001This meeting has been posted in accordance with Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. Let the record show that Trustee Scheffler, Kuhn, Murphy, Carbone, Weimer, and Francis are present with Trustee... Tonight, I'd like to take a moment to remember the life of one of our precious students who recently passed away unexpectedly with a sudden illness. Caden Joseph Rau. A fifth grader at Alexander Middle School was a very special and kind student. His classmates and friends said that he was fun and that he liked everyone. His coaches said that after every practice, he would go up and say, thanks coach for making me better. And they said he did it every single time. We will miss Caden who left a legacy of love and compassion and kindness at just 10 years old. Our hearts
002and prayers go out to his family, his teachers, his principals, his teammates, and his friends, and especially his classmates who loved him so much and still search for understanding. Please, if you would bow your heads with me for just a moment of silence to celebrate, and that will certainly grieve, the loss of Caden. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Weimer. Okay, at this time, we're going to move to the public comment portion of the meeting. This portion of the board meeting is where the board receives input from patrons. Each person who addresses the board will have three minutes to speak on his or her issue. In accordance with state law, the board must prioritize the comments of those patrons who are addressing specific items on tonight's agenda, such that input is received before the board decisions
003are made tonight. Therefore, it is important that each person who signs up to speak clearly indicates the agenda item on which he or she will comment. Patrons addressing items not listed on tonight's agenda will also be heard provided that the total time does not allotted for public comments does not exceed 30 minutes. Because of topic posting requirements of the Open Meetings Act, board members will not ask questions of the patron and nor will any questions posed by the board. nor will any questions be posed to the board by the patron. No action can be taken on any issue presented during this patron comment segment of the board meeting. Patrons addressing the board will be notified when they are approaching the last 30 seconds of their allotted time to speak. First up this evening, I have
004Ms. Maritza Wong. Is this on? Yep. Can everyone hear me? Okay. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you. Good evening trustees and dr. Berger and thank you for the opportunity to address you tonight My name is Maddie Tsa Wong and I'm a parent of two Dawson high school students one of whom is a senior on the Dawson varsity boys soccer team on the night of February 14th They were playing at Dobie high school in Pasadena ISD Dobie did not have a police officer on duty in the last 20 seconds Emotions were running high and multiple fights broke out and what was nothing less than a brawl If you haven't seen the videos I can send them to you People in playing clothes, not players, were all over the field. Two of our boys ended
005up on the ground and were being kicked and beaten by adults. The physical altercations were spread out all over one end of the field and track. When the fights on the field died down, another fight broke out in the stands. No one was in control. As parents, we could not leave until our boys left because they were not safe on the Dobie campus. About five to ten minutes after everything was over, multiple police units arrived with their sirens going, along with the fire truck to check on injuries. Little brothers in the stands were crying. Some of our players were crying. Eventually, the police gave our team an escort to their bus, which was the only way they were able to get out of the stadium. Data from the K through 12 school shooting database which
006tracks every school shooting in the US indicates that for campus shooting incidents the most common situation by far is a dispute that escalates into a shooting and the second most common time period is a sporting event. I am grateful that no one pulled out a gun that night. Two weeks prior to this event, we all know that a school shooting did occur at the Pasadena Memorial High School band competition. And a week and a half ago, on February 28th, two students were shot after school during a fight that occurred just off campus from Pasadena Memorial as our soccer players were headed to another nearby Pasadena High School. That's three serious safety incidents within Pasadena ISD in the month of February that either directly involved or were adjacent to our own students. In the aftermath of
007the incident at Dobie, soccer parents received zero communication from the district. I have had conversations with administrators, but only because I took the initiative to reach out. I have three asks for you tonight. One, communication in Spanish as well. This does not mean shifting the burden onto coaches or teachers who are in the middle of these situations themselves. Back them up with district support. Two, student well-being. The first and only update I got about this incident from my son was who got suspended and for how many games. Student well-being does not mean throwing the book at students and then closing the book. It means following up with anyone who might not be doing okay and proving to them that their district will look out for them. That opportunity was missed here. And number three, be
008alarmed at the unsafe conditions being brought to your attention and act on them. Have hard conversations, plan with other districts. Do not be the district that says we never thought it could happen here. Thank you. Mrs. Wong. Thank you. All right. I have Ms. Carla Abuela. All right. Thank you. My name is Andrew. I'm her husband, Carla's husband. She couldn't be here tonight due to an illness. So I am going to be speaking on her behalf. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I'm a mother of three PISD students, including two soccer players at Dawson High School. I'm also a healthcare professional, educator, and researcher with years of experience working with critically ill and traumatized children. Tonight, I want to offer a different perspective to the event that occurred on
009February 14th, the night that the varsity boys soccer team got into an altercation with Adobe High School and their spectators. The boys experienced interpersonal violence in sports. Studies show up to 66% of athletes endure physical violence. increasing their risk for lifelong health issues. I spoke with the director of compliance at UIL and poured through three years of state executive committee meeting recordings to understand the precedent. What happened on February 14th was more severe than other UIL cases, yet precedent was not followed. There was no coordinated effort to check on the boys' physical and mental health, while coaches mentioned counseling services how many teenage boys will recognize trauma or even seek help. Three of the most visibly injured, kicked, stomped on, and punched by adults were not sent for medical evaluation. Concussion management is crucial in
010the acute stage, yet one family received a call from our coach, while others, including the family of a boy left with a cleat mark on his neck, heard nothing from the district. Our district should have ensured a thorough investigation until all individuals were identified and criminal trespass warrants were issued. Families should have been advised of their right to press charges and guided through the process. Instead, it was clear the goal was to move past this as quickly as possible. UIL had previously required teams in similar situations to forfeit matches and end their season. Yet our investigation was closed before we could even consider those options. So what about our boys? They were demoralized, lost confidence in the district's support. Yet I acknowledge their actions were unacceptable, but the lack of follow-up and advocacy was disappointing.
011You can support them while condemning violence. Our varsity teams have high performing student athletes, top 10% students, DECA participants, ECNL club players, and future college athletes. They come from hardworking families and deserve some grace, guidance, and resources as other student athletes in our district. This event ended their season, but it's not too late to offer your support. Those are the words of my wife coming for me as an administrators and care caregivers for children I think we fell a little bit short. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Thank you. Ms. Bliss Siddha Good afternoon. My name is Liz Sitta, and I have the honor of being a mother to two beautiful children that attend Turner College and Career High School and Sablatora Middle School. In addition to that, I have the privilege of
012working for Commissioner Stacey Adams. But one of the hats I'm proud to wear today is... the Vice Chair of the Brazoria County Child Welfare Board and your representative for Region Six on the Texas Council of Child Welfare Boards. Today I get to speak on something that is very impactful. which is our upcoming pinwheel ceremonies in honor of the month of April that is recognized as Child Abuse Prevention and Neglect Month. If you're not aware, the purpose of the Brazoria County Child Welfare Board is to educate, engage, and empower our community in order to create a safe place where our children can thrive. We are appointed by our county commissioners, and we represent all four precincts. So I represent Precinct 3, which includes Pearland. And so we walk alongside many organizations to help fight child abuse
013like Isaiah House. fostering hope, guiding our youth, Davis Days, just to name a few. And one of the things that we're tasked with is educating our communities. And you will see, and actually Brazoria County is the only county that hosts the most pinwheel ceremonies throughout the entire region. So we're so excited about that. I'm going to ask my little assistant to pass on this year's sponsored pin so you could wear it throughout the month of April. Attached to the pin is a list of... that are available for you to attend during the day and the afternoon all throughout Brazoria County. And one that is hosted by our Child Welfare Board is at the County Courthouse on April 2nd. The statistics for 2024 show us 498 confirmed cases of child abuse just in Brazoria County. And
014that is less than last year. Last year we had 575. we had three fatalities. So we were up on fatality numbers. So we had three fatalities of children that passed away because of child abuse. That's 99 throughout the state of Texas. So those were 99 fatalities for the state of Texas. I get to be an advocate all month long of April and all year long. And so I hope y'all will walk alongside of us, wear the pin proudly, attend one of the ceremonies, engage the community and talk about child abuse. We know one in four girls will experience some sort of abuse and one in six boys will experience some sort of abuse. And I have left some pins over there for anybody in the public that would like a pin. Please do grab one,
015take one home. wear it proudly. Thank you so much for what y'all do. Truly appreciate y'all. Thank you for being here tonight. Thank you all for your public comments this evening. All right. At this time, we're going to move to the next part of the agenda, which is the new business and consent agenda. Is there any consideration for any items on the consent agenda this evening? Item three. Any further? Alright, I'll hear a motion to carry all items except item three so move I have a motion by Trustee Murphy and a second by Trustee Francis Any further discussion on well, let's just vote on those items all those in favor All right motion carries 6-0 with Trustee Carter absent this evening. All right, Trustee Murphy item three Yeah, I just would like to I wanted
016to kind of understand the process on the evaluation scoring around How under the reputation and references is that something that is actually called upon and checked and then what under the financial capability of these Subcontractors, how do we actually evaluate their financial capability? Are we looking at? their actual financials or is it just something that's submitted in the bid package? So I just kind of wanted to understand those two items on the bid process. Yes, sir, and our director of purchasing, Ms. Lovey, has come up and will be glad to answer those questions for you. So you were asking about the financials and what other piece? The piece was the, when we look at their experience and reputation, do we actually reach out to their previous references and other districts that have done business for
017each of these? Okay. Yes, sir. I get references from every applicant or every bidder, and we go by the weighted percentages that we get for the references, and that's part of the bid process. So, sorry, I ran down here. I thought this was going to be later. So, yeah, we get the references. We send the references off. They score them one through five based on a lot of different components. And I can send you a copy of what I used. It's very detailed. It's very in-depth. And once those come back, we get the scores for the references, and that's what we use. And as far as the financials. Yes, sir. We do look at those also. The architect helps us with that. They actually provide financials or that we're going off of what the architect?
018They provide financials. Okay. Are both of these roofs outside the scope of the bond? They're on there. Okay. That's all, that answers for me. I just wanna make sure. Yeah, we do. We take all of that into consideration. We do get qualifications and financials and all of that information. Okay, yeah, because that's a big thing when you have subcontractors and they get ahead or we're fronting some of that money to buy materials and they use it for a different project. We wanna make sure that they're strong enough to support projects of this size. If we find that they're not, then they are disqualified and we don't consider them. Sure. Thank you. That's all I have. All right. Hearing no further discussion on that item, I'll hear a motion. So moved. Motion by Trustee Murphy. Second
019by Trustee Weimer. Any further discussion on that item? Hearing none, I'll call for a vote. All those in favor? Motion carries 6-0 with Trustee Carter absent this evening. All right, now we're going to move to the workshop part of our meeting this evening, which is where we're all gonna move to the back and engage in a healthy discussion about our strategic planning. Dr. Burger, would you wanna add any more to that? No, just the board members, we did spread you around so your seats are assigned back there and then Dr. Gibson will lead us off. Anyone in the audience, you are welcome to stay and watch the workshop as we go through it. You're not required to, but we welcome any community member to stay and be a part of it. All right, we think
020these are working. I think we're on the camera, so we'll be there. I appreciate everybody. This is part of our strategic planning process. We are refocusing on the strategic plan to develop a balanced scorecard for the district. Our purpose is to align all of our processes, our procedures, our value, our purpose, our mission, our beliefs, but to make sure that we have measurable accountability through this four-year plan, that we have progress measures along the way, that we're focused on the priorities that our community wants us to be focused on, as well as the board, as well as the district, senior leadership down. We have had two community meetings that they have helped us go through this process. The documents you have in front of you are a lot. There's information provided by Moke Casey with
021Dr. Gibson we'll be talking about. We have notes from each of the community's strategic planning meetings, and we have a draft version. It doesn't say it on here, but this is a complete draft version of our strategic plan. The board is not adopting anything tonight. We are just working through this. We will bring it back to you once we have it completed. You will go through this and you will see some of the formatting is a little bit different on each priority. The reason we have done that is as we have continued to look at this, we are honing it to make sure it needs to be the document that we want it to be. We want to make sure that the board is aware of our priorities, the board is aware of our mission,
022value, vision, and purpose, and that our outcomes align with where we need to be. At the end of all this, we want our district improvement plan, our campus improvement plan, our department metrics, our strategic plan, and our superintendent evaluation all to align so that anybody in the community can look at these documents and go, I understand what we're focused on. I understand where we are going. and understand how we expect to get there. So Dr. Gibson, I turn it over to you. Very good. I'm going to mark out all my introductory comments. Well done. I seriously am. So I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and thank you for inviting me into your community, and letting me participate in tonight and last night and today with the admin team. Trustees, and let me check one
023thing. Was there? Were all the trustees here in September when I was here before or is there someone I haven't met? Okay, so I'm that guy that was here in September and we actually started this process in some ways at that time. And trustees, I've told your admin team several times, I don't want you to take my brevity and my quickness of pace. as not honoring the complexity of this process, your time is valuable, you're volunteers. Just stop me if you have a question. I'm going to honor your time, and we're going to get through the main points. And the most important thing tonight is we want to get some feedback on the draft, the status of the draft. That's the most important outcome. I will go back, and I apologize. I'm about to send
024this on a paper shuffle here. And you can follow along, or you can just use these as resources. But as a quick reminder, back to September of last fall. And I believe I had it in a PowerPoint format. But we talked that night, trustees, about the strategic role versus the tactical role versus the operational role. And so I'm looking at a document that starts with the top three essential roles. And I'm just, I'm not going to read to you. but I wanted you to go back and anchor to strategic role versus tactical role versus operational role. And just in summary, and then I'll reference this document several times tonight, that's why I want to draw your attention to it. Our framework, and it aligns well with the military framework, although tactical and operational are switched
025in the military framework. But the strategic role is, by definition, the board. That's the strategic role. Now we believe that you put the superintendent in there because the board has the responsibility of hiring the superintendent. So the superintendent lives in that strategic role and then by function, he or she is in that strategic role a lot. We like to say the strategic role is working on the system, not in the system. if that makes sense. And if the strategic role is not working on the system, nobody else in the system is going to volunteer to work on the system. I kind of joke, but kind of don't. A kindergarten teacher is not going to come up to you and say, hey, I noticed we didn't have a strategic plan on the website. May I please
026write one for the district? Right? That's just not going to happen. In fact, there's an expectation from the operational role that the strategic role is watching the whole system and developing a strategic plan. The tactical role in a district that's your size, and we talked about this earlier today and had a great conversation this afternoon. I thought it was great. I don't know how the cabinet members feel. I think after about two and a half hours, they said, we've had enough. You can go eat a snack and then come back for the board meeting. But we dove into a lot of big topics. But in a district this size and larger, I would argue that you have an upper or tier one tactical role and in large part, they're sitting around the table tonight. But
027then you have an additional tactical team of campus administrators, coordinators, directors, et cetera, that report to these. That's part of your tactical team. And so we like to say that the strategic plan, the operational role or the front line is critical to success. The tactical team is pivotal. There's a difference between pivotal and critical, if that makes sense. So like if the tactical team doesn't lean in to the strategy. In just plain language, you're going to get head bobs at board meetings, but when you go to the front line and you try to see, like, are these things happening, you're not going to see evidence of it. Does that make sense? So we're trying to create an environment where the strategic plan is ever-present, but not necessarily, you know, like there's the poster or there's
028the link on the website. It's just ever-present. It is just in our DNA. over time. And I'm going to go ahead and say it. If you can hold the strategic team and the tactical team and the plan consistent for eight to 10 years, you can get some stuff done. One of the challenges we're seeing right now nationwide, worldwide, I guess, in education, but nationwide, I'll just only speak to that. is that there's such a churn of turnover that you barely even get started on a strategic direction and you're starting over. And there's nothing more frustrating than, oh, we were doing this yesterday and now we're doing something else. To your point, Madam President, and now I'm gonna pivot us, if that's okay, to a PowerPoint that's in front of you because you touched on this.
029So we're moving, yes, sir. If I could exactly what dr. Gibson has talked about Pearland ISD has a strategic plan It's on our website and I gave a copy of it to all the board members It's the color document that you have But if you'll notice the strategic plan that we have on the website and what we're trying to move towards are not the same There are no measurements in our strategic plan currently. There are no objectives. There are no long-term goals. There's no progress measured. It truly is just some feel-good statements of what we would like to do, but no plan on how to make it happen. We want to make sure we are strategic and tactical and have operational objectives that get us to our end goal. And perfect segue, what are you
030doing Thursday night, by the way? The title page on this PowerPoint to Dr. Berger's point, and again, I'm kind of half joking, but anyone can do a strategic plan. I mean, like really, like if y'all didn't care about the community, and you do because I've been back and forth to Pearland having community meetings, you know, tell me what you want it to look like and we'll have it done in about an hour and, you know, you can get it up on the website. I'm stressing, and Madam President, what you're seeking, I believe, and this came out in September, is a performance management system. That's different than a strategic plan. That means we have strategic direction. Yes, it exists. We know that there's a strategic plan, but then we're looking at performance management. And I'm going
031to, like, lean in tonight for my brief time here with you into this big difference between just having a strategic plan and having a performance management system. So we'll just start with that on this PowerPoint. And again, I'm not going to read to you, but I'm going to use these slides, about three PowerPoint slides in, and then I'll just reference the rest of it, and we won't go through all of it. But I will start with the Peter Senge quote, who is a systems guy. It's on the front cover page there, because I think it helps kind of set the stage for what we're talking about tonight in this strategic roundtable. I realize the tables are not round, but y'all get... the concept, we're in a strategic round table format here. And Peter Singey in
032his book, The Fifth Discipline, it's like four inches thick, it's kind of the systems Bible. He talks about performance management being like the tension on a rubber band. And that a rubber band only works if it has tension on it. And the key is, like if the stack of papers is too big and the rubber band is getting overextended, it may do what? Go ahead. Break, snap. So we're always looking for the right tension on the rubber band. If you lay a rubber band down on this table and it has no tension on it, it's just sitting there, it's serving no purpose because there's no pull on it. Now, we lean into, we think this relationship between the board and the administrative team or the strategic team and the tactical team, this is not Peter
033Senge, but this is where we extend his... analogy is that the board and the tactical, especially this upper tactical team, you're holding both sides of the rubber band. And so the tension that we want to be appropriate is kind of the tension of these two teams working as one team, keeping that tension where it needs to be. Now, with regards to tension on the rubber band, one of the things that I appreciate about where we started and I... Started this conversation in September, and then we have reinforced it numerous times. The yellow part of your scorecard is the student section, and it is all that is required by law. You have to have some of the goals that we've got embedded in here. You have to have that by law. The rest of this is
034not required by law, but you have a plan in front of you that, of course, articulates the student aspect of it, but it also articulates the staff, the community, and the financial aspect, which you have very good things happening in those other three perspectives. We're just recommending to elevate them. to have targets, goals, progress measures, strategic objectives, strategic actions, just like we have student goals. That's a big shift. So you're going way beyond compliance into aspiration by articulating your strategic plan in this way. I'll summarize the fourth slide in on the second page. Richard Elmore really said this in 2004, that no amount of external accountability matters if you don't have internal accountability. Or if you haven't built an internal accountability system, you're just playing games with a higher authority. So I, again, appreciate that
035you guys are leaning into internal accountability. Now over on slide five, and I promise you, there were three more slides and then the rest is for you to digest later. Okay. When we, and Madam President, later tonight, we'll debrief the team trust self-analysis that we took in September. And so that is the trust of the team of eight. And that's eligible for executive session. So I think it will, in fact, it's recommended to debrief that in executive session. I will facilitate that. But when we're talking about trust, and I'm certified to give team of eight credit, and that's a legal term and all of that, but I'll probably be the only team of eight trainer in the state that says team of eight's not that important. What's really important to me, and I don't know
036how many we have right here, but team of 15, whatever it is, that's, if you want a performance management system, you have to have a team of 15. Or whatever, I'm just making the second number up. So whatever that is, the tactical team and the strategic team need to be in harmony with each other. That's what I'm pushing forward, I guess, tonight. And it doesn't mean that we jump roles into each other's roles, but it does mean that we can sit interspersed, and we'll talk about roundtables here in just a little bit, the potential future of these roundtables where we are in harmony with one another as we dig into some of the nuts and bolts. So we believe strongly. that generally speaking in this model that's in slide five, that some, and not here,
037but in some districts we're seeing between the board and the admin team that they're at a level of intolerance of each other. Y'all can read newspapers or Texas ISD yourself. I won't go into any specific examples, but I might be at one of them on Thursday. That's why I was asking if you wanted to take that one. I don't see you there at all. That's my feel. I just don't see that. But does it make sense that we're seeing that, unfortunately, statewide? So then we move to tolerance of one another, and quite frankly, a lot of school districts work in that tolerance level, and that's okay. The board tolerates the superintendent and the cabinet, cabinet tolerates, and we generally get things done. But I think if you're, and you're not, but if a district is
038okay with living in a compliance mindset, you can stop the journey there. You all want to articulate beyond compliance to aspirational, so we have to move in to not only acceptance, but appreciation of the two roles. and working in harmony. Does that make sense? And so we, I don't know, y'all are probably, you know, in your mind thinking, I wonder where we are on a scale of one to 10. You know, that's good that you're thinking that. I'm just trying to draw a connection that we need to, and maybe we already have, but we need to sustain levels of acceptance and appreciation beyond just tolerance of the teams. That's what I'm postulating tonight. So then Dr. Berger teed this up really well on slide six. with the comments he made, but are we staying focused?
039These are just some big overarching questions for these two teams combined into one team in front of me tonight. Are we staying focused? Are our actions effective? Now, the first part of that question is a lot easier than the second part. How do we know? How do we know that our actions are effective? You touched on we have good words. You didn't say good. You said something else a while ago. We have some words, but we don't show the targets now. And so that's the effort that we're under. So we don't know how we know if we're making progress unless we get clarity right here between these two teams on what the progress check is and then what the eventual outcome measure is. Same thing on the second. So the first one is our actions,
040and then the second one is more of outcomes. What progress are we making? And then I'm gonna go back to the slide before. Are we maintaining team trust? One thing we know about trust is that the performance of the organization, y'all have heard this before, moves at the speed of trust. I believe that strongly. Unfortunately, we have some districts statewide that are implementing scorecards. And even though we said you probably do not need to just yet because they're still in intolerance. And what we're seeing is the data being weaponized towards each other and from board to tactical and tactical to board, unfortunately. And that's what you don't want, right? So I'm giving you the anti-example. And so there's a trust component. And when I have moved beyond acceptance to appreciation, I'm a board member, you're
041a tactical team member, sir. I'm flipping the roles here. When I've moved beyond acceptance to appreciation, I appreciate that you are in the tactical role. And I want to learn. You're my subject matter expert, so I want to learn from you. And we're going to talk about a structure for that next. And I'm going to be inquisitive. And I'm going to be curious. I'm going to want the district to succeed. But that doesn't mean that I magically just became a tactician just because we're talking about tactics. Does that make sense? So we're trying to find this like real harmonious balance with these strategic roundtables. So if you look at the next slide, slide seven, and again, last slide. Yes, ma'am, please. Very good. Yes. Yeah, so today we had a good conversation, very brief, because
042we're not at that step yet about cascading the strategy to the next level. And we're going to talk about rounding here in a little bit. And there's a term in the quality world of skip-level meetings, which when you're rounding or whatever term you use, if the principal is not there, then you're doing a skip-level meeting. I would argue the superintendent's doing a skip-level meeting even if the principal is there. And the research on skip level meetings is that it is okay as long as it's real clear ahead of time what we're trying to do, why we're doing it. So we had a good, robust conversation today. If the board chooses to adopt these objectives, then our, and what term do y'all use? I said rounding today. Campus visits, that's a very good term. It's very
043descriptive, yeah. So when doing campus visits, aligning that conversation to we're going to talk about priority one or we're going to talk about priority two. So to your question, I think principals, as they get comfort with these objectives and they know superintendent and a few others are making a campus visit to talk about priority two, okay. Right. Well, we talked about, I think, and cabinet members, y'all can correct me, but I think what we talked about today is making sure to take our time over the next 18 months after this summer. Let's say this thing gets deployed this summer. We have to take small step, small step, small step in order to protect the fragility of that relationship. I will tell you, when we started this work in my last district that I stayed at
044for 12 years, in my district prior to that, I was a certified teacher evaluator. even though it was a relatively large district about this size. And when I started really thinking about these roles, it dawned on me that that was incorrect. I should not be going through teaching. As superintendent, when I have curriculum directors and assistant superintendents and curriculum coordinators, I have no business acting like that's what I should be doing. And we were trying to grapple with the concept of campus visits or rounding. So it was more of me going to check in on strategy, deployment, and implementation and execution. And I can tell you the last two questions I asked at campus visits after we concluded with the scorecard report were, what else do I need to know? And what else do you
045need to do your job? Like tell me, every superintendent has a blind spot. So tell me what I need, tell me what my blind spot is. Now that's after a lot of trust is built. Well, anyway, I'll just stop with that. If I could, Dr. Gibson, in our conversation, we already, many of the departments, CNI, technology, the CLT, visit campuses and have individual conversations with principals. When I visit, I visit every single principal throughout the year, and what I do currently is I take our district goals, our board goals, and I list them on a sheet, and then I go through and go, do you have safety issues that you'd like to talk about? Do you have student well-being issues? So I'll go through each one. So what we would do if this is adopted
046and we go through, we would mimic that process with these priorities and we would go more as a tandem instead of individually, superintendent would go, CNI would go, HR would go, depending on what priority we are talking about. Also, as we get through this and build this out, what he's talking about, the scaffolding with the campuses, is that while we would still have the district improvement plan and the campus improvement plan, which is really the more detailed implementation of how this happens, they would have their own campus version of the scorecard. Going back, that's really good. Going back to the outcome measure, if we know what the district measure is, because y'all mentioned that may be something that's missing, if we, and I'm going to totally make up numbers here, but whichever objective we're looking
047at, if the outcome measure is a 75 and we have agreed that it needs to be an 80, there's power in everyone having that same knowledge. we have five points to go in four years. Then when we, and I'm not saying the purpose of these campus visits is gotcha. In fact, if you're clear about what the top line number is, I promise you an astute principal already knows whether they're providing lift or drag to that number, right? You don't have to say a word, they know. But the clarity comes around. We need it to be a 76 this next year. They're going to immediately go and go, oh, I'm a 73. Or they're going to go. I'm a 76, I mean, like I'm not. So you're building into the system by just being clear about
048the outcome that you don't have to talk about it as much. You can just go in and start asking questions because they're gonna know as they start cascades. And then it's, to me, that's the right way for a central office team. And you've got to go in here to lead by just get real data-driven, you know, and the number's the number. And, you know, we're trying to make progress towards that number. And so we're going to talk about that progress. Okay, very good. So on the top, the slide on page seven, just so like if this was a Six Flags map, you know, you are here, which is very helpful, by the way, on a map. You are here going down the left-hand side of this. Does that make sense? Like we're checking on team
049trust. We're talking about the three essential roles. We're going to talk about the aligned subsystems again here in just a little bit. We're leaning into plan, do, check, act. Go down to the bottom. We're talking to the community, talking to the staff, and then the tactical team is making the first draft of the scorecard. So like you're almost... you know, 60 days, I'm going to give you that much time. Although I walk out to go to the restroom and I come back and the scorecard's updated. So they don't, I say, we'll do it tomorrow. And like, they're on it, like they're working on it. But you're, I guess the main concept for tonight is we're about to, we are about to move from the left-hand side of this to the right-hand side of it. To
050see we're going to, if we don't, all we did was just put a strategic plan with some numbers. Right, which is a good thing because you're saying you didn't have that. But just because we get the numbers settled doesn't mean it's a performance management system. We've got to look at these systematic plan, do, check, act, plan, do, check, act, plan, do, check, act. Is that fair enough? I'm going to take a pause here and we're going to pivot. Everybody good with that so far? The box that's on the right-hand side. is not a list of everything you need to do before the 25 school year, 25, 26 school year starts. We are capturing best practices statewide as we deploy these and execute these. And we're just capturing there. I mean, I can look at this
051and tell you last night. Dr. Berger, I heard you say with the community, there's a good chance we'll have you back another time to look. Okay, so see, you're starting a community advisory committee. Now, when that says VOC beside it, that's voice of community. If you're in a for-profit, that would be voice of customer. Do you want to interchange those words? You're welcome to do it. I think in today's competitive environment, it might be prudent to think that way. We have not talked about staff advisory committees, but we are talking about processes in priority two that probably include that. And I don't want to like just go through these, but there are two questions primarily for the board tonight are the monthly quick reports and the strategic round tables. and probably the learning to use
052strategic questions. Those are really critical components of decisions that the board needs to make. So let me go ahead and tee a strategic round table. And Dr. Berger, feel free to jump in because I think today we settled on, we didn't really talk about monthly quick reports, but... With the tactical team and tactical team members are all way in if I'm misquoting what we decided earlier to have a beginning of year B.O.Y. beginning of year workshop in October seems like a good time frame. So like the school year started, budget is passed. You have some brand new data on pre-K students, like literally the first data we have on a whole tranche of kids in kindergarten. And then we also, between July and October, some of the last year, the previous year's EOY or end
053of year got cleaned up. And we might have been looking at raw data in August, and we have comparative data about October. So let me, I just want to be real concrete tonight. So whether it's at the end of a meeting like you just modeled or it's a separate workshop, the roundtable concept, we're saying get off the dais. Trustees, come here, sit around the table just like is being modeled tonight with the tactical team members and get into some of the stuff that's on the scorecard. The overarching theme there is if we set aside, well, let me finish. So three of those, October and then in February or late January, arguably, there is a plethora of M-O-Y or middle-of-the-year data. Is that a fair statement, curriculum? Yeah, just more than we could ever, more than
054enough. So we're saying in February, get back in this format and go through those checkpoints. And by the way, these checkpoints are the things that are starting in this draft to be articulated in your column three. So I'm going to let everybody look at the scorecard and look at the third column. So now in this hypothetical I'm giving, it's February. and we're back here in a workshop and you're getting data updates for up to February on each of the bulleted items in column three. Now trustees, I wanna make sure that that makes sense. Like that column, the third column, those are your check-in measures. So you would dedicate some time. And Madam President, my recollection when I was here before, I think I said this and everyone laughed, but I think they laughed because it
055felt like it was true. And I said it last night. With seven board members, you're going to have, if you're typical of any board member, you're going to have one that doesn't want to do a workshop. That's okay. And then you're going to have one that, you know, would like to do this for three days. You know, do this M-O-Y workshop for three days. Yeah, I'm not even going to comment on what I think the comment might have been. But I think in September, what I said, and it's true tonight, the board has to reach consensus about what the amount of information in those three workshops. It's hard on the tactical team to know unless you reach consensus. And in the absence of that clarity, they, like I did, just throw spaghetti against the wall,
056hoping that it's the right amount that sticks. the more clear we are. And Dr. Berger, quite frankly, we would talk and talk and synergize in a team like this, and I would just say two hours or three hours because I knew we could hit it. Like if we just know what that expected amount is, we'll hit it. I mean, we will adjust and we will hit it. So, Madam President, that's kind of in play tonight. Not necessarily to answer, but maybe at the end to have a brief conversation about what that might look like. The third component, of course, is are you all a September 1 budget or a July 1? Okay, so after budget, then you're going to have some performance data, EOY. Actually, that works well with this because you get the budget
057adopted and then you can do a workshop in August and not tie it into a budget meeting like all the September people are doing. So does that make sense? BOY October, MOY February, and EOY summer. Good question. If you are in some districts after implementing this move to the July to coincide with that most districts policy and common practice around the state is contradictory to that So if you choose not to do that, that's okay. By the way, every year we talked about my evaluation moving to July, and the board said, yes, we want to do it, and they never did it in 12 years. It was in January. But arguably that July, well, I'm going to say August EOY report, that's the data that the superintendent is evaluated on in January. So you've got
058to, trustees, you have to kind of walk and chew gum because you have to know that that was the end of it, and you're going to evaluate on that in January, and then in February you're going to get a middle-of-the-year report on here's where we are in the current year. And that never caused a problem in 12 years for me. Did I do something? Are you sure? You're not just taking the blame? No. Okay. We had a conversation on that because when we were discussing it earlier today, I predicted that question would come up. And so on that rotation of July is end of year. And so it's kind of like, think of our graduation rates and the information that comes in for CCMR, it's always a year behind. So for us, when we do
059the superintendent evaluation in January, you're looking at a year behind. I'm not judging you right now on what's happening. I'm judging you on what did happen. But in this process, we have talked about the formative assessment, not just the summative. And so those formatives could fall when we set the goals in October for the B.O.Y., if we do the February or maybe a March middle of the year, that could be the formative check that we've been talking about. Absolutely. The main thing, Madam President and Trustees, is January, you're in the middle of the year, so it should be the end of the previous year. That's really, I think, the bottom line if you do it in January. All right, any other? That's a good question. Thank you for asking. So just real quickly, Dr. Berger,
060do you, this aligned arrows, I showed this to the board in September and my recollection was there was a lot of like, okay, like we need to get it. You spoke about this last night and then earlier today. So do you want to talk about that a little bit? No, just like I said, we have lots of great things happening in Pearland ISD. Some of the great things are aligned. Some of the great things are siloed in departments or on campuses or isolated and not all going in the same direction. So in some places, we're stage one. We're doing lots of hard work, but we're kind of running into each other and duplicating work and replicating processes, which is not efficient. What we want to do is we want to continue to move down to
061where we have systematic approaches. We have processes and systems that everybody understands this is how we do it. For the longest time, we've talked about the Pearland Way and Pearland. Well, the Pearland Way needs to be understood by everybody as a systematic process for achievement, for student growth, for staff growth, for community engagement and involvement. And so we want to make sure that what we do through this process is align all of our approaches and work towards an integrated concept. Like he was talking about, no matter where you go, people understand what our priorities are. what our outcomes are supposed to be, and the process is how we're going to measure how we get there. And so that's where we want to be. We want to go, and we took kind of a survey in
062cabinet and said, where do we think we are on this? And we were somewhere between a... 1.7 and a 2.5, but we definitely wanna get down into the stage three and stage four to make sure that everybody across the campus, and I'm talking our students, our staff, and our community understand the aligned and integrated approach of how we build Pearland Proud. The stages, there's an additional piece of paper there, and they go together. But when you guys did that internal assessment, which was, I think, a really good, this one is titled Aligning Subsystems, but they did not, the cabinet did not only have this graphic organizer or this model of the arrows. They had this additional description of stage one, and it just got quiet. We looked at it. Now, does that make sense? So
063these go together. And I mean, trustees, again, I want to keep the conversation real. In organizations that are not intentional about the quality of work, we digress to, we're doing good. Don't you think we're doing good? I think we're doing good. Versus, we're at a 1.7 and we need to get to 2.7. And then by the way, when we get to 2.7, then there's stage three around the corner. And then when we're in stage three, oh, by the way, and there's a stage four, you know, around the corner. So we're really trying to break the paradigm of just this oversimplistic death by PowerPoint to the board of kids and science goggles. You know, we want a district report and you get a PowerPoint, not y'all, but I'm just saying in general, we see it all
064the time. We want a district report and it's a bunch of pictures of kids happy. You know and you know my dad was a school board president when I was a superintendent not mine But the next district over and PowerPoint just started and he hated it like he just hated it like a picture picture things I just want numbers and words, you know, don't bring me all those picture things It is I had to kind of weed through his old curmudgeon to really get show me the data You know and just tell me where we are and he would say son The board is gonna ask you what time it is. Don't tell him how to make a watch And that was his way of saying, like, let's get clear about where we, and by
065the way, I'm not anti-student recognition. That is not what I'm saying. There's a time and a place for that. But when we get to these strategic roundtable meetings, we're digging in to the scorecard. That's what we're doing. I'm going to, we have one Peter Drucker quote, and then I think we're going to go to the scorecard. So if we'll look at the scorecard. So Peter Drucker wrote a lot. Y'all know he was chairman of the board for GE and CEO of several companies and wrote a bunch of books. And I don't believe everything he wrote, but there's a lot of it that's really good. Actually, I misquoted. Jack Welch. So Jack Welch said that if we do this right, the board should feel comfortable only owning the left column and the right column. Do you
066see the two middle columns is the tactical stuff? I want to go slow on this and make sure. Board's going to adopt belief, mission, and vision, and objectives. Boom. You own them. You just adopted them, so you are now your subject matter experts helped create it, and we're going to get some feedback tonight, but when you adopt them, you're doubling down. That's it. Then in about six months to a year, Let your tactical team work on these outcome measures. Don't try to adopt those right now. Is it fair to say, cabinet members, that every time we peeled a layer of onion back, there was another layer and then another layer and then another layer? Whereas we put some things down on here to just help us kind of... capture what the group was thinking to
067collectively, this right-hand column is still in flux and we just ran out of time and energy today to keep debating it. And I just think you need six months minimum, maybe a year to just keep updating the board on locking these down. The X to Y by Z format in the right-hand column is the desire. Go ahead, sir. This is being recorded, and this will be held in the record cabinet. You do not have six months to a year. You don't. We're not going to move expeditiously where we don't do it correctly, but we want to make sure that we get this document together. And so even though best practice might be six months to a year, but we are an A-plus cabinet, so we will move a little bit faster. I'm not going to
068make a case against that. That's good. And truthfully, if that's the case, and I have no doubt that that's true, if I'm a trustee, the clearer that right-hand column gets clearer, the clearer I start getting comfortable. Right? Like, now I see the target. And that's a good target. And there's going to be some discussion between now and then. Okay, so let me say this kind of bluntly, and it's not meant to be too blunt for trustees, but the... In the roundtable, when we get back here, minimum three times a year, we're inviting the strategic role, the board, into the tactical stuff. That's what we're saying. Come on, we're going to talk about tactical stuff. It doesn't mean that you now live there, trustees. In fact, I like to say you get a granola bar and
069a bottle of water, it's a day hike. No tent, maybe a very small pup tent, you know, but no big RVs, you can't build a cabin. And quite frankly, I mean, a lot of the, we have superintendents that walk up to us and say, I can't believe y'all are inviting the board to sit down with the cabinet and go through those actions. We're doing all this training, their words, not mine, to get them out of the weeds, and then you're just inviting them in the weeds. And maybe there's some truth to that. And by the way, I just make a mental note, we'll never be working there, so I don't have to drive to whatever that town, that's okay in some ways. But what, trustee, what we're saying is, I think, and I've always thought
070that trustees... The reason maybe they get into the tactical stuff and operational stuff from the daisk is they never hear a report on how that stuff is working. A real report. And they never have metrics to kind of show where we are. So we're threading a needle here maybe. We're saying we're going to do these roundtables. And if we do it right, it potentially should relieve some of the pressure at the dais for trustees to feel like that's their only chance to ask questions is in a regular meeting when they know there are these roundtables coming up when we're really getting in, you know, kind of down to the tactical level. All right, I'm going to say it. Fair enough. Trustees, do you want me to proceed or are you gonna fire me after that
071last thing? Are we good on the round table? So Dr. Berger. I think Murphy wants to fire you, but the rest of us are good. Okay, well, I had a trustee that... He said, whatever, and I'm not saying this is you, sir, but whatever the rest of you decide, decide it, and I'll be there if I can. And I don't know if that's what that was. And that actually worked, and it was kind of funny because he missed one every now and then. But curiosity got the best of him, and he wound up coming to the strategic round. I was like, what are you doing? I thought you, I don't know. They're going to talk about 2.1. I want to hear that. Okay, come on. But if we do it right, it should. feel like
072a benefit to the board members to come get to see some of the tactical stuff happen. All right, Dr. Berger, you have clear line of sight in your mind of primary, not exclusive, but primary ownership of priority one, priority two, priority three, priority four with your cabinet structure. And again, it's not... It's not like they own all of it because this whole team works on all of it But you might talk about just how that because I saw when that connected for you and that made me feel good Sure, so when we went through this process the priorities are students staff community and finance and then there are strategic objectives part of that and then tactical and performance measures and long-term goals. Well obviously when we started about talking about students and student performance and
073student growth that lives in CNI and so we divide it up wherever we thought it lived staff lives in HR so the leaders of those departments became the leaders of these areas then they would go and they would work with people underneath them supporting roles to make sure that they ferreted out all of the pieces that may be a part of that. So what we'll go through here is when we get to priority one, Dr. Allen will talk about it a little bit, but I want to highlight that this document is a draft. There are many versions of this document inside of this document. We are working on the best way to articulate. Dr. Gibson has given us a lot of feedback on what this document should look like and should not look like. You
074will see columns that look different when you go from one priority to another or even inside one priority because we want y'all to be able to see different versions of what the document could be. So when you talk about what you see as a strength or what you see as an opportunity or what you see as unclear, it will help guide us to where this document needs to go. along with all the community input that we have. From both sessions, we've got some very detailed community input on strengths, opportunities, and clarities that need to happen. Some of those have already been addressed in this document. This is about version four or five of this document that we keep going back to, and we will continue to go back to until we get it correct. And
075it's different than the document I looked at at 4 p.m. when I walked away for a few minutes. Yes, sir, this document is different than that one. Someone kept working on it. We took feedback from you and corrected some things. The one thing that you may get stuck on is you go to column four and you want to see those long-term outcomes and what are those numbers. They're not there. We're working on those. We have to build those. We have to make sure that we hit the mark where we need to be, where we're going from X to Y at a certain percentage or certain increase. We want to make sure that we have the right data to be doing that. So don't get stuck in column four and go, well, wait a minute, what's
076the outcome or long-term goal here? We want to make sure that we get column one, two, and three put together and make sure that we have the right data for four. Because what we may do is through our research, we figure out that, hey, we're already at the mark, so maybe we just need to maintain. And so we'll start. And the only thing I would add, Madam President and Trustees, I think it's fair to say, and Dr. Berger checked me on this, that we believe after today the belief, mission, vision, motto, and column one are near final. Yes, I would say that. So everything else is not near final. So, so board, there are belief statements that we already have in district mission statements, vision statements, and obviously the motto is the motto. I will
077ask that we do not change that. Everything else has been vetted through the community, looking at our current belief statements and then adding terms or words that they felt were missing. And so we took all of that data and put it into these belief statements of what they were saying. as well as the mission and the vision. We worked through that both nights. And so we believe that those are good. And we definitely do believe that their strategic objectives are good. If you were at the meeting last night, Ms. Carbone, Ms. Weimer, we did change. We moved up 1.13 and 2.13 to 2.1, 2.1, or 1.1 and 2.1. Well, it was good feedback that generated a really robust discussion today. And I thought it was great. You know, it's because some of the community were
078saying, first thing I want to see is well-being and safety of students. And actually it said safety and well-being of students and it was 1.3. So I kind of set the parameter of don't move it just because one person said it or maybe even two or three last night. But did what we hear last night, did it stick with some of us? And sure enough, that kind of stuck overnight. And everybody's like, why not move it? Why not move it from 1.3 to 1.1, where it's literally the first thing you look at? It doesn't state anywhere that they're in any particular order, that people draw conclusions and inferences from the first time they put their eyes on it, right? And so, anyway. Do you, Dr. Berger, five, and Madam President, five minutes on priority one,
079five minutes on priority two, five minutes on priority three, five minutes on priority four, and then we're gonna capture strengths, opportunities, just like last night, and anything that's unclear. Now, I think we'll let... Yeah, it will bounce around to those team leaders to just in basic. We're just introducing it There's going to be a lot of things are unclear over to the right and so if you if you want to share it That's okay because that'll help inform maybe the next steps for the cabinet, but we're really taking feedback on those objectives We're gonna talk a little bit about what's over in column two, three, and four, because if I'm you, I can't understand what well-being and safety of all students means unless I know what the cabinet's thinking. Does that make sense? So we're
080really only taking feedback on the objective, but I'm saying just if you think it, say it, and let us capture that note tonight so the cabinet has like where the trustees' thinking is tonight. So we'll kick it over for a quick priority one overview. Status report of the draft of the draft. All right. So when we first met, the first thing that we did was came up with our three. strategic objectives, so we just discussed that, the well-being and safety of students, academic achievement and growth, as well as CCMR. So then from there, what I did was met with, as Dr. Berger described, met with members of my team, directors and coordinator in CNI, met with director of multilingual, director of CTE, the director of testing as well, and also collaborated with Mr. Palumbo, Dr.
081Nixon, and Ms. Holt to try to come up with those key actions, measures, and those outcomes that we're looking for. So if we're just looking at 1.1, the well-being and safety of students, we tried to identify what would those things look like. So we want to talk about those, the engagement of our students, whether it be in the extracurricular activities, safety and security, of course, the social and emotional well-being and behavior management. And then when looking at what those progress measures are, what are those things throughout the course of the school year that we could be able to check to look at those things? So if we're looking at engagement, looking at the rosters, how many students do we have participate in different events? For safety, you know, we have our normal drills that we
082have to have. We have TEA audits that come through. So our success on those things, as well as threat assessments and our anti-bullying program and awareness that we're continually wanting to put out there. For social and emotional awareness, make sure that we're, you know, tracking the resources that we have. and that we're utilizing them appropriately, reviewing the logs of times when our counselors are meeting with students and our mentor program, like Rise Mentor, and also looking at our attendance because we believe that if we're taking care of that well-being of students, that should increase our attendance. Hopefully students who are more engaged in school, enjoy coming to school, feel more comfortable in school, or come daily. And then also that behavior management, something that we always want to continue to... We've done a good job
083over the last couple of years of really increasing our non-negotiables at the secondary level as well as increasing PBIS at the elementary and continually tracking that as well. Some of those outcomes in those areas, looking at that participation rate, that's one of those things where I need a number now to kind of see where we are, to see what's a good gauge for how many students being engaged would be. Also looking at... you know, making sure that all of our campus administrators and counselors are trained on the procedures that we have in place, that we are passing 100% of our audits. Each year, Dr. Berger has his superintendent surveys that go out. One of them goes to students, so we'll be tracking to see, you know, what is the student perception of how they feel
084about being at school? Do they feel safer? Do they feel comfortable? and as well as making sure that we increase our attendance rate and reduce our discipline in fractions by 15% each year. So if I may, on you, trustees, this is a good one to make this observation. There's four of them, the second, third, fourth, and fifth bullet, those will not be expressed in X to Y by Z format. Does everybody follow that? the second, third, fourth, and fifth bullet will not be X to Y by Z because you have to have 100% on those. Okay, so, but then the other four that, or the other three that are on here will eventually be expressed in X to Y by Z format. He just said, we gotta get the bench, we gotta know where we
085are, what the number is, then we have to have a conversation about what is it reasonable to move from this number to this number by 2029. Because a good conversation to have, like you said, every time we look at this, it peels back a layer and we're like, oh, you know, oh. So when on the extracurricular activities, you know, you think sports, you think band, you think choir. So if we increase student participation in those by X amount every year, we eventually reach a point of saturation or oversaturation where we can't afford it. If we are increasing football by 10% every year, well, eventually everybody's playing football, you know? So some of that we're going to have to look at and realize let's maintain. This is the best case number for us based off of
086our population and teams, so let's maintain that number. But maybe we look at clubs or organizations that have underrepresentation or undergrowth, and we work to grow those. Because while these priorities are alone, priority one, two, three, and four, they're also connected. So when we talk about financial stability, we have to look at that as well. We can't create a goal that's going to bankrupt us. And so we have to think in that manner. So that just goes in our thought process. That may turn into a maintained participation in some areas, but an increased participation in others. But that leaves me, I mean, that's the kind of point that I think is interesting because when I see this bullet point, I'm not thinking about it from a district user standpoint. I'm thinking about it as a
087student-led, if it creates a better environment, we know from research that when students are engaged. The measure for me would be more is every student engaged in something rather than the number of usage for the programs if that makes sense Yeah, we so this is something that you all will be discussing at the round tables this coming year is like what and I and you This is not the point to have those kinds of discussions. No, ma'am, because I'm just, they're just starting, like, they gotta get a first number to just say this is where we are. I will tell you, when I arrived in SCUC, I said, how many of our 7th through 12th graders are in extracurricular or co-curricular? And they looked me in the face and they said 92%. And so I
088said, well, let's get the count. Just for grans. I'm new. I don't know anything. Well, it was 62%. 62% is different than 92%. Would you agree? And it's not just barely different. And so they were like, we're so embarrassed. And I was like, well, my question is, like, how did you miss it so dramatically? And their response, I'll never forget, was it's 92% of the kids we know were involved. That was the whole point. Like, there's a whole group. And what you, you know, we didn't. Sometimes they carry a skateboard on the weekends. They come in the back door, they barely go engage, and then they get out of there and get to the skate park. I'm making that as only one example. And my middle son is the picture I have in my mind
089of that student. But then I appreciate what Dr. Berger's saying about cost-effectiveness. You can't blow priority four to fix priority one. That's the whole balanced approach. What we, over time, we started getting good at cost-neutral ways to keep kids or get more kids involved. that are cost neutral. Right, but I think a simple answer to your question, Ms. Carbona, is I understand what you're saying. While it's not program specific, we do wanna look at how do we measure 100% engagement for all our kids, no matter what it is. You may be in chess club, you may be in basketball, you may be in robotics, but yes, I understand what you're saying. We want to, so it may be two different measurements. One to maintain program stability, and the other is to make sure all of
090our kids are engaged and connected in something. there could be 50 kids engaged in 12 different things, but then another 50 kids that aren't engaged in anything. And that becomes more concerning than the use of the programs themselves. And I believe taken into consideration like kids who may also be going to college and or have jobs. So they may not be able to participate at all. Right. There is a subset of that. So trustees, just in the interest of time. Alan, right, Dr. Alan, did a good job of showing you 1.1. In the interest of time, do you see how it works? Okay, then if you look at 1.2, just hit one. You did a good job of kind of showing them the mechanics over to the right. Just why is 1.2 there and why
091is 1.3 there? Well, 1.2, I mean, that's the meat and potatoes of what we do, right? The teaching and learning of students. So we want to make sure that we have a strategic objective that is based upon the growth of all students and as well as, you know, that we're meeting the achievement goals that we want. And when you look at the progress measures, what you see there are a lot of the things that are currently happening, but putting them in a more systematic way of reporting that out so that everyone can be able to see and track that progress on a regular basis. That makes sense. And I know earlier today we were talking about at a strategic round table, trustees, just to make this crystal clear, those bulleted points under column three, that's
092what you could expect to hear at a round table, right? Especially MOY, because we don't have that. So like in that February or March, those bullet points are what you could expect to hear. And then 1.3 is our CCMR, which is part of our accountability. But also, it kind of gets into that wholeness of the child, right? And making sure that they are ready to enter the workforce or college or military. So, and as you can see there, again, those measures of things that, you know, whether it be increasing AP or SAT, the different programs that we have over at Turner, increasing our IBCs, all of that is revolving around preparing those students for. life beyond Paralent ISD. So on priority one, just free form here. And we're not gonna go trustee by trustee by
093trustee, but everybody, eyes wide open, silence means agreement under this scenario. So now that you look at 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and I know there's a lot of things that are unclear, but we're really talking about those three objectives. Are there any strengths of what you see in these three objectives? Are there any opportunities that you want to share now as the cabinet continues the work? I think one thing that I noticed is you can get into a little bit of a definitional problem, particularly with 1.1, because just for instance, the women that were here earlier talking about their kids and their soccer program, obviously that's a safety issue, a well-being issue. But you could also make the argument that football is a safety issue. Kids get injured. You could make an argument that GPAs is
094a well-being issue because it stresses kids out. So I don't know if there's any way to assign any guardrails to that to say like very specifically, what do we mean when we're talking about physical safety or safety and well-being to where that conversation at some point doesn't derail into something that, you know, basically Jennifer Twenge's book I brought up before in iGen talks about we've raised a safety generation and it has truly inhibited their ability to flourish. And so finding that balance in there without bringing on any undue risk. Yeah, and I... I would argue that 1.2 and 1.3 are the only ones that are going to be pretty cleanly clear. And everything, all the other objectives on here over this. the next few round tables are going to be calibrating between the tactical and
095the strategic role about where's the line we're trying to hit. And I thank you for bringing that up because the concept of the, remember the rubber band? We have to agree that we have it at the right spot or we'll never, the cabinet will never feel like they met y'all's needs and y'all will feel like the cabinet never met your needs. So those conversations, you're bringing up a great example of the type of thing. In my mind, I'm hearing, man, that's a good roundtable conversation that it's hard to have up there at the dais. That's the kind of stuff that you talk about down here. Where's the right line and the tactical team and the strategic team agreeing? Where's the right line on this? All right. That's good. If I could, Dr. Gibson, one thing
096that Dr. Gibson did advise us that, you know, in a couple months we can do once we land on all this, is that some of these can have hyperlinks to where you can click on it and it can give you that clarity of what that means. What are we talking about? Because you're right, that can be all inclusive, what safety or well-being could be for somebody. But what we are focused on in that could be a hyperlink, a one-pager that says, this is what we mean by well-being and safety. That's a really good time to use that example, Dr. Berger. And by the way, if I'm thinking of my dad, the board needs to know what time it is, not how to make a watch. So the hyperlinks help us not get lost in all
097that detail and stay focused on these most important top line things. So any strengths or opportunities from Bruin? Just priority one. We have enough time for other board members. I tend to over talk and share my ideas very willingly, but I want to give a chance for anybody else who's looking into this. The graduation rates, is it somewhere listed here? Either with the well-being or the, I see discipline. I don't think it is, but it'll definitely be one that we can add. So an opportunity under P1 would be to include graduation rate. Is that, I don't want to put. Also. helped me here on everybody talked about extracurricular co-curricular and then we went into the other night we were talking to about Communities and schools and ace programs and all kinds of things that we're
098talking about with the kids being connected. So We put in that I'm on one one. So in the middle in the first The first one's ours. The second one talks about extra co-curricular, which is great. But when you get to the end over there in four, it says increased participation and extra curricular. So we didn't put co-curricular there, but we still intend for that, right? Yeah, I think if it's over to the left, it's going to be over to the right. I'm just doing my issue. No, you're looking at a draft, and that's just. This was speed stuff today. And I know Dr. Gibbs is trying to steer us away from that, but that's exactly what I'm talking about. Every time we look at this, we go, oh, we missed that, or oh, we need
099to add that. So I appreciate you bringing that up. It's for our district. We're proud of the graduation rate. I guess that's my question in this process, is when is the time for us to really dig in? Is this the time to really? When they say the whole scorecard is near final. which is not tonight, then you do a round table to run through and bring your coffee and your sandwich and have to break it into two meetings because priority one can take a whole thing. And then you can put two and three and four together almost. Well, and I don't know, is he aware with what we've done kind of in our superintendent review process? Because that has been the challenge is we've wanted for years, metrics, smart measures, you know, like here's your
100goal at the end of the year, did you reach it? And defining these things, especially 1.1, terribly hard. So yeah, looking forward to getting that all defined, but that's gonna be a big conversation. We haven't been able to do it over the past three years that we've been trying to do this. And I'm hearing from the superintendent this summer-ish, because I said 60 to 90, I mean six months to whatever, and you said, no, it might be sooner than that. It may be not achievable, but my goal is to have this to you guys in a near final draft that we sit down and hammer it out. to be ready to start looking at rolling it out next year. So it would be a May, June, July kind of we start working through this, giving
101us time to make sure that we are landing on the right objectives, that you are clear and nothing's missing on the far left-hand side, because if it's not clear or something's missing, then we need to start adding so we can make sure we have columns two, three, and four. So what we're doing tonight is making sure column one is shored up. If column one we can agree on, then we can build out the document and bring it back to you to go, okay, now let's hammer out two, three, and four. I think that's a good way to frame it up. So I'm going to withdraw the strength opportunity for improvement and unclear until that. So let me reframe it and just state something that the superintendent just said. Trustees, is 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, is that
102the right three objectives? Is there something missing on the objective level for the priority of students? Can you park anything that you're thinking about in one of those three buckets? Let me say it that way. I just would want to hear, and we can't tonight, but more on that military ready, and I know that's a component, but how we're going to do that when you talk about increasing 100 and that kind of stuff. Because I know we have parents that don't, we just put the table up and let them sign up. So if you'll tell me how. No, that's good. As we talked about it, we let you visit the kitchen. You just can't cook in it. Yeah. That's a good way to, I may start using that. I guess I'm really stuck on this
103piece about in partnership with the community. And when Dr. Gibson said adding the voice of the customer. And as I look through this document as a whole, and I know there's a community section. But I feel like there's still opportunity for growth about what partnership and the voice of the customer looks like in every one of these areas. I don't feel like it is right to have a stagnant area of communication alone if we're truly a partner in each of these areas. And I'm thinking about even as a parent of my kids, and we talked about it a little bit last night, about my expectations for understanding where my students are in this academic process. It's one thing for me to see it globally as a board. trustee, but it's another thing for me to
104understand it as a parent for my specific child that we have areas of opportunity there. Where does that bake into this? Well, two thoughts come to mind. That is generally the role of your principal and their instructional support at that level, at the granular level of a student. And one of the reasons that we're proposing this at a district level and strategic level to work on this system, if I may extend what you brought up, boards get up there and back here and don't take this the wrong way, please. We're not asking, the ed code is not asking you how you're doing as a parent. They're asking you how are you doing on ensuring that the district is making progress, not your child. That's your role as a parent. Now, you know that your child
105is one in this count of 22,000 or whatever it is, right? But we have a tendency in education, we do it not just board members, we do it as administrators too. We get so down in the weeds that we lose sight at this level of that big number we're trying to move. Now, I want to talk about community. If we do a survey on community right now, and it came up in this feedback, they're going to say we don't have good communication. If we do this to perfection for 12 years, your highest negative on your survey is going to be you don't have communication. I'm just going to, like, that is always going to be the feedback. So all we can do, and so we, okay, we could fold our arms and say, well, they'll
106never be happy. Or we can say, you know what, we're going to develop systems. And for me, and I'm not saying this is what it is for Dr. Berger, when we had a strategic roundtable and we dug in and the community advisory committee was invited to it and some of them sat here, but the next week I brought that group in on a table like this and I just went back through it with them where it wasn't like watching someone else. And then we were listening. and like trying to pick up little clues and little, so I felt like we were running through the scorecard with them. We were capturing that community voice just systematically. I don't know, those are my gut responses. I will think of something better as I drive home tonight, but
107that's all I've got right now. And I guess, go. I was gonna say too now that I have been on this side of the fence, it's very difficult for us to know and that's why we kind of add things and that kind of thing is like how do we know that? So even if I, I don't even know how dual language is doing pretty much. Yes, I get a report, but when we look at evaluating the whole system, I don't know what progress is made. And then also we have on academic growth. I know training comes, I know training, y'all hear me say training, but teachers need to know how to look at data and know their kids and what the barriers are and how to get them past those things and what things we
108can do. I don't know where that fits, if that's under staff development or if it's here on academic growth because it can't grow. if we don't know where their weaknesses are and how to improve that. So I don't think you'll get that just on. Yeah, my gut feeling is that would live under 2.3, but I may be wrong because we're talking about building capacity of staff and staff development. And I think this is where we land. In the tactical area, we're talking about it, but the board creates the objectives on the left and creates the outcomes on the right. And the stuff in the middle, like training or dual language progress or EB progress, would ultimately end up in the outcomes. So the stuff in the middle, if it's being done correctly, the outcomes move.
109If the stuff in the middle is not being done correctly, the outcomes don't move. So we need to focus on the left and the right, not necessarily what is the how. So you're saying we need to focus on the trust and trustee. Well, I mean, that's... Like, just trust y'all to do the job. But I think what Dr. Miss Weimer is saying also, part of the trust is, give me some information so I'm not completely in the dark. And so I think that's what those monthly reports need to be, and that's what those, not quarterly, but three times a year rounds need to be to where we're providing that... Here's some little bit of the how, and here's a report with data, not pretty pictures and colors, but here's data where we're going and being
110honest going, hey, our long-term goal for this is to grow by 10%. Over four years, we should be growing this much. This year, we've seen a decline. Right now in December, we've seen a decline, and this is what we're doing about it. Not for you all to challenge or to question it, but say, okay, thank you for telling me that. I'm going to hold you accountable in January if we don't hit that. Yeah, I'll feel it too because I used to feel it like why can't they see we're working on this all the time I mean, you know, and so we we don't see that benchmark Okay, so I've seen a benchmark before other trustees haven't you know, so it's like wait a minute a benchmarks only word that over here in the first semester
111So we still got this far to go Understanding of that in the future that we'd like to see and do the round tables in order to hit the the three-hour time allotment, if that's what you choose to do, you're going to have to look at data at the aggregated level. You know what I mean? Like if you start, how many campuses, 23? You start disaggregating, we're here all day and all night. But then the trust is all those sub-numbers roll into that number. And trustees, this is all good. I mean, there's nothing abnormal about what's happening here at all. In fact, this is about right. The clarity comes in over time during the round tables. Dr. Burger just said this, I'm gonna double down on it, that when you see this stuff happening in the
112middle, it's going to that outcome measure or it's not. And if it's not, you're going to probably be. not waiting for the board to tell you it's not. You're gonna be saying, wait, that something's not moving here. And it gives y'all a chance at the round tables to hear that instead of just once a year. I guess all of you are doing a great job. So we're not saying that at all. It's just, I guess we can help you more and we can. I don't know, share that more out to the public and the community and that kind of thing, which gets back there. So thank you for everything. I don't want it to sound that way. Y'all do an incredible job. I don't think anyone's taken that way. Thank you for that clarification. In
113the absence of outcomes clearly defined with this team, it's up for grabs. It's just people's opinion. And so if I've... I don't even know if I have a concern as a trustee, right? I don't even know. So I'm just gonna act like I have a concern because I don't even know if I have a concern or not. Sometimes board members do that. Yes, ma'am. So the thing here is that on this side, it looks like we have like 40 different goals that we're trying to achieve over the next four years. No, you have 12. So you're calling like the KPI themselves. If we're looking at key performance indicators, it's the goals on the far left. Yeah, the goal, the objectives, I'm going to use the word objective, are those 12 things down the left. And
114then I would argue the corresponding outcome measures to the right, one could say those are your goals. I might use the term target. Those are the targets or outcomes aligning to that objective. All the stuff in the middle is just the stuff the tactical team's constantly working on and look at to see if we're making progress. That's all they're doing in the middle. And then back to Dr. Berger earlier, if we have clarity about these 12 objectives, I'm going to stick to the word objective. Your dip might call those performance objectives, I think. Okay, so objectives I think is good. We're just saying that everything we're doing is falling in one of those 12 objectives. Not everything we're doing, but the majority of the right work falls in those objectives. There's a few things that
115fall out of it. So trustees, if I may, just in the interest of time, so if you look at... You're going to be off the hook. I'm going to give an... We'll be ready for questions. So Dr. Allen, you did a really good job, and you'll tell her about it tomorrow. But we, after all the work, yeah, after all the work, good catch today. We had had that good conversation about three... I'm sorry, two point... one, 2.2, 2.3, so we move staff safety and well-being up to the top. Does that make sense? That needs to happen also. So the three objectives, trustees, on your priority two staff are safety and well-being of staff, recruiting quality staff, and building capacity. So the question we're proposing in my pivot here is, trustees, does that feel like the
116work that we're doing falls in one of those three buckets? I know you're disappointed, but I'm going to try to. Should we specify recruit and maintain? Is that or is that listed? Currently, the concept of retention is built into the building capacity section. One of our original ideas was to have retention listed specifically with recruitment, and then we got into the minutia of retaining all staff versus quality staff, and so we decided to leave recruitment in the building capacity section. Or retention, rather? Retention. Retention, I'm sorry. Good question. Any other questions on priority two? Trustee asked for a few minutes to look it over. Okay, gotcha. Do you want to start 2.1 with well-being? Okay, just flip those. That was literally at 4.05 today, I mean, or maybe later. All right, on priority two. So
117then we're moving to priority three, community. And a lot of what we talked about earlier, 3.1, communication, 3.2, engagement, and 3.3, advocacy. And one thing, Dr. Berger, I don't think we talked about today that I don't feel uncomfortable saying right now. Right now, we have the word communication there. Yes, okay, sorry. Please do, sir. I'm just still stuck on building capacity, which I know is probably a huge conversation that I wasn't a part of, so my apologies for that. I'm trying to figure out the real meat and potatoes of 2.3. So recruit quality staff, I get that. So we want to attract people. And then once they're here, retention falls in 2.3 and then improvement. And so those seem to me like, I don't know if building capacity sounds more like we're expanding the workforce.
118which is, I know that's not the goal, right? Because you can see that in the other columns. To me, it seems like improve effectiveness or... It's training is what it is. I mean, it's just a simple word is training. Yeah. This would probably be one that we would have to better define in our one pager because I was the lead on priority two. and staff covers a lot of different cabinet members, I had to bring in a lot of different departments to flush out the objectives for this particular priority. Building capacity was done in conjunction with the C&I department, most specifically Indira Ramirez, who is over professional learning, because we really felt that that capacity component was more so in the, not only who we are training, but how we are training them and what
119we are training them to do in the long term. Over time, that will then retain that quality staff because we've told them exactly how to do their job and to what level of expectation. Capacity is an instructional term, I'm not gonna lie, but we would have to define that in that one pager so that people understood capacity to mean cognitive and not physical. I mean, to just a layman that's not in the education complex, it sounds like you want to build more schools and hire more people, because that's just what capacity means to me. And that is one thing, Dr. Scheffler, last night that came up in three different groups was what they called the eduspeak, that we have to make sure that we're writing it for clarity of understanding, not in our circles, but
120in everybody's circles. Dr. Gibson has told us, if this gets blown on the floor somewhere and somebody picks it up, can they read it and understand? Tractor supply, that's $15. Can they read it and understand it? And right now, we're not there. So that word is a perfect example of, what does that mean? I guess if those if if we're the board is focused on the far left side and we represent your layman from the community on you know Most of us some of us have educational experience in a lot of it but you know To me the word is just difficult, but I don't I don't know that I have necessarily a better one that really encapsulates everything you're talking about You know it's expand operational effectiveness is how I would I would phrase
121in my mind But it's that might not make any sense in the way that y'all look at it. So That's good feedback. Priority three, thank you for that, sir. Priority three, one of the things I was thinking, so right now it's community and Dr. Berger, I didn't mention this today because we were on the gas pedal as fast as we could go. One question, trustees, and this may get to the question that was just asked. We put these in here in the left-hand column because it was just an anchor to the concept, and we did not try to write a short statement there or even expound on it very much. You could potentially do that. Let me just say it this way. If some extra words in column one helps, then feel free to use
122them. But the staff will know several times, I was like, get words out of here, be concise, be clear. get the novellas out of it. That's right, it's the balance between concise and clear. And so if some of these, this is just a consideration, an action step. And I think that's a good way to frame it up. Like if something's needed to be clear, but don't just put words on there because we have a thesaurus. I mean, right, so if it helps with clarity. But we talked about communication earlier. That is the point of 3.1 objective. engagement rather, and that communication is information, engagement is opportunity to get involved and be involved, and then advocacy, and then I'm assuming we've got local, to me, trustees and Madam President, 3.3.2, you guys have a role in
1233.3.2 typically. It's in the Ed Code when we're saying state. And I could see the board being involved in the advocacy piece. Whereas generally speaking, I said earlier, you're watching it, right? And you're making sure it's making progress. There might be an exception. Do you know if I'm saying like y'all are actually part of what we're doing for the advocacy part of it? Yeah, I think we're already very well on our way in that area. But it's just, it's kind of a counter. to what I said earlier about always watching it because there is an exception in three in advocacy. You're going to be part of that. Any thoughts or comments on priority three? And then priority four, finance. Had a good conversation last night with your CFO, and I will not hand her a
124microphone or make her talk anymore because I had her talk several times today. But some... And it was good that what they were working on, much of it was work that's already being done. And we were having a good conversation like, do we have to come up with new things? And the answer was no. Like we're just being real clear about what are the most important things. Now in priority four, I think it even goes a step further because it's on the scorecard. We're going to be very transparent with the board about stuff that you may not have been hearing reports on before because we're saying that stuff's important. So it's going to be part of the round table. So we put that in three buckets, financial sustainability, financial transparency, and then systematic long-range facility
125planning and management. Yes, sir. I don't know that 4.3 should have the word facility because in your other columns, you also mentioned technology and things that are not really facilities. So it's more capital. Asset or capital. Capital asset. I think capital or asset. I think that's really good. That's really good feedback. So I also wonder, we spent a lot of money on technology and we've talked about wanting a technology plan and how we're gonna integrate technology into our curriculum, where we're gonna draw the line and say this needs to be more a... What's the word I'm looking for? Like an added benefit to our curriculum, but not supplant, but supplement our curriculum. And I don't really see anything in reference to that. Yeah, okay, good feedback. I am going to recommend that if you do
126cabinet members, like if there is a response to it, like I see it in 4.3.1. But to her point, I don't necessarily see it in the other one. I personally think technology needs to be ubiquitous to all four priorities, and it needs to be in the strategic action. That's my feeling about communication too, sir. Right. So I think it needs to be in all of those. So that might be a feedback comment tonight. It's just if you make technology an objective over the left, I can assure you, you will never. afford everything that you put in it. Because now it's the what we're trying to do rather than the how. See, it should be the tool. Yeah. Tool rather than an end goal. Correct. But it may be that some visibility to it, the feedback
127I think is valid, that some visibility to it in the actions might help people understand why we're doing that. Yeah. There is no plus or minus after tonight. Dr. Berger. That was it, that's a good run through. I know my board and I know that they're gonna noodle on this a little bit. So we kind of went through this fast. I did share this with you previously to kind of look at. If you look at these and you come back and you think, hey, these objectives on the left side, they're good. or hey, can we add this, can we tweak this, can we move this here? I've taken down notes on all of the other parts, like we want technology communication to be running through the document in all the areas. So all of this
128feedback is great feedback as we go back to the drawing board and make this the best document it can be to help lead us to where we need to go. So focus on the left side, think about them. I will ask you for kind of a final. Later, hey, are we good? Can we move forward with these or do we need to add anything? Again, we're not approving anything. You're just giving us direction on to continue to work through this document. This will come back for full board approval at a later date. That's good feedback. And Madam President, just to re-answer a question, the full three hours dedicated minimally, and it may take a couple of them, I'm just being real here to get through the whole scorecard on that first round table. Yeah, well,
129but a question, we're not going to do it tonight necessarily, but a question for the full board. The launch of it is different than the performance management part of it. Does that make sense? Like the performance, and by the way, year one may be three hours, year two may be two. Because a big part of year one is terminology, right? And then we're getting in a rhythm. I know what. That means, and I can see the number, so we're not having to talk about it as much. So just to restate what you guys are saying, from here, you're going to take back the feedback we've given you tonight, although I feel like knowing the group sitting here, there's much more feedback that's like... We want to give. But that's the next meeting. Unless it involves,
130I heard Dr. Berger, the column one. I mean, like if you thought of something. Something right now. I heard him say even in the next few days. Sure, sure, sure. Because I think he and they want to get column one kind of solid. So our main takeaway and objective tonight is to work on column one. I believe so. If there's anything missing from column one. that's what we need to be giving immediate feedback on. Because the tactical team are gonna start having more meetings and if they don't know what's column one, they could be having meetings that don't need to be meetings or misinformed meetings and I would hate for them to say, oh, we're back because the board thought about it again and we changed the objective and that's kind of where we are.
131Yes, that's a good question. I think he's just saying in the next few days, if you think of something after tonight, let him know. Otherwise, he's going to kind of lock it and start pushing the work out. My thought is is we're good on these because I don't hear any objection, but I do know that people will think And so in the Friday recap, I will send out to everybody on the board to do Please confirm that we are good with these 12 if you have any others Please send them to me because we're gonna move forward and then we'll start Working through the document and then as we get say we get 1.1 done We feel like we got it solid then I would like to share it with all of you and go
132tear those apart, work through this, does it answer all the things? And so maybe we could just take one bite at a time of the elephant as we work through this and not necessarily have to come back for three hours at a time. If everybody's good with the big group, 15 or 20 minutes, maybe an executive session on that team trust. Okay, if everybody, no further questions or comments from cabinet or trustees. Thank you guys so much for engaging in this work. I think our district's gonna be a better place and our students are gonna get a better outcome and our teachers are gonna feel more connected because of everybody's commitment to this work. And so I really appreciate each of your time very, very much. All right, so let me read this little statement
133and then we'll move into exec session. The Board of Trustees of the Pearland Independent School District will now convene into a closed meeting to discuss the following items posted on our agenda this evening as allowed by Title V, Chapter 551, Texas Government Code. The superintendent will present for the board's consideration or discussion of the following matters, Section 551.071, 072, 074, 076, and 082. No voting will take place in the closed meeting. Any action the board wishes to take as a result of discussions in closed session will take place. after the board reconvenes in open meeting. It is now 6.57 and we will adjourn into closed session. Action was taken in closed session. With no further discussion, this meeting is adjourned.