School Board Meeting: October 27, 2025

001Welcome everybody and welcome to those at home watching via live streaming. Welcome everyone. A regular school board meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Far San Juan Alamo Independent School District will be held today, October 27th, beginning at 6.03 p.m. at PSJA Early College High School Lecture Hall, 805 West Ridge Road in San Juan. Dr. Elias. Yes, President. It's the Pledge of Allegiance. Can you read the Pledge of Allegiance and can you do the Pregnancy? The Pledge of Allegiance is to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible. Everybody, please. As we deliberate tonight, let us deliberate on the agenda items and especially on those agenda items that concern our staff. Let us make those decisions that you need to be

002the right ones. Let us do everything that we can to preserve the history that VSJA brings to staff and to us. We ask the community that is listening to us to support us in our endeavors and to keep us at all times. God's name is Christ. Okay, Dr. Elias. Yes, Madam President, we move to recognitions. And letter A is the 2025 PSJA Lady Bears water polo. Third consecutive district, 32 6A champions. And this will be presented by Director for Athletics, Orlando Garcia. Madam President, Dr. Elias, members of the board, we'd like to thank you for giving us this opportunity to recognize our student athletes. Tonight, we're going to be recognizing the Lady Bears water polo team. If I can have the young ladies and their coach come, please join me. Just to give you a

003little background on water polo, it's one of the most difficult sports that our athletes train for. When you have to compete in a swimming pool, just to give a background to everybody about water polo, we play in a swimming pool. They have to play and practice every day in a pool that's seven feet. In other words, they're treading water all day through. And see, these athletes are in tremendous shape, and we appreciate the effort and everything they give to the sport. And we are one of the pioneers of starting water polo, and our programs have really excelled, and these ladies have been on top every year. Continuing, congratulations to the PSJA Lady Bear water polo team on their third consecutive District 32 6A championship with a perfect record of 10-0. The Lady Bears won the

004bi-district championship with a victory over the Lady West Coast Panthers with a victory score of 27-2. The Lady Bears advanced to the area championship to play San Antonio Brennan where their playoff run ended. The Lady Bears had an overall record of 20-4 and a district record of 10-0. Ladies, when I call your name, please raise your hand so we can identify you. Number one, senior Olivia Cano. Number two, junior Ana Elizondo. Three, freshman Justina Maya. Four, junior Jimena Valdez. Six, senior Bridget Cardenas. Seven, senior Virginia Bocanegra. Number eight, senior Madeline Moldy. Number nine, freshman Miranda Ellis. Number 10, sophomore Pamela Sosa. Number 12, senior Paloma Sosa. Number 13, sophomore Itzel Martinez. Number 15, freshman Amari Rodriguez. Number 16, freshman Zoe Mendez. Number 17, senior Leah Munoz. The ladies are coached by head coach, Pedra Saverda,

005and assistant coach, Irma Garcia. Congratulations, Lady Bears, and continue moving forward, and let's go for number four next year. Thank you so much, ladies. Good job, girl. Good job. Amazing. Thank you so much. Three years in a row. Good job. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Congratulations. Smile. One, two, three. One, two, three. Thank you. I'll let him sit down and then I can comment something. Ladies, I wanna say that congratulations, of course, and I wanna say that the difficulty and the physical requirements of this sport demand incredible teamwork. We know that, and a lot of mental toughness. However, none of you were alone. You will forever remember the journey, the mutual support, and the sweet victories. Great lessons that nobody can take from you are one, a complete understanding of the importance of teamwork. And two,

006your accomplishments serve as an inspiration to young kids. We thank the coaches, the parents, Dr. Bella, and the fans for the support and dedication. Congratulations, Lady Bears. Yes, Madam President, we move to... Continue with recognitions, letter B. And this will be a resolution and it's a declaration of October 8th, 2025 being the Texas Education Human Resource Day. And this will be presented by Assistant Superintendent for HR, Dr. Garza. Thank you madam president president of the board and members of the board and dr Elias for this time to honor and recognize an incredible group of people That work in our human resource office if they can make their way over here so we received a proclamation signed by our governor that States October the 8th is human resource day. So we thank you for the opportunity

007to recognize this Texas is proud of our commitment to a quality education system that places students firmly on the path to a lifetime of excellence and achievement. An integral part of the success of schools for all human resource are the human resource professionals who play a critical role in the educational system. Vital throughout all industry human resource workers are particularly important in education. These hardworking young men and women are skilled and efficient in talent acquisition and retention. By recognizing potential teachers, human resource professionals surround our students with highly capable educators who will develop the next generation of leaders of tomorrow. At this time, I'm encouraged that all Texans I encourage all Texans to recognize the importance of human resources in education. I commend the profession's continued commitment to meeting the needs of students and teachers

008alike as these professionals pave the way for a better, brighter future for the next leaders of our great state. Therefore, this is signed by Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, do hereby proclaim. October the 8th, 2025 to be education human resource day. So thank you for granting us an opportunity to recognize them. And I don't know, I'll start by introducing them and assistance, excuse me, executive officer for human resource Alfredo Carrillo, Adrian Carr, human resource manager. Bernice Treviño, not sure. HR specialist, data analyst. Selena Garcia, HR compensation coordinator. And Maricela Montenegro, HR clerk. Pat Romero, clerk and receptionist. Felicia Montalvo, HR clerk. Jessica Liu, HR clerk. Teresa Barsenas, HR clerk. Maribel Tobar, HR Secretary. Maribel Martinez, excuse me. And Martha Martinez, HR Secretary. This team is an incredible group of people that they really live up

009to the care standards and I'm really proud that they're part of the team and they know that everything they do is treating our staff in our community and anyone who comes into our HR office with the best Care that they can get them. So I'm really happy that you know, they're given this opportunity to be recognized and we have just a little so that maybe Mr. Carrillo can come help me. We have a little certificate that is coming from the state and then we have a little gift and then once we're done, we can go to the front so they can take pictures. Let me just make some comments before they come up. That way I can face them. The HR department, you know, it's a job that many times it goes unseen. Am I

010right in saying that? Like, we know we have one, but many a times you go unseen. We know that you do everything from recruiting and onboarding the incredible talent that makes our district to you also do navigating, you navigate complex regulations. And honestly, you keep us compliant and ethical. We thank you for that. You are the first. to welcome new employees and we know that a smile goes a big way and we know that you greet people that way and we thank you for that. Your department is absolutely essential to the success of our schools. We take this moment to express our gratitude and to thank you. Thank you HR team. President, can I make a comment? I just want to mention, first of all, thank you for all you do. You're the unsung heroes

011behind the scenes. But I also want to mention that this is not the whole department we're still lacking because under human resource, we also have a new teacher institute. We also have TIA. which is the teacher incentive allotment. We have risk management that falls under there. And ACT-RGV, we have the complaint department also. So they're about 32 strong in HR. So the rest, I know some of them probably couldn't make it, but I just want to mention the great appreciation we have for the work that y'all do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I have to mention that they have one person in that department that sings good morning every morning to them. Thank you,

012sir. Okay, sir. Yes, we continue with recognitions by the president and we have letter C, Hidalgo County Head Start Partnership with Bar San Juan Alamo ISD and this will be presented by Assistant Superintendent, Mr. Randolpho Marquez. Good evening, Madam President, Dr. Lias and members of the board. October is Head Start Awareness Month. It is a time to recognize and celebrate the profound impact that the Head Start program has had on children and families across our nation. First proclaimed by President Ronald Reagan in 1982, this observance highlights the program's commitment to early learning, health, nutrition, and family support. Services that help ensure every child enters school ready to succeed. The Head Start program launched in 1965 as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson's war on poverty continues to transform lives through its mission of providing comprehensive

013support to children from low-income families. Here in PSJA ISD, we are grateful for our strong partnership with Hidalgo County Head Start, a valued collaborator that provides exceptional wraparound services for our families and children across five of our pre-K campuses. Would our guests from Hidalgo County Head Start please come to the front of the room. Although Executive Director Mrs. Irma Pena could not be with us this evening, we are honored to have several distinguished representatives joining us tonight. Dr. Nereida Cantu, Assistant Program Director. Ms. Connie Casas, Chief Early Education Officer. And Mr. Librado de Hoyos, Chief Pre-K Collaboration Officer. On behalf of the Far San Juan Alamo Independent School District, we extend our heartfelt appreciation for your partnership and the outstanding work you do to serve our youngest learners and their families. Your commitment to collaboration

014and comprehensive support truly reflects the spirit and purpose of Head Start. It is my pleasure to present this plaque of recognition to Hidalgo County Head Start in gratitude for your continued dedication and service to our community. And this is being presented by Dr. Claudia Gonzalez. Good evening, Madam President, the board, and also Dr. Elias. Thank you so much on behalf of Mrs. Irma Pena and also our policy council. We do also appreciate everything, especially this collaboration. Just in case, you know, maybe somebody doesn't know the history of this partnership. It was really PSJA and Hidalgo County were really the pioneers. of implementing a school readiness model from the state. And so this started in October of 2007 with just one teacher, two classrooms and one campus. And look at where we are now. Okay. And

015so now we're inside the schools. We still have just one Head Start Center. Again, some of the people that I see here were also the pioneers of what we call the school base. Okay. Partnership. Okay. And so again, it's really a mutual respect and mutual also in accepting this particular recognition. Thank you so much. I do wanna make a comment before y'all come over here. I was asking today and I know that funding trickles like from federal to the state and state to the county and here we are. And I have to say that we are very appreciative because we know that the families and children from our community benefit a great deal. And we appreciate you and we want you to know it. So on behalf of the school board of trustees, we thank

016you for partnering with PSJA. Thank you. Well, Ms. Cousins is very humble, but she, along with Dr. King, started this project. And so I just wanted to highlight the fact that a lot of you know her. She was one of our own that worked with PSJA for many, many years. And so she continues to do the work that... that she's done all this year. So again, thank you, Ms. Casas, along with your amazing team. And so here we are. And so thank you for all that you do. Some of us work together. Some of us grew up together. Thank you. She grew up one half a block from me. Picture. Yeah, picture. Okay. Dr. Lee. Yes, Madam President. If we can move from student services because it is a recognition and a presentation letter B

017under student services presentation on the countdown to zero and dropout recovery walk. And this will be a report from 2025, the beginning of the school year. And this will be presented by assistant superintendent for student services, Dr. Noyola. These are our liaisons the reason I wanted to Well, the reason we wanted to bring it to all of you as board members is that this is our 18th annual dropout recovery walk that happened this year. We did have it on, let's see, to the next slide. Oh, right there. Yes, thank you. It's our 18th annual dropout recovery walk. It did happen on September 6th, the 13th, and the 20th. And this was at PSJA High School Cafeteria. We go to the next slide. On our first Saturday that we got together, there were about over 425

018participants. We had never, I'm going to say, had this many. I guess involvement, volunteers from teachers, everybody, department chairs, admin, central office staff, a lot of them. We didn't even find a place to sit. Some of us were still standing. And at that time, we still had to look for 489 students, 89 students that were not enrolled. And this was just on a Saturday. Everybody volunteers. They go to the houses. They document for our liaisons. They do work Monday through Friday, and this is what they do on a daily basis, trying to find all these students. So anytime that these participants go out there to get information, it gives them a lead as to where they are, probably the change of address or another school district, and they're looking for them. Then our second Saturday.

019We had like 315 participants and we had a smaller group, but it was still a big group. And we were looking for 332 students that were still not enrolled. And as you can see, some of these pictures there at the homes and the cafeteria, even by schools. And if you go to the next one, Saturday, September 20th, we had over 256 participants and our numbers are dwindling. We had 198 students that were not enrolled. However, the liaisons continue once they go back to school on Monday through Friday. And then let's go to the next slide. If you notice our number, which is dropouts, that column all the way to the bottom, it says number 12. Now, this is a number that we had never achieved. Not this low. And then if you look at the

020migrant. And at the very bottom it says three. So this is a preliminary report with the 12. But if we add or take away the three migrant ones that the state allows us for them to come in either like in December or January, by that time we should reach nine. It'll be historic for PSJA that we've gone to the single digit. We've never gone that low. And I attribute that to all these wonderful ladies and gentlemen. for their hard work that they do. And if you go to the next slide, this is the rest of them because not everybody's here. But I wanted you to see them and to recognize them tonight. So we want to give them a small token of appreciation. letting them know that we value what they do and they sometimes

021they're the hidden ones we think all they'll just come in but if you ask them do the students come in on their own they're going to tell you no and if they're going to tell you sometimes even we work with parents because parents sometimes are Little bitty children are attached to their parents or parents are attached to them. So they're the ones that are there motivating them to bring them in. So I want to applaud them for their great efforts, their work. Like I said, this will be historic for the PSJA. So I want to thank them in front of all of you. So thank you for giving us this opportunity. I want to say that Mr. Villegas and I dropped by that last Saturday of the last walk that y'all had. I cannot, I

022don't have the words. I mean, it was amazing. Like how many people were there? It was what, between 300 and 400, and this was the last one. I don't even know that there was enough holders to go around because we had more volunteers than we had kids to go and find. But it's just amazing the work that you do and I admire it. I admire it because like you said, you work from Monday to Friday and then you volunteer for Saturdays of that month. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart and just to let you know that. It was overwhelming just to see it. And then the fact that you had a student that was recovered speak. Oh my gosh, that just really touched the heart. It really did. She actually came

023to us and thanked us for finding her. She really did. So I was just so, so pleased and so impressed with it. And I'm going to have to go and I'm going to have to let Mr. Villegas say something because he was in your shoes years back and you all know him as a former liaison also. So Mr. Villegas, do you want to say something? I do. I was overwhelmed, like you said. I attended first, I think the first session. I think, Rick, you were there in the first session with us. When you all were just getting started and then they sent it to the second session. But it was amazing. And I speak from the heart when I say this, that it's very hard work that you all do. And we expect for you

024all to do it to the best of your ability. Not only do we expect for you to run all the streets all over PSJA, but you do such a great job that... You make great investigators, I know. I don't know some of the faces that I see here. I know you, but I work for some of you, and some of you... even tutored me a little bit when I was just getting started. So I want to thank you for that. But the work that you all do and bringing it down to 12, that is amazing. Our numbers were much higher back when I was working as a liaison. So I want to commend you, Dr. Noyola and Dr. Gomez for the work that you all are doing and all the liaison for. the work that

025you're doing, convincing, persuading, and bringing our kids back to school, you know, with dogs jumping out from behind the bushes. It's not easy. So you all are amazing, an amazing group. So we appreciate the work that you all do. Thank you. Thank you so much. Can I add one more? Ms. Delaney, raise my hand. Go ahead. Yes, Mr. Miguel. Congratulations. I want to especially recognize, I mean, everyone has done an amazing job. For the record, I would have been there, but as you know, there's a loss of this and a man that's preventing me from doing so. But Dr. Elias, I have also a list of questions for that department that I'm going to email Dr. Mayola. And so I congratulate you for everything that you have accomplished. And to the whole team, especially to

026the elementary ladies who have gone above and beyond. This is a recognition So we can Go ahead. So you opened up the test presentations. Okay, but is it, this is a praise. It's not up for discussion. Like she can email those questions. I'm not talking about speaking. I'm talking about what you're doing. You're asking, you know, specific questions. That's what I'm talking about. The reason I did allow Mr. Villegas is because he is a former liaison and he's worked with some of them. That's why I opened it. I work with some of them as well. I hate to just cut you off. Let me ask you something. I'm sorry, I'm in a fight. My comments were in reference to recognition, as long as we understand that. Yes. Okay. Okay, so I continue, Lino? I prefer

027that she email the questions to whoever she needs to email them to. You are welcome to comment if you have some comments for the liaisons and you want to congratulate them. First of all, I'm going to ask you to not interrupt me so that you can first hear what I'm saying because you have not even heard what I said and you interrupt me. So I'm going to ask that you wait until I finish speaking and then you can tell me your response. And so what I was saying, I was just going to read the questions. They're very simple questions. We opened it for comments. Comments cannot be picked or chosen. to what you like, what you don't like. I know these questions, but these are questions that the community has made. They're different from different

028people. So I have the email prepared for Dr. Linas, Dr. Mignola, and for reference for our email. Let me interrupt you and just go ahead. Please avoid all this other stuff and just go ahead, ask your questions. Okay, so the district, make sure it follows all the rules. or changes shared with the principals and the staff? And how do we keep track of the new rules and updates? How often does the district review or audit the student records, attendance, and data to make sure everything is correct? What training resources are given to staff so they stay current on state and federal requirements? Are the district's manuals and handbooks reviewed each year to make sure they follow the law and is the review documented? Time, you're out of time. You are out of time, two minutes

029are up. You are next, Ms. Quintanilla, you had your hand up, go ahead. Her time is up. Your time is up, Ms. Gutierrez. Council, can you take over, please? Ms. Quintanilla, you go ahead. Dr. Noguera, I would like to I don't recognize you Sam, but could you name them individually, please? I would like to know their names. I know that there has been some restructuring to the program. I don't see Miss Laura campus here I know that for a time the liaisons were under her and for the previous 17 years, maybe they were under her and I would like to Hear hear their names, especially the new people. It's up to you if you want to answer that one. Okay, we have mr. Eddie Castillo Miss Gadsden. I wasn't ready for her. Miss Villarreal. Miss

030Falomein. Mr. Eddie Tapia. Miss Ronnie. We call her Ronnie. Ignacio Lopez. Miss Hortensia Martinez. Miss Marie Navarez. They're new. Nereida. Thank you. And also Miss Lee. Good job, guys. And my can I still continue? Mr. Mr. Thank you. And so I want to thank all of you. I know that there's a lot of work trying to to bring all those students who for X reason don't wanna come back to school. I know that for accountability purposes, for as far as dropout recovery, we're looking at the secondary level. That's what we hold accountable. Usually middle school and high school. Middle school and high school, great. So I do wanna address the middle school and the high school specifically. I know. that the stress is on your shoulders because those are that are accountable. Appreciate elementary because

031you're setting that foundation and the students know, the parents know that there is somebody looking out for them and that's good. Sometimes for whatever reason, the young children are, for the reason that they're young, they're under their parents and it could be not the student itself but the parent. But at the high school level, it kind of turns a bit and it's mostly the students. So thank you, secondary liaisons, for your hard work. And obviously your efforts have paid off. We're down to 12 at this point. Thank you so much. Thank you. Ms. Barron? I didn't want to pass this group because I wanted to congratulate you personally and because I lived your life for 20 some years, you know, I lived your life and the recruitment. I mean, we didn't recruit middle, middle school

032or high schools. We did children. I mean, from zero, I'm six months to five years of age. And so I want to congratulate you because I know the hard work that it is. We've lived, I think some of you, we went to college together and we see you here. And that brings a lot of joy to my heart because that is very special to us to see those kids and the numbers at 12. I mean, God, that's amazing to see. So I wanted to congratulate you and keep up the good work. We appreciate you every day. Thank you. Thank you. Madam President, can I just say one thing? We were surprised or shocked from the very beginning that we had so many participants going back to that. We wanted to find out what's the reason.

033And we thought, you know, maybe why is everybody still energetic, still wanting to go on and all these participants. And then we looked at it and it's true. You know, this is the first time that I'm going to say Dr. Elias was there every Saturday. All of our previous administrators or superintendents, not all of them were there for all three. And I just want to mention it and I want to recognize them that because of him, I think everybody sees that, you know, they see the leader leading and everybody goes after that. So I just wanted to say, mention that as well, that, you know, he's the first one that I've noticed everybody. Not everybody goes all the time, not all the soups, but I can just say that he has. So it's true. And

034I said, maybe that's the reason why they see him there and everybody wants to join in. So I want to thank him for his leadership, for all of you, because all of you also started the elementary. It was an idea from all of you to start them off. And they're doing a phenomenal job, just like what Ms. Barron is saying. educating those students, the parents, as soon as they get the firstborn or second or third, but by the time they come to middle and high, they're aware, they already know. Okay, so thank you so much for your support and for your help. Thank you for those words. And at this time, I really would like to applaud our leader because he's exactly what it is. You are a leader, sir, and we like what you

035do. Thank you. I also want to make a quick comment. I want to thank the liaisons. I know that the work that y'all did out there is work that is hard. It's work that, you know, we had the hot days and we continue to have them, but those were hotter days and y'all were still out there doing that work. And to me, it really signifies that you care for students, that you're there for students and that you truly want PSJA to succeed. And that's what we're seeing. That's why our attendance is up there. We're at 94 point something in attendance every day. And it's because of the work that you're doing day in, day out. You go to the campuses that you're assigned to. Some of you might have two, three, or four campuses. And

036you still continue to work with every single campus, making sure that the students are here. I know sometimes it's not the nice part that you do because you got to give those warnings. talk to those parents. And it's not easy talking to some parents, but at the end of the day, we mean well. We mean well for every student. We want every student to get educated. We want every student to be in class. And at the end of the day, that is the success of PSJA. That's the success of every student, the success of our community. So thank you for that work. And don't let anybody dampen this celebration on you all. because this is a celebration about the work that you do. So again, thank you for everything. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

037Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Let me let him clear. Public comments? Yeah. Council, do we have any public comments? No, Madam President, no public comments. Thank you. Okay, election of officers. Yes, Madam President, we move to item five, election of officers, the Board of Trustees, and we go to letter A, election of officers of the Far San Juan Alamo Independent School District Board of Education for the 2025-2026 school year. Mr. Diaz. Yes, madam president. I would like to make a motion It's inclusive for three positions. I would like to make a motion for president. Mr. Rick Rodriguez and emotion including vice president miss Yolanda Castillo and secretary miss Ramona With an agreement in the motion to leave the assistant secretary position vacant at this time. Okay. Moved by Mr. Villegas, seconded by Mr.

038Rodriguez. All those in favor, raise your right hand, say aye. Aye. All those opposed. Ms. Gutierrez, I didn't see you vote. I'm going to abstain. I agree with Mr. Rodriguez, but I'm going to abstain on this one based on the rest. Mr. Rodriguez, I wish you the best. As president, I'm with you, but I cannot vote on the motion because I don't agree with the other officers. Thank you. Okay, we move on. Motion carries. Yes. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations, Mr. Rodriguez. Great to see you there. Thank you. Yes, Mr. President, we now move to presentation of plaques. And let me go to the front so I can do the presentation. Mr. President, members of the board, I'm here up front to present the plaque to... Our going out board president, Ms. Diana Wyserna for outstanding

039leadership, dedication and service to the students, staff and citizens of PSJA for the 2024-2025 school year. We can get you all together. We hear one, two, three, four. Thank you. Okay, Mr. President, we move on to the next agenda item and we have... agenda item, the tabled items that were tabled last board meeting, letter A and letter B, which is called school board meeting minutes of June 25th, 2025, and letter B, regular school board meeting minutes of June 26th, 2025. Ms. Marron, do I have a second? Second. Second by Ms. Sera. I have a comment. Thank you. The reason these items it was me who requested to table them was because the board meeting minutes of June 25th 2025 had to do with the censorship of Cynthia Gutierrez and the wording and the verbiage the

040Everything that was in those minutes was not that entirely accurate I did request for dr Elias to assign either the board secretary or our school board secretary sitting here to review that and make those corrections I reviewed them and within the all our agenda packet nothing was changed the for example mr villegas in some cases is addressed as miss villegas dr elias becomes dr elisa and words that by changing one letter changed the entire word itself So I wanted to make that comment. You can approve it. Obviously, you know, I don't know if anybody else cares about the accuracy of these minutes. It should be very important for us. On the regular school board meeting minutes of June 26, there was a position for principalship of PTI that was not on the agenda posted. Yet

041in executive session, Dr. Elias recommended somebody. And it wasn't actual a recommendation because it did not require board approval. He just reassigned somebody, but then it was placed in our minutes and that is incorrect. That is a violation of Open Meetings Act. I addressed this with him. Nothing was changed again. You can proceed to approve these minutes. I just wanted to say the reasons why I had tabled this item and to hope that in the future, especially you now, Estro Rodriguez as president. can do a better job at leading this board into the accuracy of our board meeting minutes. Can we approve contingent with those corrections? Right now you can. Okay. So approve as presented. Can we send a motion? We have a motion. I'm sorry. Okay, all those for the motion. All those against?

042You're muted. It's because they mute me. I don't mute myself. I open it and then they mute it. I vote against it. Okay. Against passing them without the changes. Thank you, Ms. Gutierrez. So we have two posts, motion passes. Moving on to the next. Yes, Mr. President, we move to the consent agenda items. And the only one that will be pulled from there is... Finance. Letter C, the finance area. I have a motion. Motion motion by ms. Quintanilla. I have a second second motion Signified by raising hand. Hi, okay 7-0 motion passed Yes, mr. President then we can move now to the open discussion on finance and we're gonna go to functional budget amendments first and if any questions we have a assistant superintendent for finance miss Gonzales that can answer Okay. Sorry, Ms. Quintanilla.

043Yes, thank you. On the functional budget amendments, I have a question regarding that. Typically, it is part of our consent agenda, and it's actually a lot of times it's Child Nutrition Department. We're trying to move funding for one reason or another, and I understand that it typically does not impact our overall budget, but in this case, I noticed that there's a lot, most of this money in this particular amendment is going to gifted and talented, and also to, I believe it's bilingual. Can you tell me the reason for those moves? The total budget was not changed. Like you said, we're moving from one function to another. The bilingual department looks like they are changing their estimate or their fringes, so they're moving money from function 11 to 21, but it's in FICA, so they're just

044changing their estimate. GT did move $15,500, and they are going to pay extra duty pay, so they must be having some kind of professional development outside the contract days. Okay, so can somebody confirm that that that is the purpose of that I Don't know the days of professional development. Mr. Marcus. Do you know GT's having professional? I don't have that information with me at the time, but I can look into it and get it to you Yeah, function 13 means professional development. So that's where I'm Thinking it's a it's outside the workday. Thank you. We're gonna go one by one by one Mr. President, we're gonna move them to two No, we have to take them one by one because we took them out of consent. Okay. Okay. For a functional budget amendment. So I'll

045make a motion. Second. Motion by Mr. Villegas, second by Ms. Serna. Mr. Rodriguez, Mr. Rodriguez, I'm sorry. It got disconnected. It took a few minutes. What are we voting on? I, I, I had, I didn't hear. The finance item. Number one, functional budget amendments. Oh, the one that it's bringing in some money from a budget amendment. Okay, I already have a motion and a second. Raise up your hand. Aye. Aye. Aye. Motion passes. Number two for finance. Yes, Mr. President. Number two is bids, proposals, contracts, agreements, and or memorandum of understandings to be awarded. And this is a approve equipment services, supplies and continuous solicitations. I have a motion for a motion by Ms. Quintanilla. And a second second by Mr. Villegas. All those from the motion signify by raising your right hand. Hi. Hi.

046Hi. Okay. We got seven zero motion passes unanimously. Yes. Mr. President, we now move to item nine under curriculum and instruction. And letter A, the presentation and approval of the process list and order of library books in compliance with Senate Bill 13. And this is a presentation that will be done by Ms. Amy Marquez, Director for Libraries. Good evening, Mr. President, members of the board, and Dr. Elias. Thank you for this opportunity to be here. Today I'll be covering the new legislature pertaining to library book orders and the process that we are utilizing in PSJA. I'm just waiting for the slide deck. Okay, so we have some new legislature in place that pertains to our libraries. SB 13 involves any new materials added to the library catalog, whether purchased or donated. They have to follow

047certain requirements. We have to hold a recorded meeting with our library materials review committee, including 72 hours of notice for the public. We have to post a list of the proposed library materials for 30 days with public comment period available for the community to post. And this is located on our PSJA library services webpage. And we have to obtain school board approval for all library acquisitions, school library acquisitions. So I'm gonna walk you through what that looked like. This is our first time following this process. And you can see on the right hand side, this is the library services webpage. We have posted the library materials for public review. And on there, you'll see that we have information about SB 13, the steps that we've taken. In addition, we have the date range of when

048we put the list of the library materials, which was September 5th, and the window for submitting public comments regarding our list. So you can see from September 5th through October 4th, we had that there. Claudia with PR helped us post this online as well on the main PSJA webpage. Below that, we have our list of proposed library titles. So just so that I'm explaining what's happening, every book that we purchase, we have to put together a list, we have to review that list, and then that list has to be posted publicly for 30 days, allow for those comments, and then we need to bring it to the board for school board approval. We did have the 30-day public comment period with that posting online. There were no comments made by the public. And some things

049for you to know about SB 13 is that districts must follow strict standards when it comes to purchasing and acquiring materials. specifically is talking about sexually explicit, vulgar, profane, and decent or harmful materials. And then another thing that's important to note is titles that are currently in our catalog and the district do not require school board approval. So for example, if we're trying to order a replacement copy of a book or the addition of a book to a school library, when the book is already in our district catalog, we don't have to bring that to you because it's already been vetted and it's already in the catalog. One more thing I want to point out on this slide is that our parents do have access to the catalog. That's one of the requirements of this

050bill. We have the Destiny Parent Portal. We did send an email out to the librarians and the principals with a letter to send home. We also posted it on our social media. We did receive positive feedback from parents, questions about how to log in. And what parents can do with the Destiny Portal is they can, first of all, they can access it on any of our school library webpages and the district library webpage. They can log in with the email they used when they registered their child. And if they're not sure how to do that, they can ask their librarian. It sends them a code, so it's very secure. And then they can see the items their child has out. They can choose to restrict titles from their child, being able to select them from

051our libraries. So we have directions there in English and Spanish for them also online. I have a question, Mr. President. Who is on the library committee? In just a minute, I'll show you exactly the names who are on it. All our librarians were invited to be a part of the committee, and we have representation from all the levels. So I'll show you in just a minute the list of librarians. But it's our certified librarians with a master's degree in library science. Thank you. I had a couple of questions on this one. One is, is this like every year? Do you guys purchase these books every year? Yes. Now, do we win out some of the ones that are older? What do we do with them? Yes, we do have a weeding process. Our librarians, we

052have procedures in place for weeding books, and then we replace books with newer titles or titles with information that is updated. That's part of our inventory process. No problem. I'm ready for all of them. So first of all, I'm very impressed at what this particular program can do. Because I was aware of all the changes and it's like how do parents monitor, especially those parents. I know you said some parents, we didn't get any feedback. Nobody making a stink about certain books, which is great. It means hopefully they're open-minded. Are we creating a local, aside from all the librarians, is there gonna be by any chance a creation of a local type of committee that includes parents maybe in the future or maybe just something to make sure that some parents, there is some parent

053involvement in there? Just a thought. That's something that we can take back and look at. On the books that are weaned out, when a book is that good, though, even though it's old, you just replace it. toss it out and get something new. Like that one is replaced. Correct. This bill doesn't... Because it could be the wear and tear because it's so good. Correct. Yes. This bill doesn't necessarily pertain to weeding books. But yes, in general, our librarians keep the books as long as possible. I mean, we try to tape them, repair them, especially the very popular books. And then when we can't, you know, they don't function anymore for the students, yes, we replace them. I guess my question is when you say replace, you replace that specific title, right? Correct. Okay. Yes. The

054high traffic books, high interest. Those are the ones that we replaced. We buy again and again. So long as the demand is there. I was going to ask, how will librarians be trained to follow this new process? We had training from Region 1. This process actually started a little bit before SB 13. Last year, some legislature changed. We had Region 1 come in at that time. And then at the start of this year, I was trained. I turned around the training to our team. And we have internal, you know, procedures that we follow. So they have, you know, a guide that they follow. And we meet regularly to make sure we're all on the same page. And then, like I mentioned, the committee, everybody, all our librarians were invited to be a part of the

055committee. And I started with volunteers. to be on it because it was extra time and commitment to be able to do that. And then I recruited some more just to make sure we had enough. And in a minute, you'll see a list of the committee members. It's a good size committee. And my next question, ma'am, are there any plans to track or report how parental feedback influences book approvals? That's a great idea. That's something that we can look in look into having some kind of feedback form on the on the web page Maybe that we can allow those comments in I think it's important to have that Thank you for the feedback Miss Gutierrez, do you have any comments? No, I'm good. Thank you. Okay This slide is just recapping. I'm sorry. Yes Okay, I

056just have one more question. Yes, how will this approve the how will this hinder this process in purchasing new books and materials? Well, we're trying to make it be as Efficient as possible. So this year this bill into effect September 1st, we did get started and June and I'll show you more about the timeline in just a second. But now that we know we can start even earlier to vet and have our list ready for next school year. Okay. Yeah. I think that's important. Yes, absolutely. Okay, so this slide just pertains a little bit more to our Destiny Parent Portal. Like I mentioned, the Parent Portal is linked on each of our campus library webpages as well as the district library webpage. Parents can view their child's current and past library checkouts. They can place

057restrictions on specific titles for their child if they choose to, and they can support their child's reading journey by ensuring selections align with their family values. So I think it's a really neat option for families to be able to see what their children are selecting. and have that input. Now the budget source, every year we allocate funds to our campuses. This is the same process as we have every year. All schools receive funds for library books and the purchase of these books are to expand the access to high quality age appropriate reading materials that directly support our student learning and literacy development. It helps to build a well curated library collections. Our librarians work really hard to make sure their collection covers a wide range of topics. It promotes independent reading. It strengthens research and

058critical thinking skills, especially we had a very, um, big lens on capstone as we created these lists. It provides resources aligned to curriculum and state standards. It fosters that love of reading and supports social emotional learning by offering different perspectives, inclusive stories, and culturally relevant texts. This is what our timeline looks like in June. We had already heard about this process coming along. So to get a little bit ahead of that game, we had our library materials review committee start meeting and selecting books that they might be interested in having on our list. So it was just, let's start brainstorming. What books do we want to have for the school year? All librarians were invited to be a part of that committee. Then in August, librarians were back on contract. We had it all the

059way until August for librarians to submit recommendations of books. they wanted included in the list. After all those recommendations came in, we spent an entire day working in breakout sessions, reviewing the lists. And by reviewing, I'll explain a little bit more about what that process looked like, but really looking one by one at every single list, book on the list to make sure it's appropriate, that it connects to our curriculum and all the different things on our criteria that we have. After that, we did post our public notice on the library and district web pages and at the bulletin board at central office late August, August 29th. On 9-1, which is 72 hours later, that's what the bill stipulates, we had our meeting. We had all the librarians in attendance and we went through the

060process of talking through the list, how we came to these conclusions. The transcript and the recording was placed on our website. On the 5th, I compiled the list for each level. So we already had the list ready, but I did one last look through. I made sure that the video recording and transcript of the meeting was posted to our library department website and that the public comment and everything was posted. And then it was posted till October 5th. That was when the public comment closed. tentatively, which ended up being today, was scheduled for a school board review. So the way this works is every time we have our list posted for 30 days, it needs to be reviewed at the next school board meeting. So for future, that'll be the process. Any changes that are

061made by the school board today, that'll be reviewed before we move forward to make the purchasing for the campuses. Hopefully... pretty quickly we'll be able to start that process of placing the orders for the campuses and I'm hoping tentatively the campuses will have orders already starting to arrive by December. What I'm hoping to have is in February our library materials committee meet again to review the books but this time for the 26-27 school year and any last-minute books that we might need. So an idea for what a last-minute book is that we might want to buy this school year towards the end of the year. We have some events like our battle of the books that those lists don't get announced till the end of the school year. So like maybe around April we won't

062know those titles until then and we don't want to have to wait until December to get the book. we may place one order towards the very end of the year. And then in June, we're hoping to finalize our lists with the committee so that we can be ready for the very first board meeting to be able to proceed and start working early, earlier. Okay, these are the members of the Library Materials Review Committee. It's myself, Catherine Mancias, our Library Innovation Strategist. Then we had five elementary librarians as part of the Elementary Committee. We had all our middle school librarians as part of the middle school committee and all our high school librarians as part of the high school committee. I just want to note for the middle school and high school, those are a little

063bit more challenging. And I'm really glad to have the representation of all our middle school and all our high school, because those are the levels where sometimes the books are a little more challenging to vet, right? The appropriateness of the books. And then the last column, we have some special grant recipient campuses that received either the Laura Bush grant or the Dollar General grant. Each of those, which is six more elementary librarians who are part of this process, but specifically looking at their grant list because they had more money allocated for the grant than the ones in just the elementary group. And then for us to know, like the role of the librarian, we have to have a teaching degree. We have to have experience as teachers. We have to have professional training and collection

064development. We have a master's degree in this field. And so we really are the ones with the best background to vet and evaluate the book. So you have a really strong team here with the librarians. So this is how we are evaluating our potential titles. We do have criteria that we follow. We also look at state and national book award lists. Every year they're put out, the Caldecott's, the Tayshia's list. There's many different state and national book award lists. We look at district priorities and campus needs. We look at student engagement, student interest, sorry, and engagement trends. And we also look at professional reviews and vetted selection resources. So we have specialized library professional reviews that we use to help us. All librarians had an opportunity to share their voice in this process for selecting

065books. Representatives from each level, elementary, middle, and high school created the recommended lists. Books were selected following our school board policy AFB. Every district must follow strict standards for purchasing and acquiring, including prohibiting sexually explicit, vulgar, profane, indecent, and harmful materials. So that was a special lens we had as we went through the lists. Now, the library lists that are here for your approval today did go out for public review on our webpage. The public comment was available from 9-5 to 10-5. As I mentioned before, it shows you on the screen what it looked like, how parents could access it. There were no comments that were made. The lists were organized as follows. High school libraries had one list. Middle school libraries, a separate list. Elementary libraries. an additional list. We had an early childhood

066list to consider building blocks Academy and their special needs. And then we had an individual grant recipient list that was based on the criteria for the grant. So those that wrote the dollar general grants, depending on what they requested, they had to follow the specifics from that grant. Those that received the Laura Bush grant each had to follow the specific requirements. And then you'll notice that each of the lists contained the following information, the ISBN, the title, the author, the reading level. the Dewey, the copyright, the interest level, the language, and the BISACs. So BISACs are cataloging tags. So that would be like your search keywords. You know, if you're going to search, let's say, for example, family, that could be a tag associated with many different books. The title doesn't have to necessarily be

067family, but there might be many different books that the topic involves family. So it shows you the tags and that helps you get a sense of what the book is going to be about. Any questions about the list? Okay. That's all that I have for you today. Thank you for your time. Mr. President, I'd like to make a motion to approve. It was just a presentation. No, we do not approve of this. Oh, because it's a presentation. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay, so I got a motion by Ms. Gutierrez. I have a second by Ms. Quintanilla. Oh, so we are going to vote or we're not going to vote? I'm confused. I'm sorry. It was my mistake. We are going to vote. Okay. Okay. No, you're good. You're new. So I got a motion from Ms.

068Gutierrez and a second from Ms. Quintanilla. All those for the motion, 65 by raising your hand. Aye. All those against? Same sign. Motion passes. I wanted to just to commend all the library department and all their librarians are doing a real good job. I really appreciate everything you're doing. I did go to one of your presentations you were doing and I was just very impressed. They're doing so well. The kids are doing very well. So I just want to thank you and all your leadership. Also, Ms. Mancilla is here also. I want to thank you all for doing a great job. So thank you for me. Thank you so much. And I want to thank our team. We have a little bit of our team here just showing support. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for

069all you do. We move to letter B, presentation of the dual language English as a second language program annual evaluation. And this will be presented by Ms. Olivia Martinez, dual language director. Good evening, Mr. Board President, Dr. Elias, and members of the board. As Dr. Elias mentioned, my name is Olivia Martinez, and I will be presenting our annual evaluation for our dual language NESL programs. Our Texas Education Agency allows our districts to select the kind of bilingual programs that they're going to implement. For our district, we implement the one-way and two-way dual language programs, as well as our ESL pull-up program. Mainly, we do use our one-way and two-way at all levels, elementary, middle school, and high school. And then our ESL program is prevalent at our secondary levels, meaning the middle school and the

070high schools. So now we're going to take a look at our emergent bilingual classification information. As you can see, last school year, 24-25, we did comprise 43% of the population with over 12,600 students. And we also reclassified over 1,000 students, meaning that those over 1,000 students, they did meet reclassification criteria set forth by the state. So they have to achieve an advanced high and their telpas composite. and then they have to pass their reading or English 1, English 2 EOC in English. And last year was the first year that designated supports were not taken into account for reclassification. So that's why we see a jump from the M2s of 168 to over 1,000 students as monitored first-year students. Now we're going to take a look at our academic achievement for our emergent bilingual students and

071star And if I can just take you through some of the color coding here, so as you can see our purple is going to represent our approaches. Our blue represents our meets and our green represents our masters and a little bit of the color coding. The lighter color has our emergent bilingual student data, uh, labeled EB and the darker colors, um, have the all student population data, uh, and it is labeled with the all. So for example, For our third grade reading we do have our emergent bilingual students who scored a 65 and grew three percentage points for at a 68 percent so that again was a three percent growth And if we look at the approaches level, we did close that achievement gap from 24 to 25. The gap in 24 was a 6%

072and we reduced that to a 5% gap. So we are moving our emerging bilingual students in the right direction. In our meets, we did go from a 37% to a 39% for 2% growth, while the all student population had a 1% growth from a 45 to a 46. And we also reduced the gap there from an 8% to a 7%. At our master's level, our EB students went from a 15 to a 16 with a 1% growth, while our all-student population had a 2% growth going from an 18 to a 20%. And again, we did have a 1% increase in the gap there, but we are moving our emergent bilingual students at the meets and the master's level in a positive trajectory. In our math, for third grade, our EB students and our all-student population

073did stay at the same percentage, while our EB students were at a 65% and our all-students were at a 68%. At the meets level, we did go from a 33% to a 39%, and that is a 6% growth, while our all-student population had a 5% growth from a 37% to a 42%. And our gap did decrease from a 4% to a 3%. In our master's level, our EB students did go from a 9% to a 12%, achieving a 3% growth, while our all-student population went from a 10% to a 15% with a 5% growth. And again, we did see a little bit of an increase in the gap, but again, we are moving our emergent bilinguals forward in the meets and the master's levels. For our fourth grade reading, again, our students are moving in

074the right direction. Our EB students did go from a 75% to a 77 for a 2% growth, while our all-student population went from a 79 to an 82 for a 3% growth. In our meets level, we did go from a 44 to a 54% with a 10% growth there for our emergent bilingual students, while the all-student population saw an 8% growth going from a 49 to a 57%. And again, reducing the gap from a 5% to a 3% gap at the meets level. at our masters we did go from a 20% to a 24% which is a 4% growth for emerging bilingual students while the all student population saw a 3% growth from a 23 to a 26 and again we did reduce the gap from 3% to 2% at the masters level for math.

075We did go from a 71 to a 73 again our emerging bilingual students showing a 2% growth and the all student population stayed the same at the 74% for our meets Again, we did close the achievement gap from a 3% to a 1% at the approaches level. At the meets level, we did go from a 47 to a 50% for a 3% growth. And the all student population saw a 2% growth going from a 51 to a 53. Again, closing the gap from 4% to 3%. At our master's level, we did go from a 19% to a 23%, again, showing 4% growth. And our all students saw 5% growth from a 21 to a 26. And again, we are moving our students at increasing the percentages of our aboriginal bilingual students at the meets and

076the master's level. And now looking at our fifth grade. We do see some increases there as well our emerging bilingual students at the approaches level saw 1% growth going from a 74 to a 75 While the all student population saw a 1% decrease And again closing the gap from a 5% to a 3% at the approaches level At the meets level, again, another increase from a 45 to a 52, showing a 7% growth. And the all-student population saw a 5% growth going from a 51 to a 56, again, closing the achievement gap at the meets level from a 6 to a 4. At the master's level, our emerging bilingual students saw 4% growth going from a 19% to a 23%, while our all-student population saw a 2% growth from a 25% to a 27%. Again,

077closing the achievement gap from 6% to a 4%. In math... At fifth grade, we did go from a 78 to a 73, showing a 5% decrease, while the all-student population saw a 7% decrease going from an 80 to a 73. And again, here we don't see a gap because the emergent bilingual students and the all-student population are at the same percentage, which is again 73. At the meets... but we did see a 2% decrease going from a 45 to a 43 while the all student population saw a 4% decrease going from a 48 to a 44. And again, that gap was decreased from a 3% to a 1% and our masters level. We did see a positive gain. Our students went from our EB students went from a 12% to a 19% for 7% growth.

078and our student pub and our all student population went from a 15 to a 20% for a 5% growth as well. And again, the gap there was reduced from a 3% to a 1% gap. In our science, we also saw significant increase. Our emerging bilingual students went from a 54 to a 69, showing a 15% growth, while our all-student population showed a 10% growth going from a 60 to a 70. So we did reduce the gap there from 6% to 1%. At the meets level... our students went from a 20, our emergent bilingual students went from a 22 to a 28 for a 6% growth, as well as the all student population from a 27 to a 33. And here again, we maintain the gap at 5%. At a master's level, our emerging bilingual students

079went from an 8% to 11 for a 3% growth, while our all-student population saw a 2% growth going from a 10% to a 12%, minimizing the gap from 2% to 1%. So as you can see, we're very proud that our gaps between the EB students and the all-student population are in single digits. Moving on to our sixth grade reading. Our emergent bilingual students went from a 64 to a 67 at the approaches level while the all student population saw an increase of 4% from a 70 to a 74. And we did see a 1% gain in the gap there, but again, it's still in the single digits and our emergent bilingual students are increasing in all levels here. at the meets, excuse me, our students did see a 1% decrease from 43 to a 42

080and our all student population saw a 1% increase. And again, we did see a little bit of an increase in the gap from a 7% to a 9%, but it's still in the single digits and our emergent bilingual students are pretty much maintaining at that meets level. But at the master's level, we did see an increase from a 16% to an 18% in our bilingual students for a 2% growth, while the all student population saw 5% growth going from 20 to 25. And again, our emerging bilingual students are increasing or maintaining at that meets and master's level. For a sixth grade reading for our sixth grade math again We did see an increase here our emergent bilingual students went from a 63 to a 65 for a 2% growth While the all student population saw

0814% growth from a 66 to a 70 and so if we move on to the meats We did go from a 28 and maintained at a 28 percent while the all student population did see a 3% increase But again, our emerging bilingual students are increasing at the meets and the master's level. At the master's level, we did go from a 9% to 11% for 2% growth, while the all student population went from a 9% to a 14% for 4% growth. Again, our gap is in the single digits and our emergent bilingual students percentages are increasing. For seventh grade. Reading, our emergent bilinguals did go from a 62 to a 69% for 7% growth, while the all-student population saw 6% growth from a 67 to a 73. And we did decrease that gap from a 5%

082to a 4% at the approaches level. At the meets level, our students went from a 38... to a 46 that is an 8% growth while the all student population saw a 6% growth from a 44 to a 50 again reducing the gap at the meets level from a 6% to a 4% at the Masters level are still emerging bilingual students went from a 17 to a 19% showing a 2.2% growth and the all student population also showed a 2% growth from a 20 to a 22. and again, maintain the gap at 3% at the master's level. For math, our emerging bilingual students did go from a 51 to a 40 for an 11% decrease, but the all-student population showed a 16% decrease going from a 56 to a 40. And currently, there is no gap

083as the emerging bilingual students and the all-student population are at the same percentage of 40. At the meets level, our emergent bilingual students did go from a 28 to a 17%, showing an 11% decrease, while the all-student population showed a 15% decrease, going from a 33 to an 18. And again, that gap was closed, closing it from a 5% gap to a 1% gap at the meets level. At the master's level, our emerging bilingual students did go from a 6% to a 3%, again, decrease of 3 percentage points, while the all-student population decreased 5%, going from an 8 to a 3. And again, there is no gap at the master's level, as the EB students and the all-student population are at the same percentage of a 3. Our eighth grade reading. Our students did decrease

084one percentage. Our emerging bilinguals went from a 74 to a 73%. And the all-student population also saw a 1% decrease going from a 78 to a 77. And we maintain the gap at the approaches level at a 4%. At the meets level... our EB students did go from a 48 to a 47 again showing a 1% decrease, but our all student population is showing a 2% decrease going from a 53 to a 51. And we did diminish the gap there going from a 5% to a 4% gap at the meets level at the master's level. Again, we did decrease by one percentage point going from a 22 to a 21 and the all student population maintained at a 25% for math. Our students went from a 79 to 73% showing a 6% decrease and the

085all student population showed a 3% decrease going from an 80 to a 77. Again, the gap went from a 1% to a 4%, but still in the single digits. At the meets level, our students did increase from a 49. Our EB students increased from a 49% to a 51% showing a 2%. growth while the all student population to show 4.4% growth from a 52 to a 56 and at the Masters level our students did increase as well. Our EB students went from a 17 to a 22% showing a 5% growth while the all student population did show a 7% growth going from a 19 to a 26 and again our emerging bilingual students are doing fairly well at the meets and at the Masters level. For science and for social studies, we do have increases

086as well in science. Our emergent bilingual students went from a 62 to a 71%, showing a 9% growth. And the all-student population showed an 8% growth going from a 67 to a 75. So the gap at the approaches level was diminished by 1%, going from a 5% gap to a 4% gap at the approaches level. For our meets performance levels are these students one from a 36 to 47 again a strong 11% growth while the all student population showed a 13% growth going from a 40 to a 53% growth and then at the Masters level art student our EB students did increase from a 12% to a 15% showing 3% growth while the all student populations showed a 4% growth going from a 14 to an 18 In social studies at eighth grade, our EB

087students did decrease one percentage point from a 47 to a 46, but the all-student population showed a 2% decrease from a 53 to a 51. And we did close the gap a little bit, going from a 6% to a 5% at the approaches level. At the meets level, our students maintained at a 23% our EB students, while the all-student population increased by 1%. And at the master's level, our EB students did increase 1%. They went from a 10% to 11, showing a 1% growth, as well as the all-student population going from 13% to 14%. And so the gap is the same at 3% here at the social studies eighth grade. Our English 1 and English 2. First, we start with English 1. Our emerging bilingual students did go from a 60 to a 62, showing

0882% growth. All the all-student population maintained at a 68%, so that reduces the gap at the approaches level from an 8% to a 6%. At the meets level, our students, again, increased. Our emerging bilingual students increased from a 39% to a 42%, showing a 3% growth, while the all-student population decreased by 1%, going from a 50% to a 49%. And so again, the gap was decreased at the meets level from an 11% to a 7% gap. At the master's level, our students increased from 10 to 11%, showing a 1% growth, while the all-student population showed a 1% decrease of 1%, going from 14 to 13. And again, the gap was diminished. At 2024, we had a 4% gap at the master's and decreased it to a 2% gap at the master's level for English 1.

089For English 2, again, our emerging bilingual students showed growth, going from a 63% to a 65% for a 2% growth, while the all-student population decreased by 1%, going from a 73% to a 71%. So the gap at the approaches level decreased from a 10% to a 7%. At the meets level, our students again increased 2%, going from 45% to a 47%. While the all student population decreased by 2% going from a 57 to a 50 55 Closing the gap at the meets level from a 12% to 8% gap At the master's level we did go for emerging bilingual students went from a 3% to 6% showing a 3% growth while the all student population maintained and that gap at the master's level decreased from 4% to 1% Moving on to our algebra us history and

090biology In algebra again our students did decrease two percentage points going from an 86 to an 84 as well as our all student population going from an 88 to an 86 and the gap is maintained at two percentage points At the meets level, we did again see a 2% decrease going from a 56 to a 54, while the all-student population decreased 3 percentage points, and the gap here at the meets level went from a 5% to a 4% gap at the meets level. At the master's level... Again, we did see a 1% decrease going from a 35 to a 34 while the all student population saw a 2% decrease going from a 39 to a 37 and the gap was closed a little bit. And at the master's level going from a 4% to a

0913% gap. In U.S. history, we did increase by one percentage point going from a 91 to a 92, while the all-student population decreased 1% going from a 95 to a 94. And so the gap at the approaches level goes from a 4% to a 2%. At the meets level, our students grew from 46% to a 55% showing 9% growth and the all student population maintained at 60%. So that gap there at the meets level went from 14 to 5% gap again at the meets level. And the master's level, we did go from a 14% to a 21% showing a 7% growth, while the all-student population only increased 1%, and that gap was decreased from 10 to 4%. At biology, we did see some increases as well. Our emergent bilingual students went from an 85 to

092an 87%, showing us 2% growth here, while the all-student population only had a 1% growth, going from an 88 to an 89. And so the gap there at the approaches level went from a 3% to a 2% gap. At the meets level, our students, again, grew from a 35% to a 44%, showing a 9% growth. and the all-student population is showing a 7% growth going from a 43 to a 50, again, closing the gap from 8% to 6% at the meets level. At the master's level, our emerging bilinguals did go from a 7% to a 9%, showing a two-point growth, while the all-student population increased one percentage point from a 10 to an 11, closing the gap at the master's level from a 3% gap to a 2% gap. So that was the academic achievement.

093Now we move on to our linguistic achievement. And here I'm going to present our TELPAS data. So the way that our methodology was... Was given to us again by our TEA was that our students had to meet progress in two out of the four domains So the four domains are again listening speaking reading and writing So our students had to show progress and two out of those four so progress would be going from beginning to intermediate intermediate to advanced advanced to advanced high or maintaining at advanced high Okay So as you can see here at the elementary, we're very proud of the work that our elementary... staff is doing because this year we only had one school who did not meet their Target whereas you can see in 2024. We did have two schools who

094didn't meet their Target and that was reduced to one campus this school year. So 24 the 25 Elementary's met their Target of 49% or surpassed it and as you can see that one school who didn't meet was only three percentage points away from that meeting their their Target. At the secondary level, again, we're also very, very proud of the hard work and dedication that our campus personnel are doing when it comes to really working with our emerging bilingual students. As you can see, our middle schools in 2024, two out of the eight didn't meet. This past school year, we only had one who did not meet. And they were, again, only three percentage points away from actually meeting their target. And at the high school level, extremely, extremely proud of all of the work that

095they're doing. because as you can see in 2024, we did have two schools who did not meet to 2025, all of them meeting their target scores. And that really helped our district move five percentage points for growth going from a 50 to a 55% increase. So now we look at our progress by domain. As you can see here, we've got listening progress in green, listening no change in blue, and no change is that our students are maintaining the same proficiency level. So they might be still at the beginning level or they might still be at the intermediate level. So they're maintaining or staying at the same proficiency level. The decrease means that our students went from maybe advanced to intermediate, intermediate to beginning. So if we look at the green, of square here in the

096listening for progress, we did increase one percentage point. We went from a 54% progress in listening to 55% progress. We maintained at the no change, which is good because we don't want our students to decrease. We want them to increase, but if anything, right, we would want them to stay the same, but not decrease. And our decrease percentage also went down, right? So that's a good thing because that means that less of our students are decreasing or moving down proficiency levels. And speaking, as you can see, we did have a pretty significant growth there. We went from a 28% to a 37% increase in speaking. And speaking is one of our areas of focus as well as the writing because this is where our students are challenged to produce that language on the... that bus

097exam and so for speaking no change we did decrease from from a 48 to a 50 percent meaning that more of our students increased and then as the speaking decrease we did decrease six percentage points there which again is a good thing because we have less students who are regressing At reading progress, we did increase one percentage point from a 47 to a 48. In reading no change, again, we did increase from a 36 to a 39, meaning that more of our students are maintaining their language proficiency. And decrease, we did go down from a 17 to a 13, again, which is good. That means that less of our students are regressing. In the writing, again, we did go from a 32 to a 35, and that's good because that's three percentage points that we

098gained there. And in the no change, we did, again, increase from a 52 to a 54, meaning that more of our students, or at least 2% more of our students are maintaining their proficiency at the writing domain. And we did decrease, again, from a 16 to an 11, meaning that less of our students are regressing. So the last portion of my presentation would be the professional development where we, as a district. We do hold these different types of trainings for our teachers, for campus leadership. It's anywhere from lost links all the way to working with our teachers who are servicing our students who receive special education services. And so these are mainly done on Saturdays or after school. And this again is for the secondary. And moving on to the elementary, it's pretty much... the

099same professional development, but at the level of elementary. And this pretty much concludes my presentation. I don't know if you all have any questions. Thank you very much. I just want to commend you and your department. All I'm seeing is just real good information and good stuff and a lot of success. So I just want to commend you and all your staff. Thank you. I have some questions. Discuss two. it's very encouraging, the data that you presented. It's pretty, it's comparable to the all population. So that's good. I do have a question. I noticed that in fifth grade, we're assessing very few students in science in Spanish. If we're still following the Gomez and Gomez, we should be teaching science in Spanish. And from your presentation, it appears to me that the language of instruction

100is not aligned to the language of assessment, one. The other one is, can you please include the number of EBs? Once we started assessing all in English in sixth grade, I noticed you didn't include the number of students being assessed. Just DB students. Sixth grade? Starting in sixth grade. Oh, okay. Right. And if you can email me this presentation. Yes. And then moving forward, I know you have a lot of staff development going on. What would be your key focus, if I may ask? So lots of language, like linguistic support for our teachers and really showing them how to transfer that across the different contents because we know that that's one of the challenges for our emergent bilingual students is their growth linguistically. So really focusing on helping our teachers with their content and language

101objectives, helping them how to make those cross-linguistic transfers. And then again, just... of hoarding our students those writing opportunities throughout the different content areas. Thank you. So what's your your respond to my first question on aligning instruction to the assessment language of assessment. So one of the beauties of our biolibrizy program is that the science lab is done in English. at the fifth grade level and at the fourth grade level as well. So the classroom teacher does implement the content in Spanish in the classroom, but then when they go to the lab, it is done in English. So our students really do get the best of both worlds, right? Because they get to hear it in their native language and then they get to go do the process in the lab. So really at that

102point, it doesn't matter if they take it in English or in Spanish because they have the concept in either language. It's been synced in English and synced in Spanish. Why did I not do that when I was a principal? Well, I didn't do it to the extent that you're doing it now, but I like that. Thank you. You're welcome. That is a very good response. Well, that's what's happening. Well, I'm glad. Yes, thank you. Mr. President. Go ahead, Ms. Quintanilla. So yes, I want to second what Ms. Castillo is saying as far as the progress. I'm glad to see the progress. Thank you. What specifically is being done, I know we went at the elementary from two campuses to one, and there was a significant drop. And I also know, I believe we have some

103new principals at some of these campuses. Yes. So what is being done to support those campuses, middle school and elementary, to bring it back up, to kind of get back to meet the targeted score. So every campus has a CTC, which is a campus testing coordinator, and in collaboration with their principal and their campus leadership, they have created a TELPIS plan that was submitted to my department. And so we work with that plan, and we make sure that once we go to do visits or walkthroughs, that we collaborate with them as well in implementing the strategies and the supports that they've indicated in that plan. So that you do have a plan of action? Yes, ma'am. Okay. Yes. Thank you. I have a just for Beth. So we do have we do have the rule

104that you forfeit your time after you pass on. Right. Can I email you? Mr. President. Mr. President. I think Dr. Gutierrez has a question. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Ms. Gutierrez. Yes, thank you. Thank you for acknowledging me. Olivia, although I'm not present, you know how much I appreciate the work you have done for the dual language program. When I came on the school board, we had meetings and I have supported you all along. I helped pass dual language throughout the district. I have one question. do we have consistent language allocation models across all of the campuses? In other words, do we request that every campus has 80, 20, 50, 50, 40, 60? Do we have that across the board or each school chooses what they implement, what they're going to be? implementing in their campus.

105So as you recall, part of the board policy that you helped pass, it was a 50-50. So all of our elementary, middle schools, and high schools that are implementing our dual language education, they do have a 50-50 language allocation plan. And so that is being followed at each level, at the elementary and at the secondary level. Okay. And I had forgotten about it. How are parents or teachers or new teachers, are you training them constantly on that? Because I myself had forgotten that we had past 50-50. So, and I have heard, you know, teachers tell me that, you know, that they're not doing it properly. You know, it's just hearsay, obviously. But what are we doing to get everyone on the same page and do that? 50 50. So for our new teachers, we do

106have a two day Institute at the beginning of the school year. And so we do go through that language allocation plan and component means. And then at the beginning of the school year, we also send that language allocation plan to all of our principals and assistant principals. And so everybody is on board from the very beginning with the understanding that they that we do have a 50 50. But we also do go out into the to the campuses to continue to support the work that our teachers And then again, there is where we also reiterate our language allocation plan being a 50-50. And how about the parents? So through parent meetings as well. Okay. Does parental involvement participate in helping you? Parental involvement helps bring in those parents, yes. Okay. Well, thank you so much,

107Olivia. And I want to thank all of our staff in every level, in every school, because everyone is part of this wonderful program. And so I wanted to commend you for all of the great work that you have done throughout the years. Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, mr. President we move to item C approve the advice Texas MOU between PSJA and appoint the advisor from advice Texas to provide admission and financial aid advising to students at PSJA College High School PSJA Memorial PSJA North and PSJA Southwest and this will be presented by Dr. Uribe executive officer for college and career readiness President Rodriguez, Dr. Elias and school board members. This evening, as Dr. Elias mentioned, I will be reviewing our Advice Texas Mentors

108program. So we'll start with the first slide. And so the purpose of this program is really a partnership with College Advice Corps, which is part of the UT system. And it expands college access. PSJA has been in partnership with them for 15 years. And I want to stress that this has been a very powerful partnership. We are the only ones in the Valley that have Advise Texas mentors in our schools. These advisors collaborate with counselors, teachers, and administration. And the goal is really to boost college going rates. on first-generation low-income and underrepresented students in all of our campuses. They also help support our student and families with college admissions and financial aid guidance. They start in August through the summer and the cost is $40,000 in total and PSJA pays $10,000 per advisor with the

109college transition local budget and the system picking up the rest of the tab. So like Dr. Elias mentioned, we have one advisor per comprehensive high school at PSJA High, Southwest, North, and Memorial. The next slide, please. So their major responsibilities include leading group and one-on-one meetings with students, having classroom presentations on college and career readiness. organizing college tours and coordinating college representative visits at the Go Center. They help guide through college and career research, support our SAT and ACT registration and financial aid completion, and also support in the transition to college. And so we're really happy to be the only partners with Advice Texas System and are seeking your approval this evening. Thank you. We're talking about the four comprehensive high schools. Is there any chance that sometimes you could follow, and maybe I'm not

110asking the right question, some of, say, students that might be eligible for this kind of advice, like from T-STEM? So T-STEM and collegiate do have a financial aid officer. So our campuses also have a financial aid officer. This is an addition to the financial aid officer. So we have these mentors and then we also have our college transition specialists that are also assigned to support them. So they definitely- So they're not being left out. That was my concern. Yes, nobody gets left out. Opportunities for all. Ms. Gutierrez, do you have your hand up? Did you want to comment? What was that, Mr. President? You had your hand up. Did you have a question for the... Oh, it was the earlier one. I apologize not getting it down. I'll be careful the next time. Sorry about

111that. It was for the previous presentation. Okay, Ms. President. Ms. Barron. Dr. O'Leary, my question on this one was... How different are the tasks for this for advisors versus the counseling, the counselors that are at each campus? So our high school counselors do the academic and college advising for our students. They guide them into their different pathways, their registration. They work with them on meeting the high school requirements. Our college, our advice mentors, they work with our students more on the transition component, right? So when the kids are becoming juniors, seniors. They work with them on ensuring that they're working on college applications, financial aids, connecting them to different recruiters, and really exposing them to college so they can make that right choice. Okay. And my second question is, how long have we had this

112program? 15 years. 15 years. Thank you. Yes, you're welcome. Mr. President. Ms. Castillo. Do they work with any parents at this level? Yes, they do. So we do have monthly counselor cafes and that includes them. And aside from that, they also have different sessions for parents. And at times they work with their parent educators to help support as well. One of my concerns, I didn't realize it was the same group. But one of my concerns is that the meetings are held in the morning where a lot of parents are working. Do you also have meetings after five where parents are able to attend? That does vary from campus to campus, but it's something that we can go back and make sure that we talk to the administrator. So every campus does it a little bit

113different. For the most part, we try to ensure we have a.m. and p.m. sessions for all parents. Thank you. I think I would. Really help especially for those working parents. Yes Thank you. Miss continue. Thank you. Just a clarification You mentioned $40,000 what specifically is the $40,000? I know it's 10,000 per comprehensive school But that $10,000 is gonna help in what way it helps like for example for mileage or like if they're going to professional development And so we help support those efforts It's like supplemental like some kind of supplemental pay it so if their their salary is covered all these other things are covered and This funding comes from where this comes from our college transition local fund Motion by mr. Vegas second second by miss Baron Thank you. This question was for the

114motion six about raising hand I Passes unanimously. Thank you Next item. Yes, Mr. President, we move to item D, approve the MOU between PSJA Special Education Program and Region 1 Early Childhood Intervention Program to fulfill child find responsibilities as mandated under the IDEA Act. And this will be presented by Director for Special Ed, Ms. Quintana. Good evening, mr. President members of the board. Dr. Elias. So I am Veronica Quintana I'm in a present on the memorandum of understanding between PSJA and region one So the purpose of this in the overview right? It's a child find collaboration it's to outline the collaboration between the local education agency, which is us and region ones early childhood intervention program in fulfilling the child find responsibilities under idea So child find overview says that this is mandated right under

115the IDEA law and it identifies and evaluates children birth to 21 with potential developmental delays or disabilities to ensure access also to special education services and related services. So IDEA, Individuals with Disabilities Act, Part C, birth to age three, this is the responsibility of Region 1, the ECI program. And they focus on the early identification and the intervention. But when it goes to Part B of IDEA, that's our responsibility. So that focuses on the three-year-olds to 21-year-olds. And so their responsibility transitions over to the school districts. So LEAs need to ensure that continued support are provided through the evaluation and the services that we provide through our department. So region one, their responsibility is to conduct outreach and public awareness. to identify infants and toddlers birth to age three who qualify for early intervention and

116they accept referrals from any local education agency and community agencies and it supports early identification aligned with the idea of Part C law. And so our responsibilities as a school district in collaboration is we also can provide, recommend referrals right to region one. And so we can refer children that we suspect sometimes we have parents that come, well, you know, I have a two year old, he's not talking, he's not walking. He's, and so we can refer them back to region one if they have a suspected developmental delay or disability for screening and evaluation. And also part of the community engagement that we have, that our obligation is as a district is to invite region one to our meetings, to our events, to our fairs, to our transition meetings, to. have them be a part

117of us as well in order to promote awareness and support Joe, uh, joint child find, um, efforts. So we do that, you know, collaboratively with them. So our responsibilities are a joint responsibility region one and, and our school district. So we ensure compliance with FERPA and HIPAA when sharing a child find and family information. Uh, we maintain regular contact for smooth transitions and coordinated services. And we also collaborate on joint staff community training around Child Find and early intervention. And I'm sure you see some of those posters posted around the community about Child Find. You suspect your child has a disability, reach out Region 1 and our district as well. And so transition notification, right? Region one, the ECI responsibilities in order to ensure a smooth transition for children potentially eligible for SPED under part

118B of IDEA is they determine eligibility and they notify parents before sharing their personally identified information with us. They inform parents of their right to either opt out of the disclosure prior to scheduling that meeting with us. In other words, if the parent says I don't want you to tell the district that we were they were receiving services through region one through their ECI they don't have to but if they do you know they have to provide a timely notification to us so by the time 90 days before the baby's third birthday they have to let us know that the responsibility is going to fall on us and that the day that he turns three, Region One no longer provides services through their ECI program. Referring children with suspected deaf and hard of hearing or

119blind and visual impairment, that requires us to provide services from when they're babies. So we have our deaf and hard of hearing teacher and our VI teachers. who provide these services and these services for this particular category. These babies, we provide services even through the summer. So it's year round because of the critical need of these babies. And so our responsibility is we receive notification of a child who's potentially eligible for Part B services, which is our responsibility, age 3 to 21. So that constitutes a referral to us. And so we initiate the evaluation process to determine if they're eligible for services with us. So we collaborate our efforts with the early... Childhood intervention program with region one and we support the parents involvement in the transition planning process So we have those meetings with

120the parents whether it's in the home or at a campus And so this conference here with parental consent we schedule a face-to-face meeting with them at least again 90 days before they turn three to coordinate the services and to share evaluations. They give us what they have on the child before we do our own. And, uh, and so the child continues again to receive services until they're three. And then we take over to ensure that smooth transition. So our goal is to ensure, again, smooth and timely transition for every child from ECI to PSJA. And so by following these procedures and maintaining open communication, we support our families and uphold compliance with what the law tells us that we're supposed to do. And so this is the MOU that we're here to present and need

121a signature on. Thank you. I do have a question, Mr. President. The transition conference, is that open to parents? Well, the transition conference in this aspect is the meeting that Region 1 sets up with our SPED department, with the family. So they call it a transition conference because they're transitioning the student to us, but the parents are part of the meeting. I made a motion. What measures are in place to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our partnership? like non-negotiable rules, but we have to, right? If we are not compliant, then we have an indicator, indicator 11 and 12 that we report to the state, the state performance plan indicators, you know, where we cannot be late, especially on these. We have to be 100%. And for the past two years, we've been 100% on

122it. So we're going to keep doing that. And so we do have a lot of babies. You know, we have a lot of referrals, whether they come from the ECI program or Easterseals, but it's non-negotiable. Services need to begin, you know, at the age of three. So you have, you submit a report to the state? Yes, we do. We have to submit to the state. So if we're late on one, we're noncompliant. Yeah. Thank you, miss. I have a motion by Ms. Serna. Do I have a second? I have a second by Ms. Quintanilla. All those for the motion, take a raise of your hand. The motion passes 7-0. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Quintanilla. Thank you. Next item, Mr. President, we move to item E, approval of warning proposals for instructional and

123curriculum consultant services. And this will be presented again by Ms. Olivia Martinez, Director for Tool Lab. Good evening again. Thank you again for this opportunity, Mr. President, Dr. Elias, and members of the board. I am bringing to you two specific consultants, Ms. Lida Saavedra. And again, this is to continue to develop and support and extend our dual language teachers' knowledge of teaching for biliteracy. All consultations and trainings will be aligned to our district's action plan for support that we've had for the past three years under Dr. Elias's and Mr. Marquez's guidance and leadership. And of course, this PD will be conducted in Spanish to continue to increase our teachers, our dual language teachers. proficiency levels. This will be $8,400 and she will be helping us conduct these trainings on Saturdays. Again, Ms. Lidia Saavedra has...

124extensive experience. She has provided PD services to other districts as well while employed with this company, Maury, Drake & Associates. And again, she has a very extensive expertise in early childhood, dual language education, and as you can see. other specific areas that are aligned to our dual language initiative. So this would be to our 26 elementary schools, our kinder to fifth grade teachers, our eight middle schools, sixth to eighth grade dual language teachers, and our six high schools, ninth to twelfth grade dual language teachers. And so this will help us train our over 500 dual language teachers. Um, and again, the focus would be on the linguistic components of how our teachers implement and help our students to move forward with their language domains, listening, speaking, reading, and writing. I make a motion to approve.

125Motion by Mrs. Castillo. Second by Mrs. Serna. I just have one question. We can, President Rodriguez. Go ahead, ma'am. Yes, I'm going to vote. I just wanted to say, Ms. Dr. Uribe. Dr. Uribe. I just wanted to say, who is it? Olivia. Olivia, I'm sorry. Olivia, I just wanted to say that for consulting, we've talked about in the past how we have to have our staff who go through trainings and we spend money on getting them to conferences and all that. I'm pretty sure we have very good people that can do consulting within our own district support. and all that. I support any consultant that will bring in expertise, but we also have to start using our own to train each other. So that was my comment. Mr. Rodriguez, go ahead. Thank you, Ms. Gutierrez.

126I had a motion by Ms. Castillo, right? And I had a second by Mr. Villegas? No, I had a second, but he had a comment. Oh, I have a comment. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you. Olivia, Olivia Saavedra has been doing this throughout the Valley. And for PSJA? Yes, sir. For how long? So we've been working with her for the past two years. I wanna commend you on your choice again and your recommendation to the board on Lydia Salera being that she's one of the most talented and highly respected professionals that we've had at PSJA. So I know that she's going to meet the task and it's gonna be a benefit to your department as well as to our teachers that are gonna be benefiting from this. I commend her because she was... Much appreciated

127and highly recognized for commitment and dedication to PSJA. I think this is a role well served. Thank you. I echo that too. Okay, I had a motion. Can I have a second? Sorry, go ahead, Ms. Quintanilla. So we've been using her for two years. I think we had already passed the time, though. Ms. Quintanilla, had you already made a comment? So a question on this yeah So for the past two years, she's been helping. And aside from what's listed here, can you tell me what has been the impact of her professional development to our teachers? Because is it, and how do you, is it going to be across the board? Are you going to select, for example, the campuses, Kelly or LBJ, where there is a need? Or are you going to apply her services,

128you know, across the board? So her services would be applied across the board, but there is specific criteria, right? Because again, going back to the action plan for support that we've had for the past three years, one of the components of that plan for support is the internal evaluation of our district. So we compile all of our classroom walkthroughs, our classroom observations, the surveys that we send out to our teachers and our students, our parents every year. And so all of that compiled, we look to see what our teachers are asking for, right? And so... Saavedra has been part of of those walkthroughs and those observations. So it is with her support also that we developed this PD plan based on the feedback from last year. So each level is going to get what they

129were asking for again based on the surveys and based on our classroom observations. So elementary has a specific training, each grade level has a specific training and so does secondary. So my question is, will those two campuses, Kelly and LPJ, will they be allowed maybe to have a little bit more time or, you know, as far as her services are concerned? Will there be extra time maybe allocated? Is that something, and maybe it's not part of the plan, but I'm just thinking, should we look into helping those campuses that are not meeting the target? So at this point, she would only be helping us with Saturday trainings, but going back to the plan that we have provided, we did look into those campuses who did not meet TELPAS. So again, part of their focus is

130going to be on those linguistic components to help all of those teachers help our emerging bilingual students. non-emergent bilingual students participating in the program. Thank you. When I read all this information, we had two individuals and I gather that we're going to approve them separately, but I saw two figures there. You mentioned 84, 8,400, but I saw another one for 1300. What was that for? That was in my readings last night. Unless it was real late and I saw stuff. But yeah, I saw it in one page and they were both written and they had a 1300. But then before, what was it? I can answer that one. It's not 1300, but it's 750, the daily rate, because you're awarding the 8400 for Ms. Saavedra, but she is paid based on the daily rate. Or

131if it's gonna be a half-day rate, it's 400. And if it's an hourly rate, 150. So out of that awarded amount, they take out and that's how she is. Okay, so that's where the amount is. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay, I had a motion by Ms. Castillo and a second by Ms. Sedna. All those for the motion, raise up your hand. Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Thank you, Ms. Thank you. I also have the next person. I don't know because only Miss ever that I was past, right? Oh, sorry. Yes. So it's Rebecca Sanchez. Again, it's pretty much the same. Presentation, Ms. Rebecca Sanchez and Ms. Lidia Saavedra work very well hand in hand. And both of these ladies, again, were very much part of the classroom observations and the walkthroughs that

132were conducted this past school year and helped us to come up with a professional development plan for this school year. So it would be the same cost eight thousand four hundred dollars and as you can see there she is also a very High highly X high expert in the area of dual language and by literacy Realized that this I saw it as one item and it's broken into will I be able to speak again? So so Olivia so then we're paying 80 400 to Lydia 80 400 to Rebecca up to those amounts depending on their services 400 are they working together? But then so why wasn't it just if they're working together? Why is it just one? Amount they both have like their own Consulting services, but they do work together So we're paying double

133And I guess this is what I'm trying to understand. So we're paying double each one individually Each one individually and then they're gonna work together Yes Yes, because again going back to the to the plan of action and the focus is the linguistic components The way that the professional development was rolled out one of them takes through two domains and the other one takes the two domains and at the end they put it all together. That's what I needed to know. Yes Both in the same consultation packet They're two different consultants. They're two different, yes. And again, one of the things that we also have to understand is that every Saturday, we do have about 60 teachers in each PD. So having two trainers there, it really helps us to work with the teachers. Monday,

134it's separate because it's two it's two separate contracts, right? They have their own contract. Yeah, that's what I was saying the same amount but it's a separate contract see I Make a motion to the motion by miss Castillo second by miss baron all for the motion six mark by Thank you, thank you Next item. Yes, Mr. President, we move to student services, letter A, presentation of the ADYS, which is the additional day school year planning and execution full year redesign program. And this is a report for the 2025 school year presented by Dr. Neola. Once again getting good evening and thank you for giving us this opportunity to present on the additional day school year which we call add C and then it's it's because it is a grant it's called at CPEP the pep

135means planning and execution program and What we did last year at the beginning of the the summer before the summer we had a competition with all the elementary campuses because at sea is for the elementary campuses to go ahead and do a little video and This is what was submitted and these this is the campus that did win. So mr. Davos And as you can see for an elementary one, they did a fantastic job We had about 10 entries, and this is the one that we thought merited the award or the recognition. So to start it off, that's what we did this past summer. Every week was a different adventure. This is what you're seeing right now. It's called the Impact Report. We're guided by TEA, and what it does present, it gives you the

136summary. It does tell you it's fun-filled activities, hands-on, it's pre-kinder through fifth grade. And those are the program goals. I'm just going to say a few. It's to improve the students' literacy and math skills. And it's because we do this during the summer to decrease the summer learning loss. We know that research is out there that the students, if they don't come into summer school or enrichment days, they lose their learning. So this is what the state is focusing on. The basics, what they're asking is three hours of academics, which is an hour and a half of math, and then an hour and a half of reading language arts, and then three hours of enrichment. So you have your six hours for the day. So some of the things is that, you know, on a

137daily basis, we have over 4,000 kids. These are 4,000 elementary students that come on every day. Tells you how many meals are provided. We had 30 days last year of at CPAP. The daily attendance, about 80% of the kids come in or show up for at least the 20 days that even a TEA is recommending. We had about 25 field trips. And then we also have community partners that come in and they hold presentations at the campuses, like different departments. We take them to the sea turtle, the different areas, right? And they give us discounts or free entry. If you go to the next page. And those are some of the pictures. But if you go to the next page, this is now the academic growth. Of those students that do come in, we see

138a growth. We see an increase at 65%, at least in their reading, and then in math, a 60%. So we know that they're retaining the information if they come in. We do social emotional learning as well with the students. The students enjoy it. We do use the social emotional district team to come in to the campuses. They do all the lessons. These are all the field trips. I just mentioned some of them here, the alpaca farm, sea turtle. We also have a Best Buy. They come in, they do some hands-on learning for the students. You can see all of them. We also, what we added in this impact report is quotes. We ask students, we survey the students, the teachers, the parents, and these are some of the ones that they mentioned. The student says,

139I love that every week was a different adventure. The teacher said, when the classes are small, we can focus on the students' needs better. And then the parent says, I utilize at home what I have learned at the enrichment parent sessions. If you go to the next slide. The reason the parent made this statement is because whatever the students are learning at the campus, we have parental involvement. So the parents are getting into it. Space adventure, camping adventure, all the same adventures. They're reading the books that the kids are reading the books, both in English and Spanish. And we had in the 30 days, about 300 parents participated. They've been in all the 30 days coming in, the parents. We have like 60 parents at the three different sites. We have them like at Bowie,

140Baloo, and Ramirez Elementary during the summer. During that time also they do like substitute certificates, food handler certificates, CPR. And that's the reason we report that about 20% of the parents obtain work or they start their own. The food trucks that you see in the cities, that's where they go. That's where they start. They start selling tamales. They start pupusas or anything else. They start their own businesses. And I know because I've gone, they invite me, so I go. And I can tell that they're there. They're learning how to handle food, what is safe for the public and everything. I mean, and the parents say, you know, you can see that. And other parents have publicized that. parental program more. They provide so many resources for parents. I can tell you that TEA came in

141during the summer. We have, I didn't know that we have Dr. Ramos, Lillian Ramos. She represents Region 1 and TEA. And they came in and they said that Region 1 in ATSI PEP runs from Laredo all the way to Houston. So they've never seen any parental involvement like ours. And if you go to the next page, they also mention, because what we do a big thing about it also is e-sports. We have competitions. The elementary students, we bus them in here to the U building. They have competitions by grade levels. And then there's a champions by grade level. And then there's the champion of the champs. And so we give them... What they got is a Nintendo Switch, was given to the champs of the champs by grade level. And like what the fifth graders

142said, it says, I never thought I was good at anything, but I can finally say I'm good at Super Smash. So, you know, the students enjoy it. They love coming to the summer. Again, you know, Region 1. has told us that there's nobody out there that does it. They love the way they decorate it, everything. She's here to attest to it. She surprised me that she was here, but I'm glad she's here. Then if you go to the next slide, at the end of the summer, what we do, we do give prizes. We give some books. We also give a lot of these things, bikes, TVs. And then there's a little video that I wanted to show you. This is a little girl. We didn't tell them what they win. We just tell them, come

143on over to central office where you got a prize. When they came in, this parent decided to post it on TikTok. I know Dr. Davarez is going to help me. And they said maybe it was a gift from grandma in heaven who was called to heaven five years ago today. It was the same day that the grandma had passed away. And let's see the video. She says she can't. She doesn't know how to write a book. So I wanted to share that video that it made the little girl's day and even the mom's. So thank you. We have some more slides because these slides is from TEA, again, Region 1. They came in and they looked at the climate and the culture. Is the learning going on? And are you making this fun for the

144students? Do they have brain breaks? That's what they call them. Do you have hands-on activities? Do you have field trips? Do you have, you know, all the materials available? So as you can see, I'm not going through all of them, but it's all green. Green, green means, you know. They don't need to recommend anything to us, but you know, we're, we're doing a really good job. It's not just us. We have CLLs that Dr. Elia said, hire them to help you to make sure that these things are happening. And guys, I'm sorry, not guys, but board members, trustees, it's happening. If you go to the next slide, they also look at, you know, how about, is there effective instruction in math? We want the hour and a half of math. Is it happening? Yes or

145no. Are the activities for the students? Are they learning? Everything is green. They also look at is there effective instruction in RLA? The next slide. Everything is green. You know, are they reading? Are they learning? Can we see it? Can we smell it? You know, those type of things. They also look at as their effective instruction enrichment. These are the enrichment activities. You know, they did highlight that, you know, the teacher has materials and established routines. They can see it. It's part of their already their repertoire of the teacher. Not only that, that has been a complaint before, you know, we don't have all the materials. We made a fact and Dr. Elias helped us. We need to make sure all the materials are there for the teachers. So, you know, this is also what

146they saw. And the last item is, are you all operating as efficient, as quickly? And yes, we are. Everything is green. Is there effective instruction? Yes, there is. Is the culture and the climate? So all of it was green. And this is, again, an evaluation. And they did submit it to TEA, Region 1, Dr. Ramos. And I don't know if she has anything you want to say. I know I'm getting her on the spot, but they reported to TEA that we are doing a fantastic job in PSJA and nobody else is doing what we're doing. And the parental part of it and also even the eSports that they were just... You want to come forward? I know I did not expect her here, but she's here. Hi there, everyone. My name is Lillian Ramos and

147I have a... I'm very lucky that I get to work with your wonderful team over here with Dr. Noyola, Laura Farias, and Guadalupe Garcia for ADCPEP. And this is a testament to the wonderful things that are happening here in PSJA. We did submit two quality highlights to TEA that we saw over the summer, which was the parental involvement. And the wonderful building that you have for the parents, the classes that they get to take, that was wonderful. And the eSports, those stood out. We got to see campuses from Region 1 all the way up to Region 6. And those are the two that we can say we didn't see anywhere else. That was just amazing and a quality highlight and a definite wonderful spotlight that we saw in PSJA. So kudos to everyone and the

148hard work and dedication that goes behind it. Thank you so much. Thank you. And that is the presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Nogales. Yes, sir. Go ahead. So, Mr. Nogales, so this feedback is based on the summer enrichment that took place May? No, this summer. This summer, I'm saying. Which was June? June and August. June and August of 2025. Yes. Okay. And the, and this report, and I know Dr. Ramos just sat down. So that report was done based on obviously where they hear in may. I mean, I'm sorry. I keep saying may in June and August. Yes. Observe. Yes. They were here. Okay. And then they came back. So the students, cause we had over 4,000 students participate. Is it open? Is this specific program for students that need to make up time

149or need help or are, is it open to everybody? It's open to everybody. And we do invite special invitation for those that need to make up the time. And I mean, because it lost days of instruction. So we don't want them to stay behind and either math or reading because that was a focus. Okay. So there's no, um, so they're invited. There's no specific effort to kind of, especially when you have the liaisons working with you, um, as far as in. you know, really encouraging them to participate. So it's just set out as an invitation. It is set out as an invitation for everybody, for the bilingual, for special ed, regular ed, 504. So it's open to anybody. And of course, like I said, we have a special interest on those that have not, have

150been absent too many days, which the liaisons do. That's their job to go ahead and recruit them and bring them in. But we open it up to everybody. I can tell you that of all the school districts that are involved in this, we're one of the ones that really has the most participation of them all. That's why it's of interest by, I'm going to say, TEA or Region 1 that we have just... so many. We have all the campuses open and it's just, I'm going to say unreal for them, but I don't know. I know that there are some bigger school districts that have higher, I'm going to say, enrollment, but they don't have the people or the students that do come in. Is there any other tracking like for the students that were that

151did participate, you know with 90% 90% are satisfied or the parents 95% feel very comfortable any research done into what is keeping those at 5% or that 10% from maybe not being completely satisfied with the program anything that can be tweaked or future programs. Well, some of them are sometimes because they, what they're saying is that they'd like to come in, but they don't, can't, I guess, because of holiday, well, not the summer vacations. That's why they don't complete, let's say, the 30 days. And they have, usually those are the reasons why. That's what they mention. But they'd love to come in. We've heard even that parents say, you know, they'd rather go to here instead of the other things that we would plan for them. They'd rather be here because they know of the

152activities. And they meet new friends. That's a social-emotional part of it is to meet friends and to be kind to each other, to be nice. And, you know, it's social skills. That's also part of it, of the learning. any tracking specifically to the students who participated in the enrichment program as opposed to those baby that make it in? That's what a T is asking. We could, we submit the BOI the beginning of the year and the end of why, and that's how they're tracking them. And that's the research that they share with us. We just had a superintendents. meeting this past Thursday and that's what they're using. That they're seeing that the kids that do come in at least 20 days or more, they see a high percentage or points in their reading and in

153their math. So that's why this is real important and there's a lot of buy-in to it and I guess there is a LASO now grant as well and it's really... out there for all the other school districts to take advantage. And now what they've done this year is they've opened it up now to the middle schools. So now the middle schools, we have to start planning for them as well. Okay, thank you. Yes, you're welcome. Thank you. Mr. President. Go ahead, Ms. Matias. I'm sorry, I didn't catch. Who was the lady that spoke? that introduced herself a few minutes ago? This is almost from Region 1. Okay, from region one. Okay. Dr. Noyola, this project, first of all, the video that was chosen was very catchy and very nice, especially the part of the bus

154with all the children transporting. That video is going to be used for promotion? Well, it was used for this past summer. We're going to do this again for this coming summer. Okay. A different one, I'm assuming. And so this program is possible because of a grant, correct? Yes. It's a five-year grant, and this is the last year for the grant. And this grant specifically is for the kids that, is it specifically for a population, like the kids that didn't pass the STAR, or who is it for? What we do is we open it to everybody. It's for the ones that did pass, not pass, the ones that need attendance, the ones that are bilingual, the ones that are special ed, the ones that are 504. It's open up for everybody and anybody. Oh, so it's

155not earmarked for only specific group of students. No, they allow us to. to do what we want to do as a school district. And we have chosen since the very beginning of, well, five years ago, to decide we're going to open it up to everybody. So that's what we do, and that's what is unique. I'm going to say because other school districts do not do that. They only target, let's say, you know, bilingual or only special ed or only certain grade levels. Let's say only the testing grades or only, you know, the early childhood. Is that because they're targeting academic needs? Are we doing it as just enrichment or are we purposely finding gaps that we need to fill and cross-referencing or including them with these programs? Because this is the last year of the

156grant and is it possibly... going to be renewed for another five years or for any other time or this is it? Not that we're aware of. This is probably the end of it for the elementary. But they allowed us now for the middle school. So we know for the next two, three years, we will be able to work with the middle schools now. We would like to keep it open for the elementary, but there is no funding for it at this point. What was the cost? What was the cost of each year from the grant? How much money was it spent? The very first year, it really, it was through T-Class or other funding. We had enough monies. And then the second year, they went to 50%. And then the third year, it was already

157like a fourth of that. So every year we were losing. what is the amount? How many millions or thousands of dollars? How much? And the reason I'm asking, because we need to ask ourselves, we have enough time to see if we can continue with this from our own funds. So that's why I'm asking for a specific figure. And I do have time, Trustee Gutierrez. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Gutierrez. Can you answer that? I don't have it with me right now, but I can share that with them later on. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Nayota. looking to maybe some other grants that will maybe take care of the elementary. And that's something that we will look for and we will because I mean, just like you saw, you know, the videos, it does make a difference

158on the students and their student learning as well. And we submit all of that to TEA and they're the ones that extrapolate all of that and use it for their own research as well. I agree with Ms. Gutierrez. If this is effective, I think maybe we should look into maybe. trying to find out how we can continue the program. And Mr. President, maybe you can request that we get... No, I'm talking to the president. Can I ask him for something? Can she do it? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Ms. Contreras. Maybe, or Dr. Elias, maybe you can email us the information and if there were any changes to the legislator that affected. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Tristan. Yes, and we can look for the funding. But I know it does take a big amount

159of staffing that we pay and I know during the summer it's hourly, but we are looking at see how we can continue this program because this has truly helped us even with our start test scores and everything. I agree. Thank you, Mr. Ayala. Thank you. Appreciate it. Good job and thank you. Next item. Yes, mr. President we continue with item C approval warden a proposal for standby ambulance services and this all presented by Mr. Orlando Garcia athletic director and of course, mr. Jeff Charles It's a renewal basically from the same company from last year. Renewal from the company from last year. There's no change from last year to this year. We're continuing with MedLife EMS. I've got Jeff Darg. He's my wingman. He's my expert on the ambulance service, does the leg work for us

160on it. The services are provided for all our athletic events. Obviously, just in around... How much services are covered? Well, middle school football games is approximately 142 games they cover for us. For our junior varsity games, it's 80 games. Approximately in the varsity games, it's 25 games. And the hourly rate, it's $125 per hour that they charge us for the rate to cover our games. And we're just bringing it back for re-approval for this year. I have a motion by Ms. Quintanilla. Second by Mrs. Castillo. All those for the motion. Take five for raising your hand. Aye. Motion passes. Thank you very much. Thank you, coach. Next item. Yes, Mr. President, we move to finance, letter A, and it's the investment report for quarter ending August 31st, 2025. And this will be presented, I believe,

161by Philip Jones. Good evening. Good evening. Can everyone hear me and all in? We can hear you. Well, first, I just want to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to present this evening. My name is Phillip Jones, and I'm with METER Public Funds, and I'm part of the advisory services team here in Texas. I act as the direct point of contact for the school district, working closely alongside the finance team. But our primary focus... is to position a district's best program to maximize interest revenue while maintaining safety, liquidity, and stability in the portfolio. The finance team, they did a great job this past quarter. And today I'll just provide you with a presentation on the quarterly investment report and then also with some current market and economic conditions just followed by the portfolio's

162performance and positioning. But we can go on to the second slide here. So just looking at the observations and expectations of the market where it currently sits and where we're expecting it to be towards the latter half of the year, interest rates across the yield curve were lower for the month of August. This just means that borrowing costs dropped for both the short-term and long-term loans, which just encouraged more spending and investment across the economy. Fed Powell, he alluded that the Fed is poised to lower the Fed funds rate later this year, which that is definitely starting to become the case. So since August, they've already cut the rates by 25 basis points in September. And the expectation is for, you know, future rate cuts at least towards the latter half of the year. GDP

163rebounded in Q2 to 3.3% from a tariff-induced decline in the first quarter. So the GDP rebounded in the second quarter and continues to tick up, especially up to now. The most recent data we have is right about 3.8%. So growth is expected to continue towards the latter half of the year, just at a much lower pace than from the first or second quarter. The futures market is projecting the Fed fund rate to go below 3% in 2026. So investors are just expecting future rate cuts not only later this year, but going into the next year as well. Expectation is to have at least two more rate cuts by year end. So we're looking at roughly about 50 basic points in cuts. And as I mentioned before, the Feds have already started cutting with the most

164recent meeting in September. And non-farm payroll growth slow with the unemployment rate remains historically low. So that just means that fewer new jobs were added, indicating a slowdown in hiring. But the overall unemployment rate is still very low, suggesting the job market still remains very strong. But, you know, just to summarize that, the Fed, they initiated their first straight cut of the year, lowering the Fed fund rate by 25 basis points. And that was to address, you know, labor market weakness despite elevated inflation and shrunk asset pricing. This shift has led to a rally across fixed income sectors. And this is leading investors to strategically, you know, start to lock in those yields and the expectation of further easing and a curve steeping in the future. And we can go to the second slide. So

165biggest takeaways from this slide is going to be that, you know, inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target on a year-over-year basis. So currently, CPE is sitting right about 2.91%. And that's important because economists are predicting inflation to continue to rise because of the expected tariffs later this year. So expectation is the biggest impact that we're going to have on the rate cycle cut is going to be inflation. The cuts are going to happen in the future. It's just inflation is going to tell us the pace at which those rates come down. So if inflation remains to be sticking, the upcoming months, you know, those cuts are going to slow down. So the expectation for October is a 95% chance of a cut, and that's going to be on Wednesday, and an 85% chance of

166a cut in December. But if inflation sticks, you know, the rate at which we get those cuts might decrease. And we can go to the next slide. So this is a look at the U.S. Treasury payroll change over the course of the past couple months. So in July, the market really wasn't baking in a Fed's cut in the future. But as the market changed, labor market became weaker. Inflation wasn't as big of a factor. The Fed switched their stance on the market and decided to start initiating some rate cuts. And as you can see. you know that indicated you know just across the across the board over the short term to midterms also the long term uh those rates start to decrease uh across across those different fields and i think that is the last

167slide on the economics but that's just uh the current markets and we'll go to the current portfolio and positioning of the account perfect so this is a snapshot of the current portfolio positioning as of august 31st The main ones I want to point out on this slide is going to be, you know, the maturity distribution, the yields maturity, and the average maturity in years. So looking at this maturity distribution, so this is important because, as we spoke about earlier, we're expecting rates to come down in the future. You know, biggest recommendation right now is to start building up that portfolio, filling out these two to three and even, you know, three to five year mark so we can really lock in that interest rates that we currently have. So we start, you know, creating that

168predictable interest revenue. So whenever we are approaching budget next year, we can have that predictable budgetary income that we can plan on. 2.9, so that was the average yield for the previous order. And then 0.46 was the weighted average maturity in years. You know, that'll be with us to work with the finance team to really get this number somewhere closer to one, just based upon, you know, whatever cash flows that they might have. Just so we can see where we can comfortably extend out in the portfolio in these buckets down here so we can extend this number to one, closer to one, so we can lock in that interest for the school district for the years coming forward. And we can go to the next one. So this is a portfolio summary as of the

169previous two quarters. So I know this book value looks a little off. There was a huge decrease, but that is part of the historical trends of the school district. That's just debt service and just potential expenditures that was happening over the course of those months. But that's typically the trend for those June, July, August months. The numbers I want to point out is the weighted average yield. down for the previous quarters. So it went to 2.90, and that's also kind of to be expected. Those rates started to change. We had a rate cut. So that's really that price in there. And then the average maturity, like I said, 0.46. Really want to see that be closer to one so we can lock in that budgetary certainty, you know, for the future. But the investment team,

170the finance team did a really good job accumulating almost $800,000 in interest revenue for the quarter. So the finance team did a really good job. And that's the next one. So this is a breakdown of the portfolio summaries by funds. And, you know, as you can see, our general operating, that's the big standout here. And, you know, that's the biggest decrease. And that's just, like I said, part of the historical trends of this. And we can go to the next slide. And this is a breakdown by positions in the portfolio. So as you can see, heavily weighted into those overnight securities. So we're just going to have to work with the finance team to kind of ladder out those portfolios to extend those, to add maybe some treasuries, just add some duration to the portfolio.

171And then going into the next one. I think that's it. And this is just a breakdown of all the individual securities in the portfolio. But that concludes my presentation, and I can send it back over to the finance team. um So the market shift, as we spoke about earlier, that in a phase like this, at least they've made points about the year. Right now, the portfolio is waiting in the first three days. So it's really going to be on us to speak with the finance team to get understanding about Canada cash flows, know what we can do to add in duration for the portfolio to really extend that duration. So it really is going to be all about extending that duration for this upcoming quarter. I'm sorry, Mr. Jones, we're just getting real bad feedback.

172They're looking into it right now. Did you acknowledge me, Mr. Gutierrez? Mr. Rodriguez? Go ahead, Mr. Gutierrez. I'm trying to fix the feedback that we're getting over here. I have a question. We went from, let me see, I wrote it here, 4.26% in May to 2.90% in August, in that quarter. Can you explain what caused this decline? I know that there was a dip because of the tariffs, and then it went back up. But is that what affected that drop? So that was a low yield that was really bringing down 2.9%. So we're just going to need to get into that policy and see how you're doing. investment or earnings compared to other districts that you're handling or that you look at? How do we compare our investments, you know, our portfolio? You know, you

173know, being heavy-wearing in schools, schools over the course of the past year have been historically high. But as they start to come down, we're starting to shift from over-securities to more durationally. Mr. Jones, do you have another script in the area? I do not. Could you lower your speaker? It's back up to like two. I'm not sure what measure that is. Bring it down a little bit more. Hold on, Mr. Jones. I'm trying to fix a feedback. We'll be within a minute. Can you hear me okay? Better, a little bit. So compared to the rate is comparable, across the board, everyone's rates have come down just with a shift in the market. So it's just going to be a fun thing. Get a hint of our cash flows and extend the portfolio. Are any portions

174of our investment or our portfolio, are we using any collateral or are they insured? As far as I know there's no FDIC insured. For the most part it's the portfolio that pays the bills and they do have a future as well. So let me make sure there's a button on the state. But the majority is in those overnight investment options. I asked the previous quarter, we have a pretty safe investment plan, very stable and not aggressive, and we're doing great. Have you considered being a little bit more aggressive, investing in a more risk-taking style, or is this not a good time to do so? Correct because many, many, many, sir. Thank you. Those are all my questions. Thank you, Mr. Rodriguez. Thank you. Any other questions for anybody? This is a presentation. Next item. Yes,

175Mr. President, we move to item B, annual tax collections report from September 1st, 2024 through August 31st, 2025. And this will be a presentation by Ms. Gonzalez, Assistant Super Finance. our 2024 annual tax collection report from the county. The slide on the screen shows that we had an original levy of 64 million. There were made modifications of 879,000 to give us an adjusted levy of 65 million. Of that 65 million, we have collected 62.7. We have an outstanding tax collections of 2.6, which is about a 96% collection rate. This shows a five-year comparison chart. To the very right-hand side, you'll see that our percentage rate has been consistently 96%. In this chart, I wanted to show that... In year 22 to 23, we had a tax compression of 1.18 and it went down to 1.01

176in 2023. That year also, we went from a $60,000 homestead exemption to 100,000. So you'll see that our levy dropped from 71 million to 62 million. And our collections went- Is anyone speaking? Yes. Hi, Ms. Gutierrez. Sorry. It was muted at the presentation. So our collections for 22 went from 68 million to 59 million in 2023. The state made up that difference. So the school district still saw the same revenue. It just wasn't from the taxpayers anymore. It was from the state. Oh, I thought. Okay, that's the end of my presentation. Do you have any questions? Guess I was gonna ask a question because right now they're voting on the homestead being moved to 140,000 thousand Are you gonna come back and give us some kind of presentation as far as to make that adjustment?

177Because I know we're gonna have is gonna affect us So when we built the budget we tried to calculate that 40,000 exemption down from the taxes If we go back to the slide On this slide, you see where it says parcels? We went from 49,000 parcels being taxed in 2020 to 2024, we had 51,788 parcels. So in building the budget... Because we're not seeing a tax compression for 2025, we're only seeing the homestead exemption. We budgeted our taxes flat at $62 million. Because in 22 to 23, we had both. We had a tax compression, which the state gave us revenue to make that tax collection up. And we also had an increase in the homestead exemption. We're hoping that our flat taxes are pretty close with that extra 40,000 of the homestead exemption because its

178state comes in with that But in addition to that we're always gaining additional parcels to be taxed I have a question Becky What are we doing? What steps are being taken to collect the remaining two million six hundred and three eighty eight? We have a delinquent tax attorneys line Barger Gogan and Blair and they help us collect those taxes I mean we're doing I mean 96% is great But you know, what are we doing? So we're there constant consistently and constantly Yes, and they usually present to the school board in November right collections. Yes Yes, mr. President we've moved to school operations letter a approved a document change order number three for PSJA Transportation Diesel Tank Project, where we went from 659,791 with 85 cents, for a credit of $30,000, for a new contract amount

179of $620,532 with 85 cents. And this is, I don't know if Mr., if you have any questions, Mr. Gonzalez. System super operations can answer. I have a question. Go ahead. Mr. Gonzalez What what's the what face are we in has this been already installed? What's the cost for the the change order? so we previously did a Substantial completion so the tanks already installed and it's been in use. Okay, so this is our final final change order. Yes Thank you. And the change order is just to signify the 30,000 credit that we're getting back. Okay. That's what I was going to ask. It's a credit, correct? Correct. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Motion to approve. Second by Ms. Gutierrez. Second by Ms. Gutierrez. All those for the motion, please rise by raising your hand. Aye. Motion passes unanimously.

180Thank you. Mr. President, we move to now executive. Okay. as government code 551.071 through 151.084. If during the course of the meeting discussion of any items on the agenda should be held in a closed meeting, the board will conduct a closed meeting in accordance with the Texas Open Meeting Act, Texas government code chapter 551, sub chapters D and E, or Texas government code sessions 418.183F before any closed meeting is convened. The presiding officer will publicly identify the section or sections of the act authorizing the closed meeting. All final votes, actions, and decisions will be taken in open meeting and see board PSA board policy. Okay, so we're going to executive session at 9.07. Okay, we're back from executive session at 9.24 p.m. Mr. Board President, with respect to items 14A, B, and C, at this

181time, legal counsel recommends no action. We can move to adjournment. I move to adjourn. I second. Second. Okay. By Ms. Sena for adjournment and second by Ms. Gutierrez. All those in favor for adjournment? Aye. Okay. Meeting is adjourned. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, everyone here.