Bryan ISD School Board Workshop Meeting, January 12, 2026

001Brian Independent School District meeting to order. Let the record show that a quorum of board members is present, that this meeting has been duly called, and that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. I wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone present this evening. I ask that you please turn off the sound on all electronic devices and let's stand for the pledges. We'll start with the United States pledge. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for alliance to the Texas one and indivisible. We'll start this evening with spotlights uh celebrating Brian High School and Ruer High School students. Uh Jacob Justice, director

002of fine arts, will present. [applause] [applause] >> Good evening. I'd like to thank the board for their support of all of our fine arts programs in Brian ISD. And I am proud tonight to shine the light on some amazing performers who not only have talent but work ethic. Uh and their work has been recognized not just in Brian ISD but throughout the region. Tonight I'm here to recognize our all region students in band choir and orchestra from Brian High and Ruer High School. Hours of practice went into preparing for each student and then they come together after selected for a concert that they get to perform. Um, tonight I'm pleased to recognize 33 students who were selected for all region. Their names will be shown up on the screen. Um, and as I call each

003group, they're going to come up and we're going to take a big group picture with all those students with you. So, will our all region band students come up, please? [applause] Will our all region orchestra students come up please [applause] and our all region choir students. [applause] And so we're going to have you all come stand right here in front of the board and they're going to stand behind you. We're going to get a great picture. All right. There's a step. >> Some of you can be on the step. >> Somebody can get up on the step. >> There we go. >> Osmosis. What parents families get photos? >> All right. Thank you very much. We are so proud of these amazing students that we have. In addition to these amazing students, stay with me.

004One of them has been selected as an allstate performer for choir. [applause] >> She had to learn and rehearse challenging music as well as sight sing a piece she had never seen or heard. She's been through three rigorous rounds of auditions and out of the 70,000 Texas high school choir students, she is in the top 2 and a half% selected for one of the Texas All-State ensembles. This is one of the highest honors a high school m musician can achieve. Tonight, we are proud to have another Brian High School student join the All State Choir, Zaniah Johnson. [applause] >> [applause] >> I'm going to invite our directors to come up and we're going to get a picture over here. Of course, we Yeah, you can bring it back up. We could not do this without

005the support of um our board of our administrators and of course the amazing teachers we have and the amazing families that choose Brian ISD for their students education. Thank you. Y [applause] >> it's awesome. Congratulations >> [clears throat] >> We'll now move to public comment on agenda items. Citizens may make comments about topics relevant to district business. Topics should be limited to three minutes. Comments concerning specific student or personnel will be held in close session. Do we have any comments this evening? >> No. >> Okay. Our first information item, campus improvement plans update for Bonham Elementary, Branch Elementary, Mitchell Elementary, and Raburn Intermediate. Executive Director of School Leadership, Linda Mononttoya. >> Good evening. So, over the last uh several of months, we've had our principles uh come to our evening board meetings and share their

006uh focus areas out of their campus improvement uh or their campus plans. And so this evening we will have four principles that are going to do that. But uh thought I would just start us off by just uh reviewing uh the campus planning process. So we always start uh with our B board goals and then when we begin to develop our campus improvement plans, we always review our vision, mission, uh our board goals, and our district improvement plan. From there, we do a uh campus needs assessment. So every campus group as they plan they're looking at a whole lot of data. They're looking at perception data. They're looking at academic data, behavior data. So they look at a lot of data as they're going through the process before they begin uh the campus improvement improvement

007planning process where they're developing their goals and their strategies. They also include their timelines and the funding sources in that process. And then once their campus plan uh is completed um it goes through a process with their uh CPIC committee which is a a group of people uh that are involved throughout the process and then all through the year as they're um you know going through their campus improvement plan they're checking and uh they're reflecting and revising if if necessary. So some of the things that we do as a district uh in working together with our campus uh groups is we support through our CNI department and our support walks. Uh our coordinators from all the content areas um do classroom visits every six week every six weeks at each campus. We have our foundations

008our safe and civil schools foundation trend walk. So, we're looking at behavioral data and classroom data throughout the year. We also weekly we go to our campuses and do a campus support team meeting uh where we're also walking classrooms. We're looking at data and we're making decisions on how we can best support our our campuses. And then this year we're involved in the um Texas Instructional Leadership Grant, which is our uh grades five through eight. And it's taking principles, it's um going through the coaching uh support cycle. So those are some of the things uh that we do as part of the campus improvement planning process. And this evening, you're going to hear from four principles. So, three elementary and one intermediate principal. So, we're going to hear from Mrs. uh Gloria Garcia Rhodess from

009Bonham Elementary. Mrs. Ashley Lopez uh from Branch Elementary, Mrs. Jessica Payey from Mitchell Elementary, and then Mrs. Becky Griberg from uh Rayburn Intermediate. So, we're going to start off with uh Bonham Elementary, and Mrs. Gloria Garcia Rhodess. Good evening everybody. I am happy to be standing before you all. I am Gloria Garcia Rhodess, proud principal from Bonum Elementary, also known as the BB block. Our three priorities are student achievement in math and reading, student attendance, and then positive school culture and climate. This past year, Bonham did exceptionally well on our accountability. And so I thought why not have a theme of just staying the course and stay anchored and that is our theme for this year. Um we do have our work cut out for us but we everyone knows what they need to do

010to move that needle. And so um our our overall uh goal is to get a domain score of 78 from TEA. And so we're doing lots of things. We've started goal setting conferences from the beginning with the students and the teachers not just the students. So when the students get their assessments back, whether it's just a concept quiz, databased assessment, and even the fall benchmark, they're looking to see how they did with their goal. Our teachers also are being held accountable. They have goals as well. For example, fourth grade teachers have their own goals, and they're all different based on how the kids did in third grade. In fact, our third our teachers are getting ready to do a one-on-one with um admin and instructional coaches. We provided them a template uh over the staff

011development day in January where they are going to share their data and they have students that they're going to target their plan of action. And so that's going to be taking place this week. We also are doing progress monitoring meetings with teachers um where we step in, pop in and just talk about kids names that maybe they didn't meet their goal and talk about their plan of action as far as during intervention during pilies. Uh it's very um fast, but it's data driven. We focus on tier one instruction. Um we also have our teachers that are coming prepared to model lessons for one another. So they are coming with their I can statements. They step in that teacher role and their team are the students and they're they're modeling those activities and strategies that they're

012going to be doing for the week. So that's been a very powerful time. We've got purposeful interventions. Uh we have a time built into our master schedule called the buck block and it's targeted instruction for reading and math with our teachers and certified t tutors. Um we've implemented summit K12 that's working very well. In fact, I got an exciting email this past week from Dr. Molina. Uh Bonum was the number one school in the district for overall usage and items answered. And then I had two of the top 10 teachers um from Bonum that also were in the top 10 for overall usage and items answered. So we were very excited to get that uh news. We are doing star buddies where we're targeting students that might just need a little bit more encouragement. Uh

013students that get mentored and checked on and um maybe have lunch with their mentor. So that's worked very well. And finally, I have to brag on this part. This has been going around for a long time. Maybe some of you remember the host program. Well, we still have community people from the community that come in once a week uh out of their time. They might be uh community members, retired educators that come and this year we have them working with fourth grade where they're working on reading and fluency. Mr. Stazzy, we we really look forward to having you at bottom and and really appreciate and are grateful for that time. I know our kids, too. they look forward to that time and they find a mentor and that person that they get to read with

014and show off with. The other uh priority is of course student attendance. We're working really hard. The signness has hit the B block uh before the holidays and after, but our goal is to be at 95.63 by the end of the year. Currently, we're at 95.96. So, we're doing the oldfashioned yellow slips. Come to the office. Um our kids have roles and jobs. So, a lot of the kids that maybe come to school kind of tired, they get that role of bringing the yellow slip and our attendance secretary calling, they're calling home, admin's calling. Our families know that we're going to call. So, they're trying to beat our call. If their kids are going to be out, they're already called and say we're running late or we have a doctor appointment or our child is

015sick. Um, it's announced every day on the announcements. We even have it um displayed in the front as you come in. We put in we put up our attendance for um the day. We have equipped every classroom with the simple old Mr. Potato Head. Remember those um every class has a Mr. Potato Head. And so every day that they have 100% they add a little Mr. Potato Head piece. When they fill up that Mr. Potato Head, it is a big deal. They get to vote on their prize, whether it's pajamas for the day or extra recess or bring your favorite stuffed animal. That is a hit. and they take a picture and we share it on the live announcements and we celebrate them and that's working really well because who doesn't want to get, you

016know, a reward of some kind for filling up their Mr. Potato Headpiece. Um, we're still having our contract meetings with parents if we need to and then having our monthly meetings with truency officer. So hopefully we will meet our goal on attendance. And finally, a big thing since I've stepped in this role as principal is having a positive school culture and climate. I know that um it's important and I know when I stepped into Bonum I said I really want to encourage our families to be involved. I remember that my first year it was the first year that Bonham participated in the uh Fiesta Spadriz parade downtown and we won first place with our float and since then we've participated. Um [clears throat] instead of trying to find ways for families to come into the

017school I said you know this year we're going to go to this beautiful park that we have across the street Bonham Park and we do that. Um we have our spring into learning at Bonum Park and that has been a hit. I think there was one year it rained and we had to move it inside but that has been a huge hit where um it focuses on math and science activities and each grade level comes up with an activity whether it's making oobleck uh building a bird feeder or doing fossils. And so um every year we've seen the increase and we have families walking to the park riding their bike walking their dog and they participate. They get a little passport and they go to all the stations and then afterwards you've got kids playing

018soccer, families visiting. I mean it is it is really a beautiful thing to see and something I'm very proud of. Um in the fall we have started also incorporating our music programs with art. So our kids perform a music program and we have an art gallery and our PTO gets involved. So they might popcorn that night and then they've got cookies. And um this past fall we had our third and fourth graders do their programs and they brought in their family engagement that same night. So they did family engagement then program then the art. So it was it was really it was really great to see because families are going to come to that. And we do our employee of the month recognitions just like prize patrol. We surprise them every month. We have a

019teacher of the month, pair professional of the month, auxiliary employee of the month. They get a parking in the front. Can't beat that. We have a bulletin board with their pictures. And finally, for the kids, we uh our guidelines for success is to sail. So, they're always sailing in the hallway, sailing in the cafeteria. They're safe. They're being accepting. They're showing integrity and being a leader. And so, they can get caught at any time. And they're given a star. And they get to take that star to the office. They get a little squishy star to take home. They sign the Hall of Fame book. And then they spin the wheel and we have a principal's 100 star sailors club and they um draw a number or pick a number and then that star goes on

020that hundreds board and the first column or row to win uh gets a pizza party with the principal. In fact, I've got one scheduled for Friday. So that's always exciting. But we are working hard. We are hoping uh to meet all of our goals and um I'm just very proud of my staff. They are doing everything they can. They know what they need to do. And so with that, that's all I have. Any questions? [laughter] >> Thank you. >> Hi, my name is Ashley Lopez and I'm the proud principal at Mary Branch Elementary. Um when I stepped into this role uh last year, I uh really digged into the data and the history at branch and historically we have been very strong in our math. Um an area focus having been a former reading instructional

021coach um to me seemed easy was that we really need to build up their foundation in literacy. If they can't read, they can't do the math. They can't do the science and the social studies. Reading is key. So this year as I went into developing our campus improvement plan, that's where I started our focus was that we really need to build strong readers. Um our third and fourth grade teachers have historically been strong as well. And so we've really focused on um meeting with our kinder first and second grade teachers to really hone in those processes of progress monitoring, looking at the data, making sure that our kids are making the progress they need so that they can be reading at the levels they need to be so that third and fourth grade doesn't have

022to make up so much lost ground. Um, we are utilizing our MAP growth data, map fluency, reading horizons data to target those gaps for students. And we also have our tutors helping support students. Um, we are using that to help hopefully increase our approaches, meets and masters levels by focusing on that reading because like I said, reading impacts everything. If they're not reading, they can't do the math, they can't do the science and the social studies. [snorts] The other aspect that I really wanted to hone in on this year as I moved into Mary Branch was promoting a positive and respectful school climate. Um, just overall when I looked at our student survey data, they did not feel like they got along well with each other. And when the staff and I looked at that

023in the planning process, we knew that that meant we had to do something. Um, I had come from a campus where we had social skills, daily social skills instruction going on, and they were needing that at branch. And so we really took our um guidelines for success which are to be kind, engaged, accountable, ready to learn, and safe. And this whole first semester we went through lessons on what does being kind mean? What does that look like? What does that sound like? We did read alouds. We watched videos, they did activities where they practice kindness. And then we moved through each piece of that. And when the staff came back um last week, we asked for their input. Where do we where are we lacking? We looked at discipline data and we determined where our

024next steps will go with that. But I've been very proud of our bare necessities um is as we call it and and it starts off I'm laughing because every morning that's what we play the bare necessities song from Jungle Book. The kids love it. That's how we kick off our morning announcements. And so it felt fitting to call it the bare necessities when we talked about our social skills. And we are establishing campuswide recognition systems. So, we started with just little yellow notes the staff can write that recognize when students are um showing bare characteristics. Um, and it's it's blossomed. Now, kids are writing them for other kids. And every morning on the announcements, I read those and then they get a little brag tag they get to take home with them. Well, we're building

025on that to develop a principles 100 club that we're rolling out this week called the Golden Paw Club. So, I'm really excited about the positive. I've gotten a lot of feedback from staff as well, not and it's very encouraging because the work is hard and they let me know that they it doesn't go unnoticed. The staff see that the kids are more positive, they feel more positive, they feel like the campus is more positive. Um the next piece that as I stepped into this role, they talked about wanting to increase family engagement at branch. And so we've just been really driving that forward. When I came on at branch last year, there were people using class dojo or remind or different things and we all transitioned to campuswide consistent. We're going to all do class

026dojo. And so I transitioned to starting to send newsletters out to parents. So parents have gotten on to that. And so now this year we transitioned to teachers sharing newsletters because our parents want to know. They want to know what can they do at home to help support their kids. And so we're really developing that relationship as a partnership approach with our parents. [clears throat] And I'm seeing positive feedback in the data from the parents as well that they feel that engagement. I see them really taking on a class dojo asking questions. So I'm excited to see where we go when we jump to Parent Square next year. So and that's all that we are doing at Mary Branch. But if y'all have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. >> Thank you. Hi,

027I'm Jessica Paney. I'm the principal at Mitchell Elementary and it's my first time to be here, so I'm excited. So, um, let me just talk about our three, um, areas that we're focusing on this year. The first one is maximizing student growth. So, the first thing we're doing is, um, setting students goals. And we started with this in the third and fourth grade. You know, they're getting ready for STAR. we kind of knew what our focus was. Um then second grade asked, "Hey, can we do this with our kids, too?" Great. We had map data from last year. So, um I'm like, "That's a fantastic idea." And now we're getting ready to um implement um students creating goals for our K1 um in our K-1 classes. And I just think that's so exciting. It's something

028that um I think the when I went on a visit to can't remember in Dallas um with this um other grant opportunity they saw that and um I took it back and um we have like I said we had already done it with our third and fourth grade and second grade jumped on board and now we're going to keep moving forward. Um and I can't wait to meet with our kindergarters and hear what their growth goals are going to be. Um the next thing we do and I think a couple of people have talked about this is data digs during PLC and that's just where we look at any type of data that we have a concept check for math um a selection quiz for reading and um even in reading horizons which is the

029foundational skills reading program for K2 and um in third grade as well but it's a little bit older but we will look and see how the students are doing and figure out where their gaps are so that we can then target that with small groupoup instruction. ction because we know that that's where we're going to be get the biggest bang for our buck is really focusing on what they're doing when you have a much smaller group of kids. Um the last thing that I have um for our maximizing growth for student success and this is something that just kind of came to this year was our bulldog buddy day because sometimes we have kids in um the older kids who are um maybe not um always recognized for their scores but they have grit, they

030work hard, they have a good work ethic and um we just really wanted to build some um social skills and make help them feel good as well. So we um had a bulldog buddy day the day before Thanksgiving break and um so we partnered um third and fourth grade and some second grade with our prek and first and they were mentors for the day. And so it didn't pin and it didn't matter what reading level you were on. We kind of strategically planned it and the kids just soared. they did a reading activity together as a class and then they did a um like a puzzle or a Uno game or we did tinies, just different kinds of math activities and uh then the kids ate lunch together and they just had a great time.

031So um such a success that everybody wants to do it again and so I'm like okay well we'll look at it in the spring. Uh the next thing that was on our list is uh strengthening our family and community partnerships. This year um was my first year to be the principal, but I had been at Mitchell for several years and I knew that we needed to get into the neighborhoods and meet the families um of the neighborhoods. So um when I was at Crockett many years ago, we used to do this as well. So we did our neighborhood walks before um school and met so many families and some of the houses that weren't even on our list, the kids saw us and they were running outside and then former kids came outside [clears throat]

032and gave us hugs and we got pictures with kids that are in high school now. So, it was just a lot of fun. Uh, the other things that we do are bulldog rallies on Friday. So, I invite all of you to come on Friday where we um get together as a community and we have a um big school meeting and so we and the kids help lead it. Uh, and it's a different classroom um, every week who helps me lead it. And we do um the pledges, we do bulldog blast where we recognize um, students recognize each other. We do a fun song and dance and then each grade level has a chant that they share. We also have some monthly family involvement activities. We did a scavenger hunt around the school, trunk or treat.

033We're about to get ready for our stream night. We have mystery readers. So the parents give little clues about themselves and then the class has to figure out who it is and then they surprise the class and read to um our lower grade levels um on a Friday afternoon. So the kids love that and they love to see their parent come and read a book to their friends. And finally um and I think I think Gloria mentioned this maybe the music programs. um we always have a great turnout for our music programs, but sometimes we don't always have the same turnout for our star nights or um some types of conferences. So this year we're backing those two things together. And um we've had our fourth grade where the students then lead after we have

034our fourth grade program, the students took their parents back to their classroom and they led them in what their goals were. They showed them their binder where they had been charting their growth and they showed them how they were writing an ECR and then they did a math activity with their parents and um I mean we're just celebrating that and the parents actually are seeing kind of the difficulty and what we're expecting kids to do and how we really need to have that true partnership. So that's fantastic. The last thing that I want to talk about, and again, this is something that I wasn't sure how that was going to work, and this has ended up being my most favorite thing, um, is meaningful work. And this built on our foundations skills. We at the

035beginning of the year, we looked at our kids and we kind of grouped them um by students who you you know need some support with some behaviors. Some really students who um have a lot of support at home and who are wellconed. And then there's some students that are kind of in the middle that they're good students, but sometimes they, you know, they're not always recognized for different things. And so we talked about how can we get those students connected? And I was talking to Candace McInness about that and she gave me she told me about this um book that is connected with foundations and it was developed by foundations called meaningful work. So, um we started at the beginning of the year and um we had um some third and fourth graders and one

036second grader who it was just a small group of 10 who um I met with them and we talked about what kind of jobs they would like to do, how they would like to be involved in the school and um so they got various jobs. Um bus greeter um somebody helps me in the cafeteria pick up the cups and clean at the end of the day. Then we have somebody um helping deliver the blue cards which are the transportation cards for kids who change. So we have all those jobs and um it's been going great, but I have kids who have started noticing they're like, "Hey, I want a job. I want a job. How do you get that job?" And so I talked to the staff and I said, "Okay, we can, you know,

037expand our jobs and um what do you think? I'm going to need some help." Of course, everybody's on board. So, we get back to school and I um announced it on Wednesday that we were going to do jobs. I have the jobs wanted, you kind of see I have these big posters in the hallway and I have um I think it was 15 jobs. Well, I have over 250 application [laughter] for 15 jobs. And so, I've had to get on the announcements. I go in the classrooms and we do announcements from the classrooms. And I said, I'm so excited. We're going to have to rethink how this looks. And um so many of them want to go back and be a bulldog buddy or a class tutor and even first graders want to go and

038tutor and help and like just trying to you know read what they're writing. So, it's been so fun and um we're I met with the library. I'm like, how can we get all these kids to be story readers and how can we So, we're trying to figure out a way to get everybody involved, but we've just it has been phenomenal on how many kids then it just started with that 10 and has now exploded and um they have we have class jobs, but they all want to be connected to the school. So, um I'm just very thankful for that. So, um I think that's all. Do you have any questions? I've talked a lot. >> It's a good problem to have. Yes, >> it's a wonderful problem. Dad, so I'm so blessed. So >> your

039um bulldog rallies are on Fridays, >> Friday mornings. >> So we start at 7:20 and the kids lead it with going around asking um for good things or affirmations and then we at when the bell rings about 7:25 we start with our pledges and then we move throughout the >> Great. So yeah, y'all are welcome to come. >> You know, all all three of you who've spoken already, I mean, y'all are already growing our ambassador program. It's like what I just told Jinger I said she's got a >> Yes. house full of >> ambassadors. And that it was like not the kids that would get picked for that. It's who we originally targeted. And um some kids like we have two a set of twins who really don't talk a lot and they want to

040be li they have they're the librarian assistants and they have they smile now when you take their picture. It's just wonderful. It's just a really feel good. >> So that's love it. >> Brian, you're going to have to quadruple your ambassador program when these kids [laughter] Good evening everyone. I'm Rebecca Ryberg. I'm the principal at Sam Ryurn Intermediate [clears throat] School. And I, as in every other situation, I follow some really amazing educators at the elementary level. And this is the first time that students are I I really do believe having been at elementary and now intermediate that this is a huge change. It's a huge transition for our fifth graders especially. And then our sixth graders, they just think they're already like in high school. And so it's this fun time where you we

041have to stay very focused and very intentional because they want to do all of the things and um you have to figure out how to capitalize on that in the best way possible. So we do we this is my seventh year at Rayburn and we have gotten to the point where we do a lot of things. Every year we take on a new goal. Not that they're not done before, but I'm going to be honest and I was very transparent with my staff when I first went to Rayurn is I'm also learning all of the things. So, we can't do everything perfectly all at once. But now in year 7, we are doing great things at Rayburn. So, there are three things that we've drilled down over the years that we are going to stay

042on top of all the time and they're the things that are listed here on our slide. So, we we start number one with everything is data driven. When uh we first went to um star test, I I was a new principal at um Fannon and I really dedicated myself to working closely with our data services department here in the district and learning how accountability worked and yes, every year it changes and sometimes every month it changes and so that's a that's something that if I don't stay on top of my staff can't stay on top of. This year we're at the point where everything is data driven. um academics, attendance, discipline, we do it all with our students and and definitely include our families in that as well. We have to start with upholding tier

043one instruction. Again, at the intermediate level, that can be something that becomes its own beast because we only have them for 57 minutes. And if you have to find a student and you have to find them in math, where are you going to call? You're going to call into the tier one classroom. So, we have eliminated all of that. They only get called out of class during Raider Academy, which is our intervention enrichment period, or during their electives classes, and not the fine arts ones. it's PE because they get that every day. So they have additional minutes of PE time built into our master schedule. Uh so we have done I feel like a very strong job. Of course you can always do better but at protecting that tier one instruction. Um we do the

044standard things. I say they're standard because we've we've done them for so long and I know other schools do as well. We have the weekly team lesson design collaboration uh Mondays or Tuesdays and we have separated our advanced academics from our our general education in inclusion because they are different curriculum and especially once they hit the Aspire program they have an they have a an accelerated curriculum. So we plan separately for those. We also have started bi-weekly progress monitoring and data review meetings between teacher, principal, dean and instructional coach and we do those every two weeks. We initially said 15 minutes. Our teachers are they have really run with this and so now they're really 25 minutes where we talk about everything from anything that would come up during MTSS or RTI meetings, data, behavior,

045all of the stuff that we're struggling with, but my my teachers come with their goal setting sheets with their from their students. They come with parent communication. They come with data. They come with lesson plans. And it has become one of the most powerful um things that I think we have going at Rayburn. We also have student teacher and class period goal setting and celebrations. We're going to have a virtual assembly because again tier one instruction is super important. So we're only taking uh 15 minutes and we'll shave two minutes off of all of the periods so we don't lose from one class. And we're and it's all about data. So it's we're about to hit benchmark season. We are a star. We got chosen to do the field testing. So our our sixth graders

046have like five big tests within nine school days. And so we're going to do this fun right before this is why this is important. This is how you're going to meet your goals. This is what we want you to share with your families. We're going to do that on the 26th at 8 o'clock in the morning. Um we have things like that. And then we also have monthly implementation uh and review of all of our other data. We do that with our staff specifically and with our kiddos. Staff coaching and support. You've heard a lot. I know Miss Mononttoya mentioned it with the till pro the till um initiative that has come through with intermediate and middle school. We I love this opportunity to do this. This lasso grant has been phenomenal. It it is

047sometimes you get this is a bad word but I feel like I get stale as an administrator and as a leader and this has just refreshed and rejuvenated my capacity to lead my campus. And so staff coaching and support has been um it looks different. We have I like to say we have a comprehensive instructional leadership cycle that includes all of the bullets that are up there. We just do so much more that is intentional, specific and immediate when it comes to feedback with our staff. Uh and they really seem to like it as well. They like that that feedback. And then the proactive family engagement and positive school culture. If you know anything about Ryurn, you know that we have amazing families. They are highly involved. They're at the school. um we don't have

048to to really search for volunteers or helpers. And so every year that is a constant goal because we always want to be improving on our communication, on our responsiveness to parent or family needs, on our student needs. Um we've had teams which kind I always say it's kind of like the Harry Potter house things. We've had those since my first year at Raburn. We broke into teams. I went did a lot of uh observing with um Mr. Roberts at Brian Collegiate and we modeled it after that. We had seven teams, seven different colors. We had pep rallies and we still do that to this day. And that has been a huge um culture builder at Rayburn. Our our kids get very passionate about being teams, especially if they're they're out of pep rally. Like that's

049a super fun time. Um and then um we do standard things like we have we consider ourselves the Raider family. Um we have rise up points and celebrations. Everything's about rising up, which is to act responsibly, act with integrity, speak appropriately, and always give our best effort. Uh, and then like I said, communication is always something we can improve upon. So, we work on that as well with our families. But that's it. Any questions? >> Okay. Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> All right. Before they leave, do you have any questions uh for any of the principles? I just feel blessed that I have the opportunity to work with these ladies daily. They're phenomenal. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you for your presentations. It's great to hear from each of you and

050hear about all the good things. Um update on next on the agenda is update on progress towards board goal two culture and climate and board goal three high quality workforce. Um Linda Mononttoy will be presenting along with executive director of human resources Tommy Roberts. Good evening. Uh I'm going to do the quick um introduction just before they present just so we kind of orient ourselves to uh what these progress towards board goals presentations are all about. Um, so as you remember from our team of eight training, uh, the board reviewed the board goals from the prior year. We've made some adjustments. This evening isn't about the goals that you set during that meeting. It's about the goals from the last year. So these goals began actually in January of 2025 and concluded in January of

05120 or December of 2025. And so that's that full year review of the past year for goals and progress towards those goals. Um, and as you well know, all of the goals are interconnected with how we do business in Brian. Um, in a little bit during the annual report, we'll talk a little bit about the House bill goals that are starred up there for college of career, military readiness, and then also for early childhood literacy. But the purpose of this presentation is to zero in on two of the board goals, specifically board goal three and board goal four. Um, and for that, um, we have Miss Mononttoya and Mr. Roberts. And then one final reminder before we begin. Um again, this is very nicely aligned to Texas strategic leadership and in particular the effective district

052framework. Uh during our team of eight training, we took a look at that graphic right there and we talked about the effective district framework and again it aligns very nicely to how the board has laid out our goals and in particular in the coming year as we've added a financial goal as well. Um but this evening we'll be hearing from Mrs. Mononttoya about culture and climate and then Mr. Roberts from about human resources and effectively that's the talent lever there and then it's also under integrated student support systems for culture and climate. So they kind of again overlap very nicely and with that I'll turn it over to Miss Mononttoya. All right. Thank you Dr. Abara. All right. So just a reminder of what our culture and climate, our goal two is. It's to foster

053and sustain a culture and climate that encourages a shared responsibility for a positive learning environment that encourages engagement in academic, extracurricular and uh service activities. So going to talk a little bit about culture and climate in our district and uh our partnerships with uh safe and civil schools. So this is actually our fourth year in partnering with safe and civil schools. So our our first three years we did a lot of training but really our four critical or our three critical areas or schoolwide uh culture that was our foundations and the creation of our foundations teams at every campus. um our CHAMPS program that we utilize in well Champsed at the elementary and discipline in the secondary classroom at every campus and then our interventions. So that's our early stage interventions. So um some of

054the positive outcomes from this work have been at every campus we get whole staff representation involvement in campus decisions. So all staff members are involved in decisions that are made. A systematic data collection and analysis to inform uh next steps building teacher school skills in classroom management and data-driven uh system analysis and you heard from our principles over here. They've become experts in looking at data. We use data in every decision that we make. uh whole staff approach to student engagement and connectedness. Again, you heard a lot about connect connectedness and the things that they're doing at campuses to get kids connected. You know, if we can get kids connected, they want to come to school. Um and then discipline alignment for student misbehavior. So at every campus they look at levels of misbehavior and

055the teachers are involved in you know when we send the kids to the office for a referral. So I'm proud to to say that we've had some uh good success. So, in looking at our um survey data, when we look at satisfaction with school culture, we're right on target um with 71%. In looking at uh satisfaction with behavior expectations, we're again on target with 74%. Those were our staff and student surveys. And our last one is uh satisfaction with our core values. This is our essential eight. And we're also on target there with 80%. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some celebrations that we've had with data. So when we've looked at data, we've had an overall reduction in discipline referrals of 32% and that's looking at end of year 24 to

056end of year 2025. We've had an overall reduction of outofclassroom placements of 22% and that was also from the end end of year 24 to the end of year 25. We've had an overall um reduction of outofclassroom placements. They've decreased uh 4.76% from was from the fall of 24 to the t fall of 2025. And then we're really excited uh te teacher turnover. When we look at our teacher turnover rate in 2223 the 22 23 school year uh our teacher turnover rate was at 23.5% and last year in 2425 our teacher turnover rate has decreased down to 16.9%. So it's re reduced from 12% from 24 to 25 and we've had a reduction of 39% uh since we started our partnership with safe and civil schools. And then I'm going to report a little bit

057on uh student attendance. If our kids aren't in school, we can't teach them. So we've got to have them at school. When we look at our uh student attendance rate back in uh 2022, our overall attendance rate was at 91.76. We've grown a little bit each year. Um it's gotten better. So at the end of 23 it was 93.07. End of 24 it was 93.81. At the end of last year it was at 93.99. Uh when we looked at January of last year at 2025, we were at 94.4% and looking at uh now January 2026, we're at 94.69%. Our um goal is 95%. And I want to make it there. We want to get we've got to get kids uh back at school every day. So some of the things that we're doing, and you

058did hear some of this from some of our principles, they're doing goal setting and monitoring. uh they're communicating attendance daily. So on morning announcements, they're announcing what their attendance rate is. Um they're doing schoolwide incentives. They're doing classroom incentives and they're celebrating successes. So you heard about the Mr. Potato Head. Well um Crockett does something similar. They do uh No Tarty Tater and they do something similar with a Mr. Potato Head. But and then doing a lot of a lot of celebrating uh uh good attendance. Anybody have any questions? When you when you look back, of course, attendance was all that was near and dear to my heart, but um you know the year 22, we were still coming out of or we were still involved in CO and many people in the world thought

059school attendance was optional, you know, and we were trying to overcome the thought of [clears throat] getting back into the classrooms inerson learning. But from 22 to now, that's an average of 480 kids more a day being in class from back then. And that's a big deal. I mean, that's a lot to to convince 480 kids, 480 families that being in the classroom learning in person, how important that is. because I I know what it's well we all do what it's taken to overcome COVID and everything that you know came about with that how hard we worked to teach them virtually. I mean that was a great thing but then when it was time we needed them back in the classroom. >> Absolutely. But to think about it, that's an average I was looking at

060the difference of 480 kids >> for the year, but an average of 480 kids a day more we have in our classrooms now. >> Absolutely. >> That's and um you know each of our campus principles when they set their goals at the beginning of the year, they each have an attendance goal that they're working towards as well. So I think that is that's helped as well. >> All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. >> It's all about the leadership and it's all about making school fun. >> Okay. Next up, we have goal three, which is recruiting and retaining a high quality workforce. Um, so as Dr. Yubara mentioned while ago, um, that kind of is that red lever there in regards to talent. Um, so a couple of things to highlight here

061is our recruitment efforts. Uh, we are recruiting around the state. Um we're so we're at places of course like&m and SAM but we're also at Prairie View Texas Southern um Texas State Stephen F Austin State University and we're looking for other avenues and places around the state for us to be able to recruit. Um we also are looking at strategic staffing solutions. Um so this is a little bit stuff that's um new and different. So tapping into funding sources. Um, so like the partnership with the Brian ISD Education Foundation, you know, they awarded a lot of scholarship monies to our current employees last year and they're actually on the hook for doing that again this year. Sarah Braden, the executive director of the education foundation, actually sent out the email again like, "Hey, Friday's the

062deadline." Um, they're awarding um a couple more scholarships this year to our peer professionals as well as some of our uncertified um teachers working on their certification uh credentials. Um, we also have the lasso aotments to help establish teacher pipelines for paid year-long residencies. Um, and also to assist our peer professionals becoming certified teachers. Um, and to grow our teacher mentor support program to help retain our novice teachers, our first year and second year teachers as well. Um, and as Miss Mononttoya pointed out while ago, the professional development opportunities that we offer in Brian ISD is pretty robust. Um, one of those, the largest being the safe and civil schools effort, um, that you guys as the board started years ago, um, that we've seen tremendous gains for. Um, and that's not to mention all

063the other things that we do weekly, professional learning communities, embedded professional development, um, vertical and horizontal teamings, you know, all of those kinds of things. Um, so, and that was in regards to recruitment. Now, we talk about retaining. Linda stole some some of my thunder while ago. Um, so our teacher turnover rate, as Mrs. Mononttoya uh mentioned, is down um to 16.9 uh percent, which is the lowest it's been in quite some time. Um, I would attribute that um some of that to uh our teacher incentive aotment that u we currently participate in. We have over 300 currently designated teachers in Brian ISD. Um and that generates an additional $4.3 million in additional compensation for those teachers as well. Um, in regards to compensation, our TASBY partnership, um, so we're looking at, um, that TASBY

064partnership helped us to align and continues to help us to align our compensation practices and, uh, to market rates. Um, as well as the work that you guys do as the board, um, like you did addressing compensation across the board for everybody back in July. um all all the work that the board continues to do um in regards to benefits um you know the highlight there is we offer one of the most robust and competitive benefits packages I would say probably in the Brazis Valley um so that is definitely a recruit not only recruitment but a retention strategy that we are going to continue to leverage um as best as we can as we're out recruiting and trying to get folks to come to the Brazes Valley to make this place their home start their

065careers you guys have any questions questions regards to recruitment retention. Okay, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next information item, update on bilingual programs, executive director of special programs, Jennifer Warren, and director of bilingual ESL and migrant program programs, Dr. Georgiana Adams Molina. >> Yes. And I've also asked Dr. VeZ from Jones Elementary to join us. She's here. Thank you. And uh she is the elementary principal at Jones and it's very important that you have access to her to ask the questions that may be at the campus level and on the front lines. She has every special program on her campus that you can possibly have. >> [laughter] >> So if you have a question about special programs and how they're implemented um and not just implemented but implemented so well uh she would be

066the one that you would want to talk to as expert in the field. So uh Georgina and Dr. Vez I'm sorry Dr. Adam Felina and Dr. VeZ are both here to help answer some of the questions that uh may get into the weeds if you have those. I wanted to make sure that we had those experts in front of you. But what we are doing today is presenting to you the consideration for a refined structure of bilingual programming that moves from our current models towards a more cohesive one-way dual language model. And [snorts] before you get lost in all of those words, I'm going to take you through what our current programming looks like and all the technical words so that as we're talking, you have the vocabulary to follow along with this. Oops, somebody

067turned my slide. Thank you. Um so uh to begin with what we have is our most populated program which is our ESL program and that is located on every campus uh across the district not just elementary but elementary through 12th grade. And what you have in this program are students who know enough English to be able to hang out with their friends with their social language but may not have that academic content language. And so they are provided those content supports in the classroom from their gened teacher as an ESL certified teacher to provide that support to them. We also have the two-way dual language program. [snorts] And uh this is a biiteracy model that promotes learning English and Spanish at the same time. And in the two-way dual language, the two-way is important because

068we're going to talk about one way here in a second. But two-way is important because that means you have two types of students in the classroom. You have your English-speaking students and your Spanish-sp speakaking peers. Okay? So, you're both learning each other's language. And that's what makes it two-way. In both programs, you would learn uh English and Spanish, but it's a student makeup in the classroom. And then we also have our new arrival center and this is our uh smallest program but stretched across a lot of grade levels. We start at second grade with Knack or our new arrival center and it goes all the way to 12th grade. And these are going to be our newly arrived students who have very little English to support them in the classroom either socially or academically. So

069what we try to do in this program is to provide them not just with those English supports to know the academic side of things but also to build that social language as well. And then we have the early exit transitional program and that is a program uh that starts all the way down at our pre-K level through sixth grade. And uh what we are uh promoting in that model is that our students are learning uh in their home language all the way through the middle of second grade. And at the turning point, just this point right now going into the spring semester, we flip over to learning more English than Spanish. and we transition them into English uh slowly but uh over the course of time uh it it does take time to learn that

070English aspect but we uh do that over the course of few a few years so that by the time they finish they will have that English acquisition needed to be able to um hang out with their peers socially and then also have that academic language. Uh, one of the questions that we had uh, ahead of this meeting was how many students do we have in these programs? And, um, I can do all the breakdowns for you, but the biggest question we had was for the new arrival center. And we crunched the numbers this morning to make sure that we had the most accurate numbers. And in uh, what we'll have in second grade right now is nine students, third grade 24 students, and third grade [clears throat] 30 students. And we do have additional grade

071levels, fifth through 12th grade. But since we were really just talking about our elementary uh grade levels at this meeting, I wanted to make sure you knew what that looked like. You can anticipate the pattern that you might see moving up into the older grade levels with those numbers. Okay. So what we are proposing or what we're trying to consider uh is looking at our resources and seeing if we're using what we have in the district to the best of our abilities to serve our students. And you can imagine that when we have a program that has so few students, if you remember our Knack program in second grade, nine students, um we have to consider if we're using our resources to best serve our students and what we are wanting to consider is looking

072at our new arrival center and our early exit program and combining them so that our teachers are working together to serve our students in a oneway way dual language program. So going back to what we learned earlier that they would be learning in English and then again the the content in Spanish or vice versa. But one way means that their peers will be their Spanish-speaking peers. Okay? Just like they would in the Knack or the early exit program, but it would be in the one-way dual language program. This is important because instead of with early exit where we were pushing to a deadline or a timeline to move over into another language and move away from one, what we're doing is starting from the very beginning with both languages. One is developed socially already at

073home and we will keep adding into that with their home language with academic supports but then we turn it around and also teach it to them in English supporting biiteracy. This is so important for our students to not just go into the workforce and have two languages to lean on but also that family aspect and their cultural identity. uh having both languages to go home with. So, as we're looking at this, um some of the things that we have to consider are the benefits and the costs and the benefits. And oops, hang on. Before we go into cost and benefits, I'm going to talk to you about where we have these programs currently. Just to give you a visual, we have ESL prek through 12th grade. We have the two-way dual language program prek through

074six. We have early exit, also prek through six. and the new arrival center second grade through 12th grade. And what we're proposing is taking that new arrival center and the early exit and merging those students together so that we are going into one program instead instead of splitting our resources into two. Our knack or our new arrival center would still exist for our 7th through 12th grade students. So, some of those benefits that I was discussing earlier um include ju not just the programming and allowing students to learn both of those languages uh but it's also building it over time and not rushing them through that timeline. Consolidating programs allows us to leverage the bilingual certifications that we have with our teachers and making sure that they're serving our students who desperately need that certification

075to build both languages. We also uh would be able to streamline uh even other resources uh being able to work with the transportation department as we move students back to their bilingual zoned campuses. It allows our bus routes to stay in one area instead of moving all of our students to Knack, which is just at one campus, Jones. Um, but it's even more than that. It's allowing our students to stay close to where they live to go to school so they can build community with the the neighbors that they have. It also uh is supported through TEA [snorts] um through funding and through support. TEA this is the preferred model. So we have more support coming to us through the state moving to this model. Research and state data shows that the longer exposure to

076a bilingual program yield stronger academic and literacy outcomes for than early exit programs. So looking at our student achievement, we are looking for the biggest bang for our buck. If we put a student in a classroom with that certified teacher, we want to know that we have the best model being presented to our students. And this is what TEA and research says is best. So beyond academics, we talked earlier about fostering that cultural identity and expanding those career opportunities, which um I don't think you can put a price tag on that. So looking forward um and what we're doing next, you have to look back to see what's happened through the years. A one-way dual language model has deep roots at Brian ISD. This is something that our community has asked about many times. Our

077teachers and our principles have asked about the research behind this and if we could consider it. And like I said, every year we're going to look at our resources and see what the best options are for our students. And this year, this looks to be that consideration that we need knowing that our knack numbers are so low and we could really, really, really utilize our resources in a better way. So, we had our initial meeting with principles of our bilingual campuses in December. Very favorable, lots of questions, but favorable so that we could uh then consider talking to our teachers, our families, and our community members. We have uh spoken with some of our teachers. We had multiple meetings set up. Teachers are busy so that they could have options to pick which one would

078work best for them. So we have worked with some of our teachers to express this consideration, get their feedback. We have another meeting scheduled for tomorrow, I believe. Yes. So another one tomorrow so we can continue gathering that feedback. And then Thursday, we have a meeting right here in this room so that we can talk to our families and our community members. So that information has already gone out to our families, but I wanted to say it publicly here so that if there's anyone listening in the audience uh online or possibly here in the room that they would possibly attend and hear about the considerations, have the opportunity to ask the questions and then also give us the feedback so that we can make the best informed decisions moving forward. We are here tonight providing

079this information and then as we gather con and continue to get additional feedback, we want to bring this information back to you soon so that you can hear the updates and what we are considering doing officially for the next school year. But meeting with our stakeholders drives all of those decisions. But you are also our stakeholders. So we want to hear from you. Do you have any questions about our current programming or our proposed programming? Anything that you heard tonight that you have questions about, we're happy to answer. >> I got a quick question. So, you gave a benefits. Is there any drawbacks to it? >> Honestly, the research shows that this is best. Uh TEA has pushed this out as the preferred model with research and with uh the outcomes, the achievement outcomes. Uh

080it puts students back either at their home campus or if their home campus is not a bilingual campus, they get to go to one next door that is. Um transportation uh is aligned with this as well. Uh students become biiterate, which means that they could take this out into the community or even back to their homes. There are not many drawbacks that we were able to come up with with this model. Um if I had to dig deep and find something, it is a shift. It is a change. So, it's going to require some oversight to ensure that we honor the language model, that we train our teachers, that our principles are prepared for the change because Dr. Vez is very comfortable with this idea. But what about our principles that may not have had

081this level of language need at their campus? We're going to have to provide that support with them. >> Awesome. Thank you. >> And Dr. Warren, with that, would you remind the board and our community where we currently have the early exit model, bilingual in particular, because I don't want anyone to think that we have it at every single campus. >> Correct. So, we have it at most of our elementary campuses, but we do not have it at Mitchell, Houston, Bowen, or Ross. Yeah. Okay. They're testing [clears throat] me. I got this. >> Is there uh this might be a touchy question. Is there is there much interest as far as you know with regard to the parents and grandparents and guardians learning English and do they have the opportunity to do that around here? >>

082The parents learning? Yes, >> I know through region six we have classes for our parents in the past. Do we still have >> Right. Um so we do have parent nights for many of our students with language acquisition needs. uh uh in the past we've had that with region six. I know we do this with sign language for our regional day school program for the deaf families so that they can learn sign language. If it's not something that we've continued to do, we can certainly look into it. >> You presented this for our teacher uh teaching and learning committee and several of us asked questions. Then I have a new question. Um, so the parent information night on the 15th from 5:30 to 6:30 here in this building in this room. If parents find out

083about it afterwards or guardians, whoever can't come to that meeting, [clears throat] is there one specific place or telephone number that they can contact to get the information or might we have another meeting for them if this one isn't well attended? mostly because it's beginning of the year, a lot of people are still putting Christmas decorations away and so um I think we can actually do both. I would be happy to say that if parents or community members have questions about this, they need to call the administration building and ask for the bilingual department because they are very knowledgeable and willing to support. The other piece of that is we can always add another meeting. If we feel like there were more questions than we anticipated or there wasn't the participation that we were looking

084for, we can put out either another meeting or a series of meetings till we get that feedback that we're looking for. >> Good. >> As as this grows and grows and the knowledge gets out there, I think it's important and you probably have already thought about this that everybody get one number, one place, one email. so that everybody's calling the same place, they get one piece of information, which is the right one. Um, you know, because you know as well as I do, it if they have to go through two or three different people, some can always gets lost in the translation. So, I think that's important. >> Yes. And for our Spanish speaking families, if they call, our bilingual department is equipped to handle those phone calls as well. So as soon as they

085call and ask the question or need that language support, they are going to be funneled straight to the bilingual department and they're very responsive and very supportive. >> Thank you. >> Yep. On our website currently, we have our program models. So when uh when this is going to forward for consideration and if ultimately uh becomes our new program model, we will update the website uh in full transparency and then also talk about any phase in so that our community will be well aware of what that would what's what that's going to look like. But even right now we have our current program models outlined. We have uh forward- facing documents with bilingual handbook that explains the programs in detail. uh the two-way dual language, the early exit model, and so forth. So, we would follow

086suit to make sure that there is a location where the the parents could get this information. >> Thank you. >> I just wanted to circle back, Mr. Stazzy, to your question about opportunities for parents to learn English as a second language. That is offered in the community through the council of government along with the region six service center. and they're at the Brian Adult Learning Center, the the section behind Jones Elementary. And I just verified because their schedule changes and I wanted to see what it was for this semester, but they offer it on Tuesday and Thursday evening for adults to come in and learn English as a second language free of charge. Dr. Vez, do you want to share from your perspective and lens as a campus principal? I know when I go out

087and do my checking in with the soup, uh, your teachers and all the other bilingual teachers across the district have actually been asking us to consider moving in this direction for a couple of years now. So, um, what what are your thoughts? >> I mean, I think this is an excellent move um, for our district, for our community even. Um, when we're looking at language um, and how important communication is within your own family unit. Um, I've had several families approach me regarding their inability to communicate as fluently as they, you know, would like with their children. Um, because, um, in the current model, we are removing, we're taking away their native tongue, right? Um, and so that's been a struggle which definitely impacts our community as a whole, not just our students in the

088classroom, but our family units. Um, I also work with&m. I um helped teach a class a course for b future bilingual educators and um you know the thought of being able to grow our own um by adding and continuing to develop their native tongue will definitely help us as a district benefit from that and that we'll have um possible candidates to come back and teach um in our um in our schools. but you know visiting with my staff because my staff will be impacted. Um we do house a new arrival center and um so I made sure to visit with them after our recent teacher meeting that we that was held. Um and it was very um while while it is hard, you know, to think, oh my goodness, will I be able to stay

089at Jones as a teacher? You know, the new arrival center is going away. What will happen? Um it was heartwarming for me to hear them also say to me that they felt so um happy for our our new arrival students because um right now it's almost like while they are at a campus that is over 50% bilingual. um they are in their own classroom units. They're in a sense isolated and this will allow for them to be integrated with their fellow peers which research has shown that a effective filter comes down. They grow so much more from their peers than just the teacher that's standing in front of them. So they were very very grateful for the idea that their students would be integrated with their fellow peers as well. Um, so I mean I

090it it is hard for me because I think oh my gosh, you know what what I don't want to lose my my people, but I know they'll go and do great things at other campuses as well. So um but I am very very excited about this for us. Thank you. >> When a student enrolls in new arrival center in the second grade, how long do they stay in that program? So the most compliant answer is until the ELPAC committee determines that they don't need those language supports anymore. Um but research show shows that it can take five to six years to really integrate into a new language and own it to the point that you can say that you are truly fluent in that language. So knowing what the research says um anywhere between four

091to six years I can imagine that a student is participating in the Knack program. Uh the student uh is assessed through the TEPASS assessment which is your language acquisition assessment and uh that truly ultimately determines who reclassifies out of our bilingual programs and who has become advanced in English so that they can reclass out. That's the final determination for that. >> Thank you. All good. >> Thank you. >> Next information item, District of Innovation Local Innovation Plan Renewal Update with Dr. Barbara Bar. >> Thank you, Mr. Brian. Uh, good evening. This is a a brief update just to kind of orient you to the renewal process for the District of Innovation. Um, just going back in the time, the 2015 legislature, um, the 84th legislature allowed districts to adopt a district of innovation plan, allowing

092them to wave certain statutory regulations, not all of them like funding or anything else, but certain ones that allowed us to basically be on an even playing field with charter schools and other entities that were receiving state funding. Um, that process involved um the board of trustees. that involved resolutions and a district-wide committee. After that, the the state required that a district who has a local innovation plan, which we do, has to renew that plan every five years. And the process for renewal is slightly briefer than the full plan and the initial plan. Um, but it does require a review every five years and then bringing it back to the board of trustees. So, I'll go over the timeline in just a little bit. Um but first let me give you a high level overview

093of the components of our current local innovation plan. Um first we have a statutory waiver um for the first day of instruction meaning that we can start before the third Monday in August. Um so that allows us to start at a time that's best for our community and for our schools. Uh we have a waiver for teacher certification with parameters on that and that is changing bas based on the last legislative session. there are more constraints on that now. Um and those that we agree with quite frankly. Uh minimum attendance for credit that's also on our waiver where if a student is ill for any particular time, we can still award credit credit to the student pending um they had a passing score in the course. Uh class size allows us to be flexible with

094a 22 to1 ratio. Um within certain parameters, we don't let that go far beyond that, but it does help us deal with the mobility of students. Um there might be one week where you've got 23 students in your classroom and the next week you're at 20 and it moves up and down throughout the year. Um so that allows us to watch those numbers and see if they firm up over a period of weeks and then find um appropriate staff to serve the students. Um and then this year in August, based on the changes from the last legislative session, um the DEIC, the district's education improvement committee and the board of trustees, um allowed us to amend the current plan to include uh complaint resolution process and the oversight of campus libraries. So that's what's currently

095in the plan. So what the process involves is that we go back to the district education improvement committee, which is the DEIC. that's comprised of teachers, parents, community stakeholders, and district staff, and we present the information to them. So, in November, I went to them and gave them the current plan and have them look over it and give us feedback and ask their questions. Um, in December, we did a little bit more with them. We also entertained some other provisions where districts have waved certain statutes to see if they were a good fit for us. At this time, nothing's really servicing that we think we need to wave that would give our students any advantage that we don't currently already have access to. So, at this point, we're proposing the same provisions to move forward

096um in the new plan. Um but first, we have to go back to the education improvement committee and they have to take a vote that's scheduled for this Thursday. Um it's a public meeting where anyone can come and make public comment um and also hear the proceedings of the meeting. Um, should the DEIC approve the current uh proposed renewal plan, we would then bring it to the board of trustees for consideration. Um, it does have to be posted on the website for a few days, 30 days. Um, but before I take it to the DEIC, I wanted to first get the feedback from the board of trustees. Are there any other items that you'd like us to consider? Or do you have any questions about the current items that are on the renewal process knowing

097that I know we've had conversation about the complaint resolution process and that will be coming back to the board through board policy adjustment rather than the district of innovation plan. There any other questions that you might have about the DOI plan, the process, or any feedback you'd like us to consider before we take it to the DEIC for consideration? >> If we weren't uh under this the DO DOI. >> Yes, sir. >> Then we would had to use the new much different complaint process, right? >> Correct, sir. Yes. What were the discussion with with us was that maybe we could use some of that to make it seemingly at least >> a meet in the middle. >> Yeah. A little more uh not uh with a uh trapdo. Oh, sorry you're out of time kind

098of thing. Sure. We could do it in a way that wouldn't >> adversely [snorts] affect our ability to handle things promptly. So that's that's part of what you're going to present to us. But I just that just was I guess reminding everybody I guess maybe everybody remembers this that that we would have had a whole new world with complaint the grievance system had we not been uh >> Yes sir. That's correct. And we will bring back that res that uh that revision to the local policies for complaint resolution after it's gone through board committees for the employee side and the student side. Um and hopefully there'll be a meet in the middle. The DOI plan just allows us to actually make that change. [snorts] >> Do you mind flipping back one slide? >> Yes, sir.

099>> I don't have a question. I just wanted to >> That's fine. >> revisit it. >> No problem. [laughter] >> Well, that's great. And I'll also um share with the board um the current plan and draft as it becomes available. Um the current plan as well as the draft plan which at this point um looks very similar with some edits based on the legislative session regarding certification. >> Yeah. >> Okay. That's a preview. Any other questions? >> This will be our second time to renew since it will the inception. Brian ISD was an early adopter. Uh, a lot of other districts waited to see the early adopters and it was going quite well. So after that first year, I would say probably 75 80% of the rest of the districts jumped on board. >> There's

100a long list on the website. [laughter] >> Yeah, you can go to the Texas Education Agency website and see every single plan, ours included. So, u it's it's given us uh public school in particular a lot of latitude and it honestly came about to level the playing field with charter schools. >> Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Next information item, budget development series related to understanding tax rates. Chief Financial Officer Norma Fur. >> Oops. Good evening, Mr. President, board members, and Superintendent Caribine. Um, as promised, we are back this evening to continue ourformational sessions on the budget development series. Last month, we introduced the basic aotment and we walk through uh where the formula comes from, um how the funding works and how it's applied to fund instructional programs. Uh tonight's topic is

101all about tax rates. Understanding how the district builds its budget starts with understanding how revenue is generated. Tax rates are a key driver of local revenue and state funding formulas respond to changes in our tax rates and our property values. So, in summary, this overview will show how the district's tax rate affects how much revenue the district has to budget with. All right, let's dive in. So, here we are in January, and this month we're focusing on understanding tax rates. And then on June 20th, I'm sorry, January 20th, we'll walk through the different types of district revenue. So, let's start by clearing up a common misunderstanding about school district tax rates. The tax rate isn't something the superintendent or district leaders can just arbitrarily change if we want more money or just want to start

102a new program. School finance simply doesn't work that way. Tax rates are voter controlled. They are set by tax law and by the Texas Education Agency. And any increase beyond what's allowed has to be approved by the voters through a VATRE or a voter approved tax rate election. The CB will walk through the two main parts of the tax rate. Maintenance and operations and interest and syncing. Two separate pots of money with two different purposes. So, two rates, two purposes. At a very high level, the county appraises all property in the district, both residential and commercial, to determine the district's total property value. That appraisal is the starting point of all things. For every $100 worth of property value, the district applies its tax rates. About 67 cents is applied for the maintenance and operations

103and 27 cents is applied for INS. The dollars generated by applying the tax rates are deposited into two separate bank accounts and must be used for their specific purpose. Later in the presentation, we'll walk through this calculation step by step so that you can see how this works in practice. Okay, so let's start by breaking down the M tax rate. Now, fair warning, this is the most complicated part of understanding the tax rate. This little section right here is where school finance earns its reputation. So, the M tax rate has two different parts or what we call tiers. Tier one, this rate is set by TEA and we have no control and this is driven by property value growth. As values go up and down, the state uses a special formula kind of behind the

104scenes to adjust or compress tax rate to help limit automatic increases. This is how the state keeps funding more consistent and equitable across school districts. Tier two. Tier two is where enrichment pennies live. Enrich enrichment pennies are optional tax rate pennies that allow a school district to generate funding above the state's basic level of support. They must be approved by the voters through a VATRE or a voter approved tax rate election in November. So when we put it all together, our M rate is about 67 cents with 61 cents coming from tier 1 and 6 cents coming from tier 2. Speaking of tier 2, tier 2 allows a district to generate additional funding above its basic entitlement through a complex formula that includes golden and copper pennies. As you can see here, a district can

105have up to a maximum of 17 enrichment pennies, eight golden and nine copper. At this time, Brian ISD currently levies six out of the eight allowable golden pennies. If the district wanted to levy the remaining two golden pennies, it would require a voter approval through a tax rate election, which can only be held in November. So, you may be wondering, what would those last two golden pennies actually generate for the district? I'm so glad you asked. [laughter] Very conservatively speaking, those two golden pennies could generate roughly $4.8 to 5 million in recurring revenue for the district. But beware, that amount is directly tied to weighted average daily attendance. So if attendance goes down, that number goes down with it. So in other words, those golden pennies only shine when our students show up. And if

106you're wondering about the copper pennies, each one, again, depending on weighted average daily attendance, could conservatively generate somewhere between 800,000 and $1 million in recurring revenue. Norma, do you mind distinguishing the difference between the the gold and the copper penny? Again, what does the copper penny do that the golden penny doesn't? >> Well, the golden penny is not subject to recapture, right? >> Okay. And the copper pennies are. Okay. Which is really just the main difference between the two. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> But it's also not based just or in our case, it's not based on our property value. It is based on >> weighted. I'm sorry. >> Weighted average daily attendance. >> Do they use the Austin? >> It used to be the Austin. Yeah. That is correct. >> Case.

107>> Okay. >> And the yield is much higher on on the golden pennies than the copper. >> So, we need to buy a lot more Mr. Potato Head >> sets. >> Yes. Because remember, our our pennies only shine when the students show up. >> That is correct. Great questions. Okay, so if you made it through the M tax rate, congratulations. You are officially out of the woods. The good news is that the debt service tax rate is much easier to explain. It's one rate with one purpose. This rate is set based on how much is needed to make our annual bonded debt service payments. Simply put, the rate is set at the level needed to make our annual mortgage payments. You heard this analogy throughout all the recent bond discussions. So the rate is 27

108cents this year. It'll be 27 cents next year. So compared to the M, this one is refreshingly simple. So when you put it all together, the M rate is about 67 cents and the debt service tax rate is 27 cents, giving us a total district tax rate of 94. So now what? Okay, now that we understand what makes up the tax rate, let's put it to work. This example does not include the homestead exemption. Don't worry, this is easy math. We'll use one household as an example. If a home is appraised at $375,000 and the district's tax rate is about 94 cents, we divide the property value by 100, that is our first step. And then we multiply that result by the tax rate. That comes out to approximately $3,551 in this example for the

109taxes due. Do we have any questions? >> Okay, >> you may be getting ready to get to it, but uh just [snorts] briefly explain everybody, including me, make sure I'm clear on what exactly freezes, but when you get to be as old as I am, your yours is frozen. So, how does that freeze just the value or the taxes themselves? Because I think some a little confusing. sometime. >> Well, when the value freezes, the tax freezes with it. Especi the only way that the value that the taxes can actually go up is if the tax rate goes up. But if your value is frozen and we apply the exact same tax rate to it, then everything remains the same. >> Okay. Great question. So, this example, remember, it did not include the homestead exemption. So,

110let's take this one step further. Now, let's assume a homestead exemption of $140,000 on that same household. So, step one is to subtract that 140,000 because we don't tax that portion of the value. Now, Mr. Stasney, to your point, if you um if the taxpayer was um 65 years or above or disabled, that would be an additional exemption on top of that. So, every exemption, this is I'm only using the homestead exemption for tonight's purposes, but any others um we can also add add [snorts] to that as well. >> And it just went from 100 to 140. >> I mean, yeah. 140. >> Yeah. So, the only thing different we're doing here is we're taking that same that same home of 375,000 and then we're backing out that 140,000 only for teaching just kind of

111quick purposes. So step one is subtracting that 140,000 because we don't tax that portion of the value. Then we move to the next steps. We divide the remaining value by 100 and then multiply that result uh by the tax rate. So you can see the difference the homestead exemption makes when we include it in the calculation. In this example, the homestead exemption saves the taxpayer over $1,300 for the year. And that usually leads to the next question. Does the school district lose out on that revenue? When homeowners get a tax break from the higher homestead exemptions, the state makes sure that the district doesn't lose any revenue because of it. This is what's called a hold harmless provision and it's provided on both sides of the equation on the M side and also on the

112INS side. Now that we've seen how the tax calculation works for a single homestead, let's zoom out and look at what this means for the district as a whole. So, for simplicity and to save time, I've already done the math for you. This slide shows what tax collections look like when we apply the same concept to the district's total taxable value. You'll see the results separated into uh the two parts of the tax rate M and INS. And at a district level, the M tax rate generates nearly $85 million while the INS tax rate brings in almost $ 34 million. This gives you a clear bird's eye view of how much the district collects and how those dollars are generated. It's also important to note that these funds are kept separately. M and INS each

113have their own separate pots of money. They are deposited into separate bank accounts and are never comingled. These tax collections are reconciled monthly and reviewed again annually as part of the district's annual audit. All right, so so far we've learned what the basic aotment is and what it means for Texas school districts. Today we broke down the tax rate so you could see how it's built on purpose and not arbitrarily. In our next session, we'll connect a few more dots around district revenue. Now that we understand how the tax rate works and how it generates tax collections, we can see why those collections matter. They matter because they directly affect how much funding comes from the state. Remember, district revenue is mainly made up of a local share and a state share. So, at our

114next session, we'll take a closer look at the remaining pieces of district revenue and walk through where they come from the local, state, and federal levels. Be happy to take any questions at this time. Can you go back to the slide where you had the two pots with the total that no forward no forward uh >> total tax revenue on it >> end the end of the presentation >> that one so [snorts] um INS um we use uh we can't use that for salaries >> no ma'am >> okay um M is our maintenance operations, which 85 million sounds like a lot of money. Um, can you remind us roughly the percentage of our budget that goes toward paying our personnel, our teachers and other staff? >> It's about 155 million. About 85 86% of our

115budget for >> I was asking for the percentage. >> Oh, for the percent. I'm so sorry. of the 80 of the 85 million how much do we use what percentage do we use on uh s for staff and teachers? Well, the total amount okay that's where my mind went. The total amount that we that we spend on staff is about 155 million. So when we budget it that way we don't trace it or allocate it directly. We it all the money goes into one big pot. So we um the tax collections go into the big pot. The state funding goes into the M pot. So there's other revenues. >> So So our M the tax that we collect on M isn't enough to cover our salary. >> No ma'am. Correct. Correct. When you said staffing,

116my mind went directly to well about $155 million worth of our entire budget, which is a roughly 85% of our budget goes to pay staff. Right. >> But no, this doesn't even cover staff. You are correct. >> Okay. Oh yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We still got this is just one one line item of revenue on the in on all of our revenues, >> right? That is this is just one line item. We you know on the local side and that's that's actually going to be the perfect segue into our next session. You're going to see how the tax collection revenue um combines with all of the other district revenue to make our entire budget. >> Yeah. Thank you. Sure. >> Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse you. >> No, no, no. That's the great questions.

117>> It will. >> Any others? >> Thank you. To remind the board, especially our newer board members, Brian ISD actually had a VATRE back in the 201718 school year. We are grateful that our voters voted yes to approve that. Yes. >> Thank you. Next information item, bond 2025 status update with Dr. Brian Merrill. >> Good evening and thank you uh again for allowing me to come and uh share a little bit about uh where we're heading. I'm very excited for where we sit and what's coming this week. Again, you've seen this, but just to give you some perspective, obviously we've got three sales. I appreciate uh Miss Friddle and all her work with with us. Uh we're sitting here with the star in preparation and planning. We'll sell the bonds in August of 26 and

118then again in August of 29 and then August of 2031. And the vast majority of the money is coming in uh this August. So we're excited for that. Again, this timeline shows where we're sitting in the overall scope of the project. We did a request for qualifications in December. Uh we're sitting at the architects and engineer interviews coming up this week. uh very excited for the number of architects and engineers that submitted uh their uh proposals or their qualifications. We had uh roughly over 20 different architects and uh over a dozen different engineers. And so we put a committee together, looked at all their qualifications and evaluated them and invited some of them back for interviews. We're going to put that pool together uh and again we do the interviews this Thursday and Friday and

119out of that pool then we'll come back with negotiation and bond packaging. Um and then obviously we'll get into the design phase. All of these various stages will be in the boardroom talking to the board members and um just letting y'all know where we are in the process. So I think unfortunately you're going to get to see me uh every other board meeting that we have. So >> I'm sure that in your architects and engineers that you're going to be looking at I mean just common sense would say of course we have local >> and others but of course we invite local people. We definitely did and we had a good representation from both uh within the district and out of the district. So, we're excited for that process. So, the phases that we're going

120to get into is the design phase. And I I'll just kind of quickly move through these because again, we'll be back in the boardroom talking more specifically about it. But, uh programming, schematic design, design, development, construction documents, all of these are part of the design phase uh that we'll go through. And again, we're we're not there yet, but we're building towards that, right? Uh and then after the design phase, uh you'll get into the construction phase and that's what everyone is really looking forward to, right? So when are we going to swing a hammer? When are we going to knock something down? When are we going to see some things going up? But to get to that point, we obviously have to select all of our professionals and then uh get through the design process.

121And when you think about it, um so much of that is involving the people either on the campus or that will be the end users. And so sitting down with the teachers, the administrators, the students, and really vetting that process out and building the space that really represents the way that they're going to use that. And so we will take that process very very seriously involving our stakeholders, um, and making sure they're actively involved in it. And so, um, as we're working behind the scenes, it will all be towards building obviously the construction and actually building what we've, uh, designed. And all of this is um you know things that you've done either with your house or other projects and it's very very similar but you'll submit the plans conduct traffic environmental geotech TDLR accessibility

122reviews all of the things that go into constructing whether it's a fieldhouse whether it's uh bri collegate any of those things obviously uh the construction part so that'd be phase two and then you keep going into some additional uh obviously characteristics there uh of the construction phase PH and I won't read them to you, but you've uh been a part of that process in the boardroom before. U we've brought it in. Um Bobby Griffin will be with me in future board meetings and we'll be talking through this entire process. Lastly, we get to substantial completion and this is where the building is operational and ready for its intended use. Uh we got a punch list, we've got a certificate of occupancy, and we're working through any of those little finished products uh that need to

123be kind of finalized. Typically, you've got a year uh worth of warranty to go back and get things repaired if indeed they break or something goes wrong. And again, Bobby is wonderful at working that entire process and making sure that we're represented at the table with the architects that we're represented and we're watching as we go through the construction phase and then obviously on the back end making sure that the warranties are honored. And so very excited uh to work with him. We got to do that at the end of of Hallebertton and um just know that he's uh really a a wonderful um just eye for Brian ISD. When you think about what this process looks like, we gave an example, a timeline, scenario or range. And again, anyone watching online that wants to

124get this, these are not exact dates, so please don't hold them to me. Depending on the project, that could change uh the complexity could change the the dates, right? And then um so we'll give it to you. The design phase typically is 8 to 10 months. Construction could take anywhere from 18 to 36 months. And then obviously that gets us at that substantial completion in two and a half to four years. Um again depending on the project and the complexity of it, it could take on the lower side of that or it could take on the the bigger side of that. And I gave just an example of one of the priority projects that we have here. And that's Brian Collegiate. And if we began design in March of of this month or and this

125year and we uh finished that relatively quickly. And again, don't hold me to this, but sometime in January, construction would begin. And you can see where all of a sudden we're getting into uh 27, 28, 29, depending on the complexity of the project. Now, this one is um rather complex. We're building a school from the ground up. Not every one of them is as complex. Uh some of them are maybe more complex, some of them are less. Uh but nonetheless, uh you could see where the timelines start to fit in the design process as well as the construction phase. Okay, any questions with this? And I'll get into the priority projects here in a second that as we see them and obviously weighing in on it. We're excited that 290 million is the first installment

126because that allows us to move forward with many of the projects that we put out uh in the 2025 bond. I've got a question before you move on and it's it's not it's it's somewhat related but um I think many of us can probably relate that uh with the the bond passing communication happens locally a lot of people >> have ideas specific solutions >> u they may not be at the architect engineer side of things but they may be somewhere in the process what is the how should we advise them uh to to get involved, express interest, um apply. What is that process? >> Yeah, I I mean it's exciting, right? And they want to participate and they have thoughts and I'm thankful for that. Anytime that we've got a community that is invested like

127they are, uh you get the results like we did with our current bond package. We were I think uh the overall passing rate for the state of Texas was 45%. We had the largest athletic referendum that passed in the state of Texas. we were um our numbers were incredibly um incredibly thankful for. I think when you think back to the principles that were in the room um and the way that they talked about that community involvement and all of the the investment that not only Miss Cariban has asked us to do but all the campuses and all of the professionals have done it leads to that excitement and so I would think a couple different ways. Number one um we will engage them when we look at the campuses. So, um I I mentioned Brian

128Collegiate. Um they are asking uh the teachers are asking they when Miss Carbine did her scoop with the soup, she went out and they wanted to know when was this project going to be started. And so as we begin that process and as we start looking at it and the architects are selected and we begin those projects, there will be avenues either uh surveys or other types of instruments that allow for input because as they're out even with the collegiate talking about uh to eighth graders what they're going to get to see and do and how they're going to graduate, they'll be in that building. And so they want to use that as a marketing tool to really um highlight what what's coming. And so we've got to do a good job of of communicating

129the entire time. Um we're very excited about um kind of the first iteration of the 2025 bond. Uh our athletic department uh excuse me, a fine arts department has really begun the design of uh the uh band trailers and we can't wait to get those out because again it's promises uh made, promises kept and we want to get out in front of them. So we will engage them becomes very very important. I don't know if I answered your question. >> I'm talking more about from the company's side. So, is is there a job board? Do they go to the website and and go to the vendor page? And >> for the contractors themselves, >> um I mean, let's say it's a a roofer, for example, or somebody like that. >> I mean, absolutely. Once we

130select the architects, that becomes a conversation and they'll be able to look out for it. Yes. >> There'll be a a bid process and it'll be it'll be sent out to what we call the plan rooms. Uh every required way to advertise it. >> Melissa did a phenomenal job. We've got uh I mean spreadsheets and lists and all kind of vendor boards that we will communicate that out towards. Yes. >> Yeah. And it's usually twofold. The the contractor and then they will do subcontractors and all the layers that come with their way down. >> Uh one thing I want to add with Brian Collegiate just is back to your point about how important feedback is. The minute the bond passed, the Brian Collegiate staff started a spreadsheet. So they're talking to their kids, to the

131staff, to the parents, and they're using this as a marketing and recruitment tool to attract uh rising nth graders. So they're very excited and chomping at the bit to sit at the table and uh >> help inform decisions. >> Yes, sir. >> And to give you an idea of sort of our idea of bond packagings and priority projects, this is not uh this is not all inclusive, right? We just wanted to put the major projects up there, but as we see them, these were the ones that we'll begin working on. We've already begun working on them to be honest. So, Brian Clegate High School, Mel Green Fieldhouse, synthetic turf and track projects, elementary, intermediate, middle school renovations and improvements as well as priority one maintenance projects, Rudder High School renovations, gymnasium, locker rooms and barber

132and cosmetology, Brian High School renovations, the locker rooms and auditoriums. Again, a lot of those major projects we see as moving forward and selecting architects and or engineers to move forward with these projects. >> Dr. Merryill, just to get you to uh elaborate and it's this is premature because you haven't even done the interview. Yes, ma'am. >> But do you imagine um when you say a pool of architects, multiple architects taking on the different packages simultaneously? >> Yes, ma'am. uh in our conversations. We're meeting tomorrow with the interview committee and we're going to walk through these uh projects and look at the questions and make sure Ruer principal Brian principal Brian collegiate principal if they're not on the interview committee they have input into the selection. So absolutely to answer your question, we're looking for

133multiple architects to to uh go after these projects and we we're really excited about that because it's not the complexity is uh very variable from you've got a brand new uh high school to renovations of a of bathrooms and you know an intermediate campus. There's a all along the spectrum a bunch of different projects and we see a lot of value in that especially bringing architects to the table that have different preferences and that allows us to open up uh different expertise and different portfolios that we might not have been able to open it up to if it was just show us what all you've done with a high school or show us everything you've done with the stadium or something like that. Does that mean I don't know what that background noise is? Okay,

134any other questions? All right, we're very excited interviews this week and we'll be back in the boardroom pretty quickly and talking about that pool of architects. So, thank you again for the opportunity. Uh we're very very excited. >> Thank you. >> Next, we have parent communication software implementation plan update. Julie Johnson, executive director of technology services, will present. >> Good evening. Um, so I was here to give you an update on Parent Square, our unified communication system that we're moving to. Um, we've begun our soft launch, but before I get into the specifics, let me give you a little background. So, I brought this in the fall. Parent Square is a onestop place for communication for our community, our parents, staff, students. Um, you'll see that we have the central tool, quick translations, two-way communication,

135and then also a variety of means. And as we get into the multiple ways to communicate, you can see that we can have them access it through a web browser. They can receive messages through an SMS, like a text message, or they can actually download the app. And what's nice is they don't have to actually install the app to um use the software. Um, and let's get to our timeline. So we started in December with our roll out, our kind of soft launch with at our principal DLT and we trained all our principles um campus principles on um how to use it, how to interface with it, but it was really just kind of their first look. They'd never seen the platform before and it was an hourlong training where they kind of got to

136get in there and just set up their accounts for the first time. Um it was also December. So it was a lot to take in during that meeting. Um but it went really well we felt like. Um and then as we gone into this month um we've gone out to campuses. So principles let us know when we needed to come out and we hit the ground running on the Monday. We came back and we hit about five different campuses that day. Um from elementaryaries to Brian High School. Um they wanted to go first and go ahead and get in. Um, I cannot say enough about how excited we were about the response. We were worried because a lot of those other programs these campuses are using and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. We've let

137teachers know that during this transition, we want them to take their time practicing uh sending messages to each other in their staff groups. Um, but we've already had teachers and principles call and say, "Hey, can I start using this right now? I really want to start using this with my staff and my parents. They'll love it." Um, especially some of like the newsletter features, that kind of thing. But because we're trying to give them that time to learn the platform, we're trying to slow them down just a little bit. Um, we expect that first emails out to parents to be in the next two weeks. Um, and we'll do it by campus based on when they were trained. Um, so as we go into February, we'll have some more campuses we're bringing on. We've been

138getting those last campuses scheduled and then with a full all the way in in March, actually March 2nd. So, we'll we're asking that even if you do keep some of those platforms alive for the spring as you're transitioning, kind of like what Miss Lopez said about transitioning from Class Dojo, if they want to finish that out this semester, that's completely okay. what we'd like to see them do is go ahead and post in both places so they can move over, you know, and have a nice smooth transition come fall. Um, but what was nice is when Miss Lopez was talking about it is she was one of those first principles that already started working on her newsletter in there and gave us a really a lot of positive response. Um, when you can get the

139high school teachers to be excited about a platform like this, it makes us feel really good because they're tough customers over there. >> [laughter] >> when it comes to something like this. Um, and then one thing that we've been working with communications. So, they put out that first post of it's coming. Um, I believe that was last week, one evening, I think Thursday evening. Um, and we've already seen some um activity where they're saying, "Hey, well, what's the difference between Parent Square and Skyward?" So, we came up with that little um diagram. Um Chelsea in the uh communications department has already put a response to parents so they kind of understand that that Skyward is more the business side where you'll see your grades and credits and how your student is doing academically whereas the

140parent square side is going to be more about getting that communication and engagement. So and that's kind of it in a nutshell. Any questions? All right. Well, thank y'all. >> Thank you. >> I now recess this regular meeting of the Brian Independent School District. The time is 7:57. District to order. Let the record show that a quorum of board members is present, that this meeting has been dually called, and that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code, chapter 551. The time is 7:57. The purpose of this public hearing is to present the district annual report, Texas academic performance report. And presenting will be associate superintendent of teaching and learning, Dr. Dr. Barbara Yubara and director of accountability research evaluation and assessment Dr. Jill Morris.

141>> Thank you, Mr. Brian. Uh good evening. Uh this evening we are not only doing the public hearing for the annual report, but we're also providing an update to the board of trustees regarding the progress on board goals, specifically academics. And so I won't go over what we've covered already this evening, so we'll get to go through those slides relatively swiftly. Um, but as a reminder, this particular focus is all about the academics. Uh, as Dr. Morris will come and share in just a few m few moments, the Texas Education Agency recently released the Texas Academic Performance Report. And the bulk of our required annual report comes from that document from the state of Texas. Um, so without further ado, I'll turn it over to Dr. Morris to give you a brief introduction to the

142components of the annual report. Okay, good evening. Um, as Dr. Bar said, this is a required hearing that we we have each year. Um, I do want to remind you that there is nothing new. There's no new data I'm sharing with you. The data comes from the 2324 school year and the 2425. you have seen all of this data in some format, maybe not exactly the way it's shared in this report, but there's nothing new as far as the data that we're going to share with you. Um, so one way that we present this report, um, and you can see here, there are several components here. There's the, um, the Texas academic performance report. Um, there's a accreditation status, there's a financial reporting status. So, these are all um things that you've seen before, but

143one thing we like to do um is look at some comparable districts because we know that Brian ISD is sometimes very different from the state in our demographics and our poverty levels. So, each year we look at based on Brian ISD and you can see that in the first column there of the chart or excuse me the second column of the chart. Um, and then we do a range and we we look and find districts that are similar to us. Um, this year we were able to add Bumont and Crowley to the other five that have been our comparable districts for the past, I don't know, since I've been doing this um, seven or eight years. So, um, we use those. So, anytime in the rest of this presentation when you see a chart with

144um a state comparison, the comparable group is the average of whatever the indicator is for these seven districts. Um and so just as an example here, you see student information. If you look, the first column that's I guess red is what it looks like on my paper. Um is the state average. The second column, the green is our comparable district average and then the blue column is Brian ISD. And you can see just looking at basic demographics, we are much more similar to that comparable district than we are the entire state. Looking at our economically disadvantaged rate, our um emergent bilingual, our English learners, excuse me, our atrisisk students, and then our mobility. And just as a note, the mobility when it's reported on the taper report are students that are in the district at

145least 83% of the year. Now, they can be in our district 100% of the year, but at six different schools, that's still not considered mobility um by the state of Texas. Even though we know every time a student has to move schools, there's um sometimes a learning loss or just the trauma of having to be in a different place. So we have this information um that we want to sh to share with you um and the next portion Dr. Bar is going to talk a little bit about some accountability results. >> Thank you ma'am. >> Okay. So when we look at the district um we know the state of Texas moved to an A throughF rating system several years ago and we've been through different renditions of it. We've been through star 1.0 star 2.0

146accountability A throughF 1.0 A throughF 2.0 know these are the results from the most recent academic performance which is 2025 and so you can see the state is the bar in red as Dr. Morris mentioned the green bar is the comparable district and the blue bar is Brian ISD. We've also went ahead and added the number of campuses that represent that percentage that you're seeing for Brian ISD on that blue bar. So we had four campuses last year that were rated as an A, nine as a B, we had eight as a C, two as a D, and zero were rated as an F. Um, if you compare the district to the comparable district, uh, we are slightly higher across the board than the comparable district and the letters you'd like to have a number

147in. Um, but a little below in the A category from the state of Texas. This trend continues as you move into academic performance. Now, when we talk about state assessments, STAR and EOCC, when a student sits down and takes the test, they get a score back. that score has a descriptor of sorts on how they performed. Did they approach grade level? Did they meet grade level? Or did they master grade level? So there's three performance levels and all are acceptable rates of passing, but the state gives you different points based on how much or how high the score was. So at the approaches grade level, students approaching grade level passing the assessment, meeting satisfaction of the state assessment. Um you can see the red is the state and then once again the blue bar the

148Bri Brian ISD we see that we're outperforming the comparable group in most areas with the exception of social studies where we struggled a little bit and are lagging behind the comparable group. We still have a gap with the state and as you look at performance this year compared to last year on the full-blown report you'll see we made slightly a small gain against that gap with the state um in some areas but not in all where we saw the most improvement was in the meat's performance. This is just approaches right here. We saw a little bit of up and down over the state average and that and closing that gap between Brian ISD and the state but once again we did perform um outperform rather the comparable group in this area for that meets level

149performance. We're going to spend a little bit more time in this category because this is where we want to get all students to, but it's also where the board goals for House Bill three are set for early literacy, numeracy, um, as well as college, career, military readiness. So, for the meat level performance, again, we see a little bit of a mixed bag where Brian ISD has outperformed once again the comparable group. Again, that similar lag with social studies, ever so slightly behind the comparable group, but still a gap with the state of Texas. We did see that gap narrow ever so slightly in this past year, and again, this is STAR 2.0 and accountability 2.0, but it is still representative of the G of the gains that we still need to make. Um, when you

150look at the MEAT's performance, uh, Dr. Dr. Morris is going to come up and talk to you briefly about those early childhood literacy goals which focuses on grade three and then also with college career and military readiness. So several years ago, House Bill 3 required us to um set five-year goals for early literacy and numeracy. Um and so you can see here on the graph um this is our current cycle of goals. Um the green bar is the goal that was set and the blue is the actual performance. So you can see that for 2425 we did not meet our goal but we made a large gain from the prior year and these numbers will be different than the ones you saw on the previous screen because this is only our third graders. So house

151bill 3 requires that the metric we use is third grade reading and third grade math. Um the literacy goals also require that we have an action plan of how we're going to work toward meeting the goals. Um the full plan is in the annual report which um I think I looked right before I came down here. It's 1300 it's over 1300 pages. So you're welcome to print it but you might need a couple of rings of paper to do that. Um, so there's a lot more detail in that that full report that's already posted online. Um, but with our action plans, we're working with providing making sure teachers have the curriculum resources they need, the support and training they need. Um and also that they can look at data and you heard principles talking about

152that and customize the um for the needs of each student. Customize that instruction. Now when you look at math um you can see a similar pattern. We didn't quite meet our goal but we made a large gain in that meets level performance. Um the math teachers are doing similar things, customizing the instruction. Um in addition, this year our math teachers and our curriculum department is spending a lot of time supporting them with the new curriculum that was adopted. And so they have a lot of new things that they can use for supporting our students and getting them to those those goals. >> Sure. Just as a quick reminder, um, if you'd recall, the the curriculum materials for mathematics hadn't been adopted since 2016. It was about a 10-year gap between the state releasing any new

153curriculum materials. And so, this was the first year that we were able to adopt those materials. So, saying, we have new curriculum, that's a really big deal for mathematics, especially in grades three through eight and then also um some of the other grade levels at the upper range. But that was a big shift for sure. >> Do you have college? >> I forgot. Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Um the last performance level again approaches meets and masters is the last one. It is the highest performance level uh where we hope to push and and grow students to attain. Uh again we see Brian asked ISD has outperformed the comparable group. We still lag behind the state in several areas. But you also see in social studies at this point we we tie the comparable group rather

154than lagging behind. Um, again, trying to make those gains, um, and making sure that we're making progress with that. As we move through the Texas Academic Performance Report, um, also called the Taper Report, one of the things they report on are the graduation rates, and it's there's a lot of different rows on the report about graduation rates. It'll say class of, it'll say cohort of, fouryear, fiveyear, sixyear, and and essentially what it means is you're looking at the cohort of students. So, if we were all in ninth grade together in the same year, then we're all in the same cohort. It's the day we enter nth grade. Whatever year that is, that is our cohort year for graduation. Four years from that date is our cohort. So, if um class of 2024 all entered nth

155grade at the same time and the goal is that they would graduate within four years. that graduation rate was 94% which is above um or 91% for the comparable group 90 for the state but 94 for Brian ISD. So in this metric the district outperforms both the state and the comparable group in the cohort kids entering 9th grade and graduating in four years. The state also looks at a five-year graduation rate, noting that some students for due to life circumstances may take an extra semester or an extra year to graduate. Uh once again, we see the same pattern. Students entering um CLA uh nth grade at the same time and then graduating with five years within five years that includes your four-year and your five-year. We're still outperforming the comparable group and the state. that

156has been a laser focus for this district for the past eight or more years to improve graduation rates as well as college career military readiness. And with that focus, we've seen tremendous gains year after year. Um, moving it forward to surpassing the state of Texas, which is where we would like to be. Uh, coinciding with this are the rates for college and career and military readiness. And I'll turn it back over to Dr. Morris. So, as you can see here, um, in the most recent data, which is for the 2024 graduates, this is a lagging indicator. So, we don't even have all the data for 2025 graduates yet, even though we're about to graduate 2026. But that's just the way it works. We far exceeded our goal for the 2024 graduates. um our our campuses

157and we think of this as a high school and it is a high school metric but they can't do it without the grades before that and so they have worked very hard to prepare students to be college and career and military ready. Um there are in fact this week we're going out to all the camps as a group of us and we're meeting with the principles and some of the campus leadership to be sure they have the supports they need to continue um exceeding these goals. We talked about changing the goals even though we're still in the middle of the five years but we know that in the next couple years there's lots of changes coming down the pipe with CCMR and how things are counted and weighted. I was in a meeting um I'm

158on the Texas accountability advisory group for the state. We were in a meeting this morning and they were talking about all the changes that will be coming out in the next two or three years specific to CCMR. Some of them I think are actually really good um um and I'll be sharing those once we have a more defined proposal um from the state. But um so we adopt or made the decision to just leave these goals the same instead of changing them now. Um additionally in House Bill 8, they're changing some of the reporting metrics for the CCMR goals. And so I didn't want to bring a goal to you to adopt now and then have to come back in six weeks because TEA gave us different guidance and adopt another one. So we're just

159going to leave them since they're already board approved. And then if we have to make a change after we get guidance from TEA, we can come back and and do that. So just looking at some other data points that um are in the annual report is chronic absenteeism. And we've talked about absenteeism a lot. Um as you can see um we are making progress over the last few years on the chronic absenteeism. This is one of those where instead of seeing the bar graph go up, we want to see it go down. Um, so going down and getting lower is a good thing. And we are actually for a 2324, which is the most recent data released, we're actually slightly below the state, which is a very good thing. And we've worked really hard to

160to improve this and get our kids back in school. Um, I am not the financial expert, so I'm just going to say we're an A. Yay. But this is part of the annual report. Um, I know you've heard about this previously. Um, just to give you an idea of some other things. We also have an accreditation status. The district is accredited. Again, a lagging indicator based on 23 24. Um, the accreditation status for schools is based on financial accountability. academic accountability, um, data integrity, and those sorts of things. And accredited is the highest rating that that you can get. Uh, again, the text academic performance report has a litany of rows of data, but one that we want to draw your attention to has already been mentioned this evening. It's the teacher turnover rate. And

161like Dr. Morris said, this is one of those where you want to see the bar as small as possible. Uh so you want to be below the state, you want below the comparable group and you want to see that trend continue. And so if you look back there from 22 to 23, we were in the middle. We were slightly higher than the state but lower than the comparable group. But then fast forward to this year's report, um we are lower than both the comparable group and the state and it's one of the lowest teacher turnover rates that we've had in years. As Mr. Roberts alluded to earlier, a lot of good work on behalf of the board of trustees, the teacher incentive aotment, the compensation package and benefits packages that make Brian IC an attractive

162place to be and to stay. Um, we know when there's teacher turnover, there's instability for students. So, the smaller we can make that number, the better chance our students have of reaching their full potential. So, really pleased to see that turnaround in Brian ISD. And I won't belabor this next slide. Um you heard from our campuses earlier this evening about their campus performance improvement plans. Um this too is a part of the annual report and so those are approved by the board of trustees and every one of those documents also gets included in the big annual report that is posted online. Um and then finally Dr. Morris um posts all of this online so that it's accessible to all of the families and should anyone like a printed copy we are happy to provide one

163them uh to them if they would like one. So um again we are here to answer any questions you have. I know this data may not be new to you but it is in a different format and a different visual and certainly there are more data points connected uh with comparable group methodology and everything else. [clears throat] So we're happy to answer any questions you might have. Anybody got anything? [laughter] >> Thank you [clears throat] so much. >> Can I get the chat GPT version of this? >> Actually, what's fun, Mr. Tassy, we actually have put it in there and and asked it questions. It's very fun. [laughter] >> Thank you very much, sir. >> Thank you. There being no further business, the public hearing adjourns at 8:16 p.m. I now reconvene this regular meeting

164of the Brian Independent School District. The time is 8:16 p.m. We'll start with our board member reports. Um, I'm going to switch the order up a little bit. We'll start with teaching and learning board committee report on the district of No, that's not right. >> Dennis, are you doing teaching and learning committee? >> Yes, sir. >> Will you please give your >> Sure. Um, teaching and learning uh committee met via Zoom on January 6th um at 10:00 a.m. Board members present were myself, uh, Miss Waller, Miss Harlon Wolf. Staff members present were Mrs. Caribine uh Barbara Yubara and Jennifer Warren. Uh fortunately for me um every topic of discussion that was addressed in our teaching learning and committee was just spoken about in the agenda. So um for the sake of me not completely butchering

165uh what all we talked about, I'll hit the highlights. Um Dr. Bar touched on the district of innovation uh the renewal process and so forth that she touched on uh earlier in this board meeting. Uh Jennifer Warren touched on the bilingual program, laid out the slides and everything that that we saw tonight. [clears throat] And then Dr. Bar again touched on the the taper report, the accountability um and so forth that we just got done seeing. And so it was a good meeting, a good hour and a half long meeting, a lot of detail, a lot of lot of touched on. Uh but again, uh everything that that we touched on at that meeting was just mentioned um on the agenda just now. So that's it. Thank you. Next we'll do the finance uh board

166committee report. Mr. Tim Pavas. >> Good evening. December 11th we met uh um on Zoom and in the office uh board members present were uh Mr. Stennis, Mr. Stazzy, myself uh staff members u Ginger Caravine, Norah Fiddle, Dr. Merrill, Dr. Ivar, and Tommy Roberts. Um, Mrs. Friddle um talked about monthly financials. We reviewed the uh November monthly financials report. This report was revised to include additional information tracking expenditures uh by date. Also uh presented was attorney firm Blake Hencher Walsh. Um give us guidance on a property that was not used by the school district uh for sale. And then um Miss Friddle again talked about budget development, the overview of the budget development process for the 26 27th uh school year. Uh of course it was about an hour and a half too. So uh

167we didn't get short of that that time there. It was a good good uh conversation and uh we'll be meeting again soon. Thank you. Executive Board Committee report. Miss Ben. >> Oh, the executive board met on December the 10th. That was myself, Mr. Brian, Miss Waller, uh, Miss Carabine, Dr. Merl, and Mr. Roberts. And we discussed the bond oversight, which Dr. Merl gave us a presentation on that tonight. And we also discussed uh Washington campus lease agreement um which we are waiting further information on that um to be given to the board. I can't say we met for an hour, hour and a half because I think we spent the night. [laughter] >> Thank you. Um education foundation committee report. Mrs. Waller. >> Yes. And this is so exciting and I haven't made a report

168for a couple of meetings now, so bear with me, but it's all very fun and positive uh information. The Education Foundation is made up of men and women in the community that most have children and grandchildren in the community. And I mean, everything they do is for kids, is for staff. uh many of them grew up here and so they are people doing for our our district as if they were still in the district if they were if as if they were not only giving the money but being the one to accept the money. And so it's it's just a an honor for me to sit in those meetings and hear those men and women and see the little gerbles in their head going around and round in their little um cages. Um these are

169some of the minutes from the the last meeting. December kicked off with two exciting paws homecoming. And paws are are our uh support animals, our dogs that we have in some of our schools. Paws stands for pups assisting wellness and support. Uh Mochi, right? Mochi and rise were welcomed home to much fanfare to Neil and Ross elementary schools. They also made their BISD board of in uh trustee introductions. We got to see them here and they were so cute with each other. They hadn't seen each other in a while. Uh they were here at our board meeting in December and um it was the perfect way to wrap up this uh school year and the interest is growing so much in our pause pro in the foundation's pause program. We're beginning the stages of planning

170a communitywide event focused on this initiative. Stay tuned for more details this new year. Student scholarship applications launched at the beginning of January. Staff scholarships, as we talked as was mentioned earlier from the the podium, staff scholarship applications also started this month. And there are paraprofessionals and uh DOI teacher scholarship applications that are being opened. And this group of people are so interested in growing our own growing some of our own teachers from our par profofessionals and from our district of innovation teachers. and they're doing their best to to help the lives of those people through investing foundation money uh toward them graduating and being certified student let's see um hold on a few these will be reviewed in the in the reviews will be conducted in late January with the awardees being announced soon

171after that this next August hometown reunion is already in the works works is already being planned and so throughout the year you'll hear a lot more about that. Now, this is really exciting. The money I'm about to tell you about is doubled since 2023. So, the money that the foundation is giving our students and faculty, staff, as I say, since 2023 is twice. So, you can imagine what the future holds. $221,000 went to teacher certification scholarships. This is last year. $160,000 went to senior scholarships. $150,000 went to teacher grants. $40,000 went to paraprofessional undergraduate degree scholarships. $24,000 is going to the PAUSE program. $20,000 is going to special district initiatives, $15,000 to employee giveback campuses, $10,000 to employee of the year bonuses, and $5,000 at confocation giveaways. So, that was a fun report. Incredible. >>

172Thank you. Next is the consent agenda. The board can remove any item from the consent agenda if applicable. If there are none, I will entertain a motion. >> I move approval of all the items on the consent agenda. >> Second. >> Motion made by Mrs. Benford, seconded by Mrs. Waller. All those in favor say I. I. Those opposed say nay. Motion passes. Next, we have an action item to discuss and consider approval over $50,000 for the replacement of the Merryill Green Stadium lighting. Uh, Deputy Superintendent Dr. Brian Merrill and Executive Director of athletics Derek Rush will present. [snorts] Good evening. Uh the Brown ISD athletic department would like the board to consider the proposed project of updating and replacing uh lighting at Merl Green Stadium due to the age of the current lighting system which

173was installed in 2009 which is 17 years old lighting system. problems uh future problems that we may incure incure uh finding replacement bulbs due to the age of the lighting system uh number one. Number two, the energy cost is much higher with our current lighting system compared to upgrading to a LED lighting system which would save us around 40% savings cost. Current lighting currently has a a warm up and cool down timeline. Basically, what that means is it takes five minutes uh for the lights when you turn the switch to turn them on. And if for some accidental reason you turn them off, it takes 15 minutes to 20 minutes to to cool down and to turn back on. And so uh also number four is is uh failing visible uh during uh game nights

174and uh events will become safe safety concern for students, the athletes and fans. Uh so if we decide to upgrade our current lighting system to LED LED lighting system, this will provide several advantages. Number one, improve visibility. Number two, energy savings. Number three, enhance the game night atmosphere and most of all safety. You may have noticed if you've been to the community pep rally when we turn the lights off, we have to leave either the scoreboard on or the visitors side lights. Um and that's because of the warm up and uh that we get we cool down. And so um you know just something as simple as that uh would enhance the community pep rally. I know that's a simple thing, but uh honestly when you start thinking about just the what it does for

175the community and what it does for the morale, it's a little weird to watch uh you know fireworks with lights on, but nonetheless uh we pull it off and it's still a fun night. But being able to shut them off, it's not the reason to go buy lights. I know that. Uh but at the same time you look at those advantages um that we have and just uh for the not only athletically but uh when you think about fine arts and the way that they can incorporate and the way that they uh participate on a Friday night or even a Tuesday night uh for soccer is is pretty fun for sure. So not only will it save us money, but it also will just enhance our stadium. And again, this is uh bringing us up

176to standard uh from what other districts have. If um you've traveled at all and you go to the the visiting stadiums, uh Temple and uh I can think of all of them honestly, Huntsville, um they all have this type of of lighting system. So, we're excited for our kids to have something um like everyone else to be honest. >> Uh Dr. Merryill Derek the only observation I have I'm looking at the quote um it looks like Symmetry Sports is their quote is um the lowest one comes with the 10-year warranty u but then there's the one in the middle this Musco sports lighting um and it looks like their bid I'll be at the highest I mean by 13 14 grand offers a 25-year warranty it's just kind of an observation on my end that

177you know it seems like for >> few I mean I hate to say the $14,000 isn't a lot of money but I mean it seems like you know and I don't know to what all extent you have to call in that we've called in the warranty or or had to go down that path but >> it's a great catch >> you know in my mind for $14,000 you get another 15year warranty out of it >> you know from a um >> you know again just an observation I don't know if how reputable the other guys are compared to the other ones. But >> well, [clears throat] I can answer as far as based on uh uh the vendor one symmetry. They're currently installing lightning at uh College Station ISD and all their projects and I've

178heard nothing but great things about those guys uh from that standpoint of things. And so, uh yeah. >> Is there any chance I know Miss Riddle is probably going to raise an eyebrow with my question, but could we go back and try to renegotiate the warranty? >> Yeah. Yes, >> for sure. >> Yeah. I mean, I I just say at a, you know, the other two, there's two bids on here. They both have 10ear warranties and then there's a 25. So, for $14,000 more, and you get another 25 years. >> Correct. And we can go back and do that. Just uh I wanted to bring this up. I could bring this up as symmetry. Uh the price that they have right currently right now, they came back and and redid their quote and they're around

179218 now. Uh so, their quote would be 218. uh 250 and so we could go back and visit with those guys and see can they put uh uh you know the >> increase the warranty. So >> well and please while you're at it might as well get the details of the warranty. Is any of this prorated? Does it include uh obviously replacement installation of of the replacement lights. Uh those kind of things are important to any warranty and these warranties may not all be even the same nature. So uh if anybody else wants to look at it fine but I'd be interested. I certainly know a lot about warranties and I and >> my former line of work. So, so I would I would at least want school people in I wouldn't mind seeing it

180myself about exactly what the nature of the warranties are because that is an important question in my book. >> I I'm in support of of it and I'm not trying to to dissuade it or delay it, but I'm just saying, you know, from an from an observation standpoint, if you can get another 15-year warranty out of it and spend $15,000, might as well. for my opinion. >> I also just want to note, I don't know that y'all mentioned this yet, that um we're proposing to pay for this out of the 20 2019 bond savings. So, it's not coming out of our >> No, ma'am. Thank you for pointing that out. I appreciate that. Yes, ma'am. We're excited. Um 2019 as well as 2020, we have um surplus, so we'll be we were in here last

181time. We'll be back in here in the coming months talking about ways to use that. And we appreciate Miss Caraban a few years ago putting bond oversight in existence. And so we take many of these things, if not all of these things through them just to make sure that we're on the right track. They're not a decision-making uh body, but nonetheless, they do represent our community and we want to make sure that uh we take things that they would support. And so as we make adjustments, we always do that. >> And then if we greenlight this, is this something that when will they be installed? >> Uh as soon as possible. Uh uh we would definitely get with uh soccer right there in their season and try to work with those guys and get it

182installed. Normally uh from my understanding it's like a uh fiveday installment process to get it done. So >> I move approval for the replacement of the lighting at Mel Green Stadium in the amount of $224,250 $224,250 to Smmetry as presented. Second >> motion made by Dr. Harlon Wolf, seconded by Mrs. Benford. All those in favor say I. >> I. >> Those opposed say nay. >> Motion. >> Was this still going to involve the checking on the >> We will definitely go back and check. Yes, sir. And we appreciate the opportunity to bring the contract or the warranty to you. So, thank you for that >> motion passes. Next, we'll uh move to close session. The board will now convene in close session to discuss the following items as allowed by the Texas Government Code Chapter

183551.074 and 551.0821. No voting will take place in the closed meeting. Any action the board wishes to take as a result of discussion in a closed session will occur after the board reconvenes in the open meeting. The time is now 8:34. The board reconvened in open session at 10:09 p.m. No action was taken in close session. There being no further business, the meeting adjourned at 10:09.