GCISD Board of Trustees Special Meeting - January 11, 2022

001so we open the meeting at 6 03. first item that you call the comment you can know what's going on next we'll go to the workshop session team away training our trainer scott moore gonna have a little bit of a intro for scott i actually met scott at our leadership task class is actually one of my classmates so we started talking about districts and i said this is the person that could come and help us with some of the challenges that we were having you know we have a very divided community our policy is a very invited board and i didn't want to have a training where you know somebody stands up and started looking at slide after slide or slide i really wanted to have more of a conversation about the issues that we're

002having and that's what squad is here so scott moore is a leadership consultant with vision bridge consulting the two-term trustee at cornwall independence school district the 10th largest district in the state he currently serves as the first vice president mr moore is also on the world director for the texas association of school boards scott is urging gp presenter attacks with summer leadership institute winter governance camp and the tasa tasbi convention where he has presented on transformational leadership for trustees and administrators superintendent evaluation procedures board community relations and team dysfunction he is scheduled to present a government governance in march with dr audrey young from the state board of education on the science and psychology of human behavior in leadership situations so one of the things that attracted me about i was god is is the

003fact that he is he's completing his phd dissertation at our lady of the lakewood university on the relationship between school board transformational leadership practices and classroom teacher organizational commitment mr moore is a te everester provider and travels the state working with school boards and administrator so scott um he's gonna be first kind of telling us how how we're gonna be handling these two sessions we're gonna include including session one and section two so i'll let you scott take over thank you very much for the introduction and for the invitation it's good to be with you all um not a whole lot additional to what jorge said but just kind of expand a little bit on my phd dissertation what we'll be getting in the next in a little bit tonight and much more so the

004next time is the results of some of my research on that and and what i'm researching is uh does the way that we lead in the boardroom affect classroom teachers there's research about uh you know board superintendent relationships there's research about superintendent principal principal teacher teacher student there's no research that ties the board to the classroom teacher and with changes that have come about in the last few legislative sessions that have sort of um increased the legal onus upon school boards for student outcomes um you know the direct tie to how our students function is that classroom teacher so my research focuses on specific practices specific leadership practices and how that translates across multiple levels of the organization into the classroom so you'll be getting a little bit of that as we go through this

005what we're going to do tonight it's going to be more of a just a guided facilitated discussion a lot of question and answer and a lot of open discussion um and i know that we're videotaping tonight doesn't doesn't bother me a bit i'm gonna there's gonna be times where i'm just gonna have real talk with you i don't care who who views a video of what i say i don't have to live in the community um but i i hope that y'all will will take the opportunity to kind of let the guard down a little bit and be open and honest with one another this is team of eight training and if all eight don't participate then it's not a team of eight training it's only a team of five a team of six um

006and i say that and this is not to chastise or anything um you know i sent out a needs assessment and i got back six of the eight um and i don't know who's who only i know jorge i know becky i know louis through a mutual friend the rest of you i don't know so i have no idea which faces go with the people that i spoke with does that make sense and the ones that i did speak with i told them everything i was recording was confidential as i was writing down and taking notes during the conversation i was not keeping track of who i was talking to so when i go back to my notes i don't know which person told me that i was just taking those notes down so um

007whichever two i didn't get back i hope you've had a chance to look at them and at least think about the the answers and we're going to go through them and and talk about them tonight again i hope that all all eight will participate in this um normally when i do uh team of eight it is a little bit about what jorge described um i've got a slide presentation and there's you know certain things that tea says we need to cover and we need to talk about roles and duties of a trustee and a superintendent and all that kind of stuff we're going to weave all of that in here without you all having a classroom discussion on a bunch of slides up there this is much more a discussion an open discussion about how

008you as a team of eight as the elected and their one hired employee to lead the district how you work cohesively for the betterment of the students and the stakeholders of grapevine collegeville isd i am not here to make any judgments to make to do any finger pointing and say you should have done this better you shouldn't have done that that's not all it's about this is about trying to get everybody rowing in the same direction for grapevine collegeville isd and in some of the conversations that i had over the last couple of weeks i think that there's a feeling amongst some that maybe not everybody is rowing in the same direction so we just want to try to get everybody we can have disagreements we can have different viewpoints about what ought to be

009taught what not you know what shouldn't be taught whatever things that we all have these opinions about but at the end of the day all eight of us should be focused on what is best for the students of grapevine collegeville isd so that they can become the most productive citizens in whatever their post isd education leads to right whether that's college career military whatever so what i want to just start off with this quick question that is from the slide does anybody know how many duties are legislatively mandated to a board of trustees i got three three they just redid the frameworks right right i'm talking about in the education code if you were to go and read texas education code how many duties does a trustee have or a board of trustees so if

010you go on the tasby website and look it up they're going to tell you five okay texas education code actually spells out 27 things that the board of trustees is responsible for now some of those 27 are very closely related some of those 27 involve uh coordinated effort with the superintendent um you know the superintendent is supposed to help develop and present a budget and the trustees are supposed to approve but it's not your job as trustees to be in the weeds figuring out to the dollar how much money cte gets that's why you hire superintendent he or she brings that information to you and you approve that budget but it's his job to work with the staff to set that way so there's some overlap in some of the duties and some of those

01127 say in coordination with the superintendent you do xyz you can distill them down to five and i'm not gonna i'm not gonna go through all the 27 i can send y'all a copy of this this slide deck if you want the five duties are adopt goals and priorities and monitor their success uh adopt policies and review those policies for effectiveness hire and evaluate the superintendent adopt a budget and set a tax rate and communicate with the community slash advocate for your district in public schools that's a new one um that's the tasby five level version i don't work for tasby but really if you look at those 27 they could all be categorized under one of those five um so it sounds like a lot when you're guessing three and you're like whoa 27

012really five things you need to worry about goals and priorities for the district policies and effectiveness of those policies hire and evaluate the superintendent budget and tax and communicate with your community the other thing is that a board should reflect the community and its standards and it's my understanding and a lot of conversation and some of the the research i do and i'm sure it's probably skewed one way or another i think the great find colleyville community right now the whole community am i talking more specifically i think the community is developing a reputation as a polarized community that's happening nationwide i'll tell you i'm a trustee in conroe we have the same thing right and things seem to be getting more and more polarized in the community and if the board is supposed to

013reflect the community you can expect a little bit of that polarization to be in here because you should have people with different viewpoints representing the broadest spectrum of the community that you can are you all at large districts or single member everybody's at large okay we have places right right well because it's not like like audrey's seat right where it's just the top three voters but they're top upgrades but right so we have to pick a specific place right that's that's how we are everybody's at large some people have single member districts so that there's there's geographic representation because sometimes what you end up with is a board geographically or socioeconomically or whatever divider you want to put in there that's skewed one way or another i have no idea if that's the the case

014with this board but looking around the boardroom i can see that your board doesn't necessarily reflect the same demographics of the district right which is definitely the case in congo so you have to figure out as a team of eight who are supposed to be somewhat diverse and represent the community how do you come together and unify for the good of a community that itself is polarized right so that's what we're going to try to do with this guided conversation is sort of maybe get to the root of some of that polarization that some people in the community and on the board and in the district have been feeling and see how we can use everybody's strengths to get everybody at least row in the same direction okay um and again this is this is

015not a presentation with me just you know lecturing and throwing information at you so if you have something to add if you have a question if you have a comment jump right in um well i'll say that i think louie and i were correct with that it's three because adopt goals and policies is actually one right there so i would combine them now so i will say that one of the things that i think you definitely have going in your favor to help with this and it's actually something you've already been doing um and not everybody mentioned this so i had gone through several conversations before i actually saw this in an answer but how you're tying your lead 2.0 goals to every agenda item and how you know if if it's on the agenda

016it needs to be addressing one of those those goals um you know shameless plug if you ever hear come dr young or me do our presentations on on board on superintendent evaluations you're going to hear us talk about every single thing on that superintendent evaluation should be tied to a district-wide goal not just a goal for that individual position but how the goals you have for that position tied back and one of the things i asked my district staff to do this year um is when we start doing budgeting again next year and even in between when they come and ask us for this purchase for that change or whatever my question every time is going to be what district gold does that purchase tie into what district gold does that higher tie into we

017saw that this so when we did uh league 2021 it was it was well received and we thought we did a really good job with it um and then we got to you know to redo it and did lead 2.0 and we narrowed it down to those four goals and what was really interesting is when like uh the different department heads got their course of action it was able the compliments that i heard and that we heard was that now the principals and the teachers it all lined up because we simplified it and made it these four goals and then we built the structure or the lead the the a team our leads and department has built the structures and now it's like the teachers know the teacher team leads in each grade no the

018principals know and it was neat to hear that and see how it was like okay it all goes back up to here right um and that that's a fabulous model and uh i know leadpoint2 2.0 is relatively new like yes within the last year right so yeah we did it three days we worked on at 18 adopted in 19 we're done in 19 yeah worked on 18 adopted in 19. yeah yeah so so within the last couple years um and i love the fact that you are tying one of those those portions of lead 2.0 to every agenda because if if you're going to claim that those are your four priorities as a district you don't need to be wasting time in the boardroom discussing things that don't advance those those four goals unless it's

019some kind of emergency situation right um you have snow mageddon and you need to discuss are we going to pay the maintenance guys over time for coming in and fixing broken pipes yes um if you got any extra money you can send it our way to pay our overtime guys they were not used to freezes for sure so i think you're right in saying that you know certainly in your case goals and policies are one and the same because you are intentional about the policies that you're setting tying into a district goal not every district is that intentional about it so i would say that's definitely a positive in your favor here that you're already starting down that path um so we'll kind of go into the needs assessment like i said this is the

020needs assessment is exactly what the term assess what the needs collectively of the board are so we can kind of distill through it and then come back with some specific suggestions on ways that you can improve your effectiveness and your efficiency um those of you that did give me answers back i hope i adequately communicated to everybody that you know all of the answers are completely confidential one of the things that we do in my company frequently is we'll post something on social media about oh we were so proud to partner with willis isd this week for their team of eight training i'm not even doing that on our social media like nobody outside my company even knows i'm here right um and and part of the communication back and forth um you know i

021hope i communicated to you that everything that you told me on the phone everything you put in writing everything you took a picture of and sent me every conversation we have in here is 100 confidential um i don't know who has the ability to access i don't know that's i got a quick question sorry how do i connect to the password for network it's asking for an account name and password is that just louis dot sullens and then my normal password let's try that okay talking to the camera [Music] as i mentioned before we officially started you know with these two sessions uh you'll be i am a tea registered provider so you will get your three hours of training credit for team of eight and you will get three of your five required hours

022for education based on the framework for school board development because that's in the background guiding our conversations so we're not going to plaster it up here and read through it in unison or anything but that framework is in the background guiding the discussions so the first question on the needs assessment was what is the vision of grapevine colleyville isd and i put a little caveat at the top to try to do this without phoning a friend without checking the website you know can you recite from memory the vision and then the second question was the mission of grapevine colorville isd um so i got like i think three responses that were word for word from what it says on the website but both of those people admitted to having looked it up i got i

023think that were not word for word and one of them was a um a loose interpretation driving at the same thing and then i got two that appeared to be kind of i think this is what the you know we're going to do something good for students kind of thing so right off off the out of the gate here everybody needs to know and be focused on the official vision and mission of grapevine collegeville isd now interestingly i had trouble finding where the vision was on the web okay i think if you dig down really deep in some of the lead 2.0 documents it's there in paragraph form doesn't say like bold vision colon here it is the mission statement is the mission statement is very easy to find so i actually have to go

024up to the search feature at the top of your district website and type in vision and i found it on an old page that it took me to in that direct search that is actually no longer a tab availability on your website so if you don't use that specific word search function you can't find the vision on on the website and i actually took a screenshot of it to show you what i was talking about if you're interested so it took me a while to find it to read it to you yeah so back to my confidentiality statement if you want to out yourself on something you told me that's perfectly fine that's up to you um the vision and the mission in concert with that lead 2.0 framework you have should be guiding every

025single discussion and every single decision for the district to the point where you ought to be in the grocery store and see a kid stacking cans of making a pyramid out of campbell's soup cans and go he's building the best campbell soup pyramid ever and at grapevine polly i can help isd we are building great schools i remember the exact wording there but that's in your mission right the best building great schools together or something excellent there you go he's building an excellent pyramid and we're doing that at grapevine we are building excellent schools um so let's discuss what is the vision of great vine color to empower students to achieve the best that they can be anybody else i have to say i think that lisa you were the only one on the board

026when we actually developed the mission on division right so officially officially your vision is the vine collieville independent school district inspires encourages and empowers students to achieve their full potential in a global society sound familiar okay do we agree or disagree that that is still the vision of grapevine colorado isd absolutely okay i've got i've got five head nods i've got the superintendent signing he's giving me a general head nod and i've got got two no responses so is that the vision and the reason i ask is because if as the leaders of the district you don't agree what the vision is you can never get there you can't move towards something that you're not agreeing on so is this something that our district still moves toward is this something that needs to be revisited

027i think can you read it again yeah the grapevine collieville independent school district inspires encourages and empowers students to achieve their full potential in a global society to me i can't think of a better vision to have as a school district i mean and i think that the board as a whole we're not all on this to make sure that we do inspire our students we do encourage our students we do empower them which i feel like we do with this every tool that we possibly can give them and to the teachers to fulfill what they need to move on to the next step in life to be a better to have the education to whatever they decide to do if the not go to college to go to college but regardless um to inspire

028them and empower them to have the capability to do what they want to do for their next step i think as a board if that's not what we're looking at and we're not all seven on the same page then i think we have missed um this is step somewhere miscommunication somewhere i think that covers a lot of bases i think that that where there's there might be some um you know not sure doing this or this is the minutia that's underneath it right but i think that that that we could all agree that that's what we're trying i i can't imagine why you wouldn't want that for every student i mean what would be what would the objection to that be do we all agree yeah i agree i mean i always have issues with

029the missions timing and the vision statement on our district i always feel that they're like first because yeah like the vision should be the mission and the vision should be division i'm saying that because a vision is more of a aspirational thing what i mentioned is something that we do every day like that's what we worked on and i feel our vision is what we do every day and then when you want to be the best district in whatever state of texas or destination that is very aspirational right that's that's something you probably would never achieve or you continue to to move towards that so i always felt that the mission and division are kind of wanted to be the other but i mean i didn't really i mean they're both there like i believe

030in both it's just i just think that that means mis-titled or you know miss so that's but other than that i definitely agree on what we're trying to do in terms of not only like making sure the kids uh reach their full potential but you know one of the things that we do is explore what that potential is right by by allowing kids to explore all these different opportunities that we we offer and one of the things that we do from lead 2021 which is kind of the establishment all these programs to to focus on the needs of the kids then lead 2.0 is actually looking back and say okay what exactly did we miss in our communication because we see the participation of these kids in the program but we see there's a lot

031of groups that are misrepresented is some of these opportunities where we say you know what if we had a better communication tool resources we could get more kids into these programs that they're not participating now and they're they will they will see they will understand that you know what you actually could do this that you didn't think you could do in the past like i don't know something will be like girls in computer science you know we don't have that many girls doing computer science in the indonesia right so so so i i like the idea of inspiring showing what the potential should be and allow you and help you get there versus just taking a kid and trying to without having a lot of offering a lot of information to get them to where

032they should be i feel that you know your parents might be a set of inspiration but will also be kind of a set of limitations right because if your my dad is a barber my mom work at a factory so if i just look at what they did i might not be here but when i went to a school that everybody pretty much went to college that basically opened your eyes so you know what those are the possibilities that ucid shows students that maybe in their home environment or family or whatever they want to see so uh the potential that a mom who sealed their kid is gonna be maybe very different to what us as a district will see on the kids because we have all these other areas of opportunity that they don't

033know so i think that that is part of in this case the mission which is inspired to something more than what you saw you could do yourself so you know we were talking about it or not at the dinner table this last week and walker you know the senior that he is just scoffed and rolled his eyes at the thought that graduation of all students should be a goal because as he put it any sentient being should be able to to graduate right that that goal was way too low if that that was our goal every kid graduates that that was just such a minimal bar with the the opportunities that are available in the district and i think one of the really good things about our mission or vision whichever whichever one you're talking

034about is that there's not some kind of minimum standard there's not some low bar um nor is there any specific guarantee right it's not like you know 50 of our kids are gonna go to college well maybe 75 of the class of 22 is going to college and 30 percent of the class of 23 is going to college because the other kids are deciding to join the military or you know do a a certification program right so it's that opportunity um that i think is a real key and so you know inspire um empower right we give them the the opportunities and the availability and then let them you know decide where that takes to empower them to increase that yeah and this has to be intentional and i don't think we were as intentional

035in v2021 and we are trying to win it 2.0 and to give you an example my two brothers went to bowie high school in arlington and my mom didn't speak english so i was there talking to the teachers and and the principles and all that and you know when my brother go to see i went to school and it wasn't a final degree it was kind of a mid-grade you know me and i said you know what's going on here this my brothers are not c students and they say oh you know you know hispanic kid and that's cool oh no he's doing fine he's gonna look great you know and i'm like no you know that's not that is not that's not meeting our expectations so if if in their school their expectation is

036less than what mom and dad and brother have that is a problem right so we we have to make sure that we set those higher expectations on everybody so that you know they don't because my brother was just laughing he was just smiling when i was at the meeting because he was not doing anything and getting a c and everybody was finding the school so what would he do any better right so so we had to make sure also that we set those high expectations you know we're giving you the opportunity to participate in x y and c but the expectation is that you're gonna put the work because we're not giving you an a or a b for free you know we there's some expectations so we as a lead leaders of this district

037dr ryan and his staff we had to set those high expectations not just about presenting the programs it's also making sure that kids understand that you know the opportunity is here but you got to work to achieve if not ain't gonna work i want to circle back to something that miss cantor said earlier and it kind of ties all of this in you use the word minutiae like there's a lot of minutia underneath these so if you look at this vision statement sort of the key words are the inspiring courage and empower to achieve full potential and then you have this in a global society at the end right but there is a tremendous amount of minutiae because what inspires one student may not inspire another what is expected of one student may not be

038expected of another and so if you go back to those things that a board is responsible for you hire and evaluate a superintendent to put systems and personnel in place to take care of that minutia to see that the the staff is getting professional development that is specifically designed to inspire encourage and empower students that the right personnel this this personnel you know if we've got them in a leadership position and they just don't buy into inspiring maybe they need to be in some other position and that's a you know that's a day-to-day operational minutiae thing that the superintendent is responsible for but all of you as the elected leaders representing your community for this school district you know have to be on the same page that this is where we're going like jorge was

039saying the vision is where we're going that's our aspiration of where we want to get to we want to see that all 14 000 some odd students are inspired encouraged and empowered to achieve their full potential in a global society um now we can pick those words apart and i have a feeling that there are some certain words in there that may be trigger words it's based on my own experience in my district and my own experience working with other districts um you know there are words out there in the education field that are sort of code word trigger words right um and i know that y'all have experienced some of this recently and and been in the news over some of these um but if i start you know throwing out some some three-letter

040word acronyms hackles go up on the back of people's neck right um and and so i think that that that global society and i'm speculating here if i'm completely off base throw one of your new shirts at me and i'll give it back and and move on um but we all have to be focused on that on this idea of of um inspiring encouraging and empowering um i pulled up my district in conroe and and stats for for your district now these are a couple of years old these are i get them from the texas tribune website because it's so easy to navigate it's all right there on one page not have to flip back and forth between tea spreadsheets but it's all directly from the tea spreadsheets so i know that you uh in

041some of my conversations some of you are very proud of your gifted and talented you're very proud of the opportunities that your kids have for things like cte and stem and things like that so um we're just as proud in conroe we're 69 000 students so size wise um you know we're bigger but um we are very diverse which i think that your community is is as well when you look at socio-demographic breakdowns you are a very diverse community racially economically the book you know you pick your identifier it's out there um so you have as of 2019 because reporting issues with 1920 were delayed a little bit at the end of 2019 you had over 20 of your student population enrolled in gifted and talented uh you had over 30 percent of your student

042population enrolled in some cte some form of cte under that umbrella so 20 30 my own district's only seven and a half percent gifted and talented and only 25 cte um so i think you're doing a fabulous job in some of these areas of inspiring encouraging and empowering these students to live into their full potential i would suspect if you're again knowing some of you knowing a little bit about this district you know you've got kids in cte that they're there because that's they're going to be their chosen career they're going to be cosmetologists they're going to be vet techs they're going to be welders they're going to work in an auto shop you have some kids that are in those programs because they don't know what they want to do and that sounds pretty

043cool and that's an opportunity for them to figure out what inspires them and then you have some kids who are doing that so that they can go to college and major in engineering and work at supercuts to pay their way through texas a m right i knew there'd be one one so there'd be at least one book whether they were nagging or not there would be one book um god's country so we'll we'll move on there's a long discussion about the vision but i thought it was very interesting that i got three responses that were word for word from this really hidden part of the website and one or two that were rough translations of that same thing one that was really not on that mark so um i think that that's going to be

044one of my recommendations when i come back is examine that vision and is that the mark that we're all going to agree to wrote towards so i i i have to hear from the channel and casey jc on channel this is mission ambition on organization is is critical and we would like to hear are you okay with this are you not any issues you have i mean when i when i came to the board i saw them i other than thinking they were you know flip i saw they were very good you know they were aspirational being the best i always thought you know we should be the best district in the state and that will be a goal and we're very close i feel that we're the best diverse district in the state you

045know because in terms of college uh readiness and you know prepping people for college the best districts are you know five of them are less than one percent poverty the other one is nine which is copeland and exhaust right so in terms of that i felt that that's that's those were very very doable goals um in terms of major innovation but you guys have any comments any any uh feedback on you're okay with it you know we're so sore you know i mean i think we have a good vision in the sense that who doesn't want to inspire people he doesn't want to encourage people who doesn't want to empower people i mean i think lisa said it right i mean if you don't want to do that and while you're here right you're kind

046of wasting your time i think the difference is we all agree on that being your vision or your mission because i kind of agree sometimes you can flip them like say this but the crux is how do you get there that's where i think people start splitting hairs and disagreeing so i think we agree on yes we want to empower we want to inspire we want to give them the best but how do you do it with limited resources i mean if we all had you know a rain cloud that could come over and give you buckets of money to roll your oyster but you also have to take take that with your goals uh the the five you know we got to do a budget we got to pass it but i have a

047tax rate so you got to do that with the confounds of the resources that you're given so that's where i think a lot of the rub comes in that's where the you know brother but what's great is that if we agree on this the how we get there knowing that we're trying to get there to the same point i think if we if we can agree on this then the getting there is going to be much more comfortable right we can you know we we can talk about the getting there as long as we agree that this is what we're still trying to do what are you any comments on this special mission i mean i think casey explained that well i think there's just different thought processes and how you know you you can

048accomplish things and you know one of the things that i just noticed and this is kind of that's not addressing this question directly but it's an everything that comes out of anyone's mouth no one is able to self-reflect in a way that ever allows for improvement everything you know we we're the best of it not we're not we've got a lot of work to do to be the best i want to be the best i want a chest pound i want to do i'll you know beat everybody and all the stuff but you know when we when you aren't able to step back and actually self-evaluate what you're in and that we can actually improve you can't improve if you can't acknowledge that you have improvements to make you're never going to improve so you're

049saying we're not self-evaluating i don't i don't hear self-evaluation ever no but in our mission statement it says we are the best it says to be the best and that is building exclu schools together we're not stating that we're the best that's what we're trying to achieve and through a superintendent evaluation through identifying lead 2.0 and having those four goals and then empowering our 18 to disseminate that down and build the structure underneath it and having that as a measuring stick is that not self-evaluation uh well it's not self-evaluation just in the fact of what you're saying so what you're saying basically is i say we need to sell it to evaluate you go but are we not self-evaluation so the question to you is what do we need to do the words we're parsing

050are we aspire to be that i mean so again you want to parse words when i'm saying that it's just about self-evaluating being able to say whether or not we're where we're weak where we need to be better how we can be better so where is that what is your suggestion or you that's why we're going to have this discussion and i think that what happens when i'm hearing just just hearing that interaction there you ask for her opinion she gives it and immediately we're on the defensive and we're not saying everything that goes on is horrible where are we we this this is team training i'm talking it's my right to talk so well this is exactly what we're talking about she gives her explanation that you ask for she gives a great explanation

051you can agree to disagree that's okay but we get on the defensive and so you didn't really in my opinion seem like you really wanted to know what we had to think because we immediately got on the defensive just take a step back reflect and see what it is that you think you can you can work upon we'll talk through it right we don't have to do it immediately because you need to sit back and reflect and talk but and that's kind of the stuff where it just seems like you know we say something and all of a sudden you're on the defensive and now we're on the defense so my takeaway just my take away from this though is that and i'm new i mean casey and i came in together i mean i'm

052seeing a lot of things for the first time and some of them i'm blown away like i thought we were the best i can confirm that we're the best at some things right i can i can now really say that with some confidence there are things we do very well but there's some other things i'm like we don't do that i mean you know so so i i think there's nothing to be defensive about because i think it's an opportunity to you know just double check if i mean you know maybe we could all agree we're doing the best on it it's not a ding against um the district it's not a personal ding it's something that everybody if if we're doing this vision and we're all going you know we're all paddling the same

053direction then it's going to have to have somebody go hey did you notice that rock over there hey did you notice that you know there's some rabbits ahead hey did you you know paddle on the left you know so i think that making some observations particularly for folks who are new particularly folks who are learning things kind of every day and caring for parents that you know because a lot of times we've all worked in our little worlds in my bubble world of pta we love the schools right but then you start talking to folks outside your little bubble and you go huh really so i think that that my my perspective is that if if the vision is good and that's the way we're paddling but the the inspection of the vision is something

054that we can all look at critically without trying to say that we're trying to we're working to make it better we're not trying to we're not trying to slam it try to make it better you know so that's inspiring we're inspired to make it better and i think if we if we operate into that framework then we will get better because getting defensive gets is nowhere kind of everybody's got their ore in the water we're just stopping we're holding but if we're you know oh look at the rock okay let's look at the rock is it a rock no it's not a rock it's a beaver okay keep going you know um so i think that that the perspective and i'm just going to speak to somebody who's you know pretty new to this job

055within her 13 months that um there are things that are surprising to me too i that doesn't make me love the district anymore does it it actually makes me love a little bit more because it gives me something to work on if we have if we're the best then we have nothing to work on so and and again it's not to say that we're not working on we are we do the superintendent evaluation we we talk about vendors we talk about um we talk about personnel we talk about these things and i think if we're all looking towards the vision and approaching people with having the best intent i think that that's how we get better and that's how we did the best but what else but we also need to look at the fact

056and this goes for all of us is that we're looking at that rock and that's a rock and i think it's a beaver and you stick to it that's a rock come hell or high water i'm not changing my mind that's a rock and i'm not changing my mind that's a beaver that's where the work comes in sure to work together to fight to get you to agree to that that's the only way we're going to be able to agree to disagree and sometimes that's just where you settle and that's okay so i i think scott made a really great point at the very beginning about the mission and the vision and the agreement i mean this is a team of eight and there should be eight responses to what the vision and the mission

057are because if we are it doesn't matter the other things adopt the goals and priorities about the policy that's the that's the nuts and bolts how you're going to do improvement and look for areas of places for work but shannon i would really like to know because casey answered it to some degree i really want to know what your vision for this district is and what you believe the mission of the district should be and after that i want to hear everyone i want to hear in everyone's words what their vision and mission is as well so so that's one that's one of the questions a couple down so can can we put a pin in that and come back to it the same job and we'll we'll do that very thing if you all

058are comfortable doing that next two questions those are the next two questions so so on the video let's listen on the mission let's talk about that real quick okay um i actually found two slightly different mission statements on the website under this kind of sort of secret if page i got through in the back door that had the vision it has mission and beliefs as well okay so there it says the mission of great colorado independent school district is to be the best period new sentence we will promote good citizenship and prepare motivate and encourage each student to reach his or her full potential with a safe caring cooperative environment by providing an effective and enduring education so the thing about mission statements and visions is they should be somewhat measurable you should be able

059to look back and say we did x and it accomplished this part of the mission statement and therefore it got us this much closer to the vision we accomplished why it accomplished this part of the mission statement and it got us this much closer to the vision so there's a lot of me in there but there are definitely some measurable things in there that's not the version of the mission statement that i got in the answer on the responses um the first part is but there's a different second part okay so if you just go to the website click district information i'll go to that tab um there's it you mean that that page that pops up tells where k through 12 public school system are the metroplex committed to educational excellence rigorous curriculum um

060and then the last sentence in that paragraph you have to be reading for it to realize it's talking about mission statement and says our mission is building excellent schools together hyphen to be the best and that some version of that was more closely related to the answer so we've still got this mission of being the best but i think one of the things that's definitely come out in this part of the conversation is whose definition of best that that's you know you can be the best by having the highest sat scores in the state you can be the best by having the lowest dropout rate in the state you can be the best by having the highest scores on your ccmr report at the end of the year right but which version of the best

061are we going to define as the best in that that second version building excellent schools together again getting into that minutia what does an excellent school look like how do we measure the excellence of a school and what does it mean to be the best right i think what what i'm interpreting from the way i got to these different parts of the website is that first mission statement the longer version seems to be something that was a holder was previous right right and so you had this section on the website at one point that was vision mission beliefs and i'm guessing as part of lead 2.0 and putting that stuff on the website that contains all of that somewhere in those documents this page got archived right it looks like that's what i'm interpreting what

062little i know about technology so at one point there was this mission statement that we're going to promote good citizenship okay there's actually antiques in social studies about good citizenship right we that's actually something we can measure are we fulfilling this text that addresses good citizenship and i think you know you could argue that ccmr is part of good citizenship are we turning out people who are prepared to be productive citizens in the world by going to college by entering a career by entering the military and our k-12 system has prepared them to do that um prepare motivate and encouraging student we're actually repeating some some of the same language from from the vision so which one is which right if we're using like you can't use a word to define that word so if

063part of our vision is encouraging we can't really be talking about encouraging in the vision because we're just talking about the same thing so i think this is back to jorge's point about flip-flop like which one is the aspiration and which one is the vehicle to get there so i think that's definitely a conversation moving forward so i just kind of want to want to bring that in into the conversation that even on the the mission statement i found two different versions depending on how i look for it it's very similar you still got the best part one of them has some measurable components the one that's on that's more of the public face mission statement really is not measurable how are we going to determine if we're building excellent schools now you may have

064you may have addressed that you may have some operational stuff that dr ryan is responsible for evaluating in his leadership staff that addresses that i hope so but that's sort of beyond the conversation of boardroom stuff that's day-to-day superintendent operational team of eight training u7 higher than one to handle that stuff right okay so the next two questions were about your personal vision and your personal mission as a trustee and if everybody's comfortable i love the idea of going around the room and people sharing that because while we need a unified direction for if you consider you know legally you are one entity you are not seven individuals you can only act as one entity right a vote is taken it's four to three that is the action of the entity whether it's 7043 that

065is the action of the singular entity so as an entity you need to have an agreement on where we're going and how we plan to get there now individually you can have your own personal vision and your own personal mission and this is probably going to speak somewhat more to your motivation for being on the board right and i think that's important to share and be honest with each other about why you're sitting in this room what is your vision as an individual trustee what are you bringing to the table what aspirations and vehicles are you bringing to the table to achieve your part in your seat as 1 7th or 1 8th of a singular entity so you want to just why don't you why don't you read them read what you have okay

066i would like to read mine yeah i actually think yeah so um so yeah i i like i said i assume this is our flip and i i my vision as innovation is something aspirational mission is what you do every day so in my personal vision for gcizd is to be the best public schools institution in the state and one of the best in the nation so kind of follow the to be the best building excellent schools together but and i defined that you know what is what is an excellent school that you asked that and for me k-12 is a conduit to to college or a career or the military so you we we're here to prepare kids for college or or you know to to to go into some sort of a professional

067um career so i'll measure the excellence in how well we prefer kids for that that's why for me personally star is not really a a meaningful measure of success because i feel that stars mention this this quick sprints third grade fifth grade whatever well we have more of a k-12 marathon to get kids prepared for this goal which is to get them not only into college but be successful in college right because the point is not to get you there is to get you graduated from you know four-year institution but of course we know that that's not for everybody so we have to have these other great options for people that don't want to do that while i always struggle with many districts uh is the fact that you you look at the kid and

068you kind of make this assumption that they could do this or not that and what we want to do is make sure that the options are there for you to do whatever you want to do so that's kind of what i feel you know being the best public school institution in the state i want the best in the nation is and my dream was to always be recognized as a nation you know as a as a very uh a strong uh one of the best schools in the nation and in terms of mission of like i said we want to flip those two and we get into more of the inspiring skills just for the full potential and for me it's about just providing leadership resources needed to ensure every student fulfills his or her

069potential as they move from k-12 into college the military or the professional career so those are kind of like two answers dr ryan would you care to answer is your unique 1 8th of the team of eight from your different perspective as a superintendent yeah so my my vision is every student succeeds and um that's a lot harder to do than it is to say and um and so especially when you start talking about people and all the different people that go together to work to to work it out it makes it really really a challenging thing but but you know i think about i think about a kid in doug poteet's automotive class that um that can fix anything right and he hates every other class that he that he's going to uh i

070think he's going to be successful but it may not be the same kind of success that other people would view as being successful and so uh and then there there are kids that you know that come to our board meetings that just kind of blow us away with how brilliant they are even if like third and fourth or fifth grade at playing the school game and so that's that's a different kind of success too so i i think how how we how i define student success kind of differs with with every kid and then as far as the mission goes my personal mission is to provide an excellent experience for my family and for my schools and those are the two most important things to me is family and school and i try to be

071a good dad a good granddad a good husband that somebody could look up to and then also try to make sure that our schools are doing the very best that they can for every kid that walks through our doors no matter where they come from i don't know about you all but there's a lot of poverty in my background and and the thing that changed it was somebody had mercy on my dad and gave him a gave him a basketball scholarship to cisco junior college harvard at cisco right so um and and he he turned that into a four-year degree at hardin simmons and then you know first you know first i mean his dad had a had a second grade education smart guy but that was all of his formal education and so it

072really changed really changed our lives and his family and then for our families on on after that and i think we have a lot of people that are like that in our community uh whether we realized or not and so i think it's very personal for me to have every kid have that kind of opportunity um going back just a little bit to to the mission statement when i when i came here 12 years ago i'm reading the mission statement and i'm and i'm thinking all right to be the best and and the best was capitalized and i i found it really hard to understand what that meant so i had to make it meaningful to me and uh before convocation that year i don't know what i was going to say and so but

073i knew i had to i had to connect things back to the mission statement and so that's that's when i came up with building excellent schools together and to me i say it all the time you can't build excellent schools by yourself and you can't excellent build excellent schools if you're not together and so it takes the business community and parents and trustees and other school employees and kids all to make excellent schools and so that's kind of where that that's kind of where that came from people have latched on to it we begin every single principles meeting with our mission is to be the best and we define that as building excellent schools together because i want to send a message of whether you're an elementary school principal or a middle school principal or

074a high school principal we're all on the same page and we're all doing the same thing um and and i think i think back at little first graders that uh that i remember by name who are now seniors um and and it's just it's so amazing to to just kind of see who they've grown up to be through the opportunities that we have provided them collectively as a as a community and um and so that that helps me understand that it really is about uh every student succeed so that's about that so you brought up an actual point i was actually going to mention at the end of this since you brought up with us now dr ryan has a clear definition in his head of what the best looks like with that caveat of

075building excellent schools together so i'm suspecting that when you're talking to these principals and these assistant principals and teachers again you have something at least in your mind that they understand what the bar is for excellence how we're going to define excellence whether that is an actual mathematical metric that we're going to uh to me or whether it is just a culture that we're going to establish a culture of excellence so you've already you've got as the as the operational leader you've got that definition in mind you can have individual definitions the reason for separating these out into what's the goal you know the vision of the district what's your personal vision is because your personal vision and mission you're going to know what that means if you use qualifying words like best excellent innovative

076in your mind you have a definition for those and what it means to meet that purpose of that that longer discussion at the beginning is we all have to agree on what the meaning of those terms are in the vision and the mission and be measuring them the same way is it uh um so for my personal vision i had to give students ample amounts of growth opportunities extracurriculars challenging classes and more importantly teach students to think critically and be able to problem solve and then for my mission statement i had to raise the standards of the declining district academically to have the transparent to have transparency in the way that we do the district's business and to focus on quality okay um just a couple of questions on that so you mentioned declining academically

077is there data to support that are are star scores dropping are we having are we showing evidence of declining academically and if so is it specifically code related or is there something else systemic going on there was no code they did there was a good competition so we've been on a decline for a while um you know my kids well first of all i went through the system myself so i know that when i went to college i was not prepared for college through grade 1 high school my daughter who was next and my husband uh well he went to the naval academy and he probably wasn't as prepared as he needed to be either um so you know i i've watched and lived and so i i've seen my kids are five school years

078apart so what my daughter's experience was versus what my sons was was night and day it was a completely different so we had a shift in how we were doing things and at that point i started watching a decline and yes we do have we've had performance declines for a while um you know take covet out of it and so yes quality matters to me challenging stuff matters to me improving upon those matters to me and the other word that jumped out there was was transparency are you talking about financial transparency board operations everything everything transparency i can give you an example uh so we we've had people come to board meetings and uh they've had concerns with you know books and things that are being read and the if it's appropriate or not for

079kids and so our district responded great like they they heard the parents they addressed it through they were open they were honest they actually had ownership of it they did a great job but then the next couple steps so then the next things then become black they're no longer transparent so they get people together they don't actually give you um they give you a five sentence synopsis on a book so you don't really know what you're approving so really we went through a whole lot of jumps and a whole lot of circus to not actually accomplish anything so it seems like a waste it just the whole thing just seeing it so then it causes frustration because you're not really ever going to get anything done you're just going to stay status quo which is

080exactly where where that process is so that's not transparent thank you mr ford yeah vision uh you know giving kids opportunities teaching them to be critical thinkers you know that's sort of my vision you know what i think the school should be my personal mission is so you know i kind of take a step back and think my role as a as a trustee is the oversight over gcisd because it's a separate entity and the board's a separate indeed we work together in tandem to complete my vision which is give the kids the opportunity critical thinkers be prepared to go in the workforce right whatever ends up being so i think you have to hold people accountable i think you do have to have tough conversations um you know you're not always going to get

081your way and that's okay you know the other party shouldn't always get their way either you're going to have difference of opinion um so for me it's really accountability you know probably my main mission and you know i guess transparency i'm more of a numbers guy so to me that's important that's what i do for a career you've got to be very transparent you're putting things out in the emails all the time so you gotta be able to back it so probably my main motivation and then i think you have to take a step back too and realize you know a lot of us when we when we first came on this board covered didn't exist in fact i think it didn't when we even put our name in that goalie if you run code

082wasn't an issue and so you have to go back and reassess you know why did i originally run versus what do i have to do now but i've had i've had to change that and if no one in this room has pre-assessed and changed sort of what their mission is then you need to reassess and change it because what i came in thinking i was going to do is completely different than what i've been doing so just you know not always necessarily i guess having group think but just taking critical lens on what we're all doing and then coming together and saying yeah we need to reevaluate what's important what are we to focus on and sometimes it's got to be what we need to focus on monthly what we need to focus on you

083know annually and what's our three or four year goal so i think that's a a great point about the reassessment is you know if you've had the same vision and the same mission statement as a district not even just individual but as a district for 10 12 15 years would definitely need to reassess and say because i mean those intervening years have brought huge changes um this part was you said you've been on the board for forever something about graduating methuselah or something i don't know um so i'm you know in your time on the board i'm sure that things have changed drastically though dr brian and your time as a superintendent i'm sure that the way that you know about the district has changed drastically i think we can all agree in the last

08423 months the landscape of education in america has changed dressly covet has brought a whole new set of challenges to every classroom and every district in the nation right teacher shortages for whatever reason have brought tremendous challenges that we didn't see a decade ago i was reading an article this week colleges in oklahoma are closing down their education departments because they don't have enough students entering they want to be teachers and so the colleges can no longer financially sustain having an education department to train teachers you know school safety has drastically changed the landscape of schools in the last 10 to 20 years my first career was in law enforcement and i i was on the front lines in the late 90s of training police officers to respond to school shootings because we had had

085two and now we're having two or three a week around the country it seems like right um cyber security has drastically changed now some of those are operational you know more on the operational side but some of them are definitely board issues we have data to show there is declining academic performance we have a pandemic that is either creating or exacerbating that and boards are responsible for ensuring individual student outcomes remember iso training right you got to do it again this year legislature change you got to get a new iso training it's no longer iso but same thing so things are constantly evolving which means if we're not constantly re-evaluating our organization's vision and mission as well as our own individual vision and mission we're behind the ball i think it's an excellent point mr

086ford brings up ms pardo um first i want to go to something shannon said about self-evaluate so right off the bat i'd like to say we need to self-evaluate and look at the fact that our mission and vision statement are so difficult to find that should be on the forefront of that page when you pop open our district you should be able to see what her vision and mission statement is it's difficult sad that he had to look i did too i mean i really had to go in and search i didn't read it i gave him he can read my answer just now she just but i did after we had a conversation i was trying to find what our transition and it was it was hard to find i found two yeah so

087there are we are here to build excellent schools together and that is to have those conversations we need to stop looking at the fact i know i'm on point but we've got to stop looking at the fact that we're trying to get each other we're not here to get each other we're here to work together and that part of that is the team of eight and to self-evaluate and to say we're not the best we're working to get to be the best but we're we're not and yes i am the one that was only on the board that started the mission and vision statement if you all want to stone me afterwards i'll meet you in the parking lot but that is something that we need to look at it's not difficult to find our

088mission invention um my uh and i do agree that i could see that the mission of vision could flip i think we've had those conversations in the past as well what i look at as far as the vision um is to ensure that every student in our district regardless of their background receive the best education that could possibly be to not only change their life but their family's lives because it's not only about our our students and a lot of circumstances it is about their families and that's where we look at collegiate academy one of the proudest things i can say as a board member is that we were partnered with tcc and started collegiate how many lives have changed first generation graduating first generation college and it's changing the kids lives and their families

089lives so to me that's my visions this is just to make sure every student um it's not all about the one top ten percent it's a it's about i was not the top ten i wouldn't have been in the middle you know um i had a teacher called my parents in and tell me i was borderline special we all know i'm special but you cannot we cannot look at the student and their circumstances or their appearance and write them off and i think as a district that's something we do not do and i'm so proud of the fact we do look at each of our students and we do have them write their own personal statement of what they want to achieve and we work with them on that um personally um what i've aspired

090to do and to be as a trustee is to be someone that has integrity and is able to work with other trustees and to listen to what the community says and listen to what our community what our trustees say and over the last 17 years we haven't always had boards that have the same vision and mission so this is nothing new that we all have a different vision and mission but the one thing that we have been able to do is agree to disagree listen to each other without judgment and leave the room with one thing in mind and that is educating our students and supporting the district and that's from the top of the line to the bottom i don't think there's really any chop to the bottom we should all be treated equally

091um but that's been my my role for 17 years where i feel like it has been what i've achieved or what i've tried to achieve mm-hmm long time call me lily don't call me mr summons that's my grandfather um so for me i said on the on the division piece is and i've said this for several years is to build continue building up on the foundation that's been laid before us because you know we're a 100 year old district and there has been great before us and that's not to say we haven't lost their way a few times and had mistakes because you know we're not the best but we want to strive to be the best and through that you have to write goals you have to track those goals then you have to

092assess them re-evaluate and adapt at least that's how i write my goals for every year and for quarterly as well you know we have a district so it's interesting when i started out when my daughter was in kindergarten who's now a freshman started out as a watchdog and then got asked to sit on the campus campus excellence committee and got to ask to sit on a district excellence committee and i'll never forget i went to timberline elementary school we went to kindergarten class and this girl had this young hispanic girl had written her personal her personal i think you were there with me maybe and i remember she we were standing in this hallway out came these three kids and the teacher and there's probably like 10 of us adults and i remember these three

093kids i mean they were kindergarten i mean it's tall and they were looking up and i remember kneeling down or squatting down to get on the her eye level but she told me her personal mission statement was to get better at math and she had a and she had it on the wall and had a and i was just like oh my gosh i just had a five-year-old be able to tell me what her goal is for this year to an adult i mean you know how intimidating that would have been and so we have a district that has cl elementary schools that are two percent economic disadvantage and we have classes that are 70 i mean uh title 1 schools that are 72 economic disadvantage and we when i say build up on the

094nation give all these opportunities to these children that that's the vision um the mission is to give have the monetary have the facilities have the teachers and the staff to meet the needs of those students that are in our school district the 13 000 students we have the 36 000 households that we have and the 87 000 residents that reside in our basically four cities that feed our district with that being said it's like to to lisa's point the one thing that's really touched me as part is collegiate academy uh because that started the year before i got on the board and we got to help i got to be part of it afterwards and help grow is that you're not just changing kids lives you're changing generation forward and backwards because then those parents

095aren't having to worry about funding college or trying to get the kids a place on their own and living at home so for me my personal mission is to listen to the community because i know every not everybody has the same backgrounds and same beliefs i do and to provide a safe learning environment for these kids because some of these kids their safest place is eight hours a day in our in our in our brick and mortar buildings where they're gonna get fed and they're gonna get loved on you know and so provide a safe learning environment and then having the staff the facilities and the tools and the budget to fund that so yeah so those are all measurable things like we can measure do we have enough staff do we have certified teachers

096to be in every classroom do we have highly qualified teachers do we have you know do we have enough money to pay for the for purchasing the textbooks to put gas in the rest all of those things right um i want to i want to mention something that and to that point like right now like to to casey's point he's absolutely correct on the standpoint of you come in thinking one thing or like hey here's what i'm going to try to do because that's where we're at we've been involved but through covet take convince example for the buses we didn't have bus drivers i mean literally we're short bus drivers like 13 i think at one point we had them running two routes you know or people that had their license that didn't drive on

097a daily basis and i'm pointing at you because i know some of our coaches that have their license stepped up and drove and then you've got board members going and serving lunch i was at grapevine high school the second day and i walked by and i'm like coley what are you doing she's at graveyard high school serving lunch i mean everybody has stepped up you know and so that goes back to you know during like casey said that's different right now what we thought we some of the things we need to do hey we've got to handle some other things we'd be subs if they let us yeah exactly they won't let us be so that's right so so both louie and ms pardo mentioned the past and and building upon the foundations that have

098come before and you mentioned uh previous boards and there's always ups and downs there there are boards that'll go for a decade and it's a 7-0 board and there's no dissension or no outward dissension and then you go through periods where there's you know there's there's infighting and there's clawing and there's position and all this kind of stuff that is definitely not unique to gcisd this is nothing new and this is nothing unique to your district right i mean you are not the only board that is expressing tensions internally you are not the only board that has ever had arguments where people are talking about feeling like they're going on the defensive and that their voice isn't really being heard this is absolutely nothing new um so the point is is to move past all

099of that and figure out how to work through it give you some tools to work through that okay okay so i i guess i did get something set my mission in my thing so i'm gonna and so what i said is my um vision is to serve all stakeholders with careful insistent listening and to do my best to create an education that will serve our students throughout their lifetime so and and for me actually mine have been pretty consistent even through covet i hope that that that that always stays the same i mean they think that yes they can evolve but i think you do even you know with all the different things that come up i think that can that is consistent and then for my mission but to advocate and promote best practices

100to ensure academic success safety and security for school responsibility and maintaining a great place to work by serving all all stakeholders students staff and community now i just campaigned like a year ago my experience in the district has been my personal experience in the district has been absolutely exceptional i have three daughters i've got a freshman in college so i just graduated i've got a senior right now somebody graduated another one and i've got a sophomore and they've had they've navigated gifted they've navigated special ed they've navigated we have navigated um you know general education we have navigated getting to college navigated at athletics um other extracurriculars and cte we we've had exceptional teachers who've had teachers who had to power through um and so um so my personal experience has been that i mean

101i mean extraordinary and that's what inspired me to serve um what i think i can i can speak to shannon is that turns out not everybody's had this great experience right they're they're they're students who are not um you know are you know because talking about academics that have that appear to be declining and we need to of course examine that so what is that so that's not my experience how do i dig in and be you know a good listener and try and help support initiatives that will you know turn this ship around but if if indeed their thing well for sure there's always things that have to get if we're not we're done working then we're done right but um uh you know things that we need to work on so thank you

102so for my personal vision um i wrote and i i really wanted to keep this part simple right i didn't get proposed on this so personal vision as a trustee was work as a team of eight using our own strengths to advance the district's mission and vision because i think my role as a trustee is you know regardless of what the text education code is saying is that as a team of eight that each of us are contributing and to use the metaphor used earlier rowing in the same direction right so um and and if we're not working together on the district's mission and vision then either we need to find out why or we need to read into michigan and then my personal mission as a trustee to use my own skills to the

103best advantage for gcsd students staff parents and community that i put the talents god has given me my curiosity and desire for lifelong learning to work doing good in my community in turn that supports a and i i i feel this deep down in my bones a personal core tenant and belief in the power of public schools is stated in the texas constitution to be the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people i mean that is a 30 000 foot foot view but that is ultimately what public schools are here to do is to preserve the rights and liberties of the people there's no no charge in the constitution to any other entity to do that it's not given to private schools i would argue it's not really even given to charter schools

104because you can't even elect a chartered board and so i don't even know how you're preserving the right of people to vote when you have a board that isn't even elected so um for me my my personal mission as a trustee is i take that oath to the texas constitution deeply deeply personally and seriously i hope during that discussion that you've heard some other people that you have something in common with right um i heard um some a lot of language maybe using slightly different vocabulary but really driving at the same point about opportunities and resources for students i heard conversations about transparency in different forms accountability integrity i heard several people talk about listening both to each other and to the community so i really think that you at the core you've got a

105lot of common pieces that are already there that your your individual visions and missions um have a lot of common threads running through them you're all here kind of for the same purpose sitting in your 1 8 of the room right um so now the trick moving on from here is going to be to figure out how your what you bring to the table as your personal mission and vision propel this entity towards its vision and mission right how much of that or stroke are you using and is it all equal and are we all rolling in the same direction or is one of our our vision and mission trying to roll to the right one's trying to go to the left and we're sitting still um mr president if it's amenable to the chair

106could i suggest maybe a 10-minute recess you got it for my brother i've been at this for about an hour and a half so a lot of people get up stretched for legs and that's coming back at 7 25. thank you are we back in session yes president all right all right um so let's spend a little bit of time really kind of zeroing in and talking about lead 2.0 and and how it guides um what you're doing as a district because i think that's that's vital that you're so public and upfront with these four i keep calling them pillars but these these four priorities um that you have as a district um and and holding that out in front of everybody and like i say i was probably three or four responses in before

107i saw mention of a reference to a elite 2.0 priority being part of every agenda item so that that's that takes a big burden off of this conversation where i wanted to go with this but i do want to want to talk about that um and get kind of your individual perspectives on how that is guiding the district um a couple of years into it and and the fact that it was sort of finalized in 19 and now covet is thrown right at the front of that and how if at all has that disrupted the the functionality and the effectiveness of lead 2.0 so we talked a little bit about uh you know maybe there's a need to revisit vision and mission for the district and and i'm not saying they need to be changed

108i'm saying i think that needs to be a conversation if anybody needs to agree upon that this is still where we're going i think the same thing with lead 2.0 it grew out of a previous version of that with lead 2021 and in those years leading up coming up to the end of the of 2021 you realize let's revisit this and revamp it based on what's happened in the previous seven or eight years since it was drafted so i want to have a conversation about how the last two years have affected lead 2.0 and is that still the effective guide for from the stores operations so uh the question was you know just tell me about it in your own words what was the process who was involved what product did it produce how is

109it guiding the decisions of the district and how is it guiding your decisions as a trustee so i think i got a good idea over a thousand people total involved including community stakeholders who were not direct stakeholders of the district so like business people empty nesters who didn't have kids in the district but they're citizens of the district teachers administrators i love the inclusion of students and i'm also going to roll this next question in there for kind of for time sake one of the things i noticed that kept coming up in those documents and in the video about it was the word innovate and innovation so let's let's have this idea so y'all tell me how lead 2.0 is still guiding the corporate body the entity of gcisd board of trustees and also how

110is it guiding your individual actions as a trustee in addition to what does it mean to be innovative are you all a doi are you officially in the district of innovation okay i thought i saw that on the website would like to start tell me about how the 2.0 is guiding the district well i'll start i was only made the comments that honor agendas because i i um and my agendas in my office when i used work we always used our mission and our vision and values when we were having conversations and i think even through coving we continue to have that i mean it's if you're going to fill out a form to be on our agenda it's there and what's the lead 2.0 goal so um even through covid we you know identify

111and remove barriers okay so we need to all be virtual so how do we do that like how do we remove the barrier for students and getting them hot spots or um places to do work you know like parking spaces close to the schools where they could still do work and things like that um so um i i wasn't part of the team that developed these these goals but i i talked a lot to folks who were and i think that that even through this and because we're still focusing on um you know being best you know but trying to keep on doing what's that next best thing for our kids um so between the mission and these goals i think we've been really consistent i mean you know people's definition of what would be

112best masking and not asking right you know that so that's you know um going to be different but i think that we still talked about it and we still voted on it and we still worked on what was best um to the best of our if abilities see me over here on my phone i'm not texting or emailing or something some web pages i'm able to get to open on my laptop and some i'm not so i'm using both devices here i just took it you didn't care for what she was saying please don't check in your textbooks hey in my computer time go out before they come up so i'm using my phone right now to look up before priorities i'm glad you said that because i was thinking my goodness you can keep

113it you may need to record them i got them right here on my phone okay all right thank you you know if you look at our four goals these these were um voted on and worked on and then voted on as a board before the majority not majority but a couple three of y'all were here these are way before covet and you read these now and they are just like you can step right in with all the challenges that we have faced over the last two years identify and remove barriers design learning environments uh create a culture that fosters learning and in fact we communicate which and we're all still working on what those do look like with coven some more than others and i think we struggle on one of them but it just

114that just really to me is just amazing how these were prepared for a non-coded but we're stepping right in and able to continue on 2.0 with the four goals that we have so do i understand the the process you've got over a thousand people across the breadth of the community that worked on this as a process and then all of that information came to a smaller committee that then distilled that input from a thousand people to create the four priorities part of the document correct okay correct did you have anything else so i sat on both lead 2021 and lead 2.0 and i don't know if it was corey or it was actually lisa that said it that you know we worked on these that came before the board and it was not fast but

115it was actually when we came brought it for the board uh jorge actually and i believe jesse uh had some questions on it uh because i said i don't know how to come mean i think becky was on it and mint knows me mindy and someone else maybe it was doc me mindy and doug were on it and we had to come back to the board and they're like okay yeah this makes sense but we need some clarity so we had we called a whole nother meeting with like the 80 something people and said okay here's what the boards challenged us with here's some clarity we need and so we had to go through it again and work on some things to sharpen this up because they had some insight and had some experience and

116so that's what was impressive to me is that when it went to the board the first run it wasn't just like oh yeah it was like okay hey have you thought about this what about this so we took all those questions back to the 80-person final committee which was still made up of students stakeholders non-pair i mean parents business owners people that have a stake in our district um and the big thing for me is like it's the difference between 2021 and 2.0 is that we wanted to have the four pillars be very specific but then underneath it have what it meant for staff outcome for leadership what it means to a student and what it means to our community and stakeholders versus it just being a blanket because the question goes back to what

117you said earlier and like what shannon said in terms of uh evaluation you hot if if a goal is not measurable and you don't have matrix in place to measure it or the right data points then how can you tell if it's a success or not and that's why it was like what is we created a picture of it and what does that look like for the staff students and community because those are our three main stakeholders so one of the things that really pressed upon me and we didn't know this at the time because this was pre-covered was i'll never forget i was sitting at a table and i had three or f i had a i had three or four students and i had a 7th grade student a 9th grade student and

118i can't remember if i had a 5th grader or a 10th grader i can't remember because i had those that combination but the 7th grade student looked at me and goes what's the deal with all the academic stuff we've got it that's a that's a that's table stakes that is a known fact we have to make grades period parents expected teachers expected society suspected they're like if we want to get a job whether that's at her words or literally if we want to go to college or get a job not just go to college but have a job after high school we it's known for academics she goes we need support we need help navigate and her words were we need to understand the emotional and social piece of this and so then that then

119we got together that was a group of like 10 of us and then when it came back for all eight groups of 10 that was a common theme through it and then here we go that was pre-covered and then we get to covet and look at one of the biggest struggles we've had is the well-being of both parents well-being of students because there was no social interaction there was no going to school and everybody's been isolated and so to me that was a really big uh success even though we had it prior to covet that it's still very evident and still still very important improvement for today's environment with what we're going through and for years to come so that's my take on on these well i'm proud of these i think they're a lot

120better than 2021 because it was so big it was a mile wide and an inch deep and this is an uh inch wide and a mile deep because it's focused on our community and what the people need within our district students staff and community so that sounds like a couple of people that feel like it's held its own through coded yeah anybody else have input on that part of it oh yeah i mean i i definitely agree with with that definitely we're going to cover it and some of the things that we were including the goals um what i said is i mean i pretty much kind of paraphrase the goals into kind of small statements of identifying and removing barriers in struggles supporting students social emotional well-being make instruction engaging fun just by encouraging

121students voice and participation and continue to effectively communicate to all the dcid stakeholders so i feel the 2021 brought us into some sort of status of kind of a college prep getting kids prepared for college or careers but then this one is kind of looking more about individual needs on on maybe non-academic aspects where you're starting supporting the whole student um and one of the reasons i had a little bit of problem with this with week 2.0 is that i i didn't like the fact that we didn't have an academic like a strong academic goal as part of it um but of course we had these top goals that kind of touched in a lot of those areas but definitely with kobe this this kind of fits right in um and i'm i'm very supportive

122of these goals and i feel that we are continuing to evolve and improve in trying to support the students and also the one that we always said that we continue to struggle and it's a challenge is continue to communicate with our community you know these different ways and the groups um so that's definitely one area that we will continue to work i was gonna before he said that that was one thing i forgot to say is goal number four effectively communicate with target audiences we have struggled with that um for some time and i speak i think that speaks to shannon's comment on transparency in case of transparency and you know looking at with fresh eyes of course you just looked at it with fresh eyes we can't find the division we can't find a

123mission and then we've got lead 2.0 but then we've got the superintendent goals you know i if there's a i think providing clarity for the community would would um would be super helpful because you know we talked about you know the math and the reading and you all the academic things that we need to focus on that are priorities um but how how it filters what has so it starts with the vision then it goes to the mission then it goes to lead 2.0 and then it goes to superheroes how do we how does that how do these those align you know so providing some clarity on that just now that i'm thinking about all the pieces that go into what we're working on and how do we deliver it to parents and community right

124in a format that they understand and speaks to them because we're sitting here with all the different language linguo and all the acronyms and synonyms and we underst i say we i mean the staff and and so forth understand it because we deal with it not us as a board on a daily basis but on weekly and parents deal with it on daily from uh get the kid to school get them to this practice make sure they had their lunch or they missed the bus or are they are they rested for their test whatever it may be or am i going to be at their uh donuts with dads and muffins with moms or whatever so how do we communicate that in a format that reaches the target market as opposed to and that it's

125in terms and in a format they understand and i think at a district of our size with so many opportunities and information and extracurricular activities and programs it's difficult and we've not been successful at it and even for that even for the parents because i know one of the other things is is from the communication pieces uh we made it a board like we challenged ourselves internally several years ago and we redid our website what four years ago maybe and it got better but it's not great it's it's cumbersome and a lot of days you know everybody goes to a website and if it wasn't for that little hourglass or icon at the top magnifying glass it'd be tough to find a lot of stuff so and my example with that would be that that

126when when some star scores were reported locally um people got incensed they were like what do you mean people are failing math i mean you know we had all the family algebra right and what is that reflective of now again they took it in what so i mean you know after you know whatever anyway um but then i say hey but these are the goals we're working on and here's how we're measuring that responded back to constituents who are worried about that they go oh well we just thought you weren't working on them because they weren't someplace like of course we're working on them but i think and to that point oh my gosh the communication on that right so this whole oh my god they're failing algebra the the district students are not failing

127algebra a subset of a group of students that did not so we we have really changed our math opportunities and models here so that the majority of kids take algebra one in eighth grade that's that's essentially on track now for a student in g7c and we had a handful of students at both of the two traditional high schools that took algebra one in ninth grade so they're not on the accelerating track and unfortunately they were caught in that code of year and those are the students for very obvious reasons did not do well on that algebra one star test and so somehow because we failed horribly and even communicating that in the first place it's somehow been transcribed to school district is failing at math when in fact it's a subset of about 200 students

128who number one were not in the accelerated track to begin with in number two or caught up in a special year and then number three you know this as well as any of us we all were under not only a moral obligation that i might sound like um to take care of those kids but you know there was also legislation right and and so of course we were going to do things to meet the needs of those students and we failed miserably at the communication about getting ahead of things that need that we know are going to be a hot button in the community that we know we're going to touch a nerve in the community and and then when the conversation does get away from us we have zero plan to be able to

129try to get that back um i think our communication with um uh large segments of our community are off the mark and and failing miserably when people are way too quick to believe something like that then that is a huge giant screaming indication that we are dropping the ball in our communication and you get it and i get it and shannon gets it but i think that that sounds a little bit like we're coming up with an excuse so i think we the approach that we made i guess yeah i guess we could have communicated better but the approach that we went was we're gonna fix it and that's what the community wants to hear is that i hear you but where did i even find that message right but but i mean what i

130got was we're working on it now that you're right i had to call 100 people and tell them what we're doing so we've got a class in high school and they're doing every day and we've got tutors out at the zoo and they're all and we've all identified these kids right these aren't just a number on the side but but i think that um yeah so it does come back to communication but i but again talking about transparency and how these things all align i think that you know from a newcomer guys i can see and i mean you'll even listen it's been forever saw that we don't have these things out someplace publicly where we can be transparent and organized and look organized and our thoughts and our objectives um be it vision mission

131lead 2.0 superintendent gold how those all sync up so i've got several pins pushed into things over here i'm going to circle back to several things that have been said uh any other input on this how lead 2.0 is is holding up and actually really guiding the board individually and holistically i'm just going to say this because i think it's um it's a vital piece to this but you know the the barrier aspect is it's comical because in a district that's supposedly breaking down barriers we create our barriers have barriers because we label and we define we do all these things that literally we build more barriers than we actually break down so uh i don't understand what that could do clarified a little bit well so again you know we like to use the

132word inclusive and so everybody we want to be inclusive but yet my viewpoint is not welcomed i've been in all these schools we'll we've got uh you know lgbtq stuff all over the place includes so what if what if that's not who you are are you inclusive for that person we've started becoming to where we have to identify in all these different ways that that that's not inclusive that's actually not even breaking down barriers it's creating barriers so really you would have a sign on a classroom door that says you're all welcome and i can't wait to see you i mean that that's breaking down barriers that's actually welcoming everyone that's in there so guys for clarification on one thing i want to continue this discussion because that's on the agenda was to move into

133exactly what you're talking about so it's a perfect segue um you made the statement that your viewpoint is not welcome were you speaking you as a board member your viewpoint is quicker i mean i'm just like as a student as a student thinking i'm in this classroom and my viewpoint is not welcome right yeah okay so you think both yours the community and students if it differs from what we think are what the board's goals say that when you're not heard is that what you think the community feels you feel the students no i'm saying broadly like barriers like you you've got kids that's all we're doing is defining them that's all that's happening we're just defining people and when you say we're defining them is it society is it leadership is it teachers who's

134defining them so how do we go about uh removing those barriers yeah i mean that's what we're talking about how do we go about if those are barriers and if they're able to define who they are how is that a barrier if they are part of the lgbt and there is a place for them or if they are part of students standing strong there is a place for them whether that's in groups there's nothing wrong with that you want to have class improvements that's right i'm just i'm asking this kind of time athletics band all the things being different you know having different groups and there's nothing wrong with that but what i'm saying is when you're promoting uh black lives matter for example if you're promoting a certain ideologies that well then you're not

135you're not being inclusive to all you're not you're promoting certain things so for example when um i refer to the third floor of collierville heritage is the lgbtq indoctrination hall when you had the entire hall with five different flags and must read books and what they are and all of that stuff is that really breaking down barriers if you're a student walking down that hall or is it creating them i would say it's building a barrier so with that specific example do you think that um that the attempt i just want to make sure i'm hearing you right and we can have an open conversation do you think there was an attempt to try to break down barriers for lgbt students that then resulted in additional barriers being placed for other students or contacted by

136teachers and students that were uncomfortable okay so i would say yes okay so so the attempt to to remove a barrier for one group created barriers exactly okay okay so the reason i wanted to talk about this is because one of your your four areas talks about social emotional learning um and i'm curious where you as a district are on diversity equity and inclusion because this is all kind of one in in community-wide this is all part of kind of one big conversation right um and these are some of the the i want to say code phrases but some of the things that are that are hot topics um in our communities and i suspect if your community is anything like mine that you are having these conversations with your constituents and they're certainly having

137them with with each other right so um i've lost count of the number of times that the the concept of removing barriers creating opportunities has come up so what does that look like in gcisd what what does it mean to remove a barrier um and what happens when the attempt to remove a barrier for one group creates actually creates or creates an illusion of new barriers for another group so um i can go back to the lead 2.0 committee and i can talk about what was the thought process behind the word bear and i can back up a little bit more the whole i mean i think lead 2021 has been very successful for our community for a lot of kids and a lot of different personalized programs have been developed and a lot of

138things have happened for kids and elite 2.0 is like whenever you update your phone and the and the software on your phone you don't throw out everything with the phone you just try to fine-tune the things that are happening on your phone same same kind of thing so we didn't we didn't do away with lead 2021 we're just trying to find the things where we were deficit i'm trying to try to pick them up so things like uh dyslexia is a barrier for learning uh reading is a barrier for learning reading comprehension if you're not on on grade level about third grade then you there are all kinds of statistics later on that aren't good uh algebra by eighth grade is a is a barrier or mathematics computation or a competency is a barrier um

139a lot of times vision is a barrier and they're a little there are a lot of kids that aren't doing well in school and then when you get them tested for me for eyes you know get their eyes tested then the next year and all of a sudden they didn't know you know a lot that it's crazy but a lot of times you just you just don't know so so those are the kinds of things you know a lot of times poverty is a barrier uh experiences uh all of us have different experiences in our homes and when when we come to school it all kind of got to be the same and so and so sometimes that's a that's a barrier so those are the kinds of things that were in the mind of

140the committee and louis you may you may have something else but that's that's what was in the mind of the committee whenever we were talking about barriers and and and then i'll i'll say one thing about a word that you said you said emotional uh social and emotional learning and we we were real careful to avoid that term social emotional well-being right you're absolutely right because um we heard from juniors and seniors on the committee that uh you know they're kind of an emotional wreck because of all of the gpa pressure that is there or the ap class pressure that is there and we heard from middle school kids about different kinds of pressures that they had and so so we were real careful to talk about social and emotional well-being because that's really what

141we're concerned about you know uh making sure that kids have the coping skills and the teachers are helping them with the coping skills to be able to kind of make it through and and what's a pretty high stress environment for a lot of kids so um that's just my two cents about the barriers uh that were that we were intended uh as far as the committee talking about and then um i want to make sure we're pointing out using the the verbiage that the committee really felt was yes strongly felt was the the verb is using which is uh social and emotional well-being thank you for the corrections i appreciate that did did we cut you off ms brown did you have anything else i'm really intrigued by this this part of of uh the

142attempt to remove barriers for some people might create and that hadn't even crossed my mind so i really appreciate that that contribution um so how did what would that look like so students standing strong might be a barrier to cancer down an entire hallway and and let's read these books and oh let's talk about these things so it's different it's not the same we're not even talking about it's not even apples to apples so you're taking one ideology you're you're and you're literally you know everyone has to embrace whatever that is and i i do i think it's i think it's problematic the student study strong has my personal home address and it emails me documentation but i see what shannon's saying um they have my personal home address but but would they be allowed

143to have an entire hallway with reed read the bible read the you know the book of john you know and would they be able to do are are we looking at all of the clubs the same way or all the have they asked so that's well there are special laws about all of that so if it's a student group you've got one set of things that you can use and if it's a if it's an adult-led group there's another set right and and i don't know where this falls as far as the specific example but you know these were teachers that were putting i don't know what you're i know billboards you're thought not billboards yeah but it wasn't a billboard out there with that on there um but i don't know what your bulletin

144board i know what you're talking about i didn't know it was the entire third floor does anybody else see what miss braun is talking about sea area so i yeah i mean i could see for example that if an entire hallway was dedicated to students standing strong that would be very intimidating to our students that are not christian for example um that would be very very much a barrier um you know so i i think it's certainly a worthwhile conversation to have you know are we making sure that things are indeed inclusive and so you know instead of an entire hallway dedicated to one topic the hallways are dedicated to multiple topics so that there's multiple voices heard and i'm not just picking on students standing strong i mean it could be ffa it could

145be fellowship sure i mean we've got we've got vegetarians right right we in fact we have hindu kids i you know i i would see some students having some struggles if we line the hallway leading into the cafeteria with you know here's where what your ffa projects were processed into right i want to try to try to stitch this together with several other things that have pins in them here because it's all orbiting around the same thing so um on the topic of communication with that specific example that miss braun gave was that a district initiative that teachers did because something came down from administration that says it's uh it's gay pride month we want to make sure these students feel acknowledged so we're going to do this was it something that individual teachers did

146as part of an english or a social studies unit was it something that a club sponsor did because to dr ryan's point there are you know if we're talking about classroom curriculum that the students don't have any choice but to sit through there's a different set of rules as opposed to an extracurricular club that's completely voluntary right so um i'm curious as to maybe the let's just use this as an example that could be extrapolated to ffa or or any of these other things so you know what was the genesis of that coming about and on the communication piece how was that discomfort communicated to campus personnel to individual board members to district administration and what did those communication efforts produce so are you asking me that question yeah yeah i'm asking anybody based on

147this saying we will use your example as as so it was brought to my attention so again in our district and this is you know people don't like to hear this part of it but teachers parents students they don't feel comfortable going to a teacher and complaining about xyz people think they're going to be punished they think that there's going to be a repercussion for a grade or you know whatever and and that y'all can say whatever you want however that's not the truth that that is not what i hear so people are not free to go speak and take it to appropriate people so that stuff came to me i forwarded it to dr ryan he did handle it uh meaning he addressed it with the school um it was through a diversity and

148you can jump in because you probably know more of the details than me but it was through the diversity club uh it was supposed to get anything that goes up should get approval it was sent to get approval it got missed so they put it up anyway with no approval so just ask permission you know yeah forgiveness later and so that that's as far as i know about that in terms of communication with uh because there there were people that knew about it and that were upset about it so how we communicated it past that i don't know and i think you hear from the ones that i i will have to disagree with you that that everyone's in the same feels the same um about being free to talk about what they what they

149feel or having a problem so i think you hear from the ones that may have had a bad experience or don't feel comfortable or um but then i think we've all heard also from parents that do feel like they can go speak to a teacher and they know that there's a chain of command and that's a part of our role is to explain that change of command to our parents so not just not completely disagreeing with your i'm sure there are parents that feel that but i think there's just as many parents that feel like there is open communication there is um a free the freedom to go speak um to a parent or to a teacher i think it comes all about how that communication takes place so again like in my head you

150know like inappropriate tweets for example things that you know when when teachers are asking kids to follow them on twitter or following them so again like something like that if you're uncomfortable with it i really don't think you go to the teacher with that then you go to the principal right so so that's kind of what i mean yeah is that like that little okay right now there's certain topics that i think if the teacher is promoting that you're not going to feel comfortable addressing sure yeah true that's where the chain of command comes in that they could teach our role so how does a [Music] missed communication between one club and a campus leadership then translate into an indictment of [Music] or a characterization of the district in terms of um directives or mission

151or vision because it stayed up for two weeks it was part of a uh scheduled so it was up for two weeks and you didn't say anything no it was up for two days and i said something and so i i think um again an unfortunate miscommunication right there are 17 campuses i don't want to guess how many hallways and so i i think my question here is how does that then translate to some sort of um of issue because what i'm getting at here is that a campus issue was resolved at the campus level but that is does not mean that it's a part of our strategic plan to have miscommunication or part of our strategic plan to to have any particular agenda or one-sided perspective as as the mission or vision of the

152district and i guess what i'm getting at here is that i'm concerned that we have tempests in teapots that there was clearly a communication issue on the campus as it was resolved and i'm not understanding why um i mean that's how the process is supposed to work and i hear so i do hear what you're saying on people not feeling comfortable right but in between the campus and a trustee are a number of different stop gaps and and maybe this goes back to the communication of and in a way this starts at the top with us right that it's incumbent on us to remember what our roles are as a trustee that when people come to us that we help guide them as to what the route of communication should be i mean that's kind

153of what you were saying i mean we've had trustees in the past that um interfered on campuses and it made things difficult for particularly the campuses are you insinuating that i interfered on the campus is that what you're doing you're not the christian oh okay you're not i think she's saying that there was a trustee previously that would have handled it much different than you going through the channel and also globally speaking right because this is something that you run into in in board training quite frequently right is that respect for the chain of command and the the role of a trustee particularly in a governance perspective and so um no no definitely not directed to you because the reason that that that governance management line is there is to prevent the confusion particularly at

154the campus level and then on up into the the administration and central office as to who's in charge because then then then teachers and principals they they don't know who they're reporting to and it's very very confusing and it leads to um campuses that aren't well run because nobody knows who's exactly in charge because the teachers can see right that if the principal is not the person that's handling the campus right then that's a loss of confidence in the leadership on a campus well so from my perspective in terms of the way that i perceive our district says that nothing negative is happening happening right so they deny deny deny and then so when it is happening well it's just on this small scale it was just one classroom oh we already dealt with that

155we had to remove that from twitter oh uh just 100 people saw that i mean whatever the excuses so they never fully address whatever the items are whether you're saying there's something system no saying that we tolerate a lot of things i think we tolerate a lot i think it causes confusion so i want to i want to keep going i'm going to turn this slightly okay um the board is responsible for doing things like setting policy remember those those five broad areas we talked about setting policies and stuff so you're going to have policies that address things like student clubs and equity and inclusion and things like that you have um visions and missions and and a document that talks about re removing barriers to education right so my question is in in your

156case with the the wall on the third floor with your ffa example are those unintentional barriers that were created are they create are those barriers a barrier to students education so i think we can all agree if a student doesn't feel welcome then it's difficult for them to learn just like if they're hungry they can't learn if they're too hot or too cold they can't learn if they're worried about what's going on at home you know they can't learn so you've got the social emotional well-being piece in place right so do these additional type of barriers that are unintentionally put up that we're talking about are they barriers that impede some students performance in the classroom with seeing elsie hanging as a side of beef affect a kid's ability to learn algebra right does walking

157down that hallway making a student feel uncomfortable does that make them unable is that a barrier to them learning texas history that's a great question i think it goes beyond that though i i think that's where you look at this i had to say it um i can't say that it's going to affect their ability to learn algebra but it is going to affect their value and their moral and and here we're supposed to our goal we have a goal that is social emotional their family value is not that and for that to be plastered down a hallway that i've got to walk down every day to go to class that's a problem to me i mean if that's not my value and family my family values and that's being thrown at me i do

158think i do think that that's a could be mp that student from i wouldn't say from learning but it impedes and it affects their emotional side so i do i right to add to that if you're trying to you know teach these students to respect authority and chain command they're plastering this stuff it's probably there from authority figures so do you trust those authority figures now do you trust the chain of command it adds other kinks and what are we teaching if we know that's there as a student i know that that's there that it wasn't supposed to be there now i'm learning that i do what i want to and ask for forgiveness later right or there's only rules for some certain rights right so certain groups get away with things and other groups

159aren't allowed to do them right that's definitely a barrier yeah so i i i personally believe and i would say that there's there's some research to back this up that one way that we learn as as human beings that we learn is from our mistakes or from the challenges that we face we may not even consider it a mistake but from from the challenges we face so let's let's try to reframe this a little bit i'm a student who goes through that hallway and it violates my personal family values that i'm being taught at home and that causes me to be distracted in the classroom and have some other issues and it's addressing social emotional well-being but this brings me back to something that louis said quite a while back about teaching kids to be

160critical thinkers right is there an opportunity for us as a district to use those types of things even when they happen accidentally nobody intended to offend somebody and to create a barrier right but if we created a culture where the teachers can immediately latch onto that or the campus administration can latch onto that and use that as a learning opportunity for staff and for students to be critical thinkers to to have a discussion about what do we do when we're in a situation that we can't immediately remove ourselves from when we're faced with a challenging viewpoint what happens when we're sitting in a boardroom and we're faced with a challenging viewpoint right are we going to get up and leave a meeting or are we going to use this as an opportunity to have critical

161thinking discussions about how we approach those situations but you're talking about an adult versus a child well i'm talking about both right because i mean this is this is team of a training so i want to i want to address it from both perspectives you're absolutely right so as adults is there an opportunity for us to use that to exercise our critical thinking skills and how do we as a board translate those skills to the campus into the classroom well i guess i'd like to just on that i'd like to do that and put my value system up there and see and sure let's go after and testing because again that's what i'm kind of saying is that we we only present one side of an ideology it just we've got one side of an

162ideology that there's a lot of people that then have to critically think and do all those things that you're saying and i i think it's it's hindering i think like i can only imagine what our jewish students must feel on occasion right so when i was a preschool teacher i i had um i had a couple of jewish students in my class actually and um when we came up to the time for the christmas parties um the mom came to me and had a very frank discussion with me about how were we going to handle christmas parties in the classroom and and how she would prefer that that topic be addressed with her students and so you know if say for example you're going into a classroom and there's a display of crosses on the

163wall because the teacher has a nice collection that they happen to have there you know do we ever think i mean that's a great point that's a great point shannon do we ever actually examine that from a different lens um again i have personal experience with it because i i had jewish students in my classroom and actually had conversations um about about christmas um and that was an eye-opening experience to me out of the county i grew up in there were no jewish people there we were the only catholic people my brothers and i were the only catholics in my entire school and i cannot tell you how many times it was very very uncomfortable i had a lot of uncomfortable experiences in school because i did not share the same religion with the rest

164of the school so i i can i kind of appreciate that for sure i think one of the other things though that what what we can also do when those kind of things come up though is that empowered right there in our vision if we're going to say this we're doing empowers and revision well let's empower parents to say okay i get it you're upset so this is what you do you know and you get your student on board to help you do it right and this is so you know this is disturbing here's here's the chain of command so you know if we're about empowering students and we can help parents navigate this as well so um you know to to just as an action item on that now not to speak to the

165that overarching you know barrier but it is an opportunity to empower parents and students and navigating that system so let me let me ask this question and it can be rhetorical for you to just contemplate if you want to or we can we can go down this this rabbit hole but you know if we look at uh the demographic makeup of your community it is a very diverse community we've already covered that right and your role as a board is to represent community values within your school so what does that mean for the team of eight to represent an incredibly diverse community some of whom their ideals and their beliefs may not align with yours personally right i'm sure that there is um a contingent of of lgbtq people who identify that way and are

166allies of that community right so um there there are different races there are different religions there are different political perspectives so what does it mean for a team of eight to represent the community standards for their school when there is not unanimity as to what that community standard is do we have everything goes so that every single perspective is out there or do we have no perspective so that nobody is offended that's a great question because you know you have um like as i listened to this and we spent the time on this scenario if i go back the piece that i heard was this club did not get approval okay so how does that translate to the district saying it's a it's a it's an ideology well if the district didn't do anything about

167it and it stayed up there then by not doing anything then that is can be conceived as approval of it or vacuum so that is that is one case was it right was it wrong everybody's gonna have an opinion on that we are a very diverse community we speak 59 languages okay i mean there's a kid i was up at harris elementary school i think two weeks before christmas maybe um we had a kid just that showed up speaks russian doesn't know how to speak english russian okay i mean imagine what that kid's going through and so how do we when i say we i mean team of eight and also the administration and that goes all the way down to even the principal level is you don't want a censorship you don't want to

168be who's the judge and the jury on what can be said and not said now granted i know we have tea and we have guard rails in terms of what the texas education agency gives us on what can be taught and not taught and uh and i understand that and through this whole process i was thinking about like college okay now i know you choose to go to college and you pay to go to college um and you choose your classes or you choose to go work whether that's a vocational or a technical trade or you go to the military in any three of those scenarios college vocational trade or military you're going to have a very diverse group of people from all belief systems all backgrounds and thought processes and so i as louis

169sullivans really don't know how to answer the question in terms of do we let everything go do we censorship do we follow ta and church and state to the t but then are we falling short of giving these the teachers and are we falling short by not preparing these students to our mission to make them ready for what faces them whatever the case may be you know and that's tough because i mean even friends that have the same belief system and we go to church together as christians that are in the same small group we still disagree on a lot of things even within our own beliefs you know what i'm saying even within the church or how it should be rant or small group or quiet time etc and so and those are people

170that are my closest people in accountability but we still disagree on certain things and so i think it's tough because i mean a we're a very diverse community and so is every community or school district i mean it's a you are a representation of everybody in this district and to remove barriers and to it's difficult and it's going to be uh painful see i actually think it's easy i don't think it's hard at all because when you're focusing on what you're there to do which is learn the foundations and and to learn how to read write uh science you know just do all of the things that are academic when that is your your objective is to build a foundation so that you can excel when you're in a workplace that's that's not what the

171walls are aligned with how about uh positive um you know motivational things how about a great quotes from people all over the place that are that inspire you you don't have to again defining or that that's part of the problem when you've got high schoolers trying to define themselves and it's why why why not go gosh you know what today's great and i'm going to go conquer whatever it is i'm going to walk in and do how about oh gosh i'm going to smile 12 times at people uh because that that's going to actually benefit another human being i mean there's just so many yes that that's not that's not focusing on the right things you're not there to school to walk down the halls to be indoctrinated into other people's viewpoints and i mean

172that's not what you're there for so who would you be from but what yeah like the little kitten hanging on the tree that says hang on here right it could be that one that's a great one the best truck the best angle was the triangle you know where i learned that one called the middle school the best angle is the triangle oh and that stuck with you stuck with me sixth grade it's not easy because life is more entailed than just reading writing and math and science we have to deal with relationships we have to deal with people we have to deal with when we sit down are you doing that walking down the wall i mean like going shuffling down i mean that's not how you're you're not okay and we're a public school

173we tend to forget that we are a public school system that has to educate all kids we're not we're not and i hear what you're saying but to your words earlier it it's one hallway is like to becky said is it perfect heck no do we have mistakes yes can we do better yes where did that process fail and i don't have an answer for that that would be my question yeah and right now and it worked because it goes back to what i was uh said earlier is goals measure uh i mean goals track it measure and adjust is where did we hey where did we fail on that and if we failed on that one that was a a biggie i should say or a uh a hot topic where are we failing

174on all the other small ones what's slipping through the cracks or so where's our process breakdown in terms of that approval yeah and how do we get back to the solution of it so i want to be be respectful of your time i i told you we were going to nine we've only got like eight minutes left so i want to i want to give you all a couple questions that i want you to be thinking about um before our next session and it directly ties in this so on your vision statement let's take this conversation what does it mean to be a global citizen what do you mean by by empowering inspiring kids to be a global citizen because i think that's kind of what are you asking that from each one of our

175viewpoint or what we have as a district yes okay because we have that defined as a district but then you want us to define it as well yeah so i want you to look at that district definition and and contemplate how this conversation falls into that and from your personal perspective as a trustee as well um the other thing i want to touch on real quickly um it came out in the earlier conversation was talking about listening to community several of you talk about your role as trustee and listening to the community we've talked about how you are to represent the the voice and the standards and the values of your community so keeping that in mind this part of the conversation you've all pretty much agreed the communication with the community is not good

176right so whose responsibility is it to be communicating and i'm going to tell you there's a couple of different answers to that because you remember number five on that list of tasby things of the trustee's role is to communicate with the community right so it's incumbent on each of you as individual trustees to be communicate when when a constituent reaches out to you with a concern and says my kids saw this on the third floor of this high school it's your role as a trustee to communicate that community input to the district and to be sure that that district response is communicated back to all right so i want you to think about that communication with the community from individual trustee role because you know you speak as one voice but you're individually talking to

177individual constituents right so be sure that the individual communication you're making is in line with the what really happened in the official district but for my edification who is responsible for communicating on behalf of the district do you have a communications director is it the superintendent's assistant okay good okay so there's somebody who official officially funnels all official communications to the community right so you all need to be sure that the what you are communicating to the community when they contact you individually they call and they say hey shannon i've got this problem at this high school we need to understand the chain of command absolutely absolutely that's team of eight training wrapped up right there that's the slide y'all don't want to sit through again roles and responsibilities right okay on those list of

178four priorities are there any that you have heartburn over as an individual trustee who is responsible for seeing that they guide the district as you read those and i think i mean the four goals the four goals right up 2.0 i think there's what three of y'all that have been elected since that past right so you were not part of maybe you were as as a community member or parent i don't know but as a trustee you were not part of that process you're talking about the lead 2.04 yes right right so is is are there any of those that give you heartburn individually that you want to bring up for further discussion district-wide right it's part of that revisioning and re-reimagining and revisiting your vision mission in this state the specific conversation we were

179just having as i look at goal number two it says design learning environments that support social and emotional well-being and on that specific example i think we could could make the point that that was an attempt to address the social and emotional well-being of a particular group of kids right but number three says create a culture that fosters learning environments that reflect student voice and promote student engagement so there was at least a subset of students that that was their voice and was because they're part of this diversity club i think you called it or something like that so how do those two goals work in tandem with allowing student voice that may or may not affect the social emotional well-being of another student does that make sense right so i can see some some

180opportunities where those two goals might clash a little bit with each other where if the the facilitator of that club decided to dig his or her heels in and say i was just giving voice to my students and that's one of our goals and a parent says well your student voice affected my child's social emotional well-being so how as a group and as a district do we handle when those two things come into conflict that make sense uh okay um the rest of the questions there we actually touched on several of them um and i'll come back to a couple of them um next time we'll talk some specifically about strengths and weaknesses i was i was i was kind of surprised with the the setup conversation i had about coming in when i got

181to the shared vision of the shared values of the board when i got the responses back to that they were remarkably similar um so that that was encouraging i think from what i'm was was kind of gathering looking at these and the short conversations i had with some of you and then our conversation tonight it really does seem to me that everybody sitting in this room has the best interest of the students of gcisd in their heart right so now we just have to figure out how do we all move the ship in the same direction to accomplish what is best for the students so when i come back in february we'll be talking about some specific leadership principles and and how they kind of tie into the word framework as well as addressing over

182the last couple of these questions um those of you that that answered uh the needs assessment there was there were two likert scale surveys there where you know scale of one to seven how do you feel about this on scale of one to five um we'll talk about that a little bit next time i know some of the wording kind of caused some people a little bit of heartburn like we're talking about political skill it's not political skill as in campaigning for an election it's political skill as in functioning within a body of other citizens right the the the greek understanding of the body politic not the american political system so we'll talk about those a little bit and i'll tell you though from looking the answers were all over the board on that like

183it's it's really not going to do me a whole lot of good to say well here's the average of how it came out on these because there were ones and there were sevens you know a lot of the answers so we will talk about a little bit about how those propel you forward though and understanding how you operate and what to do when that's different than how somebody else operates so you know a question like you know i feel like we're part of a team or something like that right so if you feel part of the team and one person doesn't feel a part of the team how do you function together as a team right last questions or things that people just have to get off their chest before we go home tonight yeah

184i do i mean you ask a question and i don't think either we didn't answer it or maybe that means that everybody's in agreement but definitely on a personal note for me in bringing scott here i want to make sure that we it looks like we're pretty close to agreeing on the mission on the mission that might be flipped and we're not but it seems that we're pretty comfortable with that but these four goals and you ask the question because anybody has any heartburn about these four goals there's some controversial words like social emotional well-being removing barriers i just want to make sure that the seven of us and the eight of us are okay with this fourth goal because these are driving what we do um and if we have an issue there's a

185this is the time to maybe not now it's nine o'clock but uh this is the time to discuss it and um specifically you made a comment or what happened to chloe high school and then you know you talk about barriers and we have this goal one actively identified removing barriers that limit access to an opportunity for learning i just want to make sure that we are all in agreement that these are the four goals that we're gonna be going for and if people say nothing we're gonna assume that we're all in agreement but if you have an issue either you say it now and we can discuss it or we can come back um in february and discuss it because this is really important i mean we this is what guides what we do so

186i thought that's what you would ask that in february for us to really think about these and i think february talk really dig deep and do the the self reflection and the soul searching that we talked about and say as a trustee of gcisd am i 100 sold in on this vision and this mission and these four priorities of lead 2.0 because if you're not you're never going to run syndrome and you're going to continue to have tension and not be able to operate efficiently especially since you're doing such a good job of using those to guide your board agendas right i have a couple of questions they're about superintendent evaluation i can call or email don't do them i'm breaking the law um [Music] my question around that is how often do you do

187them is it just once a year and we reflect on the whole year do you look at it twice four times six years right here so you can make adjustments and course corrections as you go and are those superintendent goals directly tied to these four yeah okay twice a year directly it is my practice as a trustee when somebody comes before us for public comment if it is very clear to me that they did not adequately communicate everything that they needed to in that setting those three minutes were not enough for them or two minutes depending on the night um i say 30 seconds i call or email them and offer to meet with them so that they can finish communicating to me what they didn't get out in those two or three minutes so

188that their voice is adequately hurt i'm the board president i'm not the board president so i i meet with because individual board members can meet with constituents individually you can't communicate you know say oh well we are going to do this as a board right right but you can say thank you mr miss constituent for bringing that i think i'm going to ask that that be placed on the agenda for discussion or i would like to help facilitate a meeting between you and the assistant superintendent that's in charge of that whatever the case may be to help them get to whatever they need the the resolution they need we need to get to as a district so i'm going to offer that to all of you tonight if there's something we i know we kind

189of ran out of time i wish we could have discussed but i think it was a very fruitful discussion from my part at least being able to come back with some some ideas for for the next meeting so i'm going to give each one of you my card it has my office number and my email on it if there's something that's just burning for you that you want to communicate with me you didn't have time i cut you off somebody else cuts you off there was one of these questions that we just hey i really wanted to to have that my voice heard on that please reach out to me um i'm not billing by the hour so just call me email me i'm getting paid by the trip that's it um so if you

190need to communicate something else with me i've got my office number and my email here and i'll be glad to to hear your input so that what we discuss next time is meaningful to you as a body and everybody has their their opportunity for adequate input okay thank you president thank you we need to journey okay so um i accept your recommendations what