001good evening everyone I now call to order the special board meeting of the Rio Grande City guya ISD School Board the time is 6:30 p.m. this meeting was properly posted on March 1st 2025 at 10:17 a.m. we'll begin with section one and proceed with roll call myself Dr verica barera president present Mr Rene Peña vice president Mr Eduardo Ramirez secretary president Mr no Castillo member pres Miss paty Garcia member present Mr Jesse Soliz member present Mr vasilo vial member present Miss Guadalupe Gara in superintendent present thank you everyone we will now move to section three invocation will Mr paa lead us in prayer please let's go ahead and B our heads dear heavenly father Lord tonight we come before you father uh for you to bring us uh wisdom knowledge father we ask you for
002your guidance father we move our district in the right direction father we ask that you give us the wisdom father to make the necessary decisions first and foremost to put our students at the Forefront father then our employees father and then everything else we ask these things in Jesus name amen thank you we will now move to section four Pledge of Allegiance Mr Eddie can you lead us in the pledge I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you public comments section five Madame President we have two public comments that signed up however pursuant to board policy Beed local at special meetings public comments are limited to the items posted on
003the agenda with notice both of these items are not on the agenda so the board may not move forward with the public comments so we can move on to the next section okay thank you we will move on to section six item a consider and take possible action on special education initial evaluations proposal designed Madame President I'm going to call Miss Marisella Garcia to give a brief overview please good evening Dr barera School Board president good evening board members Mrs gasa superintendent of schools ladies and gentlemen the special service services department is seeking the approval to Implement Saturday work sessions for evaluation Personnel to address the Overflow of special education initial evaluations evaluation referrals and ensure the timely completion of evaluations in compliance with legal requirements we are asking for our educational diagnosticians and our
004LSPs uh to come and work for five out of the six uh proposed Saturday sessions work days and those would be March 1st March 22nd and the 29th and April 5th 12th and the 26 6 2025 compensation will be for $11,000 per employee and right now we have 13 eligible employees who can come to these um uh Saturday work sessions and the total budget that is going to be needed it's $113,000 that will be funded through idab formula 224 so um your support in approving this proposal so the special services department implements this plan accordingly is greatly appreciated we respect respectfully recommend approval do you have any questions for me um just my one question is have we done this in the past uh yes ma'am we did this uh right after covid when we
005received a grant from the state and we were able to bring in the uh the evaluation team on Saturdays as well and we basically compensated them accordingly according to what the state recommended at that time our evaluation Personnel our specialty area personnel and uh they're the ones who obviously evaluate the students based on the suspected disabilities for eligibility that they're being referred to the campus for and so they are specialty Personnel that uh you know can help us with this endeavor we do have a lot of initial evaluations that are pending right now so I think that this will be a a win-win situation for everybody so that we can uh meet our goals and compliance with the state that was my second question um is this because we're getting more and more referrals that
006is correct ma'am that is correct ma'am um the state and I'm talking about the Texas Education Agency is doing an excellent uh job in training parents as to you know for them to be able to uh request any evaluations for their children if they suspect a disability also under child find law there are a lot of requirements that the state mandates for us if we suspect of a disability in any child that we uh do uh you know evaluate these students so yes ma'am thank you any other questions m gcia i noticed that in the package had 14 total people at some there one correct sir we currently have when I wrote the proposal and submitted this to Mrs Gara we had a total of 14 because we do have 12 educational diagnosticians and two
007LSPs but um at the moment we have one of our educational diagnosticians on FMLA so that brought us down to 13 individuals and so that's why it is $113,000 and if we were to Contract Services on the outside uh we do know that one given evaluation will cost us 1,200 $ so as I included in your proposal you know we are looking at you know being able to receive and get more evaluations completed by our educational diagnosticians than if we Contract Services on the outside we still we still pay $13,000 were only yield about nine or 10 total evaluations compared to what we plan to uh to yield over the five Saturdays that we have planned yes and I would like to take this opportunity at this time to uh congratulate all of our educational
008diagnosticians as you you already know this week is designated as educational diagnostician week so we have uh you know 12 great individuals working in our department so congratulations to them for everything that they do because our department could not work as well as we do without the help and the dedication of these 12 individuals so congratulations to them as well so thank let's give everybody a hand they're not here but if they're watching a happy diagnos week thank you any other questions or comments could I have a motion to approve item a as presented by by legal council or by Administration by Administration do I have a motion I so move a second second and all those in favor please raise your right hand um motion passes and then is there possible if you could
009uh send me the board policy where it has to be a public comments have to be on subject matter just send me the you have my email can you send it for me we'll do because if we're not allowing these people to speak I want to know exactly why thank you next we move to Item B consider and take possible action on request for use of school facilities from jwc Florence J Scott Women's Club it will be the multi-purpose Center main hall could I have a motion to approve Item B I'm move a motion a second second all those in favor raise your right hand motion passes next we move on to item C consider and take possible action on the 2025 2026 rgc guya ISD instructional calendar Madame President uh the campuses were given
010an option of two calendars to vote from and they did vote on the one that has been presented to you all so Administration asks that we respectfully approve this thank you do I have a motion to approve item c as presented by Administration motion second second all those in favor raise your right hand motion passes next we will move to item D consider and take possible action in on furniture vendor for guya Middle School Madame President president I'll call Miss Diana robes to give a brief description of this please good evening good evening and as the district nears the completion of guya Middle School's construction the administration is beginning to explore furniture options to equip the new campus the district is interested in partnering with public Partners Group LLC or PPD Furnishings which has an
011extensive experience providing highquality Furniture Solutions for school districts attached uh you will find references from PPG Furnishings that highlight that expertise in this area PPG furnishings is a vendor dealer reseller of morco Inc holding bbard agreement reference number BB yes there are different uh vendors under under the buyboard however Administration feels that it is a little late to start seeking for quotes we believe that this should have been done a while back so we're not so we're not taking quotes we're just giving it we're not going to see what the market looks like we're just going to give it to this individual right what's the cost of the estimated Furniture I know you won't have a cost till the end but what's the budget for it and how much is they did submit a quote
012I'll answer that for you ma'am Mr Casio we did have a budget of 1.3 million and right now we're about $700,000 under uh so the company PPG is giving us some a very good offer have we checked any other companies man uh no again because like Miss Ro stated so right now I think this should have been done prior and because of the urgency where we're at we needed to do this promptly and that is the reason that a superintendent have decided to go with PPG Furnishings what does promptly mean how how much time time do we have to do this and another question would be have we asked the the other companies the same question you know can you can you uh meet the timeline or deadline for that because that's a lot of
013money and uh you know I think that uh what our common practice is to get even if they are by board to get the different companies to submit right what are common practices to get other companies to submit even if they're by board because you get a better price as as you did on this one right yes we do usually uh seek for quotes however we've done we've done this in the past uh with different projects uh in the district where we usually go with by board Benders as well we did have we did have money budgeted in within the bond money for the furniture thank you we'll just add also that there's no requirement to get the quotes uh Bard already pre-procurement want to get the best deal and try and save the school
014money to go to the different buy boards because sometimes you're going to have difference in prices and we're here to get the best deal for the school that's all I'm saying and you're right we don't have to go to we can go to one bu board but you know common practice would say Let's go see three bu boards and see who has the best deal for us simply put Comm practice I wish would have been used all these past years and and you're right and one thing we're doing we are submitting a an agenda item for the new purchasing procurement manual that's going to require that we get the three quotes correct thank you Mr robes thank you do I have a motion to approve item d as presented by Administration py motion a second
015Mr R all those in favor raise your right hand all those opposed same sign motion passes next we move on to item e consider and take possible action on RP P partnership with sanro ISD and mou Madam president I call Mr Joe Goda from region one to please give us a brief explanation as well good evening Madam president uh Mrs gisa and members of the board my name is Joe gisa I am one of the administrators with region 1 ESC today we're going to be talking to you about a great opportunity which is the rural pathway for excellence partnership we have Dr rul Alvarez who's going to be uh introducing the program and if any point you have any questions please feel free to ask good evening good evening good evening y'all can see everything
016right everything good sure so I want to start by pre uh premising that the Texas Education Agency has set performance measure of by 2030 they want 60% of all graduates I'm sorry could you just get a little bit closer to the mic how about there you can move by by 2030 is that better yeah is that better thank you thank you by 2030 tea has set a performance measure of expecting 60% of all students to graduate college career in military ready this measure has been going on for about the past 5 years and school districts have been aligning to this measurement knowing that we have to funnel students to meet this measure as tea meets with superintendents across the state they have discovered that there are certain school districts especially smaller school districts who struggled
017and are struggling to meet this measure because of their demographics because of their location because of sustainability of staff and so te said we're going to work towards remedying this by creating the rpep program House Bill 2209 came out in 2023 and this house bill States if any school district that's small and meets a certain criteria is able to partner with another school district then we can help them to support ccmr measures both ways so the state said a qualifying small school district has to have a population of 1,600 or less now that would be from prek all the way to 12 right now there's quite a few school districts in the region that are like that in fact we can count 13 that meet that requirement right now they ALS also say okay well
018if you meet this and you're going to be part of the arpet program what is required of them and so the requirement is that you start forming career Pathways you align CTE Pathways you work on developing a a strong pathway for the students so they can achieve the college career military Readiness you also work with a coordinating entity and a coordinating entity that'll serve all the districts that are participating to be able to keep everything aligned make sure everything flows properly make all the arrangements and alignments and works with the state also they have to have a performance agreement and a performance agreement is stated between the school districts and the coordinating entity stating that these are our expectations these are our goals and this is what we're going to work towards to ensure that
019all participating Partners have their students meet that 60% measure so how does rpep impact districts if you're a larger District what it's going to do is is you're going to one be able to provide support for the smaller districts by helping those students have CTE programs available to them that they don't have available at their home campus that's the first big bonus the second one that comes in is that the coordinating entity provides CTE support to the bigger District in other words you would have a CTE director helping to facilitate your alignment to ensure that your programs are aligned to ensure that you get concentrator and completer status and and ensure that the funding is working towards benefiting your district with your CT students and your CTE programs also the board district and the campus
020receive recognition from the state of being Innovative and creative as this is a brand new program that came up in 2023 and so they're launching and looking for districts that are going to partner and grow with the rpet program funding wanted to show you two levels of it the first is the green so for the larger District as we partner with a school district that's larger we work towards making sure that the funding is going to benefit your district for example you can start with the first level and every student earns $6,150 that's the Ada that's generally what a student brings to the district every student if that student is in a c program then there's a CTE bonus that comes to it of course that increases the Ada as well if we work towards
021aligning and streamlining your Pathways and programs that that money is going to start coming into that District as well then at the end when the student graduates at the end the state has what they call a ccmr bonus and that's when the student is identified by the state as being college career and Military ready then there's an additional momentus that comes to them so for a larger School District the financial impact and benefit will be with the green arrow smaller District that qualifies for rpet that's looking for the support they get the additional allotment of being an rpep qualified District so it benefits both districts so we wanted to show you that this isn't something that's just brand new we started phase one and we call it RGV career so there are six school districts
022that came together with region one being the coordinating entity and we formulate a partnership between these six school districts and that's laar ISD liford Sita Santa Rosa laa and Monte Alto we worked with their programs we looked at the zoning and the area between them and so technically what happens is we have students from one school district traveling to another school district to take courses and CTE programs that weren't available to them at their home District it doesn't take away from Ada it doesn't take away from the students identification we are not taking students away from one district and putting them in another it's just the concept as if a real big school district had a satellite site so you're sending for example a lifer student goes to S leita and then returns back to
023liford they still participate in their academics they still participate in the UIL activities they still participate in their classes they are not a stha student they're still a liford student they're just taking a CT course over there in s prita liford benefits because now they can offer to their students here's a pathway that we don't have to have a teacher for we don't have to have a site for we don't have to have supplies and equipments for vice versa a Sita student can go to lifeford they still can come back to Sita and they still practice and do their Athletics and their band and the UI and they take all their classes back over there they're just taking a CTE course that's not off and Sita over in lifeford so the way we worked it
024is we created an academy as a coordinating entity region one created an academy at each one of these sites in laa we created the law and public service Academy which is for students who wanted to pursue law in Lada we created the Health Science Academy in lifer we created the teacher Academy in mon Alto we created the Manufacturing Academy which was also welding we created The Business Academy at Sita and the media arts academy at Santa Rosa so by default each one of these school districts now has five additional Pathways that they can offer to their students in addition to the funding that they're going to receive in addition to working towards getting the students college career military ready phase two is where we're at right now and why we're here today we are working
025RGV career or the school districts at the very top and we call that the Eastern Division in the Western Division we have real grand city G ISD also Sun Cedro in the Northern Division we have Jim hog web Theo United in the southern division we have Progresso and Santa Maria we are working towards form forming Partnerships with all of these school districts we highlighted the Western Division and that's just what we're calling it right now formerly we can get a a better name like RGB career later RGB career is an acronym which stands for something much larger but it's up to the school districts to decide how they want to be named something that's Regional to them bless you we're looking at offering some programs that would benefit real grand city guya and benefit sanro
026we do have a busing distance we work as a coordinate entity to address those issues and the schedules we work with the school districts Bell schedules calendars we align class periods we work on Transportation there's Transportation allotment funding that comes your way to pay for your transportation by the state and we we do this because it helps to solve the issues and problems that may be at hand for you in CTE and so we're here to help and assist both school districts right now on the calendar we are looking at formulating an mou with real grand city Kya and sidro with thatou in place we submit it to the state once we submit it to the state we get designation once we get designation then we start launching and fast gear everything to have everything
027come into play by August of this next school year and that's it the contact information there is Joe Garza and myself I open it up for any questions that you may have I can go back to any slides that you want as well thank you very much do we have any questions or any discussion all right I think they've had discussion with a superintendent ongoing conversation with a superintendent for some time already so I think that she on correct and we've also included our CTE director um one thing that I I didn't hear and I'm I sure have you mentioned it uh what is it that we would be partnering up with San cidro I think we mentioned the wind Mills or what what was going to be the pathway sure you did mention that
028I'm sorry if I missed it welding because welding we already have so energy it was the energy I just wanted to make sure CU I know that we already have the welding so then it's the energy pathway okay the energy pathway is not ready to start this August but it'll be ready for the following for the following August so this year we're starting with with the welding and the reason I to take over Dr the reason we're starting with the uh manufacturing welding is because uh and speaking with Mrs VI your CT director you have kids on waiting list for welding so wasn't fair to them so we want to make sure that we uh provide those services to them great thank and uh the reason that we looked at the manufacturing technology and the
029networking systems here in our district is because those are the classes that you have very few students in so we don't want you to fold those programs because they're excellent programs so bringing in kids from another district is going to help support that numbers yes thank you thank you very much all those in favor I'm sorry can I have a motion first to approve item e so move uh second second miss paty all those in favor raise your right hand uh motion passes next thank you next we move uh on to item F consider and take possible action on board nomination to serve on r p Advisory Board back Madame President Mrs Gara and members of the board so what we're asking is that uh we have one of you as a member on The
030Advisory board for the rpep we want you to have a voice uh in this uh initiative so it would be up to you the way you usually hold your nominations and uh elect somebody from the board to be on our our pep advisory Council Thank You by when would this need to take place to you I mean we we you know normally they do it right then and there they ask for nominations uh that's what we've had in the past so as long as it's in the minutes we're fine yeah so if youall want to nominate someone we can just start off with a simple motion to nominate expers if you have a second you vote on that if it passes you move forward and if does not pass you move on to the next
031one all right Madam president I that we nominate r p Mr Rea to serve on RP Advisory Board a second second okay all those in favor raise your right hand a motion passes or the nomination the nomination yes so the motion the motion does pass to make him our nomination nomin thank you so much thank you Mr D thank you next um item on the agenda is executive session Madame President we have no items for executive session thank you we will now move on to section a personal matters a discussion and action to approve resignations and final release and separation agreements with the following employees Madam president legal council recommends that the board entertain a motion to approve the resignations and final release and separation agreements for all items listed on the agenda item 881
032through 8841 could I have a motion to approve item I move Mr Renee a second second Mr Jesse all those discussion please okay discussion go ahead okay it's let me begin miss gide you came from one of those uh madeup jobs people complain about and I heard you did a very good job you have been on the job for two and a half months as superintendent I don't think uh you have the experience uh to basically conduct a riff I think that we should have gone to region one which is here and have them conduct the Riff so it would have been fair and unbiased how can we say that the Riff is fair when you have ried the director of special AED the director of Maintenance the director of Transportation the director of Athletics
033the director of student services the director of food services and we've kept the and the AP and gifted and talent and we've kept the PR department intact I guess that you value pictures and videos more than people who fee transport and keep our schools running it makes no sense and by the way we have auxiliary that make over 60,000 in the end all of you have torn a part of the rgc GISD heart but before I close I want to thank each and every one of the 41 employees that were rifted for their hard work their dedication and their perseverance to this District to the rest of the board in my opinion it's all politics and May and may God have mercy on your souls thank you very much Mr vial to respond to you
034first and for foremost the position that I was given and respectfully was given by Mr adula former superintendent I wouldn't call it a madeup position sir because it was a director of school Improvement and I think it is a very important position especially in the school district so I wouldn't I wouldn't call it a made it a made a position on the other excuse me Mr VI I'm speaking thank you um on the other issues Mr viel I have 29 years of experience in many facets in the school district I've been in high principal as well I've seen I've seen a lot it did not take much Mr a with all due respect as a superintendent to come in and find out in the uh in the financial crisis that we in that we were
035in and so I knew that I had to move quickly to be able to save the district um other than that Mr vial I think we have done the right thing and I also want to talk to the people that have been let go tonight I respect them a lot of them were are my colleagues and continue to be friends I wish the very best for them and I did not simply just remove them Mr VI if uh you know you were paying attention during executive session as well together with the rest of the board members a lot of these positions were combined we had probably two or three uh positions uh or basically repetitive doing the same thing so basically what we have done is combined there will be opportunities for these 41 individuals
036Mr VI to apply for positions that will be opened up hopefully at the end of the year so again thank you Mr VI I I just want to say a few words uh I just want to thank all these uh uh people on this list uh for you know I know there's some of them here that uh have been in the district for decades you we have a Hall of Famer that uh you know is one of these persons here and I want to appreciate everybody for for uh doing their job for the kids and you know I just hope we didn't get rid of all their experience and uh we're going to see it later on and it's going to affect the district but I think it should have been a little bit different
037but the majority void and that's where we're at so I already said my pece thank you and if I may I don't want to point to an empty chair because you don't know what I'm going through in my personal life sir you have no idea what I'm going through and the fact that you used my absence as a political Ploy tells me all I every need to know about you sir you you missed meetings where we discussed a lot of this stuff a lot of information and why we're in this situation to attend your s inate whatever SW ceremony at the superintendent over there and I can't miss for personal hardcore reasons you don't know and you've been president for over 20 years you're telling me in three or four years I damaged what you
038created systematically with all the respect sir the okay you've been president out of the last eight years you're the one who spent all the money you're the one to me now all right so we have sorry right we have a call to the question in a second we have to take a vote on the call to the question first all those in favor of calling the question raise your right hand all those opposed so all right so it passes with the majority it passes and with the majority you have to seize debate and now you have to actually vote on the item motion passes no for the calling the question that moves us to now voting on the actual item so do I have a motion for the to approve item 88 through a41 as
039recommended by legal as represent as recommended by legal do we have um already have no we only called no yeah that was a motion to the call the question okay so let me repeat again do do I have a motion to appro approve item a discussion and action to approve resignations and final release and separation agreements with the following employees as presented by legal 1 through 41 1 through 41 so move uh second second all those in favor raise your right hand all oppose same sign motion passes section nine item a announcement for upcoming events Miss garan uh right now ma'am I don't have any however we would like to wish the district uh you know uh a great uh what is it spring break stay safe out there be you know get get some
040rest and can't wait to see you all back thank you very much um being there no no further items left on the agenda I now declare this meeting adjourned it is 7:03 p.m. have a great evening thank you everybody