McAllen ISD Regular Board Meeting (January 29, 2026)

001Good afternoon everyone and thank you all for being here today. Sorry for the late start. Uh we were wrapping up meeting but I'm sure glad to see that everybody here stayed. It's also nice to see a full room full of our community. Uh y'all didn't have to do that. We know it's the last day of board appreciation month, but to see you all. Uh, all kidding aside, uh, I'm going to go ahead and call this meeting to order at 601, and I will go into item number two, which is moment of silence. >> Thank you. Item number three, pledge of allegiance. >> I aliance of and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> And we have item number three, public comments. We are

002going to play a short video. Uh before we do, I do notice that there are about 15 speakers. Um what we've done in the past is we've given the option to each individual speaker if they would like to group up and have a spokesperson. If not, you are allotted the time, which is two minutes, and you guys can discuss that amongst yourself. It's just an option for you guys. Thank you. Here are the public comment procedures. Number one, individuals who wish to participate during the portion of the meeting designated for public comment shall sign up at mcllenisd.org at least one hour prior to the start of the scheduled meeting. Number two, an individual's comments to the board shall not exceed two minutes per meeting. Number three, the board shall not tolerate disruption of the meeting

003by members of the audience. Thank you. Mall ISD. Okay, thank you guys. Um, all right, our first speaker is Mr. Hershel Patel. Mr. Patel, you will have two minutes uninterrupted and the clock's up there and we won't interrupt. I'll >> do my best. >> Thank you. >> Um, Mr. President, trustees, thank you for your time and the work that you do and I mean that your work goes far beyond food, uh, budgets, facilities, staffing, safety, none of it is simple. I also want to express appreciation to the child nutrition department. Uh, feeding more than 20,000 kids every single day is a massive job and it's truly God's work and matters deeply to families in our district. Um, I'm here because of something small that woke me up. Uh, this little 5-year-old right here came home

004with the Lucky Charms marshmallow bar. Um, that that pushed me to look closely at the menus and the nutritional data and the long-term effects of what we're serving at our schools. Um, I know that the department will be presenting shortly and I appreciate that, uh, the work that they've put in. I just believe that we should be seeing an increase in whole foods, um, and not a reduction. Uh, based on what's been shared, um, truly substantive changes don't really begin until year three. Uh, breakfast is where I believe we can act a little sooner. Uh, right now, students choose between a sweet or a savory item. And what do you think she's going to pick? um plus a fresh fruit and beverages that include flavored milk and fruit juices. As I shared in my notes

005with you, uh many of these items are high in sugar and starch and most of them are highly processed. I'm suggesting small changes that could feasibly happen immediately. Um first, removing the sugary, starchy, highly processed sweet breakfast items like Froot Loops and chocolate banana bars. Uh remove savory options with sweet components like pancake sausage bites. add greens, vegetables, andor legumes to breakfast. Remove fruit juices from our campuses. We need to distinguish treats from staple foods. The ultimate goal again is to move away from processed foods and toward whole foods so we can all so we can serve all MacallenD children, especially in a region where high obesity, high food insecurity, and high rates of childhood type 2 diabetes are prevalent. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your time. Um, obviously in two minutes I

006had to cut out a lot of nuance. Um, what I'm asking for is maybe we like all of us and the school board and maybe some administration could sit down and discuss this in in detail. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir. >> All right. And next we have Miss Susie Lee. Miss Lee, same thing to me. >> Good evening members of the board, superintendent, Dr. Gutierrez, administrators, and families. My name is Susie Lee. I'm a Gonzalez elementary mom, a local business owner, and a regular volunteer at our school. Miguelan is often recognized as a city with high rates of diabetes. I mean, diabetes and obesity. That's not a label. It's a reminder that many of our families are navigating real health challenges and that our children are growing up in that environment. Almost six years

007ago, I was diagnosed with latent autoimmune diabetes in adults. At that time, my two boys were still toddlers. Living with diabetes has taught me how closely food is tied to blood sugar, energy, focus, and long-term health. And how important early habits truly are. Children don't become pre-diabetic overnight. It happens gradually, shaped by the foods they're exposed to, what they're taught, and what's modeled for them every day. That's why education matters just as much as access. Kids need to understand why certain foods help their bodies and how to make better choices when they can. This isn't about eliminating treats or expecting perfection. Treats have a place. The goal is to make nutritious foods and basic nutrition education part of everyday experience. So healthy choices feel normal, not restrictive. Many students in our district are not taught

008what healthy eating look like. And for some school meals are their primary source of food for that day. That puts schools in a unique position to not only feed children, but to help equip them with the tools they need to succeed long term. We want to learn, collaborate, and support the district however we can. A meaningful first step could be a conversation about the challenges food services face and how nutrition education might be strengthened alongside meal options. I believe that when we educate our children and give them the right tools early on, we can help break the cycle of diabetes rather than pass it on to the next generation. Thank you for your time and your commitment to our students. >> Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Miss Maria Fernandanda Quuez. >> Thank

009you. >> Good evening members of the Mallen ISTD board. My name is Pia Fernandanda Quuevas and I'm here to share my experience as a parent regarding our school cafeteria food. My daughters Olivia in third grade and Martina in first grade attend Gonzalez Elementary and we're truly happy with the school, the teachers, and our community. By profession, I come from a background in culinary arts and hospitality. I work in recipe development and I have created several recipe books, so I understand how to build balanced meals and how nutrition impacts children's health. The lunch boxes I prepare for my girls are well balanced with a focus in whole foods and fiber. At first, I packed lunches for them, but I've noticed the lunch boxes often came back home barely touched, which led to a lot of wasted

010food at home. To reduce the waste, we decided to let them eat from the cafeteria instead. Over time, I began to notice changes in their health. They gain weight and their digestion suffer. From my experience, this is often linked to meals that are higher in refined carbs and lower in fiber and over processing. We've made adjustments at home to balance our meals from the cafeteria, but I believe this is something that we can also improve at the school level. We're fortunate to live in a community with local farmers and growers, including families connected to small farms and farm-totable efforts. By sourcing fresher and more nutritious ingredients locally, we can improve school meals while also supporting our local economy. I encourage the board to consider partnerships with local producers to enhance cafeteria offerings. This can benefit

011our children's health and strengthen our community. Thank you for your time and for all you do for our students. >> Thank you so much. >> Our next speaker is Linda Billings. This is Riley. >> She's a student at Milm ISD or McAllen ISD at Milm. She's in the fourth grade. And I'm here to talk about the agenda item 9D number two report regarding before and after school play clubs and to connect it to a broader need ensuring elementary students have access to unrestricted play during the school day through morning recess. When she started Milm, she experienced uh many administrative changes which combined with postcoid adjustments have led to a lot of shifts and routines and consistencies for these students. They ended up cutting out the morning recess. They brought it back, they cut it out,

012they brought it back just due to personnel changes or differences across the district. But when morning recess was reintroduced, the change in her was immediate. She began to look forward to school again, waking up in the morning, seeing her friends. That short period of unstructured gave her a sense of stability and connection and it made a notable difference in her focus and attitude towards learning. When you ask young children to arrive and immediately sit still and perform academically for elementary students, that's a significant expectation. Movement isn't a distraction. It's a necessary part of how children learn. Research shows physical activity improves focus behavior and an emotional regulation. A brief morning recess helps students return to class calmer and ready to learn, which benefits both the students and the teachers. For my daughter's experience at Milm,

013I've seen how sets students up for success for the entire day. That's why this shouldn't depend on individual campuses or administrative turnover. District bright standards that provide unstructured morning play ensure all students benefit equally. Just 15 minutes of recess isn't losing time. It's an investment in better learning. Thank you for your time and commitment to our children. I also want to take a moment and thank the board for your dedication and service during schoolboard appreciation month. >> Thank you. >> 15 seconds to Our next speaker will be Miss Megan Lamantthia. >> Good evening. Anyone who has spent time in an elementary classroom knows this moment. Kids wiggling in their seats, losing focus, not because they don't want to learn, but because their bodies need to move. I know that moment well, not only as a

014parent, but as a former educator. My name is Megan Lamentia and I'm a parent of three board boys who attend Mallen ISD schools. Speaking today on behalf of my family and 53 other families represented in the signed petition who believe our kids need more opportunities for movement and free play before and during the school day. After my initial request on September 15th, I was encouraged to learn that some campuses have already found ways to incorporate this. And I truly appreciate the urgency with which it was received and implemented. My hope today is that we can expand these efforts districtwide. Children today are being asked to sit still longer than ever before for district benchmarks, state testing, worksheets, and tightly structured instructional time. Much of the school is happening in a chair. As both a parent

015and a former teacher, I can confidently say that play is not a break from learning. It is learning. Free childled play supports emotional regulation, focus, problem solving, and social skills, all of which directly impact academic success. Currently, recess is scheduled for 20 minutes. However, with transitions, students often get closer to 10 minutes of actual play. So, my asks today are simple. First, if 20 minutes of recess is all we can manage in the day schedule for our students, we need to protect the full 20 minutes. Secondly, I'd love to see the return of morning recess for students first through fifth grade who arrive early to campus. Supervised electronic free child-led play before the school day begins. This gives students a chance to get their wiggles out before a long day in the classroom, allowing endorphins,

016circulation, and fresh air to do what nature does best. I always want to also want to be clear that this should be a paid role and not an added burden to our teachers. Thank you so much for your time and your leadership and your continued commitment to our children. >> Thank you. Um, our next speaker, our next speaker is Alyssa Higen. again. Thank you. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Alyssa Hickden and I'm a junior attending IB at Lamar Academy. The numbers on teen dating violence are high, but our school procedures do not reflect that urgency. I'm here today to outline the current education and safety protocols provided to the student body within the district. Our primary source of information comes from annual presentations led by school counselors. The main focus of

017these mandatory sessions are on bullying, harassment, and um proper interactions with peace officers as these specific topics are required under the Texas Education Code and Title 19 of the Texas Administrative Code. During these sessions, we are briefed on the student code of conduct regarding peer-to-peer conflict and the specific steps taken in response to bullying and harassment. Typically, the counselor walks us through a slide presentation that outlines these policies and we watch instructional videos focused on identifying harassment and explaining proper police interaction procedures. However, under the current curriculum, dating violence is grouped generally under harassment. While we are given resources for reporting and managing bullying, we are not given specific guidance on the warning signs of relationship abuse or the legal protections available to victims of dating violence. We already have the structures in place, the

018annual assemblies, the reporting systems, and the tools. The foundation already exists, but the content is limited to these specific areas. In order to protect our students and our community, we must educate each other on the warning signs and the realities of teen dating violence. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Our next speaker is uh Miss Zienna Gara. Did I pronounce that? >> Zienna. All right. Okay. >> Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Yenna Garza and I'm a student in the IB program at Lamar Academy. When people hear the words domestic violence, they often assume is it is an issue that only affects adults, something that happens later in life. But the reality is far more concerning. Relationship violence often begins much earlier during adolescence, and when left unressed, it rarely ends there.

019Teen dating violence is significantly more common than people realize. In the US, nearly one in three teens will experience physical, sexual, emotional, or or psychological abuse from a dating partner before graduating high school. That means this is not an isolated issue. It is something impacting students in classrooms every day, often without visible signs. Recent data reinforces this concern. Over 13% of high school students reported experiencing physical or sexual dating violence within just one year. However, these numbers only reflect what is reported. Many teens remain silent due to fear, shame, or lack of awareness. In fact, about only onethird of teens in abusive relationships ever tell a trusted adult. meaning the true scope of the problem is likely much larger. This issue is especially urgent because relationship violence does not occur in isolation. Experiencing abuse during

020adolescence significantly increases the likelihood of continued abuse later in life. Patterns formed in teen relationships often carry into adulthood, reinforcing cycles that become increasingly difficult to break. What is more alarming is how frequently abuse repeats. Domestic violence is rarely a single incident. Research shows that between 17% and 59% of cases impo involve repeat victimization, meaning the same individuals are harmed multiple times by the same partner. Once abuse begins, it often escalates very quickly. About 15% of repeat incidents occur within 24 hours and over a third happen within just 5 weeks. Together, these statistics tell a very clear story. Relationship violence is widespread. It often begins in ad adolescence and it tends to repeat when early warning signs are ignored. These patterns highlight the importance of education, awareness, and early intervention not only to respond to

021harm but to prevent it from becoming a lifelong cycle. >> Thank you. >> Our next speaker is Mr. Felix Guusman. >> Hello board. Good afternoon. My name is Felix. I am currently a Nikki Rose student participating the international bachelor art program at Lamar Academy. I am here on behalf and speaking for Young Hearts Matter alongside with my fellow peers. And today I will be speaking and addressing why as a district we should address teen dating violence. So what is teen dating violence? Teen dating violence is when two consenting teens between the ages of 13 and 18 decide to date. Unfortunately, however, this can lead to negative and toxic relationships not only physically but mentally on these students. As a district, we should address these address these problems that come from teen dating violence because as

022a school district and as a board, we should strive to be able to have a welcoming and warm environment for students. However, when teen dating violence isn't addressed, this can lead to low morale in students, lower participation in any extracurriculars, and can even create a large dread coming to school, which can affect attendance as well. So, as a district, we just strive to to be able to to speak to adults and trusted trusted adults. So, so this brings me to my claim that we should have more representation of this issue in briefings and in education for our teams to avoid these problems that can affect the board as a whole. Thank you. >> Thank you, sir. Thank you. Okay, our next speaker is Ashira James. Good evening, members of the board. My name is Ashira

023James and I am a junior in the IB program at Lamar Academy. Including education on teen dating violence and domestic violence in regular Macallenized D curriculum is essential because many harmful relationship behaviors are learned early and often go unrecognized. Without direct instruction, students may normalize controlling actions such as constant modering, monitoring, emotional pressure, or manipulation, mistaking them for care or attention. When these behaviors are not addressed in an educational setting, students are left without the tools to identify when a relationship becomes unhealthy. Schools play a unique role in prevention because they are one of the few consistent spaces where all students can receive the same foundational knowledge. Teaching about relationship safety gives students a shared language to understand boundaries, consent, and respect. This is especially important for students who may not have these conversations at

024home or who are already exposed to unhealthy relationship dynamics in their daily lives. Addressing teen dating violence and domestic violence in the curriculum also supports student well-being beyond relationships. These lessons encourage communication, emotional awareness, and decision-making skills that affect academic performance and mental health. When students understand that abuse is not normal or acceptable, they are more likely to seek help for themselves or recognize when a peer may need support. Importantly, this education does not promote dating or inappropriate behavior. Instead, it focuses on safety, accountability, and mutual respect, values that align with the goals of public education. By integrating this topic, Macallen would provide students with practical knowledge that protects them not only during their school years, but long after graduation. Thank you. >> Thank you. Our next speaker, uh, Chenna Kim. >> Good afternoon board.

025My name is Chenna Kim. I am a senior at Lamar Academy. Um, today actually during my Spanish class, my teacher was talking about the books that were allowed in our classrooms and one of the books were actually banned because they talked about teen dating violence. Um, and I was very concerned with this because our students, including the students inside of my class, um, some books are required for us to be able to talk about these during our exams, especially our IB exams, which start around end of April and begin around, um, begin around that time. and learning about these topics especially earlier on as student students like my other peers talked about earlier I think it's very important um towards our curriculum and our learning opportunities forward um as a senior it's getting closer to

026college entrance time and a lot of my classmates are beginning to date and look for future maybe partners um before going into college so that they can get an experience before entering the the real world and Um, in a few months since we'll be in college, I think it's important to learn about dating violence and what our precautions should be before we enter and survive in the real world. Thank you very much for your time. >> Thank you. Okay. And our next speaker is Chan Kim. U good afternoon board. Uh my name is Kevin Kim and I'm a sophomore at Lamar Academy. Uh me and my classmates are constantly taught to follow the Ivy learner profiles including an inquirer, thinker, communicator, principled, caring, risktaker, balanced, reflected, open-minded, and knowledgeable. So knowledgeable comes specifically sorry knowledgeable

027comes in all shapes and sizes many forms and ideas um by exposing mature cla um mature students such as me and my classmates um and myself to important topics like teen dating violence in a safe spot like high schools of Mcgown. I believe that the students will be able to continue their lives safely and effectively with knowledge. Um, we request for a lift in the book banning and censorship in dating violence and sexual assault as well as addition to the annual curriculum requirements such as the mental health awareness, bullying and sexual harassment presentations, a video and an activity about teen dating violence for all students. I think that by us learning these um these important lessons for our future lives in college and in the jobs that we go that we'll eventually go to. I

028think that us having this information will help us to um correctly kind of pinpoint what what awareness we have with these um these unnecessary I guess violences towards us so that we feel safe in almost every public environment and that we don't feel like we should be scared to be able to go out and talk to people and be able to express our feelings because of because of us being suppressed by others. Um and and I think that's very important. Uh and thank you. >> Thank you. >> Our next speaker, Mr. Nick Lamontia. Hello. Good evening. Uh, Mr. Superintendent. I don't know whether or not to call you Mr. President or schoolboard president. I'm not going to lie. My name is Nick Lamontia. Other schoolboard members. Nice to see all of you guys. Um, I'm

029here with other parents in our community just to talk about nutrition. That kind of macro level word which in itself is the scientific study of nutrients, right? So, it very much plays in line with education. U there's a there's a lot that goes on with the nutrition. I didn't write anything down, so I apologize. It's just not in my nature and this is really painful. I'm not going to lie. Uh, I'm here more so to talk tactically about what you can do locally and what we think we can help out with with concessionires and kind of discre discretionary uh, Cokes, Fritos, things like that that's taking place at chess club events andor sporting events and stuff like that. I think it's very much within our power immediately and over the long term to make small

030subtle adjustments. Coke zero, Gatorade zero, other things that kind of restrict some of that high caloric intake that is not necessarily needed. I don't want to rob a child of having a a Coke in his life or a popsicle. I think it's very much a treat, but let it be that a treat, not the source of fluid or the source of hydration or the source of nutrients that they get after playing a basketball game or playing in chess for two hours all day long. And that's the only food source they can really get. So, I just want to talk about that and stuff that I think that I can help with along with a lot of other parents in whatever way we can. So, just want to say thank you and I'll give you 30

031seconds back. Thank you guys very much. >> Thank you, sir. >> Our next speaker is Mr. Oscar Padon Jr. Hello, my name is Oscar Bon. I live across the street from Roosevelt Elementary School. I've lived there for about 20 years now. At some point last year, Roosevelt installed a new outdoor PA system um/speakers. And ever since then, myself and my fellow neighbors have been involuntarily woken up by the school 5 days out of the week because Roosevelt has been allowed to forcefully project their morning announcements through their PA system. This is an example of what our community has had to endure every Monday through Friday all before 8 a.m. Sorry. >> If the PA system was being used for emergency situations, i.e. fire drills, lockdown drills, or even active threat drills, then we would be

032supportive of its usage. However, since historically its sole purpose has been to forcefully announce who has had perfect attendance, what's for lunch, or ironically, how a Roosevelt Bronco should be conducting themselves on top of sporadically blurry music like the monster match for Halloween or just yesterday celebration by Cool and the gang. I have video proof of both. Roosevelt Elementary has chosen to dedicate their PA system for noise pollution in an otherwise tranquil neighborhood. and it must come to an end. I want to stress that our issue isn't with the kids having morning announcements. Our issue is with the school narcissistically forcing their announcements on the surrounding community. >> Thank you, sir. >> Next speaker, Miss Paulina Mohamad. >> Trustees, Dr. Gutierrez, thank you so much for your time. Um, I'm here to um conclude with

033a couple ideas uh following up on uh on uh Hershel and Susie and what everybody else came to talk about nutrition. Um you know, food insecurity is a real concern within our MacallenD students. And you know, I'm using the word our very purposefully because every parent who spoke about nutrition today here cares deeply about the well-being of all children in our community, not just our own. Many of these students rely heavily on the meals that we serve. Um, in households facing food insecurity, school provided breakfasts, lunches, and sometimes dinners account for a substantial portion, if not all of the nutrition that these kids are going to get in one day. I would venture to say, and you probably have better statistics than I do, that about half, if not more, of the meals that these

034kids consume in a calendar year come from MacallenD. Um given this dependence and we have a responsibility to ensure that every meal promotes health. We must prioritize shifting our district's menu towards whole min minimally processed foods emphasizing fresh fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains while reducing the added sugars and highly processed items. We cannot ignore our local statistics. Like Susie mentioned, Macallen and Macallen and you know, Idalgo County consists consistently ranks amongst the highest in the nation for adult obesity and the prevalence of type 2 diabetes. These conditions are linked to a poor diet and our students deserve better to break this cycle. The good news is that we can change this course without reinventing the wheel. Neighboring districts have shown us the path forward. districts such as Brownsville ISD. Sorry. Thank you all

035so much. You got my message. >> Thank you. >> And our final speaker for today is Miss Jessica. >> Good evening everyone. Um, so glad to be here. Thank you. I'm unscripted and last spin it, but it's very simple. The plea is when it's got to be now. Let's make the move. We can do this as a district. We can do this for our city, for our families, for our children, and for generations. We can't keep saying one day we'll do it like some of the other districts in the country, in our region. It has to be now. It has to be purposeful. It can all be done. We will band the community and a committee around all of this to help implement in any way that we can. Use us as your advocates, as

036your biggest supporters. And we will get thousands and thousands of parents and families to help make this change. But it has to be now for the sake of our children, of our future, of our community, and of our generations. Let's do it now. Let's be the change makers and make this happen. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. >> All right, that concludes the public comments. I want to thank everyone that came forward to speak and while we can't respond to you here, you can certainly reach us on our emails, our cell phones, and once again, thank you guys. >> Thank you everybody. >> Thank you all. >> At this time, we will move on to item number five, recognition. 5A recognition of Mac Memorial High School alum national champion Amari Hernandez. >> Not sure

037if she's with us today, but there is a >> she is not she is not here. >> Yeah. >> Tonight we recognize one of McCall Memorial High School's alum, Miss Amara Ednandez, national champion with Texas A&M volleyball. Miss Felicia Viel, our director of marketing and communications will have more information on this. And this is for information purposes only. Go ahead, Miss Vielen. >> Thank you, Dr. Gutierrez. We are proud to recognize Macallum Memorial High School alum Amari Nandez for an incredible achievement on the national stage. Amari is a member of the Texas A&M Aggies volleyball team, which recently captured the NCAA National Championship, marking a historic first for the program. From her time as a standout student athlete at Miguel Memorial to competing at the highest level of collegiate athletics, Amari's hard work, dedication, and

038perseverance have led her to this remarkable accomplishment. Her success is a powerful example of what McAllen ISD graduates can achieve, and she continues to inspire current and future student athletes across our district. Excuse me. Please join us in congratulating Miss Amari Nandez, McAllen Memorial High School alum and NCAA national champion. Congratulations, Amomari. We are so proud of you. Amari and her family are aware of tonight's recognition and they were unable to attend and we know Amari's back at school and um they do express their gratitude. Mom and dad did did want to share um with Mallalen ISD board of trustees and Macallen ISD their gratitude for the ongoing support from Mallen ISD. We've also invited our director of athletics, Mr. Brian McClenny, to share with us some points about Omari success here at Macallen ISD.

039>> Dr. Gutier's school board. Uh what a wonderful outstanding young lady. Uh she's such a great leader. I know my daughter got to compete against her and uh my daughter and her I mean just got along so well. So uh just some few highlights. Uh she was the district hitter of the year. Uh she finished her high school career with over 1500 kills. Uh she was first team all district both in 21 and 22. She was blocker of the year in 2021. She was newcomer of the year as a freshman. So she was a four-year letter letterman on varsity. Uh she was also part you know we talk about student athlete great student national honor society. Uh she was named to the all academic honor role. Uh she was awarded distinguish distinguished level of achievement.

040Uh also uh she participated in a regional tournament for three years. And and here's the big thing and as a testament to her leadership, she was a team captain for Texas A&M volleyball. I mean, that that is outstanding for the 2025 national champions. And during that run, they defeated three number one seeds and I saw some of the volleyball and they defeated Nebraska who was undefeated up until that point. So, we are so proud of Amari. She's just such a outstanding young lady, a great leader uh for our community and we wish her all the best. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Hi, I am Omari. I graduated from Macallen Memorial in 2024. I've been playing volleyball since I was 8 years old and this has always been something that I've truly enjoyed doing. So

041with my time here at Memorial, I really enjoyed having my team, my friends that I would go to school with every day and then we could practice after. Then we had the privilege to play in front of all of our students and peers, our parents coming here. So that was pretty awesome. Um I think one of my favorite memories was when we played Cherryland to go to the Sweet 16 my senior year. That was a pretty awesome game to see kind of red on one side and then blue on the other. And then at&m I've truly truly truly become a whole new athlete. I feel like my coaches have propelled me to another level that I didn't even think I could reach, but I've been so gracious to learn from them and to be such

042to be surrounded by such amazing athletes. Being able to be a part of this team has truly been an honor and the nine seniors that did leave have left a lasting impact on our team. I know that we will talk about this team forever. So, when we saw that we were playing Kentucky, we were familiar with them. them when we were scouting them. We were familiar with them just because we've played them in the SEC. So, it was going to be an exciting game. >> It does. I have so much love for my Gonzalez family, my Kathy family, my memorial family, all the teachers, all the students that I met truly left an impact on me. I know Mr. Ednandees, the principal at Gonzalez, Miss Dominguez, my third, fourth, and fifth grade teacher um at

043Gonzalez just completely have changed my life and I still talk to them to this day. Once again, thank you on behalf of the family. Thank you for allowing this recognition today. >> Very proud to see what count ISD is able to have out there and it's great representation. Um I know that they swept them busy and so that's amazing. There's a couple board members here that are Aggies, so I'm sure they're proud as Aggies, but we are very proud as MacD board of trustees >> and the and the lawyer >> and the lawyer. So, thank you so much. We will move on to >> Mr. President, I move to reorganize the agenda. Uh, since we have some members from the community here, um, I ask that we move agenda items, sorry, I move that we

044move agenda items 9D 2, 3, and 4 to the forefront. You said 9D, 92, 93, 94. 92, three, and four. >> Do you want them before the >> They're gonna do a presentation. >> I'll uh hold off on my motion. >> All right. Thank you. We will move on to uh proclamation. Uh it is national or schoolboard appreciation month and Dr. Gutierrez has some more information. >> Yes. Administration is requesting the approval to adopt the proclamation for schoolboard appreciation month. Miss Felicia Viel, our director for marketing and communications will have more information and we're recommending action on this item, but I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Variel first. Go ahead. >> Sure. Thank you, Dr. Guthis. And it's no question that you guys are loved, obviously, and we are much appreciative

045of you, of each one of you. Each January, we take time to honor the dedicated community volunteers who serve on their local school boards. The 2026 school board recognition month theme is our future is public. In Texas, schoolboard members are elected by their communities, by families, staff, and citizens who trust them to always do what is best for our students. This vital connection ensures board members remain accountable for local voters, attuned to the unique needs of their communities, and committed to building a brighter future for every child. Tonight, we want to show our sincere appreciation for your service and leadership. In prep for in preparation for our first board meeting this past Janu this past board meeting here in January, students from across Macallen ISD created special artwork and wrote special thank you letters to

046express their gratitude. These heartfelt messages reflect the impact you have on their education and their lives have and their lives. This evening we continue our celebration of school board recognition month. We are honored to have students representing our Macallen ISD fine arts program and Macallen Memorial Theater. They will now read a proclamation recognizing January as school board recognition month and honoring the service of our board of trustees. We will also close out the special recognition with a very tailored and special treat for you. But before that, let's get ready for the proclamation. We have 10th grader Aiden Kaiser, 11th grade grader Gel Nino, and 12th grader Luna Galwan to read the proclamation. >> Throughout our history, each generation has been called to strengthen our foundation and prepare the way for those who follow. This spirit

047is reflected most clearly in the education of our children. For it is through a quality education that we place students on a path to lifelong excellence and achievement. Providing a strong education is the work of many, and school boards are essential to this effort. These local leaders devote their time, energy, and expertise to setting and reviewing budgets, overseeing the management of Texas public and charter schools, and ensuring that every student has access to exemplary education. By partnering with teachers, parents, and community members, schoolboard members help inspire a lifelong love of learning in the next generation. They will continue to play a vital role as we pursue educational excellence across the Lonear State. Each year, the month of January is set aside to honor the many contributions of school boards and to recognize their commitment to

048education. At this time, I encourage all Texans to acknowledge the more than 7,000 school board members whose service represents the best of our great state. Therefore, Greg Abbott, Governor of Texas, does hereby proclaim January 2026 to be school board appreciation month in Texas and urge all Texans to observe the occasion with appropriate ceremonies and activities. Thank you. All right. So, now we are going to need to adjust everyone. So, let's have our executive team if we can um let's move back to this this row here. And then we need Mr. Ball if we can clear that seat as well because we want to have our school board come and have some VIP seating in the very front row. We can Felicia, while they set up, I just want to say thank you. >> Thank you

049everybody. Sometimes a dream starts with just a spark. But a spark needs someone to protect it. Sometimes it isn't just a teacher or a classroom that keeps that dream alive. Sometimes it's the people who stand behind the school. Tonight, that's you. You believed in us. You believed in our schools, our programs, and our future. Because you believed we found our voices. >> Because you believed we found confidence. >> Because you believed doors open that once felt out of reach. When you support our district, you aren't just funding programs. You're investing in students, the next artist, the next engineer, the next teacher, the next leader. >> And some of us will stand where you sit one day, still giving back because someone believed first. >> You may never meet every student you help, but your belief

050travels from you to us, to the world we're going to build. So, please don't stop believing. >> Believe in the classrooms you provide for. >> Believe in the future still taking shape. >> We're the proof >> because you believed in us. We believe in ourselves, >> in our schools, and in our communities. So, thank you for believing. >> Thank you so much, Miss Luna, Gell, and Aiden again for being here and representing all of our fine arts students. We thank you. And thank you, Dr. Guutieres for allowing us to change up a little bit of the recognition that we do every January. We wanted to think outside of the box and here you are. We we made a special treat just for you all. Thank you all so much. Let's get a picture with the

051proclamation and our board. Can I have you on this side? You want me to switch? How about another round of applause? this for me. >> Oh, thank you. >> Yes. >> Well, do we have a public I am going to ask for a motion uh to approve the proclamation. >> So move. >> I have a motion. >> I'll second >> and a second. All in favor? >> I. >> All opposed? >> I I mean sorry. >> Motion passes 70. Thank you guys once again. That was amazing you guys. Every time that we we see you guys performance. We are on item number seven. >> Mr. President, I'd like to follow up on Mr. Hadat, Trusty Hadad's prior motion to reorder the agenda. >> Okay. I have a motion um to bring forth items 9 D

0522, three, and four. Is that correct, Trusty? >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. Uh do I have a second for that? >> Second. >> All right. All in favor? >> I oppose. Motion passes. We are going to move on to item 92. >> 92 3 and four. >> That is going to be >> Yeah. All right. Which is C2. Okay, >> that one is going to be 9 C2 >> 90 92 >> All right. Um we are on 92 which is uh the report regarding before and after school play clubs. Dr. Mcus. >> Yes. Tonight, uh, Miss Jenned Nino, our associate superintendent for instructional leadership, will share more information regarding before and after school play club. This is for information purposes only. Uh, Miss Nino. >> Yes. Thank you. Good evening. Um, thank you again for

053the opportunity to share and provide an update on something that we started um, elementary outdoor play. And tonight I also um invited principal from Escandon Elementary, Carla Rodriguez, and principal at Mclliff Elementary, Ivon Caldwell, just to also share a little bit of feedback on what um our efforts look like at the campus. So um we were asked just to give an update on which campuses were participating um the planned student participation as well as any models um involved for staffing and supervision of students. Uh we had a meeting December 9th all together as 18 principles and myself just to discuss the plan for how we could um take those next steps and piloting outdoor play. And the six schools that were chosen um were not the ones with the safe and secure program because they

054already have um staff that comes in uh later throughout the day, three extra hours after school. So we said, "Okay, let's at least start in the campuses where we can get um some some things going." and Rayurn Elementary did um offer to say, "Okay, even though we have safe and secure, we'll also pilot this opportunity." So, um the time that um was discussed and agreed on was 7:15 to 7:35. We do have school that starts at 7:45 this year, but again, it gives students a little bit of time to kind of clean up, get ready for class in between those next 10 minutes. So our campuses that are offering this right now is Fields Elementary, Escandone Elementary, Jackson Elementary, McAuliffe, Rayburn, and Thpenzala. And this began on Monday, January 12th. So right after the winter

055break um started, we let kids adjust, make plans um to join us after promoting this back in December and starting with third to fifth grade levels. The we had a campus check-in meeting today. So more information after today will also be provided as we move forward. will be having check-in meetings every 3 weeks. And the daily student participation um January has hit us with a few um weather days where it's been cold and rainy, but our staff has made the best of it as they always do. And so here's just some reported numbers of how many students on average per day and how many students on average per week are attending. And we have really good participation happening for our students. Again, third to fifth grades across these six schools. and we're looking to um

056share those numbers after tomorrow to close out this third week. So, um with that being said, I want to thank the staff who has embraced this opportunity for students. Um we have nurses on duty because we know even during the school day, our nurses play a critical role in making sure that students um are safe and taken care of. So, they are on boarded at each of these schools a little bit earlier in their work schedule. Um we have some of our coaches, some of our teachers that are helping out and some of our pair of professionals as well. So here is the list of those um amazing staff members along with our principles that are present at each of these schools every morning since January 12th um specifically supporting the outdoor play um initiative.

057And then I did ask them, you know, let's share some models. Everybody has some different opportunities and you'll hear a little bit from uh Essandon on how they're maximizing their their um outdoor play during this time. But just moving forward, it takes ongoing conversations to make improvements. And again, we appreciate the opportunity to offer this to our students. Um here are just some considerations and campus feedback from meeting and checking in for our first um time uh since this started. Again, inclement weather has hit us a little bit more in January, but we'll keep moving forward and adjust. Um, also just considering if this expands uh to other grade levels uh lower than third grade, so to our students that are kinder through second, that would have to be readjusted in supervision because our students

058that are in younger grade levels do require a little bit more help getting out of vehicles, etc. And um on certain morning, certain days also our police officers, they're present at all times um early, but if it's darker outside, we want to make sure that there's lighting outside for students to be playing. Um just allowing more time to provide a followup with enough time for staff to monitor and adjust was what they informed me. And also just continuing campus check-ins to help uh ensure that everyone's safe and that there's this is a good opportunity for students. So with that being said, I'd like to invite um Principal Rodriguez and Principal Caldwell just for a minute or two just to hear from their lens of where this is actually happening at our schools um to give

059us some feedback. So thank you principles for being with us tonight. >> Thank you trustees, Dr. Gutierrez, thank you for the opportunity for us to share our successes with our outdoor playtime at McAuliffe. It has been a huge success. We've had our PE coach out there. he was the first to go ahead and volunteer. The numbers of our students attending school at 7:15 has increased dramatically. It also has helped our students use their energy before they go into the class time because class does start at 7:45. We have been able to also during this increment weather move our playtime into the gym. So, our coach has been able to have them do hula hoops, use cones, walk around the gym, whatever the students are wanting to do to release that energy. We have had the

060opportunity to move some of our staff to go ahead and help with the outdoor playtime, but we think it's a great idea for our students, especially third through fifth grade, because they themselves are already a little independent. So they are able to get to the gym on their own with several staff members that we have designated in certain areas of our campus. They are able to use the machines, use the equipment, put the equipment away before they have to go get ready for class. So just the health aspect also another thing that we have found beneficial is it also helps our elevate program. I know our elevate program that's one of the things that we've been pushing at at McAuliffe. And so the students that do not have the opportunity for club ball, the students

061that do not have the opportunity to do extra stuff outside of the school time or school day, we utilize that time during outdoor recess, recess, anytime PE to give them the opportunity of knowing what volleyball sport is so that we can have more Amaris to know what softball is, basketball, any technical sport that gives them the opportunity to learn that. So, we really, really like the outdoor playtime for our campus. We've seen a major decrease in our discipline. Our referrals have been minimized. The focus in our classrooms have really, really increased as well, especially for our students that are getting ready for their STAR. It is very stressful for them. So, having them be able to release that energy in the morning really benefits us all. Um, so we're hoping that we can keep it

062for our campus and for the district. >> Thank you. >> Good evening, Dr. Gutierrez and members of the board. I agree with my colleague Ivonne. Uh, we have we are very grateful for this opportunity. I'm so blessed to have the opportunity to pilot this program. At my campus, there's been a history of tardies consecutive consecutive consecutive. And now that we started the program, one-third of our third through fifth graders show up early. We are starting our program at 7:05 because parents are asking can my child go, can they be there? We are very blessed that our um school wrote MEF grants and we received quite a number of them. One of them was for equipment and so the kids were excited about using it, but we do have a a a schedule to follow with

063PE. We have a curriculum to follow. So this is allowing our students to use treadmills that they've never used before. um the bouncing uh trampolines, they have um interactive games, they have about six different uh equipment that they received from MEF grant. And our coaches wanted me to make sure to share with you all that he's very grateful to MEF because we received all this equipment and our kids are having opportunity to use equipment that they otherwise don't have access to and allowing them opportunities to get physically fit uh to feel confident. We house the RSD program. So our kiddos come from Rio Grande, from Roma, from Progresso, from everywhere. They arrive at our campus at seven in the morning. So now we see RSD uh students are our deaf and heart of hearing students

064on treadmills, on the trampolines, on the interactive games. So it gives them an opportunity where they are not able to um to go to their neighbor to go across the street like many of our kids. they have an opportunity to interact with other children to have that time to to play to learn to be active and um it's just been a really really good experience for us. The having third through fifth is a great experience. The little ones are taken care of. Uh but third through fifth are the ones that are uh participating and they're really enjoying it. Parents are happy, students are happy, teachers are happy because the kids come ready to learn, they're awake, they're motivated. Um, like Ivonne said, we are seeing a decrease in behavior issues because they get their wiggles

065out. Uh, they they they're active, they're alert, and they're ready to learn. So, uh, we do want on behalf of Escandon, I do want to thank you for the opportunity to pilot this program. We're excited to continue growing the program and u for this opportunity. So, thank you. Thank you, Miss Dino. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> I just I just want to comment um thank you all for taking the opportunity to pilot this. I know it's not easy to take on new responsibilities and given everything that our schools have to deal with logistics wise, staffing, the fact that you all are willing to do this um all the campuses that took it on. Thank you. Thank you to Miss Nino and thank you to Dr. G for listening to the community and piloting this.

066>> Thank you, sir. >> I agree. That was the best thing I've ever heard in a long time. That just warmed my heart. Not to sound cliche, but um it's true. It's like giving these students an opportunity where they wouldn't have to play, to move, to get them ready to come inside. Um it's just amazing. I I would love to see where this goes, you know, in the next few years. My main concern obviously is um making sure that our district can help provide support for the students and maybe seeing it expand from kinder through fifth. Um, and I don't mean to put admin on the spot, but do you guys have any ideas for like helping um helping implement the successful play club yet or just kind of thinking through how the semester goes?

067Well, um, yeah, we just started this month, uh, January, but it seems like the feedback we're getting is good and, uh, we'll continue to, uh, evaluate it, but definitely it looks like, uh, expanding it and adding more grades, uh, will be the the right thing to do and to move forward, >> right? >> I think Oh, go ahead, >> please. Um, have you all identified any potential barriers to expending at the moment? >> Um, budget. >> Yeah. Can you be more specific? Like what are we talking about in terms of each individual campus? >> Well, well, we and I think it was said a while ago uh in public comments, we don't want to put a burden on staff, but we we do want to compensate the staff for doing this because >> uh it's

068additional duties. >> Yeah. >> And so we definitely want to make sure that uh we do compensate the staff uh that will be putting in this time to to be compensated rather than to be a duty assignment. >> Sure. And so that's what uh we will have to then make a budget uh on how much it would cost us uh for all the for all the elementary schools, the grade levels and the times. >> Yeah. And basically to ensure proper staff coverage for safety issues, right? >> Correct. >> Thank you. >> Um right, that brought another idea. Yeah, because I know this is a pilot, so there's going to be some issues right now. Um, the last thing I think the board wants is current paras who had prior commitments are now kind of juggling

069things or teachers. We really don't want that. We really value any feedback that you principles are seeing that would help support your campus better because I know you guys all want this to happen, but it's just about kind of doing the balancing act. Um, I had a few ideas about partnership, but um, maybe I'll bring that up later. just like you know we have elevate with the city of Macallen like I do think that we can look into other ways obviously staffing is a first choice but um we need to look at the budget and make sure we can provide >> Miss N you want to say >> yes we appreciate the feedback um from your end as well um so two I think two things as we move forward in the monitoring is as

070it expands to especially our students in the in kinder first and second um that takes a lot more dedicated supervision from getting them from the vehicle all the way through to where the outdoor play happens and then monitoring them. So, for example, safe and secure is staffed per um how many kids I have at each age. Um I don't say like, okay, you know, there's 50 kids, we can do it by 10 adults because it just depends what age. So, we have those considerations. And then, um in speaking with some of the staff, uh they're excited, but they also have their own kids to get taken care of in the morning. and um they said it's not so much the pay. I just don't want to miss out on that time getting my own kids

071taken care of and my own family before I have to actually be at work myself. And so that was the idea behind not choosing the safe and secure schools immediately because they are already working three extra um hours after school and so that would be a 13-hour workday even being compensated. So just being mindful and as we move forward but um it's great to hear there's excitement. It's great to have the support of everybody and just know that these three week three-week check-in meetings um we'll get different data especially as the weather uh changes too. So um I really appreciate the principal saying absolutely let's try this and um we will definitely be sure to update you as we move along as well. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> And uh the

072next item that is called is the uh item three which is the menu development process. Uh yes. Uh the child nutrition program is dedicated to providing nutritious highquality meals that promote student health and academic success. As part of our continuous efforts to assess and enhance our meal service, we will present our goals to increase scratch cooking and review the efforts we have made this year to help get us there. Miss Sonia Skkel, our director for child nutrition, will present more details. Um and this is an information purposes only item. Go ahead, Mrs. Ke. All right. Hello. Um I'm a little nervous because we had you know a lot of comments. Uh but first of all I want to um thank you all. Thanks to the parents who came out and uh made comments. I think

073that through today's uh presentation it will show that uh our department is already moving in the direction that a lot of parents are bringing up concerns. So, I think we're on the same page. Um, you know, and hopefully we can answer the question of, you know, the timing because we we do feed so many meals. It takes a a little bit longer to move, you know, the needle, but but we're moving, right? Um, first, I wanted to um just um recognize some of our staff from the child nutrition program that are here. So, if I can have uh Miss Aodora Figueroa, she's our assistant director uh is here with us and she works really closely with our operations team who oversees all the equipment needs and product needs to produce a menu. I have Jasmine

074um Valdez who's our registered dietician. She deals with all of our special diets. And then I have Stephanie uh Morales who is our menu and production specialist and her and Jasmine work really close to um make all of these menus come to life. Okay. Um so our department long-term goal is that our child nutrition department uh increase scratch cooking um made from uh uh scratch made recipe districtwide through a phasin program. So our goal is that by 2030 at least 75% of our entre or side dishes are prepared using scratch cook. Uh key focus areas and I'm going to touch on these as we go through as I go through the other slides would be to strengthen our staff skills with ongoing culinary training. Uh use standardized scratch speed uh scratch recipes, improve kitchen equipment

075and workflows. gather student feedback and replace processed items with minimally processed alternatives um or whole foods. Um did I go the wrong way? Okay, just looks different on my page. Um how how will we get there? Um so I just I just did a a five-year plan. And you'll see some of the uh terms or some some processes that are highlighted um that you'll see over and over again like uh reviewing our uh developing a standard operating uh procedure uh reviewing it, training staff, reviewing equipment needs, uh evaluating meals per labor hour. Uh but the plan is uh that we begin to move towards the uh minimum meat process. And I I did put on there I do know that for our breakfast that is probably one of our highest uh processed um where we

076have a lot of processed items. So that is a key focus uh for us to tackle uh is our breakfast items. Um so we've already identified that uh we are already uh working to try to correct make some corrections or improvements in that area. Um this is just uh this is just a way for us uh to look at or identify uh menu items on our menu uh and how we do it. So these are just definitions for you to review. Um uh so it's whole foods, minimally processed foods, uh processed foods or scratch uh cooking. Uh this was something that I had presented before, but I just put that back in there just so you know that that is uh how we how we define. >> Miss Eske, can you give uh because I've

077gotten this question from several parents. >> What is speed scratch cooking? Can you give example of the process and you know some examples of food items that we serve currently or you're thinking about for speed? >> Uh when we when we think about speed scratch uh it could be something that uh maybe uh a part of it already comes like it's a minimally processed item that comes ready to just finish out in in the in the campuses. So it could be uh beef that's already fully cooked and at the campus it gets uh finished out by adding additional ingredients. >> And would beef that's fully cooked I mean like if you go to HB and you buy uh ground beef that's technically at least minimally processed, >> right? >> Um but beef that's fully cooked

078and then we heat it up. I don't know if we do this here. I know other schools, >> you know, it's like a pound bag of beef and you put it in essentially boil it again to heat it. Is that what we do? Is that is that considered minimally or is that >> It depends. So we do have some that are that we consider processed and then we have some that we consider minimally processed. Um and and in this slide I would like to kind of point out that so this is a present. This is something that I had shown you all before in terms of where we lie. But I also wanted to point out that for this current menu, some of the things that we had already made changes to. And that second

079point of uh certain uh beef and chicken products uh were already moved into minimally processed. And the example that I gave at the time was our hamburger patty that is on our menu right now. So, it went from a processed item to a minimally processed because it has four ingredients. So, it has beef, salt, pepper, and uh garlic. It's a fully cooked item, but we we we moved over that product to take out the soy and other things that were uh so it's the cleaner label of uh sometimes you have to do those type of products because of labor, right? So, we're trying to balance out labor. So that is maybe it goes I think that for our hamburger patty it goes up against salads. So make building salads at a cafeteria takes much longer

080than heating up um a a burger patty. And so by choosing the cleaner option uh in in terms of the label uh we're providing our students that minimally processed item. Um we had also uh included one protein option in our breakfast menu uh every day of the week. So, just as a reminder, our students have two options every single day for breakfast and for lunch. Um, and so protein was already added uh as an option every day. And then we moved from a 3-week menu cycle to a four-week menu cycle to give students more options. Um, it did present a little bit of a problem. This was the first year we did it with inventory. So, now all of a sudden, you're bringing in a lot more products. uh we need space to store it

081is what we what we ran into. Uh we are making a few tweaks to our menu to be able to reuse certain products uh in different ways in our new menu uh to help uh with storage issues at the campus and at our central warehouse. Um and then our current participation goal. So the district's goal is that 80% of students eat breakfast and lunch and that 11% of students eat dinner. Um, as of January 12th, uh, for breakfast, we're at 75%, 82 for lunch, and 10.7, which is the 11% for dinner. Um, we always tie participation with a good menu. So, uh, we look to make changes when needed. Uh, so this is something that goes out every Wednesday and it's evaluated. It normally takes about three cycles for us to start getting real data

082as to what students like. So, we're looking, we don't really start knowing what kids are liking or not liking until probably November. And then we're pretty much in break. And then so right now is where we're really going to start seeing uh some of those changes. Um but we do make changes uh as needed. So, I know a concern was brought about about the uh breakfast uh bar and that was a phase that's already on the phase out um program. We're already replacing it with a chia bar, strawberry chia bar on our menu. So, that that was just we're already on depletion on that item. Um >> hopefully we'll get to cereals at least at least big the cereals that are just sugar, >> right? Um other efforts made this year is uh we did

083uh go out and visit uh some of the local uh farm in Edinburgh. I know that was brought up earlier. Uh we are um including uh so plans moving forward is that we are including locally grown produce uh on our bid that renews in April. uh that is already submitted in with purchasing. And so the wording and all of that that we need is already on there um to hopefully create a schedule uh to bring in locally grown produce uh and and feature them at campuses. Um from what we've learned from visiting is, you know, some of the challenges is the amount of product that they can provide. That's why it probably can't be districtwide all in the same day. But we could we could try campusbased. Um other efforts are that we have submitted

084uh forecasting for locally grown raw beef as well. Um and so the idea is that we would feature special menu for locally grown beef uh in the next school year. Um, of course, we will uh in doing all of this, we would have to retrain staff on the processes of cooking and properly storing raw beef. Uh, creating standard operating procedures for that type of process. Uh, because when you're dealing with raw beef at so many campuses with a lot of different people, we want to make sure that uh we're doing it in a safe way. Uh we've also uh be submitting a forecast uh using uh USDA commodity uh raw beef uh in case um you know once we we know that that we've tried it in a smaller scale uh we can uh use

085our entitlement money to try to bring in uh raw beef uh in >> Can you explain what that means? We'll submit a forecast. What does that mean? So um pretty much everything that we purchase we have to we have to submit forecastes of about how much we feel like we're going to purchase. Uh this gives uh manufacturers enough time to to produce and say okay well we know you're going to you're committing to this amount of product that you're going to bring in. Um, so it just allows them to prepare to be able to ship to us to try to not um for us not to have shortages. >> Well, I think that that is key >> because, you know, the manufacturers shouldn't be telling us what we should what options we have available to

086kids. We're the ones buying. We should be able to tell the manufacturers we want more whole foods. We want more um minimally processed. Uh I mean ideally we wouldn't have any process right but there's got to be some I understand. >> So I mean if we can push our manufacturers look for new manufacturers >> uh vendors >> to move us in quicker fashion. >> I think we should do that. >> Yeah. And and there's a lot of products that that we can easily you know move. Like I said, we've already started the the moving some of the main entre into the cleaner version of that. Those are easy. It's some of and and I'll talk about it later. It's some of the breakfast items where like you say, it's hard because that's all you have.

087That's all that's being offered. But, you know, we're we're talking about other plans as to how we can we can we can do better, right? and and from our central kitchen. Um other offer uh efforts was uh we started uh during that uh um food show we had had a conversation about uh looking at reconnecting our central kitchen. Um we did uh start the the process of that. Um there is some equipment that needs to be upgraded. Um, one of the major things too, I it's not really bakery, but in order to be able to process or open the kitchen um fully uh to do uh what we're thinking is, you know, we'd have a major dishwash repair that just broke down, right? Um so but our plan would be that uh by November 2026

088we begin testing for school year 27 28 or sooner. Um so that is that is uh what we're really looking at is how do we use our central kitchen uh to do um to meet our goals. Right. So, yes. >> Were y'all able to perform the scales assessment or go through that yet or you're just kind of thinking about >> Yeah. In general? >> In general. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> And then um since we are to Dr. Kdman's point, since we are you know the DSA doing a lot of assessment, why haven't we done the scales assessment? Um, we've just had a lot of other uh processes and that we're working on like the current menu. We are on a timeline crunch at this point to get that out because we have to have

089um managers uh order by April. And so recipes are trying to be done. So, uh, we've been testing, uh, recipes pretty much, uh, at campuses and at our central kitchen, uh, for weeks now. So, it's it's Yeah, I mean, that's we've been just on a time crunch. >> Um, you know, I'm not I I know Brownsville is recommending the scales assessment. Um, you know, I'm not I don't think I'm qualified to determine which assessment is best, but if we're looking at a five-year plan >> about how to make our food healthier, more nutritious, um, less processed, I think we need to do some type of comprehensive assessment. And I'm not I'm not saying you're not doing that. >> Um, but I think we're looking at things in isolation. >> Okay. >> Yeah, we can get

090we can get on that for sure. And then um like I said when when we put put out this menu, this current menu that we're working on now, there was already a lot of changes that had been made. Uh so some of the changes that you're going to see in the new menu is a lot of stuff that was voted on by our students during the food show. Um, so some of the breakfast items that are changing is we're bringing in uh the oatmeal that they voted for, the overnight oats. Uh, we are working at Central Kitchen. Uh, right now we just had um a packing machine that comes in so we could try to test out uh doing yogurt parfets from our central kitchen. Um, so that is already on the menu, but also

091doing other improvements to their already existing uh menu items that are going to stay. Um, and it's um, so I have a list there, you know, Asian noodle, Asian rice, uh, those are all being improved. The marinara sauce, we collaborated with our uh, Mallen ISD culinary students. Um, and so they created uh, a recipe. Uh we went out last Friday and we we tested it or we we voted on it. Um it was a really good experience for them because they got to we had gone out in December and uh introduced to them um you know or or or educated them on USDA guidelines for uh recipe development and uh they got to to see the challenges of creating. So just not adding salt to everything. So uh we have a winner and next week

092actually we're going out to a campus and we're going to test it out in a big scale at Brown. Um, and the idea is that by April, we'd be able to push this out uh at at one of the one of our lunches so that those students who are seniors get to see the um their menu on you know being showcased. Um, also, um, January we had an all staff training, um, and we got to go over the long-term goals with our staff. So, uh, and they got to hear where we're going. So, uh, increase scratch cooking, um, and how we're going to implement it. So, Jasmine did a great video of introducing uh interviewing uh some staff who had been here for a long time and they got to talk about the rewards that

093uh they had in uh because they've been doing they did scratch cooking and then how it went from scratch cooking to more convenient food. Uh so all the staff has not been a part of that. So they got to hear about the rewards of scratch cooking. So, it's uh introducing that back to the staff and then um and then some of the steps being taken uh this year uh into the new year of how when you talk about when you talk about introducing scratch cooking, a lot of times the staff uh can't see it because they can't see where they're going to find the time. So changes being made is uh not having to wrap every item like a burger uh but just doing uh eliminating that step or not pre-portioning out uh every item.

094Um and so introducing like squeeze bottles that they feel like might be a challenge because uh some of the principles might feel like it's going to take longer for students to do that. but it's still something that we're going to try to to show staff how they can gain their their uh time back. Um and then uh we are also going to be attending uh we were accepted to go to a farm fresh culinary workshop. So Stephanie and I will be attending on uh March 2nd to the 3. So it's a great opportunity for us to learn uh from uh trained uh culinary um chefs or trainers. Uh so we'll be attending that that training in March. And then facilities challenges and I just wanted to show this. Um we have um these are campuses

095that are considered self-prep um we have 18 campuses. Uh the campuses in with the notated an asterisk uh are campuses that have recently been remodeled and we have six campuses that are in fairly good condition and four campuses that would need uh facility improvements or major equipment repair. Um we have Mai and Travis that need major freezer and cooler repair. uh Row that just needs like Row and Morris that needs a uh a workflow that doesn't work very well, but they have an okay uh kitchen. Um and then we have um these are non-self prep schools. So we have 12 campuses that are considered non uh self-prep um meaning they receive all uh some part of their meals from Central Kitchen. um these campuses have ovens. So the campuses on the left are campuses that

096um would need complete kitchen repairs. And then the ones on the right are almost self-prep. They have hoods. They just don't have the Anel systems or the drains to be able to put in uh kitchen equipments. But they do have walk-in coolers and freezers. Except for Houston, they would need a walk-in freezer. And what's the So when you we're talking about facility challenges on the previous slide and this one these are challenges that our schools face today. Correct. >> Correct. >> And but we're able to provide the me meals. Oh yeah. >> So would these just be if we wanted to do more of the cooking at the school? >> Correct. >> Or if we let's say we went to full scratch cooking, we would still be able to do it central and deliver. >>

097Correct. >> Yeah. But, you know, it's it's just that it's where do we want to do the the the cooking? But I just wanted to just show that uh slide just so you know. And then I did want to put a slide uh I know there is updated um dietary guidelines. Um and so there was a a presentation or a conference in January. Uh I did put the link there for you. Uh but um at this point we are are still pending any type of major updates that will happen to the child nutrition program. Uh but it you know even the the recommendations of less process that is being talked over again. Um and concerns would be uh in terms of uh the rising cost of providing scratch cooking. So those are just some of

098the concerns that that were brought about. So I just notated them on there. And then uh lastly, I did want to show our 26 27 and where we stood. I I did want to just I separated it out so you can see breakfast, lunch, and then in total. Um so you can see that there is some work on the breakfast uh portion of it of decreasing that processed um uh processed meals uh again with the the intention of doing more in that area. Um when I did I didn't mention but one of the things that we are working on too is when we talk about breakfast some of the challenges we have as a department is how to get all the product out to the classrooms or the hallways. Um so when we're we are

099uh developing a menu we also have to think about how we're going to how we're going to take it out. Uh we have to transport hundreds of meals out on carts. Um, so this year we've already started to the purchase of actual food carts that will hold the product better. Um, so that uh we're we're already buying for all the middle schools and one high school uh in complete and then the hope is that we continue to roll in uh carts uh to be able to as we improve the menu to be able to move this product. um better for our students. So that is all I have. Um I have my team here or myself if you have any questions. >> I have one question. I'm sorry. Um do we know how long it

100took Brownsville to implement their plan? I mean Dr. Gutier, you were just there. So, I mean, I'm It just sounds like by 2030 sounds so far away. >> Um, >> they they're in year they're in year three. They said minimum year three. Yeah. >> Taking several years because they were doing scratch cooking. They went >> they did they did away with that and then they went back to it and so it was being phased in over the years. >> Yeah. I just think that there's obviously um experts and or maybe not experts but people who have already done the transition and it sounds like Brownsville did the transition twice if they went and then went back and went again where maybe we can hire a consultant to see based on our fiscal assets within each

101campus or maybe the one start with the ones that have the higher participation um to kind of push the process along. I just think that we have the opportunity. We have the community support. >> Um, and it's been done in our region or area here at Brownsville with a lot more students than Macan ISD has. And we can kind of see how we can fast track maybe campuses by campuses. >> And I know um I know we've we did a field trip over there. It was great and they're such a great partner, I think. So, I think you made a great point. Um, recently I spoke to them because in my head I think, uh, scratch cooking is going to be so expensive. How are we going to do this? But they are reporting um,

102and correct me if I'm wrong, Kion, Trusty Kion, but like they're they have cost savings compared to what they implemented before and then higher student participation. So, um, I do look forward to seeing if we can, we don't need to reinvent the wheel and I don't want to put anything, you know, crazy on you guys. It's very hard to work within the federal regulations and all these other things. But again, like if we have a local district that's already kind of implementing it, doing it well, they're going to be featured in a film festival actually on Monday if anyone wants to go. Um, but I think we can kind of piggyback off of them or partner with them in some way >> instead of us trying to go to symposiums and conferences to learn. I

103mean, we have people here that >> Good point. >> Teach. >> Yeah. In our uh I know there's an item later on the agenda on the pre-bond presentation. >> We do have u cafeteria modernization uh set set aside from the bond and so that could help us speed up the process the week >> and uh and we'll talk about that a little bit later when we talk about that item about the the pre-bond programs or projects. >> Thank you. Thank you, Miss. >> Yes, >> Mrs. I just want to say that I appreciate everything you're doing and the reason why we keep asking you questions and this keeps coming up. We're pushing you and all these parents showed up today is because it's and you know this, it's so important. It's not just about feeding

104a hungry kid for a day. Everything we feed our kids in school every day for the next three, four, five, you know, 12 years impacts the rest of their life and their health and nutrition and impacts their ability to learn that day. >> Correct. >> I mean, I think I've mentioned many times giving my kid Cheetos and then watching him bounce off the walls. I mean, it's literally uh at least for my son, Cheetos induces ADHD. Um, so I I want to thank you for everything you're doing. I think you're making a lot of good progress. I think there's um to Trustee uh uh Delegard Lopez's point, you know, let's see what we can do to to speed it up. You have our support. You have the community support. And I know when you got

105up here, you said, "I'm a little nervous because of all the comments." You shouldn't be nervous. That's a community standing behind you saying, "We're here to help you. We want the best for our kids. And what you're doing, we support and come to us. We're here to uh provide suggestions. Um you know, do whatever they can to help us because this is not um our schools. It's the community school. And so they're telling us they want us to do this. We're behind you. So I I know you can do it. >> Thank you. >> Um you have the expertise and we're here to help you. >> Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I again, you know, I know that that the our team wants the same, right? So, uh, I think we can,

106like you said, meet in the middle and and get there. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> All right. We are going on to item number four, which is the uh Yes, >> schoolyard forest. >> The motion included item number four. So, it'll be the schoolyard >> forest projects. >> Yes. Administration will uh present a report regarding the schoolyard forest projects. Miss Lauren Garcia, our deputy superintendent for business and operations will have more details on this item and this is for information purposes only. Miss >> Miss Garcia, you going to introduce? >> Yes. Good evening. Um we have tonight with us two guests. We have uh Miss Colleen Hook from Kintamaslan and uh Mr. Andrew Hefner uh architect for the projects and they're going to provide us

107an update where we are on this. President Rietta, trustees, Dr. Gutieras, and visitors, thank you for this opportunity to provide an update on the schoolyard forest project and uh why it's so important for the children. Um, also joining me is Andrew Hefner, the landscape architect on the project, and he'll be sharing some of the architectural plans. Um, as you know, schoolyard forests take underused school grounds and transform them into outdoor learning and recreational spaces. I loved hearing about the outdoor before and after school program um because this will be amazing expansion for them to play freely outdoors. The project works to improve student wellness and health just by bringing just by being outdoors in nature, support science curriculum and hands-on learning opportunities, and create equitable learning opportunities across the district. I'm proud to say that

108we've been working together since 2006. Uh we started with a third grade school contract and we've grown that to fifth, seventh, and high school. Um presently we've been enjoying the uh fearless fifth graders on our campus every day. Um and it's such a joy and a grand opportunity um to help teach them about the great outdoors and their natural and cultural history. Our partnership has grown um with the tiny forest initiative. Um we're proud to have two tiny forests, one at Kathy and one at Sam Houston. Um please take a look at the before and after photographs. And uh this is transformation in just a couple years. again um taking an underused school grounds and turning it into a beautiful outdoor learning campus and recreational areas. Remember all of these are going to have expanded

109uh nature trails for children to walk on outdoor learning libraries. And our partnership continues to grow um thanks to the $2.7 million grant from Texas&M Forest Service creating seven outdoor learning campuses on seven elementary schools. You can see the timeline. Um we were awarded the grant in April 2025 and have been running ever since with a great team. We are on the construction bid and award phase of the project. This uh past Monday, we went to the McGallen City Commission and they approved the award of contract and to go into negotiations with Southern Landscapes. Um so we will be back on the city commission agenda in two weeks uh with the final final contract and then we're we're running we're we're talking 12 to 18 months to complete these seven schoolyard forests. um our landscape

110crew, our construction team wants to spend no more than two to three months on each campus uh respecting testing days, respecting all the days that we need to be sensitive towards. I do want to take a moment um to recognize again the Texas&M forest skirts school service and one of their major goals is um growing the 11% tree canopy on the campuses to 30% um that beautifies the campus um that provides shade for the children who are playing outdoors but also on-site science learning and the team has been incredible. I think because of the shared commitment of all the stakeholders. I'd like to thank the board of trustees, Dr. Gutieres, um business and operations, Lorena and Robert have uh spearheaded this project and made it so enjoyable. Um HR, police, teachers, security, safety, region one,

111Texas&M Forest Service and all our grtors. um and the Hefner design team um has has made this such an enjoyable project. And of course the principles um and all their teachers who have spent a great deal of time involved in the cherettes and the actual designs of these outdoor learning campuses um commonly across the board they can't believe that this dream is coming true and it is a fully funded project by Texas A&M Forest Service. So they are our heroes for allowing this to happen. Um so how do we address the equity gap? Um you know you have 18 elementary schools, seven are receiving uh the full meal deal, 11 are not. Um, so we wrote a grant to Children and Nature Network for $50,000, which allowed us to hire the Hefner Design Team again

112to create conceptual designs for the remaining 11 schools and create budgets specifically to be included in the master plan and happy to hear that this item has been added to your new master plan. Our hope is that the board would consider uh funding the remaining 11 schoolyard forests as part of the school bond, advancing four of five of your initiatives. Uh number one, modernization. Number two, the health and wellness of the students. Number three, learning beyond the typical classroom. And then number four, equity and growth. It's so in line with the bond and the primary key initiatives of the bond. And we're rolling. We have seven complete um and conceptual designs and budgets for the remaining 11. I would like now like to invite Andrew Hefner up to highlight some of the key elements of

113what is in a schoolyard forest um and share some of the plans. Good evening everyone. Uh Andrew Hefner, Hefner Design Team, principal landscape architect. Um it's been a real treat working with the MISD uh team. Um we're going to look at a couple of uh elements here. We wanted to touch on the key features of the schoolyard forests. Um the tiny forest of course in the upper right. Uh building on outdoor reading, outdoor education elements with our nature reading nook. Um uh seating logs, balance beam for some outdoor recreation. We have our cookie seating learning hill which al doubles as an amphitheater which really uh expands that learning to the outdoors, gives a lot of flexibility to that outdoor space with some loosely programmed elements that have a multiple use. Uh we heard from all

114of our uh principles and their teams uh flexibility was the key. Um they need outdoor resources uh that have shade where they can bring uh students and parents on special occasions uh to these outdoor spaces like Colleen mentioned that are generally used but a little bit underutilized. Um and with these improvements with&m uh we're really able to uh push the limits of what those outdoor spaces can do. Um we're going to focus on just a couple of the individual projects. Uh phase one includes uh Roosevelt Elementary School and we chose this uh school uh specifically to highlight today because it has a considerable amount of asphalt removal. BA a lot of the phase one schools because of their low tree canopy and high poverty rates were selected as part of that equality and equity uh

115mission of the of the grant. Um, a lot of those schools that are older use blacktop or asphalt as a recreational element and combine that with our high heat index. Um, it's a kind of a fairly miserable place to play to be honest. So, one of the components at Roosevelt that really makes it special is in the center there you have that kind of organic shape. That's the remaining elements of that asphalt black top. We wanted to preserve a certain amount of it amount of it because it still does have a certain amount of play value when it's a rainy day and coach needs some extra paved surface for the outdoor kids to run around. Um, but around that we've included a lot of our outdoor playground equipment elements. Um, as well as on the

116inside, uh, Roosevelt's also an older campus, so it has those built-in courtyards. We built on some of the existing improvements that are at the school. They have some existing furniture, outdoor furniture. They have an existing pergola, raised uh garden beds. So, we're really trying to maximize that with additional tree planting. Uh our nature reading nook, which will include a free little library. I know a lot of the campuses have it, but it might not be exactly where we want to foster an outdoor reading experience. So every school will get one of those as part of phase one. And then uh really maximizing the use of any existing trees to maximize shade. We want to put all these elements in as much shade as we can because we know that's going to maximize the return of

117investment of&m's money and all y'all's time to make these more uh an improved space. Um our next site is Garza and this is going to be one of the phase two sites. The idea in showing this slide is to indicate that all of the same elements are going to be going at each school. Um, but each one is customized based on the needs of that individual school. Now, Garza Elementary as a phase 2 or future school um is the the phase 2 schools are much more on the north side. Um we're talking about a lot more uh open area which means higher tree counts which means a little bit higher investment uh to get to that 30% tree canopy. Finally, here's a little bit of a summation. Phase one 2025 2026 we have our Alvarez

118fields Houston Roosevelt Sigin and Wilson. Um we're working through contract negotiation right now. Uh contract time period is 11 months. So, if that's awarded in February, we'll be looking at ground rakings very soon and ribbon cutings uh before the end of the year, beginning of January. Um phase two is our future school program. Um this is our goal uh to move to all the rest of the 11 schools. Um and and they're listed there. Uh and then we have our design and construction budgets. Phase one at 2.3 million and phase two at five million. So you'll see that there's a a bit of a jump there in in in value. We have seven schools in the first phase, 11 in the second. We're talking about larger campuses, which which means a larger investment. Um phase

119one is under budget at this point and on schedule. Um phase two can be shovel ready in 90 days. Uh it's a great option for a bond program to get things opened and and ready for business within a year of being funded. Um and final thought on uh phase one and phase two. If if Macallen ISD completes a schoolyard forest at every school, they will be the first school in the country to complete that system and provide a schoolyard forest for every kid. Um you'll see our schoolyard forest bubble diagram and in the bottom where we've included some equity and growth, learning beyond the classroom, and health and wellness elements, and how these all tie together. So, with that, I'll open up for any questions. I don't have a question. I just um to Miss

120Hoover, Andrew, I love what you all doing. I think this is amazing. So, thank you. I can't wait to see it all all being built. >> I agree. Thank you guys so much for your work and your grants that you work and you get us. Um I'm so excited to see the first seven schools and what happens and um I'm really looking forward to discussing with administration and the board the 11 remaining schools to see what we can do. Um because it's just seems like to to be the first district in the nation that provides that would be incredible. Seems like everything is also coming together with nutrition, health, wellness, play, everything. >> Outdoor play. Exactly. Everything we've heard from the public that today just dubtubales so great with what we're doing here. >> Yeah.

121See you charter schools. We're taking your kids back. >> Thank you all. Thank you. Uh and superintendent. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Um Mr. President, I'd like to entertain a motion to um reorder the agenda to consider 91 uh in hopes of um releasing some of our campus principles >> who have other activities this evening >> and we are sorry for the delay. >> I would ask if you'd consider we do have um some gentlemen here presenting that have to drive back to Houston. >> Um but >> I know staff have a something to get to as well. >> Okay. Well, >> well, I have a motion, so um and a second. All in favor? >> I oppose. Motion passes. We will move on to 91. >> Dr. Gutierz. >> Yes. Uh tonight, Miss Janette

122Nino and associate superintendent for instructional leadership and Dr. Deos, associate superintendent for instructional services will present information regarding the 2526 board report on melaninize the academic progress. This is uh for information purposes only. I know we're also going to have another agenda item where we're going to talk about the accountability report. So uh this will also be part of that uh presentation at another we have another agenda item that coming up later this evening. But go ahead uh Miss Nino and Dr. >> Yes. Thank you for the opportunity again. And I'd like to thank u Miss Clarissa Partida Raburn Elementary principal and Miss Marisella Chapa for from Thigpen Zavala uh our principal there for being uh here this evening. Uh what we are responding to are some questions on the number of students by campus

123who are on track and off track to reach grade level standards on our star assessments for this upcoming 20 2026 school year as well as the academic interventions for students who are not at those um at those standards at this time. um with you know just also what are supports in the areas of third grade reading eighth grade math um the Texas the TSI and the college career military readiness information um before we look at third grade information it's very important to know that foundationally our students have a lot of work that they're doing with our our staff at the campuses in kinder first and second grade and so these three slides give that data of where our current kinder first and second grade students using amplify diagram diagnostic results in the areas of letter

124names, phenemic awareness, decoding, word reading, reading fluency and accuracy and that is where it all starts. So while we are looking at third grade STAR assessment right now, what we want to make sure that we don't lose focus on is our kinder, first and second graders who are starting this process of working towards third grade, which is all reading comprehension. So we even see students as they move past third grade and on um with some of these skills gaps in those skills, but we have a great team to be very intentional on how to support them. And overall, while we do have students in each of those grade levels at well below or below, we still have most of our students across all 18 elementaryaries at benchmark and above. So we're very proud with our

125staff and continue to work with our students and get make sure that they close those gaps. What we do is our focus is is is tier one instruction. That's where it all happens. Making sure our teachers are supported in professional development. Making sure that we are providing very intentional small groupoup um explicit instruction for students in these lower grades. And with that um in our master schedule, preK through fifth grade and elementary, we embed what we call retach and enrich, which is 45 minutes of their master schedule every single day. and that is intentional personalized time for students to receive small groupoup instruction in the area that they need um individual individualized attention. So specifically for reading language arts to circle back to the third grade star question we have MClass amplify to provide targeted

126teacher lessons and our teachers utilize that then to work with specific area of needs with our students and that is a digital platform for every single student who has access to meet personalized needs. In addition, they are eligible to have extra and aside time with our staff um such as adsy um Saturdays after school tutoring. But more importantly, we want to maximize when they're with us in the school day. And that is for every student in our district. With that, um here's data just to show where our current third graders who are about to take the star where they ended as second graders in the reading language arts. And again, very proud of our staff working together to have over 70% of our current third graders that ended second grade um at benchmark or above.

127But we didn't wait until now to figure out that um we had some of our students coming in with gaps from second grade. So from day one, again, utilizing master schedule strategy, that's our master schedule is what tailors the needs of our students constantly. um our principles and our staff um they get together, they plan um every day, every week to say, "How do we use that data from day one um before they start learning third grade curriculum to close gaps again in foundational skills that are going to make them um where they need to be performing in third grade start? We've had a fall um curriculum aligned assessment in third grade in reading language arts. We've had a second six weeks curriculum aligned assessment and right now they are in the season of just

128completing their third grade um star aligned benchmark and we are in the in the process of getting those results and giving constructive feedback to our students and our teachers have done fantastic. Tomorrow we have our fifth grade teachers. Um having them be in the process is just strengthening them to be more informed in feedback um for our students. And with that, I'd like to invite Miss Partida and Miss Chapa just a minute or two to hear from them on how these academic supports overall in third grade are making impacts, but we start a lot earlier than kinder in order to be successful in minimizing achievement gaps for our students in Macallen ISD. >> Good evening, Dr. Gutierrez and uh school board trustees. Um, just to kind of spiral back to what Miss Nino was saying,

129uh, the importance of that lower grade instruction being solid is really the root of success by the time kids get to third grade. Um, I have a background in being a literacy coach, um, through the National Reading First Grant and we did many national conferences that talked about that exact thing and the importance. So, there was an entire national grant that focused on making sure third graders were prepared with a reading foundation so that they could be successful moving forward. Um about two years ago uh we or year before last we lost our uh resource of Francis and panel and that was something that really anchored our instruction and was an extra step beyond our amplify testing to make sure that we were targeting students reading levels and moving them forward. Uh it's it was

130a state thing that was uh no longer allowed. So it had to be collected and no longer used. However, it was a very important resource for us to get our kids moving along, you know, through the different reading levels. So, this group of kids that's that are now in third grade lost that last year and the prior year. So, it's definitely something that we are making sure we are aware of and we are providing um retach and enrich to target some of these skills. um but also now working through our systems and we have an amazing EL department, our reading department um led by Miss uh Patricia Pena and uh Sandra Garcia. They do a great job really trying to fill gaps to make sure that we have everything in place to make sure that

131we have the science of reading at the forefront of our instruction for our lower grades. So that's been, you know, a really great resource. They take a lot of time to tailor our lessons uh so we can make up for that loss of that resource. Um so we continue to just work with our kiddos and make sure that we are targeting all of those um foundational skills getting them prepared. So third grade it is a really big jump from what they're doing in K to second. Um and it's it's a big shocker for our kiddos once they come into third grade and what they're expected to do by the end of the year for the state assessment. So um again just thank you for the support from our school district to close those gaps. And

132I know Miss um Chapa is going to talk about some other areas. >> Good evening uh members of board and uh Dr. Gutierrez. Um I'm here just to add to some of the projects that you'll find at our campuses across all of our 18 elementary schools. Right. Uh so our goal of course is to help students close uh the or to close gaps but in the mean uh the main thing is to uh for them to reach the grade level standards. So there's an approach that we do and that is we uh really focus strongly on the first teach uh that has to that's just a given. The second thing is that we assure that alignment is there between what we deliver what is practice and then what is assessed. So our PLC's then become

133uh a true need and what happens here is we plan we look at data and our instruction of course becomes data driven uh I'm sorry uh our instruction does become data driven but uh what happens here it helps us pursue that uh planning is prescriptive that it is intentional and that it addresses the foundational and comprehension skills that kids need to be able to achieve those standards those grade level standards standards. So not only that uh the collaboration that happens during this time helps everyone prepare to deliver that strong uh first teach right so that we can minimize instructional uh gaps and then uh we find that reading centers are super effective. So what happens is uh our master schedules allow for these reading centers to happen uh twice throughout the day. once through uh

134a regular rla um 120 minute block which allows uh for uh structured literacy to happen. So our students engage in these literacy centers where they get to practice foundational skills. Phymic awareness is huge. So you'll see the practice, you'll see them practicing uh fluency, blending, segmenting, everything that they need to continuously build on uh their foundational skills to then enhance uh the comprehension. So um we find that the second time we that uh affords us to practice these literacy uh centers is going to be through R& which was mentioned. It's a 45minute block that is built into the schedule and there you'll find uh teacherled um lessons, students engaging in personal pathways through amplify and I ready. Uh you can additional uh time to practice foundational skills and uh definitely enhance the reading writing uh

135skills throughout um the whole time in the centers. They're highly engaging. So, students really gravitate to these uh practices and it's just something that is shown to be super effective across our campuses as well. So, although we offer other supports, right, and that's going to be through tutorials, uh extended school days, you'll find them also uh through camps, uh we find that the most effective way to close instructional gaps or minimize them, of course, is going to be through the RN that happens throughout the day. Uh it's built into the school day. It's 45 minutes. It's intentional. They're prescriptive and uh we have access to all the kids which uh brings up the equity in it, right? Because after school, not all children attend. Saturdays, they're totally dependent on the adults to bring them to

136school, right? So of course we still open doors for all that because anytime we get to work with a kid, it's a win for us as well, right? So um we find that the R& is the most effective time for us to provide those interventions to continuously close those instructional gaps and also affords us the opportunity to extend on the learning of those students that need that enrichment. So it works both ways. Um, other than that, uh, what I can say about the literacy happening across the district, it is true what Miss Partida says. We have a fantastic group of of, uh, coaches and also coordinators under the direction of Miss Patty Pñena. We just find that it's just so well structured uh, instruction delivered to teachers. They know exactly what to do. So, if

137we know the rules of the game, we know how to play it. And the only ones to gain from it, of course, are students. So, uh, I applaud everybody who supports every effort in helping us move instruction forward and, uh, just thank you for it. Right. Our kids are really moving in the right direction, we see an upward trajectory, an upward trend in data and we hope that it continues to be that way. I know through these effective efforts and resources and opportunities. I don't see it going any other way. Thank you for your time. >> Thank you, Miss Chapla and Miss Partida. I'm going to now address the part of secondary eighth grade uh fall benchmark. This is where we uh were looking at back in November 1920 25 which is last semester. Uh

138if we go to the beginning of the year data there, uh our district was looking at 46. Now we uh in November we were at 71. It would look at the meats uh column. I also want to compare it to our 24 25 star performance uh in the same grade level and last year this grade level at the meets level ended at 65. That's 6% higher than the year before. And as you can see 65 you might say well that's below 70 and across the state uh they were at 47 which um it's it's we have still way to go but we are performing above the region and the state in this uh uh grade level. Now what is that we're doing? We have several interventions aside of the strong first teach which uh uh

139we increase the engagement in our lessons. Uh we also have an accelerated instruction plan that is uh uh delivered by the teacher once uh a week. Uh so every teacher delivers this plan of the enrichment and retach. We also have targeted tutoring uh after school Saturday uh for the middle schools for Etsy. We qualify for that as well. And then during the day, teacher and professional tutors deliver this uh targeted tutoring. And then uh for we also have review sessions, workshops, camps that are also delivered by teachers, strategists, and coordinators. Um I do have Miss uh Nora Travinho, principal at Fawa Middle School to come in uh briefly talk to us about focus tutoring after school and on Saturdays and then I'll call in uh the other staff members. >> Hi, good evening everyone. My

140name is Noratino. I'm the principal at Fawsome. Um Mr. Mr. Glass is helping me out with uh some folders. That way you can have a visual of what it is that we are doing as far as our tutoring efforts at Fawsome to make sure that we close the achievement gap. Uh last year I can tell you that our seventh graders were the lowest that they've ever scored. So we knew that this year in eighth grade we were going to have a big task. So at the beginning of the year, we like to call it a phase one. every single teacher received uh all of the students names who did not earn us any points on the star test. So that is phase one. They identified every single student who was not at grade level. Then

141uh and you can that's the first page that you see there and they're t uh they're monitoring how many times they're attending their tutorings and as you know there's only so many days out of the week, right? And there's so many start tests. So really we have Mondays RLA, Tuesdays math, Wednesdays is uh science and then Thursdays is social studies and Fridays is Telus. So every teacher just really gets one day. So we have to be very very intentional. So that was phase one. At the beginning I made sure that one of our PDs was to provide the teachers with the release test from last year. They looked at it and they identified the high impact teaks. That is the second page that you see there. The high impact teaks are the ones that the

142kids miss the most and now they're monitoring every time they take an assessment in their classroom. They're putting the percentage that their classes are getting on those TEICs and um they spiral it back. If it's not at the 70% or higher, they're spiraling it back in their classrooms. So now we went on to phase two because now we've had at least one benchmark. So where you see the tutoring attendance, their attendance now changed from the beginning of the year. They've identified our special populations. They've identified how the student has uh scored on the district benchmarks and they're also monitoring are they staying for tutoring. So they're very very uh prescriptive. They go over these high impacts during tutoring and of course they keep our our focus groups, our white groups, our special ed uh population,

143our 504s, etc. So very very intentional. And if you go on to the next page, uh we know that we have to make sure that we maximize the time in our classroom. So the intentional student monitoring page, as you can see, there's a lot of color coding and to us it makes sense. So that's why I said, let me print it out for you all. But everything in blue is our tier one instruction, right? So this is what the teacher does in the classroom for everyone. So it's the the peer groups, the um differentiation, Kagan strategies, things like that. And then we move on to other uh more targeted um strategies that we use with our students. Uh you see the ones that stay for tutoring with the actual teacher. You see the students that

144are actually staying with the specialed uh contact teacher. You see the students that are EB highlighted in green that are getting those um seven steps to language rich interactive classroom strategies. So it is very very intentional and if you see the teachers been monitoring these kids starting from their last year star to the BOI to their classroom test CB CBA 1 common based assessment one common based assessment two and so on and so forth. So we're getting ready to move on to phase three of our list. This list is going to change every time that we test, right? And we're waiting for that major big test in the spring for math in order to really narrow down what kids we have to target in order to achieve what we need to achieve on that star.

145And all of these lists are given to the athletic coaches because those coaches know, and that's the little passes that you see on the next page. The coaches know these kids need to be in tutoring. So, I'm not going to let them into my practice until they go to tutoring first and they come back with this pass. So, we work together to make sure that everybody celebrates that A when we get that A. So, everybody's in. So, everybody helps out. The fine arts teachers know as well that they got to go to tutoring first before they come to any practices. And we send mandatory tutoring uh letters home and I just included some samples there for you. We're in communication with the parents. They know from the beginning of the year that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

146Thursday, Friday it is the same content every single day. We started after the uh progress report time and uh we've been tutoring ever since. Uh we take we make sure that the students are held accountable so they kind of chart down what the class how the class did on a CBA and how they did on that CBA. So that way they know are they scoring lower than their peers? Do are they achieving their goals? And the last thing that I want to talk about, you know, very very intentional because they only have a certain amount of time with them during um the class time is a powerup uh notebook. This is basically the high impact takes that the teacher has identified and now is just spiraling back through bell ringers. Okay. So this is happening

147in the classrooms with the math teachers. But as the star comes around, we've already talked to the fine arts teachers and to our athletic coaches because they have goal setting days that they do with our athletes. And our fine arts have already identified those days that they're out, you know, for competition with just a small group. What our math teachers are going to do is they're going to give this to those teachers so that the kids are practicing math in those classrooms. And I know you're probably thinking, well, how's a fine arts teacher going to help them if they have questions? Well, every single question is going to come with a QR code with a video of a uh, you know, exact problem, just different numbers being solved for them and then now they can

148try it. So, we're very very intentional because we know we only have five days in the week and the time, you know, it's crunch time. So, that takes us directly to Mr. Gracia's plan also at Travis. So, >> thank you, Mr. Dvinho. Now for a different intervention, pull out interventions, which we call them power up groups. And Mr. Gracia, our principal at Travis Middle School, is going to briefly explain it. >> I promise we'll keep it short and sweet to the point. Uh, well, good evening. Happy National board recognition, and I'll go ahead and get started. So, uh, really quick, the power groups just so happens to be, we're going to look at the trademark and see who put it uh, closer, right? But, uh, these power groups is what happens when, um, students aren't

149able to say for school tutorials, right? what happens when it's not feasible because they need to go home and take care of their siblings or what happens when a block or a period just isn't enough to close with achievement gap. So, uh, of course, powerup groups, this is something that is not new to me and the programs that I've led in the past, but it is something new to Travis Middle School. Uh, happy to say that I I believe uh it's shown success as in the year and a half since I've been there and implemented power groups, we've gone uh respectively from an 81 with one distinction to an 86 uh with five out of seven distinctions in the year and a half since I've been there. Now, don't get me wrong, I take no

150credit for it whatsoever. Uh that credit goes to all the teachers there at Travis Middle School, uh who work day in and day out, day in and day out, and they've truly bought into this program, that's going to be one of the key components is the teacher buyin, uh because they truly have believed that, uh this is something bigger than themselves, right? Closing those achievement gaps. And as my mentor once told me, uh when you focus on closing those achievement gaps and keeping student achievement at the forefront, the data will take care and the scores will take care of themselves. So, we'll look to improve next year. Boss, I promise we're going to try to get that first A in Travis history. Uh but again that that'll come once student achievement uh starts increasing. Right.

151So what is a powerup group? Uh essentially yes it is a pull out group but uh I'd like to say that here at Travis Middle School those it's a little more strategic. The logistics you have to be a little bit more meticulous with it. And so the visual that uh massage has provided for you uh is and shows you exactly what a power group and I'll speak to just very briefly. As you can see there uh these are rotations among star tested teachers. You can see math, science, social studies and RLA within with regards just to eighth grade, right? When it comes down to sixth and seventh, we only incorporate uh math and RLA uh into these powerup groups. As you can see here, uh it is divided. Math is one week, RLA next, and

152then of course social studies and science, right? And you can see here Monday, math, I'll give you a prime example. On Monday, our teachers uh work with our low approaches and our bubble students. And on Wednesday, uh you can see that they get our meets and masters kids. Now, the reason I said it does have some buying is because our teachers do give up uh they don't give up. They provide these uh remediations and enrichment periods to our students. Disclaimer, they still get their 450 minutes of uninterrupted uh minutes. So, again, this does require a lot of teacher buying, but as you can see here, uh it is rotations that are bi-weekly. Uh so, when math isn't uh when it isn't their week, you'll see RLA go in. And again, same same exact concept, right?

153they are working with their low approaches while science takes their mess and masters kids because historically right uh if you're performing high in math then chances are you're going to be performing high in in science as well right and the same goes with RLA and social studies so that's the reason why you see that division there was strategically placed and at the same time we didn't want to grab those same students every single week so you can see here again while one week is math and social studies the other one would be RLA and science now uh theoretically these groups are ever changing because they should be changing based off of RPA data data, common formative assessments, weekly quizzes, benchmarks. So again, uh, as teachers are planning their PLC's, they're looking at these datas, they're

154looking at TE's item analysis, breakdowns, and they are choosing these students every other week. So it's prescriptive. You're looking at only five to seven students that are in these powerup groups. Uh, just again disclaimer, they're not getting pulled from core areas. So the way eighth grade works, and let me give you a prime example. Um, all four subjects, math, science, social, and early are all off in the same period. So when they're getting pulled in for these pull powerup groups, they're not essentially getting taken from a core class, right? And so the elective teachers, they they also buy in that that is also motivation for them to keep on performing at high levels. Uh so again, it is prescri is prescriptive, five to seven students, everchanging based off of the data. And uh the one

155thing that I didn't include in here was how we track them. Uh this is an entire campuswide effort. So there is a tracker that all teachers have access to whether you're an elective teacher or a core teacher. So that way you know exactly which students are supposed to be reporting to which uh respective classroom at at that given time or period or week. So uh it is an allin effort. Uh we do track them daily and uh again they they are not pulled from any core classes and that's pretty much what sums up a power group. I'm trying to keep it very very short and this year happy to say that we took it up another level and we've actually incorporated linguistic power groups. We took a we took a look at the campus uh

156small quick needs assessment right within regards to our EB students and so this year we've actually incorporated linguistic powerup groups in which our elective teachers are actually going in there during their conference and uh providing those remediations to our EB students as well. So in a nutshell that is our powerup groups. >> Thank you Mr. Gracia. And then uh last we have uh Miss Pñena, director for professional development and curriculum and instruction. And she'll briefly talk about student review plans and workshops. >> Hello. Good evening, Dr. Gutierrez, members of the board. Um I'm here on behalf of the CNI team to talk about some of the things that we do in partnership with campuses and teachers to really ensure that students can reach their academic potential. As you've heard from some of these principles, it's

157hard work, right? Being a teacher, it's a lot of hours, a lot of intentionality. And so what we are is we are partners to them, right? We want to lift their load. We want to make things um smoother for them. And we also want to provide just really great resources to ensure that while we're building up teachers and while we're trying to help lift their load, we're also helping students reach their academic potential. So one of the things that we do is we are um very intentional about the resources that we provide teachers. The resources are data driven. They're curated from the high quality instructional materials that we have adopted and that our state approved. Um they are um customized from Macallen ISD, excuse me. They are focused on critical TEICSS and they are focused

158on ensuring meaningful learning experiences for the teachers and students. I'm sorry for the students. So when you hear that R&D groups, when you hear afterchool tutoring, when you hear all of these things that are teachers are having to do, well, the content coordinators, strategists, coaches, all of us are pitching in to help create the materials that they're going to use in collaboration with them, right? Nothing is done outside of collaboration with them because they have to have buyin and belief in the systems and the resources that we're putting together. All of the resources are differentiated. There's differentiation for GT emerging bilingual and all of the distinct learning styles that our students in Macan IC have. The resources are timely. We have countdowns to STAR. We have uh resources leading up to benchmark. So when uh

159the principles and the teachers are working on their plans again, they have turnkey resources that are customized and adapted from high quality instructional materials that can be turned around pretty quickly. In addition to that, we partner with teachers directly by working with student camps. The camps are data driven. We usually sit with the teachers and talk about who the students that we are going to serve are. Are there students is with learning uh challenges that need remediation or intervention and so we work with a small group. Are they students who already know the material but need to review? So we work with a big group in a cafeteria and make the learning really fun. Um so these campuses are again customized per campus, per student group, per teacher. They include collaboration with teachers and one

160of the great things is a lot of the times they're crosscurricular. We had some in elementary not too long ago that were reading language arts um writing focus with science focus. Right? So we were purposefully bringing in science content from the grade level and incorporating it into the writing camp so students get that content knowledge that they need and are practicing as well. Um so those are some of the things that we do to partner with teachers. >> Thank you so much Miss Pñena. Um and then um they'll be here if you have any questions. Just moving on to the Texas success initiative assessment which we know is TSI. That was one part of the question that we wanted to bring uh report on how we're uh working on that. The um TSI is really

161the assessment that um can also be used to allow the student to complete the CCMR portion uh of the requirement, but it also for the students that already completed a CCMR point through probably um CTE when they pass the TSI, it is also an additional bonus. that we get funding funding for. So it has been an effort of Macallen ISD to increase this number as the years have been uh when we allow we were allowed to use this as a as an option and so I just want to compare here last year's graduates uh ended in J in June of 19th because even after graduation we keep on calling them and saying hey you have the opportunity to come and test so that you don't have to take remedial classes at the university and so

162students continue to come and test and and complete this this requirement. Uh we ended at 58% a cohort of,500 58 students we ended at 58% that is generating $2.7 million in revenues to to our schools. Um this year if we look to the right uh as of January 17th our cohort of 1568 students they're already at 43% uh completion. So, we do see that the efforts that are are in place are uh increasing that percentage and we're we're very uh confident that we're going to surpass uh last year's percentage. As you can see that uh just today I I got a message from one of the high school principles and said we got five more students completed it uh in in in today's uh uh academy. So, it's constant every time. When is what are

163the interventions? We're intervene earlier and more often. What do I mean by that? We start since 8th grade. We test in December and we test in May. We give that opportunity to eighth grade students. And then throughout high school, 9th through 12, we stop two weeks right before the semester ends. We stop uh everything and we uh work on a targeted curriculum in math and RLA and we teach review and test all the students who are not TSI complete. We also throughout the year we tutor and test as many times as we can especially when we have shutdowns for other exams like when we're doing benchmarks for nth grade then we're testing the juniors or the seniors that haven't completed this this requirement. when we have end of course testing SAT if the 11th graders

164are testing SAT then we provide a group of sophomores or seniors to keep on testing but not only testing but also um tutoring and reviews so those are the interventions that we have for TSI moving on to CCMR which I uh started talking about it previously college career and military readiness is our CCMR indicator this is very important for a district because any district that is not above an 88% in CCMR then that district does not have the opportunity to um uh be rated an A. So we're happy to uh announce uh and report that in the graduating class of 2025 we ended with a 97% in CCMR. As of November 2025, we are already at 59% with our current um seniors. We will have a another uh review uh next week starting next week

165with each high school uh campus and we believe that that percentage is going to move up already and uh we're confident that we're going to surpass last year's percentage. Looking at the accountability for 2425 in this domain, we ended at 93.9 with scales at 94% and um and like I said, this is very instrumental to be able to contribute to that A that Mall and ISD received. Now, what do we contribute to our success? We contribute uh our success to a strong career technical education program and a strong um college entrance exam which is the TSI. And so just briefly um uh to highlight some of these efforts, Mr. Leos Leo Science, career technical education director is here and just so that he can talk about the efforts um between the academic counselors, the CTA

166counselors and the review meetings. Mr. Science. Thank you. Uh good evening, uh Dr. Utetta and members of the board. Just uh some of the things that we're doing that we're constantly doing. Actually, she just mentioned that we're meeting next week. So, we we meet very regularly. Actually, we meet more regularly than we meet as a big group uh at the at the actual campuses. And then now we're even adding a uh testing coordinator, a campus testing coordinator to ensure that we're aligned with everything including the TSI. Um, on the CTE side, we did open up our doors on the nth grade and tth grade classes that are common for most or if not all ninth graders and tth graders to take a practice uh TSI test and assessment like a benchmark type thing at the

167beginning of the school year through the CTE courses. So again, we're working through those things. Our CT counselors are every day meeting with our regular counselors to make sure. So like for today, I I got the same phone call, not the same phone, but a similar phone call saying, "Hey, we already moved up these numbers. these numbers are moving up every day and so the efforts are there. We have a whole group that gets together and we just continue to look at all the opportunities that these students have. So not just like saying they can grab it with this one thing. Well, what are the three or four things they can get uh earn the CCMR point with? And then when we look at those, our goal is to get them all, not just one.

168So even though let's say Leo Science is a student and they earned an IBC through CTE, they should be checkmarked. Why can't we still continue to push to the TSI and the college credit hours or anything else that's in that in that realm to say we got it all and now we all get that outcomes bonus that you all have been talking about to me with me several of you uh on that on that on that on that front. I mean we we're looking to maximize it. I know we we're in the $6 million range where we can get to we want to move that needle up to closer to the three four five six million if we could right uh and moving on up. So that's what our efforts are at. Again, we work

169closely with uh all the different components, advanced academics, our testing folks, and we're meeting on a regular basis. The numbers she showed up there have already changed. They've already moved up. So, I I can promise you that and I don't have to look at it because I already saw it because I see it live all the time. So, we have a dedicated person just for that as well. >> Any questions? >> Thank you. >> Okay. um really appreciate all the hard work that went into this across so many different teams and departments. This is exactly the type of information that I personally think this school board should be focused on as we try to deliver on the promise of educating all of our students for the opportunities that they deserve into the future. My question

170for Dr. Gutierrez, not for tonight but for something to be thinking about is what investments might we make in the near and medium term to drive even stronger performance here? because is it is indeed the case that there are far too many children in our community that are not meeting grade level standards on these assessments. I think we could all see that number and we can agree that it needs to be higher and I just want to know that we're doing everything in our power to make those smart investments to drive that forward. The second thing is we now have two years of TIA data about the strongest performing teachers in campuses all across our district. And I just wonder the extent to which we are using that information to ensure that the students with

171the highest learning needs have access to the strongest performing teachers. I don't know that we're doing that yet. I know that it has profound implications across labor and across how we orient towards our staff, but it has real potential to dramatically improve performance for our lowest learners. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you. Uh any further discussion? >> I think we're going to see a little bit of it again later on, right? >> Yes. On the table, >> I'm going to make a motion um to bring forth item 9 C2. um the prebond planning. >> Second. >> Thank you, sir. I have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I. >> All oppose. >> Okay. Motion passes 70. Dr. Gutierrez. >> Administration will provide an update on the district's pre-bond planning process. Miss Lorena

172Garcia, deputy superintendent for business and operations will share more preliminary findings and next steps in the development of a comprehensive bond strategy. This item is for information purposes only before we bring it to the board. Uh, Miss Garcia, go ahead. >> Uh, good evening. U, we're going to go over predominantly three things tonight. Uh, one being the projects. I know that we were asked to go back and consider the principal priorities and embed those into the project list. And we have uh taken a look at that and aligned the ones that we could to the categories that that are in the bond and then others for uh consideration for future. uh some were also moved over to uh possibility of being taken care of with our maintenance budget. Um so we have taken care of

173that. In addition to that, we will look at the uh bond uh order uh and we do have our legal counsel here that will assist us and walk us through that process. Uh we also will focus on the tax rate strategy uh review that once again with the board uh so that we're all clear on the no tax total tax rate increase and how that uh is to be achieved. So first of all I'd like to remind you of the project and the cost estimates. Um very first uh project we have is a C CTE expansions at the high schools uh the three comprehensive high schools for 39,490,000. We also have uh the cafeteria modernizations at Milm, Alvarez, Sagin, and Morris. And this is 33 million50,000 is a project budget. Uh we are uh also

174focusing on our front entry security and access uh at Mac High Memorial Row, DeLeon, and Morris. And that's 13,470,000 budget. Uh the elementary gyms and enclosures uh will uh be uh for Dr. Pablo Perez, Casteda, Blanca Sanchez, Lucille Hendricks, and Houston Elementary School. A budget of 26,920,000. Um and then the fine arts modernizations at the three comprehensive high schools is uh at a budget of 35 million. Um the classroom additions are slated for Gonzalez Elementary Morris Middle School and at a budget of 38,730,000. Um the campus refresh this will be for the three comprehensive high schools with a budget of 45,150,000. We also have um some projects uh for maintenance related items such as HVAC upgrades, site paving repairs, roof repairs, LED lighting and safety and security and of course HVAC controls. That project budget

175is 103,190,000. This has not changed since last presented to the board. Uh now this area has changed where we have uh most of the uh the principal uh priorities uh a lot of them did already align with uh the bond projects is what we found. Um so um those were already included. Uh but uh there were some that were not aligned. So uh we considered whether to put them into the bond category or not and we did. We we uh moved uh some of the things for example uh update the walkways and covers. We also had some playground equipment at uh a couple of campuses. Um uh some technology um modernization that was also requested and so forth. And so uh as you can see that um this is the new chart with the revisions

176and it's uh listed by campus. And then just to review um we are proposing 335 million as the bond amount. Um um we are still looking at bringing uh a recommendation for calling of the order for the bond on the next board meeting February 10th and then uh we will proceed with our community engagement. We've already scheduled uh several uh presentations. As a matter of fact, one at every single campus uh in the district. Uh at the secondary level, we are handling it by vertical team. And uh at the elementary level, we are doing one presentation and inviting the the PTO's and at the secondaries, we're inviting the PTO's and and the uh booster clubs. Uh so those have already been scheduled. Uh and we will also present to civic uh organizations, internal staff um

177uh and also the seniors. Uh so we are building a plan of dates and um uh presentation engagement. So the uh with the uh committee of individuals within our uh district, our administrative uh executive team uh the superintendent as well as uh directors and also we do invite community members and uh members of the FFAC to be part of those teams to join us to uh go on uh the community engagement process. Um, and then the uh last day to register to vote is uh April 20th to the 28th. Um, and then we have um uh I'm sorry, that was the early voting and then we have the election on May 2nd. So, moving on, I would uh like to introduce uh Mr. Matt Lee from Norton uh Fulbright and Rose uh to go over

178the uh bond proposition language and that is included in your packet. Good evening, uh, board, superintendent, and staff. Happy to walk through any questions. I think we looked at it briefly at the last meeting. The only thing that changed, I think there was a couple questions that you all had about just confirming that the CT facilities, like what's the proper verb to, you know, encompass exactly what we're doing there. So, we went back and looked at that. Um, expansion of the current, you know, facilities and offerings that are at these campuses, uh, was the appropriate, you know, verb that we used in there. Uh we also added the word comprehensive in front of high schools because as someone mentioned uh the the fourth high school doesn't have these facilities. So using comprehensive in front of

179the three you know campuses uh would adequately describe the projects that are there. So those are the only and then we I I can't remember if we had the par amount of 335 in there or not but that's that's one of the changes that I think we made. But that was pretty much it. So the language that's up here on the screen right now in the order if you look at page four that's in section five that's what the voters will see when they go to the ballot box. So as I mentioned last time um in September of 2019 you started to you school districts were required to add the this is a property tax increase language on the ballot. Back then it was at the very end of the ballot and everything you know

180was in all caps. Um now in the most current legislative session they changed it. So now not just school districts but anybody conducting a bond election has to put this is a property tax increase has to be in all caps has to be at the top of the ballot and then the rest of the ballot has to be in a sentence case. So as you see it right there is effective as of uh this I'm sorry the November 25 bond election cycle and now this bond uh the May 26 bond election cycle. And so you can see um you know stat I think I mentioned this last time statutoily uh you could stop there at school facilities. You don't have to put it on a description but I think it was discussed and and recommended

181that the additional description of the projects would be helpful to the voters um you know providing transparency to what the district's doing. So that's why we've got the security heating you know HVAC roof replacement CTE fine arts at all the campuses. Um, and the rest of it is statutory prescribed language saying that we have to levy a tax that's sufficient to pay the the principal and interest on the bonds as they become due. Um, happy to answer any other questions regarding the order. Just going forward, uh, I know we're going to present this again on February 10th. I'll be here at that meeting as well if there's any other questions at that time, but assuming the board calls for the bond election, our firm will take this document. We'll translate it. uh we'll work with

182the district to work with the county on posting publication and everything else and then all the voter information materials will work with the district, your financial adviserss, Fluger, everybody else to make sure that we're putting out materials for the voters to educate them. >> I just have one quick question for you. >> Yes, sir. >> Um you know, all the verbs, uh designing, construction, and renovating um are about quote school facilities. Does that allow us to uh if needed in the future use funds for the campus in general? >> Yes, absolutely. Yeah. It's it's drafted intentionally that way so that you know you guys go and accomplish I mean this is going to be rolled out over time and I know your financial advisors will probably talk about that in a second on how do

183we manage the tax rate as we're rolling out B. So when the bonds say the voters approve you guys call this and the voters approve it on May 2nd that doesn't mean these bonds are issued. It just means you have the authority to go issue them. So if you did nothing that you know that there wouldn't be a need to levy a tax rate in order to pay for them because they're not outstanding, right? So we're going to be issuing those over time each summer. Um and so to the extent the the the HVAC, the roofing, the CTE, fine arts, as you guys complete those, maybe they come in under budget, uh to the extent you have surplus bond proceeds, you could use that for other general school facilities. Exactly as you said, we couldn't

184go use that on an an auditorium or or a performing arts facility or or a stadium, something like that. That's that would been would have been required to be voted separately, but you can use it for other general school facility type projects. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you um for being here. I'm looking at the um order specifically exhibit C. >> Yes. >> Um bottom of C1 into C2. Uh that table that we looked at last time was blank. It's now filled out. Yes. Thank you for that. Can you walk me through how you determined the projection and growth of taxable value for each of the years? Um cuz in my immediate estimation that does not sit with my experience as a homeowner on the growth in taxable values. >> They're at

1855% 4% 3% 1% and 0% thereafter. >> Okay. And I'll probably lean on the financial advisors to work through that. Yeah. >> Um the district when they put out that document has to put in assumptions on how they got to the tax rate impact on the authorization and ultimate issuance of the bonds. And so the assumptions that you could put in there I think that are in there right now that you pointed out what what do we anticipate the growth will be for taxable assess values? How do we anticipate rolling this out over time? um a lot a lot of different factors that that are going to go into there, but I'm I'm pretty certain that the financial adviserss I think they're either after me or or that uh I think they can walk through

186that uh through their presentation. >> Thank you. >> Yes, sir. >> Any further questions? >> Thank you. >> Um we now uh will turn the mic over to Estrada Inosa. Uh Dr. Miguel de los Santos and Mr. Bobby Viel are present here today to provide us with an update and walk us through on the tax rate management strategy. >> Uh Mr. President, uh members of the board, Dr. Gutierz, first I'll answer your question or attempt to and that uh Mr. on is is uh the reason that your tax rates are going down. We have them very low as opposed to the kinds of increases that you've experienced in the past is to be conservative with your values and to be uh we don't want to up your values and say that you're going that your

187pennies are going to be drawing more and they don't then we would be in a difficult situation. So that's a very conservative approach to uh talking about your values. Uh there may be some people that say, "Hey, my values are going to be more than that." And they probably are, but for this purpose, for purposes of of developing a tax rate that is conservative, uh the whole uh issue that is conservative, we have gone over five period, five year period, I think we went to zero. And just because we don't know what it's going to be, uh we could put fives all the way across and say where you got values are going to be very high. So you don't need as many pennies to make your debt payments and then you would you would

188add uh you'll be short of debt service uh funding. So that that's it's it's just an arbitrary arbitrary numbers that we used being very conservative. I know that that you have had as much of an increase as 10% 11%. Uh but we went very quickly to to zero. >> Well, to be clear, the homesteads are maxed at 10%. Correct. >> I'm sorry. >> The if you have a homestead, your home should not increase more than 10%. >> Yeah. >> Right. >> And we also as a school district have no control over that. >> That's correct. >> That's one of the things that uh I don't know that answer your question, sir. >> It It does. It It gives me concern in that the average homeowner sees that and if they see that when they're at

189the ballot box and they think, "Well, my values go up much more than that. So, my projected tax impact is going to be significantly more than what is shown on here." It just interjects an uncertainty at a critical moment when somebody is going to make their decision for or against if they can be swayed at that moment. And so it's um feels quite risky frankly >> actually just to say so so we have no tax rate increase projected in these projections right? >> Yeah. >> So so again Robbie said we don't control the so that's the we don't know so mention we went too high >> and it didn't hit that mark then we'd actually have to increase the tax rate >> got it >> but could I >> the goal of it was not

190to increase the tax rate that's the one particular thing that we can protect right >> if it does go higher than what we're predicting here >> we have an opportunity to lower the tax That's what I was going to bring up >> because your your pennies >> because by pennies are going to raise more money because >> by you using a conservative number >> correct >> it actually gives us the opportunity to >> do a $335 million bond and be able to reduce taxes in the future. >> That is correct. So that I I think >> it's the other way around. We end up short of the amount that we need to service the debt and we got to put >> Well, I would I'll take uh to use John's words, I'll I'll take umbrage

191with what you said about we'll need to raise taxes later >> because I think we're we're telling the public that we want to go out for $335 million bond here and that we're going to keep the tax rate the same. We're not going to raise taxes. So I think it's incumbent on this board because we are as the gentleman said earlier we're going to do the bond in tranches right it's not 335 this summer it'll be and y'all gave us those numbers I don't have in front of me you know 150 million first followed by so if we get to the point where the in order to get to 335 million this board has to decide whether we're going to raise taxes um at least it would be my position that we wouldn't go for

192the full 335 million that we would um actually secure less in bond money because today we're telling the public we will not increase your tax rate in order to go for this bond. >> That's correct. Uh you have that you have that opportunity because you're not selling all of your bonds the first the first year you're phasing in and if you ever see yourself in a position you could say this year we're going to hold back because it's going to be a bump. >> Uh so >> it's been helpful. Thank you. >> Okay. Now the presentation that we have is very simple. It was after a conversation with uh with Dr. uh regarding uh making sure because there there are questions out there for example the question has been asked uh hey the uh the

193presentation says that there's going to be an increase of uh I'm sorry the uh the truth and taxation statement that will be sent out is going to show that there is a 5 cent uh INS increase in in taxes and that is the truth. It's going to be a 5 cent increase in INS tax rate. The point that that's here is that in order to mitigate that 5 cents, the board has been managing the tax rate and in effect you look at there's a drop in 5 cents on the M tax rate and we're able to use those 5 cents from the M in the INS and keep your tax rate even to 90 93 cents. And that that was the goal. How much can we have? how much can we borrow without increasing the

194tax rate and that was $335 million keeping the tax rate at 93 cents approximately. So um >> and I just want to add that if we saw the comparison the chart we are the second lowest tax rate in the in in the in the valley in the area >> that that will be one of the one of the slides that that we propose should be included in the pres in the presentations you're going to make >> that that's going to be part of our >> there's always a question >> in your Q&A that the community will have. We we'll have that chart as a comparison in our pamphlets as as we go out there in our powerpoints to make sure we show the the entire community that the we're the second lowest tax rate in

195the entire area and and going for this bond and still maintaining that second lowest tax rate. Uh it's something that uh that we know that we can u talk to the community about how we've been very careful on on maintaining the one of the lowest tax rates and and being able to go for this bond >> and paying off your debt very you know >> ahead of time >> early ahead of time. One of the things that I would that I would say to the board is more as a former superintendent than a than a financial adviser is um I think the concentration of Any presentation that we need to make to the community should be about this is these are the things that that we identified that the kids need and improve facilities and

196these are the things that we're doing in order to be able to pay for those facilities. An obligation that boards have I mean everyone said for kids for kids for kids when you run for office it's it's for kids. you meeting your obligation of what you ran on and uh there should be a focus and I know that I know that Fluger is going to be helping you with that. Uh there should be a focus on these are the needs that we identified and they're not they're real needs and we put a price tag to them and the needs are more important. I know the taxpayer wants to know how much it's going to cost me, but they need to get a real good picture of what are we buying for it with what it's

197going to cost me. Anyway, that's a freebie. I won't charge you for that one. >> Anyway, just a reminder that you have two buckets, the M site and the INS site. One of the things that this school board has been doing is managing those two for the last three or four years in order to maintain uh a certain tax rate, pay debt off early through the defeasements and maintain enough pennies in there projecting that that if you did have a bond election and that you would propose an even tax rate that you wouldn't have to increase. For example, we have school districts that are doing bond elections and proposing a 16 cent increase, a 10- cent increase, 6 cent increase depending on that did not do the kinds of did not take the kinds of

198actions that you took in the last three or four years since 2023 actually. So it's it's called managing the tax rate and balancing M and INS so that you have a steady income I mean steady in increase or non increase actually in the tax rate and by the way when we talk about increase or decrease remember that what you're talking about is a tax rate that's the only thing you can manage you can't you can't control increases in the tax themselves because you have no control over the values of the homes. So, we need to focus on that. The the thing that we're holding on to evenly maintaining is tax rate and that's the only thing that the board has any control over. The rest of it is HCA. So and then the INS whatever

199you raise with that fund you can't do anything with that except pay bond debt which is voted you can't pay manus tax notes you can't pay anything else that you might borrow for facilities only bond voted only voted debt so uh that is what that's what finish off paying pretty soon you know and in essence like Bobby puts it all the time is he drives a fivey year car 5-year-old car. His wife drives a new BMW. So, uh, but she didn't get it until after they paid off the 5-year-old car that Bobby could have. So, it's kind of like what you guys are doing, paying off your old debt, and now you're able to incur new debt with with the same payment that more or less than you had on your old debt. So the

200uh you might remember in discussions that we've had we talked about 290 million and that would uh that would decrease I think your tax rate by two three cents and then we talked even about 400 million that would increase your tax rate by about 5 cents and then we talked about this 335 million and we found that that particular number would maintain your tax rate at the 93 cents that we're talking Uh so we decided you might remember that we met in small groups and we talked about and the consensus of the board seemed to be that that it should be 90 335 million. So we started talking about that in the last uh since I think since early January we started talking about maybe even no yeah early January we we started focusing on

201the 335 million. So on on the next page which we talked I mean this graph we have showed you before uh but just just so that uh you have it in front of you you maybe think about it you're going to be asked it could be part of your Q&A and your presentations your current M tax rate is 80 cents 8022 your current INS tax rate is 13 cents and the current total tax is 9322. That's the magic tax tax break. What you have right now is what we intend to keep or maintain throughout. Now, with a $335 million bond uh in funding year 2026 through 30, the proposed tax rate will increase those 5 cents that are going to be in the truth and taxation. But excuse me. But you'll also see I said

202conversely the M is going to decrease. >> Thank you sir. >> I know you'll get something for students. uh the M is going to decrease accordingly by 5 cents >> uh due to compressions from the state and so on and we're able to maintain manage the tax rate of 93 cents. So the total tax rate from 30 even forward is projected to stay at 9322 with the district having borrowed uh $335 million >> and you dropped about six in the last couple years. Oh, in 2023, in 2023, you actually with your first defeasence, you could have had a 20ome cent uh compression, you know, lowered your M tax rate by 20ome cents. You kept 8 cents to pay off debt and in and and then for possible bond issue in the future. You reduce the

203tax rate actually the M tax rate at that time by 16 cents. And uh then uh in 2025 just last year your tax rate was actually 6 cents higher than it is today. and you're proposing to stick with the tax rate that it is today. So, this board has whenever it has had opportunities, you know, has been has been uh pretty uh good to the taxpayer. I mean, lowering your tax rate uh and not managing it or managing it with paying off debt early and preparing for for a bond election. Hopefully, that uh that considered by the public uh you know in a positive way. Uh do not have to increase. If you hadn't done that, if you had not kept those 8 cents, we would be talking about an 8 cent tax tax rate

204increase right now. And that basically it uh I I just need we're getting close to uh to you getting more and more questions about this. And I think this is as as u as basic a summary as we could put together for you. >> Thank you very much. >> Um we also have uh representatives from Fluger tonight in case you have any questions on the project. >> Uh this is maybe more of a general question for the time being, but I think and this is uh not for y'all as far as I can tell. So thank you for being here. Um, I'm still a little unclear in my own understanding of the division of responsibilities between Fluger and what they will do for us in a community engagement strategy and what we own in house

205in our own marketing and communications. Um, we're less than 90 days away from the opening of early voting. And it would just be so helpful for me to not speak much further out in the community in generalities about what people in the community can expect, but to get really specific about who does what by when and when. We will be able to see with much more clarity individual campus level projects, uhformational signs at individual campuses with QR codes for things that will be happening at those campuses. Um, you know, we're uh 11 days away from taking this vote. Um, and every day really does matter. >> Well said. >> Go ahead, sir. >> Good evening, board. Uh, Mr. Superintendent, staff, David Young with Fluger. Uh, I am not an architect. Uh, I'm in our community

206engagement division and so I think I'm probably the best person to answer your question. We are already actively working with the communications team and the district to put together uh materials to aid in the education of your community about what's in this bond. As you know, should you all decide to call an election, uh the district can do nothing but provide information to the community. There may be groups in the community that do advocacy and things like that, but the information piece is what the district does. And so uh to the extent of you you mentioned several good strategies already about signs on campuses about what will take place on those campuses uh creating a bond website preparing the superintendent's presentation that that he will give or other staff members will give uh out in

207the community to any group that will listen be they a a campus group the Rotary Club or he will be have PowerPoint will travel and So, uh, that is something that that we do. We've already been working hard to develop branding for the bond and to, uh, we've started to share those items with the district so that should an election be called on the 10th, you're able to hit the ground running with that. So, there won't be an information gap for the community once this blasts off. Does that get at your your question or are there specific pieces of that that you'd like a a little more on? We've delivered a communication plan to the to the district about what will take place when. >> Yeah. I I think um for a deal of this

208nature, I would love to actually see what the plan is for communication and engagement. Um >> Sure. >> I've heard again lots of things, all great ideas. >> I haven't seen a plan. >> We can provide that. >> Yeah, thanks. got a plan. >> A plan exists. And what you really want, as you saw on the slide earlier, uh as early voting starts around April 20th or so, uh you want a nice crescendo to that point uh of of early voting beginning. You can actually get out there too early with your education campaign and to where there's kind of a a stale period between the time that you've done all of that provision of information to your community and the time and they they what you don't want is people getting to the ballot box

209and thinking now I remember hearing something about that but what what exactly it was I'm not sure and so that that when you see that communication plan you'll see that it is it is exactly that a nice crescendo to the to that midappril time frame. >> Thank you. >> Um may I just add a question also? How do you see our marketing department? Um what role are they going to play specifically? Because I I would imagine that a communication plan tells us this is what you need to do, but who is actually creating those marketing pieces? Well, we are uh the our purpose your your marketing department is appropriately staffed and ready to uh deal with the work that is on hand and and certainly in the normal dispensation of a school year. There's a

210lot of that to be done, right? And so our role is to come in and augment uh those existing services which are significant in the district. Uh we work with Miss Vial and her team uh meet with them regularly. they they have uh assets in place and and people that are doing great things already. And so our role is certainly not to circumvent that group, but to just bolster the service that they're able to provide because they've got enough on their plate from just a regular school year and you bring in a $335 million bond election on top of that and there's just a whole lot more work to do. And that's where so we've got uh communications, graphics folks, web design folks, videographers, all of those pieces that we can bring to bear that

211are part of our existing uh contract with the district to help provide those services so that we don't just provide so much stress on the system that it can't function. >> Okay. And the reason you kind of went straight to my point um or kind of my concern, I guess, because our marketing department is phenomenal and they may look like they're operating at max capacity with everybody that they have, but they're actually a little bit understaffed. So, my concern is just that we're not going to be putting a lot more on them that um or that they are going to be, you know, who's going to be leading the ship there because I don't know that we're in a position right now to have them lead that charge. And I've been under the impression that

212you were that your company was going to be doing that. >> Right. And I I think Miss Viel, I think you're agreeing with what I'm saying about the that we're coming alongside and providing as much support as is needed. We work with sometimes small districts that have one person that marketing happens to be something on a long list of pieces in their job description and then some districts that have extremely robust departments already. you have people that are working hard and doing everything that they can and so we don't want to overt tax them and so that is our goal is to provide just in time support at the exact right level so to where that that happen happens efficiently and effectively. >> Thank you. >> Okay, thank you. All right, I am going to

213get back on track here and we do have a public hearing for the 2024 25 district annual report in the Texas academic >> Yes. Texas Education Code 39.306 306 requires that each district's board of trustees hold a public hearing to discuss the district's annual report and Texas academic performance report known as a taper. Miss Janet Nino, associate superintendent of instructional leadership will have more information on this and this is for information purposes only as well as uh Dr. Deos will also be presenting uh the taper report. Go ahead. >> Thank you Dr. Gutierrez. Um, we'll make this as exciting and brief as possible, but this is the, um, annual public hearing for our district. Um, just to make note, um, this public notification was posted as, um, as it's required of us on Wednesday, January

21421st, and all related links that are required from the TA agency are have also been shared on our public website. Um, we'll look at several components of the district annual report. And just to start with, great news. Um again taking a team take it takes everybody from the team to earn what Macallen ISD has earned for the 2024 2025 um year. And so we have earned in our finances um an A superior rating for the financial integrity rating system of Texas a um we went from a B 2024 accountability rating of an 89 all the way to a 90 which is an A for 2025. Those have now been um officially released. So on our previous presentation last year, it just had a little note saying that we couldn't release anything at that time, but

215that has now been updated. And both our accreditation statuses for 2024 and 2025 um are accredited, including our 2025 special education determination status that meets requirements. So with all of that, part of the component of teamwork is looking at district performance goals in the areas of reading, language arts, um mathematics, science, and social studies across um all grade levels from third to high school. And so we're very happy to know that um our students continue to not just perform well on their state assessments, but out compete peers um in the region as well as in the state. We always have room for growth. as we've previously discussed tonight instructionally to close gaps. And so our goal will continue to be to ensure that 100% of our students in each one of these um areas continues

216to be supported u by our staff as we move forward. In addition, again um our community, the public has access to all the information tonight uh via our district website. So this is hyperl for them and again through all of these visuals um it'll navigate them to access um campus improvement plans etc including this public hearing presentation and the Texas academic performance report for our district was released in December. And so again we have the opportunity of no more than 90 days from that release to just share with our community what the status of our district is academically and financially and a little bit of everything else. So we had um at snapshot of 2024 we reported um 19,849 students in membership um for that year. And as we look at star star performance um

217for the 2425 school year, it approaches grade level or above. Um we had again students in all grades at 81% in our district um perform well and again um outperforming peers across the state and at region one. And you'll see that notably not just for um reading language arts but for mathematics, science and social studies. So very proud work of our students and proud work of the staff in all the efforts it takes elementary through high school to make sure that they're successful on these assessments in in including something we added here that's not part of taper that's required is just the results driven accountability um that is measured at the federal level and that'll soon be part of a district's accountability in the future. So we have our eye on that because our students

218by subopuls um we look at that data very closely to ensure that uh subgroups such as foster, homeless and migrant students that are identified in these categories are also successful as well. Um here this slide just shows that we have a 100% participation in our STAR assessments and so we're very proud to make sure that again all the efforts of our staff were calling students. We're making sure that they're present um so they can show what they know on the day of these assessments. And here we have post-secondary institutions um where our students go beyond um graduating from Macallen ISD. And again um Dr. Deos can give a a brief summary on this moving on uh so forth and what are they doing at that time? >> Moving on uh so forth and what are

219they doing at that time? Um on in addition, we are required to report on criminal and violent crimes as part of our district annual report. And so here this is a summary updated from the 2425 school year. Um overall you will see some increases across our district in the area of the uh highlighted notes here. You can see that broken down by campus. um our efforts continue to work with students where um our counselors are working with students, our administrators, our teachers. Um just making sure that we have safe and supportive school teams. Um, and just using this data in partnership with our police department to to just see how to help um, intervene with students that are um, unfortunately having some of these behaviors across the district of making sure that we use it

220as a learning experience to get them back on track with where they need to be academically. Um, part of the district annual report also is the House Bill 3 adopted goals and action plan. So these we are actually have finished year five and that is what we'll be reporting on tonight. So we're now in year six and we've set those goals as well. But the House Bill three goals do measure early childhood literacy align to third grade star uh reading assessment, early childhood numeracy aligned to third grade star math assessments. And then in po in secondary the college current military readiness goals align to graduates that meet readiness requirements. And overall again, um, we've already met our five-year student outgo outcome goals. Um, we are now in year six and we've reset those goals again

221for this school year. And this has just been the timeline since December 2020 on what that action plan looked like back then. Um, it was board approved and again we've completed now year five of progress monitoring on that board approved um, adoption of those student outcomes at in in 2020. So for early childhood literacy um our third graders last year were um they attained to 59% which they had grown 10 um 11% from the year before but again we have to go back to prek to see how they're performing um the kinder students how they're performing and first grade and so overall again just tracking um how our students are progressing on meeting um early literacy and then overall in their third grade star uh when they get to that level. Same information for early

222childhood mathematics. We look at the third grade star mathematics star outcomes. Um we are holding steady right around there. Um we have made adjustments to our curriculum to ensure that we are we have a a tight tier one instructional resource supporting um the standards that these students are expected to learn and then will be assessed. And then again looking at pre kindergarten um from circle progress monitoring data, our pre-k students are doing very well. Our teachers are doing uh fantastic with making sure that they're assessing them. Uh kindergarteners also are um 9% above from last year's goal. And first grade students are again right around the same outcomes but um looking at the curriculum to see how to help align that as they proceed into third grade as well. and second graders also looking at

223that curriculum. Um I'll let Dr. Deoyos talk on the CCMR um House Bill three goals for that. >> Thank you, Miss Nino. So here we have the college career military readiness CCMR results that fromund and uh I'm sorry 1,617 graduates 93.9 of them completed or met that requirement of the CCMR uh indicator that is um we met the goal our goal for the fifth year was to be above 88 and We ended up at 94 which we met our goal. Um this like I said earlier is a big contributor to an overall rating of an A or uh having an 88 or above in CCMR. Uh contributes to the overall rating of the district. So, we ended the the year with a 90, a rating of A. Um, and then we have it there broken

224up by different the different areas. Student achievement with an 86 which is a B. School progress 90 A. Academic growth is a 77 which is a C and relative performance with an economic disadvantage uh percentage of 70.1 at a 90 which gives us an A and then closing the gaps 91 which give us an A as well. Overall like I said 90 it's an overall rating of an A. We are also very proud um with the distinction that we uh for post-secary readiness we've received this ready uh distinction several years in a row and that is the attest to the strong uh college career uh military readiness um efforts that we have and um these are the different um ways or links where we have disseminated did the Melaniz 2425 annual report and that concludes

225our report. >> Thank you. >> There any questions? Thank you. >> Any questions? >> Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> Okay, we will move on um to consent agenda items. Can I have a motion for items A through F? >> Motion to approve. >> I have a motion. >> Second >> and a second. All in favor? >> I oppose. Motion passes 70. >> Okay, we move on to 9A1 discussion and possible action on local improvement plan for Escand Elementary. Uh, Miss Janet Nino, our associate superintendent for instructional leadership, will share more information regarding Escandon Elementary's local improvement plan for 2526 school year as it relates to identification of schools for improvement by the Texas Education Agency. Administration is recommending action on this item. >> Yes, sir. Thank you. So, we um tonight we are

226presenting on the Escandon Elementary's local improvement plan for the 2526 school year. And this plan is developed in accordance with the Texas Education Agency and it's to help address Escond's identification for additional targeted support. Um what this local improvement plan will outline are specific evidence-based strategies um performance goals, monitoring systems, and just stakeholder engagement so that we can ensure um that there's academic improvement and compliance with the state accountability requirements. As we move on to the next slide, sorry. Thank you, Mr. On to the next slide here. Uh we will see that um Escondone has been identified for additional targeted support also known as ATS under domain 3, which is closing the gaps and that is defined by the 2025 accountability rating system. So in the additional targeted support, it applies to both title one

227and non-title one schools um when at least you have one student group demonstrating consistent underperformance. And so we might ask um what is that group at Essandon? And that is our continuously enrolled group that's scoring below the cut point used to identify the lowest performing 5% of schools statewide which um is triggering this designation um for Escandon. on this slide here. That identification again is based on data from continuously enrolled students. We have our economically disadvantaged subgroup there. Um our students identified at Hispanic, emergent, bilingual and special education. Something I want to just share with um you this evening is part of our special education population. There is our students that are identified deaf and heart of hearing. um the way that their instruction happens is in their primary language which is um they have

228interpreters right as they're learning their instruction. However, their assessment is not in the the language that they speak in. They're given to it in English. So, um, we've worked very, um, intensely, um, with Miss Lada, our director, Miss Carlo Rodriguez, our principal, um, everybody at the campus to give those students as fair of an opportunity to show exactly that they know more than how they're being assessed at the state level. Um here in alignment again with TA evidence-based requirements, our local improvement plan prioritizes just strengthening tier one instruction and just implementing stronger supports for tier 2 and tier three uh interventions. Um, we're going to make sure that there's explicit instruction, frequent checks for understanding, um, daily protected intervention block for retach and enrich, which is 45 minutes every day in the master schedule, and

229making sure that the PLC's are very data driven, uh, to help our staff make um, best decisions, informed decisions to help guide and support um, learning this year. Our performance goals are directly aligned to the TA accountability indicators and closing the gaps methodology. So in reading we are targeting a 10% increase in STAR meets and meeting or exceeding growth expectations. So we can see that we're going to go from 45% in the meets to 55% meets and hit that growth target of 65% in reading language arts. In mathematics, the goal includes a 10% increase in meats and 15% growth for identified student groups. And in science, we are aiming for a 16% combined increase in meets and masters um which will help position them to um exit this um this designation. The monitoring fidelity will

230be critical and that's going to be done through weekly instructional walkthroughs, structured PLC, professional learning committee data reviews, and monthly leadership progress checks. In addition, um this is a team approach. So, we're partnering at the district as the district team along with our campus team just to conduct ongoing um forms of assessment of data in order to help them remain aligned with uh meeting those goals that were shared right now. Um we do have to have required documentation that includes their lesson plans um perform uh professional learning community agendas, intervention logs to maintain provide and provide evidence to tea of compliance and effectiveness um as they require as part of this uh board approved plan. And there's a lot of resources and support um to make sure Escondone Elementary meets these goals. Um we have

231protected intervention time again uh 45 minutes a day um PLC time with our staff that's embedded into that master schedule and just making sure that our campus is able to utilize um staff such as our interventionist to support those um additional layers of instruction for our students and for stakeholder engagement. This plan um was developed collaboratively with teachers and campus leadership. again is consistent with the TA expectations for stakeholder involvement and parents will receive ongoing communication regarding interventions and student progress. So, additionally, Escandon maintains continuous collaboration with the district accountability department which is Mrs. Christian Kintania um to ensure alignment, transparency, and sustained improvement. And lastly, um the this local improvement plan meets all requirements outlined in TEA accountability chapter 10, including timely implementation as well as our board approved board approval. Escondone Elementary along

232with Mallalen ISD's team will commit to continuous monitoring, documentation, and instructional support to ensure long-term academic success and accountability compliance. And we respectfully request your approval and review tonight on this plan. Thank you. >> Thank you. Any questions? Do I have a motion? >> I'll move. >> Second. >> Motion and a second. All in favor? >> I. Any >> oppose? Motion passes 6. Okay. Uh the next agenda items are 9A2, 983, 984, and 9B1. If there is no objection, I'm going to postpone agenda items 9A2, 93, 984, and 9B1 to the next regular meeting of the board. Is there any objection? >> I I just have one question because I see Mr. Science is here. You were going to present. Would you rather present tonight? >> He's been waiting a long time. >> You want

233to wait? >> Well, sorry. That's the one I just focused on. >> You want to wait? >> Okay. >> No objection. Okay. So, do I hear any objection from the board? >> None. >> Hearing no objection, those items are postponed to our next regular board meeting. >> B3. >> Is that including number 42? >> Yes. 234. >> 2 3 and 4 >> and B1. >> So, it's 9 A2 9 A3 9 A4 and 9 B1. And then we will move on to 9B2 which is uh Dr. >> This is a second this is a second reading for the policy uh CSA uh in proposing the designation and use of uh private spaces. Tasby is recommending this resolution be brought to the board for review and approval. Dr. Canades, our chief human resources officer, will have

234more information if you have any questions because this is the second reading and we're recommending action on this item. >> Okay, board second reading. Any discussion? >> I have one question. Are there currently any concerns with fulfilling the requirements of this policy in our current facility structure? No, right now it's already in in uh progress already. So, they've already as long as the residents are labeled. And then for the athletic part of it, y >> uh the biggest part that we had that that was a concern that we already remedied uh when this came out was when we have our games and we have our male students in the female locker room like the opposing team. We have to put a sign that just says locker room in use. That's already been taken care by

235Mr. Mlenny and the teams. >> Thank you. Okay. Mr. President, I'd like to make a motion to approve. >> Second. >> I have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I. >> Any oppose? >> I. >> All right. Motion passes 51. Okay. And we have item number three, discussion and possible action of TASBY's localized policy manual update 126. Second reading. This is what took up majority of your packet. >> Uh presented from TASB and reviewed by our staff. This update represents legal and local reference policies recently adopted by the state. Dr. Gonales, our chief human resources officer, will have more information in case you have any questions because this is also a second reading and we're recommending action uh on this item. >> Anybody want to go page by page? motion. >> All

236right. Um, any discussion by the board? >> Okay. And I will move to approve the Texas Association of School Board localized policy manual update 126. >> Thank you. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. >> I have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion passes. 6. Okay. 9C1 report regarding intention to apply for the CDG grant. >> Yes. Uh through the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974, local governments with populations of 50,000 or more are eligible for funds from the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for projects dealing with neighborhood improvements. Miss Lara Williams, our director for purchasing services, is available to answer any questions. This item is for information purposes only. >> Good evening, Dr. Gutierz, Mr. President, board of trustees. This is

237the report uh regarding the intention to apply for the FY fiscal year 2026 2027 community development block grant also known as CDBG. Um the application is due on February 6th. Uh we are requesting approximately $1,130,000. Uh the grant term will be for a period of one year October 1st of 26 through September 30th of 2027. Our first project that we will be applying for funds for is $390,000 for an all-inclusive playground at Juan Sigin Elementary. Here is a schematic of the playground, the all-inclusive playground. Here is just another schematic uh showing the playground in different different angles and the plot for where the um all-inclusive playground would go at Sigin Elementary should we receive the funds. The next project would be for an all-inclusive playground at Theodore Roosevelt Elementary, approximately $390,000. Again, here is a

238schematic of the playground. And then again, uh different views of the schematic for the playground should we receive funding and the uh plot for where where the playground would go. And I apologize for my voice. Uh and then the last project will be for a community track at William B. Travis Middle School, uh requesting approximately $350,000 for that project. And you can see on on this uh left side of the screen the where the track would would be located on the campus grounds. And that is my very short intention to apply for the CDBG uh grant. Are there any questions? >> Thank you, Miss Williams. These are great projects. >> Thank you very much. >> Thank you. >> Okay. And I'm going to go back and clarify uh for the record that I would like

239to make a motion to table items number 982, 93, 984, and 9B1. I will ask for a second. >> Second. >> Okay. Have a motion and a second. >> All in favor? >> I oppose. Motion passes 6. >> Then we will move forward to this. >> Okay. discussion and possible action of the board of education meeting minutes. This is from the last meeting where there was a correction for January 7th, 2026 and for January 13, 2026. >> Make a motion to approve. >> Second. >> I have a motion and a second by trustee. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion passes 6. and discussion and possible action to correct the special board meeting minutes of August 20 August 21st, 2025. >> We have a motion by trustee Lopez, second by trustee Ria. All

240in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion passes 6. Okay, then we go on to session. >> Okay. Uh the board will now go into close session pursuant to the Texas government codes 551071, 551072, 551074, 551076, and 551089 of the Texas Government Code to discuss the items listed on the agenda, which include human resources, school safety and security, pending or potential litigation, and possible real estate acquisition. It is 9:34 and we are in close session. All right, it's 10:07. We're back from close session. Coming in to take action on items in close session. And we have discussion, possible action on HR recommendations for school year 202526. Human resources submitted a list of recommendations for the 2526 school year under separate cover for discussion during close session. There was one recommendation. So we're recommending action on that on

241this item. >> Move to approve. >> I have a motion by trust, second by trust Lopez. All in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion passes 6. And there is nothing on items B, C, D, or E. Correct. So then we will go on to item 13 on the agenda. There's a list of scheduled meetings there ranging from February 10th to March 24th that you can take a look at. And I will entertain a motion to adjurnn. >> So move. >> Second. >> All right. I have a motion and a second. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Motion passes 6. Good night everybody. It's 10:08.