Pearland ISD Board Meeting for 11/12/2019

001I call this meeting of the pearland Independent School District Board of Trustees to order on November 12th at 5:03 p.m. let the record show that a quorum of boardman was his present that this meeting has been duly called and the notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act Texas government code chapter 5 5 1 let the record show that trustees carbone Murphy Decker Gooden Botkin Floyd and Decker are present all right Carbone Murphy Decker Gooden and Botkin Floyd and Barry all right now with the call With the call to order out of the way and very poorly done by me sorry about that the they will go into public comment this is the portion of the board meeting where the board receives input from patrons each person who

002addresses the board will have three minutes to speak on his or her issue in accordance with state new state law anyone who is here to speak on an agenda item does get to be heard prior to us considering agenda item and we have eight people and so that keeps us underneath it gives us 24 minutes so we're underneath that time so there's no need to talk about slowing any or anyone not being able to speak okay all right first we have this Travis Boldt Travis Bolt is that correct sir Boldt B O L D T Travis bolt good evening board and thank you all for having this meeting my name's Travis Boldts I am a father of a child growing up in this city the husband of a public schoolteacher I am also a candidate

003for state representative I'm here in response to the justice and education forum that was held last week of which every member of this board was invited and yet only trustee Floyd and president Gooden I can only speculate as to the priorities that were held by everyone else however if you all were had been in attendance you all would have seen passionate presentation by teachers by parents and by students expressing the experience of that white supremacy has caused to them in our school district this is an ongoing concern that has not been left unaddressed by this board there were many people who spoke on this issue everybody lamented that this should not be a political issue of which I agree president Gooden you presented that your only reason for not passing a resolution and seconding a

004resolution condemning white supremacy was that you felt that it was a political standard which you felt was a drumbeat for the left to follow however the only way that a political discussion can be had is if there are two sides of an issue so unless there is somebody here who is in favor of white supremacy there are not two sides of this issue so I would suggest that we remove politics from the issue that we second a resolution to condemn white supremacy in our schools and that it passed unanimously if this were to occur there would be no political consideration however I have strongly doubt that that's what's going to happen tonight please do what is right and make sure that we are able to bring down white supremacy and provide it no safe haven

005in our community thank you all very much thank you sir yes hi Okay next is Liz Citta Hi good evening my name is Liz Siddha and I'm the proud parent of two kids who are sitting here in the front row Aden Siddha who attends Sablatura and Olive Siddha who attends CJ Harris so I'm extremely proud that they're being raised in the school district I'm a proud Pearland ISD graduate and I chose to raise my kids here um in addition what I wanted to talk to you guys about to today is the wonderful partnership that you have through communities in schools and the development that I've seen with my son grow in those relationships and so want to commend you for being ahead of the game and really knowing I mean just as a mother of

006a child that's on the spectrum that is minority just thank you so much thank you mam okay next Representative Ed Thompson good evening sir we're members dr. Kelly thank y'all for allowing me to speak for a couple of minutes tonight I wanted to take some time to kind of fill you in a little bit about what what we're doing we are actually in attempting and we're accomplishing it so far but we're attempting to visit all 23 campuses here in in Pearland ISD I felt like it was very important after the last legislative session we spent a tremendous amount of time during that session in regards to public education many of the bills that we discussed and passed I felt like there were some more opportunities for us that would probably just couldn't quite get over

007that finish line prior to signing so I wanted to come back and actually make those visits to campuses talk to the principal's talk to the counselors visit with the teachers visit with the children visit with the kids in the school to hear what they had to say and we've really had a great opportunity to deceive the I always tell everybody I say if you've seen you know I used to say if you've seen one school district in Texas you've seen one school district in Texas well now I can say if you've seen one campus you've seen one campus because they're all different and it's truly amazing to me the the work that's being done here in PISD the students the faculty the the administrators counselors we've had a lot of really really good discussions I

008appreciate Kim Hoccot working with us and in scheduling these visits we try not take up too much of their time but but we want to hear from them we want to we really believe it's important to hear from those folks that are what we call boots on the ground we get to hear from a lot of people when we're in Austin about that have special interest and have their agendas and have their perspective but a lot of times - well most of the time the teachers and and those folks don't have time to come to Austin to sit down and talk to us so that's why we've taken on this opportunity to do this and I just want you to know that I appreciate the opportunity to do it it's an honor to represent Pearland

009ISD in the legislature and I want to thank each and every one of you I've had the opportunity to serve on this board and it is one of those honors that I that I carry it is one that I appreciate what you do I know it's a difficult job and thank you for it for your service and thank you for what you do and may God continue to bless Pearland ISD thank you thank you sir all right vidya are you here. good evening good evening I spoke here a couple times before but for all the new faces in the room my name is Vidya I am a junior right now at Dawson I've gone to Pearland ISD to schools since elementary school I went to Massey and I wanted to say thank you to everyone

010on this board for giving me the time to speak I also wanted to address the justice in education Town Hall in my opinion justice is very interesting in that it's an ongoing fight there really is no end to that and I want to begin with starting a conversation I think that first of all I'm very grateful of that trustee Floyd and Gooden showed up to that but for for everyone who didn't have the opportunity to make it there tonight I wanted to bring that conversation back I want to talk about the the importance of starting a conversation in talking about justice and especially with regards to diversity I do not in any way believe that Pearland ISD is actively working against minority students I am a minority student and I have very much benefited from

011the hard work of this district so I am in no position to say that but I do believe that in talking about this as a community not just with parents and people who have outside interests but with students who experience the legislation that this board passes and discusses every day I hope to have another opportunity for a town hall or a form of discussion to really go over what we talked about in justice and education and make it specific to Pearland ISD I hope that some more experiences from students and from teachers and substitutes who work in this district will be highlighted just so we can talk about how we can work towards solving it I'm really tired of just going back and forth and pointing fingers as to whose fault it is because I

012don't think it's anyone's fault I think that this is an opportunity for progress and progress is the most important thing that we can do as people and as especially as constituents of this district and as students I think that it's also my responsibility to make sure that this district is better for students after me and I want to take that responsibility and call this board to action I am very impressed with the fact that we had attendance in that justice for Education Town Hall because I think that Pearland ISD is a leader in Brazoria County if we do not change first other districts will not change and I believe that we are the ones who have that decision and have that power and showing what change looks like so with that I hope to move

013forward and I look towards progress thank you thank you very much Mr. feuless hi everybody I'm speaking today because I think that when you do the job of a school board trustee it's natural to get a little close to things some of you on the board pride yourselves on your financial expertise some on your experience as educators some on your understanding of student mental health issues and other types of expertise that you bring to the table but the fact is that dr. Kelly has staff with more expertise on school district financials than any of you will ever have he has an army of educators working for him that he can tap for input at any time he has experts on special education and mental health as well he really doesn't need your expertise or your

014experience he doesn't and yet your input and your oversight are still critical why because you act as the voice of the community here to represent the interests of Pearland's parents taxpayers and its students Dr. Kelly is not an elected official and so he cannot do that on his own he needs you in that role so that he can do his job in a way that he knows is transparent and responsive to those he serves that's a key difference between a public school district and charter schools charters are not answerable to a locally elected board so the local community has no voice in how those schools are run we don't want to give up that advantage that's why when members of the community come to you with a request the very first thought that every board

015member should have is this is an opportunity the authoritarian response is how can I say no the public servants response is always how can I say yes if it's not too expensive not harmful to others not in violation of some law or rule why not work with the community and it's very important to remember the community doesn't just mean the people who voted for you it means everyone that lives here the n-double-a-cp came to you with an opportunity a chance to show that you stood shoulder to shoulder with them on a completely nonpartisan moral issue the board's refusal to consider it or even discuss it has been a shock to the public instead of making dr. Kelly's job easier you've now made it harder there were no politics here if there were your political opponents

016would be happy that you decided to send such a negative public message because it makes you more politically vulnerable do I look happy I'm not no one that I know is so please think about that thank you thank you sir okay miss Colleen and I don't if you wouldn't mind pronouncing your last name for me please Shollcough thank you my name is Colleen Shollcough and I have been in education for 25 years my children have and are attending Pearland ISD schools they've had some amazing teachers and experiences in our schools I began my teaching career in a school where a hundred percent of the students were economically disadvantaged immigrants it was the most rewarding experience of my public teaching life I started in my career in a loving environment where I felt appreciated respected encouraged

017and heard all of our students were held to the same high expectations no matter their life circumstances I gained so much confidence and knowledge from my time there I have taught full-time in Pearland ISD for three years it was the most toxic environment I have ever experienced I heard teachers speak of students using racial slurs expectations were not as high for certain groups of students and the negative atmosphere that permeated throughout our school created an environment where the staff did not feel safe or trusted we were constantly told that if we were unhappy too bad we could be easily replaced when a colleague felt comfortable telling me because I am white that an african-american student we both taught was a hood rat I immediately reported the teacher I was told that he had taught at

018my school for a long time the students liked him and we should less let this go I discovered that this district favors nepotism old ideas and anything that keeps Pearland in the past subtle forms of retribution are doled out to teachers that make too much noise about anything so we keep quiet and remain miserable the only and most important thing we heard every single day was that all of our students needed to pass the star the stress of teaching in such a negative environment took its toll on my health so I took them up on their offer to easily replace me in addition it is imperative that we make changes to include our lgbtq+ population in a respectful way that full way each time I've asked for my child to have their chosen name printed

019on their student ID I've been told no because of safety reasons if you really cared about the mental health and safety of my student then you would honor who they are refusing to do so has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with personal biases against my child and others like them statistics have proven that not calling a transgender child by their preferred name increases their risk of suicide an easy and expensive fix in the skyward system that would allow parents to list their child's preferred name and pronouns could protect hundreds of youth in this district adopting a district-wide zero-tolerance policy against white supremacy hate crimes and discrimination against lgbtq+ students is the very least we can do to honor and protect all of our students in the district thank you Ellison Schollcough

020good evening hello my name is Ellison Schollcough I am a freshman at Dawson high school I started to question my gender around seventh grade everyone's bodies were changing so I was told that it was normal and then everyone felt this way but when my questions turned to a new burning hatred of my body and everything girl I found myself clinging to the ever-present question of why did God do this to me I didn't quite know how to explain the feeling but it's like waking up in a body that isn't yours or rather that you don't want the constant discomfort and unease keeps me on high alert all the time body dysphoria is a constant uphill battle I can say with confidence that my district has not provided me with adequate support I often hear about

021my trans friends in Austin whose public schools celebrate Pride Week with rainbow bracelets and guest speakers I have friends in other states used their school's gender-neutral bathrooms I'm constantly made to feel like these things are a luxury completely out of my reach like these are rarities that should not represent the status quo but the older I get I can't help but noticing the increase and what feels like basic conclusion I want pearland ISD to notice me to see my struggle and to take a stand I want my name included in skyward my real name I want an ID that reflects Who I am and I want my real name written on my coffee cup every morning I am NOT asking for much which is why there shouldn't be difficult as I grow older I've began

022to better understand why God did this to me because if it wasn't for me there would be no one to stand up for my trans sister with a love of photography and my brother and his art and my gender non-conforming sibling who can play the ukulele better than anyone I know these beautiful people deserve a chance to be themselves and frankly I believe I do too thank you very much okay Shenedria Wagner good evening everyone my name is Shenedria Wagner I'm a proud Pearland parent I have two children in the district I'm also a partner our tutoring business management center of Pearland and loves to partner with the district Kim Hocott reaches out when needed and I'm also an educational consultant with 20 years of experience training teachers on a national level I've trained in

023anywhere from Compton Chicago to the suburbs of Seattle Washington New York Florida by the board or you name it I've been there I've seen all kinds of schools and I'm proud to say but at the end of the day when I leave the schools I currently do work it what work but to make sure they get off the list for bad performed low performance then I come home to a home with my baby boy who's nine years old sits and teaches me the strategies he's learned he's in very good hands from an instructional standpoint as a parent who was once a bully I want to say kudos to you Mrs. Carbone Mrs. Carbone because of the efforts the district has made to secure counselors who actually work as the children's mental health the main complaint

024at all campuses I go to you is that counselors have no time to really do their jobs which is to work with the children that doesn't happen in Pearland ISD so I came tonight to say thank you thank you thank you I work with dr. Kelly before on a cultural committee that Mayor Reed started I want to say my heart goes out to you it has been going out to you and I'm tired of being silent about it um here's my issue the town hall meeting the other night I didn't go for a number of reasons but when I did watch it I was expecting to see this long line of parents with all these different racial stories about different things that had happened throughout the district I was poised to support them I heard

025none of that what I heard was a recycled argument a recycled argument that many parents many black parents are tired of hearing we're tired of hearing it because we know the district isn't perfect and we read we read his blogs we know he doesn't like testing I know we know dr. Kelly stance on things we read we don't read on what he hearsay to form our opinions but I saw recycled stories and I saw pretty much a whining session in an attack on mr. Gooden about this resolution I want some support of the resolution I don't anymore because I found out some things I didn't like but I think our district all districts need to deal with culture not from an ethnic standpoint that too but the culture in which we all treat each other

026with kindness no matter if you're black white don't hear me when he cries for the plight of white individuals because they get talked to crazy too they get talked badly about badly from black people who feel they're superior and most recently we had a former school board candidate call your husband a white supremacist and she has yet to justify that she has yes to tell me why she did it so yes we all have pain we all have issues and if we're gonna really get any progress in this district and what people say we should we've got to care about everybody's feelings so we're tired of the nonsense yes I'm tired of it Thank You Mr. Gooden I'd like to bring up the resolution that was just mentioned by Ms. Wagner for consideration at next

027months meeting Okay, was that yours or the NAACP's? Thats the NAACP's resolution is there a second to bring up the NAACP resolution for next week's meeting. Next month. excuse me next month all right at the at the great risk of having everything I say twisted let me preface this by saying that we as a board in a community must not fall into the dysfunction that can actually begin to damage a school district right we're agreeing we're disagreeing on something we're not disagreeing on content we're disagreeing on methodology and I don't think that I don't think that this board is ignoring these issues I think the board is taking action towards these issues and we have something on the agenda this evening from the cultural responsive committee that I think is going to get us down

028the road on on addressing these issues I did say at the Justice in town hall that that I did see a political slant to the original resolution and and I think that the the second resolution from the NAACP got caught up in the same thing but I'm I'm a hundred percent certain that that no one here supports white supremacy and just to give you an example of how this is all going off the rails I heard from a reporter today from the Houston Press and she asked me if I was backing away from the resolution because of a conservative backlash and I just think I just think it's ridiculous that this has reached this this this this pitch this board needs to be focused on its business this board needs to be working with community

029organizations and I for one look forward to continuing to do that I don't think Michael that the proper response to you is silence and that's why I stopped out to say what I'm saying and I hope that you take it from where it's coming from it's coming from the heart but I think that if we're going to get through this then the the board the community we're all gonna have to start communicating with each other in honesty and the truth and with the best interest of our kids in mind with that said I will move on that ends the public comment section with public comment done the board of trustees of the Pearland Independent School District will now convene in the closed meeting to discuss the following items to post it on our agenda this

030evening has allowed by title 5 chapter 5 51 Texas government code and/or the Education Code a superintendent will present for the board's consideration or discussion of the following matters sections 5 5 1071 072 074 076 and 082 no voting will take place and closed meeting any action the board wishes to take as a result of discussions in closed session will take place after the board reconvene in open meeting it is now 5:29 p.m. and the board will stand adjourned the board will reconvene an open session at 6:23 p.m. no action was taken on anything discussed in closed session is there a motion mr. president I move we accept and approved the superintendent's recommendation for employment of personnel as presented second motion Decker second Floyd any further discussion hearing none let's vote all in favor motion

031carries 6-0 with trustee Bakken temporarily out of the meeting we will go from there to opening comments by trustee Murphy okay I guess we'll do comments first and then we could put if we can put the allegiance up and all will go guys a lot of people here tonight I just want to say quickly you know I'd like to thank all the teachers and staff and especially we got three high school principals standing behind me in one which oversees my student but I don't think we give enough credit and that's enough love to what our teachers do on a day-to-day basis you know when I when I signed up to do this several years ago I ran a campaign on you know retaining and hiring the best teachers that we have in the district and

032I really just personally I'm sort of this board as well want to thank the teachers and the rest of the staff within our district for everything they do because they do a tough job from 6 o'clock in the morning to probably 9 o'clock at night so first of all just want to recognize all of our teachers and our administration staff for everything they do thank you guys so much and I would like to take a moment if we have any veterans that are here with us today I'd like you to please stand so we could recognize our veterans although Veterans Day was yesterday we obviously thank you for all that you do now the rest of you will please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance thank you complete your comment all right

033we will go directly into board recognition good evening Pearland ISD is home to some of the most talented students and staff in the state of Texas and now comes the time that we like to recognize them for their achievements parents feel free to come up at any time to take photos first we'd like to honor Dawson High School they're athletic trainers for being selected recently by the National Athletic Trainers Association as a safe Sports School first-team the award champions safety and recognizes secondary schools that have met the recommended standards to improve safety in sports and reinforces the importance of providing the best level of care injury protection and treatment of student athletes here representing Dawson high school this evening are the head trainer Chris Shattuck and associate athletic trainer Christine Dakota ready next we're so

034proud to honor some students from some top bands barry miller junior high and parylene junior high west who recently finished 4th and 11th respectively in the Texas music educator Association state Honor Band Competition Barry Miller junior high and parylene Junior High West were among the top 16 bands from across the state to compete for this honor here to introduce their students our band directors from Barry Miller Christopher Bennett Heather Massey and blank Lee Charlie Hackworth haunt algin Yannick Liebchen er Kenny Pham Kristen Platt Aiden Cheryl Joshua Smith Garret Taylor and Leila Wagner and parents all the photos that our photographer up here are taking you can get those off of our Flickr page will post the link on Facebook tomorrow or the next day so if she's got one of your kids that's going across

035we'll make sure that you guys can get that downloaded next introduce students from Pearland Junior High West our band directors Meredith Bishop Jessica Steiner and Curtis Emery Samuel Brady Jess Lynch in Jason Dawson Angie Guan becky Gundlach Thomas Moore Michael pair Isabella Ritchie Anushka sin Matthew Stein Baker Evan Stringfellow Andrew Swofford Benjamin walls worth Perkis and Alexander right and principal Dana miles next we're honored to recognize some high school students who stand out in the national scholarship and recognition programs thanks to high PSAT scores these students may qualify for scholarships and have their names and academic information sent to u.s. colleges and universities first we'll recognize students who have been named as National Hispanic recognition scholars these students must have be at least one quarter Hispanic or Latino have achieved at least a minimum PSAT

036score for their region and the students with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher are designated as scholars only 7,000 students nationwide receive this recognition this year from Dawson high school Liliana Hildebrand and from Turner college and career high school gorillas next we'd like to honor students who met the highest standards on advanced placement exams this year 641 of our students has achieved scholar status an increase over last year our first students receive recognition as AP scholars with distinction these students earned an average score of 3.5 on all AP exams and scores of three or higher on five or more exams from Dawson high school Joshua ACEF Christina Bell Josh booyah this next student also earned national merit commended recognition Jabari Bowen Ethan Chen this next student besides being an AP Scholar is also

037a National Merit commended and National Hispanic recognition scholar Alberto Fernandez David George Jose Gutierrez Samuel Harrigan Patrick Harris Julie Henry reales Ollis Nathan Jacob Nathan Lamont some II some II man sorry Ethan Martin Madeleine melon child Nguyen Logan win all right Manny's here we go Manny's Varmus Warren Emily Prince Anika sends Gary honest nighter Benjamin totes and then also an AP Scholar and a National Hispanic recognition scholar Michael Zamora from Pearland high school AP Scholar and a National Merit commended Lauren Adams Ariana Chan also an AP Scholar and National Merit commended Annette Murari Isabel Phoenix Nicolas Scruggs also earning national merit commended Lucas Snyder AP Scholar and National Hispanic recognition scholar Lea Shay Torres and now national AP Scholar Awards less than one percent of AP exam takers worldwide earned this award these students achieved

038an average score of four or higher on all exams and scores of four or higher on eight or more AP exams from Dawson High School Erika Anton who is also national merit commendable Charlotte Harrington a national AP Scholar and National Merit commended arrive Kumar Kathie Lee national AP Scholar National Hispanic recognition scholar and National Merit commended Colby Medina edita namah namah Joshi charreah Sekar also National Merit commended Jessica Williams Andrew yang and from Pearland high school Caleb Kimball we have one more thing finally we'd like to recognize an organization that is a big supporter of Ryze mentoring in our district during the months of July in August South Fork Chrysler Dodge Jeep and Ram held a campaign that generated a total of over fourteen thousand dollars coming from sales as well as employees and customer

039donations to support parallel is Dee's mentoring efforts in addition to monetary support the owner Chris Godwin gives his time as a rise mentor and also allows his employees to mentor on the clock we are extremely grateful for mr. Godwin and southfork's support of Ryze mentoring and accepting is Mandy Benedict's our mentoring coordinator this concludes our recognition this evening thank you and congratulations to everyone okay Ford we're going to get started again it in five minutes 6:45 you don't have to leave y'all can stick around if you want we're getting some exciting stuff coming up as I have noted so a couple of board members we're going to take a few items out of order and let's go ahead and jump back in actually as the agenda is printed and go to the consent agenda the

040consent agenda is presented with items a1 through 7 are there any items that a board member would like to pull for discussion are there any others is there a motion for the consent agenda to be approved items 2 through 7 some motion Floyd is there a second second second Murphy any further discussion all in favor vote motion carries 7 0 all right I don't want I guess two weeks ago now out at Dawson High School and we covered the topics of vaping safety security mental health and then reunification plans and I see you several familiar faces in the room tonight the high school principals discussed a lot of the issues that they are implementing at their schools regarding vaping and so I just really appreciate the efforts that you guys are doing the creativity that

041you're bringing to the table to let your kids and your students know and kind of giving it to them and letting that make them make it their own about how they're reaching out to their peers we had representation from Memorial Hermann with dr. Gupta talking about the effects of vaping on lungs and and the many deaths he's seen near death cases just in the last few weeks which was amazing giving the statistics about it and Chen d'amour and the data that she brought to the table and all of the things that she covered Don Tillis covering the facilities piece and Larry Berger and his tenacity coming to the table with a reunification plan I just can't say thank you enough for you guys taking out your time especially with the long days that you have

042for the efforts that you made to reach out to the community so thank you I do have one question though dr. Kelly we talked about the upcoming town halls can we ensure in the future that we get those on skyward in addition to the social media piece and then we can we also make sure that those are either audio or video recorded yes awesome alright so there's the second one correct yes the first one was spring spring and they're open to all the public right to come speak about any particular topic or ask any question correct well we with this issue we had a list of presentation topics that we covered and then anybody could ask comments at the end yes thank you is there a motion to approve item 1 from the consent agenda

043I'll make a motion that we include approve item 1 from the consent agenda motion carbone's second Decker any further discussion hearing none let's vote all in favor motion carries 7-0 thank you very much okay now to the items that we're gonna take a little bit out of order we're gonna jump down to item six recommendations regarding the naming of facilities within paralyse d and possible action on these recommendations we have a presentation from Carolyn high school principal John Palumbo yes sir good evening sir how are you good evening all right so it was a fun committee you know looking at all the aspects and things the impact of naming and what that has on campuses and parameters and things of that nature and so we held two meetings with regards to that so our first

044meeting was basically more like exploration kind of getting a pulse on where we were living we had some questions to ask ourselves and so we went through those and I'll get into those in just a couple minutes and then the second meeting was after basically we had some homework our homework was to kind of go talk to public constituents staff members things of that nature to kind of get a pulse on where people's feelings may be with source and naming what the process should be be like where do we name you know what facilities do we name things of that nature with regards to that so it started out with a directive from you all board of trustees in looking at naming district facilities and so we took that initiative and went after that and

045try to set some parameters and give you at least some guidance as a board of what the information we gathered from public community and staff in our district the first meeting our big exploration was just just several questions one was should we reconsider naming south east and west the junior High's should certain areas and buildings be named like auditoriums lecture halls rooms libraries things of that nature we also talked about naming the wings of peril in high school or some people call it the North Campus South Campus original PHS campus or Searcy campus looking at that also thoughts on renaming the football stadium and then also specifically there was some discussion about Cheryl Searcy and mr. Preston Bullard with regards to where in how should we recognize them moving forward so in our first meeting

046we review current pis the facility names we had a group exercise where we basically looked at those five questions and set down as group kind of came up with what was our driving force we had a large group discussion I was interesting because our first round of meetings of lots of feeling of yes retn opening up the renaming of junior High's certain areas of buildings we were pretty much in consensus with regards to public areas were areas so we were looking at not like hallways rooms things of that nature but where public gatherings would take place auditoriums football fields baseball field softball fields things of that nature and then also with regards to the Searcy and Preston Bullard overview and then we got the homework to go out and talk to our constituents about those

047things in the second meeting and I'll back up a little bit on the first meeting you know principal peril in high school there's been a lot of disjoint meant with regards to Searcy campus PHS campus things of that nature with regards to that and when we initially started that conversation talking to my staff in particular a lot of my staff had started out with the feeling of you know we really want to become one that's one of the big things the bond project was doing was bringing our campuses together and not having two separate sides and things of that nature but after doing the homework and talking to more staff members and continuing to have that conversation one of the things that came out of it was there's nothing wrong with having Preston Bullers name

048on our building on the south side of the building we felt like it's the right way to honor him number one number two it puts us in a position where for directionally challenged staff they're a lot easier to find the name in associating that with the sides of the building and we like the honor to of miss Cheryl Searcy as well that was one of the things that came out of discussions that I have my staff we didn't want to lose that name because part of the committee was talking about taking both names and moving them to junior high as as possibly that so that's one of the things that came out we also had principal commentary from the junior high principals and I'll touch on then just a little bit and we also live

049polling with regards to that through the questions I'll talk a little bit through what what the kind of consensus was in the meeting with of course of renaming junior High's generally we were neutral or no support for it you know they're kind of ingrained in our community with names they have also there were some concerns about we've spent Bond dollars on graphics things of that nature on entrances and things of that things like that also to the impact of cost there's a lot of things with regards to just murals on the wall basketball courts gymnasiums reach ange in that uniforms there's a lot with that support we supported revisiting in the future and looking at that if that's what the board looks at one of the other things that I talked about specifically as a

050principal I think it's important that we if we go that route as a district we need a seriously consider the possible cultural impact that would happen on that campus and making sure we do something to help the staff rebrand because that's a huge shift you know just speaking as parallel High School Principal you know we've got pride on our success we tie that to our school name and pretty much every school has something like that and so if you do change a name there needs to be some consideration with regards to the rebuilding and him helping us staff make that movement and the second thing is is should we rename areas of the buildings again it was pretty consistent with regards to in the consensus was just major areas you know just auditoriums gymnasiums things

051of that nature not really libraries hallways things of that nature was was kind of our driving force behind it there should be more education for students about the namesake on the campus sites we always one of the discussions we have was we don't feel like our kids and even sometimes our community may not truly know why is Sam Jameson named Sam Jamison you know and in looking at those schools and how can we do a better job as a school district in schools to educate our kids on that one of the things that came out of this was the idea of a Hall of Honor and so I'll talk a little bit more about that something that we talked about with regards impossible pursue moving forward to honor people not only people that pass away

052but also living people we've got a lot of great people we've got over 80 years of history in our district and there's been great members of our community that have graduated from our schools and are making a great impact in our communities or in the world and to be able to recognize and honor those people and so that's one of the things that we talked about and possibly being managed through the Education Foundation was one of the things that came through that this is just a sample of some of the hall of honors that are out there the one I'm most familiar with his dear parks I've seen there's up close and personal it's really done well and so these are just some options that we thought about one of the places that we talked

053about possibly housing that that's even a question you have as we even talked about just right out here right outside the boardroom it's a natural place for what all the traffic that we have for all the board recognitions and things of that nature that people get to see the recognition of people that have contributed to not only our campuses in schools but also our community so naming the wings like I said we probably had a hundred eighty degree turn from that from the first meeting to the second meeting with regards to that and we have a large support of naming the wings or what we call buildings and just some things that we threw out was probably naming it building you know Cheryl Searcy building Preston Bullard building was a recommendation but there was a

054strong support again to keep Sherrill Circe's name on the North Campus and that's just because it's been that's what it's always been and a lot of our staff members were like we don't want to lose that because that is part of our history with regards to that there was no name no support for renaming peril in high school I don't think that was the conversation we were trying to have but I'm glad that was cleared up yeah a lot of it is is that there's just so much history I mean it's 80 years and that was one of the things that we talked about and just thought it was just about honestly good so then we know that there was no support for that I'll say that was the original well one of the things

055that we looked at in the committee was we looked at all schools and buildings that had no named after somebody in peril in high school is actually one so you got para line high school junior high east west south and so that's kind of where we started just we sorted at Ground Zero what buildings are actually out there I think one was a transportation well maybe a maintenance building I think those were the six if I remember correctly and that's kind of where that started but it was Dell Caroline High School was quickly shut down in the committee well the South building is the original Caroline high school building so we try to return Agenor yeah ninth grade centers north original PHS building itself the original PHS yeah again going back to the names that

056we're really looking at Cheryl serves impressed and Bullard large support to rename the buildings after both supportive relocating the Cheryl serves to name one of the things that we talked about what's making it a little bit more prominent on thirty five because it's kind of tucked away and also - it's over an entrance and we've had some community members that they see they just see a sign and they think it's an entrance in this so they go there so we talked about it is possibly just moving it a little bit a little bit further north where it's a little more prominent on 35 still facing 35 but just to kind of relocate it a little bit with regards to that so that's something that we discussed there and then like I said in renaming the

057South building Preston Bullard and keeping pearland high school as the front of the building and leaving that there one of the other things that was interesting that end up coming up in the discussion because we started talking about the football stadium there was there was a lot there's a very vocal concern about whether we like it or not people still refer to Stadium as the rig right and so how can we make it more neutral so that both campuses feel like they have some ownership in the in the in the stadium and so I think it was renamed five seven years ago was pearland Stadium we'd like to see pearland independent school district or parylene ISD Stadium the other idea that we had coming out of it too was is well we're actually doing some

058face lifts on the rig is possibly doing some kind of LED board up on the top and then each school can customize you know when Caroline high school is there we can put up the rig I've heard that Dawson refers to it as the nest they can put up the nest up there as well that's what they want that's what they would like also to we think there's some benefits as well when we rent the facility out as well you can advertise like the fourth of July event and things of that nature that we've hosted in the past that there's some there's some other residual benefits that we would have to some kind of signage like that and so that's one of the things that we discussed and came out of that discussion and so

059this is kind of the I guess renderings of what we had discussed where you could flip it one says the rig one says the nest and I'm assuming that we'll be able to put it some graphics and things of that nature with regards to that and also gives us the flexibility to customize for any events so I'm going to read from my screen because this is pretty small but this basically goes down the the questions that we pretty much discussed and gives you an idea of what the results were should we reconsider the naming facilities after people not deceased it was a pretty resounding no we felt like if we're gonna name facilities and buildings that's a pretty high honor for a person and that's where we discussed that but we also ended up coming

060into and discussing the Hall of Honor as well because we also wanted a way to honor living people that were making an impact in our community if not deceased today asked what should be the minimum age we were pretty neutral you know because I think of you making an impact if there were some ages listed there 60 65 and 70 but we didn't really feel like the age made a difference with regard said if you make an impact in our district we definitely want to honor you if the C's should there be a waiting period there was yes of two years but in that discussion we we discussed maybe not we don't have to wait two years you know if we wanted to do a bit shorter that's something that we would be open to

061but some waiting period was the recommended recommendations through that committee should the board consider the Hall of Honor we said yes to living in deceased if so who managed it one of the suggestions was pearland Education Foundation and they talked about trying to create a an alumni subcommittee out of that to kind of run that piece stood areas of the school be available for naming again we talked about only large areas large public areas and in naming school wings not naming the junior High's we were a little mix there it was a it was fairly strong and no but there was still some mixture of if we named it after somebody to honor somebody we'd be okay with it but wanted you all to consider the factors renaming a stadium we said no just making

062sure it was clarified as purely an Independent School District Stadium and then there was a very strong belief that we would need to rename the south building a PHS after mr. Preston Bullard and then how should Cheryl Searcy be recognized and we wanted to keep her name on that so that's just kind of the results of the the polling that we did during that meeting this was just say some feedback and things that words and things that nature that we took from the process as a committee and kind of gives you an idea of it was a really good process it was a really good thorough process where discussion a lot of good discussion happened with that in summary so basically in general no support to rename junior High's strongly consider Hall of Honor that's

063something that we think is something that we may want to consider as a school district if we're gonna name large public areas make sure it's a public area that people are going to and not parceling off campuses too much slightly moving the Cheryl Searcy name naming a South Campus at para Lane high school after mr. Preston Bullard and then clarify the name on the stadium and consider introducing some kind of customizable option for the stadium or our recommendations any questions so I think I speak for myself only 110 percent in favor of adding Preston's Mr Bowles name under the south side of the campus did the committee have a recommendation of where specifically yes if you wear the old actually where the old peril and high school name used to be on the round okay

064was where we were talked about that's probably the most prominent from the road if you try to put it up on the new metal paneling it's not gonna really show so it's probably got to be on some type of red brick and we also didn't wanted to be too close to an entrance to give public the wrong idea that hey you entered a school here we still want to have the main entrance so they come and visit so on the round of the South building is where we recommend it and that used to be things so first of all thanks for for being involved and kind of leading this thing but so I would have never you know graduating for parolin I'm at that you'd have a sir seaside in the south side but having

065a kid there now and you ask your kid where am i dropping you or where am i picking you up in yeah as big as it is it's it's believable to understand that you have a Circe side and a Preston side or a north and the south side of that campus now that it's so big and all the buildings and the back and things that we've add on so I can certainly see that I would have never thought the LED part of the stadium which is an innovative idea of how you could change that name and I do understand that Dawson does call it the nest and through their football program and things like that my question is and this may not be for you to answer but maybe with facilities when we rent that

066place or if we have a let's say an on Palin or Dawson game let's say it's Dickenson and North Shore and they come play here how did they how do we how do they look at that do they say it's at you know in like a leaf or somewhere else where it's one big stadium they have one name so when people come to play here like a playoff or they rent our facility do they say I'm playing at the rig or do they say I'm playing at perylene Stadium I would venture to say that the vast majority of people refer to it as the rig and that's just because it's been engrained for years now I think that over time I think that would change with that option and so I think that's just one

067of those things that it's what people grew up with and it's kind of one of those things it's like I saw the other day somebody in an Oracle somebody referred to it as the rig even though that's not the name of it and so that may always happen for a while but I think eventually it would change if we were able to flip an LED or something along those lines yeah I guess that would kind of be my I like the idea of an LED cuz you can't change it but then the question becomes if you do rent it out for a 4th of July or something then how do they advertise it right but it's just a thought stadium and kind of have that on the brick somewhere under that led you know parent

068ISD Stadium and then have the rigged up on the thing I think the name of the building right now is when other districts looking up as its parent its pyramid district stadium actually okay that's already called pearland district it's called pyramid district stadium stadium was still too closely associated with PHS yes it's in the park yeah we had several committee members that were from the Dawson zone and they expressed that pretty strongly that you know they still feel that you know there's not a neutral naming of it and then that's where it kind of evolved into the led and looking at something like that as being a possible option to let us customize we can have fun with it you know each school and then you know when we have rivalry week we can put

069them both up and have fun or stop kids on there anybody has any other comments but they I don't want to rush the discussion if anybody has any other comments but I would I would ask one thing what was the actual suggestion of the name to go up there is it just it was a Preston Bullard academic building well well we truck what we looked at was trying to do something that wasn't overly complicated not too wordy that's kind of the that's part of what Cheryl Searcy I think it says Cheryl Searcy campus at PHS we felt like that was just too much and trying to really you know because it is the building even though it's all connected now that was the original building on that side and so we landed on building we

070didn't think wing was the right wording or honoring enough of those people and so we lay the word building that may not be the perfect word that's just kind of where the committee landed with it we wanted to try to keep it simple but also you know honor them in the right way as well so you're gonna have a Cheryl's to see campus and sherry Cheryl Searcy building if I if I may ask mr. Richter you're sitting next to mr. Bullard Brian right right so I'll just ask you if what was because I can't remember what was the initial request for the name on the building or are you are you satisfied with your hearing here if you don't mind coming to the mic I appreciate it sorry I tricked you into that yeah nothing

071like being put on the spot right yeah my Julie Preston's daughter his he did have a first name so his actually his name is actually garland Preston Bullards so he but he always went by Preston so I really need we need to figure out if the rest the family wants and name it with a G in front of it whatever we name it since that was his real name G Preston Bullard but I'm not sure they may just say just drop it and leave it Preston Preston Bullard building is campus built and so at the end of the day anything okay thank you very much so like I said I wasn't trying to rush the discussion but I mean that is the recommendation and is there anything further that come from campus funds we really

072haven't discussed it but there is no reason why it couldn't come from bond funds yeah we're in good shape so first thank you to the committee for all spend the time the child did discussing this I was one that one of the ones that kind of pushed for the renaming looking at an old policy that we hadn't looked at in a long time I'm very pleased with what has come out because in education business a lot of times I've been in here for 16 years and well seven so I'm going six and it's bored so we get complacent and we don't look at old policies and so it's refreshing you see that innovation has come out of this and thank you to the Bullard family for pushing us in the direction to because this it

073really came out because of you guys it's so that being said you know I do I do like the idea of led in the praline ISD Stadium I do like the Bullard building because that's pretty probably what's gonna end up being and being straightforward as a former teacher there I'm just gonna be the Searcy and this committee go to the Searcy go to the Buller you know it's the way it is when kids talk absolutely one ever sent love the Hall of Honor that's another innovative thing that came out of this I think that's that feeds my wanting to you know honor people that are living there's so many people to contribute to our district that they deserve I can just rattle off three or four out of my head right now but I think

074that's that's that's huge the one question I did have was on other campuses besides high school campuses y'all talk I know you talked about like gymnasiums and stuff did you talk about I got an elementary would it be the cap like it another everybody's gonna have a gymnasium we didn't honestly I think cuz the focus was where was the names gonna end up you know just kind of holistically looking at it so we didn't actually touch elementary and I think that's for us to as the board to decide how we want to we want to make policy we don't want to do cafeterias well but I would argue that it in in in Elementary's your nor your public gathering space is typically your cafeteria there's the cafetorium right and so we think that that would

075been I would say that fair enough speaking on behalf of the committee we would say that that's a natural place we just wanted the parameter of it's a pump it's a public venue you know where community is going to come to and that's that's where we're you know people are going to show you the honor of it versus you know I can do an all you know lecture hall and stuff like that that's not really you know good getting something named after you is a huge honor and that's I think that's where we wanted to keep it as it's it's something substantial when you get a name on it sure did we actually adopt the new policy we waiting of them we adopted the policy that would allow us to fragment okay ask them to

076clarify we is the presentation are we making recommendations tonight we are possibly taking action on a recommendation tonight okay just on the South you can actually take action on whatever recommendation you like so yes we are going to take we split it up with the LED everything doesn't have to be done tonight has anybody spoken to the Education Foundation to see if they would actually be willing to handle the basically pitch this to their executive group to the entire foundation and they're very receptive to it because we might retain who gets elected and that sort of aspect of it but the foundation can use this as a major fundraiser they can have a scholarship dinner or a dinner honoring the people that are like inducted into the Hall of Fame so they seem that whole

077Executive Council seemed very positive about that possibility from the outgoing president earlier today saying we're very her words were the Education Foundation has an alumni committee that is very interested in developing a Hall of Honor keep us in mind as you talk about yeah so I mean a little bit of background that whole deal is from day one we had a we had a committee that was discussing ideas when it comes to from an Education Foundation perspective discussing ideas on how to get alumni involved in the education foundation it's always been somewhat of a roadblock in trying to figure out how to contact and gather in contact information and so on and so forth so this seems like a perfect segue into being able to somehow have that singular point of entrance into the foundation

078for an alumni gathering and sort so I like the idea of the Education Foundation I love the idea that the naming convention on the schools thank you guys for all the work I'll say I had two meetings and I'm sure those meetings weren't short meetings because their little philosophical differences right there are a lot of things and people have great ideas and when you put a committee of that size together you know you tend to have longer discussions so appreciate the time that you guys have put in there I for one like all of the ideas specifically the campus ideas but the led the reason I asked about splitting it up is because that seems like a little bit maybe needs to take a little bit more thought I think Sean had some good questions

079about that kind of along the lines of where I was going but I'd be I'll be open to taking action on the naming of the buildings tonight and splitting the signage and then rig naming when it comes to the naming if we made a decision tonight the question of adding or dropping the G how would that come into that demotion well how about we ask we authorized the renaming of the buildings from after mr. Bullard and then we ask administration to follow up to figure out whether no that and then that's not only we would family and see what their preferences are and maybe they need we will give you all time you said just do the initial GP Bullard gee people they're building until well I think what we can do we're gonna we

080can say we're going to name it after him we're just gonna check with them to see how they wanted okay I'll make a motion move that we named the South building after President Bullard subject to how they wanted written second all right that was a motion Murphy second Decker any further discussion hearing none let's vote all in favor motion carries unanimously 7-0 all right thank you all for your work thank you all right are there any other things the board would like to take action on tonight based on these recommendations to have the Hall of Honor created and maintained developed by the Education Foundation I think your motion was to authorize the Education Foundation to develop create and maintain a Hall of Honor that was your motion yes okay there was a motion Decker second

081carbone and now the question all well my question was is if she makes the motion does it have to be called the Hall of Honor or can it be called something else I just want to make sure we're not stuck maybe discussing them in the motion if that's well no just like just like we were talking about with the name let's just give them let's not decide yes but the Hall of Honor concept the Hall of Honor concept okay so I would like to make a comment the the school board nor the paralyzed D has any jurisdiction over the control of the foundation well you know we can't we can't dictate to them to going to go and create a Hall of Honor and but they just said they said they would be interested in

082it yeah we can go off and do it we don't need to make a motion yeah they go off and they have to be yeah to add a stipulation about all names on there have to come before the board for a proof well I don't think we should go that far but I think the next step is Rebecca's motion handles it is that I would then or the administration would work with the foundation and see what they're willing to do as a group they need to vote on this and I personally think that we should retain who gets honored the foundation can input into that but I think that the school district should retain who gets elected the primary job of the Hall of Honor I mean of the foundation would be that they can

083use this as a fundraising and recruitment technique and possibly do the physical work out here when we when we establish it what's the point I mean we're we're actually creating it we're telling them who to put on it it's on our property so if we just want to allow them to have a dinner to raise money for no big deal why do we have to mandate in stone that oh the foundation is going to have control or and create and do this other stuff when I disagree with that again I think what we're doing is setting a framework and we're going to ask administration to get with the with Natalie clocks in our executive director and kind of hash out the details but the details don't need to be hashed out I think that the

084motion needs to be simple on the lines from of the fact that we agreed to create a Hall of Honor and however that happens that happens okay the motion on the table is to develop the Hall of Honor to authorize the SI understanding of the problem with authorize but we're saying the authorized strike the authorization how about we just take the motion off the table motion and we give we give administration our guidance to work with the Education Foundation to develop the the idea of the Hall of Honor and we will have the cook the question about budget where mr. Palumbo where we talk about this Hall of Honor is that here is our recommendation was to have a central office just because we want to recognize anybody from Pearland ISD and so our recommendation

085was actually this wall right out here cuz this I mean there's a lot of real estate you've got a long ways to go down that hall and you can even carry it one way or the other if you needed to or come to this side and so we felt like there was a it was a nice public place we have so many recognitions that happen in school board meetings kids get to see and things of that nature coming in and out of the school board out of the boardroom and so that was our recommendation so we've given administration I got inside thoughts on that and they can move forward without emotion any other motions to come out of the I would like to make a motion that we renamed the pearland stadium to pearland ISD

086Stadium to be in more neutral territory second D Stadium okay motion carbone second Decker well that very that very question is the one I've been churning on in my mind because we are peril and overall peril and you know well I guess can you clarify what Lane said it's officially called that already so is it essentially saying you should really say that it's the school district stadium peril and at least I think it's partly because of the location the building is on parallel high school's campus things of that nature there's one to be some delineation of this is actually a district stadium there's what was coming out of the committee I mean is it going to do anything I don't understand why Matt's a paradise be naming I guess the sign that's out there now

087when you welcome to the ticket booth doesn't that say paradise D Stadium is parallel and stadium okay notice the difference very much other than when we build a new stadium over by the Galena Park Stadium it's on North Shore's campus it's called Galena Park Stadium and it's clean the park is D but it's okay and it will match the naming on the facade that is going to be Bing that says paralyze D Stadium for now just to clarify the scoober analysis pearland stadium and it's in lighted letters and it also has it also has iron work on it that says the rig we're talking about what the current branding is and they're still the ghost image in the turf of the rig so so I haven't yeah just the I don't have any skin in

088the game and this whole thing so I didn't graduate from peril and although I love parallel so I'm gonna vote with crystal regardless but we've had this conversation many times about branding right and so we always go back to the idea of the colors and the rig or fleshie or the nest and all these different things as this are is this our entry into this whole rebranding idea because you guys we all just brought it out well the scoreboard and other things associated with that I know the colors are gonna be changed when with the updates or the press box and such but they talked about to be branding that the communications department floated he's talking about some other rig actually I'm sorry the so we had a conversation about what you would have to

089do to rebrand it and in my opinion I thought that we're talking about changing all of those things right now out there that say the rig right but that's not I'm quoting coach partner when he's not here to correct me but that was not where he was heading with the rebranding it was more of a graphics and type type deal like what we're doing right so this I think is consistent with what his vision was as far as rebranding because I mean if you want to go in and talk about I don't know how you clear that image off the turf and I don't know how you go out and take the rig off the scoreboard but I think that's past what we're talking about here tonight that we can just change the name of

090the building the official name of the building that's what the motion is so we have on the building though but it's gonna say paradise D Stadium the motion matches that okay can we call the vote is that a thing yes that is a thing all right there any further discussion hearing none let's vote all in favor motion carries 7-0 the name of the stadium is pearland ISD Stadium no I think the two things we'll say the three things the three things were we don't like honoring Preston Bullard the right thing to do is put it on the South building we said absolutely at this time not naming the junior High's was not an option and also that's considered in the future think about the financial and cultural impact to the campus and the stadium those

091are only big three things that we really discussed there I would like to see a cost analysis of it so can you we don't have to make a decision to get PBK to give us cost analysis we need some dollars in construction they're comfortable with changing a project like that on the fly like without knowing what it's going to cost but yeah so if you brought us something back in January is that too late December excuse me okay yes okay does that conclude the item any other concerns questions mr. Blum has done such a great job I was thinking we'd name the Dyess after him very much mr. Richter thank you as well all right that concludes the item on the facility's naming those of you who are here for the can culturally responsive committee

092thank you for so much for your patience we're going to jump into the audit and then we're gonna maybe take a small break so we can refresh ourselves and we'll get into this because this is very important all right we'll go to the audit item one on your regular agenda I know many of you are used to seeing we both had conflicting obligations I am a partner with K&L I've actually been the partner in charge of the audit for the past three years now so this is my third year we we've been transitioning to a new partner from Kevin Kaden head and then previous people affiliated audit this year was another successful audit the first thing the first thing I'll talk about is when we engage to do an audit we develop a plan and

093around the district our plan gets pretty detailed at times and we have an approach of coming in and getting in getting our work done and getting out as quick as possible as to not cause a lot of disruption for the day-to-day operations that the district has and that takes a lot of coordination throughout the district and we were able to execute our plan flawlessly and a lot of you know a lot of thanks and gratitude goes to everyone that within the district that helped make that happen on our end for the audit itself we have in the report that you all have we have three letters that we're issuing and I'll go through each of those letters the first letter is our opinion letter on the financial statements themselves we're issuing an unmodified opinion that's

094a clean opinion that's the the best opinion you can receive that tells the reader of the financial statements that what they're about to read is materially and factually correct last year we had a new standard that came into play and then previous to that there was another standard about four year four to five years ago that was issued that affected the district we don't have any new standards this year that affect the financial statement so the financial statement should read pretty comparable from current year to prior year throughout the financial statements we didn't have any findings I think this is the first year in quite a while that we haven't attached any of our adjustments that we've made in the past and a lot of that credit goes to George Annie and her staff they

095work very hard and tirelessly to make sure that they don't have any adjustments when we come in the second letter near the back of the report is our report on internal control over financial reporting so we use the control environment of the district and the controls that are in place to develop our audit procedures from a risk-based approach when we're investigating the control structure of the district if we notice any irregularities or anything that could cause potential harm to the district we would note those as a finding in there but we're happy to report that there were no findings as it relates to their report on the internal control the the next letter that we're issuing is our opinion letter on compliance with major federal programs we identified two major federal programs that we had

096to audit this year which was title 1 in the emergency impact aid grant we had no findings no compliance issues related to that so within our compliance opinion letter were issuing an unmodified opinion over compliance within that letter is the same thing with the report on internal control over financial reporting there's a report over compliance and it's the same the same idea we use the control surrounding compliance to determine if there's any irregularities and we did not identify any there as well in the past we've issued a client advisory letter and those are things that don't warrant a finding in this report but are more recommendation 'l from from the auditors perspective this is the first year that i can think of that i've been involved with the district though that we didn't issue the

097optional letter that we'll call it for any client advisory comments the last thing is there as I'm sure you all are aware there's there's two excellence in report financial reporting awards that the district receives from the government finance Officers Association then the association's Association of School Business officials international to receive those awards takes a lot of work and George Annie and her staff do a tremendous job in gathering that information they work very hard and as I'm sure other people across the district to compile it information to receive those those so with that I'll wrap my presentation up we just want to thank the board you know we're we enjoy serving the district thank you very much sir are there any questions how long does it take you to audit all of our footage so

098through the entire process we begin our process in April so we begin we begin our initial planning phase in April and then there are certain periods of time where it's a little a dead from an auditing perspective just because we're waiting for timelines to occur but our initial our initial auditing begins in in April we come out and do interim fieldwork in May and then we come out and do our year-end filled work we're actually auditing the financials and performing our procedures in September and from September to two now is when we're getting all this information together with the business office and then determining what opinions were going to issue and you know there was no reports but were there any recommendations from the firm as far as the district goes we we did not

099have any this year there weren't any from an advisory standpoint in the letter to the board to the Board of Trustees that's also issued it makes mention that we have discussions with management throughout the year for anything that comes up but those discussions are made throughout the normal course of business it's nothing but there was nothing partners are with K okay and how frequently do you rotate through rotating on the different districts that you audit so that you sort of have fresh perspective we we try to we try to rotate every five years from at the partner level at our staff level we'll try to rotate our staff in and out every two to three years so the staffs coming in with the fresh eyes just did you'd mention so we at our staff level

100we try to rotate a little bit sooner than the the partner level just because the partner transition takes a little bit longer than just bringing fresh staff with Kevin and on it's taken about two years and that's just kevin knowing the nuances of the district and then allowing me to question anything he had things of that nature but but the staff typically two to three and then partners five so with all the non findings like that I'm sure you do other districts what how this is a good honor to have that correct that's correct okay so we are to commend as a board and district are our financial gurus behind me over here okay because I'm assuming that not every district it's like ours is that correct that's correct thank you the the staff the

101staff that the district has in place I will say kind of along the same lines is Lance so you guys work with several different districts but you know as it pertains page ten on the actual report itself it's a pie chart we're familiar with pie charts I guess but are there any percentages in those areas that kind of stand out you know with parallel iced tea as compared to maybe other districts and I'm just talking about glaring issues that you see that my percentages that may be different nothing that really jumps out I mean I thank across the board from from a major class expense standpoint I think that that's I think you would see across most districts due to the you know the restrictive nature of the state government and how funding works and

102everything like that that you'll see that these are pretty pretty consistent with other districts you know Jeff one thing that helps with that that you may want to look at is when we get what they now call the TA PR report used to be the AE is in December it it looks at that for example those pie charts it looks at that and compares it to state averages for each of those categories and that generally I've always been pleased with that because we we generally tend to to spend more on instruction as a percentage than the average Texas School District bring that up for a reason because we do so many great things in this district and it gets overshadowed by some things that aren't as perfect as things like this right so we in

103the school board honest a school board in the education of business have a hard time Tooting your own horn and it's been that way for a long very long time but yet people find faults and the things that we don't do so I want to commend taxpayers dollars and protecting this district with a great financial report just specifically to George a knee in the business office I know this is the second Cafer that we've done in this kind of detail it's such a good user-friendly tool to share with the public in a way that really gives some detailed information in a visual manner so I really appreciate the efforts that went into producing this document to give our public an awareness of what's going on there was some really cool graphics about just the diversity

104piece and hour le p population our limited English proficiency population are economically disadvantaged just talking about that few board meetings ago and putting that out in a visual way is very helpful and much appreciated and I noticed that it says draft and documents is this something that I can share document let's do that motion to approve I'll make a motion all right auditor the the 2018 the 2018 annual financial statements performed by the firm of KML LLC be approved as presented second motion very second carbone any further discussion hearing none let's vote all in favor motion carries 7 0 thank you all very much for your help brink jobs urgently thank you director on the cover of this I know there's three big leaves with pearland ISD that represents the three high schools and the

105payers represent the four junior how's that correct okay we're gonna go in to report on the work of the culturally responsive Council does anyone need a quick break refresh yes okay we'll take a five-minute break alright ladies and gentlemen at 757 we will reconvene and we will start with the report on the work of the culturally responsive Council dr. miles I see you at the mic I T here we go we have it in our board book that's pretty good you say click it or ticket we'll get it loaded from the flash drive okay while we're getting that squared away good good good thought sir well we're getting that squared away yeah let's look at items - we'll start with item to consider to adopt a resolution casting votes with directors of the missouria County

106appraisal district I'll make a motion that we approve the adoption of the resolution as presented there's a motion Murphy second Decker is there any discussion this is for the horrea county appraisal district 814 from board members no sir this is for a person to sit on the board of directors of the organization that appraises property values in Brazoria County no no this is okay you're talking about Harris County the Harris County yeah the Harris County one those those members are other school boards but this that's the next item right that's the next item this item is a resolution casting votes from paralyze D in favor of George Sanders to be nominated to that board or elected to that board yes sir we took this vote last meeting but that was a guess just to nominate

107yes this time we're casting the boats right as did last time I'll abstain from this vote okay I don't know George Sanders and I'm not comfortable voting for somebody who I have no idea I don't know his personal life or anything about a monster : yeah I mean he had a monthly job to me so okay in his defense he did reach out to the superintendent I told him that we don't want to push it that hard right so he just he had given his interest but I told him Ivy didn't need to push it that hard but okay so this this yeah we've had time to do due diligence so there's a motion any second on the on the floor all right let's vote all in favor all I guess supposed or abstaining okay

108motion carries six zero with trusty fluid abstaining all right the next item is item three and I'm presenting I asked dr. Kelly to present this the consideration to vote for a candidate to be elected to the representative of school boards to the Harris County appraisal district board and there are two individuals we reached out via email which happens from time to time we do have a small part of the district that is in Harris County and I just wanted to present this maybe next year would be a little more diligent on getting information on these people and so this is a president to the board for any discussion have we participated in this in the past to my knowledge my memory we have not because it's such a small portion that we trust those people

109that have these relationships I will tell you I don't know that there's a reason behind it it's just something that we haven't continued to basically repeat what crystal said we have a very tiny representation on this board and it's never come up to the board before but Charles and I both received these two nominations and then we got a third one on last Friday that I emailed to all of the four that are running for this one spot so it's four people running for the one spot and you've received three of those four people's information if you want to vote or if you don't we can take no action I mean you know as trustee Floyd said I guess you're taking a base on the resumes that they sent you no personal knowledge of any

110of them say about miss Dixon is and I reached out one of my classmates from leadership TAS be on the humble school board and I reached out to her about Miss Dixon nothing but great things I did like what you know with her resume in education so I'll make a motion to cast our votes in favor of Martina Lamar Dixon there's a motion from Gooden second from Bach in any further discussion hearing down this vote all in favor that's two three all opposed okay so we'll leave that as a 3-0 that motion fails let me remind the the trustees that technically speaking our operations you give you if it was three three two zero three desert passes well no we don't have it that's not a quorum of not a majority but how can we

111how can we pass something with less than a quorum voted for it I don't see how that can we can't we can't take motion we can't take action on anything with less for example if there is only five board members and you had a motion that was three to two passes right but a quorum of the board is four people and so they take another vote again okay we can we can take another vote I'm over in favor of my team the Dixons there a second good and back in I'm sorry so we have the same motion again on the table we're gonna call for a vote all right all in favor okay that's for all opposed three all right for three motion carries okay well and I'll remind the board that technically speaking if

112you're gonna recuse yourself you have to have a conflict of interest right not just because you didn't get enough information or anything like that but we're gonna get moving right past that and we're gonna go into finally the report from on the work of the coach and responsive committee all right first of all thank you for giving us the opportunity to share some of the work that we've done thus far before I even get into it all of these lovely people if they would all stand in this building all of these representatives are part of the council just a piece of them so just to kind of yeah there we go look lots of people said dr. Nixon also is a member of our Council so this whole purpose mission of the culturally responsive Council

113in in my mind in mind of our Council is to be proactive is to create a stance that us as a district can move forward in a positive way in a positive light for the district so we believe that it starts at the top and has to filter down so we felt it was important to share the efforts that are already in place at the district level dr. kelly is sharing a book right now with his senior cabinet members titled courageous conversations about race by glenn singleton very important that we understand having some of these difficult to conversations are easier for some people than others so we empower each other the more we hear it the more we listen to it the more we are aware of it makes it a little easier for us

114to share or have those difficult conversations again culturally responsive counsel has been was formed we've completed some training under the leadership of dr. michele izquierdo on september third titled narrative and norms this was an amazing training that 4 to 5 members of each campus participated in some extensive work on what it feels like to join a campus as a newcomer as an ESL student and she really acclimated us to some of the differences that we have to make in order to make people feel accepted and to make to welcome newcomers to a campus so that they don't feel like they're isolated and don't feel disjointed from their learning we feel it's important to embrace that mindset and then offer her to come out and complete some some more trainings with more members of our district

115to help us share that same message of acceptance and diversity and what it looks like thus far the council is presented three times the first was at our leadership retreat always growing where we had our very own dr. Vaughn and dr. Franco when Maya and mrs. Berenson they provided an overview of the mission for the council the purpose of the council why it was originally established no secret to anyone on the board our demographics in the district have shifted over time my time here as a principal even as a kid as a campus principal of Rogers and now at West my fifth year at West my cam campus demographics have totally shifted so my minority is no longer my minority it is the majority and those types of numbers the demographics the diversity forced us

116to look at things differently when we are trying to make sure that our kids are feel like they have a part in a role to play in school and that they feel like they're accepted so that started the presentations of the council and September principal meeting myself and dr. Allen provided an overview of the council's mission of the purpose as shared by dr. Kelly his vision was very simply put I bought it to share pearland ISD will serve as an evolving and continuing an example to people everywhere the accomplishments and appreciation possible for our diverse students and staff perfect vision omission and we thought it was important that everyone understood what the purpose was and what the mission was in September later towards the end of the month we were able to invite our community

117members and parents to join us in that council we do have at least one of our members that are here with us today so that we could get input from the community find out what their what their perceptions are so that we're able to take those perceptions and really invest some time in figuring out what it's going to take to move all of us forward so thus far our council has been doing lots of research we feel at this point that restorative is the way that we need to be thinking most of us have experienced dr. Gail Eames training in Austin amazing presenter we spent three days there really practicing what it looks like to spend time building community build trust and to help us even as administrators a lot of us were administrators and

118counselors helped us learn to bridge gaps with difficult groups and that started the whole idea of we need to figure out how we can take this concept and bring it to life for us so why should we even use that model number one we need kids to be able to understand that there's empathy behind causing harm we have to bridge that gap to listen and respond to the needs of people who are hurt and sometimes the people that hurt to encourage accountability that's I think that's a mission of the board of course and then to reintegrate the Harmer into community as a valuable contributing member we all make mistakes everybody deserves a second chance we have to be able to reintegrate them in as valuable people contributing members of society number five and six we

119believe are the most important reasons why restorative is best practice to create caring climates to support healthy communities and then number six to change the system when it contributes to the harm it's hard to really say you want to fix something that's not broken we believe parallely and it's moving forward making great strides but as our diversity changes as our culture changes as all these we're having influx of new people joining us in our district we have to be able to meet them where they are and make them feel like they're still in control of their learning right now we we'd like to say we're doing a good job there but we sometimes fall short and we want to make sure that we're equipping our staff equipping our teachers equipment people with the skills that

120we need to feel confident and comfortable having those difficult conversations and building culture building a conducive setting for learning to continue to flourish so currently what we're doing is we're sharing relevant literature and principal meetings we are creating data banks in teams in office 365 that house articles that talk about everything from making prejudging people just by how they look versus who they are and not even giving them a chance we've looked at many TED Talks and what those courageous conversations look like video clips media presentations having those resources accessible to campus leaders so that they can share them a lot more freely currently at our campuses that we have many things going on in leadership trainings we have teams that are presenting privileged walks scavenger hunts multicultural Literacy nights wax meal museum showcases that

121celebrate diversity in interviewing questions so that now we're having some we're asking some of those questions that we may not have been confident enough to ask before but we're asking how do you treat a classroom where you have diverse learners what do you do we're asking some of those hard conversations supporting ESL certification for all teachers mentoring circle of time sharing articles and partnering with CIS to host lots of forums in more than one language I will 2.0 statements infusing language objectives into our content so that teachers now are becoming aware that just because we have a content to get through we have to figure out the other forum as to how to get it out to students who are not quite where everyone else is Fiesta nights of learning his parrot Hispanic heritage African

122American History Month holidays around the world translating information to Spanish and again Roz mentoring at our junior high campuses my personally at my campus anything we've talked about in CRC is fair game in my campus I spend time talking about these relevant articles I'm probably one that's a lot confident we have a lot of a different level of confidence when it comes to having those bold conversations with people we don't shy away from the truth it's it's we have to address things where they are and when we try to sugarcoat it or make it pretty or try to appease people and talking to them we wind up in a in a stuck situation so I try to be very upfront and open my campus with my teachers with my counselors with my AP so that

123they understand we are not gonna hide we're gonna say things truthfully tactfully so that people feel where we're coming from so I think a lot of that's happening at almost every junior high campus campus CRC councils have been formed Campus book wide studies on restorative practice how to create those community circles again cultural cultural heritage months awareness opportunities character strong curriculum words of wisdom character lessons grit and growth mindset never let go of that that was my doctorate I spend a lot of time talking about the growth mindset because it is the same mindset but the growth mindset that also lends itself to culturally responsive leading and learning if I have a growth mindset it changes how I interact with people similarly if I'm culturally responsive it changes how I interact with people so embracing

124those to make it easier to have those difficult moments when they come up and it's it's it's the efforts of the council to be proactive with this and not reactive happens we want to equip people with the confidence to be able to do it successfully already some people are innately born able to do it but we believe that with training and more opportunities we can acclimate many to be able to do it confidently and competently again six out of the eight junior high campus principals have already attended all of that restorative training and have become trainer of trainers so we're really excited about moving that forward how about it our high schools brain study on boys it's no secret that discipline there's that attract that we see we want to make sure that we're consciously

125aware of those things our restorative practice committee and PBIS we have partnered with them because it's some of the same concepts that we're studying in our culturally responsive learning as well workshops on cultural bias narrative and norms many sessions career talks military recruiters trying to make sure we have a diverse presentation forum we're not showing you just one type which we're showing you every one it was a picture of what it looks like all over the world restorative practice check in community grit circles campus-wide agreements party on the patio again cultural heritage months are happening at every campus and they are sometimes initiated by the student student led organizations I thought that was very powerful so next steps what we think is a good way to move forward for us in Pearland is to first

126of all continue to train our employees to make sure that we are up-to-date with what restorative looks like we believe restorative is the way to go we can't keep thinking ISS OSs putting kids out is the way to get the best out of kids we have to be able to sit and feasibly talk through culture talk through how do we make it right what do we need from you what do you need from us in order to help you function better as we reimburse you back into the classroom setting we need to be able to train people to do that a scare doze mission was to acclimate cultural differences in awareness but we believe dr. Gail Ames Way is a model that we can use throughout this district we will continue researching and sharing relevant

127information and all of our meetings but what we feel most proud of is to be able to partner with our district leadership team who has they have already drafted the new PBIS MA to take it to the secondary level now because PBIS is in our elementary schools it's those three simple rules be safe be responsible be respectful we believe we can take that same concept and springboard it forward and use that same mindset in our middle school junior High's and high schools to then create a frame of framework of culturally responsiveness that is embedded into what we do and not some isolated little piece that just sits out in the wind we believe they need to it needs to merge together to be away a way that we operate a way that we function a

128mindset that we operate from so I want to kind of show you what this framework looks like you have it you have the framework yes so if you look at that framework there's ten basic steps those those areas but what we like to do is immerse the culturally responsive piece into each one of those portions so that it becomes an embedded way and not just an isolated entity and because the leadership team is right now in draft mode and they're working on this framework I'm part of that committee lots of these people are part of that committee as well we're integrating that process so that it becomes one collective piece and it helps us drive the whole idea of culturally responsive leading and learning into a practice a process a way of thinking a way

129of operating versus something we just check off a box and say we've done it oh we here's our toolkit we have it it becomes a way the Pyramid of interventions if you look at on that very far right column one more vein to that pyramid we could then stretch out culturally responsive leading in learning and at the universal level every teacher in our district can be trained to build community in their classrooms if it's something we expect in something we respect we believe in building culture building that climate teachers feel comfortable then now so that those things that we kind of superficially talk about it's real we take the time to do it because we can't afford not to do it we have to take the time to have those conversations so that they have

130a voice they have a say the values that we talk about and bring up in these cultural cultural circles become anchors in the classroom so that when we're talking and we're teaching we can then go to honesty and go to integrity and go to these words that then we've built as a culture in these rooms to help move us along a continuum so when kids make mistakes or they do something that doesn't make sense we have something that we can round ourselves to you so what we feel is our next step as the council is to take the framework that has already been initiated by the PBS model in our district leadership team is take our culturally responsive council now and branch out and look at each one of those elements and then provide action

131steps from a culturally responsive stance that supports the model because we believe that restorative that piece can be integrated into a framework and it becomes something it becomes a way that we function as a district and not an isolated piece that we it becomes a way we think it becomes the culture it becomes a mindset that we operate from that was my last life that last slide it just simply says it's a process not a program or a plane it is a mindset it's not a prescription it's gonna take time that where we are now it took time over time we are a great district we already know that but if we're gonna continue moving forward we're gonna continue to make changes we're going to continue to embrace the newness of of our changing demographics

132we're gonna have to take a stance and really start digging deeper into some of those things that appear to be surfaced for some but continue to be embedded for others and we have to break those barriers as educators like I said it's easier for some of us to do it than others but if we empower people and we train them and we spend more time having those difficult conversations we can do it it's again it's going to take time and effort and we believe our children are worth it we believe this district is worth it we think having a great representative population to help us make these action steps will be something that we can live by something that we can move forward with question yes any questions thank you very much dr. miles in

133the rest of the group thank you all so much we take each of our comments and isolated and some of us have some very passionate thoughts and questions that we want to get through in our own right and it be had some kind of systematic way to do that sure let's let's just we'll go from left to right and we'll just let you start with a lot more questions than I do so let's go for y'all want to come on up if you have input please we'll need you to speak into the microphone so that you can be recorded you ladies and gentlemen are powerhouses in your own right and the fact that you've stayed up here this late after working all day and the extra work that you put in to be a part

134of this committee is very much appreciated so from the bottom of my heart and I think everybody up here thank you very much and I get the feeling after hearing mr. moody has given me a little bit of feedback about sort of the tone of the meetings and the way that you guys are kind of grappling with how do we implement this and what's our grand framework and scheme that these have been some really in-depth conversations and some things that have been very meaningful to you guys and I wholeheartedly appreciate what you're saying about it's gonna take time to really move the district and what I hear you saying and correct me if I'm wrong that this culturally responsive committee is not something that you see lasting forever as a committee itself it's um it's

135a group to help our entire culture of our district kind of shift I think what we believe what we see what we envision and tell me if I'm not speaking for everyone I think what we envision is that culture is not some out in the wind topic that's just floating around it becomes integrated into a way that's what we envision it as and if it means the council has to continue then it continues but I believe that's what I think we feel that it it needs to be connected to who we are as a district not something that's an isolated entity so coming from that and kind of standing in the gap between like the ISD and the community and one of the biggest critiques of our culturally responsive committee is that it doesn't have

136as much parent representation as what some would like to see as a part of that group and when I hear you talk about being proactive versus reactive and talking about completing circles and those kinds of things one of my like great visions for the way this culturally responsive committee would work is like that we would have a circle with our community that we would were there that we would say you know we're not afraid to have these conversations bring it on like we're not gonna heal and move forward and be the community what we hope to be without digging in and like just bring what you got let's talk about it but I don't I mean where do you guys see well we had our first meeting did some art the meeting where we invited

137parents and family oh yes I was going to say that too when we invited them we gave them free rein tell us what you feel are burning issues in the district what are those things that we need to visit as the council and those things that we have we are working on so that was definitely part of that first meeting we have a meeting now scheduled on the 20th in the agenda is already written the very first bullet is circled up they will experience the power of what a circle looks like so we thought it was important to let them feel what it looks like so that they'll know this is this is what's gonna move us because if they see it then those freedoms anything you need to say is able to come out

138yes and I do think it's valuable it is an invaluable experience but what about those parents that might have some concerns that were not kind of invited to the table well I think as a district we're always going to have some outliers that we'll know we're never gonna hear everyone's perspectives right I think we we get we have lots of vocal people that I think represent pockets of people I think our campus administrator we have our own PTA people that are quite vocal and burst I think we take all of those efforts collectively and are able to then use all of those elements in and literally attack them one at a time so it may be an opportunity is those that don't aren't invited at the root in the room find those people on their

139campuses and share their concerns so that they can bring them to the table as it's kind of a representative on there because I think some people are timid and may not say it but it becomes a little festering argument out here and blows up but eventually someone's gonna it's gonna come out and I think we see a lot of it we hear a lot of it on social media we see a lot of it on lots of West's parents and those things into consideration we have I mean their perception is a reality so we try to engage time spent on all of those things as well so one of the other things you talked about was being proactive versus reactive and is there a component I guess how one of the other things that I've

140heard out there that's kind of a critique of our district is that people are afraid to bring things forward people are afraid based on retribution or fear of retribution or how they're gonna be treated that they don't want to bring the truth of their experience forward and I grapple with how to open those doors so that see something say something happens in a cultural way not just about psychological issues or about guns or physical violence but it's something that we can open the door to say we want we want to if we don't know better we can't do better so we want you to bring those things for it well I think we start by being transparent I think we all try to do a good job of that as campus leaders we try to

141be very transparent and open that door within our own little pods and places that we operate from I think the board does a great job at that I think the more we talk transparency and the more parents in the community feels like they can come to us with things that are burning passionate things and they see that we are addressing it they will be more apt to come out with it mm-hmm I guess my last question to wrap up at least for my part for now is is there anything that we can be doing as a board to support your efforts and to support your work in a tangible way well we think research on restorative practice 100% I think if you even take an ounce of time to look at some of dr. Gale

142Ames work and what that looks like and what the practice what the end-all-be-all to restorative practice looks like we believe that is the way we have to go it's going to change the face of what we've done in the past to how it can evolve as a district hello you all another thing to my also we shared this book with dr. Kelly as well if you get the opportunity the little book of restorative discipline for schools it's a great way to get started $6.99 on Amazon a great way to get started our campus a lot of our campuses are doing book studies with our leadership team our department leaders because it's the way we think our districts should go if you all get the opportunity to be a part of the training that will be

143taking place with in May with our district leadership team I think it's very important to see how it truly works and how I feel not only for our students but how it's going to bring our leadership teams on our campus together and make us a lot stronger as we know and we fall back on discipline we know discipline is some of the issues we hear when we hear topics brought up about race let's be very honest about that and it kind of can make a stagnant at time so this I think will help us move forward with these learning about restorative practices and being able to implement this on campuses and move it forward so if you get the opportunity please feel free to reach out for those of us who have had the training

144so that we could sit down with you and discuss any questions you may have experience a circle we will do a circle in that in our council meeting on the 20th I've had Kim Darden who and her campus she Circle up she circles up every Monday it is a campus initiative so she's pretty well-versed in the process I've asked her we've actually talked back and forth about a good way to walk through it to get some comfort a level of openness with our parents and community that have joined us and we've since then been able to just just have a little more freedom with how we navigate sensitive issues I think that's the number one thing is that we will some confidence in being able to tackle these hard topics that we tend to shy

145away from that was your be that was like being proactive versus when something happens then we just blow up right and I guess this is my really been here and a part of this conversation about Proclamation resolution and my thought as we continue to grapple with how do we best support every student and meet every student where they are and not get caught up in the infighting and a board about how we can be a powerful tool for a beacon of hope for the district surrounding us and for me that comes best from you guys if you had a statement that you wanted to put out to say here community this is what we feel about this this is where we're going this is what we stand for as a district and you wanted us

146to get on board with that I mean and how do we get behind and bolster the works and efforts that you guys are putting in just a food for thought I think it'd be a powerful statement of unity thank you I'll be brief crystal took all my thoughts but well first of all I just want to say dr. miles thank you and your team I know you guys go and early work all day and then this is another piece of what you do beyond what we require of you to do with your students the only comment I'll make and I'm just not an expert but when we talk about restorative justice practice practice you know don't is there any implementation you know you see or hear so many times if I talk to teachers about

147hold on the families if the the you know when I talk to teachers it's that you know you can practices at school you can discipline but by the time they get home doesn't matter you know to parent one parent culture you know if the follow-up is not they're if they're defending the actions of the bad behavior from their child then it's hard to get that bye and so how do you how do you make that a part of you know that the buy into this but anyways that's kind of a opinion coming gonna be a struggle regardless because we are we fight home life and everything we do in school but I think the more empowered we are as campus leaders and the more I think when we can really get to the crux of

148what it is then kids will start to internalize it's what I do even apart from home it's some of our conversations about switching that we learn to navigate when we're here this is what is appropriate and this is right versus when I'm over here and they start learning that it's it's something that's taught I don't want too deeply because it would take forever but I believe the more that we spend time building that climate in our campuses that foster what did I do how did this affect other people how can I make it right and we equip teachers to really buy into it because right now they don't most teachers when kids do something wrong they want them in trouble all day so we have to first get across that hurdle and once we reach

149that hurdle then we can start really getting that out to our kids and I think they will then embrace what I do here looks a little different from the way I respond at home and yes my parents may be supporting me to do the wrong thing eventually they will start internalizing right versus wrong that's I would think our utopian goal for the whole process thank you thank you guys for all you do mm-hmm okay this is the second time that I have heard this and I I just want to applaud all of you coming together because it is a difficult subject at times to discuss and everybody has for an opinions and biases and all that kind of stuff so that being said and you used an example in the last presentation that I heard

150from you a time I mean that you actually used a circle on your campus when students so I'd like you kind of to share that one again as it was done oh yes okay oh yes okay but but there's two parts that so I'm wanting to know how your teachers are responding to what you're bringing to them and I know that you had said that they're not really buying into it so what do you what kind of things are we doing to help them buy into this that's and then what role are our counselors you know with the support for you guys because I know that that mean discipline usually is is the APS and whatnot but how is it becoming a teamwork effort I mean how are you implementing this with your counselors how

151does this look on a campus and okay let me share that little example with the class so no secret that I didn't have a teacher that just one day said it doesn't matter what happens this day is my last day when that happened I had my student support counselor and myself we went into the classroom and we conducted a circle with this really volatile class it was the last period this class was determined that they would run any one out that showed up in there because the teacher had already told them that they were bad and they would pretty much they were worthless so they had to live up to that so upon my our circle with them we completed what's called a respect agreement and what you do in that respect agreement everyone gets

152to go around the circle and they tell what they value what they need what they want what they're looking for same time the teacher has the opportunity to do that as well but after completing that circle all the kids we we do a t-chart what you what the teacher needs what the students need and this elaborate chart then laid out what they were looking for in the teacher they wanted a teacher that was firm they wanted a teacher that was credible they wanted a teacher that would not let them get away with things they wanted a teacher that was hard working with but that loved them and cared about him so I then we took that circle and then I interviewed which I kind of fabricated my story a little bit and told them I

153interviewed 50 people for the position and it took me a long time to really narrow it down to find exactly what they were looking for I made sure I looked for which you asked me to bring you as a teacher and when I walked in and presented that to them the teachers been there two days and they are in love it was this it was changing the culture of what was there so that was the power in the beauty of a one-shot little fix on kids having a little say a little voice to say what they needed teacher pretty much told them what you need for me I can't give you so I'm gonna have to explore some other options I said yes ma'am you will and that's what happened needless to say the teacher

154then like I said she the teacher that is in there now I clearly kind of talked it out with her and it's been a good little partnership thus far it is a hard group but she walked into it with a different mindset that it was going to be tough I knew I have to I know I have to build culture in this room I have to make sure they understand I'm here for them what they need for me I'm able to give them and it's it's growing so what it looks like now for my counseling team thank goodness my student support counselor has already been through the training as well so that's why I was so easy for us to partner up my counselors are already taken up slots from some of these lovely people

155because Galen will only train for people from a district at a time as soon as I walked through the door I said get on the list so my two counselors will be there going in December and my two ApS are going in January so I think then growing that team because what dr. lang shared with us and this is very empowering and we all if you just have if you just walk into it and say oh well we're doing restorative it's restorative you can't use that word loosely it is destined to fail and that's what I think we've done because we were all talking it and it was a buzzword 'never yeah we're gonna do restorative but it wasn't set up for success so I think we have to plant the seeds for success that

156is through really good quality training from from lang and from izquierdo because her perspective was beautiful she gave us a whole different piece that told us how we had to be sensitive to new people joining us and what we think may not always be their reality and those two pieces together I think is a beautiful way to bring in and have our staff buy-in they have to feel the circle they have to see dr. miles too that we learned too is restorative it's just not - correct it's not just to focus on just discipline but it's also to prevent the discipline from happening so it's not to wait until something happens it's to get kids and our teachers to have that buy-in to have ownership of it and then think about before they make that

157choice so that's something to remember so it's it's becoming from that point of being proactive with that when we make the statement that teachers don't have buy-in it's the fact that they don't know enough about it yet to have that buy-in so they're leery like anything new to us we kind of question and they're like it's one more thing let's just say but as we continue to have the conversations like we said a lot of our campuses are having the book studies some of them are trying to implement little pieces of it themselves already in the classroom the main thing it's it's tears it's tears the circles or tears our classroom teachers will be responsible for a tier one circle and that is basically just creating a culture in the classroom that is all we

158will be asking from them to do at that time setting up what the expectations are in the classroom doing things like that make even students have ownership holding each other accountable you know if they do something wrong not always the teacher we redirecting them but the students hey man or hey friend you know that's not appropriate we don't act like that and miss someone says class I'm making that kind of community and then the next year's or where the counselor step in and the administrators would step in during that time when harm is caused by by someone so it's really going back to learning each other respecting each other going back to their cultures why they may feel certain ways and having those uncomfortable conversations but the key thing is remembering it's there to prevent

159the action from happening not just responding after something has happened teaching coaching to work with DEA around the state help the hardest to teach hardest to reach kids we had a program that's called cbiss just put a fancy word to restorative I think it's a restored is a great word but they've just changed it up over the years right so I've always believed in in in when teachers care about kids always believed in our job as educators is we have not only educate kids we have to raise the kids and people disagree with me haven't seen this for long as I could remember because when parents go home they don't they don't always educate their kids they don't always discipline their kids they're trying to decompress our society has completely changed it 20 years and

160so we as a district need to change also anyway so when I taught this restorative what they call it a little different I left because I loved I left teaching at parolin high school coaching because I love this I love the team concept because that's really what it is when I played it for 16 years football there was no cultures inside of a team the team was the culture they make a difference what background you came from we all had a common goal and there's something bigger than ourselves and so all this goes together with teachers caring in where we've gotten away from an education is is you know people want to blame on the test people to blame it on money people don't blame and everything is much like I said before when I

161asked for for Student Support counselors or mental health counselors I want I want our teachers to go and get back to why they want to be teachers okay and I said that about being as a counselor and we moved that direction already we already seen the massive effect right and we're gonna move forward so I I speak your language I could probably teach this class I have to still have the books at the house distinct where one kid there was in Midland it was in Midland Texas and the superintendent was there and nobody could discipline him and I simply walked up to her put out my hand and I said they had a dress code back then they had it took in his shirt he had to have an ID on had to have his

162earrings off and he had to be clean-shaven he had a shirt untucked no ID ID was his back pocket he was he was had almost a full beard and nobody could get him to anything and I simply walked up to him put up my hand and as an African and african-american young man and he looked at me like I had a third head and I turned to the side and I just kind of whisper in his ear I said look we're gonna have a great day today you and I are gonna have to respect each other and I'm gonna respect you right now and so from that point forward I leaned over at Leena's here and I whispered I say I need you to be the leader of my group okay can you do that

163for me and it's absolutely and I said okay let's restart this again and I put out my hand again he shook my hand I said do me a favor can you tuck in your shirt put on your ID so we can get along with everybody else they got your earrings and that's one represent what he did and so it's all about the approach it's all about showing that I actually respected him and you know he cared and that's where you know we just lose focus sometimes in any job right make you're taking any banking in any restaurant business does not make a difference sometimes we lose our focus we got a regain or focus and I appreciate y'all going in learning this from dr. Liang I've seen several several of her videos with her TA

164and it's encouraging and you know just gonna get keep hopefully get teachers back to what they went to school for right health kids right we've had those conversations as said it seems like when we became teachers and educators we realized this was the hardest job ever we knew that we knew it was going to take us to bloody knuckles whatever I mean I've been to warm back so I already know what that looks like to but we we embrace the hard work that was in front of us and I don't know if a lot of the teachers coming into the profession that really have that same mindset so we gotta grow them I mean if they're here to do the job with us we have to respect it inspect it lay it out for them

165prepare them train them up inspect it respect it and keep modeling it and keep demonstrating it and keep doing it in the model with the discipline at the high schools and junior High's does does this model and haven't found it yet there's this model you know we call it three hots and a cot when you go to is a strand right and so you just go there and get some work done teachers pass it on we built a cbiss rooms where they actually gain points to get out and they were respectful and they learned all the seven core values to get out and if they were put in there for three or four days they had to earn their way out that model in this restorative disappoint or something like convening kids back into after

166harm has caused or in the event a kid is sent to Ala or JJ AP for 60 days 30 days how do we recycle they're gonna come back because that's what they feel what does this person need from their math teacher it's that accountability piece I'm gonna come in and check on you but when when they're sent to if they have to go to I don't even in school type of suspension are they doing something to like they have to earn their way like other respectful not yet that's that's okay that's what I'm asking that's where it's but that's good okay because that's what we taught that's what I taught how do they okay miss Dekker asked a question that I'm not sure and she stepped out I'm not sure that we've answered it completely

167and it's the one about how do we get the entire staff to buy into it and we start with a small group we start with a group that buys into it and that group would generate the success that the others will watch the others will experience and watch that success and then they want to be a part of it so that's how it works and that's how we get the entire campus to buy into it so we start with a smaller group and radiate out thank you let me answer my questions thank you thank you dr. miles presentation - 9 o'clock I really do appreciate you and all of you staying here to have this conversation with us don't want to make you feel old but you were my principal when I was in fifth

168and sixth grade I will never forget when you had hundreds of fifth and sixth graders standing up in the cafeterias you were teaching us how to salute it was inspiring you created a culture that I think should be a model you were a great principal then and I hear you're great principal now and thank you for your work thank you for your service we've heard a lot about the problems with students and obviously there's no bigger advocate restorative justice I'm a huge advocate for it I actually went through training with the Harris County Department of Education Fort Worth about restorative justice and additionally diversity and sensitivity inclusivity training so that we could see prejudice see our own internal biases and start to address them again heard a lot about I think I heard you earlier

169say you know when kids make mistakes we talk about pushing them through a sort of justice but one of the reasons that this committee was founded was because staff had been making mistakes right there have been a number of instance in the media in the press we've heard testimony even here just earlier this evening about how students were the victims of insensitive comments made by staff for insensitive actions taken by staff maybe not intentionally racist right but maybe ignorant in the sense that maybe they didn't see how their actions were being interpreted by a student particular student of color that's was kind of my thoughts about what would come out of this committee right so dealing with restorative justice but also talking about how do we train our staff and then how do we deal

170with staff when they make these mistakes right we can't just fire everybody we got to retrain them and that's restorative in and of itself absolutely a piece of our council's work I think in providing opportunities for us to learn about diversity to have open free conversations about our biases to take the these tests that then determine where you sit and really have hard conversations about them is where we have to go we're doing them with our staffs now that's what I think we have to do we've been afraid to do it or we don't nobody wants to unburied things that are there but until we do that you don't know what you sit with we all have them we all have them we can't be superficial and look out and say silly things like oh

171I don't see color we can't do that we have to be real and admit what we see respect the diversity grow it be aware of it channel it embrace it and grow it into what it can be so I think that is the work of our council that is where we're so that we can equip may not be what our first thoughts were right okay good so I didn't ask some specific questions then about the presentation and about those conversations that you have been having specifically I wanted to know what a ll training is it's in the PowerPoint presentation okay no I sight from those specific conversations about increasing yell training were there any other conversations about increasing the amount of training asset that staff receives aside from the video and you think that it's

172the best to do that at the campus level not at the district level I think with what dr. Kelley is doing with the courageous conversations about race it starts at the top but it's also important to have the conversation at the campus any meetings that we are part of so I'd like to just say that when we talk about culture and I think you all know this many people tend to think that culture is about race or ethnicity it's more than that culture is about SES it's about address it it's about a lot of things so what that's why we we didn't name this council diversity it's because people think the diversity is about race this is about culture we want to be able to accept people from wherever they are not just from from

173wherever they are so that that's really important it's creating this understanding and creating this sense of safe space to be able to openly talk and have the courageous conversation and be okay to say what it is that we may be afraid to say I've heard the word bias and you guys know about implicit and explicit bias we can truly see explicit bias people openly share their explicit bias but implicit is what we unconsciously share through our eyes through the way we react in our physical being sometimes we implicitly say things we don't really mean to say and that's where things go wrong implicit yes are things that we learned based on our experiences and some people have very small experiences and so that's where ignorance come in I can share with you my own experiences

174growing up in the United States and to different cultures I chalk that up to ignorance until people learn better they'll do better and they'll know better does that make sense and I think that's part of our council here is that we are willing to have this courageous conversation with one another and be open about our implicit and explicit biases and it's not that we don't like each other that we don't love each other that we don't respect each other it's the fact that we're willing to have this conversation so that we know better we can do better that makes sense yeah I mean wasn't the answer the question that I asked but no I completely agree with you I think you're absolutely right so there were no specific discussions about certain specific policies that this

175committee would recommend to the district other than the framework for restorative justice okay yeah well that's that's a great place to start obviously if you look at the report from the DOJ Civil Rights office right you see that our black and brown students are disproportionately sent to in-school suspension at a frightening rate and one of the issues I think that causes that or contributes to that is the fact that our staff our teachers are overwhelmingly Caucasian when we know that we have a minority majority community in our schools was there any discussion about whether or not we would look at hiring increased numbers of people of color into our employment right right yeah when that that's a common mr. must give the floor back to mr. Floyd thank you sir okay mr. Bhatt can finish

176that whenever I'm done with this 70% of our staff and and I'm proud to see the diversity here that was what that was the intention of that was but you know I often hear people say well we want to hire the best but that doesn't mean that 70% you know more than double the percentage of our students there are incredible numbers of highly qualified people of color and I think that if we hire I mean there's statistics out there that prove that when a student sees themselves in all different ways income level skin color of religion when they see themselves in their teacher their grades go up the community culture grows as well and I fear that if we say you know what's gonna hire the best that might just be a cop-out for just

177keeping the status quo and I don't think that's what we want to do and that is true that is true to a great degree but what's really true is the educator that's in the classroom that accepts all the students embraces all those students loves them and respects each and every one of them that is more important because me being Hispanic as a teacher I don't necessarily have to gain the respect of only the spanish-speaking students of course not and I don't always have to be there only for them I'm there for every child and I'm responsible for every child so I have to open up and be passionate about learning each and every one of them where they come from what they represent and I have to be passionate about that is correct and there's

178lots of literature that say that but my experience says that the best teacher is the teacher that has the passion to love each and every child no matter who that this to me that is what I've experienced as a principal for over I don't know 23 years as a principal so the race color culture did not matter when she sat in front he or she sat in front of that classroom it was the passion that that teacher had to bring the best out of every child and as leaders we tried to pinpoint those qualities that we're looking for and sometimes I mean we'd be a you know insensitive I know what meaning if I can do that you see what I mean so if a person sees a person of his culture or race yeah

179it is you know I think miss Rana you just said that you know that yes of course the quality the teacher is they of highest consideration when it comes to hiring and I'm not trying to dispute that but I do believe that race does matter like we said earlier you know you can't say it out you don't see color my grandmother says I have to correct all the time because it comes from a different generation I mean it's a generational change this is the most right you should respect it right another specific question and I know this is getting into the weeds but was there any talk about an equity audit I know that in the trainings about was sort of justice they often talk about equity audits where they look through the schools and

180make sure no there's no discussion about this restorative practices not justice which sort of practices it's formerly called restorative justice colloquially known as sort of justice we can call it whatever we want sort of practices PBIS known famously for restorative justice but restorative practices is fine I love the mission to be proactive to move ahead and to a big part of that I believe is reaching out to the community and letting them know that we see the problems that we're not gonna ignore them we're not gonna pretend they don't exist and that by recognizing them that means that we're taking accountability we're gonna do something about it so I would like to see we're sort of justice implemented I would also like to see a little bit more specifically about training of our teachers especially

181restorative training for teachers who may have made a mistake to get back in and understand where they went wrong and really process it and I believe the committee would agree with that largely just keep doing your work you've been dr. miles you've done a great job I'm really confident in you and your ability and the committee's ability to lead this district forward I appreciate your time yeah mr. beer it's me finally well I had seven questions now I think I only have four left but I think I can get in dense them in a few statements I think you've done a great job and you know I'm glad you guys have taken on the challenge because it's not an easy challenge changing the culture of a small organization much less an organization of you know

182I don't know twenty seven thousand individuals including teachers and students and whatnot is a huge issue you know it all goes back to messaging for me and it all goes around it all goes back to how do we message and this is my question is one of them is how do we maintain or make certain that the messaging from for students from year to year classroom to classroom stays consistent and who manages that messaging you would see some of those same values what is the most important thing to you so so there's another you know I read a lot of books you know we're in the customer service business right and from a small organization of you know seven people that I have and I've worked with in organizations that were just as large as

1831,500 employees right culture is a big deal and you don't realize how how intrusive it becomes into an organization and you know let's take all the color and ethnicity and all that stuff out of it it's all about people and emotions and if you can get to the bottom of what drives those individuals and I think that's what you're talking about with these circles and whatnot I think it's a it's a great thing and I just recently read this book about the ritz-carlton I don't know if any of you guys have ever been there I just heard about it I've never been but I read this Oregon this book about this the ritz-carlton it's called the gold standard and every day from the CEO all the way down to the lowest level paying employee they

184have a certain time that they all get together and if you if you were to look at that organization that organization comes to a dead stop and they have these meetings and they're much like these circles and these circles have one goal for the day and it's the same goal for the day for all locations all over the world and they all all the way down from you know up from the the CEO down to the lowest paid employee and I found that very impressive because as a you know small group that I have you know I don't manage to find the time to do that you know so I know it's a challenge it's gonna be it's gonna be a sometimes you might think it's it's it's hard you know but I think messaging

185there again becomes the key right so messaging between the students the teachers and the parents so bringing the parents in I think is very critical because the parents can actually learn from this as well so if they can build it into their day to day and I'm not parents it's easy for me to say but if they can build it into their lifestyle you know and build upon that in the household I think we come along way but how do you plan to reach the parents you know we only had five people I think on the whole committee five parents I know you guys are all parents but I've already kind of visited that with my team and I have one of the most responsive PTA this year very diverse group and I think starting

186there because they talk and they are out there and they're in the middle of it and they're in the trenches and they're at our dances in there raising money and I think we can take some of these circles to our PTA meetings which are relatively small and doable because you really need a closed group 20 is sufficient you have 50 it's difficult it has to be a manageable circle so you can physically here and put your eyes and feel the emotions because that's how it does grow you said it it's the emotions but I don't I think we cannot afford not to make time to do it we have to make time to do it and then make sure it's carried out if we do that I think we will find the fruit in it

187but we have to so over time it sounds like we're already going down this path we have people that are trainers or trainers of trainers I guess you would call would say let's say next year at this time how would you how would you define this or this this program is being accessible to reach out and at least start and train us then I believe as a council we then become the trainer of trainers for our district and start training as many people as possible I still think it's going to look different at campuses because of where we are some of us are just a little further along but you have some model pilot kind of campuses that then we can take this practice and grow it like mr. Serrano said you know we have

188to start and then have that radiate out I'm sure I'm there I know she's there a lot these council members where we're pushing it and we're ready to go I think to have a model then become a model that radiates out to the other campus principals would then be a practice that we'd like to see carried out it's not something that we can start off whole campus it doesn't work whole campus you have to start off in a smaller group and it's back to making sure we build the relationship that's really what it comes down to someone made it made a statement earlier that we got away from that part of teaching and we have because we've had so many other things we've had to check off that we had to get a conference in

189the day it's going back to what what we remember when we were in school its building those relationships mr. Murphy made a comment and I think so you said - well you know we were doing all this in school but how do you change what's at home two things we all know those of us that are parents when our kids come home and talk about stuff we want to investigate and find out more about it so that's how we get our parents involved okay there are kids are also our PR people as well another way mr. Murphy made a comment about you know if we can do all this at school but what about what's going on at home we're speaking from my own experiences you know sometimes your home is not always what you

190want it to be but it's someone at the campus that build that relationship with you that made you understand that there are things that are better than what's going on at your home and that's how we as educators can make a change for our students we can always control what's going on at their home but we can make it better for them at the school and that's what helped me progress to being a better person and I think that's a lot of our kids remembering that sometimes the educator is the only one that can reach students and help them change and instilling this and in like you said mr. Floyd you know a majority of our teaching population not only here in Pearland but in our nation are predominantly white middle class females okay a

191lot of that we can't change overnight so how do we empower these teachers to work with these students and relate to these students another suggestion I have for the board miss Carbone made the comment that how could we help and assist the first thing I would love you all to do and nothing you have to share is take the opportunity to take the implicit bias test that's free online to make you look at it for yourself and see that everybody halls inclusive Isis but how do you recognize that and own up to that and make a change it was it for me to take the test myself it was very eye-opening to see some things and I'm not gonna share them with you but okay just just to know that if you get that opportunity

192Harvard University has it online it's just not about race or gender it's about sexual orientation all different things that you're able to do if you have that opportunity take the time to see that because again I go back to in being an educator sometimes our job is more than just educating our students to be successful it's building those relationships so they continue to grow and and and do things like that so that's what we have to do we're not going to be able to change our teaching population overnight but it's very important that we think about it and we are conscious of that when we go into our interviews we know that I mean our wonderful HR staff has worked with us to create some questions to support us in interview questions with being culturally

193responsive when were sharing with our and interviewing at that time so again it goes back to how can we change and be proactive with these behaviors so we don't have to you asked about data looking at that data how do we prove success next year it's going back and looking at the data see you know compared to last year and we have as many office referrals from our teachers are they being as you know responsive in their class to where it's not always just writing a referral for something but are they trying to do more things with that so it's all these checks and balances that's important I'm gonna be honest in a perfect world right now we're gonna have to be the gatekeepers of that the principles and administrative staff if with this can

194when this continues and grows we may have to looking at bigger districts there are positions that are just for that in certain districts and later on as we continue to progress that may be an option for us because it's as this continues to grow we are going to have to have somebody other than ourselves to do the checks and balances for that last thing I'll just leave you guys with this so last year we came up with the idea of a student Advisory Committee and we just recently had a and I think my notes are in the in the board packet but you know it it's somewhat troublesome to see some of these kids that and we just had junior highs in high schools well I think we had 12 or 15 kids I didn't

195really count them but you know it it's definitely definitely a growing concern of mine to make sure that you know our campus culture is is on track and that we enable the students within each campus to whether it be foster a foster a newcomer to the school or Big Brother Big Sister type thing so I would really like to see something like that happen and I know those things don't happen overnight but I'd really like to see that happen just so that we get those kids transferring from one campus to another whether their friends are going there their neighbors are going there or not you know they have someone to show them around take them under their wing that kind of thing connect write and and fold into the culture of that campus because every

196classroom every campus every it's all different so you guys have a lot of work ahead of you and I applaud you for the taking on the task no no I would recommend a program that actually I went through here in Pearland it's called safe school ambassadors and we did have it and it was a tensive two day circle like training for students right and I think that's such an important thing that students are getting this training as well and they would under this framework so I don't know I'm not saying that we need to go out and third-party to them but I would take a glance at their framework yeah it's really really great okay bitch I thought we were done anyway a few things I wanted to address some things I've heard from you

197know families and students over the time I've been on the board and kind of want to understand how the council like where is where are you addressing some of these issues down and your in your plan because I know there's a lot that's that's going on and I probably can't see from the 30,000 foot level and we talked about implicit bias and there is there's always been a question about equality and consequences right and that students are you know maybe one ethnicity feel like they are punished more heavily or punished for things that other students wouldn't get to wouldn't be punished for I kind of talked that up to implicit values and implicit bias and I'm thinking there's another term I read an article about I think it's cultural deficit thinking but I may have

198that wrong am I right about that okay and that's pretty much the thought that if you see somebody who's of a different ethnicity or what-have-you you initially think that they are somehow worse right and so just the example would be if you see kids african-american kids being disciplined more than others and if you think that well those kids just must be worse people they probably don't have dads at home they probably don't that's cultural deficit thinking right so is is attacking that or addressing that in our training is that we have those these are the conversations we're having with our teams because that is the realness and until we put it in front of you and you see it you're gonna keep doing it right so yes we do have to acclimate them to if

199this is your bias just because you have a classroom and there are 14 Hispanic males in there you don't automatically assume that they're going to be the only group that's making all the poor choices exactly yes we found ourselves there we are trying to make sure that we're making our staff aware of those things so that that is not the way we operate it is again the mindset that we have to change okay and I've heard some stories about comments in between staff members and I wonder how we're gonna handle you know just like just over the years just racial stuff right that in I wonder how we're handling that kind of that horizontal relationship between our staff members I see where we are with working with the vertical relationship between the students and the

200teachers and even the students between the students themselves but how are we handling the interactions between staff members well I think there's work to do because in every campus level you have cliques of people that operate and I can see that becoming an issue if it's not addressed and I am hopeful that all of our campus leaders are strong enough to engage in conversations when they feel those things are happening I know I can speak for people behind me that's not something that's tolerated at our level I mean if I hear it I see it I feel it I'm on it and who else but I'm not afraid to let you know it's not and I think rat me out or whatever I personally don't care I'm not we just we have to have that

201no-nonsense mentality for tolerance and I think as we grow people and empower them and they know who they are inside and say oh yeah I may be a little tainted on this but it means I have to look at it differently so I think the more we empower people they're better able to address those things when they come up or when they surface it's just not by another person so that circle can work both ways but it's also being comfortable with addressing it head on those people the biggest thing is empowering people to speak up to say that they've been hurt or harmed and then allowing them to be heard and then hearing from the other person that was the one that did the harm and making them share that and I think that is

202the power in it and then actually growing up because people as I think mr. Floyd say we can't just go around firing people I think it was you know when we you know you have to give people the opportunities to grow but if they continue to make those mistakes then we have to do other things but you have to also know that we're here to build and grow people and that's how you do it by doing that thank you very much any community events should we expect to see any I don't know anything with any community events we I see yeah okay we're working on making sure that our community feels empowered welcome you know loved care for respected and I'm very happy that happens that all the campuses you know that we have programs

203a lot of them yeah in there one of the things that when I came as a minority to the district you know I was told you sure perrilyn and I said yes they have all these programs for the kids and we have to really work on that perception you know is the district being perceived as who we are and what we valued one of the things that we did we have we're doing a lot of community events we did we are very excited about our second multicultural festival that's coming up in February making sure that parents feel like they're here to share with you know who they are and in feel valued empowered you know making sure we're working right now with a group of teachers to have the teachers lead sessions for parents because

204you know what's more powerful for them to hear that then it is for them to really hear from the teachers how do I help my child become a better reader what if I don't read myself what if I'm an illiterate parent you know it's really empowering those parents and we do a lot of you know advertising the events you know working with the teachers and we have great turnouts we had the dual language by literacy night on the first night of the Astra's play at the World Series and we still had almost 500 people in the building so we were very happy to see that because we thought forget it all the hard work and nobody's gonna show up right now but they did in the community came through so it's building those partnerships with

205the community making sure that they feel valued that they feel accepted and that we are here for them you know and the kids when they go to the car you know to the different schools that they feel that they belong there you know it's really hard if you're coming as a newcomer and you're surrounded by a lot of strangers that don't speak the language that don't know who you are so those are some of the things and you know one the training that we actually did with dr. scared oh I had already scheduled that training for the district way before any of the events happen because we do want to make sure that teachers are feeling like they know how to work with kids that may not look like them like I said I decided

206by my Hispanic teacher he doesn't matter I want to make sure that I'm addressing all the kids regardless of who they are okay I know it's getting late so I'm gonna just go with one more thing when I mr. four talked about hiring and I will grant you that we want the very best person in every in every position and but I'll also say that we talked about employment plus a bias and in other places let's check ourselves to make sure that we're not suffering from our implicit bias in our hiring practices mr. moody I'm not saying that there was you know I'm just saying that if we're talking about this and let's just check it all right and let's just check ourselves and see you know where where we really are right and are

207we actually getting the best person and everything because as an owner of historically underutilized business as soon as you start saying we want to him we want to include her businesses right the counter-argument is what we want the best right and so the implication is that if you start saying that we're gonna bring in historically underutilized businesses then those businesses are somehow less qualified and give you a worse product so forth and so on right and I deal with that all the time right so I just want to make sure that when we say we are we're bringing in the best person for every job then we definitely want to make sure that we're doing it and I'll share with you what I've heard that of course everybody who puts in the application thinks they

208should get an interview right and so you know that doesn't always work out right but I've heard from lots of african-american individuals and I've done this for however many years whatever I can't even get an interview right but then you have individuals who work here and who say well you know we do feel underrepresented and staff and so forth and so on but when there's trouble with an african-american kid they always know where to find the african-american teachers to try to handle that right so I think that our embrace me we we really have to embrace that thing that we're gonna get the very best person and we have to make sure that we're not being hindered by anybody in our in hiring processes okay so is there anything else that even want us wanted

209to add many many years you all know that but I didn't want to think I was thinking about how this effect would just start compounding on itself right once you start training kids in junior high those kids are gonna move up to the high school so it's collectively just gonna start growing and becoming easier and really becoming ingrained so definitely a year years and years and years of work ahead of you thank you all right yeah all right anything else yeah thank you all very much I appreciate it yeah all right item four on the regular agenda consider to approve additional personnel president members of the board you may remember that last month I briefed you on our plans for full-day pre-k this is not a option for school districts it's a requirement the only

210option is how fast you can get it together in our particular case we believe we can implement this by by fall fall of 2020 in order to do so it is a very massive undertaking although you may say well this is only one grade of 14 that we that we handle it is a big job to get to full-day pre-k we believe that we need someone at the director level to handle this you can imagine that this is a combination of working with the business office the Transportation Office the curriculum and instruction office and about five others just to pull off for example one of the big challenges that we'll face is staffing and that's not just an HR question that's going to be a how do we get a better handle on how many

211students out there might actually show up because that's going to make a giant difference in how we staff we think it's going to be somewhere between 300 and 500 students so we need a better handle on it than that well the ratio that they tell us to move towards is eleven to one and that includes a combination of it can include a combination of a teacher and an aide we're not going to get there in this first year but we're I think David correct me on this but okay but I think initially we're looking at 12 teachers and 10a that sound right roughly 14 additional positions at this point that's assuming that only the kids that we currently have in pre-k were simply attending all day yeah but we're also looking at the possibility that

212because you get daycare from not daycare but you get a much longer time as a as a mother or a dad to have your kid at school you may choose us rather than choose another option that cost money and so and we would like for that to happen because the kids that are eligible for pre-k are economic disadvantaged and English language learners so it is of great advantage to those students to get caught up before kindergarten starts so anyway but I think I've gotten a little off topic my main thing is this is a very important next step for our school district and requires that we have some leadership to get there dr. Kelly real quick that's 300 to 500 additional students than what we have minitor we have 300 right now about 285 actually

213this particularly year but we've averaged about 300 so we're counting that those 300 for sure but we're saying that we may attract as much as an additional 200 because of this full-day availability for the 2019 2020 school year in 7 to 20 years second motion Bach Floyd is there any further discussion hearing none let's vote all in favor motion carries 7-0 I would just quickly like to commend the administration for moving so Swift on this and not allowing us to push out to go to it's gonna take some work whoever that director is believe me we get there all right next item number five to consider to approve teacher incentive payment for the 2018 2019 star CTE in advanced academics I want to just remind all the board I think you already know this of

214our past decisions on this we were facing what we thought would be a very difficult year this year and so in the spring I'm gonna say it was in May or June we came together and we decided the board did on a cap for each of the three types of pay and we established a cap for star at three hundred thousand SAT I mean ap SAT at 150 thousand and CTE at fifty thousand remembering Jeff's request and the board's agreement that we ought to be paying more attention to the CTE put so if you could look at page 71 in your packet or if we can show that on the board what we've done there is well let me just cut straight to the recommendations and then we'll back up if we need to first

215of all under the system we've had in place for a number of years the teachers would have earned 250 1804 ap rather than 150 thousand dollar cap that we placed in the budget so right off the bat I would recommend that we pay the full amount it's what people would expect us to do if we have the funds for doing it the same thing is with regard to CTE there's only a difference of $5,000 between the cap we established a 50,000 and the amount that we would pay under full which is 55 so to me those are the two easiest parts of your decision the HAR the hard one is the star what we said was a cap of 300,000 if you look at that chart on page 71 there a cap of 300,000 means

216that each eligible teacher would get 852 and then we would have to add another 30,000 to that 300,000 in order to pay 218 219 dollars to the non teacher of records so I know the board has continually expressed over the last few months you wish you could do more for the employees but your hands were tied because of contractual obligations this sits outside the contract it's not part of the contract and the board has freedom to do or not to do what it would like in this area so Charles if you're asking me for recommendation for sure I would say let's fully fund the AP and the CTE and at your pleasure of how much you think that we ought to do or or not with the star pay we'll keep going with just passing

217the floor around so everybody gets their questions asked mrs. Decker you started so I just want to know what was the difference again dr. Kelly between what we it was another 105 thousand dollars for the star incentive pay well the weird thing about the star incentive pay is unlike the other two it never had a this is the amount we're going to pay we went at it backwards in this particular case and said let's set a cap at 300 thousand and so now that we've done the calculations that's what comes up to in this case eight hundred and fifty two dollars per teacher so you see what I'm saying we had a new star system unlike the old one that was based on the brand new accountability system did you for example at your campus

218in that particular area did you move from a B to an A or did you maintain your a 857 what what's the difference what's the difference in the average not sure what you mean there we put you in is that we're showing you how much how much you would be able to do for the individual teacher at the different amounts there in the left-hand column if we about ensuring I know that we start start testing at third grade but it's the foundational work built from kindergarten up that meets the requirement for that third grader I'd like to suggest that instead of just incentivizing the teachers of record that we move the bar up to the 500 thousand and give an incentive we would the legal basis for doing that because that's sort of changing the

219rules after the year is finished and saying well let's include teachers that weren't in the original accountability system we can move towards that in a future year in fact mr. moody has been working on the state now is going to allocate money to school districts that basically offer that opportunity to every single person but it has to go through about two years worth of work before you can get to that point to where a PE teacher could be equally considered for additional revenue but I don't think we're in a good legal or place to say let's now take some extras like any teacher in this school whether they were did not as well as other teachers and that we're incentivizing them so I guess my thought is if we're incentivizing campus wide that it was

220about the campus improving not about individual teachers well I think that the philosophy that's emerged over the years and really from the board has been try to get down and target the teachers who are actually making the difference and the thing that you are measuring and that's where this system has no we're the mid-year bonus the mid-year incentive pay comes in where we cover everybody right and that's how we can that's how we get around what yes if yes if our financial situation had been better than we would have recommended in May or June let's put that provision in for what crystal would like to see which is more of a approach I would never thought we talked about this before if a campus it would give be given to the campus in like we

221did in the past when I was teaching the campus was allocated how much the teacher on record and not a teacher of record the dyslexia teacher that you know everybody across the board got some sort of piece of the pie because it it takes a whole village so I wouldn't I don't know where this came from but I've said that from day one I've never said I wanted sent advise just the teachers star teachers of record because I and then not here or another district too and then they finally looped that in with the other test right right so she had a part in well but all I could say Lance is this system has been in place for a number of years just like this and it's it's primarily because the board I have

222I have developed systems like that before I came to perrilyn where everybody got if the if the campus achieved a certain level every professional got so much and every paraprofessional but this is but this is what's been done every year prior and this is what was discussed when we approved the a cap but I also said that I would like to work towards not just incentivizing just the teachers of record I've said that pologize for putting a wrench in this because I was thinking that if it's a campus thing that maybe we could reconsider that option but I think what I hear you saying is this is what we already approved last year so we can we want to if we want to move towards that so the upcoming year that that can definitely be

223consideration but because we approved it this way last year that's what we're now following when you bring it to us to approve the budget you can bring it to us with a different plan and dr. Nixon was one of our original architects back there on the plan and it was based a lot on board input about how we wanted to do it but if the board's inclination is to move towards more of that reward everybody for the accomplishments as a whole that can be done it's not so difficult but I also want to point out that the state's direction right now the state is basically saying pick out your best teachers through a long involved process and get their money way up through that process and we the state will pay for that extra amount

224we will give it to you if you develop the right system so that's the long-term picture that we would do but it could be in addition to what crystal suggests which is more of a man your campus did a great job and we're a family and we're gonna award everybody on that campus X amount from and I've done this before from the custodian the food service worker up to the principal which we are respecting each other treating each other with kindness oh aware of each other's strengths and weaknesses and bolstering the environment that we're moving towards that incentivizing some who who have the opportunity to teach okay interrupt the discussion so I'm hearing that yes we want to move towards incentivizing everybody at a campus but the decision and that's great we'll take that forward

225to you know team-building and other future sessions that will talk about board goals but tonight we need to disconcert what our amounts are that we're going to make and administration has given us the recommendation of paying the full amount that would have been earned without a cap for CTE that would be fifty five thousand two hundred paying the full amount for a pea that would have been earned which is two hundred and fifty one thousand right and then we're at a level right now I'm just plugging this in of three hundred thousand dollars for the star that's the teacher of record so if you add those numbers together with six hundred seven thousand dollars we said five thousand all in but that was because we we brought that back because we were looking at a

226multi-million dollar surplus and dr. Keller would you remind me with our excuse me multi million dollars deficit what was the surplus from you you said that ask that question so the budget and the level we're looking at like four million okay so that that's where we're that's what we're working with all right so we're at I guess it's a base level where it's six hundred thousand six hundred seven thousand is there any argument against either the AP or the CDE paying those of the full amount I think we're going to pay CCTV more well we can't in the reason okay at this point we can't pay them more we gotta pay them what they earned that we got to talk about what they aren't so if we're talking about get we want to change the

227weights then yeah we can do that at a future time but right now you're next right now they've earned a certain amount based upon the criteria that were in place so do you want to play then why are we changing it now we've already voted on it we've already voted on it all of that money to change the budget yes we said in a cap based upon where we were where we thought we were gonna be budget wise right so we said no matter what the actual earnings are we're only going to pay half dollars in incentives for this I guess for last for last year okay last school year still good with that okay so okay great so good that's that's one page 72 at the very bottom it shows the amount we spent

228over the last three years and so it's you know it ranged from six hundred sixty two thousand to 696,000 so that might fit into your thinking you're basically you know if you're following Charles lead if we pay the full amount for AP and and an AP in CTE we're at about I'll round it off three hundred thousand so I do want to little quick math here if we fully paid ap fully paid CTE it brings us to a little bit about three hundred thousand dollars even if we go back to historical look at what star has been round 450,000 you put that up 750 we can easily afford it and you would be very happy and I don't know if that's what you would recommend I don't know if we can go I move that

229the Board of Trustees approve merit pay for full ap merit pay for CTE merit pay and $450,000 merit pay for star I'm okay I'm assuming that you are including that but but that is an additional 45 thousand so that sure you meant to include that or I okay so we included in the number should we add 50,000 to what you write add 50,000 know what you're saying max pay a P max pay that I don't think we're in the sweet spot yet of our incentive package plan I'm still very uncomfortable with the spread of 14,000 Macs at Dawson I know they've earned it but the discrepancy in those bonuses for AP testing is still something I feel like we need to really dig into and try to understand some more I don't know what that

230looks like or how to get there but I feel like there's still some areas that we can tweak to make this something that's of comfort to everyone you know between schools are you talking about last year we pay out of every teacher I didn't see it in this package but it doesn't make merit for what the decision is we're making tonight but those kinds of data points and then comparing that to the outputs that we're getting as far as a what we're taking and are we improving are we plateauing has all those kinds of questions I think are different for and then I hear career tech needs well I'll just make one summary comment there because the AP is one of the most successful things I have ever seen and it I inherited it the

231only thing we did since I've been here as we've tweaked it so I don't take anything away from that I think it does produce the results we're seeing but I also totally agree with you and I think Jeff especially has made this point in the past that we can do more for CTE it's just harder to measure because the thing about CTE is now it's part of our grading system yes whereas before it wasn't and so ap and Star were always part of our grading system and we had to increase a B AP test takers and ap successes in order to accumulate more financial success right so that that's why this makes sense right this is this whole scheme but when we we've kind of folded in CTE into this whole whole spectrum I think

232there's a huge disparity there I don't like the idea of increasing the actual pay for and the reason is is purely financial we got a one-off six million six point two million dollars that we didn't expect we now have a budget of a surplus of four we can certainly afford it don't get me wrong but how at some point are we gonna ever pay back some of the money that we've taken out historically into our reserve fund I mean obviously we're gonna have the money this year and it's probably fine it's not a big deal I'm just gonna have to vote against it on principle but the idea is is at some point we have to have and understand what our future budgetary goals are if we have if we know or if we know

233that we have this money looming somewhere out in the future we need to know about it we don't even get that we don't get hey you know we might get this FEMA funding that we were thinking we're gonna get not till two years from now and then oh by the way the one where the state paid two years in a row not one which means that next year we're not going to get that funding right so because we got both years this year so next year we're not going to get that 1.2 million or whatever it is so I'm just pulling that number out of the air but but I think the uncertainty is going to remain now this is a particularly uncertain year because even now all the districts are still trying to figure

234out HB 3 and what that really means in terms of what they're going to get there will be less uncertainty next year but some of it is I think we all did the best we could to estimate what House bill three meant in June when you guys on that staff regarding can you be sure to emphasize that we are uncertain about this this was a you know we're not guaranteed because you know I don't want people to get their expectations up this is gonna be a well it sure sounds like I'm gonna be doing some redesign work on some of this and then also mr. moody and his office has got some long term work we need to do last coming I'm gonna make on this is I don't want the changes that we make

235in the future to make this less of a benefit for our teachers and the reason is is because we struggle now as it is with our benefit structure for our teachers we have to be able to attract and maintain or retain good solid teachers and you know these are the ones that are really you know putting in the extra hours and so on and so forth now that the others aren't but I mean it shows in our in our test results so something to be proud of so and I'm sure that this has a lot to do with it so if there's an opportunity to build a success that's a community story or something else coming out of House bill 3 thinking that I think the you know the number one message that I think

236people will appreciate is that the board is fully funding the two elements and then has gone far beyond what they originally projected for the third which is star alone trying to find a way to communicate that externally in a way that says look at what we're doing is there any further discussion there's a motion on the floor by Floyd a second by Carbone hearing no other the last comment last comment and this err I always have to put in my last two cents yes sir but 2.8 million dollars is it is a 2% 2% raise for our teachers next year let's vote all in favor all opposed same sign motion carries six one trustee Barry dissenting the administrative quarterly investment report is in your board packet for your for your information dr. Kelly are we

237done with fees yes we didn't get a chance to review the board members to read through those notes that Jeff and I added were so highly engaged it was such a great meeting that I appreciate the leadership yeah I think what we should do is comb those to see if there any other future action items for us yes sir okay at 10:04 p.m. we will stand adjourned