West ISD Regular Board Meeting August 12, 2020

001yeah she said she would give me the sign it is now 6 30 wednesday august the 12th 2020. i call this meeting to order and verify that a form of board members is present that this meeting has been duly called and that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings act texas government code chapter 551 at this time i would ask you to please rise for the pledge of allegiance followed by the prayer both led by reverend john crowder board member i pledge states of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands for one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all our father and our god we are reminded of our great need for you as we continue to struggle during difficult times and confusing

002days and so we come to you as we begin our time together to ask that you would guide give us wisdom help us to communicate well help us to dream big help us to make plans that fit within your will and our best plans for our community and our kids we ask that as we begin a new school year that you would bless each teacher and each family that you bless each of the administrators and all the people who work so hard to make school work in our community father we we trust you as we go into unchartered territory and we pray that as we go you would help us to encourage one another and serve one another along the way we ask these blessings for your glory amen amen that brings us to the

003audience portion there's no audience here agenda item good okay that brings us to agenda item number five which is an accident item that's the consideration and approval of the consent agenda you had the opportunity to look this over past minutes financial operations there any questions we can field them at this time if not the floor is open for a motion to accept the consent agenda as presented in your packet john was that you okay john crowder moved to uh and and kenny zecora seconded sorry the the massacre kind of muffling thing so all right agenda item number six is an action item it's the consideration possible action by the board to approve with respect to or oh i'm sorry okay motion's been made and saying all those in favor of accepting consent agenda show of

004hands all right thank you agenda item number six is an action items consideration possible action by the board to approve with respect to order authorizing the issuance of west independent school district unlimited tax school building and refunding bonds series 2020 authorizing the levy and ad valorem tax in support of the bonds approving an official statement authorizing execution of a bond purchase agreement a paying agent slash registrar agreement and an escrow agreement and authorizing other matters related to the issues of the bonds mr charles mccaskill will take and be our presenter as well as mr dan wagner yes thank you you've all met dan and bart they're both here to answer your questions and explain the process once again and i'll i'll let dan then take the floor thank you all uh dan wake miller with

005specialized public finance so uh we went into the market today to sell your bonds um that were approved by voters um it was extremely timely just to give you some market perspective it really didn't sell anything as you might expect the end of march and april as things open back up we've seen one of the highest volume productions i'm sorry guys we're trying to live stream we're going to have to present without masks so we need to wear masks and i need to fix this um check check test test check check what so as to address the bond sale as the bonds were authorized as you all well know we didn't go into the market right away in order to just preserve the opportunity with um not carrying a lot of interest into the next

006fiscal year also as i was saying end of march and april basically hardly anything came into the marketplace bond wise until the economy and things started opening back up we really saw a lot of deals being pushed we really didn't know where the market would go or what the reaction would be fortunately for you all when things opened back up we have seen a flurry of desire and demand for tax-exempt municipal bonds to that degree today your bonds were sold they the the deal went over per very well as i mentioned to you previously on our zoom meeting there is also an issue to be refinanced two issues the 1998 that still had the capital appreciation bonds those were wiped out and 2012 issue the good news is the um bonds the that voters approved

007we had estimated a 3.25 interest rate as we sized everything as you may recall they approved 21.485 million but we actually had ransom models off 18 to 20. we didn't know if we'd have the capacity within the tax rate constraint to get it all issued at one time the good news is this issue sold at a 1.95 percent interest rate which means we were able to issue all the authorization that money is locked in over the next 25 years at 1.95 percent you get full proceeds back to you at the 21 million 485 will be your proceeds you receive the refinancing of just about 1.8 million of existing debt took those bonds down to well below 2 percent and created 276 000 of additional savings reducing what you were scheduled to pay on on those

008issues so all in all very well received the timing the covid situation we are at literally all-time lows these interest rates below two percent for long-term school building bonds are our all-time lows so this worked out well i know charles will be looking at this into the budget process but obviously this is a first step to at least now you can focus on construction and what you do with it as opposed to can you issue it how much can you issue rates really were in your favor they were sold with a permanent school fund guarantee so they're aaa rated so that's that's kind of a summary of the transaction today i'll be glad to answer any questions bart fowler with mccall parkhurst is here your bond lawyer to answer any questions you have over the

009order that that will reflect today's pricing um under two percent yes there's staggering but it was sold within the same package of 1.95 but it had some shorter maturities so we don't bifurcate it out but it fits within the 195 and the old interest rates were three percent on the uh 2012 but on the 98 which were premium capital appreciation bonds which can only be issued limitedly now um those have been been erased off your books yeah so that's that's our presentation not a lot too but this is any questions thank you if not this is an action item the floor is open for a motion addressing agenda item six is just presented holly holly made the motion who's and lee seconded all those in favor please show of hands okay seven zero very good

010um all right we're going to take a quick break there's some documents that i need to sign before we continue i'm sorry my signature just i guess my name just in print and then school board president on this trying to mimic this this would be my signature signature line by name and then just is it just my just printed it oh okay that'd be fine and then titled was school board president okay so i just need to sign it okay all right well i didn't want to mess up an official form that's crazy that's amazing okay there's those now is there anything within this package this is the document these are attached to okay okay yeah well i looked it over so before we got here so yeah but but there was a spot here

011in the back i didn't know if that was for y'all that's uh you know it's a different format it's the same thing okay all right so we're all set okay thank you so very much yes thank you i'm sorry there's a lot more sign oh yeah yeah sure sure i can come up tomorrow afternoon yeah sure can thank you very much all right thank you very much for your indulgence and important business we need to take care of uh we are now at agenda item number seven which is a report on the 2020 2021 west isd budget workshop this is going to be presented by mr charles mckesk our assistant superintendent for finance and operations all right as always as i go through please stop me i'm gonna really just really hit big highlights tonight

012if that's okay but if there's any questions or you wanna me to come to you later or come up here or whatever and we can talk it it's fine i'll do do whatever really the the first page of this this budget the budget assumptions really tells the grand exec summary overview here that i think tells it all we you know we're in undiscovered country you know like the movie right we're unsure of our property tax collection rates because of the situation that we're in i budgeted tax collections down you know custodial food service we added a couple ftes in there because of the unknown unknown is a word that's common in this budget other highlights were that the property insurance increased we bought a cyber security policy we funded dual credit tuition we added we

013added six subs we eliminated sub budgets so if a budget that was there to cover for a sub that was due to a teacher being out on leave we eliminated those budgets and we're going to utilize these six permanent subs karzak funding i think the rest of the world calls it ppp some people call it esser schools call it cares the portion of the general fund decreased by that amount the revenue part so it's not new money we don't have to repay it but it's not not new money um there were new tax tax rate compression laws this year our tax rate um is still down at 96 cents but on the ins side it was mandated that we use excess collections from past years or the immediate past year to lower the tax rate

014so the days of accumulating fund balance in the ins i guess are over so our tax rate fell i believe it was i'll get to that in a minute we increase custodial supply budgets again because the unknown we don't have any vehicle replacements or fleet replacements in the next year we budgeted for technology replacements to keep us on track um we there's a note payment that's budgeted in here not the bond payment but a note payment for the chromebooks that we purchased and that's the assumptions all right so if we flip flip over to page the tax rate friends we had to use excess collections so any any money that was paid penalties interest uh our prior years taxes that were paid last year we had to use that money which was in our ins

015fund balance to buy down it effectively buys down the tax rate so our ins tax rate now is 16 cents do what yes when we when when we tack the debt on now that we just issued it's gonna it's gonna be a jump so we'll get a reprieve for one year and then you know unless unless the valuation increases and then we can spread the levy but that's on page three the tax rate 2021 that'll be that'll be the tax rate we recommend it's dollar thirteen cents so it's down ins is down six cents that's correct it will not stay that way right so of the general fund we are predicting a ten thousand dollar ten thousand six hundred eighteen dollar surplus now rather than me go through every page like i have historically are

016there specific questions would you like me to go through every page or can we jump to if you do okay all right so on page three the highlight there would be the tax rates um slight decrease in property tax will not slide but there is a decrease in property tax revenue due to the decrease in tax rate we budgeted facilities rentals down just due to the fact that we don't know at what point we'll start letting our facilities be utilized for renting again on page five we'll skip to federal revenue mackinsar's is drastically down because we weren't providing those services the second half of the year and always in the following year you budget the current year services so you accrue into the following year this year's services that you build on so we didn't

017bill any so we budgeted down all right and over to page seven we'll start with instruction function 11 pretty standard there were some fte movement there due to changes in recodes of course we added the permanent sub slots in function 11. the supplies are pretty constant staffing costs are up due to the rolls and teachers salaries to the next step health services page 14. again uh due to the unknown we budgeted we actually contri we actually created a contingency for health services because we didn't we just don't know what to expect we've ordered tons of protective wipes and hand sanitizer but we don't think it's going to last that long so had to stick some money aside from that page 15 we budgeted down operating expenses and transportation again we don't we're not going to

018be going as many places for a while but if for some hopefully when this flips we were protected there's a contingency so when we need more fuel money because we're traveling we we're covered let's see debt service on page 22 that rose because of the payment for the chromebooks as i mentioned earlier budgeted down on page 23 for facility rep major facility repairs because we don't intend to spend a lot of money on major facility repairs because we're building a new school and that brings us to [Music] food service page 26. this is a tough one you know small district but at the same time how do you how do you budget that we haven't been serving food like we normally have would have been in a normal year so it was a it was

019just a stab at a guess really but revenue revenue is down from the prior year expenses are slightly up because are projected to be up because we added an fte in food service which would be to assist with food delivery to the classrooms if we have to do it clamshell serving trays we've stockpiled tens of thousands of them just not knowing meal prices on page 27 went up a quarter there's a formula that kathy has to turn in that dictates or helps you determine what your prices have to be this was a year for an increase a price increase on meal meal cost page 29 debt service because of what i explained earlier having to use i think it was 130 grand of excess collections 112 of our ins levy last year we had to

020apply that to this next year's debt service payment so it shows us a deficit over 137 000. that's an odd one but that's what we had to do behind support is the normal schedules on page 33. those are all the just all the support for all the numbers um all this all the subsidiary schedules i won't go into any of them particularly all our allocation methodology debt schedules again if you have questions either stop me or welcome to call or come by or software you know software continues to be a major major expense so we've scheduled it again we've added some software we've deleted some software and then following that on page 51 begins the detailed budgets for each administrator as we normally put in there on page 103 under staffing that's the customary fte

021maximum that the board adopts every year we're proposing an increase in ftes due to you know there's rec there's always reclasses moving positions around but but the new the new number will be 216.43 ftes primarily due to the trade-off of expenditures from the sub-budgets moved into the staffing plan to fund the six ftes it's it's practically budget neutral we're just moving the money from operations to staffing so we've got to show an increase in ftes behind that are the detail schedules for each administrator's fte complement and then the compensation guide which this year we've made no changes to we took care of a lot of that last year so that is the budget um well charles was kind enough to run a civil court free token 19 school stoppage in person uh last march we

022looked it's it's not even about the number it's about having people on hand that know our on-campus instruction and health and safety protocols that we're checking temperatures and symptoms on daily so we know who's in our buildings because the original plan was we would just cover it with current staff and not even have substance use and when charles ran the report we're like let's carry his campus had the most followed by chuck's so we're allocating three for west elementary and three to be combined with middle school high school but it's fluid if carrie needs five one day then they'll they'll go over there so we're gonna train them district wide or they're part of our team and on days when they're not needed as subs we've instructed mr flanders and miss costa to make sure

023they have schedules with kids for intervention iss cafeteria duties we have a whole list of things i can't remember everything on the list but they'll never sit idly campus so we can plug one of these subs in and they already know our system they're ready to go we're not having to do anything that's a system with teaching learning pieces you know for kids i mean this is the way to go but i will say so far we've struggled to find candidates because they they do have to commit to 168 days with us this year instead of them picking and choosing to do two days this week and three days next week we gotta have as much of the 168 as possible chuck has found two miss causes so far hasn't found someone to attach to

024it okay the unique thing is charles if i'm calling this the wrong thing we really need to think of them not necessarily as a sub which sounds like they're temporary or daily they will be a staff member in our staffing plans as an fte almost more of a professional type role uh is that fair to say yeah charles we eliminated the sub calling software as well since we want the sub calling software any other questions for charles if not thank you for that report charles yes sir in the budget hard work thank you uh agenda item number eight's a report on the 2020 2021 west isd tax rate proposal again will be presented by mr charles mccaskill if you'll turn back to page three again i would recommend to the board that we adopt um

025at the next at the meeting the 26 the 2021 tax rate of a dollar thirteen ninety seven cents m o and sixteen cents ins are there any questions if not thank you charles yes sir all right agenda item number nine is a report on the 2020 2021 west isd return to learn on campus and remote instruction and health and safety plan updates and this is going to be presented by miss amanda adams and mr dave thank you board members charles is going to need to slip out so he's got some doctor appointments and things in the morning so he needs to get a jump start on some things and and we appreciate his presentations tonight thank you charles thank you very much be careful appreciate it sir um i want to reiterate what what charles

026shared uh as always if y'all want time uh phone calls fine of course or if you want to come by and see us we'll we'll go through that whole binder with you remember in two weeks uh during this ten day period we have to post it put it in the paper make sure our community is aware of the the tax rate news and uh then we have the called meeting on the 26th and that's the public hearing for those tuning in on on youtube live tonight so you can you can ask questions it'll be a little different since we'll still be doing youtube live to those in the audience uh in youtube land we'll have a method for you to submit questions even live by phone so that you can get your information before the

027board votes that night wanted to also celebrate that first board agenda item number six is really incredible news for our school district and i don't know if you all heard me say to mr wegmiller he's going to help me with a article for the west news for next week so we can let our community know uh that fantastic news about the the rates that we heard and we need to celebrate that and it's it's even obviously way better than we projected and expected and that's great news for west isd and our future new west elementary school so we'll make sure that gets in the paper and on our website so folks can understand that better um tonight i got a two-pronged agenda item as you guys know from our previous meetings we have to post

028our back-to-school health and safety plan and even the regulation actually says one week before school starts so we have plenty of time here but i'd rather get the final version with your approval posted asap and this version and is the one in your book is already three versions ago when we started printing them i've updated it three times in the last 48 hours and so just wanted you to know tonight i've got on a slide some things that have changed even from the version you have in your packets also we we found a couple of typos still with some things we cut and pasted and and some spacing things and so it's getting to the point for permanent posting um although our parents are able to see it and our staff's able to see it

029in in this state right now just so they can read more about our our plan um so at first i just wanted to make sure that you had that that information um i already notice uh go to the next slide amanda i can already notice that um you guys want to make sure you get to the right place in your packets i'm noticing where some of you are i literally want to go through different sections of this um adams this is the wrong powerpoint we are off our game tonight is is that the one i emailed you did i click on the wrong one when i sent it to you i believe the first slide even said the wrong uh oh yeah that's the one okay did the other one okay you had two on

030the desktop all right i was like that doesn't even look remotely what i prepared but i would have uh i would have ran with it i was like uh okay thank you all right i was going what is that all right we're good all right and um for the folks in youtube land did we zoom in to the presentation mrs adams okay thank you i know last time we didn't do that and so folks couldn't see what we were discussing all right in your packets if you'll go to the document titled return and learn plan pre-kindergarten through grade 12 and have that open but really look at the slides because i tried to condense it down from the 30 pages into what's different since the last time we talked about this plan i first wanted

031to let all of you know i'm doing my best to uh update everything on our district website related to the return to learn plan so any time we do make a change i immediately save it as a pdf and post it and so the most current ish the most current version has has been up through this journey i want to report that our weekly zoom meetings which some of you have even attended are going extremely well and there's great value in them even to record and post them uh so folks can go back and watch them um the ones we posted have had 400 plus views and and so on and it's some of them were even double that from a few weeks ago and so it's it's definitely something that we need to have

032uh going as school gets closer because the staff has a need and our students and parents have a need for this kind of communication right now and on average for the staff ones we've had as high as is right at 100. uh when we're comboing the parent ones now we we've split them out with a six o'clock weekly one for wes and a seven o'clock one for for wm nhs and they're going great um and in each of those we've had 70 plus and so they're they're very well attended i want to let you know we we've been doing some staff training getting our folks ready and getting some things ready for the teachers as they return in mass on monday the 17th uh i'm apologizing to the parents because i'm going a little crazy

033on school messengers right now uh social media posts just making sure everybody has the information they need um our summer safety protocols have really helped us understand better how folks uh will treat our coming in and out of our buildings and the planning we put in place particularly starting on september 8th but as you came in i hope you saw the no touch ipad screeners that are on the stands for temperature checks and as you used it i hope you're seeing the easy use and effectiveness of having that technology in multiple places around each school and we even were able to use it for the scrimmages over the weekend at west high school and it turned out it is turning out to be a great purchase over the handheld no-touch thermometers which we've had not

034a lot of success with different temperatures and the battery challenges and having those devices outside and then reading then incorrect temperatures and so we we like the technology we have in place with those new devices i'm still struggling with with mask or face covering issues with not everybody assisting us with that request and as you'll see later on in the presentation the self-screening piece i've learned since monday august 3rd is going to be our greatest challenge this year and what i mean by that is folks screening for their symptoms themselves and checking their temperatures themselves before even coming to our stations or our event or our campuses and making sure that they have a part done there before they they even come and also remembering on that one that someone in their homes that may

035have symptoms or a lab confirmed case or been around someone in close contact over the weekend or in an evening friends or family or an event and then still coming to an event or our campus is something else we're struggling with right now our uil events gave us a great test for crowds and i was very impressed with how our parents responded they all took the temperature checks and screenings in stride they wore mass in the stands in social distance in the way the uil has described family units or folks that are in one home together but then also there's a definition of fan groups or a group that you've traveled with together to the event you may sit together without spacing the the six feet right now at both trojan field and the gyms

036in the arena we have already taped off the rows in between skipping a row we've we've taped those off so that we we've met that uil guideline we met with our uil districts via zoom this week and even talked about ticket allotments for visitors to the three gyms in trojan field and we've designated now our numbers for the home side we've decided to go online for for tickets to avoid paper and to make it easy just to send out a link on the different ticket request days and now we're working through priority of of who gets which tickets and and how many and in what order that way we can send the link to the visiting schools and just with the number and then they sell and the online piece you know collects the money

037uh just like we do with our food services and library fines and so on and so it'll work the same way and you would just show the ticket on your phone or you can do the old school of printing it out like we do for concerts and things and bring it uh when you arrive at the stadium so we know that you have a seat for that particular game i'm going to be very upfront with everyone right now that as i talked to mr clander and coach woodard we and when you start thinking about the number of seats on the home side and if we have to have it for the 50 uil guideline and then you start thinking about how many parents have kids that are participating in the events whether it's cheerleaders or

038bands or dazzlers or of course the team then you think about some of the kids that are involved with the trainers and the kids with the spirit flags and and so on um you think about the administrators and the the police officers and the medical personnel the tickets slowly get chipped away because this is an event for the parents in my personal opinion that are on the field and playing in the stands and cheering on the track and dancing at halftime and then the students who are west high school kids it's their classmates that are are doing those things and so i feel it's important that we let those families and those kids come to these events and whatever tickets are left you know for for other folks and community we'll do our best to

039get them in as well but i i do feel strongly that we need to be there especially for our senior parents and our senior class to let them enjoy uh these games in these events and so we'll publish the order in which we'll we'll let tickets released we're having a lot of debate about four versus two tickets per family because four will go very quickly when you're talking about just 500 seats in the home bleachers i made the decision to move the band in chairs to the track with a tarp down so we can have the band stands as i call them as well just so for additional seating just to increase our home side we will not sell tickets for standing um room only i guess would would be called at a concert along

040the fencing because that is not our the intent of the uil guidelines it's seats in the stands we'll have a rival in dismissal guidelines and of course temperature checks and screenings and of course even in trojan field and i know it's outside mass must be worn and so we we've got a lot to get together before our first home game fortunately we start the season on the road so we've got a little time to still get this out and get it settled volleyball is more pertinent um the crowds for volleyball though with 250 seats on the home side and another 150 on the horseshoe u piece we've had plenty of seating for our fans for volleyball games to date i also made the decision so we didn't have to mess with money in exchange of

041of coinage that we are going to allow all fans attend our volleyball and basketball games in the gyms this year for free so visitors are home if there's room based on the numbers i just gave you we will let them come in and so we're only we'll have a station then for the health checks and temperature checks and then they can they can enter based on availability of seats that was a lot any questions before i move to the next slide um for youtube land i was asked about concessions we will but it will be pre-packaged only um and of course the workers will wear masks and gloves so it'll be a limited menu but yes we will very limited menu i can't stress just a few items alright i figured you all have questions

042about the uil piece so i'm meeting with the band directors uh and uh mrs nimik who as you guys know is or harwell excuse me um since she got married the news over dazzlers and miss up moore who's over cheer to talk about some of this information in the morning especially about um away games um our district has put some some things in place for us to consider about sending the student groups other than the football team to the away games but also we have the challenge that the charter schools in particular we're playing in the dallas area do not have large enough venues to support our student groups along with fans and uh we're talking about minimal seating in one stadium we even have a question about the if it's even really a visitor

043set of stands that we're getting clarified and so we'll make a decision with them about those games and and there we even have an idea if we can't travel for the away games um to the dallas schools and so on the ones north and we'll we've tossed around the idea of inviting them to come to the thursday night home jv games so that they can get another event in a performance for the marching band and the drill team and that gives another game for their parents to come and watch them perform so they don't miss out on on those those opportunities that they'd have in a more traditional year so we're even looking at that and i'm going to throw that idea at our sponsors tomorrow morning yes ma'am um for youtube land uh miss

044crosshall is asking if the other schools in our district are considering using the online ticketing system and at our meeting this week miss cross shaw four are using it and now whitney and and west are considering it as well so not all just yet but it may dictate that in the end we actually got the idea from them and they even sent us a vendor to look at and so there's there's a webinar we're going to do to see how best it could work for for the community of west all right next slide miss adams um just as a reminder i think you're all aware that we we decided to stick with the tuesday september 8 2020 um based on the bullet points up there and you saw my two page rationale in the email

045i sent you of all the reasons why we think this is best for west and with some challenges we faced just since august 3rd i believe in my heart even more that this was the right decision and especially with monday coming and and all the things we need to do to do to get the remote instruction piece up and going uh for all staff knowing that anytime school could halt or pause we've got to have that running at an optimum level and so uh mrs adams is going to share here in a moment about even the orientation piece for the families that have chosen remote instruction the technology checkout piece and all the things that we've got to do and i'm just so grateful that we have adequate time to get it done and to

046do it right i don't know if you guys saw some of the information today about the studies for the schools that have already started but there's there's already a great increase in in that children uh in covid since some schools have gone back some staff pieces i know you've seen some stories about some that have already had the move to remote instruction and our uil is is still moving forward and and uh our plan we think will will be successful um if everybody does their part um miss adams next slide please just a reminder on our calendar i was going to bring to you tonight to change the green holiday in october to our homecoming date but after talking with enough folks they liked how it was in the middle of the grading period and

047gave a breaking point uh between the first four weeks and the last few weeks and so we're we're going to stay with friday october 9th um homecoming is the second against uh life oak cliff um and so our fall break will remain on the night so the calendar is not actually up for a vote tonight so the calendar you approved back on july 22nd is still the calendar you see before you and it's still the one that we have posted and we're rolling with just as a reminder i'm thankful for the five and a half bank days um our challenge is still going to be how fast we can remove or move to remote instruction at any point in the school year i like the green each month so it gives our staff and students

048a break i believe miss crosshall had mentioned about the october date and remember the original calendar didn't have it and so the new one does and again our dismissal times and front loading the training and work days is imperative to the success of of our plan as a reminder the one bad thing about this calendar and there's no other way to say it than that is our dual credit kids at the high school still have to start through dual credit classes on monday the 24th and there's not a thing we can do about that and so they'll be online with their professors two weeks before we start on on tuesday the 8th it really is because they get done at the beginning of december yeah it'll even out all right next slide miss adams all

049right perfect timing i'm going to come back up with the health plan i wanted mrs adams to remind you of some differences between remote and on-campus instruction she has the numbers by grade level of who've chosen remote instruction to date even though we're still missing some and then she just has some general news and updates to share with you so i'm just going to move to the table and let her take over the mic here good evening at 6 pm i pulled the enrollment numbers again just to make sure i had really accurate data so as of 6 pm today 1099 students have been enrolled in west isd of those 124 have chosen remote instruction that's 11.3 percent at west elementary school there are 72 students choosing remote instruction at west middle school there are

05021 and at west high school there are 31 and i do have a chart that i can display here in just a little bit that'll show you the breakdown by grade level but you'll find that for the most part they're evenly spread across the district with a couple of bigger grade levels having a few more but they're proportionate to the number of kids in that grade i also wanted to just mention that for those parents and families who chose remote instruction beginning next week the week of august 17th they will be getting personal phone calls from a team that we've put together that don snook will lead and they will be given more information specific to their students needs and what remote instruction will look like for their student and during that phone call we'll

051also ask questions about laptops and internet and special programs and just talk through what it means to be a remote instruction student the following week the week of august 24th will actually provide a learning coach parent guardian orientation that will be offered virtually and recorded and then that will be posted and we are going to encourage all parents in the district to view that whether their students currently on remote instruction or not because we feel like at any minute they could be we're also that week the week of august 24th check out laptops to those students who need to borrow one for remote instruction so we'll get all of that done prior to september 8th i also wanted to mention just a few key points and the differences and the similarities between remote instruction and

052on-campus learning i think it's very important that we stress and we say this a lot to our families that it is not the may the march to may plan the remote instruction plan this year will mirror what students who are on campus are doing they will have the same activities the same lessons the same tests and the same content that our on-campus students will have all accommodations will be provided to any student in a special program for dyslexia and esl those accommodations will be provided oftentimes live through a virtual meeting and then special ed and those all will be worked out with those parents on that initial phone call if they're a remote instruction we'll discuss those things with them at that point and set up the best way to provide the accommodations that their

053student is going to receive they will be no matter on campus or remote they'll receive those it's really important too that our parents and families understand that everybody in the district whether they chose remote or on campus will use schoology software and also have the ability to see any software that we provide so that will be provided to all 1300 and some odd of our students whether they choose on campus or remote so we're working really hard to make sure our students feel comfortable and ultimately our learning coaches as well grading is very important and we must make sure that our grading policy is the same for both both options for our families so we'll stress that in orientation as well that grading will be the same as well as attendance and truancy so we

054have to make sure that our families understand that they will be required to turn in grades have assessments pass their classes attend their classes so that's a big portion as well of the orientation and lastly maybe the most important part of this for our families is that learning coach role we feel like that's going to be a really important partnership for our families who choose remote learning we are going to need to have an adult for every student who chooses remote instruction that's responsible for attendance and making sure their student is logging the hours they need to completing the activities actually watching the content and then ultimately the most important part will be that contact with the teacher that they will have on a regular basis so we're very excited to be able to offer

055that extra time or that second conference we are calling it for our teachers to have an ability to conference with their learning coach and students on a daily basis and and we want to make sure that our families understand that that's a very important part of being a remote learner so i will show you those numbers for the grade levels we're trying all right board as you can see so far uh 11 have chosen at kindergarten 13 at grade 1 18 at grade 2 and like miss adams said grade 2 for example to go along with what she shared is a five teacher grade level grade three there's eight grade four thirteen grade five nine grade six seven grade seven seven grade eight seven grade nine twelve grade ten eight grade eleven five and grade

056twelve uh we have six now remember this is who's chosen before the orientations and these phone calls and really talking about the learning coach role so these numbers could change they could go up you know as parents hear about different data from around the state they may want to join this list but i can't stress enough that our on on-campus and remote instruction plans will mirror the best of our ability and so even if our eleven point i believe you said two percent three percent goes up we're ready for it and our staff is committed to meeting their needs all right so we'll keep you updated on this if you think about the 1099 she mentions we're projecting right about 1340 students so you can see we're still short about 240 kids and so that's

057why those phone calls and tracking them down are so important and some of those students may have chosen to homeschool or go to another district and as we make those phone calls they're sharing that information with us so we can remove them from our overall enrollment figure ms adams did you want to add anything else before i move to the the health portion of the on-campus plan do you guys have any questions over where we are right now with the remote instruction plan no mail no ma'am and a lot of districts are probably like us a little slow on this as we track kids down and then you have what's called the t-rex system and uh you know we're filling those as we get them um we haven't received many um so that tells us

058you know other school districts are still trying to get going again um we will leave them on on rosters until we absolutely know they will not be with us so if ms costa was here tonight her class list for their meet the teacher virtual curbside event she's hosting will have more kids on it than will be there on on the first day remotely or on on campus all right any other questions i can answer about remote instruction our our biggest challenge obviously is is going to be these orientations and making sure our families understand the commitment piece especially the attendance uh the projected minutes and how that student can technically be even truant in their own homes doing remote instruction if they're not completing the assignment and so it's it's all about engagement and progress

059in the activities that we'll be posting and so that that will be our challenge along with having someone at home to really assist with with the process of learning with us uh hand in hand helping them throughout the school year and i know we we spent a lot of time discussing the early release plan but i i can't thank you enough for agreeing for us to to adjust our dismissal time so that our teachers have that other built-in time to really reach out to their kids and when you think about the chart miss adams put up if there's eight students out at grade one for example you know with with four teachers at grade one that means they'll probably each have two and so each day those teachers have two kids uh to check up

060on and i know miss casa is even doing a plan where it's by a subject area and so if if mrs russell is doing elar then she's got eight kids to check on and and i think you can see that's going to take some time to reach out to them and hold the zoom and make phone calls and check their work and see if they're making progress and so that that extra time is going to be imperative to this plan all right next slide all right a couple of updates on the return to learn health portion of our plan the cdc um has updated the symptoms and now there's seven and the posters and and the flyers that we've made now reflect that including every time it's mentioned in this document i've got a slide

061here in a minute to make sure you're all aware of what the symptoms currently being used by the state are also on the close contact definition a big piece of that change i can't stress enough is is where they define it uh within the confines of six feet apart no face covering um cumulative duration of 15 minutes and also the 48 hours with the individuals on set of symptoms so think of it as a list and commas with the article and and so it's imperative that we remember that there's many different ways that you look at that close contact piece and um now there's even uh research that i read about today i need to really get off the internet for a while that's even saying now about the six feet and so this definition

062of close contact could could still change even as school starts but right now that's the one we're working off of and as we talked about suspected cases which is our biggest thing right now versus lab confirmed we always go back to this definition when we're tracking the student or staff or visitor that's at an event or a building to see who they were around and and with the body uh secretions and coughing and sneezing and spitting and you name it and then each of the things that i just mentioned and so this this is our big uh this is our big piece right now as we we break down the different things that we learn about our staff and kids and folks in our community on the lab confirmed covet 19 recovery period i just

063wanted to stress that there's a couple things that changed there originally it said that there was two days have passed since recovery before you could come back if you were a confirmed case and now it's one and i also want to stress that the 14 day quarantine period there's some confusion about 10 versus 14 because of different plans that have been published i just want to make sure you all understand when you see 10 for a quarantine period they mean school days all right and our document still reflects the 14 total no that's flexible because it starts after we do the investigation and we figure out when the close contact occurred and then it's the next day not the day that happened that that 14-day window starts and so we we've got to make sure

064that we're tracking that correctly and everybody's following the same standards uh for that um so there's been some confusion of that the 10 days also comes into play for a lab confirmed case because remember the three-pronged test you've heard me talk about and the way it's numbered on page 13 in the document it talks about the one day or 24 hours have passed since recovery before you can come back the individual has improvement in symptoms meaning the seven things on the chart are not prevalent and then at least 10 days have passed since the symptoms first appeared now all three of those things if you think about them in any different order all those things have to be yes we're through that but they not are a hold fast 10 days the testing piece in

065particular when they had to come back with a negative test it used to say two over a certain period of time and now it says one negative test and so we just have to make sure that each of these things are confirmed before they come back in and not get hung up on on 10 days and such um depending upon how fast they can get a test and get the results back and communicate with us it could be 17 days for example so the key is to have really good accountability and documentation with who we're dealing with that are suspected and confirmed and making sure that the campuses in my office know when each of those check marks are off that they can return and i've decided i know you're going to say you're going

066to this is a lot to take on but if i don't run it through my office i really feel like we'll miss some of this data and our nurses are fabulous and they're going to be my point people to contact the parents and i'll work with the principals on making sure our detective work on the confirmed and close contact is solid but i've got to be able to send out the letters and the notifications to our students staff and parents and if it doesn't come through my office i think we'll get off on those timelines and the notifications won't go out in the way i'd like to see them go out i've committed based on some some parent feedback in our zooms that sending a letter home with kids is not the way to do

067this obviously and i think you'll all agree if i send home a letter with a middle school child it'll probably still be in the classroom at three when they're boarding the bus so um no paper but we're going to do two things we're going to keep a running record that i can based on ferpa and hipaa on our district website on the covet 19 plan page uh suspected and confirmed campus and our best of our ability to the specific place or grade level or teacher and i don't mean a teacher that has suspect or confirmed i just mean their their course and then we'll have the timeline of quarantine and such listed so everyone will know when it's up and also if we're having to put a program on hiatus that will be listed on

068there as well and then the immediate notification i committed to is not everybody gets my school messenger emails in immediate fashion they might read them once a week on saturday you know when they get on their gmail for example so skyward has the ability to do a phone call which i was told they don't listen to they hang up sometimes and then the email is good but they don't always read it in a timely manner so it does have a texting component to let them know of of a case uh and then to go read the email for the details and so we'll use the texting piece along with the email to give the more detailed information so we'll do website skyward school messenger texting and email components i i do know the best way

069to answer that depending on the parent or guardian situation miss cross shaw is it allow only two um yes i had to look back at miss adams making sure i was speaking the truth yes so it'll do two i was making sure it wouldn't do more so only two for family groups now if if there's a concern amongst our team of eight remember we have the ability to form because i tried last spring before all this happened to start a community email group where anyone could put an email address and if it's a family that nine different folks grandma grandpa aunts uncles all want school district information even if they don't have kids in our district could sign up and i could we could do that again and make it a covet alert e-group um

070yeah two we could definitely do you and bill yeah yes yes ma'am yes yeah for those in in in uh youtube land she was asking about making sure that we have the ability in skyward to have two email um two email addresses for like a dad and a mom or a mom and a grandmother or grandma and a granddad and the answer to that is yes whatever the two texting component to both yes both uh in youtube land she was asking about uh cell phone numbers and such for texting and the answer to that is two two as well i think the biggest thing there miss cross shaw is they don't always enter the maximum of the two for both and so again we've got to communicate that if they want multiple people to receive

071that information they've got to put it in and we also have a not great track record on working email addresses and cell phone numbers so we're at their mercy of what they put in and they've got to update it if they change yes ma'am if it's important they will you're correct all right we've got three pr videos going we released one on a bus arrival in the mornings at the stops elementary released one on arrival at the elementary and we have a new one a back-to-school one on changes on the leadership teams where they introduce themselves and we're just going to keep making them and releasing them about different topics they're on our youtube channels and we're attaching those links on social media the first ones kind of went out on their own i hadn't

072even shared them and other people already had and so that was kind of fun for those to go out more detailed information up there that i know i've sent part of this in an email and only because of new teacher today i haven't sent you the updated version and i changed this slide just about an hour before the meeting currently we have one lab confirmed staff case um at west middle school and one lab confirmed student case at the high school now we've been dealing with a lot of suspected that have gone to get tested more on quarantine and came back with negative tests following the guidelines that i just mentioned we know of three more lab confirmed high school students that have not come to an event or onto our campuses but we're aware

073of them and nurse ebola has made contact with their families and then as you know uh we've got marching bands still on a hiatus through next week and we didn't want dazzlers and cheer to start except some virtual things that they're doing because of some of the contact with those other bullet points i just mentioned so i can't stress enough that they're not on quarantine yet for dazzlers and cheer this was a preventative measure just to keep them all healthy and safe until the quarantine period was up and they'll start back up as well so far the communication is going well i can't stress enough that none of those cases or suspected cases happened in our building until the middle school one today with a meeting between that staff member and and one of our

074front office folks therefore now we had a suspected case that was based on that person with a confirmed case coming to our campus otherwise it's been at home transferred by other people in the homes uh and then those folks still coming onto our campuses even though they were suspected or confirmed at their homes that's the piece i can't stress enough that i've been telling our families especially on the zoom has got to stop otherwise our plan will hit a lot of road bumps because if they're not taking care of those things before coming to school or alerting us then then they will come into the building without our knowledge and we'll have suspected or or even worse confirmed cases so the self-screening self-temperature checks awareness of close contact with those in the homes or where

075they where they're going for dinner or weddings or events seeing other other folks going to parker's park wherever they have to think then about coming to school and how do they feel and who in their homes are not feeling well and have symptoms and and the such so that's even before school starting you can see we're already dealing with some of that but our plan is working and the documentation notifications are working and the quarantine's working so we've been able to stave off i believe additional things that could have taken place all right next slide um just as a reminder these are the seven symptoms temperature of a 104 or higher sore throat uncontrolled cough difficulty breathing diarrhea vomiting abdominal pain a severe headache and then the last one is a local i've added question

0768 because the one on the previous form just said lab confirmed and now with what we've dealt with since august 3rd i had suspected because we really want them thinking about this so we're going to send home copies of this for our parents to put on their fridge or our tape to the back door just so they're constantly thinking about these eight things before they leave their homes and think about where they've been and who they've been around this obviously is our screening questions that will be on the posters at our entryways for events in school and and the buses and obviously what triggers um turning someone away is is if any of these are a yes and so anything that's a yes or anything that's 104 100.4 or higher means you cannot be in

077an event or on our campuses okay all right um i already talked about this i just did it uh speaking about those bullet points so let's let's go to the next slide um reminders that i've been sharing on the zoom meeting and then i'll be done travel between now and september 8th if you think about it right now 14 days out from the start of school is that week of august 24th and with labor day coming i've just been trying to make sure our parents understand that if they travel and go somewhere and try to do something over labor day they're really talking about the third week in september before they can come to school especially if they're suspected in the 14 day quarantine period and so now is the time to be at your

078home and with your family and enjoy that time uh with what you have left of the summer and and think about how far 14 days is out if you're a suspected case number two up there i've been stressing for our staff and students about finding mass that work i know there's a lot of research coming out now about the different types i had an email discussion today with ms crosshaw she sent me an email that went out across lorena isd that defined some guidance on wearing the face shields and when you must have then a face covering or mask under it and the definition or the guidance on that is when you're within six feet of a student you must have the second layer of the mask on or if you're teaching in front of

079the room you can just have the shield on and so i think it's a great wording for some things we're already tweaking for face coverings that we'll make sure are included in this document so i wanted to mention that that's one thing we're going to tweak there's some research now about the gators which are very popular and how the cloth mass and paper mass on the face are probably the better option there and so we'll we'll share what we recommend but we want the kids to pick their fun ones and and have them ready for school and we've asked our parents to slowly work with the kids so they get used to having them on for a longer and longer period of time i already mentioned the home screenings in close contact based on some

080parent discussions and feedback on the zooms our parents asked if we could reconsider the age of the kids at the bus stop and of course that made sense to me why would we have a parent come out with a sophomore in high school so we made it grade six and below um and so it's important that those families know that because of our screening and temperature check they must have a representative or a parent or guardian at the stop in case those kids have to turn around and go home and not board the bus the water bottle usage has come up a lot because we're turning off the water fountains we'll only utilize the the bottle fillers and so we need every kid to have a water bottle probably with their name on it making

081sure they're not sharing it with anyone because we can't have the water fountains operational and then we've added with the help of miss garrick we had such great success with the student meal bag program for remote instruction students we're still going to offer that for free and reduced or paying students if they want the meals for breakfast and lunch for a week at a time they can come by friday of each week to get it for the next week and all they have to do is call sandra to reserve that in my office and we'll have those ready for pick up at the high school by the the back entrance by the softball field and and uh for some of our families we know they'll continue to take advantage of this the only thing we're

082not going to do this time is just frankly because of manpower is the home delivery they will have to come come and get it during the school year so that's the one thing we're going to ask of them just come to us and we'll get it to you all right then just a few more bullet points on the next slide we're having to really stress the no visitors this one's been hard on our families especially on the first day in elementary age and the younger kids used to walking in to school and taking pictures and we just can't this year if you think about if we have 550 kids at the elementary i mean if two parents come or just one i mean we're talking about between another 550 and a thousand people in that

083small campus think about our health check and screening system and so mrs costa's figured out a phenomenal way to still handle some of those things and make sure we have plenty of staff i'll be there that day ms adams will be there that day we'll be there to help and get kids to their rooms and we've got some fun ideas planned to let the parents know how their kiddos are doing after school starts with their seesaw app that they're going to use and some other things also stressing to our visitors and our parents about the need for virtual or phone meetings and how we've got to get away from the face-to-face things been kind of a downer about field trips and assemblies and some of our extracurricular events as we've had to cancel those things

084but we have a renewed fervor about making sure some of our extracurricular events still happen virtually even the competition piece i tended to zoom this week for the ui academic piece and plans are underway to still host and and schedule as many of those competitions as possible virtually and same with destination imagination and i know mrs snook would add a tsa and so we're going to offer it if it's virtual and make sure our kids still have those opportunities and i was going to talk at length about the substitute plan which i'm really happy we're going to provide but charles stole my thunder on that one during the budget time so no need to to share that and that's it i know that was a lot but i i want you all to be very

085comfortable with the remote instruction and the on-campus health plans that we're putting in place so any questions that i can answer all right then the next agenda item is seeking your approval for what we're calling the west isd return the learn plan which encompasses all 30 pages that are in your packets tonight the only addendum is what i mentioned about face shields and how we need to define when a face covering or mask must be worn under the face shield so that was the only thing i'll add that's not in your packet okay thank you thank you mr thank you for that report you bet agenda item number 10 is an action items consideration and possible action by the board to approve the 2020 2021 west isd return to learn on campus and the remote

086instruction and health safety plans as just presented by mr truitt is there a motion to accept okay mike and then and lee seconded okay all those in favor please show off hands seven zero all right agenda item number eleven is a report it's the first reading of the texas association of school boards board policy update 115. update 115 focuses on updating and reorganizing several policies in the ffe series addressing student welfare ffea continues to focus on counseling and a new code ffeb focuses on mental health provisions several policies have also been revised to incorporate the new title ix regulations effective august the 14th of 2020 which defines sexual harassment under title ix and establish detailed procedures for how districts must respond to notice or allegations of sexual harassment this will be presented by mr truitt

087i think the easiest way to go about this policy review is to go to the vantage point section in your binder or in your packet excuse me it's behind the return to learn plan they're still even from the last legislative section sending us policy updates and so that's really the majority of what you see in this vantage points as a reminder there's 72 legal policy changes but remember that's law really what you're looking at are the 13 local and this vantage points why i went back to this document is i thought it did a really good job of highlighting those 13 under nine different headers so i thought we would start with this and see what questions you have as a reminder we've chosen as a team of eight to split um the approval of

088these updates from tasby into a read first in review so that think of this as the first reading and then next month in september i'll seek your approval and so during that month is a time to ask questions and if i don't know it i need to find the answer obviously and get back with you but that's our time to work together to see if you have have questions before approval i'll start with page one um the revision the bf local um this one's all about uh clarifying some some legally referenced policies that aren't adopted by the board and i just really said that in my intro you don't technically adopt legal it just flows into our policy so it's just going to do the wording there on the bf local piece so you approve

089local and that's the ones i bring to you where we work with tasby to revise about something that's specific to life in west isd on number two where it says section d personnel that's all about uh ded local and addressing the board's authorization for some paid vacation and holiday benefits and you can see down there about how we've got to have we have to address the details of the different programs that promote consistent effective implementation and even prevent any conflicts between policy and our procedures that doesn't happen much in west and so for me that's that's in policy but it's not something that that we we deal with on number three revisions the dia local this has to do with the supreme court decision that you can see there which held that an adverse employment

090action against an employee on the basis of homosexuality or transgender status violates title vii's prohibition on sex discrimination employment of course we would not do that and di local states the reasons why from the legal standpoint so you can see in that second part there about how that paul that policy clarifies that discrimination on the basis of those two things biological sex gender identity sexual orientation gender stereotypes and any other prohibited basis related to sex and then this is also the staff section on the two on the new uh title ix regulations we have a prepared powerpoint that we have to do for all campuses here when we get back on august the 17th mrs moore with walsh gallegos has helped me with it and so there's some different pieces that we must cover it's

091about 12 slides and all staff must sign off on it just like we did the ferpa training before the covet break and so this kind of gives you just a short overview of some of the major points in these bullet points um just as a reminder uh it includes the sexual harassment definition of prohibited conduct and clarifies the employee reporting requirements is really what these updates are about and then you can see the next four bullet points gets into more detail and you're going to see this again in a few pages for students because remember it's it's both you have a staff policy and a student policy and for both i am the the title ix listed um officer in policy um as a reminder 504 is is carla sequora and the difference there is

092mrs cora does students i do staff and so i'm listed on three of these and carla's the fourth one um so just want to make sure y'all were aware of that the first bullet point on top page two says that we must follow our existing investigation process in addressing allegations of prohibited conduct and so we've got that spelled out and we really do follow it like we do any complaint or grievance we look at the timelines the dates of course consultants more uh in anything that we receive along those lines and department heads and principals can't take this one on by their own accord they're a piece of the process and in getting it to me and we got to make sure it doesn't stop with them the third bullet point says specific provisions outlining

093the legally required district response we have a checklist and things that our legal departments provided us that we have to go through the fourth bullet point talks about my requirement to to have developed a formal complaint process and the key for that in a district our size is knowing where to find the form and making sure they know to contact me and i think practically every staff member in the district has my cell phone number at this point um but office phone calling sandra to track me down email anything to get me as soon as they can to come come visit with them so that it's timely especially if there's an emergency there on number five um then doesn't designating the preponderance of evidence standard um it's still recommended we go with that over the

094clear and convincing higher standard i firmly believe we should investigate all concerns in this area that's listed in this policy and looking as consistent with the other pieces of our policy of using the preponderance of evidence so you can see there's a note that if we wish to go to the higher standard we can it's our recommendation and joey moore's to stick with this universal level of evidence for all these investigations number four uh our section e number four on my sheet is ei local on academic achievement there's some new provisions about how and this does affect west um we we do not provide semester uh credit or grades our courses at the high school are year long um and so our students you know must complete and and a course for a year it's

095not divided by a fall or spring semester where you earn two two separate credits this talks about a new provision for receiving passing grades and half of a course and so we've got to make sure this aligns with our grade and reporting standards to make sure our high school is aware of this provision in e.i local and how it will look at the high school moving forward with awarding some credit dependent upon a failing grade in the fall or spring semester and so we we've got to make sure they understand that and the easiest way for me to explain it many of you have had kids in our high schools before we take a course at west high school they have to retake the entire year even if they pass the spring and only failed

096the fall or vice versa so this gives them the ability in ei local to have a conversation as a district before we approve this in september about if it's just one half of the course them only being required to do that one half all right so let that sink in does that make sense okay all right i'm gonna keep moving then the page three number five fd local on admissions uh for addressing transition assistance for highly mobile mobile students who are homeless or in substitute care and the big piece on that is for fdlocal is how we award credit for kids that are in and out of schools due to a homeless status and different things that we can look at to ensure they still graduate with their cohorts on feb local this is another

097administ amended administrative code about official attendance taking time during the campus instructional day the policy used to say the second or fifth instructional hour and now policy is catching up to where we can set an official time and it says it's my responsibility to do that for attendance taking across the district and i haven't seen the new bell schedule times at middle school high school but usually it's at nine or 905 we'll need to make sure that those are adjusted and communicated and correct in our our handbooks here before school starts on ffg local that is you can see really in that second paragraph um about the sexual abuse trafficking and maltreatment of children about plans are being included in our student handbooks and the district improvement plan i can tell you it's definitely in

098our handbooks because that's a tasby model and they include it but i will say we do not have it in our disk improvement plan and you just approved that two meetings ago so we need to add some bullet points and bring them to you in the september board meeting to amend that document on number seven on discrimination harassment retaliation this is for students it's the same bullet points you just saw on the staff side of it in the d policies a page ago so if we go to page four um f and g local in the middle there you can see that this is all about if we have to remove a visitor or a parent or student you know with a trespass order for education code 37.105 the only thing that changes in that

099big long paragraph is now the parent or whoever we trespass has 90 calendar days to come and complain to you to see if if they can get it resolved through board action and that's different than a traditional grievance because a grievance has to be filed within 15 days of the incident in question and then we move to the 10-day periods between the different levels so this is out of that system with that 90 calendar days so we just have to remember that at any point if someone's been trespassed or removed they have really three months to decide hey i want to talk to the board and so that that's different new we got to remember that timeline is different than than other appeals on the last section under miscellaneous those are just three policies that

100are being removed so they they'll be deleted from from our section those sections on the citizens advisory committee that doesn't mean we still can't do them it just it's up to us if y'all ever wanted to form an advisory committee so the guidelines are going away same with the professional meetings and student contests and competitions with some attendance pieces there that were already in another section yes ma'am remember that's the whole reason we're using schoology and if y'all haven't heard the state adopted schoology so we were already ahead of the game and it's free for the next two years um and uh so we don't even have to pay our subscription for the next two years and so we're we're already on board and ready to roll so we're happy they picked it and they

101picked it for just that reason because it has the analytics to track the amount of time the student is engaged in the system and not just sitting idly in the system and remember based on 180 minutes and then 240 on the age of the child if they meet that guideline they get attendance for that day we print the reports and review them and the state said uh about four weeks ago now that on like friday for example we we would review that and enter in their attendance for the week but the teacher has to verify it on a daily basis so the peems ladies don't have to do it daily because that'll be a big chore but the teachers do and then we'll notify through a system we put in place to let peems know

102who to count absent and present for that week it's critical i don't think i i believe firmly that that 11.3 percent will reduce when they understand it's not the plan we had march through may uh before the summer oh oh yes i'm sorry yes oh yes that they have to check and see if if their kiddos are working in schoology on a daily basis yes ma'am yeah great point mrs adams did i say all that correctly okay yes sorry this one make sure all right so tonight you're not approving update 115 it'll be on the september agenda thank you so we're on 12 dr sparks agenda item number 12 is an action knife's consideration and possible action by the board to approve wednesday september the 16th 2020 and wednesday march the 3rd 2021 is new

103regular board of trustee meeting dates for the months of september and march the reason for this request centers on the dates for the first day of school and spring break mr truitt's going to present this to us that action item speaks for itself you know usually we look at spring break and then sli in june we don't know what sli will look like in june but i didn't want to meet the wednesday right after school starts on the tuesday i wanted to give our staff and students and parents time to get back in the school group so i can report the following week on the 16th on how it went with actually uh you know having at that point will be seven days of school under our belts so you'll have a better idea of

104how the plan's working so i'd like to meet on that 16th which would be the third wednesday and then of course spring break we always move the march one up a week and so tonight i'm seeking your approval for september 16th and march 3rd for new board meeting dates for those two months very good the floor is open for a motion to address agenda item number 12 is presented seven action nights consideration possible action by the board to approve the updated early voting dates by proclamation of the governor of texas october 13 2020 through october 30 2020 and an updated list of election day vote centers for the november 3rd 2020 joint general election mr truitt again self-explanatory you probably read online about how there's the proclamation from the governor for these dates and anytime

105this stuff comes out it has to be on our agenda for approval i will tell you we're still missing the hill county uh voting sites they're they're always a little behind mclennan it should be on the september agenda if we get it we'll add it to the called special called meeting on on august 26th um so this is one piece we had to add based on that proclamation all right very good are there any questions before i call for a motion if not floor is open for a motion to address agenda item number 13 as presented kenny's made the motion is there a second and lee crochet six said all those in favor please show of hands seven to zero okay thank you david agenda item number 14 is a report it's on the house

106bill hb3 teacher incentive allotment known as the tia west isd application overview and timeline information and amanda adams will present that for the board thank you i'm going to attempt to change the slides with this mouse let's see if it works okay tonight i wanted to bring back to the board some information about the teacher incentive allotment that we've been talking about for quite some time we've been doing a lot of research and we wanted to report back what we found and and kind of share with you what other a few other districts around us are doing and and what we feel like we we should do based on some discussions we've had with tea so the first thing i put up here comes straight from the teacher incentive lot texas.org website and each district

107is assigned a different amount per category of funds that a position a teacher position can generate so i say that very carefully because i'll explain this is somewhat misleading if you go to the website you think that amanda as a kindergarten teacher can just be a really great teacher and earn extra 22 thousand dollars every year for five years and so if you're a teacher or just a a community member that looks at this that's what you're going to think that is not exactly how this works so what happens is there is a criteria that is fairly strict that the teacher would have to qualify for and then this money is generated and put into a campus what i'll call pot so there's it's generated by the teachers reaching a certain achievement level on two

108things observation and growth in their student achievement and then those funds go into a pot for the campus what i think sometimes is not understood is that campus pot is then distributed basically adopted off of the dallas isd system that they have been using for quite some time and so if you go look at their website for teacher incentive allotment you'll see that that's exactly what they do they generate the funds per campus and then they take those funds and they put them through their metric and then they distribute them based on that to the teachers who earn their metric and so um having said that i hope that made sense designations that teachers can earn there are only these are the ta predicted acceptable percentages that only the top 10 excuse me the top

109five percent of mass of teachers in the state will get masters so if you look at a campus that's five so that's um five teachers so out of the between i think i don't want to miss quote i'd have to look exactly over 5000 educators in dallas isd they had less than 100 that we could find that made the master level to put it in perspective and so it is a very high bar and we'll talk a little bit more about that exemplary there's a little bit more room there at about 20 percent and then 33 of teachers can earn a recognized status because there's um what you see at the bottom the two stars is that if the teacher goes out and enrolls and pays for the program to become excuse me nationally board

110certified then they automatically get recognized status okay so we'll talk a little bit about more of that so i wanted to we'll come back to nationally board certified status so what happens with this designation system is that there's two components like i said there's a teacher observation component and for most schools in the in the state that's t-tests bigger districts sometimes have a their own developed system and they can put that on their application if they've had a lot of research so 10 plus years for be a good example of data that they can show their observation is not subjective that it's objective and then the second component has to do with student performance and it's heavily heavily heavily based on growth and you guys have heard us talk so much about growth when we

111talk about star so keep that in mind and like i said the other opportunity um that has nothing to do with those two things is if a teacher goes out and gets that national board certification designation that can begin in this school year i wanted to tell you a little bit more about the observation minimums so if to get to the master rate okay they have to be on this scale 90 of the possible points on that t-test have to be achieved and there are multiple multiple points but they have to get 90 of those have to be at the top level which based that that system as you we've probably talked about before is not designed for a teacher to get that top level easily because it's all based on evidence so that that

112i just this just to say again that that it is not gravy to get master it is a feat and there are a lot of things that have to be done to get there oop let me go oh i don't know if i go back so and that was this the continuous trend there i wanted you to see now i want to talk a little bit about what the state will and will not commit to for tiaa the state will not determine the designations of our teachers that is up to us they give us criteria we have to apply they approve our plan or not and then we amend they will not come in and say this is your list what they will do though is we will submit a list of teachers who meet

113the criteria and we will pay a 500 fee for every one we submit and every teacher we submit to texas tech for review and if texas tech agrees that our data holds up then they'll give our 500 back and that teacher will get that designation however if they disagree with our data we won't get our 500 back let me talk a little bit about data so we did there are four other districts in our cohort in region 12. we're one of four um in fact i talk regularly you know stephanie coucher and i talk a little bit about this almost weekly because there are so few of us she'll call and say well what'd they say for y'all what'd they say for y'all and we've had the privilege of being early in that cohort c

114we actually had ta reach out to us and say what do you guys need help with and that's not been the norm so we were lucky um i have a contact that i can just call or email and she'll answer my questions yes yes ma'am when we needed help to figure out how the application system worked and what would best work and so in my discussions with teresa ta my my knowledge that this this system is be able to meet the standard to show student growth you have to have a nationally normed test or star so for districts in texas really that means you have to use star there are a few other things that we could try we threw out in our application could we look at how many could we give cte teachers

115this designation if we showed how many kids they were able to successfully get licensed or certified in their ag welding or in their adobe illustrator and that they said no that's a one-time mastery check it does not show growth okay so that's the difference it has to have a starting point and end point that hasn't been normed for years so a lot of districts in our area of i'll say they're four again waco for example isd is only using grades four through eight star as their fund generator for this year so what they'll do is take those funds and on the campuses that have those kids and those teachers excuse me they will put a metric out and then they will put that money back into that campus teacher salary for no better word uh

116based on that they generated those funds only from those star grades there are a couple of other um ones that are doing a k-8 model where they're using a test called nwa very similar to iready and so there's some a little bit of wiggle room there but when i talk to ta and of course they're not going to say you can't use that because you know they're trying to let us decide local control however they said if we used a metric that did not have enough years of data to show that it had been normed then they would texas tech would not accept that data they would deny that data and therefore that campus could be completely knocked out of the tia for that year and so having said that we had a committee meeting

117a zoom committee meeting this week to talk about it with teachers and i'm going to talk a little bit more about that but the main takeaway from this i wanted to show you for this slide is that ta will not come in and say you met the criteria teacher we are responsible for that based on a a set of criteria that hold up in their data review so i just want to circle back to national board certification for just a minute in some states national board certification is a really big deal and it's included in their college prep for teachers so if you look at some states like florida almost every certified teacher in florida has also gotten their national board certification however it's not ever really been a big deal in texas so in

118the whole state of texas right now there are only 997 nationally board certified teachers okay there's 191 on this waiting list waiting to be approved because it's a two-year process another thing about nationally board certified national board certification it's kind of like signing up for a master's degree it's a two-year process it costs nineteen hundred dollars you have to go through a system where you submit online a portfolio and you go to class but here's the thing about it if a teacher does that it's good for five years and that certification like i said automatically earns them recognized status which can be a significant amount of money about five thousand dollars so um it monetarily would be beneficial in the end but it is quite a process you would have to redo the process yeah

119yes so it's an investment on their part it goes with them wherever they go it's attached to them like a certification like a state certification but it automatically guarantees that the district the campus not district the campus will receive funds for that which we would of course then turn back around and and distribute to that teacher who earned it okay so finally at our committee meeting we needed to gather input from our teachers and our administrators and what we did was we invited all administrators and all teacher team leads and we had a very good turnout zoom and we got some great input so what we talked about is that if we go with the route we know will be accepted which is star data grades three through eight and there are two eocs that

120generate growth that could work as well if we go with that for year one we know that if we go with that we will generate funds for those teachers who meet their t-test and their growth measure so what we needed to know from our teachers and here's a big question is if you are generating funds so so amanda is a fourth grade math teacher and i got a master teacher and all my kids 90 of them by the way got growth so now i'm designated master and i generated twenty two thousand dollars for my for my campus ten percent of that goes to the administrative fees like that five hundred dollar fee and all that good stuff teachers what what the question was what do you want us to do with that do you want

121us to have a teamwork approach whereas other people k12 interventionists all that could get a piece of that money because they helped you get your kids there or do you see that differently where it all should go to you and almost overwhelmingly mr truth was on there so if you if you see jump in if you have anything else i think i felt like almost all a woman they were saying we see this as a team effort right yeah it depends so yeah right so here's the thing so ten percent remember goes to administrative fees um campus um and and probably needs to to be able to pay for all those data's back and forth um the rest 90 can be divvied up to any teacher it has to be a teacher it cannot be

122used on any other code no admin no counseling no custodians anything else it has to be a teacher that ninety percent could go to a teach any teacher that receives that rating of our metric so we would create a metric by which that pot of money that was generated for the campus is then distributed amongst others they would have to achieve that same standard on our metric for example we looked at dallas isd's plan for a pre-k teacher to get the master designation they're doing the same thing they take the money they put it in a pot they put them through their metric and for a pre-k teacher to get a master designation they have to get 85 of their t-tess is looked at and then 15 of their beginning of year middle of year

123which is we use the same one at cli circle so it's a very different percentage but they use the same type of thing for star grades it's kind of a 50 50 deal it's 50 observation and 50 student growth so they're trying to mitigate knowing that those are four-year-olds and you know that's their first year so they're using more observation not saying we have to do that but that's one way we could do it so the next step in this and i do think it's still a valuable thing i i want to say that not there there will not be a high rate of teachers who are able to achieve this in year one just because the metrics that the state has put out um five percent for masters uh is tough um and so

124i think we all went into this thinking it would be a more inclusive system and and the ability to get it would be a little more straightforward but i understand start that again and not star based right and and if you ask tea to be clear they will tell you it is not star based but they will also tell you that that one they know will hold up so um so you're gonna see if you went to everybody's websites that's doing this you're going to see they're using star for your wine now i want to be clear we can amend in year two so we can say okay now we've done that we know that works we want to try this state what do you think about that and so bottom line is that we

125would like to submit our plan based on what you see here star data grades three through eoc the ones that have growth use that money to distribute to teachers based on a metric we create with that big committee that we just talked about so everybody will be involved and then just it would be i know i keep calling it salary it's kind of a supplemental pay it's not ever going to be like listed as their salary because it can come and go and so it's a supplemental pay situation it goes with them that is right yes ma'am if yes it's a very fluid situation so each year we'd look at our pot of money and see put it back through the metric but it will not likely be the same amount of money each year

126because like we said it goes with the teacher if they go and it comes to us if they come to us with it absolutely that's a big if as well if the state continues after year five then we would obviously look at it every year we can amend based on what we see happening but i do still think it's worthwhile i do think that our teachers will appreciate at least the chance to do this it does mean that we created that awesome waiver process but if they want to be considered they have to come off that t-test waiver and be observed at least this first year and then once every three years remaining that they want to be on the list and it also means i wanted to be clear that there's no funds coming

127to the district or campus until the year 2022 in september we have to gather data all year this year submit and then wait six months basically for them to come back and say did we make it or not so that's kind of where we stand if you have any questions i know that was a lot we had a very healthy rather long zoom on monday and i got some great questions afterwards there will be some teacher designations that it will be very difficult to to reach this at this time but if we do the metric like i said where we pull the money for the campus like most districts are doing and then distribute it based on a metric that will help more people to have the from opportunity perspective way back performance based yes

128ma'am i did ask the ta rep i was like is this like an opt-in opt-out thing and she's like that's unusual the only thing that would opt them out is if they chose not to be observed so yes that not every teacher got that amount right it's a potential together a presentation for the red days on the calendar because the t-test piece is huge that they know they have to retiring or they know they're going to be moving maybe they don't see the value the anomaly for me is high school yeah because what i was trying to say a minute ago about why did we have to ask them high school is yes ma'am there's only two eocs with growth yes sir 44 000 distributed amongst they're really stopping at grade eight a lot of

129next them if those two teachers though want to earn up to 22 000 each why would you say no right and that criteria would probably just be that based on them and who helped them yeah so so it's gonna look differently per campus almost because three through five and then the middle school actually has the most they do they have a big opportunity misunderstanding but also maybe some angus because the elementary middle school and high school plans will all be very different right so i think we'll find that i think that most teachers will want to go ahead and be observed so that they can be put on the list and let's let's think about that in our metric we will say that that is a requirement even if you're not a star teacher if

130you want to be considered because in all equity there that would be part of our metric for them as well so if you're pre-k we'd still say you need to be a t-test observed teacher to be able to be considered for this pot of money so we're going to submit our amended application this friday and so we wanted to bring it to you tonight and then once we receive word back from my new friend at and thank goodness for theresa mccorkadill at dea and we'll we'll go ahead immediately and start working on some different metrics to present to the committee and let them make suggestions and tweaks and and move forward from there and there will be a time in which board we bring a budget and metrics to you to review so thank you

131i think the data digs that we already do will help the teacher to know if they're on the right track to meet the metric yes ma'am right quarterly reviews of t-tess yes okay thank you so much oh thank you for that report amen so one other question on the national board certification yes sir that would qualify them for what levels and i think we'll have some people that want to do that as well well it goes in the pot but we would yeah yes right right where did you get the five thousand is that um in that recognized level it's basically it's really 5400 oh okay yes we were asked if the national board certification money would go straight to the teacher or into the pot and it would go to the pot but then

132we would put it right back to the teacher it is slated to possibly be reimbursed if you read the language it is a possibility like the 500 if you do certain things yeah um it import unfortunately that would be a responsibility of the teacher to to fill out the proper paperwork and things to get that reimbursement basically contends on do they finish the program and pass a certain test to get reimbursed right unless we build a matrix a metric that our matrix or a metric system that uh included them yes miss crosstalk asked if that knocked teachers who don't teach core out of this system and and the answer is we could build something that included them based on how much contribution they had towards a metric plan that showed student growth if you review

133it if you review the dallas isd plan and the requirements for application for taa it is very similar probably i don't know that for sure but it sounds like about the right time frame smells like sounds like but you could go with that one too any more questions or comments all right if not we're at agenda item number 15 which is an action item it's the consideration and possible action by the board to approve the 2020 2021 university interscholastic league grade 6 through 12 12 course exemption list presided presented by amanda yes sir it's probably better for you to go from the back of your book to find this if you'd like to review it the documents there for your view we do this each year these are the courses that will be exempt from

134the uil standard eligibility rule and include most or include dual credit as well as the other courses listed below which are many advanced courses as well as well most of those are at high school but there is also um algebra 1 8th grade on that list so i'd ask for you to approve that as we normally do okay yes ma'am each year the following will be completely exempt from that rule which is dual credit credit so they can earn a 60 or better 60 yeah it becomes a 60 basically there's a 10 point buffer yes as well as the ones below and that's to encourage them right we want it's it's the oh it's the same as when we waited those courses in the past but the ul exemption you want them to take it

135and they have a little buffer in case they struggle yes right we've we have very few that we have to invoke at all it's very pleasing it gets invoked and we would be at a disadvantage though because every other district yes it's a course list is actually usually much longer right so we we have to do this to have a level playing field yeah it's a very good thank you this is an action item the floor is open for a motion to address the section item as presented by amanda adams i'll make the motion uh jason makes the motion uh kenny seconded all those in favor of the motion is presented please show of hands thank you very much 7-0 that brings us to agenda item number 16 which also is an action item it's

136the consideration and possible action by the board to approve the 2020 2021 appointment of texas teacher evaluation support systems commonly known as t-tess appraisers and calendar and the principal texas principal evaluation and support system appraisers also known as t-pess and amanda will present that for us thank you this is also in your book towards the back for review the first page in that section is the list of appraisers for both t-tests and tpes typically every administrator i do have a few additional in that list that are not currently campus administrators in case we need a second evaluation that's a typical thing to do and then the tps of course is mr truitt and myself and then the two campus principals as they evaluate the assistant principles the calendar is the next section each year we

137put out a detailed calendar for our whole district to see the process and the deadlines for each portion of t-test so that is also included very good are there any questions for amanda concerning this t-tess and t pess if not the floor is open for motion to address agenda item 16 as presented lee crawshaw has made the motion is there a second senator mike gerrick has seconded all those in favor of the motion as presented show of hands please 7-0 all right thank you thank you amanda yes sir it is now 8 45 p.m at this time we will adjourn into a closed executive session pursuant to texas government code chapter 551-071-5511 and 551072 for our guests out there in youtube land um you're going to see us get up and go to the conference

138room so you'll you'll see a blank video but we're going to come back at some point to approve the personnel reports amendments to the superintendent's contract we're going to go over some district calendar reminders a training piece for the board and then uh information about the special called meeting on august 26th so you're welcome to stick around but if not that's what we have left when we return to the meeting thank you what'd you say text messages i'll send it over here with the gavel and stuff same reason oh is it not on okay it's now 9 53 at this time we'll reconvene from closed executive session for possible action relative to the items discussed during the closed executive session mr truitt if you'll do 18a yes tonight board i'm seeking your approval for the

139personnel report as presented motion's been made by lee seconded by holly all those in favor please show of hands thank you very much action item 18 b is consideration and possible action by the board to approve the amendments to the language and the superintendent's contract as we discussed uh with the move of his uh separate substantive evaluation do i have a motion motion has been made by mike garrick saying by john crowder all those in favor please show of hands all right thank you very much that now brings us to our uh closing remarks by mr truitt first i'd like to say thank you for the 18b support my family and i love being a part of the west isd family and team and i greatly appreciate all of you and believing in me and

140our work so thank you all so much on 19a on the district reminders if you'll go to the very back today uh amanda did an awesome job with our new staff um we can't get over how few there are which is such a blessing and a praise she's asking how many do you want to count the para or just the teachers what number do you want to give her i didn't know if you wanted to do the whole we had even some of our new pairs come today for insurance and things so but uh they are on on fire group and we're going to remember this this cohort as difference makers like we have the last few on the calendar reminders if you'll take a look at some things that are coming up again no

141convocation this year [Music] if any of you want to go by campuses and things love to have you just text me and there's a luncheon on the 17th if you want to be a part of that i am going to do visits for i'm giving out service awards since we didn't do that in the spring and each principal has given me a time on that monday if any of you want to come pass out the service awards pins i would love to have you come and so on the 17th so i'll let you know when i'm going to the campuses so you can decide if you want to make it i'd love to have you help me with that um also looking at this memo you can see we've got our meet the teacher nights

142i didn't want you to know there's one change chuck because of the scrimmage with robinson for football has moved his scheduled pickup to wednesday august 19th and only because the churches don't have things yet on those wednesday nights so we thought we could move it back to that night and he changed the time to 6 30 to 8. so that fourth bullet point now is incorrect then of course we've got our first day of school uh coming fast on the 8th our september board meeting again as approved tonight is the 16th on the next item i just wanted to make sure all of you understood my email about how the dallas tasbee event is virtual but all of you but but lee carl shaw need hours so congratulations lee but she's our delegate so she

143has to go as well or get online i guess i should say um i wanted to let y'all know you have two options to get your 11 hours tasby has stuff all the time you don't have to wait until those days unless you want to get online on those days to earn your hours through this virtual event so i didn't want you to think will those be live will they be a live seminar on those days they look live but they're not because even the ones we did this summer they pre-record and then you get on live with the presenter but the video you're watching has been recorded so we can watch him anytime then after the fact not yes um not beforehand so the dates of the of the uh convention um the 30th

144through the second you can't watch them on the 29th for example you can watch them on the schedule the 30th through the second or any time after the second now the problem with that is your hours are announced at the october board meeting so that is october the um um hold on one second i'm sorry i don't have that date memorized that's october the 14th so you have until we post on the 9th to get the hours done and i sent y'all or did y'all get that from sandura do i need to have a rescinded because you've done something since sandra gave me the report did you do it yeah i did something but you sent us an email with the link for this in the dates yes i know larry has this president's hour

145did you end up doing that webinar you told me about i did yeah i did okay you've got that and john you have one random hour for some reason you you three were still zero and i'm not even sure yeah you have a random hour on there so it'll be easy to get but we we have a deadline of october night so you can knock it all out just by using this virtual uh edge gun or you can do the other test movements she's going to sign you up she'll take care of registration but i'm going to ask her to contact each of y'all if you want to log the hours that you take and i'm going to have here because it's not like we'll all do these together so we could do something tomorrow

146whatever just saying to know what we're doing okay yes where do you log the hours you don't sandra does and so she gets those reports or you can turn them into her like lee's given her things to add but if it's in if it's a tasby event it loads it into you because you're in the system thank you because even i'm in there no but she can go in and print out what you did she'll set you just so you all know all of your options i'm going to talk to sandra over the next 48 hours and i'm the pastor to call you to make sure you're all set with what you want to do okay yeah let's just do it that way yeah yeah she'll she'll do all that and we even talked about

147a social because we didn't get to do that with our spouses i still would love to do that so we can pick a date all right then the last thing you've already heard me talk about this uh wednesday august 26th please make sure it's in your on your calendar 6 30 youtube live stream for the special call meeting for the public hearing and possible approval of the 20 20 21 budget and tax rate and that's traditionally a very short agenda because it unless there's questions from the community it's just those items in the go so it will be possible august 26th i may add a few things just put you to sleep and mike that's the one that i won't be here that's it dr sparks all right wonderful the floor is now open for

148a motion to adjourn anybody wanna uh jason makes that emotion taken by mike garrett all those in favor show of hands this meeting is now adjourned [Applause]