001and I'm the co-chair of that of this illustrious group. >> Illustrious group. >> My name is Champion. I teach prek bilingual at Howard. >> Martha Flores. I am one of the Spanish march teachers in first grade at Woodridge and I've been for 20 years. >> Good afternoon y'all. Uh my name is Brandon Kane. I teach at the high school. I'm 10th grade world history and 11th grade US history. >> Good afternoon everybody as well. My name is Land Mona. I'm a senior over here at high school and I'm here 3 years ago. So unfortunately I did not study at the middle school, junior school. So I immediately become a high schooler. >> I'm Tim Blazy. Um I'm a parent. I got two kiddos. Uh one just started prek at Howard. The other one is in
002third grade Spanish immersion at Cambridge. >> I'm Kristen. I'm the director of testing counseling for Heights. This is my 19th year. have a daughter that's a sixth grade at the junior school. >> I'm Brian Grer. I'm the director of technology for the district and I think this is my 13th year on this committee. We've been here five years. >> Yeah, that's about right. >> Hi, I'm Ya Palasios, not a partic officially of the committee um but here today for Dr. Walker who is not in town and so I'll be going over her presentation today. 10th year in the district. I have one son at the junior school student team with John Shepard in eighth grade and so I'm very excited about that and one sister at Cambridge who's a librarian. So yeah, that's my family.
003>> She's a rock star, right? The librarian. >> Yes. >> Hey, welcome. We had one ethnic person join. Tell us who you are and where your kids are. >> Okay. Um my name is De Patel. This is my second year. And um by the way, I really appreciate the time change. Um, my son is a senior this year and my daughter is in the seventh grade junior school. >> Can't believe she's in seventh grade already. >> Wow. >> Well, uh, welcome. I'm glad you guys all got to know each other. Um, uh, you got to tell everybody where you're from originally, what your original home country is. >> Ukraine. Ukraine. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And so, those of you that arrived a little early, I had Thank you so much for sending your pictures in
004and your fun fact. It had it scrolling and Ivon had his picture of um he he sent me like four pictures and so I picked a couple of them. One with your mom hugging you >> uh in your ROC uniform and then one of you standing in front of something with your the Ukrainian flag. Yes. >> Yeah. So, uh yeah, he's he's a great student ambassador for us and goes to anything we ask him to do, he does. >> So, I appreciate you being here. >> Um I think I covered that. Um uh we did the welcome. I'm going to give a just a brief overview of what this group is. You some of you have been around for a while. Some of you are new. Uh even if you've been around for a while,
005you might still wonder what is it we do again? I forget. Um so I'll do that. I do want to put out a call to anybody in this room who's interested in serving in a subcommittee to set next year's calendar. It's interesting. Easter's early butts up against spring break. There going to be a lot of controversy. Uh, Memorial Day is a week later. It's really I was just looking at it today. Anyway, so what but what I do is I get I ask the PTO presidents to give me one person from each campus, each PTO PTO exec uh to come. It's really important to have that parent perspective. So I have them come on that day. By the way, I haven't told the PTO presidents yet. I'm going to email them after the the meeting
006on Friday to give me a person and then uh I make sure I have uh admin from junior school or from secondary and elementary. Then anybody from this group who wants to be there to shoot. Now that's like the rolling up the sleeves getting the draft ready. We ultimately bring it back to this group for you guys to bless. But that's the group that's kind of like making all those kind of look giving us a draft. So that's what that's for. I know it's super early, but we got to get the ball rolling. So, think about that. I'll send out an email and you guys can let me know. Uh, now we I will do a presentation on something called District of Innovation, which I'll explain when I get there. That's the first agenda item.
007Next, we're going to hear from Brian about him and Dr. Walker's work on clarifying technology expectations for the classroom. It's very important. We've tried to get that word out, but we want to make sure that you all are on the same page. Uh then Yadita will lead the community based accountability conversation, the one that Dr. Walker usually does, data and some funding. And so that's kind of that part and then I will do just a brief update of some laws that passed in the last session that I think as that you all might want to be aware of like teachers, parents, students to a certain degree. There's a lot of stuff that passed but maybe not a lot of stuff that you care about necessarily. Um so I'll cover that. Uh now one of the
008the reasons the purposes of this group is that a lot of stuff we give you information to kind of help explain thinking about things that we do and it's really important for you and whatever role you're in whether you're a teacher or a parent to just find ways to share that with others. And so like if you're at a volleyball game or at a band concert or at a little league game and something comes up, find the urge to say, you know what, you know what I learned? And spread the information because you know information goes a lot of different ways, but in our district, you know, that that persontoperson community information is really the best I feel like. And so that I want to encourage everybody to keep sharing whatever you learn here, share
009it. Now this group is called the district education advisory council. and it is advisory in nature. Uh but essentially it it serves the purpose of two statutoily required groups. For a long time we had two separate groups. The school health advisory council that talked about things like fitness and PE and health and nutrition and that kind of stuff. Those of you that were on this group last year remember we talked about snacks. That's kind of one of the things that they talk about. Snacks that are sold at elementary and those kinds. uh that's a group that we have to have. Then there's another group called the district sitebased uh decision-making team and that's a group that just talks about education things in general professional development of technology anything that deals with student learning and teachers
010teaching and so all of the campuses they have a campus sitebased team and they have parents on the teachers and high school generally has students on that as well. What we've done with this group is you've combined the two and so the things we talk about or one or the other sometimes uh both if you can imagine that. So that's kind of what we do. Um I'll often run stuff by you before I take it to the board and I'll say tell me what you think and then I'll rework it or whatever and then I'll tell the board and the board will often say well what did the EAC say? Like with calendar they always ask about that. Did they really go for this? And so that you guys serve a valuable uh function in
011that role. Um okay. So I did that already. I said that I'll send an email out so you guys don't have to feel pressured to sign up right now. Okay. So now here's the fun. I need to present to you all some things. And so sit and listen. Take notes if you have if you feel like it. But at the end, I I do need a formal vote because this is a loss. I'll explain it, but I need to be able to say that this group is recommending X, Y, or Z because the board makes the ultimate decision. And so, I take it to the board. And so, listen, ask questions, but at the end, I'll be asking for you to you guys tell me what you think. Yay or nay. Uh, so now I
012want to click or I need you to click on that, right? I don't clip. There you go. Look at that. Seamless. I'm going to I got to stand up. Uh now, uh several years ago, the legislature passed a law that allowed districts to pursue something called a designation called district of innovation. And the purpose of the legislation at that time was in response to early districts saying, "Hey man, you guys keep passing laws where they're hamstringing us. Um, we need a way to get out of some laws so we can be innovating." That's why it's called district innovation. And so it passed in about I want to say maybe like the first year at least the second year for sure that it was available. We jumped on because there are some various things that we
013thought it would be helpful. One small example is uh the start times like when we start in August. The law literally says you can't start till like that last Monday in August which would push us you know cuz if you back it all up it goes beyond Memorial Day. And so we're like hey we can exempt ourselves from that law start a little earlier and end a little earlier. That kind of this allows us to do that. So for years we've had what's called a district of innovation plan and that the law requires that we have a community group that helps us to develop the plan and recommends things and it goes to the board and the board ultimately says yes we we want to do this and then we have to post it on
014the public on the website and that kind of thing tell TEA that we did it and that kind of stuff. Uh there's a lot of districts in the uh state that do this. Now, now I will say that I've heard the commissioner himself kind of complain that most folks use the district of innovation distinction simply to be exempt from various laws that they want don't want to follow for good reasons, but they don't want to follow them. And it's not used very much for innovation, right? which I don't guilty is charged. If you if if the legislature would quit passing laws that hamstring us about things, we would quit just trying to do that. And but anyway, but it's there and so we take advantage of it. Now, what I'm going to present to you
015all and ask for your consideration to recommend to the trustees are three exemptions from three different laws. I'm going to go I'm going to go over them in a little bit depth one more time, but I want to kind of lay out the the the line. This I'm going to explain this. This is a training that actually passed in a previous legislative session. I'll explain why we're talking about it so late that wouldn't require 600 of our employees to do an 8-hour training. Uh, and there's no funding for it. And I'm looking at the teachers and I'm like, I'm not sure they would really enjoy doing a whole another training. So, but I'll explain why we think it's a good idea for us to be exempt from that. The next one is a law that
016just passed in the legislative session that ended in June and that is to redo our grievance process. Now, uh I'm happy to say nobody in this room I is familiar with the grievance process. I would know because I deal with that. >> Um but and it it's not common that people file grievances in our district, but sometimes they do. And though it is important that people have that avenue to do that, a formal avenue to complain about something so they can get formal redress going all the way from level one to level three with the trustees. That's important. Our argument is that our process works fine for us now. We don't feel like changing it. And the changes they're suggesting we feel like are too homeless. And I'll explain that. The last exemption, there's not
017four. I I just uh didn't fix that. The last exemption is, and uh all you high school parents, I want you to listen to this and junior school upcoming. Uh uh they passed a law saying that the commissioner needs to come up with a universal way to wait extra points for AP uh and IB classes. We don't offer IB, but we offer AP and dual credit classes. Now, that means they would dictate to every district. Uh it doesn't apply to charter schools. The charter schools can do whatever they want, oddly enough, but it applies to all of the public schools. And our sense is just two years ago, we went through a big policy change and we feel like we don't want to change that again. And so that's why we want to be exempt
018from this new thing coming down. So let me explain a little bit. So here's the first one. Now, this is from the 88th legislative session. uh a law was passed that said um everybody who interacts with kids which is basically everybody like in our account in the next slide it tells you we counted out how many people that would be should go through this training now at the time it passed and Kristen who works over counselors we read it we're like what are they what specific training are they talking about are they talking about this one that we know about that's 8 hours really surely is that what they're talking about well the way it works sometimes when a law is passed past. It takes a year or two for administrative rules to be written
019so that we're crystal clear about what the laws require. So, we looked and it wasn't clear to us. We're like, we're going to wait till the the rules come out. Well, guess what? It wasn't until January of 2024, last fall, that the final rules were published. Um, and we got to read them and we discovered that it really is saying everybody has to do an 8-hour training. everybody. And so we did more research and there's only one training that complies with that law. It's a very specialized training. I've done it. Uh it's not a bad training. It's a little overkill, I think. But I'll tell you that in a minute. Now, it's actually it's 6.5 hours of in-person training, but it's 8 hours when you count like the whole day. That's why I say it's
020an 8 hour training. And the company that does the training, they limit it to only 30 people at a time. So, our first thought was, well, let's get all the high school teachers in one room and let's knock it out. Well, they don't let you do that, right? Believe me, we looked at every angle on this to try to figure out how we could do this before coming to you. So, what this would mean if we if we did this, we'd have to have 677 people trained in this 8 hour training because it's a limit of 30, we'd have to have 22 different trainings. Um, now the law does say that you don't have to do them all at one time, but they do say you have to do a quarter at a time. So,
021even a quarter at a time would be 170 people in one given year. And that would be six different sessions. And depending on I mean I will to be honest I could find it for free some places because it's grant funed some places but other places it's not. And some places you have they'll give you the training for free but you have to buy the book. And so I did a rough estimate that in general every session would be about $3,000. So given the financial situation we're in, which I think everybody has heard about adnauseium, we're like, I don't know if this is a good uh thing for us. Now, let me tell you why it's also another reason why it's not a good thing for us. Now, the first is we've offered this to
022our staff before. Back in 2022, our then nurse at the junior school went and got trained to be a person who does this. She was all excited. She said, "Hey, Frank, I want to offer these to folks. I'll do it on Saturdays." So, I create this big list and I send it out to all the staff and I said, "Hey, Dy at the junior school is one, you know, if you're interested, come do it." And at that time, she had 53 staff members volunteer to go to a variety of Saturday sessions, which is nice. It's a nice number. Uh, and if you were interested in that level of depth, then you could go, but it wasn't mandatory. Then in the next school year or sorry that was 2020 that was 5 years ago. Then in
023the 2022 23 school year the service center had a grant to offer this training for free to anybody who wanted to go. So at that time before the budget crunch we could still afford substitutes. I sent out a email to all the staff and I said, "Hey, this is" and you know, and I went I think I went to the first one like I wanted to make sure I I went before I told everybody about it because I wanted to know it was good training. And so I went and I sent it out to all the staff and I says, "Look, this is during the school day. If you want to go, we'll get a sub for you." And we had three people attend. That's fine. I mean, but it's voluntary, right? Not everybody has
024to go. And so my point is that we've offered this and our staff is they voted with their feet. This is if they thought it was something important that they really need they would go and some have and some haven't. So that's the past. Now what the training requires in the statute right and this is a lot of words but I I try to bold some things in terms of the content right substance use impact on mental health strategies to prevent harm or violence the self and others uh awareness of adverse childhood experiences grief and trauma and risk factors right those are big categories a lot of words but those are the general content it goes to another page. Protective factors for that kind of stuff. And then experiential activities while you're learning. That's really
025a pedagogical thing. It's not a content thing. Um and then likewise risk factors for early identification of students who might struggle with those challenges. So what you would imagine a mental health first aid course would have. And there's more uh ways to support students when they have those concerns and ways to engage with parents or guardians. So interesting content. Oh, there's more. School-based resources and how to how to how to if somebody if a family is in need, how to kind of give them the community resources they need to do that. Sounds like something that our counselors are expert in, right? uh and then strategies to promote general mental health. So that that's a kind of I tried to make it a little bit more manageable. So essentially it's like 10 things that this 8
026hour training is requiring. Well, guess what? Here's all the things that we already do prior to this vlog. Um we do annual training all the staff. I mean Amen. It's it's a lot. It's like over eight hours of and I know it's a pain. There's online trainings that we all have to do by September 1st maybe. >> Yes. >> Right. I do them too, right? And I boy, I know about bloodborne pathogens. I know about suicidal stuff. I know about drug abuse. I know about bullying. They're the same courses we do all the time. And so we do a lot of stuff in those key areas already. So we feel like this other thing is kind of redundant. And I'll show you another thing in a minute about that. We've got great counseling staff uh
027at our different campuses who are expert in this field in these areas and our teachers work very closely with the counselors. So if they identify anything that's needed, they work with the counselors and the counselors use their expertise to go forward. We don't necessarily need all of our teachers to have the same level of expertise that our counselors do. Seems like a little bit like overkill. We also have wellness counselors at the secondary at and not a lot of counselors have those uh campuses have those in other places. We have a district wellness coordinator funded by the foundation. We have these regular student intervention team meetings on every campus. Uh there's a time where administrators and counselors get together. Sometimes teachers come and they talk about students who are in need whether that's academic or
028social and emotional. We do that already. Uh we have weekly sobriety groups at the secondary level for students who are struggling with substance use. Uh we have a suicide prevention curriculum that we use with fourth graders in the spring, fifth graders in the fall or fifth graders, something like that. >> Six and up, sorry. Six and up. Uh once a year, I think Chris knows more about that. In elementary, we have morning meetings every day where the kid the teachers get together and they get a sense of building community and they get a sense of whether students are struggling or not, right? You get you know how they're doing by those meetings and at the secondary we do weekly advisory meetings. So my point is that we feel like as a district we do a
029ton already to have to kind of be a safety net for these students who are in need. That is really the larger purpose of this required training. Right? So that's kind of the argument we're making. Now, if that wasn't enough, this is a list of all the online trainings that our staff is required to do. It's a lot. If you add them all up, I forgot. It's like 8 hours, 6 hours, I forget something like that. But look at how many of them overlap with this other required training. So our general sense is that the argument is that it it just feels redundant. Uh not to mention that uh going into last year's budget cuts, we made a big point. Uh Dr. Basher went around talking to all the teachers about how like this is
030going to be hard for us and it's I'm looking at the teachers. It's hard this year. You know, like we made cuts last year. It was hard in the abstract, but now we're here and we have fewer teaching assistants. We have fewer interventionists. We have uh well, thanks to the foundation, classes are not as big as they could be, but we're feeling it. And so our sense is that we have to kind of keep our culture intact that another training like this adding on will not help that would actually hurt that. So that's kind of our big point. And the other thing is we just don't have the money to support that, which you all know based on the cuts. uh I already made this point is that we substantially cover all that stuff already
031in our online trainings and this is the I think it's the most important point is that we have multiple layers of supports for students with mental health needs uh already and we feel like it's redundant and the last point here is that uh all of our counselors except for one new that came in have already been through this training so like we have the expertise in the place where we need it which is our counselors and So that's why we feel like that the exemption for this particular law makes sense. Now, I have two more laws to cover, but I'm going to pause. There's any questions about this particular >> I got Yeah, I got two. >> Okay. >> The first one, so if I'm understanding it correctly from that session breakdown that you did,
032do we even have the capability of finding 30 substitutes or teacher aids to even cover? because you're going to be doing you're gonna have to find 30 individual staffs to cover. >> Yeah. I wasn't even thinking about doing it during the school day, but that's an added cost. I was thinking about like the summer before school starts or something like that >> or you know having Saturdays to do that. >> So because that would be an additional on top of the 30,000 session is >> if it's during this Okay. >> So that that >> good questions that puts that in perspective. The second one is from the teachers perspectives. I have young kids. Hopefully I don't ever have to deal with that. Um, but I guess from a parent perspective to the teachers, y'all are
033with all that stuff going on to because it's going to start in the classroom and it's not if it's not identified in the classroom, it's never going to get to that second layer which seems like is more than enough. So from that first level directly to the teacher side of things, the training that's in, and this is pure curiosity, the training that y'all are in already helps identify what the red flags are to be able to get that child from the classroom to that second tier. Is that >> Yeah, you and we might actually do it in in grade spans, right? So we got high school teachers nodding and we've got elementary teachers. Can we go backwards? So, elementary folks, give us a sense, give Tim the sense of like the processes you use to
034identify students in need and that kind of thing. >> So, we have an RTI response to intervention process where we it's all data documented, but you track your kids on their emotional well-being. Essentially, you know, if there's ever something they're saying that seems like a red flag, you note it. That goes directly to the counselor. So, all of that data is already there. Um, system already in place for that. And those summer trainings help notify us of like what you would be looking for. >> And really a lot of it is just lived experience that if you have a question, you have counselor right on campus that you can ask. >> And then uh middle school, anything to add to that? >> We do um twice a month team meetings where like sixth grade teachers
035are together, seventh grade teachers are together, and eighth grade teachers are together. So I can come in and say, "Hey, I have Johnny and these are the things that we that I'm seeing." And then other teachers will be like, "Oh yeah." Or like, "No, that's not in my class." uh that started when Dr. Beth came around. Um it's been very helpful because then those then go to the SIT and teachers can refer students to sit through um whether it's academic or social emotional wellbeing. Um so we have we fill out a form. So I mean the trainings and stuff like that through I just feel like being a teacher in the 21st century now like you mental health awareness is so big and um you've probably gone through an in-depth training it but yeah the
036training that we do there also helps >> and then brain damaging that the high school >> and James filling if I'm missing the sits are key for us. Yes, >> that's going to be essential just like you guys junior school where we really can get a collaboration of teachers, several eyes on those standards and and that's where we we really thrive. And then we're thankful for our wellness counselors. They do such great work. Stephanie used cat really help support us when our um when our understanding of the situation uh reaches its limit or if there's more that needs to be done. We've got highly trained individuals who have such big hearts and that's for us in high school. Those are great questions. Any other questions about this uh request to be exempt from this law
037before I move to the next one? >> I I just want to say that the morning meetings for us in the elementary are also a key part. >> Oh yeah. >> Because when you make that like it's a time for us to make connections with our kids with our kids and a lot of questions come out and that's when we see flags that then we could talk to the counselor and say hey so and so is talking about this and and they feel comfortable. So it's a safe spot for them to talk to us and to the other friends. So morning meetings are a big part that I think that helps you. >> Yeah, we should start doing that in the office. I feel like I could use that. Anyway, thank you Martin for that.
038Okay, let's go to the second law that I'm requesting an exemption from. Uh oh, I just jumped into it. So there's no there's no introductions left. Okay. Uh this is about the Senate Bill 12's. It's a massive law. It's got a bunch of stuff in it and but one part of it, part 19 I think it's called. I wrote it down here one section 19. It's about changing your grievance process. So I thought I might start by just telling you what are our processes now and that stuff on the left. Now it's not a onetoone comparison. So just kind of help me focus on this part. Now uh we have technically there are three different policies but it's the same process. There's a grievance policy for parents and that's FNG local. There's a grievance policy
039for employees. That's DG B. I don't know. I don't have I don't get as many of those as as the parent one, but it's D in the D series. And then there's one for just general community folks. And I think that's that the other one's the D series. That's a G. Anyway, but they're all very similar. They're just for different audiences. Now, what happens is if somebody wants to uh file a formal grievance, they get the forms and we and we give them the whole packet. So, we give them level one, level two, level three, we give them a copy of the policy. There you go. They got it all. And the rule says or the way the policy writes right now is that well, the first thing is you should file a formal grievance
040within 15 days of the thing happening. Uh that's just kind of common sense because like if you file something that happened a long time ago, it's going to be impossible to invest. It's really hard to investigate by the way. I've I've been there. It's just hard the farther you go. So our general sense is like if you have an issue, you try to work it through the administrators, you go up the ladder. Well, generally you within 2 weeks you're done and you're ready to say, "No, I think I need to do something formal." So the 15-day thing that's important for us. Now, I'm going to for this one, I am going to go across. The new law is suggesting that you can file a grievance within 60 days of something happening. Uh I'm not that
041good at math, but is that how many months is that? 2 months. >> That's a long time, right? That's a really long time. And just from the person who investigates this and deals with these like can you imagine the junior school asking kids you know hey you know you know something happened and I have to figure out what happened at lunch yesterday much less 60 days. It's just I think so my the larger theme here is that these time frames are just they're not practical. That's my larger point. My point, my argument is that our time frames are much more practical. They've worked. They're not too long. They're not too short. Uh they're not ownorous on the parents. If they have a complaint to do it, it does take a while. Think about it. I'll
042walk you through it. Let's say something happened and they, you know, filed uh a formal complaint, they turned it in the the start, the clock starts ticking, right? event. Our policy says that we have 10 days from the time that they turn it in to uh meet with them. Means you guys didn't say all right help me understand what your you know what your issue is because the form you know you can only put so much in the form. So you meet with them, you ask all kinds of questions. And so you have 10 days to do that essentially like two uh it's uh I think it's it's school business days. It's not not like calendar days. Then once I meet with you or the principal meets with you at level one, we have the
043law the policy says 10 days to give them a decision. Can't wait 3 weeks. You can't wait four weeks. Uh now turning it around in 5 days is kind of quick cuz you think about sometimes you have to go investigate. You have got to talk to people. People are busy. It just takes time to do that. So you have 10 days to to give them a written response. Say this is my decision in writing. Okay. So then if they get it then they have 10 days to say you know what I still don't buy it. I want to appeal. So then they have 10 days to appeal to the next level. Now that makes sense too. I think you'll hope is that if I sit on a level one for 30 days or 60 days,
044it's the same thing. It takes longer to go back and investigate something that happened even farther ago. But then it all the 10 days starts over again. Then there's 10 days. I'm usually level two in our in our neck of the woods. 10 days to say, "Okay, great. I want to meet with you to learn more about what your complaint is." And then after I meet with you, now I don't have to take 10 days. I can do it in two days but but then once I meet with you I have 10 days to give you a written response. So you know in writing this is my decision then if you get that Frank sorry I got to take it to the board. That's level three. That's how we do it. So then you they
045have 10 days by the time they get that to say oh I want to appeal it to the board. Now it kind of slows down a little bit because uh open meetings act require that the boards can't just like meet whenever they want, right? So you have like regularly scheduled meetings, then you have to call the meeting in 3 days, that kind of stuff. And so what the board has to do then is once there's an appeal, they have to take it up at their next regular board meeting. So that might take a little longer if you like, especially if you filed it right after the last board meeting because those are generally a part. But at that point then they have the right to sit in front of the whole board and they talk
046about their complaint. The board listens to them and our policy says that that the level three decision can either be issued any time before the next board meeting or not at all. That's kind of like a pocket veto you guys learned in in right like that a president could uh not sign a law right but just by not signing it and it dies right pocket veto that so that's kind of what that means as well but our board generally in my experience in the few grievances that have gone to the board they always write a written response to the to the parent uh we don't have many of them but that's how so the way I've explained it I hope it seems pretty reasonable the timelines are not too too long, but they're also not
047too fast. They enable people a reasonable time to investigate and take seriously the complaints. I just feel like uh stretching it to 60 days is unreasonable. This other thing in the law that says that you can insert another level between one and two, so I 1B I guess to where another person like that would be like I did level two like no, I want you to hear it now. So you go there before the board. It just kind of makes it longer. Um, this one h it's fine if the board wants to designate three trustees to be a committee to hear it, but I feel like in our community, our board likes the parents to know that they're all going to listen to it and they don't, not just some of them. Uh this one
048now I don't quite understand how the timeline works but it says something like you have to have a hearing before the board within 60 days after which the previous decision was made in the decision I don't quite get it but it's just like I let's just keep it the way it is cuz it's clean. Um, and then this one I think is a big deal. Not it is to people involved in it. That is this says that you can keep adding claims to your complaint all the way through. Now, that just doesn't make sense cuz the way it is now, our policy says if I'm complaining about something that Brian did on September the 3rd, I'm working that one complaint and I'm digging deep and I'm looking at it. I'm taking all my 10 days.
049if I did all that and all of a sudden they're like, "Oh yeah, here's another thing he did. Wait a second. Why didn't you tell me that at the beginning? Now I have to go back and do that other one." Like that's just not um it's just uh it's impractical. But the way this thing works is people can keep adding complaints to their thing all the way as it goes, even all the way to the to the end. That we just don't feel like that's practical. So I gave the hard sale. And any what questions do you have about this law? >> Is our current policy is just an whites thing or was that originate somewhere else? >> Uh our current policy mirrors what a lot of other people do as well. Uh it's boilerplate
050uh Texas Association School Board. Yeah. Uh, I think there's one thing we changed in it for clarity, which was something like it just seemed ambiguous about turning in stuff, but other than that, it's all the timelines and stuff are the same as everybody else has been doing. Now, unless everybody goes with this law, then it's going to kind of everybody's going to go out of whack. >> Other questions about this? >> Is there a reason why they came up with this law? Districts already have something. >> I will be very generous in answering that question. Senate Bill 12 is uh has two uh names that the politicians are calling it. I'm going to tell you where this comes from. They call it the parent bill of rights. And so the legislators who craft this have
051said that parents deserve the right to do this and that that schools are locking them out of the complaint process that they're getting complaints from parents about the grievance process that it's not working for them. That's what the legislators have said. And so they said we're opening it up a bit because we feel like parents want it to be like this will work greater for parents. Now I don't know who they're hearing from. Now I will say like if you don't get your way you often don't like the process you know what I mean but the issue is not the process the issue is just like like seven people disagreed with you right and I think that's the larger thing and that's my experience is that sometimes you just don't you don't you don't win
052and you feel like you blame it on the process but yeah that that's parent build right that's what does good question yeah >> um so I'm just curious on the dates of if the incident or something happens with your child and they don't let the parent know for a while or the parents not you know informed about it. >> So does the 15 days start when the parent is notified or when the incident actually happened? >> No, it's when you know. >> When you know. >> Yeah. So our policy says when you know or should have known. Okay. >> Yeah. Not like when it happened. Yeah. >> Good question. Any other questions about this before I go to the last law? Right. This has been a fun legislative session. They do all this stuff. This
053is like nonstop. All right. Uh here's the last law. And this is I mean in our community like GPA is something. Uh this is what the law says. I took a snapshot of it. that the commissioner shall develop a standard method of computing GPA for additional weight for AP classes and dual credit classes. Seems simple enough, right? Everybody should be treated the same, right? All across the state of Texas except charter schools. They don't have to I mean literally it's not in this law. They don't have to follow this law. Um now I think some of you were very plugged into what we did, right? We did a lot. I mean 40 like uh we counted them up. It was like 40 meetings. Board meetings, not just regular meetings, board meetings, special call, special call,
054special call because we worked through um class rank and our decision to change the way we do GPA generally. And boy, that was a lot of work. And we feel like um in a community that's as engaged about high performance as we are to go through that gauntlet and land in a place where we felt like a lot of people like yeah we we landed in a good place like we don't want to get rid of that. That took a lot of work and we feel like we had a great consensus with our community. And so that's that's really that's our argument. It's like we did this already. Please let us keep doing this. >> Any questions about that law? >> How is it ranked against young kids. So, don't don't get mad at me.
055Um, how is it? I'm trying to remember when I went to school because I did a bunch of dual credit. I don't remember how dual credited AP is. It's it's ranked just as any other grade currently out >> and they get extra points to acknowledge the extra challenge. Yeah. So, like Yeah. So, if I'm not an like let's say if I'm in English three and it's just English 3, the grade I get is the grade I get. But if I'm in AP English 3, which is uh language and composition, I get a little bit of a multiplier added to top of my grade. >> Yeah. >> So if you take a bunch of dual credit and AP courses, chances are you may be able to rise slightly higher on a GPA than somebody that was
056just taking. >> What's the chance that they say no, you have to do all of this when we appeal? Well, the way the legislation works now with District of Innovation, there's no approving it. Our board just has to say it and it it is so. >> Okay. So, I mean it doesn't go to the state for approval. It just >> No, we just goes to the state to report like they they keep track on the website. It says these are all the districts that have an innovation thing. They got to click and it takes them to our plan. So, it's like transparent. Everybody knows who's getting exempt from which laws, but there's no mechanism for saying no. Now, I will say just so you know, there is a list of prohibitions. And so, in commissioner's
057rules, it says these laws you cannot get exemption from. And so, if they had passed this law, for example, and they said you cannot get use a DI exemption from this, then we wouldn't be able to. But this law and the Senate Bill 12 did not have that. Some dolls do say that. They say or they take them away. Like for example, in the discipline law, there's a law for a long time that said you have to designate one person on your campus to be called the campus behavior coordinator. We exempted ourselves from that law cuz we thought it didn't make sense because all of our APs deal with discipline and it's too confusing for parents to say that person's in charge of discipline when really they're all three. So, we've been exempt from that
058since that law first passed. But guess what? In House Bill 6, they said no more DI uh DOI exemptions from naming a campus behavior coordinator. So, now I have to say the principal is the campus behavior coordinator. So, I we'll see if that confuses people or not. But, but they can they can take away programs like that or exemptions. >> Is there a limit on how many exemptions you can go after? It just depends on the laws. Uh which laws you think make sense. Yeah. I don't I mean I don't go nuts. Uh I just like if something doesn't make sense to us and it feel like it's going to be ownorous on the staff, that's where we go after it. Good. Any questions? Okay. Now, so now it comes. This is where I have
059to ask you what you think. So there's no more question. No other questions. Okay. So I think I Oh, by the way, the the timeline this is technically an amendment, right? So, a DOI plan is good for 5 years. Every 5 years, you have to renew it. We renewed ours a couple of years ago. I forget where we are in the 5year cycle, but you can amend it. And when you amend it, it's a it's a lot easier. Uh, so I have to report to the board that we're going to amend it and then post it for a little while and then we're done. And then it's we just report it to the state that we're done. Now, goes to I have to ask. So, I need a uh so I need a motion, then
060I need a second, then I need to see if anybody there's any more conversation about it, and then I need to have like a a show me show me your hands thing. Um, and so, do I have a motion to recommend that the board approve this DOI plan amendment to do those three things? >> So, moved. >> Who said that? >> All right. So, Brooke, you going to mark that? Brooke moved it. Do I have a second? All right. So, the high school teachers, they'll give it to Braden. Braden seconded it. Is there any more discussion about this before we take a vote? All right. So, all in favor of recommending to the board that we pursue these three exemptions, uh, raise your hand and say, "I." >> I. >> All right. Anybody opposed? All
061right. So, it's unanimous. Everybody who has a vote uh that goes a long time. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. >> I feel like new bathroom. >> Thank you all for helping keep our culture kind of a little bit uh maintaining. What's next? So, I got Okay, we got to jump out of this and I think we're going to update you about technology, right? All right, Brian. >> I don't know if I can follow that. Wouldn't that fun to stand up and warm up? Uh so for those of you that might not know, I also uh kind of sit over a a sub our district technology committee which is really a a subcommittee of this committee. Um and we meet about four times, four or five times a year as well. uh a
062number of things that I'm going to I'm going to show you some work we've done since our last meeting and especially over the summer um to address some items that that we've been kind of focusing on uh over the last year or so. Uh I want to start off just with with um our statement about technology in the district. We have always this has always kind of been our northstar of of how technology is used in the district, right? We we expect and and and really strive for active use of technology by our students. So they're they're debating things. They're not just sitting here and you know you know mindlessly doing wrote you know wrote uh apps and things like that. Uh and this community building as well. This has been around like even long
063before I got here. Um, so we grounded our work in a little bit of this, a little bit of our technology beliefs, uh, which I I don't think I have a slide on our technology beliefs, but we sat down as a technology committee two years ago, two or three years ago, and really work through uh, what we believe about technology in the district and and um, you know, how we think it should look. Uh we also spent a bit of time looking at some February feedback data we got. So this is just a uh one of the questions that was put out to parents uh asking parents whether or not they felt that um the use of technology in the classroom was was appropriate for their child. And what we saw there's a lot of
064green, there's a lot of positive there, but there's also in our opinion, you know, a lot of kind of, you know, yellow and orange and red there. And we've seen that increase over the past couple of years. So, we had a little discussion about why that might be. We last year then asked an additional question to our to our parents. What jumps out to you on this one? Because this is where really kind of where our conversation around these two things landed, right? From a parent perspective, how much time? >> I don't know how it's >> right. So in and in the slide before generally positive a lot of inappropriate or you know not so positive. Then the very next question was I'm not really sure what's going on in the classroom. And we kind
065of had a hard time, you know, uh um balancing those two and we realized, you know, this is a problem for us. If we do go back to our technology beliefs, I have a slide about that now I think about it. >> How about that? Part of our beliefs, our beliefs are really broken into four different buckets. And one of those big buckets deals with communication and and believing that um transparent and ongoing communication about what's going on in the class. Kind of that homeschool connection. Um that that's just going to be a benefit for for everyone. It's going to be a benefit for families. It's going to be a benefit for teachers. It's going to be, you know, most importantly, a benefit for for our students. And we really felt that uh in order
066to address all that purple and hopefully the slide before that that we really wanted to start um one improving our communication with with with families with what's going on. So we did a number of things over the course of the summer and since last school year. Uh I'm going to start just with um we have explicitly said you know what our expectations for student technology are in the district. We've always kind of talked about it. This is now written down. It's in our technology handbook. It's been, you know, talked about with every teacher in the district at the start of the year this year. Uh but and we talk about, you know, when it should and when it should not be used. U so, you know, we've talked about, hey, if there's indoor recess, you
067know, kids are not on iPads. You know, that's not, you know, that's a time for them to socialize with one another and and, you know, do what kids need to do. uh during free time, you know, if there's, you know, it should be like downtime in class or they finish their work. That's not a time for technology. Uh as a reward, you know, if you finish their work early, you know, well, I want to get on my iPad and, you know, play play whatever game. We we have clearly stated that that's not time for it as well. Um, as far as uh when they're on devices, we expect that they're, you know, being supervised. And we have tools um all across all K through through 12. We have tools that uh we've provided to teachers
068to help help monitor that. Um, and then personal devices. I think some of that Yeah, personal devices. So, phones, you you guys all know the new personal um you know, cell phone policies essentially uh during class time. Uh phones, smartwatches, personal laptops, those aren't allowed uh during class time across any of our campuses as well. Uh in addition to that, we wanted to talk a little bit more about um what technology use uh looks like in the classroom. and we worked over the course of a year to develop what's called our technology integration and expectations matrix. Uh this came out of our beliefs as well and one of our commitments to provide teachers with a tool to reflect on their practice. Uh and it it does it does so much more. So I'm not going
069to get too deep into this tool, but this has been uh reviewed with teachers at the start of the year. I'm going to talk more about it uh with teachers during Jimmy and I do a what we call it a road show. we go out and meet every teacher uh or every teacher uh group, you know, department or grade level uh sometime in early September. But this is essentially a matrix that can be used by um administrators like on their walk through. This this column, this white column there on the left talks about, you know, what should administrators be looking for in the classroom. those three middle columns that are kind of colorful. We talk about um you know developing technology in your classroom. You know, here's kind of like what a a uh developing
070level looks like. Here's what a proficient level looks like. Here's what a distinguished level looks like. So, we kind of give teachers some idea on what uh good technology use looks like. And then on the far right column there are reflection questions uh for teachers to use and consider not only during the planning process but after the lesson is over uh as well as during the PLC's. Um so from just a simple reflection tool um to to something like this in a one pager I think uh you know kudos to the tech committee for you know helping uh put this together because I think it's a a valuable tool for for um our staff administrators and teachers alike. Uh the next thing we worked on and this touches more on the the communication piece um
071is uh our high quality high quality instructional materials matrix. So um this came out of a discussion on like screen time you know how much time are my children on you know devices in the classroom. Um the direction we took with that was let's make this a communication tool and talk about not only that but what they're doing on technology uh as well as you know just the different resources they're they're using. Um so we have one of these for each grade level from kindergarten through fifth grade. And then as we get into the secondary level, it's more of a um kind of a general, you know, general statement about how technology is being used. Uh just because there's so many different types of courses and courses like computer science have a you know much
072different need than you know an art one class. Um but for the elementary level specifically, it breaks down um here on the on the left our major uh academic uh subjects and language arts, math, science. Uh and then also talks about intervention, morning meetings, and research skills. Down here at the bottom, it also gives uh parents an idea of how long is a math block. Uh if you heard, you know, your child was on a device for 20 minutes, well, if you think the math block is only 40 minutes long, oh my gosh, they're half the time on it. So, we wanted to communicate how long these these are as well. Um this kind of middle column here are state adopted materials. So textbooks um if there's any digital materials that are adopted as well
073would be included in there and you know a lot of our textbooks are are digital textbooks is uh such a major costsaver and then each grade level talked about okay as a as a grade level what what do you all do kind of you know in common right so what does every in this case third grade teacher use across all all classes. You know, they told us, well, you know, we use the Epic app, we have Raz kids, we use vocabulary a toz, uh there's some stuff down here in math, reflex, they use Cahoot for so they talk about the apps they use, they talk about what they do with it, and then they also give an idea of on average, you know, we're doing Cahoot maybe 10 minutes a week. uh we're doing uh
074math rotations, you know, and reflex maybe 40 minutes a week. Uh so I think this is really going to help give parents an understanding of what's going on in the classroom. And then we followed up with teachers saying, "Okay, teachers, you know, we really believe in autonomy. We want teachers to teach the way they feel is best for for their students." uh recognizing that we have to keep those lines of communications open with our with our families. So teachers, okay, if you're going off of this, if you got a green screen project coming up, you're doing with your with with you know, your students in the upcoming week, share that with the families. Hey, next week, you know, we got a green screen project we're going to be using, you know, uh you know, this
075app or that app. Um just make sure you're communicating that with with families. uh we've also kind of took what we found was we had a lot of things about technology just all in different places. You know, this document was over here, this guidance was over here, these rules were over here. Uh we've put together a technology handbook. It's kind of just a one-stop place for everything technology. It's got everything in there from um you know our our screen time, some of those slides I just showed you, school and personal devices, tech safety, cyber security is in there, parent resource, professional. We've put this all together in one place now. Uh which is going to make it a lot easier for uh families to reference, teachers to reference, you know, anybody who's um uh interested.
076Uh this is available online. It's right on the technology website. Uh, feel free to take a look at it. And those were I'm not going to spend too much. It's already 5:30. >> Yeah. You ready? You done? >> I think I'm done unless there's questions. I mean, >> so yeah. Any questions for Brian? >> Uh, let's clap for him. So, uh, the takeaway that I want to make sure that we all get is that, uh, as a district, we're responsive to, uh, parents saying, "Hey, I want to know a little bit more about what my kids doing." Uh, to teachers to say, "Hey, let's be clear about what we're supposed to be doing." So that way, uh, we can just have clear expectations in case anybody has any questions. And that we're trying to be
077transparent about what that is. So to me, that's the takeaway that you want to share at the Little Mic field if anybody brings it up. >> Right. Anything else, Brian? >> I don't think so. >> All right. Well, I feel like uh if you guys are okay, we're going to punt the data stuff. >> Okay. >> Yeah. You all right with that? >> No, that's fine. >> You know, we'll let we'll start first with that next time so Jimmy can like do her magic thing with that. Thank you so much for being here. But I want to end just kind of with giving you the legislative update. That's the last thing done. And uh not because I'd like to drag everybody down with stuff, but not because you want to get your agenda items. I
078know it's mine. I'm going to roll. >> You know, then you punch it first. >> I made a handout. I don't know why I did that. >> It's helpful. >> Just Yeah, just in case you wanted to take notes. Um um it's uh if you'll go to back to the slide deck and click on that one link. This is essentially a two-page Google Google doc that I have. Um the legislative session that ran from January to June 2nd. Um by the way, you know, we're in like a second special session right now. My back can't even keep up. Uh I've been in I've been here at Heights for 25 years. I've been in the business for 30. I've never seen one legislative session so jam-packed with things with education stuff that just not friendly. Uh
079it's just a lot. And I've talked to a lot of people like at the Texas Association of School Boards. I'm like, is it just me or is this a lot? They know it's a lot. And there's a variety of factors. One is that if you recall in the last legislative session uh when vouchers didn't get passed and there were four special sessions, the governor vetoed a ton of stuff just to get even with people. And so there's probably like there's a bottleneck of things that people wanted to talk about that just got all pushed to this one. That's one. But the second thing is it's just part of that whole voucher conversation. There's just a lot of like uh uh public ed on the mind of some legislators now. So a lot of stuff passed.
080I sifted through as much stuff as I could and I'm like, well, y'all probably don't need to know a ton of stuff that we need to know or even that the board needs to know, but what might you need to know? So, I I compiled this. Let me just kind of go over it. The first block, I won't do the adnauseium thing again, but it really is important for you all to know that uh and I'm just going to say it. The lieutenant governor, I'm being recorded, right? The lieutenant governor has said this is $8.5 billion uh has been new money has been injected into public education. That's true. What they don't say is that those are restricted to use on teachers who have experience more than three years experience and more than five years
081experience. So it's a great boon for teachers. I'm glad teachers got a raise, but it didn't inject any other money into the system like increasing the basin a lotment would have done. So, it didn't give us money for raises for bus drivers or anybody who's not a teacher in those fields, that kind of stuff. Class size, all these cuts. So, essentially, the cuts that we made last year, they put us in a position to be able to give other people raises and to just kind of keep getting through. And so we're just living on kind of the all the cuts that we made last year. So I don't mean to be a downer, but they keep saying, man, there's a lot of money going into public ed. And it's true, but it's so restricted that
082doesn't benefit the whole of public. So that's the first thing. Can you scroll up? >> Mhm. >> Uh the next thing is I want to uh notice it's kind of small, but uh there is House Bill 6 was intended to help teachers in general, right? because uh legislators kept hearing that after COVID student behavior was just different. I'll say it that way. Especially Joseph Young. I mean, right, you guys probably will test they're a little different when they they came back to us. And so there were some laws that educators were telling them are really hamstringing teachers and administrators, especially with younger kids. And so they changed a variety of laws. I won't get into all of that, but part of the law required us to disseminate to parents a summary of what got passed.
083And so what TEA did is they put together a uh a two-pager that's a summary of those various changes. And so we're going to be sending that out sometime next week with three other things that we'll require to send out to you guys to go, while this email is going to come. It's like, hey, this is not on us. They're telling us to send it to you. But you'll see more of that. I just want to give you guys a heads up and teachers might want to read it too. And this is like it it kind of strengthens your ability to say, "Hey, this kid's not behaving. I I need help." This one is interesting. I don't know if you guys been reading the paper. Senate Bill 12 is the law that says we have
084to put the Ten Commandments in every classroom if somebody donates them. We don't have to buy them ourselves. Well, uh there was a lawsuit and um uh several districts around the state of Texas were sued to stop that from happening. And we were one of the lucky districts that got sued. And so in San Antonio, Alamo Heights, Northeast, North Side, and Lackland of all places were sued by the ACLU and individual parents in each of those districts uh were sued. There were several districts in the Dallas area, some districts in the Houston area were sued to stop the law. Now, we didn't pass the law. Why are you suing us? Right? But the way it worked was the law requires us to do it and so they sued us now. Uh but the good news,
085if there is good news in the law, it says that if any district is sued over these issues that the attorney general is responsible for the cost and for the defense. So, as a district, we really didn't have to do anything. The attorney general did it all. And so, on that first level, the judge uh stopped it because he said it was unconstitutional. The attorney general is appealing it to the fifth circuit. And so, right now, those districts who were sued uh cannot do anything with regard to the Ten Commandments. All the other districts in the state of Texas who were not sued could proceed if they wanted to. Just this weird situation. So I want to let you guys know in case you read about in the paper uh the that is us next
086slide coming next I'm not sorry scroll up >> scroll okay >> scroll up okay now this one um I'm just going to highlight a few things this is Senate Bill 12 you recall from my previous presentation including the stuff about grievance it did a whole bunch of other stuff so remember I told you they were calling it the parent bill of rights law they were also calling the anti- diversity, equity, and inclusion law, the anti-Dei law. So, there's a bunch of other stuff in there. Now, what I think you all need to know is that the law prohibits the district from doing anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It addresses a whole bunch of things about parent notification. Now, notice that second bullet, the last sentence. We will send out a required notice to
087all of the families. next week sometime that tells them these are the counseling services that we do and we have to get parent consent to do them. Boy, it was hard to set it all up. I think we have it all set up electronically. But to to explain all the stuff, this is what we do. And parents have to consent. They can say, I consent to you having counselors talk to our kids or I don't. So, make sure you fill it out. It's important that you get that. And then we also have to send in the same email. It's going be the same email another notice that says these are all the health related services that our nurses do. We list them all out and then you have to say at the bottom I consent
088to that or I don't consent to that. I promise you uh this is required by the law. I wouldn't be doing this otherwise. It's crazy but it's required. So we're going to So that's going to be coming out as part of Senate Bill 12. Now the next bullet is that the law prohibits any of our employees from assisting students with social transitioning. Well, now that's defined in the law as a person's transition from one biological sex at birth to a different biological sex. I've spoken to all the teachers about this uh so they all uh know that this is a law. Now, the next bullet is that the law also says we are prohibited from having any student clubs that are based on sexual orientation or gender identity. >> Does sound like the just say
089the junior school there's a boy service club and the girls service club. Does that fall under that? >> Uh, it doesn't because it's not based on a gender identity. It's a service club that happens to be for boys. >> Okay. This is about like like gender identity that you're you're a boy but you want to be a girl. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. That's that's what I've talked to lawyers and so we're Yeah. It's not it's not that. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> But this is like I mean in the past I don't know we've had one now but in the past you've had like a a gay gay straight alliance or lesbian thing that kind of thing. That's what this is. Yeah. Uh then the the next bullet says that any club
090we have you know we have a kids especially the junior school in high school have a ton of clubs right hulu club uh you know film watching club uh you have to parent has to sign a permission slip for the kid to be part of the club we've already been doing that uh and so they're just going to keep on trucking with that permission slip form. All right, deep breath. This is a that was hard. That's a lot. Scroll up. Okay, this one, uh, there's a lot of other stuff going into it, but I'm just telling you what parents need to know with teachers. The board, there's some other stuff. So, this Senate Bill 13 says that as a parent, you have the right to know what your kid is checking out from the library.
091And so we are required to set up some kind of automated thing that whenever a kid whenever your child checks something out, you're going to get an email get set up. >> I honestly I think it's awesome. >> Yeah. Well, yeah. So I but that but just know if you get mad because you get too many emails cuz your kid reads a lot. That's you know I'm not flooding your inbox. That's that's required. Um, it also prohibits us from having any materials that are considered sexual or etc. I'm not going to read it because kind of it offends me to even read that, but we got to make sure we don't have books that have that in there. And then likewise, it requires that the board themselves now, not the librarians, but the board has
092to approve every purchase of our library books. So, we're talking with the board next week in a committee meeting to explain kind of suggestion for how that would look. librarians would say these are the books we need and we'll kind of like share them with you all. We also have to post those publicly for 30 days before we buy. Uh so we've been working hard for that. So you guys will we'll have a presentation next week. All right. Now the last one is the one that you guys already know a little bit about because um it's the GPA one. We talked about that one earlier. So there's a bunch of different laws. If you have ever any type of questions, give me a call or send me an email. But those are the ones I
093thought you might need to know about or people talk about. >> That SB12 the consent needed. Is there like a percentage that you have to like >> is every individual parent realistically going to sign? >> Yeah. The way the the the way law is written uh for the counseling for sure is that we have to get affirmative written consent. That means it's not like you didn't tell us no therefore we can do it. you have to tell us yes, therefore we can't. And so that so that's what took us a while is that we've set up and we use Qualrixs for like our February feedback and stuff. So we set up a way to kind of ping you and if you didn't finish it, we will keep bugging you about it to to reply. >>
094So what if you know >> then we can't we can't provide those services >> like their individual kid. >> Their individual kid got okay for your Okay. >> Yeah. And by the way, you also have to do Yeah, you have to do one per kid. >> So, sorry if you have a lot of kids. You have to do a lot of >> a lot of Yeah. >> So, are these like for the for the classroom lessons for the counselor do? >> Uh yeah, I think it's on the list. Is that on the list? Yeah. >> Yeah. We tried to be global and saying these are all and by the way, it's it's written like these are all the great things that counselors do like we do. I mean, by the way, these are also all
095the things that state law requires our counselors to do. That's what a job of a counselor is. So, we kind of frame it like that. >> So, what's going to happen when they let's say in my classroom, I have 22 kids and uh out of the 22, I have 21 parents that say yes and one that said no, or five that said no, and the rest of them said, >> that's a great question. We're going to put it on our board to think through. So, we're taking a list of all these questions about what do we do, what if, what if, >> I mean, what do you do? >> We'll have to think through that. Yeah. Yeah. So, I'm keeping a list to think through all that stuff. I'm hoping that everybody's going to say
096yes. I'm hoping, but we'll see. >> We'll see. I don't know. We'll see. >> Well, yeah, because it's also space. Like, where are you going to >> Yeah, we'll figure it out. >> Uh, but you know, just so you know, I don't know if this is I mean, this is a larger scale, but we already have opt out for certain things at the secondary level. So like in health class when you do the sex ed stuff parents can already say I don't want my kid to do that and some do and they go to the library you know for that period of time now it's a bigger scale of course it's not just one health class. Yeah. >> Okay. So with the um star testing changes that are up for special session right now. So
097we as a district originally supported the changes that were proposed during regular legis legislative session. what's now being proposed in special session is totally different. Correct. Are we putting out any kind of a like SOS to our community to to help? >> Well, the first thing is the last I saw is it still in committee and it might it's still it might not have the juice to finish. >> What we did do was a couple of weeks ago, I think it was last week, I forget, uh Dr. Walker went and testified, >> right? Uh and then she had a follow-up meeting with the chairman and a couple of other experts uh to kind of try to nail down some of the things that she was trying to suggest to them to consider. That's the best
098we can figure out. Uh we're not just because it's so in flux. I don't I don't feel like if I go out and tell the community to do something, I don't quite know what's going to be what's solid. Nothing's solid, right? If it was more solid, we we could do that. But it's so amorphous at this point. And I'm I'm thinking it's just going to die. But who knows? >> Is it It's a It's an education right now. >> So we could call people. >> Oh, yeah. Yeah. >> And we have Yeah. >> But I mean like the community as parents, we could say. >> Yeah. You could be like whatever Dr. Walker suggested, that's what >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. Can I This is a completely off topic um >> related to
099what you discussed. >> Change the topic. >> Well, the the budget cuts took away all the cafeteria monitors at the elementary school and Howard and I know that that's teachers are feeling it >> and all that. I have had a couple parents from Howard mention this because it's new to them and then it kind of made me think about it too, but um I think that the the like parent monitors or whatever that the emails that are going out are kind of just through a signup genius and who knows where it's ending up in boxes and all of that. And um I don't know that like you can't go on a field trip with the kids without a background check, but I don't know that there's any kind of >> There is there is there
100is >> they're being >> so any parent who volunteers to go be a lunch monitor has had to have gone through a background check. >> Yeah. Okay. >> I Well, I mean I know you have to go through Raptor, but I was I'm on Howard PTO and >> Yeah. Raptor's different than the background the volunteer background check, >> right? Nobody Okay. Well, nobody's checking the Howard sign of genius. you. >> Yeah. So, if I'm understanding correctly, just to say, hey, anybody who does the volunteer thing for lunch duty needs to be vetted by our our higher volunteers. >> Adding that to the volunteers, like we need to have a background check done first, >> but like I'm pretty sure I just I worked at Woodridge last week and I hadn't done my background check. I
101mean, I done it in the past, but I hadn't done it this year and I I did it. So, I'm just >> I'm just Do we have to do it every year? I don't even know. Yeah. >> That's good. That's caution. >> You're just kind of letting anybody in right there and they're contained in one room because I think that that should be held to even a higher standard than a field. >> Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We'll follow up on that. >> Thanks. You got that. >> Yeah. >> Very good. >> That's a great one. Yeah, that's that's that's this group. Thank you. Two-way. We will follow up on that. Anything else? >> Just a thank you to them for being there because it is takes a lot of not I go hide in my room
102all day. I have lunch on my own. But we appreciate the support. That's cool. Thank you. I'll see you there. >> Well, thank you so much. Sorry. I was Yeah. Thank you. Definitely. Thank you. I know it's super hard. And so this is what I mean like I I'm serious when I say in the abstract budget cuts was hard enough. Everybody imagined it. But now when the teachers are living it, it's super hard. And so I appreciate the community uh being sensitive to that. There's a lot of things that are going for us like the groups to come and help with the classrooms like we're filming it in our classroom. Our normal is completely different but we know that you guys are putting up like signups too to have coming in the classrooms and we're
103ready like we're like ah get our Spanish speakers and the parents to come and help. So we really appreciate that. I almost think like a like a consolidated place of like you know >> I don't know minding your own pair I don't know you like sign up in one place and be a volunteer and then those are the people who get the asks to like I don't know >> the junior school kind of does that through the champions Dr. Guthrie has a champion program and so you apply to do that through him but I think there's some that becomes like your your banker so he uses those champions you kind of encourage people join this you know blah blah blah and then you're in part of that and then that here are service opportunities within
104this group and so you can't really get the service opportunities unless you've already done >> right >> hey Christina can you add to the we we have a principal meeting tomorrow >> let's just add like parent volunteer conversations and we'll share some of these ideas and get a sense how things are going. >> And having something more streamlined will ensure that we don't miss like things like the background check because we have several lists going on >> and even just like you have like some type of meeting like I remember I showed up to help at lunch and somebody was like can I go to the bathroom and I'm like sure like I don't know what I'm doing right would be nice >> you have to take a cone and I was like okay get
105a cone so I'm like I don't a little like Yeah, >> very good. >> I think it's also we all are learning this because it's a new normal. But even for us the teachers who showed that what am I supposed to do? >> Even for us it's all me. So we're all learning but we truly appreciate the help. >> Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you all for being here. Thanks for coming. Go enjoy your back to school 35th incubator night. >> School is back. We're back.