Arlington ISD Board of Trustees Meeting - January 8, 2026

001Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. s sooul. Oh no. Hey I know. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. Everybody together. D. down. Daryl Dur. Heat up Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey, There we go. Hello. Hello. Hello. Morning. That's always All right. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. down down. Hey I feel happy. Yeah, you Hey, Hey. Hey. Hey. They shoot the leg. Good evening. I will reconvene in open session this meeting of the Arlington ISD Board of Trustees on January 8th, 2026 beginning at 7:23 p.m. We'll get right into things tonight and we'll start with our pledges. And tonight those pledges are going to be led by BBC Elementary student Marcelo Ramirez. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the

002republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. You may be seated. At this time, we'll have a moment of silence. Thank you. To learn a bit more about the student who led us in the pledges tonight, I'm going to turn it over to our chief communications officer, Tyena Northington. Miss Northingington, thank you very much, President Chappa. Focused, confident, talkative, joyful, energetic, and smart. Those are the words used to describe Marcela Ramirez by his own siblings today. So, he has four siblings that are joining him along with his parents in the front row and all are very proud supporting him in his BBC blue. So, we're excited that they're well-dressed and

003I know our principal is in the house as well. But, I wanted to take a moment to talk about Marcelo. I introduced him to Fred Thes who is our slab student president because I said Marcela you remind me of someone who has the potential to lead and be a slab president in the future. Very well-dressed, well spoken and the item that he actually shared with me about what he loves about a school is that they treat everyone equally and that the way that they teach their children and just so powerful for him to have such strong dialogue about what's happening in his school in his classroom. He wouldn't name a favorite teacher. It was very wanting wanting to be politically correct and make sure they all knew that they were his favorite. But he did

004say if David Lewis is in the house, I said if he could have wings every day for lunch, that would be his favorite item. He says some days they have wings. There's David right there. And I said I would say it for him. So originally he had pizza, but he changed that. So it must have been on the menu today. Um one of his favorite activities is simply just having fun. Um, but when he asks to focus, it's all about math. And if you guys wanted him to extend a conditional offer, he actually wants to be a math teacher when he gets older. So, we love knowing that the next generation of educators is being educated right now in our classrooms that are doing great things. I'm telling you, they will completely offer you a

005conditional offer. You come back in 10 years and we will get that figured out. So, we we love that we have students um of your caliber. I know all of your siblings are so proud. You are the shining star of your parents and we appreciate you for being Arlington ISD students. Thank you so much. All right, we'll turn over to our appointments and recognitions part of the evening. And after appointments and recognitions, we'll have a brief recess uh out in the lobby up here at the front for folks to celebrate and take pictures. We'll go back uh to Miss Northing for the recognition portion of the agenda tonight. And so, uh, to introduce our student of the month from Lamar High School, I will turn it back over to Miss Northing. Thank you so much.

006This evening, I'd like to start by turning everyone's attention for a special video about our Arlington ISD student of the month for 2026 in January from Lamar High School, Chosen Green. Please make sure you watch this very closely. Here at Lamar High School, we have selected Chosen Green as our student of the month. Chosen is involved in so many things on our campus and around the community. His impact is major. Chosen is one of our leading students in the classroom, especially in his AVID class. People look up to him. He's a great kid. Chosen is one of our exceptional students here at Lamar PEK. He will be receiving his associates degree a semester early in cyber security. He also has an internship with the Texas Rangers as a cyber security. Chosen Green is an exceptional

007musician and a leader for the pride of Lamar. This year he was the drum line captain and led the band on the field for all of our home games this year. He is a very dedicated student who is driven and passionate about everything that he does and all of the work that we do he does at the highest level and he also serves as a leader helping the other AVID students. He exudes and exemplifies what it means to have Viking fight never dies spirit. Congratulations and we're proud to name Chosen Green as our student of the month. At this at this time, I'll invite Chosen to go ahead and say a few words at the podium and then I'll have the board come down and give him his award. Good evening, board president Chapa, other

008board members, and student superintendent Dr. Smith. I'm truly honored to be recognized as student of the month. This award means a great deal because it represents not only my hard work, but also the guidance I received along the way. First off, I would like to thank my mother and grandmother for their constant support of my academic and personal development and for pro provided me with a firm foundation that has guided me throughout my life. I would like to give a special thank you to Miss Hudson whose support has been a key part of my success. She provided me with the opportunity to be a part of the PEK program and has always gone above and beyond to make my schedule work despite extracurricular commitments. These actions have opened doors I wouldn't have had otherwise. Without

009her guidance, I would not have the same opportunities I have today. I would like to thank my AVID teachers throughout my time in high school. Coach Nicasio, Miss Drake, and Miss Omana. AVID has taught me how to advocate for myself, stay organized, and take on challenges with confidence when work gets hard. I would like to thank my experience in band for teaching me discipline, hard work, and commitment throughout the year. I would like to thank all of my friends, whether in AVID, band, PEK, or at the CTC. The people I'm surrounded with helped me create a fun and supportive environment that made school enjoyable. And last but not least, thank you, Miss Froy, for selecting me to represent Lamar High School, VFND. Thank you. I think some of them were so engaged with your speech

010that they didn't realize they were going to come on down. So, I love the shout outs. Okay, Chosen, congratulations on being our student of the month. Come on over here by me for a second if you would. So, a couple of things. One, did did I hear right? You're graduating with your associates degree a semester early. Yes. Okay, everybody realize that, right? That's a college degree that he's graduating with a semester early. And you did that while being involved in the band. Not just being involved in the band, but having a leadership position within the band from what I understand. Correct. Yes. And you seem to be doing a whole lot at your school as well. I am blown away by your work and by how you were described in that video today. You make

011not only Lamar High School look amazing, but Arlington ISD look amazing. We're proud of you. I want to point out I hear you're involved with the Rangers with cyber security. You know, we have cyber security jobs here as well in Arlington ISD. Uh shameless recruiting plug here. Come on back when you're all done. But we're super proud of you, thankful for the work that you're doing, and excited to see what you do for the future. Congratulations on being our student of the month. We're going to stay right here. Chosen one more thing. This pin is the pin that you see Superintendent Dr. Smith and all of our board wearing. Um, we know that you have a bright future ahead with many achievements and accolades coming your way, but we hope that you can accept this

012as a small token from our school district to say congratulations. And we are so happy to hear that you speak that we made a difference for you, but you have made a difference at Lamar and our community at large. So, congratulations, Chosen. Well done. Congratulations chosen. Next, we'd like to recognize our Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Art and Essay winners. Arlington ISD is proud to partner each year with UTA, TCC, the city of Arlington, and the Arlington Ministerial Alliance to support the MLK 4day celebration. This is a communitywide event that honors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and really brings our city together through reflection, service, and most importantly, creativity. At this time, I'd like to invite Troy Williams, the director of community development for the city of Arlington to the podium to

013share more about the 4day celebration and introduce this year's student winners. Didn't see how she raised that up. Okay, there we go. Good deal. Uh, good evening, President Chapa, Dr. Smith, and members of the board. Uh, my name is Troy Williams with the city of Arlington. Um, and we have the distinct honor of chairing the Martin Luther King 4-day celebration this weekend. So, we're I'm sorry, in January 16th. So, working alongside with AISD, UTA, TCC, the Arlington Ministerial Alliance, and other uh members of the community and critical stakeholders, we look forward to hosting one of the nation's largest uh celebrations honoring Dr. King this year. And as a part of that uh celebration, students from Arlington community will serve in many uh capacities such as performing at the step show, singing at the ecumenical service

014and the youth extravaganza, and using their imagination and creativity in the MLK art and essay contest. The students did a phenomenal job this year depicting this year's theme of advancing the dream, a journey towards unity. And so tonight, it's my honor to be able to recognize these amazing students um who won both our art contest and our essay contest. And so we'll start with the art winners this evening. Um our third place art winner is Aerys Seria from Buoie High School and she's a recip and she's a recipient of a $500 scholarship from Atmos Energy. Our second place winner is Joe Quinn Marino Lamar High School and she'll be the recipient of a $750 scholarship award. She was un he was unable to join us this evening, I'm sorry. And in our first place uh

015winner for the art contest is Romero Ram Ramirez of Lamar High School who's the recipient of a $1,000 scholarship. Now, as we move into our essay contest winners of two winners in this category, our second place winner is Destiny Akulli, uh, Arlington High School, 12th grade, and she'll be the recipient of a thousand scholarship as well. And our first place winner is Miss Annayiah Butler, Arlington High School, 12th grade and recipient of a $1,250 scholarship. All right. So, I'm gonna do We're going to have our students just in the middle. So, we're going to take one group picture. You guys can go right in the middle and we'll have Troy. Would you like to be in the photo? You want me to get in? Okay. So, before I jump in, just let me real quick

016um recognize our contest organizers, uh, Miss Lisa Fields, who organized our essay contest, and Mr. Lynn W, who organized the art contest. All right. Ready? And three, two, and one. One more time. Three, two, and one. Got you. Congratulations. like to real quickly make a couple other points of recognition before I close out. Um, and first of which is I'd like to recognize the teachers and uh counselors that have supported these young people that were the winners this evening. If you could stand up and be recognized. I'd also like to quickly recognize other members of the MLK committee that are here with us this evening. So, I think there's a couple members in the audience. And then just to kind of close out of my final moments, I just want to give you a quick

017rundown of what the weekend looks like. So, on uh January 16th, we'll have our MLK Advancing the Dream Gayla, which will be held at UTA. Our keynote speaker will be uh President Tama Lrand who is the president of Prairie View&M University. Um we'll also be honoring the former mayor Elsie ODM. Um and that will start at 6:30 p.m. at UTA University Center, the Blue Bonnet Ballroom. Um on Saturday, we've got two events for you. So start your day early. The MLK Step Showcase will be at Buouie High School starting at 11:00 and run till 3. Um and then in the evening from 7 to 9:30, we'll have the MLK poetry meets jazz um at UTA once again in the Blue Bonnet Ballroom. And then on Sunday, uh we'll have the Hubert Moss ecumenical service which

018will be held at First Presbyterian Church um from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. And then on Monday, the actual day of the holiday, we'll have several events. We'll have uh the Zeb Strong uh Junior MLK Day of Service where folks will have an opportunity to engage in service projects at Mission Arlington Metroplex. And then um on Monday, we will also have from 10 to 2 a day of service festival which will be sponsored by the Dallas Wings basketball team and that will be held in the city hall lobby. And then throughout the weekend, we will have our um MLK uh youth extravaganza on January 19th as well from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. at Fielder Church Metro Center. And then throughout all of our events, we'll have the MLK historical timeline exhibit where you can kind of

019see the timeline of all of the the progress that we've made over the years um in honoring Dr. King. And so in closing, I just want to share a brief quote from Dr. King that reinforces how important this event is for our community and an important step of continuing this tradition. The quote comes from Dr. King's I have a dream speech. Um and I think it's particularly suitable for uh this year's celebration. Uh we cannot walk alone and as we walk we must make the pledge that we will always march ahead. We cannot turn back. So, as we look forward to each of you joining us this year, as we continue advancing the dream through our shared journey towards unity, um we are really looking forward to having a great celebration. So, if there's any

020additional information that you'd like to get, you can certainly go to our website at um mlkarlington.com and find out all the ticket information, event information, and the like. And I'll be here for the rest of the evening if you have any questions. So, thank you for your time. Congratulations to all of our winners that won our scholarships. We'll be taking some photos during our recess in a few moments, but I also want to say a special thank you to the city of Arlington for how they work with us in partnership with TCC and also the other uh organizations, UTA as well for making this a successful celebration. This does conclude tonight's honors and recognitions. Thank you, Miss Northing. With no speakers registered for the appointment section tonight, we will go ahead and take action on

021the appointments. Do I have a motion to ratify the appointments of the individuals discussed in close session? Motion. Have a motion for Miss Fowler. Do I have a second? Second. Have a second for Mr. Mike. Trustees will proceed to vote. All trustees voting in the affirmative. The motion carries seven to zero. Dr. Smith. Trustees, thank you for that. We would like to recognize first this evening our new assistant principal at Sam Houston High School, Mariela Castro Gomez. Come on up, Mariela. Miss Castro Gomez brings over a decade of experience in bilingual education and instructional leadership with a strong focus on world languages and early childhood learning. Her progression from classroom teacher to instructional specialist reflects a deep commitment to instructional excellence, equity, and teacher development. With a master's degree in educational leadership, she is wellprepared

022to serve as an assistant principal at Sam Houston High School. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, President Chapa, members of the board, and super and superintendent Dr. Smith. Thank you for the opportunity to serve as the assistant principal at S Houston High School. Arlington IZ has truly been my home as a student, as a teacher, instructional specialist, and it's an honor to continue my journey here. I would like to thank to like to express my sincere gratitude to my family and my friends for their constant love and support. To my husband, Irvin, thank you for always standing by my side and your constant love. Mama, gracias. I am deeply thankful for the mentors who have guided me along the way. Dr. Sini, Miss Stevens, Miss Harris, Miss Bustamante, Mercado, Miss Sernna, Miss Hardy. Thank

023you for always believing in me and for your continued mentorship. And of course, Miss Perigene, my fourth grade teacher and my very first champion. Thank you for opening doors and encouraging me to grow. to the world languages team, Christina, the oneway dual language team. It's been a pleasure to work and learn from such a talented group. I can't wait to see everything that you accomplish. And to the Sam Houston staff and community, thank you for being here and rallying for me and for trusting me with the opportunity to serve as the assistant principal. I look forward to working together to create meaningful ripples and lasting impact for our students, our staff, and our community. Let's go Sam. And next, please join me in congratulating our new assistant principal at Williams Elementary, Erica Boyin. Miss Boyin

024brings extensive experience in instructional coaching, teacher development, and education in both secondary and elementary settings across multiple districts. Her background includes campus level leadership, literacy instruction, and career and technical education, demonstrating a well-rounded approach to student and staff support. With a strong foundation in teaching and coaching, she's well prepared to serve as the next assistant principal at Williams Elementary. Congratulations, Good evening, President Chapa, members of the board, and Superintendent Dr. Smith. I want to thank you so much for this opportunity to be part of the Arlington ICD community as the new assistant principal at Williams Elementary School. Um, I did not get here alone. I've had a lot of help along the way. And so, I need to start by recognizing my husband for all of his patience um and support along the way. And

025my two children, Robert and Derek, who continue to be my why today as to why I push forward and keep growing as a leader. I would also like to thank um some of my mentors along the way. So I started in Mansfield ISD on this path to be a leader and I can't acknowledgement of those who got me here. So I'd like to thank Jason Mutter and Leslie Hash and Roderick Pouncy for all of their mentorship. Um and then I also need to start with my amazing principal Miss Garcia and our executive director Mr. Toer who saw the potential in me to be part of the W Williams family and help lead our amazing staff who are so welcoming our community and our future leaders at Williams Elementary. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

026All right, congratulations to our honores and our appointees. Tonight, we're going to take about a 10-minute recess. And during that time, you're welcome to come up and take pictures at the podium. We have a backdrop out in the lobby. Uh trustees, it is 7:46. We'll aim to be back in about 10 minutes. We're in recess. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Hey. Heat. Heat. Thank you. Heat. Heat. What's that? Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. over. Hey Heat. Heat. All right, we're going to resume here in just a couple minutes. So, if you are uh would like any last minute photos, come get them and wrap up conversations. We'll be starting in just a few minutes. oh hey oh oh hey I've seen All right, it is 8:01 and we are going to reconvene after recess.

027Uh the next item on our agenda tonight is open forum for agenda topics. We have quite a few number of speakers tonight. So, I am going to um lay out some ground rules just for folks to be aware of and then also how we'll approach the order of speaking tonight because we've got some folks in person, some folks virtual and and some folks have indicated who they may or may not speak. So, what I'm going to do is we will first start with folks who are in person and I'll call you out one by one. If you are somebody who's planning to participate virtually, um we will put you at the end. that will allow us to have our technical folks work with you to work out any issues that you may have while others

028are speaking so it can be as seamless as we can do. Um and then I will call first folks who have registered as in person who um have indicated at least not an intention to maybe not speak. So the folks who seem like they want to talk I will call first. um we'll go to the virtual folks and then any folks who have indicated they may be um will not want to speak depending on what others say I will I will come back to those uh towards towards the end. Um couple other ground rules that I don't think are going to be applicable here but uh just to go over uh open form is a routine part of our agenda for regularly scheduled meetings. Uh this segment of the meeting provides folks with an opportunity

029to share their views with the trustees about items that are on our agenda tonight. It's not intended to be a discussion or debate. And I know this is a little awkward um because we like to go back and forth with folks, but um just the way this works is it's not a back and forth. You you're free to to say what you'd like to say, but trustees will not respond. Uh derogatory comments directed towards any individuals are not going to be tolerated. We may have to ask you to leave if you do that. Um, and personnel matters about particular individuals are not appropriate subjects uh for open form. When Miss Crossno uh notifies you that your time is up, there'll be a there'll be a beep. Would ask you to wrap up your thought as

030soon as you can. Um, and then we'll we'll move on to the next speaker. So, Miss Crossno, do we have any requesters registered to address the board regarding agenda items tonight? President Chapo, we do. Okay. We'll see how that goes. All right. Our first individual up tonight uh is to speak on Bllandon Elementary is Imod Hoke. Oh, that's a virtual. I'm sorry. I didn't see the flag on that. Uh we also have uh Anna Kavah. Okay, we'll move to the next registered speaker, Arlene Prito. All right, Prito, you'll have three minutes. You may begin. Hello, my name is Arlene Prito and I come from Bllandon Elementary School. I have three students. I don't want Bllandon Elementary School to close because we are not aware of why they have decided to close the school without informing

031we informing the parents in advance and why we weren't given the opportunity to adjust the possible solutions. But if there's the reason, if if but if the reason is because of the low rating of the school currently has, I would also like to bring out that other schools also have it and have had it for so many years just like Blandon. Principal Casio has been here for three years and has done an amazing job supporting, motivating, educating all the staff and students. But she also primarily decided dedicated all her effort to the students so that they are suspectful academically, socially and emotionally. I would like to ask if you could give us the opportunity to explore other narratives together to keep the school open. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Pico. The next speaker who has

032indicated that they they definitely want to speak on my list is Adrienne Cannon. It's Miss Canon here. Another virtual. The lines on the chart are very narrow and I don't follow them all the way around. She is in person. Oh, okay. Okay. Going on to the next person. Uh Steven Seaton Blanchard. I did not know. You may begin. Thank you. Sorry. Uh thank you, President Chapa and members of the board. Um thank you for giving us the opportunity to come up here and present our I guess questions. Um I know that it well and I also know what incredible weight it is to decide fates like Bllandon's. um that that's a lot of impact on you know the community, the students. I know that must not have been a easy decision to make if you

033guys have already made the decision. I know that weighs a lot on y'all. So, I know thank you for all the work you guys do for AISD. Um I personally have two kids at the school. They love it there. Um God, I I came up here and I started to blank for a second, but um it's one of those things that Sorry, I'm just losing it here. Um, I think for me, I just want to know why this is happening. Um, and why this decision has been reached. Um, whether it's, you know, the low rating of the school or just funding issues. I know that whenever they added the new playground, I wasn't overly like happy about it because in my mind, why did we need a new playground? The old one was like only

034a few years old, seemed fine. They added that fence, which to me, it just seems like money that went towards some minor renovations could have been used um better or more constructively towards improvements to, you know, I don't know, things like teacher salaries. I don't know what whatever could have brought like the rating up if that was the deciding factor. Um to me that's that's where my concerns are because you know if the school does close down we have to go to whatever school is in next in line in the available area you know and so if we go to the nearest five schools that means 20% of our students go into those schools right which means that those classrooms suddenly fill up quicker. we've got, you know, suddenly got 30 kids in a classroom,

03535 that that lowers ratings in all of those other schools. So, to me, that's another major concern. It it's one of the things that would make me want to leave Arlington um with especially with my job. I work out in Fris, so my drive is hellacious every day. Um but it's one of those things where, you know, I've lived in Arlington for 10 years. You know, I love being here. I love this city. Um, but it if it's that is the situation we're presented with with AISD, it it's going to be my primary reason to go, you know. So, um, thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Seat and Blanchard. And I just I just want to clarify the purpose of the the the way the agenda is set up tonight. So, this is

036not not a comment on the merits. Um, no action has been taken with respect to this item. This is the first time it has been presented. This is a recommendation that's coming from the administration and it's only on our agenda tonight as a discussion topic item for them to present their proposal. Um we are not taking action tonight as a board. Well, thank you for the clarification. Yeah, that was not the way it seemed and was addressed. I I know the agendas are confusing because as far as everyone's concerned, it's an agenda item and we might be doing something about it and and I know some folks are con conf you know, if if there's an communication from the district about it, it's presumed the board took action. Um, but just just for the record,

037there's been no action taken and this is just a discussion presentation tonight of the administration's recommendation. Okay. Our next speaker, and I I believe I have tracked this one across the the chart correctly, um who's in person who would like to speak is Olivia Assis. Mrs. Seis, you have three minutes. Will you be using a translator tonight? Yes. Okay. If you still need additional time at the end of three minutes, then I will give it to you. Thank you. Okay. So, Patrick, Hi, my name is Gabriella Toledo. I'll be translating for Olivia. Her main concern is she's a parent. She's involved in all the meetings. We're parent volunteers at the school. She uh she's worried about the transportation. We'll be having to We usually walk our kids to school. Most of the parents there do.

038We walk our kids to school and it's going to be an extra expense for us having to go out of the way to to take them to school. Okay. Another concern I have is our school not being bilingual if we get to go to another school. We want our kids to be able to be in that environment and be able to get those resources. We are a title one school and we also we feel like we benefit a lot from that. Another concern I have is we have a lot of kids with special needs in the school and a lot of those parents do not drive, do not are not able to be moving around to go help the kids if needed at the school. So, I'm very worried that we're not going to be

039able to get the help needed for them. And it's going to be a lot of them are autistic. She didn't mention the autistic, but a lot of them are autistic and moving out of their comfort zone is going to be really difficult for them. Thank you for taking the time to listen to us. I have a kid that is graduated from Lantern and I have another one that is currently in the school. He will be graduating um in two years. And I have a little girl that's also going to you you may continue. Okay. There I have a little girl that will also be going there and it's just something that I want to stay with. Thank you, Mrs. Sales. Our next registered speaker is Sawa Ahmed. Miss Amed, will you be using a translator

040as well? Yes. Okay. You'll have three, you'll hear the three-minute buzzer, but then I'll give you additional time if needed. Thank you. Uh my name is Salvad. I'm from Saudi Arabia and I I have three students in the school and she will read for me. My English is not good. Okay. She doesn't want Blancen to close because she has no transportation. I walk my children every day like many other people, perhaps 50%. My financial situation wouldn't allow me to buy a car. As an addition, I don't know how to drive either. It has been very difficult for my children and myself to adapt to this new system. But we have had the full support of the volunteer group staff and especially from the principal, Miss Castillo. If you decide to close the school, I want

041you to know that I would feel lost again. It would definitely take a while for me and my children to adapt to a new system, new people and for us to have to start over again would be very difficult for us. Thank you. Thank you. I can say something. Uh we are just not the mothers and student. We are like a family. We sit together, we eat together, we just mean other religion, other country but they are all my family and we are volunteers also the principal the counselor the our family coach all we are just don't want to lost to go anywhere. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Our next registered speaker who is present in person is uh Guadalupe Frasier. Miss Fraser, if you're using a translator, you'll hear the buzzer at three

042minutes, but you'll have additional time. Thank you. Good. Good evening. Uh, my name is Lupita Fraser. I speak English, but my pronunciation is not too good. So, I would like my friend Gabby and translate for me. Thank you. Okay. She gave me what she wanted to to to read. I am worried that Blandon Elementary will be closing down and not being rebuilt for our community. Our community needs schools with teachers that have qualifications and support from the district to help students succeed academically and reach university. As a volunteer, I have seen the work the principal, teachers and administration have done for the students to grow academically. For students to be sent to other school will result us in larger amount of students per classrooms. This will not be helpful for students. I ask that people

043will take into consideration to reconstruct the school instead. so our children will have more opportunities in education. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Frasier. Okay. Our last registered speaker who's indicated that they definitely want to speak is Miss Jacqueline Kanas. Okay. Buenos Jacqueline. Gracias. My name is Gabriela Toledo. Again, I'll be translating for Jacqueline Ganas. My Let's see if I remember. My kids currently go to Bllandon. I have u uh two boys in there and it will be a struggle for me to have to start all over again with looking for schools to relocate to going through the registration. I already have all my paperwork submitted through there and it makes it somewhat somewhat easier knowing the staff. Um, I have um a first grader that is currently testing for special needs and I

044know that if we move to another school, it'll be another process to get to to testing him again and getting to know what the to go through the whole process again and it it is it is timeconuming. So, I please ask that you reconsider that you um take this into consideration that um it would help me with my financials and my time and it'll just make things easier for me and it'll it'll help it if if we have to relocate it'll make things harder for us. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And I just want to just want to point out if there are any folks here um who would like to use a we do have a district provided translator over here if anybody would like to use to use a

045district translator. If you guys need an interpreter, I'm right here. Okay, we will continue on with our virtual speakers at this time. And I are we ready to go the sec? Okay. Uh and then at this time then I will call Mod Hookah. Right. Mr. Hook, you'll have three minutes and you you may begin. Good evening board members and all the presents in the meeting. Uh my name is Iman Hog. I am the parent of two children at Blenon Elementary. The group Can you hear me? Yes, we can. The proposed closer directly. Mr. Hawk, we can hear you. The proposed closure directly affect my family and our community. The district says this is about The district says this is about building as is declining enrollment resources. Blendon has served families since 1956. Many ASD schools

046are old. Why clothes are being considered instead of renovation? Court alternatives were truly explored. Enrollment decline is not our children's fault. What steps are taken to address this before proposing closure? And how does moving my children to a larger or more crowded campus improve their learning or emotional well-being? I am also concerned about class size, transportation and safety. Will my children spend more time on buses? What supports will be in place to help them in transition? Most importantly, why Blenon? Why Blenon was used to close? Why were parents not involved earlier? Blenon is not just a building. It is our children's safe place. Please reconsider and work with families before make this decision. We love Plenton. I just want to finish by uh the word of my second great uh son. He said yesterday when

047he heard about the closure, he said, quote, "Is Blenon retiring? Do we have power to stop it?" So I want to conclude before this meeting. Please reconsider. We love Blenon and Blenon help us lot and help us my kids to grow. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Hawk. Our next virtual speaker is Adrienne Cannon. Okay, I have a I have a note a technical note uh that if you are participating virtually tonight um just we can hear you and just just speak as you would if you were here in the room. It seems uh there may be a delay and you may be hearing some feedback but just continue to to speak as you would in person. Miss Cannon, are you online? Miss Cannon, if you can hear us, you may begin. She just left the

048room, but I'll keep an eye on her if she jos back into the waiting room. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Sack. We'll move on to our next virtual speaker then. Um, our next virtual speaker is uh Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer Lopez is not in the waiting room, but uh Miss Canon has returned into the waiting room and I'll bring her in now. Okay. Miss Cannon, if you can hear us, you may begin now. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you just fine. Okay. Good evening, board. My name is Adrien Cannon and I have two students currently at Blandon. Um I'm also a parent volunteer and we have a lot of active um volunteers. Um we know that decisions are still in the process of being made and so we would like it to

049be considered um that you know Bllandon remain open because it will impact a lot of our families. A good chunk of the school like others have said are walkers um especially the ones I know with special needs there are a few u several that um I know would be very difficult for their kids to acclimate to a new um environment even if buses are provided and so forth. I know for that um population of the school it's going to be a harder transition for them. Um we are a family at Blandon and so um I know I was under the other principal for a short stint and when Miss Castillo came in um she brought you know more order and unity to Bllandon and I would say that uh we've been there for four I've

050been there for four years and so under her leadership I have definitely seen changes and um more unity of the staff especially um but she works hard to make sure that the staff and parents and everybody's working together and I think she's done an outstanding job with turning the school around. So, it would be very unfortunate if um Bllandon closes. Um it would just impact u this area greatly. Um I know Carter recently closed and relocated um further up um and I'm not sure if they have busing for the students that live, you know, closer to Bllandon, which Carter is down the street, but it would just be um definitely it would impact, you know, the community um in this area. So, we just uh want to know kind of what are the steps and

051you know what's being decided if parents can have input into whatever is being decided going forward. Thank you, Miss Cannon. Okay, we will work our way back now through folks who either were not uh present the first time or or have indicated that they they may not speak. Um did Miss uh Miss uh Carvajal show up? Okay, in that case we will move to um Laura Garcia. Would you like to speak, Miss Garcia? My number is la Garcia. My English is a little bit but she can help me to translate this. Okay. Okay. I translate before. No, I don't want to take more more time. Okay. So, this is the script she wanted for me to read out to you guys. I don't want the school to close for three reasons. First, just two days

052ago, we received a statement announcing the possible closure of Blandon. But from what I know, they were announced to all the students. All the students in Blandon know already that it's closing permanently. And I think this is affecting them emotionally and socially. This will be reflected in the results of academic performance. Thirdly, I find it unfair that the state star exam determines how hard the teachers and students have worked all year. I think the STAR exam does not reflect the hard work that all the staff, the principal and especially our students have been doing daytoday who work hard every day to ensure good results. I ask you to reconsider the school closure and also look for strategies to keep the school open to our best abilities. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for

053your time. Thank you, Miss Garcia. Okay. Uh, next speaker who indicated they might be interested in speaking is Kenya uh, Viata. Okay. And then um, that takes us back to our virtual speaker who was not in the room, Mr. Sack, if they return to the room. Okay. Okay. I believe that I have moved through all the speakers who were registered here to speak tonight. If you registered and I did not call your name, can you please let me know now? We would like to hear from you. Okay, there being no further speakers, then we will close open forum at this time and we'll move on to our committee and staff report portion of the agenda and we'll move right to item A, which is uh a discussion uh about the future use of Blandon Elementary

054School. And that discussion will be led by Dr. Smith and Dr. Collins. And I will turn it over to Dr. Smith. Thank you, trustees. Uh Dr. Collins is going to come up to the podium. I I do want to see it. Do we have any translation available for our families that are here um already? We we do the devices. So, let's make sure. Can we would you mind uh pausing for a minute so we can get um organized here to make sure that the families who are Spanish speaking in the in attendance tonight that they have translation right now? Great. We'll take a a few minute recess here while that gets set up. Um so when we absolutely uh have are assured that everybody has a translator who mechanism that would like one then we'll

055resume. Would you say that in Spanish for us real quickly? Tyena also we we could sir mine. Okay. So, we'll do Michelle. So, you can stand here. That's perfect. Just uh yes basically not to give me very long segments if there is any acronym I might be not familiar with just to clarify that you ask any questions. Of course I will. I'm not allowed to guess but I allowed to ask. Perfect. Okay. Awesome. I will follow your lead. Perfect. That's great. Yes. No, I I actually think the the microphone is going to work better, but he'll just translate all translate live. Sorry about that. Yes. I'm just letting them know that because it's like first time interpreting, we're just going to use do it this way. Okay. So, what we're going to do, what we're

056going to do instead is we'll just have our translator because we do have quite a number of people watching I understand on online uh live. We will just translate the the every part of the presentation questions from the trustees. the presentation. We'll we'll pause occasionally for the translator to translate. We're we're waiting on one trustee to return to the DAS and we'll resume it. Okay, I think we're ready to go. Trustees, thank you. Um, and audience members, thank you for your public comments earlier this evening. Tonight's presentation is simply a report and a proposal. There is no action associated with this item tonight. And we want to be very clear about that. Dr. Collins will walk us through um the majority of the presentation and then I will add a few things as we get

057closer to the end. Foreings for two purposes. We want to share some recent findings regarding Blandon Elementary School and we also want to discuss uh towards the end of the presentation an administrative recommendation for future campus utilization. Earlier this fall, you as a board of trustees adopted some values and beliefs. And I just want to reiterate to you that as we have um hard conversations as a district administrative team, we've really been leaning into these values and beliefs. And so specifically for the conversations that we've been having about Blanton Elementary, I want to highlight three of the values that we've been leaning into. We've really been focused on exceptional Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead. Arlington. So the three values and beliefs that we've really leaned into recently are around the idea of exceptional experiences

058for our students. Um the idea of maximizing our resources and having effective management fiscally and then um considering the best learning environments that are safe and productive spaces for our students. So as we present findings about Blanton Elementary this evening, we have three um different categories that we want to talk about. The first is learning environment and infrastructure. The second is declining enrollment and the third will be academic growth. So to begin with learning environment and infrastructure, I'm going to read the statement here. So, according to the fall 2025 facility condition assessment, the majority of the facility at Blandon Elementary School is in significant need of repair in order to uphold our values and meet our expectations. So, with our most recent facility assessment, we set out district adequacy standards and we compared Blankton Elementary

059and all the other facilities in our district to those standards. What you see in this chart is the data of how Blandon Elementary specifically compared to the standards and where it fell short. So in 2014, 29.7% of the campus was in need of repair in order to meet the standard at the 2014 range. In 2018, the campus 32.8% of the campus needed to be repaired or replaced. And now in 2025, we're at 58% of the campus. stand. So, the second area um that we're going to talk about tonight is declining enrollment. And according to our November 2025 demographer presentation, Blankton currently enrolls 458 students, which is 55% utilization. The number of students at Blanton has decreased by 270 students since 2016 and is projected to decrease again. Bllandon Elementary was designed to hold between 8

060and 900 students. students. And then the third area is academic growth. And according to the 2025 Texas Education Agency accountability ratings, academic performance at Blon Elementary School has been declining since 2013 as compared to pure schools. The data presented in this chart is about relative performance, which means it's comparing Blandon Elementary to other schools across the state of Texas that have similar demographics to Bllandon Elementary School. So you'll notice in the chart that in 2013, Blandon Elementary was performing as well or better than 76% of campuses that looked like Blandon Elementary. In 2025, the data shows that Blandon Elementary is performing as well or better than only 6% of campuses that look like Blandon. As we heard families talk about tonight, we know that there has been a lot of hard work that has happened

061at Blandon by the administrative staff and teachers, especially over the last few years. We are very proud of the leadership of the campus and we are thankful for the hard work and dedication of the teachers there. So these three things lead us to our administrative recommendation this evening. The condition of the facility, declining enrollment, and academic performance were all considered in making this decision. The recommendation from our administrative team is to consider closing Blandon Elementary School as an elementary school and repurposing the 2013 addition, so a portion of the campus for another Arlington ISD purpose. administr I'd like our board and uh community members to know that this decision uh to recommend this is not taken lightly. Ultimately, right now, with the condition of the facility, the declining enrollment, and the academic performance, we don't

062believe we're creating exceptional experiences for students at Blandon. Tonight's presentation is the first step for us to present publicly and talk with our trustees about the potential closing of Blandon. and we want to make sure that everyone knows how we got here and what would come next. Our board asked us to study the state of our facilities in Arlington ISD and to engage a community group in that study and that began on October 3rd. We received our fall demographer report which showed the enrollment trends and projected enrollment for Bllandon Elementary and presented that to the board on November 20th. During the fall, we also had a an architect and many people assess the condition of our facilities and we reviewed that information with our trustees on December 11th. Our administrative team then discussed um informing

063the community at Blandon Elementary School this first week in January. We notified our parents at Blandon that we would have this initial discussion at the board meeting this evening. In over the next two weeks, we would like to meet with the Blandon parents at Blandon to talk more about why and address the concerns that they've brought up this evening about what would come next. That meeting we would propose to have on Wednesday, January the 14th. And after that, our board of trustees would need to consider all of the information and make a decision before January 31st. The reason for that um deadline for a decision is because of the Texas Education AY's rules regarding school closure. We understand the concern about moving fast about this, but we also do have a deadline that is looming

064at the end of the month that affects accountability ratings. So this evening we wanted to present to the board of trustees the big reasons why we are considering that or why we are proposing this explain the dates and the timeline that uh allowed us to get here and to allow our trustees to ask initial questions. We realize that you may not have all of the questions uh this evening, but we will be able to answer those should you consider a vote later in the month. again. I want to reassure our community that we will meet with the parents before the board has a decision to make. At this time, we'll turn it over to our board of trustees for any questions or comments on the presentation. Um I I normally don't don't go first, but

065I I do um just want to ask a couple questions uh from the outset that I think were shared uh by the community members that I think might be part of just to answer on the outset. So, Dr. Collins, one of the concerns that was shared is that um moving the students from Bllandon to another campus would put them in classrooms that that are overcrowded or or have too many students. Can you explain why that would not be the case? Yes. So we have a standard in Arlington ISD for the number of students and teachers that we would want to see together in a classroom. Every year we work with our principles to ensure that we meet that standard um for every grade level and every classroom across the district. If the board made a

066decision that we were going to close Blandon Elementary School, then that would inform the decision that we would make with our HR team to make sure that we had enough teachers on the receiving campuses so that we met those minimum thresholds. So we can assure families that they would not go above the minimum threshold that we would set here in Arlington just like we would have on every other campus in the district. And Dr. Collins. Last year we received some data on our average class size and especially at the elementary schools we have very small class sizes typically in the neighborhood of of 14 15 16 students. Right. Yes. So, for example, a second grade classroom may have a threshold of 22 students for every one teacher. And currently we are well below that on

067many of the campuses in our district. If we were would go above the 22:1 ratio, then that would require us to add an additional teaching position on that campus. Okay. And then the last question that I had that based on the the I think would be appropriate to answer now is a number of the speakers expressed concern about the staff and how much they like the staff and and have a connection to the staff. What is what will happen to the staff? Will they remain employed with Arlington ISD? Dr. We agree that we have some amazing employees at Blandon Elementary School. And when we met with them on Monday, we already assured them that they would have a place in Arlington ISD next year. our human resources team will design a um plan specifically for

068Blandon Elementary to ensure that every teacher and every employee has a position in the district next year. We will look carefully at certifications to ensure that we have a good match and then we will place um our employees in a place where there is an opening. certific. And then if our employees are interested in other positions that are available in the district, they will be able to apply for those to perhaps have a transfer. And then I I missed one. There were concerns expressed about would the students wherever they end up, would they have access to the same bilingual education opportunities as Atlanton and the special education services that they receive? Yes. So every student that is a part of a specialized program, we will consider their needs individually to ensure that they have continuity

069of services as they would move from one campus to another. Our special education team would partner very closely with families to ensure that there was um very tight communication regarding any particular student needs and our bilingual program would ensure that every student who is a part of the bilingual program can continue in that program. I'm sorry. department. Thank you. Those are all the questions I think that would be generalized to help me at least and I know they were expressed by the community. And at this time I will uh turn it over to other trustees for comments and questions. And and because of the nature of this particular discussion and the timeline, I would ask my colleagues to please indicate in their comments whether they would like the board to further consider this going forward

070because we will have to um act on that timeline and take further action if there is interest in hearing more about the proposal. Consult. Okay. Our first uh trustee with comments and questions is Miss Valor. Miss Valor. Thank you. Uh, you already addressed a couple of my my concerns, the class size and the special ed, but it seems like one of the issues that I heard over and over was transportation and being able to walk your student to school and back is is nice. And for some of our parents, they may not have a car or not be able to drive. So, how are we going to work the transportation for these students? access. So, I'd like to ask Dr. Hill to come up. Dr. Hill is in charge of our transportation and he can

071uh give you a few pieces of information as we talk about next steps. So thank you Dr. Smith and uh regarding transportation we have a standard across the district by which we provide transportation to and from school based on how far a family lives from the school and so we would in earnest implement that same situation in the new assignments and then there's always this ability or this opportunity to be nimble enough where it makes sense to make some adjustments to that. So Roberto. Thank you. And if I could just comment, I want to say something to the parents and to the students of Blandon. And I know that new situations can be scary and it's the unknown that frightens us. But I want you to know that whichever campus your student is assigned to,

072they are going to welcome them with open arms and they are going to want the parents to come in and be parent volunteers on their campus. But you're going to be welcomed and and we want you to be happy in your situations. But I want you to know that that whichever campus you end up going to, you're going to be welcomed and make you'll be made part of their family. They want you to be part of their family. And I know it can be scary and maybe you want Bllandon and you know Bllandon and you want it to stay open, but you'll be safe and you'll be happy at other campuses that will that you'll be assigned to. And I'm going to try to remember every single word because it was Thank you, Miss Feller.

073The next trustee with comments and questions is Miss Richardson. Miss Richardson. Hi, Dr. Collins. I have a couple of questions for you. Um, one of my first questions would be with the students if if the we went through with the administration's proposal, would students be assigned to new campuses or would they have a choice of new campuses? So, we would anticipate that if the board moved forward with closing Blanton Elementary that we would redraw the boundaries for where those students would be zoned to attend school. Africa. And just like um in the remainder of our district, if students participate in the bilingual program or the special education program, their zoned school may not be the school that they are asked to attend. We also are an open district and if families are interested in a

074transfer to move their student to a different campus, that's something that they would be allowed to apply for. One of the other things that um I was thinking about when um Laura Garcia spoke earlier in the forum was talking about the star ratings and how it is not fair that sadly we live in a state where we are judged on those. If we have a school that is under a certain rating from TEA and let me think the best way to word this, would they be then going from one failing campus to another failing campus? There's actually legislation specific to closing a campus that is currently rated at an F. We would not be allowed to reszone students to a campus rated at a D or an F, which means that all families would be

075reszoned to a campus with a current rating of an A, B, or C. And repeating the information in smaller segments for the interpreter, please. Um, there is um legislation that guides us in making this decision. We are not allowed to reszone students who are currently attending a failing campus to attend another campus rated at a D or an F. So that means all of our families would be reszoned to a campus currently rated at an A, B, or C. I'm learning as we are moving forward and looking obviously our administrative and the cabinet has done a lot of work thinking about if this moved forward what would that look like for our students and for our families but also on the impact of other schools and I'll pause. Thank you. Knowing that, what schools do

076we have as possible options that Bllandon would be reszoned to attend? We're still working on that with our demographer and we would like to be able to go over that with the parents of Bllandon Elementary School next week. There are many factors to consider in that including what programs like bilingual or special education programs but also um the proximity of students to each campus. So, our administrative team is working with the demographer to figure out how to best meet each and every student's needs as we uh consider that proposal. When I think about everything that these students are going through and I think about the parent who talked about that her Jacqueline Con Canis was talking about that her first grade grade student has special needs and is going through the testing program right now.

077I want to make sure that we do everything in our power as a district to make sure none of these students slip through the cracks as we make these changes if that is what we do going forward. You say sleep to the cracks. Will you clarify the idiom? Um doesn't um we don't forget don't lose don't lose lose sight of the u the student. Sorry about that. No, they change is hard on kids and we know this. I have two kids here in the district and if I told my two children we were going to need to change schools at the end of the year where they had family and friends, Change is difficult for them and we don't want to make change that is already going to be hard harder by not by losing

078sight of their needs. So, what can we do as a board right now, Dr. Collins, to support y'all in the next two and a half, three weeks where it will be a quick pace of information coming? I I don't know that it'll be a quick pace. What we would like to do is provide the families with as much information as possible while you're making this decision, but then we have eight months to ensure that every student has their needs met as they transition to another campus. So, if the board makes this decision, then it's our job to work with every family at Blandon to make sure that their student needs are met, that their transportation needs are discussed, and that there uh any other questions they may have that arise, that we have a plan

079for each student. I feel very confident in our team that we can ensure every student has their needs met at every school. One of the things that I'm happiest about tonight is hearing our parents speak and our community members and how proud and pleased they are of the principal and the staff at Blandon. It's a hard thing that we're discussing tonight, but I think there is such a silver lining here and it was hearing our community speak about these people who are the bodies in the school that they're making the school, what they said, feel like a home and but most of all making it feel like a Safe home. President Chopper, the last thing that you asked was for us to indicate if we would want to hear more and to be able to

080continue with this process. I would like to hear more and you asked if we would indicate individually and I would. Thank you, Mr. Richardson. We'll move on to Mr. Mike. Mr. Mike, thank you, President Chapa. Um, I just have a few comments and some rhetorical questions. So, they First, I want to focus on the reality of the situation and and how we got here. Uh, for the 2021 and 2022 school year, Blackton Elementary had an accountability rating of a B. And then the Texas Education Agency did a star redesign and in 2022 and 2023, Latin Elementary had an F. And and I don't see that as a knock on Bllandon because several schools and several school districts went down in the ratings due to this new redesign. Texas. Now, I will keep my thoughts to

081myself on um what I think about what TA has done. But, um when we get to the reality of Blandon Elementary, um yeah, we see they're facing a declining enrollment under 500 students. U based on three years of accountability data. Um there's been lower performance and um major facility repairs per the needs index. And this is all in a high Hispanic area where 86% of the students are at risk. And so for me as a board member, the overarching questions that are in my mind um given these realities, what are the details on the cost, equity protections and broader consolidation opportunities? Would you mind repeating this three aspects? What's that? Would you mind repeating the aspects that the question? Uh given these realities, what are the details on the cause equity protections? And so I

082understand that the the administration will hold some meetings with the parents next week. So, I think um I've got some key questions that are rhetorical, but for the administration to keep in mind when you are talking to the parents, um the specific repairs for the facility needs index for Blandon elementary. Um the total cost um how does that compare to financial savings uh from the closure and any redirection of funds to support students at receiving schools? And I I'll I'll break that down. Thank you. Um what are the specific repairs for the facilities needs index for Blackton Elementary? The total estimated cost and how that compares to financial savings from closure, including any redirection of funds to support students at receiving schools. Uh the next question to keep in mind, uh with Blandon's high Hispanic

083economically disadvantaged and at risk population around uh 95% minority. Will we ensure that the closure won't disproportionately harm these groups? or widen achievement gaps seen in low math and reading proficiency. Um the next question. Um will we ensure that transition plans include um spots in schools with strong bilingual programs and uh possibly counseling to address any social or emotional impacts from the closing of the school. These are just a few um questions that pop into my mind when I hear about a potential closure of a school in our district. Um I would also like to point out that the state of our district uh is very different now than it was in 2013. And and while I know that we as community members and parents and students have particular ties to the schools that we

084attend, political forces have put us in a position that we do not want to be in. I just want every community member to know that each and every one of us sitting up here wants to ensure that Arlington ISD prospers. And I too would like more discussion on this topic. be sure to include those in our parent meeting and also with you when we meet again. Thank you, Mr. Mike. Next trustee in line is Mr. Will Banks. Mr. Will Banks, thank you, President Chapa, and thank you uh Trustee Mike for your comments. I share the fact that I'm not happy to be in the situation that we are in tonight and that I hope that we would do everything possible to accommodate the families of Bllandon Elementary. Dr. Smith, you mentioned that um you're you

085guys are still working through the boundaries and and a plan for reassigning students. And I would appreciate for the families if we could do a study on the impact and the potential need for additional transportation for those students. And and so that we have a clear idea of given the schools that are most likely choices for reassignment that that we do everything possible to make those walkable um decisions for our students. and if not doing everything we can on the transportation, but I would definitely like to be like to know what that impact will on the ability for our population to be able to walk to school. And um following on to what Mr. Mike said about um the population and and what Miss Richardson uh comment on before in terms of making the transition

086easy. What efforts are we making? We've Well, first of all, what um what special populations do we serve at Platin Elementary terms of special needs and special other specialized programs? Fore. So at Blandon Elementary, we have bilingual programs and then in special education, we serve all curriculum students. We have students that receive speech services and students that are served for learning disabilities in the classroom and also in resource classrooms as well as autism. particip. Thank you, Dr. Wartz. Um, so are are we considering trying to keep the our special needs populations in the creek to those families together? So, individual family discussion because it would depend on family circumstances as well. Like you mentioned earlier, how close they are to potential campuses. But we want to take a look at how we best care for

087the students at Blandon Elementary. So we are exploring all options. Blong Elementary. My next question is on potential efficiencies that um a change like this might be a silver lining for. Um do you mind repeating that please? I would like to look at um the efficiencies that a change like this might entail and be a positive uh given the difficult decision. It seems to me that when you have a campus with around 50% projected to drop below 50% and as Mr. Mike pointed out is a high needs population. It's more difficult to have the economy of scales for those extra wraparound services. Um for addition, for example, um extra resources for academic deans, um extra resources for the special needs populations and um right. And that having a campus with a higher um enrollment percentage

088gives us economies of scale to better serve those students given the efficiencies of spreading that cost out over a larger student population. So, do we anticipate having the ability to serve our students with those special needs or um special populations more effect um in a better way? I'll answer that uh very briefly. As campuses get smaller, it does become harder to provide the right resources for each and every student on a campus. This is one of the things that has been on our mind with campuses with declining enrollment and one of the reasons we are proposing this this evening. With our larger campuses, we are able to offer more programming and support for our students. Thank you, Dr. Smith and Dr. Collins. Could I have you put up the first slide you shared on our

089um values and beliefs? These values and beliefs we as a corporate body hold dear and um specifically the first one and the last one. We care dearly about the student experience and that students provide are provided with the best learning opportunities and experience possible in Arlington ISD. As my colleagues have already pointed out, a campus I would argue also that a campus that is 50% capacity and declining and with the needs um that that facility needs to bring it up to a quality learning environment for our students. and that we want the very best for our students, all of our students. So I would be interested in hearing more about this given the short timeline that we have. I'm not happy about the political situation that Mr. Mike alluded to, but this is the reality

090that we face. Thank you, Mr. Will Banks, Miss McMarrow. Thank you, President Chappa. Um, thank you, Dr. Collins and Dr. Smith. Um, it's been highlighted several times tonight that the staff at Blandon under the leadership of Principal Castillo has really um just shined and they are all there to reach and teach the Blandon Eagles. And I I just want to commend I I want to echo kind of what's been said all night, but I also want to say that when you go to Blandon, you Oh, sorry. Thank you. director as a trustee. When I visit Blandon, I see it myself. And when you enter the school, something that you can't miss, there's a big um floor mat that says Blandon Elementary, a place to soar with eagles. Blandon Elementary, a place to soar with eagles.

091Oh, thank you. And whether our students attend Blandon or another Arlington ISD school, it is very important to me that our students soar from what um questions have been asked, mo most of mine um have been answered and I I do believe that our administration has put a lot of thought into this proposal. The only remaining question um I was going to actually ask Dr. Collins, you or Dr. Smith to kind of elaborate on is what measures are what interventions I'm thinking of academics. what um interventions are in place in response to the improvement plan um are already happening because I know that was a question this evening a couple times and I would like to know what academic interventions are already in place One key intervention at Blandon is our Bailey Education Group where

092every teacher who teaches a tested grade level has individualized coaching. Additionally, um we are ensuring that the curriculum is being followed with fidelity. And there's been a lot of training around um what we call productive struggle um where where students work hard to learn the the the the learning. much. We also have our curriculum and instruction team and another department helping to provide lesson plans directly for and with teachers. and then targeted targeted learning for individualized students. Thank you, Dr. Champion. So, um, it really brings me solace to know that no matter what the future holds for Blandon, we have invested a lot into growing our staff and they will remain employed with our school district. which will yield a positive impact for students. That's something that I don't want to leave up to chance.

093And the reality is that Blandon is in multiple consecutive years now of being an F-rated campus by TEA. Um, I I do appreciate the dialogue and the support and when when when staff says when parents say at Blandon we're a family, that is evident and and our board knows that. It's very important um as proposed that we host that community meeting to give everyone a voice and I also support bringing this to the next January meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Miss McMarrow. Miss Haynes. Yes. Um, so most of my colleagues have asked all the questions that I had and have addressed a lot of the hesitation I had around how this process would move forward. Um, what I do want to do is acknowledge the parent voice that is present tonight. Um, I have been

094in your shoes. Um, I had Go ahead. Sorry. Um, I had a third grader years ago that was on a campus that was set to be repurposed and no longer a home campus. Um, and similar to y'all, um, parents showed up and and we spoke against that. And I am sharing from my my point of view and experience to the administration that the parents at that time at that home campus did not feel supported. And I want to make sure that that is not repeated here. I want to ensure and ask that beyond this parent meeting that if this comes back and if it's approved that our administrators, that our community members that work with that campus, that everybody is doing everything they can to walk this hand in hand with our families. I want

095to encourage overcommunication. I want to encourage empathy and I want to encourage giving as many opportunities as possible for the families to share and share again and to grieve. I think that allowing those opportunities for families to come together and meet with administrators as many times as they need to will ultimately make the transition easier for them and it will allow for the parents to be able to communicate and help their children through the change smoother. Thank you. Um, you've done a great job. Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Thank you. I I apologize for interruptions and the mistakes. No, you're doing a fantastic job. Um, Mrs. Haynes, after tonight's meeting, um, we will be sending out a letter to the Blandon Elementary families. They will receive that tomorrow. We will also send a

096letter to Blandon Elementary staff as a followup tomorrow. And we are launching a website where families can communicate with us directly regarding their questions and concerns. We will use our new tool called let's talk or onflow. Let's talk and it allows families to communicate in any language to the district. And then it will distribute that question directly to the department to best be able to address the family concern. Thank you. I I appreciate you outlining that you have those processes already in place. Um, I'm I'm guessing when we come back to have further discussion on this, you will have an another timeline that shows other parent meetings in place and other community dialogue opportunities. We do know that this will be a transition that lasts eight months and we want to walk hand in hand

097with our families through the entire transition. Wonderful. Thank you. Um I I am willing to continue the discussion at the next meeting. Thank you, Miss Haynes. Are there any trustees that have further comments or questions? Thank you, Dr. Collins and Dr. Smith. That was a lot of information and I I just have a few things I want to say and to the Blandon family who is here tonight. I want to talk to you about some complicated things that were shared tonight. I understand why The district administration is recommending closing Blandon for several reasons. One of the things that they are not recommending closing Blandon for is because of our budget. Closing Bllandon would save a little bit in the money that we use to operate every day. The main reasons are the building being very

098old. about half the students that it could and because we have a very short time to improve the academic score at Blandon. And I want to talk about that last part just a little bit more because my colleagues have called that a political situation tonight. And I want to be clear about what that political situation is. Under state law, if Blandon does not improve its score in a very short time, then the Texas state government will make the decision to shut down Bllandon itself. And we will have very little say in what that looks like. Even though we don't want to necessarily do that, we have the ability to work with you and you work with us to come up with a plan that works for this community here that understands each other. You can

099come here tonight and you can share your concerns with us and you can email us and you can call us on the phone. the political officials with the Texas state government who might shut down Blandon if there's not improvement. You don't have that level of connection to them and they may not listen to you. Because the people that will be brought in to make those decisions almost like very likely do not live here. Now I grew up in East Arlington. The community you live in is the community that raised me. And if we are going to close campuses in our district and in the community that I care about. I would rather it be us who know each other and not people we do not. So in the future, I want to talk more about

100the building being very old and the student population being very low. But for tonight, I want you to know that we hear your concerns. We do not want to be here. But the reality is if we do not take action ourselves, it will be done for us. So based on the comments from my colleagues tonight, I hear that there is a consensus to continue considering this issue. And so I will work with Vice President McMurro and Secretary Richardson. and superintendent Dr. Smith to consider this further at a meeting before January 22nd. Looking at the board calendar, I believe I will recommend that that meeting be held on Tuesday, January 20th. Because even though the board is scheduled to meet on Thursday, January 22nd, this issue is important enough that it deserves its own meeting. That

101is all I have tonight. Thank you for coming, trustees. I I would like to point out uh two things. One, uh Dr. Collins mentioned additional communication coming out tomorrow. Bllandon families know of the meeting date and time at Blandon Elementary. We will have all appropriate translation services available for families at Bllandon and we will do our best to ensure we answer some of the questions that you posed tonight and that our families post. I also want to note that you can see on your screens that we are also lifting up a website to help us ensure that we are communicating with our entire community about this topic. We know this is a challenging topic and we will do everything we can to make sure our community is well informed and listened to during the process.

102Excuse me. We appreciate our trustees and our audience members tonight listening. Thank you. So, we have been going for about two hours and we still have a lot of work to do. And so, at this time, we will take a short recess for uh the the board to take a quick break and then we'll be back in say five minutes or so. There won't be any more discussion about Bllandon tonight. So you you are free to leave if you would like and go home and get some rest and we very much appreciate you coming tonight. It is 10:06 and we in recess. Ah. Hey. Hey. I'm a Yeah, down. My heart. Hey. Come on. Hey. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. All right, it is 10:17 and we are back from recess. We're going to

103continue on with our committee and staff reports tonight. And we have one committee report tonight that's coming from our governance committee which is chaired by Miss Haynes. So, I at this time will turn it over to Miss Haynes for a governance committee report. Um, yes. So, we met um several several weeks ago. I'm trying to remember now. I had to really dig deep to think about that. Um, we at that meeting we um continued our policy review. We left with a substantial amount of homework um given to the members of that committee, myself, Trusty McMurro, and Trusty Richardson. Um that will prepare us to come back at our meeting in January at the end of the month and dive into policy AE local. So that's where we're at. All right. Thank you, Miss Haynes. We'll

104move on now to item C tonight. That is a um one of our district priority updates and the district priority for safety and discipline. Dr. Smith, I'd like to invite Dr. Jarko and Dr. Hill uh to the podium tonight. They're going to update you all. As you know, we've talked about this over the last couple of years to well, I should say a little over a year now to make sure that we're um reporting out on our progress toward the priority that you adopted. This is just another update along the way. So, thank you, Dr. Smith. And again, board, we're here to provide this update and we're going to break break it into two different sections. One on safety and one on discipline. And so, Dr. Jarco will start with the discipline, please. and what

105we've been uh working toward and I'll follow up at the end with the safety piece. So, Dr. Jer, thank you, Dr. Hill. Good evening, uh board president Choa, members of the board, Dr. Smith. We're going to jump right into our purpose this evening. So, um our purpose is going to be to provide an update on safety and discipline metrics for the 2526 school year. It's important to note that when we talk about the metrics, we're talking about preK through 12. Um it's also very important to note that some of these metrics are ones we've seen, as Dr. Smith mentioned over the past year. So, we're trying to keep consistency um with the presentation as much as we can. Main key tonight is we're just again reporting on how we're striving to create those safe and

106secure learning environments so that every staff member can thrive. So, we are going to start tonight a little bit differently. We know discipline referral is only one piece of the data. So, we're not going to spend a lot of time here. We're going to start with the end of the story. Um we again have really good news to report in terms of where we're at with our um discipline data. You can look here at the chart on the lefth hand side and see several different incidents in which we would want to be decreasing to have classrooms where students and staff can can thrive are decreasing and decreasing at a pretty good rate. Um couple key things to note when we look at discipline referrals itself. We did have to take out technology related infractions and

107that's because away for the day we're enforcing it. We're doing a good job of it and it's probably leading to these other data that you're seeing in terms of coming down with fighting and so on assaults because we have control of phones. That's a new thing this year, of course, state law. So, we wanted to take it out to make sure we were comparing apples to apples. And when you look at the fighting, that is not the number of fights, that's the number of kids involved in fights. So, it can be deceiving. We just wanted to clarify it. On the right hand side, you can see those decreases um based upon the different um discipline codes. And you can also see the total referrals and the decreases we have. Again, we're comparing last year to

108this year. Same time period, same time frames. So, this is pretty exciting data. We do want to jump into more than just quantitative data though and also want to talk about the qualitative data. As you may recall, um we have a group of 12 behavior support team members. They're on the restorative practices side and also on the the positive behavior intervention support side. We set out three priorities. We reported to those the last couple meetings. We want to give you an update. One of those priorities is to work with our first year teachers. So, as you may recall, we've have our first year teachers attend a new teacher academy over the summer. But then during the school year in the past, we hadn't really connected with those new teachers in a way that we would

109be proud of. We've stopped doing that and started doing things differently this year. So we have four cohorts. We've connected with 85 brand new to teaching teachers. These are not teachers coming to us with experience and delivered 36 hours of targeted PL. And I'll give you a piece of quantitative or qual qualitative data quote from one of those teachers and the impact that that training has made. Had a chance to go and meet with all those teachers. um they were at training earlier this week as we actually did an activity where the two cohorts came together and cohort one which started with this back in September talked with cohort 4 about how the the programs beneficial what they can learn they're really developing a true sense of commodery um and almost a natural PLC that

110I think will have an impact for years to come so it's pretty exciting also been working with our campus behavior support teams as we've mentioned those are actually what used to be known as PBIS teams we're calling them campus behavior support because we know that positive behavior support and restorative practices working hand in hand. They're not working in isolation. We're really trying to change that perception. So, we've trained those campus teams. And again, if you recall, our through line is to make sure we can build capacity. We have 12 team members and a coordinator. And the only way we're going to be effective is if we build capacity with those on the campus and work in conjunction with our campus leaders um to do that work. We feel like we've done a pretty good job

111up to this point um of working to build that capacity through character strong curriculum training and also through making sure our campus behavior support teams have the members that they need to help build capacity with others on their team so that we can truly have that through line all the way down to the classroom. And then of course lastly our our third goal for this year for uh 2526 is to make sure every campus had a seven had a behavior support action plan. All campuses have one and they are specified specifically to the need of that campus. I'm going to share an example with you here in a second. So with our first year teachers, I'm not going to read this entire quote to you, but I'm going to ask you to hone into the

112second line on the lefth hand side where it says, "Learned ways to implement respect and structure, which are two main aspects that I'm struggling with." That's coming from one of our first year teachers. Very important. Um, we're hearing even from our teacher behavior committee, which we'll talk to you about that in a second, that they feel like there are more constructive ways that they can bring PL back to their campus that they can immediately implement. Our first year teachers are telling us the same. And that's just one piece, one teacher, an anonymous teacher saying, "Hey, this has really been helpful for me." We want to provide that hope. We have to invest in those first year teachers um throughout the year. This is a teacher who most likely came in either September, October, November, maybe

113even a couple weeks ago, right? and we want to make absolutely sure they're supported. Our campus behavior support teams, again, we always try to get feedback at the end of our PL. So, one of the pieces that they elevated was the fact that, hey, we're getting the training that we need to be coaches for our campus. And that's what we want to hear because again, it shows that behavior capacity through line. Um, I talked to you about the behavior support um action plans. We keep trying to thread one of those plans into every one of these meetings. So at Ashworth Elementary as an example, their plan is going to go ahead and really focus on the idea of how do you make sure that you're recognizing kids when they're doing things well. We a lot

114of times will write a referral. Of course, if a kid's not doing right, we can counteract that. Think relationship bank, you know, mini deposits. Um you know, when you take out a withdrawal. So what you're seeing here is our assistant principal working with a kid who was referred for doing something kind. Um what that's led to of course is a 14% reduction in the office referrals at Ashworth. It gives you one example um of what a positive behavior support plan at a campus looks like or a behavior support action plan I should say and more importantly the reduction I I would almost guarantee you knowing Ashworth pretty well it's it's resulting in a lot of smiles on people's faces which is what this is all about. So I mentioned to you very just a minute

115ago we've had teacher behavior focus group uh meetings. So this is again a group of teachers across our district that have been nominated. There was one teacher that was involved in the committee last year campuses and also nominated a new teacher. We had almost every campus represented late in November. We were over at Arlington College and career a full cafeteria 75 total teachers. We got positive feedback. I mean they felt like administrative teams and campuses had strength and consistency and accountability that they would that they are wanting to continue to increase our support. So we're taking this feedback in hand, but to continue increase support around behavior and mental health to enhance our communication and collaboration. So there were stories about APS are doing a better job communicating with their teachers about what happens to

116a kid and we want to see more of that. So the meeting was extremely positive because it was forwardinking. It was recognizing the good work that was done but also giving us ideas on how we can continue to improve as a team. Um there comes that again that idea of more practical behavior strategies that can be implemented ASAP. So we'll take that feedback in kind and also supporting with student engagement and attendance. So we will internalize this feedback and already have started to figure out where we're going next. It's one piece of many pieces of feedback um coming from our teachers. Now current work really important here. So with some of the feedback that we've heard quite a bit of it actually whether it's our student surveys or our our teacher surveys is we have

117to make sure they're responding beyond tier one. So as we know tier one is meant for everybody. It's it's basically us providing interventions at our campus and supporting a system of interventions across our district so that every single kid can thrive. When we do that and we do it well, we should get the data that you see and we should get it to continue to improve. But there's still going to be a group of students around 10 to 15% that need the tier 2 support and we've heard the feedback from in this forum and in other forms. We have to start working in that area. So some things we've been working on is we have 11 pilot schools that are a cross representation of all of our levels to go ahead and to work through

118what does tier 2 support look like with the support of character strong but also if you see the second bullet around systems alignment. So we had interdep departmental work late in December, a full day. We sat down and said, "Okay, as a system, knowing that our campuses do know how to do some tutor support. How do we support them? And what does that look like with the end outcome that we're working on to be a one-page document, tons of links, enough though where we could go and point people in the right direction and also gear our support for our behavior team support members in helping these 11 campuses to be exemplars so that we can keep rolling forward and making sure that we're helping our other campuses. So at this meeting you can you can

119imagine special education leadership, parent engagement leadership and discussions are specifically around what does a good tier 2 team look like that can help a kid because it's not a tier one team. The tier 2 team has got to be individualized. It's got to have wraparound support. It may have different members on it. Has to be flexible based upon the need that you're trying to work on with the actual individual kid. So, we're working on trying to see how we build a system at our level, not just 12 behavior support team members, but across an entire department um and many departments to make sure that we're all talking the same language and providing aligned support to our campuses so we can help them through that work. And we're pretty excited about it's in its early infasy,

120but it's coming to fruition. Um the goal there again is to support and sustain that tier 2 support across our district um as quickly as we possibly can. Last but not least, before I turn it over to Michael, we also have a district behavior focus group that we've recently started up. I know all these can get kind of complicated. This is not the team of 12 behavior specialists. This is representation from all of our departments. 13 were represented. We had our first of five meetings. We're taking a researchbased approach to use a self assessment. How are we doing as a district across all departments in our alignment and where is it that we need to get better? It's a researchbased approach from the National Center of PBIS and so on. So the idea here is

121that at the end of this year, we have defined goals that are not just built with the 12 specialists, but they're built across all departments and we can all buy into them to help our continued improvement because as we know when you continue to get better and better every day, improvement gets hard. So we have to keep thinking ahead of the game to try to make sure that we hit those next steps. So we're going to make sure those plans just like this year align with district priorities. And with that being said, I'm going to have Dr. Hill continue that story um with the safety report. So thank you Dr. Jarco and and down that same path uh continuing to ensure that we're aligning to the district improvement plan safe the goal safety uh goal

122three safety and discipline the performance objective is aligned and what Dr. Jarko has talked to you about is strategy one. I'm going to dig a little bit deeper into strategy two which is about the uh safety management plan and then strategy three about reserving time to really dig into best practices with with regard to addressing student discipline. As you saw one of those uh strategies talked about uh dedicated time at assist at assistant principles meetings. And so here are just three draft agendas of the meetings throughout I think October, November, December where you can see the dedicated time at the assistant principles meeting where we're actually bringing assistant principles in who've shown some good data and letting them teach other administrators the processes and procedures that they have on their campuses for uh opportunities to

123possibly improve. What we really look at whether it's this diagram of continual improvement or any other one, it's really about uh monitoring and adjusting. And so we see where we are, we see what the data is saying, and then we monitor that, and then we adjust where necessary. That's the cycle that we're really focusing in on all of these meetings to make sure that we are trying to continue to improve that discipline outcomes. With regard to the safety piece, uh the TEA uh intruder detection audit, the top graph you'll see from 2425 where we had 10 findings throughout the school year, and the bottom graph is where we uh were at semester where we've only got two findings. So you can see the drastic improvement with 41.9% of our schools uh assessed by TEA at

124that point only two findings. Uh anytime there's a finding you all know this is required to report to the board there staff training that's require required the school safety committee uh has to uh be made aware of this report and then there's a report back to TEA that we've actually done all of these compliance pieces and so we are we're on point with all of that. This next slide is just an example. This is not real data here, but this is just an example of the drills that we have to do on a daily basis from every campus, K through 12, it doesn't matter. And so there are fire evacuation drills, hazmat, severe weather, and some others that are required by the state. Uh we are in compliance with all those security works very hard

125with the campus administrators to ensure that we are uh handling those drills and doing them well. We do have uh collaboration with APD on some of those drills to make sure that we just you know we're doing it the way that that it should be done. Again, we want to continue to focus on safe and productive learning environments. That's our target whether it be student discipline and or safety and putting the supports in place around uh the campus to ensure that. So that being said, we'll take any questions or discussion that you may have. All right. Thank you, Dr. Hill, Dr. Jarko. Trustees with comments or questions. We'll start with Miss Richardson. the uh the graph that you just showed us uh page 17 just for clarification. You said that these are drills that they're

126doing daily. Uh it it all depends. There are some that are required like for a fire drill as an example, there's one required by the state anytime kids are in school 10 or more days per month. So on average, how often do we have to do these drills? Like a fire drill is done once every six weeks. An evacuation drill is once a semester. How often do we have to run these types of drills? again fire drill once every month that there's 10 days with that we are in school. I think there's evacuation drills maybe once or twice per semester. One of them is once every 12 weeks. There's different uh requirements. I ask only because I hear my own kids come home and say it feels like they're doing a different different drill every

127week and then you hear teachers say but when you look at this it's truly not as much as what it may feel like. So thank you. Sure. Thank you Mr. Richardson. Are there any other trustees with comments or questions? Miss Valor. Thank you, President Choa. All right, Dr. Hill, I'm looking at If you'll go back to the one that was this one. Uh, so I'm looking at Barnett and why do they have zeros all the way across? So again, uh, this is just a snapshot of an example of what the drills could be. These are not real numbers. It's just an example. Thank you, Miss Apologize about that. Want to clarity, sir. Thank you, Miss Fowler. Are there any other further comments or questions from trustees? Okay, I have just a couple real quick questions

128and a couple comments. Doc, Dr. Hill, we go back to the district behavior data slide and I noticed that the data there for for fighting has two asterisks and said it reflects the number of students who were involved total. Is it is that number reflective of unique students or if a student was involved in two incidents of what we would categorize as fighting are they counted twice or they counted once? Thank you, Mr. Trump. It would be counted for every single student who had an altercation. So, if TJ got into an altercation twice in a month, it's going to count for me twice. It's going to count for you twice. So, it it it could be that there are fewer than 651 students who were involved. Yes. It is almost certainly Absolutely. Okay. Yeah. So,

129but I my the point I wanted to make here is first of all these are all green. These are all decreasing which is a trend that we have seen for years and then co happened and then they kind of like everywhere else popped up for a short time and then we've been going back to where we were. But historically we have been seeing increasing um improvement in our discipline data for a long time. And yet if we go out in the community the perception is is not that. And so it's just interesting because if you ask folks just in general how society feels about how safe things are, it's it's a very interesting trend where we actually live in historically safe times, but people don't feel that way. And but you like have to show

130them the data and some people still don't believe it. And that's sort of where we're at here. So I mean, even if we took the 651 students being involved in some sort of shoving or fighting, like districtwide, like we're talking about it's almost like fewer than 1% of the kids. And so, but we have this perception of what our schools are like. And I just want to continue every time we bring these forward, I want to point out that the perception that people have just doesn't match match the reality on the ground. Um, and related to that, if we could go to the slide uh that has DIP goal three, the first their per the first bullet there, I just want to highlight the performance objective one. We're talking about um we as a district

131have been doing this for a few years now where we actually ask our staff how do you feel about your campus safety working conditions and that's part of the surveying that we do for our staff and then we report out on it. So for several years now we have been very transparent with our discipline data and objective data on how I guess it's a subjective feeling of the staff but we reported out it's an objective number how our staff feels about their safety on in their working conditions on campus and for several years that has increased too and as as Dr. Lopez shared when we shared she shared this data um even going up 0.1 or 0 2 which we have and and our goal is to go up another 0.1 next year that reflects

132several hundred staff members changing their views on how they feel safe at work. So we are continuing to have in declines in student behavioral incidents. We're continuing to see an increase in the the how safe our staff feels on campus. And I just want again to point out the perception doesn't match the reality. But we're also being transparent about it in a way in which the the um campus the schools systems that we are frequently compared to they do not many of them most of them um do not share this level of transparency at all. And so people are just it's guesswork as to what's actually happening inside those buildings and how their staff feels. But we are we are being transparent about that here in Arlington ISD. Um and that's really the only two

133points I I wanted to make in relation to that. So thank you all for the report. Dr. Smith, if I could add just one thing to that, you you pointed out a couple of things I wanted to hit on, but there's one more add to that is one of the reasons we don't measure our effectiveness by just the number of disciper discipline referrals is because we want to get at the heart of the perception. We want people to feel safe and secure on our campuses, that they're well trained if an emergency arises, but that they're uh the safety and discipline on each campus is improving on a regular basis. So, there's a reason that our our metric that we have here isn't just decreasing the number of referrals. And we're we are very proud of

134the work. We're going to continue investing in the work because we know if our teachers and staff uh and our students feel like they can uh be successful and and and be safe in a system, we're going to lead to better academic results, too. So, we're we're very grateful for the work that's been going on. All right. Our last item um on our staff report section tonight is a update on our strategic plan. And I'll turn it back to Dr. Smith and Dr. Collins. We're going to let Dr. Collins uh walk you through some uh slides this evening on an update on where we are on our strategic plan. Just a a brief recap for our community and also for our trustees. We started this process last January. So, it's been a year now since

135we started. We had consultants come in and work with our board in numerous workshops regarding uh developing a strategic plan. We then took the baton from those um those facilitators and have been working on it ourselves and this is an update for you on our next steps regarding that strategic plan. Thank you, Dr. Smith. You've done the purpose slide for us already. So, I'm going to skip over that and go straight to improvement planning. This is a graphic that we've put together to just try to explain a little bit how complicated improvement planning in a school district really is. Whenever you think about all of the different kinds of improvement planning conversations that are happening, I think it gets confusing sometimes for our stakeholders as to where we are in the improvement planning process. So,

136I want to kind of walk through this and it's almost like a funnel as we think about where we started. So, we're going to start with values and beliefs. So, we've already talked about values and beliefs a little bit tonight, but as you think about improvement planning, that's where we start, right? What are the things that we hold true? What are the things that are most important to us in the way that we're going to do our work in the district? And then it kind of fun down to our district priorities. So, last fall um a year and a half ago, you guys worked together to identify priorities of things that you wanted to accomplish here in Arlington ISD. And so, how are we going to do those things and what are the things that

137we really want to accomplish together? And then this year we made some minor adjustments to um a little bit of wording, but really those um priorities have stayed stable. So what we're going to talk about tonight is strategic plan, which kind of lives in the middle, and it's that five-year plan of how are we going to accomplish those district priorities. And we're going to get your feedback tonight hopefully on where we are right now with our strategic plan. And then the strategic plan then ties to our district improvement plans, our campus improvement plans, which are annual plans that are put in and we monitor progress over the course of the year. And then finally, we have our key progress measures, which is the most narrow. Those are the things that we are publicly held accountable

138for. We talk to our board about these on a regular basis. We talk to our trustees, um, I'm sorry, our community about them. We talk with our principles about them. And so, it's really important. these are the things that we're really trying to accomplish, right? And so you can look at those things backwards and forwards, but improvement planning truly is complicated. And then tonight in our workshop, we also talked about vision. So really vision is up at the very top because what is it that we're trying to to become? What is it that we want to be um what do we want to be known for um in this district? And so that really is at the uh forefront of our improvement planning. Now, these things should not be just documents that sit on a

139shelf. They are not static documents. Really, they are living and breathing and they should be revisited. And so, we're going to talk about them in the idea of a continuous improvement cycle. So, thinking about the plans that we make, what is it that we're going to do, how do we study the work that we're doing, what actions are we taking, and how that goes on over and over and over again really with all of the different improvement plans. So, what I want to share with you tonight is that middle part about strategic plan and the five-year goals or the metrics that we set out that we believe are aligned with our district priorities. So, the feedback that we want to hear from you is, are we hitting the mark? If we were able to accomplish

140these kinds of things over the next five years, would you say, "Yeah, we met our culture goal because these are the metrics that would tell us whether or not we met it." And so, we really want to have some dialogue. So, I'm going to walk you through each one of them. I'm going to do very brief um kind of commentary on each one and then at the end I've got a slide where we'll put them all back up and we can have some dialogue back and forth about them. So, we'll start with academic growth and we know with academic growth we're going to have things like House Bill 3 goals. We know that we're going to have things like response to our curriculum management audit. They're going to give us recommendations and findings and we

141know that that's going to be a part of it. But in addition to those things, we want to think about things like workforce expectations. So sometimes people call them soft skills, but what are the things that the workforce wants our students to be able to walk in the door um and know? So things like leadership, things like collaboration, things like responsible decision-making. Those are the kinds of things that we want our students to know beyond just reading, writing, and mathematics. Um we want to think about things like um CTE completers. And so the legislation changed a couple of years ago and it is great that our students want to participate in CTE programming, but having completers where they get all the way through the practicum course is really where we're headed with our students. And

142so setting some goals around CTE completers. Eliminating DNF campuses altogether and increasing the number of A and B campuses in our district is something that we've talked about. We've talked about increasing specialized program enrollment. We have some amazing specialized programs um beginning with our youngest learners all the way through our um um seniors in high school and we want to increase that specialized program participation. We want to think about um enrichment opportunities. So things like arts and athletics, academic um enrichment opportunities, leadership programs and how do we increase those and then increase participation in those at the elementary, junior high and high school levels. And then thinking about technology proficiency, you know, what is it that we would want our students to know and be able to do regarding technology? And then what are the

143different ways that we could measure it? So I think that there are some um um real life real time things that we could do um to measure. I think that there are also some survey kinds of things that we could do as well as some assessments that we could put into place. So for culture, we have a few things that we've been talking about. Um the first is that student experience framework. So tonight when we were talking about vision, we talked a lot about the student experience. You know that we have a key progress measure this year focused on um defining that student experience. And so we would hope that in five years we would have a framework developed and that we see students growing in that student experience framework and that our feedback says

144yes, we're making progress with where we want to be with our student experience that's being provided here in Arlington. Um the student experience and well-being index is something that um the research and accountability team talked with us a little bit about when we looked at student data um from the student survey. And so just wanting to keep that as a metric that we're continually growing in our SUEI score. And then the employee net promoter score as well. something that we've looked at for the last couple of years and we would propose leaving that on there but increasing you know over the next five years where is it we would want to be with our employee net promoters with safety and discipline um we think about things like behavior data. You just heard a whole presentation

145on um a lot of these areas here but increasing the numbers of students who are demonstrating um you know personal accountability. Um so that could look um like referral data but it would look like a lot more than that as well. And so what are the different ways that we would measure um behavior data? Um thinking about classroom management, restorative practices and crisis response. So that would be a lot of professional learning that we would want to be able to guarantee. So for teachers who are currently in our system, but then also what is the process when teachers enter our system that we're ensuring that that is continuing to be provided. Thinking about students and staff reporting that they feel safe and supported at school. We want um ready, responsible, and respectful students. And we

146want our parents to say that they understand what that means and that they become partners with us in that work. And thinking about safety and behavior expectations, we want to increase um our parent and guardian confidence and satisfaction and communication around our safety and behavior expectations. Regarding marketing and engagement, we're um really hyperfocused on the idea of campus branding. And so this looks like things um like mascots. It might look like um wrapping windows on the front of a campus um with film. It could look like banners, you know, in the office or in the cafeteria. It could look like digital print media using new and updated logos. Right? So just thinking about campus branding for 100% of our campuses over the course of the next five years. We want to reduce student attrition in

147our system and so why are students leaving to continue to investigate that and then to reduce the students who are leaving our system. We want to think about parent and community volunteerism and increase that um through lots of different methods and then thinking about that parent or family net promoter score and increasing that as well. Again, that's something we've looked at for the last couple of years and keeping that on as a five-year metric. And then finally with talent and resources, you know that we have a goal this year um where we are working to eliminate our deficit. And so we would hope that in five years that the deficit is eliminated, that we have long-term uh fiscal stability and that we have a balanced budget. That's where we would want to be in five

148years. We would want to have certified teachers in 100% of our classrooms. Um in five years, we want to think about strategic compensation, which of course is for our teachers, but it's also for other staff. And so what could strategic compensation look like in our system and how could we build that up over the next five years? We want to think about our talent talent pipeline. So growing your own um what are the different um opportunities that we could put in place here in Arlington ISD that would allow um employees to grow in our system. And then finally thinking about district culture. We want to be thriving. We want to be collaborative. And we want people to feel like this is a rewarding place to be. And so we've got several different metrics um identified

149for that. So again, this is just kind of a broad brush about the conversations that we've been having. Um there are lots of documents and lots of um data that we've put together. Um but we wanted to just kind of bring you a broad picture and get some feedback from you on are we hitting the mark and if we were able to do these kinds of things over the next five years, would you say that we had met um the goals that we have articulated there through our priorities? So, um, we'll open it up for discussion, but I'm going to leave it on this slide just so that you can see everything. Thank you, Dr. Collins. We'll go first to Miss McMurrow. Thank you, Dr. Collins. I really like um the the rough plan that's

150laid out. I think some of these metrics would be lofty, but I'm not afraid of them. And I um I just had a question about one and it's it's timeline related and I know that that's still very very much early planning. So if you guys don't have an idea yet that's fine. I I just want to be conscious of it. So under culture um you mentioned the student experience framework taking five years to develop. Why would that take five years? Or maybe I misunderstood. Well and I may have misspoken. So we are um working this year to define the student experience and then we want to begin to work on a framework and we would hope over the course of the five years that we are growing in our progress towards whatever the framework says.

151So the student experience is defined as X and so over the course of the next five years we would want to be getting closer and closer to whatever is defined. we just we're not there yet and so it's hard to kind of talk about but you're right the framework doesn't take five years to develop but we would want to continue growing in the framework over the five years. Okay. And each spring our students take a student survey and there are a lot of questions on there about well-being and physical and mental safety. In addition to that they would be able to selfassess where they fell or self assess I guess like what their student experience is as of that school year. Is that the idea? I I think so. I I think that we want

152to be conscious to make sure that we're not over surveying our students. It's something that Dr. Lopez and I have talked about already in the way that we try to um alternate surveys with different grade levels and those kinds of things. And so I think that we're going to want to be really conscious of that and figure out what are the questions that assimilate into um opportunities that we already have in place. And then as we think about things like maybe um measuring technology, maybe that's something that's different that goes on a different kind of cycle with students who aren't already participating in different surveys. I think that's exciting and I I just think it's really good to get students thinking about that and being a self-aware and um you know this this leads to

153setting personal goals and just being reflective as they grow. Um so thanks for answering my questions and I'm really happy with the direction this is headed. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you, Miss McMurro. We'll go to Mr. Will Banks. Thank you, Dr. Collins. Um, there are a lot there's a lot in here to like there's a lot of possibilities and I think you guys have done a good job of kind of narrowing down those KPIs that uh or buckets of KPIs that you think are important. Um, I especially like, you know, I mentioned earlier tonight that our student experience is front and center in our um in our uh values and beliefs and anything we can do. I like the idea of coming up with the framework. So, yes, double down on that. Give me some

154KPIs uh over five years that we can monitor. Um the behavioral data we spoke about tonight and um marketing um kind of you know if you look at the effective school framework about how we move the needle parent engagement and involving the community and our stakeholders is key. So that's another area I'd be really happy to see us develop developing some KPIs around in our strategic plan. And then um specifically with talent and resources, you know, to me the culture of Arlington is our best selling point and our best hope of us continuing to attract the best talent and education here, which we know is definitely going to move the needle. And so um that's one area where I would like to see a lot of um focus on the KPIs and our strategic plan.

155And then going back to academic growth, one of the things that looking at the academic growth, I know you you know we've got our HP3 goals. Um but one thing I think that would be helpful given where we have gaps is in the gaps between the subops and what are we doing to close the gaps. So that's one area every area of concern for me and this may be tangential to our priorities here. But we've just wrapped up a curriculum audit and we know there's going to be a lot of key findings that are critical necessary success factors for any district. And uh I think AC academic growth is the one bucket those would be in. that I would hope that we would align the work that's being done there to improve um the findings

156from our curriculum audit would be somehow incorporated in one of our priorities. Great. Thank you. That's all I had. Thank you, Mr. Wanks. Are there any other trustees with comments or questions for Dr. Collins? Okay, seeing none, um Dr. Collins, Dr. Smith, thank you. This is a very um you know we work in the governance level and this is a great way for us to uh measure how we as a board operate at that level and because we're not not on the ground. We're not operations folks. We're not curriculum folks. And so thank you all for helping us put all of this together because I do having been on the board um for some time now. I mean this is in some ways we were doing all of this but this is a very comprehensive

157and strategic way to put it all together and keep us on track with what we need to be doing. So, thank you all for bringing this lens to what we do. Thank you. All right, with that, we will move on now to our open forum for non-aggenda items. Miss Crossnet, do we have any speakers registered for non-aggenda forum? President Chapa, we do not. Okay, with no speakers registered for non-aggenda forum, we're going to move on to our consent agenda tonight. Are there any trustees who would like to withdraw an item for the consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll move on to vote on the consent agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved. I have a motion for Mr. Wilbanks. Do I have a second? Second. I have a

158second for Mr. Mike. Trustees will move to vote. All trustees voting in the affirmative consent agenda unanimously carries. That brings us to our superintendent comments. Dr. Smith. Trustees, thank you for your time tonight. I know we've had a lot of uh important conversations and I appreciate your engagement throughout the evening. Um, tonight in the superintendent report, I want to take a little bit different approach than I've taken in the past and we're uh over the next uh couple of superintendent reports, I'm going to highlight one of your priorities each time and our district highlights are going to align directly with that. So, this month, I would really like to hone in on talent and resources in Arlington Arlington ISD and give you some highlights from that. You probably know about Kade Cunningham, a former NBA

159number one overall draft pick. And I think some trustees got to know Kate Cunningham that are sitting up here at the dis. Um, he's now an NBA all-star for the Detroit Pistons. He went to school at Larsson Barnett and Buoie. And Buoie just retired his jersey last month while Kade was in town for a game against the Mavs. But I'm not here to highlight basketball this evening. I want to talk about the incredible teachers and coaches here in Arlington who helped make Cad's basketball dream come true. That's Doris Morhead Jones on the far right, one of Cad's teachers at Buoie. Listen to what Miss Jones had to say about Cade. Now, I don't know anything about his stance or his position, but what I did know was that my kid had a dream and I

160was going to make sure that I did everything in my power to help him reach that dream. That's exactly what our teachers are all about in Arlington ISD, helping our kids reach their dreams. At Martin High School, we had another teacher doing the same thing. Uh Martin High School visual arts teacher Sharon Miller. She's been helping kids express themselves and develop their dreams throughout the arts for decades now. That's why she was so deserving of the recognition she got recently from the Dallas Cowboys and Reliant Energy when they stopped by Martin and surprised her as a Cowboys class act teacher. They presented her with a $5,000 check that she's going to use for lighting in the new courtyard at Martin High School. We also have uh teachers who aren't just teaching kids. Our toddler time

161teachers help parents learn how to be good teachers themselves at home with their children. This is huge for kids to start building the foundation for a successful education before they even start prek. And they had one of their biggest events of the year last month, Winter Wonderland at the PDC, where they invited families to come together to enjoy interactive learning activities with their toddlers in a fun festive environment. They also provided all kinds of resources for the families. We're so proud of all our teachers and staff for how they go above and beyond for kids and their families. And we're working to make sure they are empowered to continue to do this and improve upon their dedication and expertise. And that concludes my superintendence reports for the month. Thank you, Dr. Smith. That takes us

162to trustee reports. Are there any trustees with reports or comments tonight? All right, seeing none, uh there are no further items on our agenda tonight. So we have no b further business to conduct and we will not be returning into close session. So this meeting is adjourned at 10:58. We're adjourned. Good job everybody. Like a marathon.