001[Music] n [Music] n [Music] I know why say too much wish that I could some keep my mouth shut but you and night fair enough Ling War why don't we just break because this is who we are we're just pieces of a broken heart million Tri no goodbye wo [Music] yeah do [Music] oh I [Music] like get MO we are are face to face I know that this feeling just won't go away broken bones broken hearts how we stay together is to fall apart this is who we are we're just pieces of a broken heart a million Tri no goodbye wo yeah [Music] yeah [Music] St oh oh I you for oh fight like in the CU you and I fight like fight like [Music] animals like [Music] getal [Music] St it mov [Music] oh
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003[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] w [Music] n [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] la [Music] my [Music] n [Music] ah [Music] all [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh oh [Music] oh [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] m [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] he [Music] n [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] la [Music] a [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] w [Music] m [Music] girl [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] n [Music] w [Music] oh [Music] yeah [Music] nah [Music] a [Music] h [Music] w [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music]
004[Applause] [Music] [Applause] w [Music] nah [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] PA [Music] PA [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] PA [Music] a [Music] a [Music] PA [Music] a [Music] oh [Music] n [Music] a [Music] n [Music] a [Music] PA [Music] [Applause] [Music] the [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] n [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] I [Music] n [Music] l [Music] n [Music] n [Music] a [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] he [Music] n [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Music] n [Music] n [Music] n they that's for at this time we will reconvene into Open Session this meeting of the Arlington Independent School District Board of Trustees
005April 22nd 2021 beginning at 7:13 p.m. we will start our meeting with the open ceremony please join Mrs fer in leading Us in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge alce to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you will everyone present please silence your cell phones and any electronic devices to make sure there's no disruptions and now at this time if you would please join me in a moment of silence thank you so this evening there are no programs presentations no administrative appointments or public hearings so we will go to our open form for agenda items okay as shared before all persons in attendance are required to wear a mask speakers who are addressing
006the board in person please keep your mask on thank you as stated on the posted agenda members of the public who desire to address address the board regarding an item on this agenda are required to register by sending an email to the superintendent of school secretary lb n j a Mii aisd.net no later than 3 p.m. the day of the meeting Mrs Benjamin do we have any requesters register to address the board regarding agenda items yes ma'am we have two joining okay this is a routine part of the school board's agenda for regularly scheduled meetings this segment of the meeting provides citizens with an opportunity to share their views with the trustees on items that are on the agenda tonight it is not intended to be a discussion or a debate and trustees will not
007reply to speakers derogatory comments aimed at an individual will not be tolerated Personnel matters are not appropriate subjects for open forum you will have 5 minutes to speak Mrs Benjamin will notify you when your time is up and please end your presentation at that time are we ready for our first requested yes I don't see them good evening if you can hear me you can start speaking don't see a picture okay there is Frank is anyone there we're good okay can you hear me I can't hear or see okay okay can you hear me now hello hello yes we can hear you yes we can hear you can you hear us okay we can hear you what we can't see you but are more than welcome to start in just one moment please our time
008taker has stepped away and you don't have to be I think that's fine but our time taker is not here so just give us one second and I'll tell you when she's returned okay you're welcome for okay Miss Fritz can you hear me okay so you will have five minutes to present to the board your public comments I understand that you have filed multiple grievances on behalf of you and your family that are currently being considered since your grievances are pending if you or your daughter speak on the same subject as your grievances during public form you will be deemed to have chosen under board policy FNG legal a stop look and listen hearing and your FNG local local grievances will be dismissed let me also remind you that you may not criticize or attack
009the character of any school official or employee during public for and that if you do um you will be deemed out of order and your time will immediately expire if you choose to proceed you may do so now and your time will start anything what I read in the Texas statutes about the Grievances if I mention something here that all avoided my agreements yes okay hold on just one moment and your question will be addressed let them get to the microphone so that you can hear okay okay okay we've explained the law and the law is consistent we don't have time right now to go through and explain further in detail each question that we may receive with regard to the grievance Poli policy but we have explained it properly okay okay and Miss Fritz
010if you'd like for me to repeat it one more time I can uh no that's okay so I will go ahead and continue with this okay so your time will start now okay thank you so much days to slow the2 I have been an ER nurse for 23 years and my husband has been a paramedic and firefighter for 23 years we have been Frontline workers during SARS spine Fu Ebola Ms Anthrax and now we come in contact with menitis tuberculosis and influenza and we have never worn masks for 12 to 24 hours straight and we certainly haven't ever had to fight with the school district to allow our children to breathe freely there are 128 Texas school districts with mask optional kdd 880,000 students and scair with 117,000 Stud students here recently AISD has 60,000
011students masks were given authorization by the FDA on April the 24th 2020 as a medical device under the emergency use authorization eua under this eua federal law 21 USC 360 BBB requires individuals to be fully informed of the risk and benefits and given the option to accept or refuse this includes vaccine social distancing and PCR test as elected officials you have no legal authority to unconstitutionally enforce a eua device such as mass you all took an oath to uphold the US and Texas Constitution yet you continued to force Mas denied our religious exemptions twice did not let our children take the star exam I repeat denied our children the star exam without a mask and turned my husband and daughter away on 420 you did not let our daughter trial for soccer two days in
012a row and discriminated against her in front of her peers still won't let our children learn on campus resulting in unequal access to education all year our youngest has an IEP but your art committee continues to veto our concerns due to your policy AISD also removed my public comments from their Facebook page suppressing my freedom of speech multiple times as well as other parents on page seven your board handbook States trustees represent the community not the superintendent or District yet parents are rarely a focus in your open meetings it also States trustee shall strive to put the needs of children above the want and of adults and to make decisions that promote the educational welfare of all children in the district that is on page seven of your board handbook if you want to start
013putting the children first then focus on the fact that kids are dying from suicide and homicide and rarely from covid-19 here's the data from January 2020 to April 4 2021 off of the Taran County medical examiners website in tan County please keep in mind that Texas has 254 counties there have been 29 pediatric suicides a ages 12 to 18 and 30 pediatric homicides to include abuse from ages 1 to 18 for a total of 59 pediatric deaths in the entire state of Texas there have been 49 pediatric deaths from covid-19 and miraculously zero flu deaths for for Pediatrics in one County we've had more deaths from suicide and homicide for Pediatrics than covid-19 death for Pediatrics in the entire state of Texas and for context one there's been one pediatric flu death uh in the
014entire United States for per the CDC website so that being said uh can you tell me how much time I have left anybody one minute and 52 seconds Miss Fitz okay um uh I would uh like to say state that um in no way do my comments represent my employer and in no way do they represent what I do the the the State Board of Nursing my comments are based upon my research uh truth and fact uh of what I have obtained um on the FDA website and CDC website I have sent every single one of you information about and I copied you on the Grievances the fact that it's gotten so far that you all have denied our children is star exam I I don't know what it's going to take for AISD to
015stop and look and see what's going on here um but I will say this I have also addressed the fact of one of your uh health professionals there uh that spoke about the the the variant that's coming that's around all of that was generalized information with no data at all nothing no information yet one of your trustees said that we'll go ahead and just keep our safety measures going and keep the mask I I don't I don't know what what's going on but I will tell you this as parents we have the right to decide what is what we want for our children medically and there is plenty and plenty of science showing that the masking is harmful and there are multiple multiple constitutional rights being violated so I wanted to remind you all of
016your constitutional Oaths that you all took and I want to remind everybody that we are now in it's time to go ahead and vote um voting is for Schoolboard trustees uh May 1st and that's what I'm all I'm saying today so my daughter I guess would be next thank you m FR yes Miss Fritz can you hear me Miss Fritz can you hear me Miss Fritz can you hear me that's first looking at the screen it looks like you're muted on your end if that's not purposeful uh please unmute okay okay is Heidi ready to speak ma'am okay yes okay if you can hear me you have five minutes to speak and your time will start now okay okay ever since the sixth grade I've been looking forward to high school and my freshman year
017and I lost that my entire freshman year went down the drain before I even knew what hit me 8th grade spring break the last words that I said to my friends was I'll see you guys after the spring break I never got to see any of them after that day soccer Tri outs were right after spring break so not only did I not get to tr out for eighth grade soccer but I was turned away twice for ninth grade soccer Childs all because I couldn't wear a mask and my off-campus soccer team disbanded so I never got to play soccer on a team for the year I lost the majority of my friends from school all the friends I have right now I can count on my two hands there's countless amounts of students lives
018being ruined and mental health being deteriorated I want to go to normal school and hang out with my friends and play soccer and I wanted to enjoy my freshman year when I went to try out for ninth grade soccer I was treated as if I had the play and I was embarrassed in front of every other girl there including coaches I shouldn't be treated this way all because I can't breathe in a mask I was even denied the star test due to not being able to breathe in a mask I hope you all can make the right decision and let our school go back to normal I was really disappointed this year and lost a lot and I I really thought that no this year I'd be able to actually do all the things that
019freshman can do high school being a Freshman is a once in A- lifetime thing apart from college and I got that taken I don't know how you know the school board and other people sleep at night knowing that those kids lives including mine that have been ruined my little brother this was his seventh grade year he was just going into middle school he didn't get to see any of his friends we had to find them ourselves and even he can count all his friends he has now just on one hand and my older brother it was his senior year and he didn't even get to go to school for that either my birthday and my younger brother's birthday we had to do at home we couldn't go and see our friends and have fun at
020school my brother's birthday was today and he spent it with family which is great but he couldn't spend it with any of his friends he couldn't go around having cupcakes and doing everything that seventh graders should be doing everything that little kid should be looking forward to so every single one of my siblings has lost something this year I lost my freshman year my little brother lost his seventh grade year and my older brother is going out of high school and it's not the way he's leaving it is not the way he should be leaving it he should be leaving and making memories my younger brother should be going into eighth grade with all his friends we should be able to be at school and be normal kids and live our lives instead of having
021other people make choices for us that we don't agree with so I really hope that my sophomore year and my little brother's eighth grade year is normal so that we can actually be happy I never would have thought that not only my eighth grade the rest of my eighth grade year and my ninth grade year I never thought that any of that would be taken away from me it definitely showed me that I should be grateful to have school I should be grateful to have all of my friends and it shouldn't be taken for granted and I really hope that a lot of I feel sorry for all the students and the teachers and the parents that have to go through this but yeah I really really hope this isn't the case next year cuz
022so many lives are being ruined right now so many and so many lives from students are being taken away they're it's it's not okay this isn't how this is supposed to be we shouldn't be wearing masks everywhere as if we're the disease or something and people that can't wear mask like me shouldn't be treated as if they're contagious they should be treated normally and we should be able to play soccer and basketball and all that other stuff and be able to actually live our lives and be ourselves without having to worry about someone calling us out okay thank you very much Heidi your time is up okay next on our agenda we have four action items we will start with considering resolution for a one-time modification of District policies and procedures on grade promotion Dr
023kassos thank you president Mason this evening we bring a resolution for the board's consideration related to our policies and procedures for promotion and so we covered this with the governance committee as well uh and there's a one-time modification so it comes in in the form of a resolution uh so I'll turn it over to Dr warts to lead us through that presentation Dr WS good evening President Ma Dr members of the board I want to start off by saying hello it feels like it's been a while since I've stood at a podium in front of you live so it's nice to see everyone's faces again um I'm here tonight to talk specifically around a resolution it's um as it's stated a one-time resolution for modification of District policies or procedures related to grade promotion for
024clarity to the board and those who may be watching this um this resolution is not related to grades or grading policy in any way it's it's related to promotion moving the student from one grade level to the next specifically in grades K through 8 um and the reason I specify specifically grades K through 8 is because High School um promotion typically happens through the earning of credits not necessarily by grade level bands so I thought I would provide initially some background and this is not anything new for anybody but back um last spring Governor Abbott issued an executive order g08 and this order specifically pertained to preparedness and mitigation uh that was how impacting how districts respond to co9 and this uh when when we think about policy related to grade promotion and the implications
025of the way we've kind of had to function over the last year the specific one I want to reference tonight is eiee local in eiee local there is guidance specifically for how a student is to be promoted and specifically guidelines for promotion including um earning credit and it's all based on defined um Mastery levels in k through2 um it's articulated as significant Mastery um within grade within the grade level for the content areas of language arts and Mathematics and those standards are articulated in the standards based report card um in each of those uh categories in grades 3 through eight it specifies Mastery as something specific such as overall average of 70 in every Star uh any Star tested subject area um if a student has a grade of less than 70 but at least
02665 and they pass or receive a passing score on Star they can substitute that score for their grade of 65 to meet qualifying criteria for promotion and in elementary they must also have a combined average of 74 science and social studies and in junior high school they have to have an overall students have to have an overall average of 70 all other subject areas as you look at these uh this policy and the specificity that's listed there in terms of Mastery and you also consider some of the actions that have been taken by the state it makes it it renders the policy impossible to actually deliver as spoken this year the Student Success initiative which is um the requirements for students in grades 5 and 8 to pass both the reading and Mathematics star Assessments
027in order to be eligible for automatic promotion um even if with passing grades was suspended uh for this school year year so uh the other thing that's important to note is that students who uh were participating in star who chose to um receive instructions solely in a virtual environment and did not come up to the school to participate in Star um were unable to participate in the star exam um the state uh required us to offer the star exam but we were unable to offer it to students who were at home who did not want to come into the building because of this situation uh there's a lack of access for start testing for all students which prevents the Equitable application of the policy and star scores as I mentioned earlier are unable to be
028substituted for a less than proficient grade um for those students that would normally have qualified to do so so what we're proposing tonight is a resolution that allows some more flexibility when considering whether a student is ready for promotion to the next grade level and so what we're proposing is a process um when you apply this resolution as we're as I'm about to share a process that gives some guidance to schools to think about students from a more Global Perspective and look for something what I'm calling a preponderance of evidence so this is an example of the process that would happen um if a student did not meet the Mastery requirements as defined in eiee local it would trigger a committee to meet about that student that student's committee would consist of the teacher the
029parent and a leadership member of the leadership team at the school and they would review student achievement and engagement data they would review information related to how students have responded to intervention over the course of the school year any educational history and then based on that decision that discussion um they would make a decision about whether promotion is um in the best interest of the student with an intervention put in place to support them as they move to the next grade level or whether in fact the student should be retained this is a sample of the screenshot about what that the initial front page of that process would look like for schools and the bullets that you see there on the left are all the specific information points that the team will be required to
030go through so what I'd like to emphasize is the process is intended and designed to be methodical so that every single one of those points there's a discussion point that happens about that um including any relevant demographic information what trends in terms of attendance the student has um had over the course of the school year and in past school years um also looking to see whether the student has been retained in the past um because some students for example may have already been retained in one of an earlier grade level which impacts some decision- making around retention any health information any information or documentation that was provided to parents in advance notifying them that their child was struggling academically um and then all the academic information grades Star scores screener information um curriculum assessments and
031any information that the teacher would would have and then of course we would look at any interventions that were already provided as I mentioned earlier in the school year and what the students response to that intervention was and then what their rationale for the decision point in the in the document there are four specific question that talk specifically about what's the rationale for retention um what's the uh students motivation is there is there um is there a reason why promotion should actually be considered what I wanted to highlight around this resolution is what it is and what it is not what it is is really a more of a holistic review of how the student has performed traditionally academically and how they're doing this year um also it's an opportunity for us for a teacher
032and a and and staff to consider whether the student in fact can be successful in a future grade level um if supports are put in place and then also really to consider the significant impact that retention has um one thing that's important to note is in our board policy it states specifically that we've been charged to reduce retention in the district and to eventually eliminate it and so um there's already a philosophy or culture Arlington that it's important to really utilize retention as a last resort uh strategy um since there is a plethora of of research that articulates the fact that retention typically is a poor practice and does not work I wanted to also emphasize as I did at the beginning of the presentation that this uh resolution would in no way impact grades
033and or the calculation of class rank so our grading policy as it currently stands in place and the way that class rank is calculated will continue as normal students will receive numeric grades they will be transcribed on their on their transcripts and um our rank our class ranks for graduation this year um and and the other cohorts that are prior to our that are earlier than our our seniors will all be calculated the way we have currently in policy that will not change as it as it did last spring so Administration is recommending that the board adopt a resolution for a one-time modification of District policies and procedures on GR promotion any questions I can answer for you thank you very much Dr Works do I have trustees with questions or comments Miss fer thank
034you President Ma um don't really have a question Dr warts but I want to say that I'm I'm pleased that you're all are taking the holistic approach you know a grade doesn't say everything about a child just like the star test grade doesn't say everything about a child but to be able to look back in their past performance to look at what's been going on in their life during this time and then make a recommendation uh for their future so I like the holistic approach rather than a grade determining that child so I appreciate that sir thank you thank you Mrs fer Miss Walton thank you President Ma yes Dr WS uh as an educator for many many years in this District uh I never saw saw too many children that benefited from being retained
035and I am so glad that we have developed a culture of Trying to minimize that as much as we can even during these extraordinary times that we have been through so the five-page uh evaluation the holistic valuation is very very thorough and I'm glad that it involves many people that have been involved with the child and I believe in my heart they will make the best decision for each and every child based on all of this information they will have to review so thank you and your group for taking such care with this sure thank you Miss Walton there any other trustees with any comments and or questions yes Mr choa thank you president May uh this is something that the government governance committee reviewed and I I had quite a few questions about it
036in governance and um you know former teacher myself and I think a concern we all had is is you know we don't um we don't want this this policy change to be received in any way is saying that teachers can't you know give students the grades that mathematically they have earned um that is not the intent of this at all so um I I want that intention to be clear that this is a no way shape or form saying that that teachers have to automatically pass a student or automatically give them a 70 or that they can't give them the grade that they deserve they very much can but what this does is it for students who don't uh get a passing grade in in mandatory classes for promotion in the normal course of events
037we're going to take a closer look at those students to determine whether or not the reason that they're not eligible for promotion under the existing policy is because they got um they they the situation that they're in is indicative of the fact that they need to be retained and are the special cases where retention um may be the appropriate response and then for the other students to recognize that this has just been such a year that that we're going to take a holistic review with that student and you know quite quite frankly you've been in the classroom and you work with students you know when a student is you know has knowledge of the material that you've been teaching and if the reason that they're not able to successfully demonstrate that with their numerical grade
038is situation beyond their control in this unique circumstance that we're in for the past year and we have to take that into account and I was very pleased it it was only up on uh the screen for a little bit but I was very impressed with the the form uh Dr works that you uh you showed to the government committee showed here tonight that will walk the Review Committee through the different aspects to look at so it's a it's not only a holistic review um it's not a Loosey Goosey holistic review it's here are the factors that we should consider uh in in whether or not we should promote this student and I feel like a lot of students who might deserve promotion and will be promoted under this policy um the fact that they
039have been flagged by their numerical grade is going to put them in a process where we can identify the support that they need to be successful going forward next year because like you said retention is not the appropriate um solution for for many many students who just don't get the the the the 70 uh especially this year so with that President M I'd like to to move to adopt a resolution uh if there's no further discussion I I will need a second but and then I will uh read the resolution thank you Mr Choppa do you have a second okay so I've got a Mo a motion by Mr Choppa a second by Mrs Walton Justin you can read the resolution than I got you Justin thank you thank you President Ma uh this is
040a resolution of the Arin Independent School District Board of Trustees titled a one-time modification of District policies and procedures on grade promotion whereas due to the outbreak of covid-19 the normal oper operations of the District closed on March 16th 2020 and the Texas governor issued executive order number g08 relating to covid-19 preparedness and mitigation and through this action and in accordance with guidelines from the president ordered the temporary closure of all Texas school districts and whereas the Texas Education Agency has granted permission to suspend and alter policies to address the ongoing effects of the global pandemic on the method of delivering education in a safe and effective Manner and whereas AISD continues to be at the Forefront of initiating multiple effective unconventional instructional approaches due to limited capacity to safely resume normal campus-based instruction for
041an extended period of time and the temporary suspension of or modification to certain policies and guidelines related to student promotion will ensure fairness in the process for all students and whereas board policy eie local currently provides guidelines for promotion and course credit including standards for Mastery as reflected by course assignments unit evaluations and our final exams and whereas the Texas Education Agency has suspended Student Success initiative requirements for students in grades 5 and 8 to successfully pass the star exam and reading and Mathematics to be eligible for grade promotion for the 2020 2021 school year and whereas students in grades 3 through 8 learning in the remote environment were unable to participate in the star assessment remotely preventing said students from having the opportunity to substitute a passing SC star score for Less and a
042proficient grade thereby meeting promotion requirements is defined in board policy eie local and whereas board policy eie local states that the district shall establish procedures designed to reduce retaining students at a grade level with the goal being to eliminate the practice of retaining students and whereas board policy eie legal currently states that data used to determine a student's eligibility for promotion include demonstrated proficiency of the subject matter the recommendation of the students's teacher the students grade in each subject or course the students score on an assessment instrument administered under Education Code section 30.23 a b or L to the extent applicable in any other necessary academic information as determined by the district and whereas each of these one-time modifications of board policies and retention promotion procedures are intended to ensure appropriate and individualized academic respons
043responsivity to all students in light of the current unprecedented circumstan es now therefore be it resolved by the board that one the board determines that any requirement that a student be retained solely for failing to meet standards for Mastery as defined in board policy eie local in grades K through 8 shall be suspended for the 2020 2021 school year and two the board determines that a temporary modification of board policy eiee local shall be implemented to allow for students not meeting standards for Mastery to be considered for possible promotion to the following grade level based on a preponderance of evidence to include but not be limited to grades attendance unit final exam assessment scores curriculum assessments State assessments academic screener information response to intervention information parent and teacher input and any other relevant information and
044three the board determines that based on a student's overall academic performance and engagement during normal instruction as well as virtual instruction teachers parents and administrators will collaboratively determine whether a student has mastered a sufficient portion of the grade level course curriculum to be promoted with appropriate intervention support or if retention is needed and four the board hereby ratifies any previous acts and further authorizes the superintendent to take any other actions necessary to fulfill the purpose of this resolution and ensure the appropriate grade level placement for all students during the 2020 21 2021 school year and the authority granted by this resolution for the remainder of the 2020 2021 school year and unless the board takes further action [Laughter] one do I see any other discussion seeing none um let's all vote okay all have voted
045in the affirmative and the motion passes thank you very much Justin to you and your governance board committee um also set on by Miss Paulie Walton and Dr Rice our next item on the agenda is another action item consider policy change from board policy gkb local and board policy gkd local Dr kasses thank you President Ma and we bring this uh policy revision uh to the board's consideration today um and this policy revision uh will align to allow us to uh Act activate uh our facilities uh specifically the Visual and Performing Arts Center um and when I mentioned ad activated to be able to rent those facilities appropriately uh book uh different events and things like that that are outside of our school district so we knew when we built those facilities the board's intention
046was also to be a partner with the community and rent those facilities and make it a community facility as well serving our students first of course and so this policy revision allows us to do those things and this has also been reviewed by the governance committee I'll turn it over to Dr Hill for a presentation Dr Hill hear you sir president May board members and Dr Kos again thank you for setting the frame for that uh policy revision uh so just a little background as she's already said with the opening of the cvpa uh the district has the opportunity to make this space available to rent for for-profit organizations and events currently our our policy prohibits uh rentals for for profit profits uh policies being considered are gkb local which deals with community community relations
047and advertising and gkd local which deals with community relations and non-school use of school facilities so the revisions being uh discussed for uh gkb adds language to this policy that allows promoters and tour managers of for-profits to advertise and Market uh their rental occasion it also gives I think this is important piece here it gives add the final right to accept or reject that proposed advertisements that do not adhere to to our standards within the district uh gkd adds language to this policy that uh permits for-profit organizations to use our district facilities with an agreed upon agreement or contract uh you have these policies uh just a little bit of the visual of the language that's being added to the policies uh and or revised within the policies and you can see there for gkb
048and gkd again dealing with the uh with the contract uh uh adjustments contracts and use of terms we are in the process of of revising or drafting some uh procedures and contracts for uh use of the facilities and other terms and so that will accompaning this policy but they are not finalized at this time so it is administration's recommendation that the board approve these revisions uh to GK B local and gkd local as presented and at this time we'll be happy to answer any questions or discuss thank you very much Dr Hill are there any trustees with questions or comments Mrs Fowler thank you president Mae um Dr Hill I want to make sure that first of all that AISD always has first dibs of course Center yes and I think you mentioned that um
049and what about liability statements will there be something in the contract where if something happens to someone during the rental use that it doesn't come back on the ISD yes ma'am that's a part of the we're in the process of drawing those contracts up to make sure that they cover all of those uh concerns and to make sure that the district's protected okay thank you thank you Mrs Fowler Miss Walton thank you President Ma uh I just want to assure the uh rest of the board and anyone listening that our new Fine Arts Center is certainly a Sellar place and should be a wonderful way for the community to share uh with this uh change in our policies and so forth uh proud mama alert I heard the Lamar Orchestra perform in that hall yesterday
050and it was so wonderful the wonderfulness I know that's not a word of that Hall was so fabulous that it made the in the orchestra better they they the kids you know excuse me the young people in the orchestra Rose to a different level after they had rehearsed for a little while in that Hall uh it was it was quite something to behold so I'm so glad we're going to share this with others uh this space with others with being able to do that with this policy change so thank you thank you thank you Miss Walton Mr hog thank you president Maz Dr Hill why does it say specifically say promoter and tour managers why is that wording used and in in conversation with Dr uh Christopher Anderson and Mr Bryant who's a director of
051those facilities that that's language and lingo that's used in that industry and they wanted to make sure that the the language and the policy reflected what what's what was in that industry tour managers and promoters they are the ones who bring in the artists and things of that nature so are there others that do that also and are we just limiting it to them it could be others and U I'm sure seems very narrow on our two terms right there and then let me ask why is this just for this in essence location what about for the athletic center and the NATO torum and so if you will see that I don't think we spell out any specific facility in the policy it would be open to all facilities but it's really driven by so
052does promoters and tour managers anyone who's organizing the NCAA division 3 National swim competition and that's why I asked the question about promoters and tour managers is verbiage I'm not sure as who would be uh the contact person for for a venue like for an event like that but we could definitely look at that can you scroll up it's a little small on the deck that I'm showing can you go back to the screen with the actual verbage sorry I guess I could inflate my screen a little bit bit or zoom in my eyes are getting a little older I I just I guess I'm still confused why we specifically listed promoters and tour managers because in our policy then if someone's not a promoter or tour manager they can't request this okay that's something
053we can definitely take a look at uh I I don't think that we want to be uh restrictive of those others that may and so maybe it's an opportunity for us to widen that a little bit more in policies Mr chop I'll let you chime in I'd love to yeah love to he yeah so um Dr Hill can you go back to the prior screen just just for a second to make sure are the other one that the other Red Line okay so the the the main Mr hog the main thrust of this uh policy change as presented in governance committee was that under the the board's prior policy it was very restrictive in our ability to rent out any facilities for for-profit use so the main goal of this um policy change is to
054make it to where we can have uh for-profit uses of these facilities and in this page that's the primary change under the section titled for-profit use so Dr Hill we go to the next page or the next page on the red line thank you this particular um this particular SE is is titled advertising and this language um is specifically about uh as an adjunct to promotional activities and so if a promotional activity has the approval of a superintendent or design I think that's sufficient this was particular language in the advertising section that Dr Anderson asked to be included is my understanding and I I don't think anything if there is a concern is whether or not the NCAA would be um considered you know F to fall under this particular sentence that was was added
055to the advertising policy I think anyone that wants to put on an advertise an event at the facility would be within the definition of a promoter I don't think there would be anything that would restrict yeah so is is any marketing agency considered a promoter yeah I mean it it says promoters or t managers May request Services of preferred third party marketing or advertising firm so whoever is hosting the event anybody they wanted to bring in to do marketing or advertising I think would fall under the the I guess I'm still confused why we need the word promoters and tour managers I mean I I that was language that was request why could we just say approved third party entities May request the services that was not the recomendation from staff I don't I don't
056think there's anything in this policy change that would prevent um if I understand where your cons concern is from from any any any of the language here would prevent your concern from being addressed because those are all promotional activities that as long as they have prior approval of the superintendent or design would be able to to be done um so go ahead uh I was just going to let Dr R wanted to piggy back off of the piggyback of the piggyback yeah sure we we all piggyback I'm interested so um I I appreciate the conversation uh perhaps what we can do here uh for whatever reason there there was that specific request to have this specific wording in here um uh to your point Mr hog uh if everybody is okay with this perhaps we
057can just edit this to say entities including but not limited to and then continue that way it's broad-based all-encompassing covers everything I'd be fine with that and listen yall know I'm you know I'm I will do it more Revenue we can bring in the better it is for the taxpayers the better it is for our district across the board I just want to make sure we're not limiting we do always have to be cautious and protect our buildings because certain groups that can come in can cause issues it may not project damage we want as a district and it can also cause potential harm to our facility um and cost us more money in the long run so but I'm also going to always promote as this District of how we can generate Revenue at
058the exact same time when it's not being used by our students or you know for times when it it's good it's a great thing for students that may have access to it so I'm always for that I just don't want this to be limiting yeah and and I'm fine with that change too I mean I don't think anything here would would um inhibit that consideration at all I mean that this this specific line that we're talking about is related to someone who hires a third parting third party marketing and advertising firm to produce content related to time sensitive ticket sales so it's limited to ticket sales but I mean I don't I don't have any problem changing it to be clear that this is anyone that we might bring in who want might want to
059use a third party entity to do ticket sales I think that that's fine okay um Mr willbanks is this in conjunction to what we're talking about now do you have another question okay yeah I I also don't have a problem with adding that I would say that based on the fact that this is in the advertising section talking about advertising the word promoters would be broaden up to cover anyone um in the other section as Mr Choppa pointed out that um takes the previous limitations and makes it open to anyone for profit allows I think covers Mr Hog's concerns and then this being related to just people who are doing marketing I.E promoting would cover the NCAA or any other examples that we've come up in terms of their marketing those tickets so but again
060I think Dr R has come up with a nice I think it's fine add listen as long as the intent for our policy is there and and we can go back and track the intent if we change a Dr R I'm fine if we leave it but we have the intent that it's open for anyone and if our our interpretation of promoters is anyone who's been approved by the district to allow them to Market um that's great but I do think those two words were for some reason very specific spe um I don't understand why they're very specific so I don't really feel they're necessary okay Miss Walton thank you President Ma uh let me assure you I I only talked about the actual concert hall but uh you mentioned something about taking care of
061the building and I felt very secure um there were Health screeners uh at the entrance uh there were security personnel and several locations and ushers so um the place is being well looked after by our extended staff in that facility okay so this is an action item um we've stated some changes so do I have a a motion Miss Walton thank you President Ma yes uh I'd like to move to approve the revisions to board policy gkb local and gkd local as amended and discussed and I will second pending the Amendments from Dr Rush is that the intent this Walton yes I thank you okay so Dr Rice if you don't mind if you turned on I'd just like for you to repeat what you said so we make sure we get it for the
062minutes and the record yeah so uh that Amendment uh would be adding entities including but not limited to and then carrying on with the rest of the R line that's fine okay so I've got that a promoter might not be an entity um we we don't know that's why we're doing this just covering covering the bases that I just I mean if if it's an indiv if we say entities including but not limited to promoters then including but not limited to promoters would be a modification of the word entity and so the promoters and tour managers referenced in the policy would therefore have to be entities is what I'm saying everybody hates the lawyer but here I am so let's uh let let me so for just one moment we've got a motion we I
063have a I have a proposal can we can we can we in this is just discussion can we change it to just say the Ser eliminate the phrase promoters and tour managers May request the services of and just say the services of preferred thirdparty marketing and advertising firms um may be used to produce content related to time sensitive ticket sales so so Mr choppy you're just eliminating in essence promoter and super marage May request it says the services of preferred third party marketing is that what you're saying yes maybe used to produce content related to Time s yes so it's just eliminating the first one two three four eliminating the first one and then yes and then adding um the services preferred third- party marketing and advertising firm um make that firms may be used
064to produce content okay yes Mr aabon Madame President because we are not required under our policy to follow Robert's Rules you can either move to amend the amendment of the original motion or if the board has a consensus you can just take the current offer and move forward with that I would just suggest that you have someone be the motion maker of the most current whomever that chooses to be and then someone second it and we just proceed from there if that's the board's preference well can we just amend with yeah and Mr eom we're not required but our board has agreed to try and follow Robert sh's border so okay then Robert's Rules would be we vote to on the First Amendment or the last Amendment which Mr choa make that recommendation couldn't miss
065Walton amend her original motion there was I believe if I'm not mistaken there was a motion and then there was a an amendment and now he's amending or altering the amendment was there a second to the amendment I guess is the question no no Miss Welton made the original motion with the amendment in it right okay so then this is the only amendment because yes her original motion really wasn't an amendment am it was just a okay okay so we vote on the amendment all right so now I will move to amend the motion we'll need a second for that amendment can I should I read it first okay so I moved him in the language to eliminate the words promoters and tour managers May request so that the language that is now in red
066should read the services of preferred thirdparty marketing and advertising firms may be used to produce content related to time sensitive ticket sales okay and retain the remainder of the change so we have a first and a second to amend the original motion ument yes for unanimous consent from uh Mr Choppa and Mr will banks for the second you have to confirm that there's unanimous consent by voting I can't hear you you have to confirm that there's unanimous consent by voting on the amendment just raise your hand right I was still reading it wasn't I raise your hand and okay so yes please if you are in agreement of amending the original motion please raise your hand no Dr Dr No my my point uh of dissension I guess is the promoters and tour managers we
067I don't have enough information as to the the uh Administration was very specific and and kind of adment on those terms and I I don't want to take a step too far at this point in eliminating it in case there's some reason that that level of specificity exists uh so I I wouldn't support that at this time I I'd rather take it back to committee and and uh give Administration the opportunity to provide more clarity to bring it back and let it is time sensitive which I think we've got time yeah and that was going to be my question as well because it was noted Mr chair and Dr Hill um that for whatever reason those were specific descriptions yes Mr Choppa I I mean I that that's fine so I I if I have
068the floor I would move to refer this back to the government's committee for a further consideration okay so and there's a second so we have a motion by by Mr Choppa a second by Mr willbanks to amend the first motion okay so we don't have to go back to the first motion you do not this would take priority of referring it back to the committee over the original motion so you vote on whether or not refer it back okay so I have a motion by Mr Choppa a second by Mr willbanks to um take this um action back to committee and that say tbling the motion yes yes so we will be tbling this motion we need to vote um I don't know if we're going to have a voting screen up if we're not
069we can vote by hand we do okay so we need to vote everybody please vote Okay so we've got six yes one no so motion passes and this will go back to committee okay thank you very much Mr iomb Robert okay next on our agenda is action item C consider sell and resolution to approve the sell of delinquent tax property described as. 21 Acres more or less abstract 1580 JT Turner survey located in the City of Arlington tarant County Texas also known as 3700 West Greeno Boulevard Arlington Texas back thank you President Ma and we bring this uh consideration for sale um of this property of delinquent tax property as you described uh for your consideration okay Dr R thank you president may I move that the board approve the resolution to sell the Delinquent
070Tax uh sale property located at 3700 West Greeno Boulevard as presented okay I have a motion by Dr Rice have a second second second by Mrs Fowler any discussion seeing none please vote all voted unanimously in the affirmative the motion passes our next action item is consider appointments to the financial Futures committee Dr kassos thank you president Mason we have two uh opportunities to appoint um for the board to appoint members to the FFC uh due to some changes uh in the original uh individuals who were interested so this time I'll ask Miss Fowler to uh as the chair of the community engagement committee to lead us through that Miss fer thank you Dr kassos first of all I want to thank people that are serving on our committees the volunteers they give a lot
071of time and insight and it's very important information that we need and we appreciate their input for the financial Futures committee I move move to appoint April Nock from Martin High School and train Wilson from Sam Houston to fill the two open positions on the financial Futures committee I have a motion do I have a second Dr Rice second so motion by Mrs fer a second by Dr Rice any discussion seeing none please [Music] vote all present voting in the affirmative the motion passes thank you very much okay next on the agenda are discussion action items Dr kasses thank you president Mason this evening we bring a school operations update uh to give the board uh an opportunity to receive an update on uh School operations as we now have entered the last six weeks
072of school for this school year um and so we will continue with providing uh these updates so Dr Brown take us through this thank you good evening president Mays members of the board and Dr kassos as usual thank you for the opportunity to be able to share a brief a school operations update with you and my partner Dr WS will also have part of our conversation today um as usual we do begin with our guiding principles that we that have govern really pretty much our work during this pandemic and of course prioritizing the health and safety of our students and our staff members making sure that we're extending and asking for uh flexibility and Grace still continues to be important ensuring educational equity and access to rigorous learning no matter if students are learning at
073home or they're learning in person and last but not least is valuing stakeholder input as we continue to make important decisions for our district so today we have three uh brief topics the first one of course providing an in-person learning update for you also update on our aist in tant County CO data and Dr warts will close our conversation today providing you an update with virt about virtual and hybrid school for the 2122 school year so as we talk about daily inperson learning we've been um really persistent about ensuring that we try to get as many students back into our classrooms as possible to engage an in-person learning and um so far since the beginning of the six six weeks which did begin April 13th we've had almost 67% of our students attending in-person learning
074that actually went up another point today um so we're actually at close to 68% of our students since the beginning of the 66 weeks and we do attribute this to a couple of reasons one we launched operation reconnect which we we talked about that with you all um a few weeks ago and this really has not it was not really a new process in terms of reaching out to parents and students who've not been present but really those kids you had extended absences um the schools really made a concerted effort to make contact whether it's inperson home visits or phone calls to be able to connect with those parents and students to try to get them back engaged so since we began operation reconnect which was about four weeks ago um our schools have logged
075over 10,000 phone calls uh to parents of students who had excessive absences and over 400 um home visits uh by administrator staff members of the school again to try to make that face-to-face contact with many of our parents and students who might have not who might be disengaged for various reasons so we believe that's one aspect of the work we also have had um lots of success stories our our principes and campus teams have really tried to um take out all the stops if you will to try to encourage our folks to come back especially for this last six weeks of school we know it's really important that we close strong as we end the school year because that's going to be indicative of how we begin the school year year as well so we've
076had many success stories I just wanted to highlight a few of these for you um this evening one is Rank and Elementary um they had about 120 students who had some absence concerns over the last few months so they really said let's just do a two- week inperson restart to try to engage our students back in school um make sure they have access to the learning management system they have the resources they need and we were very excited to see they have um gone from 329 to over 400 students now who are in person uh John's Elementary School had 47 students on their operation reconnect list who had excessive absences from there and we have 37 of those now returning to in-person learning sometimes that contact from people that you know at the school um
077makes all the difference in um the work that we're engaging in San Houston High School uh through operation reconnect they've contacted over 350 students who have excessive absences um they' make it a point during their daily um and conversations with admin and weekly admin team meetings to talk about specific students um who are in danger of not graduating for example or we need to get back into the school um and these are just a few cases of schools who've done an amazing job of really trying to reconnect with our parents and students South Davis have logged over 10,000 contacts over the course of this year um they are at about 98% attendance which is amazing uh 407 to 600 students in person so this represents just a few of the many success stories that are
078campuses the teams have been committed to trying to do our best to re-engage our students um during this challenging time so now just to transition to our a aist covid data and talk to you about tarant County data as well um of course our up our um our monitor is updated every every single Tuesday afternoon excuse me so we have that updated our dashboard to make sure that we have current information about student and staff cases and so as of Tuesday we had four active staff cases and 32 student cases and you can see I just put the arrows there so that you can see where we have an uptick or there's been a downward um Trend and again none of those have been significant either up or down something to note um but our
079data mirrors the week of March 1st that was something that our health services team wanted to highlight that there's not really been a shift one way or the other it's really pretty much staying about stable and so since our last board update we've had about 56 confirmed cases uh 15 of those were symptomatic resulting in about 406 uh quarantine staff and students again our teams at the campuses and our departments are really just trying to still be um continue to be um as purposeful as possible with our protocols and ensuring that we continue to mitigate the spread as much as possible our a AIC Co rapid testing um Center is still up and goinging we've had an uptick in the last week of of testing we've tested over over a hundred tests um since the
080last board update a couple of weeks ago only one positive result but a nurse minerally does say that there have been some false negatives which others have tested positive once they go to the doctor but that team is still there ready to assist any way we can um to make sure that we can test as quickly as possible and get data to to our um staff and students moving on to tarant County metrics for safer inperson instruction again our community spread uh excuse me continues to be at the moderate level and our 7-Day U moving average positivity rate is at 7% I'm sorry excuse me it's kind of going crazy there our virus spread is about 1573 cases as of April 17th and that 7-Day movage moving average for covid like illnesses is at about
0812% and hospitalizations remain steady at about 3% as of April 20th all right so that's all that we have for our covid update I'm going to go ahead and turn over Dr warts and he's going to provide an update on Virtual and hybrid schools accelerator Dr WS right good evening so as we move into the next school year there's some interest in considering how to provide flexibility and opportunities for students who want to continue to learn in a virtual environment and as you as you're aware there are several Bills currently on the legislative floor that are being considered um during this legislative session that's related to remote learning and its relationship to um average daily attendance that's calculated for schools this is just a sampling of four of those specific bills and I want to
082preface my comments to say that while there are opportunities that we're looking into all of it as contingent upon the fact that a legislative action must happen so these are two potential Virtual School models that we are considering one is virtual school which is completely 100% online and that would be available for students potentially in grades 3 through 12 students um in this who choose this environment would be able to take all of their courses in the virtual setting and it would in essence be asynchronous learning with very strategic rout synchronous uh instruction points for small group instruction for example it's also important to note that this is the only model of the two that will be offered as a potential for grades 3 through six and the reason that that's the case is because
083the Learning Blocks in elementary are not equally separated like they are in secondary so for example the periods in in high school are all 90 minutes we don't teach that way in elementary there are 120 Minutes for English language arts 90 minutes for Math and so there's no way for student to come and go in these equal blocks of time because schedules are vary by teacher so um for elementary it'll be 3 through six would only be offered this one option the second option is we're calling it Blended uh tea refers to it as hybrid we're making some choices to change the phrasing just because it's confusing for people since hybrid meant something different for high school but in essence this would be offered for grade 7 through 12 and this is for students who
084want to take only a portion of their courses online and the best way I can describe this is when we all went to college uh we got to choose what course we wanted to take and the environment in which we wanted to learn and some of us took a class here and there virtually and other times we came face to face this that's in essence what this model is it would give students the chance to come to school face to face and choose to take one or two or a couple of their courses online it's also important to note that when students are engaged in this environment teachers who are selected to participate in this instruction will only be providing instruction in the environment in which the kids are in so right now we have
085concurrent um teaching going on where a teacher teaches face-to-face students and has online students simultaneously being taught in this situation um in either of these two models for next year that will not be the case um if a teacher is teaching virtual students the entire class will be virtual at that time if they're face to face they'll be all face to face they won't be doing both at the same time it is possible however that a teacher could have both types of student groups on their roster so for example if I am a um if I am a teacher that teaches algebra and I may have four sections face tace and two sections virtual but I won't be mixing those two groups in anticipation of this possibility tea has opened up a an application um
086for virtual and hybrid schools accelerator program and in essence what that does is it permits a district who's selected to partner with an outside group to help us in accelerating our plan to implement either of these two models um this actual process we've engaged in and we've submitted our application we actually had our interview with tea today they're going to be selecting 50 institutions or organizations to participate and we will be notified of their decision by May 17th because of the the delay um from tea in terms of getting this started which they're legally not able to go any faster because they're waiting also for legislation we on our ends have started the process of Designing so that we're prepared for that person to that group of uh or vendor to come work with us
087what the virtual schools and hybrid schools accelerator is it's an opportunity to really think about how to design this environment for kids um to ensure their experience is high quality and so the partner that we would work with should we be selected will help us really think about how to make sure that the experience students are having is is high quality and research based what kind of Staffing models need to be considered to do it effectively um how to facilitate strong family engagement in a strong School culture for students who are actually learning from uh away from the brick and mortar building um also will help us as we work on providing training to teachers and leaders and really trying to be proactive and responsive to make sure that students have access to all the
088wraparound and support services that they typically would have available to them if they were actually learning in person um they will also work with us to help us analyze and use our data to ensure that the the instruction that's being provided in the virtual environment is differentiated for the individual learner and it will give us also access over the next school year direct line of support to tea as we implement the model right now we have a a task force that's already started this process we actually initiated the thinking around this idea back in the early part of the semester um and we're really thinking about our work around three kind of a three legged stool prong three prongs of thinking so to speak one is around the learning experience that our students are having
089one is around the whole child support and one is around how we provide structure and guidance for students who are learning from home and the work that we're we're doing is really um focused around the effective School framework levers that I I know you've heard Dr Brown share with you multiple times and they're listed there and um when we work with our vendor or tea that would support us in our planning process their support will primarily come around the first three which is around strong School leadership and planning effective and well supported teachers and a positive School culture um and like I said that will begin in May should they should we be accepted the last point I wanted to mention is that it's important for us to know as we plan what is what
090the interest level is in in the in our community um and so we will be launching a survey a very simple survey to the parents of students across our district in grades um 3 through 12 to understand what their interest level is and this survey will be very basic it basically will ask them simple questions such as um are you interested in taking any of your cours work online yes or no if yes um how would you like to do all all of your courses or some of your courses and if they answer some of your courses we're asking pretty much which subject areas or bands or strands of subjects are you interested in taking your courses in so that we can plan the important thing to note is if a student chooses a totally
091virtual environment in their city in high school we are going to have to design a basically a skeleton graduation plan that would allow a students to take courses over the course of their four years to meet graduation requirements but what students will have to know is that their course loads will be limited we will not be able to offer every course that we have in this system and every elective online because of um how we how teachers teach groups of kids um we can't have like one on plan on doing having courses where there's like one student here and one student there so it's important as we design that we make sure we design courses that are for kids where we know interest actually lies and so we'll be launching that survey um in May
092probably so that's what we're working on and any questions that either myself or Dr Brown can answer for you preferably Dr Brown yes Dr kavass thank you president May so just a a quick um addition here uh to Dr W's presentation so we know and you said this at the beginning but I think it's important to reinforce the state will have a lot to say about what we can and can't do with virtual instruction in the fall and that unfortunately will not come probably until the end of May tea is working through this process a very strong process by the way uh to support schools that are interested uh so these combinations and the things you heard tonight are being explored they're being planned for uh what we do know and I think I don't
093know if Dr warts mentioned it but what we do know is that we will have teachers teaching virtual courses and not trying to do that concurrent face tof face and virtual and we've said that several times but I think it's important to surface that again so if we have virtual courses we will have teachers specifically for the virtual courses uh and they won't be doing it uh concurrently however if a teacher wants to teach a virtual class first period and a face t- face second period Then they may be teaching but they won't be teaching those two things at the same time if that makes sense so different models it's exploratory but uh the clock is ticking uh whatever restrictions tea or the state legislature puts on this then we will have to adapt to
094that such as prerequisites and things like that or blend it they may insist that any virtual instruction still needs to have some face to face in the school so we'll adapt to that so it's a challenge right now but I think it's a it's an important opportunity for our students to have as appropriate right virtual learning is not for every student um and so part of this discussion also includes the survey that we'll be sending out to determine interest so that we can continue to plan the appropriate model ultimately when the state puts the rules together we'll have uh better Clarity on that just wanted to make those those uh reinforce those points thank you president thank you Dr kasses Mrs fer thank you President Ma uh Dr WS a couple of questions so you
095mentioned that teachers may have you know two classes virtual and five classes in person will those teachers be given the option I know there are some teachers that have not loved the virtual so so will they be told that you have to teach this many and this many or will they be given the option of saying no I want to do all in person that's a really good question so they will um right now what we will be doing is working with HR to establish parameters on how teachers are selected what we will not have is just for example a principle just tapping someone on the shoulder and saying you're going to be doing virtual um there will be an application a process for people to be selected who we know are proficient in the
096skill set and are actually interested in doing it good I wanted to make sure of that thank you also let's say a student decides that he or she wants to take two or three classes virtually and then the others um in person can they change can they change their mind so yes and that's a really good question too and that's some of the details that we have to work out um because we do know that some students are not necessarily ideal for the environment so some of the work we're doing on the front side and we have a principal some of the lead principles are working with us on this is developing one what is a profile of a highly successful virtual student what are the qualities and characteristics that you want to think about
097whether you as you self- evaluate the student themselves or the parents as they think about the process and then what do we do when a student's not being successful how do we monitor their success and what are their options if they're not being successful in essence what it basically boils down to is we want kids to be successful if a student is not doing well in the virtual environment we're going to invite them back to school if that's the best thing for them because we just want them to have a ideal learning experience it's it's it's we're indifferent about what environment they're doing it in that's really their choice will there be a limit of how many times it can change their mind I can see them coming to school and then say no I
098want to do that and get a few weeks and then coming back yeah we it will be a lot more structured there won't be this uh o there won't be opportunities for kids to flip back and forth because what it will do in essence it will shift their entire schedule because every time they go to a different environment it will require a completely different teacher so their sections would have to change their course schedules would change so it's going to be a lot more structured um than you would necessarily seen during this situation but ideally there won't be lots of back and forth but there if a student is not being successful there will be a process in place for the counselor and teachers to think about that and whether to make a recommendation about
099if they should come back to school and if so went okay and last question will there be a certain number of students to to make a virtual class make I know at TCC we have to have a certain number whether it's virtual or in person to meet that number whether that class makes or not so is there a number for the virtual we don't have that defined yet but there will have to be um simply as part of Staffing um and that kind of got to the question I was trying that the point I was making a little bit earlier which is why we want to do a survey and understand where to build our courses because if if we have kids that are interested in one person's interested in this course and one's interested
100in that course it's not a sustainable Staffing model and so we will eventually land on what that can look like but as Dr gasos indicated it's super exploratory right now and so until we know what the interest is which course as we actually think we're going to be designing how big the average class size is um we haven't really created the actual formula yet but we will end up eventually doing that great information thank you thank you Mrs fer Mr willbanks thank you president May and uh thank you Dr Works um I know this is very fluid based on where the legislation is and what the TAA teas developing um where do we know with our legislative consultant what the most likely outcomes from the legislature are going to be I think one of the
101bills is expanding the virtu you know the traditional virtual school network that the state ran with grandfathered in districts and it sounds like what the first option the virtual school is similar to what is a grave by in cille that does a virtual school now um is offering is that the model for that particular modality that you're looking at that was one of the districts that we looked at when we initiated the the investigation or the research about where what models were out there what success um levels were districts having we did look at that one um I can't say for certain that that's exactly where we're going to land but it is a model that we elevated to examine yeah and weren't they one of the few in the in the existing Virtual School
102networks that was successful right and the the interesting thing about the virtual school network um that's at the state level that even students today could enroll in is it's a little different because there are different courses offered by different districts around the state and um attendance that's the Ada that a district receives for that student is based on their successful completion of the course not on the actual attendance that they participate in so um I suspect that when we get through legislation it's going to be a little more defined for more individuality in terms of districts for receiving um funding to support students as they're attending not necessarily waiting for course completion but we're not we're not positive yet yeah so am I right in assuming that option is close to that existing model that
103you're looking at and Essence will be providing a online school and will that be open to other students from other districts to R in that's also a good question so in essence yes it's a virtual school would be like I would the the way I would best describe it that we're the way we're kind of planning it is have a school take the brick and mortar down so it's it's it's it's a unit led by a leader exactly in terms of the question about whether other people can enroll um it's really up to legislation there's some discussion about limiting um District's abilities to enroll students from other districts into their system in a virtual only environment um because some smaller districts are also concerned about losing student populations um but we don't know exactly what
104it's going to look like yet because legislation hasn't passed but that that's a topic that's I think highly discussed right now at the state level specifically around this topic about the loss or gain of students across student School District boundaries okay yeah and I I'll haven't really been paying attention to those um that set of a legislation but um I'll be sure to do so um now on the Blended option so um you know I'm thinking about the high school student um who might want to take Latin which isn't really offered but at one high school now we have it at arink I we used to have it at Lamar yeah it we have it maybe at one or two I think it's very limited so would that be an option so that a student
105at Sam Houston who wanted to take Latin could log into a class that we decided hey we maybe not have enough students to make Latin at any one high school but we can certainly offer it virtually and then for the student you say it's a freshman we don't want the Freshman to go to campus and then turn around drive home and then take Latin or do Latin in off time will they just have a period at school to do that Blended or am I Way Off the Mark no so these are some of the questions we still have to answer so one of the big questions we answer we're trying to answer is um if a student chooses to take only a couple of courses but the rest of their day is in school and
106they are transport for to by a bus where do those students go during the day when they they can't go home and that's not an answer that we have today we're still trying to answer that question in terms of the question that you asked around Latin for example um we will not be promoting or trying to facilitate a concurrent course so if there is a a class at Lamar that's happening in person and a student wants to do it virtually into that class we're probably not going to be doing that because that's one of the core models we're trying to get away from is the concurrent instruction the student would have to be physically there if they're doing it if there are enough students who are interested in Latin to Warrant us creating a virtual
107course and they come from many many schools and they're going to take that one course together that we would we could offer yeah and I could see the necessity to provide a an a a classroom where you have multiple students taking multiple classes virtually across the district going for that period so they that they're not having to go home they can go to their virtual classroom to do their virtual work similar the how our concurrent model works now for those that are are doing in person yeah so if a student is in a virtual school meeting they're staying completely at home then there would be no need except for if they want to come participate extracurricular but if a student is doing a a schedule that's Blended meaning they have some score some iners and
108some online then we will have to designate a location or place in the building where they are learn where they're able to do their class um and also try to provide some flexibility on what that looks like because that is the point of a virtual environment you know if you were to have opportunities to visit some um schools that are are um really Innovative and and modern in the way that they're designed which many of our new buildings are looking that way um there are actually pockets of places for kids to congregate and learn that are outside of a typical learning environment the thing is that we s to design like where that would be how that would look how they're supervised um that kind of thing but um but yes the intent is that
109they stay at the campus in some way good good and then my final comment and and this is Maybe a use case that you've thought of is um as my colleagues know I had a daughter when she was in high school to develop a very chronic pain condition and kept her at home and we looked at homebound but since she was needing to take um Advanced calculus and advanced physics classes that was not an option for her and um she was able to go to venture she wasn't able to take her calculus but she was able to get through close to calculus at least it still take advanced mathematics and it was a God for her um I'm thinking of students like that that maybe for whatever reason medically or mentally or for some other
110reason a traditional school's not an option will you will it sounded like from your description that right now the plan is to provide a a graduation plan that is pretty basic so would that also preclude someone who has um need in in need of advanced academics to take a calculus you know AP um BC calculus in the virtual school no it doesn't it doesn't necessarily my my comment didn't necessarily reference the level of work the student will be doing meaning um general education versus Advanced academics um the which courses are actually selected that would be part of that um Continuum in terms of course selection that they can they can choose from would be really based on interest so we will identify a specific set of courses that we know will meet all the graduation
111requirements if a student want to go from beginning to end freshman to to senior year all online um and it could include General Ed courses it could include Advanced acade a classes it could in include IB classes if there was enough volume to create a course but if there a student if there wasn't a volume to create the course um then we wouldn't we're not we can't offer every class that way one thing I would would say though is there's Silver Lining to this experience we've all had and it's changed the way that we have thought about education um and I'm kind of excited about it because I've said I actually said this to principles today often Educators education is the last one to the party and we should be the first in the party
112when it comes to Innovative thinking and um we you know Venture High School is a good example of of how this is really helping uh in terms of thinking about ways to reach kids who don't necessarily want to learn in a traditional way but also don't necessarily need to be at the school um they already doing asynchronous learning well before we ever started using packets now we can do it in a much more um effective richer Way Rich and rigorous way so yes I've been watching things of venture and there are number of Silver Linings that have come out this has not all been negative this past year we've learned and we've evolv you know in a much quicker Pace in terms of what using an LMS and and online learning can do in positive
113ways and it's not for everyone and um it's good to hear my final question was you talked about my biggest concern is right now we know for the vast majority of students that are doing virtual it's not working for them but there are a about a quarter of students roughly where it is working and there's also those special students where traditional schools that have really not met their needs where they're thriving in a virtual environment and so I'm glad that we're looking at these options but my I I want to be um couch my enthusiasm based on you know are we going to have the numbers to make it work and um and given the fact that we're talking about a small subset of our population you know really the vast majority right now given
114the existing Co slide probably need to be in the classroom where that extra intervention can occur and be most effective um but um again there is that population where I think this is highly exciting and I think we can take the best lessons of what we've learned and and what's really worked and be Innovative um and I would encourage us hopefully from a legislative standpoint that if we can use a virtual school to increase enrollment increase dollars and provide and fulfill a need out there for students who aren't getting maybe some of those advanced classes from where they're located providing one of the you know on a course by course basis or at in a virtual school setting um I'm all for that so let's just hope the legislature agrees thank you Mr will Banks
115Mr hog thank you President Ma and Dr WS uh I appreci appreciate you bringing exploratory things and it's a brave thing to bring exploratory things but we do need this knowledge and this is good information for my colleagues uh one of the major bills that we need to track is committee substitute Senate Bill 27 by Senator Taylor it's a major item one of the things he struck in some of the language was that students can't districts can't deny um if they're offering a substantially similar course which is a problem from that scenario um one of those the virtual learning is good and so Dr W as the question comes and Miss Bor asked it um students changing back and forth I was glad to hear you say no because that's a terrible idea unless we
116have to have the option where almost virtual can be a privilege not a right from where it comes in so if you are performing if you are doing the right things if you are producing then you can remain virtual otherwise we will bring you back to the classroom um where it's proven learning is at a higher level um some students do Excel and it takes a lot of self-discipline sometimes to excel virtually from that side and so I think it's the question of also Dr works as we get into I'm just making a couple of statements more than questions um I do think we have to have the option to be able to decline students um on those choices and I also think we have to be very particular about which classes work well in
117a virtual environment and which ones do not and the example I start thinking of is some science classes where they need some Hands-On you need some labs and some of those things or you know um you know there's some belief that some foreign language can be done in person but some people believe it works better in person to be able to do that so I think we just have to be very particular about which classes we offer um you mentioned it and I fully agree with opening it up to outside the district if someone needs to take those it can not only help us bring students in but there's also maybe some classes that our students aren't taking that are offered by another district and through some Partnerships with districts we can offer um to
118expand class option let me ask when teachers are C teaching virtual um are we going to keep class ratios at approximately the same levels that was uh that's a question I can't answer yet until until we have an idea about um what's the ideal number of students that should be in an online class typically in online classes there are larger amounts of students sitting in a roster than in a face-to-face environment because you don't have the constraints of the space um so I don't know the answer to that question yet but it is one of those design elements that we'll be considering and I appreciate that and I think that's just something to think about and across campuses I think it's a great thing um to do that and if it's modifying classrooms with cubicle
119we need to plan those things out and I know you're exploratory so I I want to thank you for bringing it up but there is a lot that goes into it this and we have to keep monitoring our our legislature because they will make a major decision that's all I had thank you thank you Mr hog Miss Walton thank you President Ma uh goodness gracious we are Reinventing uh major parts of how we do this and that's exciting and I I appreciate your enthusiasm for this because it's quite a Quite a feat to to try to do and dance with tea at the same time um I just have a couple of quick questions on that idea of kiddos that maybe at one campus that are virtually doing something at another campus in a room
120where they might be um I I hope that uh we're planning some sort of supervision uh of that area uh depending on the age and so forth um I figured you probably I see you were nodding your head so that's a good sign and the question about um can students enroll um from another District to ours to do virtual did you say that uh tea was doing interviews and was would select 50 districts oh so that was two concepts so the what tea is um interviewing and selecting districts on around the vert they they call it the virtual and hybrid School accelerator program and basically they're selecting 50 school districts or 50 consortiums which usually consists of smaller school districts that come together for some of the reasons that were talked about um and they
121are working they have partners that work with ta that they're assigning to school districts to help them in their design um to accelerate that process and to help them over the course of the year um that's what that's about the the question about kids enrolling from other districts um we don't know the answer to that question it's a it's a highly debated topic right now uh in the legisl legislative session um because there is some concern about districts smaller districts um losing students to larger districts where there are more options because of the access they'll have just by going virtual so I don't know if that's going to be allowed or not um we're kind of waiting to see but we will respond in whatever way is going to benefit our system and our students
122once we know what we're allow well sure yeah uh I would think that it would be harder for smaller districts to to provide u a w wide range range of of courses U and so that this might be an opportunity for some of the smaller ones to you know let let share their children with a district that is one of these that are a Consortium of Cl of school districts that could U could take them so there's got seems to me there's got to be some there may be opport there may be opportunities um we just we don't really know what they are that challenge that small districts that you described they have that now even with before virtual ever existed the the courses that they can offer are just more limited because of the
123the volume of students and staff sure but if there are opportunities to partner um what that would look like in terms of finances and all that like we will work with within the limits to um maximize the system once we know what it is but um we just don't know yeah we just need you know we share we share students we share Ada yeah thank you very much for your help on that thank you Miss Walton Dr Rice uh thank you president Mae and uh yeah thank you for the information Dr WS I I applaud anything that we can do regarding Flex scheduling it's something that uh has been near and dear to me and Mr hog for many many years so yeah that is certainly an an opportunity that has uh surfaced we'll see
124what the legislature does I was just curious um with the interest indicator the survey that that you'll be doing I know you said it's going to be very simple are you going to do any kind of framing uh of the what that looks like that or something to say as a disclaimer that it may or may not be what you're experiencing right now because that could certainly affect the result yes in fact we've talked about that at length um and we will we have drafted a disclaimer that will accompany the survey and we will also send out information to families before the survey is launched so they understand here's the context you're going to get a survey in the next couple of days and this is what it will be asking you and then with
125the survey we'll also reinforce that context so they have a sense that it is um different the other thing that I fail to mention that we'll also include the survey is an open-ended question that will allow us to understand why they're motivated to do this take a school in a virtual environment so that we can customize programming to meet their needs um as we design okay that's good and then uh as far as communication out to the rest of the district to the teachers um is there a component of that that hey we're we're looking at this and it's not going to be what you've experienced this year Etc because the word's going to get out and I I hate for teachers to go what what are we doing here right yeah no we'll work
126with um Anita Miss Foster and her team to make sure that it's included as part of that discussion I know many of us in meetings that we've been in have already started talking about that possibility and also we have um teachers on the task force helping us to design the actual schools that's part of um the process great and then the final question on the 50 districts uh that cohort is uh that's something that would provide us extra resources if we're not selected as one of those 50s that doesn't prohibit us from going further correct no not at all in fact we are operating we already started this process before that accelerator program was even initiated from tea the reason we chose to apply is because um frankly why turn down help if it can
127accelerate the process and have an outside person think with an objective point of view to help us refine our process and that's why we decided to engage with that but if for example um if for example we were not selected we would intend to continue with our design regardless we would just um work with other partners that we are currently working with um we wouldn't rely on a line from tea okay and then the the final I guess it's more of a statement of course this is all subject to legislative uh purview but uh everything does come down to the uh the almighty dollar and so we'll see where uh where that Cooperative effort uh comes from when 80% of our school districts are rural there might be a lot of lobbying and the legislature
128no we can't do that but if we can work something uh where it is financially a viable model for the those partner districts and us as the lead District uh I would also add to that uh maybe for our legislative Consultants to uh include in in that discussion is that that would include perhaps Charters as well um you know we are a district of choice uh Charters a lot of people flock uh to those just because it's something different uh Charters are I know in a situation where they'd like to uh have additional opportunities and they would essentially be they are a small District so that that might be an opportunity as well so just putting that out there it's a excellent uh point R um just a little context and to your point that's
129where the battle is if you feel right a who's going to be allowed to do this under what situation and under what funding so just as a reminder and and I share this with individuals who we speak with about this whole concept pre pandemic virtual wasn't really allowed right the virtual school network is very small and very restriced and it's almost a disincentive to start one so virtual wasn't allowed so when we talk about Innovation and changes and adaptations we want the state to come with us on that that's that's the the real challenge because quite frankly pre- pandemic if you weren't in school and counted for attendance you weren't funded right and very old archaic kind of system now that we look back right um so we those adaptations have to come from the
130state and that's the challenge because they have to adapt funding how you account attendance what you require do you require them to come to school at some point what grade levels are eligible so all those are really open questions it's a it's a it's an interesting challenge I think as a district we provide many opportunities for students and from our perspective this is one more opportunity that we should under certain conditions right be exploring and providing for our students and so that's it's in that spirit that kind of this discussion and this motivation Etc is is because we have so many opportunities from Career Tech Fine Arts Athletics you name it this would be one more tool for students to be successful under the right conditions Etc but to your point that's where the battle
131is who's going to be allowed to do it under what conditions how can you enroll and all that yeah and that's why I'm hopeful that we can help frame that debate up front because somebody's going to use that as as the mighty sword to kill the whole thing and uh i' I'd like to stay on the front end of it frame that debate as much as possible lead it so that it doesn't happen so that we can't offer this for our students thank you thank you Dr Rush Mrs Fowler thank you president May Dr W will'll probably have to get back with me on this question but I'm curious to know how grades hopefully have improved the high schoolers have been back 5 days a week for probably what about two weeks now MH and
132I'm curious to know what the grades are looking like you know from from virtual grades to in-person grades so that's a good question um so you're specifically referring to the grades over the last couple weeks since we've started coming back so we won't really know how grades will look until we get to the progress report kind of place and we kind of dip into grade books and know um and usually the reason I say that is because teachers don't there's the deadline for them to actually have grades in to produce a progress report um is around the 3 we Mark so once we get to about 3 weeks then we have a chance to kind of dip in and see how it's kind of going um but I always say that with caution because students
133um especially high school students are very aware of what a progress report means and what a sixe pre report card means and so sometimes students um know very frankly that they're behind in the three-week point and communicate that to their mom and dad but have every intention on getting up to par by the sixth week so I'm happy to share that with Mr Dr kassos and with you all about where we are in terms of the dipstick um that's the only caveat I would add to that is it's really kind of hard to know because they're pretty smart yeah they are but I'm just curious to see speaking from my own household to be honest exactly exactly but I'm just curious to see my my my thoughts are that we're going to see grades going
134up but it will just be interesting to see what those grades look like from virtual yeah and I think the other thing to think about too is um especially as kids transition from one environment to the other there is an adjustment period that takes place some of the kids that are coming back that um Dr Brown spoke to have been gone the entire year and now they're showing up in class again and so I don't think we can underestimate what that is like for them um just emotionally re acclimating to being back in school and the the the um the accountability that's in in place really strongly at the campus that may have been a little bit more difficult to do at home so um yeah it'll be interesting to see we'll definitely keep an
135eye on it and I can share with you where what we know as we know it but um our best place is really at the 3-we and the six week Point yeah thank you so much I have one more question that's probably for Dr Brown okay and I headed here and then I didn't want to interrupt when when Dr wart started on that page that showed how many students um have returned because they reached out to them mainly there were elementaries and then you you had a uh some information about Sam Houston High School but it just said how many they had reached out to and it did not say how many had actually returned to campus do you do you have that number no I don't have that specific information because that's a roll
136that's rolling data that they look at but I can if you're interested I can certainly ask them how many have returned based on the 359 contacts okay thank you so much yes ma'am thank you Mrs fer okay next item on our agenda discussion action item considering any motions necessary thank you President Ma and we don't have any motions necessary under under this item uh to consider tonight okay then we will continue we got our items to be withdrawn from the consent agenda are there any items to be withdrawn from the consent agenda okay I see none so tonight we'll be considering the items that are listed on your agenda under consent items uh Mrs Moss we are ready to hear from you good evening good evening thank you president May's trustees drosos we have three
137bids for your consideration tonight those are all actual annual contracts and uh Administration recommends approval of the consent item okay so is there a motion to accept the consent agenda move for approval that a second okay got a motion from Mr hog is second by Miss Walton any discussion seeing none please vote okay all in attendance voted yes the motion passes mark it where okay six voted yes one is not voting because he's not in his seat Dr Rice okay we will continue on our agenda next we have discussion items Dr kastos thank you President Ma and we move into our discussion items with the progress report for the Board of Trustees continuing education credit and so tonight the board has been provided uh your continuing education credits that uh board members have acquired uh
138and at this time Miss Benjamin everybody has received their credit is that correct yes sir all trustees have exceeded requirements thank you and so we bring this as a discussion just a an information item as well as it's required to be be reported okay so Dr kavas say I have uh the report of the individual hours for all trustees um they have all exceeded their required training hours um they have been provided the literature that covers the framework for school board development that was adopted by the Texas State Board of Education um and for that I will move it back to you if you have anything else to add nothing else to add on this item okay thank you very much our next discussion item the 20 2122 preliminary budget update thank you president Mason
139so tonight uh we bring uh another budget update we've already provided one I believe in January and as the legislative session continues and as we get more clarity about our own budget situation and where we are in planning uh for for next year's budget we want to take this opportunity to bring this update we covered this with the finance committee as well and I think it's important we're kind of shifting gears on our discussion here because we've been talking about virtual learning and things like that the budget uh process is something that continues to evolve um and we want to make sure that we have that opportunity to discuss because as we move forward it kind of moves rather quickly uh as we get into June uh to talk about the finances and the budget
140proposals for the following school year so with that uh Darla Moss will present our uh preliminary budget planning thank you and again Dr F said in January we did bring you a budget update in January that Focus was on the current Year's budget uh tonight we want to want to just share with you some of the things that we're looking at for the 2021 2022 budget um not any numbers or or any Revenue numbers that we're bringing tonight but just showing you what we're doing in the process as we go along to build that budget tonight okay so just uh a brief look at the timeline and what's expected of us and what's required of our district um the board um the items that the board has to take action on so that first item
141I'll point out is on April the 30th we'll receive our estimated values or buy that from the parent Appraisal District and that will give us the information that we need to estimate our values and start to um share out those Revenue numbers as we project make those projections um that information will also help to generate a proposed tax rate that is the first first action uh from the board and occurs in June the public hearing the adoption of uh the Compensation Plan and the adoption of the budget also occur in June and the next item after that would occur in August and that's when the board will actually adopt the tax rate and so just an overview of the budget process um the foundation of course of the budget is a demographic study and Dr
142vasos mentioned that we shared with the finance committee uh this information a couple of weeks ago we actually brought our demographer in at that time and he went over a presentation showing how he came up with um um our enrollment numbers so the district partners with Templeton de demographics for this process and the study was completed in the fall Rocky Garder um is actually uh works with our district Personnel he works with our human resources department he works with research and accountability and they all collaborate and of course finance and budget and they all collaborate to come up with the number that's best for the district um human resources also completes a staffing analysis and that's based on our projected enrollment enrollment that we come up with uh a little later we'll share historically how
143that looks for the district our budget and finance works with the Department uh using a zerob based budget uh process and our departments are asked to assess their needs and to enter that information into an um a line item detail in line item detail in our system our campus allocations are also uh projected based on that enrollment number that uh District Personnel come up with and so this is just uh a picture of what it takes for us to start putting that proposal together for the budget uh we look at several items that are significant in that process uh I mentioned earlier that we'll receive those property values uh by by the end of the month and we're evaluating and monitoring our attendance and its impact on whole harmless I'll talk a little more about
144whole harmless here in a minute uh but our kindergarten pre enrollment is being monitored closely um and we're analyzing all of our PPE cost uh for the 2020 school year we're looking at our PPE cost for the current year in order to determine to determine what next year is going to look like for us and what we need to budget as as far as PPE for next year we're monitoring also our federal funding there's been a lot out there about the availability of what's coming for the district I'll share uh that with you as well and um but for now let's go back to whole Harless um there are some conditions and we've talked about whole harmless earlier but I just wanted to point out some of those conditions to the board tea has held
145the district uh harmless for the first uh two six weeks attendance and there were no uh uh no conditions for those first two six weeks for the third six weeks reporting period we're held harmless on the condition that we allowed on campus instruction um throughout that entire third six weeks period the second condition for the third six weeks period was that we had to um send in to tea an attestation that we allowed uh for oncampus Learning and we have sent that in I believe it was back in January we sent that into tea and we are good for the third six weeks for the fourth the fifth and the six six weeks periods the district also must meet two conditions sorry give me just a sec okay the average on campus attendance participation rate
146during the six six weeks reporting period must be equal to or greater than 80% of all students being educated during the 66 week period we can meet that uh condition or the average oncampus attendance participation rate during the six6 week attendance reporting period is equal to or greater than the on campus attendance that we reported in the fall snapshot um Eric up church and the tech techology Department Department Dr Barlo um in research and accountability are working on those numbers right now and there's no reason for us not to believe that we will not uh meet those numbers and uh be held harmless for the last six weeks we're in not to say that we will but it it's trending uh like we will um this is just a snapshot of the district's uh historical
147student enrollment and of course you all know that that number has been trending down for Arlington and um based on the demographers report it will continue to do so for the next several years okay it's not going forward thank you so this slide uh is one that I asked the staff to pull together for me and I think it paintes a really good picture uh of what the district has done historically as far as our staffing so if you look at the blue line that shows you uh the count of our students if you look at that orange line kind of a burn orange uh that shows you the count of our staff and so these should Trend together and you can see that they do uh that line on the top is also U
148representative of our total staff and uh it's trending that way as well uh I will tell you that we look we look very closely and and Mark Strand and team do an outstanding job as far as analyzing that um and and what we need to do as far as Staffing on an annual basis uh we're working with them now I'm starting to look at all staff to see where we are in in regards to that number as well the other thing on this slide I will point out is that the yellow bars represent the revenue for the district and you'll see that that continues to increase um even though you see the little decline in the student and teacher uh which it should be there uh but that yellow um of course represents our revenue
149and it's trending up that allows for the district to stay competitive as far as compensation and other things so uh this is something that we'll continue to Monitor and make sure that we're in the in a good position now I want to just show you uh a snapshot of enrollment changes based on what we projected the district is projecting 56,2 47 for the 2021 2022 uh school year that's a difference from the first semester of about 300 uh at the end of the semester we had 56749 so we're projecting that uh we'll have 56447 for next school year I also want to share out uh about our tax compression for 2122 um initially the state's controller's office um had projected Statewide growth of 0. 29% and that has now been revised to 1.84% however that
150number is still lower uh than the number that's needed for compression So based on that information we will not see tax rate compression uh for 2122 however if ais's uh taxable values increase more than 2 and a half% we will have to compress that tax rate right now in our conversation with the tant appraisal district um we're looking at just keeping that flat at a 0% and they're telling us that it could possibly actually go uh uh we could possibly see a decrease um and I'll show you how that impacts Revenue here in a minute of course we're taking um uh that information and we're still going to present scenarios based on maybe we see an increase or not so uh we'll we'll look at um all all areas and this is just a picture
151of where our tax rate was for 201920 uh we we were at 97 cents for the total emo tax rate uh because that that was the first year of the compression after House Bill 3 for 2021 uh the V pass thanks to all of the citizens of AR Arlington and we were able to um uh have a tax rate of 1.08 64 without compression we would have that same tax rate for the 2122 tax year and so I mentioned we'll you know we're still evaluating and looking at what those percentages would do uh these numbers of course I was having a a disclaimer on there they're subject to change based on legislation but we're looking at a 0% increase uh with net revenue of 493 million that's under current law uh that could possibly change
152and if we were to see a 2% increase in uh uh in values that would create an additional $7 million for the district a 3% would in uh would uh increase by $1 million the next slide I want to share uh how covid-19 impact has impacted the district and the reason we look at that is we want to see again you know as I said earlier what have we spent on covid-19 PPE all those cost uh during the first year what are we spending this year and what might we have to spend for the 2122 budget um and that is still to be determined based on the work that our our team is doing now but you can see that in 1920 we spent uh 10 .9 million and in the current year so far
153we spent 19.9 million so we're taking those numbers and trying to determine what we need to put in next year's budget in regards to um our covid-19 or PPE cost uh one thing I will point out on this slide because it stood out to me when I first got the data is under cleaning and sanitation you'll see that we spent a million dollar in 1920 and of course that was just the first uh uh uh only 3 months of the fiscal year that we were um um experiencing um the pandemic um in 19 in 2021 this year so far we've only spent 218 that's because we were buying a uh inventory to prepare for the 2021 uh fiscal year and of course you know we're we're heavy into springtime here and we forget that just
154a few weeks ago we had a winter storm uh that uh Mr horn and his team is still working on and we're still working with insurance adjusters on that as well uh the reason we're bringing that to you is that it may impact our 2122 uh fiscal year budget depending on when everything is uh wrapped up uh with that if we receive our insurance funds this year uh it will not impact next year but it may not happen and we have to evaluate that to see how much we're going to have to put into the budget for next year for that we do have uh $250,000 deductible uh our property insurance total projected so far um is 6.8 million we met with them and that number is does continue to to rise uh we met
155with them and they believe that we they will be able to cover all of that um uh um those expenditures on the one other point I wanted to make on that $250,000 deductible that the district has uh Anita Foster is working uh with the foundation uh Matthew uh MC and his foundation has awarded the district $250,000 so that will cover that uh cost for us okay so so earlier um we talked about the impact of covid and here's a chart that shows um some of what um is helping the district out with some of those expenditures um it shows everything that we've received so far uh from federal and state assistance if you'll look in that First Column we've received 16.9 million um I'll point out that under Esser one that 15 million is what
156was supplanted by the state uh so we actually didn't receive those dollars but it was um um uh we were made whole on those we have $5.4 million in process right now uh we look to be reimbursed at least 84% of that number that we have applied for so far um and you'll notice the aster of course in that future estimate these are the SR 2 and the SR 3 uh funds that have been um um communicated out there the numbers that you see are based on our the numberers of our students and our Title One um dollars now I'm going to just share out our general fund balance that's been in the legislative session a lot this year and is has been for for several years I just wanted to give you a picture
157of where we stand and it does continue to grow uh but as our Revenue grows and our our expenditures grow you can expect that to grow a little bit um one thing I would like to point out to the board is the just the definition of fund balance some people think that it's a savings account or it's all cash uh that's not the case some of that uh amount is inventory for us is strictly the difference between our assets and our liabilities at the end of the FIS year that's in in a nutshell um and I do want to share on the next screen some of the reasons why we do need that our local cash uh Revenue cash flow the timing of our property tax payments we're a July 1 fiscal year uh District
158that means our fiscal year starts July 1 and ends on June 30th so July 1 our budget is open for spending for that fiscal year most of our uh local Revenue dollars we do not not start to receive until December uh and January um our um State funding payments do not come in July they don't start until October and they we don't get our last payment for the fiscal year until August of the next year so we're depending on that fund balance uh for operations and of course we talked about the winter storm we had a we've had a tornado in November uh the pandemic we have to uh spend our money for all those things until we're reimbursed from the state and and federal government and so I'll end here with what um Administration
159has come up with as our budget priorities um number one on the list is our competitive compensation for our teachers and our staff um our um human resources department is working with tasby for a styen review and adjustment uh for those stiens to ensure that we're competitive with other districts uh Dr ws and his team are working on um what we need as far as student recovery intervention and academic support uh social and emotional learning support and our technology department is working on what we need uh for our students uh as far as technology items and so I I'll wrap up I guess by saying one uh thank you to our staff it's it's our budget process not does not start now it actually started back in the fall and uh it's an ongoing thing
160it's not just finance that works on budget it takes the academics Department uh Transportation we're working with facilities we work with all departments all campuses uh to pull this work together uh we're in transition in the finance department and we're doing some things a little differently it may seem like we're bringing this information to you a little slower than than you're accustomed to getting it uh but we're working on that to have you a proposed budget uh by June 22nd and I'll be glad to ask answer any questions that you may have thank you very much Mrs moss do I have any questions or comments from trustees going once okay Mr Choppa thank you President Ma Miss Moss I just have um a couple questions on the first there was the chart that had the
161co9 impact our estimated costs to date and I know this is more of a refresher for me I know that we designated some fund balance earlier this school year here um and so if you go to the general operating fund balance bar chart um it shows that our assigned fund balance basically increased this year how much of the designating of fund balance that we did covers these costs well that well we we'll wait until we're reimburse from all the other organizations to see what cost there is if we get to the end of the year and we start to do our audit that's when will'll determine whether or not we need to UND designate those funds and put it back into fund ballots based on what we've been reimbursed for our expenses so far okay
162and so that we we'll make the decision on whether or not to UND desate those funds this budget cycle or next it will be actually that's during our audit process so before we close the books for this fiscal year 2021 we'll make that decision then okay all right thank you that's the only question I have oh Justin you caught me off guard I figured you'd have some more questions I took some water okay Mr will Banks thank you President Ma and thank you miss m uh for your presentation um since you're on this slide I had a question on this one as well um uh a little bit curious of what makes up the payroll the 6 million on payroll is that for stiens or cover ining employees uh with some of the resolutions that
163we had passed pre previously it just seemed that that number just jumped out as yes for 1920 the the biggest portion of that is when we continued to pay salaries and and employees were not actually uh in the district working uh so that's the biggest portion of that when you look at the 6.5 million that's for like substitutes if we had employees who were out uh to due to covid related uh uh illnesses or anything like that those subs that we brought in go into that category okay all right that seems reasonable um it was much bigger number than I expected I think yes and and I I I um when I got the data given to me I asked for this data and I got it I went back and and researched that because
164it seemed a little high to me too but if you think about all the benefits and everything that comes along with uh the salaries it's yeah the way you explained it it makes sense now so M Mr Bank if I may just real quick uh just for context um these are budgeted salaries right so what we've captured here I think because we Dar and I had this discussion we're capturing the cost for covid so it's not above necessarily what we had already in our budget for salaries necessarily in some cases it is but that also represents like when we had the shutdown right the state and others have asked us to capture covid cost and that is a covid cost if you just for clarity it's not like unbudgeted funds right all of it some
165of it is some some of it is above and beyond what we like the technology imagine that's correct but however my next question is is on the technology those were going to be reimbursed with sr1 funds that's correct and on two slides over I think or 80% of them right she Dar M showed how much of that has been reimbursed so far so this is all kind of pieces to the puzzle I think the the important part here is we've captured and thank you to staff and everybody involved in this because it's a very meticulous process to keep track of all the covid costs anything related to covid and that's what you're seeing represented here yeah now thank you for that clarification Dr gasos and you know I want people at home to understand that
166you know we we didn't get hit with 19 uh $20 million over what we had already budgeted uh some of it is but but fortunately most that was above what was budgeted is being reimbursed correct the majority of it majority so so another way of saying that because it's an important Point Mr obank so I apologize for interrupting here again but what another important point to capture here is hold harmless was also a piece of this puzzle that's why all those puzzle pieces were were demonstrated if we didn't have hold harmless and we had these expenditures that'd be an issue because we wouldn't be getting the revenue for it so all these things fit together but this is capturing because we had a lot of discussion about this as well this is capturing every cost
167of Co but then it makes up with you know some of the hold harmless to cover some of this but um that's why the conditions for the last hold harmless is important uh that they are met so that we continue to generate that Revenue to address these costs absolutely and just the one other thing I'll point out on this slide this is not just general operating expens ures you will see that we have our student new nutrition on there and some of the uh blond dollars that we use for technology are included as well and I know you have TBD listed for next year but it's is it reasonable to expect that things like the additional Food Service cost given the fact that most students will be will be close to normal in terms of
168food operation and that um and so that's what evaluating right now is how we're going to be operating if if the majority of the students come back what are the needs are they are we going to need more PPE we're looking at what we currently have on on hand in the warehouses and and determining do we need to purchase more for this fiscal year or or do we not so those are all the things that we're and again we are looking at our food service operations and how it will uh you know be operating next year we have gotten word uh already that we will again and um be able to give students free meals again for next year for the next school year um so we're taking all of that into consideration when we
169do that we have to prepare it a little differently um so our food services team is is taking that into consideration as we build their budget their budget is one that has to be approved by the board as well um so we're currently uh reviewing all of that now thank you thank you Miss um Moss now um I do have a question about the tax rate um I don't did you have a slide showing that right there yeah so right now I I want to make sure I heard you correctly um we did cover this in finance and at that time you were more leaning towards Tad was saying that we should expect a zero increase in the property values now they're saying more like 2% no uh they're still saying that it will be
170flat this is just for our our uh benefit and uh when we build a budget I like to bring to you different scenarios so if you'll remember last year when we adopted the budget they also told us that it would likely be flat and we came in at about 2% or a little over 2% last year so I'm just running the numbers to see how that might impact us if their number is off a little bit again we get that information by April 30th we'll see what their uh number is and we'll start to uh um you know run some numbers and do some calculations to make some projections I know that projection might seem a shock to those listening at home who've already gotten their Tad notification and what their new valuation is everyone
171I know has seen at least a 10% increase but the other side of the equation is co has been very hard on our commercial businesses exactly and I think a larger port a much larger por portion of our tax revenue comes from the commercial side so even though you know you may be hearing this and thinking oh what they must be crazy because why did my property tax go up by 10% that's is that the primary reason exactly right yes yeah and I would be interested if Tad breaks that estimate out that could be emailed to the board to see the breakout between um what the increase in property values on the commercial side as well as the res yeah we can we can do that um the other thing that I will um mention
172that we're doing is we're um going back and looking at historical data um typically in April it's a little low and then they tend to drop when we get to July uh I'm accustomed to just the opposite I'm accustomed to April being there and then it increases to July because you know you're being a little conservative in April and uh you have the increase so so our staff and and team is looking at looking at that data historically so we can kind of find the trend for uh for this appraisal district yeah yeah that's good um and I do want to commend you on one thing I um one final thing if you could go to your great your beautiful slide with the burnt orange line um thank you and I will not take credit
173for that I actually asked for it but my uh Sheena uh Joselyn our budget director pulled that together for me it's beautiful isn't it uh but it tells the story and that's exactly what I was that it tells a great story and I think that was very helpful when you shared that with us in finance and it you know it gives us some comfort just looking at that seeing our revenues increase despite the fact that our enrollment is probably declining more than we're comfortable with so um and it does mean like you said that we are in a good position to be competitive going forward on our salaries so thank you thank you Mr will Banks any other questions or comments from trustees okay I see no lights Miss Moss thank you very much for
174your presentation this evening thank you we appreciate it and before I go to the next one um I omitted saying uh thank you to Dr warts and to Dr Brown for their previous presentation okay next discussion item rachal and social Equity update Dr kassos thank you President Ma and so as uh we have done this evening several times we are Switching gears uh again but I will uh just share with everyone that these items are interdependent and that's really I think an important thing to keep in mind so as we talk about budget priorities recovery after covid uh Revenue that we receive from the state hold harmless Virtual Learn learning opportunities welcoming more students back to class um these things are connected and so this next item is connected to that as well because in
175order for us to have continued success and enhanced success uh we must also uh examine our racial and social equity in the district and so the board adopted a resolution in the summer of 2020 that gave uh some clear uh visioning and Direction related to racial and social equity for our school district and so Dr Brown has this presentation but I want to frame it with the two parts of that resolution that were critical and they're about half and half first part is a comprehensive examination of our culture curriculum instruction and Inter internal systems so first half is a comprehensive uh examination the second half is actually to do something about it so as we examine these uh these uh items in our district then that we would actually take action to address them and
176improve them and so as we look at tonight's work it's the first part which is that deep examination in our school district related to culture curriculum instruction and internal systems related to racial and social equity and so uh I want to thank Dr Brown for leading this effort but Dr Brown has reminded us often that it takes all of us in this work and so we have a task force we have a group of people in the district that have been helping us with this work and so Dr Brown will lead us through a presentation of where we are thus far in this important work of racial and social equity in our school district Dr Brown thank you so much Dr kassos and glad to be back with you this evening uh to provide an
177update on our racial and social Equity work in Arlington ISD um I often say the time is now and we are the people and I think that's important for us to continue to remember um this is a great opportunity for us collectively to be able to engage in meaningful uh conversations and work in our system this language is actually part of the resolution that the board pass in the summer and it still Rings true today that we still want to make sure that we're contining to uh provide an uh an environment in our school district in our system that is Equitable and that's um free of racism and inequities and the comprehensive examination will allow us to determine where some of those marks might be so I think it's important that we just spend some
178time talking about what's really been happening behind the scenes because you may have thought gosh it's been month since we've talked about this since our last update and I guarantee you there's been lots of work happening just to make sure that we are launching this in the appropriate space and way and that we have the information that we need the right partner um and the right steps to be able to engage in this meaningful work so I want to just kind of share with you a little bit about the work we've engaged in over the last several months and that is engaging in numerous uh collaborative sessions with our partner which is Handover as well as our steering committee and our task force to really make sure that we're laying the foundation and groundwork for
179the work that we're going to engage in in the coming months and subsequent years it was important that we share the context of Arlington the context of our culture and our community so that the Handover team that's working with us um is right there lock step with us and knowing what we are going to be focusing on and some history about our system we also spent time outlining the the work for the next six months so we know and Dr kassos has said this before this is not something that's going to happen overnight or we're gonna have strategies or all these ideas and it's going to be a two or three month process it's going to take time so we're going to talk to you about the first six months of this work and that
180examination and what that's going to entail it was also important that we spent time talking with the people who initially expressed interest in our district in being part of this work so keeping them engaged uh continuing to communicate with them about steps and where we were in the process and that has happened throughout the last few months one thing we talked about as a as a as a steering committee and Dr kosas wanted to make sure as a cabinet that we engage in this conversation is we really just talked about what are our greatest hopes for this work like if we could just wave a magic crystal ball or magic wand and say this is our ultimate hope and really to be able to listen to each other about what we really want to see
181happen as a result of this work and then also conversely what is our greatest fear because sometimes when you outline what that greatest feere might be you can be more proactive in making sure that does not come to fruition so we spent some time really talking about that as a system again just really laying the foundation making sure we're on the same page and a clear understanding of the direction and steps that we were going to take so this is what the next six months look like looks like and I'll talk to you about each of these steps in just a moment but at a glance we'll first have an equity and inclusion survey we'll have an equity audit that's actually happening simult ously actually right now uh we'll talk about benchmarking Equity Frameworks how
182we look at other peer aspirant districts to see what are some best practices they have in their systems that we might be able to emulate modify or tweak and then also really be able to engage in this listening tour part of the examination is talking to our people um all different types of people in our system to really get an idea of what their perceptions and experiences have been in Arlington ISD and then ultimately be able to dig into the data and have meaningful conversations about the trends that have been identified through this diagnostic survey so what I'll do now is just kind of walk you through each part of this process and again this is just the next six months so it's a pretty tight Examination for the next six months and the first
183part of this is the equity and inclusion diagnostic survey one thing I just want to outline is we um this part of our conversation is about racial and social Equity but it's important that we also remember this is going to inform a broader conversation about diversity equity and inclusion so that's going to not only talk about the experience of our black students and staff members and community members which was what our resolution um was entails but it's also going to inform broader work so this equity and inclusion diagnostic survey it's important that we are looking at not only the race and ethnicity component but also how inclusive is our system in general so we're going to be soliciting feedback uh perceptions from students uh grades 6 through 12 and varying degrees of questions depending on
184our um age appropriateness parents and Guardians in our system um and also staff members and being able to engage in this survey to just really be able to help us understand constructs in our system of race culture gender identity sexual orientation religion ability socioeconomic background and what the expected outcome we have of this work is that the Handover is going to be a establish be able to establish like Baseline perceptions of what all of these particular groups in our system have talked about in terms of their lived experiences this Baseline survey that we're going to have this year is going to be just that and every subsequent year we'll engage in a survey so we can be able to track uh strategies and systems that we put in place to see if we're generating some
185positive uh results and outcomes also wanted to share the research questions that Handover um is going to be engaging in and again we've been lock steps side by side with them through this entire process helping them and make sure their research questions are aligned with what we seek for our organization so number one is what are Perceptions in in aist of diversity Equity inclusion uh what are differences in perceptions how can we filter and look at specific student groups uh parent groups demographics locations uh geograph graphically in our system to be able to break down the data in a meaningful way and then what are priorities for our stakeholders again this is across the board um what are priorities that that they have as Rel as it relates to diversity equity and inclusion we want
186to make sure this is accessible language wise to all of our parents and our students and so just wanted to share that we do have the survey available in the languages that are listed below so the next slide just basically gives you an idea of the the possible time frame for this survey we are still right now finalizing some of the questions in the survey uh and finalizing that process so we have not yet determined our launch date we're thinking it's going to be about miday that we do this but it's important that we set the foundation and lay the groundwork in terms of messaging with our parents with our staff members and our students so everyone has a clear understanding of why we're engaging in the conversation and what we seek to um what
187we seek to gain from their perceptions and their experiences so after the survey goes out we give them about a two week time frame to be able to complete the survey and then we will um get those results probably the end of June or sometime in July as a senior team we'll be able to look at that data they'll help us identify what are some Trends and themes that we saw as we filter through this survey data um once we have that survey data it's going to be really important because that's when we're going to be able to now go to focus groups so so we have the survey we sent out here are some trends that we identified in the in the survey let's go talk about the lived experiences now so qualitatively we'll
188have focus groups engaging in conversation around these themes we'll have listening leaders uh who've also volunteer to be part of this work to be able to go and interview people on their on their on their campus or in their departments again just a way to be able to get um qualitative data around the the big ideas and big rocks that have been generated through the diagnostic survey also wanted to share just some sample questions um just in the constructs of how these questions have been established and so again there will be some questions that are for parents some questions are going to be for staff members some are going to be for high school students and some will be for our sixth through eighth grade students but in general we want to know uh overall
189my child support um my my school supports or my child supports different race R es ethnicity skin colors cultures genders I've identified there where you'll see where there are some questions that of course are not going to be for our sixth through e8th grade students Hanover's done a lot of work um with many districts around this Equity work um and they've also made sure that the language they use um the number of choices that they offer are age appropriate for those who are engaging in the survey another one is really just about um how does students how do students experience teaching and learning in the classroom so do there does a teacher use books and stories from many different perspectives is there a conversation about discrimination and racism or are we engaging in meaning meaningful
190conversations about diversity at the high school level for example with our parents with our um students another set of sample questions about positive student relationships um adults at my school or my child School respect students of all backgrounds will be able to again filter all this data all the way down student level staff level and parents level that's the first leg of our work is the diagnostic survey um and the second part is the equity audit and this is actually happening as we speak in fact the data transfer happened today so it's really an exciting time and so for this Equity audit the purpose of this is for us to really be able to do this deep thorough Examination for the last 5 to S years of data in our system so as a result
191will be able to produce um the team will produce an equity scorecard and an equity dashboard so this Equity scorecard is basically going to look at tons of data that we have already available in our system it's going to be displayed in a heatmap so we'll look at academic outcomes behavioral outcomes disciplinary infractions over the last 5 to seven years we'll be able to look by student Group by grade Band by school year by campus um to be able to see whether there may be some some inequities or disparities um in and specifically on the scorecard the dashboard allows us to have side by-side comparisons so again the equity dashboard and scorecard is all of our data and it's going to be analyzed and published for us as a system excuse me so some of
192the research questions that we're asking where do disparities in student academic and behavioral outcomes exist in our district that's one of the questions we want to ask where do disparities in student participation in state assessments like maybe AP programming or IB programming or classes are there disparities that exist in our district in those aspects and then to what extent over time and at what schools have there been changes over the course of the last 5 to seven years because what we imagine is that we're going to see some bright spots for sure we're going to see some areas where there have been closing gaps and less disparities we want to celebr Cate those two so our Equity dashboard our initial data has been submitted today this is going to take about a two-month process for
193them to call through the data they're likely going to have clarifying questions for us they're going need to ask us so tell us about this data piece and what does this mean and so we'll have to spend some time our research and evaluation team of course not me uh really digging into the methodologies and making sure they have all the data they need to be able to produce this dashboard and scorecard so we are looking to get the equity dashboard and scorecard by mid July so as you can see we'll have a chunk of data starting to come in around mid to late summer uh that will help inform some of our work in the fall semester I wanted to show you just a sample dashboard and what this is going to look like of
194course this is going to say Earlington ISD it's going to have key findings recommendations our scorecard will be able to filter by group um and there'll be some frequently asked questions about our specific project um with Handover so here's an example of how some of the key findings might look there are consistent opportunity gaps in academic outcomes in the district with these specific student groups special education English language Learners black students Hispanics whatever the data might show they're going to give us some key findings and they're going to help us kind of walk through this process to learn understand and be able to ask questions about the findings then from the key findings they're going to make recommendations now these are just things that we can consider these are going to be aligned to best
195practices and research this organization has already engaged in to be able to say here are some things you might consider for example you might consider conducting additional research on how you identify gifted students if there are disparities that um that are revealed here are some things you might be able to consider so we'll be able to see some concrete recommend commendations from the team that will give us um food for thought and ideas for us to be able to create strategies as I mentioned we'll also be able to look at outcomes by student groups so we'll be able to look at this dashboard it's going to be live we can literally click and filter however you want it to look to be able to see what the proficiency has been for all student groups over
196the course of five years in English language arts we'll be able to see disciplinary incidents for a specific student group over the last 5 to 7 years so again a wealth of data for us to be able to call through which is the charge with the examination to be able to see where are some of these gaps we might be able to um focus on in the next leg of our work also in the first six months uh benchmarking Equity Frameworks and so this is really um an exciting part of the process is because right now the team is researching they're researching pure districts uh that look like us in terms of size demographic population sociol low socioeconomic status percentage of English Learners all of Mobility rate all those kinds of um components they look
197at and they're basically saying hey so how are your peer districts engaging in this Equity work um what are objectives they have what are some themes they've identified as work they want to engage in and to what extent possible have they seen success in the outcomes of the work they put forward so they're going to produce for us and we'll get this actually pretty soon a comprehensive report um that will share those best practices so again we don't have to start from scratch if there are people and and districts who say hey this one has really worked well with us we struggle with a similar challenge or this is an area where we've continued to see growth we can actually look at some of those practices and be able to learn from them as well
198so again here are the research questions was important that in this process that we knew exactly what we were signning signing up for so what research questions do we want to know we want to know the answer to um who are these AI who are aic's peers uh who are exemp who have who have exemplary practices as it relates to racial um Equity Equity plans policies that they have in their District that we might be able to lean into uh what are some core components that are included in these Frameworks that also could inform future work in our system as we look at creating Equity plans and framework and then specifically how are they monitoring progress how do they know they're being successful how are they measuring the impact of the goals and strategies they
199have um for their district and so um we are looking to get that benchmarking Equity report here actually in just the next few weeks so we're looking forward to reading the research report from Handover I also just wanted to bring back that we have um a lot of people who are highly interested in this work and so our listening leaders are going to be be very instrumental in helping us understand again this the results from our Focus from our excuse me from our diagnosis survey they'll be instrumental in helping us on the ground have conversations one-on-one with people in their Department uh people at their campus um to be able to around a standardized set of questions about racial Equity again these the the question stems will come from what we learn that diagnostic survey
200so we have 100 listening leaders who are across the district representing um all different types of of roles and responsibilities but all very engaged and interested in this work we have over 160 focused group participants this is only staff members because we do look to involve community and focus groups as well as student focus groups as well but we have 160 folks who participate in at least a 90-minute focus group again to explore some of those themes that were outlined or that were discovered in the diagnostic survey so thought it would be important to just talk about strategic planning because that is coming up here in the next few months and how a lot of this information that we are gaining is going to help inform some of the plan that we have so our
201survey and focus groups and listening leaders of course will engage in collecting qualitative data about student staff and parent experiences the equity audit is going to be the quantitative anal of examination of our systems examination of our programs uh disciplinary infractions Etc our Equity Frameworks is how they are looking at peer and aspirant districts to be able to find ideas of how we might be able to modify and involve some of those strategies in our district and all of those will help inform our district planning priorities as we begin strategic planning here in the next few months so I wanted to end today with a quote by by one of our AISD teachers of 177 years she said our racial Equity work will improve relationships among teachers students and parents and improve the educational experience
202of all of our students with an emphasis on leveling the playing field for black students and people of color so with that that is the update on where we are with our racial and social Equity work and I'm happy to take any questions thank you very much Dr Brown do I have any questions or com comments from trustees yes Miss Walton thank you President Ma um back to the um Equity audit and the dashboard and scorecard of that section um how um well let me just set up in some of our elementary schools we have special um behavioral programs uh of small small groups of student students um uh with um you know qualified experienced teachers for that sort of delivery of instruction and and help for those kids my question is how how will
203a campus um how will this dashboard or comparison work out um on between the campuses for our campuses that have that sort of Behavioral program and those that don't as far as you know I'm thinking discipline specifically okay so the dashboard is going to be a district level system level dashboard um and what so that means it's not going to be like individual campuses will not have their own dashboard we'll be able to filter it as a system um but the research is going to be able to take into account just a number of infractions um disciplinary infractions going to be one referrals and I understand you're probably saying there may be some campuses that have more more ex more EV of challenges than others um and we just look to see that in the
204data and be able to filter through that and and make sense of it yeah well I read it was by School site so I was assuming so meaning that we can filter by School site so we'll be able to say okay Adams Elementary for example we can see all the data in terms of equity the dashboard for that particular school and we can make comparisons to say well how does Adams look as it relates to let's say disciplinary infraction vers verus Fitzgerald so we can make those side by-side comparisons right but also taking into account and filtering by maybe a special program on that campus I'm asking this as a question would there be a special filter for a campus who held one of those special behavioral programs so we'll be able to filter by
205program and so that will involve okay some of the the situations that you're mentioning yes okay thank you yes ma'am thank you Miss Walton Mrs fer thank you President Ma Dr Brown so we we send out all the surveys we have the listening groups we have the focus groups We Gather all this information then what that's a great question M it just depends on the data right um what I will tell you is part of their the partnership that we have with this organization is they are experienced and being able to dig in this date and help us identify themes so we're going to work side by side with them in workshops which is what I mentioned earlier in the presentation we'll be engaged in workshops to really be able to dig into to where
206we're not having surface level uh experiences with the data but we're able to dig deeper and say this isn't a real issue that we might need to that we might need to tackle what's important to think about with this particular organization is again this is a multi-step process the root cause analysis comes after that so yes we have the data but digging into the root cause analysis is a whole another process to make sure that we're identifying the right strategy to tackle so Dr cavaso has been very clear you know and making sure that we're not just jumping to reaction mode to find strategies but to really pull through the data do root cause analysis engage in listening tours to make sure we're tackling the right strategy that's right and I want to make sure
207that with the information that we gather that it's not just left you know use that and do something with it within the schools or the district as a whole and I think that's going to be important you know to do the surveys and do all of that but then the follow through know what needs to be done maybe at each campus or different campuses and I think that's the important part yes absolutely we definitely concur thank you yes ma'am thank you Miss Valor do I have any other trustees with questions or comments yes Dr R thank you President Ma and thank you for the information it's uh it's going to be good work uh to do a deep dive across the entire District District um one of my questions is on the uh the the
208listening leaders and the stakeholders what does that look like um as far as the the profile of the participants is there a breakdown of X number of different race culture uh types and is that something that we can see I'm I'm just curious I I would assume the goal is that it's pretty balanced representative of our population uh but was curious about that yes it's a great question it was important to us that we had a diverse representation to engage in this work and we had diverse interest in this work so not only diversity in terms of their role and their responsibilities in the district but also diversity and racial e ethnic makeup as well as experience so we certainly can provide that information to you for um focus groups listening leaders task force all
209that information can be provided to you sir okay thank you and as far as the uh the the listening leaders uh I think you mentioned uh that there would be uh Community listening leaders in there as well so can you define that a little bit more for me and how those uh individuals are identified yes so we haven't quite gotten to that part yet Focus just on the internal parents and our student student focus groups but um we certainly are just going to engage in those conversations we've already had some initial conversations about what that could look like but again we want a diverse representation just like we have with our internal um focus groups and listening leaders as well I'll be working to um you know to work that out to determine who that's
210going to be okay in the coming probably couple of months okay great and um what about outside um um contract contractors vendors uh th those uh external uh groups that we work with I mean obviously the the focus is within the school system itself uh but I know as trustees we uh we interact with the community we do interact with uh potential vendors and I'd be curious to know what if this work will uh Branch into that or is that a completely separate thing that we're not doing right now or considering I guess so what exactly are saying in terms of Branch out into the so um into our our uh Contracting process uh policies just to make sure that they they also are representative of of like an equity lens and that type of
211thing uh so different than our internal uh as far as our our staff and and student experience but more so what that looks like uh outwardly sure I think I think it's um it's primarily focused and I'll I'm going to refer back to the resolution to make sure we have Fidelity to it but culture curriculum instruction and internal system so as much as an internal system such as uh hiring recruitment retention leadership development I mean you can go down the list of internal systems purchasing Etc um that we commit to examining that as well but it's primarily for focused on within the district but the systems so I think captures what you're describing Dr R and just just to be clear that is lofty and very comprehensive right so um it doesn't happen overnight to
212examine the systems and the structures and the culture and the curriculum the instruction uh but that's this is the launch of that work and so do anticipate that in this listening leaders for example um that we talked about that we we're going to invite individuals you know we would make that opportunity for board members or others who want to engage with us in partnership in this listening tour if you will listening leader so that uh you everybody gets a full kind of breath of what we're hearing and amassing within the district to miss F's point the the challenge but I think it's measured right is then we have to have action so what we discover right uh deals with strategy and action that comes after that but to answer your question there will be I
213think an opportunity for those internal systems um but it's launching first with the mostly the culture I think is is what we're dealing with right now we'll look at instruction curriculum Etc okay very good and uh I I know this is a long way it's away but as far as curriculum and things we're not uh we we're still defined uh by the state as far as the tees um everything thing that we're going to do uh if there's anything regarding curriculum it is not going to be uh in uh it will remain in alignment uh with what our state standards are uh unless the state changes something we're we're sticking with that right so in essence yes I think where where we talk about curriculum specifically are course offerings perhaps that are available through state
214approved course offering offerings that perhaps we haven't offered because either interest or examination Etc we offer a lot of courses and I would venture to say we offer probably everything that the state um allows us to offer if you will but I do think that just like special study Pathways that we have at the Career Tech Center for example may be a variation of what the state allows but can we put a pathway together as as one example it's just a but to your point with the Essential Knowledge and Skills with what the state standards are but can we frame it in a way that it becomes a a course of study for example that you can begin perhaps at Junior High and then into high school state approved courses right but a course of
215study that we don't really frame that way right now we kind of say well you can take that elective you can take that elective but could we amass a a group of of courses that I think that's more the examination in the curriculum last piece on that is is also looking at at um how we uh Source out curriculum material and things like that again all of those are for the most part State mandated state approved Etc right but making sure that they're available that's that's probably another piece of the curriculum is to what extent are resources available again state approved Etc but have we taken advantage of the availability of resources across our district right that's an examination we we do have a lot of resources but have we taken advantage of everything that's
216available uh based on the feedback we receive because the feedback is going to drive a lot of this right in terms of to what level is the curriculum um matching the needs right uh within what's available I think that that's how address addresses it very well thank you and thank you for uh for all the work with this uh looking forward to uh the the results step by step as we move through through this process so thank you very much of course thank you thank you Dr R um I don't see any other lights um Dr Brown thank you very much for this presentation okay Mr Choppa oh I rejected you on accident thank you Mr Choppa thank you President Ma I just wanted to say um briefly that I appreciate the qualitative and quantitative
217aspects so it looks like this uh Equity review is going to Encompass um you know we've seen I think a lot of organizations over the last year or so uh take steps to do something similar and you know different organizations handle things in different ways but I think that among the ones I've seen um this is very thoughtful it's very deliberate it is on a longer timeline than some other organizations have done but I think think a result of that is going to be that this is going to be not only much more thorough but the datadriven approach that's going to be used is going to give us much more actionable um items to consider on the back end and I think the change that will come from this approach I hope will be um
218much more effective and deliberate than some of the other um reviews that I've seen and the outcomes there so thank you again I really appreciate your staff and the thoughtfulness that went into this thank you sir thank you Mr choa um once again Dr Brown thank you very much for the presentation that you gave this evening um I like how you're delivering it in a way of here's what we do first steps and next steps in a situation like this I don't think can be derived until we finish those first steps it's hard to have a conversation and fix things until you really understand the root of everything that needs to be involved so to Justin's Point appreciate the Strategic way that we're going about this in addition to that you know I I know
219that the resolution that we all voted on was not to appease anybody or anything but it is to make the culture of AISD better for our students a better place for our employees to be a way to help our students become better citizens and a way to also also help our students and staff and all of us within the community look within ourselves and see the positive things that we all have um so once again I appreciate that um I had one qu two questions one the survey how exactly will it be administered and will there be any parental permissions for any of this yes so the survey is going to be sent out in house so District we will send it out to our people to parents um to our staff members and to
220students they'll have a two-e window to be able to um complete the survey um at this point we have not finalized all the details as to whether or not there'll be a parent permission or if we'll share the questions ahead of time so parents know what questions are coming we're still working through some of those details okay very good um and then my second question was do you mind just maybe sharing a little bit of what some of the hopes and the fears were that were discussed I really would like to just hear just a summary you don't have to give me all of them but yes Dr C do you want to say that sh well um so yes um we had this we we tried this activity it's a brief activity but it's
221it's a powerful one actually um with different groups and we think that uh we want to use this activity with some of our listening leaders Etc because it really is powerful and so um some of it gets draws on experiences and things like that but um everybody got to share who wanted to share because that's that's how we you know frame a lot of this work what are those hopes and what are those fears right and so if I had to summarize uh they they were um they were probably uh interestingly enough and and you correct me from wrong Tracy because you were there obviously but they were interestingly enough um the the Hope was to to some extent the same fear on the opposite end so the hope is that this work is is
222persistent courageous and makes a difference and the fear if you will that's how we framed it fear may be a strong word is that it's not persistent or it won't be courageous and it won't make too much of a difference and I think when we reflected on that individuals found it that really they kind of saw it you know that was the hope and at the same time that was the fear and it's not just our organization let me be clear this is true of organizations across this country that are dealing with this type of work because uh there's there's there's certain um to Mr Cha's Point there's certain maybe unaware Tendencies like go fix something and go do it fast right or bring back a you know the three things we're going to do
223with this work and because that's so built into a lot of systems we we want to guard against that right we want to guard against that we want to make sure we examine just like the board resolution says an examination and then to misf follow point then action right but that's a discipline so that was another hope and fear hope that we really take the examination deep enough that it informs the action right the fear is the opposite that the examination won't be deep enough and we're going to rush to action right because that sometimes is not just Arlington but it's a tendency of organizations because we want to fix things that's that's what we're that's what we do so uh it was an interesting dichotomy we weren't expecting that at least I wasn't expecting
224that kind of dichotomy I thought that'd be nicely bundled hopes and nicely bundled fears but it turns out that those two things are opposite or or different ends of the coin or whatever opposite sides of the coin so that's what we learned I don't know if you want to add anything else Tracy you know just just to add on to the Hope part of course all the things the aspirational organization we we hope to be um better than we are even now and I think the fears is that when you're asking people to do a self-examination um there is a heightened awareness and sensitivity with that so that the the fear is that it might become so messy and uncomfortable that we decide this is probably too much um and we are all committed to
225not getting to that space and so as I mentioned before when we know that's the greatest fear how are we being proactive to ensure those things don't come to fruition and and you shared with with administrative team today principles and all over the district it's a Ila uh all the administrators basically um I shared that um that even asking the questions that's why we talk about this survey and and we take our time with making sure people understand what the survey is draws some reflection an important piece to this right but even asking questions draws reflection and we want to be mindful of that and give people space and give people an option if they're not ready to reflect to that level then that's going to be their choice as well so long answer to
226your question of Hope and fears but that was that was what we discovered thank you for sharing that I think that's very interesting so I My Hope Is that the fears don't come true yes um and then just um two more small things that I would just really like to say because I'm very excited about this work that's being done um kind of pivoting a little bit off of what Dr Rice said um The Hope from this resolution was that once we do the Deep dive and we are able to make some changes in culture that then it impacts some of the other things that you were talking about on the outside of how we interact with other individuals other things you hope that once we do the Deep dive that we start um stirring
227up that thirst of knowledge for the things that we've been hiding from and we're hoping that that comes out of this so um the last thing I just want to say is isn't it very interesting that when we try to find one area certain group of people or certain program um that needs um some improvement it can still only be done by a diverse participation it doesn't come from that same one group so we're going to have to all be together so you mentioned that diverse participation and I think that's very very very strong so thank you once again for your presentation really appreciate it Dr Brown thank you okay next thing on our agenda is open form for non-agenda items um ass shared before all persons in attendance are required to wear a mask
228speakers who are addressing the board in person please keep your mask on thank you Mrs Benjamin do we have requesters register to address the board regarding non-agenda items okay well welcome Mr Kev um the second open form segment of the meeting provides citizens with an opportunity to address the trustees on any subject except personnel and this is not intended to be a discussion or debate and trustees will not reply to the speaker derogatory comments aimed at an individual will not be tolerated and you will have five minutes to speak Mrs Benjamin will notify you when your time is up and at that time please end your presentation Mr keville you may begin thank you Mr Mr President uh my name is Phil keville and I just want to thank all the board members for staying
229up late and giving me this platform I I know you're tired um the eyes go first um I have lived here in Arlington for over 70 years I uh I still live here I plan to live here forever so so um I just want to say I went through the aington school system I went to CB Barry Elementary I went to Ferguson Junior High School when I was the eighth grade that was the year integration occurred so I've got a lot of history here I graduated from Sam Houston High School I graduated after that from uh UTA and um working forth basically my whole life uh my wife taught in the arity for 30 years and and she's a very popular very very good teacher so you know she's retired now and I have five
230great nieces that are like my kids uh two just recently graduated and went to the Arlington schools and three are still in the Arlington ISD currently and so I say all that because what I want is is is what is best for Arlington I mean I I have Nexus here I've been here forever and I love Arlington and and I appreciate what all you guys have done and are doing it's hard work but and I've never spoken to the board this is the first time but a disturbing uh education trend is occurring in the United States and I'm here to discuss critical race Theory and I know once again after what we just heard this is a difficult subject and what she's proposing is groups and discussions and making things better and I mean yeah
231boy that sounds great this is not what what this is this is something that they're teaching the kids okay so if I can just give you a quick definition critical race Theory claims that everything in Western Society is irredeemably Tainted by the bigotry of whiteness hence all of our institutions including schools and traditions are irreparably polluted by past and continuing institutional racism remediation isn't sufficient mitigation only puts a bandage on the cancer the only true cure is to demolish everything that has come before and rebuild from the ground up along anti-racist lines critical race theory is the opposite of diversity and tolerance it's a bitter movement bent on Vengeance against everything branded what so I mean I could talk all about but what but what critical race theory is it's divisive it's discriminatory it's damaging
232it's subversive it's Insidious and it destroys the cohesiveness of our nation of what we're trying to do um I I I think the emphas needs to be on the emphasis needs to be on the Constitution our Bill of Rights uh the Declaration of Independence where it says all men all men are created equal and endowed by the creator with certain inevitable rights which include life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and if you read the Constitution and all these documents nowhere in there does it say do the words appear it says black white race female slave it's all people is what they address the 14th Amendment says you cannot deny any person in the US equal protection of the laws and that's that's where we are that's that's the country we want to be that's
233the country we are in and so I could talk you know at length about the extreme damage which would result by injecting critical race Theory into into our schools but time canra prohib me from doing that but I'm here to ask if any of you on the current School Board endorse critical race Theory and want it taught in our schools which is being done Nationwide in a lot of school districts and secondly do you you promise to maintain vigilance against any individual school or teacher teaching critical race theory in Arington schools and so you you know I'm not trying to be comutational here but we just need to oppose every aspect of racism wherever it exists you know and and once again I'll go back to 1965 when we had first integration I I played
234basketball we had the black guys came in and we we and you know we had the same coaches we played with them I mean there wasn't anything it all went quite well we're in the same schools we had the same teachers I didn't see any issues at all so I'm proud of that I was part of that and I'm proud of that but but promoting uh critical race the just promotes racism and and it's it's something that I don't want to see in our schools and I'd love to talk to anyone um about this and and I would ask that you would uh not allow that to be in our schools thank you Mr Calvin okay next on our agenda is our superintendent's report Dr kavas thank you President Ma and so I I uh
235spend have been spending this time of of the report just thanking individuals so I just briefly want to thank um all the faculty the staff and the students of web Elementary we were able to join the the groundbreaking ceremony for the rebuilding of web the new web and in that thank you I thank the voters as well because they supported a bond program that allowed that to happen so that we are able to rebuild aging and aged facilities like web uh web used to be a junior high it's been an elementary for a number of years space is not the uh the most conducive for modern learning if you will but I will tell you the kids at that school when we were in the groundbreaking were exceptional um and I want to thank them
236uh in particular the students that helped in the design of the new web they were very active and they were very persistent in telling me this is what we wanted at the school and I'm glad we were getting a new school uh but I I appreciate uh Kelly horn and others in leadership who included students in the charettes and the design initial uh process because that left an impact and that those students will never forget that that they help design something that will be here for hopefully another 50 years when it's a brand new school right and and so I'm just proud of them and proud of our teachers uh for for their dedication this year um and so that's the thank you I have uh today thank you thank you Dr kasses are there
237any trustees with any reports this evening yes Miss Valor thank you President Ma I wanted to congratulate Mr Atman the sponsor at Martin High School for his Academic Teams two of those teams are headed to State and I think that is just amazing so to Mr Atman and Martin High School Academic Teams we're proud of you and our fingers are crossed for you as you move to State thank you Mrs Fowler any other trustees with reports yes Miss Walton president M well I just want to give a shout out to rowark um we were there uh earlier this week for a a a great assembly the Roark kids and staff were so responsive to a medal of honor winner uh a national Medal of Honor U uh gentleman Captain uh roberg and uh shout out
238to the General Motors plant who helped uh bring him here and are soon to have are soon to have museum for the Medal of Honor winners and I was talking to jeie deine today and uh she is Vice President of that uh Endeavor and they are hoping to break ground in August on the museum so I thought I I I don't know if I can hold her to that but that's exciting if that happens so that's all I have than educational opportunities thank you m wman um don't see lights for any other trustees okay um Mrs secretary do we have any items to consider yes we do uh we have three um the first one is uh a question since most of our students or yeah more of our students have returned to our campuses
239uh for oncampus instruction could we get a report uh of how this has impacted grades hopefully in a improved uh nature and it was indicated this could happen at the end of the the third six the third week of the six weeks when progress reports come out two uh question was how many students at Sam Houston have who have uh have returned as of the beginning of the six six weeks I believe that was the time period is that correct thank you Miss F and the third one uh was when we received the April 30th Tad report tant County appraisal district report could the uh Revenue be broken out by two categories residential and Commercial PR it is thank you very much Miss secretary okay it is it is 10:32 and this meeting is adjourned