Belton ISD Board Meeting July 21, 2025

001Good evening everyone. Thank you for joining us this evening and for your interest in Belton ISD. The time is 6:15 p.m. and the Bel and Independent School District Board of Trustees are now convened in a regular board meeting on Monday, July 21, 2025 at the Pittinger Fine Arts Center located at 400 North Wall Street in Belton, Texas. A quorum of board members is present. Uh note for the record that Mr. Recorder Preston will not uh join us this evening. This meeting this meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. Texas Government Code Chapter 551. I want to welcome the members of our audience and our live stream viewers to this meeting. As the Belton ISD Board of Trustees, we're here to set

002goals, listen to reports from the superintendent, approve budgets, contracts, personnel appointments, and make policy for the district. This is a meeting of the board of trustees held in public. However, it is not a public meeting. Prior to this meeting, board members received information related to items on tonight's agenda. Agenda items may not necessarily be handled in the order listed on the notice. This meeting is open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed. These proceedings are being livereamed on the district's YouTube channel and will be available for review in the days following tonight's meeting. For the video to adequately reflect the proceedings, I respectfully request that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and that cell phones are on silent. Please rise for a moment of silent prayer or meditation.

003Please remain standing as our students from Leon Heights lead us in the pledge of allegiance and honors to the Texas flag. I pledge 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. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge algiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Please be seated. I'm going to give these kids a big round of applause. The first item on the agenda this evening is recognitions. We'll turn it over to communications department to lead us in that regard. Thank you. It is a pleasure to be with you tonight. And first of all, we want to recognize our students who participated in the pledges tonight from Leyon Heights. We have Ava Littlefield

004and Hayes Dberly. Ava is going to be in second grade, and her favorite subject is math. Her friends describe her as sweet, outgoing, and a little bit silly, but in the very best way. Hayes is going into first grade and his favorite part of school is PE. His friends say he's funny, smart, and just plain awesome. And I think you will all agree you guys were both awesome tonight. Thank you for being here. And next we would like to uh introduce and recognize our host our HOSA international qualifiers. We are so proud that we had three exceptional students uh that qualified as international com uh competitors in HOSA. With us this evening is Olivia Gallant from Lake Belton High School who qualified in personal care along with Tristan Hernandez and Ana Janatha who from Belton

005High School who advance in the categories of phamod phabbotomy and research poster. These students earned their spots on the international stage by excelling at the national leadership conference. We also want to thank their sponsors Stephanie Jar Jaren and Mary Katon. Congratulations. We are so proud of you, Olivia. And Olivia is a recent graduate of ours and is pursuing a degree in nursing starting this fall. So, congratulations and our department showcase this evening. We want to recognize our exceptional custodial department. If you will come forward, we have director Maria Garcia, supervisors Francisco Guzman and Nathan Coleman. We have a dedicated team of 116 custodians. We have a dedicated team of 116 custodians who maintain, clean, and our 116 custodians maintain and clean two million square feet of space each and every day. um they do an

006essential job. They are absolutely essential to our system and truly world-class employees. So, thank you so much to our outstanding custodial department. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And we are excited to recognize a new administrator this evening. We have Amber Ross as the new principal at Hubard Branch Elementary. Uh Amber uh brings more than 20 years of experience um in education uh to this role. Uh she joined Belton ISD just last year as assistant principal at Chisum Trail and she is known for her student centered leadership and we are truly excited to have you step into the new shoes of principal at Hubard Branch. Congratulations. And our community partner recognition this evening is our neighbors um to our office. We have the Belton Education Foundation. Please come forward. The Belton Education.

007The Belton Education Foundation. The Belton Education uh Foundation's impact is driven by a committed team of board members, executive committee members, and staffers, each bringing diverse uh perspectives from across the Belton ISD community. Last year alone, the foundation awarded uh 124 over $124,000 in classroom grants to 36 teachers and over $300,000 in scholarships to 174 students. We share a commitment to fostering innovation and excellence in education and we could not do what we do without the Belton Education Foundation. Thank you so much for being such valued community partners. All right. Could everybody join me one more time in just congratulating. We have amazing teachers in this audience who work so hard and give so much to their students. We have parents here celebrating their students. We have international competitors in this room and amazing community

008partners. And so let's give everybody a round of applause. All right. Now the recognitions have concluded. We'll take a short break to dismiss students and families unless you want to stay for a long meeting. Next on the agenda, public comments. Becca, do we have anyone? All right, let's just move down to item four, action items. Consider, discuss, and take appropriate action regarding the 2025 2026 compensation plan. Dr. Golden. Yes. Thank you, board. Todd Schiller, our assistant superintendent for human resources is coming to the podium. Um, we discussed this during workshop today, but he is here to present for your discussion and consideration the compensation plan for the 2526 school year. Thank you. So, as discussed in our workshop this afternoon or this evening, um so we are recommending a teacher um increase starting out at

009year zero at 55,000 with a $600 increase provided to years of experience one and two and then $2,500 provided for three and four years and then 5,000 for five and above years. Um pair professionals and auxiliaries a 50 cent per hour increase. administrators um which are not covered by the a lotments that we discussed earlier in the workshop um a 1% increase and professionals a 1% increase. The total compensation package um for local cost would be 4,57,362 and then school nutrition which is not part of our local funds. They generate their own revenue source and their increase would be a dollar per hour. any trustees. Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah. Um, first off, Todd, thank you so much for all of the effort Todd, the entire business office, the entire HR office for the work

010that has taken to kind of get to this point. like this has been a monster to try to figure out um as we work through the the many different variations of the uh legislative session and and what's going forward. So, this has been a monstrous effort. So, so thank you all so much for that. Um you know, certainly I think from my from my seat, I I really wish we could do more. Um you know, I think we've we've been pouring over this for the last several months. Um and I think as we look at what is the funding that we receive that we're so grateful for um you know from a teacher standpoint especially from a three-year plus um point of view um as we look forward to sort of sort of what next

011year is and the year after that we got to plan we got to plan a couple years out here and I think as we look at that um I think what we what you put forward Todd is is really the most uh maybe appro appropriate sensible um thing that we could put forward from a from a budget standpoint to um to make sure that we're in good shape from from for years to come. We know that next next year, next year as part of the legislative session um or the outcoming from the legislative session from a funding standpoint, we're going to have a million dollar shortfall in funding just, you know, coming in the next year after. Um and so we've really got to make sure that we're putting ourselves in a position that uh

012that we can be talking about an increase potentially next year as well, right? So, um, but this this one's tough and, uh, I really wish we could do more. Um, I am I'm actually really happy about what we can do, I think, from a paraprofessional standpoint. Um, assuming that what Todd just put forward goes through, I think the paraprofessional increase is a really important increase. Um, and it benefits not only the pair professionals, but also the teaching staff, right? Because I think what the pair professionals bring is really support to the classroom teacher. And I think as as much as we can shore up the stability of that group and make sure that we've got, you know, great people showing up day after day all year long, uh, to do those roles, it really does

013provide an exponential benefit. I think way more than the the 50 cents per hour that that we were talking about. It it it pays back way more than that, um, in the benefit to the teacher. So, so assuming that, you know, this ends up going forward, I I'm really happy that we're able to do that. Um, and uh, yeah, I think that's where I'll leave it for right now. Anyone else? questions, comments for Mr. Shield? Yeah, just one one quick comment. Um I agree, you know, I think Chris said it well. I wish we could do more. Um but I think it is important that we're fiscally um responsible and conservative because we have to look ahead. And I know while we may not have um a very in-depth conversation, I would encourage people to

014go and watch the workshop because it really y'all did a great job um of explaining this just so much more in depth. So um I thought that was very helpful. everything that we were able to to discuss and what y'all brought to us during the workshop. So, I would just encourage anyone out there that wants to know more about the behind the the the um um compensation plan is to go back and watch that workshop because it was I thought it was really great and helpful. Anyone else comments uh questions? Oh, absolutely. Okay. Just a couple of things. Thank you and thank you board for the discussion in workshop. Couple of things. Um while we're not presenting budget this evening, um I think anyone across the state of Texas has heard about budget shortfalls in

015school districts and I think everybody is thankful for the additional funding that came to public schools. for Belton ISD. As y'all also know, um we have just spent about a year and a half and have cut $12 million out of our expenditures. Um we've also lost in about that same amount of time a little under $2 million in federal funding. And so as we're reducing and trying to bring down a budget shortfall, then we also face additional challenges with some of the federal funding being up in the air. And so, um, I I just want to reiterate Chris's point and there's been a lot of work behind the scenes and, um, no doubt we're thankful to be able to give teachers an approximate, you know, on average 7% pay raise was so deserved. And our

016teachers, just the ones we talked to tonight, and you saw, uh, just scratched the surface of what our teachers do day in and day out. It takes amazing educators, teachers, staff, administrators to get kids to internationals, much less nationals, state, and to grow them academically. And so I'm just incredibly proud of how hard our staff works. And so our teachers are incredibly deserving of that. Um, and so the 1% for everyone else may not necessarily feel great, but we're also trying to ensure that we are living within our means as a school district. And even in cutting $12 million out of expenditures, we're still potentially looking at a shortfall. We're not bringing you the budget yet. We still have some work ahead of us to do. Um it's the gap has closed quite a bit

017thanks to our legislators and um just want to I know Todd stands before you disappointed that the that the um recommendation isn't more but appreciate all the hard work that's gone into getting us to this point. Anyone else? And Dr. Golden, I want to thank you for your leadership. I I know that as as Chris has indicated, this has been a monster and it really has. Um, looking back over the years, uh, several of us has been on this board for several years and this has probably been the most difficult for me. Um, you know, looking at the shortfalls last year. Uh, lot lots of sleepless nights. So, Dr. Golden, thank you for your leadership and and trimming this budget down. You like you say $12 million or $12 million are now gone. All right.

018And we're still able to to do at least some raise. I I wish we could do more. um more than 50 cents for pair of professionals, but it's just it's just not there. Um and there's still some unanswered questions. Uh we still don't know what what special ed funding is going to be. And 20% of our student body is special ed. Dr. Goldman, that's that's an accurate figure, right? So, we won't know that until I think uh 2026 when we begin next year. Uh we won't know what that number is going to be. So, there's still some unknowns. Um so, this is not not without risk. So, and Todd, thank you and you and your staff and everyone that's been a part of putting this thing together for us. All right, with no further Oh,

019no. Okay, so no further uh questions or comments, uh let's um do we have a a motion to adopt the 2025 2026 compensation plan as presented? So moved. I'm sorry. I make the motion. Okay. All right. I've got one. All right. For Mr. Bzon in a second. I'm assuming it's going to be you, Jeff. All right. Uh, any additional discussion? No additional discussion. All those in favor, please raise your hand. That passes six to zero. Thank you. And move to item 4B. Consider, discuss, and take appropriate action regarding resolution to reimburse certain expenditures. Dr. Yes. Thank you, board. Dr. Morgan has come up to the podium and Melissa Laferty, our CFO, is in the wings if you have questions. Um, so we brought to you a need a couple of meetings ago on some issues

020at Tiger Field, specifically around um our turf and we've exceeded the life life cycle and lifetime of that turf as well as field lights needing to be upgraded um based on UIL specifications as well as a scoreboard that's about to be out. And so this evening, Mike's here to talk about a resolution to reimburse those expenditures, which basically will allow us to move forward on those expenditures. Thanks, Dr. Golden. Thanks, Mr. President. Yes, tonight I'm here to talk and and ask for your consideration to approve a reimbursement resolution. Uh this resolution provides a mechanism that allows the district to reimburse itself at a later date for capital expenditures. Um the reimbursement will be funded up to the amount requested from a future revenue source determined uh and and and then approved by the board. Um

021there's a couple of reasons why we really feel like this this would be items that would be ideal and is really one of the purposes of a reimbursement resolution and and for these particular uh they're long lead items. There has to be a there's a lengthy procurement process and a lengthy design process. So, we would we would bring this to you tonight for your consideration so that we might go ahead and start a procurement process, a design process, and be able to get on the schedule of companies to have these items uh installed and ready to operate for the 26 2026 football season. So, this uh this summer and fall would be an a time of procurement and design. And then we would try to find the the most uh least intrusive time for the

022the campus to come in and replace the turf, the lights or the the video board and also do it in a way so that it would be up and running for the next school year. Uh as Dr. Golden mentioned, the the three major maintenance items that are at the end of their useful life uh are all at Tigerfield. Uh the turf was installed in two 2015 and has reached the the end of its of its typical operational life which is generally 8 to 10 years. So we're a little a little past that on the life of this turf. Uh for the lights um we would like to switch to LED. Uh we did have a light assessment done on that facility in February of 2023. At that time the the current average light level was

023only 24 foot candles whereas the UIL recommends the average for a facility of that size to be 50 foot candles. And so whenever you have that diminished uh foot candle capacity it doesn't meet industry standards for glare and light level uniformities or those of the UIL. And then the final one is a video board. We're operating currently with a 15-year video board. Um technologically it it's it's uh is a little bit obsolete. It's hard to get parts. Uh, fortunately, we have some really talented people on our technology and in our facilities team. Uh, but it comes with a with a a cost of them being out there for hours on Fridays to make sure that the the video board is good to go on a Friday night. So often, as you noticed, if you've been

024to an event there, you see several of the cells generally are not working or functioning properly. It's also become more costly to maintain just due to the aging components and just how often and how much time is spent keeping that piece of equipment running and operating. Um, so tonight we do ask that you approve the resolution expressing our intent to reimburse for these three capital projects for Tigerfield as discussed. And so I would open it up to questions or discussion at this time. Any questions or comments? Yeah, I have a few questions. So, um, intent to reimburse, is that just for the bidding process and seeing how much it it might cost the design or is that I'm I'm assuming that's what that is? No, it it would be for it would be to complete

025the work and then we would have several several options uh within a period of time either from future revenue sources whether that be from operating expenses whether that could be from a revenue bond or if eventually the board and so the future time calls for a bond then it could be paid for out of bond funds as well. My next question is why what's the pressure if we're not looking for this until the 2026 year? Why don't we just wait until the board calls those actions? Why why are we needing to already be spending and reimburse if we're not talking about I would assume till doing it next summer. Yeah, it would be a process for these particular lead items, the lights probably to the least degree, but for the video board and for the

026turf, these are super long lead items and we need to get on people's schedules now to have it installed next year so it would be ready for the 26 season. And and the the way that these would be reimbursed, it sounds like, is one way or another of a revenue source. And that that was what we've talked earlier on in a workshop of the revenue bond that takes the money from the different UIL activities, football, whatever. What else? The things that people that we charge for for activities is that mainly that would be a that would be one consideration that we could use. Yeah. Yes. and that there is a little bit of a history um for us to use revenue bonds for these types of capital improvements on our athletic facilities as is some

027of our sister districts in the area have done that as well mainly for turf scoreboards things of this nature. So that would be that would be an option that we could consider to reimburse for the cost of these projects. And then one more th this is not so much as a of a question as just observation. So we um thank you to Dr. Golden and and Mr. Skidmore for taking us out to the field and showing us that. I I wanted to kind of do a walk through and and see what we were talking about. And the reasons why I would I I think that I would consider this is because of the location and how often that field is used. We we went out there on a weekday and there were probably a hundred

028and again this this was last week so the middle of the summer 100 students running up and down the field and that and so that field is used basically it's tamping down the turf almost every day other than Saturdays and Sundays and probably even some some weekends as well. So summers uh it's used every night of the week basically. Um, and so, you know, there's you you'll probably be hearing there's some things as far as bonds and a lot of spending go that I don't agree with. Uh, because of this one being used so much being used by two high schools. Um, and also middle schools will come and do track events there. Um, I see this as a prudent expenditure, but it, you know, there will be some others in the future that that

029I don't agree with. But because of the location and how often that is used for safety reasons that were discussed uh you know for concussions um uh you know the padding gets worn out after 10 years. So um anyways that helped I think to to do that walk through and under understand this project a little bit more but that's just some of the observations I had. So thank you. Thanks. Anyone else Chris? Yeah I mean I think this is what this is really is a tool in our toolbox right? Um, and so we don't have to reimburse ourselves necessarily, right? But if we don't do this right now, we lose the option to potentially reimburse ourselves. So, so this is this is a tool in our toolbox. Uh, and so certainly like I think this

030is good for us to have. Um, it keeps all the funding options open for how to do it. Any questions for Dr. Morgan or comments? All right. All right. No one else. Um, do we have a motion to approve the resolution express an intent to reimburse certain expenditures as presented? Mr. Norwood. Have a second. Floor. All in favor, please raise your hand. That's 5. We got one abstaining. All right. Uh, moving on to item 4 C. Consider, discuss, and take appropriate action regarding resolution on participation of non-enrolled students in the University Intercolastic League activities. Dr. Golden. Yes. So, Dr. Morgan is staying at the podium. This is his item that he's going to present as well. um he's here this evening as a result of Texas Senate Bill 401 that does now require a conversation

031and action um by the board regarding um allowing or not allowing UI uh non-enrolled students to participate in UIL activities. Thanks Dr. Golden and board. Um once again I'm here tonight to present an item for your consideration concerning participation of non-enrolled students in the university intercolastic league or UIL activities. I I do want to give a little background on this. This is not a new law but the Senate bill 401 did provide a new mechanism by which you decide whether or not you're going to allow this type of participation. So, if you go back to Texas House Bill, uh the Texas House bill in in 2021 in the 87th legislature is when it was initially allowed for districts to choose to extend UIL's participation for eligible homeschool students. And in that in that mechanism for

032that participation, it was an opt-in method. So, the default was a school district was not going to allow it unless they chose to opt in. And then in 2023 with Texas House Bill 3708, uh an an annual aotment was provided per UIL activity for participant of $1,500. So that was the sec kind of the second tier in this process. And then with the the 89th legislature and Texas Senate Bill 401, which takes effect for the 2520 six school year, the the law doesn't change. It's it's still it's allowable if the school district decides to allow it. And there's still the $1,500 aotment. But what they did change was now the default is all schools will allow it unless the school board uh adopts a resolution or policy to chooses to opt out of the policy.

033So really the law has continued to be consistent with what it was ever since 2021, but they have changed the the mechanism by whether you're in or out and whether you allow it or whether you don't. Um, I will go into some brief reasons why our administrative recommendation tonight uh at this time and for the 2526 school year would be to decline offering UIL participation to non-enrolled students. Um, this is an action that we have sought input on. Um, and and our and I will say that our our fine arts, the director of our fine arts department, the director of our athletic department, and the director of our K12 career readiness, which is which also oversees all of our the CTE and the extracurriculars involved in those programs, have all asked um that that be

034their recommendation at this time as well. And I I will go to a couple of reasons why. Um, as I stated earlier, this has been a a law that's an allowable activity since 2021. Yet, for the 2425 school year, only 46 public and charter schools in Texas allowed this activity. That's a little uh under 4% of the over,200 public and charter schools uh in in Texas that serve uh 5.5 million students. So, um, we also in polling local and regional schools, we do believe that this recommendation tonight is in alignment with all of the 5A and 6A schools from the Mlennon, Bell uh, and adjoining areas. So, we we have uh have talked to most of the other similar school districts and we believe that this is going to be the ones that haven't taken

035action already or have not put it in policy already, uh, we do believe that that their intent may be similar. Um there's a few reasons why. One is we have thousands of students involved in these programs from 7th to 12th grade in extracurriculars. Each one of those students have to have their academics monitored. They have to meet uh credit for high school kids. They have to meet credit eligibility standards to begin the school year to be eligible the first six weeks and then they have to meet eligibility standards at 69 18 and 27 weeks to remain eligible through the school year. uh it it's it's an it's a pretty engaging endeavor uh just to do that with the the thousands of students that we currently have in these programs. But now you would be talking

036about adding an unknown quantity of students that each one would have to go through an individual evaluation process of of these credits and grades to make sure that they're aligned uh and make sure that they're eligible. and and and one of the things especially particularly when you get to varsity level competition or state level competitions there are consequences if there are um if there are any type of uh ineligible participation and and there could be team consequences there could be forfeertures and then obviously there could be consequences for the the coaches and sponsors and staff that are responsible for checking that eligibility and making sure they do it correctly. Um there's also some just some of the UIL requirements that become a little bit more of a challenge. Um the residency requirements, 15-day rule, those

037types of things. But really there's a there's a whole set of rules that have always been for non-school participation. And one of those is under dual participation restrictions. So there would have to be uh the the potential that if a non non-school participant participated in one of our programs and then also participated in one of the non-school uh homeschool leagues and things like that, there could be some some oversight challenges to follow in that and then some consequences for us from a UIL standpoint if those if those conditions weren't met. Um and then another concern that as we've talked with our staff uh is just the the we would like to get get a little more information um and and see how things go. There we feel like there could be some challenges around academic

038behavioral attendance standards and and uh basically operating under our code of conduct student uh handbook, but also the team dynamics and culture that the shared experiences that kids who are at school all day together get uh you know get in from late from a trip and have to be at school at at 7:45 or 8 o'clock the next morning. um the types of things that that are done uh throughout the school day, the shared study halls and all those sorts of things that there could be some impact on team dynamics and culture because of the shared experiences during the school day with kids in a in a enrolled in the school participating in a tight-knit team. So, we would say that that in for what we would really like to do is con is to

039take some time for a more thorough evaluation. Uh from our understanding, this will be an action that has to be done annually. So, we will have to come back with a recommendation each year. But for the 2526 school year, we think that we would like to assess the long-term implications of Senate Bill 401. We would like to look regionally and statewide and see if there's a significant shift in schools that allow homeschool participation, which has been at about 46 uh for the last school year out of over,200 schools. So, I would say I would would open this up for for discussion and for um to answer questions, but we would ask you to consider the resolution that requires by Texas Senate Bill 401 for us to opt out of the requirement to allow non-school participation.

040Any questions for Dr. Morgan or comments? Anyone? Okay. Well presented, Dr. Morgan. Um looking at my motion here says do we have a motion to approve? Um so Dr. Morgan state again what what uh what you're requesting. We we are asking to approve a resolution and in that resolution we are uh declaring that Belton ISD will opt out of allowing non-school participation for the 2526 school year. All right. Do I have a motion to approve the resolution as presented by Dr. Morgan? Mr. Floor, I have a second. Miss Bass, all those in favor, please raise your hand. That passes six to zero. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Oh. Oh. All right. So, we have five to one. Thank you. Sorry, Mr. Balden. I thought you had raised your hand. Okay, moving on to item 4 D.

041Consider discussion to take appropriate action regarding resolution to claim a good cause exception regarding Texas House Bill 3. Dr. Dr. Golden. Yes. I'd like to welcome Dr. Spearman to the podium this evening. So, also in this last legislative session and and you had to do this last year, I believe um also was to have a conversation regarding um our ability to implement the requirements of having armed um peace officers on all of our campuses. And so, um this is I think a going to be an annual conversation that we have as well based on the last legislative session. And Dr. Spearman's going to talk to us about why and what our recommendation is. Thank you. Good evening, board. I am here this afternoon, as Dr. Golden mentioned, in the 88th legislative session, House Bill 3

042required for us to consider a um good cause exception. if we were not able to fund having a peace officer on each one of our campuses um each day we had the option to consider a school district peace officer an SRO or a commissioned peace officer who was serving in the role of security Belton ISD I don't know why but the clicker doesn't like me tonight those were our options in order to be within standard Belton ISD chose to choose the alternate route which if funding and having the personnel to qualify as those officers was an issue we could um take the alternative standard and so we did we took the alternative standard which in doing so we chose to hire a third-party firm Vet securing America to provide security for our campuses they meet

043the requirements of the alternative standard Ed and that has been what we've done in this past school year. House bill in the last legislative session, 89th legislative session. The requirement now is that we come back before the board and we review this requirement each year annually. And that's going to be House Bill 121. And so I wanted to remind you of the decision that we made and why we made that decision. our current armed security. We have 10 school resource officers primarily at our secondary campuses and then we have a rover who also supports our elementary schools and then 19 contracted security officers where we put one at each elementary school at our middle schools. And then also we have a rover just in case someone's sick or there's an emergency and we have to

044replace someone for a total of 29 armed staff members that cover all of our campuses throughout the district. Our recommendation tonight is that we continue to um support the good cause exception and um securing vets, securing America for our armed services for Belton ISD for the 2526 school year knowing that we will have to come back each each year and ask for the board to consider the good cause exemption. Any discussion? Any questions for Dr. Spearman? Mr. Floor, I've got a couple comments. Comment. All right. Go ahead. Um, this is an interesting topic, right? Um, what it comes down to for me is what is the safest option for our students and for our staff and for our families, right? Um, you know, I think without a doubt, if I had my choice, right, this

045is me talking as an individual, right? if I had my choice, I' I'd want to fill this all of those positions with SRO's, right? So, we've got an amazing partnership with Temple PD, an amazing partnership with Belton PD, and the work that the SRO's do for us is just outstanding, right? And so, um, but what we know is we can't get enough police officers, right? There isn't the staff, right, for either of those police departments to fill all of those roles, right? So, if I have my choice, that would be my first priority. Um and so when I take a look at the other options, right, let's go to the other end of the spectrum for a second. So if we armor our teachers, we are potentially asking putting a teacher in a position even

046though they've gone through training, right, to have to make the horrible decision if something were to happen on our campus, do I run towards the issue and leave my students behind or do I stay with my students? I couldn't live with myself. Um I I would not want to put any of our staff in that position. I also wouldn't want to put any of our our family members or community members in that position. I I could not ask a parent to go through the training and to have to make the decision again. Do I run towards the issue potentially away from my kid to intervene? and I cannot in good conscience get myself to any other decision than the recommendation that was put forward. Um I've had, you know, some personal experience with the Veturing

047America team that that's been on site um at my kids campuses. Um from what I can tell and from my experiences, they've done a wonderful job of fulfilling what we asked them to do. Um and they and that solution also addresses sort of the concerns that I've got um with the other two alternatives. And so the unfortunate thing about it is, you know, we don't have we don't get enough money from the state to cover uh this option or or or really even to cover SRO's, right? And so, you know, we're grateful to have the increase in the security aotment um that came, but it it doesn't cover it. um we're still short about $795,000 I think is what it is um to be able to cover this. But again, I think that $795,000 is

048well worth not putting our staff and our parents and our families and community members in the in the position that we're potentially asking them to be in. So, I I'll leave it there. So, thank you so much. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Bzon. Yeah, I've had similar positive experiences with vets um securing America. Can you speak generally to the feedback we've gotten from our teachers and parents and administrators on campus? Absolutely. So, each year we conduct safety surveys and we also conduct the student safety summit. I had to say it correctly because we have two different safety summits. We have the student safety summit and each year our students tell us how the how adding them to our campuses has made them feel safer. Um we thought it was really important to have someone who's trained

049and experienced and their sole purpose on our campuses each day is the physical safety and security of our campuses. It never fails when I visit campuses they are a part of the culture. They are very very um they take their jobs very seriously and nothing but positive feedback about having them there and visible. They wear very bright um vest and shirts so everyone knows who they are and they're walking around and they are very in tune to what's happening so that they can act if need be. Thank you. What role did they play uh Dr. Spearman also in just the physical safety of the building? Can you talk a little bit about their responsibilities there? Yes, ma'am. So, the research tells us just having someone present who's trained with a firearm will deter people. So,

050they're very present, very visible. Secondly, they check our doors three times a day and we use an app called Door Check and they go around and they physically check our doors and then they they um input the data into the system which then triggers um a response if there's a concern with the doors. They also help check with the functionality of the doors. They walk hallways and they check, we have an internal rule that internal doors are closed and locked because that's best practice. They also check that as well. They're visible at lunchtime. They're visible during hight traffic times when there's lots of um students and people moving. They're very visible. Anyone else? I do want to make a comment. Um and Chris, I I agree with everything that you've said. Um, the thing that

051drove it home for me in support of of of the recommendation by the administration is in my mind I had to think about the absolute worst case scenario on a campus. And I don't I don't think that the program I mean opting out of the program that we're talking about I think is the better choice because I I don't want to have a you know the math teacher in the southwest corner of the building and the absolute worst case scenario happens on our on our campus. I I couldn't live with that either. So um that's what led me to say you know what I need to support this. So with that comment, um do we have a motion to adopt the resolution to claim a good cause exception regarding Texas House Bill 3 as presented?

052M floor. Have a second. Miss Bass. All those in favor, please raise your hand. That passes six to zero. Thank you, Dr. Spearman. Moving on to item five of the agenda reports. Uh 5A, Belton Education Foundation annual report. Dr. Golden. Yes. So I'm really proud to introduce two incredible um women who are really giving so much of their time to support our students. The Belton Education Foundation um is an organization that is so completely aligned to our goals as a district as well as something we value very much and that is that the engagement of our community enhances the educational experiences of our students. And so this evening we're going to hear from Ellen Bernett, board president and our new executive director of the Belton Education Foundation, Kim Pimento, to give you your annual update.

053Hello board. Um, thank you for having us. My name is Ellen Bernett. I am the board president of Belton Education Foundation and all I am doing tonight is introducing you to our new executive director who's going to give the annual report. So, without further ado, this is Miss Kim Pimento. Hello. I think I've told everybody just how grateful I am to be here and I'm so excited to get I've gotten started and kind of getting my feet wet and this was the best assignment I think I could have had because I had to dig into things to kind of find some of these numbers and how they were calculated and things like that. So, um if I'm wrong just correct me. I you know I can take feedback. So, here we go. So, it was

054I do I have a clicker or point it was founded in 1992. um you know the mission is to just totally serve the Belton Independent School District with grants and scholar and scholarships for their children and I spoke for a long time with Mr. Jay Tagert and he was fundamental in getting it started and what was so wonderful about him was that he went out and knowing that needed we needed to be a self-supporting foundation not you know just supported by grants and outside contributions he went out and set it up like a collegiate um devel they call them development departments now so I think he did a great job in setting up such a wonderful foundation that is so totally self-supporting and we have over 1.4 4 million in assets. So, I just think

055that I I think we all should be applauded for what he did and how we've all carried that out. So, our foundation is um all voluntary board and I I think that's phenomenal to think that they've been going on since 1992 with a voluntary board. 25 board members, seven executive boards and we have two advisories. One is our superintendent and one is one person that sits on the school board. So, here's our list of board of directors, and the second column used to be on there. I don't know if what went on there, but anyway, I won't name them all. So, we have there's our board members, some pictures of when they were going out and doing the the patrol, the December um giving out the teacher grants. So, we can go on. So, let's

056go on to our event. So, we have three this year, past year, we had three fundraising events. One was the red carpet. It made $168,000. The g the the um the theme was through the decades. And I think they looked like they had a lot of fun. I love watching all y'all's pictures and uh kind of played a game of if I could name all of you and I would ask people who you were and then I would, you know, go back and see if I could remember everybody's names. But it looks like you had a great time and u that's a that is just a commendable amount of money. I've just been blown away with everything that I've seen that y'all have done. And the golf course tournament at 20 62,500. Again, what a

057great contribution to the to the cause again. It looks like you had a great time. I I hear that we're going back to the same tournament um uh golf course in Sato to do the tournament again this year. I think that's exciting. I can't wait to participate in the pickle ball tournament. So, we had one of those. It had was at the brewery, the Commonwealth raised $15,000. Um, that was fun. I've had a lot of good comments about that. Um, so we're kind of going back and forth if that's going to continue or not. Maybe restructure it a little bit. I mean, I know it was a lot of work. Um, so we're just going to rethink that one. In the teacher grants for 2024, we raised $124,79724 to 36 teachers. So that's a total

058of $436 plant grants with 8 $874,79724 awarded to date. And I think that's just I mean that's that's wonderful. Another one is for the um scholarships. We awarded $365,500 in scholarships in 2025 to the Belton High School. That was 138. Belton New Techch 28,000 Lake Belton High School 164,400 and recurring grants was awarded in $35,000. So grow your own. So, we used to I guess people know we used to have a paraprofessional program and so we kind of just went in with y'all. Y'all have a grow your own program there at Belton. So, now we've donated $15,000 in 2024 with a total of 510,000 to date of what we've donated to that program. The Carpenter Foundation, we just applied for that grant. So, we will know if we got that in um December, and I'm

059looking forward to that. We've asked for funding for my position and for some other um administration hours that we need if if needed. And the accomplishments. This one I think was great. They successfully rebranded. And I know there's our new logo up there. We've got most of our forms redone. I think it looks great. The only thing people say, "Well, you're not beef anymore." I said, "I know it's Beth, but you know, the little thing over the E. Let's just act like that makes it along. We'll we'll we'll stay with beef." Um, so using our QR codes, we we made QR codes to donate. So that was kind of nice. When I went to the um ex X student association retire I mean retirement um reunion that we had the QR codes they could link

060to where they could donate. That was neat. We're also going to do some of those on web pages and always have our link on our web pages and and for our social media as well. We also put a link to donate for the teachers campaign on their payroll page, but we are bringing back the forums. We just had those re um done and they will be held hel held out at convocation in other areas time in the school year and we're going to try to get the board members. We're going to go out and visit each campus to kind of tell them how that works. Um and also hired an executive director which would be me. And then I think that was a great accomplishment that made So, um, and then we clarified the roles

061of the committees. So, I think that they just kind of decided what the committees to do. We're trying to get board members to be a little bit more proactive and come join us and really put some effort into the into the work that we do. So, my goal for this coming year is that we funded 65% of the scholarships that that were asked. My goal is to get us up to at least 80% of those scholarships being funded. We don't have to turn any child away. that we t we improve the donor engagement that would be through social media, handwritten notes, emails, written cards, just anything that we can think updates. I want to try to give them some stories of successes we have had. So, I just want to keep them in touch and

062engage them and try to think of a really good story I can tell about how we were founded, what our mission is, how passionate this community is about it, and what we want to bring to the education of our teachers and our students. So, that's my goal for the year. And then to design and execute a social media plan. Um, we've already Taylor and I have already started on a story board and some ideas that we could do to get people out there and more engaged in social media. Even though I have looked and it said that really statistically you don't get as many touches through social media as you do actually handwritten notes person face to face contact which you know I knew that but still I think social media does kind of attract

063some of those young millennials and the people that will soon be the donors that we have in this program. So I do think that we need to get strong in that. Um, and other besides that, I think it's going to be a great year and I can't wait to be around and we're going to try to uh have everybody come out to our casino night. So, please save the date and I hope to see y'all there. Thank you. Anybody have any questions or comments? Okay. All right. Just have a couple of comments. First of all, welcome to Belistd and you did fantastic on your first board presentation. Um, so we look forward to having you back and just your follow-ups on on just your the new ideas and goals. But really just appreciate all the

064work that Beth um bef does for our community because truly it is you're right. It's a it's a large actually in the grand scheme of thing a small group of volunteers who do a lot of work. I'm sure that there's they're already meeting and discussing and planning and so just really appreciate the work that y'all do for teachers and for our kids because you really do this foundation just does has a tremendous impact and you know I'm not sure that I knew that Jay Tagert was part of that so many years ago. So that was really is what I understand was really great to know that I think it was Jay and and Mr. Ple actually. That's really so thank you. I'd learned something. Um, and I maybe I did hear that along the way,

065but maybe it just it clicked or hit me today. So, but thank you for and just good luck and I wish you just all the best and I know that it's been on the discussion for a long time about um going the executive director route. So, again, just glad you're here and wish you well this year. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much. I do have a question. Um, I remember when I was on the board years a on on your board, the scholarship minimum was like $500. Then it went to a thousand. Have y'all increase that to No, I know. I mean, I know you take any donation, but to to give a scholarship, what's the minimum? Right now, it's $1,000. And we have discussed that about what we do. I'm another thing that

066I've been assigned to do is I've been asked by some people, what per hour when you go to community college, what is it? You know, if I I'm going to try to get some averages of what it costs to go to a full ride in Temple, CTC, you know, Texas A&M, so we can get an idea of how far $1,000 does go. Okay. And then we'll kind of relook at that. Right. Well, welcome and and Ellen, thank you for everything that you do. Um, you know, you're I'm glad to see that you're still leading this organization and I know it's a lot of work and a lot of time that you put into this thing. So, so thank you and uh also thank the rest of your board on on behalf of this board for

067everything that you guys do for BISD. Thank you, Kim. Yeah, thank you. Okay, moving on to item 5B, academic progress report. Dr. Golden. Yes, Gabby Nino is coming up to the podium and she's here this evening to provide you with a report on our grades three through eight academic progress as measured by STAR. Good evening everyone. As oh gosh, as Dr. Golden said, I am going to provide our monthly academic progress report um in grades three through eight specifically measured by star. Just as a reminder, last month um when we were together, our discussion was really centered around our EOCC's for our high school students. And so this is um somewhat of a duplicate report with different grade levels and content areas in it. I do want to add just a quick note before we

068get started. I will have a couple of slides that are not specific to STAR. As you know, we believe very strongly that um we have more measures than just STAR within our system to tell us about how students are progressing. And so I'm going to highlight a couple of areas related to that as well. Um so let's get started with um our three through eight math. And before we look at the data, there's a few um areas I want to orient us to again. Um along the left again it's math but this is each grade level that's included third through 8th. As a reminder there there's a lot on this slide and so I did not add a key at this point but the approaches performance level are students who are considered to have passed

069but may need occasional intervention in order to be successful in the next grade level. For students who are at the meets level, we anticipate that they will experience um success in the next grade level. They've met the standard for um the current grade level and masters would be that they've demonstrated mastery of all grade level standards um and are likely in need of some enrichment experiences in the next um grade level. Other orientation to this visualization, the color coding system here is if we are looking at a yellow color code, it means there is minimal change. So with that language of statistical significance that I use, we see minimal change and does not exceed 3% gain or loss. Um anything that's in red would mean that we saw a regression there and anything that's in

070green would say that we showed growth above the norm. So we want to look at those um further from the norm areas and ask some really good questions. So, our third grade students um we did see a change in their performance level. Um at the approaches level, we saw a decline there. And as you may or may not recall, we have been very concerned about the achievement level of our third grade students in math um beginning actually at the end of second grade. Um one reason is because of their impact the impact of the pandemic in their very early years between preK and kindergarten. Um but when we dig in deeper to what these students are experiencing challenges with, we see some numerical fluency challenges as a trend um and have done some pretty significant

071um instructional shifts and we will need to continue to monitor and put supports in place for this group of students. Um also a reminder that this is yearover-year data. So this um decline in performance at the approaches level um is not the same students that we saw in third grade last year. It's year-over-year. But I do want to um note that we did see an increase in the percentage of students who are at M's level there. Um the other grade level that we see an outlier of performance in a decline um would be in fifth grade at the meats level. We see a lower number of students who are meats this year. in fifth grade. Um, one of the questions that uh, Recker asked last week or last month is if we could look at

072cohort. This is an important group. This is his question was really important and this group of students illustrates the importance of that. While I might just at glance look at fifth grade and say we're lower this year, this group of students, that's actually a gain for them. And so we have to really look closely at the students that are in that um, grade level, not just yearover-year. And then um on the green or um growth area in eighth grade, we saw some gains for our students at both meets and mast's level in math. And what we would attribute to that, as we've um discussed a couple of times, is the significant shift we made in the instructional resource um in our middle schools and the intensive professional learning that we've provided related to that. Um

073and we and we see it more notably at our with our eighth grade students this year. So, um I want to take a look um at our comparison to both state and region and then have added and I'll own it super small. Um and it um I made some edits and it still looks super small, but yellow here would just mean that we're within the norm of both the state and region um in any area. and green means we ex exceeded the performance of both and red would mean that we were below the performance of state and region in that area. Um so I really want to talk about seventh grade math. This is a continued area of concern that we've faced um in Belton over time and there are intentional decisions that we make

074that are contributing to the performance um levels being so much lower than our peers in seventh grade math. Um one of the decisions that we make is our advanced math pathways. When students transition from sixth grade into seventh grade, their testing decisions have changed. So, our students who were in advanced math were taking the eighth grade star versus our students who were on level continued with the progression of star. Um that does not mean that we are okay with our performance being um this low in comparison to the state or region. Our decisions are different than our peers related to that. Okay. Just to be clear, Gabby, uh, so seventh grade students across the state of Texas, it's a district's decision on which assessment they are administered. And so some school districts use their have

075their advanced students at seventh grade and they take the ongrade level seventh grade test. Yes. In our district, our advanced seventh grade students took the eighth grade test. Okay. So what you're saying is it's across the state everybody makes different testing decisions um which we're kind of seeing in some of this data. Absolutely. Now wait let me answer question. Yeah. So do those for that group of students are their test are they showing up in the eighth grade line? The students so the seventh graders that took the eighth grade test are they showing up in the eighth grade line? Yes. So though anybody who took that eighth grade assessment is included there. Now interesting related to Dr. Golden's question um legis there were some changes um during that were introduced in the 2324 school year

076that will require across the state if a student in fifth grade 40% of your students um are at the meet or mast's level then there's a new requirement that they are automatically placed into advanced ac math experiences when they get into middle school. That was new for us. We were already doing that to to a degree. We are reviewing every student, but that was not a practice across the state. And so this year, and we had the opportunity to take part in the committee, there was a committee review adv of advanced academics at middle schools. And what was uncovered at a state level was not only did we have discretion to make our own testing decisions. So there's quite a few um discrepancies across the state, but it uncovered that many districts across the state

077did not have an advanced pathway at all for students. And so there was some action taken as a result of that committee um including something that that our teachers and team are are happy about. Um we had the advanced pathway developed, but we didn't have specific standards for that pathway. So for the 25 26 school year will be the first time we have available to us TESS for advanced mathematics um in our middle school classrooms. So that's a win for us and there's um implications for that. There also will be um there will be shifts in the percentage of students taking um the shift in percentage of TE's allocation now gives us us guidance as a state. So, we've made a decision that moving forward because of those standards, we'll have a better balance of

078the TESS in our um seventh grade classrooms and our students will take the seventh grade test moving forward because we now have advanced standards for seventh grade students. Does that make sense? It's super complicated, but we're making a system change so our students will take the seventh grade test moving forward because we have standards for them now. Gabby, did that happen in any other grade level where the like a fifth grader takes the sixth grade or So it really only happens starting in seventh grade. Yes. So you start to see more variability in the assessments that they take. Do we do we have any idea how the numbers would have looked had that not occurred? Um we are working on pulling that you can actually see on this cohort visualization and it does become more

079complex because you have unique pathways. Um, but we are working on pulling that data right now. Do you think there could be a correlation between testing harder and and and possibly, you know, teaching uh more difficult subjects in seventh grade and then it looks like eighth grade is bumped up. Yeah, 100%. I feel that way. Um, and there's some nuances to the seventh grade math test as well. Um I don't want to negate the decision that we make but um we it is very well known that the seventh grade math assessment is the most challenging math assessment that students experience. It is the one where they also are not don't have access to a calculator. And so on our other math assessments students have access to a calculator and on that one they don't. So

080yes there's rigor of instruction um but there also are um testing differences at seventh grade with standards as well. because of that correlation. Now, if we go back and have them tested at seven at at the seventh grade level, would you imagine that that could I I mean, yeah, the seventh grade level might kind of even out, but then will the eighth grade level be able to maintain, you know, hypothetically speaking? Yeah. So, um your question is really highlighting some of the implications for us as a system. I I anticipate um that this data will look different next year and it would be really easy for me to step in front of you and say, "Oh my gosh, we have these gains." I what I anticipate is that we'll see leveling out. Um and the

081numbers will look like gains if we let it just look like that. But the reality will be it's leveling it out. That also means that with a shift in the standards exposure um having advanced standards now we are going to have to make sure that we are um maintaining rigor or increasing rigor or we'll see a negative impact in other grade levels. It's a very insightful question. Okay. Um let's take a look at I'm going backwards. I apologize. um third through eight reading. Again, same color coding. Um where we saw a change in fifth grade in math, we see a we saw a negative change in data there. We see a gain in fifth grade um reading. In eighth grade, I meant sixth grade, I'm so sorry, we see a dip in the student performance

082in sixth grade reading. I want to highlight something here. um with our sixth grade students. We've talked about the implications of the ECR assessment over time. Um this is the first time that our students have had what's called a correspondence response in ECRS in sixth grade. That's a part of the English language arts. They've not ever had that before um in any of their testing experiences. And basically what that means is they have to read um two texts and then they have to write an a letter corresponding with a specific audience making their argument um on conclusions they've drawn across text. And so we do see a slight change there. Um and again we we see an increase in the number of students in masters but we saw a dip in the number of students

083at meets level. Um and then if we look at 8th grade um that's an outlier in language arts um gain at the meats level as well. The next slide um will take a look at our comparison again to region and state. Um sixth grade approaches is the area that we see um a a lower performance of our students compared to the region and state just in that approaches range. Um and so of course I dug in a little bit more and that's where I learned about the ECR. This is the first time that we have seen that type of um prompt for our students in that grade level. Um we are seeing some strengths across the board in 8th grade both math and literacy where we see some gains there. And if you take a

084look at the cohort charts um you'll see that um for that group of students it's a higher level of performance than we've seen over time as well. in science and social studies. Um, as you can see here, our approaches performance at fifth grade. Um, we see some gains there. This is not a grade level that we it is year-over-year is what we're always able to look at here. We don't have cohorts. It's a standalone grade level in elementary where students are tested in science. Um, in 8th grade, the students are tested again, but it's three years later. So we don't have cohort data to follow there. We saw a reduction the students um who were at the master's level in eighth grade science. What's interesting about data analytics when you're looking between approaches meets and

085masters level is you can see some interchanging of numbers. So if you see the 4% um reduction in masters, we also see a total of a gain um and 3% and 1% at approaches and meets. Um, and so what'll me what that means for us in these grade levels is that getting an item analysis to really look down to the specific questions and standards that were measured will be critical for us. We just got that data in on Thursday. And so our team is um digging into that as we speak. We establish um I didn't talk to you about the comparison here. Eighth grade science um while we are comparable in approaches and meets our master's performance is slightly below the region and state in eighth grade science. um not in the other areas of

086approaches and meets but we do see that in the master's performance level um in science related to star as you know we set targets every um when house bill 3 rolled out it was a five-year target that was established and we come back to review our progress on those annually um we only set targets um based on star in third grade math and reading. Third grade, as I shared earlier, the group of students that were serving in third grade who just are now rising fourth graders, um we have continued to see some academic challenges specifically in the area of math and we did not meet our target for House Bill 3 in math. I will talk to you about our action related to that as we get to some conclusions overall, but we did not

087meet our target in third grade math. We did meet the target in third grade reading um for House Bill 3. I will tell you third grade reading, we have more analytics for literacy right now than we do other areas. This is another area where the extended construction response played a significant role um in student performance. across the state, not just in Belton ISD. Um 84% of students across the state score between a zero and five out of 10 possible points on extended constructive responses. And at third grade, that's 18% of the students overall score. So we see that that extended constructive response is impacting students all across the all across the state, including us. But we did meet our target because it's a robot grading it. Here is where we go beyond STAR that I

088think is really important for us to note. Um we set early targets before third grade. Um we feel that we have to have the targets in place in order for us to meet the um third grade standards. And so we set targets using Star Renaissance um for our students beginning in kindergarten um with the targets that we want them to meet in order to be ready for third grade where we want them ready to read um once they get to third grade. One of the reasons I really want to highlight this information is because as we speak, special session has just started and one of the topics of consideration is whether we continue with the STAR state assessment or not. Um, and I feel very strongly that we are so much more than just that

089one assessment. Star Renaissance is the decision that we make to use. It's a normbbas based assessment in Beltonist and we use it beginning, middle, and end of year to measure our students growth um and progress. And so we also set targets related to that. Just in the last school year, we adjusted the standard that we set in Belton ISD and aligned the um standard on Star Renaissance that we would look to. Um we adjusted that to be in alignment with the state standard. So you can set internal targets at 35% at 50% 65% and we adjusted our targets at each grade level to make sure we were measuring at the mastery level. And so you can see across in both um early literacy and in math we set targets um at a mastery level and

090we've exceeded those targets in those grade levels um with the exception of first grade literacy. There's a uniqueness to the first grade assessment because students make a transition mid year where they're either on an early literacy um screening that's more phonetics-based and then midyear they shift if they met a certain target to a more reading and comprehensions based assessment. And so um some of the students in this group are are primarily our students who have experienced a greater degree of challenge. But we met and exceeded all of our targets in math and reading in K12. And then this just gives you very high level in both math and in reading. Um a a look at beginning, middle, and end of year in all grade levels that assess um whether we see if they are growing

091or not as measured by Star Renaissance um the norm based reference test. And we see growth across all of our grade levels in both content areas. um using the STAR renaissance assessment and again that's a nationally normed assessment. The exception to that is sixth grade in English language arts. Um we did not see at the end ofear assessment that they continued um progression as measured by star renaissance and we saw that similar pattern on the star assessment with our sixth grade students as well. Okay, I want to talk targeted supports very briefly. Um it is clear in a a different way than with our EOC assessments that we have some general challenges in math instruction in Belton ISD. Um and so we are heavily emphasizing that moving it's already started but really moving into the

09225 26 school year. I've shared with you previously um but really want to emphasize now in response to this data that a 100% of our elementary um teachers will go through the TEA mathmies. We're one of the first in the state who are ruling that out um and they started three weeks ago. We have 84% of our teachers have already engaged in the learning or are in it this week. Um and we are excited to see that engagement. We're getting um good feedback right now. And when I say good, I don't necessarily just mean the good like, oh, we love this learning. We're getting good feedback around the learning that needs to continue throughout the year. For many of our teachers, they're reporting that this is really stretching their thinking. And so, it's evidence to

093us that this learning had been needed. Um, we've also put in place a coaching academy for our instructional coaches in math. Um, and are getting feedback from our principal leaders that they want the same level of like a coaching academy support for math instruction. So, very intensive learning in math as well as you all approved the adoption of blue bonnet math materials. Now, we have made a decision about how we rule that out. We believe very strongly that the most important resource a child has in the classroom is their teacher. Um, of course their parents and their partnership come first, but we are heavily investing in the teachers and their thinking around math and infusing the um resource of blue bonnet math into the learning prior to full roll out. We felt like we needed

094to strengthen the the foundational knowledge of our teachers prior to full embedding of those resources. In literacy, you all supported the adoption of SAVIS um literacy, a new language arts adoption. Because we've done the foundational learning for all of our K through5 teachers and readingmies, we feel prepared to roll out that instructional resource. However, we were just awarded a grant as well to support that roll out um of over $100,000. It's called a lasso grant. And so we will use those funds to support the implementation of that resource at the classroom level with high quality learning as well. So we'll see high quality professional learning in alignment with the resources that we are using and embedding that into our curriculum resources with that. Are there questions that any questions comments? Thank you Gabby. Okay, moving

095on to item 5C, personal electronic communication device guidelines report. Dr. Golden. Yes, and thank you Gabby for that report and Dr. Morgan is back to the podium this evening and as you know board, we spent the fall semester of last year really studying this issue of personal electronic communication device usage in our schools. um sought a lot of feedback and input from a variety of different stakeholder groups and then we brought to you our recommendation and implemented that recommendation in the spring semester. So Mike's going to talk to you about he conducted another survey at the end of the year just to get perception of implementation and so he's going to share some of that data with you as well as talk about some changes in recent legislation around this topic. Thanks Dr. Golden Board.

096I'm really excited about this because we did we did engage a lot of stakeholders and we did our first initial surveys um about a year ago. This is end of July. We we reached out to parents and teachers first and then we had some in-depth conversations with principles, assistant principles and students. So we really had five key stakeholder groups that kind of contributed in the discussion last year around revising our stakeholder guidelines. And um one of the things and this is a a slide that we showed you back in in the fall whenever we were making a recommendation on what those guidelines were going to be and we started to communicate it out to our community and and without going through all the guidelines again, I will say that um very pleased that they align

097very closely uh with the legislation that was passed. Um, we did have um we we did see this as a priority item just as the legislature did as well. And and I'm thankful for a couple of things. Number one is that we implemented our policy from from uh kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade. So I I do think we had uh really good feedback and and if you look at an elementary level had really good grip uh and and even in the middle school and I'll give you a piece of data later that that kind of lends itself to that a little bit. And the second thing was that the that the legislature and ultimately the governor signed it into law that set kind of clear and similar expectations for all schools statewide.

098So I think there were a couple of wins not only of us implementing prior but also for the legislature to take the action they did because we did think this is an important law and we did think it was a priority item to try to try to minimize the impact of of personal electronic communication devices on our instructional time. And so you can see here we had um uh statistically valid samples. We had uh 300 teach and over 300 teachers which is almost a third of our teachers that responded to our survey. About 510 parents um and 302 students and we only surveyed our secondary students. We didn't survey our elementary students uh at the end of the year. And you can just see and I and I put in italics kind of the the

099biggest themes that came out. We had 207 comments from teachers and you can see that they they really feel strongly that we need that we need consistent and strict enforcement of the policies. We need clear communication and and shared responsibility among stakeholders. I think you'll see in the data a little later while overall the data seems strong for our first semester of implementation. Uh consistency across all areas is something that that will be a focus for us. Uh and then for parents, they they were really concerned about consistent and and firm enforcement and they clear communications and accountability for all involved. And there were comments in in the the 98 comments from parents around students, teachers and parents all have a role in consistency of these expectations. And then for students um students were a

100little more interested in flexibility and uh and they were also in in a diminished restrictions. So, that was kind of a something that was really on our students minds at the end of the school year. I'm going to go through these data points fairly quickly, but I do want to show uh areas where where we do feel like we will need to get stronger and get better and in areas where we did pretty well. Overall, the data for how well the guidelines were communicated prior to kickoff in on January 8th, um teachers 96%, parents 92%, students 91.7%. We felt like that that that of the strengths of what we did last year that it was communicated well. We were clear about the expectations and people knew uh when they started and what was expected once

101they got there. And you can look at these. This is um took on about teachers and parents about how consistency how consistently did students at your school or your child's school follow the guidelines. And so we had about 75% for teachers and about 70% for parents. So that would obviously be an area where we want to improve that we want our teachers to observe more students following the guidelines and we want our parents have to have more confidence that the guidelines are being followed. And then when we talked about how how consistency how consistently staff enforce uh the personal communication guidelines really for that one I we felt like there's a strong correlation here that teachers and students were about on the same page. teachers about 91% of teachers either very much agreed or somewhat

102uh it was very consistent or somewhat consistent with only 9% saying it wasn't consistent and for students we had 93% said it was very or somewhat consistent. parents. Uh once again, one of the areas for improvement this year will be to make sure that that we find ways to communicate better and make sure that um that that parents have have some information on uh the enforcement of our personal electronic communication guidelines. And then as you look at this one, this is um this is just a student question that we had about asking from a student perspective, have the consequences been consistently applied? And uh about 85.4% of students said that they were somewhat or very uh consistently applied. So we do see I think that that's a strong correlation for the first semester but it's

103also something that we would like to improve that number on where where more students feel like consequences are consistently applied and then the the final question we asked was have personal electronic devices helped reduce distractions during instruction. I was really um overall I think this is an area where we need to get stronger. Uh but as far as teachers having the highest uh area in this and and teacher feedback was one of the main drivers of going in with a stricter and and a revised uh personal electronic communication device guidance that that 81% of our teachers felt after the first semester that it helps reduce distractions is one that um is one that we I I'm really proud of and I think we can build on that as a positive. Once again with parents, we

104saw the our parent response a little lower than our teacher response. And then and then this one um is probably the one outlier in all of the data and this is the one where it's flipped and students about about 67% of our students did not feel like it reduced distractions during instruction. So that's the one uh that's the one outlier in the data that we collected. Um I won't go to a lot of specifics on this but in overall trends when we do comparative samples u not samples but comparative data from our discipline reports of of the the the period before we introduced the new guidelines and after we did see just in general terms a about a 10% decrease in overall referrals. We saw a decrease in serious offenses about an 8% decrease in

105students with disciplinary in incidents. So that meant um not only did we see overall referrals go down, but we saw 8% fewer students who actually had a referral written on them during this during the second time period and then increased accountability for inappropriate cell phone usage. So, if you go back to the um how consistency does staff enforce personal communication guidelines, I think this this one kind of ties back into that because we we we had over, uh70 uh referrals written for perfor the the peed guidelines. And so, uh the majority of those were at the high school. And we did have high schools make a decision to go ahead and do a disciplinary uh referral for the first warning. So that we did see a little bit of an inflation there. And I think

106that I think that was a good decision. It get it got it on a quick a quicker track to get to the second third fourth consequences for repeat offenders. But I do think that that saying that we had over,00 uh, 1100 referrals for violations of the guidelines meant that a vast a majority of our staff took it seriously and and and applied the consequences. We just have to get more consistent throughout campus to campus and grade level to grade level. And so tonight, this is the part of the of the conversation where I would have told you based on the feedback we've gotten, here are our recommendations. But as you know and as I mentioned earlier, Texas House Bill uh put into law some some some requirements that that I do feel like a line,

107but we're still waiting on a little bit of guidance. And I'll I'll discuss that a little more in a second. So what a school district does, we really have two options. We could prohibit cell phones altogether and say that that students are not allowed to bring personal uh communication devices to school. uh or we can design designate a method for the storage of the personal communication devices while a student is on school property during the school day. And so uh we in alignment really with what we were trying to do with last year's guidelines, that's the one uh based on feedback from our parents, one of the biggest concerns from parents was the ability to get a hold of their children and communicate with their children in any potential emergency. So, uh, right now we

108would opt towards the second method of a designating a method for storage. Uh, in the section in the law, uh, very closely aligned with how we define a personal communication device. It's all of the different ways that that that someone could communicate. Telephone, cell phone, smartphone, flip phone, tablet, smartwatch, radio device, paging device. Basically for us, we will keep similar language that was in our original guidelines as it would be any any electronic communication device that's not schoolisssued would be what would be considered prohibited uh and not to be out during the school day. And then finally, the Texas Education Agency, and this is straight from the language of of the law, the agency, the Texas TEA shall develop and publish in the agency's uh internet uh website model language for this policy. So, I

109will say our next steps is to really the the last step that we would like to see is that TEA guidance. And I'll give you a couple of examples on on why releasing updated guidelines uh per the the piece of legislation and the new law prematurely might might be an issue. So, in in the law or in the in the legislation, it says uh you have to meet one of those two criteria during the school day. And so for us is is is tea going to give guidance to define on what what means during the school day. Is that from the first bell to the last bell? Is that from the time the the the student steps on school property until they they go home? Does it include school buses? Does it include extracurricular activities?

110I mean, we have pretty strong uh reasons to to believe where it stops and where it starts, but we would like to see the TEA guidance before we communicate with our families and staff and kids on what the expectation will be. Uh the other one would be uh there's not a clear pathway for use of a personal electronic communication device as a uh method of delivering instruction. And we do know that some of our programs, some of our band programs, some of our other programs uh have come to rely on that. So uh getting a little bit more guidance from TEA before we give before we give final guidelines out to our community would be wise in in our opinion. So, uh, really excited about the data we collected. There's some clear parts of of,

111uh, clear points and some feedback we received on where we can focus on getting better for this year. Uh, happy about the legislation, uh, because it aligns so closely with with what our beliefs are and the feedback we've received and look forward to trying to get this get the the little details figured out and get communication out to our families uh, as quick as possible. I'd open it up for discussion and questions at this time. Any questions for Dr. Morgan? Comments? Chris? Man, do I have a sixth grader, upcoming sixth grader who's upset? Uh, yeah, no phone for him. Uh, so I apologize to his friends. Um, yeah, I mean, Mike Mike and I had a phone conversation earlier today and and he hit on some of the stuff at the very end. I mean,

112we do have some programs that actually use phones. So, for example, like our marching bands actually use phones as part of their practicing to deliver music and to do their formations on the field and all that kind of stuff, right? So, we really do need to figure out like what is that? And if there ends up being an acceptable use somehow, being really clear about where is that line, right? Where's the line behind it's okay right here, but it's not here. And then it's got to get enforced, right? Um making sure that awareness, consistency, enforcement, right? like that's got to be, you know, all the way across. I'm a little concerned that we're not going to get guidance from TEA before the school before school starts, right? Um and so that gets that makes things

113a little hairy. Um I don't know what we do there. I mean, we may do we get out in front and make a decision and you know have to change it. I I don't know. But I think our we just need to have really good communication, I think, with our parents even if we don't know what the exact answer is going to be. Correct. We agree with that, Chris. You know, for the most part, um, during instructional time, students were expected to keep their cell phones in their backpacks. Um, what I'm watching across the state, um, everybody's weighing in right now on what are you going to do? Are you going to go purchase something? Are you going to purchase pouches? Um, all of those things. I will tell you the general consensus there are

114exceptions but I'm seeing a lot of general consensus around um they can keep it in their backpack during the day and you don't take it out during the day. Um now is during the day also include a school bus. I mean those are some of the things we'll need from um Texas Education Agency but I think the law is clear. um you know we didn't allow it at all and then at secondary the only exceptions could be hallways um in between passing periods I believe and then sometimes at lunch well this would be cell phones in your backpack all day there's not exceptions to that with the exception of us figuring out ath band and their usage of it so I think we're going to see okay they have to be in backpacks put away

115is potentially what we're going to need to tell everybody until we get additional guidance. Um, but those are the things we're talking about and we'll make sure. I think we did a really good job. I'm incredibly proud of Mike and team of communicating it. I thought that data was really strong and we'll make sure when we land this that we clearly communicate that before school starts. To be clear, and one thing I failed to mention is the exceptions that are included in the legislation are very similar to the other exception. We said for instructional use was an exception that we had that's not included, but it's also if it's part of a student's um IEP or or needed for a health or medical reason or prescribed by doctor would be would be some reasons that

116the state would allow some access limited access to that personal electronic communication device. So that that uh that that was clear in there. what it what it didn't seem to allow for in the in the new law was to to use it for instructional purposes like with marching band and and some of our other programs that could go that that direction. Yeah. Uh and just generally I think this is good policy and and good legislation. So thank thank our legislators for for passing it. Uh and a great job by BSD to be ahead of it and already have a a policy. So, at least we're not going from the Wild West to to full stop in in one year. Uh, and I'm excited to see the outcomes. Other states that have implemented similar uh legislation

117have seen, you know, positive student outcomes from socialization to academic integrity to academic success. So, uh I think this will be great. Um, I think we have certainly understand the the parent concern and emergencies, but uh I mean we have an amazing crisis communications team and really that's who uh folks should be looking to when there uh is an emergency so that we get uh good correct information out to the public when when something's going on and we don't get uh sometimes misinformation can be harmful or often misinformation can can be harmful and I know it doesn't always come from a a negative place. People are saying uh what they know or what they see, but uh really um we've got a great team and and they get the information out there. So hopefully that

118can uh mitigate some some parent concerns. So thank you. Thanks, Brian. Anyone else? Just a quick question. Yes, sir. I have a quick question. So, I I understand and and respect the decision to hold off on the communication to parents because we want to be accurate, but at least I think to to Brandon's point, I'm glad we are ahead of the game that we're not starting from ground zero. Um, so super proud and thankful for all the work that we've that y'all have been doing and and great report tonight. So, what about our teachers and staff now? Are we going to kind of get ahead with them? At least give them the heads up. We will teachers come back um I believe on August 1st or so. So we have a small window here but

119yeah we will start ramping up communication. Uh we could on general expectations are pretty easy. There's just some of the finer points that we want to make sure that we have every detail crossed out. But yeah we'll start ramping up communication as we get teachers return a couple weeks ahead of time for parents and and and maybe we can maybe we get some guidance sooner than than what they initially said. I I do think that uh to to the defense of TEA, there were over a hundred pieces of legislation and they're going to have to weigh in on guidelines for a lot of those and so uh and a lot were uh deal with with finance and some others. So I think they're prioritizing the ones that the districts genuinely need first and then but

120I do know cell phones because of the urgency and and school starting especially for for uh DOI school districts that uh there's going to be some urgency to try to get it out as soon as possible. So, thanks. Anyone else? Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Thank you. Okay, moving on to uh item 5e. I'm sorry, fin superintendent report. Dr. Golden. Yes. Thank you so much. So, I'm just going to hit some highlights since the last time we saw each other in a board meeting. And as Dr. Morgan just said, we have um teachers that will be back August 1st. We've had um staff busy working all summer long to ensure that our campuses are ready to go. Our our buses are ready to go. And so just a quick shout out again to our custodial staff,

121our auxiliary staff. Um I know we highlighted our custodial staff this evening. Um they are so integral to achieving the vision in Belton ISD. We had a leadership retreat recently and it is every person's job in Belton ISD all pulling together in the same direction for us to achieve the vision before you and we just have an incredible auxiliary staff and team and thank them so much for what they've been doing all summer to get us ready to go. Um we recently held two fantastic events. One was our um launch to the year with our campus and district leadership team where we brought campus administrators, district administrators together to really focus on and you see in the background on the left hand side um we talk about it takes leadership to lead the journey. Um

122leadership matters. We know that leaders um in our district to achieve our work. We we through stakeholder input said they have to be able to build culture have to be able to empower people and have to be able to pursue excellence. And there are leadership competencies behind those words. And we dug in deep into those um competencies and really coming together to ensure that that we're equipping ourselves as leaders and each other to to really lead the journey. And then um we also had an incredible safe um safety summit uh student services summit um where we brought together our principles, assistant principles, counselors. Um it was a great day of learning and that's where um Hope Squad, one of our um key progress measures. We started a really good session um with some training around

123Hope Squad and actually one of their regional representatives um has nieces and nephews that attend school in Belton ISD. So they are super excited to partner with us. Also want to hit some highlights. You recognized an international competitor this evening in recognitions and I want to recognize some national competitors. Um we have so Jesse um Pers on the lefthand side with our incredible Lake Belton High School. We had a robotics team that competed in national nationals. Yes. Um recently and I want to read this make sure I get it right. Um they came in fifth place in the nation at the National Technology Student Association. They were the only Texas team to be in the top 10. And so that is incredible. and so proud of Jesse. She's a great example of teachers all across

124this district. Um you know there's this thought that um perhaps we just shut down for the summer. Um and you know of course our admin a lot of our administrators work year round but we also have teachers that are working year round and she is really dedicated to our students um as many of our educators are. And then on the right hand side that's our incredible Belton High School teams work. They earned silver, second place in the nation at Skills USA national competition. They got first in state and went on to nationals. And so I'd be remiss if I didn't highlight the fact that um the New York Times in wanting to do an article on programs that are really strong in the area of CTE but also in academics um looked across the nation

125and they selected one one school one school district to really highlight. It was Belton Belton ICD and Belton High School. They came and spelt spent time with us with our students with our incredible staff. You see Den Denise there and um Michael Coreo um our incredible teacher and spent time with our um staff and then they followed the students and went to Atlanta when our students were actually competing. And so I I know you've probably seen the article. Um I am incredibly proud of our staff. Um, last time I looked, there were hundreds, really hundreds and hundreds of comments on this New York Times article from across the world, not just across Texas and across the nation. And I was so proud reading people in Germany, France, Australia, um, as well as Texas, really proud

126of our students and proud of the work we're doing in CTE programs. And so just wanted to congratulate them and thank you to all who make this possible. You as a board make this possible. Um you adopt budgets, you set policy. Um you hire me I guess. Um I had nothing to do with this. Um but your work impacts this in the programs you approve, the curriculum we approve. um you support me in the hiring of staff and you recognize the great work of our teachers and our students. And so I just wanted to end with a thank you to the board for all you do to make things like this possible in our community. Can you read that read that quote at the bottom of that slide? Oh yeah, read that quote. Um, the

127tiny house, the tiny home construction contest is a big deal in this Texas town. It says, "A Texas high school has won more championships in mock tiny home construction than any other school in the country? Could a team of rookies defend the title?" And I think they did an incredible job defending the title. And what I also loved was while they were a little dis disappointed they came in second. Um they have a world and nation of cheerleaders out there that basically said don't you dare be sad about that. What you did was incredible and we're proud. It's amazing. You want to have Can I add one one thing on here? Absolutely. So unfortunately our CTE programs are our best kept secret secret right they shouldn't be right I I think people don't understand what

128CTE stands for right career and technical education and they don't understand the breadth of what we have the power of what we have the level at which our programs compete at the state well in the region in the state nationally internationally they don't understand it there's there's a lot of people in this community that don't understand that and so I just want to put out to this group and anybody who's listening right like if there's if there's the story that you want to tell about the district, right? About the power of what we're doing from a public education standpoint, CTE, right? That's an easy first place to start. Uh and so I think uh as we come to the state of the district that's coming up into the fall, like I think we're going to

129get some more information around, you know, sort of a the powerhouse look at everything that's happened over the last year. But this is a great place to tell the story. U there's just so many amazing things going on and it can't be the best kept secret. like we've got this is everybody's got to know about this thing. Thank you, Chris. Anyone else? Okay, moving on to item 5e, board highlights. Um, this is our opportunity to share prominent highlights from the last month. Anyone care to start us out and share? Yeah, I mean it started. I mean, it feels like school started already. there are already school activities going on um you know with our UIL activities. So um yeah, I don't know. I'm just I tried to lay low for the last month, but like

130I'm Anyone else? Riley. Um I kind of talked about it earlier, but I just thought it was encouraging to go out there to Belton High School and see so many kids out early in the morning exercising uh and improving their physical health. and the coaches and everyone else that that is there to support them. That's all. Thank you. Anyone else? I do want to make one comment about the board advisory committee and this the last um the last I guess the third meeting. Chris, you were there. Bond bond advisory committee. I'm sorry. Uh and Ronnie, you were there. And as I was watching how the how the members of that of that committee engaged um it was very enlightening to me and it just it's just a testament to what this district does in terms

131of engaging the community. I mean, it's part of our vision and goals, but we actually do it and I think we do it well. And that was just an example of that. And that was the thing that was what was going through my mind. And Chris, at the end of the meeting, you you thanked everyone there. Uh, but I think we need to thank everyone publicly uh for participating in that because it's it's going to be some work that's going to be real important for us as we move forward um in the district with things that we we may need to do. So, thank you everyone that was involved with that. Um and great job you and your administration in putting that together and moving forward. So um anyway, I just want to share that.

132All right. So let's move on to um the consent agenda. Does anyone wish to pull anyone any anything from the um consent agenda for discussion? I'd like to abstain from K2, please. We can do that one. K2, the memorandum of understanding with Temple College. Okay. K two. And I just have one discussion note. I it doesn't need to be pulled, but I I just would like to say something. My now I can't find it. Uh where is it? Where is it? Where is it? Uh about item J before we vote. Go ahead. Okay. All right. Item J. Um this one looks a little bit weird, right? contract with Bell County Office of Elections Administration for Election Services. So, um we don't have an election going on. Um uh and but this is preserving our options,

133right? So, uh and so from an election standpoint, we're talking about a bond election. And so, right now, unfortunately, the county's um the county schedule and the schedule that school boards have to um declare uh an election on don't match up. And so if we don't do this right now, we will miss our opportunity to have a possibility. There's no um there's no harm in us if we decide not to go for a bond. We there's no exit clause or or no negative penalty um you know for coming out of this. So this is just preserving our ability to have um have have it there and have the resources if we need it. So no real commitment. That's correct. Right. Thank you for that, Chris. Um, just I'm still kind of new here, but the

134the consent would be any of the items over 50,000. Is that that's included in those, right? Yes. All everything from from A to L. Um, well, where am I? I I had a question on the on the computers on the um what are we calling the Chromebooks? Um am I on the right? Yeah. Anyways, on the Chromebooks, I was wondering the cost of those. I got adding that up and it like it was like $700, like $680 a piece. I was just wondering why are those for students and you know why do we spend so much on on computers when when on Amazon you you know for I you could get one for $2 to $300. Okay. Um, Shad is not here, so I'm going to do my best and I'm looking to Frank and

135he's going to walk towards the podium for me. These are actually staff refresh devices and so we have to get um appropriate pricing and bids for these devices. Do you want to talk about that process? So, so just for the record, Riley, which which one is it specifically? I think it's it's D34 and 34 and five, right? Are you looking at D34 and five? I know. page page 100 has it on there. Let's see. Is it D three, four, and five? Square staff is D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D3 D D D D D D D D D D D

136D D D D D D D D D3 only three staff device refresh CDWG. Yeah, for staff refresh probably similar to the Apple staff device refresh, but I I know they they're more expensive, but uh specifically was to the Chromebooks. Sorry to be off guard. I hadn't realized. And Frank, can you explain why we have three different ones as well? Yes. Okay. Um, good evening board. Uh, so we do have three in in this in Belton ISD. Teachers get to choose whether they want a PC or a MacBook. Um, Google has released a Chromebook Plus, which is a teacher model. It has an i5 in it, 16 gigs of RAM, 250. Same same specs as what's in most of the computers that we're buying. The difference is we started pushing Chromebooks in teachers hands because

137Google had a huge release. It's called class tools. What class tools allows you to do is from the teacher level from the OS level of a Chromebook control exactly what's all on all the students Chromebooks in the class. So what they're doing is I want students to have access to schooly the assignments and two other research sites and that's all they can get to on a Chromebook. To do that the teacher has to have a Chromebook. So, we bought um 72 Chromebooks to test this. We've been pilot in the past. We are down to um eight Chromebooks. So, you can see what we're paying for Chromebooks, which is way cheaper than a PC or MacBook. Most of our teachers live in Chrome anyways, which that's what it runs. We're also buying it with a stylus.

138So, now teachers can write on the screen because it is touchscreen. So, that's also their document camera. They can take pictures. They can share students work. they can see the screen using class tools. So we were trying to figure out class tools was released July 1st how many we would need based on a refresh that we could get in teachers hands. So what we have found is our as we've been showing teachers class tools. We had two of Google's developers that develop class tools come to the district about a month ago at Lake Belton High School and show those teachers in instructional coaches like I want a Chromebook now. So we started handing those out. So, every time we show class tools to teachers and Anna and I have trained um we have three more

139trains left um at Belton Middle School um we have been handing those out and teachers have been handing in their MacBooks, handing in their PCs to get their hands on these Chromebooks. So, that is what those are. That is a Chromebook plus a professional model Chromebook for teachers built for teachers with a nice stylus. That that answers it for me. Just that clarification. I thought these were student Chromebooks or possibly could have been this. That makes a lot more sense. So, thank you. Thank you, Frank. Thank you. Okay, so for the consent agenda, we're going to we're going to pull out in this one vote, we're going to pull K2, memorandum of understanding, renew of memorandum of understanding for Temple College dual credit. So, for this first one, we're going to remove that one. Um,

140so do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda except for that one? And we'll vote on that one in just a moment as presented. Mr. Bzon, we have a second. Mr. Norwood, all those in favor, please raise your hand. That passes 7 to zero now. No, six to zero. I'm sorry. No, that passes six to zero, right? Yeah. Okay. All right. I keep forgetting that Rucker's not here. All right. So, uh, now we need to vote on me memorandum of understanding. K2 renewal of memorandum understanding for Temple College dual credit. All those will I give you a motion first. Mr. Norwood, do you have a second? Second, Miss Bass. All right. All those in favor, please raise your hand. That passes 5-0 with one abstaining. All right, moving on. Public comments. Uh public

141comments regarding non-aggenda items. Becca, do we have anyone? No one has signed up. There being no public comments, moving on to the close session, which is item eight on our agenda. Close session tax code chap subchapters D and E. The time is 8:16 p.m. And the board will now go into close session 4 A, student disciplinary matter, Texas government code section 551.082. 082 B personnel Texas government code section 551.074 one consider superintendent recommend recommendation regarding termination of Betto Geostino term contract employee and then item 8 C consultation with attorney government code section 551.071 071. One. The time is 8:43 p.m. and the board will now reconvene in open session. All right, moving on. Item 10, proposed termination of BTO Geostino term contract employee. Is there a motion? Yeah, floor. Um, this is going to be

142a long one, so I'm going to read this. Um, Mr. President, I move to accept the superintendent's recommendation to propose termination of Petro Gustino's term contract for the 202526 school year and further move that the record of this action reflect the following. Before voting on this motion, the board considered a draft letter to Mr. Castino uh proposing the termination uh of employment. The superintendent reviewed with the board the reasons for making her recommendation regarding the employee and the board considered the reasons and other information provided by the superintendent and that by passage of this motion the board directs the superintendent to prepare for the board president's signature a final notice of proposed contract termination for Petro Gustino and ensure that the notice is delivered. directs that the notice include the time limitations and procedure for

143requesting a hearing before an independent hearing examiner as required by the Texas Education Code. Directs the president uh directs the board president to notify Ekob, Morell, Hansen, Powell, and Munoz PC of this action and requests the firm to take whatever actions are necessary and propose in support of these proposed actions. Um and uh directs that a copy of this motion be attached to the minutes of the meeting along with the final notice of proposed termination sent to Petra Gustinino. Do I have a second? Mr. Norwood. All those in favor, please raise your hand. That passes six to zero. Okay. All items, all action items, reports, and consent items for this meeting have been addressed. There being no further business, this meeting is adjourned at 8:45