Belton ISD Board Meeting March 27, 2023

001foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you very much [Music] I don't know [Music] um thank you [Music] good morning foreign [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen if I could have your attention please tonight we are extremely my name is Jennifer Bailey I'm the executive director of communications and Community engagement and tonight we are very pleased to host our student showcase and we have the Lake Belton Middle School orchestra so y'all May begin foreign [Music] thank you [Applause] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Applause] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign good evening everyone and thank you for joining us hope you enjoyed our student showcase tonight by the Lake Belton Middle School orchestra can we have another round of

002applause for them [Applause] the time is 6 19 and the Belton Independent School District Board of Trustees are now convened in a regular board meeting Monday March 27 2023 in the pittinger Fine Arts Center located at 400 North Wall Street Belton Texas a quorum of board members is present this meeting has been duly called notice that the meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas open meetings act Texas government code 5 chapter 551 I want to welcome all the members of our audience live stream viewers to this meeting as the Belton ISD Board of Trustees we are here to set goals listen to reports from the superintendent approved budgets contracts Personnel appointments and make policy for the district it is not the role of the board to make day-to-day operational decisions the management and

003day-to-day operations of the district or the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a meeting of the Board of Trustees that is held in public it is not a public meeting prior to this meeting board members received information related to the items on tonight's agenda agenda items may not necessarily be handled in the order listed in the notice this meeting is open all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed these proceedings are being live streamed on bisd's YouTube channel and a recording of the meeting will be available on the district's website in the days following tonight's meeting for the video quality to adequately reflect proceedings I respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and the cell phones

004are turned off or in a silent mode thank you for taking the time to join us this evening and for your interest in the Belton ISD please rise for a moment of Silent prayer or meditation please remain standing as our communication team introduces students from Southwest Elementary here to lead us to the Pledge of Allegiance and honors to the Texas flag um we have two students with us tonight from Southwest Elementary leading Us in the Pledge of Allegiance is Braylon Lyons and in the Texas pledge is Jada Brown I pledge allegiance 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 allegiance to the Texas one State under God one and

005indivisible all right thank you let me tell you just a little bit about these two students as we said they're both from Southwest Elementary Braylon is a fourth grade student he enjoys math and studies World Geography he's played soccer for the last five years and his favorite food is pizzoli that his grandmother makes for him and Jada enjoys reading and playing on the computer at home she also plays soccer and her favorite food is also mine egg rolls with dumplings [Applause] [Music] foreign first item on the agenda is recognitions ask everybody to remain in the auto oh remaining auditorium at the conclusion all right board good evening board and Dr Smith it is my pleasure to come to you tonight you can see we have a packed room because we have a lot of recognitions

006to go through this evening and students please stay through the remaining through our recognitions and support your peers if you don't mind our first recognition this morning well let's give it up one more time for the Lake Belton Middle School orchestra these guys did a fantastic job our first recognition we are going to recognize top academic Talent we have Kailyn Caleb bovill from Belton High School and Kevin Thomas from Belton new tech they are among 15 000 students Nationwide who are being honored for the 2023 National Merit Scholarship award this is huge congratulations and after graduating in May Caleb plans to attend college and study mechanical engineering and Kevin wants to enter the medical profession so our next recognition is the UIL State finalists we have Sydney alameen a senior at Belton High School get

007this she placed 15th twice at the UIL 5A state championship she placed in the 200 and the 500 free races congratulations [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and as you all I'm sure are very well aware Belton ISD has a fantastic fine arts program and now we're going to honor um our Orchestra State solo Ensemble State finalists we have students from Belton High School in Belton High School and Lake Belton High School and we're going to recognize them all at the same time congratulations guys [Applause] [Music] all right now we have a number of students who were made it to the state level band solo and Ensemble they're from Belton High School congratulations to these students foreign as a district we're incredibly proud that we have the best of the best right here as far as Fine Arts

008goes [Music] and now we have 60 students who have been named a solo and Ensemble state qualifiers that is incredible our first picture is going to be the students from Belton High School what's cool about tonight is we're representing the Fine Arts in a number of different disciplines we've got band Orchestra choir visual Performing Arts congratulations guys [Music] and next up we have the Lake Belton High School choir Sullen Ensemble State finalists our state qualifiers rather how great is it that we have such a large group representing us at state congratulations guys we also have tonight a number of Belton ISD students that are State qualifiers at the Texas Art education association's High School Visual Arts Scholastic event next month only 10 percent of artwork given Superior ratings at the regional vent are also awarded

009area medals and then Advanced to state so once again we have top talent here in Belton ISD thank you all right our next recognition is we have the temple rotary educator of the month Julianne kamonecki is being recognized for her outstanding service to Belton ISD she's a third grade teacher at Miller Heights Elementary this is our eighth year in education and her first in Belton ISD Courtney Brewer her AP says Julian is in a phenomenal asset to her team and her fellow colleagues she always exhibits a deliberate positive mindset for her students in the entire campus we are so proud to have her at Miller Heights and we look forward to seeing her continuous impact on Belton ISD congratulations [Music] thank you and tonight for our department showcase we have our business services team led

010by Miss Melissa Lafferty there's 24 members of this team and they do everything from process 10 000 checks per year and processing 26 000 invoices they process 54 payrolls nearly 7 000 purchase orders a year the warehouse crew fulfills 40 work orders a month they are a hard-working team this year the they earned the certificate of achievement for excellence in financial reporting from the government Finance Officers Association and the association of school business officers International presented them with a certificate and of excellence in financial reporting congratulations to our phenomenally talented business office [Applause] great job that concludes our recognitions for the evening thank you well that was a lot of celebrations and a lot of wonderful things happening at Belton ISD now something magical happens at every meeting if you would like to stay for

011the duration of the meeting we would love for you to stay but if you're a kid sitting here wanting to get out of here there you go you're free to go if you're a parent that's with one of these kids you're free to go as well [Music] thank you thank y'all well okay [Music] okay thank you foreign I've told y'all that would be magic this happens every time so next on the agenda is public comments based on policy bed local we take public comments regarding items on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting comments regarding non-agenda items will be heard at the end of the meeting to allow the board to conduct the business of the district forms have been provided in accordance with District policy bed local any person wishing to address the

012Board of Trustees during public comments shall sign up before the meeting in order to comply with the Texas open meeting act the board may not respond to comments or otherwise discuss or act upon any issues that are not posted on the meeting agenda participants will be allowed three minutes for public comments regarding items on the agenda we have a timer on the screen that will show you a lot of time a sound will occur at the conclusion the boar shall not tolerate disruption of the meeting by members of the public when I call your name please come to the podium state your name and city of residence for the record the first person is Hillary hicklin and Scott farnier you are on Deck foreign good evening Hillary hicklin from Belton Texas I did not write

013down my comments so hopefully I don't regret that I want to speak um in regards to the consent item for the policy to delete or eliminate Hunter education class I would hope that you would not do that because I consider Hunter education as a life skill and just because we don't currently offer that class doesn't mean that in the future it might not be some might be something that we want to offer I'm myself not a hunter but I did go through Hunter education whenever I was in public school in Texas and there were some valuable lessons that I learned even though I've never hunted in one day one day in my life but I learned a lot about gun safety just being sure of your Target and what's behind it just a lot of

014really helpful life skills and thinking about just how hunting is a popular activity here in this area that it might be something that we want to offer in the future um I'm not sure what the harm is on keeping the policy on the books in the meantime if there was a group of students that wanted to access that kind of a class um it's available versus if there's if we don't have the policy and then we have to develop the policy later could take some time and that group of students might not even be able to enjoy it so um I am here to Advocate that that policy remain for Belton ISD thank you thank you Scott farnier and Amanda Kelly you're on Deck good evening my name is Scott Fournier and I reside in

015Morgan's Point Resort Texas um I I came tonight to address the board specifically item 6B on the agenda the attendance boundary for elementaries while I'm personally pleased with the recommendation made by the district to the board I I think that there is a potential tweak that could be made and the concern I have with the recommendation made by the school district to the board is that there's capacity pressure on Lakewood Elementary five years six years out and actually under all three scenarios that were proposed by the uh I guess the school district in working in conjunction with the demographer there were attendance uh concerns or excuse me capacity concerns with regard to Lake Wood Elementary and actually the the fourth scenario or alternative scenario that that I would propose involves uh shifting a certain area

016uh that is in between geographically in between High Point and Lakewood it's a new development Kela development that the streets were just poured there's no houses there's there's no families there yet my concern well so we take that area which based on my conversation with the demographer is a high density area that's expected to produce 150 students that would go to Lakewood Elementary so we take that area and right now which under the proposed scenario that the district has proposed to the board and we shift that over to High Point that would alleviate the capacity concerns with regard to Lakewood in the five-year period and furthermore I think that's the only capacity concern really primarily under the proposed scenario so one you're not disrupting current families that live there because there's no houses there's no

017families there's no families who have made investments from where they live to uh High Point has no capacity pressure concerns under this current scenario actually under any of the three scenarios but under the scenario proposed by the district to the board tonight but three it's geographically close in proximity to High Point probably the most Northwest point of that neighborhood is closer to High Point than it is to Lakewood Elementary um so yes that's uh it's not uh I guess it's on you on your agenda tonight uh it's it's a slight tweak uh to the proposed boundary attendance zone for Lakewood and High Point thank you Mr President if it's okay for me to just share just who our public knows we have no screen access up here and stuff so um the timer and everything

018we're relying on our Tech Team and everybody back there we apologize thank you Miss Kelly hello I am speaking on agenda item number four I'm from Temple Texas my name is Amanda Kelly an athletic trainer who resigned from Belton night Independent School District last year after he was caught watching child pornography while on campus in view of students has again delayed his trial he's one of multiple Belton ISD Educators charged with sexual misconduct in recent years including a middle school orchestra teacher who's now in prison for Distributing child porn Trevor Swift has accused of viewing porn during school last may he was actually escorted off campus in the middle of April U.S Marshals arrested Swift on May 26th and charged him with possession of visual depictions of sexual activity by minors a federal felony a

019June 14th Federal grand jury indictment added the charge saying pornographic image viewed by Swift included prepubescent minors and miners who had not attained the age of 12. he faces Miss Kelly 20 years in prison I'm going to allow you to finish but this is not on the agenda so in the future if you could please follow the rules of the meeting thank you because number four is about values and belief this directly impact my kids ability to go to this school so it absolutely is an agenda item just so you're very clear on why I'm reading this my kids are not safe at Lake Belden since his arrest Swift has delayed his trial seven times on Friday judge Albright granted Swift latest request for continuance he his next scheduled court date are in May and

020early June Belton parents only learned about the child porn allegations against Swift through public information request this is yet another example of how Belton ISD Administration lacks transparency and accountability to parents and taxpayers here Belton mom Amanda Kelly told scorecard she and other parents are upset that the district allowed Swift to quietly resign and never notified them about his on-campus porn watching or subsequent arrest Kelly said that Belton ISD superintendent Matt Smith refused to even provide the most basic answers about such a serious issue I had every right to ask these questions because it happened out of school that my child attended I've pulled my kids as all are well aware of from Belton ISD I wanted transparency so that all parents of students in Belton that Trevor Swift might have had contact with were

021made aware and given the opportunity to have such an important discussion with their children if parents don't know they cannot talk to their kids about people like this they may have come in contact with this man and they would never know because the school district never allowed them that opportunity parents also obtained a tea report from September concluding that Swift engaged in misconduct he's been added to the do not hire registry he does not hold an educator certificate I'm a protective parent and I'm disgusted that the district has been so determined to stop parents including me from getting information about this and many other serious issues within the district y'all are dismissive and y'all don't care about the parents I have had it I'm not paying tax dollars working hard to fund a district that

022doesn't care about me or my children I can pull them out and homeschool them y'all still get my money so you're still going to hear my public comments thank you next time on agenda number four Vision Empower each and every learner Dr Smith board just uh like we do every month is take a look at some of the vision values and beliefs that we have as a school district we've gone through those values and beliefs we've gone through our journey of a graduate competencies and tonight we're back to the vision statement that you all adopted and that we focus on on a regular basis a vision is a direction a focus for a school district to continue working to continue striving for on a regular basis and to point us all in the same direction

023the importance of us talking about these things at the beginning of every meeting is to ensure that our efforts continually lead us toward that Vision so the statement that says Empower each and every learner to pursue their dreams and enrich their communities every student that walks through our doors in Belton ISD we want them to feel empowered to be able to explore the future to be able to thrive in the educational system that they're in and to be able to when they leave our doors to be able to be well prepared for life beyond our walls enriching the community is an important piece too that this board very heavily weighed in on when we adopted this vision statement so tonight if you would talk a little bit about what the vision statement means to you

024and how you may have seen it play out in Belton ISD foreign something that came to my mind thinking about this is it's a focus and I think it's also a why I think it's important to reflect on that I know as a teacher not just in the in the challenging towns but even in the the most rewarding times it's it's important as teachers to reflect on our why um and not just for teachers I think it's important for kids and families so I I think I don't want to speak necessarily on what it's about I think Dr Smith um talked well about it I think it's important that us as a board we encourage each other and then encourage our community to talk about what they're seeing at in the schools and encourage our

025staff to reflect on this you know on a daily basis encourage even our Learners to think about this for themselves is is this being um are they being empowered are they being enriched so I think it's important to just encourage and then we need to talk about it because I think sometimes we hear more about what's the challenging pieces of what's going on in our schools and it's important to reflect on what's positive in our schools so listening so we were just talking in a meeting just a little bit earlier about how we've got students that are graduating job ready right from high school and the construction trades and our drone program is allowing kids to be able to be certified to walk into high-tech jobs right out of high school and that to me

026not only is our district casting a vision for these kids to be able to have these opportunities but the kids themselves are are embracing it and and seeking out new opportunities and I think that's super cool board again thank you for sharing your thoughts on this we appreciate your continued focus on our vision that idea of enriching a community means giving back to a community that they're involved in whether that's the Belton ISD Community another community that they engage in after their schools but their service to the community as well was something that stands out to our stood out to our board when we adopted this and I'm proud to say that I see on a regular basis acts of our athletic teams of our Fine Arts programs of our students that are encouraged to

027engage in civic-minded responsibilities and to be out invisible giving back to their community and so I think you see glimmers of this throughout our system and will continue to pursue a day when we Empower each and every student each and every learner to pursue their dreams and enrich their communities and even more fully thank you okay well one of our other journey of a graduates is adaptability and we're about to do that because as of right now we do not have screens correct which don't really think we can do the taper report until we get those up we well we have those screens out there so um I'm looking at our Tech team do we have the ability to make some arrangements to our screens up here so so we if you wanted we could

028adjourn for a few minutes and then or I can move to things we don't need the screen on that'd be fun okay the board okay with that we moved items that Okay so sure okay then we're gonna adapt real quick there we go we're going to adapt and the item we're going to now action item is item number six Dr Smith I'm excited to welcome Mr Todd Schiller up here tonight we have some wonderful administrative hires and I'll make a couple comments on those further in a minute good evening board so tonight we are recommending four recommendations for you the first one being Gabby Nino for assistant superintendent of teaching and learning Gabby is has a master's degrees of Education from Texas State University a Bachelor's of Science degree from Texas State University is in

029her 21 21st year in education in education and is currently residing here with us as you know is the executive director of school leadership and has been with us for the last three years the second one is Sarah Windham for executive director of special programs she has her masters of communication disorders and speech language pathology from Louisiana State University has a bachelor's degree in communication disorders from Louisiana State University is in her 24th year in education and has served in an SLP in the in the private sector and is currently the director of special programs then we have Meredith Bonnet who is this for assistant principal at Southwest Elementary School Meredith has her master's degree in education from Lamar University of Beaumont Bachelor's of Science degree in education from Baylor University is in her 22nd

030year in education and is currently serving as the intervention specialist at Southwest Elementary then we have a Christy Whitman for assistant principal at Belton High School Christy has a master's degree of Education in curriculum instruction from University of Texas at Arlington a bachelor's science degree in biology from umhb and is in her 18th year in education and comes to us from Georgetown ISD where she has been an assistant principal for the last four years if you would join me in giving them all a round of applause [Applause] if it's okay I'd like I'll let the board take action on this one if you uh would and then I'd ask Gabby and Sarah to come up and say a few words okay do we have a motion to approve the recommendation and addition of personnel as

031presented Miss McDonald Mr Taggart all in favor all right that passage me Ashley thank you very much all right [Applause] good evening board again I realize I welcomed myself earlier to join you all in a conversation I am absolutely thrilled to be here tonight and to accept this honor it's been such a journey joining Belton ISD um and I feel great conviction to continue the work here I've been stretched and grown so much and find such tremendous value in the relationships that have been built um there's a little mixed emotions thinking that my day-to-day might shift a bit I have such a tremendous respect for our principals but it's also those principles and seeing our students in our classroom that really reinforces my belief that this is the right work and I'm crazy excited about

032what the future holds for our children I was asked recently why like why did you do this and it is that it's my belief in what could be it's my belief in what will be it's my belief in our vision for students in our district and for our community so again I thank you so much for blessing me with this honor and I just couldn't be more proud than to be a part of the Belton ISD community so thank you good evening board um thank you all for having me it is such a privilege to be here I first want to thank Mr Ramirez for her leadership and for growing me into this role and I I'm forever thankful for that it is a privilege to serve our students and I look forward to working

033with with Miss Nino and with the rest of our team it's been such a great past three years so looking forward to a great next several many years thank you all for having me [Applause] so Bordeaux before we go down there and take pictures and we're going to ask our new assistant principals to join us down there for pictures as well I just wanted to make a comment about both Gabby and Sarah I want you to know wholeheartedly how excited I am as superintendent to welcome them into these new leadership roles one of the things that I believe is that we have to give good people opportunities to do the right work for our school district but we don't just give those opportunities away I think both of these candidates will attest to you that

034they had to go through a very rigorous interview process and in that interview process we pressed very hard on how we can continue to improve our system not only celebrate the things that we're proud of but to continue to improve our system as well and one of the things that stood out to me about both of these leaders that I'm excited about is it's not just about what they do it's about how they conduct themselves and how they do business and I think those two things matter equally as we talk about leadership in a school system so I'm excited to welcome Gabby and Sarah into these leadership roles in the assistant principles thank you for investing in Belton ISD we're glad you're here and we can't wait to see your name come up more and

035more as a leader in this community let's go over there and do a few pictures everybody foreign this is a really good time if you need to do anything up here to go ahead and do it foreign because yesterday all right [Applause] foreign all right we are still working on that um we're pretty sure that Mr Taggart kicked a cord so that's why we don't have power so other items that we can move on to uh under action item C consider discussing appropriation regarding the selection construction delivery method for BISD agricultural facility authorized a superintendent to issue a request for competitive seal proposal for the project select committee evaluate and write proposals Dr Smith you all know the future Dr Mike Morgan um is coming up to the podium now and he's going to lead

036us through the next couple items on this Mike take it away please good evening my pleasure to be here this evening we do have a couple of exciting projects coming up and uh so I would like to start tonight with the um for our Delta program facility uh I would ask you tonight to consider as we're required as a as a as a district to choose the delivery method that we're going to use tonight we're recommending that we use competitive sealed proposals for the Delta program we see some some significant advantages for the district because of the scope of the project now there's not a significant cost Advantage for looking into the construction manager at risk like we've done on some of our larger projects We Believe using CSP should get us better participation from

037contractors and an overall lower price so we would ask you tonight to uh to approve the recommendation to use competitive seal proposal as a delivery method for the Delta program facility any questions board if not I'll take a motion to accept the recommendation that's been made Mr Taggart second by Mr Floor all in favor all right thank you that passes unanimously I believe he has another one for us I do in a dissimilar uh similar rationale here we we are also uh doing a substantial uh addition in our agriculture facility there on Second Street uh it is going to be equipped to handle a uh our swine and poultry populations and allow us to use our existing facility for sheep goats and cattle and once again we are in the in the working quickly through

038a design process and we should have construction documents ready soon so I would ask you for the same reasons as beforehand mentioned that we select uh approve a competitive sealed proposal as a delivery method for our agriculture facility Edition all right any questions from the board if not I will take a recommendation or take a motion to accept the recommendation is made Mr Taggart he's on ball a second oh Miss Lee there we go all in favor all right that passes unanimously thank you thank you very much okay we're going to continue skipping on around for things we don't need to screen for the next item on the agenda well it's actually not the next but next what we're going to do is the consent agenda does anyone wish to pull an item for discussion

039not for discussion uh president Norwood but I'd like to pull 882 the February 6 2023 special meeting the minutes that address that primarily because the minutes do reflect that Miss bass had made a motion initial motion but there's no indication that that Miss Lee had seconded that motion so we need to correct that in the record and make sure that that's reflected accurately okay thank you very much board what we can do is we can pull that item from this and so you can prove the consent agenda minus item 882 and we will bring that back to you with the amended item that you have for next month so that's just going to be a clarification for the record okay all right besides 8a2 are there any other items that need to be pulled no

040okay do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented Mr Taggart okay do I have a second Mr alcoser all right do we have all in favor okay that passes unanimously thank you very much let's see now I believe Dr Smith has said he feels comfortable doing the taper report because the public will be able to see it yeah I think we can go ahead and do the taper report Holly Moore is going to come on up and lead us through the taper report and Dr Cassandra Spearman will be here as well uh in during the public hearings you do have the ability to see those screens out there and I do believe that they are able to see them on our YouTube channel and stuff it's just our monitors up here

041so they will walk you through this presentation and there will be an appropriate slide that we cannot see so uh at that slide it'll say public hearing and that's when you'll open it up for a public hearing at that time so Holly will give us a little bit of a heads up on that one so Holly take it away for us please thank you evening honored board so the purpose of this presentation is to hold a public hearing per tea requirements on our Texas Academic performance report of the 21-22 school year also referred as taper the report is based on the 21-22 school year and we began sharing information from the report at the June 21 board meeting the entire report including the district and campus reports is a little over 450 Pages the intent

042of tonight is not to go through the entire report but to make sure you know what was in the report and how to access it the report includes a district report and a report for each campus the overall taper is an annual summary of the 21-22 school year you may wonder why do we look at it now tea has to wait until all appeals and final information are completed this is the final summer report from the 21-22 school year the pims data is a lag and includes data from the 2021 school year also included is the accreditation status the commissioner did not issue accreditation status across the state due to coveted impact campus performance objectives are included in campus Improvement plans taper includes a report on violent or criminal incidences in addition taper includes student

043performance report on how students perform at institutions of higher post-graduation which is also lag data lastly we are required to give an update on our house bill 3 goals from the 2122 school year just a little background on these goals and aspects of our accountability reporting Early Childhood literacy and math and college career military Readiness also known as ccmr goals were created based on the House Bill 3 bill passed in 2019 by legislation the requirements are based on the 60 30 Texas goals which are to have 60 percent of students reaching proficiency 30 I'm sorry I messed that up Texas schools which are to have 60 percent of students reaching proficiency by 2030. the thinking of linking Early Childhood goals with ccmr together and the early academic achievement will lead to better post-secondary performance this

044is our data for Early Childhood literacy and math this data was shared in August and December but were required to highlight the data in our public hearing specific campus data can be obtained within our on taper the next couple of slides focus on ccmr I want to begin by providing you with a reminder of the indicators for ccmr there are 10 different indicators and several ways to meet those there are specific score students must meet to earn a ccmr indicator it's important to note that since House Bill 3 was passed the criteria has changed each year not always significantly but we are expecting more changes this coming year that we highlighted at the February meeting this performance is based on lag year data so this data is based on the 21 graduates unlike star data

045based on one single assessment a student hitting any one of the 10 indicators under ccmr will meet we have students who meet several of those indicators in this data new tech is a part of Belton High School Lake Belton High School does not have college career military Readiness until 2024 and new tech will not have it until 2026. board at this time do we have any public comments Miss hicklin you've already stated your name and address so you're good I will admit that I do not have experience or competency reading these reports and so just in the the time that I was able to look at the graph I specifically wanted to speak to the um student disciplinary action incident counts violent or criminal incidents I noted first of all safety is Paramount to all

046of of parents we want to know that schools are safe for our students I notice on this graph that there were only two schools listed and then I also noticed that there were some notable events that were left off of of the graph I noticed at the top of the graph where it says it's very small that the data are masked if the number of students involved is less than five so I understand that not everything would might not be indicated on this on this graph however I also noticed that um there are a couple areas where only one incident is noticed and and so I didn't know if there you know maybe that incident had more than five students so I I get that there's you know that there's some play here I guess

047if that's the right word um but I believe that this uh creates a skewed data um at the bottom for the the results of what we're what we're looking at and I didn't understand why there were only two schools listed I guess it's possible that only those were the only incidents in all of Belton ISD and that would be fantastic um but I pulled which is in the the packet that I gave you I pulled the um police reports responding to the address of the schools and I just included the first page of the report one for Lake Milton high school and then one for Tarver so again I don't know what's I don't know what's recorded and indicated on this this graph so basically it's just a question and it feels like there there

048might be a disconnect in the data that is presented on this graph in an area that's really important for us as parents to understand um what in incidents happen on campus so it's more of a question than a comment so thank you okay thank you and I believe we have someone to answer that question Dr smear Ben and Ms Moore if you would you can come up and just kind of give a little bit of an overview on why some of those things happen and again the example that we were given was police reports for a couple of schools and incident calls don't quite match reporting on here so I'll I'll add to that but if you'd address some of the things like um Ms hicklin was talking about it I'd appreciate it okay so

049when we pull the um the data that goes into this specific report it's very specific pims data and so when we work with our teams director he pulls that and he sees what qualifies for this data chart and so the other schools did not qualify in this chart it doesn't mean certain instances haven't happened it just means that the ones that qualified happen in this chart because it's a much more narrow um scope of what needs to be reported and on the taper report and then Dr Spearman is going to also answer and address the further um clarification okay good evening how are you so we are aware that we did have a major incident at one of our high schools in the last year and the incident was reported it was reported as a

050state code 17 which is what we use for the code of murder okay we know that that happened in our community when we entered that code the student was incarcerated which made it difficult for us well not difficult impossible for us to take action on that code and so we coded it an action so there's an offense code which is a 17 of murder and then there is an action code which is 28 Mandatory Action not taken and the reasoning is student is incarcerated however we received a fatal era so in trying to correct that era we added what had taken place which is a parent conference with the parent to share what had occurred on the campus and that there would be the ramifications of law enforcement again it resulted in a fatal era

051in trying to clean up the Ping's data and to clear the era we regarded that because the student had met eligibility for graduation and we could not impose any discipline that we could not include that incident in our data thank you so graduated student cannot have discipline and that's kind of what the guidance much that we received Dr Spearman did you work with DEA in reporting that that's correct so our teams director and our director of student services both had ongoing conversations with um the disciplined Department of tea over the course of three days and that was the final guidance that we received civil board and again I want to very clearly acknowledge we all know we had a significant incident at Belton High School last year and it doesn't show up in the in

052the taper report on this and it's because of the student's graduation status at the time of reporting for all of this in that fatal area error that kept getting kicked back in the PM's data submission that's how we were told to code this this is in no way shape or form a saying that an event didn't happen okay I'm bored any other questions okay okay you can access the taper on the Belton ISD website and the tea website the last piece is the taper glossary we encourage individuals looking at the taper report to be sure to also use the glossary some of the terms and definitions are not intuitive as to what specific grade levels or school year is being included the glossary will explain what data is being used at this time does the

053board have any other questions or comments let's pass so I know you're talking about if parents or any individual that's looking at it they can look at the glossary but what if they have further questions is there contact information that they could reach out to the district and speak to an actual person and not something just from the website yes they are more than welcome to call me or email me and I'd be happy to talk to any of our parents to further explain because it there is a lot in there and it can be very confusing thank you it's worth noting that Holly's email address is on the last slide that we were struggling to see too so it is on the last slide for this okay there are no other questions thank you

054very much thank you it is a hard report to read and appreciate the clarification so now that we've just just destroyed this agenda um next on ours is going to be uh under action items B consider discussing take appropriate action regarding Elementary attendance boundaries Dr Smith oh I need to close that meeting yes you do well I do close that public hearing okay there being no other comments on that the public hearing involving the tape report is now considered closed board is we are navigating a new device in front of you for the first time you just hit the down arrow and that will move you through into the next presentation and I do think it's important for our board to be able to see this next presentation this is on the attendance boundaries for

055our elementary schools in future Dr Mike Morgan is going to lead us through that thank you thank you Mr President and board my pleasure to be here tonight back again uh I hate to say this this will be a little lengthier presentation than my previous items but we will get through this so um I'm here tonight to ask you to consider discuss and take action recording new attendance boundaries to take effect for the 24-25 school year our purpose here tonight with this presentation is to provide you with the re the district's recommendation for the adoption of these new Elementary attendance boundaries throughout this process our goal has been simple we wanted to take the investment that's been given to us by our community make sure that we manage growth to the best of our ability

056maximize the use of our current and future facilities and reduce our use in law of long-term Portables as you know belton's a Vibrant Community it's fast growth and people have chosen to make BISD their home since 2019 our capacity has grown by about 1500 students that 2019 is significant because that's when we opened our last Elementary School of Charter Oak Elementary and it's also the last time we adjusted Elementary attendance boundaries the charts you see was taken from the fall 2022 demographers report and shows our growth since 2019 and our expected growth over the next five years we will receive an updated demographer's report next month in May of 2022 our voters approved two Bond propositions to accommodate the enrollment growth and and to and undertake other District projects included in these propositions were funds

057to expand Southwest Elementary the construction of James L Burrell Elementary and the construction of Hubbard Branch Elementary of the Total Bond project these three projects intended to increase Elementary capacity total nearly 95 million dollars increased Elementary capacity is something that's definitely been going to be achieved of the 1700 new seats which is 800 at Hubbard Branch 800 at Burrell and 100 at Southwest Elementary minus the closure of the 306 students currently at Miller Heights we will be adding 1394 more student seats when these new attendance boundaries take effect in addition our third goal was to try to reduce the district's use of long-term long-term Portables and as you can see from this slide that we do feel like our bond project and our bond programs have done what we set out to do the bond

058projects will reduce our overall dependence on Portables from 25 to 4 and eliminate the use of long-term Portables at most of our campuses that's an 84 percent reduction as a fast growth District it must be noted that we may have to use Portables again in the future but we prefer to do it as a short-term strategy to address growth and not as a long-term solution to provide teaching on campuses we do feel like that that we've lived out our our aspirations of goal one of stakeholder and Community input and go five to maximize the use of our of our facilities and our in our resources in this process we've also tried to live around our value and belief of learning space and that we believe in well-designed and maintained facilities will possibly impact student learning

059this has been a seven and a half month Journey so we started in mid in mid-august of 22 with uh taking Gathering data working with our demographer uh at the end of August we had our first meeting with our long-range facility planning team and from that time until tonight we had concurrent processes going so from August until December we worked through our our uh the Su in December to adopt uh parameters that would guide us through the final three months of this of this attendance boundary process while at the same time started working on what potential maps and scenarios could look like that we could take forward to our community so the development began with our long-range facilities planning team it went through dwick it went through our facilities committee we had a parent thought

060Exchange in November of 2022 and that all that feedback helped us identify the parameters that we would use and then develop maps that would that would ultimately go out as this scenarios that we would that we would test with our community and see what was uh what kind of feedback we could get our long-range facilities planning team and others developed six Maps over the course of the Fall those Maps were narrowed down to three and those were the ones that went out to our community earlier in March for feedback all in all we had we had three three different times our long-range planning team worked around this we had a thought exchange with over 900 participants we had a tennis boundary an email message and presentation that went out that had over fifteen thousand nine

061hundred views or opens we had over a thousand English and Spanish-speaking parents and community members watched the the 12-minute presentation on the attendance boundary process we had over 210 feedback forums through our through our submission Google submission from our from our presentation and we had listing session of approximately 30 attendees also answered we've answered many emails over the last couple of weeks and many phone calls as well uh the parameters that were adopted in in December we hope uh to to show that that we tried to live out to these to the best of our ability and making a final recommendation for growth we made sure that we that we tried to leave capacity in the areas where we anticipate the fastest growth and the highest density of new residents socio-economic factors we think that

062we're presenting reasonable boundaries that that will ultimately create more balance between schools and percentages of economically disadvantaged students neighborhood Unity we tried to work with our demographer and go Zone by Zone in neighborhood by neighborhood to to try to make certain that we didn't split neighborhoods between two different elementary schools Family Impact was considered in the final recommendation but we need to understand that that uh of the new seats that were created we are upping our capacity by almost 15 percent with these attendance boundaries so when when you have 15 new capacity there are going to be some families in some some neighborhoods that will change schools and as we add three two new campuses in in growth at another and then finally feeder pattern alignment we have a very comparable feeder pattern alignment which

063gives us protection and balance to Middle School enrollment forecasts for the next several years I would now like to take a few minutes to hit the highlights of the recommended attendance boundary Plan before we open up for discussion I'll start with our Northern zones uh in the north and I'll just briefly kind of touch on the if there were major change or not if for each of our elementary schools but the neighborhoods from our current Tarver attendance Zone on the Northern side would be the one that would make up the entirety of the Barella tenant Zone the area east of old Waco Road would be added to the Tarver attendance Zone the area south of Belton Lake would move from Lakewood to Sparta High Point would remain unchanged and portal would receive relief from the

064additional students moved to Tarver in areas north of the Leon River in east of IH-35 would move South from Charter Oak to Southwest Elementary with its added capacity looking at our Southern schools current our current Miller Heights attendance zones in areas north of the Lampasas River would move wait excuse me our current the areas excuse me our current Southwest Elementary zones and areas north of the Leon River and east of IH-35 would move to Southwest Elementary along with um the along with the small area between Loop 11 and Wheatley Road between Sparta Road and Highway 93. the current Miller Heights area along Loop 121 South of ih-14 and Shanklin Road would make up the tenant zone for High Point Elementary Leon Heights would remain unchanged in the western edge of the current Sparta Zone would

065be moved to Chisholm Trail and I know that was a lot and I know that I wanted to briefly just kind of touch on each attendance zone so I would stop now to see if there's any questions or discussion before I move forward into forecasting so for forecasting we have a the similar report that that we have seen over the past eight years from our time working was on education as as our number one parameter set out to do we wanted to take those areas where we think we'll see the highest growth and highest density and make sure that that room when in space was saved at those campuses to address our address our parameters you could see that we are several years into this forecast before we have campuses nearing capacity we do allow

066for growth and we also found some solutions for Charter Oak Sparta and Lakewood to Grant some relief to those three campuses in the center of our district which proves to be most challenging when you look through the different scenarios feeder pattern alignment is very similar to the current feeder pattern alignment we have the movement of some neighborhoods has exchanged for instance uh Lakewood Elementary which was a split feeder pattern between Lake Belton Middle School and Belton Middle School now becomes a pure feeder pattern while Southwest Elementary has 89 percent of students going to South Belton Middle School and 11 students going to Belton Middle School all in all we had we would have four split feeder patterns Charter Oak would remain the only school that would split between the two High School feeder patterns as

067it has since it opened in 2019 I will say that our student services staff has worked with families if you are a member of a very small cohort that is split from one campus to another we do try to work with those families on a case-by-case basis and see if they're extenuating circumstances that would allow them to stay with their cohort group if it's a vast majority you can see a fairly even between Hubbard branch and a pearl split that is very similar to what we've had for the for the past two alignment zones between Lake belt middle school and North Belton Middle School um some of the next steps in this process we know that communication once uh once we get to an approval Point uh communication is going to be very important we

068know that um with growth comes change and change can be hard and we need to do a good job telling that story we need to do a good job making sure that families and staff have the information they need I will remind everyone that by taking action so early we're allowing our community for the most part around 15 months to prepare Embrace for the changes that these attendance boundaries may may have um the exception with that would be our students our 400 or so students who will be the inaugural class at Burrell Elementary and we will we will have to start getting some communication out to those to that Community sooner because of an anticipation of being able to be in that building early and release some of the pressure of stress of overcrowding at

069Tarver Elementary we will do a good job communicating with our community on the circumstances under which a student could remain at their current campus when boundaries go into effect how transportation services will ramp up prior to implementation of new attendance boundaries and how that will be communicated and what families will be impacted and then obviously the next steps for Burrell Elementary opening will also have processes to uh to Garner community and student input for mascots at both new elementary schools and make sure that we have numerous opportunities for families to get on campuses meet principals meet teachers and see their new homes if they are going to indeed change schools I know this is a tough decision I know it impacts families but I know that a 95 million dollar investment 1400 new seats is

070exciting for our district and overall it's going to be great for for the quality of our of our uh teaching and learning that we're going to be able to give our elementary students it's going to be great for capacity great for class sizes and we look forward to moving forward with this with uh with your support now I'd open it for discussion I just want to thank you Mike for the work you put into this it's been very thorough and I appreciate mostly the input that our community and our parents have been able to to have if they wanted to and um it's very thorough I know nothing will ever be perfect we live in a very strangely shaped District that covers lots and lots of Miles um but I think it's it's incredibly thoughtful

071and I truly appreciate all the work you've done thank you thank you my this may be a little bit off the subject but in terms of the the transfers the inner District transfers um how's that going to impact is there something that we're going to have to address policy wise or how are we going to move forward with that in terms of the the transfers yeah historically the district particularly with elementary students the district has been open to easing the transition for those that that are have the biggest concerns about making that and so we would come with a administrative recommendations Communications to our community on what that process may look like typically you uh you would take what we've done in the past is take some of your students that have been on campus

072for the longest amount of time and allow those families an opportunity to stay as a transfer student for that first first and second years if we choose to go that route so that that's that's kind of the plan now the The Good the good news is at the early end of the forecasting we have ample capacity at the campuses as the growth catches up so it will not uh should not impact in a very uh substantial way towards the the capacity and and operations of that school if some students did ask to stay so we would evaluate those through our student services department generally we would expect them to follow and meet the same criteria that other transfer students would have meaning that that that's where the board policy FDB local since this would be

073intra District transfers would come into play and they would have to meet that five or six prong criteria that transfer students have to have to follow so typically uh typically uh good behavior good attendance uh provide their own transportation some of those sorts of things um thank you for all the work on this I I mean I was very happy to see you know this is a a assimilation of I think all three of the plans right I think when I personally looked at the three plans like there were things about each of them that I didn't necessarily like but this really looks like it kind of took the best of you know what we came up with or what was proposed from the north and kind of you know did it that way and

074what was the best of sort of what the options were and the feedback in the South and really made it look look this way so this is really a I guess an assimilation of all those plans to try to take the best out of all of it so this is this is tough um you know I had some great conversations around this at one of the listening sessions um and uh and particularly around some Transportation concerns and it looks like those Transportation concerns have been addressed here as well um I guess just to address one public comment um did we take a look do you know the neighborhood that Mr Fournier was referring to and did we take a look at that and we did we looked at that we looked at the uh the

075neighborhood that's going to the 584 homes that are going to go in across from across from Lake Belton High School met with the city of Temple planners and and really tried to look through each aspect of it it's kind of a trade-off I mean there was a couple of a couple of neighborhoods in the north and a couple of neighborhoods in the South we could move them to a different school but it would create a similar scenario in the other schools so we we do feel like that we are going to be uh pretty sound for five to six years and then at that point if we uh if we have to look at things we can look at things again but do feel like that we've got a plan that's going to give us

076the the capacity to not have to look to Portables not have to look to expanding class sizes in certain campuses and not the all the strains that go so we did look at that we looked at some Futures looked at some currents looked at current kids that are that are in some of the developing neighborhoods and tried to come up with the the best plan to address the growth and and to minimize the family impacts as much as we could and the last comment I really appreciate the way that you laid out the Middle School piece of this right and I think the way that it preserves for the most part um you know I think those Middle School promotion groups so um that was that was key so thank you so much so we

077ran some we ran some projections on the middle schools if we were to just say take in any of these scenarios or even our current middle or current Elementary and if we just went to Pure feeders some of the imbalance that we felt like and I think it was just interesting that by um by we would have three elementary schools well over uh we had some imbalance too where you would have you know 960 at one campus and 700 at the other and some of those sorts of things so it really was to minimize the feeders and the split feeders as much as we could but also try to maintain that balance so our middle school kids can have the best experience they can not be overcrowded so I do appreciate that I mean I

078as part of the last time we did a tennis boundary adjustment um you know we did end up uh we did in fact end up impacted right so I had a sixth grader who started it North and then moved to Lake so I understand it very much appreciate like what that means to like have to move you know a school and I think you know the way you did that from a middle school standpoint very thoughtful so thank you just a couple of comments I just want to Echo the sentiment again of just thinking you and your team for doing this I I have trusted the process all along because we trust you all and I think it I think what Janet said it was very thoughtful and very consistent in your focus all along

079all the way through I feel like every decision that has been made along the way can be accounted for whether it was because of a parameter that we're focusing on or whether it was input from the community or um from the long range facili the Planning Group I feel like every decision made there's you can be you're accountable to that there was reasoning behind that and so I appreciate that and I loved that you that we have the ability or the opportunity for families over the next several months and encourage them to go tour their new campus that they're going to potentially attend I think that's such a great idea because changes can be scary sometimes and so um I think that's a great idea I would I hope that lots of families take advantage

080of that and get them excited about the change because change can also be really good too so thank you and I'll say this that with with over a thousand parents providing some sort of input to us and probably I would say somewhere between 110 and 130 community members parents on our committees and things uh provided input I was happy to help facilitate this conversation but it has been a a wide conversation that's had lots of voices in it in it now I would like to thank uh some of the last feedback we got other than through our demographer was one last meeting with our transportation department just to make sure that our final uh we weren't going to create some inefficiencies and some things that wouldn't be good for kids and families in the long

081run and so that team particularly but but all of the hundreds plus people that have weighed in on this have been working on it for the last seven months and then our our parents and community members that weighed in as well so yeah Mike I'm going to ask you a couple questions just so we hit the highlights real quickly and so that we summarize well what year did these attendance boundary changes take effect uh they will take effect for the 24-25 school year although we do believe that it we will have a building ready to go at Burrell next spring and we would like to move some of those uh the Burrell students that are currently at Tarver there and do it well and do it right and if we if we can't come up

082with a plan to do that we don't need to do that but we're going to uh and and be able to give Tarver some of the relief that was really one of the reasons we passed this bond to begin with and so there will be targeted communication I'm assuming from Tarver Elementary and Burrell Elementary next year as that date approaches on that move yes great we will start the initial conversations very quickly and then more information will be given throughout the spring Mike the next part is on transfers in the transfer piece we would work through this it's not like parents that are in a certain area and want to request a transfer it's not like they have to fill out a transfer form tonight because the attendance boundaries take effect the next year is

083that correct that's right we've already closed the window for 2023-24 transfers but we will open that that back up again next February and that would be the time that parents that want to transfer for the new attendance boundaries would do so and so if parents have concerns about that right now after this is passed and stuff they can start talking to your department I assume about those concerns and how to move forward we will get some information website and we'll make sure that's included in the community correspondence that goes out as well I just want to applaud Mike and his team I believe and if I'm mistaken Mike please correct me sixteen thousand plus emails were sent out to community members with a video in both English and Spanish I believe and from there we

084received over 200 comments and suggestions on the various scenarios and approximately I think 30 people showed up for the in-person meeting am I close on that one and then not only did they hear that feedback but they took that feedback and used that feedbook for the feedback for this final presentation the last thing that I'll note is in regards to the public comment made earlier I agreed Lakewood Elementary's uh population is of concern for us after you get more than five years out the one thing that I would want to make sure our community knows and understands and that we constantly say is that we will not guarantee five years plus of attendance boundaries because we know in a fast growth School District new developments happen all the time new developments have happened since our

085last demographer report and in order for us to be able to respond we can't make promises Beyond a number of years and so we will do our best to minimize impact on families and transitions but we hold that concern that that public commenter has absolutely I'm concerned about that moving forward as well and it may be that in four years we're coming back to you all talking about attendance boundaries as we see the new populations shake out in that area so we will keep you updated we share that same concern that our public commenter had and we will make sure that we do our best to address that moving forward all right board do we have any other questions right now no sorry about that do we have a motion to approve the proposed attendance

086boundaries for the elementary school as presented Miss Bass Miss Lee all in favor that passes unanimously thank you very much thank you very much okay next on our report or next on our agenda are reports uh start Dr Smith our first report that we have tonight is Amy Armstrong is going to come on up and give us an overview of changes to the star assessment for the 22-23 school year Amy is the director in our teaching and learning Department she'll walk us through those changes that our students are experiencing across the state of Texas this year good evening Amy real quick I think board you can still keep clicking down and you still should be able to get to the star report here if you haven't gotten to it already so thank you Amy yeah

087of the report tonight is to share significant changes that have been made to star in EOC testing you may hear this referred to as star 2.0 which is really the redesign that is happening so the reason for the changes is to more closely align with how students learn and how questions are asked of them in the classroom it is important to note that it is a tea expectation that all students test online there will be new Testa question types that account for at least 25 of the test they may include things such as text entry graphing multi-selection drag and drop and written response we will also see an increase in Reading passages that are connected to content standards sorry about that from other subject areas however they will still only be assessed on the reading

088standards for those passages in the past we have seen students take stand-alone writing tests in fourth and seventh grade we will no longer have those assessments now we will see that writing expectations are embedded within reading assessments students will be asked to provide evidence from the text to support their answers and then additionally online testing allows for a variety of tools and accommodations that are that are remain consistent and specific for students some tools are available to all and others such as content language supports text-to-speech and large print can be assigned individually to students who qualify so I wanted to show you a few examples of what this might look like for students this spring this is a fifth grade example um you can see that there are a number in symbol buttons for students

089to enter responses into the boxes at the top left of the page you will notice navigation buttons for students to move from question to question students can move forward or backward and the system will tell them if they're trying to move forward and they've forgotten to answer in the upper right hand corner you will see icons for available tools and accommodations depending on what test it is for students this is an example of 8th grade reading you will notice this is an example of science content within the reading passage if you I know you probably can see it on your screen now if you look at the question you will notice that the content the science content is not assessed it is the ELA expectation that is assessed again you will see navigation buttons in

090the top left top right you will see tools just under the top right where it's green you'll see questions 12 13 14 15. all four of those questions are aligned to that passage students can move back and forth between those questions and the passage will remain on the left side for them to be able to see here's a biology EOC question and so students can use scratch paper but you can see that online tools and touch screen devices will be really important for questions such as this where students will need to work out their answers again tools and navigation buttons are there as well and the last example is from U.S history EOC and this is a multi-part question some of the new question types students can they can earn two points but if they

091just get partially right then they can also earn one point on those multi-part questions so in response to these changes we have taken some steps we've taken several steps to prepare our students many of our students have already taken star or EOC assessments online and all of our students have practiced with online platforms through learning tools and tea practice tools in preparing our teachers we have had a variety of opportunities to learn about changes question changes in the questions online tools and additionally teachers have become more Adept in using resources such as performance matters lead forward and interim assessments which all support the new Star question types one of the most valuable tools of the online testing is the available accommodations our administrators and special education facilitators are ensuring that appropriate supports are assigned based

092on individual student need and teachers are making these available to students throughout instruction so with this being a significant change this year teaching and learning has communicated this information to campuses through a variety of modalities Additionally the content coordinators have partnered closely with teachers and instructional coaches to support this and then finally we are very excited to announce Holly Moore and I will be having a parent session for Star redesign we're offering two different times and locations flyers and communication have gone out and we already have several registered do you have questions about that do you know if there's going to be some way not only for students to practice how to use this ahead of the test and navigate the system but also parents to be able to maybe sit down with their kids

093and show them how they'll be able to drag and drop and do all of that yes absolutely so and that is part of what we will discuss with parents during the meeting but we can put out public information about where to go tea has all of the online practice platforms and they're wide open for anybody to use and look at so we will definitely get some information out for the community to be able to play around with that and see those questions Amy have students already done that yes so please elaborate on that um interim assessment assessment line to exactly exact star two point s bring and then they have also used those online platforms through tea to look at the different accommodations use the different tools there's a ruler if you're if it's the

094right test and grade calculators are available so it takes a little bit of work to get used to those tools so we have had students playing with those tools additionally a really important piece of that is students who have text to speech or some of those content standards you can play around with the pacing of the voice and you can do it really low really high and so it's important for those kids to play with that and kind of get that out of their system before they actually take the test so yes they've had plenty of opportunities to to be in that system what about scratch paper is that a thing of the past no no no they can use scratch paper it does have to be turned in at the end of the test

095but that is also another strategy our teachers have used in using making sure that they use scratch paper because sometimes you know if you're on the computer it's very easy to click and so teachers have been really working with students about the importance of using that scratch paper so yes they will have that available okay I have a question uh you you mentioned that this is an expectation of tea so is there an option to opt out of this online so so yes I kind of wondered on how I wanted to present that because um if a student can't there's only like really special circumstances such as a student is Homebound and there's no internet there so that would be one exception where tea would say okay they can take it on paper however whoever's

096proctoring that test does have to still enter their information online so everything will still be graded online but there's only just like a couple specific situations where tea will allow paper and pencil good question that's a good question all right any other questions no okay thank you very much for the update all right you bet thank you next item on the agenda is the facilities committee report Mr turret well we did not have a meeting but we were able to go and tour Burrell Elementary and it was wonderful to see still in relatively early stages but to be able to kind of understand how they're moving through the project in stages and see uh you know the thoughtfulness that that our Huckabee folks have put into it uh and and and to be able to

097ask those questions but to see it at this phase we normally get on the campus much later in the process but to be at this stage was I think an interesting time to look at it but it was a great tour to see our communities support and our money in action these things once they get through all the the the red tape it moves and these guys are moving so it was uh awesome tour for us to be able to do that thank you very much next item this policy committee report we had a very short meeting um there were actually three policies that we discussed in our meeting two of those we've tabled and bring back to us I think at our next meeting right Dr Smith yes sir one of those dealt with

098uh administration of medication and the other dealt with uh use of District facilities by someone outside the district so we need to make some clarifications and I think I think Mike Morgan is going to bring that back to us the other one was the uh policy that was addressed you know during one of the comments that we heard today um which is a policy addressing Hunter education in other words if if we had a course that we taught hunting then there was a policy addressing that since we don't have that course than then the decision was made to delete that policy now there was a concern expressed about having some difficulty in bringing that policy back if if a course was offered in the future and just from my experience on this committee I don't

099think that would be very difficult to do I don't believe we actually need that policy to offer Hunter education in Belton ISD okay okay but if if we did if that were the case then it's not difficult to do that so right and I don't remember exactly what that policy said other than just remember that was being deleted because we don't have the course but just to clarify we don't need that policy in other words one is not dependent on the other right okay so that's that's an easy easy answer to that question uh the last thing that we discussed was um I think Mr Floor brought up a couple items that he wanted to discuss in the future for future agenda one was dealing with discipline and then we had some discussion about the

100instructional materials policy only because we had the meeting back in February we had a level three meeting that we had to utilize that policy and then after that meeting we had some discussion about hey we need to maybe make some changes to this make it better because that was the first time it was actually implemented and taken into action in terms of going all the way up to a level three of course that may change now with with house bill and I have a copy of it here hospital 900. um one of the things I want to comment about is that because it's in now in the legislature we've got a bill that addresses books I mean the fact that they're actually looking at that now tells you how complicated this issue is and they've

101they've put that on school boards to address that but now the legislature is taking it upon itself to to address that in a bill I I don't know what I think Dr Smith is going to talk about in a little bit and you've got a slide that you can show us there's been a lot of activity with respect a lot a lot of response to this bill um the one that I have here in front of me that may not be the one of course if it doesn't pass it doesn't pass but if it does pass Ed upon all the comments that have been directed at this bill that's probably going to be a quite different than what we have here in front of us but at least it's going to address some of the

102concerns that we've had just with our own policy and probably make our lives a little bit easier because now it's being forced Upon Us in terms of what the legislature is going to tell us what to do and what not to do as it relates to instructional materials so it will facilitate things in that regard so if anyone has has a complaint about it especially if this bill passes then they're going to need to talk to their legislature about it and not necessarily bring that to us we're doing the best we can with that and Doc Smith when you do give your report if you'll spend some time on on that and elaborate on that issue if you would uh Chris anything else that in terms of what you had brought up and just to

103clarify the the student discipline piece fit so I asked for an update on the implementation of the behavior framework and while it's not necessarily a policy um it seemed appropriate in the time and the conversation that we're having to be able to really bring to us a presentation about how that behavior framework is really coming to life all the way down to the individual classroom and So based on some anecdotal stories um you know that I've heard in classrooms you know I think what was sort of what their driving framework is maybe hasn't made it all the way down to the classroom and there's some teachers that are feeling stuck uh in some things where and it doesn't really compute with what I hear and what I know about the behavior framework right so there's

104a miscommunication somewhere in there it sounds like so so like I said I just asked for you know a little bit greater visibility into what does that look like how does that get implemented anything else on that you know the the other thing the other piece about this instructional material situation is that for us if we start looking at that again and try and make it better we would probably necessarily need to hold off on that because we don't know what's going to happen with with House Bill 900 because if we do something and then it's a little bit different than what the legislature wants to do we're going to have to change it again so we may have to just wait and see what the legislature does with House Bill 900 and then if

105we have some leeway in terms of a local policy then we address it at that point yeah I think from A administrative perspective we'd like to to continue to take your feedback and and move forward with some ideas and then see how legislation shakes out in the end and I'll go into some more detail on how spill 900 in a little bit but I do think that the we've got some good feedback from our policy committee on some next steps I think and I uh I think we can start making some ideas putting pen to paper on those ideas and then we can move forward I view it as a two-pronged piece here I believe that obviously if legislation passes that we support then that's a positive for us and then the second piece is

106is we always look internally and say well can we improve internally as well and so that internal piece for me I don't think is over yet we have some ideas on how to make it better because we want to make it better so we'll we'll keep plugging away at it and then we'll bring it to you all moving forward and we did talk about some specifics and some concerns that we had and and you know we all express our opinions on what we thought about that you wrote those down and then we decided we were going to talk about it later so yes we did we did discuss that as well and that's basically it anybody have questions no all right then I will hand it over to Dr Smith for the superintendents report I

107know you're excited but you can also click forward on the superintendent's report as well um the important piece that I mentioned last month that I want to make sure that I stress and know if you click fast it doesn't mean my talking goes faster uh that I that I really like to stress is our where we're going and I don't know that I'd done a good job consistently in our superintendent reports we're talking about where we're going just a quick reminder our strategic plan is based on Belton ISD goals you adopt goals annually as a Board of Trustees recently you adopted five goals again for us to work with they are broad overarching goals from there we develop strategies to implement and key progress measures to measure our progress on and so that was heavily

108influenced by a strategic plan that was created with community members over the course of a year in that slide is in there just to remind us of that process but ultimately as you all read the vision statement earlier in our tagline that we move forward with that idea of inspiring dreams and empowering Futures is really important to us in Belton ISD the pictures that you see on that slide show you our students in action you see our our athletes competing you see pieces of artwork now that that picture that has a dog in there looks like a picture but it's actually artwork created by a student you also see our students sharing their work reading together in our classrooms ultimately everything that we do on a regular basis no matter what goal it's in is

109in service to the experience that we want to see for kids we want to inspire their dreams meaning when they come in we want them excited for Learning and we know sometimes that's a stretch for particularly middle schoolers and high schoolers and so we got to get better in that area but we want them to be inspired for their learning and we want them to be able to feel empowered for the future that they're going to have after they leave our doors in Belton ISD that often means things like being aware of the options that they have for the future eligible to engage in those options and prepared academically socially and skill wise like in the Journey of a graduate competencies in order to engage with those things so that idea of aware eligible and

110prepared for a future in front of them is important to us in Belton ISD goal one engaging all stakeholders also serves that we believe wholeheartedly that by engaging Partnerships in our school district we have the ability to enrich the education of students in our school system on that slide you can see the strategies that our strategic plan committee and again that was over a hundred community members that were involved in developing that they had the ability to give us some ideas about how to move forward so what that looks like for us in Belton ISD if you take a look at the next slide under highlights how we've taken steps forward in that you know our faith-based leaders have been an important group for us we believe that engaging our faith-based community and supporting students

111in supporting our community makes sense for each and every student in our school system we had a principal for a day experience in our district that garnered a lot of positive media attention and it's about engaging our community and knowing and understanding the role of a campus-based administrator and then we had the opportunity to eat with them talk with them and and do a little debrief on that whole experience for us we've had Capital visits and Communications with our legislators that is another example of Engagement with our community in service toward the vision that you're trying to create with our board in with our in within our school district and finally that Hubbard Branch groundbreaking ceremony I felt like my speech at the beginning of that took about an hour and a half because I

112talked about all of the different Partnerships that are important for us to have an experience like a new building come to life for the sake of our students so this idea of creating Partnerships within a community in the strategies that we're upholding to do that are really based on ensuring that the community comes in as partners to improv appropriately enrich The Learning Experience for each and every student on the next slide we talk a little bit about world-class team of employees and I said last month I'd talk more about it this month and so if you skip to the slide on highlights on this I want to specifically highlight the recharge conference Vicki Dean led the planning effort for the recharge conference and did a great job I need you to know that we had

113almost 2 000 employees in the school district Under One Roof learning with and from each other on a day together in Belton ISD so some of the things that you see in front of you there you see Keith cook talking to a group of people who in some time in some circumstances have never experienced a professional learning experience where they're learning together side by side with teachers and staff members throughout our system whether it be our bus drivers our custodial workers or our maintenance department you see our teachers gathering together looking at data and analyzing next steps and so there was some self-paced work that was going going on there with a group of teachers and then you see that some of our Educators in our system learning from an expert in creating the playful

114classroom because we actually believe that Joy should be seen in every classroom in our school district why learning should be fun it is fun when we do it right so we want to make it fun for our students as well learning with your colleagues and from your colleagues we know is one of the best ways to improve a school system overall so again in an effort to create an environment where our students feel inspired and empowered these strategies that we have and that we're seeing come to fruition in our system all con contribute to the ability for us to see that stuff come to life on the next slide I have legislative update on there there are a few things that we're monitoring on a regular basis we're in um pretty much constant communication with

115our local representatives and our Senator and we I applaud our board for being advocates for Belton ISD and public education down at the Capitol on a few instances already this year and we constantly work to communicate those things as Manuel mentioned House Bill 900 is one that we wrote a letter of support from Belton isd's perspective on that one and I think again I'm going to lean back on a two-pronged approach we agree and we've said wholeheartedly in our communication with our community if there's inappropriate books on a library shelf we don't want them there and we said that back in last August when I sent communication up to the community but we also want to remove those books and do those things the right way so I applaud our board on working on a

116policy that helped address that it's not perfect we we noted that in our letter to our legislators and we're continuing to refine it and we will continue to refine it we will do our part as a school district to continue to make sure we're addressing this issue on the flip side of that the house bill 900 helps us as a school system in other districts across the state put a little bit of a burden on Publishers and book distribution companies that'll help us with this as well so if the state decides to have specific language in there about content that they don't want any Texas public school to have that legislation could help us with that and so we wrote a letter of support with our representatives and with our Senator that will be sent

117to our Senator as well so that they know just where we stand on that Manuel mentioned this earlier my belief is that legislation will changes through the process I don't know that the bill will look exactly like it looks in draft form and we'll continue to monitor it but I thought it was important for us as a school district to continue to support that other legislative updates that we continue to Monitor and that I'm in constant communication with honor issues that directly address fast growth schools we know that fast growth school districts have different and unique challenges in the state as opposed to other school districts House Bill 2 and the budget piece is one of those things that we know could impact fast growth schools pretty significantly we're working again today with our CFO

118and our financial advisor to ensure that we know and understand what proposed legislation would do and does to not only the school district but our local taxpayers as well and we will continue to monitor those things and also we're continuing to monitor things like curriculum bills that are out there and also other other bills that directly impact or directly align with the legislative priorities that the board has adopted back in October and so as an admin team we continually monitor those things and we'll keep communicating as appropriate from our board perspective even the superintendent perspective based on the legislative priorities that you adopted a couple other ones that we're watching is any accountability system updates and also any STAR testing updates as well and there is legislation that is filed out there in both of

119those I don't know if the board wants to ask any questions or make comments about legislative any legislative updates or I think yeah my last slide is discussion at the end so any questions comments discussion that you may have I start down here yeah quiet group you must have covered everything how about that all right okay the next item on the agenda is board request for new information annual reports one remembers right now is there any traditional no next item calendar of events have a busy few weeks coming up here pretty soon so look forward to seeing you all at those events and if you'll mark your calendars accordingly now we will be going into closed session the time is n't it no we have no other public comments on non-agenda items so the time

120is 807 and the board will go into closed session for consultation with attorney Texas government code section 551.071 Personnel Texas government code section 551.074 student disciplinary matter Texas government code section 551.082 and deliberations about real property Texas government code section 551.072 we are now going into closed session thank you time is 9 14 and we are now back in Open Session there being no further business this meeting is adjourned at 9 14.