001and they've got some pretty cool projects so come on down and check it out and yes and lake belton my bad so foreign me oh hello there [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] let's go [Applause] hey [Music] like james all right um [Music] guys [Music] okay [Music] [Applause] [Music] tommy's here uh [Applause] program [Applause] perfect [Applause] hi how are you hey [Applause] i [Music] for me [Music] [Applause] [Music] um [Music] hey okay [Applause] i randomly selected you all ready okay let's go all right let's do it i'm going to good evening everyone thank you for joining us hope you enjoyed our student showcase tonight by the belton ffa the time is 6 15 and the belton independent school district board of trustees is now convened in a regular board meeting monday august 22nd 2022 in
002the pittinger fine arts center located at north wall street in belton texas a quorum of board members is present meeting has been duly called notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with texas open meetings act texas government code chapter 551 i want to welcome the members of our audience to our live stream viewers or welcome members of our audience and our live stream viewers to this meeting as the belgian isd school board of trustees we are here to set goals listen to reports from the superintendent approve 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 management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and
003issues this is a meeting of the board of trustees held in public this 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 on listed on the notice this meeting is open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed 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 to adequately reflect the proceedings respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and cell phones are turned off in silent mode thank you for taking time to join us this evening and for your interest in belts and isd please rise
004for a moment of silent prayer or meditation okay please remain standing as our communication team introduces students from miller heights elementary that are here to lead us the pledge of allegiance and honor the texas flag i'd like to welcome logan adams and maddox orsag up here logan is going to lead us in the pledge of allegiance 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 and now maddox is going to lead us in the texas pledge under the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and indivisible i'm going to tell you just a little bit about logan and maddox logan's a third grader who describes himself as
005an athlete he loves to play sports and football is his favorite his favorite subject in school is science but he also loves video games and going camping and hunting with his grandpa and maddox is a fifth grader who is kind and empathetic toward others his favorite subject in school is math and he loves singing and learning how to play the piano he also loves running and playing tag with his friends thank you guys [Music] good job and thank you all very much the first item on the agenda is recognitions all right good evening board um hopefully you got to visit with our fantastic students up here for our showcase we had our belton ffa and as you know that we are very proud to have the fifth largest chapter in the state and last year
006we sent three teams to state and so we're very excited to see what's in store for this year and so with that we're going to transition onto our our individual awards and we have an ffa student miss laken easton if you please rise she goes to lake belton high school and she's a member of the ffa and she earned the lone star ffa degree which is the highest degree possible through the texas ffa so we are super proud of her accomplishments congratulations she was very impressive telling us about her flowers down there it was wonderful congratulations and of course as you all know we just started school and we could not start school without our amazing transportation department we have 155 members of our transportation staff and they're led by andrew forrester and vicki tubbs
007and they have just done a fantastic job getting our kids to school and they've been flexible and they're so wonderful to work with so let's give these guys a round of applause thank you and now it's my pleasure to tell you a little bit about the 2021 belton high school volleyball team they earned the distinction of being the 2022 this is a mouthful us marine corps american volleyball coaches association team academic award and they earned this because they were able to maintain a grade point average of a 3.3 on a 4.0 scale and this highlights their commitment to not only athletic excellence but also academic excellence and we are so proud of this team congratulations girls all right and finally we're going to honor a staff member miss elizabeth hausen of north belton middle school
008she is actually earning two distinctions she was named the gilder lerman institute of american history 2022 texas history teacher of the year and also she was named the 2022 betty berringer outstanding middle school teacher award we are so proud of her and her commitment to her students congratulations okay now i will give a few minutes here short break so that we can i'm assuming we're going to clear this stuff off tonight or do we want to leave it we're going to take it now i figured we would okay yeah we'll give y'all a few minutes to do that and then if anybody else wants to leave before we start the regular meeting [Music] so all right thank you [Applause] okay in accordance with revisions to bed local adopted by the board meeting december 13 2021
009we will now 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 public comments on agenda items forms have been provided and i have them here in order to comply with the texas open meetings 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 allotted three minutes for public comments regarding items on the agenda we have a timer on the screen that will show your allotted time a sound will occur at the conclusion the board should not tolerate disruption of the meeting by members of the public when i call your
010name please come to the podium and state your name city of residence for the record the first person is ladonna kelly and hilary hickland is on deck hello um thank you for giving me some time to speak with you tonight i found out this morning that oh first of all i'm i live in belton texas i have two kids in the school age that could be going to belton isd my oldest son went to school here at new tech the last two years i pulled him because of inappropriate things going on at school what i'm talking about tonight is an example of why i pulled him out of belton isd to put him into private school this morning while i was at work i was sent a text that had screenshots of what was going
011on in the belton middle school library i suppose that probably all of you have been aware of what's going on since this has gone viral on tick tock where the librarian was complaining that she was asked to take down sexually explicit books um that she is encouraging these children to read we're talking about sixth graders seventh graders and eighth graders if they read two of these explicit books she's promised to give them another book this is inappropriate i have read excerpts of one of these books which is called the lawn boy i don't think there's any children in here i'm going to read part of it you're probably going to want to stop me and i understand that because i don't want to read this in front of children but i think it's important that
012we see what's actually being read by our children while we are here although my children do not go to this school i have grandkids eventually that will probably go to this school and my kids grow up with kids who go to this school i'm part of this community and this breaks my heart that we're allowing this to occur so i got one minute again you're welcome to stop me because you're not going to want to hear what your children are reading there's one thing i'd never tell nick this is on page 13 of the long boy there's one thing i'd never tell nick in a million years not that it really matters in fourth grade at a church youth group meeting out in the bushes behind the parsonage i touched dick goebbel's dick and he
013touched mine in fact there were even some mouths involved this is not something i'd even think about all these years later except that goebbel is the hottest real estate agent in kitsap country his face is all over town signs billboards christ even the shopping carts do you know what i think about three times a day when i see his picture i wonder all these years later why he just kicked our friendship to the curb like that was it shame okay then on page 44 of the same book you can read that on your own thank you hillary [Applause] hillary hickland and lisa comprath is on deck good evening my name is hilary hickland i'm from belton i'm here to speak to the board regarding banned books week i'm a resident a mom and a concerned
014citizen i'm not a book burner but these are not public libraries this is our schools where parents are entrusting their children's impressionable hearts and minds and i'm finding that most people are unaware of this event banned books week is a campaign in our schools that promotes challenging challenged books these contain in part age inappropriate and sexually explicit content currently every secondary school in the district will participate in band books week september through 24th the event is advertised to students promoted and at times incentivized not all banned books are equal the heavy subject matter of lords of lord of the flies challenged in the 70s is not on the same scale as a sexually explicit content of beyond magenta a book that is currently on display in one of our school libraries serving 11 to 14
015year olds without materials having a shared academic or literary identity this event is a door for material that is harmful to our students the majority of these books have recommended ages established by the publishers that is beyond the ages of the students affected i provided the board members with graphics created by the american library association and also chart of books that are currently in our libraries on one graphic you can see the major reason for book challenges is sexually explicit content the other chart shows the source of challenges based on all public libraries um i can only imagine the section representing parents would be even greater if the statistics were based only on school libraries i've also pronoun provided you with the ala's list of the top 10 most challenged books of 2021 all but
016one are in here in bisd in our schools so why would we participate in this i imagine that the goal would be to raise the level of engagement with students and ideally increase literacy rates but are we has this campaign been effective how are we objectively measuring these efforts does that objective outweigh the inherent risks i have found no data indicating such my concern is that the event is actually working in direct contradiction to the culture we all hope to create in bisd which is collaboration between parents and educators for the benefit of students and ultimately the community in celebrating controversy we are sowing seeds of rebellion among our students and division between parents and educators we are sending mixed messages to our students when we provide literature promoting language and behavior that would result
017in just discipline it is all of our privilege and responsibility to do our part in nurturing the age-appropriate growth of our youth it is my recommendation that as a district we do not participate in band books week and remove these promotional displays immediately and entirely thank you thank you lisa compath and brandon hall on deck my name is lisa camprath i live in belton i have children in the middle school the elementary school and the high school i'm a mother i'm i've homeschooled my kids until recently and having no awareness of this regularly activity of banned book week it was brought to my attention recently and i am very very surprised and just saddened to see that the effects this could have prolonged in our community in our children it affects our minor children recently
018that library worker on tick-tock under the guise of the band book week promoted and incentivized this series of books containing sexually explicit content any such content typically should receive parental authorization and consent not just openly to their access this is unacceptable and really really frightening what kind of information are we not are we exposing our children to who are so vulnerable and so easily influenced during these vulnerable years and then some of the comments she had made really made me surprised to hear that despite the fact that a parent had voiced her concern that such information is inappropriate and should be pulled down she dismissed it saying that it's one parent when one parent's voice represents so many who are not able to come and represent and voice their concerns so one of the remedies
019i could see the policy committee hopefully taking action on is creating some kind of evaluation method to hopefully censor these inappropriate books before they go into circulation so that our children can have a better enriching education experience when they do go and grab a book from the library even if they didn't know what was in there they know that it is a safe educational informative and engaging book that they could learn from and gain value from instead of being exposed to something their sensitive minds are just not ready for so thank you very much i hope we can go forwards yes thank you brandon hall with brenda howard on deck all right can you all hear me you all know me on brandon hall i come here quite a bit um i live in belton
020this book is not inappropriate and i wanted to share this one with you the name of the book is called there's no such thing as a dragon by jack kent it's a phenomenal book about a boy who recognizes that there was a dragon in their house and it starts out very small the bomb doesn't want to believe that there are dragons so the dragon gets bigger and bigger and causes greater and greater problems in the house until the dragon literally takes the house up and moves it to where the mom finally had to recognize that this dragon was in the house and once it was recognized then the dragon became much smaller of course this is a it's this is an existential story about ignoring problems and unfortunately i believe that we as a community
021have ignored a problem for a very long time and i don't know why that is i don't know if it's out of fear i don't know if it's out of uh in action i'm not sure what it is but i didn't really even know that there was going to be a group here today that was um going to talk about books that are inappropriate i agree that there are a number of books that are sexually inappropriate that are in our schools but the one thing that concerns me is that a lot of parents concerns have gone ignored or unnoticed or a lack of action or perceived lack of action and i think that's probably from you know i know there's a group that many of you probably don't get along with and it starts with
022accountability and it ends with belton and i don't know why that is because everyone has the same goal we have parents we have stakeholders we have taxpayers we have members of the community that are interested in making this school better and it seems like there's a very antagonistic approach going on here and i don't know why that is because everyone has the same goal which is to make these schools better to protect these kids is to encourage the teachers is to support the staff and we want to support you but i think there's a lot of parents there's a lot of community members that are feeling left out and even their suggestions that they be removed or not even considered for certain committees because you may not like them or agree with them accountability is
023important because it makes us stronger it makes us step back and look and see if what we're doing is the right thing tai you and i we met um a couple months ago in the parking lot and we talked and we had a very good conversation it started out a little um heated and then it calmed down when we realized that we had a lot more in common than we disagree with and i think that you'll find that is the case with a lot of the people in groups that want to see change so i'm not sure what we're going to do or how best to do that i don't know if you're familiar with the the influence pyramid dr smith i'm sure that you're familiar with that i want to try and find a
024way that we can all work together and i don't know what that is but right now there's a lot of animosity and i want to encourage everybody to step back and look at what the ultimate goal is and so i'm available if any of you would like to reach out and talk i'm making myself available so that we can get past this whatever it is that's going on so we can actually get to some solid change so thank you for the extra five seconds and you all have a good evening thank you so much brenda howard and then and i apologize i'm gonna butcher this name i'll get the first one right boyd la cheminate there we go on deck good evening brenda howard belton texas as i listened to janet lay's comments last month
025and chris floor's concurrence and manual okozar's agreement i considered them thoughtfully the argument is that only a parent of a student currently enrolled in the school system could possibly have the best interest of students in their heart when considering the groups of people who could participate in the book review process it was suggested that district taxpayers and residents be removed from the class of people eligible to sit on a library or instructional book review committee this is plausible maybe these people do not have the student's best interest in mind placing that same criteria on other important groups in belton isd i thought that we should also apply the same criteria to the requirements of the class of people eligible to make the most important decisions for the entire school let's consider the school board trustees
026maybe the reason the school board trustees struggle to remove sexually inappropriate books from our schools is that they do not have currently registered students attending school at belton isd just maybe one does need to be a parent of a student currently enrolled to sit on the school board as a trustee it is definitely food for thought i am not implying that this is the case i'm simply simply considering the ramifications of removing a stakeholder class from participating in the process of providing input in the school district in which they live and support once that line is crossed in one area of policy i suspect that there will be a cascading effect of policy changes that would be less than ideal i highly recommend the school board trustees on the policy committee revisit the thought process
027and see if they really want to play this out in a future school board election the idea of the entire school board of trustees being ineligible to run for school board sans aaron bass does appeal to me on a level however it is still wrong i recommend that this decision by the policy committee be reconsidered i have purchased all boys aren't blue so that each of you can read the book and decide for yourself whether the incest sexual abuse and sexually explicit anal sex is worth the rest of the story thank you thank you boyle the chimnet okay and uh trisha richner you're on deck i want to thank you for the opportunity to voice my opinion to y'all and um several weeks ago i was in a meeting of some local people here and
028some books were handed to us from a library and i looked inside of these books and they were actually drawn pictures of men and women men and men women and women you get the picture of what i'm saying and i would i could have picked myself up off the floor when i saw what these pictures were demonstrated and they were removing them from the teenage side of the library to the young people i didn't understand that until i realized teenagers don't want a thing to do with this kind of stuff but these little minds my grandchildren and our children you can program them any way you want to when you have them eight hours a day and i tried to explain to a friend of mine an adult exactly what i saw in these pictures
029and i didn't have the words they weren't inside of this heart of mine to explain what i saw on those pages that were trying to put in front of these little children and i was devastated and behind me is a unified parents grandparents and the such and i'm telling you i have nothing to lose except to fight for my grandchildren and i will fight for them and i'm telling you when we become unified you will see our faces during the voting voting in and voting out and that's where we aim to make a change because i was here last year talking about these same things and it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that we need to move on these i don't want my grandchildren to be exposed to those when they crawl up
030on my knee with them blue eyes look into it and say peapod what does this mean what am i going to tell him when i don't even have an explanation for it this ideology this marxism you can call it whatever you want to but we are going to take it out of our schools i declare that and as far as i know maybe every one of you have the same idea and i know you're under pressure but you need to be bold you need to stand up and you need to listen that you are trustees and we want to trust those that are up there to do what we are asking you to do they're our children we're not going to give up the fight for them so i appreciate you make a move on
031this and a quick move be bold and do what needs to be done because we don't want them to be injured thank you i have a trisha richtner with janet brown on deck it's richner my name is trisha richner and i live in temple i bet y'all hoped that this issue would fizzle out and that we'd all just go away but our commitment has only gained momentum one year ago this month it was brought to this board's attention that there are books with inappropriate sexual content in our school libraries these posters show why parents think this is inappropriate for school we parents have followed all the tedious processes and procedures for challenging books but nothing has changed we have attempted to work with this board to get policies that prevent access to this kind of
032material in schools there is simply no context where sexual relations among children is appropriate genderqueer is one of the most challenged books of 2021 let me tell you why it's a graphic novel which means there's photos that go along with the text some of the illustrations consist of a minor giving oral sex to another minor descriptions of masturbation while driving two men engaged in naked hip thrusting and a brother penetrating his sister with his finger and then closely examining the vagina slime genderqueer is recommended for ages 18 and up and was included on the banned books challenge display that has already been brought up that display again encourages and rewards students for reading banned books again for eight for ages 11 to 13. the texas education agency i'm sorry association states that quote library materials
033must be appropriate for students the texas penal code describes harmful material in part as material that is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community no library material shall be used if it contains content that can meet the harmful material standard it is the community that decides what type of content is obscene or inappropriate and these books certainly do not represent the big right values i know again the tea states quote the legal responsibility for the purchase of all library materials is vested in the board please uphold your duties board members and also as members of this community there is no literary or artistic merit in graphically describing sexual conduct involving children there is no context where sexual relations among children is appropriate thank you janet brown good evening my name is janet brown
034i'm a resident of the city of morgan's point resort during the august first policy meeting the book review topic was discussed again how hard is it to protect children as committee members seek to silence commit community voices on this issue instead of solving the problem of sexually inappropriate and explicit books in our taxpayer-funded public school libraries putting age-appropriate limits on library books and curriculum for kids in schools should not be controversial and the district's review process should be perceived as a common sense response and action you and heard mike moratz the commissioner of education of texas education agency on march 11 2022 say so the ultimate decision for the instructional material exposed to students in the classrooms or the library materials that are purchased those materials that are purchased he repeated those are ultimately the
035purview decisions of the school board that is you ladies and gentlemen they make the decision as to the standards and procedures that are adopted in their local context and in their local communities you have each received a copy of the book milk and honey this book was in lake belton high school okay it was pulled it was unrated it was published in 2014 it started making its climb by 2017. it was number one new york times bestseller milk and honey is a collection of poetry and prose about survival about the experience of violence abuse love loss and from femininity that's the review that was given to it however this is the truth about it i've read the book i invite you to do that also too it contains depictions of incest this is the first
036chapter incest rape familial abuse and descriptive sexual acts there are also pictures to go along with that the very thought of you has my legs spread apart like an easel with a canvas begging for art you plow into me with two fingers and i am mostly shocked this is when she's talking with her father these are just a few examples of excerpts from the first chapter of this book this is erotica ladies and gentlemen so belton isd board of trustees why do you feel children should have access to sexually explicit and inappropriate reading material this book of poetry is grooming and harmful to children with no educational value and should not be available in a public school library full of minors and they are under the age of 18. please act and remove these books
037so children are protected this is your job thank you [Applause] thank you all for the public comments i want to address a couple of quick things so i don't want there to be any confusion so agenda items are recognized right now under public comments i have because some of you didn't get your names called two individuals that will be non-agenda they are at the end of the meeting just didn't want you to think that you were looked over it's a fair and statler stalter sorry and a keith gilbertson those are non-agenda items they'll be handled and then another one a gregory scott daniel your public comments will come during the during the public hearing on the budget so just wanted to clarify that so nobody felt like they weren't called or they were done just
038the order in which things are handled thank you next on the agenda is vision statement dr smith good evening trustees thanks for being here tonight our vision statement is we adopted in june excuse me july of 2021 empower each and every learner to pursue their dreams and enrich their communities is the direction the the compass that we use to talk about the work in belton isd tonight we bring this to you just like we brought to you all of the values and beliefs that we've talked about over a series of months and ask you to weigh in on the vision statement and thoughts about what it means to you so i'll turn it over to our board for any comments on that there's many things that i like about the vision statement but i think
039what comes to my mind the most is that our vision statement is supported by our district goals and key pros key progress measures it's supported by our journey of graduate competencies um what else about our values and beliefs and i think there's another one but we're able to hit our vision because of like you said it's a compass but we're we have other things in place that help guide that work as well and just the alignment of it all they just align so well together and the vision just kind of is at the the forefront of all of it but it's supported by all of of those things that we're working on daily monthly yearly so mr floor yeah when i look at this right it empower each and every learner to pursue their dreams
040right it doesn't matter what a kid looks like where a kid comes from what their prior activities are good bad or ugly right what we're trying to do here is create an environment where each one of those kids can find their passion can find something that they're potentially really good at that they want to do for the rest of their lives right um find the diamonds in the rough right and polish them to shine as brightly as they can right empower each and every learner to pursue their dreams right any kid that comes into belton isd should be able to go by the time they're done in any direction their heart followed their their heart pulls them um and to enrich their communities right and so to take that dream and to better society because
041of it right and so um it's one sentence short sweet to the point but i think there's so much power in what that should mean to our students what that does mean to our students and and how that shapes the direction that we are trying to take from a mission vision policy journey standpoint um i don't know i love it means a lot well thank you board as we continue to have these conversations on values beliefs and vision we'll bring another one back to you next month next item on the agenda uh first is action items first action item consider discuss take appropriate action regarding the employment of administrative employees dr smith we're excited to have todd schiller come tonight to uh give you an update and welcome potentially another administrative member to our team
042good evening we have one recommendation for you tonight it's william jungle william has a master's degree in educational administration from concordia university a bachelor's degree in mathematics from baylor university and has 10 years of her completed 10 years of education experience in his 11th year and comes to us from waco isd do we have a motion to approve the recommendation and the addition of personnel as presented ms lee mr taggart all right all in favor all right awesome and i'll have him go over there and we'll do pictures yep let's go do a picture thank y'all [Applause] [Music] okay next item the public hearing regarding the 2022-23 budget and proposed tax rate [Music] so board i'm excited to have melissa lafferty our chief financial officer in belton isd come forward tonight she'll go through a
043presentation with you and then we have a public hearing and a few action items after that melissa all right good evening tonight we're here to hold a public hearing and to discuss the 2022-23 proposed budget and tax rate for adoption so back in february we began the budget process and that takes a series of months and a lot of refining as you go through the process but the board approved our original budget assumptions with our demographer projecting 800 new students next year we also assumed a six percent increase in property values and we were well below what they actually came in at they're actually increasing closer to 21 actually 20.7 percent the board also back in june approved as things began to refine a 2 raise for administrators a four percent for the professional and
044teaching staff and six percent for our paraprofessionals in auxiliary with increased students means an increase in teachers so we also added another four and a half million dollars in additional ftes employee benefits are remaining flat at four hundred dollars per month and then as property values increase we're seeing that tax rates are decreasing so this slide here is a visual of the enrollment and the attendance over time and you can see that up until about 2020 the black line is enrollment and then the red line is the attendance and you can see that they strongly correlated up until about 2020 and that's the impact of covet on our on our attendance as it relates to our funding net taxable values are also increasing and we can see in the 2023 that the state attempt their
045attempt to ease the taxpayer burden by increasing the homestead exemption by 15 000. so had that not passed we would have seen a 23.2 percent increase in net taxable values which is basically were a two and a half percent increase over that 20.7 percent increase now it's important to note that we do not appraise property values the appraisal district does that for us and they are statutorily required to appraise values at market value so with that increase in net taxable values tax collections increase as well now belton isd does not receive additional funding as it relates to those additional tax collections and as you can see from this graph that had the values increased at six percent the tax collections would have been seven million dollars less than what they're actually coming in at at
046the 20.7 percent increase in value so with that being said what you can see that shift because our funding is tied to the state funding formulas and we're paid on a per student allotment of six thousand one hundred and sixty per student in attendance so as tax collections increase the bur this burden to the state decreases because our state funding encompasses both our tech local tax collections and the state funding now if we were a property wealthy district our tax collections that red would extend beyond our allotted revenue of 127 million that's basically the total bar at the different property values if you're a recapture district or property wealthy that would extend past that bar and then whatever extends past your of revenue you would be paying back to the state all right so general
047fund as illustrated on this slide the state funding and the local tax collections are our primary sources of revenue basically we're seeing a four percent increase over last year in our state and local revenues is going to be coming in at about 52.628 million and then state revenue is at 82.415 million and then you can see there by the pie chart that state revenue is basically 60 of our funding and then we have additional federal revenues in the form of shars and mac and char stands for school health and related services and that's for the medicaid eligible students that we provide services to and we're reimbursed for that so federal revenue is at 2.5 million for total revenues of 137.543 million general fund expenditures most of our expenditures is salary and benefits at 85 percent
048and then campus and operating budgets make up the remaining 15 percent our expenditures are increasing 3 percent over last year so the general fund budget proposed for adoption tonight is assuming that 100 of all positions are being filled for the entire year and this just does not happen so that's 100 percent field positions every day in the classroom and but that does not happen we do have vacancy factors so total revenues are coming in at 137.5 million total expenditures of 141.7 million for a deficit budget of 4.2 million dollars now this deficit is 3 percent of our budgeted expenditures more than likely we will not realize the entire deficit due to that vacancy factor when it's all said and done this our fund balance is healthy enough that if we were to realize the entire
0494.2 million dollar deficit we would be sitting at around 23.6 percent of budgeted expenditures in our fund balance our ce local we would be in compliance with ce local because our ce local we try to remain within 20 to 25 percent of those budgeted expenditures the school nutrition budget is coming in at a balanced budget of 8.5 million for revenues and expenditures and we're going to be from last year we're seeing a shift from federal to local as all of the students are no longer eligible to get free reduced mills so we'll be seeing an increase in that local funding on the school nutrition budget but again they have a balanced budget that we'll we're asking you to propo adopt tonight and finally the debt service fund is proposing a deficit budget of 1.4 million
050dollars with local tax collections primarily making up the revenues at 22 almost 22.3 million dollars and total expenditures of 23.6 now for the 2022 fiscal year we're anticipating that about 2 million dollars surplus will be hitting the fund balance in the debt service fund and then for next year we'll be going deficit now you got to remember that the 2022 22 school building bonds debt service was structured so that we would dip into fund balance that first year of those debt service payments so that was intentional so a healthy fund balance is a good thing for the debt service fund and it gives us debt capacity that helps us manage our budget as we go into the future and also pay down future debt so the thing with bonds is we can't it's not like
051a car loan where you can pay off sooner whenever you decide to pay it off you have to wait for your bonds to become callable and by having that healthy fund balance it allows us in february of 2024 and 2025 is when we will have bonds that will become callable and then we can begin to pay down that debt or restructure and this is always an interesting slide to look at if you were to take the general fund the debt service fund and the school nutrition fund this is how a tax dollar funds a student i always like to show this just to show you where the money is going if you were to draw a line under the extracurricular activities about 64 percent or 64 cents directly impact students educational experience and then of
052course there's the transportation and breakfast and lunch and devices and then your regular operations alright and this is basically house bill 3's impact on belton isd's tax rate over the past four years and you can see that that tax compression is compressing that tax rate down to um to about 12.8 cents the m o rate from 1920 has decreased 12.5 percent or 12.54 cents and the ins rate is decreasing 0.26 in this current proposed tax rate for a total of 12.8 cents so tonight we will be proposing an mmo tax rate of 94.29 which is a decrease of 1.74 cents to the mno rate from last year and then an ins rate of 39.42 basically a 0.26 decrease in the ins rate for a total tax rate of 1.1 33.71 for a decrease of two
053pennies overall to the total tax rate and tonight when we get ready to adopt our tax rate there's going to be some motion language that is statutorily required and must say that the tax rate is increasing although we just saw on the previous slide that our tax rate is decreasing and this is because the proposed m o rate that we're proposing tonight is greater than the no new revenue rate which is a rate that is calculated in the truth and taxation calculation by the state comptroller and that no new revenue rate is basically the rate that would produce the same amount of taxes if you apply the same properties if you tax the same properties in both last year and next year and that would basically be the rate to give you the same amount
054of of revenue and we're ready for the public hearing excuse me now hold a public hearing regarding the 2022-23 budget proposed tax rates i do have when i call your name please come to the podium state your name city of residence for the record i have gregory scott daniel gregory daniel belton texas it's important we understand where tax money comes from in this bi bisd budget discussion belton is a bedroom community the lion's share of tax revenue comes from homes compared to other towns and compared to other towns a larger portion of our community are military veterans or age 65. school taxes for this segment of taxpayers are frozen therefore taxes for everyone else are slightly higher 52 percent of homes in belton are rentals these homes are not protected from higher taxes with a
055homestead exemption higher taxes are passed on to the renter from their landlord this dynamic creates an unfair tax burden on poor and elderly who rent we cannot forget a vote of 2844 to 2008.03 in the may 7th election is not a mandate to spend taxpayer money in this budget discussion for every line every item we must ask is it nice or is it necessary we owe it to citizens to be physically responsible the school slogan no tax rate increase left the impression taxes would not be raised a rate of 1.22 would generate just as much tax revenue as last year and that's what many thought they would get with the bond proposal i identified two checks on the school's bank ledger that fall under the budget heading instruction for a total of twenty eight thousand
056one ninety four point fifty nine that was paid to brian pop llc do you have crt in the bisd curriculum administration says no then why did you pay twenty eight thousand one hundred ninety four to brian pop which is a company that specializes in crt curriculum eliminate that cost be true to what you advertise to citizens i identified six checks on the school's ledger for a total of 77 556 that was paid to linux industry this that falls under the heading operations this money was used to replace air conditioner equipment an entire elementary school is being replaced in bisd school district not because it's the oldest school but because this school was not properly maintained because of bloated administration pay 85 percent of the mno budget is spent on pay and benefits which leaves only
05715 percent for maintenance maintain every school and eliminate these unnecessary and frivolous replacement costs the replacement cost for now many schools about 14 million dollars for a 52 000 square foot facility i want to ask that you increase maintenance on the mno heading from 15 to 25 percent reduce administration payroll by moving some of the admin to teacher positions to backfill those openings she just mentioned eliminate any payouts to anything that is crt curriculum these ideas will postpone the replacement the cost of a new elementary school reduce the likelihood of replacing major equipment and it will deliver 1.22 per 100 rate for deserving belton citizens thank you at this time we'll close a public hearing move on to other action items action consider discuss take appropriate action regarding the adoption of the budget for the
058accelerated instruction for the 2022-23 school year sorry for me all right so the texas education code requires that school districts provide accelerated instruction to those students who fail to perform satisfactorily on assessment instruments it also requires districts to separately budget funds for that very purpose these funds are budgeted specifically for accelerated instruction and are part of our compensatory education funds in the amount of three hundred ninety thousand and forty eight dollars we're asking you to basically adopt our accelerated instruction budget for the 22-23 school year all right any questions board if not do i have a motion mr taggart mr floor all in favor sorry hold on do we have a motion to approve the adoption of state compensatory education funds budgeted for the accelerated instructions for the 2022-23 school year as presented mr taggart
059mr floor all in favor all right that passes thank you next is consider discuss take appropriate action regarding adoption of the budget for the 2022-23 school year right so we have pretty much went through uh the proposed budgets with the general fund having 137.5 million in revenues total expenditures of one hundred forty one point almost eight million for a deficit budget of four million two hundred thirteen thousand and six hundred and sixty six dollars school nutrition budget being balanced at 8.5 million dollars in revenue and expenditures and then the debt service fund at 22.264 million in revenues and exp debt service expenditures of 23.6 million dollars for a deficit budget of 1.368 million okay any questions okay do we have a motion to approve the adoption of the 2022-23 fiscal year budgets for the general
060operating school nutrition and debt service funds as presented mr alkozer miss bass all those in favor all right that passes thank you very much next is consider discuss take appropriate action regarding an ordinance adopting the tax rate for the 2022-23 school year all right this evening we are proposing a maintenance and operations tax rate of 94.29 and an ins tax rate of 39.42 for a total tax rate of 1.33.71 cents whoever's got the clicker can we go back to the slide because i think it's important that we show this slide because of the language the one that shows i think starting back in the year 2020 there we go i just think this is important for the board and we know because we've done this but to have a good look at this and i
061want the public to be able to see this because for some reason the state of texas in the language that they tell us i'm going to have to say that we are going to be raising taxes as you can see um since 2019 the tax rate has gone down and it's going down again this year so when we come to the next step then we're just saying it i always like to point this out as did my predecessor and the predecessor before that has always pointed out state says that we're going to say the tax rate has to be increased but as you can see even with aggie math the number is actually less so i just wanted to put that up there for everybody to see so that you could understand it on that
062do we have a motion that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 1.3371 which is effectively a 19.7 percent increase in the tax rate do we have a motion miss lee mr floor all right all those in favor all right mr tiger no okay in favor all right that passes consider okay yes go ahead i do want to say that five years ago getting on the board these numbers are intimidating to take in and i think you've done an excellent job since you've been on here of spending extra time with some of us to make sure that we understand where we are where we've been where we're heading i think i want to commend you and your team on allowing us i know we're not having a lot
063of discussion but there's been a lot of discussion or a lot of learning since you've been here and i think you're doing an outstanding job on preparing us to be able to understand this because the state makes this stuff really really really hard to get a grasp on especially the way they word things in the process so i do want to commend you melissa on what you've done and your team and thank you all very much thank you i appreciate that thank you next consider and discuss take appropriate action regarding tasby insurance renewal dr smith we're going to just leave it to melissa again she's right up there and she'll take us through it all right so last month we brought you the tasby insurance renewal and we basically we're seeing a 12.7 percent increase
064over last year in our premiums and on average school districts across the state are experiencing rate increases that are ranging between 10 and 28 percent and they're also seeing deductible increases in the property casualty area of wind hail and freeze damage and it's kind of depending on their individual loss histories based on those market conditions we felt like the tasbee risk management fund fund is being fair in its offer to the school district they have done an excellent job for us over the last several years and through winter storm uri got us through those claims and so we're going to continue the recommendation to renew a tasby risk management fund on those on that but also i wanted to let you know that back in march of 28 of this year the board approved an
065interlocal agreement with tasby risk management fund and this management fits within the scope of chapter 791 of the government code and satisfies the requirement of seeking competitive bids as noted in the education code chapter 44. so we are continuing with our recommendation okay thank you do we have a motion to approve the tasby insurance coverage for the 2022-23 fiscal year as presented oh i'm sorry ms bass i know we've had lots of discussions about budgeting and um and especially this as well but can you just i think for clarifica clarification for myself and even for our public can you explain what an interlocal agreement is because i think that's important to for people to understand an interlocal agreement is a lot like a purchasing co-op and so you are going into a cooperative agreement with
066other districts across the state so we're not doing business specifically with tasby the tasby risk management fund is a separate fund that's made up of multiple districts across the state that go in and share the same risk and try to find savings on their insurance needs thank you good question good clarification there that in our local agreements again the words we throw around that so with that being said do we have a motion to approve the tasby insurance coverage renewal miss mcdonald mr taggart all in favor all right that passes thank you [Applause] next consider discuss take appropriate action regarding the appointment of the citizens bond oversight committee dr smith mr morgan is on his way up and he's got numerous items to talk to you all about tonight uh and this is one of
067them to get us kicked off the the bond oversight committee uh mr president board of trustees it's my pleasure to be here tonight my first item that i'd like to bring to you is kind of a follow-up from our june 2020 in june we brought to you a charter for commissioning of a citizens bond oversight committee in that charter was outlined the purpose of the committee and the process we would go through to have the inaugural uh the inaugural group of committee members tonight i bring to you a request that we approve the appointment of the citizens bond oversight committee the purpose of the committee is to review bond project project progress expenditures and schedules throughout implementation um and this will kind of be in conjunction with our our bond website where we will also
068be making all this material available do we have a motion to approve the appointment of the citizens bond oversight committee as presented miss bass mr floor all those in favor all right thank you thank you i believe well let's see consider to take appropriate action regarding the naming delicate to the alternate and alternate to the 2022 tasby delicate assembly wow that was a lot i apologize i i had it in my head that mike was up there for quite some time so bored every year when it comes to uh appointing a tasby delegate you know this person represents belton isd in working with tasby at the delegate assembly in the fall and this is one of the duties of the board to appoint a tasby delegate if you so choose and so i turn it
069over to you all for that discussion tonight okay uh this last year i believe our delegates would have been mr floor and the alternate would have been last year was it manual it was okay well open this up who wants to be the delegate this year well i propose that we um nominate miss erin as our delegate and chris as the alternates recommendation for miss bass and then for mr floor it's the alternate i don't see if if they hold but they'll want they won't they won't okay uh floor's open for discussion if not we have a motion to appoint a delegate and an alternate do we have a second for that motion oh ty has seconded that motion okay all in favor of miss bass being a delicate and mr floor being the alternate
070all right that passes look at that got voluntold right there okay consider discuss take appropriate action regarding the selection of architectural firm for the belton high school additions and renovation bond project once again thank you i'm back with several more items on the agenda so i'm very pleased to bring this to you and so for these next three action items i would like to give just a general description instead of going into detail for each one so we um as part of our bond uh 2022 bond programs we did have some additions and renovations at three different uh facilities uh as identified by our bond exploration committee the a request for qualifications was sent out on july 11th responses were returned by july 25th and we had a committee of different evaluators went through for
071each project and evaluated i will say and i always always take a great pleasure in saying this that we had we had great turnout from the firms we had very some very quality architectural firms that submitted for our projects they were all qualified and to be honest any of the firms that submitted would have would have been a great choice have done a great job so we had some very difficult decisions to make um i would also like to say that our evaluation teams were was a different uh evaluation team did not have the same members for each committee so i would like to start with belton high school additions and renovations bond project at this time the administration would like to recommend that o'connell robertson be the architectural firm that uh is takes on
072the the design and development of those projects and eventually the construction and so i would recommend now that o'connell robertson be the architectural firm selected for belton high school additions and renovations first we have any questions no if not do we have a motion to authorize the superintendent to negotiate a contract with the architectural firm selected for the belton high school additions renovations project to be executed at a later date as presented mr taggart ms mcdonald all in favor okay thank you that passes the next is oh consider disgusting appropriate action regarding selection of architectural firm for southwest elementary school additions and renovations it's my pleasure to make a second recommendation for the the next round of bond projects and at this time i would like to recommend that the board authorize the superintendent to
073negotiate a contract uh with pbx atx to be the architectural firm that leads us through the design and development of our southwest elementary school additions project i just want to clarify it's pbk atx yes we have a recommendation for pbk for the southwest elementary projects do we have any questions if not do i have a motion to approve as presented mr alkozer mr taggart all right all in favor all right thank you next this is sounding repetitive but here we go consider discussing appropriate action regarding selection of architectural firm for lake belton middle school additions and renovation projects and we are just as excited about this project as well so at this time i would like to ask that the administration's recommendation that the board authorized the superintendent to negotiate the contract with o'connell robertson
074for the lake belton middle school additions project all right do i have a motion to approve the recommendation made mr taggart miss bass all in favor okay that passes next consider discuss take appropriate action regarding selection of construction delivery method for belton high school additions and renovations project as with the architectural selections i will give a brief overview of all three action items and then just specifically state each one as it comes up so um one of the things that the board is authorized to do before construction project begins is to choose the delivery method that will be used so in identifying the best value for the district we are going to recommend that we return to the construction manager at risk as the delivery method for this project we feel that a cmar helps
075us getting them involved early helps us identify construction considerations in the design process it helps bring systems expertise to the design team it helps us better estimate construction costs more accurately and we know that's very important right now and it also could help us or should help us expedite the timeline in the design process at this time we would ask that you approve the resolution choosing the construction manager at risk as the delivery method for the design and construction of the belton high school additions and renovations bond project all right board do we have any questions no if not do i have a motion to approve the recommendation made by administration ms mcdonald miss lee all those in favor hope that passes thank you next consider discuss take appropriate action regarding the selection of the
076construction delivery method for southwest elementary school so as stated before we also have an additions project that will be started at southwest elementary school we ask you at this time to approve the resolution choosing construction manager at risk is the delivery method for the design and construction of the southwest elementary school editions board do we have any questions if not do i have a motion to approve the recommendation made by administration mr taggart mr floor okay all those in favor okay thank you that passes and finally consider discuss take appropriate action regarding selection construction delivery method for late belton middle school additions so for the late belt of middle school additions we would ask that the board approved the resolution choosing construction manager at risk is the delivery method for design and construction of the
077lake belton middle school additions bond project okay we have a recommendation are there any questions if not we have a recommendation do i have a motion to approve the recommendation made by administration mr alcoser mr taggart all right all those in favor all right passes thank you very much thank you thank you oh you're still up here right oh yeah yeah okay i thought so consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding the guaranteed maximum price for elementary school number 12. so it's great pleasure that i bring this one forward because this will be an opportunity to start get ready to begin construction on our first our first project from the bond and so um cloud construction last year was last summer was chosen as our cmar to work on elementary school number 12. over the
078past 9 or 10 months cloud construction has worked closely with huckabee architects as the design project was completed and construction documents were developed and delivered the bid for the project was released to the public for subcontractors on july 12th and the proposals were submitted by august 9. we're very pleased with the work that our architect and our s and our and our construction manager at risk have done we bring to you tonight a guaranteed maximum price for the construction of the project i'm pleased to say that the this this gmp will fit within the total project cost that we had estimated in proposition a of the 2022 bond so at this time i would ask the board to approve the guaranteed maximum price of 35 million 619 429 dollars submitted by cloud construction for elementary
079school number 12. okay i'll open this up to any questions mr taggart oh i thought you were raising your hand anyone else no if not do we have a motion to approve as recommended mr taggart it's a made a motion and okay there we go mr flora second motion all those in favor all right okay that passes thank you and uh thank you and then thank you for this this was a lot of work went into this with with you and administration and cloud construction we greatly appreciate this and coming in on budget we're excited and we're very excited for our partners and uh look get ready to do some great work for the kids of belton next we'll move on to reports the first report matt i'll let you go and take it from
080here yes board since february we've been talking to you a little bit about how we're continuing to expand parents as partners in belton isd tonight we have members of our administrative team giving you updates on the work that they've been doing in this thought good evening just like last time we are here again tonight as a group to talk about the work that we've been doing in regard to our parents's partnerships through the areas of teaching and learning operations and human resources so i'm going to kick off tonight specifically with teaching and learning and then we'll go back i don't know why that was out of order there but i'll talk about teaching and learning um we did uh create a new website so what we did was we had an intentional goal that our
081website would be more conducive to parents and just easier for parents to navigate so that is live and we'll be communicating with parents this week through campus newsletters to let them know that that's there and we have multiple resources for them another big step that we took is that we are wanting to provide a parent-facing year at a glances for our scope and sequence now this is a quite an undertaking and as you can see we went from having no year at a glances that were on the website to having 185 this will be extended work and so as we go through curriculum revisions we'll continue to strengthen what's parent-facing so that it'll it'll be even better work than it is now but we wanted to take that step forward and so as you can
082see these are a year at a glances um k through 12 in the areas of elar math science social studies and then our largest number was in cte so we have a facing forward document for every one of our cte courses and so that's what the big work that was done since last we met for teaching and learning i'll go back a slide i apologize mike we need to go a little break between mike mike's here for school safety we do have one item from the operational uh groups and it's a school safety item uh to just kind of exemplify some further work with parents as partners towards the end of july we convened a task force of parents students teachers administrators law enforcement officials and mental health professionals and we had around 100 people
083on that committee happy to say that about a third of that committee was parents and students and we're very pleased with the outcomes of that in total 27 different strategies were evaluated by the committee they were evaluated and eventually prioritized in terms of overall effectiveness of the strategy ease of implementation and unintended consequences and um the the parent voice and the student voice was exceptional in that we'll say that uh it's it's several of those strategies are already being implemented here as we start the school year and others are under review to see uh to see about what next steps might be to move those forwards so uh when talking about bringing parent voice and student voice to the table we felt very pleased with that and also thankful and i think we've mentioned before
084of our law enforcement presence and about a third of that about a third of that team were law enforcement officials as well so very proud of the parents that showed up for that and one more way that we're trying to move the parents partners forward in operational and student services okay as you know we are focused on increasing the number of volunteers that we have in our system we've made several social media posts on twitter and facebook asking for volunteers for parents to get involved in their in their students education and volunteering at campuses campus principals have also sent out communication and their newsletters and in their initial yearly uh start the year meetings they've communicated that information as well and we're also working on a volunteer website joe ross we got some feedback from
085our faith-based leaders in those meetings and asked them what they'd like to see or what information is important to them and so we're using that information that came from them things about confidentiality what to expect on a first day of volunteering replacing those things on a website that they can see and utilize and help provide some comfort in in volunteering i think i'm turning it over to arturo and finally watchdogs want to take a moment to give you a quick update on watch dogs but we also know that that parents as partners is not limited to watchdogs and the program so i want to give you a little bit of update on on what our schools are working out the elementary middle and high schools with an update on watchdogs and other opportunities high point
086elementary tarver charter oak and lakewood will be resuming their watchdog programs that they've already had established before sparta chisholm trail bex miller height southwest will be learning more about the programs and starting to build build that those opportunities some elementary campuses already have developed programs similar to watchdog but they don't call it watchdogs so for example pearl pops exists right parents of pearl students becks and their purposeful partnerships sparta you and legacy of leon heights are all other ways that we're engaging parents similar to watch dogs at the middle school level our goal is for all of our middle schools to have a program similar to watch dogs prior to covid the program existed at south bound middle school last year it was started at belton middle school and we met as middle school principals
087and there's definitely a commitment to bring watchdogs or program very similar to all four of our middle schools we want to break the stigma that middle school is a time where you know it's too cool to be on campus right we want our parents there involved actively engaged during the day last but not least you'd be surprised to know that we actually have two dads who are interested in starting watchdogs at um um over over at uh i'm sorry i'm losing track of myself here uh over at uh new tech at new tech and so we're exploring that possibility you typically don't see it at the high schools you see the more traditional ptsos and and booster clubs and those types of things but i want you to know that our high schools are committed
088to re-engaging parents as partners and as mentors as coaches such as our in our cte program such incubator for example guest speakers in classrooms audience members for projects and even chaperones for field trips bringing that back some of that fun to the lives of our of our parents and our students as well so very much committed to increasing those volunteer opportunities during the school day and so with that any of our team will entertain any questions or comments that you have for us okay miss pass i have a question for mr lamelli can you i have a little bit of background knowledge on watch dogs but like can you can you explain like what what if a a person comes what do they do what's what does their day look like when they come to
089school yeah so it's it's a really structured program to where um typically fathers watch dogs are are trained beforehand on what their roles and responsibilities they wear a t-shirt they walk the halls and really are there to be another set of eyes and ears and just a presence to work with students to be visible in the halls and and if if possible be in the classrooms you know to provide support reading those types of things we saw great benefits from it belton middle school last year i think folks would come in and and do those very things and leave um you know more informed with what's going on in the school which was very helpful uh byproduct as well and so just increasing those partnerships um again saying kind of building that rapport and saying
090that it's cool it's okay to be on campus during the day yeah absolutely any other questions no okay well thank you so one quick comment wait um yep the year at a glance that i love it right i mean the the website looks great um it's really easy to navigate i think when you look at the actual i guess their pdfs i don't know maybe their pds but the actual year at a glance for each one of the areas i mean it really clearly lays out sort of what's what the what's going on in the in the individual weeks you know maps it to the teks i mean very informative now whether everybody i understand what this is right and and i don't know mapping it to the teaks might not be completely intuitive from
091a parent you know from a parent standpoint that that's not sitting here um but i this is a great addition i think to part of that communication so yeah thank you a lot of work and proud of our team we'll keep working um to your point to just continue to make them stronger and as we get feedback we'll we'll address that okay well and i would like to thank you it's just you know i have one kid that just graduated from belton one who is a junior so i think i've got like 14 years experience in belton isd and i can say that in the past couple of years especially now belton isd has been intentional about bringing in parents giving them more information getting them more involved than any other time and like i
092said i've had kids in the system for 14 years now and i'm proud of that that's good work to bring them in to make it available to us so we can see everything that's going on and just appreciate it so thank you very much good work thank you it's a team effort thank you all next is facilities committee report mr taggart uh we did not have a facilities meeting but as you can see based on the action items tonight we're going to have one that's next week totally true we sold our bonds we're moving forward and i'm excited i don't see us canceling one of my committee meetings for quite some time and i'm excited about that all right thank you and next policy committee report mr alcazar we did have a meeting on august
093the 1st we looked at uh 16 policies if you go back to march of 2000 of this year when we had tazby come talk to us about reviewing all of our policies i think there were 16 policies that we looked at for us this will be the second reading i will tell you that most of those policies if not all of them there are really no substantive changes most of them are for clarification purposes i think one we added one word to an exhibit that went to eic local uh it was for clarification purposes as well um also we did it we did it to make sure that what we're actually doing right now matches what our policy actually is so that was there's 16 policies i think it begins on page 100 of your
094of your packet there is one policy i would like to mention and if you remember in our bulletin when dr smith reported to us ckc local which allows some district staff employees to carry firearms with appropriate approval and training that's something that we're going to talk about in executive session because it does involve a safety issue for students and know that i think part of this isn't is uh exhibits our our willingness to stay ahead of the curve um and it's not as simple as okay you know this person is going to carry a firearm at school it's not that simple there's going to be a lot of training involved they have to receive written permission from the superintendent something that we're going to keep i don't think anybody's going to know other than a
095certain people about that so again since it does involve a safety issue i'll i'll leave it at that of course the big the big policy for everyone you know based upon our a lot of the comments that we just received tonight is ef local and i do want to say that um yes this started quite some time ago and i believe it is right we've been looking at this for about a year now but also when when governor abbott sent the letter to to the commissioner last year like i believe i believe it was in november um it took the commissioner i don't know what five months four and a half months several months before the commissioner came up with a with a a model policy that they didn't say well districts across the state
096you need to accept this you need to adopt this it was just it was just a guidepost so obviously some of the things that were said tonight are are and i can probably speak you know for everyone here very disturbing um it's something obviously we're going to address and we've been in the pos we've been in the in the process of addressing that uh there's always been a um you know if local has always been there there's always been a a policy in place for for challenging things it's not like you know we're just we haven't adopted a policy where you can't come in and challenge an instructional material it's always been there we're just trying to make it better we're trying to fit what we what we do in this district now so it's
097not like you know i don't want anybody to think that well what's wrong with the school board they haven't adopted a policy to challenge instructional materials well it was there before i got here um and it'll be here after we'd leave here but hopefully we're gonna we're gonna make it better uh but there's a lot that goes into that uh in addressing these things um in our next meeting i will tell you that that our objective is to to look and see how this thing's gonna be gonna be written okay um and it's it's not an easy it's not an easy process i mean there's some irrespective of what i may believe from a personal perspective as a parent i mean i don't have any kids that are in school anymore but i did at
098one time um i know i know some of you guys have these kids that are young i know mr floor does i know aaron bassed us i think uh tiger just finished uh but we we've all had we've all had kids in this district so it's not like it's not like it's something that we're ignoring um and there was a comment that was made that you know we're struggling to remove books and i don't think that's accurate okay we wouldn't be working on this thing for so long if we were struggling to to remove books that's that's not that's not true we're ignoring a problem um if we were ignoring the problem then we wouldn't be spending so much time actually trying to drive something that's going to pass muster under under law you know
099we do have laws you understand both state and federal laws that we have to comply with so it's not like we're going to just you know go rogue and draft something and then and then someone comes in and challenges that i mean we have to be careful we have to be meth we have to have a good method by which we adopt something um so understand that we're we're trying to do that and we struggle with that some of the things that were read tonight i mean i i mean i'm at a loss for words of you know those kinds of things are appearing of course we don't want to expose any kids to that i mean that's just that's nonsense for uh for any of us for anyone to think that any of us
100up here uh is wanting to to expose a kid to something like that um you know janet said in our last meeting she said you know uh and i'm paraphrasing okay um at the end of the day it's about protecting the kids i think that's what you said and that's what we're trying to do so um you know in our next meeting and the meetings to follow hopefully we'll have something where we can bring to the to the board maybe for a second reading um but it's been it's been a challenging it's been a challenging uh just like eic local we spent a year you know working on that and and this one here yes you know time is of the essence but at the same time though we've had a policy in place all
101of this time so so go go and look at it ef local it's on our website um all the policies are on the website so um i understand that we're working on it and we're going to continue to do that dr love smith and her and her team have done an excellent job uh we look at other districts and what they've done and at the end of the day we're going to draft something i think is going to fit fit within the uh the i the ideals of our district and it's going to comport with texas and and federal law and that's the objective thank you mr alcoser yes mr trevor there's nobody i trust more to be the chairman of that committee manual than you and the folks that sit on that committee janet
102and chris i know you guys to be uh outstanding christians and how you've lived your life and raised your children i never questioned that i will say however that i get frustrated being on the school board and how slow sometimes the wheel turns and i'm a get it done kind of guy and then i deal with it later on that hasn't always been my best policy in life i get burned that way as a dad as a business owner as as a dude in the community i want this done yesterday but we have to put something together that is legal because the other side of this will start coming and they're going to bring their people and their attorneys so we have to make sure that what we do is sound but i want it
103done i'm i can't believe that those people read that stuff in here tonight if it doesn't need to be heard by our kids it doesn't need to be read in public i don't want to see that stuff in our libraries i'm tired of this but we have to trust the process and i appreciate the hard work that's gone into this but i'm ready as a board member and as a community member i would be mortified if one of my children walked into their middle school library and a selfish person had done something to them that got done in our middle school library i would be mortified if that had happened i'd be jumping up and down on someone's desk myself ty taggart but we have to do it the right way and that's frustrating at
104times but it's the right way to do it and i know we're getting there and we're going to get there pretty quick because we need to thank you mr taggart all right any other questions for mr alkozer no all right thank you for the report next is superintendent report dr smith board welcome to the 2022-23 school year we are excited to get things kicked off today excuse me this last week in belton isd um obviously the superintendent's reporters just administrative updates to you all we're going to hit some highlights real briefly tonight first of all started off with culture day ignite professional learning conference professional learning is a big piece of investment in teachers staff in belton isd so that we can create those experiences that you all desire for students culture day obviously was
105a huge success i think a lot of you have heard about that already and we welcomed nearly 300 new staff members to lake belton high school that day and talked about the vision the values and beliefs journey of graduate and the culture that we're trying to create in belton isd and it is gaining momentum special thanks to todd schiller in the last two years for getting that kicked off in a committee of people a group of people who have made it great for all of our new staff employees i think if you take a look at the feedback that was provided on culture day you can see that the staff that was welcome to belton isd are proud of the things that we're doing and things that we're trying to create in belton isd for
106the culture of being valued supported and challenged to grow we're excited about that and we'll continue doing those culture days moving forward campus professional learning is an important piece of this puzzle as well school principals were working hard over the summer to create learning experiences for new staff as they came back when teachers come on contract and when staff report back to each school principals create those learning experiences so staff can focus on the improvement efforts that they need to focus on in their school so principals did an outstanding job in getting campus professional learning going and were extremely appreciative of the work that they do over the summer as well convocation i think most of you were able to be there at convocation when you take a look at a gym full of staff
107members in belton isd again we employ over 2 000 staff members in our school district and we had a gym packed full of staff and it was a real exciting day because it was led by students facilitated by students and featured students so when we talk about what we're trying to create in that vision statement that you all talked about earlier i think you're seeing that come to life through the student facilitation of our convocation student activities and athletic competitions you've seen starting to take off again in our school district and we're glad to see those things happening our meet the teacher nights we had were a success as well and obviously that first day of school it's great to see people in the hallways these next few pictures you can see some examples of
108some of the great work that i just talked about we're extremely thankful for all of the work that goes into opening the school year and most importantly getting it started on the right foot for the students i told you all i got to visit all 19 campuses on that first day of school and the feeling in our schools is a positive feeling and i'm thankful for the work that our teachers our staff and our administrators have done to create that context for our students to engage in those learning experiences we're on our way to over 13 500 students i don't have those numbers off the top of my head right now but we're continuing to grow in belton isd and continuing to see those new bodies coming into our buildings we're excited about that and
109we will continue registering kids as we've seen through history all the way up through the end of the school year and so we anticipate seeing more and more of them and have er open for any questions that you may have at this time i just want to say that convocation was awesome uh obviously anything would be better than virtual convocation anything yes but experiencing the expo center and the and and the that and then having it be about a guest speaker and some of those kind of things it was always cool but this was focused on the kids and it it's with the theme of this admin that this is the focus and i just i left there that day knowing that this was this was going to be all right and seeing you go
110to every single campus on first day several teachers commented on how big a deal it was having you do that and i know that was a great day and i was so happy that you got to do that this year because your first two years were kind of a mess but i was super proud of that event it was awesome thanks i still have the blister on my foot too for those 18 000 steps that first day of school yes thank you all right thank you for that report next item on the agenda is the consent agenda does anyone wish to pull an item for discussion i'm starting here and working around all right do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented ms mcdonald mr tiger all in favor okay it
111passes thank you very much board members at this time are there any requests for new information or reports from the administrative team seeing then i'll move on as a reminder we have the following upcoming events you've got them in front of you so i'm not going to read through them all we'll now proceed to public comments regarding non-agenda items as mentioned earlier in order to comply with texas open meetings act the board may not respond to comments or otherwise discuss or act upon any issues that are posted on the agenda participants are allotted three minutes for public comments regarding non-agenda items we have a timer on the screen a lot of time and a sound will occur at the conclusion we'll call your name please on the podium state your name city of residence for
112the record the first person is keith gilbertson and pharah stalter is on deck good evening thank you ladies and gentlemen for your service to our kids to our community i i was just disgusted by what i heard this evening talking about the books in our library just heartbreaking that this kind of trash has been in our schools and from what i hear for a period of time it's just disgusting you folks are our connection to the school administrative people and we we expect uh business to be taken care of a little more promptly a little more uh in in in agreement in consonance with our the moral fabric of this community we're a conservative community i think in good part biblically based and today we are we're living an hour away from the epicenter of
113liberal activism and homosexual activism and we see it in my information is second and third hand okay my kids are long gone from secondary education but when we have the homosexual lifestyle presented in a positive way by books by personnel it's unacceptable and i would you started the meeting saying that the superintendent is responsible for the day-to-day operation and rightfully so you guys have business to take care of too but he is responsible he's responsive he needs to be responsive to your direction and there's i don't i don't know what kind of direction you're giving him but it seems to me like it's a little bit vacant so i appreciate what you guys are sacrificing of your time your responsibilities are huge our future in my case it's in my grandchildren that i'm looking at
114but our children are our future and when this garbage is presented as normal and right and honorable the homosexual lifestyle it's not but there's nothing positive that i can find in god's word that would say this is something we need to seek after and it's presented to our children in my case my grandchildren in a way that is it's okay it's fine it's wonderful and it's not thank you for your time thank you [Applause] farah stalter hi my name is fair i'm a resident of temple and um in the belton isd obviously i have two elementary age children before my oldest was born my husband and i took a parenting class and we received wonderful advice of remembering that we parent our our children with either all or never meaning that they can always do
115something or they should never do something and it's a parameter to keep them safe and to hopefully avoid confusion for instance you never play in the pool without mommy or daddy it's very simple that's always the rule never are you allowed to play in a pool with by yourself you're also not allowed to drink your kool-aid on mommy's new carpet ever okay it just helps to keep our children safe and avoid confusion they go over to grandma's house they know that they're also not supposed to drink their kool-aid on her carpet within the belton isd we have a student handbook that student handbook gives parameters of how those students are supposed to behave no profanity no sexually explicit material should be brought to school no weapons no violence no bullying we also have that same
116handbook for our employees sexual harassment no inappropriate behavior with the students no violence toward a co-worker we have those parameters in place because they're all or never unfortunately it seems like we've lost those parameters with what's in our public library it seems like now that these topics can be discussed sometimes if they're in written form but they can't be discussed publicly if they're in our classroom we need to go back to the idea of all or never you spoke and said that there were problems with getting things done quickly you've already put the parameters in place our students realize it's all or never except for in the library sexually explicit material whether in a library book or a playboy magazine should never be allowed if children are not allowed to bring the sexually explicit material
117into school they should never be allowed to take it out of the school ever banned books should not be allowed in our schools and i hope that you guys do something quickly with the parents to make it happen thank you thank you [Applause] okay the time is now 806. the board will now go into closed session for consultation with attorney texas government code section 551.071 personnel texas government code section 551.074 and security texas government code section 551.076 me the time is 10 16 the board will now reconvene and open session there being no further business the meeting is now adjourned at 10 16.