001good evening everyone thank you for joining us hope you enjoyed our student showcase tonight by the sparta elementary sabre cat sound choir and ukuleles the time is 6 15 and the belton independent school district board of trustees are now convened in a regular board meeting on monday may 16 2022 in the pittinger fine arts center located at 400 north wall street belton texas a quorum of board members is present this meeting's 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 and our live stream viewers to this meeting as belton isd school board of trustees we're here to set goals listen to reports from the superintendent approve budgets contracts personnel appointments and make policy
002for the district it is not the role of the board to make the day-to-day operational decisions management of the day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a meeting of the school 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 listed on the notice this meeting's been open this meeting is open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed these proceedings are being live streamed on bisd's youtube channel and recording of the meeting will be available on the district's website in the days following tonight's meeting for the video
003to adequately reflect the proceedings respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking and that cell phones are turned off or in silent mode thank you for taking the time to join us this evening and thank you for your interest in belton isd please stand up mr president before you start that we didn't get an opportunity to thank that wonderful student body that was they left us i know but we still can thank them and someone can share with them how much we really enjoyed them so if you all have joined me in giving them a big hand clap of praise [Applause] thank you communications team will introduce our pledge leaders from leon heights elementary school y'all please stand first up is uh madeline she's going to lead us in the texas
004pledge 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 to texas one say under god one is right all right madeline would describe herself as being kind creative and truthful her favorite subject in school is science and she loves to play softball outside of school she is very excited about middle school next year and the opportunity to make new friends matthew wells would describe himself as being happy athletic and smart his favorite subjects in school are reading and math he loves to play soccer out of school and he's very excited about middle school as well and the opportunity to choose electives for the first time thank you
005madeline matthew [Applause] okay so one of the highlights of the belts and isd board meetings is the student recognitions tonight we'll have over 60 of those but before we begin that portion of the meeting tonight we want to pause acknowledge the grief that we are experiencing on behalf of the board of trustees i know everyone in this room joins me when i say that we are still hurting after what transpired at belton high on may 3rd we are eternally grateful for the opportunity the outpouring of support that we've received from those here in belton isd and also those outside of our immediate community in a few moments we're going to celebrate almost 60 bisd students who've worked exceptionally hard achieved great success in our programs we're incredibly proud of them these kids represent why we're
006here and why we do what we do and it's in hard times such as these that our students give us hope at the same time joe's very much on our minds and so i ask that you please join me in a moment of silence in joe's ramirez's memory all right thank you very much first item on the agenda is recognitions as we've already said we were treated to the student showcase featuring the sabre cat sound choir and ukuleles they were performing some songs for us ukuleles eli pero performed a solo members of the choir are third and fourth grade students and they include abigail wickman harper mckinney xavier perez madeleine brown allison miller ava moyer charlotte wiley kylie capela emily munoz gwen taylor amy yarin benny benny briscoe hannah seavey elizabeth worman allison gilliams blake
007perro emily potts noela rodriguez sydney harvey chandler w eden mccallum ava basil finley bernie emma goodnight paisley burdeen brooklyn wittmeyer tatum thrash piper lundley lynday sophia summers mia simpson eli brown and emery hobson ukuleles ukuleles that's hard to say our fifth grade students and they include kyah trahan alice wiley shawn beamsterfur tyler millington andy uristi ella johnson james willis evan foster brodie lee annie nickerson eli pero aiden kinsey jackson dudley tatum hobson ryan truett ansley harvey and charles rabroker thank you for being here tonight thank you so much [Applause] all right next we're going to recognize students who've achieved a lot of recognition through the texas bioscience institute we are happy to celebrate several belton isd students who've gotten a head start on their post-secondary education through this great program elizabeth alvarez david basa bay
008tiffany den alexander ellison selena gieron matthew thomas graham hannah kliklinsky jaden kurzynski diana lamecca megan larocque madeleine mockmer taylor rovall anden sanders diso sharma mariah smith mccarthy grace taylor jordan tolbert ezekiel trahan jenna white and callie young were recognized in the silver courting ceremony held by temple college on april 20th for completing dual credit course course work and the texas bioscience institute middle college program the program demonstrates one of the district's values which is community engagement and it states that learning experiences are enhanced enhanced through community engagement and we are very proud of these students congratulations [Applause] several belton isd students demonstrated their journey of a graduate competencies at the uil academic state competition earlier this month from bhs ulyssa gray qualified in headline writing and jax jackson bella bredik qualified in two categories science
009and top physics jackson placed fourth overall in 6a science this is the first time a belton isd student has meddled in science at the state level laura smith steven seals and lacey wilson have served as the academic coaches at lake belton high school jahanjir karim qualified in top biology and placed third just missing the mark for earning a medal brienne corrin no brianne cowan is his academic coach the academic sponsors at vhs are joseph cevaldi and pamela rodriguez and the sponsor at lbhs is christine wolfe next up we have the texas high school power lifting association and texas high school women's power lifting association academic all-state recipients belton high school is celebrating six student athletes who were named to the texas high school power lifting association or texas high school women's power lifting association academic
010all-state teams to be nominated seniors had to be in good standing with their team of good moral character and have an overall gpa of 92 or above this year's recipients include jonah myers maya jones jenny bonnett kristen rodak shalice roeder and selena guerin maintaining these high academic standards as a competitive athlete demonstrates adaptability one of the district's journey of a graduate competencies congratulations [Applause] belton isd was also represented at the texas high school women's power power lifting association state championship by nine high school student athletes in march from lake belton high schools lake belton high school juniors pedron ayers and hayley thomas qualified for the state competition for the second year in a row at the state meet pageroom set a personal best for all three lifts and for her overall total haley said a
011personal best in squat bench and her overall total they were joined by four newcomers at the state stage juniors emery castillo anna ramirez and freshman becca menzak and taylor love emory has set a personal best in bench deadlift and overall total while taylor set a personal best in deadlift and overall total anna and becca set personal bests for all three lifts and their overall totals the girls power lifting coaches are greg rudolph and matt uzell and liz ramsey from belton high school senior zoe peterson advanced to the state competition for the first time and set a personal best on two of the three categories senior maya jones placed fifth in her weight class at 935 pounds total increasing her personal best on squat and matching a personal best on bench sophomore jackie myers finished fourth
012in her weight class at 865 pounds breaking her personal best in all three lifts the girls power the girls power lifting coaches are barry campbell and chris eurekan on the boys side through the texas high school powerlifting association three belton isd students qualified for the state meet in march from bhs isaac jones had a personal record on a deadlift of 445 pounds and on squat with 440 his coaches are christopher harbin and brandon fabian fabian from lbhs sophomore adam walden set his personal best in all three lifts and finished ninth in the state in his weight class freshman christian morales at a personal best and deadlift and overall total and finished eighth in the state in his weight class the lbh lbhs coaches are greg rudolph and matt uzell congratulations to these students and their
013coaches for displaying perseverance needed to compete at this level congratulations [Applause] we had several students qualify for state in the national ffa three teams of students from belton ffa qualified for the state career development events contest at texas a m university sam houston state university and ranger college teams and members include nursery landscape sarah mckeska lake and easton natalie myers and emma canales wildlife jose kaler brady scott gage white ryland norwood and keaton galleon and that's science anna kate cox ulyssa gray cody emmons and candace zigler advisors for these teams are brad hobbs and lori hobbs congratulations guys [Applause] hmm very good oh tonight we're also celebrating the success of one of our world-class employees belton high school's head basket basketball coach jason fawcett was recently named the class 6a region 2 coach of the
014year coach bossett has led the tigers to a district championship this year with a record of 29 and six the tigers were also recognized for the second year in a row by the texas association of basketball coaches as the top three point shooting team in class 6a so thank you coach fawcett for modeling empathy and perseverance in your students we're very proud of you congratulations [Music] [Applause] now we have the temple rotary educator of the month for march mindy wampler is being recognized by the temple rotary club for her outstanding service to belton isd mindy serves as a pre-kindergarten teacher at belton early childhood school she's in her seventh year in education and her fourth in belton isd her principal sheila cervic says this about miss wampler visiting her classroom fills my heart with such
015pride and hope for our youngest learners in bisd she has helped her students create a song strong sense of community where students know each other celebrate each other's successes and help one another when needed one of her one of the most powerful reasons why her connections with students are so strong is her desire and dedication to eat lunch with her students in the cafeteria each day she can be seen sitting at the tables alongside her students talking smiling laughing and getting to know all about her students and on top of that her playful mindset and in spirit encourages students to be excited to come to school to smile and understand that school really is a magical place congratulations [Music] and our temple rotary educator of the month for april is caitlin panero she's not able
016to be here tonight but i'll go ahead and read her recognition caitlyn serves as a band teacher at north belton middle school she's in her 10th year of education and her third in bisd michelle tisch the principal at north belton middle school said this about miss pinero caitlin is one of the most positive forces i have ever had the privilege of working with she is always the first to help when asked or take on additional responsibilities just to lighten someone else's load caitlyn freely gives up her personal time after school to make sure that each and every student has meaningful feedback she works very hard to build relationships with every student and tries to make them feel at home in the band hall caitlyn doesn't just represent our bronco values and beliefs she lives them
017through her actions passion for her job and compassion for those around her congratulations ms panero [Music] thank you all very much love celebrating all of y'all's victories we will take a short break right now for anybody who wants to leave the auditorium not saying you have to leave but if you want to sit in for the rest of the meeting you can if you would like to leave you can do so now all right well next item on the agenda is values and belief continuous improvement dr smith yes the board uh as a reminder we address one of these values and beliefs every time we get together in board meetings continuous improvement is our highlight for a month for this month we believe a mindset of continuous improvement should be modeled by our staff and
018cultivated in our classrooms i'll let y'all weigh in on how you see this being lived out in our system on a regular basis but just earlier today had a meeting went through process taking a look at what we'd done how well we believed we did it what we need to improve for the future and there's a constant reflection process that we go through is a cabinet team and in various administrative teams to try and make sure that every time we're always focused on taking that next step the next time we address it so any thoughts on how you see continuous improvement modeled throughout our system i think a great example of that is our journey of a graduate without a shot of a doubt that whole process is exactly the statement you know one of
019the things when we went through the bond exploration was discovering that we did not have the ability based on our current facilities and our current programs to meet the needs of every student there were students that were being turned away from certain programs and so i'm looking forward to that improvement to being able to welcome more kids in a program so that more kids can be engaged more kids can have a great high school experience and so grateful for that i think i'm going to bounce off of janet's idea in that if you have a fixed mindset i just fixed if you have a mindset that's that's growth oriented i think it ensures more success in sports work anything that you do and i think that we we emulate that in many respects here in
020this district i know my old coaching background we we'd be done with a game on a friday night and we'd come back saturday morning and we would spend most of our time evaluating ourselves and so i and i see that being married to a teacher i see a lot of self-reflection and a lot of working with her team and her colleagues they're constantly getting together and bouncing ideas off and saying man this worked really good we need to improve in this area so i see a lot of that in bisd that we're always self scouting to make sure that we're we're coming better prepared the next time around with for our kids what i was thinking about where were the smart goals you know that we started this year um dr love smith it did
021a presentation on that several months ago but um and we've gotten i've gotten to see it in classrooms not only at home with my own two kids but the smart goals i think isn't a great example of of this continuous improvement because the kids take ownership in their learning and they're excited to um work towards the goal that they have for themselves and so it's just this continuous the mindset kind of what emanuel is talking about is just that growth mindset that we're not fixed and this is what i made and this is what i've got to stick with but i'm going to create a goal and i'm going to work towards that throughout the year and so i i appreciate and i'm just i'm thankful for the smart goals that started this year and
022i'm i look forward to hearing more of those successes and of that continuous improvement for our kids i don't know how i add to any of that so i'm going to take take a little bit different approach we couldn't get here to to where we are today even talking about being able to do continuous improvement if we didn't have an amazing foundation and so those who have sat on this board before us uh the administrations before us the teachers and staff before us who really laid that groundwork you know that is really what allows us to be able to even be in a position to talk about continuous improvement to figure out how do we get to that next level um not that anything that we're doing you know today or yesterday was was not
023at that level but how do we continue to push and grow and improve um and shine even brighter and and so really just a thanks and recognition to all those before us to allow us to be in the position to even be talking about this board so i appreciate you again reflected on this you adopted these back in april of last year and the more we talk about these and how they play out in our system the better they become ingrained we talk about them as a cabinet often and continue to work one example i've received feedback that if i turn my head too much at the microphone they don't hear me as well and so i'm working on that this month and so i'm gonna do my best to look forward as i present
024today but the little things the big things i'm really proud of our team and constantly looking at how we improve each and every day each and every minute for the sake of our kids so thank you for talking about that tonight thank you all very much next item on the agenda is to administer the oath of office board members jeff norwood suzanne mcdonald and manuel alkoser at this time ms connie burns will administrate the oath of office to jeff suzanne and manuel yes please go down in front yes afterward we're going to go down and take a group picture so you're fine if you all would raise your right hand where i insert my name would you please say your name i connie burns do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the duties of
025the office of school board trustee for the belton independent school district of the state of texas and will to the best of my ability preserve protect and defend the constitution and laws of the united states and of this state so help me god if you would please sign your oath here you may take your spit mr norwood board members if we can go down and take a picture with them down here all right one so [Applause] feeling a little salty all right the next item on the agenda is public comments in accordance with bed local policy bd 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
026the district in accordance with district policy bed local any person wishing to address the board of trustees during public comments shall shine up before the meeting in order to comply with texas opens 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 shows your allotted time and a sound will occur at the conclusion the board 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 brenda howard and on deck is brandon hall no
027i mean they're just in they're not in order just you got them yeah mr hall's on deck yeah mr hall is on deck hi i'm brenda howard belton i'm speaking to agenda item 6a reorganization of the board we all just watched each board member take their oath of office congratulations to all the new board members each was elected by our electoral process the next step is to establish the leadership of this board and this is up to the board members themselves i believe there are extenuating circumstances that would preclude jeff norwood from holding any officer position specifically jeff norwood's unethical and illegal conduct while serving his current term as president he violated texas statute section 3902 abuse of official capacity and texas statute 3906 misuse of official information what he did was wrong all of
028this is at best unethical and at worst illegal his actions show an immaturity that precludes him from making wise decisions for belton isd jeff norwich should be censured by his board of trustees i have completed a level one grievance process and have been made aware that this is my only recourse in hindsight i should have immediately called the police and made a report when jeff norwood doxed me and distributed my personal email address and phone number instead i held grace for him hoping he would see the wrong of his actions he has not and has left his inflammatory facebook post up as a consequence of his actions i request that this board of trustees censure jeff norwood if in fact you do not censure him you are condoning his wrongdoing your action or inaction will
029speak volumes when people mention bullying at belton isd it is so easy to explain because all i have to do is show people jeff norwood's facebook post even people who have no idea what this post about are appalled at the hatred expressed by the majority of the people posting hopefully you have read these posts for yourself and you can see bullying at the highest level this behavior even with grace should not be consequence free i call for the censure of jeff norwood as far as the officers of the school board i recommend the following for the stated reasons chris floor president of the board he has proven thoughtful and while we disagree he is willing to engage in constructive conversation with anyone ty taggart vice president while he did nothing to remove the pornographic books
030from the school so far he is the only board member who said he would not want pornographic books in his home suzanne mcdonald secretary she has consistently represented her constituents time and time again if there is an area that has excellent representation in belton isd it is area three she will advocate for her constituents even if it means voting against the entire board she has shown courage it is your choice to censure or not to censure to select good leaders or or not please choose wisely thank you thank you brandon hall is up with jeff howard on deck all right good evening been down here good evening brandon hall i live in belton i'm sure all of you know me very very well i wanted to take the first couple seconds of my time to
031speak to formally congratulate manuel on a well-run campaign i came in second and i want to make that very well known so congratulations on on winning the second thing that i wanted to bring up was what was brought up in the workspace or the workshop the fast growth that you're all concerned about i before moving here i lived in hutto for a while 15 years ago 10 15 years ago hutto saw explosive growth and they struggled with that growth i would highly recommend that you reach out to their superintendents to their board and see what they did and what worked and what did not work because i know they struggled tremendously with the growth that occurred in that area now the main thing that i wanted to talk about was um as i was on
032the i hate to say campaign trail as i was talking with others as i was running for the school board i came across a theme that i wanted to share with you i think it would not be fair for me to do so but first i want to start with a quote from stephen covey it says trust is the glue of life it's the most essential ingredient in effective communication it's the foundational principle that holds all relationships and i think one thing that i found was a concern and a frustration from a lot of people that i talked with was a lack of trust that may come as a surprise to you it may not but i wanted to share that with you if you lose the trust of your parents and teachers you lose
033the school one thing that i notice is that a lot of teachers i'm not saying every single teacher shared with me both in and out of the district that they do not fully trust the board and the administration they fear retribution they fear being able to tell the truth and express the concerns that they see in the classroom on a day-to-day basis that's a problem that needs to change and that i'd like for you guys to seriously look at and address parents are many parents of bullied children are frustrated they see nothing happening to the offender as they report these incidents i only heard one side i don't know all sides but i'm just reporting to you the frustrations that i've heard from a lot of parents from kids that reported bullying the thing that
034i want to challenge you with is this that i was challenged with how many times have you sat in an on level class in a classroom how often have you watched the teachers struggle sometimes with some of the the students in disciplinary situations how many parents have you talked with in your district and out of your district how well do we really know our school this is not a rebuke or an admonishment it's a warning of what i know and what i've learned while talking with with parents and teachers over these last several months these truths have been shared with you what you choose to do with this information is up to you thank you thank you next up is jeff howard and janet brown is on deck evening jeff howard belton uh i'm speaking
035to agenda item 70 the superintendent's report on the election first i offer my congratulations to uh jeff and manuel uh for your uh election to the board the people have chosen to trust you as their representatives never forget that you work for the people you know the people that voted for you and the people that didn't vote for you that's how our system works i want to thank those board members that as ethics requires you stay neutral on the board on the bond rather excuse me voter turnout for this type of election is normally very very small two to three percent this one was very high it turned out to as fifty six hundred voters out of forty thousand of available voters within uh belton isd it's a fourteen percent turnout also means that eighty
036six percent didn't vote that's something for uh a different discussion by no means the bonds were not a mandate 41 votes and two votes is what it came down to i've broken down the spending uh by a precinct and trustee district i hope each board member does the same there's lessons to be learned here spending the business builder and developer uh funded vote yes campaign raised and spent about forty thousand dollars for just over twenty eight hundred votes uh that equates to fourteen dollars and twenty eight cents per vote the grassroots funded vote no campaign raised just over thirteen hundred dollars also for just over twenty hundred votes that equates to forty four cents a vote there's a message there um also i was notified before i came in that the vote no campaign will
037let the board know prior to close the business on wednesday whether they want to do a recount on proposition b votes by precinct and trustee district this is important when you look at location and demographics trustee area one four and five the vote was so close that any of the three precincts barely carried the vote north belton isd precincts 101 102 and 115 were the strongest north precincts note that the far north precincts of 311 and 104 which are moffett morgan's point voted against the bonds trustee districts two and three precincts 103 111 113 which are south belton ist precincts covers chisholm trail and miller heights elementary school voted against the bond again note the location the demographics these priests thinks felt they will receive no benefit from the bonds in fact out knocking on
038doors and talking to people many were angry that bisd did not honor its 2017 pledge that pledge was to build an elementary school a middle school and possibly a high school on the property off of shanklin road and 121. as the bond process moves forward and the bond review committee has formed i hope that it is made up of a wide swath of parents and stakeholders just regular citizens i hope all actions will be completely transparent and easily and readily available to the public i would suggest a direct link somewhere instead of the public having to navigate through multiple links to find the facilities committee and the consent decrees for spending this will go a long way to developing a dialogue an open relationship with parents and stakeholders thank you thank you janet brown good
039evening um tonight i'm speaking about one of your consent agenda items as the expenditure over fifty thousand dollars with regards to uh you the purchase of technology and one of my concerns about this is when we when you all discuss the sr3 grant and also the essa grants that was 11 million dollars in esser grants and this is off of your website there was three million two hundred thousand dollars that was going to be for specialized instructional spaces and two million four hundred and sixty thousand dollars for instructional programs and educational materials so you have a hundred and you say a lot about a hundred and forty five thousand dollars are going to be coming out the esser grant for the purchase of technology laptops ipads you know mac computers and i believe that uh
040we came to you uh over this past year's expressing why are you not using esser funds to purchase this why is there a bond in proposition b where you have title for technology when you have over 11 million dollars in an esser and really only 20 percent of that has to be devoted to emotional or social uh characteristics so the other 80 of that 11 million you can use in other areas so that's what the public is asking also too when they think when they see belton isd coming forth with bonds repeatedly and there seems to be the same message of what we're going to do overall there needs to be some accountability that needs financial accountability that needs to be done in this bond but also all the way back to the 2017 bond
041if you can take two million dollars out of that bond to fund humbert then there's some unspent money that is in that 2017 bond that needs to be accounted for to the public that is our tax dollars so we want to know where is all that money how are you you have you have a bloat is it bloat isd instead of elton isd because you have millions of dollars sitting around and ladies and gentlemen of the board that is your responsibility thank you thank you next item on the agenda is action items matt that jump ahead of me i think you did yes i think action item a is considered to discuss and take appropriate action regarding the reorganization of the board so according to our board operating procedures every year the board after elections
042take place discuss the organization of the board and so i will leave it to our board of trustees to discuss if i may first of all congratulations manuel congratulations jeff uh thank you thank you is a hard fought battle just me anyway um you know sitting on this board uh for almost 10 years i've seen a lot of different things occur but i also know that this group this team you'll give all that you got uh and i appreciate that um you know as i'm aging here um i'm thinking i'm almost i'm almost out of fight not that one needs to be head but i am so i feel so privileged to serve alongside you and so um before we get to uh any type of emotions i just want you all to know that
043thank you for the service that you provide and the time and energy i know you all show up at all of those events and do all those extracurricular activities as well as your day jobs and your family and i know personally that's a lot so thank you well i want to say age gracefully of course as our mentor and our example of bisd and what the board ought to be i just want to say one thing in light of the last two years being what it has been i'm i still wake up every day and i'm honored to serve this district and i'm honored to serve our kids and our teachers our employees and the parents in this district uh it's been a tough two years but that doesn't make our work any less important
044and it doesn't make me less proud to be a member of the bisd school board so and i'm proud to serve with this group and congratulations on you three uh choosing to to do a great a great cause because it is so it's good work seeing no other comments i'd like to make a motion that jeff norwood remained president that emanuelle kosa remained secretary and ty taggart remain vice president we have a lot of work to do and there's no greater opportunity to do it than as our current team that's my motion i'm sorry there you go do i have a second mr floor all right emotions oh well i guess we're just doing that all in favor all right that passed you nationally thank you very much thank you all very much on to
045the quickly i want to thank our board again your guidance throughout the bond election process and throughout the last couple of years as we dealt with uh challenges that we have never seen before we appreciate your leadership immensely so thank you board all right consider and discuss take appropriate action regarding the employment of administrative employees dr smith excuse me we're excited to have mr schiller come here tonight we have two outstanding candidates to bring forward to you tonight for administrative positions good evening board so as dr smith mentioned there are two candidates we're bringing to you tonight the first one is erin prietza for charter oak elementary assistant principal erin's unable to be with us tonight but she has a master's degree in educational administration from umhb a bachelor's of arts in elementary education view
046from umhb as well and she has seven years in education five of those years being lakewood teacher in the last two years being southwest elementary teacher so that's the first recommendation second one is for gina sniffen for principal at high point elementary gina has a master's degree of education in administration and supervision from the university of houston and a bachelor of arts degree in interdisciplinary studies from stephen f austin she has 25 years in education and has been a principal at the middle school in elementary level and comes to us from georgetown isd so do we have a motion to approve the recommendation and addition of personnel as presented oh they've got everybody pointing at me right now so i got miss bass and then i had mr taggart so i have two all in
047favor all right that passes unanimously and i'm gonna have gina come up and we are we do we're gonna take our pictures that's right so come on over give her a round of applause please we're going to talk to us first yeah you can talk to us before we get the picture well thank you i'm really excited to lead and serve in high point community and in our belton community so thank you for this opportunity it's an honor [Applause] you are third [Applause] uh board as you're coming back to your seats just one real quick note on our assistant principal hire for charter road aaron uh some of you met erin the other day she was recognized as a teacher of the year in our teacher of the year ceremony the other day at southwest
048elementary school as a second grade teacher i kept saying third grade and they corrected me to second grade nope i was saying second grade and it's third grade there we go so we're excited to have aaron uh continue to provide leadership for us in our system just in a different role so while we're talking about aaron i know she's not here i had the pledge i didn't know this was going on i didn't even know she was a candidate to this we had the privilege of having aaron in our oldest child's classroom uh as she was a student teacher uh coming through and so so excited for for aaron to have that opportunity and i feel like we've watched aaron come all the way through so it's a great surprise today we actually when i
049came in and and saw this on the sheet so thank you all right and uh let's see next item consider discuss take appropriate action regarding the superintendent's contract i think you skipped item c didn't you did i yes oh i did i'm sorry look at that i marked it too consider and discuss take appropriate action regarding a resolution expressing intent to reimburse certain expenditures dr smith i'm going to turn this over to mr morgan as we proceed from our recent bond elections we want to make sure that we're adequately setting things up for success for the future so mike's going to talk to you a little bit about this reimbursement resolution good evening pleasure to be here tonight i'm here to bring a resolution forward asking you to consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding
050a resolution expressing intent to reimburse certain expenditures as we move forward through the process we do want to position ourselves that any early items that we can procure that might save time or money for our for our project of elementary school number 12 that we consider we would like to look at anything that might be advantageous in a procurement of materials permits or site work that would be beneficial and would allow the program or the pro the construction project to move forward uh in consultation with huckabee and cloud construction we will determine if there is an advantageous use of funds that would be considered that would be secured through this resolution the district would be reimbursed for the full amount used once bond funding is issued the amount that we were considering after consultation with
051our cfo would be an amount not to exceed two million dollars the funds would be reimbursed when bond funding is available and that we would ask tonight i would answer any questions that you may have on this regard and we would ask that you approve the resolution allowing us to explore options uh all normal purchasing requirements would take place so this is in no way a two million dollar blank check that would be reimbursed later we would come back with project details and and regular procurement that we would be under under any type of funds well there we go do we have a motion to approve the resolution expressing intent to reimburse certain expenditures as presented ms lee mr alcoser all in favor all right that passes me absolutely thank you very much now on
052the one i've already read once and i'll go back and do it again consider discuss take appropriate action regarding the superintendent's contract the proposed contract extends dr smith's contract with belton isd by two years with a term ending on june 30th 2027 no other changes were made um obviously we can have discussion or actually i think if anybody like to make a comment i will start because my microphone's already on so this extends into a five five-year term and i think that what we want everybody to know is that we are blessed to have dr smith when he came into our district came in in the hardest time that we've ever seen in public education so we've gone through covet a couple of freezes some major water issues you name it we've gone through it
053and your leadership through this the team that you've built um i think that i can speak for the board and say that we're inspired by the work that you do and we absolutely love serving on a team of eight with you so i will open up the floor i'll admit for you but miss lee went first i see your green light i would like to say anytime somebody asks me about dr smith's um leadership the first thing i tell them is he is a leader who listens to people and empowers them to take ownership of their position because that in the end will have the greatest impact on student performance and job satisfaction when people see it as a team and that is the kind of leadership that we saw in him when we hired
054him and he's continually proven this and i i this is one of those processes you know like jeff said it's been a slow climb because of the things we've dealt with and the things we've been going through it's like a little bit like trudging through mud sometimes but i am so excited for the future and that's why we extended by two years because we need we want to see this play out exactly as we see it going forward so i found out saturday that two sunday school teachers from my church had invited matt to come and speak to one of our sunday school classes and it was about leadership during crisis and so when i found out about it of course i went to that sunday school class and i sat there on front row
055and listened and when his they had questions and they had they asked him different questions about how he leads through all the different crises that we've encountered in bisd and the one the one thing that i'll say is when class was over several people came up to me and grabbed me or shook my hand and said you all have to figure out a way to keep this guy because i could see him winning over the room with his comments and his heart as the as the class went on and so i want to piggyback on that by saying that i've been able to witness a complete transformation in the transparency the level of teacher and community input that you welcome on a daily basis but the thing that i've been the most maybe proud i
056don't even really know the word but i could feel it yesterday i could feel this emotion was the love that you put in your work and that was what you brought out yesterday is is that the way you handled things at belton high school in the last couple weeks you led with love and it shows through in your work and i'm proud to be a part of a team of eight when the leader of our district is leading with that now we've got to make some tough decisions on some things all the time and sometimes tough love is is part of that equation too but i just want to say how proud i was sitting in my sunday school class yesterday watching you went over a group of people from my church i didn't even
057have a clue it was going to happen and it was wonderful so i'm going to go off the leadership there's three things that come to my mind and i've one i've said this to you before and i think it's worth saying it again and in public is is your character how you handle anything that comes your way um you just pour out grace over everything and so i think your character to me stands out above all and it it exudes to the rest of us and and to our staff and and so i i thank you for that the second thing is you're consistent with your your message in our one on ones you're consistent up here you're consistent in our policy and facility meetings you're consistent in the public um and i've been to
058several community and public meetings with you and so i you're consistent and i appreciate that about you and then the third thing is you're present you are how you go to everything is is just is incredible you you're present at games concerts community meetings sunday school classes you've you know you've only been a part of this community for a couple of years but i just applaud you for being present i don't know how to top any of that i got to stop going last or next to last or whatever yeah i know um i knew from minute one when i had my cell phone up with the light turned on under the the interrogation light in the interview room uh i knew from minute one and you know i think that for everything that we've
059been through there's so much to celebrate in the time that we've had and i think your leadership has really helped to get us there um constantly keeping the kids and the staff at the front of what's going on um constantly be able to being able to see the other side of what the challenge is maybe not challenge but see the opportunity in the challenge and i'm so grateful to be just a part of it and um and uh on the ride with you wow okay so i keep bringing this up you know whenever we talk about you dr smith i'm the first one to drop the pen after you walked out it's like drop the mic this is the guy this is the guy one of the things that i firmly believe is that in
060order to be a great leader not a good leader but a great leader you have to learn how to serve first that's what you do you are in those trenches you are in those classrooms you are doing exactly what you would ask your staff to do nothing more i appreciate that i absolutely adore you for that in all the messaging that you sent to us and it's a lot i'm not complaining i i really appreciate all those texts and in different ways that you communicate with us but i feel your heart in every single one of them if it's negative if it's positive i feel your heart and i appreciate that you are a servant heart leader in this district thank you and i'm so glad that we are extending the contract and if we
061didn't have to have an end date legally that's where i would go i guess i'm last um matt when i when we first met you the thought that i had in my mind is is i wanted to satisfy myself that you actually cared about what you were doing um because it's such an important position i mean you've got the you've got all the staff we have 2019 employees that what we have 2009 200 2090. so i had i had to be convinced in my own mind that you actually cared about what you were doing that you had a passion for it so i was convinced then after the interviews and i'm convinced now more so um i remember telling the staff last week when we addressed them and you know talking about whether we cared
062about you know teachers and and and about their well-being and and what they're doing and what they're going through when you've talked to me about that i know you care about them it's not lip service okay a lot of leaders uh jawbone things and and it's just lip service but but i don't think that about you i mean i think you're sincere about it um none of us are perfect right so if we were if we were all perfect he would have never had to come here right so i i appreciate that and i i've noticed that in you and um man you do really well and all these things that have we've been hit with and i'm thinking man what's he going to be able to do when we get some sort of normalcy
063around here you know just think how we're going to take off okay so you've been able to handle and you came to a brand new community didn't know a soul around here your family was elsewhere for a year and you were here by yourself basically running two households to a brand new place and then bam you're you know you're you're punched in the gut and you made it through and uh we actually did pretty good right so uh that that speaks volumes to me um and now that we've had the other thing i was going to tell you as i was listening to my colleagues here talk about you how many of these these bond uh meetings that you go to how many did you do i don't have a total count we did about
06472 yeah but how many times did you actually you you took the lead on and you presented okay and you did that you did that to so the public had an opportunity if somebody says well we never had an opportunity to ask questions they had over 70 times they could have come to a meeting and asked you questions about this bond and put you on the spot you were there open ready to go they could have come in so so if if someone says well there's no transparency there's nothing but transparency okay and i was watching you over at belton high school one day and i'm thinking man how did this guy do it day in and day out uh having to deal with with with all the staff issues and then come in here
065and do these talks every night you know i don't know how many you were doing i mean i went to like a couple of them and i was going wow this is this is too much okay and you were doing it over and over and over and over again i don't know where you got the energy but i think the energy came from you wanted to make sure that the public was informed about what was going on because we had a big deal going on that's where you draw your energy okay that's what motivated you to keep on doing that so i appreciate that matt you have anything you'd like to say yeah i i appreciate uh the kind comments and i'm humbled by them i want to say real quickly and i i hate
066to give this secret away but the things that have gone really well it's because of you all as a board and that team out there and the things that have been messed up or my fault and that happens on a regular basis so i could not lead this school district without the support of you all and what you do on a regular basis but equally important is our administrative team and they politely put up with me sometimes and sometimes unpolitely put up with me but uh they they put up with me and they're we're doing really good work that we're proud of tonight in the superintendent's report i'm going to give you a couple of highlights that just blow my mind in the middle of all the stuff that we've we've had going on so
067i just want to say a sincere thank you to our administrative team and to you as a board for allowing me to be here and uh we've done great work and we've got great work left to do well kudos to the admin team [Applause] do we have a motion to approve the contract as presented mr taggart miss mcdonald all in favor okay that motion passes thank you all very much next we will move on to reports we get the pleasure of having a report tonight on a new program at belton new tech high school and this is the unmanned drones report now for those of you that think when you think of unmanned drones and you think of people standing in their driveways figuring out how to fly them a few years ago and crash
068them all over the place this takes it to a whole new level because the world in the use of drones right now in the potential job markets for the future is pretty spectacular so i'm going to turn it over to dr lowe smith and dr ferguson yeah so i am super excited about what dr ferguson is really going to share with you tonight i just wanted to open up she's been doing the work to bring this to our district and when you think about our values and you think about inspiring instruction and you think about innovation this speaks to preparing our students for the jobs that might not exist today but would exist just in the very short future we've heard from our we've heard from local industries how they're they're moving to this type
069of robotics technology and we we've seen it come to life with amazon and their deliveries and the way things are going and so when we think about inspiring dreams and empowering futures we are challenged with empowering futures that we don't know quite what look like exactly but we know the technology needed for that so with that i'm going to open it up with stuff dr ferguson and she'll tell you about this program thank you president norwood members of the board dr smith i'm excited to be here tonight to talk to you about the unmanned drone program that we are starting at belton utech high school in the fall and so as we looked at what you're working on okay as we looked at opportunities to create innovative programs we found some exciting opportunities at the
070intersection of student interest as well as high wage in demand occupations and so as you see here we know that there is an extreme growth rate in the the demand for jobs in the unmanned drone space and the reports that we hear nationwide that there will be over a hundred thousand jobs that will be open in this space by 2025. and so the coursework around around this new program of study as you can see here is we've intentionally designed it from a 912 perspective and so we this was a program of study that was not available to us it was only available to certain sections of the state but as i said with that intersection of student interest as well as what we knew would be some in-demand occupations in our region we worked with
071our chambers of commerce with our cte advisory board with our teachers with our students and we actually designed an application that went to tea and we were approved to offer this in january of this year as you can see it's a it's a very intentional program of study in ninth grade they will start students will start with introduction to the unmanned drone vehicle aerial vehicle and then they will go into robotics one and two in this space we're also going to include project lead the way so the exciting thing is is that these students will not only be focused on drone they also will have the opportunity to also compete in vex robotics as well and then that 12th grade year we added scientific research and design we refer to that as srd and this
072is going to give students the opportunity in that space to to actually work with industry partners and actually go to sites within within bell county as you can see here we're constantly looking at opportunities to align our cte programs of study with in demand high skill high wage jobs as you see here in this slide we went and did some work with texas workforce commission we live in workforce development area 26 and so we went drilled down with with our partners and some things that we found some connection to our flight engineers commercial pilots airline pilots and co-pilots and and we also in part of this this project that we put together with our industry partners these are some areas that we have heard that there is a need for these unmanned aerial vehicles everything
073from real estate to oil and gas to agriculture filmmaking mapping and surveying so there are tons of opportunities i love turf and golf course management we were talking to some people at wildflower and talking about how they use that as well to to look at greens and to to make sure things are from that balcony view they're able to see things that they can't see at the at the forefront we are partnering with iconic drone this is really truly going to be a turnkey operation for us it will allow for extensive teacher training equipment and consumables and then also in our focus for building capacity before teachers can actually go through this program in the summer they have to earn that faa part 107 federal certification and so we have our teacher at new tech
074who is working on that but then we found out that we have a belt in high school teacher who does this as a hobby he had already earned his um his faa part 107 and so in an effort to build capacity we worked with the principals we're actually going to send them both to training together to partner to support each other and so in the future that helps us build capacity if we want to include that on another campus we already have the teacher who's going to be far ahead and ready to ready to move so anyway this iconic drone it does provide all the professional training provides all of the equipment and um and then also the fun thing is that they also will help us with the competition with the students as they
075are trained on the equipment and so with um there at the campus we'll develop a network of our industry partners they truly are going to be a real lead for um for our region as i mentioned because of our ability to get this approved for our school district it opened it up for every district in region 12. so we truly are on the forefront of all this and so for that i'll have if you have any questions i'll be happy to answer them so when i saw this when i was reading through the information a good friend of mine has gone into this business in the last couple of years and he's doing very well with this so i screenshotted a picture of it and sent it to him and said hey we're starting this
076up would you be willing to be a consultant and he was right on board so i think you're going to see some people be willing to step forward and come and help he was excited about that so but once we get the unmanned drone program going if we ever do a manned drone i want to nominate jeff to be the first pilot he can he can ride while they're testing out on their stuff more safety for that one yeah i think this is awesome just another well thank y'all very much that is um that's just excellent and the great things that are happening our school if i could say one thing certainly uh one of the things that wasn't mentioned in here that i believe if you take a look at the austin job market
077you're gonna see postings from amazon about their delivery using drones for packages and so as this continues to evolve i think those items that you see there are current uses but i think i think this world is going to open up in ways that we've never seen and thankful for dr ferguson for getting us rolling for us and getting an opportunity for all of region 12 but obviously getting belton isd and new tech kicked off first so thank you the update on student behavior focus groups we're going to invite mr mike morgan on up to give us an overview of the the committees and the work that we first started talking about mid-year this year or excuse me mid-school year this year beginning of the year again and talk to you about something that's that's
078uh very important to us um it's it's a another piece of the puzzle in our listening to our community listening to our parents listening to our teachers and students and trying to address uh issues and address concerns that are out there the purpose tonight is to give you guys an update on the on the process for our teacher and parent focus groups this is not a complete report we still have work to do we have a listening session uh coming up tomorrow night where we're gonna invite our community in and have administrators there to to uh discuss one-on-one their perspe their perception and the and the concerns and the the experiences that some of our our teachers and our staff and our parents and perhaps even students are having in our schools and so our
079final results from this process of focus group and listening session could could uh alter a little bit after tonight but we thought it was important to give you an update on where we are and what we've done so far so we really wanted to gather feedback from teachers and parents and we wanted to get a really clear perception of how they perceive classroom behaviors when we use varying data collection methods to do this i will say that this was a as far as our focus groups go there was a definite purpose to those there was a beginning and end we did randomly select teachers and parents to be and serve on our focus group we thought that it'd be that it was important in that regard to get a wide array of perceptions and a
080wide array of experiences we did invite parents and teachers from each campus multiple we also included special education teachers and bus drivers in our in our teacher focus group because we believe that uh that their experience in classroom behavior and classroom management was important as well and we know that many of our students start and end the day on school buses we also thought it was important to include or to invite parents from all the age groups and make sure that we had some special education parents invited to the parent group as well to kind of summarize tonight the first i wanted to kind of talk about when we talked with our teachers and we went through a series of discussions with our teachers and and kind of had them address what the highest priority
081needs or the the biggest concerns that they had for classroom behavioral challenges and you can see here it was kind of broken down into these five major themes uh one about student concern or unconcerned about consequences of behavior disrespect for others whether that be other students or staff apathy and low motivation and the challenges that that brings in some students inappropriate social interactions and cell phone use and technology use were some of the other themes that came out of those discussions and and out of that for those processes that we went through we asked our teachers in in one portion of the focus group process what do you need what do you need from us what do you need from our community what do you need from your students to be successful and these were
082some of these were the major themes that came out of that in regards to student behavior it was consistent and appropriate consequences when it's talking about needs from parents it's parent parental engagement and support we want to find ways to to have our parents be engaged in the educational process and support our teachers one of the things that came up with support from administration and as we dug in a little bit deeper than that it doesn't mean the same thing to each teacher so we have some work to do with our administrative staff and on our campus levels to find out what that support that's needed and how we can provide that support professional development on skills and strategies to address high need behaviors sel support on each campus for those students that that need
083that less res less reliance on technology manageable class sizes and available administrators and counselors for support and that kind of talks directly back to finding ways that we as a district can free up our administrators and counselors to support uh classroom needs as they're occurring we also spent time like say with a parent group we did our parent and teacher group separately we thought that that really the discussions that we wish to have uh needed to be framed a little differently and we also wanted to make sure that we had a clear picture of kind of our parent our parent observations and concerns and our teacher observations and concerns uh one of the things that kind of came out of this was is that parents the parents that we spoke with anyway didn't notice a
084considerable change in behavior uh through the perspective of their kids or their experience uh since covid uh really you can see here a lot of the areas that the parents had the biggest concerns about dealt with technology issues with their ability of their kids to access or or could they access inappropriate content cell phone use during instructional time bullying behavior on buses was a concern that came out of our parent group teachers being able to monitor technology uses in class impact of social media and what that carries on our students and clear communication to parents about expectations the some conclusions that we drew as we kind of synthesize the data from from all four sessions together is that we have to we have work to do and we need to make sure that we do
085things that are going to strengthen teacher and student relationships and teacher and parent relationships the importance of communication and engagement between teachers and parents and utilizing all of our resources to make sure that happens in a way that that that communication is getting home and that parents can get can get back with teachers and ask questions and be good partners the importance of consistent expectations and consequences for negative student behaviors the value of professional development and resources to manage classroom behavior and the appropriate use of technology and strategies in particular to cell phone impact on instruction we do have some next steps and it kind of ties along with our conclusions is that um and and these may be refined after our listing sessions are complete and after we have spent some time with our
086campus administrators and principals and and retrieved some student data as well but really trying to foster those strategies to foster better communication to improve consistency district-wide and you know there's a real challenge with consistency in a district of our size that's growing as quickly as we are because when you really look at consistency you're talking student to student teacher to teacher classroom to classroom grade level to grade level campus to campus and then and then from your elementary middle and secondary or high schools so uh you know we're going to spend some time really talking about district-wide consistency what is what is uh what can be achieved and what are the areas where we really need to hone in on that work develop and implement effective professional development we have some groups coming up very
087quickly to work on this and and how we can best utilize our time and really meet our teachers where they want and need the most information whenever they come back in august and then also to evaluate all aspects of technology informally and informally and informally used in the schools and then as the school year concludes we need to analyze current year discipline data and historical data to address trends in behavior and see how they relate to the feedback we achieved so this is a it's a very serious topic to us it's a very important topic to us and it's going to take all of the stakeholders to uh to really get to work on this and figure out ways that we can that we can make things um take these things take the feedback that
088we've gotten and come up with sound strategies to help us implement these implement these moving forward we do have a another listing session tomorrow night uh it's going to be at sparta elementary from five to eight we have a team of administrators district level administrators who will be there and our goal is to provide one-on-one discussions with uh with community members parents students and staff that wish to come and hope to to gain some insight on their experience and their perspective but also allow them to to partner with us on potential solutions for some of their concerns and uh like say this is an ongoing effort it's uh it's part of the our entire um goal one on engaging our stakeholders we know that times are um that there are some challenges out there right
089now and we want to be great partners and we really want to listen to the voices of our parents and our teachers as we try to address some of these needs so i would open it up now for discussion questions and knowing that we will be coming back to you in the near future with more information and more next steps as we continue to plan so what does a timeline look like um the timeline it's yeah it's moving it's moving quickly now as we prepare for next year so we um we're gonna we're gonna take the data that we receive tomorrow night and and uh the major themes that emerge from our listening sessions we're going to discuss these these uh conclusions and and the the elements that we've that we have gotten so far
090with our campus principles tomorrow morning and then as we work with our teams throughout the end of the school year and then on into our summer planning for for return as is we need to have a sound place and sound plan in place before everybody leaves towards the end of june and so that sound plan will include like tangible things you know you can strategize all day long but there's going to be some tangible things that come out of that right there will be mike um do you see any i mean maybe maybe too early to tell cause i know this is work in progress but do you it green lights on oh okay do you see changes in administrative regulations or is there going to be some sort of policy issue uh it could
091be both it could be things to look at in our handbook code conduct it could be creating better rubrics that our campus administrators can use when applying discipline to situations that we consistently see on our campuses it could be additional supports through our counseling departments and things of that nature it could be a stronger referral process for students that maybe need some supports outside of what the school offers it could be a review of the types of behaviors that we're seeing the most how can we engage students better how can we create better parent engagement um what can we do to make sure teachers have a an avenue to go speak whenever they don't feel supported and and you know not get in a position where they they may not feel that they can go
092ask for that help when they need it so i see lots of different pathways um i think identifying kind of what the roots are first uh one of the activities we that we went through with our teacher group was not just talking about the behaviors they're seeing but really digging deep and seeing where kind of where they were on what they believe some of the root causes of those behaviors are as well so if we can identify some root causes then perhaps we can we can implement some strategies to keep those behaviors from even happening to begin with so there there definitely has to be a punitive side to this but there has to be a a preventative side as as well and we hope that um we we can come up with some sound
093strategies and and some things that we can do as far as relationship building and communication that could help ahead get out in front of some of these problems um thank you so much for looking into this right so we started this meeting talking about continuous improvement right and so this is a great example of something we're trying to do from a continuous improvement standpoint um you know ultimately this comes down to having expectations having two-way communication about those expectations respectful and respectful enforcement um or interaction around you know when those expectations are not met refining those expectations as we've got data that that shows otherwise um you know we talked about the student handbook right i mean that's got to be part of this consistency right is absolutely key to it you know involvement of
094parents is absolutely key to it and and how we frame whatever the outcome and next steps are around the journey of a graduate right and really to kind of tie that in because i think there is a great tie-in uh for that into this right i mean those are all key things for me i mean i'm anxious to see what the sort of how the next next conversation goes and sort of the final it's never really going to be final but you know what what the final um report looks like because you know we need to we need to do something take an incremental step of improvement right before before the beginning of next school year for sure so thank you i know this is not easy work i know some of the stuff that
095that is coming up is not easy to hear you don't want to hear it but it's important to hear it um from all levels so thank you so much i do want to thank dr spearman and cynthia bodie for helping lead this work too they were kind of instrumental in getting our groups together and kind of facilitating some of these conversations it's been really important to us that we are the listeners in this in this process we we have kind of let the conversations go where they were the the people that we were in our focus groups felt like they needed to go there's going to be more of that tomorrow night and then i think that's when we have to really start uh looking at the some concrete things that we feel like we
096can do to move the needle a little bit i think this goes back to me and has a whole lot to do with the the bringing in and the retaining of our teachers because when i read constantly all the time i'm reading about people all over and teachers who are getting out of the profession the number one thing that i can glean from this the theme is they don't feel like they're being backed up in their classrooms they don't feel like there's consequences for bad behavior there's not consistency and in my opinion how are we going to bring in new people to our profession if they feel like they're coming into a district that has a reputation that can't handle their kids and their behavior issues so i think this goes it's a deeper issue
097than just the behavior itself it goes along with that retaining of the world-class faculty and you know this is one that i feel just personally and you all know me you'll get tired of hearing me talk about this but i feel like this is the most important issue we have in belton isd moving forward we're growing from an old district we're not there anymore we're not the old school belton joe p walking around every kid a winner those days are gone now we're growing at 800 kids a year and they're coming from all over the place and they're bringing a lot of different ideas and a lot of different things from other communities but we don't have to stand for all that we can say this is belton this is what we believe in these
098are the values that we have this is the discipline that we expect in our classrooms from bex all the way through high school and i think it starts at the at the younger ages is where we can really make a difference these are our expectations and this is what we will do what we want so i think moving forward to to be able to maintain the pride that we've had in bisd this is the most important issue in my opinion that we have and i know this is tough this is where i said earlier tough love sometimes is difficult whenever before my first child was born we were able to get a hold of a book by a man named james dobson that talked about bringing up boys and boy i'm telling you what it
099was a blessing for us to have that book because when other people of our generation were reasoning with their kids and letting them walk all over them we had we had a rule book and we stuck by it and you see the performance that my kids had throughout their careers because there was high expectations so i want to see some of that stuff brought back i think there's been some failed attempts at some new age discipline and stuff in the classrooms that has shown not to work very well that's just ty speaking but i think we i'd like to see some of that stuff get back and something else i'll back 100 percent is a as a cell phone policy where you don't see a cell phone in the classroom in between the bills i
100think that is a problem that we have in our classrooms but uh you guys have a lot of work to do in this but i will say one thing being an old educator and being married to a teacher listen to what they're telling you because we have to let them know that we're going to have their back in this and that we're going to draw a line of what our expectations are going to be we're going to treat those expectations with consistent discipline and i think that's going to go a long way in us turning this boat around of people not wanting to be teachers or people leaving so quickly after their first and second year this is how we bring them back this is how we keep them right here so i appreciate y'all's
101work this goes back to that transparency thing that y'all are doing this and you're listening to people and i'm excited to see how we can turn this around before it gets out of hand miss mcdonald i just had one more question and thank you ty for helping me remember what the question was the question is um are you listening to parents at all grade levels or is it a specific grade level you may have said that and i missed it this group the group that we worked with here and we we're going to have some other parent inputs but this group was pretty much a straight split it was about half elementary and about half middle school high school so any other questions dr smith anything dad i just want to thank mike i think
102ty had mentioned it chris mentioned that this some of these things aren't the easiest things to work through but we're very appreciative of our team that's working through them we do know on our teachers to feel supported we also want when you get to behavior and discipline to remember that we're a learning organization and it's about helping support learning and growth for each and every student each and every day and so we're continually looking at our systems to help that because i think you all have probably read data nationwide reports nationwide and we're hearing it from some of our teachers some of the behavior that teachers particularly kindergarten first and second grade teachers have seen since the pandemic initiated in the united states are different than we've ever experienced before and so we have to
103learn new skills and new systems to adapt to some of those challenges and i'm thankful for mike and cassandra and cynthia for helping us get this started all right thank you very much thank you next is facilities committee report well i'll have to say that uh it was a really good facilities committee meeting i've been looking forward to that one for a really long time and i'm not going to i'll just have we'll we're going to get to do some stuff and i'm not going to be labor of the point because i know matt's got some stuff in his report coming up but basically what we're what we went over was what we're doing to get started and we've already laid the foundation with some decisions that we made uh during the last year knowing
104that if things were taken care of and the bonds passed that we would have a lot of groundwork taken care of and we could hit the ground running and that's basically what this meeting was about is those steps moving quickly moving forward uh with some reasonable expectations knowing what the construction industry is like today but we made some we took some steps to hopefully help with that moving forward so i'm proud of what we did moving uh going into this phase but now guess what it's time to go does anybody have any questions for mr tiger well that was a quick report right there all right uh next is policy committee report okay um lots of important work ahead of us let me just touch on the a couple of the things that we didn't
105spend a whole lot of time on one was uh it's found in your board packet on page 113 which is fda local just a small change to coincide with our district of innovation policy uh nothing significant by three or four lines first reading second reading tonight and the consent agenda and then the tasby policy review update uh melinda came spoke to us i think there were 45 45 policies that tazbee pointed out and very in different different areas that we need to look at later so for example uh ten of them involve student policies nine involve business and support services eight local governance one was basic district foundation seven personnel five instruction and five under community and governmental relations we're going to go over those uh again later so there's more to come on that
106uh so we spent the crux of our time on uh efb local and let me just reiterate some of the things that were how kind of kind of what we got from point a to point b point b being today uh we had one meeting on instructional services that deanna come and talk to us about and then the tea model policy came out so let me i have some notes here and i just want to share with you some of the notes that i've taken over the course of the last three meetings so the governor's letter came out november the 6th 2021 and then tea responded to address the obscene contact that i've seen content that may be found in in our on our school shelves so tea worked with the texas state library and
107archives commission as well as the chair of the state board of education so then they came out with the model policy via letter dated april the 11th 2022 so that kind of threw a wrench in our process here so now we have to take consideration the model policy but we had looked at other policies from other districts and we kind of focused on mckinney this time but there were some other districts that we took a look at but now we have to take into consideration the model policy because tea says well maybe you ought to use this all right and again school boards us we choose and adopt policies that define number one procedures and processes used within our systems in many operational areas including library materials the now the tea model is supposed to
108address procedures related to selection review and transparency of library materials that emphasizes the rights of texas parents the tea model references standards regarding inappropriate and harmful content for materials as defined by number one the texas penal code and number two the federal children's internet protections act and in selecting materials to be included they have to be read by someone reviewed and then recommended for inclusion by the district library supervisor of course ultimately if something hits our shelves it's up to us to approve that now so what do we do from here um i mentioned a few things in passing one is as we draft something one is who has standing to to come in and complain can it be somebody from the temple district come in here and says uh mr superintendent you've got about
109400 books that i don't like that you guys need to get rid of until in belton i don't like those but it's a temple resident and with a kid in temple schools or is it just limited to parents with children in the district or is it limited to anyone that lives within our district so we're going to have to decide on the standing issue because what we don't want to to do is draft a policy that's going to lend to abuse and this is something obviously we're going to have to talk about in public so if someone comes in and says there's 500 books that i don't like that you guys need to take off your shelf so what do we do with that who reads those who do you assign to read those um
110and then janet brought up a good point what's what's the initial threshold question um well parent you need to go visit with uh that english teacher or the or the the principle of the school and see if you can work those things out now matt and i had a discussion recently about the standing issue and then about the situation where these policies can lend themselves to to abuse there's no way according to the ta policy you have to read everything okay but but i think we discussed it some we talked about attaching a form uh to the policy that whoever the complaining party is fills out this form and in my mind's eye it needs to be very specific so if i've got if i'm a parent and i've got a hundred books that i
111want off the belt and shelves then i need to fill out this form and we haven't finalized it of course we just talked about it the title of the book page number line and you tell me why this book uh is inappropriate as a whole and chris made some comments about that inappropriate as a whole and why needs to come off the shelf because we don't have the manpower to review 500 books we just don't i mean that's let's just be real about it right so we can draft something and say okay if it's two or three books then we got this committee the committee looks at it but that's we have to look at situations where it might be one or two or 500 and it's got to fit every particular instance so in
112my view um one thing that we do need to have in place and i know deanna's talked to us about it is a parent who says you know what i don't want to i see your policy but i don't want to i don't want to go through that process just um take my kid my kids ability to check out these 100 books and that just applies to my kid i don't want to fill out a form i don't want to read all the books i just don't like what i hear about them but i want my kid away from these books okay i think that's something that we need to talk about and then we need to consider including in that now what if that parent says well i want i want to go ahead
113and fill out the form but i don't want to read all the books i just heard about it i just heard that they're not good well we can't have that because that's going to that's going to lend to abuse so i think we we need to put this onerous burden back on the parent because we want parents involved right so let the parent tell us exactly what's wrong with it and then we can take it the policy will allow us to take it even further if we want to do that but we need to be able to have the resources and and the and the policy needs to allow us to be able to address all concerns so that's that's that's one thing standing the form needs to be very specific and then the third
114thing that that we're going to have to address is as the grievance for lack of a better as the as the as the concerns of the parent are taken upwards to the level and ultimately up to us what is it that we review ultimately i mean do we uh we'll say well suzanne you're going to read it you're going to read the 50 books and report to us and then janet you're going to read the other 50. and then tiger you're going to get it with about 200 i mean i'm i'm i'm trying to be i'm not trying to be silly but you see what i'm saying so the what what is the record that comes before us that we have to look at well i think we look at the exhibit that or the
115form that he that the parent filled out for each particular book because we don't have the resources nor the time to go through all of that okay um and understanding that that that that we as a district can also take the initiative to pull something if and and saying something positive about that model policy i like the fact that it's got the penal code in there and that other that other provision in there it gives us it gives us some guidance it gives us a litmus test and say well man if it doesn't pass muster under those under that test that we probably ought to think about pulling that thing so that's kind of where we are with this thing it's uh it's obviously um um very very important okay and then you know we
116talked about digital stuff instructional materials can include digital stuff or does it include textbooks because textbooks have already gone through their own process okay we're talking more about stuff that's on the library shelves all right so um anything else janet okay um we also discussed the review committees like how many people we would have on it what their jobs would be and and how to keep a review committee randomized so that you wouldn't end up with one uh cohesive think group so that you'd have you would try to avoid that sort of um everybody's already in agreement before they ever come there you know just one person from this campus a parent here an administrator here and so it's it's not you and all pick some friends right so we we just discussed on how
117to keep that fair and i think along the same lines we we talked about how do we how do we achieve a good cross-section of our district on these on this committee that's going to review that and then we don't want inconsistent decisions coming out of different campuses you know north belton makes a decision southbound makes a decision now we've got inconsistencies in our system and we don't want to do that maybe it should be more centralized to avoid that that kind of process now for the vast vast majority of cases this can you know a policy that like teas it's going to work to some extent i don't know if it's going to work for us um i don't know that we like some of the things that that are in there but it
118does have some good language in it but it's not going to work in situations where you've got to read every every line in a book that's a thousand pages long it's just not it's it's not going to work okay so we need to have the parent tell us because anybody can go out on the internet and say well these these are 500 books you want off your shelf well why tell us why okay because they're not only maybe i don't want maybe i don't want on a book but you know the parent down the street maybe maybe that parent wants those once those materials on on the shelf so none of us here obviously want inappropriate material on on the shelf okay much less pornographic material okay none of us do and i've made that
119clear in our policy committee uh and i'm making it clear now and none of us want that garbage on our shelves okay and it doesn't even need to rise rise to that level uh it can be inappropriate and be somewhat below that and we may not want that kind of material on our shelves either okay so we need to make that very clear to the public that that's that's where we're going but this is a process we can't just uh you know draw something up in the in in a month or so heck it took ta how long five months to to draft a model policy okay and even their model policy isn't the greatest and they had all the resources in the world all right so uh you know i think we're doing the
120best we can chris is is there something else that we yeah i mean from a next step standpoint i think we also expect tasby to come out with a suggested policy right and so then we'll have that as an input in um maybe pun intended here i think the devil's in the details um so um you know it's all about the crux of this is how do you what's the test right how do you know what how do you know that the material is sort of what you're looking for right or not what you're looking for um and then how do we work that through the system i mean that's that's probably the hardest part of this so but we've had some great conversation right actually i think we did i think we had a
121great conversation last time um but it's gonna it's still gonna take us a little bit because that taxi policy i think is a little a little further out there yeah and and you know that model policy does give us that test you know because you you try as best you can to remove as much subjectivity as you can uh so if it doesn't pass that test and it's got it it's got to be pulled off the shelf okay we're going to have to have something whether it's that language or some other language we're going to have to have something that gives our committees and guidance as to whether they need to pull something to recommend that um which is it's not an easy task it's a different it's when you start getting involved with subjectivity
122it's very difficult to drive something and then we have to obviously consider the you know our parents and and our students and just because local control was supposed to is supposed to take precedent here so so tea says local control but then they tell us well maybe you need to use that model right one just one thing to remind everybody again um and we say this at every meeting that we discuss this at and deanna will would help any parent understand this as well parents still have the ultimate control over their children's resources that they check out of the library even today you can have conversations with your librarian with your child's teacher to make sure that your child is not allowed and that goes all the way up to the high school level you
123have that control and you have that power as a parent please do not forget that and please use that as you need to indiana is nodding her head right she's emphasizing that so emphasis added right first of all i can't think of three people i'd rather have you know y'all are so thoughtful in in all your process of of what y'all do to be servant on this committee second of all i would i would like personally i would like to see something in place before we get cranked up in our next school year so that leaves us june july and then in august we usually are coming to our meeting whenever the kids are coming to school that week we need something in place and if we're going to sit around and wait on tasby
124then we may need to do something more localized with the guidance of the tea to go ahead and have some that's just my opinion and that may not be possible to have and and now chris was about to say something but matt you mentioned that towards the end of our meeting that we kind of need to i mean i don't want to say fast track because we want to pay close attention to this but we're going to have to have something in place by well here's what i would say is remember you're talking about policy policy is only one piece of the puzzle of this and so we can enact a review process we already have policy in place to change our review process as we see fit we can enact that before the policy
125is actually adopted we can enact the things that we've already talked to you all about about more transparency on websites on notifications those are all things outside of the policy so i don't know if we'll get a policy adopted by the beginning of the school year but all of those things that we talked to you all about in the workshop back in march that we initiated before tea came out all of those things we can take a large step forward in doing those things before we finalize quote policy in some of this so i want to make sure we manage that piece we are not just sitting here waiting on the policy committee to say yes to a final policy we are actually have a lot of stuff that's already moving forward deanna's going to
126be presenting to you on again in in june coming up and those things can be enacted and we can actually get the review process started the way we want before we even finalize the policy and then my last thing on this my last part was i like i like the thinking on trying to keep this as local as possible this is about a parent or or a stakeholder who has a concern about a book or three books if someone brings you 500 that's politics this should be about local concerns from parents or stakeholders this should not be so we need to try to figure out you guys not facilities you guys figure out how to keep the politics out of this this is for concerns about real things not not for political gain from somebody
127and that's going to be hard to do very hard and uh well any more discussion on the on that part and then the last thing we we talked some about uh legislative priorities of course we've we've kind of exhausted that this evening so really no needing to go into that yeah i mean we we to matt's point into your point ty um we already have a policy in place right so it's not like there's no policy right and so a lot of the mechanisms that matt's talking about that can be started from a you know review standpoint all that like i believe actually all of those things would be supported by our current policy right so so we do have at least a framework there to to make some progress there you know i think
128what we're talking about is like how do we fill the gaps in the policy that we have and yeah we can't let perfect be the enemy of getting something done right um but um but i do think we have a good framework to get get a good way down get a good way there make some good progress towards this on the time frame that you're talking about so yeah any other questions manual anything else no sure all right thank you very much next is the superintendent's report trustees thank you tonight superintendent's report we are having a discussion sorry about that there we go i was going the wrong way talking to you a little bit about first thank you to our community for support for belton high school i think most of you are in
129the know about this but i want to very publicly thank our local police departments our cities our county we had people reaching out to us from everywhere in support of belton high school and the situation that we went through and we're beyond grateful our partners at fort hood are still on campus every day and we're thankful for their continued presence our local churches as you drive up um 317 or main street and you see different churches and things that have signs out to say praying for bisd every support every message every piece of this puzzle matters to the students the staff and the community for belton high school so thank you thank you thank you i wanted to very clearly acknowledge that we have a lot of central office staff that were out there for
130a number of days and continue to be out there to fill in to help out when we have needs at the school and to just be a guide on the side as we navigate this this tragedy and so thank you to our central office staff we did have other isds from across the state and honestly across the nation reach out and say if there's anything i can do to help you let us know and that tells me the community level of support for the big red community and specifically belton high school is strong so we're very very thankful for the outreach of support by all of those listed there and those that aren't listed there we had numerous volunteers that are helping in various ways for this as we continue to to grieve and also
131move forward at the same time so thank you to all of those who provided support i'm going the wrong way again i apologize we had old glory day lakewood high school or lakewood high school lakewood elementary school i mentioned this a little bit in our workshop but i i was blown away by not only the uh support that we felt for our our military community at that event but also just the the camaraderie and support that we have is a community event at lakewood elementary school so kudos to lakewood for tradition for history for putting putting our best foot forward as we continue to build bridges within our community pre-prom at belton high school was an outstanding success it is now going to be one of my favorite events it's the first one that i've
132ever been able to go to and i couldn't be more proud of our staff and our students at belton high school for their pre-prom event end of the year activities we are in in the thick of award ceremonies senior events you know when you get to hand out scholarships uh and you hear the amazing work that's going on from our kids right now and you think about all of the teacher support that's gone along the way uh i just couldn't be more proud or humbled as a system because we have kids that are thriving and i want to skip to the athletics fine arts and ffa et cetera i think sam and sam you're going to correct me if i'm wrong on this i think that every varsity team sport at both lake belton high
133school and belton high school made the playoffs this year am i right on that now that has never happened in the school district and in the middle of the challenging times that we're talking about we're talking about the the time and effort and energy that is poured into by our staff and our students and also our students in their dedication to the practice that needs to happen for that we also had two bands this year qualify for state marching band competition again let's think about that for a second in the midst of all of this we have teachers students and staff members that are just thriving and it i couldn't be more humbled or proud as we reflect on the year yes it is sometimes we reflect on the hard stuff but it's important to
134reflect on all of the other stuff that's going on because there's a great story to be told we're getting ready to wrap up the superintendent student advisory council i don't know what to expect on this one it's always interesting when you bring elementary students in to give you some advice and so we're looking forward to wrapping that up wednesday this week and obviously we're going to culminate with graduation coming up and i cannot get that um the right order right now our bond exploration timeline this is uh just a quick recap as you all remember we we got things kicked off with you all approving a charter for the bond exploration committee last fall and we really had an accelerated study that happened in our school district on all of the needs that we had
135as a school district we ultimately brought to you as a board of trustees some recommendations and on february the 15th you all approved an election to go out for our community to decide on a couple of propositions that were in front of our community you can see these results again these results were the preliminary results what you voted on earlier tonight were the final results and so these were the initial results that we had but obviously belton isd's proposition a and proposition b both passed at the end of all this and we're very very thankful for the support of our community we do realize yes it is very those were very close votes and we realized that we have to be really good moving forward at continuing to talk about the needs of our school
136district continuing to realize the challenges that taxpayers are in on a regular basis we've talked about that at every one of those 72 bond presentations that we did and we'll continue talking about that over the next few years because this is about partnership with our community as we continue to move forward so we're thankful for their vote of support as you can see we went over these next steps and ty mentioned this earlier in our facilities committee we are going to be proceeding with that elementary 13 design we've talked about that quite a bit in various uh formats with you all we'll work with our financial advisor on the bond sale timelines again we're looking toward the end of july beginning of august to actually have these bonds funded project timelines for design and construction
137will be developed with the consultation of our our team at the central office and on our campuses we are going to establish a bond oversight committee it's the first one that i believe that belton isd has done and this is where on a scheduled basis on a periodic basis we report out on the progress of our projects and also on the progress financially of how we're using those bond funds so that we continually build that transparency in with our public and finally i would expect that our bonds project website is going to be up and running as we kick things off this fall and we'll have more information than you can ever imagine so we're definitely looking forward to those next steps for the bond and very thankful for your support as a board but
138also for our community support that concludes the superintendent's report at this time thanks matt any questions for dr smith no okay there being no questions we will move on to the next item which is the consent agenda does anyone wish to pull an item for discussion all right seeing no takers do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented ms lee mr taggart all in favor all right that passes all right next item board members at this time any requests for new information or reports from the administrative team i'll start down here work my way around no okay uh next item as a reminder following events coming up matt had already listed those but you also have them here in your packet the upcoming events we don't have any public comments on
139non-agenda items correct connie okay all right so while we'll move on the time is 8 16 the board will now go into closed session for consultation with attorney texas government code 551.071 deliberation regarding matters whereby personally identifiable information regarding one or more students will be disclosed texas government code 551.0821 and personnel texas government code section 551.074 you