Belton ISD School Board Meeting November 15, 2021

001good evening everyone thank you for joining us hope you enjoyed the performance from the north belton middle school advanced treble choir that was wonderful thank you the time is 6 15 and the belton independent school district board of trustees are now convened in a regular board meeting monday november 15 2021 in the pittinger fine arts center located at 400 north wall street belton texas a quorum of board members is present this meeting has been duly called notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with texas open meetings act texas government code chapter 551 please note for the record board member suzanne mcdonald is not present i want to welcome members of our audience and our live stream viewers to this meeting as the belton isd board of trustees we are here to set goals

002listen to reports from the superintendent approve budgets contracts personnel appointments make policy for the district it is not the role of the board of trustees to make day-to-day operational decisions the management and day-to-day operations of the district are the responsibility of the superintendent we have policies and procedures in place to resolve concerns and issues this is a meeting of the board of trustees that is held in public not a public meeting prior to the meeting board members received information related to the items on tonight's agenda agenda items may not necessarily be handled in the order listed on the notice this meeting is open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed these proceedings are being live streamed on bisd's youtube channel and a recording of the meeting will be available on the

003district's website in the days following tonight's meeting for the video to adequately reflect the proceedings respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking cell phones are turned off and in silent mode thank you for taking the time in this evening and showing your interest in bisd at this time you'll please rise for a moment of silent prayer meditation thank you please remain standing communications team i'll let you take it from here the evening trustees tonight we have two fifth graders with us from miller heights we have colton teal and brianna magana and i'm going to let them take it away and lead us in the pledges 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

004for liberty and justice for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one and indivisible that's right great job colton and brianna thank you so much and a little bit more about colton as i said he's a fifth grader his favorite subject is math and he also likes pugs i'd love to know that story brianna also in fifth grade her favorite subject is math she likes coloring and taking pictures of the outdoors and going out to eat with her family great job to our students from miller heights thank you so much [Applause] next on recognition moving right along into recognitions as we all got to enjoy just a few moments ago our student showcase this evening is our north belton middle school advanced trouble choir students in the

005advanced trouble choir at north belton middle school performed shine like stars by pink zebra that's an awesome name home arranged by janet day and this that's christmas to me by kevin osula and scott hoyne before the start of the meeting this evening members of the group are elizabeth baxter peyton beaver annie brown leah bruno isabella dixon laila dutton mariah espinoza landry hargrove abigail hoffman mckenna koontz alexa miller megan ogden elena prager emma solt bailey shorn wherealex toledo amy waller and caitlin ward the group is under the direction of alicia martinez thank you so much for being with us tonight [Applause] next up this evening we have our college board national recognition program scholars four belton isd students have been named college board national recognition program scholars for top performances on the preliminary sat or the

006psat the students were among the top two and a half percent of test takers who identify as one or more of the following african-american hispanic american or latino indigenous or attend school in rural area or from a small town that's a mouthful belton high school juniors caleb bovill and ellen dupont de george were named african-american scholars like belton high school junior benjamin kolbath and bhs junior gisela whiteman were named hispanic scholars to qualify for the recognition the students had to achieve a minimum psat score and a cumulative gpa of 3.5 or higher congratulations students it's quite an honor [Applause] next up this evening we have our specs mix junior bricklayer 500 winners three belton high school students took first place at the spec mix junior bricklayer 500 regional competition last month in fort worth this

007event is considered the super bowl of brick lane and tests the attributes that make a great mason skill speed and stamina we are proud to recognize seniors rahen shaw kyler peter and junior nathaniel hernandez for this incredible accomplishment rayhan was the team's mason and with kyler and nathaniel serving as the tenders or assistance to the stonemason michael carrillo is the school's instructor and enjoying us tonight and a big support for our masonry program we have with us the texas masonry council's tony topping and corey hancock brian bush from the austin block and quarry llc and james boosting from spec mix thank you all for being here and congratulations to the students [Applause] [Music] and parents will make them stay up there as long as you want get all the pictures you want this is quite

008an accomplishment miss cox while they're taking pictures if i can just say something i had the pleasure of going out and trying to build a wall one day and lay some brick and for those of you that think like you can do it like them and i thought i can do this these guys are unbelievable not only in the quality but the speed in what in which they do this work and so proud of their work and the skills that they're learning for the future the jobs that they're earning for the future already and the programs that we offer our kids truly impressive so thank you guys congratulations thank you [Applause] [Music] now we'll recognize our state qualifier in cross country belton high school freshman olivia brillhart ran in the state cross country meet on

009november 6 and placed 53rd out of 145 runners she qualified for state after placing 14th overall in the region 2 6a cross country meet at lynn creek park joe pool lake in grand prairie on october 25th she's joined up there with her cross country coach holly lamberty who i know is really excited that olivia is just a freshman and so i think this is a really great start for her in cross-country competition congratulations olivia [Applause] we pause for all the cameras here so take as many pictures as you'd like congratulations olivia next up we have another state qualifier our lake belton high school stampede marching band for the second year in a row stampede marching band qualified to compete in the 4a uil state marching band contest on november 10th at the alamo dome after

010earning superior ratings at the uil region 8 marching competition last month their 2021 show was called dreamscapes the band is under the direction of bobby jurgen craig george jacob guerrero and jessie arbolay congratulations to these students the other members of the stampede and our directors great work we're so proud of you [Applause] again families if you want to come up and take a picture you can come up and take a picture you go right ahead [Applause] [Music] students hold those smiles you have a lot of proud parents congratulations stampede [Applause] our final recognition of the evening is our rotary educator of the month for the temple rotary jessica kopwal is being recognized by the temple rotary club for the month of october for outstanding service to belton isd jessica serves as a special education resource

011math teacher at lbhs she's in her 17th year in education and her 16th year with belton isd jessica is the first person people at lbhs think of when someone asks who is someone that has great school spirit and would be willing to help out with x y or z jessica is full of spirit so much so that she has established the student-led spirit section called the herd she helps to create a culture where each and every student feels welcome and she helps to ensure they find a place club organization or hangout where they feel included amber lubier assistant principal at lbhs stated ms kofal loves kids through and through and is so evident by her energy her smile her concern and consistent dedication to tutoring teaching and meeting their needs congratulations jessica we appreciate you

012[Applause] all right thank you all very much uh we'll take a couple minute break right here to let everybody who wants to leave go ahead and leave so you don't feel like you're trying to sneak out of a meeting that includes all the parents who are here to take pictures uh okay well a lot of people in here for awards that's a little echo in here now next item on the agenda values and beliefs and engaged workforce so again board thank you for uh taking time to highlight one of these every month at our board meeting and again these were adopted by our board of trustees on april the 19th engaged workforce we believe a thriving staff will be able to create exceptional learning experiences for each and every student so if you wouldn't mind

013if a couple of you would weigh in on just what that means to you as we continue to make sure these values and beliefs help guide us moving forward well i think we just saw an example right there of engaged workforce i know at least one of my daughters had her in class and it was such a difference making experience and when you have the opportunity to go around our district and see and visit with different people i think that's what's made belton a special place through the years is our workforce the people that are there every day to greet the kids and then when you do when you when i get up early in the mornings i'm usually on highway 190 or 14 now heading to clean by seven o'clock in the morning so

014i get to pass a lot of buses things like that and you get to see the district working you know as that as the organism every morning and then the afternoons when you're coming through you get to see the the cross crossing guards and all those people so belton's been a special place because of the people that we have that are serving our kids and in today's workforce with the challenges that we have today we need to be able to keep that focus on belt and being a good workplace for these folks and i think that todd and his folks do a good job of recruiting good people and i know they're working really hard on bringing in more and more of those people but i think that's what's made belton isd such a special

015place is the employees of our district i don't know how anybody follows that but i mean from a student perspective i mean how do you expect our students to get fired up and to find their passion if our teachers and the administrators and the folks in the building aren't fired up in exploring their passion right and so i i think it's so important to have an engaged workforce just to make sure that we get the great outcomes for our students and then i think i hit on this too right from the other side of it is we've got to have a great workforce in order to have a great workforce right i mean it's a sort of a self-fulfilling thing right and so in order to continue to have folks who are really fired up

016and passionate about what they're doing we've gotta we've really gotta bring more people in um we've gotta cultivate that and we gotta bring more people in um with that spirit so um this is this is a passion of mine for sure so this is this is great i felt obliged to say that because i'm married to one of our engaged employees so i want to thank our board i'll touch on this in the superintendent report tonight it has been a challenging couple of years and the way we see kids thrive in those performances that we see at these board meetings in the classroom and what's been happening is a direct result of the leadership of our principals and administrators the teachers in the classroom and our other employees throughout the district and i'll highlight that

017a little bit later tonight but we as an administrative team know it's been a challenging couple years and we are going to continue to work to try and make sure that we can create that condition where everybody can thrive there's my mic all right thank you very much uh the next agenda item proceed with public comments regarding items on the agenda in accordance with district policy bd local any person wishing to address the board of trustees during the public comments shall sign up before the meeting in order to comply with texas open meeting act the board may not respond to comments made or otherwise discuss or act upon any issues that are not posted on the agenda participants will be allotted three minutes for public comments regarding items on the agenda we have a timer

018on the screen that shows you're a lot of time 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 for the record the first person is going to be janet brown and the person on deck is brenda howard good evening everybody my name is janet brown and i'm live in morgan's point resort to kill a mockingbird the diary of a young girl by anne frank 1984 by george orwell the adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain the five people you meet in heaven watership down the lorex by dr zeus helter skelter the true story of the manson murders of mice and men harry potter and the sorcerer's stone animal farm these

019are some of the books removed from school libraries some were included as reading assignments in my school studies and i'm sure you are familiar with them so this practice of review is common i'm referring to 7b policy instructional resources report challenge process school libraries are not regular libraries they are taxpayer funded educational buildings housing libraries money and funding control the contents with local school board approval parents and community stakeholders place their trust in your ability to do this job there has to be scrutiny within the school and the school board is tasked with what's allowed in the school settings including the classroom material taught or shared by the educators or administrative staff public libraries can have whatever but the school library is a place just like the school building a place where students need to

020experience age-appropriate content in an educational setting personally i object to books being banned or removed but as a member in this hot mess of a world students are already confused overly influenced sexually and morally they are being damaged and consequently are finding themselves lost it is the educational system public schools staff and the school board's responsibility to offer students autonomy and also safely offer content knowledge appropriate to their age again parents place a high amount of their trust in your ability to perform this duty in oversight i know everyone's it's in the news right now that governor abbott has tasked the tea with reviewing books especially those with pornographic content and that is a very very serious charge for them to take under consideration because we do not want our students to be exposed with

021pornographic content at any age you wouldn't want your child to be to be watching that or reading that at home that is um we have a responsibility to ensure that no texas child is exposed to pornography or obscene content while in a texas public school and and hopefully their investigation will help accomplish this admission in closing parents and community stakeholders place place a huge amount of trust in you to accomplish the task to protect children and to not be unwitting accomplishment accomplishes accomplices sorry in openly advocating liberal social indoctrination activism equity pornography or gender confusion in any school subject matter sorry i stumbled a little bit thank you brenda howard good evening i'm brenda howard belton texas i'm speaking on agenda item number three values and belief and engaged workforce after speaking to many teachers

022that are currently teaching or have quit teaching at temple isd colleen isd and belton isd i learned that there is an immense dissatisfaction with the direction education is heading discipline or the lack thereof is the primary problem the workforce has disengaged as opposed to being engaged belton isd used to have the best teacher retention in all of bell county this isn't so anymore it started in austin five years ago austin isd's enrollment continues to drop as population increases there are many factors for this but one of them is the current education system whereby academics is being left by the wayside these students have moved to the outlying areas like leander hoping for a return to core education now leander is experiencing teacher and parent dissatisfaction and we have students here whose parents work in austin

023and they're moving here because they like the hometown feel a focus on academics school spirit and pride this is slowly leaving belton isd as our school begins to mimic the larger schools we have relaxed the dress code lesson disciplinary report repercussions and as ty taggart mentioned in another board meeting given the student multiple chances to pass as a matter of fact you can hardly fail a student imagine being a teacher with a no consequences student students are not afraid to break any and all rules because the consequences are meaningless as a matter of fact teachers are discouraged from referring disciplinary problems out of the classroom and to the appropriate person for handling they're also discouraged from failing a student because it looks bad on school performance statistics teachers are checking boxes and not allowed to

024teach academics enforce discipline and grade according to the student's actual performance how many years does a teacher go along with this until they go from engaged to disengaged the isd can throw money at teachers paying bonuses but job satisfaction is the ultimate reason most teachers teach they want to feel good about having a safe classroom environment being able to refer the troublemakers out of the classroom and award grades on actual effort if belton isd cannot do this for their teachers they will simply move further out to the rural areas that still believe in academics discipline and performance when good teachers leave so will the students belton isd is at a crossroads this course can be reversed and we can get back to basic education or we can kick the can down the road and end

025up like austin isd it's your choice thank you thank you next agenda item public hearing regarding the 2019-2020 school financial integrity rating system of texas otherwise known as the first report it is my pleasure board of trustees to welcome dr robert mueller to the podium tonight and he is going to take us through the um first report and the public hearing for this we are grateful for him serving as our interim cfo right now and the wisdom and guidance he provides us on a daily basis okay thank you dr smith board of trustees tonight this is the public hearing for your financial integrity rating system of texas it's been around for a while belton has always done extremely well they did it well again in this rating that's going to be presented here tonight in

026fact i would tell you even though it's 98 out of 100 you really couldn't achieve 100 out of 100 and we'll go through that in just a minute so you are to be congratulated i would also like to acknowledge the efforts of the business services group jennifer land is done really a fine job kerry pridemore is here his director of finance and kerry kind of serves as a representative of the rest of the business services folks and so they've worked very hard to bring to you uh just a top-notch score on the financial integrity rating system of texas and it's not just business services it's really the whole team because hr plays a part teams plays a part and it just goes on and on so it's really an acknowledgment of the excellence of really

027the entire district um let me acclimate myself to okay all right well first has been around for a while and it's really to provide an accountability system for school districts with respect to financial management practices and to improve those practices over time it was first kind of developed back in the late 90s two gentlemen that i happen to know joe neely who was deputy commissioner of tea at the time and ed flathouse who was director of finances at the agency we're kind of spearheading the effort and so it's been around for a while there were some rule changes a few years ago that really have been implemented with this first rating that you're going to see here tonight so what's new in this first rating well i'll tell you quite a bit there are a

028total of 20 indicators seven of those are new indicators there's been the introduction of ceiling indicators which we're going to talk about here in just a second and some of the point scales are a little bit different and you can see that in the graphic below there that you know substandard achievement last year was 0 to 59 points substandard achievement for this year is zero to 69 points so there have been some changes i would also acknowledge that you know i swapped out the presentation i apologize about that when i was looking at it this weekend there were a couple of slides that i felt like weren't real clear so we've felt like well let's go ahead and clear that up or i felt like we should clear that up and so i submitted another

029presentation and that's the one you're seeing here tonight tea pulls information from a variety of sources average daily attendance the annual financial report and belton now has gone to a comprehensive annual financial report which is called a cafer for short and uh warrant holds as reported by the texas comptroller and data from peems and attendance data okay so one of the biggest concepts that's that's new this year is the introduction of ceiling indicators what is what are called ceiling indicators and the ceiling indicators are just that they create a ceiling which this the school cannot score above most of the in fact i'll tell you all the ceiling indicators tend to be digital they're they're kind of pass fail so if you fail a ceiling indicator there will be a a point associated with that

030a maximum point value associated with that that the score cannot rise above so for example if you failed indicator 4 the maximum points you could receive would be 95. even if everything else was perfect the maximum points you could receive would be 95 if you failed indicator 4. again you can see the ceiling indicators that are indicated there and the points associated with those ceiling indicators you can also see that one through three and four a four is also a ceiling indicator because it's kind of got a two-prong test but one through three are considered critical indicators as well as four and if you fail any one of those you're automatically going to receive a substandard achievement and what you see sometimes across the state you'll see a school district that has substandard achievement you

031think well i know something about that school district why did they receive that and many times it's because their audit wasn't submitted on time their independent financial audit was not submitted to the agency on time well that's a critical indicator so that caused them to receive substandard achievement all right belton independent school district received 98 out of 100 points again i'm going to show you one of the indicators that was uh not the maximum number of points but there's some there's a little bit of a story behind that and i would tell you 98 out of 100 is about the best you could do this year which is an incredibly strong score all right real quickly i'd like to walk through uh the 20 indicators and i'll be quick indicator one which is a critical

032indicator and again the critical indicators are those that if you fail you receive a substandard achievement score so was the audit the annual financial report submitted within 30 days of the deadline as required and the answer of course for belton isd was yes it was submitted within the required time and you can see there that the august 20 the audit for the august for the fiscal year that ended august 31st 2020 was approved by the board in january of 2021 and received by the agency on the next day because it was submitted electronically so indicator one for belton isd was an affirmative and indicator 2 was there an unmodified opinion in the annual financial report on the financial statements as a whole of course the answer to that is yes belton isd received an unmodified

033audit opinion for the fiscal years both ending in 2019 and 2020. indicator 3 again a critical indicator was the district in compliance with the payment terms of all debt agreements the answer of course was yes it was in compliance with all those payment terms indicator 4 which is a critical and a ceiling indicator did the district make timely payments to trs texas workforce commission internal revenue and other agencies if you don't make timely payments then a warrant hold will be issued by the comptroller if that warrant hold is not cleared within 30 days then you're considered to be out of compliance with respect to this indicator so bisd made timely payments to the trs irs and other governmental agencies if the district was issued a warrant hold and it was not cleared within 30 days

034then the district would have failed this indicator if it was issued a warrant and it was cleared within 30 days that's where the ceiling indicator comes into play then you've hit the ceiling and it it you can score no higher than 95 points indicator 5 which is part of the 20 indicators it's kind of strange but it's not scored so i won't even spend any time on it indicator 6 was considered a new indicator this year it is was the average change in fund balance over three years less than 25 percent less than a 25 percent decrease or did the current year fund balance exceed 75 days of operational expense and the answer was yes belton isd passed that this indicator really test if fund balance is declining too quickly and if it's declining and

035if it is declining whether sufficient funds are available to fund operations for 75 days and of course with belton isd you have a healthy fund balance and it was certainly sufficient to operate for 75 days in fact the amount that showed at the end of 2020 was 37 million and the amount for 75 days is roughly 23 million indicator 7 was the number of days of cash on hand in current investments in the general fund sufficient to cover operating expenses the district earned 10 out of 10 points the district had cash on hand as the end of at as of the end of august 31st 2020 to fund the district for 137 days in the previous year was 151 days so it dropped off a little bit but this the threshold for the standard is

03690 days do you have to achieve 90 days in order to score a perfect 10. indicator 8 was the measure of current assets to current liabilities was that ratio for the school district sufficient to cover short-term debt in belton isd earned 10 out of 10 points and the ratio was 3.009 the threshold for the 10 points is 3.0 and then the previous year it was 5.1237 and the difference between those two years is really related to the construction that took place because the key word in that that indicator is current assets so as as capital projects became completed changed a little bit indicator 9 did the school's district's general fund revenues exceed expenditures the answer is yes they did well actually the answer is no they didn't but if not did the school district's number

037of days of cash on hand was it greater than 60 days and while for belton isd for the audit that in i mean for the fiscal year that ended in august 2031 the district's general fund fell a little bit short of expenditures by about 472 thousand dollars but the district had plenty of cash on hand enough to cover 137 days of operating expenses so it earned the maximum number of points for this particular indicator the next indicator is new indicator 10 did the school district average less than a 10 percent variance when comparing budgeted revenues to actual revenues for the last three fiscal years and the answer is yes it did in fact belton isd did very well on that indicator the variance was about 1.39 and the allowed variance by this by this indicator

038is up to ten percent as long as you were less than ten indicator 11 was the ratio of long-term liabilities to total assets sufficient to support long-term solvency and belton isd earned 10 out of 10 points the percent of student enrollment the percent increase in student enrollment was about 12.19 percent for a five-year period and you can see that that indicator includes if the district's change of students and enrollment over five years with seven percent or more you automatically pass this indicator indicator 12 and this was the only indicator that district did not earn 100 percent of the points it scored 8 out of 10 on this particular indicator this is a new indicator and so if you look at the the equation that's shown there you kind of have a numerator and a denominator

039and if you don't change the numerator which is a ratio of local to total revenue on the ins side and you don't change the long-term liabilities and you say well and you can see the numbers there the ratio is about 0.85 and the long-term liabilities for belton isd is just a little bit north of 256 million so if you say well let's not change those things but let's plug in the standard which was a metric of four what would the denominator have to be it'd have to be two billion dollars more than what's shown there so instead of 3.5 million billion dollars in total evaluation it would need to be 5.5 billion dollars in total valuation so this particular indicator which i would say is a little bit frustrating kind of works against fast growth

040school districts unless you're in a fast growth school district that is heavy industry but in a school district like belton where you have about 75 percent of the total taxable value being residential there's really in my opinion there's virtually no way you can earn 10 out of 10 points on this particular indicator the next indicator was administrative cost ratio this has been around for a long time you can see that belton isd's administrative cost ratio actually ticked down a little bit which is generally thought to be a good thing indicator 14 did the district not have a 15 percent decline in this student's uh to staff ratio over a three year period and again if the student enrollment did not decrease the the district automatically passes this indicator and of course you know belton isd

041is a fast growth district so it automatically passes this indicator based on student enrollment alone indicator 15 which is a new indicator was the school district's actual ada within the allotted range of the district's biennial pupil projections submitted to tea and yes the district earned 10 out of 10 points and what happens is before each legislative session school districts submit have the opportunity to submit pupil projections that are used by the legislature to create financial estimates for revenue that that are put in place for that biennium so you can see that they kind of test that if a school district says no those projections are not right they also have the opportunity to submit projections that they think would be more right and this test kind of compares those the actual enrollment to the to

042the projected enrollment or ada and belton has done a really good job of projecting ada that is in line with the actual ada and again the standard for the variance is seven percent and melting was well below that indicator 16 which is a ceiling indicator did the comparison of peem's data to like information in the school district's annual financial report result in a total variance of less than three percent of all expenditures by function and i skipped through that and the answer to that is yes that was passed if the district had failed that indicator then because this is a ceiling indicator the maximum number of points that could be earned would be 89 but i will tell you that when you looked at the actual numbers for belton isd uh it was substantially lower

043than the point or than the three percent it was point zero zero zero zero at that point it's like well this is almost zero so uh belton isd has done extremely well on that particular indicator indicator 17 which is a ceiling indicator did the external independent auditor report that the annual financial report was free of any instances of material weakness and internal controls we passed that into gator and that's been true for for several years now indicator 18 did the independent auditor indicate that the annual financial report was free of any instances of material non-compliance for grants contracts and laws related to local state and federal funds and again belt and ice the earned the maximum number of points 10 out of 10 and that's been true for a number of years and then indicator

04419 which is another new indicator did the district post the required financial information on this website in accordance with the local government code and yes the district very much pays attention to that and is very good in complying with those requirements and has been for some time and then indicator 20 did the school board members discuss the district's property values at a board meeting within 120 days before the district adopted its budget and as you all know certainly you did that and i went back in the minutes and pulled and it looks like you you had that discussion at the july 20th 2020 board meeting and i don't think that was the only discussion he had but she certainly had the discussion at that particular board meeting as part of the first report there are

045some required disclosures and these are all attached and are posted at the link shown there in the presentation but one of the disclosures is the superintendent's employment contract another disclosure is a summary schedule of total reimbursements received by the superintendent and by each board member and then the remaining exhibits three four and five i won't read those to you but there were no numbers in any of those exhibits so those were just those will be posted but they are empty sales because there were no numbers represented in any of those three exhibits okay so since this is a public hearing we can ask for comments or questions at this time all right any questions anyone in the public have any questions okay all right well again congratulations to belton isd that's a phenomenal score and

046you have a 10-year track record of having very perfect scores so congratulations dr mueller thank you you have now retired like seven times and you keep coming back and we appreciate that more than you know so good to have you next on the agenda consider and take appropriate action regarding the employment of administrative employees so we're welcoming todd schiller to the podium tonight we do not have a cfo recommendation and you can see we'd like to keep robert mueller around a little bit um to bring to you all tonight but todd will talk to you a little bit about the recommendation we do have so good evening tonight it is my pleasure to recommend uh jennifer bailey for executive director of communications and community engagement jennifer has a bachelor's degree in speech communications from texas

047a m university and she has 15 years of experience in education in districts of leander georgetown and most recently in gerald isd where she has worked as the director of communication so we're excited to recommend her for ella's approval tonight do we have a motion to approve the personnel has presented miss bass second one mr taggart all in favor and opposed all right that passes thank you and i'm gonna have her come up here and then we'll do some pictures oh yeah and then we take pictures just what you know don't forget the song [Laughter] yes i'm jennifer bailey and i'm so proud to be the executive director of communications for this amazing district i was so impressed by the students and staff here tonight the energy of this community is just infectious and i'm

048privileged to serve it so thank you [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Applause] [Music] the next item on the agenda um i'm going to try to get through this one [Applause] would you like me to reinforce yeah please this next item on the agenda is item b and it's considered discuss and take appropriate action regarding the naming of lake belton high school baseball and softball batting cages the jace jefferson batting cages mr mike morgan's here for us tonight on that board it's my pleasure to be back again and i'm here tonight to speak with you to discuss and take appropriate action regarding the naming of lake belton high school baseball batting cages in softball a nomination was made from a community member on september 27 2021 for the consideration to name the lake belton high school

049baseball softball batting cages after jace jefferson jace was a student at bisd who tragically passed away on november 11 2016. jace attended high point elementary and north belton middle school and he would have been a student at lake belton high school he loved baseball he was very caring and compassionate towards those around him he was a friend to many students and many of the students who will be in the first graduating class of lake belton high school next year the board the board facilities committee uh in consideration with the superintendent reviewed the nomination on october 13 2021 in accordance with guidelines set forth by board policy cw local and it was determined to move forward with the nomination at that time if approved tonight principal ross our belton isd athletic department and jace's family will

050work together to figure out the appropriate time during our spring semester with the arrival of baseball season to have a celebration and name the facility after jace so i would ask you tonight to consider and approve the naming of the lake belton high school baseball softball batting cages after jace jefferson do we have a motion to prove the naming of lbhs baseball softball to jace jefferson ms lee mr alkozer all right all in favor post that passes thank you thank you very much consider discussing take appropriate action regarding revisions to eic local academic achievement class ranking second reading we're here to we're excited to welcome dr deanna lovesmith to the podium tonight and she's going to walk us through the information regarding policy eic local and the work that we've been doing over the past

051year good evening i'm waiting for that to come up while they're getting that presentation up i will keep going um so our purpose tonight is to seek action appropriate action on the second reading of eic local and this is very exciting because we have been talking about this for a long time we have been working with our policy committee and really looking at the driving questions so when we originally adopted our journey of a graduate competencies we the board asked us at that time to review any policies and how those might impact students especially in the competencies that we wanted to see brought to life and so as a part of that we asked three central questions how does a ranking belt in isd students impact students during their college admissions how does ranking courses

052impact journey of a graduate but we centered around what barriers if any exists that prevents students from following their pathway and the pathway is different for each one of our students and that's what we want to accomplish by we want to inspire kids dreams and empower their futures whatever those futures may be as a result of that we had 11 meetings prior to tonight to discuss that's a lot to to talk about this policy but then to really talk about what we want for our students and this policy impacts that because what we know is that even though we advise our students and counsel them on courses they can take they often look to us and how those courses are ranked and so we value academic rigor but we also wanted to open up options

053for for kids we value our ap courses our dual credit courses but we have some incredibly important cte courses as well so part of that i'm going to see if i can get it to that presentation can you get it there you're working on it okay well i'm gonna keep going um we developed uh we currently had a four-tier system and so we've we've made some adjustments to that system so at our level four this is what's being proposed tonight in the policy will impact our incoming freshmen and so with that level four now would provide an option so students would rank their top eight courses that are advanced placement or on-ramps and i failed in our first reading to get that on-ramps in there but we had been talking about that all along the

054way our on-ramp stool credit is a little different from a traditional dual credit in that it is our teacher we have heavy input in the scope and sequence and we provide the support and training with either advanced placement through a test assessment or through dual um on-ramps and your performance in the course it does lead to a pathway of course credit and so with level four being our highest students would choose up to eight courses between their sophomore junior and senior years it'll be six in the sophomore and junior years and then to their senior year now that doesn't mean they're limited to taking eight courses one more thank you it doesn't mean they're limited to one more to taking in eight courses they can take as many as they choose only eight will be

055ranked in that tier one in the policy i apologize it's actually written as level four next in level three we'll keep all of our ap courses so again the number of ap courses a student takes is unlimited along with on-ramps dual credit our pre-advanced classes any advanced classes and advanced is different from advanced placement advanced placement is a specific name from the college board advanced is very similar to an honor so when we have an honors class that's not um using college board criteria we um still consider it advanced it would be in that level two or our level three tier two and then also um and this is new our advanced cte courses and those will be in our year three and four and as you saw tonight we celebrated a student in one

056of those cte masonry courses and so we value and believe that that adding that really does open up for students to choose what's most important for them our our courses in those areas are in biomedical fields engineering fields computer science culinary arts really opening the pathway to to a student's future and then we would continue to have and our uh level two or tier three as represented on the board our on level courses and then um our for fourth level is our skills based courses and again this policy would begin with our incoming freshmen now with that this is a significant change so i don't want to underestimate all of this work tonight and what this impact is like i said um an incoming freshman would would be impacted beginning their freshman year however for

057choosing those top eight courses and making that significant um and you know decision that would not be until their sophomore year and so what that does is that gives a team immediate time to start working so you can see on there november december tonight we're seeking approval in november so then december we'll communicate that we have an eic local that's new and been approved and then we can start with our communication our student in january that from january to may we'll start working with counselors we're looking at building systems behind to support it so this is new and would need to be tracked we need to have systems that support how the structure would work so we'll be working with skyward and our different vendors we'll start having our parent communication meetings um start start

058you know all of those those pieces that go along and then in september december we have one-on-one individual conversations with students and then we can start to explain it the great thing about it is the significance of those choices doesn't come until a child's sophomore year and freshman year is a lot it's just so so this opens another opportunity for kids to come in as 9th graders and start to choose what really interests them and to get into some of those cte pathways early on that they could potentially have counted into their gpa we're very excited about this um although it's big and you're we're going to have a lot of conversations because this will be new this is new for for our area it's new for for really any school this policy doesn't is

059not consistent from one district to the next but it does provide us an opportunity to let our families know that that we're inter we value what your child wants to do and we don't want any barriers to exist that prevent them from doing that and so with that we have the official language tonight for you in policy form it's not showing that but it's it's um as i articulated it the policy addresses that it will um we will now have two pieces to the policy the first part as you may have noticed will be beginning with the class of 2026 and beyond and that will address the new level four tier system and then the next piece of the policy will continue to honor what's currently in place for our 2023-24-25 classes we will update

060the policy annually every time we have a class that well 22 23 24 and 25 nothing's changing for our current seniors and so every year we'll update the policy to to clean that up in addition um based on the decision that was made for new tech at the last board meeting we have addressed that in the policy as well so from beginning with the class of 25 i believe it's in the policy it'll it references what um grade level will start with new tech being their an independent standalone school in terms of class rank are there any questions that you have for me tonight it's big been a big decision and a big discussion ms lee so yeah we have been studying this for a year or more and we've we've studied everything and i've

061just been so incredibly impressed um you know from the get-go the whole point of this and and matt's direction on this was to be able to give kids more opportunities not less without taking away what we know is important particularly to our top ranking students having had some experience with this in my with my own children i i can honestly say that in the beginning i i didn't think you could get there i didn't think there was going to be a way that you could tweak this system and still let kids be competitive because i've got i understand competitive kids and still give them extra opportunities to explore who they want to be when they grow up i really didn't think it could be done but deanna and the you know wonder team they they

062really put their you know they really did the good work and they called universities and they did all the background work and they they went above and beyond surveying kids and all kinds of things and finding out exactly what it is that they would want to want to have taken that they were missing out on opportunities for and so when they presented this idea to us i was just incredibly impressed and i can honestly tell you that i wish my kids could have gone through this they would have benefited greatly from a system like this and it would have still allowed them to compete still would have allowed them to get into the schools they got into but then they would have had these extra opportunities to explore and that's what we really want for

063kids and so i think it's a beautiful thing and i'm excited to roll this out to our kids ms pass just a couple of comments to add on to that um i think one you know spending this much time it really allows for me personally that i feel confident in where i'm where i'm voting and because of how long um how much time and effort was spending in this and and teaching us and educating us along the way and i mean the the word keeps being repeated and it's opportunity so i get to have four that go through that so i'm excited um and then the other thing i just wanted to make comment on um is what was the guiding piece of this which was the values and beliefs and the journey of a

064graduate and so i just want to say thank you for for using those two pieces of of our strategic plan to help get us there as well i i can't say i can't beat janet or aaron for that matter so so maybe i'll talk about the process um it's probably the most exciting 11 months that we've had from a meeting standpoint those are like the best 11 meetings i know somebody may have left those meetings beating their head on the table i loved them all they were great um but you know there was homework on our side there was homework on the administration side i mean there was you know some pretty thoughtful discussion about you know what was going on we thought about this thing from from every single angle we tried to make

065sure that we truly were making an improvement that had as little negative impact around as possible and i think you know janet covered you know the fact that i think we've been able to preserve all the good stuff all the way around and keep those doors kicked open for opportunities as long as we possibly can and like the process that we went through and the partnership that we went through i think is something that that i haven't experienced right since i've been on the board necessarily and um i'm energized about that process energized about being on the the policy committee and sort of the impact um and seriousness that you know we kind of took took through that um you know proud to be a part of the decision and you know my oldest is

066is kicking me because she won't be impacted by this uh she's she's two years on the wrong side of this one but my one coming in next year is like giving me hugs so um you know i'm seeing it from both sides right now and just so happy to be a part of the process and everybody who's who's touched this i mean i know it's definitely more than dr love smith right the entire team of everybody who's touched this has done such an amazing job this is definitely not my work solely um there was an amazing group of minds that have um come that came together on this and and i don't want to i really i mean appreciate all that it's been a this is this is exciting i don't want to underestimate this

067will be uh still a lot of we have a lot of work ahead of us a lot of understanding when any time you change something and you don't do it the way maybe it's always been done there's a lot of unpacking of that and so um when we keep the kids as our north star and that that's what we're going in the direction of and it's their future it's not mine i've already done this i've already had this policy but it's theirs and and the world is evolving and we we this will not be i mean we've got to work i want you to know that um coming forward just talking to folks but i do believe that we have the kids as their north star and we're making the right move and i appreciate

068your support and all those conversations yeah you know deanna you you say and you said it before this is big the fact that we've had 11 meetings tell you tells you how big it is and how serious we've taken this whole process i want to thank you and your team for your tireless relentless dedicated work i know a lot of times you don't want to take credit but you know you're leading the team and i know a lot of your folks came to some of the meetings that we had and did presentations for us um the fact that when you say it's big i mean this is district-wide and i want to echo what chris said um when we had our last meeting i walked out of there i'm thinking man i'm pretty proud of

069this um i wish i wish my could my kids would have had the same opportunities because when you started the first meeting i think maybe the second meeting you um directed us to an article to read and you said do we want to do we want to rank talent or do we want to develop talent and i think with this policy we can do both right i think so yeah so thanks thanks for the work that you've done thank you well i'll just echo what y'all said um you know those of us on the facilities committee we didn't have 11 meetings about just one thing so ours are not quite as serious but that was a lot of work appreciate y'all's hard work those were really long meetings i i got to sit in one

070of them and i'll tell you from a personal side how it affects people we have a graduate at belton obviously i will not identify this person but they'll be graduating this year they'll be one of our very top graduates this is not a norwood kid by the way we don't go for top 10 percent but it's somebody i'm very close to and i know for a fact that this student because they've told me and their parents have told me there were classes they wanted to take and subjects that they thought would be fun but they would have to not take an ap class in order to do that and when you get into that top ten percent top five percent they're like there's no room i can't take these classes i really want to take

071well i i feel to an extent that we have failed that kid that's about to go off to college because just because you are that smart and all that doesn't mean that you don't have interest outside of what you're doing and so you know it was just not going to affect this one but these are these are real kids these are driven kids but we've got to you know something dr smith said when he came here we have kids that are really good at playing school and that's what he was referring to is hey i know how to play the game to get in the top ten percent but are we really giving them a great education thank you just thank you all for doing that that is do we have at this point do

072we have a motion to approve revisions to policy eic local as presented miss lee do we have a second mr floor all in favor all right now to pose that passes thank you thank you next we move on to reports you notice deanna's staying right there so we're going to turn it over to deanna and i'll say a couple of things at the end of this report okay so i'm going to give the report tonight on our bilingual esl program and unlike our students in our dual language who hopefully will be biliterate one day i'm only giving this in english somebody asked me if i was going to deliver this report in spanish tonight as well no i am not i wish i could um but i think that's what is so exciting about our

073program is what we are developing in our students um so the purpose of this is to report annually on the evaluation of our bilingual esl programs i'll talk tonight about student performance staffing and our professional learning so as you can see our enrollment in our bilingual program is staying fairly consistent with our population increase so while we do have an increased number of students in our bilingual esl program because of the rate of growth across the district our percentage is still staying about the same which represents about six percent of our students well the majority of our program and our students are spanish speakers native spanish speakers learning english it would be a miss to not recognize that we have a representation of 20 languages in our system and that's exciting to think that we

074have those voices we did put beside each the number of students just so you would see the impact like i said 790 or spanish speakers but to think that we have 19 other languages other than english shows the what we have coming into our program and we're excited about that in terms of our program just as a refresher we've talked before but we do have several different programs going on within this umbrella versus our bilingual program as you know we started a dual language program and just as a quick reminder dual language immersion one way is our program for students that are all native spanish speakers and they are learning english we added i'm super excited about this a dual language immersion two way we um we've revived it i should say we've had it

075in the past years ago but we've brought this back and it's it's strong in this dual language two way means that we have both students we have students who are native spanish speakers learning english and we have native english speech speakers who would like to learn spanish our goal is that these students will be biliterate by the time they exit fifth grade in fact this is the first group of students that we would have eligible to earn high school foreign language credit at the elementary level and that's pretty exciting and programs that we're thrilled with that we have transition early exit this is a program that we are transitioning out of these are for students who are spanish speakers native speakers learning english we're transitioning out because now they will either be in the one-way

076or the two-way program which is a richer model but you don't want us we don't want to change model in the midst of a student's elementary years and then we have an esl program an esl program is not for only spanish native speakers the esl program is for any student who comes with the native language other than english and we support them and so all the students you saw that speak vietnamese cambodian and hindu they are they are served as well as some of our spanish speakers in our esl programs we have content based and pull out programs in terms of academics this is a harder piece to fully grasp the way that that this is calculated but we are required to administer the telpos and the telpas is the texas english language proficiency assessment

077it assesses students on listening speaking reading and writing and so what we're showing you in this chart is that basically we are at the same level as the state and that's not where we want to be and so this is an area that that we are intentionally working to improve that our students will be scoring higher than they currently are those numbers that you see um so because there are four areas it represents the average of the score of the four areas and again it's an area that we we want to seek improvement we like students that exit out of this program so you can see in the next chart it when you administer this assessment there are four labels a beginning intermediate advanced and advanced high and what we really want is every student

078earning an advanced tie and so they'll come in students will come in what you what's what you see in the k through second grade is is fairly accurate in terms of what you would want to see most of your students coming in k and 2 or beginning beginning should be your your new students to your system it's not where you want our students to progress and so where we want them to score is at least one level up from one year to the next and so we're looking for students that are scoring at an advanced high level bilingual our staffing and our recruiting is really done in in three main areas we want to make sure we're supporting our teachers we want to retain them and we only want to recruit them if we have

079somebody that we feel we have a new opening we really don't want our teachers going anywhere bilingual teachers are very hard to find it's a not an easy test um so in order um to support i have uh is behind me somewhere romero she's right there she is a gift to our district that's our she is our full-time dual language coordinator and her role is to provide on-site coaching to our teachers she has because she is biliterate she is able to go into a classroom and recognize academic excellence in both english and in spanish and that's important especially when you're going to dual language program because you've got to be ensuring that students are receiving um the rigor and the instruction in spanish at the same level that they are in english and so for

080somebody like myself who's an english speaker and i my spanish is not very strong it's harder for me to really recognize the rigor level through the language and so she supports um our teachers and she is an amazing recruiter and so she's been out at job fairs at the universities depicted on the screen and she is actively connected and searching for the very best bilingual educators to bring to our system um in in addition to supporting we are contracting with caledon consulting they are out of northeast isd which is a very strong and large dual language esl program we've been working with them for two years now she came out and originally began working with us to prepare us and ensure that we had stability to offer a strong dual language program and now she's

081continuing to offer support and professional learning to both our teachers and then also to our administrators it's a different role when you're administrator on a dual language campus and so really providing them the support they need to retain our teachers we increased our bilingual stipend from three thousand dollars to six thousand you all provided support to do that and we appreciate that that is a competitive figure that we watch in our market i will also tell you that probably one of the best opportunities for retainment is a supportive environment and so the professional development that that our teachers are provided the value that we place in dual language programs and the fact that our teachers know we have that value and we see it as an additive for our students sends a very powerful message

082of the value those professionals provide to our system and so we want to continue to do that and then we do have to recruit and when we recruit we do have that six thousand dollar stipend we also have a two thousand dollar sign on bonus and then we make sure that as we're recruiting our teachers know what support they'll they'll be provided which is why it's so great to have norma on site because she's the person that's going to provide the support and she can assure them along answer all their questions and we're also doing coaching walks bilingual meetings and we've done some curriculum writing to just really continue to support our teachers as we talk about our staff we have 32 staff that are bilingual we have 411 that have an esl certification we

083have of those teachers we did need to fill out a waiver for six of our bilingual positions that's down from 11 last year so we're continuing to try to reach a goal where we have no waivers in play we also had 34 of our secondary teachers for esl it's been a new requirement for the esl certification and how you serve at secondary and sometimes what trips us up a little bit is just if our teachers are like in our our bilingual program our six are due to where in some cases we have departmentalized versus self-contained classrooms and so just kind of getting that partner teacher so we continue to to focus on getting those numbers down and then um our next steps so we really are continuing to make sure that we build capacity in

084all all of our system for developing high yield strategies focused on meeting the needs of our bilingual students making sure that we're providing system-wide training system understanding and support for not only our teachers but our administrators and then you may have heard about our reading academies that was a requirement by the state our bilingual teachers are also involved in that that is an intensive training and if you've talked to some teachers that's been a big lift that was placed on them we're looking at how we can support them internally and for our bilingual teachers as well so we are continuing to work to strengthen our programs so that we can see that yields in our the academic performance of our students do you have any questions dr smith i just want to make a couple

085comments first of all um if you i don't know if you all have met norma yet but norma is like a rock star she really is and i don't know if you all know that or not but she is and there are a couple things to point out in all of this first of all the term emerging bilinguals is an important term for me and i think an important term for us to consider if we took a second grader an english-speaking second grader and said that that student was at home learning another language we would sit there and go wow that's pretty impressive often in the past we've thought about students learning english as a second language and a deficit mindset absolutely norma and her leadership brings a celebration to our students that i couldn't

086be more proud of these students are in our system 800 students in our system that are not only going to school but they're learning another language along the way and i couldn't be more proud of them in the work that they're doing norma helps set the context and the support to help those students thrive in our system and thanks to you all we very clearly articulated last year that we are about each and every student in this system and those 800 students are doing great work and a lot of it is thanks to norma and her leadership so i wanted to point that out very specifically and then real quickly the program models that deanna hit earlier we made a shift to a two-way dual language program over the last year research shows that that's

087the best environment for students to thrive so we will see these scores we will see things improve based on the program models that you all have allowed us to do so a special thanks to norma and for what she's doing for our kids special thanks to you all for helping us focus in on each and every student in our system and those 800 students i couldn't be more proud of yeah that's all teachers real quick deanna remind me we started this two-way dual language for this current year and um so and then it was just for incoming kindergartners is that correct pre-k and kinder okay so that's all we've got in the two-way right now correct okay just reminding remembering just thank you norma thank you that's good it's good to hear things like that

088it's amazing to work for belton and it's we have a great group of teachers and um so just proud of my teachers our bilingual teachers i try very hard every day and i'm just very honored that i'm here to serve them and serve the community thank you well thank you all gracias thank you very much and her husband's in the audience tonight and he gets to go home and tell her how wonderful she is well thank you very much uh no other questions oh wait we do okay must fast um on the the composite scores for the tail pass what's the range in that one to four one to four okay i couldn't remember and then just to comment um i my kids go to chisholm and i was in the hallway with a mom

089and her kindergarten dual weight 28 class was walking by and the teacher from a three-minute span was talking to them in both and they were it was it and then i looked at this mother and she's just beaming because you know she's learning and i asked her her thoughts about it and she's just she's excited she's so excited about what he's learning and she's learning alongside with him so thank you okay anything else anything else no all right thank you thank you the next uh matt i'll let you have it next we have a policy ef local instructional resources report i'm welcoming ms holly wardell up tonight as you all know holly is our general counsel and holly's going to walk us through uh this policy and the challenge process and a little bit of

090history behind that with with some help uh from an expert on the issue good evening mr president members of the board and dr smith it's great to see you this evening i am delighted to be here to talk to you give you a little information about your ef local policy on instructional resources your ef local policy is a standard policy you have an identical policy to most school districts here in the state of texas and it establishes the criteria by which the district selects or in some cases retains instructional materials that are used like library books and things like that and the policy is rooted in legal standards that comes from a significant amount of first amendment litigation involving this very topic that goes back many many years in our country including supreme court precedent

091and so the that's where a lot of those standards in that policy come from they've been litigated before and tonight i have an immensely qualified attorney here with us joining us by zoom to talk to you about those legal standards and walk you through your policy we have dr carol simpson who in addition to being an attorney for several years also has an incredible career in public education here in the state of texas she has she holds a doctorate in curriculum and instruction in educational technology from east texas state university she has master's degrees in both library science and curriculum and instruction from the university of texas in austin she has a bachelor of science in art education and french from southwestern university down the road in georgetown and she began her teaching career some

092time ago as an art and french teacher in round rock high school in round rock texas and then she developed a niche as a librarian and became a library administrator in the mesquite independence school district she's taught at the graduate level at both north texas university and texas women's university she has devoted the vast portion of her career to library and media services we could not find a more qualified attorney to come talk to you about this issue and this policy tonight she is probably the most qualified attorney in the state of texas possibly within the country on these very issues and so with that i'd like to turn it over to dr carol simpson we'll kind of walk you through what you need to know the finer points of your policy and why it

093says what it says thank you very much holly let me see if i can get us started here that's all we need to do come on there we go i think that's backwards sorry about that what well you know techno technology is always fun to get i know hundreds of miles away i used to have a sign on my door that said if it's green it's biology if it's uh has numbers its math if it doesn't work its technology you just need to figure out a way to share your screen there you go there we go i think this should be it looks like you have lots of things open on your desktop no come on all right let's see there we go there we go you just look and find the tiny little print

094they'll tell you how to do it all uh well thank you very much for having me uh to talk with you today about book selection and reconsideration that are in your policy ef uh but we're going to start by talking a little bit about the the statutes and the rules that govern um operation of libraries and classroom libraries in in texas and we'll talk a little bit about a foundation the freedom to read foundation and uh and their work and then we'll start going into some case law as holly said there's a considerable body of u.s supreme court president and there's also fifth circuit president so we can take a look and see how these are and here's your policy efb legal sets your standards for school libraries um now these were appointed by the

095legislature and and given to the state library and archives commission and so they periodically review the standards for school libraries and update them as needed um this is part of the administrative code and you can go in there and you can get the you have should have a copy of the the standards booklet and that's where that comes from it comes from the texas administrative code now the education code addresses these standards by saying that a school district shall consider the standards when they're developing implementing or expanding library services so the the standards can't just be ignored but you do have to take some consideration to what they have the standards talk about providing materials for collaborative learning environments providing equitable access to materials so that um if you have physically disabled students um and

096you put the books that they all need on the top shelf you're you're not meeting those standards so you are supposed to provide those type of learning tools for all the students in this community then it also talks about maintaining a professionally developed collection of print and digital materials and you're going to match these materials to their academic and personal interests and we'll get into this a little bit later about the role of the library it is not just for the classroom it's for it's for personal reading as well um for professional development i mean professionally developed collection of print and digital materials is usually done by a librarian and they read certainly you couldn't read every book that's published in the country so they read book reviews and book reviews are set um to

097explain to school librarians uh exactly what the topic of the book is um what the good parts what the bad parts are and will would give any um any caveats that you might have uh such as um this book only has line drawings if you need full color uh illustrations you might need to choose a different resource the first section of the standards talks about a carefully curated collection of current materials and it says that are uniquely suited to support inquiry learning and the needs and interests of all users if you if you had a a school library for example that only had books about football your basketball players your baseball players your track folks um none of those would have any supporting material to get to their interests and so it the idea is

098that the library collection will encompass all the interests of all the students that are in your building the the strand two dimension three talks about opportunities for learners to explore real world problems by interacting with relevant information and this will touch on the section in your ef policy that talks about controversial materials we're talking about real world problems and so if we want to know um what's happened in myanmar today and the u.s citizen that was released from the prison in uh in myanmar these are real world problems how would your social studies class your government class discuss how how um hostage negotiation happens uh and so providing relevant information in different formats is um required as far as the library goes strange 3 is all about reading and the the standards want students to

099read a variety of literature for information and pleasure there used to be a reading program that was popular in elementary schools and the the students would read a book and then they would take a test on the book if you looked at the list of tests that were available on that program all of the tests were about fiction materials well at that same time the the standardized tests were or higher non-fiction type questions well if we're teaching students to read only fiction and we're testing them on non-fiction we have a disconnect and so that's the purpose of this one we want to have the students read a variety of literature students need to lead to read nonfiction as well as fiction and yes they read lots of nonfiction in their textbooks each day but they

100might want to read nonfiction for pleasure for hobbies for um to to babysit uh for their their siblings or their cousins there's all sorts of reasons that they would need to have um various types of literature available to them um the next dimension says that the library materials are going to reflect the diversity student choice and leisure reading and reading for information so it's more than just the curriculum and the state standards the librarian has to find out what kind of books that students like to read and provide that type of reading material available to them moving on to strand four in digital learning they're talking about supporting the academic and personal needs of students so again the library is not just support for the curriculum and the text it's for personal development of the

101student the library is going to advocate for the user's right to privacy confidentiality and age-appropriate principles of intellectual freedom basically is that you're allowed to say what you think um and it that what you say can be addressed is correct or not um but there's the opportunity to have a discussion of the the material that you're that you're talking about um students sometimes want to have books that they might not want they're friends to see them with a girl might have a book about acne and she doesn't want her girlfriends to see that um the the librarian will make sure that that book is checked out to the student if she wants to put it in her purse or in her book bag where her friends can't see it that's perfectly fine and the librarian

102will not tell anyone other than the parents that the the child has that book all right let's talk about the library bill of rights there is a group called the freedom to read foundation and they're an offshoot of the american library association and they are very active in situations where there might be um challenges to to literature um there are challenges every year to various types of literature from dr seuss to [Music] just anything you might imagine i've done a statewide report on challenged materials um and it's amazing some of the things that you will see that will show up as a challenged book on those reports um and and the parents um the citizens who make those challenges um are have um high principles they they're very um invested in the fact that they

103don't want these particular materials available in the school library the the issue that you have here is you're supposed to have access to content on subjects by diverse authors and creators that meet the needs interests and abilities of the people the library serves this is just a rewording of the standards that we've already seen uh note here it says seeking content created by representative by and representative of marginalized and underrepresented groups if you have a school district that is occasion and all the books that you have in the library only reflect caucasian life when those children leave school they're not going to be prepared for the world as it is outside the school district best practices in collection development um materials should not be excluded from a collection solely because the content or its creator

104may be considered offensive or controversial and we'll talk about that as we go through the case law because the the judges are very precise in their language as far as what can be uh restricted and what can't be restricted all right let's start here this in this case the supreme court ruled that states must provide adequate procedural safeguards when establishing a mechanism to protect minors from offensive and obscene language well that sounds that sounds reasonable this procedure is outlined in your policy ef local and it will talk about how a a parent or a citizen or a an employee can basically file a grievance against a book and it will that policy will walk you through the process that that starts uh at the at level one someone will appoint a committee and the committee

105will all have to read the challenged book all of it not just the one page that the person who's making the complaint may say this is bad right here well this is a 200 page book is the book in as a whole suitable for schools and that those are the questions to to answer and this is what the bantam books case uh addresses it requires a procedure designed to critically examine all the challenged expression the supreme court had to address what is pornography and what is obscene and this was obscene as to use because adults generally can can deal with pornography or obscenity they don't look they don't buy they don't read but students sometimes might be exposed to that and we certainly don't want that type of material in the library and you have

106a really good fail-safe system with your professional librarians who are selecting books for your for your district pornography refers to material dealing with sex designed to arouse its readers or viewers webster's dictionary says pornography is writings pictures etcetera intended primarily to arouse sexual desire pornography is not illegal obscenity is illegal trying to understand what obscenity is one of the supreme court justices said i can't define it but i know it when i see it the supreme court gave us a a three factor test that someone who has to decide is this too much for these students because remember something that might be okay for high school might not be okay for a primary school and so it can be acceptable in one environment and not acceptable in another so here are the three tests you

107have to know whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find that the work taken as a whole appeals to the prurient interest other words there is no literary value in the material aside from the pornographic or obscene content second question whether the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law and the state has certain things that it is decided are inappropriate it is sexual conduct that is inappropriate or illegal rape um uh luring a minor um there's and there are lots of them but you'll you know what those are just like just like the justice said you know it when you see it then um the last one is whether the work taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic political or scientific value

108i had to consult with a school district once where the book grey's anatomy was being challenged um the high school in that district uh taught physiology and anatomy uh grey's anatomy has been around for a long long time and it has very detailed uh illustrations of the human body including their sexual organs and the person who sought to remove the book was only considering two pages of the book so that that fact finder has to say whether the book taken as a whole lacks serious literary artistic political or scientific value so speech that is neither obscene or subject to some other legitimate prescription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them and and you are the legislative body so you cannot remove a

109book because it offends your ideas you can remove a book if it is obscene if it meets that requirement there's no artistic value there's no political value there's no scientific value and certainly that would be unsuitable for students and and by the way this is um all under the first amendment and i know we all think about the first amendment as the right of speech and the right of um news reporting but it also has a right to read and so students have the opportunity to select their own materials to read i'm sure you heard of the the tinker versus des moines school district case it was the um students don't shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate and it's it's um the students were wearing black armband armbands to

110protest the vietnam war and the school district disciplined them and the they went all the way to the supreme court the supreme court said no they have the freedom of speech there was no disruption they went to school nobody even knew that they had them on until the end of the day so obviously there was no disruption and so what they say here is students may not be regarded as closed circuit recipients in other words you're not going to put a funnel in their head and pour only in what you want them to read they have to have freedom of speech or expression board of education versus pico is probably the closest case supreme court case for removing books from a school library they they weren't um they weren't just restricting the students right to

111expression to write about things or draw or paint or whatever but they said that the right to receive ideas is a necessary predicate to the recipient's meaningful exercise of his own rights of speech press and political freedom and students too are beneficiaries of this principle so the supreme court was telling us this is in 1982 that students are that we're there to guide them in growing in the types of ideas and um our artistry that they come across in in books it goes on to say that school officials have a have significant latitude if the removal is based objectively on a finding that the material is educationally unsuitable in other words the whole thing like we said before taken as a whole has no literary scientific political value so the one thing that they that

112they mention here is that an official's substantive disagreement with or a disapproval of the content is not acceptable so if i'm i'm i'm gonna talk about another board somewhere else a board decides that they're only gonna allow books that have a pro second amendment focus in their library and then here comes a book that has been reviewed everybody says it's it's perfectly fine for the grade level that for which it's it's written but it is against free transfer of guns the school officials may not prevent that book from entering the library because they're just objecting to the content not necessarily the artistic merit the political merit and so forth the what we get out of this this case is that a parent has 100 percent right to control what that parent's child reads that parent

113does not have any right to control what other people's children read and so you have a library that is supposed to be to cover the the diversity of your district and if you if you carve out this say and said no we're not going to have anything on this because i don't like it that's a fast trip to a federal court this case um it goes back to your policy ef that addresses the selection and use of materials about controversial issues um the court criticized the federal ban on mailing unsolicited contraceptive advertisements because it ignored adolescence pressing need for information about contraception in your health classes there are certain things that you're not supposed to discuss but that doesn't mean that those things can't be in the library they are age-appropriate they're scientifically accurate um

114and so forth but perhaps artistically relevant so um be aware that the supreme court was uh does take into consideration the need of the target group for the information there are two student speech cases that kind of tend to tangentially affect the library one is hazelwood that was they had to have the principal censored the newspaper there was there were going to be articles on teen pregnancy and on divorce and the principal said no i don't want any of my students reading about those things well he was allowed to make that decision because the school newspaper is the voice of the school and it would have been inappropriate for the school based on the the the sorry the the mission statement of the district that that those would have been inappropriate for that for that

115grade level so when it has the imprimatur of the school it's got the school name right at the top so it's the annual it's the newspaper it's the graduation program um the administration has the right to say no we we're not going to have that um and also in the bethel school district case uh fraser was running for student body president and he decided that um uh bad press is better than no press and so he made a speech to um it was not just to high school students there were junior high students as well and it was full of vulgar language and lewd conduct and so forth and they disciplined him for making that speech and the got to the supreme court the supreme court says no we don't have to put up with

116vulgar speech and lewd conduct that is not part of our mission so let's look through some lower courts here's the circuit court in florida believe that's florida the 11th circuit is florida georgia mississippi alabama and and and it says here in matters pertaining to curriculum educators have lots of control you get to pick whatever textbooks you want the students to learn from the state gives you a selection and you choose the one that you think is most appropriate for your students but in this case the court said these challenge books stay in the library they're not going to be used in the english class the two books were the miller's tale by chaucer and liz estrada and and the the court said okay fine take them out of the classroom but you just leave them

117in the library and anybody who wants to read them will read them and i don't know a whole lot of high school students who are interested in either one of those because they're so difficult but they're they're there and they're available to them and you have students who are taking college classes and they might be useful to those students but in this case the the court upheld the the administration from withholding those books from the curriculum but they remained in the library the fifth circuit which is the circuit we're in um it says the key inquiry in a book removal case is the school officials motivation and arriving at this decision to remove the material so they're going to look at your your motivation and why is this book being challenged um and is this

118something that no one in the school might need to have for any um for for example um when you participate in debate you're given a debate topic and the students have to be prepared to argue on either side of the topic because they don't know until it's two minutes before it's about to start what they're talking are they going to argue argue for or against whatever the proposition is and so that means necessarily that you're going to have to have materials on both sides may not be that the the district likes this side very much but the students are going to have to argue that for the purpose of developing their persuasive skills in this same case it talks about the special role of a school library as a place where students may freely and

119voluntarily explore diverse topics and so when the school board is making a non-curricular decision to remove a book well after it's been placed in the library makes the assumption that the administrators are trying to as they called it strangle the free mind at its source no you don't you don't want to read that um when i was a in high school our um our library had gone with the wind and the librarian this is long before 1993 i promise um the librarian required written parental permission to read gone with the wind because there is a four-letter word in it and so it's and this is um kind of where we get to that the book had been in the library it had been well reviewed uh and then all of a sudden somebody says hey

120wait a minute there's there's something here on this this page we don't we don't like this and so you've got to decide is there no political scientific artistic literary value in this work does does maybe this book tell students that that being vulgar is not a good way to go through life so that's one of the things that the fifth circuit was telling us here the library is a place where students can freely and voluntarily explore and remember things that that kids are interested in aren't always in a class that they teach and how many people have gone on to have great careers on something that wasn't in a class that they learned in high school um the 11th circuit again has a new one a new case um this is in 2009 they wanted

121to to remove an entire series of picture books and it was um life in england life in france life in brazil life in cuba [Music] well this is the miami-dade school board and there is a very large human population in the miami area and so the the the parent that objected said that the book the cuba book only was factually inaccurate now understand that this is a picture book so it's it's a book that's being read by first graders usually sometimes second graders it's mostly pictures on the pages maybe one or two sentences on each um and each book followed the same format you know my name is so-and-so i live in such and such um i my house looks like this my parents get around by a donkey or a car or a bus

122and it went on and every book was the same format each one of these books had a page that said something about and i go to school each day and the person who objected to the book said that this book for first graders omitted detailed facts about cuba's dictatorship the fidel castro dictatorship and so they said the books are not suitable because they are inaccurate that they that children don't go to school and it was there was a phrase that was repeated just like me just like you and so the idea being that someone in the united states should not be comparing themselves to someone in cuba and the 11th circuit allowed the the reviewer to have the book pulled they in fact they pulled the entire set of books because of what was in

123the one cuban book um another couple of close ones and we're we're about done here um in this particular case the harry potter series um was selected and i'm sure you know those are all very um highly uh approved um well-reviewed um students adore the harry potter books and um the the school district had taken the books from the shelves where students could reach them and they put them way high up where students couldn't reach them without a ladder and the court says there's nothing improper in here there's uh yes there's wizards and there's uh cats and spells and so forth it's all fantasy um and so the court said that the miners rights were violated by removing the books because the books were stigmatized in other words there really wasn't anything wrong with the

124books they were being put in book jail by putting them way up on that shelf in a student whose parents does not object to their child reading harry potter they can certainly do that other parents who do not want their children to read harry potter they certainly have the right to tell the child not to read them this case was in city of wichita falls now is this is a public library case um the the the case was found said that they were um the i'm sure you've heard about the um the abortion uh amendment from this year where um individual citizens are deputized to sue people um who they think have been involved in providing an abortion this city did the same thing they said library card holders can censor children's books by taking

125the books literally from the children's area and putting them in the adult section well if you have uh these kinds of vigilantes that say okay i'm going to get all of these well then somebody from the other side is going to say well i'm going to get all of those and it's pretty soon there's not much left so that's why the having a professional librarian doing book selection and verifying that these books are haven't been met with um good reviews and appropriate for the for the grade level then that gives all kinds of children an opportunity to read the books that were at uh at issue here were two books about um gay families one was heather has two mommies and the other was daddy's roommate um in first grade or sometimes kindergarten uh students

126do a study of their home and their their family life and the children there were there were many in wichita falls that had two same-sex parents were feeling greatly excluded you know here we go and we talk about living with grandmother and we talk about living in an institution maybe living with a single parent a male and female parent and these two children these children did not have anything that related to what they saw every day and so that's why the the library had chosen those books and the the federal judge said no they could not uh the patrons first amendment right to receive information would be irreparably injured if they didn't get a permanent injunction which they did okay i hope that i've helped you a little bit as far as working through your

127ef local but you may have some questions but i can't see you so i hope someone will right um thank you dr simpson i appreciate that one of the things that might be helpful for the board to know is more information about how libraries if you're opening a new campus how libraries are are stocked okay i can i can address that um when you are you know that you're going to have a new building opening next year you have to order things stuff equipment quite a time in advance and that's going to include tables and chairs and computers and all sorts of things but in the case of a library it's going to be lots and lots of books unless you're willing to hire the librarian for that new building a year in advance so

128that the librarian can go through book reviews standard book lists there are selected bibliographies for example there's a selected bibliography for anatomy and physiology and so they would the the librarian would go through and make sure that they had balance in the collection that all the materials was well reviewed and um and and they would collect the the certain number of books that they were supposed to have to meet standards well i don't know of a single school district that does that that hires the librarian a year in advance when i was a library administrator it was my job to make sure that there was there were books there on the first day of class and typically what libraries will do is they have a contract with a book jobber in texas that's either fallit

129or baker and taylor and they will tell baker and taylor or or follow whoever their job is i need to have this many books and they need to be sorted this many fiction this many biography this many [Music] uh science this many religion this many picture books or whatever depends on the kind of library that you're going to have and the book chopper will say okay we'll do that but because the day that we go through our warehouse and we start putting books as books in boxes we may be out of some of those and we know you don't want to put them on back order so we'll use our discretion to pull some books in and so sometimes we've had some situations where you look at the book and you wonder how did this

130get in that building um i've had um some elementary schools where there was a a book that was quite obvious a high school topic but the writer writes on a fifth grade level and so somebody had chosen that book simply because it has a fifth grade reading level not recognizing that the the book and the topic were totally inappropriate for elementary school so that sometimes happens when you have people who aren't uh certified librarians making your book selection it even happens when you have librarians uh doing the book selection that there will be the book jobbers will sometimes say okay we were all out all of those and so we're going to send these anyway and it happens then usually the librarians will as they're unpacking the books they're going to go through them and

131look and see you know mark them off the list that they had and and see okay i didn't pick this one let's take a look at it real fast and see if this is appropriate for us so particularly if you have a school that opened this year the librarian is probably still getting books on the shelf and trying to get things checked out to students to read and so there may be some materials that snuck in there sometimes you discover something in your book drop some nice friendly person has left you a book and as a gift and then you have to look at the book and you have to do an evaluation of it what's the reading level what's the what's the um the political viewpoint of the book is it appropriate for any

132classes that we have is it appropriate for our any of our students so those kinds of things will will appear occasionally just because you have 5 or 10 or books in a book order an opening day collection order that may be inappropriate and have to get sent back that's not unusual at all i wanted the board to understand get a a picture of the scope of one of these first day or opening book collections you're talking 10 000 15 16 000 books in this collection so they don't all get vetted okay and that that is the way that schools open libraries around the country is they they order one of these collections trusting the discretion of the book jobber to send them appropriate materials basically all right what questions do we have who'd like to

133start no well i have a couple of questions holland we we talked about this first video i'll address the i think it was called first day correct first day or opening day collections right right so that you told them you're building a high school this size i think it's 16 000 books and that's you know how they end up in the library um but i do want to clarify i think there's so we have a there is a policy comes from the state and that if a book is challenged it goes through the process and then comes at that point to does it meet these criteria and all of that right so you have a board policy that incorporates the the state library standards right uh the strands and the dimensions that dr simpson walked

134us through and so if a parent objects to an instructional material like a library book can file a grievance under ef local there's a committee like dr simpson explained that is knowledgeable people who get together review the book as a whole and make a decision based on those guiding principles in your ef local and then there's a process to appeal that to level two and then ultimately up to the board so there's a process that you have to follow because i think there was some confusion i know just in my own personal people have asked me well y'all are the board can't y'all just go in there and remove the books well the stuff that you send us that we read is like oh you can do that and the supreme court is going to

135come down on you rather quickly because you don't have the right to just walk in and remove a book it's got to go through an entire process before that's done exactly and that was the point of our presentation is trying to show you that there's some really well established case law in this area it's not as it's not as easy as that right so i guess what we're finding is since we've recently opened a new high school and and and the presentation that we were just given very thorough about the predicament that everybody's in based on lots and lots of precedent from the top court all the way down so in the case of these i think ours was 17 to 19 000 books is what lake belton got in in the drop so you

136have an opportunity for a few things to get through there that over time are going to be challenged and we'll have a process to be able to remove some of these things that don't meet these criteria that have been very thoroughly set forth for school districts over decades of people trying to remove books yes sir and that's kind of where we're at at this point then otherwise you have professional people who are hired to be professional book people are librarians and it's it's not easy to get certified to be a librarian it's up to them if you're an established library to vet the new books coming in to to meet the criteria of all of these things that were discussed in all these court cases yes so it's not just as easy as the the

137media is making it out to be and it seems so i don't even really know how to put this but it seems so uh they're making this more sexy in the news media about the 850 books and the letters and the things that are coming out this is a process that's been around for decades and decades and it's not just as simple as well school board you need to read 19 000 books and tell us which ones you think should be here and shouldn't be here so it's almost like we've kind of school boards across the state or are in the nation are kind of being vilified for something where there's processes and we're going to work the process and when we have these books that should be removed there's a process to do that

138but it's not as easy as this is going to happen overnight so we have level one which is a committee when the book gets challenged and then if it gets past that it goes to level two so is there a process where eventually it would come to a level three grievance and come to us yes if the individual is not satisfied with the results at level two which would be somebody from central administrative offices then it can come to the school board for consideration i like the i like the references she brought out about the uh supreme court person saying that you know it when you see it i think there's some cases of that definitely that they don't really have i mean you know it when you see it that you don't want that

139in your school libraries and and so so it's not up to us necessarily as a board of seven to challenge those books it we it really needs to be brought forth by people from the community is that kind of how that works right the processes and dr simpson chime in if you'd like to but i think it's really intended for parents to utilize to to object to things that their child reads yeah primarily that's that's what hit what happens um i had a when i was an elementary librarian i had a student who was in second grade but she was reading on a junior high level and she came in and checked out a judy bloom book and lots of you have read judy bloom um they're they're a little risque for elementary maybe but

140not for older elementary and the the mom came in and talked to me and she says how did my child get this book and i said well it is on her reading level she says i don't want my child ever to have a book like this and i said you know you volunteer the day that she's in the library why don't you come in and help her and you can help her find books that you or you approve of and that was the one thing that i think that that so surprised her that that the librarian would allow her to come in and help her child choose a book and and that way you get you you you tell them okay you can we're not gonna take this book out because we have a lot

141of parents who want their children to read that book but your child doesn't have to read that book you're in charge of what your child reads so carol this is matt smith thank you for being here tonight and thank you for holly for helping us so i want to clarify that part just a little bit so in that situation if school districts were to develop a process where parents were able to help select their students books you're saying that's that's acceptable but it's not acceptable for a parent to remove a book that another family or another student might be interested in my am i reading am i hearing that right that's that's correct i i'm sure if you're in a conservative community you would would not want anybody to come in and put progressive books

142in the library or vice versa but there you don't have a homogeneous community and so you have to represent everybody and and you know even like holiday books well what about diwali and and you know festivals from other religions and other countries um you may have students who have that heritage and they would like to read about that well if your child is not supposed to read about other religions that's fine you can you can certainly do that um now when you've got a student body of 4 000 students um asking the librarian to remember which student is not supposed to read which books there's there's some um requirement that there be some parental oversight and it could be you know that the kid checks out the book takes it home and mom says okay

143or not and that's that's fine too thank you carol no other questions well i um like i said i'm going to speak for the board thank you very much for coming in this is a topic and i think ty said it best you read the newspapers you read everything going on it's confusing it's confusing to be on the board um because it makes it sound like well we can just go in and do whatever we want but then you know holly sends the stuff and you read it like oh no no no we can't just go do this and um but i appreciate you y'all coming i appreciate the expertise the time to kind of walk us through something that is very confusing you know i know that nobody wants their name associated with banning

144and burning books don't nobody sitting up here would want to be involved in that at the same time we represent the whole bisd community we're going to be thoughtful about that and just make the best decisions we can and let our policies go through what they need to do so thank you very much all right thank you for your time all right thanks well we had a facilities meeting and uh we talked about two things uh one we got an update from dr golden on our bond exploration committee in the process i think at this point we got the recommendations from the committee in their priority list and then the list now is going out to the public i actually got a letter from you this weekend to my mailbox about the survey and you

145can click on your phone and do whatever and go digital or or submit it so now we're going to the public to look at the recommendations uh from the committee and then we'll gain that feedback and i think what december 8th get back together and uh look at that and then we spent a little bit of time on the process with huckabee architects mike morgan along with mike from huckabee mikey mike we're there to talk about the process of looking at if we do decide some time in the future to take a bond if there is elementary schools in that process what the concept from dealing with kids and teachers and people from the community what those schools would look like moving forward and that's what we talked about thank you ty next is the

146policy committee report not a whole lot to report from our november one meeting uh of course we went through eic local first reading and now we voted that into our policies for the for the district uh we also had a fairly lengthy discussion about um bed local which is the public participation in in our meetings and public comment the primary issue was whether we should give the same amount of time the three-minute time limit well like today we had a public hearing so if someone comes in do they have three minutes to address you know something on the public hearing issue and then three minutes on another issue that's on the agenda and i think that the consensus is yes um holly had sent us something i actually sent it to all of us and

147she made some clarification or put some put some language in it to clarify that and i think we'll have that next time is that right matt i believe so i think it depends on what policy committee would like at the after the next um meeting and then we'd bring it to whole board after that right so more to come that's basically it thank you and now we have the superintendent's report so i thought it would be um important for me to change my superintendent report up just a little bit because it is the month of november and it is the month of thanksgiving and so the only thing that i'm going to talk to you about tonight are the things that i believe is a superintendent i have to be thankful for a couple of

148things to note we saw in our presentations tonight in our student recognitions tonight the amazing work that is happening by our teachers throughout the school district i understand that it has been a challenging couple of years but our teachers have answered the call and done so on a regular basis and they do it for kids and i am so proud of the work that our teachers are doing and i couldn't be more thankful for their dedication in such a tumultuous time in our nation because what they do matters for the kids that you see in front of us the kids that were singing tonight the kids that were recognized and all of the great things that are happening it is utterly amazing what our staff has been able to do and special thanks go to

149our teachers students i have a lot to be thankful for as well if anybody questions if our future is in good hands take a look at the students in belton isd in what they're doing in our local area for our community and in our classroom and on the competition field despite the challenging circumstances on a regular basis our students answer the call and do amazing things lake belton high school in its second year in existence just finished seventh in the state band competition belton high school it's my understanding had their best finish since the 90s in in marching competition as well we have a whole lot to be thankful for in our students what they give to the sports what they give to their classroom experiences what they give to their extracurricular activities and it's

150important to recognize all of the work that they put in faculty and staff that aren't always recognized as well we have a lot to be thankful for i had the opportunity to attend the marine corps jrotc ball at belton high school in the last month as well and what those instructors what those community members do for our students and helping provide them a program that instills in them the discipline the service and the support mentality that our students get in the marine corps jrotc program it is utterly phenomenal we have a lot to thank be thankful for them our support staff whether it's our crossing guards that have already been mentioned tonight our school nutrition workers our bus drivers let's think about this all for a second we've all driven as parents with our kids

151behind us in cars well imagine driving every day with 50 kids behind you in your car and getting them to school on a regular basis we have so much to be thankful for with all of the support positions that we have in our school system that do day in and day out what is right for our kids the administrators in our school district if we think that this hasn't been a challenging year on our principals and assistant principals in in the tumultuous nature of everything that they've faced i think we're kidding ourselves they have been a ground zero of the challenges and that we have all faced in our community in our nation and they have handled themselves unbelievably well through that challenge we have a lot to be thankful for them finally our community

152our community i have said this and i will say it again and again and again while it's been challenging for us all during this time there is not a better community in the state of texas to go through these challenges than the community of belton isd and i couldn't be more proud and thankful for what support they have provided for us all finally our board of trustees i thank you for what you've done i thank you for diving into difficult conversations and challenges that are popping up all over the place and listening because in this world where we seem to be at polar opposites for everything the sport has demonstrated on a regular basis how good it is to listen to the community that we have in front of us so thank you for your

153leadership and what you do i am humbled to serve here and i'm thankful to serve here because of the people in the school district and the staff that we have but most importantly because we're focused on the outcomes for kids so thank you all well thank you dr smith and we really appreciate you being here thank you all right the next item on the agenda consent agenda does anyone wish to pull an atom for discussion not seeing anything there do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented miss bass mr tiger all in favor all right not a post thank you all right board request for new information miss lee mr alcoser mr floor miss bass mr tiger okay below you'll see the calendar coming up into break season so if there

154are some campuses you want to go see or if there's any campus activities going on just let everybody know that you're going to be there next i'm glad to get to it we need to go into closed session where is my paperwork on that oh here we go uh the board is now going to go into closed session to liberate regarding matters whereby personally identification let's see text disclose texas government code section 5510821 so there's the other one here it is the time is sorry 848. the board will not go into closed session consultation with attorney government code 551 uh deliberation of real property 551072 and government code 55074 so at this time we will go into closed session [Applause] uh meeting an open session are there any other items to discuss no actions being

155taken this meeting is adjourned 9 48. you don't get you