001good evening everyone thank you for joining us hope you enjoyed a wonderful performance by belt and cheer the time is oh go ahead the time is 6 15 and i'd like to call this meeting of the belt independent school district board of trustees to order a quorum of board members is present this meeting has been duly called and notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings act texas government code chapter 551 we're excited to have members of our public join us tonight respectfully ask that you refrain from loud or disruptive comments during the meeting in accordance with the policy this time if you please rise for a silent moment of prayer meditation okay thank you please remain standing believe we have students from chisholm trail here to lead us
002today and our pledge of allegiance we do for the pledge of allegiance we have lose compian she's a fifth grader at chisholm trail she loves reading it's her favorite subject in school and what she loves to do in her spare time her favorite books are the dogman series and fairy tales she loves being outside riding her bike and playing with her brothers she also enjoys working on cars and then we also have ephraim shepherd he's also a fifth grader at chisholm trail he's been in cub scouts since the first grade and plans to work toward getting his eagle scout he's a member of first baptist church in temple he loves playing basketball hanging out with his friends traveling to new places around the country he just got back from mount rushmore i pledge allegiance to
003the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation and god indivisible with liberty and justice for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one indivisible well great job thank both of you very [Music] much okay first item on our agenda celebrate the kids the reasons that we are here we do what we do so we have recognitions first one here we go okay so we got to see members of the belton high school varsity and junior varsity cheerleader squads they performed a routine in cheers before the start of the meeting the group included freshman addison krauss avery rivera riley campbell jazlyn davis julie hee kamora davis sophomores addison donohue gabby rodriguez lauren lazat sharon turner taylon reinkowski junior mia uresti seniors
004alex sappola camden carruthers ireland corey kailyn bond and the team is coached by marcia russell kristen hinage and emily cook so thank you come hope they've left but we appreciate them [Music] all right we're also pleased to recognize the lake belton high school rising junior lilani watson she placed seventh at the uil state track and field meet after running a personal best of 15.77 seconds in the 100 meter hurdles during the season lalani set five bronco records in the 100 meter hurdles four by 200 relay 300 meter hurdles and the long and triple jumps lbhs track coaches are cali cameron kaylee krennic and brandon bird [Music] [Applause] we are also pleased to recognize noah newman a belt in high school rising senior who placed 8th at the uil state and track track and field meet
005after running the 300 meter hurdles in 38.85 seconds noah who began running hurdles in seventh grade had a great junior year season with personal bests of 14.97 seconds and the 110 hurdles and a 38 point 27 seconds finish in the 300 meter hurdles at regionals his head track coach is bobby fowler we also are celebrating the lake belton high school golf team who advanced six athletes to the 4a state golf tournament although the state tournament was shortened because of rain sophomore tiffany lang finished 23rd out of 72 participants shooting a 124 the boys team finished sixth out of 12 teams and included sophomores chandler cook colby connor chase pacentino sloan hayden nix and freshman james bond they are coached by william sims [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you can come up and get a picture good job
006we're also celebrating belton high senior dallas hankemer who made his second appearance at the 6a state golf tournament this year he shot 73 on day one and 78 on day two for a two-day total of 151 in his last tournament as a tiger jim hellums is the head boys golf coach at bhs belton high school is also celebrating 60 student athletes who were named to the texas high school coaches association academic all-state teams to be nominated seniors must be in good standing with their team of good moral character and have an overall gpa of 92 or above class rank and s a t a c t test scores are also taken into consideration this year's recipients include from cross country on the second team kade windberg rylan reyes shelby littlefield from volleyball isabel hogan campbell
007burnett and sydney cell on the second team football first team cannon utley basketball second team luke bramlett girls soccer rylan reyes was honorable mention girls powerlifting vanessa ache was named elite first team was bryce allen borland and from boyce track second team trenton whitworth and kade windberg we're also recognizing some of the boys soccer team they were recognized by the texas association of soccer coaches for maintaining a 90 or higher gpa all four years of high school and we have martin bedola here tonight [Applause] [Music] [Applause] uh all right [Applause] [Music] [Applause] congratulations to all these students okay [Music] this is super sensitive all right we'll let them finish getting out before we continue with the meeting good group of kids right there good group do i need to ask the questions i already know
008i just already know we have the comments i need to ask the question all right okay public comments in accordance with the district policy bed local any person wishing to address the board of trustees during public comments must submit a public comment form located in the lobby those have been submitted here to me the board has elected a permit permit comments on any subject but ask that the comments pertain to public education issues in order to comply with the texas open meetings act the board may not respond to comments or otherwise discuss or act upon any issues that are not posted in the meeting agenda we have a timer on the screen that shows your allotted time and a sound that will occur at the conclusion if comments address a matter on the meetings agenda
009the board will defer discussion of the issue until the agenda item is reached during the meeting the board will consider complaints that remain unresolved after they have been addressed through proper administration channels and when they have been placed on the agenda so with that being said uh the comments were handed to me in no order just ask when you come up you state publicly your name and address for the record the first one is brenda howard you guys did produce some beautiful students tonight that was awesome it's pretty exciting my name is brenda howard 5613 hamlet drive belton texas and i'm speaking in regard to the budget the sr3 and specifically bisd has allocated 1.3 million dollars of sr3 grant money for sel this amount is shocking considering tight budget public school budgets and the
010lack of reliable objective research-based method to measure or assess a student's personality values and mindsets as sel proponents admit i personally could not find any data supporting sel that showed a scientific research or a metric that showed any academic improvement the only positives i found were on castle's website or any proponents website that was actually selling the product so there was there's just no research out there my own research in actually watching some of the videos because of zoom shows that it's actually a bit harmful to both the student and the teacher as a result of covid i was able to observe miss ma's fourth grade scl lesson one only four students responded in the comment sections two students said hi miss moth so they were thrilled she was back one student said wow thanks
011me bruni i don't know what that means and my favorite which i agreed with him is this is crappy really crappy i was also able to watch an sel webinar hosted by castle that entire webinar was also very very disturbing there was one teacher who said he doesn't teach one item of physics until he has created a bond with his student because he's all about the feels the other disturbing comment was from a teacher that stated she had disciplinary problems in her classroom but because she is white and didn't have the same lived experience of her students she could not tell if the students were misbehaving or if this was how they behave normally in their environment kind of sounded like the students were lab rats and being analyzed based upon race in every case
012in this webinar it seemed to be about the teachers feelings and it didn't address student concerns it's my interpretation the sel attempts to make pseudo-psychologists out of teachers all of this belongs in the hands of professional psychologists thereby freeing up the time the teachers and students can use for academics which is the only reason kids come to the educational institution when the we know that the student thinks the asl is crappy so i spoke to three teachers and this is what i was told teacher number one we became teachers to teach academics sel goes down roads we don't want to go down teacher number two it's a waste of time and finally teacher number three a friend of mine who has a doctorate degree and taught over twenty threes that twenty years at elementary and
013high school level stated it was one of the reasons i retired enough said in summary sel and this surprised me has been around for 24 years and has not produced any improvement to student success in a measurable form and i believe it's a waste of valuable educational dollars please spend that 1.3 million dollars on something tangible like academics now i understand that there's a federal government requirement for covid and mental health and it's something that you do have to address but maybe hire another counselor maybe bring in another psychologist if someone's having mental health issues with with relating to covid or if you're trying to build in some mental health but putting the burden on the instructors but on the teachers to be psychologists and try to analyze analyze the students and even in this
014fourth grade video i literally saw them tell the students if you see your fellow student and he's depressed your job is to listen to him unobjectively and and unconditionally and accept whatever the person's saying well if that student's depressed which in this situation it was and that student were to commit suicide or do something horrible how would that student feel because they've been told to react in a certain way what he should that student should be doing is going to a psychologist you know and teachers know you guys know if you're in the classroom if a student has problems you should refer them out and not not try to do this sel so thank you for your time i appreciate it i hope you find really good uses for 1.3 million dollars thank you good
015evening thank you my name is monica windham my address is 12308 bowie drive um i'm here to really everything that brenda said was pretty much what i was going to say so i'll just skip over that but i noticed that these values and beliefs i really love this i really love this i do however there are things that are stopping us from being from continuing this um you know each and each and every we believe that each and every student deserves exceptional experiences according to their unique needs and passions love this however if we continue to with the brain pop and the sel i don't think that's going to help our students to get the education that they really need the no child left behind act came into action in 2002 the fundamentals and morals
016changed the way that teachers were able to connect and actually teach their students the requirements for standardized testing were were led and tied into federal funding and so pretty much what brenda said you know that kind of ties your hands i don't really like that i kind of want to see them you know teachers get more involved in the education giving them the proper education that's why we bring them to school for innovation um it's crucial continuing of success if we you know we've already know that there's a law passed where abbott has stopped critical race theory from touching our texas school systems that's wonderful however there are little ways that this is still being talked about and discussed in our school system i feel like these political messages will only hinder our children's innovation
017we want to improve this and not change the process of how our children learn and i think that us confusing them with the identity of a color of race is just i mean that's that's too much continuous improvements so we see you know you say you want model staff if you allow you know to bring marxism into school to you know subtly make our children learn little things about marxism there's no gray areas in this it's black or white they either get to know that they're oppressed or they're not oppressed no one's oppressed let's not talk about that that changes the whole values and beliefs once we bring that in this all goes away community engagement is exactly why i'm here exactly why a lot of these people are here it was so great to
018see those cheerleaders and all the achievements that those students had made throughout the year and throughout their whole high school years uh we want to engage with you to ensure that our children get every experience that they can and enhance enhance their ability to be successful throughout their lives and serve our communities or whichever communities they choose to move to and serve them with love and compassion and the correct knowledge to be productive members again if we continue down the route of federal funding guidelines and not teaching them what they need to be taught and letting us parents take over that control let us answer those questions then we're only hindering and confusing the minds of our children the learning space while the schools are wonderfully built especially the new high school my son will
019be going to it next year and i'm excited we noticed that this year that the walls and the yearbooks were filled with bml and false coveted facts now i know that i'm not the only parent that did not appreciate that being done so we just wanted to make that known and then this unity unity has been so the meaning has been so misled like we we're not it's like led by politics and with all that stuff on the walls all that through the yearbooks that just confuses the mind what is unity my kids don't even really know i have to explain to them what is true unity because the school system is not telling them they're confused because politics has been flooded in all over the walls and now the yearbooks at the end of
020the year i mean just like wildfire just imagine like your five-year-old say you have a five-year-old anyone's five-year-old comes home to ask a question like the utter fear and disgust that you would feel like your five-year-old asking a question i don't understand what this is and it's a political statement or something that's completely unrelated to anything they should be teaching at this time it's mortifying it's absolutely mortifying just those topics should be left to discuss with our children and engaging the workforce a thriving staff would would not be able to create an exceptional learning experience if it's teaching a curriculum that involves critical race theory politics thank you for your time hi good evening glad to see everybody i hope you have enjoyed this summer respite that though brief it is and we understand that
021you have a very long meeting tonight so blessings on that as you cover it's all this information it's important for our school district my name is janet brown i reside at 5 branding iron belton texas that's actually in morgan's point and what i will be speaking about tonight it it's about diversity it's on your sr3 grant use of funds item six each and every student 1.5 million there's diversity initiatives and also staffing diversity so i want to open up with martin luther king i have a dream that one day my four little children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character and i think that's really important when we start to talk about diversity when we start to recognize
022that when whether we're talking about students or we're talking about staff improvements into our school systems that it's about what are you bringing to the table what are your qualifications you know we're not looking at you know we're not trying to fill a quota by race because we may miss someone who is very very qualified um the definition of equity and equality that comes into this into diversity equality is the state of quality of being equal the state of being equal identity and magnitude or dimensions value qualities degrees the state of being neither superior nor inferior greater nor less better nor stronger nor weaker with regard to the things or things compared where equity is the state of being just and fair so there's a big difference when we talk about when we hear the
023buzzwords equity and then we hear equality what that means diversity is a trap it is a part of crt or critical race theory it's being forced to sort someone by race gender sexual orientation or even age identify they will identify whether they are an oppressor or they are an oppressed group so it's either a victim mentality or it's a victor mentality instead of again looking at character we need to they confess privilege based on race gender sexual orientation or age we get bombarded by that in our media on constant basis so you know what i'm talking about where does that and that does not fit into our school system definitely not 1.5 million dollars okay failing classes for refusing to accept criteria as a student or for a job or for promotion so how does
024that affect are we are we accepting people you know based on what they bring to the table or if they don't do uh you know if they don't accept the adversity or they don't accept something about their race if they can't be white enough but it can't be this then you're fired from your job that is wrong so what happens when these various identities do not allow align with social norms essentially crt through diversity initiatives initiatives place race at the center of a paradigm so our forms are crt in our belton school district yes they are we have we did mention monica mentioned about the yearbook we we have pictures of that there was a one course at lake belton uh middle school that was actually it was called social awareness equality awareness alliance that's
025crt right there so that was an elective course and that was printed in the yearbook so it's here also it's important to hire educators who value education over indoctrination schools are not indoctrination centers um we you're all in my age you know what school is like when we grew up it would be nice for our children to also realize what school is like when we like how we grew up do not import import personal values or especially political on to children teach our children how to think versus what to think things like math science history and reading and again hire the best qualified personnel as as instructors versus a goal of diversity house bill 3879 was passed this is our texas legislature in action where the prohibit crt concepts in k-12 social studies courses they
026prohibit the 16-19 project from being taught in history prohibits course credit for activism action civics and protest civics thank you and i if i can leave you with this final quote from dr martin dr king darkness cannot drive out darkness only light can do that hate cannot drive out hate only love can do that thank you very much thank you and sean clutter good evening my name is sean clutter 3354 kathy lane belton texas i will be speaking about propaganda and covid for the first time in u.s history acting presidents and public local officials at the state level have been spreading misinformation about a pandemic that continues to ravage the country with 13.6 million covet 19 cases a fourth of the cases worldwide there's over 269 000 deaths we can safely say that our government
027was at war with its own citizens surpassing india and brazil the united states is incomprehensibly still at the top of the list of the 10 most affected countries by the pandemic talk about american exceptionalism there is no denying that the deep state worked tirelessly to convince u.s workers and their families that the pandemic was a worldwide hoax the daily propaganda that came out can only be compared to china's both governments bent on convincing the populace that true patriots should only trust its top officials and anyone who says the contrary are enemies of the state state-sponsored covet propaganda is not unique to the united states but it has claimed the most lives this reality deception and the lack of government action to protect us from covet is directly correlated to a failing democracy only a functioning
028democracy will be able to rescue us from this misinformation nightmare one that some will claim can only be counteracted by propaganda the conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society those who manipulate the uh this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is true ruling power of our country we are governed our minds are molded our tastes are formed our ideas suggested largely by men we've never heard of this is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they're to live together as a smoothly smoothly functioning society in most every act of our daily lives whether in the sphere of politics or business and our
029social conduct or our ethical thinking we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses it is they who pull the wires which control the public mind and that is a quote from edward bernays and propaganda the united states of america is in trouble from the top to the bottom as a veteran who served in panama in 1989 in the first gulf war i can tell you about propaganda leaflets being spread all across those countries to destroy those enemies of america the enemies are actually here in the united states now so i've come home to enemies at the top and local level and i'm not being accusatory of this body whatsoever i'm just putting the facts out there that this has been ongoing for
030a long period of time it is incumbent upon all of us as american citizens to rise up and protect our nation from the evil of the day are we going to return to this this mask that in itself has chemicals and biological material already on it when it's passed out to breathe in to our lungs to infect our children our adults it's fear fear is false evidence that appears real and we can't allow that to happen this is our country we are one people we are a diverse people and it's so important that we work together to expose the enemies and tell the truth we cannot live a lie we can't live a lie regarding the pcr test we can't live a lie regarding the fact that the spike protein is coming from the vaccine
031we can't live a lie that you have 22 month old babies having vaginal bleeding the size of an egg we cannot lie that grandparents are getting shots and passing on what's called shedding to their family members we're never going to know the true numbers but we have to do due diligence now this board must do it the citizens of belton must do this it's for our po if for nothing but self-preservation and the people that you love and care about that you'll do this on a daily basis to be educated and not follow the broken program that is destroying this country it is a depopulation agenda and our students are failing from it they're dying suicide mental health issues it's a terrible thing we are responsible adults we can do this together and we got
032to stand on truth we can't stand on the lies that have been perpetrated across our nation for a long time would woodrow wilson once said that there is a hidden hand we can defeat that hidden hand thank you [Music] okay next on the agenda item four values and beliefs mr president members of the board some feedback on some things and at the beginning of every board meeting we're going to just review one as they're all brand new to our system and ask you all the way in and just give a few personal thoughts if you would like to share on what that value means to you so we're going to start with one this month if i have a board member that would like to read it that would be great and if not i'll
033go ahead and read it we're going to start with the first one each and every each and every we believe each and every student deserves exceptional experiences according to their unique needs and passions and so in the development of this when we were asking all feedback about what makes belton isd great and what's going to make us great moving forward we adopted these values and beliefs because we believe belton has done this great for a long time when i moved into this district and i asked the question what do we do great almost everybody told me we're about the kids we're about our kids and we're about taking care of our kids so when i see this value each and every i think about knowing every kid that walks through our door knowing that they
034come from diverse backgrounds knowing that they come with unique needs and they have unique challenges and it's our job to know them well and support them well so that they can thrive in our system that's what that means to me as a superintendent i'll open it up to you all to chime in yeah so um what public school is in in its essence should be is for each and every student and that is should be what public schools do do best it's for every level of student that's for every type of student we have programs for every talent of every kind of student we offer things in a public school that private schools can't do all-encompassing like we do and we want to do it well we don't want to just say we do it
035we want to do it well and we want to think about every kid we don't want to let any kid fall through the cracks we want to make sure every child has a path to success in their life no matter what no matter who they are that they've been noticed and that they've got some path and some program to get them there and i think that's the path we're on i've got a good example uh just recently i was up at the administration building and i went in and checked on a group and it was from our teaching and learning department and they were talking about we had 560 kids showed up for summer camp this year and how excited the kids were and when the bell rang a bunch of them were saying they
036didn't want to leave they didn't want to go home that's an example to me of kids going to a place where they love and they feel loved and they want to be with us and our people and that's just an example of each and every right there to me i i i smiled the rest of the day after hearing hearing all that because little kids they want to be at school during summer and that's awesome that's a good example of us doing that okay so i thought about this and i studied this this sentence and there's a word that stuck out to me and it's the word deserves so i just i wanted to look up really what deserve means and it that the theme that i could come up with or that the sources
037i found were to be worthy of or to rightly receive something so then i thought this then it became personal because i have four each and every i have a son with special needs who's non-verbal he's 12 and functions as a three-year-old so his experiences look different from the nine-year-old who has adhd and he's like school but if he could be on the baseball field that would be better and then it's going to be different for the seven-year-old who's going to be the ideal student who loves to sharpen the pencils and wants to be the line leader and wants to gra you know and then it's different for our the three-year-old who's adopted who is going to have a different story so this you know our experiences are going to speak to us differently they're
038going to impact us differently so it's important that we when we do these things it's going to impact them differently and so and i'm glad that it's at the top i don't know how i follow any of that but i'll try um each and every you know for me it's about trying to figure out for every student each and every student each individual student no matter where they come from no matter what their background is you know understanding where they're at as an individual understanding how we get them how we help them find the way to the next level how we find the glimmer that excites them you know finds that excitement point for that individual who's going to take the you know get them from where they are to that next level right no
039matter whether it's in the classroom whether it's on the field whether it's you know uh preschool or you know you know the pre-k program or whether it's high school right no matter what that experience is try to find that for that individual student to help them get to to the next level so that's each and every for me well i think for me the the each and every really goes to the heart of what we have to do and what we do at belton isd and that is as java said finding that spark finding that passion but hats off to the people who are behind the scenes that we never see in this so we know that the football coaches we know the the choir we know those that's not where every kid goes there
040are so many clubs so many things that we don't see every day teachers spend massive amounts of time running these clubs being their sponsors being the ones there after hours that nobody ever sees but for that group of 50 kids that's what's important to them and so i think it's it's important that we realize um especially in a time when budgets are tight and and we know that that you know why are you spending money on on these extracurricular programs because we need to find kids need to find that passion and they don't fall into that 70 group that it's going to be athletics or banned or acquired there's so many other things out there that we offer at belton isd and i know that dr smith and and the administration is working harder on
041you know connecting with these kids so that we find out when they graduate part of the journey of a graduate is what were you involved in while you were at belton isd that'll help us know have we been successful did you just go to school or did you find these other passions that you're going to follow so to me that's where each and every kicks in mcdonald's that's okay you know jeff i'm sitting here i'm listening to you and um you know i think about you know you made the statement did you just go to school the reality is some kids just go to school and that's a big accomplishment for them because perhaps their home environment is such that going to school is their way of their way out their way to a better
042situation their opportunities to be around something that's positive so when we're looking at um each and every we need to ensure that we're also making sure it's not just those that are involved in clubs and all those other things but at a very basic level also to include those kids that just go to school every day i kind of took a little bit different approach i mean i i see that each and every but the thing that stood out to me was unique needs and passions and i think that's probably because of the discussions we've been having over the last several months uh in eic local um in our our class ranking and grading system um and what the discussion has been that that we've been having regarding that particular policy is that we want
043students to be able to pursue their individual dreams uh their individual passions as opposed to being locked into having to take a certain certain course to to make the grade uh to make to make the class rank that kind of thing so that's that's what uh stood out to me uh and we're working on that i want to thank our board just for sharing some thoughts tonight on that topic and we'll take one of these uh the values and beliefs you see that the value is uh listed there in bold and the belief statement is following that and we'll take one of these per month and just share a few comments along the way so i appreciate you doing that that helps us as an administrative team know what it means to you and helps
044us continue to work on how we talk about it in our system so thank you thank you all very much for that so action items number five dr smith yes in our um board operating procedures we actually have um a operating procedure that talks about committee membership and i know you as a board have talked about that before and with the reorganization of the board that happened last month i think you as a board need to discuss who might be serving on committees and moving forward so i'll turn it over to you all to discuss that is appropriate so what we're talking right now motions for the facilities and policy committees and i can help on this i can be a little more clear to start with in our board operating procedures it says that
045the board president doesn't serve on either the facilities committee or the policy committee and with a change in presidency we have to formally make sure that the committee is made up of ms mcdonald is a member of the facilities committee and um that mr norwood would no longer serve on that is the board president he has the ability to attend either one that's what y'all had set up with dr battershell so this that's what this formal action is actually for um and you all have the ability to every year adjust those committees if you need to and if this needs to be the time to do that you may do that as well so sorry for the lack of clarification from is there a motion to appoint miss mcdonald i'll i'll make that motion all
046right is there a second mr taggart all in favor any opposed okay that passes unanimously it is the coolest committee by the way it's the coolest all right next item is uh well i guess a little bit of background on this so that they understand what we're doing dr smith you'll give the background sure it's uh part of covet 19 we had to have a resolution by the board of trustees that allowed us to do some things and grant the superintendent some specific authority that is not normally found in policy and that was because of closures remember seems like a long time ago but last spring we were meeting virtually we were doing business virtually and this resolution that you all passed on march 17th 2020 allowed us to do some things appropriately as a
047school district to continue to move forward and continue to do business what the action item is today is rescinding that because knock on wood we are hopefully out of covet and moving forward and we no longer have to have this resolution intact and so this i won't be reporting to you in the superintendent's report every month on any actions taken according to that resolution so that's just rescinding that so we can put that to bed are there any other questions on this any discussion no okay do we have a motion to rescind the resolution as recommended miss mcdonald do i have a second mr floor all in favor don't oppose okay that passes unanimously i know you're all going to be really disappointed but i actually have to report out on one more month during
048the superintendent's report tonight so i apologize on that all right item c lakewood elementary principal mr schiller is going to be coming forward to present to you some administrative hires tonight including our lakewood elementary principal recommendation all right good evening everyone so i do have three recommendations for you tonight the first one is two the first two are not here we're unable to make it here tonight but we have christy chandler principal at lakewood elementary has a master's degree in educational administration texas state university and has a bachelor's degree from st edwards university she has 27 years in education she served as a principal an assistant principal at an elementary level and served as a teacher at elementary level she's done that in flugerville isd and she also served as a teacher in austin isd
049at the elementary level as well so she's being recommended tonight our second recommendation is on ashley bates for assistant principal of lake belton high school she has a master's degree at san angelo state university bachelors of arts from uh from from in ottawa university she has her seven years in education and she's been an assistant principal in waco isd for three years and she's been a teacher in the central texas area as well and then we do have choreocratic here tonight and corey is being recommended for associate principal at lake belton high school has a master's degree from lamar university uh bachelor's of business administration from tarleton state university is in his 20th year in education and if you know corey he's been at the at belton high school um as a as an assistant
050principal um for the last couple of years so we're excited to to to recommend him for your approval tonight you know once y'all vote i'll ask him to come up here maybe say a couple of comments and then i think we'll take pictures all right sounds good all right there any discussion any questions no if not oh yes ms bass just a comment that i just was thinking about this and as experience when you get new principles as a teacher you know the unknown even though it's really exciting the unknown is is it can be scary so my hope is that the schools that are getting new principles that that it's peaceful and and it just it's a good change and the lines of communication are open and that i'm just hoping that lakewood and
051new tech i know they're getting some new leaders in lbhs as well that i just i'm praying for you guys that it it's all the transition is smooth and for teachers parents for kids so it's exciting but i know it can be a challenge too thank you no other questions do i have a motion to present or do i have a motion to approve the personnel auditions as presented mr taggart do i have a second mr bass all right all in favor no opposed passes unanimously thank you let cory talk for a second yep all right we get to talk and then we get to take pictures we didn't get to do that all right well thank you um kind of being put on the spot here but that's okay you know i do want
052to thank you all for for allowing me this opportunity uh i really look forward to it i look forward to working with miss ross and uh you know really you know putting on our boots and and getting to work i also want to thank mr smith uh over at belton high school for you know bringing me to this district and uh providing such a great example and uh you know i look forward to to working along with with everyone here to make belton isd the best it can be all right congratulations congratulations all right board yeah yep everybody go down we can do that now absolutely todd was that you that hit the did you hit the mic did you just hit that mic or was that something that we did okay next on the
053agenda is the compensation plan mr schiller gets to stay up here we uh presented to y'all in a workshop a month ago seems like a lot longer ago than that i know but mr schiller is going to walk us through compensation plan recommendation for the upcoming school year yeah i think i told dr smith this morning that it felt like three months since we've last met in a regular meeting so appreciate being here tonight to recommend a salary increase for for y'all's approval so last month we did meet in the workshop we discussed our current position in the market and we reviewed possible salary increase scenarios we looked at comparison of our market medians on salaries um during our conversation and we also looked at just kind of how we compare in the market because
054kind of where we stand and so what we owe we felt like we heard when we left that is is that we want to maintain our current position in the market and kind of kind of stay in the same situation as we've been in and so we feel like a recommending a two percent salary increase based on salary range midpoint and in the 1200 increase for all full-time teachers librarians and nurses would allow us to maintain that current position also in your packet you see it you'll see information on a bilingual stipend increase um from three thousand dollars to six thousand dollars annually so again the recommendation tonight is is for a two percent salary increase which will amount to twelve hundred dollars for all full-time teachers librarians and nurses and a two percent salary
055increase for all other staff based on their salary range thank you mr schiller questions from the board i know there's a ton of work that goes into this todd and you know when we did our workshop on this you know we got to ask all the questions and you know brainstorm and we kind of been over the information but i just want to say that you know when my wife got hired in belton 26 years ago we didn't we weren't in this standing necessarily in the commun in the area as far as where we ranked and but belton provided a atmosphere where teachers wanted to stay even though they weren't being compensated as well as other districts well now we have both so our previous leadership got us where we needed to be and now
056you guys are maintaining it and even taking it further like some of the steps we made in some significant positions this year to increase our uh ability to recruit better folks so i want to commend you and your people on the work that y'all have done because i'm proud now of where belton sits in the area and amongst the districts across the state that we compare uh with and uh proud of the work that you guys are doing appreciate that appreciate that it's a great place to be any other questions okay if not do we have a motion to approve the 2021-22 compensation plan as presented ms bass do i have a second miss lee okay all in favor opposed all right that passed you pamphlet thank you appreciate your support thank you okay this
057is a fun one uh mr president members of the board i am excited to have mike morgan come talk to you tonight and uh our policy committee and our facilities committee have been doing good work over the past year and this is a result of the work that's been done and those things and so we're excited to have uh mike present to you our first nomination for regarding naming facilities from that work thanks dr smith uh president norwood board it's my pleasure to be here tonight this is a this is a fun one as was said and i'm here tonight to ask you to consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding the renaming of belton high school tiger baseball field to tidwell field so for the consideration of this is to understand a little bit
058about coach david tidwell he's a 29 year coach and teacher was a 29 year coach and teacher for the belton independent school district during his tenure at belton isd the baseball program was a perennial district champion contender and was in the playoffs almost every year he was head coach his career was highlighted by the 1994 4a state championship but probably his greatest accomplishment is the hundreds of of young men and families that he touched and he mentored during their time at belton high school coach tidwell's success culminated in an induction into the texas high school baseball coaches hall of fame in 2017 coach tidwell is also a member of the belton high school wall of honor in two capacities he's there as a member of the 1994 state championship baseball team and he's there individually
059because this is accomplishments and being inducted into the hall of fame we anticipate with your approval tonight that we would hold a dedication ceremony during the varsity 2022 baseball season at that time we would officially dedicate the field and the renaming and maybe even have coach sidwell throughout the first pitch so i would like to open this up for discussion our recommendation tonight would be that we approve the renaming of bhs tiger baseball field to ted welfield all right i will open up the discussion hi well this is exciting because this was something we started talking about like you said a year ago and we have had so many people that have had an impact on belton isd and we how can we honor some of these folks well we have facilities and so that
060started the discussion and mike and his folks i mean they rolled up their sleeves and did comparisons of these types of policies all over the state and can and really gave us a really smooth uh lockdown uh procedure and then the nominations started coming not long after that it hit our website and uh this is about as much of a no-brainer in belton as one can be to have coach tibble honored like this he was a winner he and he changed the culture that they not changed it but he helped maintain a culture of excellence that belton isd has had for a long time that 94 team i'm friends with so many of those guys and they and they absolutely love coach tidwell he's like another father to those guys they really do so i'm
061excited about this i hope we pass this any more discussions from down here no no oh miss bass i'm late on my comments uh just a couple of things so i didn't know i didn't go to belton so i didn't know coach tidwell but like ty said i've at some people that they he coached were friends with and they approached me both yesterday at different times and not just about hey you need to vote for this but they they just had to go on about who he was and and then i kind of thought about a little bit later at the ball fields when my son had made a terrible play but when he came off the field it hit me the coach met him at the dugout got an eye to eye and it
062it changed the rest of his game because it could have not and so it just made me think that our coaches i mean as a bomb i wanted to go out there and say some kid suck it up but i couldn't um sorry that's not on the record um but i know that that coach sorry okay um coaches make a difference and so i think when you see that name year after year it's going to continue to make a difference and so i'm going to are there any other discussions no uh yeah i want you to call for more would you like to go ahead no okay yeah we'll do it this way then all right well do we have a motion to rename bhs tiger baseball field to tidwell field as presented mr taggart
063it's made in motion do i have a second mr floor okay all right all in favor and i have to abstain is going to abstain i'm going to let him explain why after we vote so all in favor let the records show that everyone voted yes except for manual he is abstaining and he is going to tell us why well i'm the one that actually submitted the nomination uh to kick the process off uh coach tedwell has been a gosh i don't know i don't know what to say about him in terms of sports and belton but when i was talking to mike morgan about it i said well how many coaches uh in the state of texas have a coach that's been inducted into texas sports hall of fame i mean that speaks that
064speaks uh volumes in in my book um i i spoke to not just uh uh kids that were playing uh for coach tidwell my son was in high school but kids that go back to the 94 team and even even before that and uh i think without question it's it's the impact that he had on them um when you when you go to watch coach tidwell's teams warm up i used to go just to watch that because of the organization the discipline um and he didn't always have the best athletes but he always found a way to win because he took he brought he brought out the best in these kids not only as as players but as individuals and a lot of the kids that that played for him the values and and things
065that he instilled in them they became successful men so it's not just the winning but but what he did uh for these kids off the field so that's why that's why i'm staying i couldn't vote but uh uh i think you guys did the right thing thank you manuel and uh it's wonderful to be able to celebrate our hometown heroes when we can so next item on the agenda is architectural services we're going to let mr morgan stay right there as you all know we are talking about looking at our elementary school design and we've gone through a process and mike's gonna inform you about the process and our recommendation here yes and i would like to thank the policy committee for the work on cw local the the last action item that we took
066uh we had several discussions and a lot of work went into that and we think we we with their partnership came up with a great process to uh to honor our belts and not that goes without i should have mentioned that earlier uh once again excited to talk to you about this one so tonight we're going to consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding contract with huckabee for architectural services for a new elementary school a little background i feel like we have engaged in some in-depth discussion about growth but as you know we are fast growth district we're growing by approximately 360 elementary students per year currently and that is expected to maintain for the foreseeable future it's imperative that we develop strategies to sustain quality instruction while managing new student growth one strategy that
067could be implemented is the construction of new schools the administration tonight would like to make a recommendation to move forward with the design of a new elementary school to be prepared for future growth we have gone through a process and that process began in march with the approval of a 15 firm architectural and engineering rfq to establish a pool of candidates that we would be allowed or be able to work with for future projects we have gone through a process in interacting with those firms who were interested in working with us as partners in a new elementary school design and as a result of that process we come tonight to say that a fair and reasonable agreement has been negotiated with huckabee and we would like to have that contract approved and would like to
068move forward with huckabee for architectural services for a new elementary school as presented open this up to any questions or discussions i do want to jump in real quickly on this one for our board as you all know this is about securing plans for the future what we want to be able to do if the board decides to elect to go to our our public for a bond election coming up if a bond election is considered and passed we want to be ready to build those schools based on those demographer reports that you all know about this is not in any way shape or form getting in front of that and i want to be really clear about that with our community this is about us being prepared for when we do build the next
069elementary school and that is going to be voted on by our voters if our board chooses to call a bond election so i want to be really explicit about that right now we are not building a new elementary school or taking anything for granted we are preparing things well so that we can do what our community says we might need to do for the future okay any questions down here anyone down here i would like to take a minute and just thank uh mike morgan and his team um and everybody who got to visit schools that was that was fun it was interesting and it's a unique thing our our schools are in wonderful condition our elementaries have been maintained uh facilities committee which i was honored to be on um i mean it just
070the reports that we got but the fact is this we saw some of these newer schools and i think the design of our last elementary schools was around 10 or 15 years ago which doesn't seem that long ago but if you built a house dinner 15 years ago and you're building it now things change and it's not about making everything nice and new but it was about the functionality of some of the schools that we visited where collaborative space things that honestly i'd always heard about collaborative space but just thought it was an empty classroom but we saw it in action we saw how it worked and the layout of some of the different designs which allows us to maximize our land and you know for me it's always a big part of what is
071the playground looks like i know that sounds funny but you know to maximize what we can do with these pieces of land when it comes so i and i appreciate y'all's work that was i mean that was a lot of interviews and a lot of stuff y'all went through to come to this and just really appreciate it i believe you've made a do i have a motion to prove the contract with huckabee architectural services for a new elementary school as presented ms mcdonald anymore mr taggart all right guys we get these hands going a little bit faster all in favor all in favor all right passes unanimously thank you thank you very much thank you okay considering to test cb local state and federal revenue sources i am excited to welcome jennifer land up to
072the podium tonight jennifer presented this to our policy committee recently and she'll explain the details and why we're bringing this to you tonight yes so good evening president norwood dr smith board members i am standing here for local policy cb and this is a as part of the sr3 funds that tea awarded they wanted to make sure that the districts had an opportunity an opportunity and a clearly defined method by which public input would be received for the use of those funds and so tea recommended that a board policy be revised to address that requirement in response tasby actually put together a a proposal to policy cb local that addresses that tea requirement and what you're seeing here before you is a little bit of a different order than the language that tasby responded or
073has suggested is in a little bit of a different order from what was presented at the policy committee for the first reading but it's the same language i just wanted to point that out to you and i think i mentioned in the policy committee that the order might change just a little bit so we are proposing to add language that clearly states how public input will be received for these federal funding sources and this policy will address every federal fund funding or grant moving forward so we anticipate that this will be an annual event with you all where we will have a public hearing for these funding sources i do want to point out one thing in the policy that is not a change but i think the policy that got in the put in
074the packet had a slight miscommunication in it and under gifts grants and gratuities under one and two there is the s vendor gift threshold single item under one that should be fifty dollars as it's already stated in policy and under two that should be one hundred dollars is already stated i didn't know if anybody caught that or had a question on it but the tasby policy that they sent us did not have those amounts filled in and i apologize for that oversight but that is not changing tonight that is simply a tasby policy piece that i overlooked thank you miss lamb do we have any questions concerns just um i want to thank jennifer for figuring this out basically just being really blunt in order for us to accept esser funds we had to either
075have a resolution that allows us to break our own policy or change our policy so we elected to make sure we took it to the policy committee and do it the right way so thank you jennifer for helping us figure all that out all right any questions from down here any down here no well do we have a motion to approve the revisions to cb local as presented miss lee mr floor thank you all in favor pass it unanimously thank you all right well i believe this is going to be dr smith going to take over here all right that's actually ms land and she's going to do our presentation on our federal funding sources and our esser monies etc yes thank you again i have celia ray with me tonight and she's going to
076get us started in our public hearing for our federal funding sources celia is our director of federal programs and i will turn it over to her thank you jennifer president nowhood dr smith and board we're excited tonight to explain further our the activities that we look to use the federal grants for this is a preliminary plan but one based on needs assessment and a lot of collaboration among our departments so we are looking to apply for these grants in the months of july and august so our first slide please oh that would be me thank you along this slide explains the essa every student succeeds act the idea and the perkins grant along the left are the categories that are similar to all these grants across the top are the different grant funds though the
077categories are somewhat similar the target audience or the target benefactor of each grant is different so i'm going to take a moment to go across the top the essa grant has four title funds title one funds benefit our title one campuses that are identified as such because of high concentrations of our low economic students our main support on those campuses is with intervention for math and reading we do have some professional professional development on those campuses as well very targeted as identified by the campus principles and some required set-aside amounts which is for parental involvement we we agree with that requirement that that's a very important initiative to build up our parents as they build up their students titles who under essa is for professional development not only for teachers but our teacher leaders and
078our administrative staff we do support two curriculum coordinators with title ii funds title three is for our english learners and that program is very exciting moving forward it that grant funds professional development educational resources and again has a set aside for our parental involvement among those parents essa title iv funds has some initiatives to address a well-rounded education and safe and secure learning environments for our students we partially fund our coordinator security with those funds do professional development through technology on digital learning and also resources and supplies we support our health services department with items both for teaching of district safety measures and aeds we purchased for some of our campuses ideab is our special needs program grant most of that grant supports staffing for professional and paraprofessionals to address the specific needs of our
079students there are some resources that are identified with that grant as well and service providers we're in a shared service agreement with waco for our regional deaf center and support our students that way perkins is our carl perkins cte grant the main funding for that is with our coordinator of cte but as funds are exceed that need we look at supporting programs new programs as those needs are identified each year i did want to say that all these grant funds are federal funds they originate with the usde tea is a pass-through entity which then um allows the districts to make decisions um along the guidelines that are identified um we're excited about these opportunities and for the essa idea in perkins grant and jennifer will be next to address our next grant yes our next
080federal funding source is new to us and this is our sr2 funds which we are we just really got uh real good information about a couple of weeks ago and these funds originate from the coronavirus response and relief supplemental appropriations act which is better known as carissa and this is to support in recovery from the impact of covet 19. these funds are are very important to us because they are supplemental they are above and beyond our current allocations and with this fun we are we're slated to receive about five million dollars and they they can be used for activities that have occurred between march 13th of 2020 and all the way through september 30th of 2023 we do have an application due date of september 2021 but that application period is already open and with
081these funds we are interested we are proposing that we use this revenue for some retention strategies as well as to improve our hvac and air quality these funds do not have a deep the detailed requirements for use that the sr3 funds have because these more closely resemble our sr1 funds that we got however with the use however we do not have that same supplant rule that esser one had and again these funds are above and beyond and esther ii leads us to sr3 i stood before you last month to talk about our sr3 funds and just give you a brief overview of them and now i'm standing here to talk about the some additional information that we have gathered since that time again with our sr3 funds we are slated to receive about 11.1 million
082dollars our application is due very soon it's coming up next month and we can use these funds for activities and services from march 13th of 2020 all the way through september of 2024 the requirements or the major requirements in this grant is that we have to have a use of funds plan and a return to school plan the return to school plan we have already satisfied and the use of funds plan is what i am about to go over i do want to mention that these are additional dollars above and beyond and when we get to our proposed use of funds plan it is very important that i point out that the development of this proposed funding plan was in support of our strategic plan you know that is not to be taken lightly the
083five focus areas that you see here you will notice are the same five focus areas that we have in our strategic plan and we have outlined esther priorities in support of these five focus areas and the strategies that were developed with these areas i will say i will point out first that each of these focus areas have a professional learning component built in in terms of the dollars that we have considered to be a priority in each of these areas that is absolutely intentional because we want to build up our staff in each of these areas and these funds will provide us an opportunity to do that when you look at the 1.5 million under the each and every student category we wanted to make sure that in alignment with our strategic plan that we
084are addressing barriers that are preventing each and every student from accessing the tools and resources and programs that we have in the district as well as taking advantage of an opportunity to expand an issue to expand in the diversity of bisd of the bisd team so that we can build a highly skilled workforce that really looks like our community so those are the um that's where the 1.5 million dollars is directed toward and when you look when we're looking at the 800 000 dollars under engaging all voices that's going to be to develop processes to really and truly gain the student voice and and understand the school experience from the student perspective as well as using these funds to better understand and address the communication needs and delivery modes for parents and our stakeholders you
085know those that was those were some really big strategies under under the engaging all voices area and moving to the exceptional learning area that 4.3 million dollars we wanted to make sure that with these additional funds we were able to explore some personalized instructional strategies as well as providing various instructional programs to meet the needs of our students and also under this exceptional learning focus area we want to grow our job our journey of the graduate competencies with some initiatives that we are considering as well as focusing on high quality and personalized learning for each and every one of our employees with our future for facilities that 3.3 million dollars we developed some initiatives and we thought about some flexible learning spaces which includes our outdoor learning spaces that's something that was a big focus
086when we held our community meetings also the tools and resources for supporting our teaching and learning of our students that also is a priority under our future for facilities and then last but not least under the social and emotional support that 1.3 million dollars really is focused on investing in partnerships between the schools communities and our mental health experts and families to make sure that we are developing and equipping our staff and our students with the strategies that they need to practice empathy and continue to educate and support the whole child experience so that's just a brief overview of our proposed use of funds plan when you look at it from our strategic plan focus area and last but not least here's a look at that of those same categories or those same dollars in
087different categories which are more closely aligned or focused with some tea language just note that some of this language in these categories may change as we could seek community input and go back and make sure that we are best investing the funds that we have so here just percentage-wise as you can see instructional programs and facilities and instructional spaces are you know the highest dollar areas that we're looking at and that goes all the way down to some staffing diversity initiatives that we have discussed in our use of funds plan thank you very much all right do we have any questions or discussions i've got one quick thing um so i know this is a brief overview and some of the topics are kind of broad such as removing barriers for education things like this
088i would at some point it doesn't have to be an explanation today sort of like to give maybe a little bit more detail on what what's behind y'all's thoughts process on some of some of these broader topics and we'd be glad if you have some questions we have a whole team right here that would be glad to give you an idea again this was a draft and this is where we're asking for input from you on are there things that you think we should be spending these monies on too so this is a time to bring those up but we also have a whole group right over here that's ready to answer some of those questions because we happen to know this is a hot topic so can we go back to the slide before
089or the do it that way yeah so i would just start with the removing barriers to learning opportunities and kind of get your thoughts on that so some of ours this discussion has been about you know removing those barriers that prevent from kids from participating in in certain opportunities or or programs and so one idea or thought that we had that that we were looking at is is maybe to be able to pay for band equipment you know if cost is associated with preventing somebody from participating in a uil program or other type of program then that maybe we could set aside dollars to be able to help a family be able to to be able to pay for those types of things i think something that tonight during public comments we someone talked about
090the sel and i just haven't had a chance to dive into that i would like to hear a little bit more about that absolutely so really in that area we're looking at this the social and emotional wellness of students and so some of the ideas we've discussed in that are we currently have a cis program that you're going to be looking in consent tonight to approve and so could we fund that over three years that's that right there is about a six hundred thousand dollar commitment and then um do we need additional social workers do we need to contact with um contract for account clean services or independent services to to address the um emotional needs of students and so it was in it's in that realm that we're thinking with that yes and communities
091in schools i was asked on the side to explain if anyone's not aware of what cis is communities and schools we partner with them they currently provide a social worker on our identified campuses they pay they take 60 of the cost and we pay 40 so um we are in in discussion with them to see um if we could expand that program and at what level would they be able to support right now we think it might only be one additional person but we want to put those types of costs in this program for the future so being a former classroom teacher social issues and emotional things have kova didn't invent this this has been going on in schools for since we've had schools and i can remember when i would see a kid whose
092emotions would change or their attitude would change or their overall happiness or their appearance then i would refer them to someone who's more of an expert than i that's what this is about enhancing that program and building that we're not turning our teachers into counselors that's what we've we've had this program in place for a long time we're just going to enhance this because of a little bit more maybe that was brought on by the pandemic is that kind of really what we're doing so i think um covet heightened our awareness for emotional needs for our students um emotional needs for our students have always been there our counselors are continuously pulled in many directions from supporting their emotional needs but then also career advising and many many other duties at hand um in in
093terms of like the classroom what we work with our teachers on we're still about instruction in the classroom we still need our teachers to focus on the reading skills and the math skills but but there have been tools in place in professional learning to help them make sure that there's an environment ready for learning and that everyone in the classroom is ready for learning that doesn't take the place of counselors and that doesn't take the place of additional mental health support that our students need and it's growing and that's everything from the aftermath of covid to divorce and i mean there's illnesses in our there's many things in our homes that are our families this is um we've also talked about working there for our families as well and we're we've talked about support that
094we might find to help our parents who find themselves with a child that is exhibiting concerning behaviors whether it's suicidal tendencies cutting emotional distress and these families need support for where to go and they turn to us and so so really in that area that's what we're looking at all right thank you deanna okay you're welcome while we're at it can we look at instructional program enhancements and then also enhancing communication strategies so instructional program enhancements um you know we are looking at the the opportunities that we feel like we need to provide to address the needs of each and every student and so that could be anything from two programs that we're currently looking to add our incubator edu which is an engine entrepreneurship program at a high school um cisco computer software programming
095at high school so you think about our cte but then we think about our elementaries and what do we need to do there whether it's you know opportunities for coding or stem or maker space or art or all a plethora of um enhancements in our instructional program in addition to the reading and math but that really capture kids interest that goes back to that each and every so we're looking at any of those types of opportunities and how we could potentially enhance them any other was it was there another question to that the communication strategies on engaging all voices yeah yeah and dr golden will come up and address that one real quickly so i also want to make sure that i hit this topic real briefly i think you all remember these five focus
096areas are what our community identified in our strategic planning process that's been going on since january so the the whole goal of this is trying to use our funds wisely around the way our community said we needed to use our funds so when we talk about program enhancements and new experiences for kids some of those things that deanna just mentioned we heard loud and clear from our community we do some great things but there's some more great things that we could be doing and that's what this money should help us do i am going to speak on behalf of elizabeth cox so she did a lot of work in this area and one of the things along with our community and the focus area around engaging all voices were strategies such as um you know
097when when people call the district or they want to read newsletters and information we want to make sure that we're able to provide that both in english and in spanish and so i'm looking for strategies for increasing our ability to both in print as well as customer service support all of our families we've also talked about looking at and exploring just a variety of tools thought exchange is an example that was a great tool that we started using and it allowed us to engage in two-way conversation with our community so looking for tools such as that looking for tools for surveying for example so that we can survey our community our students our parents so that we can continuously increase those feedback loops so that we can hit one of our beliefs around continuous improvement
098and so those are just some of the strategies that we've talked about as well as in this one engaging all voices really looking creatively about how do we engage the voice of our students more deeply as you all know they were on our journey of a graduate design team and the voices of our students was incredibly powerful in informing that work so just looking at what are some additional ways that we can really engage the voices of our students so that we're not always just designing for but we're also designing along with them yes can y'all talk a little bit about the diversity initiatives i know you briefly touched on it so when we talk about diversity initiatives i mean we're always gonna to attempt to attract the the best quality individual and so it's
099really about expanding our network um and talking about like what job fairs to attend what associations to be a part of to be able to attract a diverse diverse applicant pool and always hire the best quality individual but it's you know we could go to some job fairs we're gonna join some associations we can network with organ network with organizations um that are more diverse um we could hire somebody to help us develop a website that attracts a more diverse applicant pool so that's kind of the thoughts and ideas that we had as we were going through that one of the firm beliefs that i have is i want every student that we serve in our school district to see themselves in our schools um and that starts with our staffing and also in a
100lot of other ways in in what we celebrate in our schools etc so i appreciate that being on there i understand that that is a topic that people will talk about but i also believe wholeheartedly that we are here to serve every one of the students that walks through our doors and i want them to feel warm welcome and supported in our schools when they walk through that door and so we will explore that with our community values in mind and also make sure that we're doing whatever we can for those kids that walk in our rooms any other discussions no okay well thank you for this hard work and thank you also for just for breaking it down this way and i think what you said dr smith when we look at this diagram
101here this is what the community said this is not the board although we agree with it when we went to the community these were the things they gave us and for you all to take these and break these down into these different channels instead of just one lump sum and say hey here's what we're doing which is the easy thing to do there's no way this is easy to break this down and to each one of these initiatives so appreciate the hard work there's no action on this item so i do think we should formally say because we don't know here this is supposed to be a public hearing so if there is any member of the public that is present that would like to comment on this at this time we would welcome that
102comment no takers i think we can close that seeing none we'll close on there okay next up is reports facilities will go first uh facilities committee met last wednesday i believe uh some of the things right all right it feels longer than that i know everything's kind of crawling but we talked about the naming policy uh we have some other uh things in the pipeline hopefully uh that will be coming down soon uh we talked about the winter storm repair update i think the final number ended up being about six hundred thousand dollars worth of damage uh was kind of concentrated in a couple of our areas around the district uh but we got lucky i think and i think a lot of that was in part to our facilities people and some decisions they
103made during the the crisis so proud of them on that a lot of this works underway being worked on uh as we speak so and then because of insurance i think the final bill was about twenty five thousand dollars or a deductible so how about that that's awesome uh we talked a little bit about the bond exploration that's time to start uh dusting that thing off and really start kind of getting into the the community discussions and the faculty discussions discussions with our students and come up with a plan to put forth uh to consider uh in within the next year more than likely so we kind of started you know kind of dusting that issue off a little bit and then we just started uh talking a little bit about the summer updates you
104know this is a time where we get a lot of things done but we have a a shorter time period because we the extended year and some of the factors with the pandemic so we don't have quite as much time to get some things done this summer but believe me david bennett and those guys are out there and they're working and we have work being done and and making things uh done all across the district so that's it any questions thank you tai mr al kosar mr president my fellow trustees dr smith um i'm going to report to you about our meeting on june 7 2021 first thing is we've decided to well administration decided to move forward with the tasby policy review two words come to mind one is it's prudent thing to do
105right and i think matt said that in our meeting second thing is uh if we were to take that take that job uh in the pilot's committee it would be a long arduous kind of thing to do so um plus you get you get the benefit of a third party review from people that are supposed to be experts in the field um of course it has hasn't been done i think we mentioned before it hadn't been done in 21 years so it's obviously the the right thing to do uh and in terms of price i think it's uh sometimes a bit over five thousand dollars which we thought was was uh a reasonable amount of money to pay for that uh next thing is we we looked at our board operating procedures of course we
106do that on an annual basis uh by policy we can do it at any time of course um we don't have anything that for approval today other than that we discussed a couple of sections one is the public participation section um and uh the policy procedures were reviewed by also holly wardell there were some things in there that we kind of cleaned up a little bit there was uh capitalized a few words here and there but in terms of of substance um a couple of things i want to mention to you one is in the public comment and uh section if there's a special meeting posted if you're going to have someone make comments about that they can be limited whatever whatever is on the agenda at that time second thing if a person brings
107written materials to the presentation they're going to provide copies to all of us to include dr smith and we also mentioned that if you bring written materials we had it was a little bit awkward someone came up here and wanted to hand us some documents and we thought well maybe we should designate a third party one of the staff members to receive those and then disseminate those to us prior to the person beginning their public comments so that we could have them in place and and someone didn't have to come up here and approach us that way we'd do it in a more orderly fashion um i think that was about it chris janet anything else that we discussed as far as the operating procedures and oh the other thing was no electronic presentations would
108be allowed during public comments by the person making the comments um i think we're going to make some revisions to it and then revisit that we don't have a meeting in july so we'll have to revisit that in august and bring that to you uh in august jennifer has already talked to us about cb local next thing mike morgan spoke to us about the student handbook revisions and how those have been viewed by by not just staff but by students as well the biggest change that we made last year was the change to the the id requirement whether you need to wear an id or not wear it um in fact it's it's been it's been well received uh according to the uh survey that that mike and his team had done that's one thing
109the other thing was the dress code the changes that were made of the dress dress code percentage wise well well received by by everyone there's going to be some changes that are going to be made the next thing i think that's on the agenda for mike and his team is going to get some feedback from the the superintendent student advisory committee that's going to be presented to them um and there'll be some final final discussion with the principals on hoodies i think is the next thing and then uh that will come back to us i guess uh what's the timetable for that matt probably next month i think um because we all enjoy talking about dress code so much that we need to bring it back as soon as we possibly can all kidding aside
110there are certain things that we have to address before the start of the school year so we'll be coming to that policy committee with some follow-up items at the beginning of august right and and uh mike made a point to point out that we're not trying to devalue the the necessity of ids we want to focus more on the kids as opposed to where's your id today that kind of thing and there are i think there are five different instances where a student has to produce an id uh first you know you gotta have an idea to be able to eat those kind of things use the library so you're gonna have to have your id while you're on campus anyway so we're a little concerned about that about that change but it but it's
111been uh well received any other comments about that oh oh goodness no the only thing that was interesting and probably unique for this year is that some of those dress code or policy changes coupled with not having to have an id coupled with coveted and wearing masks created a bit of complication in some instances where teachers couldn't readily identify a kid just because they didn't have their id and they did and they had a mask on and then that's where the hoodie came into play because then if their head was covered they really didn't know who they were so some of that will resolve now that masks are no more so hopefully we can move past some of these issues and it'll be fine chris anything else on that and then the last thing we
112discussed is uh went back and talked about eic local again um lots of lots of work's been done on this uh dr love smith and her team i can't tell you how much work they've done uh they've gathered data for us brought us the results of the data and one of the things that resonate resonated with me when when we were in the meeting is chris said something that i've been thinking about ever since then he yeah he said um you know you can get a an associate's degree with dual credit and not be in the top 10 percent and and i've been thinking about that ever since and that that that gives it perspective as to what we're doing with with this class ranking and how we weigh uh courses here in this district
113uh and janet you said something to me about um was it was it you maybe it was dr lovesmith that told me about um a child that had had 50 uh quarters 50 credit hours college credit hours and uh didn't have the the ranking that they desired um you can have kids that that are very gifted in certain fields for example they'd be gifted in computer science just like dr love smith's child is and um may not be able to graduate in the top 10 percent because that child is going to be focused on developing his or her skills their unique their unique passions um that that a child can't pursue because of because of how they're strapped with this with this particular policy the last thing we discussed is we're going to have some
114recommendations that can be made by that administration that probably won't come for another what couple of months month would you say i need to be careful on how i answer that because i've not checked in with diana as soon as possible we also know that there's an appropriate time to adopt a policy change like that right and so we do have a window to play with in this that it might not move super fast because we're just starting a school year out we don't want to create confusion with our students and our parents so yeah and indiana had mentioned it more than once that if if you make a change to this particular policy it needs to be made where you've got incoming freshmen and then it applies to them all the way through the
115system uh so that they know what they're faced with when they enter high school um so they they can probably plan for for things right um last thing i want to mention to you and it's an article that that deanna had brought to us when we first started this and i spoke to her today about it and there are two things that that article told that brought as far as me as far as takeaways it says do we want to do we want to rank talent or do we want to develop talent uh i think i said that when we first started talking about eic local but that again has resonated with me all through this process so hopefully we can bring some something to you here in the near future uh be a tough
116decision to make but i think it it's in line with um with the competencies that we want our students to have um and i think we have to do it that way because if we don't then i think we're making a mockery for a journey of a graduate real real quickly oh i'm sorry go ahead just a couple of clarifications on going back to the public speaking part that you were talking about yes when you say the electronic device are you talking about someone coming in and broadcasting themself out on social media that's going to be outlawed no i think what we're talking about is doing a presentation here and using some sort of powerpoint that kind of thing okay yeah so have you all thought about the other well in terms of i think
117we get into other legal issues that that hollywood would have to address you know in terms of whether someone has the right to you know communicate on their cell phones and post things on facebook that's a whole different issue that that i don't think that we can address in a policy and procedure okay and then on the uh literature or the handout thing uh in that poll in that reworking of that part of it cleaning that up shouldn't there be a time where that material is reviewed to make sure that it's pertinent to what the public speaker is talking about i mean there's a reason why i didn't grab what was it was trying to be handed to me right that's something that came up i think in passing and doing those comments and i
118think holly was going to address that and maybe provide us with some proposed language yeah holly is taking a look at some other policies around the state to take a look at what other districts do in point weld taking on that we did talk about having somebody if if someone signs up for public comments and they have handouts for the board of trustees having someone gather that and be able to say is this appropriate and do it in a manner that is thoughtful to the community member as well so it's a it's a tricky piece but we're researching and we're going to bring our our best recommendation forward that's a good question i'm sure i mean it was mentioned in our meeting um and then again as as matt has indicated holly's going to address
119that hopefully we'll have some language for you next time i did want to just thank both committees um our board is doing great work and it's not seen on this stage all the time it's in other forums as well we record those and put those on the website as well but just to reiterate on eic local as an example our board asked us to study this policy we put together a group we brought some policies from around the state we laid them out in front of you we asked what kind of information do you need to know as a policy committee we got that information we discussed it i think this is the sixth time that we have talked about eic local in our policy committee and i applaud you for that because that's going
120deep into the policy level which is where the board lives in this relationship between the the governance of a school district and the administration of the school district i applaud you for your efforts on that and equally applaud our facilities committee as jeff said we went on field trips to actually go see other schools and designs we're actually diving in to try and understand what is best going to meet the needs of our kids moving forward and that work doesn't always get shown on the stage and i just want to thank you all for for dedicating all of those hours because it's we it um it's noticed by our administrative team and we appreciate you all immensely thank you manual there any other questions for manual no if not then let's move on to dr
121smith i'm excited to try out a clicker from the podium tonight or from the dyess tonight we're going to see how this works look at that it works so i'm here for the superintendent report and we're going to keep this really brief tonight i was going to skip it but there are a couple things that i really need to point out first of all oops i went a little too far for you on that i need to say a clear direct thank you to our cabinet members sitting over there our leaders that are here throughout the system and our principals and our administrators in the system so i created a list this is just from my brain but these are things that changed this year and impacted either our board or administrative team and you
122start taking a look at this and you notice that nothing on here says covid and nothing on here says new superintendent well it does say leadership changes but um there was a lot of stuff going on and while some of it is a direct result of covid like you see zoom and then zoom learning for kids and then zoom board meetings and then live streaming board meetings like a lot has changed in the past year i sometimes don't take time to recognize what i put that group through over there and i want to very publicly thank our cabinet for their leadership there's been if if you could create the perfect storm for changing scenarios in our system it's what happened in belton isd and i couldn't be more proud of how we responded to that
123and it's because of their leadership the things that we messed up was because of me and the things we did right was because of them so i want to thank them directly and our principals directly for the work that they did this year because there are things on here if you think about implementing a new block schedule or a new change in calendar or going one-to-one technology separately most districts would not do those things but only one of those things in a given school year we did all of those things in the last year plus more plus all of the pandemic related things so i just want to very publicly thank our administrators and leaders in our system and our board as well because you've put up with me in zoom board meetings live streaming
124board meetings having workshops before board meetings and so i truly truly appreciate what you've done over the past year whoops i got excited i use my computer look at that celebrations i want to point out as we progress through the school year despite all of those changes we saw great things in our schools on a daily basis and while in jeff mentioned earlier earlier it was a little challenging to be out face to face with kova this year we had a lot going on but we were still out there and we're still out taking these pictures and we're still out looking and seeing what's going on you see things that continued in belton isd like old glory day at lakewood elementary and you see a picture of it there you see that there's a picture
125in the learning lounge where we had our superintendent student advisory council and that's when actually they were giving us feedback mike came in cynthia body came in and they're giving us feedback on dress code that manual just brought up we had these things happening on a daily basis and i want to point out and thank our teachers as well in the classroom because without them these learning experiences would not have continued in our system and despite all that change we were still doing the things that made a difference in belton isd for these kids finally that culminates in the idea of graduation i think it'd be remiss if we didn't celebrate graduation for the second year in a row we pulled off a modified graduation ceremony that despite all of the changes in the school
126year i felt like was a roaring success and that's a thanks to our principals who did the planning mike elizabeth cox who wasn't here tonight but elizabeth and her communications team put in a ton of hours to make sure that that happened and you see the smiles on those kids faces i can tell you that they are still happy that they had graduation and they had it on tiger field at that point so thank you thank you to all of those people who who made that happen finally is i think everybody knows june 14th we move back to scenario one for our safety and mitigation strategies that's as close to pre-covet as we can get but i want to point out that that is not just pre-code we actually have to ask our students and
127our staff how we can best support them covet impacted every person in our system and it impacted some in greater ways than others as an educational institution we have to know how that impacted them and helped to meet their learning needs moving forward so that's the scenario that we're in right now that means that we are back to normal for travel we're back to normal for capacity issues we're back to normal as much as we possibly can be but we also want to very very clearly point out that still requires some different actions of us for the future because of the covet impact on all of our students and staff for the final time i'm going to ask todd and jennifer if we have any updates on march 17 2020 resolution that we have to
128present and that's a good end to the superintendent's report this month so any questions from y'all well no questions we will move on to strategic plan update i'm gonna invite dr golden to come on up and this update is uh giving you all a brief overview of where we are in the strategic planning process so that you know what's coming next we have a couple of big items coming to you next month and this is one of those and so we want to make sure you're well informed before we get there all right thank you for this opportunity our purpose is to engage in a conversation this evening around strategic planning work and particularly our key progress measure for goal five it was a comprehensive needs assessment of resources would be completed and as you
129know we we conducted a very comprehensive facilities assessment along with that a long-range strategic plan has been in development so tonight i'm just going to help update you on the journey and talk to you about next steps and so you've been engaged in all of this work along with us um just real quickly if you'll take a look at this current kind of current reality looking at our current state of affairs things like assessment of our facilities curriculum management training things like that we conducted as we also worked on directional work and so as you all know in the fall and i think you adopted in january our journey of a graduate that's a that's a big piece of that directional work for us as well as adopted the values and beliefs that we looked
130at earlier in the meeting you gave input into vision and we're going to look at that in just a few minutes but strategic plan is what we're here to talk about this evening and that really is that road map that helps move us towards the achievement of those goals that have been set and so i wanted to start with vision because next month we'll be coming to you hopefully for consideration and possible approval of the strategic plan and a piece of that will be adopting the vision of course it's the role of the board to establish vision for the school district and we came to you and asked you for your input each of you gave input into that statement we took your input to the steering team the strategic plan steering team and what
131you see here is the final draft that we'll be presenting to you next month for that vision statement we received feedback from district leadership team principals on the draft that was developed in the steering team and this is where we are right now with empower each and every learner to pursue their dreams and enrich their communities we just talked about values and beliefs and you are digging into those and tonight particularly you looked at one you adopted these in a past board meeting and these values and beliefs really help inform how we approach our work and that's part of our directional system that all popped at one time they were supposed to slide in one at a time but what i wanted to do is stop for a second and share with you of course
132you recognize the goals that you adopted almost a year ago on the left side of this image we went out when we formed our steering team we did numerous community summits where we asked our community what are your hopes and dreams for students what are we doing well in belton isd and what are some of our challenges that we face and through those community summits our steering team took all of that that feedback all of that data and out of that data came these focus areas and there are five and i know on the right hand side it looks like there's more but i wanted to show you how these focus areas actually align quite beautifully with the goals that you already adopted so you see engaging all voices embedded in that was not just
133our community which is goal one but also our students have been really integral in helping set direction as well you see each and every um each and every learner each and every voice you see exceptional learning and that fits in multiple areas of the goals you've already adopted as well as that social emotional support in creating the culture we want we want people to feel valued supported we want them to feel included we want them to have opportunities for growth and then finally in terms of maximizing our resources future focused facilities came out as a priority for our community and really wanting to ensure not only that we continue to maintain our facilities in the way that we have been and they've done a really incredible job in that but then we also look to
134the future and look at our our journey of a grad and think about our learning space and how it can be an accelerator and a support to bringing those competencies to life and so one of the things we're going to ask you this evening to think about and certainly you can give me some feedback after the meeting as well as you have time to think about it but we're going to ask you to think about those goals our five goals and see if you see any that you think will need to be tweaked and if you have any suggestions for that because we want to bring those goals back to you next month along with that strategic plan so i'm going to pause for a second and see if you have any thoughts in terms
135of suggestions for goal revisions dr smith and i talked a little bit about this last week and these were just adopted the beginning of last fall so and and all of them look great there's one that we just kind of that um stood out that might need maybe need to be tweaked is that first one because you know you've already done a lot of that work but how do we maintain it or just tweak it to where um we're still setting a direction um engaging voices but um because i know y'all we've done the vision check mission check journey of a graduate graduate check but um how do we just keep that going in maintaining that awesome thank you okay now i think the um goals as a reminder the goals are in bold at
136the top and those are the things that the board sets and as a as a board you are charged in texas state law to adopt a vision and goals for a school district and so those were goals that you all adopted last year i do think that first one probably needs to be tweaked just a little bit based on feedback of the community so we'd be glad to take any feedback that you have over the next few weeks and present something to you if you would like to email us i would say just email dr goldman myself and we can take a look at what feedback you have the others i feel that are in bold there goals two three four and five personally i believe those are long standing goals and i would like
137to see those goals continue as a superintendent stability in an organization is important i think they cover a lot of what you as a board said you valued last year and have indicated that you valued over the school year this year and we've got uh we've done good work this year but we've got good work left to do under those areas so that's where my recommendation would be at this time awesome i have a feeling the next slide when it transitioned i have a feeling the animation didn't come with it so you're going to see in the next slide everything show up at one time and so what i wanted to do tonight is just share with you the progression from the right side of this slide to the left and so for goal one
138the focus area most aligned to that goal was engaging all voices and so our steering team and our focus teams spent a lot of time looking at what our community said in terms of engaging all voices and spent some time talking about if we were to focus on engaging all voices what impact would we have for our students and our system and our community and so for each of these focus areas when you see the strategic plan next month you're going to see that there are impact statements and again that's if we focus on these focus areas what impact do we want to have and hope to see and so you see this one for example the impact of focusing on that would be strong partnerships we would continue to build and strengthen stakeholder trust
139and stakeholder meaning internal students teachers staff as well as external the other impact is that people would have value and pride in in belton isd as their school system and feel recommend it to their neighbors and students would feel a sense of pride in being here and so those are the impacts we hope to have by focusing on this area the team also identified what are some high leverage strategies that if we focused on over the next several years and did exceptionally well that would actually get us to that impact so you will see in the strategic plan some high leverage strategies i just abbreviated for the purposes of this ev presentation but one of the strategies is for this one for example is to really look at how do we ensure not only you
140know newsletters can provide one-way communication we want two-way communication we want that conversation going back and forth so high leveraged strategy strategy was developed around that and you can see from these others we want to continue to deepen things around gathering input and feedback and you've heard us be very intentional about that input into when we're creating and designing systems feedback on our services and those systems and so being real intentional about deepening those feedback loops strategic partnerships deanna mentioned a little bit about incubator edu we that's just an example we want to look at what are programs where we need community partners very strategically to partner with us to really enhance the experience for students and bring that wealth of knowledge that we have in our community and help students see whether that's in
141the area of cte it can be in the academic classroom it can be in in our fine arts area in athletics but we want to be really intentional about bringing those experiences into the schools and with our students and then that last strategy is really just deepening opportunities particularly this one around student voice and so you'll see when you get the strategic plan draft that it's going to be designed like in this in this format and i wanted to show you and unfortunately i have a feeling you're only going to see one layer of it because the second one was supposed to fly in but there's two pages and this is just going to be the high level draft that you see we haven't landed on these exact pictures we have some enhancements to do
142to the fine print you see lots of text and we recognize that but this is just a draft that we have so far we're in the process of collecting feedback on this draft and then you will see the refined one when it comes to you and so i just wanted you to have a quick visual of a piece of what this will look like and so next steps we are finalizing the strategic plan when we bring that to you for consideration and possible approval once the strategic plan is approved that's where we begin to work on there's high level strategies but then there's all the actions behind those strategies to bring those to life and that's where we're going to start developing those action plans so the district improvement plan goals campus improvement plans we'll
143be bringing to you in september and those will be in support of our district goals in support of these strategies that that we gathered and learned so much about through our community summits and with our work through the steering team all right any other questions if i could add melinda will you go back two slides for us please right there on uh there's been some confusion along the way about how do these focus areas that the the um strategic planning committees have developed how do they align with goals as a board you still adopt the goals the school district our plan is how we get there so these uh focus areas should be the way for help us to help achieve those goals along the way so i just want to be really articulate about
144that sometimes i think it's been a little confusing that the board just adopted goals but then we got five focus areas that aren't worded the exact same way well they're not worded the exact same way because their job is to help us get to the goals that you all adopted so just want to be real explicit about that and then we will continue to bring back things for you all hopefully we'll see this is a final product and adopted next month and super proud of dr golden in our community for engaging in this work you're going to see a a one or two page kind of overview for people to digest easily then a multi-page document where all of the strategies and things are detailed along the way so a lot of work has gone
145into that engaging those voices to make it happen okay thank you dr smith thank you dr goldman next is the consent agenda does anyone wish to pull an item for discussion not see any takers do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented mr taggart suzanne right all in favor unopposed thank you board request for new information board members at this time do we have requests for new information okay calendar of events listed below that we provided thank you for this this is just a little bit of of housekeeping here the virtual sli starts thursday okay it is our understanding that the virtual sli is going to be available to us for 30 days the hitch on that is the post legislative conference is also going to be virtual we do not
146think it is going to be made available everything we've read says you have to watch it live and in order to get credit and we do have to get credit for it now dr smith you said that it'll also be available in the fall yeah to my understanding at the tasbee conference in the fall that i hope we attend together um that it would be available then as well but definitely if you can go to this one on saturday it'd be it'd be great it's saturday this saturday we'll have it might be a placeholder we'll have connie make sure you all get additional info on that so that we know one is it being recorded for future use uh for you all in two with the exact times for you so you can make plans
147accordingly if you're able to attend if you cannot attend if you would please let us know as soon as possible if it is only live because if you can't attend then it might be behooves to see if we can get that registration money back okay and you have the other fourth of july parade for those that want to participate you need to fill out your forms on that and all the other things are there that you see there'd be no further business this meeting is adjourned at 8 28. you