001good evening good evening everyone good evening thank you all for joining us i hope you've enjoyed your our performances that from our belton high schools magical men let's give them another hand clap appraise that was pretty awesome excellent job excellent job you all couldn't see it but i was given a one-hand clap of praise it was like awesome awesome awesome it is currently 6 16. i would like to call this meeting of the belton independent school district board of trustees to order a quorum of board members is present i would also like to point out and note that chris flora is in route he's stuck in traffic he just flew in so he is really trying to get here and we may have to do some adjustments on our agenda until he gets here because
002he'll need to be sworn in and take the oath of office later this meeting has been duly called and the notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings act texas government co-chapter 5 51. before we move on to the next item which is our moment of silence i would like to just call out and make note of the fact that last thursday our big red community lost a vital member of this particular community our own coach douglas he was known to many many folks here in surrounding areas he served 52 years in education with 49 of them here at belton isd he was the nicest man that i've ever met i had the opportunity to listen to some of the things that were said about him during his homecoming
003celebration today and and it just you know when you're that nice and people can and it's the whole theme uh was just how sweet and funny and nice and thoughtful that he was thoughtful to the point that he wrote a letter to his family and friends way back in 2007 to be read on the day of his service and it spoke to a present day situation and i was honored to have been there and honored to have known him a very large footprint has been left here in belton with his passing i will pause for a moment and if any board member would like to have words please join me mr taggart i had the privilege of knowing coach douglas for a long time and uh the last 11 years the neighborhood that i moved
004into he was lived around the corner so i got to know him as chuck and not coach and i saw him all the time in the community and he like said he was always just upbeat and had a smile and he was uh he got hired in solato for one year and uh you probably won't believe this but he gave me my last ever high school lick swat so what his daughter one of his daughters today in the service was saying hey if you if dad has had this effect on your life raise your hand raise your hand and i got to raise a hand for getting a lick from coach douglas of course a few other things but he was just an example of what made belton what belton is today chuck was one
005of those representatives that helped this big red community have what we have and that's what i thought about today was he was a heritage guy for this district and what an honor him laying in state down there with his red coffin it meant a lot uh but we we're definitely going to miss chuck in the community but on friday nights when the game was over i'd get back to my truck so i could hear the end of the game stats and hear chuck on the radio it just meant so much to the community and a life well lived thank you mr taggart mr coach douglas was my coach in freshman football and also taught me in high school i think i had him for world history after i graduated from high school we became really
006good friends anytime i saw him he was always very very cordial always asked about my family he's just a class act i'm going to miss him thank you anyone else nope oh thank you for those words as we rise for a moment of silent prayer meditation i personally will be keeping he and his family in our prayers please join me as we rise for a moment of silence prayer or meditation thank you please remain standing as our communications team introduces our students from high point here to lead us in the pledge of allegiance and honors to the texas flag thank you madam president good evening board tonight with us from high point elementary we have claire hinn claire is a fifth grader at high point she likes sports like basketball and running and is currently
007on the blue storm volleyball team she enjoys spending time with her sister baking and being outside her favorite subjects are math and reading and she is a member of the leadership team at high point also with us we have colton bulls colton also a fifth grader is an avid baseball player and plays on two different teams way to go month he's in the outfield with the angels and on his travel team the spartans he plays first base he also likes to play other sports such as basketball and likes to hang out with his friends his favorite subjects are math and reading and when he is older he wants to be a state trooper just like his dad first up is clear awesome welcome i pledge allegiance to the divine of the united states of america
008and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to texas one state under god one an indivisible well thank you excellent job we should give them a handclap they did an excellent job all righty the first item on our agenda is recognitions while we get settled we get our first group settled miss elizabeth you'll get us started with those recognitions ma'am as you already mentioned our student showcase for tonight that was the performance we enjoyed as we were coming in it was a snippet from this year's belton high school madrigal and harmony spring show titled blast from the past the madrigal men performed i want it that way by the backstreet boys an incredible rendition i might say
009this group includes seniors robert brown ethan matus jupiter murray and paul vassar along with the juniors corbin hammonds will hayes daniel holcomb jackson reasoner and nick wagner our belton high school choir is under the direction of tony lavorne and trey seanweiler thank you so much for being here with us tonight and we really enjoyed that performance staying in the fine arts realm our group tonight first up is the uil state solo ensemble state qualifiers this group includes band orchestra and choir students 44 students from the district's high school band orchestra and choir programs qualified for the uil texas state solo ensemble contest held recently students earned the opportunity to participate the state level by receiving a division 1 superior rating at the region 8 solo ensemble contest in addition to receiving the highest rating available
010they also had to receive that rating on the most difficult level of music available to them first we have 18 belton high school band students those include samuel foreman michael jones nicholas sullivan emily evers joshua krieg jacob masters michael eckert angel rios torres andrew johnson ethan rasmussen alex rendell michael summers joshua fuentes sam newell father gill brandon bechtel nolan clarkson jacob wiley and grayson necessary shannon gill is the school band's director congratulations to belton 100 members [Applause] [Music] [Applause] parents come on down and take those pictures that's quite all right carly i think we're gonna wait just a second let these parents come take a few pictures congratulations students awesome job [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] orchestra orchestra students from both of the districts high schools also reached the state competition from lake belton high school
011elena i am iron qualified for violin brian barrett is the school's orchestra director from belton high school jackson bella bragic aditi bhatt krithik rajesh mashwari qualified on violin john fairley is the school's orchestra director congratulations to these orchestra [Applause] [Music] students [Applause] [Music] congratulations congratulations belton high school had 19 choir students qualify for the state soul ensemble contest they include mackenzie bramlett megan sloan daniel holcomb preston ramirez ashlyn reyes jackson reasoner joshua martinez ethan matus jupiter mooring erica aguan annelise miller nicholas wagner haley cavazos caitlyn kidd amy villanueva sarah millington rachel schiller paul vasser and sunshine phelps tonya lavorne is the head choir director of belton high school congratulations belton high school students [Music] a lot to celebrate there with our fine arts programs our next recognition this evening is our uil academic state qualifier
012unfortunately guantanamo wasn't able to make it tonight but he um did advance to the uil state competition in current issues and events so we'll get him a certificate congratulations to quantum moving on to our national ffa organization state qualifiers six teams of belton isd students from belton ffa qualified for the state career development events or cde contest held at tarleton state university sam houston state university and the stephen f austin experimental forest with one team earning state recognition the environmental and natural resources team including belton high school seniors julie johnson luke reed colton schlickstein and kade winberg placed third at state luke reed and kade winburg placed first and second respectively as individuals other team members included home site evaluation bhs students hannah erskine anthony jones kelton mcbride and rowan tarabay land emma canales from
013lbhs carter hitt also lbhs alexis lisenby bhs and avery jones from lake belton high school milk quality and products we had rachel mayhem from belton high school and veronica morales from belton high school josh roberts from belton high school and emma winkler from belton new tech nursery landscape belton high school students thomas galloway amy jones sarah mckeska and brooke mogher the competition of wildlife we had josiah caller from belton high school joseph knox spelton high school and brady scott from belton new tech advisors for these teams are josh flowers jeffrey heffernan brad hobbs and lori hobbs cde contests build on what is learned in agriculture classes and encourage students to put their knowledge into practice about 3 800 teams of about 14 000 students competed in 28 different events congratulations to our built in ffa
014students congratulations [Applause] our next group up tonight you'll notice they have some some extra adornment with their cords these are our temple bioscience institute graduates joshua nagiri benjamin broome joseph dominguez lexi marshall loris mendoza ashley perrier riley suiter drew wong lindsey ware amy jones and brant menzie were recognized in a special silver courting ceremony held by temple college on april 27th these students competed dual credit coursework in the temple bioscience institute also known as tbi middle college program the tbi middle college program is a partnership with temple college that allows qualified belton isd students to enroll in rigorous stem focused dual credit coursework in their junior and senior years of high school nine of these students have also qualified to receive an associate of arts degree from temple college in may [Applause] [Music] [Applause] congratulations
015next up our first temple rotary educator of the month eric regier was recognized by temple rotary club in april for his outstanding service in belton isd eric serves as an algebra one teacher at belton high school he's in his ninth year in education and his third with belton isd if you walk into mr gear's classroom you will be blown away by the connectivity observed between mr gear and his students their presence and engagement is evident and this is aligned with the thoughtful planning and instruction provided by eric he has taught his students the important skill of self-analysis and reflection on performance data his students can break down their assessment data and identify areas of needed growth he's become a mentor and a model for staff and recently was named the head girls basketball coach correct
016congratulations coach ben smith principal at belton high school stated belton high school is blessed to have an educator like mr aguirre he has meant so much to the overall growth and success of our school academically emotionally and culturally we are so thankful for all he has given to students and staff at belton high school and i'm honored to nominate him for this recognition congratulations coach congratulations [Applause] and we're going to have a second temple rotary educator of the month this is our may recognition we're going to go ahead and bring her forward tonight so she can have the month of june off raquel mcgill is recognized by the temple rotary club for the month of may for her outstanding service in belton isd she serves as a third grade bilingual teacher at charter oak elementary
017she is in her 17th year in education in her eighth year here with a hundred percent she has taught in a modified hybrid model all year and has made it look easy raquel builds relationships and develops trust with her parents and she knows her individual students academic and social emotional needs her years of experience in many different grade levels has helped strengthen and solidify her deep understanding of student learning behaviors jennifer connor principal of charter oaks stated raquel is a team player is always there to offer assistance and is such a joy to have in our charter oak learning family congratulations thank you congratulations to all of the recipients this evening next we'll have ms burns administer the off the oath of office to aaron bess and chris floor fuel will meet her down there
018yes please uh good evening if you all will state your name where i state my name please raise your right hand i connie burns do solemnly swear that i will faithfully execute the duties of the office of school board trustee for the belton independent school district of the state of texas and will to the best of my ability preserve protect and defend the constitution and laws of the united states and of this state so help me god congratulations if you would [Music] we'll give them a moment to return to their seats and also give them an opportunity to have any words that they would like to share with us certainly congratulations from the rest of your team here glad to have you all here with us miss aaron would you like to have any words
019going forward all right mr floor yeah same thing here i i'm i'm so excited to be back i know there's a lot of hard work to be done and so happy to be here and then since i've got the mic i want to apologize for being late i got stuck in some travel snafus so thank you you made it safely yeah i'm glad all righty the next item is the superintendent's report yes madam president members of the board thank you we are going to go into the superintendent's report this evening next slide please purposes superintendents report as you all know is always to provide the board of trustees with information from the superintendent on administrative tasks of the school district next slide so a couple of highlights that we have here belton isd continues to
020grow even as we are down to i believe 17 school days left so you can see that we have added a couple more students since the last board meeting we are currently at twelve thousand eight hundred thirty nine students enrolled and eight we're up to eighty four percent of those students uh at school learners and about fifteen percent that are at home learners a couple of highlights that we have from this month first of all and we're going to see some pictures in a minute award ceremonies there are award ceremonies happening all across the school district right now and a couple of things that are um important to highlight is how is it our um mj rotc event last week i believe it was might have been two weeks ago now we have amazing kids
021in the school district and the work that's going on with the kids despite challenges this year is phenomenal but equally amazing is the work that's going on with our staff and all of this so highlights to all of our award ceremonies that we see happening throughout the district right now it's important to note that our kids and our staff are doing great things all the time second thing is the every kid a winner award as we all know joe pearl left a lasting legacy on belton isd and this award has been around for quite some time it's not actually a student award it's a staff award and it's about the way the staff prioritizes the treatment of students and focuses on kids so as a superintendent i get the distinct honor of going out to
022schools and presenting that award they're nominated and they're given those awards and the work that has gone into educating our students this year has just been phenomenal by these amazing teachers in the schools and these amazing employees student learning continues to happen you'll see a couple of slides we'll talk a little bit about in a minute student performances i was at a band concert for belton high school on friday night and if you haven't been to a band concert recently you ought to go because that is one amazing group at belton high school and they're doing great work there obviously we've had staff appreciation days over the past well over the whole year but we had teacher appreciation week earlier in the month we had school nurses we've had our school nutrition staff appreciation principal
023appreciation day landed on a saturday this year again the work that is happening by all of those groups of people it's just been extraordinary and then finally i'm going to ask elizabeth to come on up and talk a little bit about graduation planning before we get into a couple of the pictures and other items good evening again um so as dr smith said planning for this year's graduation ceremonies um is well underway at this point we began with our principals engaging students about what they valued most about the graduation experience this was around january february time and with their feedback around seeking a safe and celebratory event that included more of their classmates and family members watching them in an outdoor ceremony we're looking forward to another amazing built in ic graduation day on june
02410th at tiger field belton high school will graduate over 700 students in two sessions just for the size the first at 8 am and the second will be at 12 pm students had the opportunity to sign up for their preferred times belton new tech high school at wasco will graduate over 100 students at a ceremony at 10 a.m kind of straddling their right in between with that smaller group and they're going to return to having their special ceremony just for those new tech students this year's event will take on some of the energy or much of the energy and fun that we all remember from last year and with our 2020 graduates we're paired with some more traditional commencement style components with the students seated on the field at the 50-yard line family seated in
025the home side of the stands and graduates walking on the stage together the two lines for belton high school the single line for new tech like you might remember from years past at the expo um students and families will again have photo opportunities with balloons and props and those things that we really enjoyed last year that made it special and when they walk up we are going to ask families to to keep it moving for us a little bit so we're going to make sure we space them out just knowing that we have an 8 a.m 10 a.m and 12 p.m graduation time we'll again be working with photography and videography vendors to capture the important graduate moments and we'll be live streaming each ceremony the links to the live stream will be available on
026the district's website featured up on the front main page of our site as well as the high school campuses site soon but close to that graduation date we'll make sure to push it out again so that everyone can see those live stream links after the graduation ceremonies um project celebration is returning so the that nonprofit's in in um the busy hurried time of planning and prepping and i think would love anybody's additional support if you want to sponsor a graduate for twenty dollars i think ben smith can put you in touch with their group project celebration will be at tiger field at 7 p.m we will again close out the night at 10 p.m with fireworks what questions can i answer where would the board be during graduation at all of those different ceremonies we
027will have opportunities for the board to be on stage this year in the more similar tradition getting to um do elbow bumps or congratulate graduates as they wish or greeting them along the side it'll be um we'll have opportunities for you to share with us what your preferences are and we'll again have a graduation shirt made and let folks have those and also feature some more of the traditional roving on the the stage so we'll get you more of that information awesome sounds like a good time yes ma'am and i can't think of a more awesome way to celebrate my birthday because that's june my birthday we will remember that that would be the loudest one [Laughter] no it just no it was june 8th last time so looking forward for do you all have
028questions about graduation happy birthday with your 900 kids celebrate with all my 900 friends and fireworks at the end of the night and some fireworks yes that's a that's a party right there okay any questions no i think we're good so then next slide please you can see a couple of the pictures taken over the past month here you see a few things happening in the top left one sparta elementary school middle one at the top i gotta share this story real quickly so i was at beck's last week and the middle one at the top is the space room and the students were encouraged to stop and write about what they were talking about so all the students stopped and sat down on the floor i had knelt down next to a young lady
029might do a four-year-old and i said what are you working on and she said i'm writing about stars silly and i said okay point taken good luck and moved on they're doing great work in bex in slide at the top right hand side you see students that we got to see dissecting some eyeballs in a science classroom and i had a couple of board members that were walking through with me on that one that was enjoyable last one you see down at the bottom there's the student performances the student experiences that we're seeing happening throughout our school district right now we are extremely proud of those things that are happening next slide so i know this is on a lot of mind safety and mitigation strategies so a couple of things about this throughout this
030whole experience since the beginning of the year we have been talking about how we monitor this we continue to monitor guidance orders and recommendations throughout our state so we look to guidance from bell county public health authority we look to orders from our governor we look to recommendations from tea and we constantly look at our data along with that to make those decisions and recommendations to you all as a board of trustees throughout this process this spring we've been in continued direct communication with bell county public health district but we also took an extra step over the last month to make sure that we were accurately representing the things that they wanted us to or that they wanted to share with us and we shared all of that information with you as trustees we asked
031them very specifically what are their recommendations for continuing to wear masks as we close out the school year what were their recommendations regarding research that we should look at etc they shared with us and i shared with all of you that they continue to recommend wearing masks through the remainder of the school year we also know that cdc recently put something out as well and tea has some guidance in there as well regarding wearing masks a couple of things that i want to point out about this the number one reason that we wanted to continue to do that is about those experiences that i mentioned on the previous slides we want kids to be able to have the school experiences that they missed last year and a lot of them missed a lot of things
032in the spring last year so we want to be able to keep students in school and teachers in school to make sure those things happen one thing that isn't talked about a lot is the close contact tracing and things like that still have to happen when you have coveted tests positive right now and one of the concerns that we had is bell county public health authority considers masks as the primary mitigating strategy in all of this so if we were to unmask at this point and we had positive cases we would be sending more students home for an extended period of time because of that student and staff safety obviously we want to keep people safe but another point that i want to make in all of this is we have a desire as a
033school district to move forward we have mass fatigue just like everyone else around and we want to continue to move forward our goal has been to make sure we get through this school year get our students those experiences that they we want them to have make sure our staff and students are safe get into the summer and then scale things back so we made an announcement at that time when uh may 12th we made an announcement that said based on this information we are going to continue to require masks inside for the remainder of the school year but that we would be able to ease mask restrictions outside so that means students on the playground it would be optional if they were masks or not students at athletic events it would be optional if they
034wear masks or not and then we in being really pointed graduation ceremony it would be optional whether people wore masks or not because it would be at belton high school at tiger field we also wanted to make sure next slide please i'm sorry there we go we also wanted to make sure that we noted that we will continue to require masks inside until june the 13th june the 13th we are through all of our our regular school events at that point and we would start our summer events on monday june the 14th so that's the reason that date was chosen so that was the announcement we put out on may the 12th to make sure that our public knew that next slide finally we also put out an announcement that on june 14th we intend
035to scale back to scenario one as you all know we created five scenarios throughout the year because we did not know what we would be responding to with a pandemic that nobody had ever experienced before so we created those five different scenarios and we've moved throughout those scenarios throughout the year this year our goal is always to try and get back to as normal as we possibly can for the sake of our kids and our students so that announcement says that on monday june 14th we would move to scenario one we believe we have the ability to do that and we're able to say at that point masks will be optional inside and outside of all bisd facilities at that point and so we made sure that our public knew that as well we will
036continue to monitor guidance orders and recommendations from local health authority tea anything from our governor etc and continue to navigate this process along the way while also bringing in data to make sure we're making good thoughtful recommendations to you as a board of trustees and to for our students and our staff so at this point i'll make sure i pause for a second and let you all make any comments or ask any questions that you would like on this topic well i was very happy to see that cdc made the recommendation that they did over the weekend about making sure that schools understood that they should remain mass and i like the sentence in there where they said this should not be a political issue for school boards they should not have to worry about
037this being politicized the whole idea of mask at the end of the day we do want our kids we want our staff to be safe and so i'm certainly glad to see the cdc came out with something very plain i'll defer to the rest of the board mr taggart you know last year uh my middle child was a senior in high school when the longest spring break ever happened and the expectations that she had always had growing up you know our lives are full of expectations especially when you're kids her expectations were to close out her senior year and everything be normal and it all got ripped out from underneath her and her classmates and i just will never forget the tears that whole class i mean because you know me i'm close to so
038many people and so many of her friends and so to me wearing the masks if it allows more kids to finish out this year especially our seniors and not have to be sitting at home being mitigated and and and kept at home because they were in the same classroom with some kid sitting at the other side of the room without a mask if those kids get to finish out the year and not have to go through what my daughter went through i'm all for that so i have to say i appreciate what our administration has done the cabinet members our teachers this has been a tough year for everybody nobody doesn't have a coveted story nobody doesn't have some mental anguish and some heartbreak over what has happened we buried someone very special recently and
039part of the reason why they're not here was because of covet that hurt today so there's a lot of stories out there about how this hurts people we've all experienced it but i can't say how remarkable it was to get through our seasons with our athletic people coach skidmore and his people get through our school years get through our fine arts the expectations that these kids had going into this year were able to be fulfilled for the most part because of the thoughtfulness and and your guidance and our cabinet's guidance and then the the the hard work by our employees and our teachers so i can't compliment you guys enough on this this has been tough on everybody so i have to say thank you and i will say the other day i was at
040the high school and i drove by sparta and saw the kids out on the playground there was anybody wearing a mask out there and i was i smiled it's like okay we're getting close we're almost there and then moving forward i hope we're done with this awesome thank you mr tiger anyone else just a quick question so if we when we go to scenario one are we gonna have to take any action in order to do that or right now because tea has not issued any guidance for summer programs at this point we asked our legal counsel we don't think we have to take any action for that because it has passed the school year and all the tea guidance that was given to us was for the 2020 2021 school year if obviously if
041anything changes with that we would bring it to you and have you take appropriate action but because it it is past that initial date that they said for the school year our school year is over at that point we feel that we were okay in making that announcement okay um i'm not going to repeat everything ty said i mean i i think you know and the reasons that you said like for our kids not missing things right i i think that just i want to see our kids move past mass as quickly as we can right but but for all those things right i i'm okay and i think it's somewhat nuanced because it's not just about the kids right there's 2 000 employees almost 2 000 employees of this district that we also are
042responsible for um from a policy perspective and so you know if that also helps us get our teachers to the end of the year if that helps us get our families to be able to attend graduation right i i think i think we lose that sometimes in this conversation right it is it is all about the kids but it's about more than the kids too um and so you know while i want to see them out as quickly as i can like in order to make sure that all that stuff happens i can get to the end of the year so thank you mr floyd anyone else mr alcoza thank you ma'am um dr smith i want to thank you for your due diligence i want to thank you for your leadership um you came
043in man you just you just took the reins that just led us through this pandemic and i want i want to thank you for that um and i've said it before if if there's anything that we did as a group uh that we've been successful at is is hiring you as our leader i don't know that anyone could have done a better job than you did just looking at this the system response that was that was brought out to us it's well thought out well planned you didn't make any decisions without consulting the the experts in our county um it's not something that you did unilaterally uh you did your homework your staff did your home their homework and everyone here i know has had a very difficult time with the situation that that we're
044in um and i'm also i'm also proud to serve with everyone on this board because i know that everyone here has the best interest of these kids at heart the best interest of the faculty at heart all the staff members at heart just like mr flor said it's not just about the children in our district it's about the 2000 employees that we have and sometimes you got to do the greatest good for the greatest number and i think that's what you've done and i appreciate that anyways nope yeah a couple of things real quickly on that to special thanks to a staff that's been navigating all of this again i want to reiterate we're ready to move on and we want to move on and our staff is ready to move on but we want
045to get and finish this year strong for our kids um our staff and particularly some of those cabinet members sitting right over there have done amazing work in trying to help figure these things out and navigate it so the positive things that you just said i'll make sure you know that a majority of that is all due to that staff sitting right over there not to me and i'm thankful for them next slide please if you would march 17th 2020 we had a resolution that talked about covet 19 and any actions that we had to take we committed to you that we would bring this to you every month todd and jennifer do we have anything to announce based on coven 19 resolution from march 17 2020 we do not at this point and that
046concludes the superintendent's report for this month thank you the next item on our agenda is public comments in accordance with district policy bed local any person wishing to address the board of trustees during public comment must submit public comments form located in the front lobby at this point we have about 17 people signed up the board has elected to permit [Applause] the board has elected to permit comments on any subject but ask that 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 on the meeting agenda given the large amount of people signed up to speak today each participant will be limited to three minutes in accordance with the board
047in accordance [Music] in accordance in accordance with the board's operating procedures speaking to the board in a disrespectful or threatening tone is unprofessional and counterproductive to a cause our board secretary will keep time during a participants remarks and will provide notice when a minute remains and again at the conclusion of three minutes if comments address a matter on the meeting's agenda if comments address the matter on the meeting agenda the board will defer the discussion of the issue until the agenda item is reached during the meeting the board will consider complaints to remain unresolved after they have been addressed through proper administrative channels and when they have been placed on the agenda i will call your name as you have signed up if you will come down to the podium as i call your name
048state your name and address for record and our secretary ms janet lee will let you know when you have reached your one minute time at this point can we have brendan [Applause] [Music] kendrick my name is brandon kendrick 8316 split trail cove preserve protect and defend i just heard that the constitution i'm very disappointed that's how you interpret what you all are doing anyways besides the point this year has been filled with anger frustration from many parents i for one never thought i would have to come to a school board meeting to try and convince people what is best for my child's health your intentions and belief do not outweigh my parental rights how are y'all going to make a decision next school year in reference to masks are you going to follow cdc guidance
049or are you going to let the parents decide what's best for the child's health next next year are you going to violate our religious and medical exemptions like this year based on several observations this year i have the following concerns how do school board members reach out to their constituents for important issues is their decision or vote based on what they believe or what their constituents believe i'm concerned about uh some posters i've already addressed this issue with the assistant superintendent and he has helped a little bit i'm concerned about some posters and what the teachers have been saying to our children thank you for like i said thank you for working me on this to improve but there's still room for improvement i'm also concerned about how teachers have been able to connect with
050children this year when masks are worn body language and facial expressions are a big part of a child's development i believe that my child has been deprived of that connection this year i have noticed my son has been struggling with anger depression is often fearful of certain situations at home now before all of this he was happy motivated and always had a smile on his face also i just received paperwork from charter oak about this award ceremony it says charter road cafeteria don't forget your photo id facial covering and camera i will not be wearing a facial covering to this award ceremony but i will be coming to it for my child if you all deprive me of that you have to you need to make an accommodation for that i'm getting tired of this
051y'all i'm trying to be respectful i'm trying my best not to shout i've always thought that yelling and anger is not the way to do it but it's getting hard y'all anyways i appreciate it thank you [Applause] all righty please state your name sir and your address my name is braden kendrick and i live at 8316 split trail cove i do not like to wear masks because it is hard to breathe it should be my choice the mass affects me at school by being annoying and a distraction the masks make it hard to breathe and gives me a headache a lot of the time i do not think we should be forced to wear a mask because the distraction it causes i'm done thank you brenda howard my name is brenda howard 5613 hamlet drive
052thank you for giving us an opportunity to speak tonight thank is it you to start please proceed okay i'm addressing civics and critical race theory i am against any part of critical theory social justice intersectionality etc being taught in any school in america while slavery is a part of our history it is not the foundational part of our nation the 1619 project the resources of the smithsonian's national museum of african american history and many other resources including the anti-racism book written by mr kennedy are well intentioned but misguided as such they should not be part of our educational system at the heart of all of these resources is a theory that if we implement discrimination against one race then all other races will be made whole using discrimination to fight perceived discrimination is like using
053cancer to fight cancer it will not work and doubles the problem we've already seen the divisiveness hatred anger and destruction while racism does exist it isn't not in fact systemic if it did exist on the level that is excuse me touted by the critical theorists the authors such as mr kindy would never have been able to achieve his current notoriety or intellectual success his success as well as many other minorities would not have been possible if their own theories were true as a judeo-christian nation our founding fathers fought to end slavery and they were successful this is factual information not the emotional storytelling of one segment of society unfortunately critical theory and insert intersectionality are founded on marxist theories and contain historical inaccurate presuppositions all of which fly in the face of our nation's founding
054constitu constitution our judeo christian heritage and dr martin luther king's dream to be judged not by the color of our skin but by the content of our character one minute we are a nation of american citizens under god in this commonality makes all of us equal in the eyes of god we have liberty personal responsibility and equal opportunity as a citizen in our wonderful nation to be the best that we can be to teach anything else would be un-american i encourage you to read other resources such as vody t bachmann's book called fault lines i am willing to purchase a copy for every board member out of my own pocket if i can do so and make sure that everyone has an alternate resource to mr kennedy's book and that's all i have to say
055thank you [Applause] [Music] christina wilson [Applause] excuse me that was loud hi my name is christina wilson i live at 5105. belton um excuse me fenton lane and built in i'm going to be talking about vaccines and our concerns what's happening in other school districts i do not want happening here it is not right to treat unvaccinated individuals as if they are sick individuals or as if the choice they had made is morally wrong no one in our society should be hindered from participating in business schools or our government just because they have a they have made a very personal decision for themselves or their children not to receive a particular vaccine or vaccines the mere fact a person has not received a specific vaccine does not make them a threat to others health and
056safety in contrast the vaccines they have elected not to have may very well be a threat to their own health and safety it is no secret that the covet 19 vaccines are not fda approved the governor himself recently said and i quote here is a reality everybody needs to understand the vaccines have not been formally approved by the fda they have been approved for emergency use operations only and that means that no one can be required to take the vaccine likewise facial masks including cloth facial masks to prevent viral transmission have also been approved under the emergency use authorization and recipients shall also have the option to accept or refuse the product also the cdc does not make laws they are a corporation this is our governor that said this can look it up um
057a little bit of history sorry i have to cut this down because you still only three minutes a little bit history in 2019 they were reported to the vars 203 vaccine deaths in 2018 119 deaths and 2017-85 deaths since december of 2020 through april 23 of 21 four months there have been a reported 3 362 deaths from the covid vaccine that's roughly 30 people a day dying from this vaccine vaccine adverse event reporting system is estimated by most people who follow it as being less than one percent of what actually happens compare the copa vaccine to the mandated vaccine for bacterial meningitis only one person died in the time from 2007 to 2015 for that vaccine folks this is not about vaccines in general it is in the four months of 2021 we've had more
05819 experimental vaccine deaths than all the vaccine deaths for the 15 year period between 1997 and 2013 plus almost a thousand heart attacks over eight thousand hospitalizations one might wonder why you rarely hear negative facts about vaccines from the media the answer may be just as simple as follow the money we would never mandate universal use of medication due to well-documented risks and complications surrounding most pharmaceutical products so why on earth would we do that with vaccines now we are hearing of surrounding school districts who are making their schools and vaccination centers and that unvaccinated children will still need to wear masks in the classrooms hear me now the propaganda that is being administered to our children regards to covenanting will no longer be tolerated nor will we tolerate any mandates related to mass squaring
059ever again may i remind you also that it is a violation to ask who has been vaccinated and who has not each individual has a right to privacy about their own health therefore schools cannot legally require proof of vaccination you would do well to keep this in mind when drafting the 2022 school year guidelines if you do not hear us and you continue to dismiss the concerns of this community come fall i promise you you will get it we will pull our kids from your schools how much government funding would you lose not to mention the lawsuits that we're already prepared thank you for your remarks if you follow the surrounding narrative on this we will not stop fighting for our freedom of our will [Applause] [Music] [Applause] sandra perez [Applause] sandra perez please state
060your name and address for the record please yes ma'am my name is sandra perez and i'm at 7099 water supply road i'm speaking on behalf of children who can't speak for themselves and for teachers and staff who are afraid to speak up for fear of losing their jobs i'm a mom of four and a grandmother to three and i'm grieved and i'm concerned and i'm heartbroken over what i'm watching happen to our schools our community and our country educating other people's children is a huge wonderful responsibility educators are entrusted to teach our children to help them grow learn explore and develop a love for learning themselves not to intimidate control bring fear upon our children by bullying them telling them they're going to kill their grandparents isolating them and etc when and where does this
061stop the way our children are being treated required to wear masks stay out stay away from their friends treated like little robots and give an experimental shots in some schools around our country without their parents permission it's child abuse over a year ago putting a mask on a child for discipline was considered abuse but yet now we say it's okay to protect others i was reading texas education code section 37.0023 prohibited adversive techniques a in this section adversive techniques means a technique or intervention that is intended to reduce the likelihood of a behavior reoccurring or intentionally inflicting on a student significant physical or emotional discomfort or pain the terms include a technique or intervention that one is designed or likely to cause physical pain other than an intervention and technique permitted under section 37.0011 use
062of corporal punishment 3 involves the direct release of toxic or otherwise unpleasant spray mist or substance near student space 5 ridicules or demeans the student in a manner that is adversely affects or endangers the learning or mental health of the student or constitutes verbal abuse seven impairs the student's breathing including any procedure that involves b obstructing the student's airway including placing an object in or on over the student's mouth or nose or place in a bag cover or mask one student's face 10 inhibits reduces or hinders the student's ability to communicate constitute 12 constitutes the use of time out or precludes the student from being able to be involved in and progress appropriately in the required curriculum including isolating the student by using physical barrier all of these is what is happening to our children
063today many parents have already come forward with facts and to statistics and it appears to be falling on deaf ears the schools the government they don't own our children children belong to the families that god has entrusted them in and this is abuse and criminal teaching and reminding people to use proper hygiene wash their hands sneeze into their arms is much more effective anyone knows basic science knows that masks do not stop viruses we're talking about a virus that has a survival rate for most of our population and 96 of those over 70 we are not god and we cannot stop a virus masks are dirty affect oxygen levels that is your time thank you okay that is your time all right that is your time thank you thank you very much richard easter evelyn
064yes sir if you'll please come state your name and address for the record richard easley i'm from 11713 roselle drive in belton texas i don't have no stats or nothing i just come up here as concerned parent um my son is in the 504 i'm sorry i'm not trying not to lose my temp um my son is in the 504 program and he had to take his mask off his face because he was getting aggravated very aggravated and when he does that he shuts down his teacher pulled him out of class and threw him in the hall and told him to stay there the rest of class that happens again we're going to have problems as far as the y'all say you are listening to the governor and everything do you all know what he
065done today besides you know a couple of about a month ago when he dropped the mass mandate for the state of texas everything there's no more funding he don't he's not accepting no more government funding for the unemployment stuff or the covenant team stuff all that stuff it seems to me like he's already got the clue that this has gone away and just needs to go away it's i mean look at copper's cove look at celletto look at our college right here in our hometown they're done why are we still sitting here having to debate this i understand the people that want look up here do you see anybody that's holding up signs to keep mask on our kids in school i see nobody there's nobody sitting here that's holding up a sign that says
066we want our kids to stay in masks thank you [Applause] roxy gothier [Applause] hi my name is rox santa gothier and my address is 2515 inked up drive i am speaking about how bad school was it's not fair for me to be separated from my friend at different playgrounds we only got to play together by walking laps together for free and it just made me really sad because we had to wear a mask and we couldn't hug each other or anything and and my other friends i couldn't play with that office because well we couldn't hug in the hallways or anything we had to i had to separate from my class sometimes because i had to take mask breaks and i had to do stuff and jim a teacher yelled at me because i was
067i took a mask break far away and he's yelled at my brother too and it made me sad and um [Music] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] can you can you hand that can you hand that to dr valentine don't care about our children yeah okay we're ready good evening thank you all for allowing public comment again tonight you already know my name it's andrea gothier and i'm here again 2515 inca dub drives my address i'm here again because i'm concerned for the well-being of the thousands of students that attend bellin isd i know you're aware the suicide rate of adolescence has increased 67 percent in a year i know you're aware masks reduce oxygen to our children's brains i know you're aware masked harbor bacteria i know you're aware masks cause anxiety and other
068emotional discomforts i know you're aware of mass cause physical problems like acne for these children i know you're aware that there are no long-term studies of the harm that mass cause our children i know you're aware of ta guidelines that say specifically you may not mask a child or cover their airways i know you're aware because you're sick of seeing me here here we are may 17 2021 and you still don't care that you're abusing and harming our children hundreds of districts in texas have now gone to mask optional they've realized it's not their place to make medical decisions for children that aren't theirs south carolina's governor has now made it illegal to require mass in school texas schools receive around ten thousand dollars a year per student i've happily pulled mine from the abuse
069of your district are you aware that a large number of your own employees reach out to me daily looking for other jobs wanting to leave your district they can't wait to be done you think you have the majority on your side you're sadly mistaken i lived in germany for three years i worked under a lieutenant colonel i value my rights in my constitution i visited the cow concentration camp the village people's homes backed right up to the fence of the concentration camp they woke up every morning and saw people starving to die one minute and being experimented on i can't imagine waking up and doing nothing forced mass today vaccine id tomorrow it might as well be a yellow star or a tattooed on your forearms telling them who you are and what you believe
070you're trampling on our rights as parents our religious rights our medical rights and i've had enough the nuremberg coats code ended with doctors being hung for their crimes against humanity you are the real science deniers 99.9994 of adolescents under 18 survive covet that is statistically a zero [Applause] let me close with the definition of hypocrite a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs i see board members on my poster out and about not wearing a mask with people that aren't in their family [Applause] evan gothier [Applause] [Music] you got seven my name is evan gothier i live on i live on two five one five two five one five inca dove drive temple texas here are a few reasons why we need to unmask belton isd i was bullied bullied and
071picked on almost every day of school i would come home upset and mad my english teacher kicked me out of my classroom for putting my face shield on or putting my face shield up to take a break to read a book at my own desk i ended up going to the bathroom to text my mom to help me recess was horrible we cannot take off our masks or play with our own balls soccer balls even by myself please let us have mass destroys thank you for your time vaccines are salvation jesus christ and the word of god says that he has not given us a spirit of fear but a love power to some of in a sound mind the government and tree has the right has the right to tell and no government entry
072has the right to tell any parents or anyone that they must muzzle their children eject inject them with chemicals or whatever else will come next when we will study history we know that we know history tends to repeat itself our children are not experienced to be abused they are not robots they are they are created in god's image just like you and i we should be protected them protecting them nursing them helping them to think logically and to and to question when things do not make sense i am asking plating to use the rise up to brave to truly protect of our children by stopping all all masks don't allow injects of this experimental shot to our schools play by plank by plank leads to communists wrong one minute thank you for your time janet
073brown hi i'm janet brown i live at five branding iron drive in belton texas i've been a resident here since 1995. i'm also a founder and an advocate for a rose program and what we do is we fight sex trafficking and we also help to raise awareness for that so i have a very unique perspective about abuse i understand the power will also understand what it means to protect our most cherished possession which are children i also want to share with you that i am immune compromised because of the covet virus so it was because of a vaccine but it was because of the virus just innocent contact i never came down with it but i am now immune compromised societies and cultures are often judged by how they treat the weakest among them and
074today we're here and you represent the weakest our children and so as you make decisions for them and i think that's out of proverbs so a lot of wise words out of that book so we have we have a lot to think about as we think about the children to the best of my knowledge belton isd has never mandated mass face shields plexiglass dividers social distancing measures contact tracing or other restricted uh measures for their students from attending or learning until covent not even for flu okay we could almost call this the new flu the refusal of belton isd to accept unmasked children without consequences of punitive unlawful actions to threaten and to intimidate segregate them on school premises or to have right or to have them to allow them to have right of access
075in classrooms or at school-sponsored activities is discriminatory and does not provide equal access you're all aware of the power wheel so we know that all of this falls into the realm under the power well of abuse so under the definition of child abuse child abuse refers to any behavior or action that results in harm injury or death of a child below the age of 18 so let's think if that is that has occurred by your actions the federal child abuse prevention and treatment act defines child abuse and neglect as any recent act or failure on the part of a parent or caretaker and you are caretaker which results in death serious physical or emotional harm sexual abuse or exploitation you are grooming these children by having them wear mess by bullying them by telling them
076oh they're going to kill grandma or if they're friends if they don't wear a mess you are grooming and conditioning these children and that is [Applause] [Music] martin prison you can listen to us now look down at the papers good evening my name is martin friesen i reside at 5337 fenton lane belton texas i'm the father of a kindergarten student in belton isd i am here to appeal to the wisdom god has made available to you some are happy that the mask requirement is going away because of the decrease in cobit 19 infections i however see a problem with the mask requirement being linked to that or anything else my first argument is that even if masks work for covid they cannot possibly work on children do you all remember a year ago when we
077were told to have a properly fitting mask not to touch our face etc well which of you have seen children faithfully follow these instructions when i take my children anywhere and i'm sure most of these parents if not all find ourselves constantly saying stop touching that stop touching everything keep your hands to yourself it's literally an impossible task not to mention children's poor bathroom and hand washing hygiene so how can we possibly expect masks to work for them plus in schools there are many exceptions not enough in our opinion but at the moment lunch mass breaks if anyone actually gets them class pictures and so on it therefore seems that mask requirements are more of a formality or political theater if you will [Music] [Applause] to make people think you are doing something well this
078something is nonsense one minute and the children and their parents are sick and tired of it additionally this something is actually illegal for texas education code 37.002 which prohibits the covering of a student's nose or mouth with any object including a mask yet you claim fear of covid is an exception from this rule i submit that enforcement of the mask mandate at any time is illegal unnecessary and ineffective also your own tea guidelines exempt children under 10 from wearing mass yet you insist on including them including my kindergartner and finally with wars and rumors of wars in all that is going on in this world do you really want to be found guilty of suffocating children when jesus comes back [Applause] time thank you and good night [Applause] [Music] sean clutter let's go shawn power
079to the people uh good evening my name is sean clutter 3354 kathy lane belton texas i am a retired army veteran of the u.s army uh combat in panama and in the gulf war first gulf war and i'm here to talk about tonight about the mass guidelines the u.s center and this is feeding off of what the cnn report that came out was talking about today the u.s center for disease and control and prevention advised that fully vaccinated people can be indoors and outdoors without wearing masks except when in care settings on public transportation or in specified areas where mass are required when cnn asked about the press's role in covering the return to normal cnn's chief medical correspondent dr sanjay gupta said we can report what the news is but then we have to
080explain the relevance of it gupta said the cdc made a critical error here in surprising basically everyone with a very significant change he added that just days before the announcement was made he spoke to senior leaders at the cdc a private company who told him indoor masking would probably be the last thing to be lifted because it is so effective and it's not that hard to do in most situations which is a complete lie another point of concern is the lack of guidance on how best to implement these new guidelines and if the loosened restrictions could potentially increase the risk of infection for those who cannot yet get the get vaccinated and the immuno compromise the announcement created a domino effect in the business world and school districts across the united states prompting companies to
081announce that they would lift mass mandates for vaccinated customers in most cases customers wearing masks in stores but walmart did send out a letter friday noting masks will also continue to be required by some city and state ordinances and we will follow those requirements one minute we have a problem here where we're suspending the constitution and the rule of law for codes acts and stat statutes and edicts and this is wrong what andrea put up there was just completely disrespected and dishonored you represent the school districts right there seems to be a dark hand at work here that's working against our children you're not going to be able to violate the will of the people it's just not going to happen it appears that way but the end game will not happen so when did
082we suspend logic for insanity why is this happening only you know the answer only you know the answer so i just want to encourage you people to take advantage of the relevant information that's out there about the masks you're wearing you're touching it you're breathing into it you have stuff coming out of your your lungs you're coughing into the mask you're touching this touching that what about what about the pcr test with dr kerry mullis who invented the pcr test which did nothing to diagnose anything so we're all here on a live stream we're being lied to and deceived our kingdom is your time and it's wrong thank you for that is your time you're violating the rules thank you for just five minutes disrespecting the citizens thank you sir that is your time thank
083you sir that is yours where's your integrity where's your honor and adherence to the founding documents of the united states time is time is coming to an end because when fall comes thank you sir that issue when fall comes around and the people that have been vaccinated start to shed and people start to really get sick and die you're going to regret this moment thank you the power and the opportunity now to stop this and save our children thank you sir that is your time evan hall evan hall please [Music] my name is evan hall and i am a student at belton new tech high school at moscow i go i live at 3205b replace drive and i personally do hate masks i hate wearing them and i think that they're very ineffective and they
084make it really hard to actually learn anything at school and it actually makes thinking about the concept that my teachers are trying to tell me harder and it makes me more tired every day and i don't think that should be accepted i don't think that lowering the cases by a couple of numbers and it doesn't even work by the way i don't think that lowering the cases by a couple numbers will do anything especially at what cost we're doing it it's harming more than it's helping it's not even close the teachers aren't helping either some of them do not like this and i know personally that they do not and some of them enforce it too much to a degree that is it exactly this is my first year public school and i've been very
085disappointed thank you brandon hall remember you have a constitutional oath to protect our rights too thank you sir my name is brandon hall i live at 3205 river place drive here in belton i talked last time and i unfortunately have to speak again some of you i've talked with personally and i appreciate you listening to me i've sent each of you an email with a detailed list of why maths do not work and here i want to start what i have to say mark twain said whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority it is time to pause and reflect i ask you to put aside your own personal and political truth and beliefs and seek the objective truth start by asking a do any of you want to intentionally harm any student
086i know that's a rhetorical question do you want to harm any teacher or any staff member obviously not that's not why you're here that's not why you're volunteering your time but what if your decisions and politics and policies do just that that's the question we need to ask ourselves again i send each of you an electronic message with 75 references to what i'm speaking about tonight data studies numbers charts reviews opinions from the medical community that bring into question the narrative that we have heard and that we have followed for this past year dr smith in your latest update you had said that we were going down to stage one and many people celebrated that i don't want to celebrate that because we shouldn't have been in this situation in the first place based on
087what we what we know now one of the things that you said that i have concerned with is you said we hope that next school year we won't have to wear masks which means that's still on the table which means we might be doing this again next year we don't want that and i have a question if mass are okay to be removed by june 14th based on the numbers today why can't we remove them today right now one minute i want to challenge you tonight the trustees should vote to end mass mandates and the school's ability to enforce them i ask one of you one of you to make a motion and another to second it to place a vote to end mass mandates and and mandatory mass from now until perpetuity i challenge
088one of you to do that stand up for the children mass mandates in the debate between liberty and the public good at large is at the forefront again safety versus liberty benjamin franklin said those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety each trustee on this stage is an elected official and represents the people behind me and took an oath to uphold the constitution where did assumption of risk go in our lives masks without question infringe on personal liberty in order to suspend those right it is your responsibility time as being elected to show that the con it is constitutionally necessary to suspend those rights in order to protect the public in london sir thank you mass have never been changed sir thank you okay but
089i'm not done that is your time this is in violation of the fifth the sixth and the fourteenth amendment it's very important to know that is your time sir i can't speak i can't that is your time thank you but when did they when did they legally allow change it from three to five minutes they can legally do that and i'm happy to talk with you about that tomorrow well that doesn't work because my time to speak to them is now your time i'm sorry that is your time thank you i hope not either thank you sir thank you sir that is your time man that's unfortunate that's really unfortunate but thank you sir [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] rachel craig good evening um rachel craig 2610 garden brook trail in belton we are new to
090the district but i have two kiddos in the district one of the middle school one at the elementary and i have been a substitute teacher this year um um in my subbing i've been i've been distressed to see what a distraction the cell phones are at the schools um and it's sometimes really it seems like all of my subbing time is spent getting the kids off the devices um it's i mean some children are very excuse me some students are very very resistant to even laying their phone aside i can't imagine what it must be like for the teachers so i was there may already be a district policy i was hoping that could be considered that the young people could perhaps lay their their phones aside when they're when they're working um so it
091is i'm sure hard for the teachers but even my eighth grader unfortunately has been exposed to pornography on another student's phone during stripes time and i just wish that wouldn't have happened it's not all the time but that's my concern so thank you for hearing me [Applause] monica there a moniker dagger pond windham on i'm not here just to speak to you guys i'm here to speak to them as well so i want to make that known um i want to tell you all a story moses had a statement name and address for the record please okay my address is kind of irrelevant but my name is monica dagger pont windham i live off 1328 louis drive moses had a stage fight much like i am having now or had stage fright i'm sorry moses
092had stage right like much like i'm having now and david brought a rock to a sword fight we are not here with rocks today we are here and flesh and with full force to end what is not only harming our children physically and mentally by putting them in danger our lord children's 12 12 outsiders no one else would have by doing that he changed the world that's what we're doing today that's why we're here to change the world today we have a chance as outsiders with a purpose and today we will fulfill that purpose for our bisd community and our children i hope this moment is so impactful that we make it an historical a historical event to be remembered throughout our community for years to come if our efforts here are forgotten then that's
093fine with me here we are for here are forgotten if our efforts here are forgotten then that's fine with me but i think we all are here for the world to see and set an example now as far as masks are concerned not only one not one single entity can enforce an american to take this covet vaccine or wear a mask which has yet to even be proven approved by the fda which christina and many others have already stated these masked mandates are always and will always be government overreach masking our children is child abuse and schools must stop this abuse immediately it's uncost and unconstitutional bell county has been blindly followed by the cdc and the nhi our voices matter and are crucial right now we have all been led by false and inaccurate
094data that has now been put a burden onto our children this needs to come to an end i believe we all have enough knowledge and common sense to know that this these mandates are not only doing any good for or not doing any good for any of us but especially our children um i have other things that have statistic statistics that i could say um but also i would like to state that i do not want y'all to continue to teach our children critical race theory that we will not allow critical race theory that is your time there is no critical race theory allowed in our school district that is your time thank you thank you thank all of you [Applause] [Music] kristin chapa hi my name is kristen chapa and i live at 463
095westfield boulevard you guys wasn't that exhausting this is the first board member board meeting that i've ever been to and i swear that was the most exhausting thing i've ever i have a headache and i'm so hungry you guys you all know the statistics they're gonna point out to you you know everything that they've they've had what they've said at the beginning what they're saying now and for for us to have to come out here and express that we want our child you know to be able to breathe at school every day is ridiculous i shouldn't have to come down here and talk to you guys about my child's well-being at school for eight seven hours a day whatever all right you mentioned you didn't want to take the masks off and have close contact
096spread between whoever whatever but you look at all the other different schools lorena is what 15 20 minutes up the road my little brother is eight years old and he's been going to school he says the only thing that they do now is use way more hand sanitizer than they did before kovid all right so you that you mentioned that you said i think it was you that mentioned you're worried about your daughter not attending certain things next year not being able to do certain things that she didn't do last year whatever i'm worried about my six-year-old daughter who couldn't breathe through her mask all day okay i'm worried about the headaches that she gets from sitting at school all day okay i'm worried about if if you know one day it comes down to
097you that you you're deciding whether or not my child wears a mask are you going to decide whether or not my child has to be vaccinated to come to school is that where it's going to get down to it because this is ridiculous already you guys you know the statistics you know what they're going to come out here and say every single day we spent two hours on stuff you already know what's the point what is the endgame we got the teachers vaccinated controlled a lot i don't know how many because i don't know exactly how many kids out here that's actually experienced covered in my sixth year and my six-year-old and i have experienced covered and we were you know we got through it and like we were fine a lot of these other
098families have gone through that too some of you guys may have too this is ridiculous i spent eight hours working today to come here and tell you things you already know and to listen to them tell you are things you already know i have a headache and i gotta go home and make dinner and take care of my kids my family this is enough [Applause] [Music] okay the next item on our agenda is closed session the board will go into closed session to talk about texas government code subchapters d and e personnel texas government code section 551.074 we will adjourn for closed session b all righty it is 8 24 and we will reconvene in open session thank you all for waiting the next item on our agenda is an action item to consider discuss
099and take appropriate action regarding reorganization of the board i will tell you that reorganization of the board should happen every may and typically does we have a policy that says that the board shall elect a president a vice president and a secretary who should be members of the board each officer should have completed their annual required continuing education hours on time and completed one year of board service board officers which shall serve for a one year term or until a successor is elected officers may serve three consecutive terms except in extenuating circumstances as determined by the board that being said i've run my run so to speak i've been on the board since 2013. i have been a member of president since september of 2018. at this time since it's may and it's time to
100reorganize and get a little fresh blood i'll entertain a motion to reorganize a board is there a motion yes miss aaron make sure that's fine i would like to make the motion to move the board to appoint uh jeff norwood as president of the board uh ty taggart as vice president of the board and manuel elkoza as secretary is there any other motions is there a second miss janet lee all in favor please raise your hand congratulations president norwood so that being the case if you'll give us a few minutes and let us just do a little switcheroo and reorganize and then the next voice you hear will be president norwood before i go i'm so sorry you know i have lots of stuff to say i just want to thank this board for allowing
101me to serve in the capacity that i have done i want to thank the school district and this community for all the support this has been an amazing run i'm sure that there's lots of folks out there that have been doubters and haters and all of those good things and and felt like this very loud black woman was not going to be able to pull forth some good words to be able to lead but i have a different saying on that i have a god that i serve that who knows better and he has been able to bless me to be able to sit here and also to know when it's time to sit down and so that being the case thank you all so much i love you guys which part of the agenda
102do you need so here's the here's the upcoming stuff leave that right there yep yep all of that i would leave that right there and if you make sure connie gets that and you have the agenda to start on the next item and you cannot have my pen i'll come back from my bag yeah come here happy birthday jeff [Laughter] what did you get for your birthday no please thank you okay well let me get my glasses on i am going to put them on i have to get used to the fact that the mic in front of me is turned on so let's see the next giant agenda items consider and take appropriate action regarding the employment of administrative employees mr president members of the board we are excited to have todd schiller come
103up and make an announcement regarding uh some administrative hires mr schiller good evening everyone well tonight i'm thrilled to recommend kim winters as principal of new tech high school at wasco kim has a master's of education education degree from the university of texas at austin and uh and a bachelor's in education from texas tech i'm sorry texas state university kim has been in round rock isd all 19 years of her education career she has worked as a teacher an assistant principal and a principal and has experience at the elementary middle school and high school levels kim has been a principal for nine years and is currently the principal at pearson ranch middle school in round rock and she opened up that campus and it is a pbl campus so tonight we are recommending um approval
104of her of this recommendation okay i'll accept the nomination one from madam president i don't know what else to call her and another one and from mr taggart all in favor move passes and i'm going to have kim come up and say a couple of words thank you [Applause] hi good evening thank you so much to the board and to dr smith for this amazing opportunity to serve new tech and belton isd i'm really excited to serve this campus and be a part of your community so thank you so much thank you next on the agenda consider oh that's right are we all going to go down with it yep oh come on it's red gonna say that [Music] [Applause] uh okay consider and discuss take action regarding the adoption of pre-k and structural materials
105for every year we as a school district go through proclamations that are issued by tea proclamations talk about the adoption of resources for use in classrooms uh vicki dean and deanna lovesmith are here tonight to talk to you about the resources that we are considering for our pre-k program at pecs good evening yes i was going to open with um this is proclamation 2021 it's for the adoption of pre-k materials in general once we adopt materials those are in in use for eight to nine years before the next time they recycled for consideration so tonight vicki dean is going to talk about the process she has led with our district and our bec staff to ensure we're getting the highest quality resources for our youngest learners good evening i'm here to talk about the pre-k
106adoption but before i do i want to share the beck's journey this year to reach their vision for our youngest students starting this past fall beck's administration and staff were challenging themselves with the question how do we have exceptional learning experiences for each and every student so through many conversations plc's professional learning and committee meetings along with the board's guidance with their vision and goals becks wanted to design innovative spaces where their youngest learners were exposed to career readiness skills through active and exploratory experiences spaces where each and every student feels empowered to dive into learning make mistakes and thrive in who they are and what they need and in these spaces teachers first lay the foundational skills aligned with the pre-k guidelines and state standards then students explore developing their pre-literacy and pre-math skills
107so let me just share a couple of examples of what i'm talking about so here in one of those spaces called the imagination experience we see students who are dressed as archaeologists so at first you might say oh they're just kind of digging in some play dirt and then just playing with some plastic bones and and looking at the microscope but what's really happening are multiple objectives are happening so a student is digging looking at bones trying to decide what can i make with these bones they're also digging up bones to reproduce the alphabet with those bones that they're digging up or numbers there also could be digging in there some leathers to make their name they also could be digging up different sized dinosaurs and sorting them out based on their attributes if you
108notice the feet that are on the floor have different pictures students can hop around on those dinosaur feet to work on rhyming alliteration so those are just a few of the things that could be happening in just this one part of this space that are aligned to those pre-k guidelines in our next space called my community these students are at fire street pizza so first you see oh they're making a pizza but what they're doing is creating and working with collaborating with each other what you don't see in this picture is they have a customer so working on their skills as when they go to a restaurant and take in writing down an order and the customer actually ordered a pepperoni pizza and when they brought this pizza to her if you know this up
109close it's not pepperoni at all it's probably it looks like a supreme [Music] and she pointed that out to them so they had to go back and remake her pizza that she had ordered but other skills that are being worked on in here in pre-math skills is counting subitizing which is counting but just by looking at things not actually touching one to one simple division where we're sharing equally amongst each other we're also sorting when we're cleaning up our space we're having to put all those items back into the places where they need to belong so those are just a few of the things that are happening in this experience room but all these experiences the teacher's role is to support a student where they are in their learning so based on that vision the
110beck's leadership and staff had taken on this vision where curiosity blooms into new learning teacher leaders served as voting members on the adoption committee with feedback from all staff members the committee followed a process aligned aligning their resources choices with that vision so with that the committee's recommending the following state adopted resources to be purchased with instructional allotment funds totaling eighty eight thousand eight hundred and forty one dollars i just wanna say that i wanna recognize the beck's leadership team and their staff for all the work that they have been working on to ensure aligning y'all's vision with um with the journey of a graduate with what their vision is and ensuring that their work and moving forward and then i also want to appreciate the board's commitment to laying out your values and goals
111to support that vision of educating our youngest students okay board any questions oh yeah it does it just doesn't light up oh yeah can you hear me no can you hear me okay here you can use mine hey i just want to say thanks we got the tour backs i guess it was pre the worst of all things could happen and i loved the culture over there i just loved what they were doing and that that campus is doing really good things for these kids and so yes i just love that campus so much that i their their team is here so um it's not vicki dean i'm telling you it's that leadership team of um well they're doing great because they're doing good things over there at backs they really are any other comment
112i want to add i love i'm going to just add on to ty i love what dex does i've had two kids go through it boy girl so there's the difference in their learning and then they just they learn differently but when they went to kindergarten they were prepared socially emotionally academically physically they were ready to take on the world when they left bex so good job for all that you've been doing a great job and i have no doubt it's going to continue so thank you okay all right well do i have a motion to accept this mr taggart one second miss lee all in favor all right it passes mr president if i may say a quick thank you to deanna and vicky for leading uh in all of this and also to
113our beck's team back there sheila and crew we if you ever want to go to a happy place go to bex like it's it's pretty special place but these rooms that vicky just gave you a glimpse into but i think there's a ton of potential for the future there and they i'm super proud of their their work to continue to improve it back so thank y'all next item on the agenda is consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding selection of construction delivery method for construction of a new elementary school so mr president members of the board we discussed this with our facilities committee in depth at the last facilities committee meeting um this action that mike's going to bring forward to you is to get us prepared for the future so that we can act
114quickly if we need to when we need to appropriately build an elementary school good evening mr president board of trustees that was i had madame president in my notes but i made a quick adjustment there if y'all saw that so good evening mr president tonight i'm going to ask you to consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding selection of a construction delivery method for construction of a new elementary school i would like to start with some brief background to address the need for a new elementary school design as we all know belton is a fast growth school district and this year we will grow by around 600 students from the conclusion of last school year elementary enrollment is now projected to grow at approximately 360 students per year in contrast when we did our 2017
115bond planning elementary classes sizes or elementary students were only expected to grow by around 160 students per year at that time we opened new elementary school in 2019 two in 2014 and one in 2007. the last elementary design process occurred in the 2006 school year we are recommending to engage in a new design for future bisd elementary schools i do want to point out that this will be regardless of when the next elementary school is built we don't know when that will occur but we do want to have a design in place that's well planned has and has taken in as many uh stakeholder views as we can and to be used for a substantial period of time for future facilities ultimately the decision to to build a new elementary school will be determined by
116the board of trustees recommendations of stakeholders and ultimately by the bisd voters the board of trustees is requested is required to select the method of procurement for any construction project because we would like to have a contractor involved in the design process our administrative recommendation is to select a construction manager at risk for the design and construction of our next elementary school choosing a construction manager at risk provides best value for the district including the following advantages being involved in the new elementary design process helping the district make choices of mechanical and operational systems and materials during design more closely estimating construction costs expediting the design process working closely with the district and our architect in the design process and ultimately with the use of a guaranteed maximum price for construction there's two phases of
117service for a construction manager at risk there's the pre-construction or design phase and then there's the construction phase we also would ask the board tonight to delegate the authority to the superintendent or designee to determine the method of procuring the construction manager at risk the district may use either a one-step or two-step process for procuring a cmar in the case of a one-step process the district would issue a request for proposals an rfp and then make a recommendation to the board based on that process if we chose the two-step process the district would issue a request for qualifications then the district will create a short list of candidates based solely on those conversa solely on those qualifications and then select one firm to represent the district as the cmar tonight we bring forward a resolution
118to the board proposing selection of construction manager at risk as the delivery method for the next belton isd elementary school and request that the board authorize the superintendent or designee to select the process for procuring the construction manager at risk i'll answer any questions that you have this time yeah mike uh just to make sure i understand are we talking about a two-step method we would we're asking to the uh for the ability to to negotiate or to go through that process with with uh legal counsel in our purchasing department and determine which is the best process so the one-step process is basically an rfp the two-step process would start with an rfq and then move to a to a second second tier of selection so what method have we been using um for construction
119we used at the last construction we used the construction manager at risk for lake belton high school and then we used the the competitive bids for charter oak elementary the difference the recommendation tonight is we would like to use the construction manager at risk because we would like for to have a contractor involved in the design process are there any other questions uh yeah i think this is really smart for us to start this process now right i mean we don't know exactly when it's going to come we know it's coming but in order for us to have a really good idea of what it's going to cost right and to do that planning carefully up front like we i think we got to do this i mean i'm not sure if there's any doubt
120but um i think this is this is to our advantage over the long term to start this and and to start that design process now yeah okay are there any other comments one more question yes mike just to make sure i understand um so the process that you're talking about is going to involve um determine the qualifications yes of the manager okay next steps and this is probably a key part that i should have went into next steps would be to come back to the board with a recommendation for an architect and at the conclusion of this process would be a recommendation for a construction manager at risk so we're not making decisions on any firms tonight we're asking that the board approve us to to engage in a process to bring a recommendation back
121to you but we approved a list that y'all compiled of each category at one point two or three meeting a couple meetings ago we've approved a list of these folks so now they're gonna uh pick you know the one that they want to use and bring that back to us if i understand that correctly on the architecture side yes sir is correct yes yes and that and this process the way it was explained to us at the meeting is is if we we get a bond passed and we're able to move forward we're going to have a design a footprint and it's going to be ready to go we don't have to wait another year to bring all that stuff together we can start putting the plan together quick so just for clarification what we're
122doing here tonight the recommendation from administration is to approve the resolution choosing the construction manager at risk as the delivery method for the design and construction of the next new elementary school delegating the authority to the superintendent to determine the method to choose the construction manager at risk to be brought back to the board so what we're proving tonight is the method that the superintendent administration is going to meet and decide whether we're going to go to the one step or two-step correct to pick that that's what we're being asked to approve okay well do i have a mr taggart mr floor all right i have two all in favor and pass it to nemesis thank you thanks mike and by the way um madeleine president made this look a lot easier than it is
123so the next item is reports uh first report will be secondary schools bell schedules report mr president members of the board we are um welcoming some guests here tonight to talk to us a little bit about schedules first of all mr loma lee is here he's been working with our secondary principals on this and as you all know bell schedules have been a topic throughout the year this year so they have been in an improvement process in studying what their recommendation will be we are not asking for action for you tonight this is just a simple report to you all so that you know what they've been doing and what we are recommending moving forward good evening board of trustees thank you for having us here we're going to be talking about secondary school bell
124schedules if we go to the next slide the real purpose is to talk about the 20 21 22 school year and how we would like to move forward next slide the why it always starts with students right to provide students with the best learning experience possible so they can be be prepared for life after middle school and after high school bell schedules are a critical resource of our day-to-day activities and enables schools to maximize meaningful learning experiences for our students aligned to district values as i shared very quickly the last time we were here a committee made up of principals as well as district athletic fine arts and cte directors have been working this semester to gather extensive feedback through thought exchange focus groups and yet additional staff feedback beyond that we are here tonight
125to share our plans with you answer any questions that you may have and get your feedback research tells us that there is no perfect bell schedule what makes a bell schedule successful is the alignment to to a school district's values and goals and the collective ownership that a school takes at the building level i'm going to turn it over to ben smith our belton high school principal who will share our plan with you thanks arturo as we plan for what our focus and alignment with our district-wide work should be at the high school level we landed on the journey of a graduate competencies we feel these essential skills are what our kids need to develop so that each and every one of them are adequately prepared for success beyond high school specifically they need more
126time to critically think through problems and have countless opportunities to communicate their thoughts and ideas through dialogue and presentation models they need more time to practice the art of collaboration while also developing empathy for other perspectives and ideas and they need more time to work through what it means to adapt and persevere through challenging learning experiences so then the next step to our process was to identify what daily schedule best aligns with this work next slide after looking at numerous bell schedule models living through the schedule we did this year and considering feedback from students from staff and from parents we feel the modified a b block schedule is what is best for our kids we know our students crave the hands-on interactive experiences that the block allows teachers to plan for as you can
127see in the graphic displayed the modified block schedule has three 100-minute block times and two 50-minute periods that meet at the start and end of each school day based off feedback this provides two periods that meet daily to ensure some of our programs can be seen every day what the modified schedule would allow for the high school level is targeted focus on fewer classes each day interventions enrichment clubs meetings tutorial times all built into the daily schedule less transitions during the day and it also ensures the daily 240 instructional minutes required by the state are met we firmly believe the block schedule was best for our kids to prepare them for whatever they want to excel in beyond high school we have learned a lot this year and we have targeted objectives to enhance the
128schedule moving forward i will now turn the presentation over to jill ross to discuss how we will make this plan a success thank you so as you can see we know that we've got to make some changes we we went to a block schedule this year because of covid and we've learned quite a bit along the way and so what we know is that we we needed to talk to our parents our teachers and our students and you can see a quote on the slide that talks about how block schedule provides this parent student the opportunity to participate at higher levels we are dedicated to making the modified a b block a success by focusing on two different things one is maximizing learning time we need to decrease lecture and passive learning and we need
129to increase collaboration critical thinking and authentic learning activities our students and faculty have actually told us that they think the modified block schedule provides additional time for critical thinking and deeper learning the second thing that we know that we need to work on is uh next slide please is the professional learning we know that making a change when we made it this summer for the reasons that we made it were it was the prudent thing to do however we know that our students need additional um strategies that our teachers need to learn and so we are going to focus on professional development and professional learning and we've already begun to gather our teacher leaders our instructional coaches together to look at what did we learn this year what can we do to improve our instructional
130strategies and how can we do this in such a way that it is meaningful to our teachers and not just wasted time and so what we've noticed is that we have additional time built into the school day over the course of a month that we can provide professional learning opportunities for for our staff to improve our area our our work in this area so mr hopson is going to talk to you guys about middle school schedule all right so as we worked with uh the stakeholders that arturo mentioned at the very beginning one of the things that kept coming up were the needs of 11 to 14 year olds those in the middle were a little bit different developmentally they're in a slightly different place there's some social emotional learning needs that we needed to
131make sure that we addressed and those larger blocks of time were just a little too long so the committee felt like a seven period day where we meet daily with every class every teacher is more appropriate we have some the beginning of some fine arts programs athletics things like that that are new to students and those smaller chunks of time and the repetition the daily schedule was best meeting the needs of that group of students so we we enjoyed the extended time but when we looked overall at what was best for that particular group seven periods a day 50 minutes roughly for each class and there's a little bit of an intervention time extension time in there built in so it does give us a little bit of extra but this was where the committee
132felt middle school was best served so with that i'll open up the questions for myself or any of the other members of the group for comments or feedback that you may have i'm really glad that you all are taking a greater look at this i can recall back in january during school board appreciation month there were some middle schoolers from south belton middle school that took the opportunity to email me individually all 100 and something of them to talk about this very topic so thank you all for doing the work and ensuring that we're going to do what's best for the kiddos so looking at the high school schedule how does this change from the high school schedule this year it's it's the same right actually it depends on which campus your student is on
133okay so it is a this schedule that we are proposing is actually the one that lake belton high school is using where we have uh the what we call team time or its enrichment time and it is uh every other day but it's divided into academic intervention at the beginning and then club time later um belton high school schedule was a little bit different and and so the um they have team tiger time every day and so it just it it depends on which campus you're on can we go back to the slide for the high school schedule please so if you will look at one of the significant changes and ben can step up if i misspeak but when we are and on this schedule fourth period or fourth that fourth block is going
134to have just pledges and moment of silence that's just a regular academic block the other day that is the intervention enrichment period and so it doesn't show that it's split but it's it is split if you were to come to lake belton high school on a b day you would see uh students in their team time for making up a test getting extra help getting tutorials at the beginning of that time of that seventh period and then the back end of that block is where we have clubs we have student council we have the herd it's our student group um activities crochet club if you ever want to come so those are some activities that happen during that that intervention block and i'll just add we we tweaked our schedule a little bit currently our
135schedule our kids in the day with tiger time was the eighth period block um it meets every day um we had to make some changes this year again we did a lot of things that were best for our kids at the time trying to overcome so many things and and one of the things that we had to adjust at belton high school in addition to that was facilities and we we adjusted from moving from the nine to belton high school we had four gyms and when you think about who are using those gyms it's not just athletics we have pe we have our special ed kids we have dance we have winter guard we have cheer that's a lot of kids that were using those facilities so we had to be creative and our coaches
136and directors were fantastic they were wonderful this year they were such team players but we knew that we needed to add another time built in during the day so that we could help offset offset some of those issues to have facilities so we have um equality across the board so after looking different models the one that lake belton was using made the most sense for us and it was an easy transition because they've already lived it and they know the things that we need to work on and tweak and it's consistency across the board for all three high schools yeah and this sounds like a positive for new tech as well right it reducing the transition periods right so yeah and again it's a very similar new tech will follow the same schedule as built
137in belton high school and so it does there's always challenges with that but we'll figure it out as we always do i got one real quick so in regard to teacher training for how to do this well can you just give us one or two examples of how that would look different going forward than what we've done currently one of the most important differences is that we did it spur the moment and i hate to admit that quite so transparently um trying to meet the needs of our students and staff during covid at the beginning of the year and so i actually met with a teacher friday afternoon and she was telling me how at the be she was so relieved that we were going to keep this schedule because for her she learned a
138lot along the way of how to manage that that block the 100 minutes for example and so we've already began to gather things that we need to put together a scope and sequence so to speak of how to best meet the needs of the teachers so that they can learn strategies to block up and chunk up that hundred minutes into uh into more appropriate pieces of time because no one wants to sit and listen to someone lecture for a hundred minutes another thing that we have committed to doing is that we have the 50-minute blocks at the beginning and the end of the day and then those longer blocks in the middle if i'm a teacher for example and i have two preps i teach english one and i teach yearbook for example it makes
139sense to try to put those two different classes on separate schedules so that i don't have one english one class in a 50 minute schedule and a different english one class in a hundred minute where is if i taught english one twice a day and it could be both 50-minute periods that makes it easier that's our commitment we can't say that we're going to be able to do it 100 of the time but it is something that we feel we heard our teacher say i can't just take my 100 minute lesson plan and cut it in half and do it in a first or a last period class it just is it doesn't flow the same way um but those are those are some things that we have heard from our teachers that they've asked
140for is um we need you to be more intentional with the master schedule which is important and then two we need to know better how to better meet the needs of our kids in this different kind of time frame that we have them every day i want to thank arturo jill ben chris all of our secondary principles for diving into this again they went through multiple pieces of feedback to get to this point and i think we have a good plan moving forward so thank you to all of them for that update tonight are there any other questions no then i'll move on to virtual school update board we have gabby nino here tonight to give us an update a real brief update on virtual school and what our planning efforts have been as you
141all know this is not a done deal this is us planning to be prepared and gabby you got a clicker so you can go ahead perfect good evening everyone thank you for having me back again tonight i am going to share me and just a brief update on the work that we've been doing as a committee and planning for the possibility of virtual learning for the future there are going to be a couple of items that may seem a bit redundant to you all but i just really want to make sure that we are keeping these things at the forefront of our mind especially when we think about our staff and students and their experiences this year being thrust into this virtual learning environment our um why behind planning for the future is really to
142ensure that whatever we provide for our students is exceptional that we are investing the time and energy to design what is exceptional for our students who may and participate in virtual learning we want to provide options in our system that are aligned to students needs to the students that we serve and we're also committed to improvement and we know that our teachers did a phenomenal job this year um and they faced so many challenges throughout this virtual environment the hybrid environment we know that we can do better and we want to create an environment where our students and our staff are thriving so the last time we were together we talked some about our process but we didn't go much into depth and i'm going to try to land a couple of pieces of information
143for you all this evening to provide some clarity but this visual here is just a timeline that shows that we're narrowing our scope we began our process in really establishing what the why of our team was what's driving our work and doing some research to discover where schools are doing the best where schools who have students who are excelling in a virtual environment what are they doing that we can learn from and use that to inform our work then we started assessing the needs of our own students or the interest i should say that the interests and needs of our own students and families and developing some potential models for us to build upon we're in an ideating process then we are moving into this recommendation phase where we've got some frameworks that we would
144like to build on and strengthen and for lack of a better word we have like the bones and are building some meat around the bones that was a horrible analogy that that just came out i'm sorry about that and but we're also building systems that will be ongoing in support of our teachers we are in a phase where part of our research and feedback was using input that teachers had already given whether it be through thought exchanges through listening sessions about the challenges that they were facing also just in one-on-one conversations and observations in the classrooms beginning tomorrow we will jump into some information sessions with our teachers that's not necessarily feedback now back it's input so we'll share what we are planning um for potential but get their input on improving design and then
145pending legislation you see that that narrow pending legislation we've narrowing a model and then we'll grow it to make it the best that it can the last time we were together we were in the midst of an interest survey being out into the community you all received it and we were in the final days of that interest survey being out so i want to update you that we had a thousand fifteen responses that came in and of those 1015 responses 288 of them were interested in virtual learning for the future and 727 were not so percentage-wise it's 28 percent of our students who completed the survey are interested in virtual learning for the future we're able to slice that data in a many different ways based on the information collected including special programs extracurriculars they
146may take part in whether or not they'd be interested if those were not available in the future but this is the overall survey outcomes this next slide i think is something that is probably most important to this conversation to really illustrate the difference between what was the experience in the existing year in the 2021 school year and what would be a proposed plan that still needs to be built out more for the future so here's some of the differences our for our students and families in particular we will be asking them to enroll at the virtual school not at their home campus so as you're aware that created some challenges for us this year that resulted in teachers being in a hybrid environment and so we would ask students in the future to commit to
147a virtual school rather than their home campus there will be specific guidelines articulated and clearly communicated related to engagement expectations attendance expectations and academics that will continually monitor to ensure our students are experiencing success and we're going to ask for students and parents to make commitments prior to starting in the virtual school if it moves forward with approval from the legislature there would be limited courses available it will not be the full gamut of courses available they would be limited um with limited electives and extracurriculars as well for the staff experience they will be able to teach exclusively with virtual learners so they will not have the hybrid situation going on where students are in class learning and at home at the same time they'll be able to focus on one environment they'll also have
148professional learning specific to virtual teaching this year they participated in all of our district learning which they will still be able to do but we want to provide opportunities for them to go into further depth with how we actually design instruction for a virtual environment they will be based and work from a bisd campus and there will be a selection process for staff who are interested in this like i shared um tomorrow we have teacher input sessions and following those um information and input sessions we'll launch a collection process for teachers to express their interest in taking part we'd like to be able to see some model lessons and select teachers that this environment is best for them and for students the instructional experiences what will be different is that most of the experiences for
149students will be virtual but they will also come in person for some experiences in our research process those schools that are experiencing the greatest success have a very um connected community of learners that they have an identity to their campus and most of them have these in-person learning experiences so that would what that would mean is that most learning happens at home but students come to site it may be for extensions of the learning experience enrichment maybe because they needed academic intervention or smaller group one-on-one support but we'll be making a variety of learning opportunities available in person the bisd curriculum will be the curriculum that our students use aligned to our standards but it will be adapted for a virtual environment and we'll work with our digital learning coaches to make sure that that
150curriculum is accessible and easily navigated by our teachers to support students who are learning remotely again limited course offerings and limited elective courses this visual here just gives you an idea of i'm at home but i come in person for some experiences for that community experience some potential next steps for us as i shared we do have some teacher information and input sessions scheduled we have been in the development of a website to launch that through that website students would have the opportunity to pre-enroll so that we can get from interest down to some commitments moving forward we'll finalize our course offerings and then also offer parent and student information steps or sessions again i want to reiterate that we are wanting to put a very strong plan in place so that when the legislature
151wraps up and we have some decisions that we would be ready to launch if that's what we made the decision to do just a real quick update there's not a lot that's changed since we were here last time and the there's three bills that seem to have gained the most traction one of them being um well i can list all three of here but the the big ideas if i were to sum up the house bills is that um there's proposal for virtual learning to be approved for students in grades three through 12 with ada funding and requirements for synchronous learning opportunities there is also a proposal in senate for there to be a committee formed that would examine what the best practices are related to virtual learning and bring that back to the legislature
152for recommendations both of these are all three of these are sitting in committee right now which is where they were the last time that that we came together as well and again as a reminder the legislative session ends on may 31st i will tell you that one of the the bills the senate bill related to a legislative review committee for virtual learning is scheduled um for discussion tomorrow but not today are there questions that i can answer for you all this evening so if this passes will this virtual opportunity be available for all grade levels or particular grade levels so we'll need to narrow that um based on need within our community what we submitted so far or what we have so far is interest and will want to collect um further commitments and we're
153also looking at the the course offerings that we can available so i can't tell you today what the exact grade levels would be but we're being very intentional and determining where the the highest need is okay and the other part of that is just thinking about any seniors who could very well potentially be involved in this virtual environment with limited course offerings to ensure that they get the courses that they need to graduate i'm sure that you all are thinking about those things as well yes ma'am so we um have been looking at a multi multi-disciplinary graduation endorsement and so yes we are considering all of those options thank you and our seniors are a big part of the conversation and i just want to be crystal clear in case teachers are listening teachers will
154not be teaching both things they will not be teaching in class and virtual at the same time after this year yes correct okay and make sure they hear that unless they they choose to teach virtual that's the only people teaching virtual yeah we're gonna take an interest process so teachers can say that this is the environment that they are interested in teaching in when you talk about the commitment from the student and parent does that mean that the student's going to have to commit to do virtual if you go virtual you're stuck with virtual you can't go back and forth right so one of the challenges quick answer is we are asking families to commit to this environment for the school year just like i enroll in miller heights or i enroll in lakewood elementary
155or lake belton high school that's the commitment that we are asking for and we're asking for that in advance one of the major challenges our teachers face this year was flexibility environment and students coming in and out based on the pandemic so we are asking for a commitment in advance eric i have a question kind of going off what susan said about offering it to all grade levels what about um the special programs like kids that are served under special education or maybe have a 504 plan let's start on that so um it would be available to students um our we have special education representation on our committee and they've done a phenomenal job of thinking about what the possibilities would be and i'm just going to say the big broad answer is available to
156students but we will consult with the art committee to make sure that the students needs can best be met in this environment and work in consultation with the families our special education team has developed a rubric to really not rule anybody out or rule anybody in but for it to be a tool to help the art committee think about the students needs and where those those needs are best met the same with 504 i do have one more really quick thing have you thought about um gpas in regard to high school and how they will are they separate are they blended so we are working through all of those challenges right now okay yeah yeah but yes yes we have thought about that yeah we are thinking about that a lot yes yes my question
157was more along those lines so it sounds like in the works um mr president members of the board i want to thank gabby for spearheading the planning efforts again this is not a done deal there are a lot of things that still have to be done for us to offer this moving forward but we are exploring well and trying to plan well we will begin hosting some teacher information sessions tomorrow and so you will hear more talk about that with some teachers coming up and we want to make sure you had an update ahead of time thank you very much thank you all next report elementary and secondary school emergency relief sr-3 funds report yes ms land is coming forward this is part of our process to secure the esser funds that you all know
158have been released by the state we also have some requirements that we have to do and ms land is going to walk you through some of those brief requirements this is an important step in the process because we will be bringing you a plan eventually based on some of our planning efforts that we will need you to approve ms land thank you dr smith mr president i had to catch myself board members thank you for having me here and this is a brief this our a brief discussion of the sr3 grant and the next steps for belt and what that means for us so the sr3 grant or the esser funds were appropriated through the american recovery plan and the funds that have been allocated to belton isd are intended to address the covet 19
159impact on our students and we are currently slated to get about 11.1 million dollars of that amount 7.4 million is available now from tea we have to file an application for that and i'll briefly go over that later but that first two-thirds of 7.4 million is available the additional one-third or 3.7 million dollars will be made available at a later date the allocation is only available if we apply for it in the grant form and that application is will be due to the texas education agency in late july and what that what this funding looks like for us is that we have the ability to basically back date expenses that occurred anywhere between march 13th of 2020 all the way to thinking about expenses that we would incur in the future all the way through
160september of 2024 so this grant is in essence almost a little over four year funding requirement or um commitment but we are are still exploring what that this availability period is going to look like as dr smith stated there are some requirements with the grant and the largest requirements are going to be those allowable expenditure categories so we have several categories and we've tried to condense them here for you all they range all the way from mental health and and behavior services to instructional time or extended instructional time and some summer learning as well as some pd that we could provide to our staff and the grant also allows us to purchase some facilities and sanitation equipment and materials that are going to aid in the in the return to safe return to school and
161rounding out this list is our technology whether it's devices or infrastructure or some other digital tools those are all allowable with these sr3 funds one of the largest caveats of this of these funds is that at least 20 percent has to be set aside to address learning loss or what tea has now termed learning recovery type or learning recovery and so we have to designate at least 20 percent of our funding toward learning recovery activities and we have a we have to have a plan in place that outlines how we are going to spend these funds that we do receive from tea so in order to address the requirements and make sure that we have a plan in place we've already started with a timeline we do have a short or condensed timeline that tea
162has put together but we are committed to making this plan to spend these funds meaningful and valuable and we are being driven by the question of how can we best invest these funds to obtain or to have an intentional and sustained impact on our student learning so just remember that's our driving force with these sr3 funds we have already begun begun planning meetings and those meetings consist of cabinet members as and we are planning to expand those meetings to the leadership team and we are also seeking input from our external stakeholders you know our whether it's our families our teachers our students our campus administrators and other community members we're going to start that process as well and in the in board at in the june board meeting we plan to have the board have
163a public hearing regarding the plans surrounding these funds and then after we receive the input and we get the planning committees or planning meetings wrapped up we are going to take all the feedback and we plan to look at that at the use of funds plans and determine if we have met our goals in terms of what we want to use those funds for and make sure that we have a great plan to bring forward to you all at the july board meeting so that you can adopt our use of funds plans for sr3 and then we will in turn submit that plan as well as the requirements of the application to the texas education agency in late july that's it for the answer three funds questions can you expand a little on learning loss
164activities and what that looks like sure what we there are several several components in the esser application that addresses learning loss but primarily it's those activities that are geared toward making sure that we're bringing or have a focus on bringing our students back up to a an acceptable level based on uh the great that they're in for the the learning that they should be at because there has been a lot of discussion about that covet i think i've heard the term covet gap but we want to make sure the premise behind these funds is that we're trying to close that gap and if i may on this one you will not hear me talk about learning loss i think that is i think there's some fallacy in all of that and i think that every
165student in our system has experienced impact on their learning because of covet what our approach is going to be on this learning piece is to enrich the learning experience for every one of our kids that needs it and so you'll see in our next presentation coming up an expansion of our summer learning programs and we want to expand that to more students we want our students that are in the classrooms now to get deeper learning experiences so that they know the content know the standards in depth and can apply their learning so you're going to hear us talk more and more about enriching the learning experience for each and every one of our kids in our district rather than about learning loss okay thank you thank you very much and what you were just talking
166about summer academic learning report mrs er excuse me dr love smith is coming on up to give us an a quick overview of our summer academic learning absolutely so i was just kind of dying in that last question because um that's exactly what we're talking about as dr smith said we're not talking about learning loss but extending opportunities for our students we recognize that we lost some time last year with our students and we wanted to make sure that we offer opportunities for students to come in the summer if they would like to in the past when we pre-coded for our elementary programs we offered programs specifically for kids who had been struggling throughout the year and in this this year we are expanding to open to all students we're very excited about this we're
167going to have an elementary program for our incoming first through fifth graders and to just give you a little perspective in the 1819 school year we had 90 students who participated in sale last year we had 241 we were fully virtual as of today we have 297 students signed up and we're still accepting students it's open to all students we're encouraging parents to comments at no cost we'll also offer a challenge program this is specific for incoming sixth graders so what we recognize is fifth graders don't want to consider themselves elementary students anymore but they're not middle school students and so we have a program specifically targeted to our first summer challenge and as of right now we have 26 students that's twice the number from last year this will be the second year we
168offer this program our middle school program in the past for middle school we have offered a program only for star for our eighth grade students that was required for students to have a third opportunity to receive remediation before the third assessment this year we we're opening up again our middle school to all students our middle school program unlike our elementaries which will be both in person and virtual our middle school program will be in person we feel like that best meets the needs of our middle school students again like i said this is the first time we've opened up this program to all students and we currently have 49 students enrolled so we're very excited to see the numbers coming through we will continue to offer a high school program we do not have numbers
169yet for high school because we're holding out hope till june 9th many students that will they'll earn their credit however we will continue to offer credit recovery for any students in 10th through 12th grade our high school has done a great job about offering ongoing credit recovery throughout the year so that they're not dependent on summer i'm learning we will offer it though this summer and it will be both in person and virtual in addition to our our credit recovery or our pe for original credit we are going to offer an opportunity for students to come in and take their cpr this is a state requirement so we'll offer it on one day for any student that may have missed it we typically offer it through this through the school year and then we also
170are going to offer a tsi boot camp we've not done this before this is a new program this will assist students with a with additional support before they take a tsi test in ela or math we'll have our bilingual program which will be for incoming k through third grade students this program will meet in person for the first part this is a required program by the state it's required to meet 120 hours we'll offer the first portion of it in person and then we'll offer the second person for second portion virtually and then we have our gt virtual camp what we learned last year our gt camp for the first time ever went virtual we learned in a virtual setting we were able to serve more students and it worked well with parents schedules so
171we've kept that for this year we have like 17 courses that are offered we're offering them this year at multiple times we'll have virtual opportunities in the morning in the afternoon or in the evening parents can sign up for which of those choices they'd like for their students and that is a two-week program we are excited about these opportunities for our students we do believe that opening up to all students is going to meet the needs of our kids as well as meeting the needs of of parents and and by having um both in-person and virtual options any questions for me any questions thank you thank you deanna okay thank you mr taggart facilities committee report have to lean over here i think matt turned my speaker off on purpose uh facilities wise the number
172one thing that we really dug into deep was our bond capacity potential moving forward and what i will say is our our financial team jennifer ritter i believe our bond lady the previous administration and our previous people have put us in a really good spot our debt's falling off quick and we will have capacity to go to the voters to to get some things accomplished this next time and it was more than what i anticipated potentially be there but obviously that'll be up to a massive evaluation board recommendation and then the stakeholders ultimately passing it but we're in really good shape guys and if we do decide to take a big a big chunk this time we're going to still be in great shape moving forward 12 years down the road when we have to
173start looking at high school number three middle school number five we really are in really good shape that's the main thing to take from that at this point and we'll have more information as we kind of put that strategic plan together uh we talked about facilities assessment mike and his people are crunching the numbers they're putting these things together it has a lot more to do with budget than what we realize it really does long range planning so we're really starting to get to see the workings of that 35 000 data points that those firms put together for us elementary school designs i didn't think about this but tarver was designed 15 years ago so even though those campuses are wonderful the four footprints that we have those four newer campuses elementaries that's that's an
174older thought process and it's a sprawling campus that needs a lot of space and as we're finding with this new building boom and land grab space is going to be really hard to find so going to a two-story footprint that's what this was about earlier today starting to put that design together could help us in the future be able to require less space possibly if that's something that's needed but it's just a revamping too i think the thing in the facilities assessment that we realized was our philosophy as far as classrooms and school buildings didn't change for generations for 50 plus years and then these four schools are awesome but it's time to to rethink what our new philosophies are with with with our new you know with our new uh journey plan so that's
175what it really boils down to is what the journey sets that agenda for what yes what's for this new campus concept so what we talked about earlier with the construction delivery methods that's going to help us get there a lot more efficiently and when we do get there boom we're ready to go and then the facilities naming nomination forms this was our first meeting to have that we had three can i say anything or we'll i just want to say we're moving forward with one and i think it'll be coming to us mike next month so i'm super excited about that and then there's a the other two were they're in the works but i was so excited to see these forms turned in because we have so many people that have made such a
176huge impact in our district and it's time we honored these people and this is what that's all about that's it any questions thank you mr tiger manual with the policy committee report last but not least right let's talk about something really oh okay here you go um we had our meeting on may the 3rd uh janet lee was there chris flora was there and then probably the administrative staff of course dr smith one of the things that that matt and i had discussed it's been quite some time now we talked about reviewing the entire policy and procedure manual that we have for the for the beltman but the school district so matt had uh a task be represented to come speak to us virtually and what they will do what tabs we will do and
177of course i didn't know this until until we had the talk the other day is they will conduct a policy review session for us they call it a prs i'll tell you the cost now is what uh between five and six thousand dollars that's done now one of the things that i was really surprised about was that we have not reviewed or bisd has not reviewed its policies in a comprehensive review since 2001 so it's been 20 years tasby recommends that those policy reviews occur every five to seven years and of course obviously ours is way overdue um they they gave us a rundown this is what it looks like the slide that he gave us um of course there has to be an agreement between tasby and and the school district then they submit
178a questionnaire then they begin the preparation and what's what was good here is they have an administrative session and also a board session so we get some training along with that and i don't think that we get any credit for that right one hour one hour yeah i think that question was asked during that part of it um we have of course we we talked about it many times uh when i do these reports there are legal there are legal policies and then there are local policies and and there's about i think what he said we have 160 something policies total we have 45 local ones uh so they don't they don't review the the legal ones because that's done with the policy updates that come across and the legal ones i mean they're pretty
179much yeah i mean they're they're based on state law federal law administrative regulations that kind of thing so there's not any there's not any leeway there of course the local policies represent our philosophies our beliefs it's unique to us it's probably time that we have a comprehensive review i don't know if we need it matt do we need to bring that up at some point um in terms of a vote or how's what's the process yeah we'll be bringing that back to you um i think we're going to discuss that again at the next policy committee meeting to make sure you're all comfortable with it we're finalizing some details from tasby and then we'll come forward and let you all know from from there after we get a gauge of what the policy committee would
180like to do and chris you had asked an interesting question during our session about um well doesn't tasty provide that that service anyway based upon what we pay them annually um what was your question do you remember your question specifically i mean i think it was pretty much that all right i just want to make sure that i understood what we were paying for normally right and why or how this was above and beyond what we what we typically would expect and this is a separate service with a separate price and when you look at these these policies there's 45 of them there's there's a lot of work i mean it sounds like a hefty amount of money 5 thousand six thousand dollars but there's a there's a hefty amount of time that's going to
181have to be spent reviewing all these things and since it's been since 2001 20 years we probably ought to take a look at that one way or the other and either we do it in our sessions or we do it we allow these folks to take the reins and and and review those for us so that's that's in the works um so when you kind of just ask a quick question how would they do they speak to how what the process would be as far as being able to review those policies and making sure that they we retain our local desires of what we want as opposed to the way they think they should be set up well that makes any sense i i think that will come from their meeting with administrative staff gotcha
182i don't i don't know that we talked about specifically who they meet with matt i'm sure you're involved in that yeah i think it would be your cabinet um all those folks are involved and they have an input as to as to what is done during the review process that's that's a good question i mean i didn't i didn't think about that but that's that's a good question we don't want them changing things for us i think some of it too has to do with making sure that we we comport with what what the law is and we're not doing something that that's out of date you know what i'm saying um manual may i address that real quick one of the things that they'll do is basically they work with administrative staff and they
183take a look at policy and ask on practice and they make sure that policy and practice are in in alignment then they take a look at your policy is written they take a look at what the tasby guidance is and they say here's where your pr what your policy says your practice is in line or out of line here's what we would recommend and then it's up to our policy committee and our own legal counsel not tasby's legal counsel to determine what's best for belton isd at that point again the board lives in that policy discussion and that's really where that policy committee would come in handy and can i just say that you know we've been any review that's happened of our policy up to this point and especially in the last year and
184a half with kovid there's been quite a bit of policy review but it's been in pieces and the ad administrators and matt and us together have been doing that project by project together and so to have somebody take a look at all of it comprehensively and discuss with admin would be helpful moving forward i mean we're going to get some more information but it seems to me at this point that it would be prudent for us to do that i mean it seems like the smart thing to do just like matt said make sure that what we're doing matches what we have on paper and not doing something different um the the next item that we discussed with ff ac local was the second reading and it's i think it's on page 110 of your
185materials um mike morgan came and spoke to us about that and i think the discussion is centered around the unassigned use of epinephrine and the thing that's probably most important here is that it's going to be if epinephrine needs to be administered to a student because there's an anaphylaxis situation occurring then that person is going to be trained that person is going to agree in writing to administer that and that person is going to be trained and there are specific guidelines as to what that person has to be taught before they are allowed to administer epinephrine so just looking at the policy i think it's i think it's it's very clear that that whoever administers epinephrine is going to be trained to do it which was one of our i guess primary concerns during the
186discussion i don't think that uh there's anything in that policy now that's that we're concerned about i think it's pretty clear uh anybody have any questions about the no and i think the intent was to get as many staff members as possible trained to to to to be able to do that okay um i i will say that you know you know when we had the talk on becks today and then our principals coming in and talking i know mr smith mentioned you know journey of a graduate which is obviously as we had discussed before it's going to come into come into play in everything that we do policies whatever we do is going to come into play so we had our another discussion on eic local i see diana i can tell she's smiling
187yeah she's smiling um and i'll tell you this that that i think at some point in the future i mean deanna and her and her folks have done a lot of work on this and i think at some point in the future maybe it's later on this summer we may have to have a have her come in and give us a summary give us a road map of where we started and where we are because there's a lot of information here that we that that were that we discuss in these meetings now um remember last month uh what what she brought to us was the results of the survey of the students and what their wishes were and how they how it impacted their their choice of of classes and whether they were playing the
188the gpa game or whether they were taking something that they really wanted to take now this this last session or this last um bit of information that she provided us i won't go through all of it because it's actually quite a bit just a couple of things that i want to mention to you one of the questions and we're talking about colleges and talking to colleges hey you know do you look at class rank or do you do you have a more holistic approach what if the school district that this kid is coming from doesn't doesn't rank so how are you going to decide whether you're going to accept that student or not well um some universities create their own ranking system uh some universities then shift to a holistic review and this is a
189this is a the report that deanna had given us nothing changes to the admission process since the university already reviews holistically so bottom line is that if we're going to change eic local to indicate that um we're not going to worry so much about class rank um how's that going to impact students getting into a particular school if they want to get into a particular school now janet brought up something uh that i thought was interesting you talked about the top tier of students right you remember your question about that well that they would they would do whatever they it took either way right either way so it doesn't matter what we do there's going to be a certain number of students percentage-wise they're going to do they're just going to play that game so
190we're talking about all the rest of the students that are not going to play that game um so this is a a fairly complicated process um we're going to have to have a lot more discussion about it before we make any moves on eic local um and and at the end of the at the end of the session deanna's going to gather some additional information and we're just going to keep adding to this and like i said i think that that it would be it would benefit us all i mean i can go back and look at all my notes but it would benefit us she summarizes this information at some point in the future whether it's in august or whenever it is but at some point we're going to have to have a summary
191of of of what has been presented to us over the course of last several months before we make a even even start discussing change in eic local if i can add one thing on this topic on specifically on eic local as you all remember this discussion began last year and we were asked at that point as an administrative team to bring this back for our policy committee to take a look at so we are in the middle of what we would call a policy study we are gathering info our policy committee has asked us to get certain information from our students from our staff from colleges and universities and we're in the middle of presenting that right now ultimately it's the board's responsibility to adopt policy and so if at the end of this the
192policy committee recommends changes we would then bring that to the whole board and have you all vote on it appropriately but that we're in the middle of a study process it could be that we don't do anything it could be that there are recommendations moving forward and i just want to be ultra clear on that one because this is where the board lives on those policies chris you had something yeah i think there's maybe two points right that i think everybody should know that we took away with right we only we only i think came to one concrete answer right so so when it comes to like advanced placement versus dual credit versus on-ramps right i think what we learned through the the research that was done was that the way that the colleges and
193universities treat those classes right ap dual credit and on-ramps from an admission standpoint is the same so they don't look at it they don't look at ap any differently than dual enrollment although we we look at it differently right so so we learned that pretty universally in the schools that that were talked to so the other piece of information we got was nowhere near as concrete from a ranking standpoint everybody does it differently so there is no one way to do it um that you know is going to set students up you know for a better situation or a worse situation everybody's doing it differently there's no consistency around it so those i think were the two real key takeaways i think from that conversation that i think this group needs to know about we're
194gonna you know again continue to do more research okay is that all manual yes sir all right thank you very much all right next item on the agenda is the consent agenda is there any item on there that we need to remove no if not i'll take a motion to approve it mr taggart miss bass everybody oh well i lost my train of thought there didn't i okay uh i'll approve passes thank you now request for new information and or reports board any mcdonald i do um as far as our noon badges and things well that happens sooner than later because we'll have to just use my old picture that was the best picture i want a new picture i don't want a new picture do you not no i have my goatee in this
195one i'm gonna get rid of it so so i'll just put that out there we'll get back to you on that one that's a great great question thank you okay miss lee trial closer no sir i'm here no okay and next is our calendar events there's quite a few you've got it i'm not going to read them all but i'll highlight a few of them here uh friday may 21st that will be this friday admin employee appreciation luncheon you're all that will be where it was last year or two years ago whenever we did that correct out in front of the admin building mr taggart you're cooking so you should know weather permitting weather permitting uh and i believe this is the one connie that everybody's supposed to be bringing something and not everybody can
196bring potato salad i tried that yeah everybody's got to bring something okay uh friday june 4th retirees luncheon the bhs bleachers and thursday june 10th that's graduation day with three graduations that day so that will be a lot of fun i am going to ask this because i thought about it while i looked at the pictures of our last graduation which i thought was wonderful by the way we're going to be outside um are we going to be dressed casual for this like we were at the last one that's a loaded question i think right at this point um a couple of things that we want to make sure we do is we want our board to be comfortable out there is you're going to be out outside for all three graduations we're going to
197make sure we have some shade that's available to you all in graduation attire as elizabeth mentioned earlier we are working to secure some graduation shirts and it'll be up to the board whether or not you decide to be robed or in graduation shirts that day i would recommend graduation shirts i'm going to go with that okay is there anything else if not adjourn the meeting you