001all righty it is 6 17. at this time i'd like to call this meeting of the belton independent school district board of trustees to order a quorum of board members is present i will note that our board trustee janet lee is not with us tonight we will miss her this meeting has been duly called and a notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings act texas government co-chapter 5 51 please rise for a moment of silent prayer or meditation thank you all please remain standing as our communications team introduces our students from pearl elementary here to lead us in the pledge of allegiance and honors to the texas flag yes ma'am thank you madam president tonight with us we have the pearl panthers mason bailey and brooklyn jennings both
002fifth graders mason's favorite subject in school is math and he is involved in several clubs including the pearl running club and purdle rock stars he describes himself as outgoing and adventurous and in his free time mason enjoys playing soccer and doing puzzles and we also talked a little bit about possibly cross country in his future because he has stamina in his running we discussed in miss brooklyn she's also a fifth grader her favorite subject in school is reading because she believes books have the ability to take you places that you've never been before she also loves reading about the adventures of characters in the books in her free time brooklyn enjoys playing with her siblings and her cousins she is the oldest among all of them she shared she is also an active runner and
003is part of the pearl running club so we're first going to invite mason to lead us in the u.s pledge and then brooklyn will follow him with the texas pledge i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one indivisible that was excellent thank you all so much we always like to get our little party started with some recognitions and we've got some really great recognitions this evening and miss cox if you'll get us started yes ma'am thank you madam president what we enjoyed during our student showcase in our break tonight was the north baltimore middle school theater performance
004they were back there in the back with us we were honored to have the cast of charlotte's web performing a scene from their upcoming production the show opens may 14th at 6 pm in the school's cafetorium it with a second performance on may 15th at 2pm in lieu of buying tickets audience members can make a donation to the theater program students participating in tonight's performance include giselle lemus tyler gray lauren denker gabriel dalton kimberly dewberry avery rayburn jalen mace leah aguilar mila knight and ava speichard the production is directed by theater teacher connie gilseth and we just want to thank them again for coming and entertaining us this evening congratulations [Applause] first up for recognitions adts national champions the belton high school magic bells have once again claimed national champion titles at the american dance
005drill team nationals competition held at the university of north texas late last month competing alongside 49 teams the magic bells took the top spot in the contemporary category with their performance of colorbind and earned the first and second place titles and duets with the partner performances of genevieve zweissek and leah reyes and also ella ling and reagan martin in addition there are over 10 other awards that the belt and magic bells claimed i'll let you read it in the board memo but tonight with us to accept this team recognition is captain genevieve zwezik and officers madeleine bradshaw rachel schiller and maggie hodnick their coaches are rachel hill and emma sewer thank you so much and congratulations also at this same competition some of the district's younger dancers had a successful season earlier this year members
006of the pearl dance team collected socks and underwear to donate to our district's project heartbeat program they entered the service project with the american dance and drill team and in march they were announced as the winners of grand champion giving back award the award comes with a 250 donation to further support project heartbeat the pearl dance team is an after school club with over 80 students participating the group is taught by teachers jennifer anderman elizabeth bandy amy martinson and heather whiteley along with former magic bell and current umhb student and seder bell berkeley martinson congratulations and thank you i expect we'll see some of these students back in the later years too good to get them in here at elementary level another big exciting recognition tonight belton isd was represented at the texas high school
007women's powerlifting association state championship by six high school student athletes last month from lake belton high school sophomores pedro and ayers and haley thomas qualified for the state competition in their first year ever competing in the sport thomas finished in 12th place in the state in her weight classification ayers finished in seventh in her weight classification and posted a personal best in the bench press and deadlift from belton high school we had four lady tiger power lifters qualifying and compete at the state championship freshman jc meyers junior maya jones senior bryce allen borland and senior bethany shorewood all four ladies finished the competition within the top 10 of their weight classes three finishing with their personal best weight totals and bethany sherwood finished the competition by bringing home a state medal earning fourth place in
008the 198 pound weight class with a total of 900 pounds oh my goodness coaches for these outstanding belton isd athletes are greg rudolph barry campbell and crystal year again congratulations to these amazing student [Applause] [Music] athletes i'm expecting we'll see them back since several of them are freshmen and juniors that's cool next up we have our uil theatrical design state qualifiers two varsity theater students are advancing to the state uil theatrical design competition juniors felicity anderson and madeline clark who both attend belton new tech were among students from across the state who submitted designs based on the musical man of la mancha anderson's marketing designs and clark's hair makeup will now be resubmitted for the state meet in may belton high school's technical director of theater is marie phillips congratulations to these students and their
009technical director [Applause] our belt and rotary educator of the quarter is ms sarah harden trimble she's being recognized for outstanding service to belton isd sarah serves as a fourth grade teacher at sparta elementary she is in her 19th year in education and her fifth with belton isd mrs hardin sets a high expectations for herself and for her students and finds every way for students to meet those expectations this year mrs harden met the challenge of virtual learning for her fourth grade self-contained class she made the online learning fun and engaging and students succeeded because of her efforts she then moved to be a hybrid teacher where some students are face to face and some are virtual again mrs hardin created the best learning environment for all students her students are making progress and growing as
010learners because of her efforts the relationships she has built hold fast in both environments julie manley principal at sparta stated mrs harden is an incredible educator who values relationships with students and families above all else i would highly recommend her for an outstanding as an outstanding representative for educator of the month congratulations and thank you for what you're doing mrs harden now our temple rotary educator of the month mary cruz audrey is being recognized as the temple rotary club for her outstanding service to belton isd mary cruz serves as a pre-k teacher at belton early childhood school possibly one of our favorite places to be on the communications team she's in her 22nd year in belton isd mrs vaude is dedicated to connecting with kids every day her positivity is contagious among staff and students
011she provides each and every student with structured engaging activities and allows their voices to be heard she teaches students to observe and share their learning with others in the classroom this rich learning environment which she has created has resulted in students feeling valued confident and eager to communicate courtney brewer assistant principal at beck stated one of my favorite things to see in her class is the use of the table captains and leaders even at four years old these students exhibit leadership qualities mrs vaude has created a sense of community and unity within her classroom thank you for all that you do mrs audrey [Applause] and finally tonight we bring before you the tasman award of excellence in financial management belton isd is one of only 10 school districts across the state to be awarded the
012inaugural award of excellence in financial management by the texas association of school business officials this new program recognized texas schools districts that have implemented professional standards best practices and innovations in financial reporting while we want to thank all of our business services staff for what they do each and every day for all of our students and staff involved in making this happen and with us tonight we have carrie pridemore ebony ortiz tris miller and mrs jennifer land our cfo congratulations and thank [Applause] you always a lot of fun it's just pleasing to my soul to recognize good people good students good work amazing all righty then so the next item on our agenda are public comments we have a number of folks signed up so i will just be as clear as i can be
013when you all are when i call your name if you'll come up to the podium here state your name and your address for record in accordance with district policy bed local any person wishing to address the board in public comments must submit a public comments form i already have that up here 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 that simply just says that while we're happy to hear what you have to say we're not able to engage in a back and forth discussion with you but we're certainly here to hear
014happy to hear whatever you would like to discuss with us each participant should be limited to five minutes our board designate today will be our vice president raise your hand one more time vice president jeff norwood he will keep the time during your remarks and will provide a notice when one minute uh remains and again at the conclusion of your five minutes if comments address the matter on on the meeting agenda the board will defer discussion on 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 and administrative channels when they've been placed on the agenda as i stated before i'm going to go ahead and just call you by your name forgive me if i get your last
015name wrong but if you will clearly come up to this podium here miss andrea gother gaither and just state your name and your address for the record and when you start speaking mr norwood will start the timer good evening my name is andrea gothier my address is 2515 inca dove drive here in temple texas i know you're all thrilled to see me here again tonight rest assured i'm not here to make you answer to me i'm quite sure at this point god is already aware of your complicit crimes against our children january 6 my child's 5th grade english teacher thought it was a fun idea to throw the language arts curriculum out the window our children watched cnn that day they saw cars being blown up and missile strikes you can imagine if this material
016had been in a movie she would have needed a signed permission slip from us parents aside from the violence she showed these 10 and 11 year olds this day she told the class everyone needed a coveted vaccine not fda approved not approved for children and she's not a health or science teacher why is a teacher giving medical advice to our children after school that day my son came home afraid a vaccine that was given to my husband a doctor at fort hood stole the health of his dad my d my son has seen codes called on his dad he once had a healthy active dad that coached him playing soccer and now has a dad that thankfully can just barely walk again my husband is immune compromised and receives ivig monthly when i asked this
017teacher that evening why she thought it was her place to show the bombings airstrikes or give medical advice to children that day she told me i was just mad because it was cnn this is someone that has never met me she doesn't know me my political beliefs my religious beliefs or how i parent my children she had no idea that for the last four years i was one of those pink wearing anti-trump marching women i didn't care for him didn't respect him or the way he talked about women you see this teacher is rogue she's dangerous she's promoted so much wear and mask if you care about others wear a mask so you don't kill grandma and grandpa the other students have harassed my children you must be a racist trump supporter one fifth grader
018said to all three of my kids at the end of one day because my kids went to school wearing a face shield and not a mask is that acceptable that our kids are being harassed and called racist trump supporters for parental decisions of whether they wear a face shield or a mask there's too many politics in the classroom dare i say too many leander politics too much of the teacher's personal opinion is being projected on the students i'm disgusted my second grader and her best friend are segregated on opposite playgrounds at charter oak i'm disgusted that you all think you have any right making medical decisions for our children there's a hundred other districts in texas now that have allowed parental choice i urge you again to do the same you are not god you
019are not my children's parents you are not my child's doctor which you've also ignored you're too busy being political you're contributing to mental health problems in children the suicide rate is 67 percent in children it's up 67 percent in the last year you've created an environment full of abuse you've kept parents out of classrooms you've kept us from having relationships with teachers you've promoted a toxic and abusive environment at bisd you've overset boundaries it's time for a reality check no mask is soccer for my kids gymnastics or during worship we've gone to the rodeo the zoo and the caverns we're not wearing masks i've already told you my husband's immune compromising gets ivig every month we still aren't living in fear i don't mean to trample on anyone else's beliefs if you feel more comfortable
020wearing a mask for you and your children that is fine however that is not what i want for my children no massive school free our children from the pacific the political placebo you may not answer to me but you will answer to god promote basic hand hygiene it's time to ditch the mask one minute recovery rate it's not a pandemic especially in our children thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] shauna duggan heart [Music] shannon please state your name and address for the record please shannon degenhardt naples drive temple texas good evening my name is shannon degenhardt while my children are not zoned for bisd i have two very special nieces that are i stand before you today speaking on half of the voiceless in this district and the children and the teachers the children have been
021forced to wear an ineffective medical device for viruses all year in order to get a quality education they have been told over and over to keep their mask on for everyone to stay safe from sickness and dying we have instilled a fear in them that is beyond horrifying this fear we have created carries over to their daily lives as well i witness it frequently when i shop around town mask free and a mass child cowers to their parent in fear when they see me maskless when parents complain to schools about the forced masking and the problems it's creating for their child they are told they can do virtual learning if they don't want to comply give me a break we all know that is not an adequate education teachers even admit that what are we
022doing to our children and when is someone going to stand up for them unfortunately we know it's not going to be the teachers an admin at each school they are fearful of losing their jobs i called on several friends that are teachers and a principal from this district to stand up speak or even just show up today all of their responses were the same i agree with you one hundred percent this is terrible what we're doing to our children but due to conflict of interest and fear of losing my job i have to remain silent i hadn't planned on speaking tonight but only attending the meeting to show support but when my teacher friend at church approached me yesterday begged me to stand up she said hold the line and fight for the voiceless i
023knew what had to be done today i call on you mr smith on you mrs mcdonald and you mr norwood you also mr taggart you mister floor you mr alkozer and you my friend mrs bass to stand up for our children if not you who is going to do it [Applause] [Music] rebecca isdow please state your name and address for the record rebecca isdale it's 569 messer ranch road in belton good evening i appreciate the opportunity to be here speaking with you tonight my name is rebecca isdale again i have four children two of our daughters currently attend south belton middle school our little ones pre-k and kindergarten aged aren't aren't attending belton elementary school we're zoned for because of the mask mandate they've been attending a private school where masks have never been required
024for the kids and there's no major outbreaks we've been attending our church in belton without masks since september with hundreds of people our kids have been going into child care and youth group with many kids all masked free there's been no outbreak we were at a clay walker concert friday night in solato with a thousand other people maybe even some of you 99 with no masks we have a lot of friends and neighbors many of whom are in the healthcare field and we all hang out together in large groups fellowshipping with with one another and letting our kids play no one's wearing masks and there's no super sweater stuff going on we were just at extreme trampoline park and temple on saturday for a birthday party the place was packed only about five percent were
025wearing masks we went to spare time a week and a half ago and it's never been i've never seen it more crowded and again there were virtually no masks i would imagine that many of you when you're not serving in this role or just like us and not wearing masks so why the farce a lot of people don't want to wear masks it's a front when they wear than to school they're not they they're not wearing masks other places they're not getting sick and you continue to infringe on their freedoms this is putting our children's psychological well-being health and education at risk masks just as vaccinations should remain a personal choice and i would hope you would agree that institutions such as government tea and respectfully this very board should not be allowed to make
026medical decisions for our children we're not asking you all to say no masks we're asking that you allow for people to choose if some people are too afraid to come to school without a mask mandate let them stay home teachers who have to come to school can wear masks and exercise social distancing if they choose i plead with you to stand up for the children in the district including those who have been failed this year due to these policies it is time that we make masks optional for our children and staff and allow them to return to normal like the flu cobit is not going away we risk something greater by not ending this now the mass mandate is not helping covet from spreading i encourage you to look at the facts and not be
027led by emotion and mask shaming look at the school districts that lifted the mass mandate back on march 10 when our governor did look at their coveted cases and you'll find there has not been an explosion of covet you are our elected officials please honor our rights as parents i will fight for our public schools it defines our community and embodies embodies our values we will fight to hold this board to its intended position please adjust this policy we beg you god bless and thank you brandon hall make it very difficult so thank you my name brandon hall and i live at 3205b river place drive i have two children that attend new tech high school one proudly supports and participates on the jv bells team and uh that win numerous awards and she loves
028participating and representing the school and i also have a son who's in ninth grade actually she's about to graduate as a senior so we're very proud of her she's going to texas tech so thank you for giving her the education that allows her to be able to succeed at the next level we also have a son who's in ninth grade at new tech and he also participates on the basketball team and he loves it and he enjoys representing the school both are incredible students and my wife and i are very proud of them so with that i'd like to make my comments please i'm here in support of removing the masks off of these children both of my children asked me to come here and speak for them because they feel that they do not
029have a voice in this they do not want to wear their masks they do not feel that it is required or necessary but aside from the feelings we know after a year of dealing with this we now have data that we can step back and review we can look at what the scientists are telling us and we have to know that amongst all of the everything that's being told and all the different propaganda that's being thrown on both sides if we actually step back and look at the data we can see some some things that that make sense you know telling the truth in a world of lies is a revolutionary act and that's what i'm here to do looking at the cdc's website itself and their own studies it says that disposable medical masks
030have there is limited evidence that they're effective and their systematic review found that no significant effect of face masks or transmission of lab that they that they that they protect at all that's just one study right there we have another study that says that when we wear masks this is another cdc study that says that the blood co2 levels increase after one hour of wearing these masks and it creates significant physiological effects on the wearer stuff like headaches increased pressure inside the skull nervous system changes increased breathing frequency increased work of breathing and requiring to breathe many times when we have to wear we want to move them from our faces because our bodies are not getting enough oxygen to fix the problem what these doctors are saying is simply remove the mask that's their
031that's what they say as as to fix the problems with the masks that do not work is to remove them we're seeing that they cause headaches rashes acne skin breakdown impaired cognition one that i pulled from stanford recently which is a vast right-wing conspiracy uh you know university this is stanford um they they're saying that the impact that is occurring while wearing these the effectiveness of face max are ineffective to blocking the particles because the particles are so much smaller than the face mask they say that the evidence challenges the efficacy of face masks compared to no masks there were no effective they were no no more effective against transmission of viral infections or influenza these things do not work we may think that they work we may feel safer with them but they do
032not work and what are the long-term effects we don't know we know that they cause problems like headaches we know that and these are all physiological issues that we see but what about the psychological issues what about the psychological impacts to young children to teenagers in these awkward years when they're trying to fit in and get along it is so difficult to look at someone else with half of their face covered they have a hard enough time identifying who they are as teenagers as as children and now we have to add this to it we know that any individual that's 19 or younger has a 99.997 percent of surviving this we probably have a probability of getting a higher probability of getting hit by a car crossing a street we know that those from 20
033to 49 have a 99.98 chance of survival and those 69 and under a 99.5 chance we know the numbers now and i'm asking you as our representatives as our leaders as the ones that can help these children make the decision to remove the masks please do not follow the fear but lead by example and boldness that's what i ask thank you margie pyle please state your name and address for the record my name is margie pill and i live at south highway 35 belton texas 7-6-5-13 i am here today for all of the children but i'm definitely here for the children that have had assault in their lives and they are being made to wear these masks in your school buildings i don't know if any of that has ever happened to you but i
034am a survivor of rape and i will not be wearing a mask my mouth will not be covered my mouth will not be not exposed to be able to shout to the world that i am a survivor we we have to stand up for our children did you know according to reign.org one in nine girls are sexually assaulted and one in 50 boys are we have hundreds of kids in our buildings and our schools that we are protecting and we're doing a great job but it doesn't matter these kids are walking home these kids are riding the bus and walking home there's assaults that do happen happen in school buildings and they are having to cover a mask not only that when you wear a mask and cover your face the anxiety that comes with
035that we are a school we are learning these kids are not learning when all they have is the draft of my mouth is covered i cannot breathe i cannot breathe it takes you back to that moment when you had no control over your body and once again in these school systems they have no control over their bodies they have to wear this mask or they can't go to school sure they can do learning on a computer at home isolated from other children that is not the answers there is healing that comes from survivors and they need friends they need teachers they need counselors they need coaches they need principals they need each one of you to say i support you and i'm not going to harm you any more than you already are please i
036am begging you do not force these kids to wear masks inside your school when they are affected anyway they are already living in fear what if they come back what if they hurt my family member i have to go to court next month i'm still in counseling i'm still in counseling three years later and i'm still having to wear a mask at school it might not seem like a big deal to you but it is a big deal and i promise you they are not focusing on learning their social skills are not being taught and growing when all of when they are just covered up i'm asking you please be there for the kids and unmask our kids at least give a choice i'm not saying that every child or every teacher shouldn't wear a
037mask it should be a personal choice us parents should be able to choose for our children if that is what they should wear or not it doesn't do anything and it needs to stop now thank you [Music] christina wilson okay please state your name and address for the record good evening my name is christina wilson i'm an independent journalist with naked wire network uh members of the board excuse me i live in belton 5105 fenton lane good evening ladies and gentlemen members of the board and our superintendent matt smith this evening i would like to spend my time speaking about the belton school board and belton school district's decision to remove parental choice in regard to their child's health and well-being specifically by forcing them to wear a face mask when they attend face-to-face instruction
038on campus i stand before you this evening one year and one day after the infamous claim of 15 days to slow the spread the fact that i am here in an attempt to reclaim our children's god-given right to personal liberty is disheartening to say the least to be clear i will not continue to speak from an emotionally driven standpoint instead i will be discussing research and facts the very research and facts that you all are already acutely aware of but continue to ignore the same facts that countless parents spent hours researching that were sent to your office for review and of which none was responded to or taken into consideration months ago when the mandates were lifted i never thought there would ever be a need to stand in front of a school board discussing
039the very basic common sense knowledge but let's discuss the physiology of breathing as brandon already did thank you brandon i'll even put in it medical terms for you breathing is one of the most important physiological functions to sustain life and health the human body requires a continuous and adequate oxygen supply to all organs and cells for normal function and survival breathing is also an essential process for removing metabolic byproducts like you guessed it carbon dioxide it is well established that an acute significant deficit in oxygen with increased levels of carbon dioxide even for a few minutes can be severely harmful this is where the common sense part comes in my friends why is my five-year-old being forced to wear a face mask on his face while he is outside at recess why is my 12
040year old forced to wear a face mask in pe while he is running does that seem like a good healthy choice to you can the school board and school district guarantee that every student being forced to wear a face mask has not or will not experience any harmful side effects by wearing one can you can you guarantee that yes i will continue to the efficiency of face masks again this research is already well established and each of you are already well aware of it but on a whim on a whim just in case one of you happens to honestly not know this information here is again in medical terms the data is clear masks are ineffective to block viral particles period clinical scientific evidence shows that the efficiency of face masks to block human to
041human transmission of any virus is ineffective there are countless controlled trials that show this very research a simple google search my friends in case you need a quick reminder in layman's terms and in case in case i mean let me just put this in layman's term okay this was america's frontline doctors this came from her at the start of this pandemic back last july this came from a doctor from the american frontline doctors who was very outspoken about this issue from the very beginning she said and i quote if all anybody had to do to prevent the spread of a virus was to put a piece of cloth up to their face do you not think that our ancestors would have taught us the centuries ago and our grandmothers i'm fairly certain she said that
042i would have learned this information in medical school this is a doctor many doctors have said this this is common sense my friends it's common sense why has this district refused to follow the other 112 school districts in texas who lifted their restrictions while while the mandates were lifted when the mandates were lifted why why their data clearly shows a decrease in cova cases as a result fancy that oh and that information by the way mr superintendent has already been provided to you multiple times one minute now let me continue further and discuss the physiological effects of wearing face masks and again you have already been provided this information physiologic excuse me psychologically according to established research wearing face masks has a fundamental negative effect on the wearer and the nearby person basic human to
043human connect connectivity through face expression is compromised and self-identity is eliminated these sorts of dehumanizing movements delete the uniqueness and individuality of a person as well as the connected person what do you think this has done to my the development of my five-year-old i would share that testimony with you but i vow to keep emotion out of this please ask yourself if you have truly taken into consideration all aspects of this issue have you you are all parents how would you respond to this 20 years ago when all we had access to was dial up internet would you have been so easily manipulated no where did our critical thinking skills go my god limiting human human contact especially in a very young age of a child is nothing but detrimental to their growth and development
044period and i won't even get into all the statistics about thank you for your comments that is your time [Applause] i had way more to say sorry eric dominoski please state your name and address for the record good evening my name is eric dominowski i live at 328 irish lane in killeen uh you know i sit here and i listen to this group of parents and i'm sitting here wondering if you guys are are tired of hearing us yet um i want to assure you that there is more than the 20 individuals that of us sitting here and i am here speaking for thousands probably thousands and thousands of parents within your district colleen coppers cove who all feel the same way you've heard these stories i don't have a script this evening i've done
045that already i spent the past year with scripps sending emails talking to vice principals principals superintendents phone calls zoom meetings at board meetings i want to be here and i want to look each one of you in the eye and i want you to look at me because i'm not asking anymore i'm tired of asking i've been asking for the past year for choice and allow me the right to look out for my son's health i don't need you i don't need the school board i don't need the school district to dictate or force a mask on my child i know what's best for him i've been raising him for 14 years not you okay what we're doing here is absurd if we just sit here and have common sense and take the politics out
046of this you will see that wearing a mask on our children wear the mask eight hours day after day after week after month is illogical it makes no sense it's not preventing disease it's not keeping them alive okay my family has not worn a mask since the beginning we were out about a month ago at a place in lampasas and i'm not even going to say their name because i'm afraid they'll catch backlash but there was hundreds of children there having fun celebrating hugging each other high fiving guess what none of us died we're fine i want to know how you guys are supposed to follow the t e t e a code and there's a specific code in there that prohibits you or teachers or anybody in the school district to place a mask
047on a child during a verse of techniques not even you can't even do it for minutes five minutes during adversity techniques or discipline if that is wrong and that is against tea code to place a mask on a child for two minutes then how do you justify that it's perfectly acceptable to force a mask on my child for eight hours every day for the entire school year and let me tell you this you know what you say to me you say well we'll give you an alternative you can do distant learning is a joke okay let me tell you what my son does he gets up in the morning about an hour maybe two hours at the most he's done he's done with school for the day he doesn't talk to friends he doesn't talk
048to teachers he doesn't participate in any kind of activities he's done he wakes up the next day does it for hour you think he's learned anything you think that's comparable to face-to-face learning it's not so i want you guys get off the politics look at these parents and listen to what i'm saying because i speak for thousands this ends now okay i'm done with it i'm done being nice i'm done begging i'm done pleading i'm demanding that you take us seriously and look at these children listen to these parents and do the right thing we're tired of it thank you [Applause] brandon kendrick [Applause] please state your name and address for the record my name is brandon kendrick 8316 split trial cove in temple good evening dr smith members of the board i'm here today
049to be a voice for my son and the many other parents that believe the mass policy should be apparent choice i am an army vet that spent 10 years protecting the freedoms and liberties we all value i am raising my son to do the same and be proud of his country i wanted to grow up with the same freedoms that we all had as a community we elected and put trust in y'all to help belton isd thrive as of today i feel myself and some parents are not being heard if the parents the parents aren't heard then what what's the point of the school board if you're not reaching out to the public to ask and get them involved there's no point so things need to change or we're going to have people start replacing
050y'all and i don't mind running so by not allowing the mass policy to be a parent choice after the state mandate has lifted it turned into a political issue in a recent study in a recent survey that y'all sent out i guess about two months ago to ask the community ways to improve your schools the overwhelming majority said to make masks a parent choice i'm not going to get into facts about mass because i've sent emails and everybody else already talked about it but i do believe that masks are a huge distraction and the parents should be the deciding factor when it deals with their child's health by forcing masks you are effectively taking my parental rights away and the school board is taking over my child's health decisions a little bit of my son
051my son was segregated for four days because he has difficulty wearing a face mask all day when he gets home he always complains of headaches and being tired the school then gave me an ultimatum to either wear a mask or do remote learning remote learning is not an option for myself or many parents so in the end i was forced to send my child back to school and to finish it all up the chances of a child getting or spreading covetous minuscule you need to balance your options and the action no you need to balance your options and the action cannot be worse than the inaction the social and emotional damage combined with the gaps in learning should be enough to realize that the mass policy needs to be changed thanks dr larry montgomery please
052state your name and address for the record please dr larry montgomery 401 east 6th avenue here in belton thank you and my own mr norwood yep got me going good deal well happy april 19th uh today's my wife's birthday my daughter-in-law's birthday my nephew's wife's birthday apparently montgomery's only married people on the 19th and i remind my wife each year it's the anniversary of the oklahoma city bombing and the branch davidian assault and so tonight i will be sleeping on the couch again but anyway when i considered being in a bombing or doing what ms mcdonald's done which is raising five children i'm still out on that which i would choose everything i say tonight will be based on national institute of health or pubmed articles so just keep that in mind sat on hundreds
053of board meetings and so i thought what can i say that you will not hear you've already heard a tremendous amount nothing that i've heard i disagree with on a scientific basis but i thought i would just tell you how amazing you are not only you but every person in this auditorium chris i know the new river when it runs by radford is beautiful but nothing so beautiful as what we have around us most of the people are talking about the pathogen so i'm going to talk to you about the host you have 86 billion brain cells now you multiply that sorry left out one of you but uh that's 602 billion brain cells that you have there's ten thousand different types of neurons as ms lee if she were here tonight would greece and
054she grew up with two boys and a husband men have five million sweat glands and they can spit enough in a year to fill up two bathtubs it's pretty crazy isn't it every second you produce 25 million new cells in your body and 99 of us in this room are genetically identical and mr norwood ever did night i drop on my knees and i thank god for the one percent of me that's different than miley cyrus so as mr alcozar will confirm from his past experience and expertise if we were to culture your throat right now 33 percent of you would have latent tuberculosis cells another 33 percent of your students would have strep they're not sick and you're not sick okay one billion bacteria can fit on the size of a pinhead and viruses
055are 200 times smaller than a bacteria and just look at your mask right now and contemplate that you have four pounds of bacteria in your body over a thousand different types are on your skin right now but that's nothing because you have 380 trillion viruses in and on your body as we speak each of you 1.7 million of those we don't even know what they are and on the planet if you take 10 and put 31 zeros behind it that's how many viruses are on the planet so how is it possible one minute doctor you're still alive well your body is doing exactly what it's supposed to do you have an immune system the nervous system and the immune system are inseparable and your largest immune organ is your gut so you need a neurologist
056a chiropractor and a gastroenterologist to help you understand immunity i have much more that i could say miss bass could tell you about the psychology of fear much better than i but in my 37-year career where i treated over 400 000 patient visits the pill i prescribed the most was something called a chill pill you are not going to die the statistics you've heard are correct your body will function if it's healthy and i just encourage you to make a bold decision that's time and side with health thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay our next item on our agendas are action items consider discuss and take appropriate action regarding adoption of values and belief statements madam president members of the board i believe we started this discussion back in december and uh we
057are here tonight presenting to you those draft values and beliefs that we've brought to you a couple times now tonight we are going to fly through a couple of slides so next slide please i think we're having a little bit of trouble there we go there you go there you want it well hold on just one second rachel give me a thumbs up when you all think we're we're good to go we'll leave it right there that's perfect so uh goal one key components of goal one there are three major things in there and goal one we talked about setting direction and three key components the first thing was developing a journey of a graduate the second thing was adopting a vision and a mission and a third thing was identifying values and beliefs as
058a school district and so we came to you in december and talked about beginning this process we asked you for some feedback along the way and we got some draft statements that we went over with you not too long ago tonight we bring those statements to you for consideration for adoption next slide so those draft values and beliefs that you see here there we go sounds like the echo's going but those draft values and beliefs that you see here we believe represent the feedback that you gave us as an administrative team we hope that you see your words and your ideals in there and the purpose of these again is to state what we as a school district value and then a belief statement that accompanies that and as we continue to grow as you
059all know from the templeton demographic report just a few months or a few weeks ago we are anticipated to grow by over 5 000 students by the time we hit the end of the decade these values and beliefs help us preserve according to you all as trustees the things that make belton isd great and so tonight we bring these to you for your consideration i do want to point out that the last one we as an administrative team added because we felt it was extremely important to point out that instruction has a fundamental impact on kids their excitement to learn and their passion for learning and we believe that that's an important part to put in those as well so i present these to you tonight for discussion any feedback that you might have in
060potential adoption board is there any discussion is there a motion to approve as presented i saw mr taggart a second by mr norwood all in favor please raise your hand that passes unanimously and as we close this one i appreciate your support and all of that you know that uh this roadmap map has been shared numerous times those values and beliefs are not only where we've been but where we continue to go for the future so thank you for your time thank you next item on our agenda reports looks like we have an update by temple college we have some friends from temple college here tonight in case you haven't heard temple college is a growing thriving educational community in our area and we're proud to have brandon here and partner here tonight to get
061us a little bit of information regarding their upcoming bond election welcome all right thank you all we are very excited to be here tonight my name is brandon bozon i serve as the vice president of administrative services and cfo for temple college uh with me tonight is dr evelyn y oli she is our vice president of development and the executive director of the temple college foundation so i'm very pleased to have her here so again thank you so much for letting us be here can i start by asking um who here as a has either attended temple college or had a child or a friend or family member that attended temple college all right cool that's wonderful and that's a i'm a temple college attendee myself so we've got a great connection to the community
062we find that every group we present to has got a handful or a room full of folks that have been impacted by temple college and that's what our slogan for this bond process is is the trusted for generations and building for the future so a quick summary of the bond projects we have an expansion and renovation of our health science center that's going to add about 42 000 square feet and renovate about 12 000 square feet of our existing health science facility the largest project in this bond is the temple college main building which is 122 000 square feet and will contain a university center student enrollment services a workforce training center and then classrooms and other collaborative spaces as well a visual arts center which will be 23 000 square feet and a campus
063service center of approximately 18 000 square feet so that rounds out the the total bond package of around 125 million 124.9 million dollars so the temple college began its facilities master plan or our facilities master plan about a year and a half ago and so a number of the buildings on our campus right now are 50 to 60 years old so the college was established in 1926 and barry hall went up in 1956 that was our first building on our existing campus and so that is shown there as well as the the isc which was built uh shortly thereafter so as part of the facilities master plan i kind of caught the tail end of your own facilities condition assessment uh we had consultants and architects come in and and do assessments on our existing
064structures and a number of them are um you know unfortunately past the point where rehabilitation or remodeling makes sense and building new is is the most cost effective option and so that's why you saw so much new construction here in this bond package temple college has actually only pursued 33 million dollars in general obligation debt over the last 50 years and is a board that's very familiar with with building school buildings that is not a lot um relative to to the needs of our students and of our community and so we've been very good uh stewards of taxpayer dollars in that regard uh so the gonna do a quick uh map view here before each project so you can get an idea of where we're where we're at uh there at the bottom of the
065of the image is the hk dodge and loop the future i14 corridor there they're bisecting the campus kind of running north-south is first street or veterans memorial there in temple and so they're on the east side of campus when you exit on and drive on from 1st street you'll see your existing health science building off to the right just just besides the softball field so that is what's shown there and the addition to that building is in the darker orange so this project is a need because our existing health sciences programs are outgrowing their spaces we've got crowded nursing classrooms and small simulation areas that they're in the nursing building and so we want to move that into an expanded health science center uh you know the key uh focus for for temple college and
066our higher our workforce partners especially in the medical field is addressing the shortage of health care workers and so that is a big part of what this project will do the college is committed to doubling its its nursing program over the five-year period that put that doubling is currently underway uh started in 2017 and hope to conclude our current plan in 2022 uh and then re-engage in that same effort again over the next uh five years following that we also have uh committed to growing our ems programs as well as our uh sonography program very popular medical programs at temple college uh and so that's our our goal to increase those i don't know if anybody's had the pleasure of joining us at the the leopard room before but that is currently our community uh
067event space or our meeting space uh where we like to host um you know in normal times uh folks to to come on campus and have banquets or rotary club meetings or whatever else that is is available but right now that space is being used for overflow classrooms so a lot of our health science programs even in a covid world accreditation does not allow them to not have face-to-face labs and clinicals and so we're using utilizing that large leopard room to address our general lack of space and also provide greater social distancing okay so our next project is the temple college main building and so that is right there on the the southern edge of campus where the existing berry hall and isc are it will be our new uh front door uh to temple
068college and so that's a a big push for us to increase that presence there really um to help students to know where to go you know with with first generation students uh sometimes the biggest challenge is getting them out of the parking lot you know if you arrive on a on a college campus and your uh you know your family didn't attend college and and you're already kind of on the fence about it any sort of of confusion or difficulty to just even find the right space can can deter a student from pursuing their educational goals and so that is a big part of what we want to to solve with this as well as giving our expanding those workforce programs and offering new opportunities to our our students and our our community members as
069i touched on earlier there's three main components of this building a workforce training center so the the colleges is dedicated to bringing in more industrial technology programs those hands-on technical programs that you know you can complete a certificate in as little as six months all the way up through more sophisticated programs the isds uh in this area certainly uh belton isd and temple isd of both you know a little embarrassed to say past us test is pretty good in these regards some awesome community or some technical programs are being offered at the isd level and we want to build on that or not not compete with it but partner with those uh and help students either finish that uh certification uh and as they've you know kind of rolling out of high school or even
070build on it if they're already receiving their certifications at heist in high school so very excited to add that space to the campus and grow those programs the next project is a university center so right now the college has as a great partnership with central texas a m and was aiming to to grow that significantly but what a university center allows is to that additional classroom space that university-level classroom space where they can send their instructors and teach upper level even master's level courses on the temple college campus so that a student can do all four years in temple and receive a bachelor's degree or not even a master's degree from partnering institutions and so we have partners we have right now we have transfer agreements articulation agreements with i believe four of our major
071transfer partners we want to continue to grow that and bring that presence those transfer partners actually on to our campus so that that our students can get those four-year degrees without leaving home and the final piece that i was talking about was is the student enrollment services piece and so that covers everything from admissions financial aid tsi testing all of those things that a student needs to do in order to successfully enroll and begin their career and begin their higher education journey and so we want that also right there in that building one stop so that we can convert those those prospective students to to students and get them on their way to a degree or certificate also featured in this building will be collaborative spaces classrooms uh we an i.t help desk all things
072that you know if if a student doesn't know or even if a faculty member or other staff member might not know where to go for a specific service they'll know to start here at the at the temple college main building and and get those quick answers to whatever their questions may be so very excited about adding that space it's as we touched on earlier it will be the front entrance the the south entrance to the temple college campus there is ample parking in that area of campus so it's it's easy to get to right off of the loop and we'll also have feature plenty of parking and so we can have that community meeting room i touched on the leopard room earlier uh it's a nice nice room but it's kind of in the far
073eastern kind of tucked back into campus hard for community members to find sometimes and so having it right here in our a community and flexible space in our our main building will will make temple college that much more accessible to to our community and to our partners the next project to touch on here is jumping all the way to the north end of campus is our visual arts center so does anybody know what is in that space right now i will make you guess through and go through the guessing game but it's an empty lot so that's a bit of a trick question there's no actually nothing right there it's an empty lot and then as you're driving down first route they're headed towards the loop on your right there's that lot then some parking
074lots then some administrative buildings so you can actually make it almost halfway through the temple college campus without realizing i'm on the tem i'm on the temple college campus and so we want to have that focal point on the north end of campus supposed to enhance our visual arts programs which i'll touch on in just a moment but also to provide that that north end welcome there'll also be a reception desk and welcome uh center there so that you know if that's the point in which you enter temple college we can make sure that you're uh directed to the to the right location to get the services that that are needed uh directly to the west of that of that empty lot is our existing visual arts center and so this uh this used to
075be a western ware store if you were familiar with it also a piece of trivia was a pet store sometime before that and so it was never a visual arts center before it came to temple college so it is not the type of space that is ideal for those instructional programs or for really the to to grow and give our students the the ideal opportunities i will say visual arts faculty are incredibly creative people and so they have done a great job with with what they've been given what you see there on the left side is uh the outdoor area where our kiln fires and items for our pottery are done so they've they've made it work um you know inside of the the western ware store here or visual arts center you can see
076we have a very tight gallery that was a picture from one of our spring art shows and so we're there there's not the adequate space in there but our programs are very popular so they do everything they can to make them make them fit so this is some conceptual renderings of what we'd like you know not an open beautiful art gallery for our students to to display the work that they're doing collaborative workspaces for them to to work together on on projects or whatever art they are designing at the time we are also offering new degrees we are offering a new associate's degree in studio arts so growing that program and then we've also partnered with texas a m central texas to offer a bachelor's degree in visual arts as well on the temple campus
077and so big kind of growth issues as a that's not the right word but grow good problems to have uh exciting things happening in our visual arts program so we're excited to have this uh project uh as part of the bond package uh the next one uh i i'd like to joke that nobody is quite as excited about this one as me since this is a i'm our vice president of administrative services and a campus service center uh hosts a lot of our back-end operations uh what is exciting about this to most people is not where the campus service center will be but where it will no longer be so what is there shown on the in the red dot is the existing campus service center and so our campus service center as uh you
078can imagine is a maintenance facility so there are there's trucks equipment golf carts things going in and out of there all day long as our as our team responds to issues around campus and so it's not a great front door facility it's also quite a dated facility it's one of our oldest buildings on campus there as well and so the goal is to create a new campus service center that will be out of the main foot traffic or even vehicle traffic for for our students for our visitors to campus and create a a well-designed maintenance facility was also housed our police department our i.t infrastructure and our purchasing and mail room and so all well well needed on campus and so excited about about this project uh what these projects will also do sort of
079indirectly is address things such as lighting and pedestrian walkways to create a safer more pedestrian friendly campus shown there in the middle is existing it's a parking lot it's our quad parking lot but we would like to to convert that into a quad quad with a nice green space so that students that will be exiting the new temple college main building to go over to the performing arts center or the newton science building will be traversing across a nice open green space as opposed to going through a parking lot and so these really want to address that and then lighting and other safety considerations and this is really all geared towards preparing our students for 21st century careers the the college currently has a tax rate of 18.37 cents per 100 dollars of assessed value
080this bond as it's as it's been modeled will step up into a total proposed tax rate increase of just under five and a half cents we do plan to issue in in two different series and so that will not be uh all at once but we do show that that is the the total proposed tax rate that's modeled uh what that means for uh homeowners in our in the temple college district which encompasses the the city of temple as well as the areas of tisd that are not within the city of temple is 3.63 cents per month for 100 for each 100 000 of homestead appraised value the average homestead in temple in our temple college taxing district is just under 200 000 so that means six dollars and 14 cents a month or 73.6
081cents per year temple college has enacted a tax freeze so homeowners who are over 65 and have applied for the tax freeze exemption on their property will not see an increase as a result of the bonds being issued um and again we're training students uh here in temple texas for a global economy we we were privileged to give this presentation to the texas sorry the temple economic development corporation uh and learn a bit more about what they have going on and there is so much growth from from an economic standpoint the land is available the infrastructure here but one of their great shortfalls is is the workforce and having the the skill highly skilled workforce that these companies who are bringing you know 100 200 500 jobs into our communities are looking for and so
082this is a step towards addressing that need and a big step towards addressing that uh temple college has always been committed to to providing an affordable education uh you know our our tuition is about the third about a third of a public university in the state of texas and so we want we will continue in that and that mission to give those educational opportunities to everyone in our communities uh and again we our goal is to our a goal is to create that skilled workforce and and bring those millions of dollars of of economic impact into our communities attract those businesses to locate here and create jobs create a larger tax base that we will all enjoy and be able to lower taxes for our residents okay so we have now passed the last day
083to register to vote but we did start today early voting and so if you uh live within the temple college saxon district which you can city a temple or well certainly no one here would dare live in tisd but city at temple you may vote at either city hall or at r1 college center on campus that will run all of this week and then monday and tuesday of next week election day is saturday may 1st and we have four locations across the district that are available folks can vote at any of the locations and we certainly appreciate the the district allowing us to use uh thornton tarver elementary for for one of our locations so and just to quickly recap this is the the map with with all of the projects uh projects shown there
084in creating those uh north and south entry points and expanding those those vital programs uh within health professions okay and this is our again this is a rendering of what that expanded uh health science center might look like uh kind of tucked on there in the front i'm not sure if we okay the video didn't come through but that that's okay it's been a it's been a pretty good meeting run already so i won't share the video but we will certainly email it out to dr smith and if if you could share it with us so thank you all very much if you have any questions i'm very happy to address them tonight but if you think of any we have a bond website that goes deeper into each one of the projects you could
085also email bond2021 at templejc.edu or email myself or our president we'd be happy to to answer anything thank you brandon for that update it sounds like some exciting things are happening over at temple college you know anytime you're growing you have to plan for it and it sounds like you all have a great plan board do you all have any questions or comments mr taggart really good job on the comprehensive plan i think y'all are doing a good job with that it was it was impressive when i was reading through this how long it's been and how little y'all went to the public and asked for in 50 years so that's a commendation to the university but the only thing i saw missing on here was there's no money for bringing the golf course back
086i really missed the golf course that's where i started my non-illustrious golf career on the bjc golf course years ago so but i know y'all expand out there at some point yeah we um yeah that that will likely not be bringing back um the golf the golf course yeah actually in our master plan uh not part of this bond but that will be hopefully space for our athletic facilities to expand that direction but we do have a temple college foundation golf tournament that you should definitely play in so well y'all are doing a great job and i'm rooting for you guys in this thank you very much thank you mr floor temple college is such a great resource for us here locally um you know i'm relatively new to the area in the grand scheme
087of things right um but it's been a great partner for me in my corporate life outside of here from a workforce development standpoint helping us get off the ground it's been a great partner from a bisd standpoint when it comes to dual enrollment and you know folks kids that are have the opportunity to graduate with associates degrees and so to see some of the stuff that you're doing um to really expand out the opportunity to provide some of those programs i mean like ty said i mean it sounds like some and and and mcdonald's said yeah it sounds like some great planning's going on there's a lot of excitement so thank you so much for everything that you do um you know not just for us here at bisd but for the community in general
088so yep thank you thank you anyone else yep you have anything else sir yeah i just want to say what a proud partner we are with with temple college it's imagine we've talked about pathways of success for each and every one of our kids imagine pre-k through 12 but imagine that being pre-k through 20 in our local area and being able to say we have those opportunities those programs that are going to lead to those amazing careers for our kids and we know temple college is working on uh building on their strong foundation to create those careers for the future for us too so we're super excited about their partnership and uh thank them for being here tonight thanks again thank you okay the next item on our agenda is update by city of temple
089in our city manager from the city of temple bryn myers is here tonight and she's going to give us an update on all the happenings in the city hello miss brown hi thank you guys for having me today i'm really excited i feel like i haven't been here in a long time so thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to give you a little bit of an update on what's going on with the city of temple so i was encouraged to see you all adopt your your values and belief statement and i know that you all have been working really hard on your strategic planning and your journey of a graduate plan we at the city have also been up to strategic planning and business planning and so we actually really got started probably
090about a year and a half almost two years ago where it was time for us to take a hard look at our strategic plan we had not updated our existing strategic plan since 2008 so it was dated and it needed a fresh look and we set out to do that and we comprehensively went to the ground and and and started to build that back up for our needs today and and make sure that we were planning and prepared to uh to provide the uh meet the growth and provide the services that our that our community expect so we we call our plan a business plan and it has really four main elements it has our strategic plan which is the base of that plan but it's also a fiscally constrained plan so we have a
091financial plan and it's a total of an eight year financial plan that allows us to identify the specific resources that we're going to use to implement the goals that have been set out in the strategic plan we of course have our annual budget just as you all do where we adopt and officially appropriate the funding for the upcoming fiscal year and then we also have a comprehensive capital plan and i'll talk a little bit more about that as we go along so our annual plan and our uh our our annual budget and our annual work plan is a one-year plan but we wrap that around with an additional seven years of of planning um financially and capital work uh that that makes up the base of our of our total eight year plan so as
092i mentioned the strategic plan is really the the foundation of our business planning that's where we set out the vision and the mission for our organization as well as our values and our focus areas um so our vision is that temple be a place that you love to call home we feel like though that is a very short and simple statement we feel like it's very powerful and very inclusive we care about you wanting to call temple home to to live and raise your family but we also want to be a place where businesses want to call home and invest and grow their their jobs and and capital investment in our community our mission statement is to provide exceptional service without exception i tell my my team a lot that the reason that the city
093of temple exists is to provide services to our community that's what we're here for that's what that's what we do so our mission is also a simple just very short sentence but it we feel like it really captures what we exist to do which is to provide service to our community we've identified through a process of both employee input and our city council's input five organizational values which are the lens in which we do what we do and that's commitment innovation integrity accountability and collaboration and then the city council has also set four focus areas for us to be a high performing organization to have beautiful places and spaces to to focus on strong public safety and to have smart growth plan for smart growth in our community so i want to just talk uh
094there are we have nine goals that that work to achieve those four focus areas and and you can see those on the screen there i want to just talk a little bit today just very briefly about some of the programs and initiatives that we're working on right now this year in each of those focus areas so i'll start with places and spaces this program is really near and dear to my heart i'm really passionate about it this is a neighborhood planning program that that we set out to do where we've we've taken really more of our older neighborhoods the kind of the core of our community we've separated these out into 18 distinct neighborhoods and we are setting out to make a neighborhood an individual neighborhood strategic plan for each of these areas we believe
095that neighborhood planning isn't a one-size-fits-all approach what what is needed in for example the historic district is very different than the needs that exist in some of our east temple neighborhoods very different from some of the needs and and like the tea med area around the hospitals so we really want to approach it from planning for that specific neighborhood and planning with the neighbors not for them but with them so bringing a lot of community engagement and understanding what the desires and the needs are of the people who live and work and engage in those neighborhoods so we're setting out to do one of those each quarter it's been it's been a great opportunity so far we have completed about six plans and we're underway with our downtown plan at at this moment so we're
096making great progress there i just have a few quick slides that kind of show you some of the examples like this is a this is one of our plans in an east temple neighborhood where lots of housing reinvestment is desired and this also shows an east temple neighborhood that has some big open green fields where new new neighborhood or neighborhood service type investment could be considered this is on the edge of our historic district so maybe reusing some of the historic homes that are along the busier corridors as some neighborhood service maybe some office or retail type experiences so we're really excited about that program we're also setting out to develop a strategy on mental health and homelessness we're working this we we vision this to be a county-wide initiative this is something that doesn't
097stop at city limit lines and so we're really working with our partners in colleen and bell county to develop this plan our goal here is to identify um where what resources and and what facilities we have available what we need to have in order to achieve our goals and a strategy to to bridge the gap so we're there make sure that we're not duplicating resources but identify where we may be lacking resources and connect and put in strategies in place to to try to fill those needs and the term of smart growth i know you guys know a lot about this as you've dealt with facility needs and planning in bisd currently we have 266 million dollars in capital projects underway as we speak those range from reinvestment zone projects to mobility or transportation work
098utility work and parks drainage and other types of facilities when you total up the remaining eight years or seven years of our of our business plan we have another 560 million dollars of capital projects in our plan and and funded as part of our our capital outlook so a lot of that is in utility work and mobility um we're actually dr smith and and i are meeting actually this week um to talk about uh growth and roads and and capital needs so that we're supporting each other well in that so we do have we are busy with capital work and we want to make sure that we're being a good partner um to the district as as we know you're growing and want to make sure we have the infrastructure in place to help support
099that growth so some of the examples of transportation projects that will be under construction this year include an expansion of canyon creek or black land that's really in support of our partnership with the other school district temple isd but you can see poison oak finally on the list so we are we have acquired the right-of-way that's needed our council actually awarded last week demolition contracts for taking down the remaining structures that are that are needed for the road expansion work there if you've driven out that way if you've if you've gone to the elementary school out there recently you'll probably also notice some tree lines being cleared so we are nearing the point where we can put a shovel in the ground and get that project underway so we're very excited to see that project
100come to fruition and i think the meeting that dr smith and i are having this week will help us prevent that kind that we we've committed to to collaboration and help us to prevent that kind of disconnect in the future so we're very excited to get that project started and and get ahead of the curve as well to plan for additional future needs you'll see kegley road under construction in the coming weeks as well as outer loop west phase one which is uh the portion where the current improvements leave off to just past poison oak road so those projects will be underway in a similar time frame we'll also be re reconstructing north p ridge phase one and two i don't have phase two on the screen but we will be moving forward with phase
101one and two so that will get us to airport road we'll also be reconstructing south p ridge azalea drive and working on avenue d so lots of mobility work in the next year we're also currently right now underway with the city's first ever mobility master plan so we will be we had our first stakeholder meeting on this topic last week and we will be working closely with dr smith and team to make sure that we incorporate your feedback and your comments but this will give us an overall plan to help us address mobility needs in our community in the future so that we are planning ahead and and making sure that we're we're balancing and meeting the needs of our growing community on the utility side we have just under 280 million dollars in projects
102that will be coming up through the next few years one of the most exciting ones for me is an expansion to our water treatment plant this project broke ground two weeks ago so we're fresh freshly started this is a really important project for our community this will expand our this will add an additional membrane treatment plant to our plant fleet and will allow us to treat an additional 11 almost 12 million gallons a day of treatment of water treatment capacity so that will serve us very well as we continue to see great growth here in our community in our region that project is as i mentioned just broke ground and so it will be up and we expect it to be up and running by next summer so that's very exciting work in the public
103safety focus area we do have a public safety bond or capital improvement program that we're planning at this point to expand our training facilities for our police officers and firefighters right now our police officers train in a facility that's over 40 years old it has it's essentially an earthen berm on three sides no technology no no really investment in in that facility to speak of in in over 40 years so this would allow us to build a state of the art training facility because we want to make sure that our officers are um are getting the training and um and well-equipped to meet the needs of our community and to provide the services that that we call on them to provide this would also include some additional training capacity for our fire department a driving
104range to help our really all of our our city drivers have the opportunity to train fun fact we as you know probably we provide solid waste collection services for our community and if you would take all of the miles that our solid waste trucks drive in a year and line them up they would drive to the moon and back twice so we do a lot of driving so having the opportunity to have a training facility to make sure that those those drivers are being safe and keeping our community safe is very important we're also planning an expansion to our animal shelter which will be a part of this cip program as well we are very focused on our neighborhood and community policing program as you hopefully you've had a chance to meet our new police
105chief sean reynolds he is a wonderful advocate for community policing and building relationships between our police department and our community which are absolutely critical to effective policing and are strained today so we're really looking to invest heavily into community oriented policing and really make that something that every officer within within our organization is focused on in addition to having a specific a specific division dedicated to that effort as well we added a school resource officer this year so this is a little bit of old news for you all but lake belton high school of course opened up this year so in our partnership and support of that high school facility we have brought on an additional officer to serve there at the high school and so we added that position um to our department um
106this past year and he's on board and then finally in our high performing organization focus area the city council has recently done a complete overhaul of our boards and commissions and i'm really proud and want to share a few examples of some of the new commissions and boards that they've established one goes right in line with what we've just talked about in terms of community policing the council has allowed us to create a citizens police advisory commission and that commission will help study policing issues help us understand what types of best practices that we can bring to our community and really focus on channels of communication between our citizens and our police department we've also established a diversity equity and inclusion commission and really an entire dei program we've added staff to our to our
107team to help us lead and implement the strategies that come out of this work we actually just had a luncheon today to welcome our new equity manager to the community bria gambrell just started last monday so we're excited to have her lead the program the commission was just appointed by council last month so this is a new program for us and we're very excited to get that program started and um and off the ground and then this is near and dear to my heart and i'm excited to talk to you guys about it because i feel like we'll have a great partnership here as well so one of the other new boards that the city council approved with a was a youth advisory commission when i was in high school i was a member of
108a youth advisory commission and it really formed my love of local government and it is probably the primary reason why i'm here today speaking with you because at an early age i was able to understand the impact that local government makes on our lives and how important it is for people to serve and and choose public service as a as a potential path whether it's like you all through volunteer service or for me or dr smith through uh the professions that that we chose so it also allows young people to understand how accessible local government is to to them and how they can make change and be a part of something bigger than themselves so i'm very excited to have the youth advisory commission established we are going to wait to appoint this new board
109until september so we can get kind of get into the new school year and and get more the word out more so we'll be working um closely with dr smith and ways that we can partner to to try to get young people aware of the opportunity and wanting to be involved but that is that is a near and dear to my heart so i'm very excited to see that program come forward so that was a brief i know um you've already had a a long meeting today and i appreciate the time and the opportunity to update you all if you have any questions on these topics or others i would be happy to answer them and you can also send them my way dr smith can connect me with it if you think of something
110later so again thank you for the partnership we've had i think we've enjoyed a a great partnership and dr smith and i meet every other month or so to just catch catch up and check in and make sure we're we're serving each other so i know that that commitment continues and i appreciate that very much i think it it makes us better when we are serving the same we we have the same citizens and so that we serve and so i i feel grateful for dr smith and his leadership and your support as board members well that we appreciate you i'm gonna just echo exactly what you just said we appreciate the partnership we appreciate the update lots of good things happening in temple and appreciate you sharing that with us tonight lord do you
111all have any comments or questions you do mr taggart i just want to say thank you when i saw this on the agenda i thought it was long overdue for you guys to be here with us because we do have such an you know integrated now relationship i mean we've got a high school over there so those of us who grew up in belton i graduated here we would have never dreamed that this relationship would have ever even happened we've never really gotten along on the football field but right we have a really good and growing relationship with the city of temple and it's so vital because so much of our growth is in west temple and i know when we decided to build charter my wife teaches there i know that was a big
112decision for you all because you had to bump up that poison oak project you put it ahead of kegley maybe and some of the others and we appreciate that i know it's been a long a long road to hold because of the property acquisitions and things like that but i was just out there a couple days ago and seeing the trees coming down the stakes are going up and it's happening finally it really is so that's that's a signal to us the commitment that the city of temple has now to bisd and i appreciate that relationship and matt bringing you you know y'all coming in and y'all's you know talks and stuff like that so it's from an old school belting person it's it's awesome to see us coming together because we do share so
113many of our students now in temple texas that are part of bisd so it's awesome that we're getting along everything's moving forward we really appreciate y'all's efforts in this thank you and i think that you know as i mentioned dr smith and i'm meeting regularly meeting intentionally to talk about development and and transportation needs so we can um we can be ahead of you know we can time our projects better so that you know when y'all are building a school if there's transportation needs we're alongside you and not behind you so we appreciate that uh partnership thank you any other company mr floyd yeah for the record i think ty technically calls it north belton isd instead of west temple but now i mean i think you know temple texas and the surrounding areas right
114popped up on like some of the best places to live right list uh in the last several years right and there's and that's not an accident right and like with our with you look at us in a fast growth school district and you look at the population growth in this area it's it's not unreasonable to think in our lifetime like this area is going to kind of look like the outskirts of houston right does to downtown houston like we're going to look we're going to look like that to austin and you know i think the really intentional growth and planning that's going on you know with the city at temple with with belton isd with the city of belton um i mean that is so critical for us to to get there and to get
115it right um and so so appreciated to see that just the changes that have occurred um you know whether it's parks and rec right in the amazing opportunities that have come out into west temple that i think we're leveraging even from a school system standpoint is auxiliary facilities um you know the redevelopment that's going on downtown the school resource officer has been amazing i spent a lot of time out out there and and he's been great so i think like this partnership i think he started by saying we don't do this enough i think we agree um you know it can't be i don't think it can even be once a year i think we got to do it more frequently than that um because i think our success is going to be so tied
116together so thank you for for being here and everything that you do yeah absolutely i'd be happy to come back when when the time is right i think the only thing we need to work on is with the economic development people to get like another tesla to come into the bisd part of temple texas and put a big plant over here somewhere yeah that would be exciting to see that i also put a plug in for a bronco logo on the water tower i knew i wasn't going to get out of here without that one i it was on the tip of my tongue to save i thought no no chris was saying all righty anything else board dr smith i just want to thank bryn so since i came in the discipline has reached
117out on a consistent basis we get together as she said on a consistent basis i think i told you all before one of my best friends is a city manager outside of chicago and i was just bragging about brin to him not too long ago i really believe with brandon with sam liste and we have a new city manager in in morgan's point we have great partnerships with our cities that just can only continue to get better and really excited about what the future holds for bisd and partnerships with the city so bryn thanks for being here tonight thanks for having me i appreciate y'all thank you so we have a a variety of things listed next but we're going to move things around a little bit and the board is actually going to go
118into closed session i'll let dr smith talk about the wire and then i'll come back and tell you about the what one of our items on closed session has guests visiting us in closed session tonight and so we'd like to move our closed session up and adjourn the closed session at this time and then go from there so if you all would humor me just for a little bit we'll move the agenda around and take care of that okay so the board will stop this portion of the meeting and we will go into closed session to discuss personnel and deliberations about real property we will return and continue our agenda as printed afterwards so ford we're going to meet uh next door in the learning lounge so we'll go ahead and close out in this
119meeting at this moment thank you and what our parents and community want from us regarding virtual learning and so gabby's going to tell you a little bit more about that good evening thanks for allowing me to speak to you this evening about our exploration of virtual school options for the future and 21-22 school year the purpose of this presentation is just that to provide you an update on the work that we're doing and that exploration let me talk to you just a bit about the why of this work we believe in providing exceptional learning experiences for each and every child and while covet and the pandemic thrust us into virtual learning what we've learned is that now there's still 2 000 students who are still choosing a virtual learning option and so if we're truly
120about um continued improvement and responding to those needs we feel it's important for us to ask the question why and what is it that your child needs or student that you need to be best prepared for the future and so we have committed to exploring the possibilities of virtual learning in the 21 22 school year with full recognition based on feedback from our teachers our families and our students that we've got to make changes and we've got to make improvement as well so that both students and teachers can thrive in that environment so we have taken an action plan approach to this work really being driven by question and problem solving and so we've timelined the key work out the first phase of our work was really about getting in the know what is our
121challenge that's in front of us what have we learned this year what's the challenge of the future and really doing some research on models around the country and within our state where we see significant student success and what we can learn from those models versus what we are working through right now what i can tell you in that research is that we're learning that the most effective programs or models really embrace community and connections to school and so they have developed models that include both virtual primarily virtual learning with enhancement of in-person opportunities so students might come in for lab experiences community experiences service experiences getting social emotional needs met but there's that connection back to the home community the phase that we're in right now is truly assessing the needs by listening and engaging
122our community about their interests for the future why or why not they're interested and how we can improve the options that are available to them you have probably seen a social media post or an option coming home to your student asking about your interest for the future and so that opened last week and we'll close tomorrow and we started another final push today to try to get as much information back as we can we are also with the team that we've formed i'm really developing potential models based on the level elementary middle or high school that we're working on how we're doing it i just shared then and you've seen that we launched the community survey there's key information that we want we want to know about interest in the virtual school why you were
123interested in it what were the positive experiences that students had this year and what were specific areas for improvement i can tell you as i entered this meeting today there were 836 responses um to that survey and they just keep coming in we have approximately 70 people who have taken the survey who are expressing um that they are not interested and then who are and so that data alone tells us that it's just not right for everyone but there is a number of students who are still preferring this gabby just clarification on that you said 70 people 70 of the people are not interested but 30 percent are yes and what was your response number of responses so far 836. great thank you okay so that's a large number of students that are still interested
124and we're looking for themes in the data about the reasons why or why not um individuals are interested and some themes that have begun to emerge for us are the the flexibility in the model and the alignment of the model to student learning needs we're also finding the feedback that there's some need for improvement in communication there are complications in the system when students had to navigate multiple management systems developing understanding of the attendance and grading practices and of course um wanting a desired focus on one environment for our staff and families as well you can see in the data that there was a clear transition when we started having students come back and there's the feel of tug between teachers having to split their time between virtual and in person and so we really
125want to make sure that we are planning for the future and developing the environment that allows both to thrive like we said before um we're tracking data on special programs that students may participate in and their extracurricular activities and the impact of those on decisions that we're making about the school design all right and then um the other piece of information that i think that you need to continue to be aware of is that we're tracking legislation we have direct contacts um who are um deeply involved in tracking bills there's two primary bills that seem to be getting the most traction and the first one would ask our legislators to form a committee to assess the current state of virtual learning in the state of texas and come back to the legislature with an update
126on their findings the second bill would allow for school districts to design virtual learning courses without having to be a part of the virtual school network and to continue to receive ada funding for those that bill is specifically referencing grades three through twelve and it has moved out of the committees and is actually on the floor now so again these are the ones that have seemed to gain most traction and they're kind of running simultaneously so if school districts are given the option of developing their own courses for ada funding that this commission would simultaneously be assessing the effectiveness the legislative session ends on may 31st and um i team up with elizabeth to get educated we also know that they could extend that time frame but we are watching the the bills closely and
127that's when the legislative session should should end so that was an extremely high level overview and there's tons of information to share with you all what questions might i answer for you or do i have any questions mr taggart i know this is just kind of the big broad view and you've got a lot of steps still left to go and i'm kind of lean you know trying to grasp this concept i know we know that the pandemic is going to change a few things about how we do certain things in the world i get it yeah so this is thinking outside the box very non-traditional but i'd like there to be a pretty it be like an academy of sorts i think i've heard that where you need to qualify to get into this
128it needs to be screened because i do think there are still examples of some that are at home that really need to be not at home but i know there's some that are thriving so is there going to be a pretty strict criteria kind of at least in the beginning of the thought process of allowing people into this program sure so if we are truly committed to improvement um we'll be really reflecting on the challenges that we faced last year and one of the or this school year one of the biggest challenges is flexibility that um i should re-change that the mobility between settings so students who are going back and forth between settings has really put significant challenges on staff attendance and engagement has been put in place so when i'm hearing your question
129one of the things that we have to be challenged by is to really provide clarity clarity about what the offerings will be in the virtual school what the expectations for attendance and engagement are and just make those very very clear upfront and commitment this would not be an in and out you would be choosing this as a learning environment for you so providing that clarity around expectations we really feel would be supportive of what you're describing yeah if i may just elaborate on it we don't want to redo this year and i want to be super clear about that we have said all along that we want more people back face to face and we will continue to say that we believe we do our best work face to face but this has changed the
130learning uh trajectory for some students and virtual learning outside of texas has been taking off uh texas has some pretty tight rules regarding secondary education in particular with virtual learning other states have not so virtual learning has been taking off in other parts of the country at a different pace than in texas in the past we want to make sure that we are meeting the needs of our community so i did quick math 836 respondents so far 30 percent about 30 percent interested that's 200 and about 60 people that are still interested we don't want to lose 260 kids we also already know that we have uh i believe is 2018-19 school year over 80 students that had left us to go to a charter school nearby so we want to continuously study and make
131sure we're meeting the needs of the bisd community and that's what this is allowing us to do we don't know if we're going to be able to offer a virtual academy virtual school virtual whatever we want to call it but we feel it's in our our due diligence to our community to explore it right i mean at this point we unless there's some legislative changes we still can't anyway right so just to be clear right we're just trying to lay the groundwork to to be ready in the event that that were to come about um because i think i said this before like if we're going to do it if we if that's a big if right if we're going to do it it's going to be world class right like there's no yeah mr
132floor to that point that we've been really working this year on agility right and being prepared so that situations that come don't control us that we have management of that right and so we're really using this time to learn um and design multiple options um that we could look and say what is world class for our students what is aligned to the needs of our students in our community one of the things that mr dr smith just mentioned was the 267 students that are in belton isd and not in our system right now because they're choosing home school private school or charter schools we've been looking at that data for the last few years and by listening to what's happened in our own system this year and considering that we realize that we can do
133better for our kids and we can connect with students who we may have lost that we believe in serving in belton isd in our community so we've been studying the schools around us the charter schools private schools to understand what they're doing that might be drawing students there as well and then honestly designing world class that's top notch and brings them back because they recognize the needs will be bet better met in dalton isd awesome any other questions comments okay thank you appreciate that thank you please reach out with any questions or curiosities that you have as you're thinking okay next item strategic plan update dr golden's going to come give us an abbreviated report on our strategic planning process good evening so yes here to provide a quick update on our work regarding developing
134a strategic plan as you know this is tied directly to goal 5 and our key progress measure we mentioned that key progress measure earlier this evening big picture of how this fits with all of our work we've spent a lot of time talking about directional work so things like establishing goals this summer key progress measures in august the values and beliefs that you just adopted developing the journey of a graduate and adopting that the other i think a recent workshop asked you about your input into vision we showed a quick video by michael junior and really talked about how knowing our why and when we know our why are what becomes more impactful so i got input from you and i'm going to show you a couple of sample vision statements in a few minutes
135based on your input and the input of others all of that has been about setting direction during this time we've also been doing assessments of our facilities as you heard earlier this evening just to figure out in some areas current reality so directional system direction for our district and then assessing current needs and now we're in the phase of developing a road map to bringing all of this to life and so our we've developed a strategic steering team that's been working and we are about to launch our planning team so this is just a timeline i showed you this earlier in a previous presentation we hope to be seeing you in june with our strategic plan but big picture on process the steering team has really been guiding this process they designed the community summit
136we had several of those as well as a thought exchange to gather input from our community those took place and now the focus area planning teams are getting ready to launch this week big picture when all of that data from thought exchange and all of those community summits studying all of that data these are the focus areas that really emerged from all of that data which should look really familiar because they really align with the goals that you've developed so we have teams forming around each of these focus areas and part of that process was we took your input when we talked vision recently we took it back to that steering team we gathered feedback on a couple of drafts that they crafted based on your input as well as gathering some input from principals
137in dwick our dewitt committee and so this evening not asking you to pick one or the other of these two statements but these are two that after taking it to all of these groups based on your input these were the two that were drafted and resonated most with the groups we were working with so you'll see a draft so that first one provide a foundation that leads to an unlimited future for each and every student and the part below it is the tagline that they developed along with that second draft empower each and every learner to pursue their dreams and enrich their communities tagline on that pursuing dreams creating futures so again not asking you to vote on these but would like to gather some feedback from you this evening are there parts of these
138statements that really speak to you really resonate with you is anything missing because our goal is to bring back to you when we bring the strategic plan would be the the final draft of a vision statement because it is the charge of our board to set vision for the school district and so i want to bring the final one back to you in june i particularly like the word empower and draft too i believe when you empower someone you give them the just the uh opportunity to see that there are there's no limit that they can do anything regardless of their socioeconomic status or whatever they may have going on at home and then the pursuing dreams and creating futures you know every little boy and girl has a dream uh to do something wonderful
139they may not know necessarily know at the time what it is and so i believe if we can empower them with the ability to dream that we can definitely get to draft too quite easily thank you other comments i'll punt it to the board y'all have any other comments what she said all righty then thank you okay if you have other comments please let me know next steps again our focus planning teams start this week and they will share their feedback and basically their work will be around identifying strategies for improving and moving forward in those focus areas that work will go to the steering team for some feedback they'll go back and do a little bit more work and then it will hopefully roll into that strategic plan that we'll present to you in
140june thank you thank you okay looks like we have the training requirements up here we had some reports that were listed before but i'll go ahead and speak to this since it showed here on the screen what this simply means is that the board has to uh continually learn and there's some requirements that we are that we are faced with uh every year and i am happy to report that we have met and or exceeded those uh in the case of miss erin bess who just got appointed in january she still has some opportunities to complete those requirements but board again i just want to say thank you for all the work that you do thank you for being a continual learner and i know that each of us has individual things that we have
141to accomplish when it comes to these learning things and some of us are doing it virtually some of us have done it in person but we've done it so thank you for the work that you do for this community uh as a whole and individually and so that will take us to the next item which was facilities committee report my facilities committee report was the workshop tonight awesome awesome well then we'll move on to policy [Laughter] all right um with the exception of one policy that we discussed in our last meeting all the policies are on the consent agenda under subsection m there are six of them and these are going to suffice as our second reading pursuant to a policy um the changes that were made to these six policies uh are actually quite
142small one of them was like the investment was for for commercial paper went from 180 180 days to 270. so albeit the changes were very small there could be quite impactful so just keep that in mind one of the things that i want to mention and tai had made a comment to me uh last week when i talk about these policies we always say well cda local dea local cpc local but what does all that mean one of the one of the things that i want to emphasize tonight is that these local policies are a reflection and we've talked a lot about vision tonight talked about our beliefs uh and what we value these local policies are in fact a reflection of what we believe and what we value as a district so anytime you
143see local although there's recommendations that are made some of them have to have they had to comply with the legal requirements of course but but we are allowed to add in our local policies what what we want to do to reflect what we would like to accomplish for example um the cda local that i just mentioned about the 180 to 270. the dea local when you see a d it's you see a policy begins with a d generally talking about personnel and that was a local compensation plan um that begins on page 232 of your of your packets we had to address this early on in the year well actually last march whenever we had the emergency closure and how we're going to pay employees during the pandemic we actually discussed this i think on
144two meetings and there was a very small change made to that about paying employees during during emergency closure whether that mercy closure is due to weather whether it's due to some sort of state mandate federal mandate those kinds of things one of the things i want to point out is that non-exempt employees that are required to work are going to be paid two times they're paid up to 40 hours and then two and a half times after 40 hours chris is that correct we had a lot of discussion about that yes okay so if if employees want to know how they're going to get paid during emergency closure of course the board still has discretion um but that's something that that uh we wanted to make very clear we're going to take care of employees
145during the during an emergency closure moving on to cpc local which is records management if you look at our policy that was kind of stuck on matt and as many records requests as we receive uh you you can't possibly keep up with all of that so we added uh that you could it could be you as the custodian records or your designee or it could be more than one design depending on the on the department so that was a small change big impact bq local and bqa local and then bqb local if you look at all three of those those have to do with our district vision our goals objectives and journey of a graduate we've had a lot of discussions about journey of a graduate and we would be remiss if we did not
146add journey of a graduate as an element to these policies we talk about it a lot uh so whenever we're considering uh the district vision mission mission and goals and objectives of what we want to accomplish with our students we got to factor in the journey of a graduate and the competencies that go along with that so we made some changes to those again it was they're very minor but have a big impact the last part of our discussion centered upon eic local and i know i've said this many times and deanna's back there um she brought she brought us back some um some data and interviewed uh the class of well all of our graduating seniors isn't it right right so uh and then matt and i had a discussion about eic local and
147we're going to continue our discussions about eic local and one of the things that i want all of us to to start to ponder and think about is eic local has to do with class rank of course and grading and how we weigh our courses obviously we're going to have a especially the top ten percent they're going to be focused on the on the grades let me get let me get as much as as much of a gpa as high gpa as i possibly can to get into a certain school and one although there's several things that that deanna and her team brought to us based upon these interviews that they did and we found that that kids are avoiding taking certain classes because of the eic local and i'll just give you some of
148the classes that they're avoiding they're not taking a pap calculus because on-ramps is weighted higher they're not taking debate medical microbiology anatomy medical terminology dual credit courses that was interesting physiology they're not taking the culinary arts accounting too and i'll mention something that that janet's not here tonight but janet mentioned that uh i think her her boys were one of them i think went to business the other one went to engineering but she thought well you know an engineering student should have some sort of maybe accounting background or some sort of business background so then when they go out into the workforce um they'll have some some knowledge of that so um she thought she made it a point to say well my kids were focused on nothing but gpa so they avoided those courses
149and we thought that they should have those courses psychology health sciences introduction to business and there's some others on the list also that the kids are avoiding so so i want to leave you with this tonight if you look at that policy as a whole have we lost to some extent the purpose of education because it appears that gpa is the driving force behind that uh and one of the things that that melinda mentioned tonight in a strategic planning is um are we not allowing kids to explore what maybe they're interested in because maybe they're not they're not going to know now because they can't take certain courses because they're so focused on gpa so so we want to have we want we want to have kids to have the ability to have a broad
150perspective of what they want to do especially in high school it should be a fun experience another thing that that deanna brought to us is that kids are spending several hours three plus hours a night completing homework on a daily basis and that was 15.5 percent of the kids reported that that's a lot of time that they're spending doing homework two to three hours 19 percent one to two hours 31 percent so as we move further uh one of the things that we had asked indiana to do for us is to bring us back some data on if you take the focus off gpa how is that going to impact kids get it into college and that's going to be one of our our future discussions so at some point later on i mean it
151could be many i mean this is this is going to be a long process we've said that many times we're going to put all of this together and then and then we're going to address eic local and decide whether we're going to make some significant changes to it or not so we're going to start thinking about that now because it's going to be an ongoing process indiana and her team are doing a great job in bringing us information uh you know interviewing these kids uh and obviously the way we've done things from from for the last several months is we're going to engage the community and figure out um remember it's an it's a local policy so it should be reflective of our of our local beliefs and our desires that we want for our
152kids and eic is local is one of those that we can i mean we almost have full discretion to change it the way however we want to change it thank you lord you all have any comments or questions i mean one of the most trouble troubling things that i've come across kind of as we've got as as we've looked at this is we're chasing kids away from engineering um and you know if you look at the job market and so where the needs are in the skill sets like we're millions of people short in the country like filling those fields and some of the stuff that we have in that policy is chasing kids away from taking those programs now you could argue to get best set up to pursue those programs in college like
153as much match as much math as you can take as possible that that's pretty much that'll help you get there but they're not exploring the engineering sciences stuff because of this right and that that's really troubling so you know we gotta we gotta figure out yeah more much more to come so and the goal right is kick the door open as wide as we can for as many students for as long as we possibly can and hold it open right we want to make sure that they've got options to i don't know if that second vision statement we looked at right so awesome yeah mr tag but i don't know the exact data on this but i know texas is kind of a relic when it comes to the gpa and class rank thing right
154so if we could get our big universities the the two big ones that the a lot of the those top tier competitive kids are trying to get into because they only take the seventh or six percentile and up when we can get our legislature to make a policy change for our state then that should free up local districts to do what's best for their kids but until we can get that figured out it's going to be kind of tough isn't it yeah well so what we're learning too is there's it's almost like two different ways kids are scored right so if you go from uh if you go to uh dr love smith correct me if i go off the rails here all right okay so right so so the school's two different processes right
155so if you go to if you go to apply to a college from a school system that's a ranking school system you go through one process if you if you go through the application process through from a non-ranking school district you go through a different process that looks at the student holistically well i don't know i mean just with what i know today and sort of you know some of the research and stuff we've done i mean that more holistic approach seems to be maybe a better approach i don't know we're we haven't done all the research right there's a lot to do still but like they're start that that process is starting to change um so and and part of the input is actually college and university input like admissions input so we're certainly
156going to get a view of what that looks like well one way of doing it we talked about would be to weigh courses less or not weigh as many courses to allow kids to explore what they might want to do for the future because if you're a kid that just focused on that you're not going to you're going to be focused on gpa period you may not you may want to take other courses but you can't you may not know you may not ever know what your interests are until you get into college and say man i really don't like this i should have i wish i would have been able to explore that in uh in high school good any other comments or questions about that nope we'll move on to those pretenders reported
157i am really excited about giving this report tonight we're going to boil it down to four points real quickly and i'm not even going to use the slides on this one first i want to publicly thank our board and our administrative team as you all know since i was virtual last month i have a family member who has been in and out of the hospital for over a month now and i appreciate your support immensely it's challenge and i just wanted to make sure i thank the board but also our administrative team they are amazing and they're doing a ton of work right now and i'm very proud of them and thankful for them so i wanted to say that first and foremost secondly as you see throughout the presentation tonight there's a lot of
158teacher recognitions going on right now and i think it'd be remiss if i didn't point out that despite the challenges that we've had this year our teachers are doing phenomenal work and i think it's important for us to remember that and it's exciting to remember that when we talk about teacher of the year time there are some amazing teachers in the school district and i'm super proud of what i see when i go to visit classrooms third thing i want to make sure that i point out is mr loma lee is going to come up real briefly and talk to you real quickly real quickly about um getting about getting some feedback right now as you all know we made some changes to the secondary schedules this year and be due to some changes because
159of covid and we are in the middle of studying that right now and talking about that so mr lonely will you give us a quick update yep that's my update have a good evening well very quickly thank you board good evening and um just want to give you a quick uh a couple phases that we've gone through in terms of getting feedback uh our purpose has been to get comprehensive feedback around uh our secondary bowel schedule moving forward and really the the how we get feedback is just is critically important even more important than the recommendation just as important as the recommendation that we're being very thoughtful about getting parent student and teacher feedback along the way so a phase one was a thought exchange and kind of prepping for that and some focus group
160phase two was holding the the focus groups and the thought exchange we've collected a variety of data sets we took that data sets and actually analyzed it with students and staff in those focus groups and then we took it to kind of phase three where now we're taking all of that data all of the the wonderful information sharing that we had and are analyzing it and creating some scenarios around it okay so it's very well informed i'm very proud of our principles that we slowed the process down in order to get incredibly valuable feedback to help inform our decision making and our recommendations at this point we're running those scenarios by staff yet again right to get additional feedback we're having conversation with central office leadership about a couple of scenarios and that would be
161the everyday scenario and every other day scenario we're vetting it through various feedback loops athletics fine arts cte making sure that everybody's eyes are on various scenarios we are not in a place right now to make a recommendation yet we are okay living in dissecting the scenarios right and really making sure that we're well informed and bringing forward a recommendation that everybody um can be be sure that that voices were heard and part of the process and so that is my quick report for you this evening letting you know that that process is going well and then i'm very proud of our principles for leading the way and getting that feedback any questions or are there any updates comments questions thank you thank you and then the last piece i wanted to uh point out
162this evening is that um well first of all i should thank mr lomely for leading that we we made some changes to that schedule i have some strong opinions about using schedules to best meet the learning needs of our kids but we've been put in a challenging situation this year i really appreciate arturo's leadership in doing that the last thing in the superintendent's report every month we report out on any actions taken regarding the resolution from last year for covid19 todd and jennifer are there anything to report there are no items to report this month regarding that so in the essence of a shortened superintendence report that is the concluding remark well thank you very much sir any comments or questions about the superintendent's report we're good all right next item is on our agenda
163is the consent agenda does any board member wish to have any item pull further discussion if not is there a motion to approve as presented mr norwood is there a second mr taggart all in favor please raise your hand that passes unanimously all righty our next item a board request for new information anything on this side of the house you all need anything chris erin no anything on the side of this nope i would move on to the calendar of events you all have a listing i just want to call out a couple of things early voting started today that's weekdays only that's listed there the nelson high school pre-promised from 1 to 3 30 at belton high school gym this coming friday april 23rd we have a couple of sports special board meetings that
164you all need to make sure your calendars are updated uh one is going to be april 26 at five and the other one is going to be may 10th the only other thing that i would want to point out here is our next regular board meeting will be on may 17th other than that if there's nothing further we stand adjourned thank you all for tonight's meeting you