001I call this premeating briefing of the Carolton Farmers Branch ISD Board of Trustees to order at 6:00 p.m. on May 7th, 2026. The purpose of this premeating briefing is to conduct the briefing session with administrative staff regarding the posted agenda for the regular board meeting scheduled for 7 p.m. on April 2nd, 2026. For the record, board members present are Kim Brady, Ilana Garza Rojos, Marjorie Barnes, Paul Gilmore, Randy Shackman, and myself, Cassandra Hatfield. We constitute a quorum and may conduct business on behalf of the district. Um, our next item is audience for guest and we did not have anyone sign up to speak prior to the 1pm posted deadline. So, we'll move on to item number three. Dr. Elders, do you have any administrative reports? >> Yes. Our first administrative report is item 5M considering
002approve theou between Charleton State and CFB ISD. So, Mr. Hunter will present that. This just gives our um students more options for college prep. So, Mr. Hunter >> and let the record show that Miss Benabus has arrived at 6:01 p.m. >> Thank you, Mr. Hunter. >> Hello. Okay, here we go. Um, good evening, President Hatfield, um, Dr. Eldridge and board of trustees. I'm here to discuss um, CCMR, but more specifically um, ensuring that we understand a strategy that we're pursuing here in CFBISD that relates to our House Bill 3 goals. Uh the objectives of this brief presentation is to review CCMR components, explain the strategy that will be through Charlton State University, and to inform you of the potent potential investment of this partnership as it relates to maintaining a high CCMR rating, which we
003know is a direct reflection of our student outcomes and post-secondary readiness. To review our House Bill 3 goal for CCMR, I presented back in February that we're tracking in a at a good pace right now. In addition, our 2025 graduates should be around a 96% CCMR met rate for the 2026 accountability rating. Our 2026 grads are track are tracking at a very similar pace. However, tonight's presentation is about our 2027 graduates and the potential upstream proactive measures we need for 2028 accountability ratings. Remember, our students can earn a CCMR indicator by achieving any of the elements you see on this flowchart. Obviously on within that flowchart, there are also flowcharts within each piece of the flowchart, right? Uh on the career ready side, our students must meet the requirements of completing both the coursework through
004their program of study and successfully passing their industry-based certification. On the college side, there are cut scores for all of these areas that you see up there or a cut score of number of hours earned through dual credit. Today, we're going to focus specifically on the blue side or the college ready side. While overall CCMR is something we should be very proud of in CFBISD, TEA is making changes to the pathways for CCMR met on the college ready side. While the approved list for college prep will not be released until June, we are preparing that this list will not have an approved college prep course that supports met criteria for CCMR. Currently, college prep course completion accounts for approximately 30 to 35% of our CCMR met uh for all graduates in CFBISD. And and we're
005not alone. This is a very similar percentage to our region in our state. We are proud of our CCMR accountability rating. Uh but as I shared, we're we're exceeding both the state goal and the CFBISD House Bill 3 goal. However, um uh I shared that that we probably shouldn't change our district goal just yet, right? um because we knew and predicted that there could be some changes to the criteria coming. Miss Hulcom likes to say, "So what? Now what?" um and that seems to be what's happening right now, right? Um great that we're achieving at high rates, uh but it's time to raise the rigor for our students. The now what part is really moving the focus from college prep on this flowchart to the dual credit portion on this flowchart. First of all, our
006goal is to offer an array of dual credit options for all students in CFBISD, but we want to pursue an avenue of raising that rigor for our students that also connects uh to our CCMR accountability. DEA says that a student can earn three credit hours in English language arts or math. Uh and that would support our our CCMR college readiness component. We needed to find the right institution that really matches the the values of our district that we could partner with. Uh first and foremost, this has to make sense for the students in CFBISD. Um we have to be able to potentially offer this to over 600 students in the district in 12th grade. Um and and then really finally, we want to make sure that there's also options within this partnership that aren't just
007specific to to the college prep portion. After careful consideration, the university that we feel that provides the best option for our students is through Tarlton State University through a program they call Tarlton Today. We are excited about the potential with Charlton State for more dual credit options and specifically for a course to support CCMR for college readiness. TSU offers an English language arts course through COMM 1315 called College Readiness and Study Skills. This course is specifically for nonts MET seniors, which is the target group we're looking for for CCMR. This investment would be very similar to the investment that we already use for college prep. Uh and finally, uh it has to be a program that really is a partnership with our high schools that fits with our systems, our organizations, and is willing to
008work with our teachers, which we believe Charlton State will do. The investment from CFBISD is predicted to be similar to what we were already spending for Texas College Bridge. Additionally, the financial piece only comes after we enroll students, which would be in August, if we so choose. Uh while we're excited about this potential opportunity for our students, it does allow us time to review what TEA releases in June before we make final next steps with Charlton State University. Additionally, the partnership would also um provide some some other avenues for dual credit through CTE courses courses or just additional uh dual credit courses in G in general that are not just about college readiness. We are really confident this MOU aligns with our district values and student outcome goals and provides further dual credit options for
009all students. It is recommended that the board approve an MLOU with Tarlton State University to support additional dual credit options and college readiness for all graduates. At this time, I'd be happy to answer any questions. >> Board members, any questions? Mr. Shackman, >> thanks for the report. Remind me the text bridge program that we've been using has gone away. Correct. >> It it hasn't gone away. Um there there is an approved list that has not been approved. >> Okay. >> And there is a chance that Texas College Bridge is going to be on that approved list in June. However, we do not believe that that list that will be approved is going to be connected to college career military readiness moving forward. And it currently is. >> Right. And so the recommendation from admin is
010that the Tarlton will replace that. >> Yes, sir. That's correct. And they have the the course that we think makes the most sense to replace it with. >> All right, M. Brady. >> Thank you, Mr. Hunter. I actually I think Ry's question, your your answer kind of answered my question, which was what would we be doing with the TSI ineligible kids if we didn't have this option? So, we would do the bridging option. >> Correct. >> Gotcha. Okay. >> And we still obviously want to provide a college prep course for our non-TSI MET seniors, but we would love it if that was also a course that supports all of our House Bill 3 goals. >> Board members, any additional questions? >> Um, I do have one question for the professional learning. Mhm. >> Um how
011are we anticipating the impact to our teachers um with their interest with this? >> So the first place we're starting is with our English 4 on level students. That is where most of our non-TSI met seniors uh they all have to take English 4. So we've already sort of briefed the high school principles on on what this partnership could look like. Uh and they've already started sort of talking to the English team because those trainings are over the summer. Yes, ma'am. Um, any other questions or comments? Um, shout out for a pulling up our progress monitoring report and b for bringing back the same diagram that shows the pathways. So, I really appreciate the repetition um because you know we don't do this every day and so I really appreciate the repetition. Um, so thank
012you for your intentionality with the presentation. >> Thank you. >> All right, Dr. Eldridge, any additional administrative reports? >> Okay, the next item is 5N with our technology group and I'm so excited about this. Um technology is ever changing. Um but we need upgrades in our network and um this boardroom and even at the Watton Center even though it looks a shiny new building technology can always move faster than we can upkeep sometimes, but they have a great plan. So um Dr. Stout, >> thank you Dr. Eldridge U. President Hatfield, members of the board, I'm pulling up. Okay, there we go. So, we are here to uh talk to y'all about the agenda item concerning the network operating center and other district infrastructure. Um, we came to the board and thanks to uh thanks to
013your support and thanks to the generosity and support from our um voters in the CFB area, we had our um 2023 bond approved. In that there was uh $ 38.88 88 million approved for the fiber um refresh replacement package. That project is 99% complete right now. And to date, we have spent uh $14.8 million of that 38.88 million and $1.8 million of that is still remaining in our contingency fund. So that will come back when the project is closed out. Whatever is left in the contingency will come back. So we are uh quite a bit under budget thankfully um in part because our our conduit that our old fiber was running through is in much better shape than um what it possibly could have been. if if a lot of it had been crushed, it
014would be much more expensive to replace that than it would be just to pull the old fiber through and put new fiber in. Um, so we're here tonight to um ask for your support in repurposing some of those unspent bond funds um on the district's network operating center that is at the Nancy Watton building. Um, I would go through and explain everything that goes into the network operating center, but I'd rather let our network engineers do it for for me. event. All right. favorite. You're not getting it. We don't Thank you. >> And and I want to give a huge shout out to those five engineers. Um they are truly are the wizards behind the curtain. Not only do they have their normal 8 to5, but they put in long hours, evenings, nights, weekends, holidays
015to to make sure that our network is safe and secure for our students. So, huge shout out to them. Um, a little bit on the Knock Network Operation Center uh timeline. You can see there back in March of 2019 is when we first put our very first electronics in the Nancy Waten uh technology and event center, Knock. For the better part of a year, we were running dual knocks. For some of you remember our old TLC building that was our old network operations center. We had a connection where we're running dual knocks for pretty much for a full solid year. We converted over uh to where we are present or presently knock in that network operation center now at Nancy Watton in March of 2020. Uh in 2023 is when we had our bond uh
016fiber uh initiative and our bond package for all of CFBISD. In 24-25 we were anticipating leveraging some TIFF funds to be able to upgrade some of this network infrastructure. Um and then in 2027 is when uh a lot of this network infrastructure becomes end of life. Let's talk about some of the components that are in our our data center. Uh, we have firewalls, network firewalls. We have network switches and routers. We have pieces of our AV infrastructure. We have our the AV infrastructure over at our Nancy Watton, our banquet rooms that a lot of that equipment was put in in 19 2019 and 2020 that we need substantial upgrades there. Uh, we've all seen the technology that's in this boardroom. Uh, we're looking at upgrading the technology in this boardroom. Uh, our UPS's. Uh, what
017do you might think, what do we need UPS's for? We lose power in our in our schools quite often. And when we lose power, we need to be able to keep up our network at those campuses from a safety and security perspective. Without those UPS's, our phones wouldn't work, our security cameras wouldn't work, our badge access wouldn't work. So, we need to be able to leverage those UPS's to be able to keep our staff and students safe at our campuses. and our virtual virtualization network for our staff and the virtualization that controls the back end of all our access control for our staff and and our students as well. You can see where we uh we RFPD a lot of this or all of this we RFPd we will have to get some updated pricing
018because the pricing that we have now is null and void. So that's why we have a pretty good hefty contingency in there. And due to the 26 $27 million in savings in the bond fiber package, that's where we're asking you for your support and being able to leverage that savings, being able to upgrade a lot of these components on our in our uh network operation center and AV infrastructure. And then it's recommended that the board of trustees approve the listed RFPs authorizes the superintendent and her design designate to award according to the evaluations and to execute the purchases and contracts within the scope of the RFPs and RFQS that are in the best interest of the district. And with that, we'll happy to answer any questions you may have. >> Board members questions or comments?
019Um, would you all like to comment on the BOC that this was presented to the BOC? Could you Thank you guys and thank you for coming in under budget. I can tell you that at the BOC meeting um they got a round of applause because it's very exciting to come in so far under budget and then to already know what you want to reallocate the remaining funds for. So, thank you all very very much. BLC was very much in favor of um this idea. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Uh with the new changes, how many years will that help us be at a higher level of technology or not years but timewise? >> The the average the average cost of infrastructure in a network operation center is five to six years. So this
020will get us through the next five to six years. >> Thank you. We then the reason why we were wanting to leverage the bond funds because we just got our new allocation of V-Ray funds which is according to our district 5.2 million. We have five years to use that. So that's why we want to be able to leverage the bond funds so that in five years from now for another refresh refresh we could leverage. >> That was a great addition. Thank you very much. All right. Uh thank you all very much for your presentation and this is on the agenda later tonight. >> All right, Dr. Eldridge, any other reports? >> I really appreciate you BJ in the video. Um that was very good with the So we appreciate that. Okay. Um the last administrative
021report we have is item 5X and it's about our external audit service. I will tell you that um um Mr. Art Martin will give a um a short presentation on our audit um system and process and basically um how we go about choosing who our auditor is. So, we had some questions about that. So, Mr. Martin, >> yes. Uh members of the board and and superintendent, thank you very much. And uh this item here is uh as I understand it uh the staff uh decided that we needed to go out for a a uh a request for uh proposal or qualifications for an audit firm. Uh we've been using Whitley Pin for for a number of years. Whidley Pin is a very experienced uh auditor and they they specialize among other things in school districts.
022They do a lot of school districts around the state, but uh their proposal uh was designed to to uh just test the market and uh and make a decision of whether or not we needed to stay with Whit Whidley Pin or make a change. And uh the uh the the bid went out and uh it came back and it was evaluated and the uh the uh evaluators decided that uh Woodley pin was still our best option for conducting the audit. Uh, as you know, we we're talking about uh we have already decided that we're going to next year go through a a fiscal year change and uh so Whitley Penn is is well positioned to help us with that in that regard because they'll be doing the audit work to uh shift over from uh
023a uh September one fiscal year start to a July one fiscal year start. and uh they they're going to be uh we believe very competitive on their price and they're a very experienced firm and uh we'd recommend that uh you know we stay with Whitley Penn. >> All right. Thank you, sir. Board members, any questions, Mr. Gilmore? >> All right. Thanks. Um I'm the FNG, you know, so I had to learn a lot on >> that stands for fun new guy in case you were wondering. >> He's not a policy. Um so as I was going through it and preparing I noticed under the evaluator uh and the process integrity that only one uh Mrs. Espinosa was is the only remaining evaluator that's still employed by the district as I understand it. Uh the other
024two have left. So with that um I looked at the you provided us with the scoring evaluations and there was uh quite a difference between two and Mrs. Espinosa in how they they came to the same conclusion. But in my mind, I think if we had two other evaluators there, it could have easily been the number two uh who came in. But the question is, are y'all confident uh with this decision uh having two uh evaluators that evaluated not here to stand behind? which is where it said notes on page 12. There were no notes about the evaluations. >> Absolutely. I I am uh again, Whitley Penn is is a firm that they do audit uh school district audits across the state uh large and small. And uh they're very good firm and if if
025I were on that evaluation uh team, I would I would have recommended Whidley Pen. They're they're a good firm and like I said, they're very familiar with our district and uh we're going to be going through some significant changes over the next year or so and and uh I I'm I'm very comfortable with the recommendation. >> Yeah. And I talked to Dr. E about that and so that makes sense. Um and just so everybody knows, this is not an a digin audit to make sure we're double paying for this or double paying for that. it's of the books to make sure money is going where it's supposed to go. Uh, and we're coming up right. Uh, it's very standardized through GAP, GASP, and TEA. And, um, so my question is with all these, we looked
026at four and you put a RFQ out and so it was figured on qualifications, not pricing. But what is I don't expect you to tell me right now, but are those close in pricing? Because it seems that since it's so regulated, we probably would have gotten the same results, but another firm might have found other areas of concern because we've used, as far as I can see, back to 23, we have used this same firm. Just my thought is a fresh set of eyes sometimes is uh good to bring in and maybe going forward um we uh have a rotation policy of some kind every 5 to seven years just so it uh creates more transparency and more eyes are on it. >> Yes. And and that's uh that's a legitimate uh a legitimate question
027and and Whitley Pin is a large enough firm that if we choose to we can ask for a rotation of partners. We can ask for rotation of seniors and also the uh auditors that actually do the to do the bulk of the work. We can and uh Whitley pin has a uh they they they typically uh and and other auditors do too. Uh they have a they have a practice of moving auditors uh from job to job so that they can so that they can get experience in different areas of uh of their audit work. But uh we can request a a rotation uh at any time we choose. And so you you get a new set of eyes anytime you want anytime you would want that you can ask for that. And uh but
028you don't and now in this case where you have a a firm that uh has such a large staff uh you wouldn't have to change firms to to get that rotation or or a new set of eyes looking looking at our transactions. >> Mr. Instagram or I'd also like to clarify that we we have switched before. So back the last time we adopted the RFQ the initial RFQ for Whitley pin we did switch and so that has been done is to switch companies and I remember actually I believe I remember a conversation with Mr. Shackman behind the dis about the importance of that. I do think it's important to note that the the contract is for one year with an option of four years of extensions. And with us changing the fiscal year, I personally
029believe it behooves us to stay with the same company because of the experience they have and the monitoring they can, you know, they can use their past experience or they can switch people. Like I said, they're bigger, but it does not put us in a position where we have to stay with them for five years. We're only going in for one. So that's just my any board members. Any other comments? Mr. >> Paul, you have one more question. >> No, I was going to say I agree. I just want a clarification. >> Yeah, >> I I was here when we made that switch from the small firm in Denton that was handling our audit prior to going to Whitley Penn. And by the way, Whitley Pin have had the privilege of serving the audit committee
030and they do an excellent job. Are there any accounting principles that we need to be aware of that advocate for the time allowed how often you should make a switch? There there's not there's not a requirement. Uh there are there are a lot of organizations that will go out every five years or or so. But I've I've known districts that stay with the same auditor for decades. But and but there are times when they will ask for a change in staff. Yeah. they'll they'll ask for a rotation of partners or seniors or or audit staff and and that's not uncommon, but there's no requirement that you that you go out to bid uh every five years or that you get that you go out to bid at all. It's a professional service and it's governed
031under the uh under the government code of Texas. It's like an engineer or a a doctor or any other type of professional service and you're not even required to bid it. Uh you can you can choose it without bidding. I choose a company. Okay. >> Thank you. >> Right. Any additional comments or questions? All right. Um Dr. Eldrich, are there any additional administrative reports? No. All right. With that, um we will move. Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you, >> sir. Um we'll move on to item number four. Board members, do you have any additional questions regarding the consent agenda? >> All right. Seeing none, uh we will move to adjournment. And the time is 6:28 p.m. I call this regular meeting of the Carolton Farmers Branch ISD Board of Trustees to order at 7:00 p.m.
032on May 7th, 2026. Board members, district staff members, and members of the audience, a lot of members of the audience, you are free to join me in standing as Ivan Deleon provides a message, followed by the leading of the pledges by Randy Shackman with the US flag and Carolyn Benvdas with the Texas state flag. >> Heavenly Father, I just thank you for this time, Lord, that we get to acknowledge your presence in this room. We ask you for your anointing upon each board member here. That you would bless them with your wisdom and knowledge to make the right decisions that would create a foundation for this community to spring forward. Lord, that we would be have a community that would be like a beacon on a hill for everyone to see. We ask you to
033bless the families as we end another school year, Lord, and that you would bless them through the summer vacation that would be strengthened and protected. Lord, we ask you to just help us as we continue to move forward in our community. Strengthen our our families and make this a better place for our students, our our parents, our families, teachers, and all those involved in making this community a better place. Let your will be done here tonight, Lord. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. I aliance to the Texas one state. >> Well, it is the season that I like to call Mvember, which is when May is so busy that you feel like it's the Christmas season. Um, and that is kind of how the end of
034the year feels, but it's very exciting uh as we prepare for graduation and celebrating uh the great work that our teachers have done this year uh working with our students. And then we have lots of more things to celebrate as we anticipate next school year. So, um as a district, we dedicate all of our efforts and resources to a goal of high expectations for all. We use this goal to guide every deliberation, decision, and action. As elected trustees, this board is responsible for providing oversight, setting the strategic direction of the district, and ensuring accountability, all in service of student achievement. You will witness this meeting as we work in open session except for specific items that can be discussed in close session commonly known and permitted under the Texas Government Code section 551, which is
035the open meetings law. These items typically involve personnel matters, consultation with our attorney, or real estate transactions. As we move through the agenda tonight, it is important to remember, and we will get to see that on display tonight, that we are in business of supporting kids. With that in mind, we ask everyone to model the respectful, responsible, and constructive behavior that models the behavior we expect of our students, which includes school spirit. For the record, board members present are Kim Brady, Iliana Garza Rojas, Marjorie Barnes, Carolyn Benvitas, Paul Gilmore, Randy Shackman, and myself, Cassandra Hatfield. we constitute a quorum and may conduct business on behalf of the district and celebrate schools. On top of that, um our next agenda is item number two. Um special presentations and recognitions. So we'll move forward with recognitions. Good
036evening, President Hatfield, esteemed board members, and Dr. Eldridge. Through our partnership with Chick-fil-A Trinity Mills, we honor those who demonstrate excellence with the CFB Champion Award. This month, we are proud to recognize Kelly Parker of Creek View High School as our CFB champion. In 2025, she launched the Creek View Prom Closet, an onampus resource where students can find prom or graduation attire without being obstructed by transportation or financial barriers. Thanks to her outreach, the community rallied and donations of dresses, suits, shoes, and accessories, allowing uh students to find what they need and to feel their best. Dozens of students have benefited from her closet and not just by finding an attire, but by experiencing the joy and confidence to celebrate one of high school's most memorable moments. Thank you, Miss Parker, for your heart, your
037leadership, and your commitment to our students. Please join me for congratulating this month's champion. For our student recognition, we want to congratulate the Ranch View and Turner High School students who travel to Houston last week for the final stages of the NASA Hunch Competition. These talented Institute of Technology and Engineering students presented innovative solutions to real world or should we say real space NASA engineering challenges. They presented the Mars Transit Trash ejector, the Raspberry Pi application server, the NASA HIA rover swarm, and Mars Transit food storage system. Their work has already been highlighted by Channel 8 and by Channel 5, as well as Spectrum News. And so tonight, we're proud to recognize them with our community. Please join us in recognizing these outstanding students who are able to join us tonight. And I apologize in
038advance if I mispronounce any names. Fane Culvin, Daro Glass, Oliver Gonzalez, Bream Muhammad, Neil Ralph, Arun Ribba, Pragata, Arnav Sangel, and Adve Singi. No. Hallelujah. Do that on purpose. And last, but certainly certainly not least, I ask everyone present to join me in recognizing Trustee Randy Shackman with the Distinguished School Board Service Award. This is his last board meeting before retiring after 12 years of service as a CFBISD trustee. and the years. So, thank you so much. We hope you'll always stay with us as you cuddle up and re retire. >> I will. >> Thank you. Thank you. That concludes tonight's recognitions. >> Well, I do want to say just a few words on behalf of the board. Um 12 years of service to this district is a lot of years of volunteerism and we
039are so thankful for uh Mr. Shackman and how he has consistently showed up. Friday night lights always have Mr. Shackman and so do Thursday night lights. And so we're so thankful that not just there but also on the academic side you can see Mr. Shackman at the school district showing our students that the board of trustees cares and we are so thankful. Um also behind the dis he always asked very thoughtprovoking questions and uh he pushed us to think deeper and stay sharp and they were so thankful for that. I think my favorite memory will always be the data jar. So, there was a a uh work study, I believe, where Mr. Shackman showed up and brought a jar and it was empty and it was a data jar. And he said, "Every time you
040say the word data, I'm going to make you put a dollar in this jar." And what that really was, it was a reminder to be curious and be engaged and be asking for data, but it was also a reminder that while we request data, there is a cost to that to the district and that we must also know what we want to do with that data. And so that is uh going to carry with us for many years to remember that data has a cost and it's important that we use that data and use it in a way that is making a difference for kids. And so I just want to thank you for your unwavering support and commitment to this district and we're so thankful that you've been one of our colleagues. And with
041that, um, we will move forward, if I can find my place, um, with the president's report. And for the president's report tonight, um, I just want to remind everyone that at the election, which was on May 2nd, um, we do have a new trustee that will be joining us, but in order for um, the election results have to be canvased first. And so the canvas has been scheduling. That means that we accept the ballots um from the counties and then after that there'll be the swearing in ceremony which will be happening um in June. So that's kind of how that process works once the election passes. And then I also would like to celebrate um this past weekend we uh were recognized by HB as one of the large district finalists of the years who
042are one of the top five districts in the state to be recognized. And we came home. It was a beautiful dinner and ceremony. But what was most excellent about it was the title of it was class acts of education. And HB was celebrating teachers, principles, counselors, and school districts at large. And we are so blessed to be among the best in the state. And so we have a very proud um award as one of the top five finalists in the state, which is so representative of the teachers and staff and the hard work that goes in this district. So, I just want to thank all of our employees for how much they support our kids and for our kids for being able to shine. And with that, I think we have some very exciting district
043announcements. >> Okay, so we had our retirement lunchon and we had 41 teachers retire, which is 1,156 years of service and 815 of the those years are in dedicated to CFB. So, that's incredible. Um, we also had our teacher of the year of event and I want to thank our education foundation for sponsoring that. Our teachers, district teachers of the year are Crochet Powell and Mason Kulkhurst and we want to thank all of our community partners for giving um their sponsorships to have that event. So with that, I also want to thank Mr. Shackman for all the service that you have given to our district. Um, one thing he said I failed at. I used to pick him up for events and he said, "I you never got the president flags on the car for
044me." So, I'll never forget that. But, we had some great car rides and some great car times and I don't think our friendship's over. So, thank you. And Ruth, thank you so much for just allowing him to serve. Um, I know that you appreciated some of the long nights, but like you get them back anyway. We love you both. Um, and the last but not least, we are honoring our brand new Newman Smith head coach. So, Coach Houston, you have great guests here to come and greet you. We want to show you that we have great pride in CFB. Go Trojans. So, I guess we'll go down there. You want to go down there or not? Okay. Here we go. Let's go. I mean, they bring it all out. Keep going. All right, guys. If
045you would please line up for a picture. >> All right. Good evening. My name is Isaiah Young, and I am the proud principal of Newman Smith High School, and I am honored tonight >> to be the person to present our new head football coach and athletic coordinator. After three long weeks, interviews, and a number of other challenges, we were able to come up with who we think is going to be the perfect fit for Newman Newman Smith High School going into the future. So, if you would, let's give a round of applause for Coach Keith Houston. Put your hand in front. Wait, one more. cheer. >> I don't know. Trojan Nation. We can start the chant. >> I know. I can put the drums down. >> I know. >> I think there's a chant that
046says Trojanation. >> See, we've got school spirit. >> All right. Um, Dr. Do you have any additional announcements? >> All right. So, we're moving on with our agenda. Our next agenda item is item 2D, which is an update from PTA, Miss Nunees, >> Dr. Eldridge, President Hopfield, and esteemed board. I'm Diana Nunes, and I'm proud to serve as the VP of membership for the CFB Council of PTAs. Right now, we currently have 5,751 members. Our members help to strengthen our school, family, community partnerships. They help to advocate for children's education and to support opportunities for the children. Is never too late to join a local PTA. In April, we were able to honor two lifetime members as a council. We honored Dr. Mark Roar through his dedication of supporting the fine arts programs in our
047district. Our reflections program has blossomed into a showcase of talent. We also honored our current council president, Stacy Hullman, with her dedication of serving the communities through PTA. Looking ahead to next year, if you're wanting to learn about PTA and connect with others from across the state, Texas PTA launch is for you. Registration is now open for Texas PTA conference being held at the Gaylord Texan July 10th through the 12th. Remember, for every local PTA that has at least one member, a administrator gets free registration. We hope to see you all there. Here are some program updates. Our last delegate meeting of the year will be our annual general meeting on May 13th at 6:30 p.m. here at this boardroom. Each month, we have a PTA challenge. The last challenge of the year was in
048April, which is equity every day, creating a culture of belonging. Tonight, I have the honor of presenting the April challenge winners. Our primary winner had a taste of rainwater where they had a culture parade during the day and a food festival at night. Congratulations to Rainwater Elementary. For our secondary winner, we had a world culture event where students created booths that promoted their cultures. And then there was the special dance that was performed by the student exec team and the FSLC special education classrooms. Congratulations to Turner High School. As always, thank you for your continued support and advocacy for our children. Together, we are PTA. >> Thank you, Miss Nunes. I think this week it's especially fitting to be thinking about our PTAs as they are spoiling our teachers for teacher appreciation week. So if
049you see a teacher tomorrow or you think of a teacher tonight, maybe send them an email, write them a quick note and deliver it tomorrow. Um because kind words are something you can pull out um maybe when you're having a tough day. And so just think about how a message that you can send that teacher could be something that really means a lot to them um for days and even years to come. So, we're so thankful for our teachers and thank you PTA for spoiling them this week. All right, our next agenda item is audience for guests, but at this time I do want to give a brief pause to anyone who would like to step out of the meeting. I know we have students here tonight that might have uh exams to study for
050as it's the end of the year. You are always welcome to stay and attend as much as the board meeting as you would like, but we will take a brief pause and transition. >> Oh, I was spaced out. Yes, that's fine. All right. So item number three, uh, persons who wish to speak during audience for guests must have electronically submitted an online form for the this purpose prior to the closing of the form at the at 1 p.m. today. We do have one person that would like to address the board. And before we begin, I will remind our audience members of the board's procedures for handling audience for guest. Each speaker will be allowed to speak one staring audience for guest. Speakers designated as a stakeholder will be allowed a maximum of three minutes. and
051speakers designated as non-stakeholders will be allowed a maximum of one minute to address the board as dictated by board policy be local. Because the board wants to hear from as many of you as possible while keeping the money reeing running efficiently, groups of more than five people who wish to present on a particular viewpoint of a topic should appoint one person to speak on behalf of their group. Recognizing that students are at the heart of our work, we ask that speakers model their respectful and constructive behavior that we expect from our students. Please keep your comments civil and courteous. Avoid profanity or personal attacks. Refrain from discussing students who are not your own child. Yelling, disruptive behavior, or discriminatory remarks will not be permitted. In the event that your comment in the judgment of the
052presiding officer constitutes a complaint or charge against an employee or officer, it may be necessary for me to interrupt you and ask you to stop and direct you to the district's formal grievance process. If a speaker is seeking board resolution of a specific complaint, that concern should be addressed through the grievance process, which can be found online and include policies GGBA, FNG, and GF. Grievance forms can be obtained on the website. In compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, please note that the board will not respond to the public directly and will address any agenda items as deemed necessary when they're listed on the agenda. As the providing presiding officer, I may respond with factual information as dictated in board policy BEC local. The timer will be shown on the screen in front of you
053and will begin when you arrive at the podium to speak. Again, the presentation will be a limited to the allotted time and I will call the individuals in the order which was received which was only one, Nico Ernelis. Mr. Ernelis. All right, seeing that Mr. Arnellis is not here, I will move on to agenda item number four, which is non-action items for discussion. Uh, item 4A, uh, special education program update. Dr. Eldridge, would you introduce the item, please? >> So, Miss Roland's going to give us an update on all the great things that we are doing for our special ed programs. And, um, again, this is just information. We're not asking for anything for this. So, Miss Roland. Oh, there we go. Good evening, Dr. Eldridge, President Hatfield, and Board of Trustees. I'm Sarah Roland,
054and I'm the assistant superintendent for special services. I have the pleasure serving alongside a great group of leaders who are here tonight. Stand up and wave. They didn't know I was going to do that. I am here to present the first annual special education report as part of a requirement from Senate Bill 568. What is that requirement you might ask? It is a required special education annual meeting. It is important to note that guidance from TEA is pending. So I am sharing what we can best interpret from the legislation. I'd like to begin by highlighting our department's vision as it serves as the foundation for the remainder of the presentation. The vision of the special services department is to provide an equitable education to students who receive special education or 504 services through a collaborative
055and culturally responsive community that prioritizes accessibility and inclusivity. All right, we're going to start with a little bit of data. There's my dollar. This slide shares information about special education enrollment compared to total student enrollment as well as special education enrollment over time. Over the past four years, special education enrollment has grown by 14.9%. However, the rate of the annual growth has steadily declined with the most recent year reflecting an increase of just 2.1%. It is also important to note that we completed 954 initial evaluations during the 2425 school year. This is a 9% decrease from the previous year. We're really focused on keeping students in the least restrictive environment. Right now, over half our students spend 80% or more of their day in general education. We did see a small increase in in resource
056support, mainly due to dyslexia moving into special education. More restrictive placements have stayed stable or decreased over the past three years, which shows inclusive practices are working. One of our areas of focus is to hold name and need meetings for every student to support to support IEP proposals and ensure they are receiving services in their least restrictive environment. Now we'll move on uh move to show how we've performed for state performance plan indicators. My team refers to these as SPIs. What is SPI you may ask? There are 16 performance measures defined by the US Department of Education and tracked by the Texas Education Agency. These cover areas like graduation rates, test performance, and timelines timeliness of services for students with disabilities. Every district must submit accurate and timely data on these indicators which TEA uses
057to evaluate our special education programs. We strive to be transparent and accurate in reporting our data. Two very important indicators are SPI1 timely initial evaluations. It has two parts. Part A is completing the full individual initial evaluation within timeline and part B is the eligibility determination or holding the AR IEP meeting within timeline. SPI12, Early Childhood Transitions, evaluates the timely transitions from early childhood part C into preschool services by their third birthday. Our goal is 100% across all three indicators. While we have not reached that mark, we have made consistent progress over the past three years by strengthening our practices each year. Based on our current trajectory, we are optimistic that all three indicators will reach 100% when results are reported for the 2526 school year. Resultsdriven accountability or RDA is another monitoring system for
058special education. We refer to this as RDA. This s through this system TEA evaluates our district's performance and special education program effectiveness through 15 indicators across domains one through three. Some of the 15 performance indicators include academic outcomes like star test star test passing rates, student success, graduation and dropout rates and inclusion discipline equity measurements. RDA is about ensuring we not only meet compliance requirements but also achieve positive results for students with disabilities. The 2025 um RDA district report um was released in October. This covers the 24 and 25 242 school year. Our district performed well for the RDA indicators reflecting both compliance and strong student outcomes. There were no significant areas of concern identified by the RDA in the last cycle which means our special education program is right on track. RDA domains one
059and four indicators on STAR performance for students in special ed show improvement in elementary reading. We are looking forward to the impact of implementing the new supplemental curriculum for secondary English alongside the RLA department. One of our areas of growth is to continue partnering with the leadership and learning department in the analysis of data to address areas of academic need for students in special education. We also know that the adoption of the new math curriculum will benefit students in special education. On the screen now are the special education star math data for elementary and EOC. Next year, we will be working with campuses, specifically elementary, on ways to address disability related skill deficits with interventions while ensuring access to tier 1 instruction in the general education classroom. Graduation rate is also a part of RDA,
060but I've also included some additional data as reflected in the taper and commit dashboards. This data is for the class of 2024. Remember, this is lagging data. Special education graduation rate was 81%. 4% of those students graduated college, career, and military ready, generating $28,000 in income bonuses. 7% graduated with an advanced diploma, and 1% completed their IEP with workforce readiness. One of our areas of growth is to enh enhance the 18 plus programs and increase the number of work options for our students. In turn, we expect to see this number increase. Now shifting to IDAB maintenance of effort ore. IDAB are funds that are federally are our federal funds for special education. Idea BOE is a requirement for districts to maintain or increase special education funding uh each year. Thee report indicated that the district
061was fully compliant in 2425. This demonstrates strong fiscal responsibility and commitment to students with disabilities. In working with the business office, the district continues to spend above the funding received for special students in special education. There was a new special education funding model through House Bill 2 and Senate Bill 568 and information was released on April 16th. Texas is shifting from instructional setting to a service intensity funding model. This means that funding will be based more directly on student needs. Next year will be a transition year. We will be required to report under both old and new systems. Final funding details under the new model won't be clear until the end of the 2627 school year. This does create some uncertainty with regard to the level of additional sped funding that we can expect to
062receive under the new approach. However, the state has guaranteed funding will not drop below current levels during this transition. Another legislative impact from Senate Bill 2 was the creation of education savings accounts for students in private or homeschool. This slide shows some information in related to students with special education eligibility. To date, we have evaluated 107 private school students. This includes students who reside in CFBISD boundaries or they attend private schools located within within CFBISD bound boundaries. Then of those 107 students, 51 families requested to be submitted in the supplemental special education services education funding account through the Texas Education Agency. To conclude my presentation, I would like to share some of our bright spots over the past year. We had a successful Special Olympics event held on March 27th. We were also glad to
063be able to have an in-person Casey's Run event on April 25th. Thank you so much for attending and supporting our athletes and participating in the run. This year, Casey's Run raised $76,425 in registrations, t-shirts, and donations. This year, we provided many sessions of professional development for teachers, assistants, and administrators. Some topics included writing a compliant IEP, measuring and reporting progress, deescalation techniques, creating positive schoolwide behavior practices, structuring a classroom, and using curriculum. We held three dyslexia parent nights attended by almost 50 families. Topics included identification, definitions, curriculum, there were some simulations, resources that they can use outside of school and inside of school, reading an IEP, and interpreting MAP scores. We are also planning a dyslexia summer camp um that is scheduled for June 16th and 17th. The flyer was sent home via the dyslexia
064interventionist um earlier this week to students who are currently in the program or have been dismissed recently. We hosted two coffee and connect events which provide dedicated space for families to network and support one another. We also held 14 family support meetings covering topics such as autism 101, the ART process, positive behavior strategies, safety skills, and more. We've had the opportunity to partner and participate in a pilot with Really Great Reading, which is a program used for students in our dyslexia program. They they also um selected our district for a case study on our work with for students with dyslexia. What we're seeing so far is really encouraging at the secondary level. About 40% of students have already met strong decoding benchmarks by midyear. That tells us students are building skills more quickly and making
065solid progress. We expect that growth to continue and will share the full case study once it's released. We're also proud to recognize Amy Barber from Country Place Elementary. She was identified as one of the most engaged Gold Book educators nationwide and was recognized by Goldbook in April. Thank you for the opportunity to share this hard work for our stu of our students, teachers, instructional specialists, assistants um and leadership team. This reflects a shared commitment to meeting student needs and continuously improving outcomes. I appreciate your time and support and partnership as we continue to work together. And I'll take any questions you may have. >> Well, Miss Roland, for no guidance from TEA yet, I would say that that was a very thorough report and I learned a lot. Board members, any um comments or questions?
066Miss Barnes? I have a question and a comment. Um, I'm gonna go for my comment first. Um, so I found out from tonight, but also from uh the district improvement committee when she also presented this, you also presented this information about the dyslexia uh gettogethers, the parent nights I had always assumed were for maybe parents who thought their child had dyslexia. And I was so excited to hear um and wish I had looked into it a little further for my my own child and myself that it's actually it's it's ongoing and it's for parents of any you know at any point in their dyslexia journey with their students. And that I just think is so amazing because it doesn't end when they when they finish um you know the the help and all of that.
067It's a continuous thing of trying to encourage them to read and and being supportive. So, I'm I just really appreciate that y'all are thinking about all of that and hope to join one soon. >> Well, we appreciate your feedback and we'll advertise a little bit differently next time. So, thank you for that. >> And then, um I also wanted to point out or I had a question. So, the really great reading, it said on here that it was for it was geared specifically for multilingual. So, are is this um is this a study for students who maybe are coming who are working on dyslexia or working through dyslexia who have maybe a couple languages that they're speaking? I that's not all of the study, but I know we do have a lot of students that
068are that are speak more than one language. So, that was definitely something that that they um highlighted. >> Okay. All right. And then um I'll leave it. I think I think my question will get answered later on, so I'll let someone else talk. >> Miss Brady. >> Yes, M. Roll. Great presentation. Um I'm going to piggyback on what Miss Barnes said about the calendar of events for parents. I think it's phenomenal and I think um if we can get that out even to all parents who think there might be something different about their child and they just want to explore and ask questions that would be phenomenal if we can get that out even further widespread. >> Um my second question or my that was a comment but my first question is about how is
069the HMH reading curriculum impacting our students with special needs and is that available to our resource kids at the secondary level to increase those EOCC scores? >> Yes. Um our goal is to keep students in general ed as much as possible and so they are getting the um first instruction with their general ed teacher and then the supplemental materials can be used by the special education teacher to reinforce retach um and then whatever general ed students get we also um use for students in special education too. So what's what what um is decided on with secondary ELA will also impact um our students in um special education and in resource classes. >> Do you feel like that's helping so far with our EOC or our scores anywhere a little low? >> We we're hoping for
070better obviously this time around. >> I don't think that will help with the EOC scores in reading next year. >> Okay. >> Or English. Yes. >> Thank you. We do know it's working though because I think part of our um decrease in referrals is attributed to the great tier one instruction that students are getting with the um HMH curriculum in elementary. >> Excellent. Thank you so much. >> Yeah, >> Miss Garza Rose, >> thank you for your presentation tonight. You're welcome. >> Very informational. I do have a question about SB2. Okay. >> So, let's get some clarification on that. When it comes to ESAs, ASAs for community information is vouchers, right? >> Yes. >> Okay. So, my question to you is when our we have 107 private school students who reside in CFB boundaries. Is
071that correct? >> Or attend school in a C in a school that's in CFB boundaries. >> And then you have 51 families who requested the vouchers. >> Correct. >> Okay. Do we get reimbursed for the expenses for the testing? If we test and go to AR on those kids, we get reimbursed and we did that for all of those. >> What about the kids that go to private school? >> Yes. If we test and go to AR and then they Yes, ma'am. >> Everybody. Okay. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. That was a good question. >> Thank you for your information. I was wondering about the 81% of the students that do graduate. Do we know where they go or what kind of pro programs they're involved in by any chance? >> Oh, I
072can't speak on that, but there is a report on that that I can get you. Um, I believe it's the SP14 report and it talks um it it um surveys students after they graduate. Um, and so if what we get back we can get information on, but I can definitely get that report to you. >> Thank you. And then my other question was regarding the 4% that are CCMR. Which program uh are they most likely to graduate from? We are doing a lot of research on that. It's there's a lot of options and it's kind of scattered. Um but we are that's one of our really strong areas of focus next year with inc um increasing the 18 plus program. And I hope next year when I get up here to talk to you, I
073can give a little bit more information um about what's going to be our pathway program. >> Wonderful. Thank you, >> Miss Burns. >> Okay. I had a question about the um enrollment trends and seeing those numbers going up. Um for the 25, you mentioned that dyslexia now falls under the special uh education. How how much of that num is that number affected at all like the 4,419 that we see this year like those jumps or that jump? So, I can tell you from 25 to 26 we we had 1,355 students with dyslexia which was a 4% increase from the previous year. >> Okay. And then the previous year was a three was a 13% increase from the year before. >> Probably meaning we're catching y'all are catching it. Um are are those trends expected to
074continue to increase seeing more special ed students, you know, and having those numbers increase yeartoear. I actually think that they will decrease some or level out as we increase um students participating in general ed. >> We have a stronger um tier one reading curriculum. >> Um I think we'll see um the dyslexia referrals decrease. I think we'll see our students in special education decrease. Um we're also doing name and needs. My goal is for my team um to work with campuses to have a name and need meeting on every student to really look at what is it that they really need and making sure that we're keeping the rigor high enough and giving them what they need. Um I think we'll see I think we'll at least even out. >> Thank you so much. That
075is wonderful. And thank you guys for all of your hard work. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Roland. I have one question. >> Oh, sorry. >> Sorry. Um, on Senate Bill 2, I know you mentioned that we get reimbured for those if we go to ARD. Is that full reimbursement or is there like a an aotment that's pretty small for that >> for the Senate bill? It's $1,000 in evaluation. >> So, um, does that >> unless they change that? >> No. Does I just wanted to clarify because you said that we get reimbursed, but it's not for like the How much time does it take to do those assessments? >> It takes longer than the amount of money that we're getting paid. Um, I would say for the same evaluation that we do, it can be
076anywhere between $2,000 to $5,000 if you went to the private sector. >> Okay. So, I think um for our legislative committee, that would be something we have some data from you now. And so, Dr. children might be asking for that information in writing so that we can include that as a potential legislative priority because while we greatly appreciate the $1,000 reimbursement, um that is time that we need um and that impacts our staffing model because we have to have people to conduct those assessments and that cost us extra money. And so um I see nodding of heads in the back. got you. Uh we we can use this is the examples that I say that when you guys give us data and you explain it, we can we can fight and we can say like
077this needs to be a legislative priority because I think sometimes we need to remember that our representatives are representing not just education. They're looking at roads. They're looking at I mean I could go down a list. Um, and so it's our job to educate them on that so that they can make a decision to further help us because I do believe that there are a lot of state representatives and senators that do want to support public education, but it's our job to educate them on how they can support us better. Um, and so I think that information would be really helpful, Dr. Eldridge, so we could consider maybe if the board wants to look at a priority um, related to that cost. Well, in a little more details from 23 to 24 to 24 25
078>> we it uh we had a 69% increase of evaluations for students in private school or home school >> and this year from last year is 119% increase. >> Okay. >> And that does impact our staffing. So, thank you very much for that information. >> Yep. >> All right. I think uh thank you for your presentation. I'm looking forward to the second annual presentation already. >> All right. I'll work on it. >> Okay. Um, and thank you to your team for all of your efforts. It's very clear from this presentation that you guys are focused on kids. You have high expectations and we're so excited to continue to see the great work that you do. So, thank you for being here tonight so that we could lend a smile and a thank you to you
079in person. All right, our next um presentation is um 4B, the budget update. Dr. Eldidge, would you introduce the item? >> Yes. I also want to thank our special ed team. Um, you all work so hard, not only just with the kids, but also planning great events. I'm super excited about our dyslex dyslexia summer camp this year. That's going to be new. So, thank you for all your efforts. And I'll also say the teamwork between the learning the leadership and learning department and special ed has been great. I also think with the intervention for our students has also helped those great results. So, really appreciate you all. So, the next item is our budget update. Um, Mr. Martin is going to present that. I also want to thank our departments and campus principles for all
080the hard work that they have done on really streamlining expenses and and being aware of um where we put our money. So, um, with that, I'll give it to you. >> Uh, thank you, uh, Madame President and members of the board and and, uh, Dr. Eldridge. Uh this is uh this is a a uh a budget overview of of really where we're at uh at this time of the year and uh but also kind of a precursor I think to our budget workshop coming up next week. But uh we uh we uh have a significant uh number of issues to deal with uh financially for for a district like ours. Uh we we uh want to cover to start off with cover u you know how we are funded primarily uh we're funded primarily with
081tax collections. Uh the vast majority of the money that we receive comes from our local taxpayers. Uh we receive some state funding but about 85% of our our funding comes from local sources. about uh about 15% comes from uh there we go. Thank you. About 15% comes from state force uh state sources and less than 1% come from federal sources and and with regard to our everyday general operation funding. uh it's uh designed uh the school system uh the TA system of of funding is uh based primarily based on the number of students we have average daily attendance uh what's also referred to as weighted average daily attendance some students are worth more than others uh like special ed students for example even though the state doesn't provide us additional uh funding for uh they
082do provide additional funding for special ed students. They they don't provide nearly enough. Uh but uh we we have uh and I'm going to see if I can't get this to go. Um >> so for example we have uh uh like like I said we have we're funded based on a per student basis but we are also losing students. Uh we have lost uh over 1,400 students from last year. Uh we have uh we've also as a result of that we've had a significant drop in our revenues because we're funded based on a per student basis. the uh the state formulas calculate our entitlement uh and then the the state fills in the gap when uh when it's appropriate to do so. We also we are a district that's referred to as a a uh
083recapture district. So uh as a result of that uh we we uh do have to pay the state some of our tax collections. we have to uh pay that to the state in the form of what's referred to as recapture. Um our state requirements uh for of uh I want to refer to the required uh arm uh there's there's a number of things that the state uh has not fully funded. Safety and security is one of those uh expanded ac uh academic and curriculum requirements. new safety and health requirements. Uh things like we're required to do audits every three years. We're we're provided uh required to do certain trainings for for uh a variety of things to students, mental health uh services. And so uh there's a number of things that the state has required,
084but they have not uh provide any uh any additional funding really to address those needs. So, uh, for a district like ours, uh, it's it's, uh, you know, we have, uh, cost that rise every year. Cost of health insurance, for, uh, property insurance, supplies, materials, everything that would be affected by inflation. Uh so it's it's uh difficult enough to uh keep up with the rising cost just general inflation cost with the additional uh with what uh little bit of additional increase the student may provide for uh within the formulas but in addition to that we're having to deal with a drop in enrollment. So it's kind of a double whammy uh for for our district. Uh we have taken some actions to try to reduce our budget deficit. Uh we we are not in bad
085shape financially. Uh we have about five months of fund balance uh in the bank. So we're we're in we're in pretty good shape financially. U you know, but we do have a we do have a budget deficit that we're having to to work through. and uh and so we're we're going to be focusing on uh uh mainly mainly employees. As we reduce the number of students that we're serving, we need to reduce our staff. Uh so for example, a a classroom of students uh at uh say 20 students, our average revenue is about 10 to 11,000. So that that classroom of students is worth a couple hundred,000. And so if you lose 20 students, you lose a couple hundred,000. And so we we've got to we've got to look primarily at our staff. There's uh
086that's that's where we have the majority of our control. We have uh limited control over the cost of utilities or the cost of property insurance, the cost of non-payroll cost, cost of fuel. We have limited control over those costs. Uh the most control we have is is over payroll costs. Uh this year uh we've uh uh we're we're uh estimating that our that our revenue uh is going to be around $286 million. Our expenses around $298 million. We're estimating right now a deficit of between 13 and between 12 and $13 million. Uh we're we're hoping to trim that as much as we can, but that's probably about where we're going to end up. Um so far this year, uh we've had uh we've incurred total expenses of 177 million. Uh our total expenses prior year
087was 189 million. So, in uh our efforts uh driven by the superintendent and and her staff, uh we've actually reduced our spending uh through the month of March, $12 million over the previous year. So, there's been a lot of work that's gone into reducing costs. uh general fund expenditures. Uh we've we've had uh capital expenditures and you're going to have those every year. Uh we've we bought some buses and some some vehicles. Uh what we refer to as white fleet. We bought some transit vans and some some work trucks and uh we we've had some other miscellaneous expenditures and and uh we'll review all of those going into next year. Uh we are uh you guys have already approved a a change in the fiscal year uh that'll give us an opportunity to balance the
088budget going forward uh you know for this next year. But that's a one time that's a one-time change going from a fiscal year start of September 1 to a fiscal year start of of July 1. Uh we are going to have a budget workshop on May 14th and uh we'll be reviewing uh projections and assumptions, you know, our compensation options. Uh we we would like to give a a cost of living increase and uh and be as competitive as we can so that we can maintain the a quality staff. Uh so we're going to be evaluating our our pay structures. And uh we also want to rightsize if you will the staff to the number of students that we have and I don't know what happened but it went away. >> There you go. >>
089Thank you. And do you have any questions for me? >> Thank you Mr. Martin, Miss Brady. >> Well, first I want to say thank you Mr. Martin for the presentation but excellent job to our staff, Dr. Eldridge, your team. like we were expecting a completely different number than that. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You guys have done an amazing job. So, thank you. >> Well, thank you, >> Mr. Gilmore. >> A few questions. Uh great presentation. Uh on the enrollment, we're down 1,400 uh compared to last year. Have we defined I know it's probably hard to define the driving factors uh in the decline and how it's affecting our revenue uh and will affect the revenue for the remainder of the year. Uh and how confident are we in the attendance assumptions that
090we built into the uh 286.4 million for the full year revenue projection. >> Yeah. And Dr. Eldridge can uh help me with that, but uh I I don't know that we saw the 1400 drop coming. And so, uh, that was that was, uh, that was a surprise. And so, if you look historically over the last few years, we've lost around 200 or so students per year. Uh, over the last 5 years, we've lost about 2,200 kids, but 1,400 of those came this year. So, uh, we we're hoping that it won't be that dramatic. We we, uh, I think we're looking at probably estimating a drop of around a thousand for this next year, but hopefully it won't be that much. Uh I don't know that I could pinpoint one thing that has caused that that
091level of drop. >> Okay. >> Um Mr. Gilmore, I think it has to do too with our demographer report from you know the declining birth rates and then all the options as you um you know we have young families that try to purchase a home in our area and it's ex super expensive and so they keep going far you know way far north because they can buy a home and and the school's right there and um as we get you know all the companies moving here too you know it's a great location But honestly, it's a lot of different factors. Mainly, we're just seeing a huge decline in birth rate. And we're not the only ones. Um, our surrounding areas, we've all discussed it of how many. We had no idea that we would lose
092that many this year. And so, last night, Art and I were meeting and we were trying to decide what number do we want, you know, we don't know, especially now with the different options that people have. So, we feel like we're managing the um the NIL portal for football. We have no idea who's going to get in the portal and where they're going to go, and we're just reviewing all the factors, but we want to make sure we hit our target definitely for our our budget. >> Um on the uh position control, the overtime monitoring, all that. Great job. But are we do we have guardrails in place to make sure once we get over this hump that we don't go back to bloated and out of control? >> I probably can explain that too.
093Um so um HR um Dr. Smalus and um Carla, sorry Carla, I like my contact, but um we meet regularly on you know closing positions and re-evaluating what positions we actually need. So, we've closed so many positions this year. And it goes back to right sizing. If if you have a classroom with 10 kids and the classroom next door has 10 kids, just what um Mr. Martin said, we we can't have our class needs to be 20 kids and otherwise we're paying two teachers for 10 kids. So, we are we're analyzing all that. Even for our staff here at central office, we are evaluating every physician. So, just want to reassure you that um we want to make sure the main focus is on our campuses helping our students. >> All right. Board members, any
094additional comments, Miss Benvitas, >> I was going to ask, thank you for your report on the um decrease in uh expenses. Is that a one-time deal across the board or is that something we're going to continue to monitor and keep, I guess, make a change from the past? Yes, it's something you're going to have to monitor uh going forward. I I think uh I I think I want to kind of say something I said a little earlier. It's it's difficult enough just to keep up with rising costs with the funding that TEA provides. But when you combine that with the loss of students and those loss of students occur every single year, then you have to do the evaluation every single year. And you try you have to try to anticipate what your loss of
095students are are going to be that year. But uh like I said, over the last five years, you lost um over over 2200 kids and it's uh it's millions of dollars. And so it's something you're going to have to evaluate every year. Miss Garza Roas, >> thank you for your presentation. I just had a quick question. You mentioned the state funding. We have recapture. How much did we pay in recapture this last school year? >> I'm going off a bad memory, but I think it was around 14 or 15 million. >> And then what's our deficit? >> Uh our deficit uh we're estimating right now about 12 million. >> Thank you. >> Yes. >> Okay. Sorry. Thank you. Just just saying. Miss Brady, you have another comment. >> I just want to point out one
096more time that um the legislature if they would just give recapture districts a break uh a rest from paying recapture money. Two years, that's all we need. We'll catch up. We'll get ahead. We'd be back on track. No problem. But they don't. They just they keep at it. So again, your legislators, please reach out. Um, we have mentioned this to our the boards, the boards that meet um in our North Texas um area. People kind of like the idea. I kind of like it too. So, spread the word and talk to your legislators. All we need is a break. Two years would be great because we'd settle for one, but two would be great. >> Mr. Gilmore, >> I wasn't done. The uh on the buses and vans and all that. I know. confirm for
097me that we do have a some kind of fleet replacement schedule or deferred maintenance analysis that going forward we'll know whether it's more fiscally responsible to buy new or to just keep fixing what we got. >> Yes. And I I'm not the best one probably to answer that question, but I would say that we do have a replacement schedule and we we're we use those buses a long time. They get a lot of use out of them. >> Mr. Moore, you want to add on there? >> Sure. Absolutely. We um we do um there's and we do because over the last two years we were able to build in you guys allowed us to add $2 million to the replacement cycle each of the last two budget years. Over the last seven years we've added
098about 50 buses to the fleet. Almost 20 of those in the last two years with that $2 million. Um of our buses we have about 135 that are active in the fleet. We've got about 145 active white fleet service vehicles. Um the buses almost 40% are 12 years or older. The white fleet more than half are 12 years or older. And this is where um we'd also had three before this past year that were turn of the century. They were they were created in the 1900s. And so we are managing that and monitoring that. We've got some we we're using that funds to uh to continue replenishing that. If we work on that, we're we're not able to kind of bend the curve back, if you will, to where the the age decreases. We would
099need to be a bit more aggressive uh in in offloading older buses and a bit more aggressive in bringing newer ones in. But with what we've done in the last two years, we're in pretty good shape as far as setting something up special uh as far as um getting a replacement schedule in place. >> So, um a little bit additional information, and Mr. Shakman, you may have to help me on this, but um when I know when I came on the board, there was some intentionality with buses, particularly because the transition from Dallas County buses. Yes. Mr. Shman, can you add on to that about kind of how we acquired our bus fleet? And >> I' I'd have to look at the, you know, calendar to figure out the exact year that it occurred, but
100Dallas County schools used to run buses for all the districts in basically region 10. And uh from whatever reasons, that service is no longer available. and it was uh sunsetted out of existence. We were forced to pick up uh and acquire buses at that point in time that were under their purview prior to that. And so it it created an interesting cycle in terms of where we suddenly now had to create uh cycles for replacement and maintenance and all of that. And uh it has been a challenge to accomplish that and I think the district has done an excellent job of making that transition from personnel and equipment through the process. >> Yeah. Yeah. I agree. I think um it's really important to recognize for the public that when you hear a budget deficit, you
101think the district is in debt. There is a major problem. And while yes, we need to rightsize things, there is a flip side of that. Our fund balance is also our savings account. And this board intentionally over several years was putting money back in savings knowing that there were capital improvements that we were going to need to invest in. And so now is the time where part of this in my opinion is we're cashing in from our savings account on strategic investments. And one of those strategic investments is our buses. And if we were to just go in and replace them all one year, what would happen? They would all need to be replaced on the same year. So there's a reason for having this strategic plan over time because it allows us to get
102on that replacement cycle. And this board has been intentional about that. And I know when I got on the board, I was flat out told by some board members, we don't bond buses. We pay cash for buses because buses don't have the life cycle that our buildings have. And so there has been an intentionality of this board to ensure that we get on that replacement cycle. And therefore that $2 million, if you look at your deficit, 2 million of that is us cashing in on our savings account for a capital investment. That's the way I see it. And I think that's really important for the public to also know that, you know, we do have to invest in our capital investments. And that's the other reason to rightsize so that our capital improvements can be
103a part of the pie and we don't have to dip into our savings because that's ideally what we want to do. And you know that happens over time. There are going to be other unforeseen expenses. Buses are unforeseen. We kind of know they're going to wear out, but there are other things that are going to come up and we're going to need our savings account. So it's critically important that we have these overtime replacement cycles and that's why this is in place. Um, and so thank you for that information because that $2 million is is key on that, Mr. Gilmore. >> Yeah. One more more of a statement. I I appreciate it. Again, you answered like three of my questions, so you save time. Uh but um piggybacking on uh what Miss Garz has said
104and you Cassandra um the unfunded state mandates, >> we're sitting at 12 million and how much we have um let's see, safety requirements, curriculum changes, lack of inflation adjustment, uh and the security uh officers and all that good stuff. How are we as a board supposed to prioritize those? what's the biggest dragging factor on our budget so that we know how to go to our legislature and fight for more money in that aspect because I don't have the breath of knowledge that you do but but I can I could be a mouth and I could go to Austin. >> So I think Mr. Gilmore that's like the example that we asked for with special education is now that we have the data then we can use that data to craft a priority. Um and I
105think the we have a committee that will be working on that and we're going to be working with administration. So rather than us sitting in a silo creating our legislative agenda um there's actually a presentation done at team CFB recently where we looked at um Dr. Eldridge, we um there was a presentation where we looked at the sphere of influence of staff, but then we also explained how the interim period is so critically important, but that we have holders of the knowledge and the keys in the district, not in the board. And when you guys when they share information with us, then we're able to better advocate. So, I agree with your point. And so the uh subcommittee is going to be working on that specifically um by making sure that we're working with the
106district to craft the priorities. And so Dr. Elders already has plans um to get us more beyond the special education data some key areas that she feels like I don't know if you want to expand on that. >> Um yes with amounts because right now the other thing that has gone up tremendously and everybody feels it is our fuel. So you think about all our buses, our fuel costs are not what we budgeted. So we've got a lot of um a lot of fun unfunded but also utilities, all the things that we're also dealing with in our personal lives. So they're not giving us more of an aotment for that. Here's what we have. So we will have all this data and we will just march on. >> It'll cost us a dollar for every
107data request. Hence why it's going to be very strategic because we also can't have a hundred legislative priorities. We've got to pick a few that could be the most impactful and most supportive for our community to be also be able to speak to. And when we provide the data to even to you as community members as a priority, then you're able to talk about it. And that is one of our goals for the fall is that we're going to come into the community and share some of this with the community so that they can feel better equipped to go and advocate on our behalf as we go advocate. So, I think we have some big plans for the 2627 school year. Um, Mr. Martin, thank you very much. I do want to acknowledge that in
108November, the board presentation um was a doom and gloom presentation that was looking at a $20 million deficit after we uh realized the loss in students and we're now down to a $12 million um $12.5 million deficit projected. And so that is kudos to administration for really working very hard um to uh rightsize our expenditures and so we are on the right pathway. So thank you very much for your presentation. >> Thank you. >> All right. Our next update is 4C the summer school program update. >> Summer is coming quickly and fast and furious. So um Miss Hulk and her team have put together um a presentation of the offerings of what we're going to have our students be a part of. So, um, Miss Hulk, it's like, which glasses do I need? I got
109to change this to Good evening, President Hatfield, Dr. Eldridge, and distinguished members of the board. I am very excited to present our summer school camps uh for this summer and I would be remiss to not recognize the incredible team that supports all of these presentations and these camps that are going on. So I would also like to ask great job Sarah for leading off with that for our leadership and learning team that is a part of all of these summer camps uh to please stand. I've got a group behind me but there are several of you that are involved in helping with summer camp. So y'all stand and be recognized as well. Some are not standing. Okay, we'll move on. Um, so we want to start off and I want to share that for our
110families that are watching online um or are looking for some summer camps, our communications team has done an amazing job with putting everything on our website. If you go to the top banner where it says students and families and you go down to where it says summer school camps and programs, you will find everything we're going to present very quickly this evening, but in a very detailed form. Not only are there registration links that will take you straight to how to register, even if it's an off-site program, but there's also all of the program information if there is a cost involved, uh what ages are able to sign up, all of the good stuff. So, our website is phenomenal for additional information. So, I'm going to start off with some of our enrichment camps. We
111have got our camp invention returning. This is the second year we have had this and we have expanded it because it was absolutely awesome. We have two weeks. The first week is going to be camp spark happening on June 15th through the 18th and then we also have camp Illuminate coming for June 22nd through June 25th. Both camps are happening at Blandon Elementary and will be supervised by our amazing AP at Rainwater, Miss Megan Britain. This is available for kindergarten through fifth grade. So, I want to highlight a little bit about these camps because these really are a wonderful opportunity. We started advertising these back at Christmas so that our parents could give the gift of STEM camp to their students. Um, but in addition to that, there are additional opportunities available for our high
112school students. So with that, our students that are in high school have the ability to earn up to 40 volunteer credit hours towards graduation requirements through college scholarships and also job applicants. Um at the conclusion of the program, they as interns will receive a letter of recognition from the US patent and trademark office. So that's very very cool for our high school students. If they are interested in being an intern, I would encourage them to go to the flyer that we have. It's also available on the website as well as the QR code to get additional information and register there. So, the first camp we have, well, it's actually on the second week of June, but it's called Camp Illuminate. Uh, this is where our campers get to become confident problem solvers. They will be
113exploring things with physics, electrical engineering, chemistry, and all kinds of things. They're going to be diving into prototyping. Uh, they'll be discovering properties of light. They'll even create their own sports ball uh through the physics of motion. There are four basic um activities. They're called Let's Glow, Prototyping Studio, In the Game, and Operation Hydrorop. And I thought, what better way to see how these camps are going to be um in action than to see the video. So, let me see if Nope, that's not what we need. Hold on one second. That's what I need. ideas. Best part is all materials are provided and are supported every step of the way. The science of life challenges around the gloity and confidence. >> Okay. And while we're here, I'm going to go ahead and show you what's
114happening at Camp Spark and then share a little bit more information. Sharpen your detective. Investors join the fun summer. Okay. So, lots of fun at the camps. We are very excited to offer both of these camps this summer. Um, and so with our spark camp, a little bit different than the first one. It is all about the ocean innovation as well as forensic science, space exploration, and all the fun things that you were able to see. So, we are very excited. We already have 47 students registered for this camp and 50 who are registered for Camp Illuminate. So, sign up on CFBISD website. In addition, the Carolton Fire and Rescue Summer Camp will be going on for our secondary students, 7th through 12th grade. It'll be during June from June 9th through 12th. It is
115a free camp with all meals provided and there will be additional information shared from Carolton Fire um once they register. So, when they go on to our website, it'll take them to the button that is right there on the screen that says fire camp registration. That will link them right over to get registered for the Carolton Fire and Rescue Camp. Other summer programs going on across the district include a camp for Bush students at the Bush Summer Boot Camp. Um there is also two camps happening at Early College. One is one of our um credit recovery camps as well as um additional acceleration at ECHS. And the second camp is for incoming freshmen coming into early college. They do this every summer and all of our freshman students go through um a summer camp to
116acclimate to what school will be like at early college when they go in as freshmen. And then also all summer long, our summer funshine program, which is not CFB, but it's offered through Farmers Branch Recreational Center, is going to be serving at Blair lunch from June 1st all the way through 16th. We will have summer meals going on all summer, Monday through Thursday. Our traditional summer school programs will also continue. Um, as you know, we have lots of acronyms in education. So, we have written these out so that you can also see what these align to. But what we call our ESY summer camp is for special services. It's our extended school year that will be going on at Blair June 2nd through the 25th. And then all of the rest of our summer school
117camps are all taking place during the month of June starting on June 1st. Learning the language is our current preK through kindergarten. um emergent bilingual students also at Blair. The newcomer academy for our elementary students will also be going on at Blair. Our high school will be doing credit recovery acceleration EOC retesting this summer, the last week of June. And then career college technical education, CTE, is also going to be doing some acceleration courses that are available at the high school. Both of those will be taking place across two summer sessions at Creek View. um in addition to a newcomer academy for our high school newcomers and then also CDA is also open and we'll have more information to come from Miss Chelsea in just a moment. So I'm going to turn this over to
118um our team to tell a little bit more about these two camps um that are happening this summer. We're going to start with learning the language. Dr. H. >> Great. >> Hi, good evening. So our summer language programs in elementary consist of learning the language uh which currently have 524 prek and kindergarten emerging bilingual students and our newcomer academy students who are in first through fifth grade students who are attending schools for their first year and we currently have 53 students. So these uh language programs are designed to support our students in developing English skills through thematic learning experiences that integrate literacy through social emotional learning as and as well as real world application as you can see here in the pictures. And so last year our students and our teachers had an amazing time
119where they learned together, they grew together and most importantly they had fun. And so we are very excited this school year to launch that again. >> Great. Yes. Sorry putting my clip in. Good evening everyone. So we may not have a fun capy bar program but the big kids have some pretty cool options happening with high school summer school as well. So, in high school, we are excited at and really blessed to have the opportunity to offer both credit recovery and acceleration options for our current high schoolers and some acceleration options for incoming 9th graders as well. In addition, we have STAR EOCC prep happening along with the EOCC retesting schedule that is set to happen towards the end of the summer. We are partnering with our friends and multilingual to offer the newcomer language
120enrichment with extended hours. So those students will actually stay an additional two hours after the regular summer school hours for some additional learning uh and language support. So you can see on the bottom left, these are the confirmed course offerings, meaning these are the courses that students have already signed up for. Uh a big big big major kudos to Stacy Jackson and her admin team. They she is the summer school principal uh leading the charge for Creek View the Creek View program and her team. They have created this beautiful I take no credit for this beautiful dashboard that you see that is how they are tracking their enrollment and it um updates automatically with every single student that enrolls. So when we captured this it was at 298 as of today we are right under
121500 students and so it is tracking every single registration every program that is how they are in turn staffing their program. So you can see that we we started advertising early. I know Chelsea is going to chat about an incentive that we had with CDA which was a great success. But as soon as we got the word out first we um shared the details with the principles and then it went out to the teachers. Interest is high. the admin teams for both LTL, learning the language and for high school divided and conquered when it came to vetting the applicants, doing virtual interviews and so it is well underway. There was a lot of interest in working summer school and we were very uh fortunate and proud to offer multiple opportunities for staff for teachers for
122assistance to work this summer. So both the elementary programs and the high school programs are are rocking and rolling and so we are going to continue learning throughout the summer. So thank you for your support in helping to make that happen. Okay. Okay. And then before we talk about CDA, I want to also remind that the YMCA summer camp is also going on this summer. It will be happening at Riverchase. Um all of the regular care rates are are posted online. Um, the camp will be going on from May the 26th through June the 31st. It is for ages 4 through 12 and it is also available for registration on the website at cfbisd.edu back or slsummer school. And then the very exciting child development academy this summer. Super excited about this, Miss Chelsea. Good
123evening everybody. We are excited to provide child care for summer school, but also for our longer contract staff members that have children at the daycare. And so I worked with Kim Hulkcom and we were able to provide 50% off to the first 20 teachers that registered to teach summer school. We currently have 28 teachers that have registered for child care that are going to teach summer school. And we have 120 kids on the list. And that could be anyone from people on longer contracts, our current students whose parents just want to drop them off with someone they trust. And so we are super excited to be open all summer and support our little otter. >> All right. And so that is an overview of our summer programs. We are all here to answer any questions
124that you may have. >> Board members, any questions? Miss Brady, >> just a quick one. I with the exception of CDA, are all of these options free to our families? >> Most of the camps are free. There are a few that will cost the STEM camp being one of them. Okay. >> Uh YMCA also has a fee, but going back in my memory, I don't think any of the others do because fire and rescue is going to be free. All of our traditional are free. Am I missing anything? >> No. >> Oh, acceleration. There is a small fee for acceleration for high school. >> Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. Any other questions? Miss Benvitas, >> thank you. What a great variety for our students. Um, what about transportation? I don't recall that being covered or
125is it available? >> Transportation is available for our summer school programs that are going to be our I'm going to call them more of our required traditional programs. So, the ones that we do for credit recovery. Um, but the things that are the enrichment type camps for like STEM and the others, there's not transportation for those. But for our traditional uh CFB summer school, yes. >> And I was going to mention that on summer funshine for farmers branch, there is a fee for that, too. If that's different than what y'all showed us here. >> Yes, there is a fee for summer funshine. >> Okay. Thank you, Miss Garza. >> I just wanted to say thank you for bringing Camp Spark Invention. I think it was last year. >> Both of my children attended and it
126it's a great program and thank you so much for bringing it here to CFB. Oh, you are very welcome. I'm so excited. The kids loved it and we wanted to give a little bit more of a highlight for that this summer because I do think it's something that, you know, we've been promoting it, but it's also something that as school gets going, we get busy and we forget, but we are underway and we can ho host a whole lot more students that want to come. So, we encourage them to sign up soon. >> Awesome. Is the child development academy available all summer new? >> Yes, ma'am. So, in the past, it's been open just in June. This is the first year that we'll open in July as well. So parents have had to find alternative
127care and that's been stressful having to piece together different people to take care of their kids and now they get to bring their kids to us until our staff starts their professional development days. >> Um Chelsea, isn't there a daily rate too? If I didn't want my children one day, I could just bring them to you. >> Yes, you always want your children, but if you wanted to go read a book by the pool, you're more than welcome to drop your children off. >> There is a daily. I think that's >> a drop in rate. Yes, >> there's a drop in rate. I think that's great. If you need to get errands done, >> Chelsea will take care of them. >> And this is just for our staff, right? Just to clarify, we are not
128opening to the public. >> Yes, just the CFB employees. >> This is a for our staff CFB employees. Um, what a great benefit. I'm really excited about that. I think that's a great perk. Um, sometimes teachers make extra money either for us or somewhere else during the summer or like you said, maybe you want to go sit by the pool for a day and and drop your kid off at the CDA. So, what a great um support system. It also helps our staff members too because it provides work for them as well in the summer. So we have 26 teachers that will get to work extra. So that'll be great. >> That's awesome. All right, board members, any additional questions? Miss Brady, sorry. >> Mr. Gilmore is very shy, so I'm going to ask for
129him. Um, first I want to know, can I can I go to the fire camp because that's really cool. I was sure. >> Okay, I'm I'm going to go. Yeah, I'll just pretend. But secondly, is this replacing or are we are are we also going to be offering the sports camps that we have in the past like football, volleyball? >> That's a great question. While Mr. Moore is making his way up here, I would like to make a quick plug for the teachers that are watching. Um, if they'd like to do a drop in care and attend any of our fabulous summer staff development opportunities, we would love to have them come. >> No, ma'am. We are not offering the sports camps as we have in the past. Uh last budget year we were given
130strategic numbers and targeted percentages for cuts and that was one of the cuts that we made in our athletics department within the athletics budget talking with coaches and the athletics department. One thing that we did put in place to accommodate rather to um offset that is our traditional sports uh strength and conditioning camps at our high schools for grades 9 through 12. those are in place and we expanded those also to grades six through eight incoming grades six through eight uh as long as they stick within their feeder pattern. So we removed the traditional sports camps but we did introduce grades six through eight feeder pattern base for incoming students who want to do the uh traditional uh strength and conditioning camps. >> Mr. Gilmer. >> So with the getting rid of those, is that
131was it not considered to have a fee for those or were would the fee been bigger than would justify and all that >> fees were talked through amongst the coaches in the department and based on the feedback they got and and from years past when there were fees charged uh didn't think that there would be enough merit to charge the fee and get the students to attend. >> All right, any additional questions? Thank you all very much for your presentation and for being here tonight and being a wealth of information. Um so we're really excited for the summer. Thank you all. >> Thank you. >> All right. Our next presentation is 4D, which is the virtual school program updates. So Robin and Megan have been working on um this partnership with the University of Texas
132to see if we could put together a virtual school um you know one to give our students other options but also to remain competitive in a market that um is we just don't know if some school districts are offering it but I think they've done so much research on this and put together um a great presentation So, I I just am excited about it. So, go ahead. >> Thank you, Dr. Eldridge, President Hatfield, and members of the board. Um, we'd like to introduce you to um well, first of all, I'd like to introduce Dr. Megan Garza. She's our director of digital learning who returned about three weeks ago from maternity leave, and I handed her another baby to keep her up all night. So, um, we'd like to introduce you to our our new baby
133and, um, outline some of the things that we proposed. Uh, I did a little bit of a preview on this at um, district improvement at the last DIC meeting and then Dr. Garza met with the principles and gave them a heads up and then had a more indepth conversation with the You didn't meet with the high school today, right? Or was it? No, it had to get rescheduled at the last minute. Sorry, my apologies. She has not yet had her in-depth meeting with the high school principles, but that has been rescheduled uh for next week. >> So, um we are taking a look at um a virtual program in a partnership with um University of Texas High School at CFBISD. And so that's our little CFB version of Bivo up there hanging out on his
134laptop and doing school virtually. So I want to talk for a minute about about the why. Simon Synynic says remember the why as you're making your decisions and moving forward. Um, in March, early March, uh, we sent out, the district sent out a survey to parents of students that are in grades 8 through 11, which would be next year's high schoolers. And we asked them, if we were planning to offer uh an opportunity for students to attend school virtually next year, how likely would you be to uh to how likely is it that you would wish to participate? And only about a third of our parents said, "No, absolutely not." Um for about 43% said, "Yeah, I'd want to know more. You know, I absolutely I want to take a look at this." And about
13522 and a2% said, "Well, I I I want to learn a little bit more before I make a decision." So, I'm on the fence. uh of the 23 of the respondents and we had approximately 420 respondents. Um, of the twothirds that were either that either responded positively or neutrally, um, we took the answers of the what type the qu another question that was asked which is which type of virtual learning environment would you prefer and um they were able to select more than one answer but um about 150 of the families were interested in hybrid um and about approximately halfish of those were interested in full-time and or allocart. The definitions are over to the left. Um full-time is the kids take pretty much all of their classes online. They can still do UIL and
136extracurriculars as allowed by UIL rules. Um the hybrid kids would be on campus part of the time but not full of the time. And then an alleart would be a student who takes one class for um acceleration or takes a class so that they can participate in um an extracurricular, an athletic or um a CTE course and still need to get their credits for graduation. Um I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Gersza and she can outline um some more about the UTHs partnership that we investigated. So in looking at what type of virtual learning environment we wanted to offer our students, we decided to partner with University of Texas High School. I apologize to any Aggies in the room. I'm from the north, so this doesn't really mean much to me. Um but
137obviously University of Texas carries with it a legacy of prestige. Um UT UTHS has been doing this for over 25 years. They are highly regarded by TEA. They are NCAA approved. They offer all different kinds of courses from on level to honors to advanced placement courses. And their students have been very successful in these programs. um on their AP exams they tend to outscore the n the state and national averages by seven points and their AP calculus um passing rate was 100% this past year. So students are getting a very rigorous education through this program which we obviously want for our students. The courses are taught by UTHs instructors. So even though it is an asynchronous course that is completed virtually, there is a live teacher sitting on the other end of that curriculum to
138help support our students. They also rewrite their curriculum every three years to make sure that they're staying up to date with all of the TEACS and TEA guidelines and mandates and all those different kinds of things. So, what we did to figure out what courses we would want to offer students virtually is we looked at the CFB course offerings and then we looked at the UTS course offerings and we decided to kind of do a little matching game. We didn't want to offer students anything virtually that they couldn't get on campus. So, that means any student who's participating virtually will get the same type of learning experience as our students who are fully face toface. So, no student is going to miss out on an opportunity regardless of what type of learning environment they choose
139to be in. Um, this is just a small snippet of the course guide that is from UTHs and it shows that we filled in a column, that second column with the CFB course ID so that we could show this is a course offered face-to-face in CFB, but it is also one that you can take virtually through UTHs. Um, and this also shows that we have those on level courses, those honors courses, and those AP courses available to students. I'll jump up. So, um, we wanted to talk for a minute about revenue because obviously this is not free. Um, the University of Texas High School, we would pay for our students a little similar as you would if you were sending a kid to college. um you send you pay by the course up to a
140certain point. Um and so we would be doing the same thing. We would be purchasing seats in their courses that they're already offering statewide. We would be buying those seats for our children whether the child is taking one seat or you know one seat in one class or whether they're going full-time. So, we crunched some numbers and given um the hypothetical that we have 100 students that are participating full-time, we would be paying the equivalent of 59% of that child's basic allotment to UTHs and in return they would be providing the curriculum, the course, the instructor and the textbook for all the courses that the child that the children are taking. um they would be approximately $364,000 that we would be paying UTHs for those 100 full-time students. We they still remain CFBISD enrolled students.
141Um and so we would get the basic aotment for those students at approximately $616,000. So go ahead. Um, so for our first year, we've decided to kind of tighten the qualifications a little bit. Um, because this is a virtual program, we have the opportunity to reach students not only in our district, but outside of our district as well. So any student that is a resident of North Texas would be eligible for this program. And as students come into CFB, also their ADA comes into CFB. Um, so that is a nice, you know, benefit for us. We are going to in our first year limit it to students in grades 10 through 12. We feel like those nth graders really need to have that year on campus to kind of learn the lay of the land
142in high school before they decide if they want to go virtual. Um there is an application process and in that application process we are going to be looking at the students academics, their assessment, their attendance, their discipline. Some of the things, some of the guardrails that we've put in place is we want to make sure that any student interested in going to a virtual setting is already being successful in their courses. We want to make sure that those students have already passed their required EOCC exams. We don't want to send any student into a virtual environment that might not be successful there. We're also going to look at attendance because virtual students still abide by the 90% seat time rule. So, if they're not having good attendance when they're coming to us, we need to
143make sure that they're going to have good attendance if they're staying at home. Um, and then obviously we want to look at discipline. Again, just making sure that this is the right environment for those students. Um, if a student is participating as a hybrid virtual student, meaning they have some classes on campus, they can still get transportation via the regular bus routes. if their first two classes are face tof face, they can hop on the bus in the morning, get to their campus, take their two classes and then they would have to get themselves off the campus for that afternoon. Um, so we can provide transportation for those normal start of day, end of day times. Um, but if a student is part-time on a campus, they would need to arrange transportation for that. Some
144more year one logistics. Um, as Robin mentioned, any student, regardless of whether or not they set foot on a CFB campus, is enrolled in CFBISD. They will receive a CFBISD diploma at graduation. It's not going to say UTHs on it. It's going to say CFBISD. They are going to follow the CFBISD academic calendar. And they are going to be enrolled in a home campus. For our students that live in district, that's the campus that they're zoned for. For our students that do not live in district, we are going to assign them a home campus based on whichever one is closest geographically. So if we have a student in Arlington who's interested in being a virtual UTHS student, Ranch View is the closest to Arlington. They will be enrolled at Ranch View. Okay. Um any student
145that needs to take a state or national assessment, if they're enrolled in an AP course, they will have to report to campus to take that AP test. they would have to report to campus to take ACT, SAT, those kinds of things, which is why we kind of limited the um eligibility to North Texas. If a kid really wanted to drive up from Waco, we could have that conversation, but we want to make sure that students are at least close enough to be able to come to campus as needed. Um, the other thing that makes this program a little bit different than other virtual opportunities we already have is the grades will be included in the students GPA and class rank. So again, even if they never step foot on our campus, they are still one
146of ours. They are still part of our graduating classes, um, our enrollment counts, all those things. So they are still part of our CFB family. So, we wanted to outline a couple of possibilities in who we think this program might benefit. Um, the first example is a student that takes all of their courses online through UTHs. They never report to campus. They're loving it. They're good to go. The second we think of about our athletes. We have a lot of students that participate in elite athletics in things that are not necessarily school sports. You might be an elite gymnast or a hockey player or a figure skater or something like that. So, you could come to campus and still get your traditional education, but have some flexibility in your schedule to go to your training.
147The third option, um, students take mostly face-to-face classes, but maybe they want to take a course online at home to accelerate or they're working, so they want to have a little bit more flexibility. I need to get out of school a little bit earlier to get to my job kind of things. So, we just wanted to kind of provide some examples of students that we think this program might benefit. Um, extracurriculars UIL is always a question. Any student residing within the CFB boundaries is eligible to participate in UIL activities. Now, this you might be thinking, well, how is that going to work? Can I be full-time and stu still do UIL? Logistically, no. If you want to be in band, we can't offer band virtually. So, you need to come to campus to take your
148band class. You can do everything else at home and only come to campus for band or football or ceramics or whatever it is. Uh so, there's it's very differentiated and individualized depending on what each student may need or what each student may want. um students that reside outside of our CFB boundaries, we still want to make sure that they have an opportunity to participate in the CFB culture. So even though they're not eligible for UIL activities, they can still come and participate in afterchool clubs, they can still come to prom, they can still walk at graduation and be a part of that school community even if they're not reporting to campus for classes. Um, so even though every course has a UTHS instructor, we're adding another layer of support from the CFB perspective. Each student
149who takes a virtual course will be assigned a CFB success coach. This will be a staff member from the district. Their responsibility is to provide those regular check-ins to take that students attendance to make sure that they are progressing in their coursework. UTHS gives students 140 calendar days to complete their coursework, but this is not a thing where you can wait until the last minute because we still need our 90% seat time in order to get our ADA. So, the success coach is going to make sure that students are staying on track, staying on pace, checking in with their course every day, completing work every day to make sure that they're going to finish that course in the allotted time. The success coach would also make sure that if a student is participating in UIL
150activities that they're hitting those UIL benchmarks. Um, UTHs has already built in a UIL pacing guide so students will know exactly where they need to be in each of their courses in order to remain eligible for their activities. Um, the enrollment process, we've just kind of outlined briefly what it's going to look like. Um, first thing that we want students to do is to apply to the program. Once they apply to the program, we will review their application and decide if this is going to be a good fit for them. Once we decide if this is going to be a good fit for them, they may need to finish the enrollment process. If we have a student coming from outside of the district, we don't necessarily want them to transfer in before we decide if
151this is a good fit. Because if we decide it's not a good fit, they're then going to have to withdraw and go reenroll in their home district. So, we want to make sure that we make those determinations first before they fully enroll in CFB. Once they become fully enrolled as a CFB student, we are going to handched these students to make sure that we are optimizing their schedule for this first year. We're going to work very closely with Katie Bondies and the high school um master schedulers to make sure that we are placing students in the best possible scenarios not only for their schedule but also for our campus schedules as well. Um in August we are going to pull students and parents in the district um for a mandatory orientation. At this orientation students
152will receive a CFB Chromebook in order to facilitate their coursework. We're going to go over expectations, how parents can help support the program, what students need to be doing, all those different kinds of things to make sure that they are ready to be successful in this environment. Um then once the first day of school starts, UTHs houses all of their course materials on Canvas, which is the same learning management system that students use in CFB face-to-face classes. So they will begin their coursework as normal. And this is just a brief timeline to kind of show some of those dates. Um, we are planning to open the application on Monday and we are going to collect applications through the end of the month. In June, we're going to start notifying families of those that qualify for
153the program so that in July, we can make sure that they have all that enrollment paperwork taken care of and we can get their courses scheduled. Again, August, we will have that orientation and the first day of school begins. So, as I was drafting a slide um going over how this could benefit our students as they have um more flexibility in designing their educational experience. And we're trying to um help meet the kids where they are and and give the families what what they've been asking for. Um, I thought of an email that I'd received when the uh, survey was live. And this came from I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but it came from um a parent of uh multiple CFBISD students who also was a former CFB employee. And
154one of her daughters was able to participate was given an opportunity to participate in um a theater advis or conservatory program for next year. and she says that a virtual CFB school would literally be an answered prayer because what was stopping her and her daughter from participating in this uh program is that they did not she did not want to leave CFBISD. Um she wrote, "I love CFB. I love the teachers. I love the leadership. I love the extracurricular offerings." um her students have attend her children had attended CFB since kindergarten and so she is very excited about the opportunity that her daughter could take some core courses uh through the UTS partnership still have the possibility of participating in extracurricular activities at school and be able to participate in this theater conservatory program so
155her daughter could have it all if we are able to offer this level of flexibility. Um, and so she begged us, please make this a a reality because it would be a dream come true for her daughter. And as I read this email, I thought, this is exactly why we do what we do is so that we can help children live their dreams and give them the um level of flexibility and support um and to allow them to to be able to progress with that sort of um aspiration. Um, so we are starting, we are planning to start in the fall with what what we've labeled as a soft launch. We want to keep it small. We want to keep it contained because we feel that we want to provide the best level of service
156possible. We want to see these children as individuals and in and because each child is going to come to us with a unique set of circumstances. We want to be able to customize their learning path that they are creating. And the fear is that if we did too much too soon, we would not be able to provide that level of service. Uh next month we'll have an item on the June consent agenda uh to purchase a block of courses where as students are enrolled in the program we would the we would um have a PO and we would draw down from that purchase order to send to UTS uh for each individual seat that we take in one of their courses. Um, we wanted to thank you for your your stewardship and oversight and uh
157would love to answer any questions that y'all have at this time. >> Board members, any questions or comments about this? >> All the things. We'll just go down the line. Miss Barnes, >> we figured there might be one or two. >> Oh, yeah. >> All right. So, when you're starting when you're talking about a soft launch, are you you're talking about at least as of this fall, you're only going to be accepting students who want to use this as their fulltime or are you talking about a hundred students that could be hybrid, wanting to take one class or full-time? We are go we are planning on offering all of the options but um the constraints we put as far as um like the 10th through 12th graders and that sort of thing. That's what and
158and double-checking to make sure um that their academic record and their discipline and and and whatnot the the level of evaluation that we're giving each child. Um, we do not want I'm not going to say 100 is a hard stop because theoretically if we had kids that are only taking one class or some hybrid classes, we could have more kids. >> Okay. >> Um, so I don't want to put an absolute exact number on the depending we we also may not get a large amount of families wanting to dive in right away. >> I think you answered my question. I was just wondering if you were only taking full-time students or if you were going to take Yeah. Um like all offer all three options at the get-go. So yeah. And then my second question
159is um you know we're paying uh was approximately >> it's $260 a course. >> Okay. So what happens if that student you know we think that we want to work from home, we think we want to go to school from home. We think that's a good environment, but it is not a good environment. Are we still going to be paying that money for that student if for some reason they're not going to continue doing that? >> We purchased the seat in the class regardless. Um I'll in a second I'll step aside and have Megan speak to the success coach uh that there that person's role in it. Um, UTHs also if they decide, let's say a a student is 10th grader and isn't quite mature enough to to handle, you know, the the time management
160and the um the >> Well, yeah, freedom. But I would say motivation, the motivation to tackle this type of learning. um they could they could retake the course again later uh for the same, you know, and that would they would have a one-time doover if they wanted to try it again the next semester. Um but if they decide that it is if it is one course and it doesn't work out, then yes, we have paid for that seat for the this semester. Um, I also just want to kind of add on to that. One of the reasons why each virtual student is getting a CFB success coach is so that we can have some of those conversations. We plan to do a check-in with students on week two, which sounds really fast, but if you're
161supposed to be checking in every single day because of the 90% seat time rule, if you get two weeks into a course and you haven't done anything yet, we're kind of like, okay, we're putting you on notice that you need to get your butt in gear a little bit. And then we'll do another check-in at week four. If the student is still not progressing the way that they need to, the success coach can meet with the student's campus principal and the parent and you know kind of a little advisory committee and we can decide if it's better to bring that child back to a face-to-face class on campus. So we do have that option to move students back into face-to-face learning. >> Thank you. A question in relation to that success coach is is the
162university going to allow CFB to access the student records to know if the student's being successful or not? >> Yes. So the C CFB success coach will be enrolled in the Canvas course as an observer of that student. So they will be able to see the students grades. They will be able to see the interactions with the activities. They'll be able to see the course content as well so that they can support the student with questions that they have. Um, so they'll be able to get all that information from the UTHS course. >> Okay, great. Thank you, Miss Mavas. >> Thank you. Um, I was thinking, is the course self-paced >> to an extent? Um, it is self-paced, but there are certain checkpoints that UTHs recommends in order to ensure you're going to finish the
163course in the time allotted. If you have a student that loves math and they want to knock out their math course in a month, they have the freedom and flexibility to do that. Um, so there's not any, you know, hard due dates except for the end of the course. They do have to make sure that they are making progress daily and checking in daily, but they can do as much or as little that sounds not quite right um as they want in a particular time frame. So, but it's still based on the traditional August 12th, day one to the end of the year. >> Yes. So, the 140 calendar days is roughly a semester. So, students will start their course on the first day of school with the rest of the face toface students and
164their course will end the same time our face-to-face classes end. >> Okay. Okay. And then my last question was, how many North Texas ISDs are doing this same uh online program with Texas >> with the University of Texas? I'm not aware of any that are uh there was a district in um North Texas that >> had used UTS as part of the Texas Virtual Schools Network. Um, I've since learned that they are going a different route with their virtual program. Um, I have not seen or heard of any other North Texas districts that are are advertising their partnership with UTHs, >> which is great because the outreach is much bigger for us. >> That's awesome. Thank you, ladies. >> Miss Garzeros. Okay. So, to piggyback off of Miss Benvitz's question, you know, this is very
165innovative and it could potentially help CFBISD's enrollment numbers increase. And so, I have a couple of questions just in general. Um, you said a CFB success coach. What does that mean? Is that a teacher? Is that like who is a CFB success coach? >> Well, the University UTHs calls them a mentor and it is a CFBISD employee. Um, sometimes it's a guidance counselor, sometimes it's a teacher. It's basically district determined who is their uh local assistant and contact and coach and motivator. We are it's an internal term that we call it a success coach. Um, we are examining a number of different options, a few different options for the success coach. We have a plan in place uh for the success coach um which we will take a look at and modify if the um
166enrollment or the the interest is higher than we originally intended. But it could be um a teacher that has um an off period, an extra off period that their master schedule isn't fully um utilized. Uh we also have a few people that we're looking at to specifically ask to assist us with this. >> Okay. Uh that's what I was going to ask you next. Um, so if our families have any questions regarding the program, they're supposed to go to their CFB success coach once they're enrolled. Is that correct? >> Yes. The success coach is their their first Well, if if a child has a question about the content, then obviously they're going to reach out to not obviously then the then the child would reach the student would reach out to the UTHs instructor of
167the course. But um if a family has a question or if the question is not specifically content cor content related then yes that that success coach is the conduit between the child and um the parents and the family. However, we also um depending on what the question is, that success coach would be the one to say, oh, you need to talk to technology about this or well, let's call the guidance counselor at your high school or let's reach out. You know, the success coach would kind of help point them in the direction where they need to go. >> Okay. And then my last question is just what's the marketing strategy? Is it within CFB? Is it just in general? Like how would we promote it if >> Well, the website goes live in the morning.
168Um, thanks to Karen and her team, they did a fabulous job standing it up with a fairly quick turnaround. Um, it is my understanding that it's going to be promoted on social media. Uh, and then we're doing some targeted um, parent square messages for internal. Um, but as far as I know, we're not buying any spots on buses or um, where billboards, >> right? Billboards or Right. Right. So we're we're relying on the website and and social media at this point. >> Okay. Thank you so much. >> So just to clarify, there won't be any um parent sessions to understand it. It's all just online to like understand the program and better engage in it. So like will we have a a public session where parents can come and learn or a virtual session? We
169are uh going to post a video, but we hadn't planned on any parent virtual sessions at this time just because we were thinking that the turnaround time is 3 weeks and the end of school is pretty hectic. Um, we can we can my thought was that if they have questions that are not uh answered on the website or the FAQs, there's also an email address in there too, but we could also call and have a conversation with the parents >> to alleviate concerns or address any questions. >> So, the timeline for family notification of June 1st to 23rd, is that kind of a hard deadline? Like why is the application window so short? Well, the application window is is short because uh we need to go through and customize and build schedules for every single
170one of these children. We need to go through and evaluate their um admission or their application on every single one of these applicants. And we're doing a fairly thorough evaluation on those. And we were concerned that an open-ended application process would be problematic with getting the master schedules built and getting um the students onboarded in a timely enough manner. Um, we also are having them complete the um, July 3, complete their team's enrollment if they're new to CFBISD by July 3rd. So that their information and data will be um, contained within or will be ready to roll over with the rest of the the CFB students when they roll from 25 26 to 26 27. We want to make sure that they roll so that we can uh put their schedule and and whatnot into
171place. >> Okay. Um so the slide six, the revenue retention gives one example as if a 100 full-time students are going to enroll. >> Um I'd like to see some other scenarios. Okay. >> Because this is looks great. It looks like uh we're getting more money than we're expending. Um but there's also it sounds like a success coach involved. So, it's not just the money that we're expending on the tuition, but it's also a staff member. Um, and so like what's the ratio of time of that staff member that's going to also impact this number? And this also assumes just full-time. So, what happens if we have 40 full-time, 40 part-time, 40-timers? Um, we like how is that going to work? So, I think I think it may have some more questions. Um, and when
172you say that it's coming to the consent agenda for June to the board, what is on the consent agenda? It's us purchasing a block of classes, >> correct? >> But we're already going to have people applying. >> We can hold off on all of that if you'd like. >> So, I just I think we need to consider the fact that what happens if we go live with this and then there are more questions and then we need to put the pump the brakes. So, I just I just want to caution us that this is really exciting and it's really great. Um, however, if you're going to be coming in the consent agenda in June without an approval and something there are more questions when we look at I'm assuming the consent agenda is it's going
173to be like anou with the UTD or with UT. >> Yes, with along with the um block of seats. >> Okay. Um, very helpful. Thank you board members. Any additional questions? >> I think you asked my question, but I'm not sure. So, third grade level here. So, we get $6,300 per kid, right? Whatever it is. And you're saying this is roughly if someone's full-time, it'd be $3600 a student. >> Yes. >> So, we pay the 3600 out of the 60 whatever it is that we get. And that would >> is the right. >> So it could possibly be a net positive, but it also depending on her >> different examples, it could be a wash. >> Well, well, if if we have a child that um is taking one course that wants to accelerate, the
174typical cost to accelerate is $150 that they pay to the district. we would be paying UTHs $260 for that child to be taking that one course. U but we're not providing the teacher, we're not providing the textbook, we're not providing the curriculum for that one course. >> So as this expands and people outside of the district start learning about it, then that's where the positive effect comes in. I'm thinking right when they because at this time the hybrid and the um alle cart the one or more courses are available to CFBISD students. Um the full-time would be if a child is coming into the district full-time. Well, the CFBISD students could do full-time, but we're not allowing students from outside of CFBISD to come and take one class or come and take two classes. It's
175you are a CFBISD student. >> Okay. Board members, any additional questions? Mr. Shackman, >> I think you just clarified something in my mind. So, anybody that's in the virtual program is it going to be a CFB designated student? >> Correct. They are enrolled in CFB fulltime. >> Okay. Full-time. And so we're not going to have anyone from Capel that says, "Oh, I'd like to take this one virtual class." >> That's correct. >> Okay. And there because there also is some policy that we set in place recently with legislation about uh not opening the district up for homeschooling, for athletics, and other things. And I want to make sure that going forward that we don't cross ourselves one way there. But these would all be CFB students. >> That's correct. And that was part of the
176application process is that they agree that they are going to be if they don't live in the district and they don't currently attend um a CFB school, then they would agree that they are going to be a full-time CFBISD student. >> Super. Thank you, >> board members. Any additional questions, comments? Okay. All right. Thank you for the presentation. It's very exciting to see um us innovating in this area and so we look forward to the next update. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right board members, at this time the time is 9:10. Would we like to take a quick recess? All right. Um we will come back at 9:20. The time is now 9:20 p.m. Um, and we are called back to order. We will move on to agenda item number five, which is the
177consent agenda. Um, the consent agenda is a mechanism that the board uses to approve a number of routine items together with a single vote in compliance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. The public notice for this meeting includes a list of consent agenda items and the board has been provided ample information about these items in advance prior to any action being taken on the consent agenda. The board members um may request withdrawal of any individual items for clarification and or discussion. Board members, do we have any items to be removed from the consent agenda? Miss Brady, >> Miss Hatfield, I um failed to ask the question during premeating. Um but I do have one about uh item 5W from Miss Roland. >> Okay. Item 5 W. Any other items, Miss Benvitas? >> 5 AG. Any
178other items? Okay. So, um I have requests for removals of 5W and 5 A. So, um, with that, if there are no other items to be removed, do I have a motion regarding the consent agenda as amended? Miss Brady, >> I move that we approve the consent agenda with the exception of 5W and 5 AG as presented. >> I have a motion for Miss Brady. Do I have a second? I have a second for Miss Benvitas. Is there any discussion? >> No. >> All those in favor? >> I don't know. I just assume she had it right. >> All those opposed? I'm so confused right now. >> Say again. >> Okay, I'm gonna redo that. Um, all those in favor. Okay, all those opposed by a vote of 70 and five opposed, the motion carries.
179I missed some hands there. Okay. Um, next we will move to item 6A uh which is items removed from the consent agenda. We have two items removed from the consent agenda. The first one is 5W and the title of the item is >> consider and approve purchase of safe and civil schools training and materials. Miss Brady, you requested that one be pulled. >> Yes, ma'am. I just had a few questions for Miss Roland. Um, one of them being this is this to be implemented in the 2627 school year and is this training only for special ed staff or is it going to be for all staff? Oh, there you go. We actually have done some safe and civil schools training in the 2526 school year and we will continue in the 27, no the 26
18027 school year. Two cohorts, 15 schools were in cohort 1ish, 15 161 17ish are in cohort 2. Each campus has a team of up to six people. Some some campuses choose more um and they are learning as a group and then going back and implementing what they learned on their campus. It's all teachers um eventually will have a training by their training team of their campus. Does that kind of make sense? >> Yes. Thank you for clarifying. Is that mainly elementary campuses or would campuses? >> Thank you. U Miss Roland, why don't you kind of give an overview about what Safe and Civil is so everyone understands. >> So, Safe and Civil Schools is um a uh it's not one thing. Um it works with campus teams to create a positive schoolwide behavior um practices
181and culture. And um the trainer comes and he works with the campus teams and they reflect on what what um are their biggest hot spots in the area and what kind of systems do they need to put in place to remedy any issues in those hot spots. Um it it was really cool this year. Um while we were sitting in the training, um groups put together a survey for their teachers to reflect on, you know, what areas do we see the most misbehaviors? Um just all the different types of questions they wanted to ask. And the funny thing was is they said, "Oh, well, we thought it would be this." And it was this. And so it was really cool to watch them get the information and then adjust a system to help solve that
182struggle on that campus. Um the trainer comes and works with um the groups and he gives them basic ideas and foundation. It's actually called foundations foundations and then they reflect on the programs and the processes and the systems on their campus and work to improve them. >> Okay. Thank you very much. >> Right. Okay. Are there any additional questions about item 5W? All right. With that, I'll entertain a motion. >> Do you want to talk about AG? >> No, I I'll do them separately. >> Mr. Shackman. >> I move that we approve consent agenda. >> I have a motion for Mr. Shackman. Do I have a second? I have a second from Miss Barnes. All in favor? Any opposed? by a motion of seven in favor, zero opposed. The motion carries. The next one that
183was pulled was um 5W, Miss Benvitas or sorry 5 AG. >> I was not. >> Okay. Um so do I have a motion regarding this agenda item? >> GG. >> Miss Barnes, >> it's GG. >> I would like to make the motion that we approve the minutes from the board of trustees work study meeting that was held on April 9th of 2026. I have a motion from Miss Barnes. Do I have a second? I have a second from Mr. Gilmore. Uh, all those in favor. Any opposed? By a motion of six in favor, zero opposed, and one abstension. The motion carries. All right. Our next agenda item is um item 6B. Consider and approve the adoption of math instructional materials for the 2627 school year. I have a team of very excited people as we've
184been gearing up for this. So, Dr. Eldridge, I'll get >> So, this one's instructional materials and then you'll have the one for the textbooks. So, um I know you all have worked so hard and done such great research, feedback, practice, and all of that. So, I can't wait to hear um the results. So, take it away. >> Thank you so much, President Hatfield, Dr. Eldridge, and esteemed board me more board members. We are thrilled this evening and I want to first introduce this fabulous team. Our director of mathematics is Miss Shashawn Campbell and then also Madison Bottoms is our coordinator of secondary mathematics. Um and we are very excited to kind of co-present this to you because it's been a lot of um work this year on this particular adoption and we are very excited
185because it has been such a long time since there has been a refresh on uh this particular area for curriculum materials. So I want to take a minute to overview first of all um well I'll introduce you to a new acronym and we refer to that as IMRA and that is the IM is the acronym for the instructional materials review and approval process. This is the first time that CFB has adopted materials or will be potentially adopting materials utilizing the EMRA process and the funds that we are provided by the state. So, this was basically originated with House Bill6005 and that was back in May of 2023. When Texas approved this bill, it basically impacted educational funding for school districts in a very mighty way. Um, with this new legislation, we actually receive additional funding
186per pupil. um as long as we are adopting materials from the district from the state's approved list which is the high quality curriculum materials that they have vetted and approved. This initiative is also overseen um which is called the instructional materials review and approval process. Uh and it also um ensures that we have the best resources really in our classrooms. So a visual to kind of help see what this is basically looks like. When the HP16005 was actually passed, all the Texas school districts have the ability to utilize the entitlement which is the IMRA funding as long as we are approving or excuse me, we are adopting something that is from the state approved textbook list, consumable workbooks, it can be digital learning platforms, any kind of lab equipment or teacher resources. But the kicker
187is it has to be on the EMRA approved list. So with that, we did a lot of deep diving into the process of how the EMRA review process is actually um conducted. So I want to be very transparent about what this process looks like. With the EMRA process, it is the current review process in Texas and it replaced what you probably remember as the proclamation Texas resource review process. When EMRA was established, it's now governed by the state board of education and also the materials are vetted as considered highquality instructional materials or what you will hear referred to as HQIM. The review process is not limited to, but it does ensure that anything on the list is aligned to the Texas essential knowledge and skills 100% that they are accessible and they do meet quality
188and suitability criteria. So if you go to the dis or excuse me the state's website um there is an instructional materials review and approval um website you can explore anything that has been explored by the state board of education there is an approved list there is a rejected list there is a proposed rejected list and there's materials with no action and it is very very in-depth and when we adopted science if you remember the EMRA was science had not been through this IMRA process at that time so when we purchased our science materials. It was out of our Texas um what we call the tea funds. This is a whole different kind of bucket of money. I like to say it's an entitlement that we're able to use that will stretch our dollars um a
189little bit which is actually really good with this. They have vetted some language arts materials which we are not at this time um needing to renew. They also have some phonics that's been reviewed. But what we're looking at for this evening is the math full subject. Uh they also did some reviews on supplemental. When you go on to the website, I want to just give you a quick little overview, but there was a rubric that they put into place. Um, it went through several areas like the implementation quality, progress monitoring, supports for all learners. They reviewed depth and complexity, um, the balance of conceptual and procedural understanding, and even productive struggle. And with that, you can kind of see, I was scrolling there on the web and just giving you an idea of what it
190looks like. But when you go into one of these materials that they've actually reviewed, you can see the TEACS coverage that they have um aligned to. But every one of these rubric areas, you can see the green bar there, they've got 28 out of 28 points or 26 out of 26 points. And each of those, as you expand and and expand those, each of those areas have even more areas that they explored. So when I say it was in-depth, it was indepth. This is a truly really vetted process of highquality materials and there are a lot of different vendors that sub that submit their materials for this review. So I would say that anything that has landed on this list has been through a very very deep dive for quality. So moving on um I
191want to turn this over to Shashawn and Madison. Um, I want to remind that back in November, we were here asking for approval of our textbook committee. And from that time, since then, this team has done an amazing job diving into all of the different avenues to lead this process. And I can't say enough about the hard work that they've done and the extra measures they have taken to ensure that every one of our stakeholders has had a voice and that we do believe we are representing the majority voice of our stakeholders and what they want in their next math curriculum. So, with that, Shush on. All right, good evening. Um, this is an exciting night for us because we have been working since October on this process. We initially did an all call to
192our stakeholders to see who wanted to be on our math textbook adoption committee and we had a ton of teachers reach out saying they wanted to be on our committee. So, we narrowed it down to 60 people and divided that between secondary and elementary. Plus, we had departments that signed up to be on our committee including sped, multilingual, advanced academic services. Our assessment team was on the committee. So we had a plethora of everyone from our district on that committee. We started out with a deep dive in the IMRA process because we needed our committee to understand what this where the state sat with the curriculum resources. We identified the resources that we thought would be a benefit for our district. We also identified what our vision for CF NCFB, sorry, a little nervous in
193CFB for high quality instructional materials would look like. So, we really had to do a deep dive with our committee to make sure we were all calibrated in the resources that we wanted to look at. We also laid the documents against our CFB best practices that we've been studying over the last year um to make sure that when we select a curriculum that it's aligned to what we believe in CFB at this time. This was November, we also started to create our rubric so that we could also calibrate on on that information. By December, we had um finalized our rubric as a committee, but at the same time, the math instructional coaches and specialists were digging into the curriculum resources. We asked them to look for vertical alignment, TESS alignment, rigor, differentiation, intervention, all the
194things you could imagine that a math specialist would want to look at. But most importantly, we asked them to look at the math and how did it align to some of the math that we have currently been doing in our district. We then moved on to thank you to January which was exciting and I will say it was exciting because this was the day that we had the vendors come in. We had our whole committee there. The vendors showed up with all the bells and whistles to tell us about each one of those curriculums. And you can see here's our schedule of that day that shows all of the vendors that we actually vetted. So we didn't just go in saying we knew which one we wanted to select as a district. We listened to
195every vendor to see what they had to offer for our teachers as well as our students. The participants on that day left that meeting with print resources and digital resources to take back to their campuses and start talking to their teacher teams about what our options were. Then we decided to broaden our net and get more feedback. We then sent out a notification to our community informing them that we were going to have our print resources available for viewing at the ESDC for the month of February as well as our digital resources we sent out to our community. When we sent out our digital resources, we sent out our website as well as the user information so that they could log in and see the English spa version as well as the Spanish version of
196those curriculum resources. It was very interesting because then February became the month of feedback. I call it feedback February because at that time we started getting all of the feedback from our stakeholders. We had our teachers having a survey and they were giving us feedback. Our public gave feedback. Our textbook adoption narrowed it down to their finals two. Then we sent out for more feedback from our stakeholders and the community and then we got more feedback from those from our community. I wanted to take a second and read you some of the community feedback that we received. Um, it's amazing how informed our community really is about textbooks and curriculum. Um, I was really surprised. So, one of our participants said the resource had a good mix of traditional direct instruction and guided practice as
197well as productive struggle for teachers and students and higher order thinking. If teachers are strong in discourse and active learning strategies, this would be a great resource. There is a good amount of different differentiation, very easy for teachers to use. Plus, it has built-in teacher support. Very rich resource and flexible for all. This would be a good choice. I was impressed with with a community member that said that. Then we had a secondary teacher send in feedback that says, "This curriculum offers many resources to meet the needs of all students. The online resources are excellent. I'm looking forward to exploring the labs. The more I look at the curriculum, the more I like them." So, we had teachers out in our community that were really taking a deep dive into our curriculum resources, which I
198was really proud that people really wanted to have a voice in this process. And so, the whole time Madison and I were coordinators, we remained neutral. We never shared what our favorite was. People would try to ask us questions, what's your favorite? And we're like, we're not going to say anything. So, that was the whole journey. We had to remain like Switzerland. So, what you'll notice is that we were going to come back to you in April and we were going to come with our recommendation, but because feedback February gave us so much feedback, we decided to do a deeper dive. And in our deeper dive, we um went out and had the vendors come in and do a model lesson for us. So, the vendor was the teacher and we the committee members were
199the students. So, we were able to engage in the curriculum as a student to see what experiences our students would have on a daily basis, which was pretty exciting. We were also able to ask like, well, where did you figure out that content knowledge? Are those questions embedded in the curriculum? Is that something we could pick up and run with tomorrow if we were to go in and teach those lessons? We still had some things we wanted to find out. And so, we needed a little bit more voice. And so, we went to our secondary leadership lab, which is a committee of teachers from all of our middle schools that are are experts in math. So, we brought them in. We had them look at our model lessons that we sat through and give some
200feedback around what they were seeing in the lessons. But then we wanted to see as a teacher because they're the ones in the trenches in the streets, right? We wanted to see what did they think about the lesson framing? So, if I were a new teacher, how would I implement this? If I was a 30-year veteran teacher, would this curriculum work for me as well? So, then at the end of that session, we were able to get more feedback. So, we took our April feedback and our February feedback and we're here tonight to make our recommendation. And it is a big secret. And there are people online. I want you to know they are watching and waiting. And there's people in this room who are like, "What is it? What is it?" So, I'm going
201to turn it back over to Miss Hulcom who's going to lead us in what we our final recommendation, our big reveal. >> Oh, yeah. It is. She's really not kidding because we were with the um final APLA group with the area directors um yesterday actually um no Tuesday and we was had them ask questions and they said hey do you know what we're going to adopt for the second or for the secondary math curriculum? I said well we do but it's pending board approval so tune in and you'll see. So tonight we after truly so much hard work um and careful consideration um as well as receiving um all of the feedback comments uh the thorough review conducted by the committee. We are asking for the following recommendations to be approved by the board of
202trustees this evening. Drum roll is for elementary mathematics. It was an pretty overwhelming um this one was a little closer but it was very much overwhelming for SAS envision Texas mathematics K through five print and digital you can see the vision uh envision textbook cover there for each of the grade levels it is 100% of course aligned to the TEICSS it is approved through the EMRA process and state board of approved and commissioner recommended so it will be eligible for use of our entitlement funds so it will be completely paid for out of our entitlement Middle school math was really this one was one that they kept diving deeper into but it was overwhelming. McGra Hill Texas math course one is sixth grade, course two is seventh, course 3 is 8th. We do have algebra
2031 at this level because of our eighth grade students that do take algebra 1. Uh this will be print and digital. Um we are excited to provide a consumable option with this adoption. uh we do believe is it important for our students to do things that are have color and that are in writing as well as go from conceptual understanding to the abstract and moving into the digital platform. So that's going to be really great. It is also 100% aligned to the TEICSS EMRA approved and state board of approved with the commissioner's recommendation. And finally for high school math is also McGraill. It was overwhelmingly secondary wanted McGraill. So we have algebra 1 print and digital. We have algebra 2 geometry as well as pre-calculus for print and digital. Um it is also 100% aligned
204to the TICSS and we're approved and state board approved by the commissioner. So at this time we will open for questions before we will ask for a recommendation of approval. Um if you have any questions we are here to answer. >> Board members any questions or comments? Miss Brady? Well, it seems clearly well vetted, so I'm not really sure what questions we would have. You all have answered everything. Um, but my do have a question about calculus. So, does that just go into like college level math? Is that why we don't have a textbook for that? >> So, the calculus and AP programs are through a different vendor. Um, we do have textbooks and everything for those already. Um, those are not or have not yet been reviewed by IMRA. Um, so we could not
205include that in this adoption as of right now. >> Okay. But we will. That's that's coming. Okay. Thank you. >> And we currently have per two years ago a still contract with a publisher already for an AP calculus program. >> Okay. Great. Thank you. >> You're welcome. >> Great question. Any other questions or comments? Well, thank you guys for the vetting, the hard work. Um I'm pretty sure you could have written a dissertation by this point with the amount of rounds of feedback. So, I really wish you would have gone for that doctorate through all this work. Um >> that might be next. >> I might be an SU next. >> Okay, there you go. That might be next. um maybe you can use everything you had and like represent it. Um so thank you
206very very much um to the teachers that were on the committee and the the staff that were on the committee um 19 years >> 19 years in elementary 14 years in middle school >> 19 years in elementary 14 years in middle school before a new adoption. So, this is extremely exciting and we have high expectations for how this will impact our student achievement data. Which means my only last question is since we did such a wonderful job rolling out the reading curriculum, um what does this look like for teachers going into a new year knowing how much work went into shifting with reading curriculum? >> Yeah, I will start off with that and of course you guys jump in. Um we will have the first thing is going to be approval of the purchase this
207evening. Uh we will then of course get licensing getting started quickly. Our curriculum team will be trained this summer deeply on the materials using them and getting curriculum um the units written. In addition then the the vendors will be coming in August and all of our teachers will be fully trained and onboarded for initial training and that will be ongoing of course throughout the year. there will be lots of times to be able to get in utilize their PLC time for planning um and really getting their hands um into the new materials. Anything else can I add on? >> Yeah, >> one of the things that we're proud of in both curriculums, let me get out of that. Is that um they come with just in time PD sessions. So for every lesson there's going
208to be a little PD video. So, if I'm a brand new teacher and I'm not sure how to teach the math that I'm about to walk into that room and teach, I can watch a little two, three minute video on those strategies and I can walk in and teach the math. So, that is something that we'll be using through PLC. Um, and it's a bonus. And then the other piece that comes with our new curriculum once you guys give us your blessing and approve it is that there are also videos for our students. So, oftentimes kids go home and they're not sure how to do the math at home. There's tutorial videos that are just like those short little Tik Tok videos done by kids to help other kids understand the learning from that day.
209So, those are some bonuses with going with a more, I guess, modern curriculum um after 19 years. Sorry, >> it's a big bonus. Wow. >> Upgrades, right? So, oh my goodness, >> we're excited about just the PD pieces. That's incredible. >> It's something else that made me think of with the new adoption, they have pre-made slide decks for our teachers, so that reduces their prep time. Um, in addition, there is quite a bit of emergent bilingual language supports. I know Dr. Hoon and their team have really dove into that as well, and that is very impressive with this new material. So, we are beyond excited. The teachers cannot wait. They're like, "Let's go. Let's go." >> Awesome. Very excited. >> Board members, any other questions or comments? Well, with that excitement, one more question. >>
210Go ahead. >> I just have a I know you kind of touched on this, but is there a rollout plan? So it'll be you guys will go first >> and then >> Sure. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> So we're already in the process with your approval. Um we will start training with our specialists and coaches first. Then we will have principal training in June so that all of our principles are first in the curriculum and what they should be looking for in the classrooms. Then we will roll out our training to teachers August at the August PD day. Okay. um for elementary and secondary we'll have a half day with the vendor and then we will continue with CFB best practices and implementation at that point and then from there we will continue to figure
211out like what is the rest of the year look like but there will be a strategic plan for implementation >> elementary and secondary >> elementary middle and high school >> okay great thank you so much >> all right with all of that excitement this awesome this item is marked for possible action does the board wish to take action Brady >> I'd like to make the motion that we approve item 6B, the adoption of instruct math instructional materials for the 2627 school year. >> I have a motion for Miss Brady. I have a second for Mr. Gilmore. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor? >> Any opposed? By a motion of seven in favor, zero opposed. Let's move forward to item 6 C, which is certification. Step one of three. In case you didn't
212know, apparently I learned there is an order in which this has to be done. um which is meant we either put it on consent or we pulled it here and then you get to hear everything. Go ahead. >> So part two of this um thank you of of course for your continued support. Every year we are required to certify to the um Texas ed or to the school Texas education code uh that our school system is required to annually certify to the state board of education that we have materials to cover 100% of the Texas essential knowledge and skills. um the survey and all of the deep information. There's about a 30-page document that has been included in your board items. Um and that will certify that we have materials to cover every single one
213of our content areas. In addition, the other part of this is to certify that we don't have any um obscene or harmful content. Um that is part of the Children's Internet Protection Act. And this is something that we do every year. And so this is a requirement that must be done prior to us being able to approve materials for purchase. >> All right. Board members, do you have any questions about this item? Seeing none, I'll entertain a motion. Miss Brady, >> I move that we approve item 6C, um, the annual TEACS certification. >> I have a motion from Miss Brady. Do I have a second? I have a second for Miss Garza Roas. Is there any discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? By a vote of seven in favor and zero opposed? The motion
214carries. And moving right along to 6D, which is the math adoption textbook purchase. So now that we've adopted, now we actually have to purchase the textbooks. >> Yes, ma'am. And so with approval this evening, we are asking for again the approval of the recommended materials. Um the elementary SAVIS package. It will be an 8-year access. It will be fully funded out of the EMRA allotment. It will be done in a payment plan that will cover all eight years, but it will not um have to be paid out for eight years. we will have it paid off in actually three um this will be through um again the EMRA funds the total cost um for all K5 for all eight years is 2,63,400 so that is for the elementary for secondary or excuse me for middle
215school um for the 8-year access this part is not including algebra 1 this will also be funded through a payment plan um across the 8-year period it is a little over $1 million for middle school and for high school it is coming in a little bit under a million at 990,000. Um and this again is an 8-year access. It will also be paid out of the EMRA funds. Um we have been able with good stewardship of our financial resources and how we've been balancing this particular um funding source. Um we did not use our IMRA funds last year. So that built up funds for us for this year. So with that, we have two years of funding that will cover all of these adoptions through that entitlement and also allow us money to then be
216ready for the next round of reading materials that will come in 2030. So we have a very strategic plan financially to get all of this paid for and it will also um we will be complete with our science adoption as well as our reading adoption that we already did and we'll be ready to roll for the next. So, but with the strategic staggering of utilizing this money, it will continue to refill, but then we will also have money there ready for when the next one comes and we don't have everything being adopted at the same time. So, with your approval this evening, we will be able to then do our first purchase out of our EMRA aotment um for the recommendation of our math purchase for the 2627 school year. >> Okay. Thank you very
217much. I appreciate the long range planning of how we're going to utilize those funds to make sure we're maximizing that. So, I really appreciate that. Board members, any comments about this one or questions? All right, seeing none, I'll entertain a motion. Mr. Shackman, >> uh, I would move that we approve the math adoption textbook purchase for the 2627 school year. >> All right. I have a motion for Mr. Shackman. I have a second from Miss Barnes. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor? Any opposed? By a vote of seven in favor, zero opposed. The motion carries. Congratulations to our math team for all their hard work. Um, onward to the next eight years. >> Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. All right. Our next agenda item is item 6E. Consider and approve
218the District of Innovation amendment. >> You're good. Gosh, as a former math teacher, it makes gets me excited. You might have to go back. I mean, >> maybe not that far. >> All right. Where's this? >> Okay. Good evening, President Hatfield, Dr. Eldridge, and board of trustees. Tonight, I'm bringing forward proposed amendment to our district of innovation plan. And this amendment is narrow and specific and it's going to focus on our local control over the grievance process. All of GF, FNG, and DGBA. And just to recap, GF is a public complaint. FNG is the parent complaint and DGBA is the employee complaint process. So, as you recall, a couple months ago, we adopted update 126 and we pulled out these three policies from the update 126 approval process because we were decided as a school
219as a as a board as you as the board did to amend through the district of innovation these proc uh these three grievances. And part of the district of innovation amendment process is to take the uh proposed amendment to our district improvement committee. And we did that last month. Our I presented this I know uh uh Trusty Barnes was there and I presented this to the district improvement committee which is comprised of teachers, community members, administration, district employees, etc. And had to get them to uh vote to uh allow us to move forward to bring it to you all. and uh it was overwhelmingly approved by that committee and so that's why we're here this evening. And so in short, the board is being asked tonight to amend this to allow us to manage our
220grievance process um uh locally rather than being locked into the statemandated timelines and structures that came out of the last legislation. So to allow for local flexibility, this amendment requests limited exemptions from specific sections of the Texas Education Code strictly regulating grievance procedures. This section controls things like grievance policy requirements, required filing timelines, and appeal timelines, and specific requirements tied to chapter 26A. And that's how they are it's that's how our grievances are conducted. Who hears them, the timeline to respond to the hearing, um and then the response that we have to get to the uh complaintant as as far as as far as our findings. We are also requesting very limited exception from a section that requires full compliance with the state's grievance structure, mainly so we can keep timelines shorter and resolve issues
221much quicker. These exemptions are very targeted. They apply only to the grievance procedures and do not affect any other area of the law. Most importantly, this amendment does not eliminate our grievance process. It simply allows us to f to define and manage it locally in a way that works best for our district. And I just want to remind everyone that the district of innovation can be re must be renewed every five years and we can amend our district of innovation at any time. We just have to make sure we go through the process. And also our board of trustees, you all can adjust board policy at any time. So I just want to make sure that you're aware of that. So why is this amended needed? So obviously the the the core challenge we're experiencing
222with the new state grievance uh timeline can be a a stretch of the grievant process can can um go up to 9 to 10 months. And I'm talking um as an example the FNG process for our parents and you guys should have a sidebyside comparison of those timelines. And so if we were to follow what was proposed it could take up to 9 to 10 months for a resolution to be developed. If we stick to our current policy, which has been in practice for years, um we can complete a an FNG process within four months or even quicker. So what local controls allows us is faster, more efficient resolution procedures align with our district operations, clear and orderly grievance pathways, and bottom line, it allows us the flexibility to help us resolve our concerns earlier
223and more efficient effectively as well. But I want to be very clear. It does not change. What does not change with this amendment is first TEA oversight does not change. The commissioner's authority and TEA's oversight remain fully intact. Key protections in the law are specifically excluded from the exemption request. In fact, I want to make it very clear. There's been some questions about the informal resolution. You go to the TEA website and TEA encourages the informal resolution. In fact, TEA states on their website, TEA encourages parents, staff, students, and community members to raise concerns with their school as soon as an issue arises. If informal efforts don't resolve the issue, every school system is required to offer a formal process. And so, I just wanted to make that very clear that we are following everything
224um regarding how how we execute the timelines, etc. Public accountability does not change. Our grievance policies will continue to be publicly posted with clear forms and timelines provided at every level. Um, a big part that I want to make sure is clear that any anti- anti- retaliation protections do not change at all. Retali retaliation for filing a grievance remains strictly prohibited by law and our local policies will continue to reinforce that protection. This amendment is about our process flexibility, not less accountability, not less access, and not less protection. And so this evening, the district administration recommends the school board to approve the pro proposed district of innovation amendment as presented. And I'll take questions. >> Thank you, ma'am, for the presentation. Board members, questions, comments? Miss Barnes? Hello. So, I think um Cassandra Hatfield and
225Kim Brady and I when we met with you about our policy um 126, the policy updates, I know this was something that came up with us and and I know we had looked through it and definitely very can be somewhat confusing looking especially at the changes to the update 126 versus the original. and we got pretty nitpicky on days and stuff and had a conversation about how District of Innovation was going to kind of change some of that. And um I I definitely um agree with, you know, coming up with our uh using what works best for our district and and agree with that. But um and while I guess my question is so even in your example of like an informal uh informal being attempted and how um tea says on the website that
226hey uh that is the recommended but if you look even at um the handout that we were given today um it talks about if an informal is attempted, it expands the days that um that they have in order to file a level one complaint probably to enable them to have a chance to go through those channels be with the time ticking um versus what we have originally being 15 business days from knowledge. So, I don't even know if this is really a question so much as I think there could be room for us to look at what we have currently. Just because it's worked for forever, does that really mean that it works to the fullest of its ability for our parents? And and so I wonder if um maybe taking a look at it
227for things like that where maybe the language and making it clearer is helpful. >> Sure. And I'll answer that question. So, under the current policy, if there's an incident that happens, you have 15 days to file a complaint. Go ahead and file the complaint. When the paperwork comes in, the paperwork does say, "Did you have an opportunity to resolve this informally?" And most of the time, and I will say 95 to 98% of the time, the the complaintant will say, "No, I have not." So then what we do is we put the formal process on pause and we allow them an opportunity to see if we can resolve it informally. And like I said, 95 to 98% of the time it does get resolved formally. And then we go back and say, "Do you want
228us to to continue with the process?" And they if they don't want us to continue, then they have to resend the um formal process. If that makes any sense. If we didn't resolve it informally, we're on that timeline. Again, within 10 days to have the hearing from 10 days after the hearing, we must issue them a response. And you can then see how it goes. 10 10 10 all the way down. Does that does that answer your question? We just need to explain it. >> No, that does help. I think it's the clarification process which was something that we had started to get into with the governance committee but then had put on hold pending some more of this. Yes. >> And so then when it was brought back in tonight, I was kind of
229like, wait, but we didn't talk about it. Um, and then I guess another question I have then is is what we were given today was this example of what it looks like now versus what the update 126 was stating those changes would be and then with the district of innovation we would be able to continue with our original one. Is that this specifically goes into FNG? Does this also apply to all grievance processes including employees? >> That is correct. >> Okay. So, it is the same. Even though it says FNG, it is also for DG. >> The timelines are identical. That's correct. >> All right. Thank you so much. I'll let someone else talk. >> No, you're good. Those are great questions. >> Additional questions. Miss Gar, did you have one? >> I mean, based
230on this calendar, what you proposed to us, it looks like there's more time, like increased time. Is that correct? like 15 business days from knowledge ver versus now 60 days no informal or up to 90 to 30 days if informal attempted. >> If we stick to what we currently our practice >> we resolve it much sooner. >> I see >> the goal is to resolve it much quicker get it done under a total if you get all the way to the level three you get it done within four months versus if you look at what they're proposing it could stretch all the way from 9 to 10 months. >> I see. Thank you, >> Miss Brady. >> I was just going to comment Miss Barn's comment, which is we can go ahead and go back
231to our original I mean, no harm, no foul, and then if we want to as the governance committee or the board want to relook at the current policy, I think we should totally absolutely do that. But I think what we're just doing today is just going back to our original policy and just negating the 126 because we can under DOI, >> right? like the back to continue our original policy >> and we can go back and change it later >> at a at a future date that's the whole point >> we have the flexibility absolutely >> I would say to you trusty Barnes um what I hear you say too is what we need to probably the govern the governance committee needs to do is look at how we implement it which is our regulations
232so we we vote on this, but I think we could be a little clearer with how we implement it. And I think that that has come up. And so while you're looking at policy, what makes it easy for people to understand it? >> So >> that's correct, >> communicate effectively. >> So those the policy and then the regulations that go with it um supported by administration. Board members, any additional questions or comments on this item? Okay. So, um, this item is marked for possible action. Does the board wish to take action, Miss Brady? >> I make the motion that we approve the district of innov district of innovation amendment. >> I have a motion for Miss Brady. Do I have a second? Oh, sorry. Your your hand was not here. >> I have a second
233for Miss GarcA Roas. Is there any discussion? Mr. Gil, more discussion. >> Yeah. Um, I agree with all that and I think Dr. Eldridge just said what I'm thinking, but I wanted to put it out there again. I think if you look at the website, it's kind of not real clear. So, I think it does need to go back to the governance cuz we do this more than a parent or whoever at home. And when I went on the website, I was like, wait, that's kind of confusing. So if I'm confused, so I can imagine a parent and I know we always want to do the best and communicate the best. So I think that should be a a higher priority to get that done sooner rather than later. >> So Mr. Gilmore, are you
234asking the governance subcommittee to take a look at this? >> Yes, I am. >> All right, great. We can do that. Duly noted. >> Duly noted. Our Miss Barnes long way to get there, but we got there. >> We got all right. So, um I have a motion and I have a second. We had discussion. All those in favor? Any opposed? Five of seven in favor, zero opposed. The motion carries. All right. Our next agenda item is item number seven, close meeting as authorized under Texas government code, including but not limited to section 551.071, consultation with attorney 551.072, real property 551.074, 074 personnel matters. 551.076 security devices. 551.082 school children district employee disciplinary matter or complaints. 551.0821 personally identifiable student information and 551.3084 investigation. Item 7A pursuant to section 551.071 consultation with attorney and section
235551.072 072 real property discussing regarding land um including the sale of 2115 East Frankfurt Road, Carolton, Texas 750007 and 818111 Kelly Boulevard, Dallas, Texas 75287 and item 7B, discuss board self-evaluation. The board will now move into close session on a very late night. Um it is 10:06 p.m. Audience members, you are welcome to stay in the audience for as long as you wish. We will return after close session and the time is now 10:06 p.m. The time is now 11:02 p.m. and we are back in open session. Um item 8A, possible action on real property located at 2115 East Frankfurt Road, Carolton, Texas 750007 and 1811 Kelly Boulevard, Dallas, Texas 75287. Uh we do not have any bids on those properties at this time and so we have uh asked the superintendent to continue uh
236with the process that was discussed in close session which does not require any official action because we delegated authority at the last board meeting. So with that, we will move on to agenda item number nine, um, which is comments from board members regarded the posted agenda items. Board members, are there any comments you wish to make at this time related to the posted agenda? >> All right, seeing none and hearing none, the time is now 11:03 p.m. and we are adjourned. I hope you enjoy your blanket.