001Okay. Well, good evening. Tonight is February 3rd. It is 6 pm and um this meeting is a public information meeting and tonight we have present Miss Brady, Mr. Shackman, and myself, Cassandra Hatfield. We do not constitute a quorum, but we are doing a community information session tonight. Um the focus is what does a school board member do? This presentation is being recorded and we will post it on the website um for anyone interested in seeing it. Just a few housekeeping disclaimers is this is not meant to be all-encompassing. Uh Miss Brady and I are going to be speaking tonight and we are speaking on behalf of ourselves, not on behalf of the entire board. The we will see in the presentation at the bottom uh there are some hyperlinks. This presentation will be posted on
002the website. So if there's any information on the slides and you're looking to dive into that, we have that content available for you linked in the bottom lefthand corner. And additionally, if you are specifically looking for information related to schoolboard candidacy, um we want to make sure you reference the te Texas Ethics Commission or the Texas Secretary of State Elections Division. Um as this presentation is not meant to tell you everything you need to know about potentially running for school board. So tonight our focus is to share more about the responsibilities of school board members, what our service entails, um how we operate. We have board operating procedures, information about how long our terms are, how elections work, and then the vast amount of training that we take in our volunteer position so that we
003can adequately do our job collective. Um a little bit of district facts. We are an amazing district that represents 90 countries. We have 63 languages spoken in our district. And even though we are Carolton Farmers Branch, we actually incorporate all or part of six cities and portions of two counties, both Dallas and Denton County um for a total of about 53 miles. Um that's a lot of miles that our buses drive every day in the district to serve our students. So some more facts about the districts. We have a graduation rate of 93% which is higher than the state. We have the most employees um in Carolton and Farmer's branch. So we have 3,636 employees with the bulk of those being our full-time certified teachers. 34 campuses serve our students and a little over a
004little less than 23,000 students. And you can see a breakdown of our our ethnicities and other facts about the students within the district. So, um, like every good education, uh, area, we want to offer different ways of instruction. And so, we're going to show you a video that explains a little bit about what board members do. And then we will continue on and uh, expand on that. >> My name is Rachel and I'm in the sixth grade. I was invited to go to a school board meeting to get an award, but I didn't know what the school board did. So, I asked my grandpa Freddy since he used to be on the board. He said, "Well, school boards are kind of like grandparents of the schools. >> They want good things for the students and
005staff. >> Even though grandparents aren't always around, we do our best to help you learn and grow." Let me see if I can explain it in another way. Think of the schoolboard team as building a bridge between the community and the schools. They are your voice. Board members listen to parents, community members, school staff, and even the students about their hopes and dreams for their schools. They share these messages with the superintendent and other school leaders. And they advocate for their school district by speaking up for them with other elected officials and within the community. Another important job of the board is to provide direction for the schools. School board members choose a destination for the district. They might like the students to go to Topeka, Kansas, Paris, France, or even Mars. But they don't
006tell the staff how to get there. They empower the superintendent, staff, and students to choose their path. The board also makes a lot of decisions like hiring a superintendent. The superintendent is the leader who makes sure the daily operations of the schools run well. The superintendent helps determine the best routes on the map along with the staff and students. The school board also ensures that resources are in place so that the staff can complete their work and make sure students can reach their destinations. Let's say that the schools want their students to be able to play a musical instrument if they'd like or fix a car or understand algebra or other opportunities. The board makes sure that the school district has the money, staff, and materials in the right places at the right time to
007ensure success. The board and superintendent team help students complete their journey in their local schools and prepare them for the future. >> After talking to Grandpa Freddy, I had a much better understanding of what school boards do. They build a bridge so that the community and the schools can communicate and they set destinations for the schools so that I can reach my goals. The school board looks out for me just like my grandpa and grandma do. 2015 video actually sums it up pretty well. Um, our key role is to provide guidance and oversight, but not to impact the day-to-day operations from an operations perspective. We're really here to provide that strategic vision for the district and ensure that um we are shephering the district forward as trustees. So, to break that down a little bit
008more, um, the responsibilities of the school board. So, that's the board collective, the seven of us collective. We adopt and monitor the success of their goals and priorities. We hire and evaluate the superintendent. We adopt policies and then review them for effectiveness. We annually adopt our budget and set the tax rates. And we communicate with the community. So let's start with adopting and monitoring the success of goals and priorities. So in 2019, the community and staff worked together to develop collaborative vision 2030. And that vision really ca brought everybody together in the community and developed a new mission and a vision for the district. really focusing in on what the community sees as critically important for Carolton Farmers Branch. And then from there, a strategic plan was developed and adopted by the board. Since then,
009the board um is really been focused on two things. And this work has started really this past school year, continuing on revising these. And so, we first have our student outcome goals, and those student outcome goals are aligned with the school district's mission and vision. And then we also have our guard rails. And the f focus of our guard rails is to uphold the community of values while advancing those student outcome goals. So the reason why public education exists is to advance student achievement. And so our primary focus is to improve student achievement with these outcome goals. And so I'm going to share those with you now. So the board has adopted four goals. Three of them are required under house bill three. And one of them is an additional focus that the board brought
010in this year because of our belief and high expectations for all. So the first and second one are focused on early childhood literacy and mathematics and looking at the percentage of third grade students who are advancing on the STAR test. And then our third one is the one that the board adopted this year, an algebra readiness goal. So in looking at our current data, the board really saw a need to focus in on the success of algebra, which we believe starts as early as fifth grade. If we can get our fifth grade students moving on a trajectory, then their trajectory for algebra is even more successful. And so rather than setting algebra as the marker, we set fifth grade as the marker because after fifth grade, students take advanced math pathways potentially. So if we
011can get fifth grade right, we feel like our algebra success is going to increase and then that ultimately will support our college career and military readiness goal of ensuring that students are ready to take whatever pathway they have selected for high school. So as we're working on our student outcome goals, the other part that we developed are our guard rails. So our guard rails are that upholding the community's values while we're in pursuit of those goals. So we have four remaining areas in the collaborative vision. The first one is focused on uh capital investments and long range facilities planning. The second one focuses on the social and emotional health of our students. Making sure that we have a whole well-rounded child that we're looking at, not just the academic goals. And the third one is
012centered around community engagements and cultivating the shared belief that the district is an exceptional learning community. We want to make sure that we continue to spread what a great learning community that this school district is. That is a a part of CV 2030. And so we really bring that in with these guard rails because these are the things that we are telling our superintendent while you are working towards these student achievement goals. It is the board's expectation that you uphold these four guard rails. And the last one is optimizing all available resources which is focused on the recruitment and retention of high quality staff. Because when we have high quality staff in front of our and teachers in front of our students, then we know that we can achieve these other goals. And so the
013board identified these four ways that the superintendent needs to ensure she upholds these while she is working towards those student achievement goals. And with that, I will turn it over to Miss Garza Rojos, who has uh joined us and is going to go over the next section. >> Hi, and thank you everybody for being here tonight. I appreciate you. Uh, one of our, as a trustee, one of our roles is to hire and evaluate the superintendent. And the progress monitoring of our goals helps us fulfill our next responsibility, which is hiring and evaluating the superintendent. The school board as a corporate body, not as an individual, are the performance managers, policy makers, and evaluators. We determine the highlevel what the district should be focusing on to meet the needs of our students and our community.
014While the superintendent is responsible for implementing and managing the day-to-day operations, this board has worked extremely hard to develop goals and guard rails that make it very clear to the superintendent what we're expecting. These goals and guardrails are used for the superintendent's evaluation. This differentiation between the role of the school board and the role of the superintendent is one of the most challenging parts of being a schoolboard member. It's not our role to get into the weeds of the day-to-day operations. Do I just click? There we go. Our next responsibility is to adopt policy and review for effectiveness. There are two buckets that policy falls into. Legal policies and local policies. Legal policies are what I would consider the non-negotiables and they're based on laws set forth by the legislature. We don't have the ability
015as a board to amend them. We do review them and use TASBY uh policy support services to ensure that we update them after each legislative session. Then we have local policies, local policies that are directives from the board itself. We can adopt and readopt local policies and the board sees the need to support this work. We have put in place a governance subcommittee. This subcommittee of three board members meets as needed to review policies and then bring them before the board for consideration as a body corporate. Let's take a look at the policy manual. Just push it. >> Policy. It's broken into buckets. Let's take a look at the policy manual. It's broken into buckets and the lettering system just supports the grouping. Here's an example. AE local. I'm sorry, AE legal, vision statement, and
016comprehensive. Oops. Nope. It's right here. Educational philosophy and vision and statement goals. A board shall adopt a vision statement and comprehensive goals for the district and the superintendent. And then here's another example that it supports local operation CW. So, we'll just go back a little bit. Go under section C and look for CW alphabetical order of course. Make it look pretty naming facilities. So, definition for the purpose of this policy, this is the way that we would name a facility. It's in our board policy. Okay. presentation. That should there it goes. >> Okay. Next up, we have another important component of our role, which is annually adopting the budget and setting the tax rate. It's really important to note that it says adopt the budget. In our role as a trustee, while we may review
017strategic funds being spent on goals and guardrails the board has established, we have finance experts on staff in our district. They manage the day-to-day funds from the budget that the board adopts and monitors. There are three different budgets we adopt annually, the general operating fund, which is the funding of the day-to-day operations. Some examples of these are teacher and sta staff salaries, electricity, gas for buses, curriculum, materials and softwares. Then we have the debt service fund which is related to our bond funds. Finally we have the student nutrition fund. The district has two tax rates M and INS. Maintenance maintenance and operations M is a dayto-day expenses where an INS is the interest and syncing funds are where our bond funds come from. Typically these funds go to pay for construction expenses for long-term projects.
018The state provides very detailed guidelines on how these funds can be spent. In other words, in which bucket the funds go to for both the budget and the tax rate. Additionally, the board has the authority by a vote to call for a bond election based on the needs of the district. And then if a bond passes, the board can issue bond sales so that the work can begin in the district. Again, I think it's important to note that we're really focused on the oversight of the budget, not the day-to-day operations. And finally, for my portion of it, another role of the board is to communicate with the community. This includes parents, community members, staff, local government officials, and the legislature. One of the key things trustees can do is listen to our community and build
019trust within the community and support of public education. However, it's also important to note that the board operates as a corporate body. This means that when I am out in the community, I am speaking on my behalf of myself only. As an individual, I cannot make promises on behalf of the board. The work that we do and the decisions that we make as a corporate body really happens behind the DAS. Understanding this is one of the key components of the board's functions. Next, we want to share what activities a trustee typically engages in. The business of the board of trustees is done in meetings. Every month, we have a monthly meeting, typically on the first Thursday of the month. We receive agendas at least 5 days in advance and have an opportunity to ask questions
020about the consent agenda items. The consent agenda is a mechanism that a board uses to approve routine items all under one vote. but items can be removed for individual consideration. Additionally, in these meetings, we get updates on progress towards our student outcome goals in related to our guard rails. We also have work study sessions that at least six times a year. These sessions are designed for the board to work collaboratively on goal setting and study programs and initiatives at a deeper level. We do not take action at work studies. Special meetings and emergency meetings are called as needed for specific matters that allow for these meetings. Each board member serves on at least one subcommittee. The work of the subcommittees is intended for a smaller group of board members to prepare documents or information for
021the entire board's consideration. We currently have three board subcommittees. Additionally, each board member serves as a liaison or exeicio member to district committees. These are district committees and the board members there to listen and so they can support and report information back to the board as a whole. On average, we have one to two meetings every month and they are typically but not always on Thursday nights. Each of these meetings typically has pre-work that can range from reviewing the documents connected to the agenda or regular meeting so that a member is able to make an informed vote. It could also be reading a chapter in a book for the work study session. Board members are encouraged to engage in the community at a dis at district activities in the city and community events. Personally, I
022really enjoy going to see our students in sports and fine arts activities. Board members are also welcome to visit campuses to visit programs and initiatives in action. We always make sure we follow board operating procedures when scheduling campus visits. The board operating procedures provide structure or a framework for how we conduct business and engage the community. These procedures sometimes reference a specific board policy, but in general they have more flexibility. The board reviews and adopts these procedures annually. You can see the different sections of the board procedures on the screen. This includes procedures for a legislative for legislative advocacy, how officers are elected and engaging with this district personnel. It is also important to note that in Texas, schoolboard trustees serve without compensation and can only be reimbursed for attending meetings or training. Elections are
023conducted annually about onethird of the representation being elected annually. We serve in three-year terms. Our seats are at large. This means we represent the entire district, not a geographical area. This year we have two seats up for election. The term will be from 2026 to 2029. Trustees are typically sworn in at the June board meeting after the votes from the May election have been canvased. In our district, we use cumulative voting for our schoolboard elections. Let me show you a video on how that works. Have you ever wondered how your school board members are elected? In this video, we'll teach you about a process called cumulative voting and how we use it to elect our board of trustees. Under cumulative voting, Carolton Farmers Branch Schoolboard members are elected by all voters living in the district.
024In cumulative voting, the voter, that's you, can cast as many votes as there are board member seats up for election. You can distribute your votes among multiple candidates or cast all of your votes for the same candidate. This means that no matter how many candidates there are, you will only have two votes to submit. You could cast both of your votes for one candidate, or you could spread them out and vote for two candidates. As you can see, you can use your votes in any combination. Also, you are not required to cast all of your votes. However, you cannot cast more votes than there are seats open for election. At the end of the process, the candidates who have the most votes win the election. In CFBISD, we have seven trustees that make up our
025school board. Each school board member serves a three-year term. To maintain continuity on the school board, the terms of trustees are staggered so that board members come up for election in an annual cycle. Each year you will be able to vote for the school board member seat up for election. For more information on early voting dates, times and locations, and voter registration information, visit the board member page of the CFB website and click on the elections tab. Thanks for watching this video. We hope that you will make your voice heard in our future board member elections. This year, two seats are up for election, so voters can cast your two votes to one candidate or split them across two candidates. Voters are also not required to cast all votes. Thank you. >> Board member eligibility
026and qualifications can be found in the board policy BBA legal. I'm not going to read all of these to you, but just a reminder to click on the link to read the full board policy. Trustees are required to take a number of trainings. In this table, you will see that the first year in office has more requirements than subsequent years in office. Additionally, new trustees are required to take some trainings within the first 90 to 120 days. Some of the required trainings are very specific, including our local district orientation, the orientation into the Texas Education Code, and the Open Meetings Act, while others are more flexible and can be determined by the team of eight and individual training needs of the trustees. Annually, we sometimes attend a TASBY leadership conference to support ensuring that we
027are able to earn all of the required PD and personal growth. It is also important to note that annually the board must announce at public board meet at a public board meeting the training requirements that have been met or not met and any hours beyond the required that were completed. All of these dates can be found by clicking on the link at the bottom left. Additionally, some other links are provided if you are interested in learning more about schoolboard elections. The superintendent's office has election packets with election election related documents and paperwork available during normal business hours. Miss Castanon has also prepared and some for their available tonight. They are election related documents and paperwork designed for those interested in running for school board. All of the information is available online. Thank you all so
028much. >> And the time is 6:23 p.m. And we'll end with that. Thank you.