School Board Meeting | June 2, 2025

001I call this meeting of the Casper Independent School Board, School District Board of Education to order. Let the record show that when a that a quorum of board members is present, that this meeting has been duly called, and that notice of the meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. Just a reminder, we are here for what is best to promote and encourage achievement for every student in our district. And at this time, we will have uh Miss Katika with the invocation. Lord, as we come to the close of another school year, we pause to give thanks for this school year. We are grateful for the students, for the teachers, and the staff. Thank you for the guidance you have given us as board members. Help

002us reflect on the decisions we make. Give us wisdom and knowledge to do what is best for every child. As we step into this summer, may you give everyone this rest they need and peace and preparation for the new year to come. Protect our students and staff, keep them safe, and bring them back refreshed and ready for the next chapter. In your name we pray. Amen. Item number three, we appreciate you being here this evening and we're always welcome. We always welcome communication from citizens of our district. Individuals who wish to participate during the portion of the meeting designated for public comment shall sign up with the presiding officer or designate no later than 1 p.m. the day of the board meeting and shall indicate the agenda item or topic on which they wish to

003address the board. Miss Branch, do we have anyone who wishes to speak to the board tonight? No, we do not. Thank you, ma'am. Now we move on to item number four. Miss Smith Faulner, were there any questions called in regarding the consent agenda? Uh, no, Mr. Board President. Thank you, ma'am. Item five, a 2025 2026 compensation plan. Yes, Mr. Board President, at this time, Dr. Mir Blanchard, director of talent acquisition and policy, will present the 2526 uh compensation plan. Uh in addition, do know we're presenting it tonight, but the approval will be at the June 16th uh budget uh board special board meeting. Okay, perfect. So, this compensation plan, the changes that you'll see are in red for you. And uh in the meantime, what I'm going to do is Mrs. Branch is going to

004help me just highlight a few key changes for your review. On page 18, she's going to get to it. We have the teacher incentive aotment on that page. Now, that's not a new section, but we are going to be paying our first cohort in August, which is super exciting. So, we've got 31 Castleberry ISD designated teachers that are going to get their compensation in August. And then on page 19, we have employee benefits listed. And there, I just wanted to draw your attention to where it talks about medical insurance right there. And it shows you that we contribute $293 per month towards employee medical insurance. I provided you with a list at your tables and or at your at your spot right there. And it has the UEA kind of canvasing of 50 area districts.

005And out of that list, just wanted to highlight for you, we are number 37 out of 50. So that's definitely with the with the 10% increase that TRS is saying we're we're going to be charged. Um, we are definitely looking at that as a possibility of somewhere we could give more as a district for our employee benefits. Okay. And then the last thing I wanted to point out to you is the teacher, librarian, and nurse salary schedule. We added three things. The first two are teacher resident and teacher intern. Now, Mrs. Walker is going to be canvasing different districts here in the area of what they are paying their teacher residents and teacher interns. And if you remember from last month, but if it's okay if you don't, but teacher residents are the ones that

006have that are in our GCU talent pipeline program, for example, they're not yet certified or or haven't finished their student teaching, but they'll complete a year-long residency with us and be paid more than um than an instructional aid, for example. And then the intern that we're looking at is somebody who is has their bachelor's degree, does not yet have certification or has not started their certification program. And that's those are the pays that we're looking at in a draft form right now. We also at the bottom you'll see that we capped our retirey teachers at 20 years starting with those that we're hiring now. The reason for that is we pay as a district, I don't know if you know this, a 16.5% sir charge for retirees of their base salary. So you can imagine

007if we put them at the higher levels, say they have 30 years, it really costs us a whole lot of money and those retirees are drawing their retirement, their teacher salary, plus we pay the teacher the retirey search charge. So we're trying to uh balance the budget. That's the reason for that. All right, that's all I have. Any questions? Okay, thank you. Item 5B, budget workshop, budget preparation. Uh yes, Mr. Board President. Uh at this time, Mr. William Wooten, our chief financial officer, will present a preliminary budget uh information during budget workshop uh four. Uh this budget workshop will focus on the key components of the budget development process including revenue estimates, expenditure planning and financial priorities for the 2526 school year. Also, please note please note that this is on current law as we

008await the impact of what House Bill 2 will uh could uh potentially have on our funding. And so what we're trying to do is balance the budget with the existing budget based and create a baseline before we have any considerations uh if we uh do get the signature and I have not seen that yet uh today for house bill 2. Okay. Thank you. Good evening Mr. President, board of education and superintendent. Thank you for allowing me to present budget workshop number four. Um today's uh discussion points we're going to talk about the 2425 current year projections uh the 2526 budget assumptions uh and then 2526 general uh fund budget child nutrition budget debt service we're going to talk about those three budgets then next steps then we're going to hopefully review the preary budget as

009the superintendent said that uh things are changing rapidly even today the numbers are shifting and and it's really contingent on uh what what happened to the governor's desk. Next slide. So the infamous question we always talk about how do the year end numbers look? Uh next slide. So as we noted, we adopted a $45.9 million budget. Uh we are pretty sure we're only going to collect 94% of that budget, which is a $2.6 million budgetary shortfall. Uh expenses, we've done a really good job. We've slowed down uh discretionary spending. Uh we believe that we're going to land about 43.2 in in uh expenses. So we're um consider all things equal. Uh and nothing changes. The net change in fund balance will be 97 uh net positive fund balance 97.5,000. Did you guys hear that? [Applause]

010It's because of the people behind us that they they're they're doing the work and managing their spending. So, uh 25 26 budget assumptions uh as it looks as uh as it as it stands, the amount of money that we we intend to collect for Avalor taxes is about $1 million. That assumes a property value growth of 5%. That's what the chief appraiser told us. State aid is down 1 million. So typically when property values go up, state aid goes down. So it's a balancing act. We lose no money. Uh the state has promised to educate every kid. So the net state aid and local are pretty much flat. Uh other shifts, we're taking advantage this year of indirect cost, we uh each grant that we manage, we get administrative cost for that. And so we're

011we're taking advantage of that of those funds. Uh expenses. Uh we believe that I mean we have uh built uh 3% for our water, gas, utilities, uh health insurance uh is about 10%. We'll find out this week uh from TRS if they're going to increase it and what about what amount. Uh property insurance is has increased about 10%. I've gotten that that new invoice. Uh as you know, we've we've cut the non-payroll budget by 5%. So, uh, we're doing everything on our end, uh, to make sure it's possible. So, this is a year overyear budget comparison. Um, basically here you see the the actual 3.9% that of that $1.4 million really, that's uh that's year-over-year. That 1.4 million consists of TIA, teacher incentive aotment, which is a uh we get money from the state and

012a tier one aotment. And so, um, that that's going to $400,000 of that is that. And the other, uh, part is the increases in TRS, uh, contracted services, we're we're cutting that budget, uh, down from last year, 22%. General supplies about 27.2%. Uh, and other costs uh, is going up marginally, and that's because of the, uh, the, uh, the actual property insurance increase of 10%. And then our capital uh plan uh we've actually increased that budget about 186,000 that consists of a um two 200,000 to uh maintenance our hback in case something happens uh and then other um departmental plans for 800,000. Next slide. So th this is uh the the budget assumptions. Uh we believe that um we project a slight increase in student count up to 34 students. Uh property values. As I

013said before, the chief appraiser is anticipating us to grow about 5%. Um and then the the other uh one is local property tax rate. When the actual uh property values go go up, our tax rate will go down. So, next slide. So, this is the general fund budget. This is what we believe we're going to collect. Uh about 10.7 uh% I mean 10.7 million for private tax collection. State aid is 34 million and federal aid is about $300,000. Uh we believe that our uh our collections will be about 45.4 million. Slide. So, child nutrition budget, we typically hadn't talked about that to this point. Um, we believe we're going to collect state aid about 82,000 and from the federal collection, the federal government about 3.4, which is a total collection of 3.7 million debt service.

014Um, as it relates to abalone taxes, we're going to collect about 7.3 million uh from the homeowners and the state is going to give us about 481,000. We don't get get very much money for uh with that service. Um, and so at the end of the day, we're going to we intend the collection to be about 7.8 million. As it stands, June 16th, uh, we plan on adopting the budget. I'm going to send the public notice out after tonight's meeting uh tomorrow so it can be posted in the in the paper uh and then we meet again depending on the the board uh we we intend to request you to adopt the budget uh and this budget will include the impact of house bill 2 at that time. Next slide. So here's next step. So,

015we uh as I said before, the we're going to conduct a public hearing on June 16th and propose the budget for adoption. Um, any questions? Um, you mind if we go over the the preliminary budget board, this is the basically the pre preliminary budget as of last Friday. Uh, as I said before, the numbers are are uh are going to shift. Our goal is to bring to you a uh balanced budget. As you see, the the first column um is the general fund. If you look down at total collections, we believe we're going to collect about at this time 44.4 million. Uh we think we're going to spend at this time about 46.3. Um and then there there's going to be a net um there's going to be a budgetary deficit of 97,000. As we

016said, these numbers are steady moving. We don't intend to to bring the deficit uh back next time. Uh but we just got to run the numbers. So child nutrition is the the next budget that I'm going to ask you to adopt. Uh we believe we're going to collect about 3.7 million. We're going to spend about 37 3.7 million. So we plan to adopt a balanced budget there. Um and debt service we're going to collect about 7.8 million in Avalor taxes between Avalor taxes in the state which is the 481,000 and we plan on well based on our receipts we are going to spend about 8.2. Now the thing there is that you you you have a really healthy fund balance uh and so if we have to dip it dip into the fund balance 388,000

017uh I think I think we'll be okay. the fund balance now there is about uh about $6.3 million and so I think um $388,000 won't be it will be not material so um Mr. President ping any questions for you? That's uh for the board. That's all I have. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you, board. I do we do have one thing uh Mr. Wooten that I want to be sure that everyone's aware of is that um there is still the possibility that we could uh fall out of the uh property value study and so we've already been making arrangements uh for that uh to appeal it uh and we will not know that until about December but we do have made some plans on what action we'll take if that happens. Thank you board. We

018are Yes. Now on to item 5C, five-year curriculum audit report. Yes, Mr. Board President. At uh this time I we have Scott Hutchkins and uh Whitney Harper, our TLI lead coordinators, and they're going to present the updates to the five-year curriculum audit highlighting focus areas for the 2526 uh school year uh based on uh a deep dive on our data. Good evening, President Toifer, Superintendent Smith Faulner, and Board of Education. Thank you for allowing Mr. Scott Hutchkins and I to present our five-year curriculum audit updates this evening. There are five curriculum audit standards. However, this presentation will focus on standard two, which is ensuring clear and valid objectives for students. Our board policy, eh local, guides the development, implementation, and evaluation of the curriculum. The full policy is linked on the slide for your reference.

019A little background. Back in January, we had the opportunity to do a little bit deeper dive into curriculum. Each of the coordinators spends days, days on end really honing in on their own curriculum. Um, but we sometimes don't get the opportunity to look at the other subject areas. Um, and so we took advantage of a TLI meeting and we printed off samples from lots of units. um and looked at where everyone was at, what things do we notice, what things can we grow in, and overwhelmingly um we we determined that from an outsers's view, an outsers's lens, um we really needed more clarity, um and refinement so we can ensure that teachers are able to do the internalization, which is just making sure they understand how to deliver the lesson instead of having to do

020any actual creation of materials. Um and so that kind of really defined that work. Um and so we've had some follow-ups to look at what are we going to do? How are we going to enhance our documents moving forward? Um as we came to you uh last month looking at some curriculum adoptions, we had just a few changes to our um HQIM materials. Um and so you see that blue bonnet learning which we brought to you that studies weekly and then McGraw Hill brought back into that 612 social studies. Now all the work that we do is and if you will click in just very briefly um we have captured which is now essentially a 10-year plan to ensure that we are providing curriculum and resources for every course that we offer here in Castle

021ISD. Um it's been a very growing plan but also we're also continuously modifying adjusting making it changes as needed. Um and so Miss Harper and myself now are going to highlight some specific changes. if you'll flip back to the slides. So, for our elementary curriculum updates, um next school year, our district was actually awarded, which is very exciting, um a grant from Texas Reads, Texas Leads Literacy, and this is to support literacy initiatives and boost student achievement. Our focus next year will be on early literacy in grades K through three. A key area of focus will be strengthening the literacy block. And Miss Putney, our early literacy coordinator, has previously presented what the updated block will look like, and her presentation is actually linked in this slide under restructured literacy block. Additionally, our guiding documents

022will also be revised to reflect best practices in literary instruction. our humanities third through fifth grade which encompasses reading language arts as well as social studies. I'm going to do some highlights here for our reading language arts. We um the third grade is actually under the grant that I mentioned earlier that um Miss Putney will speak of here in just a little bit. Um this grant was awarded to CISDS to support that restructured literacy. We're going to be updating the guiding documents as I mentioned and um it will also allow us to hire a literacy demonstration teacher. Um actually we will be hiring three but we will only have one under that grant. Um we also will be updating some writing instruction alignment. We worked really hard on that K12 alignment, but now with the

023um induction of the AI tools, we're really using those more for our ECR, our extended constructive responses as well as our short constructive responses. And we're really going to be prioritizing that student feedback and revision. Our last focus for our uh RLA 3rd through 5th will be continued refinement in collaboration with our new elementary bilingual coordinator. We're going to be strengthening that existing grammar and conventions instruction. Now, for social studies, you heard Mr. Hutchin say just a second ago that we have adopted a new curriculum. So if for social studies uh we will be uh offering studies weekly to our teachers and this is a teach aligned engaging content with um we will be providing professional learning as well as that PLC support and all of the guiding documents for third through fifth will be

024rewritten so that the teachers have that um internalization that lesson internalization and they don't have to come up with those lessons themselves. And then in early mathematics, excuse me, elementary mathematics and science, um I'm just going to highlight those bullet points. In math, we are going to be, as we do every year, we're going to be updating those guiding documents to align with what we will find out when the STAR um data, not the data, the star tests are actually released. Um, we're going to be streamlining some assessments to combine some similar CFAs so that we are more focused and and efficient more efficient in our instruction. And then we're going to continue our problem solving model which we use K12. And we also are going to focus on the uh and emphasize building a

025stronger foundational in number sense. We've actually um been we were called by uh region 11 last week and I was on a call with tea and we are looking at getting a grant. It's called um facts on fire. So I'm meeting with the principles this week to discuss more about that. in science. Um we're going to be working on uh Spanish translation improvements and our fifth grade will be moving um in bilingual will be moving to science in Spanish and that will be the instruction as well as the testing and we also will be uh revising and refining those guiding documents. On the secondary side, um just a couple of big highlights. Um, we've talked a lot about the writing process, but we've kind of determined we're at a place where we understand the structure

026of what is the writing process. We're now to the point where we really need to look at comprehension. Do students actually understand the work and that's why they're missing because we keep talking about missing the prompt, but as we're starting to do a deep dive, we're really going to push on that um reading comprehension. Um, and so we're going to bring that into the guiding documents on the social studies. Definitely a big area, and we'll talk about this in our next presentation. Um, we're going to be looking at an overhaul of eighth grade. um still not getting the performance or we're needing and so I'm working with Miss Harper and looking at how we can leverage some title one funds to hopefully bring in some support um to really move that data um the way

027we want it to go. Um on secondary math, we use algebraic reasoning as a a high school course that we can still support our retesters at the algebra 1 with algebra 1 retesters. Um and so we're really going to be kind of taking a deep dive to make sure that we're getting the absolute most out of our um curriculum and experience for our kids there. Um, and then in science, we've had a lot of success that we'll share with you in a little bit. Um, but physics is a course that we have not developed to the level that we really want to. And now that we've got a pretty good handle on the STAR situation, Miss Kogar is really going to do a deep dive into physics and make sure that we're providing that beyond

028biology experiences for our kids. Um, on the languages other than English, um, now that we've done a little bit of restructuring, um, looking at how to support Spanish one, two, and three at the high school level. So, we're looking at using some existing resources within the district um to give a little bit better support and guidance to our teachers, but then looking at is there another resource that would better serve our students into next year um to the 2627 school year. Um and then in the career and technology realm, we've just because of a couple of updated core sequences, we've now got to offer architectural design and global business um to meet some specific pathways. And so, that CTE department is going to be working on developing guiding docs to go along with those new

029course offerings. And so that is um just a very small snippet of the work that the curriculum and instruction department's doing. And so we're happy to field any questions we can. Oh, first of all, thank you. Um so the question I think my question is for science, the science assessment, you said the fifth grade science that'll be in Spanish. Will that be the star assessment will be in Spanish? The language of instruction for the bilingual fifth grade students. Yes, the language of instruction will be in Spanish and they will take in Spanish. Thank you. Just a couple of clarifying questions. Yes, ma'am. Um, will we need to reapprove the curriculum plan since we're adding that sixth grade on it? We we did that on May 5th. We are. That was part of what we approved.

030Yes, ma'am. Okay. I'm misunderstood. Okay. And this is a 10-year plan, is that correct? Yes, ma'am. So, what's the advantage of a 10-year plan? Because I'm worried now about the star wos is what we're calling them. Star Wars if because they're we don't, you know, may be different next. This was actually an interesting conversation because we sat down with all the coordinators last week to make sure before we came to y'all. Um, originally this plan was written to ensure we came in 2016, we had no guiding documents. um we had some very rough outlines but there was the curriculum audit basically said we do not have at the district level information to support your teachers um and so Miss Smithner along with the executive directors at the time started developing this plan to say hey

031we've got to do a roll out because you there's 17 high school math classes we cannot roll out seven so this started as just kind of a how do we even begin to tackle this situation but your challenge is exactly that we've got to const constantly revisit, revamp, relook at we have a seventh grade curriculum, very welloutlined documents, but I'm going to dive in the second I get my release questions and make sure am I addressing every So there's there's this natural process that goes along that even though it's a 10-year plan, we're having to dive in on all of our major courses all the time, but um the 10-year plan was much more of the roll out of this greater process to ensure is everything that we're offering have documents, have the materials and

032then on top of that there's this ongoing process along the way. So um I think we are addressing it. It's hard to capture now that we do have for the most part the bulk of the curriculum has been developed. It for the most part's refinement except science got new tees or a new adoption. There is a little bit more um creation but for the most part it's lots and lots of refinement work that we're doing. Um so uh we did have a curriculum audit with Tessa Tasby and so they helped us uh develop a plan and so this was an outcome of that training was a three-day training. Okay. And uh then uh on uh year two, let's say that year one we're writing guiding documents for RLA. Then year two becomes a deep dive

033and that's where you look at everything that you've written and you align it with the assessment. And then year three you go back and revisit it. So even though you may we maybe created all of our guiding documents each year you're doing something different uh to that guiding document and as new teques are developed then you might have to go back and make changes. So they actually help us helped us put a plan in that we can audit it ourselves and we went through the training which leads me to my final question is and you and you you both mentioned these answers but you read and breathe this live and breathe this every day and I do not. So how will we know that the strategies of this tenure plan um is working? Well I

034I would say just by re-evaluating it every year. Um, three years ago when we adopted new math curriculum, STEM scopes, I had to rewrite the guiding documents for kinder through fifth grade, all sixth grade levels. And so, we're constantly adjusting depending on what our star scores are, what the release questions look like. Um, and so it's really just that ongoing conversation every year. And so, one of the things that uh Mr. Mr. Hutchkins and I have been tasked with is meeting with those coordinators and ensuring that they are on the correct phase of their curriculum documents. Um because of our new literacy um focus next year, we will be rewriting and and revamping all of the kinder through three documents. Now um once you get into phase three, like Maulner said, that's more of just

035an implementation year. But if you have something in phase three, which would be year three, and you get new um TEICSS, new adoption, you've got to start back over at phase one. You may not even make it to that five-year implementation. And so, it's really just looking at it every year. And actually, we looked at it at the middle of the year and we adjusted. It's just an ongoing breeding document, kind of like our strategic plan that you guys look at each month. I think Miss Gman also to add to that is for example we have been concerned with eighth grade um social studies and so we look at the student outcomes we made some adjustments and then we dug a little deeper and uh we looked at the curriculum that um we had and

036we realized we needed to go with an a different adoption uh and so we went with an adoption so student outcomes could trigger uh a change in uh mid uh implementation and we get those updates, we get those reports throughout the year on student outcomes. I think just to follow up on the other So I understand we had support right getting this launched and started is there a feedback loop or some sort of cadence with them to come back and then follow back up because it's like yes go go run with it but then will they come back and support? uh currently no just because of funding. But what uh Whitney and Scott did is they did bring the campuses in and one of the great things that they gave feedback on was we would

037like more clarity uh in the guiding documents and they referenced that so that they were able to identify where teachers uh or when they were in PLC's what would be helpful so that teachers uh can very quickly understand what uh the student um standards are that they should be covering. And so I think that for our feedback loop it is the campuses and the teachers. And so that refers back to um on the slide that Mr. Hutchkins presented our stakeholders. When we came in it wasn't just coordinators, it was instructional coaches, it was campus academic leaders, it was our sped department, it was um our bilingual department. We had a whole bunch of I mean it was a room full of people. And so what we did is we all kind of took a couple

038and we went through them and we answered, you know, certain questions. And so that's where we found out that there was certain areas that really needed that clarity. And so, uh, Mr. Hutchkins and I have been working on really aligning our pacing calendars and our guiding documents to make sure that if you teach reading, you can pick up reading or you can pick up math and you can still follow it because a lot of our younger year teachers, they teach everything and so they need to be able to look at a document or a calendar to and it makes sense. Now what to add, we did get uh feedback when we worked with the Moody Foundation uh on our grant. They actually helped us develop our structured uh literacy plan. We have taken a year

039to develop that block. Uh they looked at it. They gave us feedback and uh they really think we're moving in the right direction of what that is going to look like. And they're also going to be helping us for three more years. I just looked at the uh agreement for the grant and so they will be uh coming and doing walkthroughs with us and we'll have a showcase day in which we'll be able to invite uh board members to come in uh to the classrooms to be able and then they will give us feedback on uh how they feel we're implementing and any adjustments we made. So since that's a focus, I think that even though uh we're not getting feedback from the original people that helped us on the audit, uh because the audit

040just kind of dictates when do you update your guiding documents, we now have um the Moody Foundation who will be coming in and looking at what tweaks do they think we might need to make for our teachers on showcase day? Yes, we will have a showcase day. We'll we'll be able to showcase what we're doing in the classroom. Thank you. Now, we'll move on to item 5 D, HP3, early literacy and numeracy goals and progress. Yes. Uh Mr. Board President. And so, what is driving um our curriculum audit or our next two reports? So, our first report are our House Bill 3 early literacy and numeracy goals. Whitney uh Harper, elementary lead coordinator, and Becky Putney, our early literacy coordinator, will present our House Bill 3 goals. In addition, uh we also through the grant

041have uh help had some help in developing new goals for our uh comprehension and not only looking at foundational goals, but moving to comprehension. And so we're going to have to make some adjustments to the goal. So in July based on the data that we're receiving and also a new baseline uh test that Becky will be discussing because we're going to be using a mirror if you remember and so we're going to have to set a baseline year so that we will know how do we set goals because uh we have no starting point. So Becky's going to go a little more in depth about that. And so uh again the Moody Foundation helped us with at the campus level we make uh individual goals and at the house bill 3 goal is one general

042goal which will be for the school board and then the campuses of course will have individual goals wrapped into the big goal and so they have helped us their smart goals measurable uh and we'll be looking at that during our progress monitoring that uh Miss Putney will talk about. Okay. Good evening um President Toiver, Superintendent Smith Faulner, and school board members. I am going to show you the results of our end of year assessments. I'm going to share some celebrations and some areas um for opportunities for growth. So, next slide. Okay. In preK, we're pleased to report continued success in meeting our benchmark of 90% of students being on track in early literacy development. This includes critical skills such as phenemic awareness, uh, knowledge of letter names and sounds, vocabulary acquisition, and early writing. You

043can see we've surpassed that 90% uh, benchmark. In kindergarten, our goal is 85% of students being on track in literacy by the year's end, and we reached 81% showing strong growth from 67% at the start of the year, a 14 point gain. Miss Putney, can you explain uh Tex KIA and Circle and why we uh use those uh assessments? So Circle and Tex KIA are ones uh that the state uh requires us to use. Uh Texia, especially at the beginning of the year, there's a text uh kindergarten readiness component that the state dips down into and and takes our results and that's part of the tapier report. And then circle is one of the um approved assessments um that the state allows us to use to measure early literacy scores. Okay. Before we get into

044first and second grade, there's a few things that we need to remember. Um, we adopted a new assessment tool this year, but we kept our same HB3 goals that were based on our past performances with TPRI and Tahhusle. We made this change because we had high scores on TPRI and Tahhusle, but they weren't aligning with our third grade star results. So, TPRI and Tehus assesses a broad range of reading skills. And when averaged together, we found that students could meet overall grade level expectations even if they had low oral reading fluency. MAP reading fluency, which is our new assessment for this year, focuses on oral reading fluency. And our current data that you're going to see reflects only the oral reading rate, not the foundational skills. So with this in mind, our first and second

045grade results really need to be considered that baseline data. So in first grade, you can see that rather than tracking growth toward a 90% HB3 goal, as shown, this data really should be considered a baseline. And please note that this slide doesn't show just the percentage of students in first grade who have mastered foundational skills, nor does it show how many students can read text. What this percent shows is those students who can read at a rate of 60 words correct per minute. That's their fluency rate and that's what's being measured here with MAP fluency. And then in second grade, 30% of students met the oral reading fluency expectations. Again, this data really should have been considered baseline data and reflects a shift from our previous assessments that were more focused on foundational skills. While

046this number is concerning, many of our students continue to develop that ability to apply literacy skills to read connected text. And to support their growth, we're committed to enhancing an instructional time that's focused on fluency and text application as part of our ongoing literacy plan. So, as a reminder, and what's been mentioned already is that since this past fall, our district literacy team has been working on an action plan that will increase early literacy proficiency scores as part of that TXRL grant. Previously provided, the board with a comprehensive report that was detailed all the action steps that are underway, including the early literacy proclamation that Mr. Holder so eloquently presented and that you approved. And you will, as you heard, I'm uh we're excited to share that we did receive word that we did, uh

047we are one of the winning um school districts for that grant. So, second grade, uh another important note about the oral reading rates. Here you can see that in second grade comprehension, we have a 23% increase in our meets and exceed score from the beginning of the year to the end of the year. And um in each uh stage along the way, the the measurement to show that you met or exceeded expectations also raised. So students who moved into the oral reading portion of MAP fluency were also assessed in comprehension. And once our students are reading fluently, we see that their comprehension of text increases greatly. So, while low percentages are difficult to see, the renewed focus on oral reading fluency is an opportunity for us to realign our efforts and to ensure students have

048daily opportunities for oral reading. It's also essential to support teachers in identifying and addressing fluency barriers often tied to a lack of decoding automaticity. So for these reasons we are going to transition to Amira which provides both assessments and aligned daily oral reading practice and teacher support. So the 2025 and 2026 school year is going to be another baseline year as we gather data to guide instruction and support our students. So for writing, since the state accountability for writing is based on short and extended constructed responses to reading passages, we are focused on tracking our students growth in this specific type of writing to ensure vertical alignment across grade levels. Each grade from kindergarten through 2 grade has established vertically aligned goals designed to build a strong foundation by the time students enter third grade.

049Currently, 62% of kindergarteners, 59% of first graders, and 52% of second graders are meeting these writing expectations. As this is a new area of focus for us, we are closely monitoring progress and we're adjusting instruction to support continued growth. So, before closing, I wanted to highlight three big achievements in early literacy efforts this year. Um, we've mentioned before about our just right readers. Thanks to a gen gen generous grant funding, we were able to provide these take-home books to support our second graders phonics skills and help build their home libraries. Our hit tutors and ACEs reinforced these skills, making a meaningful impact on student learning. We also started Lion Pals, a volunteer program launched this year that targeted first graders, pairing selected students with volunteers for weekly reading sessions using read to win materials. So,

050we're excited for next year to expand and strengthen this initiative. So, if you are looking for opportunities to work with students, um, Lion Pals would be a great avenue. And then, of course, we are the TXRL grant recipients. Um, as mentioned earlier, we're very proud of this because it has been a lot of work um with our campus principles and other campus leaders um and district leaders. A lot of work has gone into this and we're really excited about what we're going to be doing next year to improve literacy proficiency across our district. And now, Miss Harper will share early numeracy results. Good evening. So, I want to first start off um by showing our HB3 pre-K math goals. Um our preK data does continue to show strong progress even though we narrowly missed our

051goal of 93% just by two percentage points. This growth is a testament to the expertise of our veteran teachers. This next slide shows the highest growth areas for prek were rope counting, shape naming, and operations. That's where that biggest growth um was seen. As you can see, the first one is rope counting. They started the beginning of the year at just 8% on track, and by the end of the year, they were at 78%. And um we still have a little work to do in operations, but we're moving definitely in the right direction. You can all see that we've made a lot of gains throughout the year in our preK math. For kindergarten, um, we exceeded our goal this year for HB3. Our goal was 85% and at the end of the year, we were

052at 93%. So, that's very exciting for us. Also in first grade we exceeded our 60% goal and we um actually got to 86%. So 26 percentage points above our goal. That was really amazing. Um this is the group. This is all based on STEM scopes. These kids have had it in first grade, second grade, first kinder first and second. And so we're really seeing um some gains there. Also, our second grade, we had set our goal at 78%. However, we did reach that 88% goal. So, this is the slide that I really want you to focus on. This shows our kinder first and second grade data from when we started three years ago. It shows our endofear data. So, in the red, you'll see the first year that we started STEM scopes. We had about

05367% um in kinder and now two years later we are at 93%. We started off at about 36% in first grade and now we're at 86% and then in second grade we've made gains from 57 to 88%. What's really exciting about this is our rising third graders. So these second grade students will be the first group to have had STEM scope since kindergarten. So, we're really excited to see how they perform on Star next year. Our recently new uh STAR raw data shows a slightly lower um area, a slightly excuse me, a slightly lower percentage than what our students scored on benchmark 3 um this spring, which was that 2024 release star. However, um we're really working on this. um the the spring benchmark was actually more on the low end. So, we weren't as

054surprised to see this um meets number um a little bit low. These kids have not had STEM scopes for three years. They've had different things um different curriculum when they started out. So, um it's important to note that this test changes each year and each group of kids is different. The district will need to review the release questions once they're um out and we need to compare the rigor. Once those questions are available, we will adjust our pacing calendars, our lessons, as well as our assessments to address any gaps that were identified from this current year's test. So, moving forward next year, we will enlist the support of additional personnel to assist us in reaching those goals. And there's just a couple there's um some adjusted math action steps here on this um I had

055mentioned earlier about streamlining some of those assessments um this year so that we can add back some days for the teachers to actually um give additional instruction time. Um the math non-negotiables are the same that we had last year and we will be continuing to um monitor those. And as I mentioned earlier, we are looking at a possible TEA grant um called Facts on Fire to increase our fluency. And this is for K through fifth grade. So Mr. Hutchkins always asks me, he says, "How come some of these kids are struggling with their multiplication facts?" Well, now we're going to be really working on um even starting in kindergarten if we are given this grant. So, I'm looking forward to that. And then also uh focusing more on attending those PLC's and helping those teachers

056with that lesson internalization and increasing their rigor. And then these are just a couple of things that the kiddos have done. Anybody have any questions? Congratulations on the STEM STEM scopes kids. Thank you. Thank you. It's really good. It's exciting to see how much growth they've made over the last three years. Yeah, I'll be excited to see what their stars are. I know that's next year. Britney, what are we currently using for multiplic or for facts, I guess, to practice? So, so we have So, STEM Scopes has a built-in um fl fact fact fluency piece um that we use in the younger grades. It's more of just kind of a a daily awareness kind of spiral review. And then in the upper grades, we start in third grade, which you'll actually get to hear a

057presentation earlier that you've heard me do before. Um we do a multiplication contest where our kids really they start in October in third, fourth, and fifth grade learning those facts throughout the year and then we close the year um at the end with a multiplication contest that's kind of like a spelling bee but it's they don't stand up and say the facts, they're actually timed. And so we'll see some um exciting exciting scores here. Results, huh? After the break. So thank you. And then um Ekki for the early literacy I know we're going to Amira. Does that mean that MAP is going away for K2? Okay. And also uh Meera, we're going to use that for TIA because we do not what the teachers also uh have told us is that they spend a lot

058of time testing and you know the the STAR test uh was not revised uh this legislative session. And so we we listened to what the teacher said and we said if we can find a program that will uh test our student uh outcomes, have student outcomes and also provide lessons, individualized lessons and now teacher lessons for small group instruction so they can again not be spending all their time creating their resources. So that's why we went with Amira and it's in Spanish and English. English so you have some parody which is nice. Yes. And it's used for the Spanish too which is sometimes hard to find. Right. The authentic Spanish, right? It's not just a translation of the English, right? Perfect. Okay. Thank you. I think we all echo your excitement about stem scopes. It's

059a strategy that we can say, hey, this is working. And then we have the kids to prove that. So my only other thing is sign me up for line pals. No, I'm available, but you call me. I will. When we get ready uh in the fall, we will make sure everybody has word. It's a great great program. I do have one uh followup. Uh Miss Harper, um 60% meets on AF accountability has been our goal because our ultimate goal is an A. But perhaps we might need to put a transition into that because that's a very it's a lofty goal. But if we're performing at let's say 27% maybe we need to look at what are the steps to get to 60 so that we can see if we're hitting a goal. I know as

060a teacher uh if they feel like that it is an unrealistic goal then uh they might not um be seeing any value in that. Correct. Thank you. Thank you. Now on to item 5e, the May 2025 star results. Yes, Mr. Board President. At this time, uh, Miss Harper and Mr. Hutchings, our TLI lead coordinators will present very very preliminary preliminary STAR uh information uh that they have been handculating looking at uh the data and trying to make sense of it. As of right now, the state when I logged in earlier today has not released the state scores. So, we're not sure how we have are compared to uh other school districts, but I have heard through other superintendent friends that they're seeing some of the trends in fifth grade and third grade that we are

061seeing. And I'll let um I'll let Whitney and Scott fill you in on a little bit on the data. Good evening, President Toifer, Superintendent Smith Faulner, and board members. Mr. Hutchkins and I are pleased to provide you with our star scores for 2025. Um so just as Miss Smither said, um last time when I made this presentation to y'all, we were able to say, "Hey, here's where the state's doing and here's where um Castleberry is. We talked about there was 23 out of the 25 tests at the state level decrease." We got a much better picture of the whole story of data today. We know what we did last year. We know what we did this year. We don't know what the test looks like. Um so there there's still a lot of questions. um

062but we want to give it to you as soon as we possibly can. So you will see some colors um from that dark red meaning double digit losses to the dark green to double digit gain. So we're looking at comparing just from last year to this year campus by campus. What is the trend in those numbers? And so that's the information we have and so that's where we're coming to you tonight to say hey here's our first look and certainly as we get more information we'll be sharing that with you as soon as we possibly can. So for our elementary RLA results, our brightest spot in third grade RLA this year is Joy James, where two veteran teachers achieved gains in approaches, meets and masters. Districtwide, we did hold steady at approaches, but we saw

063a slight dip in meets, but we gained four points in masters. Compared to our benchmark three, which we took in the spring, we saw some increases across all performance levels. Our third grade Spanish testers across the district showed strong double-digit gains in approaches and meets with an eight-point increase in masters compared to last year. While Avo saw a slight decrease overall, their M's level still improved by three points. Our fourth grade RLA was a clear area of celebration with strong growth across all campuses and most performance levels. Our veteran teacher at AV KO achieved 63% at the meets level. Fewer students are testing in Spanish for RLA. A KO and CISD saw significant gains in meets and masters and Joy James showed some increases at the meets level. Our fifth grade rla English um our

064goal for fifth grade uh is the 60% meets and most campuses are maintaining or making some progress. Joy James appears to be an outlier on our upcoming cohort slides you will be able to see that they have made gains over the last three years. And to protect confidentiality on our fifth grade Spanish scores, um data was not reported for Joy James because there was only one student that tested in Spanish and so um we kept that um confidential. Um so now I want to look at our cohort data. So AB KO fifth grade over the last three years of the RLA STAR test we have seen a 7point gain in approaches a twopoint drop in meets however we had an eightoint increase in masters. So over time these students are really working hard to make

065some gains from third to fifth grade. So these are our current fifth graders. These are our current fifth graders and this is the data that they had on at third grade, fourth grade and now fifth grade in in 2023 was that the year for the redesign of star that's the first year of the redesign. So we are comparing apples to apples. Correct. So at CE although we only saw a one point gain in approaches we have seen doubledigit gains in meetats and masters when comparing this growth over time. At Joy James, we saw that 2% gain in approaches, but just like CE, Joy James saw double-digit gains in meets and masters. These cohorts have really shown so much growth over the last three years. All right. Now, for our math results, our third grade bright

066spot is um also Joy James. uh where a firstear teacher achieved gains in approaches, meets and masters over the year previous um from a different teacher. So districtwide, our star results are closely aligned with our benchmark three, which was that 2024 release star. And I had mentioned earlier when I presented the HP3 goals that our third grade did not test as high as we were hoping on that spring benchmark. So, some of these numbers, although they're very raw, um did not come as much of a surprise. Um we will be able to compare these items more rigorously once they um release those actual test questions. I want to say congratulations to our fourth grade math teachers. CISD improved or maintained performance across all campuses and districtwide with a 5% gain in approaches. A 4% gain

067in meets and an 8% growth in masters. All of our fourth grade classes are taught by veteran teachers contributing to this very strong performance. Our fifth grade story tells a little bit uh our fifth grade tells us a little bit different story. While we saw an increase in masters across campuses in the district, there were declines in approaches and meets. But please remember without released questions, it's very difficult to fully analyze the cause of these numbers. A deeper review of this decline will take place before the new school year begins. And additionally, as Miss Smith Faulner mentioned, after speaking to two local districts, they confirmed that they had a decline in their fifth grade math as well. Our next three slides will show our campus cohorts in the fifth grade math over the three years.

068So with the three years um of the new math star assessments at AVA, we've seen a 2% gain in approaches, a 9% gain in meets and just a very slight dip in that masters over the three years with this cohort. At CE, what an accomplishment. We've got double-digit gains at 15 and 14% in approaches and meets and a 4 percent gain in masters. And just like CE Joy James made an amazing accomplishment for double-digit gains across all performance levels with 12 in approaches, 16 in meets and 11% gains in masters. So if you look at how these students were performing in the third grade to how they're performing now, they have come a very very long way. Our fifth grade science results um despite this being a crossover year where they had new materials um

069that new adoption, they had new teaks that were updated and the science test is only tested in fifth grade which what's called it's we call it a banded test. So it's testing third, fourth, and fifth TEICSS altogether. And most campuses did improve in the approaches level compared to last year. Um Joy James is the that one outlier, but we have made a staffing change for next year. And so we're very hopeful that those scores will be um improved. At the middle school, sixth and eighth grade saw RLA saw gains in most areas with sixth grade showing significant gains in approaches and masters. Seventh grade RLA has been a target area throughout this year as we've worked through that progress monitoring process. Um we've developed intensive coaching plans um and support. However, ultimately we have found

070three uh teachers to add to that department. And so we've got three very strong teachers coming in um two with lots of experience and one that's been through the TCU teacher program. Um, and so we're we're feeling very good about moving forward. Um, still looking for one eighth grade teacher, but otherwise really moving the right way with our hiring situation. As we look at sixth and seventh grade math, um, across the board, sixth grade saw impressive gains when compared to last year in all categories. Seventh grade on level saw a small gain, but it's important to note the number of seventh graders that we accelerate to eighth grade math. We've increased from 79 students last year to 89 students that are testing above grade level. Um, so that does impact that onle score, which is

071the line that just says seventh. But when you put that entire seventh grade cohort together, you can see the d the 5% gains and approaches meets and masters on the bottom row. Um, so we're definitely putting them in the right place to be successful. Um, and overall that will positively impact accountability. Looking at eighth grade and algebra 1, while we did see just a slight dip in our middle school algebra 1, um, it's important to note that we're at 90% meets. Um, that's an incredible performance. these students are being extremely successful and we're servicing nearly 90 students in that group. Um so we have a huge number of students taking that high school credit course um at the middle school. Um and then we did see the slight dip on the approaches at 8th grade

072but we did make some staffing changes which I think will shure up that situation. So we will see some continued growth next year. Science scores at the middle school were a big celebration area. Outstanding double-digit gains in all areas. Furthermore, the performance of that STEM cohort is to be celebrated. Um, not only were they highly successful as seventh graders, but when we accelerate them to that biology high school test, they had a 100% meets. Um, so outstanding outstanding work. Um, very much to be celebrated from one of our outstanding teachers over at the middle school and our uh, coordinator support staff. Um, social studies continues to be a focus area. Um, we brought to you some of the curriculum concerns and conversations in our last meeting. Um but there's definitely um the process where we

073need to do a little bit deeper dive. Um as Miss Fifth Faulner said, we're looking at talking to some of our neighbors in third through fifth. Um similar story in the social studies realm from what I'm hearing through the grapevine. So as I reached out to a number of people um definitely some overall we need the rest of the story and so we're certainly going to dive in um look at how the state's performing, look at those individual questions to make sure that we're putting the best learning experiences forward for those kids. As we move over to the high school, um now as we look at high school for reach and high school for science, just like eighth grade, this was a big big celebration area. Um lots and lots of growth, lots of green.

074Um there was a tiny bit of dip at reach with biology, but it was two students. Unfortunately, one didn't quite make it. However, across the board, lots of success and celebrations to be had around that. Um you'll see we took the retester, that's the rats column. We had 55 retesters last year after this testing session. we're down to 25. So really, really addressing the needs of those kids, taking them off that retester list so they can move on and do bigger and better things. As we shift to US history, um while the approaches level remain strong, still sitting at over 90%, um we did see a little bit of a decline on the meats area. Um it's important to note we have a large number of students that we take the US history onramps course,

075which is that partnership with um University of Texas. When we did that, we put all of our honor students on that college track, but we don't control that coursework. And so that's all provided through the University of Texas. Well, their coursework ended the day before STAR. So, we didn't kind of have that time to regroup and the alignment isn't exactly aligned with STAR. Um, so we're going to do some really deeper dive in evaluating, but um still a lot of highest level of success as far as the approaches in US history. Looking at algebra 1, um there was a slight decrease. Um we did see um Reach, they've been taking on more students than ever and so um they did have a nice little increase there over at Reach. Um but at the high school

076we did see a little dip um which is never what we want to talk about and we do have a few more retesters than we previously serviced. But on the next slide we kind of have a little bit more information that better tells the story. When we look at the two teachers that teach algebra 1 um on level and inclusion, both of those teachers are sitting at 71 and 72% success over 10% higher than they were. But when you look at the student service through resource and our students that I mentioned about algebraic reasoning, that's where we're we're kind of having that hit to our overall performance. Also, we transitioned from only seven students in resource class last year to over 23 this year. Um and there's been some staffing challenges related to that class.

077So that's definitely going to be a focus area moving forward. As we look at English one, um we did see a little increase in approaches which is great because that reduces those overall retesters that we are servicing in English one. Um we did see the slight dip in meetats which we never want to see that. Um but reach had a little bit more success with some 10 point 11 point gain um from the year prior. If we dive into the teacher, they have a very similar experience to algebra 1. So on the next slide, so if we look at just those two teachers that taught English one, they're at 75 and 74%. So that first teach that tier one instruction is in a very good place. We're we're really making some solid gains, but we're

078still addressing those retesters and those those students getting services outside that tier one classroom. Um our resource success isn't quite where we need to be. And also that ESOL was definitely not our biggest area of success. Um and so we're really looking at we've got a pretty good hold on that tier one instruction. So now what does it look like to to take that next step to make sure we're supporting all those students because overall it's greatly impacting our results. Um looking at English 2 um very very similar scores to the year prior with just slight dips um and we added just a few more retesters than we would like to. Um when we dive into the teacher numbers here um you will see a little bit more discrepancy here. However, um through the PLC

079process and trying to make sure students had what they needed, um the teacher one on this list determined that she was going to take every kid that was not successful on STAR previously on English one. And so they did some creative grouping and rescheduling to make sure that they kind of had a targeted plan for those kids. Um and we saw a little bit more success on some of the retests, but still not where we need to be. And so we're really going to take a deeper dive on making sure that we have a very um broad retester plan and make sure we're getting these kids what they need. At this time, I'm going to call up Miss Laura Guzman to tell you just a little bit about our early Telpas results. The telara demonstrates

080clear and encouraging growth in English language proficiency for our emerging bilingual students. At the garden level, 15% of our student score at the advanced and advanced high reflecting the early stage of second language acquisition. By fifth grade, 65% of our students perform in advance and advance high, a 50% increase. This growth highlights the effectiveness of our emerging bilingual program. Like uh Miss Harper and uh Scott mentioned, this is preliminary data as well for TOPAS. Um the pre preliminary reclassification data for the past three years reflects a study progress across uh CISD campuses indicating that our emerging bilingual students are making continuous gains in language proficiency. Notably two campuses show significant growth worth to celebrate. Jo James in increased the numbers of potential reclassification from 13 students last year to 18 students this year. CHS show

081an increase of 11 students qualifying for potential reclassification like you see in this slide. speaking and writing and being in district state uh wide focus as both are key expressive domains in language acquis acquisition. I am pleased to report that we continue to maintain positive momentum in these areas. This slide reflect the progress in the speaking domain at the advanced high level. Compared to last year, 41 additional students across the district had advanced into the advanced high category. Griding continued to be one of the most challenging components in language acquisition. The griding is no exception. However, I am pleased to report tremendous growth across campuses in these domains like you see in the column of 2025. Every every camp made some gains. This slide highlights all the campuses. Advan advanced high category with Joe James

082again showing double digits growth increasing from two students last school year to 14 student this school years. A big recognition goes to all campuses and staff for have worked diligently to ensure our students are prepared to meet the demand of state assessments. The focused instructional efforts target support and commitment of our educators are directly contributing to these positive outcomes on the TOAS test. Thank you. You have some questions. Yes, it's the number of students uh the the the increase of number of students from one year to uh to the different years like you see then uh 2023 we don't have anything to compare but 2024 we had the comparison and you can see uh we had 16 students uh The previous year five, this school year we had 24. Then we can see the huge

083jump and the in the griding every campus make a huge uh uh a growth. A quick question on the slide 40 or let me see slide the one with the graph with the kinder versus fifth grade. The 40 41. Uhhuh. So that'll be um it's 15 and then 65. That's the composite score. That's the overall. Yes. And thank you for asking for that. uh our goal is to keep uh our the progression in advance and advance high. You can see in kindergarten the major the majority of the students are performing in uh in um beginners and intermediate. Thank you. Beginners and intermediates and then that is very common across the the the state. But you see fifth grade how that decrease. That's how we want to uh keep the momentum and the growth. Um only

08411 is 36 students uh that we have in fifth grade escorting at the beginners and intermediates uh level and everybody else is flipping to the advanced and advanced high. So that's the total number of students in kinder and in fifth grade. Gotcha. Okay. But that's the composite of all of the four or I guess it's is it still the best out of two or the best two? Best out of two but still the composite. Thank you for the classification. Uh just for clarification, um it looks like there were 71 retesters at the high school and are out of that are we saying only 1% of the retesters passed on the May test? Yes, ma'am. Do you know what the action plan was for after December on how we were for math? You said we had

085al algebraic reasoning. Do we know what plan we had for our uh RLA students? There was a couple of pieces. Um they had uh try to take advantage of ACE which I think was very underutilized. If you were to look at that roster of 71 students, I would suffice to guess that that was a highly underutilized there. Um we did a number of pullout sessions and so we had um some targeted lessons work with those kids um to prepare for that STAR test. Um they did a boot camp the day before and tested after but certainly an area I think we could develop a more rigorous plan to to meet. U this is what I see one of the highest area of need. So what I would as a followup like to know how many

086students are in our summer program or that are retesters as a followup later. I actually had a question about the retesters. Can um and would you go back to one of those slides? It doesn't matter which one. It could be 34. That one's fine. Um, so can you just real quick, Scott, like explain the retesters because I see 2024 retesters, 123, and then I see 2025, 131. Is that the same group of kiddos or is that different? So after the spring test there in 2024, there were 123 students that did not pass. Um, and so first administration, first administration. So they worked through the process. Um, so when we're talking about the 71, well that's what's left after we've had a summer test, December test, move outs, moveins. Um, but now for the test that

087they just took about a month ago, 131 that Miss Smithner is asking about who's getting to summer school because we now need to address, 131 are starting that cycle now that they're going to be entering that potentially the same students, but potentially not the same students. Certainly could be, but for the a lot of those are going to be new. um retesters joining into mix. So, but can you go back to the teacher um individual? So, when we have our tier one instruction this year for English one, we had only 25% of the students that were not successful. So, what's happening is our retesters are carrying on year-over-year and growing. So it sounds like the place tier one is improving but we need a good strong plan for retesters or it's going to continue to

088grow and impact the overall accountability. Yeah, I mean absolutely it's overall took us down almost 20 percentage points from where that first teach was and so very a critical area for sure. Two and three. The other thing I wanted to mention I'm sorry Tracy did I cut you off? Okay. So the other thing that I wanted to mention is that Miss Patton um we have spoken about how do we get the resource teacher uh help because it's hard to find a certified uh special ed teachers. And so in the resource room, we're having more students qualifying for resource. And we actually had three different teachers in the math resource room. And you saw how at algebra 1, we only had, I think, one student, is it one student who passed? Four out of 23. And

089uh previously we had a higher group that um was successful in the resource. and we now know that they are also responsible for taking the STAR test. So that's also fairly new. So that was a little bit of a surprise as we're focusing on that tier one instruction in the uh mainstream classroom. So, uh, Miss Patton is working on having content, uh, teachers such as a math teacher and trying to help them get their sped certification so that we can put a content teacher with a sped certification in that classroom to address that. So, that's uh, we're helping them get their uh, sped certification to address it at the the root level. When you say we're helping them, does that mean financially? uh if if uh Miss Patton is providing uh professional learning, we had

090a group of teachers who volunteered this year uh to have an interest in getting their special ed certification and if they pass the test then we reimburse them. Now we'll move on to item 5. Okay, we're going to move on to item six, close session. At this time, the board will retire to close session under Texas Government Code sections 551.071 and 551.076. 076 and 551.08 and 551.083 to discuss the items listed on the agenda. The time is 7:19 Yeah. Going to hold on for a minute or two. I call this meeting back to order after our recess. It is 8:06 PM. As we continue tonight's meeting, we welcome all who have joined us as we keep asking how can we best promote and encourage achievement for every student in our district. The mission of Casemary

091Independent School District is inspiring, educating, and empowering all students to be innovative thinkers in the global community. At this time, we will begin with the pledges of allegiance. Uh yes, Mr. Board President. At this time we have Cub Scout pack uh 155. And from that uh pack we have Daniel Cantou who will be leading us in our pledges tonight. Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible and indivisible, justice for all. And and now for the Texas pledge. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas one state under God. and indivisible. [Applause] Now we'll move on to item 7 C. Uh yes, uh Mr. board president. We have something very exciting

092uh to share with you tonight. And uh Miss Abby Offenbaker, our communications coordinate uh coordinator, will recognize uh the campuses and the programs that have been identified as a DFW favorite. Hello. Good evening. Uh tonight I have the honor of sharing Castleberry ISD's achievements in the 2025 DFW favorites contest. The DFW favorites contest is an annual program presented by the Fort Worth Star Telegram that celebrates the best businesses, organizations, and individuals across the Dallas Fort Worth area. launched in 2023. This year marks the third edition of the program for the education related categories alone, which includes elementary school, middle school, high school, and education and tutoring services combined. There were 232 nominations across DFW. This year also saw a 52% increase in voter participation, a clear sign of how engaged and proud communities all across

093DFW are. So without further ado or whatever you say, um, uh, Castlebury Elementary once again earned the gold award for best elementary school. Oh, no one wants to clap. I was post a pause and uh Gideon, I'm a little disappointed because Dr. Richland specifically said, Abby, you know, Mr. Gideon will get up and do all that. So, he was real quiet. Um, this marks back-to-back wins for 2024 and 2025. Competing against 86 nominated elementary schools, this recognition reflects a nurturing environment and a strong, supportive campus culture. Next, additionally, Irma Marsh Middle School retained the gold award for best middle school throughout all of DFW. Thank you. This marks back-to-back wins for 24 and 2025. Being selected as the top middle school out of 77 nominations is a testament to a campus culture where students and

094staff know they belong. But that's not all. Not only did Castlebury ISD defend its gold rankings, additional recognitions were earned this year. New this year, we had Castlebury High School receive silver for best high school. And then also new this year, we have Ado Avo Elementary, who secured silver for best elementary school in addition to, wait for it, um, bronze in the category of education and tutoring services for its ACE out of schooltime program. [Applause] These recognitions highlight the supportive community that surrounds Castleberry ISD and the collective dedication of our students, staff, and families. Special thanks to the Fort Worth Star Telegram for sponsoring this contest and to everyone who voted in support of our schools. [Applause] Next time I'm going to make some like Q cards since uh it wasn't always on Q, but

095thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Welld deserved. Uh item 7 D. Yes. Uh Mr. Board President, at this time we have Dr. Mirina Blanchard, director of talent acquisition and policy will present the district elementary and secondary teachers of the year for the 2425 school year. Thank you, Miss Faulner. Yes, the district teacher of the year, which includes our elementary and our secondary. This is so exciting, so I'll get right to it. It is with great pleasure that I introduce this year's district elementary teacher of the year, Remy Mclofflin. Come on up, Remy. Remy teaches kindergarten at AV KO. When her students were asked what they love about Miss Mclofflin, kindergarten students, they responded saying she's been super nice to students. That was K. And always does good things for us. That's adult. And Yummy stated that

096she makes us have fun. What a wonderful testament. As the honored elementary teacher of the year for the district, Miss Mclofflin advances to the regional level where one exceptional elementary teacher will be selected as region 11 elementary teacher of the year. And we wish you all good luck. Okay. So, for this special honor, Miss Mclofflin received an award to display proudly in her classroom, a $1,000 cash donation from the Education Foundation, Castleberry ISD, and a wonderful bouquet of flowers. and several of her family and friends are here to support her. So, if I can ask them to stand up and if you'll help me congratulate Miss Remy Mclofflin one more time as our district elementary teacher of the year. Congratulations. So, for our secondary teacher of the year, it is with great pleasure that I

097introduce you to our district secondary teacher of the year, Mrs. Christina Wyatt. Come on [Applause] up. Mrs. Wyatt teaches CBI special education students at Irma Marsh Middle School. When her students and staff were asked what they love about Miss Wyatt, they said she consistently goes above and beyond to support students, encouraging them to thrive and always putting us first. Congratulations. As the honored secondary teacher of the year for the district, Miss Wyatt also advances to the regional level where one exceptional secondary teacher will be selected. We're sending good vibes for you. for this special honor. She also received an award for her classroom, the $1,000 cash donation from the Castleberry ISD Foundation and her beautiful bouquet of flowers. And we have several here that are here to support. Family and friends, if you'll please stand

098in honor of Miss Wyatt. And for both of these family and friends that are here, I just want to say thank you to them as we know that it takes a lot of support from our family and friends to encourage our both our teachers of the year. So, please help me congratulate Christina Wyatt, our secondary teacher of the year. Congratulations. That all right. Thank you. Congratulations. I think we have uh item 7E recognition of multiplication contest winners. Uh yes, we have Miss uh Whitney Harper again, our lead elementary math coordinator, will recognize the 2425 multiplication contest winners. Good evening, President Toifer, Superintendent Smith Faulner, and all the school board members. I am pleased to announce that this is our ninth annual multiplication contest recognitions. Uh this year um Castleberry had several students show their mastery

099of multiplication fluency. All the students in grades three through five are given a one minute fact assessment to see who can answer the most correctly. Winners are generated at the classroom level, the campus level, and also at the district level. So tonight we are recognizing our district level first place winners in third, fourth and fifth. And the winners are our first winner is our third grade champion is Juan Banda. He is a student at Joy James Academy of Leadership and is in Miss Moreno's home room. He answered 50 facts in one minute. Congratulations. He has already been awarded a medal and a trophy and a certificate as you can see in the picture. Our next winner, our fourth grade champion is Aker Solario. He was unable to be here tonight. He is from Avo Elementary

100and in Miss Yuriosi and Miss Clinton's home rooms. and he answered 57 facts in one minute. So, let's give him a round of [Applause] applause. And our fifth grade champion was Axel Sanchez. He is in he attends Joy James Academy of Leadership and is in Miss Caseres's home room and he was able to answer 67 facts in one minute. Now, I'm really sad he's not here today because if you'll go ahead and show the next slide, Axel Sanchez has been our district winner for three years in a row, winning in third grade, which is that bottom left picture, in fourth grade, the bottom right picture, and then this year, the top picture in fifth grade. And he started off in third grade with 49 facts in one minute. He graduated to 62 in fourth and

10167 in fifth grade. So, if any of you know Axel Sanchez or his family, um, be sure to give him a congratulations. So, we'll give him a round of applause at this [Applause] time. And right now, I would just like to thank all of the parents, the teachers, and administrators for supporting these mathematicians year after year. If you are um a parent, teacher or administrator for any of these winners, would you please stand and be recognized? [Applause] Thank you so much. F recognition of science fair winners. Yes, at this time we have Nikki McDorman, our elementary science coordinate coordinator, and Marcy Koger, who are who is our secondary science coordinator, and they will recognize the 20242 science fair winners. Good evening, President Toifer, Superintendent Smith Faulner, and members of the board. On behalf of Miss

102Nikki McDorman and myself, we extend a heartfelt appreciation for the opportunity to recognize the outstanding achievements of our top scientists. In January, the district held the annual science fair at Irma Marsh Middle School. These exceptional students excelled in the district fair and at the secondary level were selected by a panel of judges to advance to the Fort Worth Regional Science and Engineering Fair held on February 19th at UTA. A total of 28 students from Castlebury proudly represented our district at the regional fair. Their projects covering topics from water purification to conductivity demonstrated creativity, critical thinking, and a strong commitment to scientific inquiry. We invite you to explore and celebrate a selection of these impressive projects on display out in the hallway. All middle and high school students, please come forward and stand in a line

103facing the board members. Mrs. Henry will present you with your award. We will begin our recognitions with the Irma Marsh students starting with sixth grade STEM. Unfortunately, this first student was not able to be here tonight, but I still would like to recognize her. I would like to recognize Cara Hatley for her physics investigation on conductivity. Cara tested different types of wire and determined which one produced the most voltage when connected to a lemon battery. Next is our first place seventh grade STEM student winner. I present Elen Serentia for her chemistry experiment on chocolate. Elen's research focused on determining how the composition of chocolate bars influences their melting rate. Earning top honors, the Grand Champion Trophy was awarded to two exceptional investigations. The first grand champion award went to Annabelle Watson for her experience in

104the plant science category. Annabelle investigated the effect of different concentrations of carbon dioxide on plant growth. The second grand champion award went to McKinley Lavender for her environmental science experiment. Which method of water purification purifies water the best? McKinley used three different methods of water purification to determine which was most effective in removing sulfates. At the high school level, I would like to like to recogn recognize Lette Herado for her place experiment in material science. Lette experimented with various cleaning solutions and protein test strips to determine which cleaner removed the highest quantity of proteins. Last but not least, I present the Castleberry High School grand champions, Pedro Villa Franco and Victor Lacona, who was not able to be with us tonight. These two students conducted an investigation titled Bird's AI view, building activity mapping with

105automative perspective, in which they explored how artificial intelligence can be used to map activity patterns from an aerial viewpoint. well beyond my scope of understanding, but I want to thank all of the students for their participation and hard work this fair season. I would also like to take a moment to recognize the science teachers of these exceptional students. In sixth grade, we have Miss Ratu Nand. In seventh grade, coach Brad Adams. In eighth grade STEM, Mrs. Janine Henry. Ninth grade, Miss Monica Rivas. And in 11th grade, Mr. Richard Young. Students, you may return to your seats if we can give them a round of applause, please. Okay, I will now turn the presentation over to Miss McDorman so that she may honor the elementary winners. In January, fourth and fifth grade students from our three

106elementary campuses also competed in the district science fair. And at this time, I'd like to have our fourth and fifth grade students please come and stand in a line and face the board members. Miss Corgar is going to present you with your award. Our district's fifth grade first place winner from Ako, Dominic Martinez, was unable to join us tonight, but Dominic's project examined how far a Hot Wheels car rolled on different surfaces. Our elementary grand champion, also from Ako, is Jenny Scott. Jenny tested how long a paper airplane made of cards stock stayed in the air. Our district's first place winner in fourth grade from Castlebury Elementary, Lily Puraphoy, was unable to be with us tonight. Lily tested what changes occurred to the appearance or texture of plastic bags exposed to sunlight. I would like

107to take a moment to recognize the science teachers of these exceptional students. If you are present, please stand when I call your name so we can recognize you. Miss Cababayero, Miss A. Kaminsky, and Mrs. B. Kaminsky. I don't think they were able to join us tonight. On behalf of the district, we would like to extend our sincere appreciation to the superintendent, school board, parents, family members, and teachers for all of your unwavering commitment to our students academic success. If you are a parent, family member, or teacher of these young scholars, please stand so that you too may be recognized. So, parents, stand up. Stand up. Thank you. Now to the ACE recognitions. Uh yes, Mr. Board President. We have Claudine Abila, our 21st century grant project director, who will recognize the accomplishments of our ACE

108program for the 24h 25 school year. Good evening. Board President Toiver, Superintendent Smith Faulner, board members, and Castleberry community. I'm honored to present the recognitions for the ACE program for the 2024 2025 school year. We are funded through the 21st Century Community Learning Centers Grant, also known as a 21st CCLC grant, which provides nearly $10 million of funding for afterchool and summer learning programs over the over the fiveyear span of the grant. We are currently in cycle 12, year two of the grant. New for the 2425 school year, 61,000 in additional funding was awarded to Castleberry ISD ACE program to to provide work-based learning opportunities through stronger out of school time. We applied for this grant to further expand on our already strong CCMR programs. In addition, we were just awarded the driver's education grant

109through the Texas Department of Transportation for the 2526 school year. This grant adds 20,000 to our already existing driver's education program, which served 130 students in the 2425 school year. We will be able to expand and enroll more students with this additional funding. I am excited to announce that we will we served 1,266 students during the fall and spring of 2425 and 1,359 students are being served this summer. Thank you. Our program continues to support academic excellence in accelerated instruction. Accelerated learners are showing growth beyond the region. As you can see here in these tables, in the first table, green indicates growth in reading and math from 2023 to 2024. In the second table, you see Castleberry ISD's accelerated learners by grade and subject compared to the region. We outperformed the region in every area

110that is shaded green. The ACE afterchool program supported accelerated instruction with high impact tutoring using highquality instructional materials as excel and air. Exciting news. Avoid program was just awarded bronze in the DFW's favorites for education and tutoring services. [Applause] There are multiple recognitions that I would like to point out for enrichment. All campuses also participated in the Wellman recycled art project and AV KO won first place. Before you leave this evening, please be sure to check out the art in the back. We also had some of our esports winners. They attended uh the fall invitationals and so we have a picture of them there. 133 students uh 133 contestants um participated and we had five of our students that placed all campuses participated in the 2425 cowtown marathon. Two middle school students were invited to

111a special event for placing in the top of their age group in the partnership with the education in partnership with the education foundation. AE students performed in a complete student production of Willy Wonka at AV Ko. The ACE program offers opportunities to build sports skills and provides uniforms and students at no cost. You will see this. You will see examples in the next few slides. All three elementary ACE programs competed in a soccer tournament and Joy James won the championship in the spring. All three elementary programs competed in BA in a basketball tournament and Castleberry Elementary won the championship. In this photo, you'll notice both the basketball players and the cheerleaders are wearing the uniforms provided by ACE. We continue to partner with LYSA and the community to provide sports skills that build perseverance, stamina,

112and good sportsmanship. The Lysa football team were Texas State champions this year. I would also like to recognize partnerships beyond sports. A support STEM, the arts, and college, career, and military readiness with partnerships with Aean Carter Museum, 4H, and Girls, Inc. Additional partnerships include working together with our child nutrition program, TCC Aviation, Texas Agroife, Charlton University, and Kathy's Critters. All of these provide experiences to students they likely would not have without Castleberry ISD's ACE program. You may notice the CCMRCTE trends in our enrichment. Here are additional examples that support college and career pathways. This year we have added a field trip to the Fort Worth Aviation Museum. And we continue to partner with Girls in Aviation and the University of North Texas among many other partnerships. The ACE program provides monthly family engagement opportunities throughout

113the year and through various collaborations. Every campus is required to provide events aligned to math, literacy, STEM, and the needs of our community. Thank you to our dream team, the campus level administrators whose dedication makes the program possible. I would like to ask our aside coordinators and program specialists to stand and be recognized. We appreciate all the hard work you do to provide a highquality program. Thank you for continuing to fuel excitement, growth, and success. Together, we're building tomorrow's leaders, Lions who dream big, learn fearlessly, and blaze new trails. Thank you. Yeah. Now, we want to take some time to remember this day, to recognize these kids, recognize these people. We're going to take some pictures. Uh, Miss Branch, I'll let you direct that. We're going to just take take a few minutes. I think

114our uh first group, Miss Brand in budget on schedule and you know roughly about 20% of uh bonds finish that way. So we're on track to do well and we're going to keep it that way. Uh little timeline here. We're hitting some good milestones. So these are huge. So I try to go back about a month and go forward about a month. But just in brief um our peer and beams which are necessary for our slabs uh are all in uh design. We're at different stages. I'll go through that a little bit more on the the schedule. Um finalizing some plans. I'm going to go through that a little on the last two slides. We've got some updates for you on White Settlement Road. Uh yee-haw on that. Um, and we've got some substantial completion

115which uh we're going to have an update for you on the 16th and BTC will be here because we've got a huge savings as I mentioned at the last board meeting and we'll get to finalize all that. So, keep on moving. Uh, so as far as our schedule and timeline infrastructure-wise, uh, we do have our permanent power. We've got one more meter going in. Um we're cutting power off the 9th through the 14th at the high school. So that'll all be complete. Then uh storm water drainage pending our encroachment. Uh so we've got one more item to approve with the city of Fort Worth which brought you tonight uh in order to complete that storm water drainage which is very crucial so we can get water off the site. Uh we've got the main water

116line to go this summer and hopefully we'll get that started next month. Renovations wise, interior, uh, gymnasium is looking good. I've got a few pictures to show you. Uh, media center, we're finalizing some, um, design. We kind of had to wait and let some chips fall on other items that, uh, so we could see where our budget lies. Uh, new construction wise, we've got, uh, pier and beams in, slab on grade going in. We're about 33% and you'll see some steel going up. We have our, uh, crane mobilizing soon. So, uh, good there. Okay. And, uh, so, uh, our early package, as I mentioned, is complete. So, we're going to have an update on that portion of it. And then we've got about 88% of our funds left, rocking and rolling on package two. So,

117it's good to see the the blue bar raise, but uh, it's also good to know that, you know, we're roughly about a fourth of the way through, but we've got 88% of our money left. So, good news all the way around. Here's a picture of what will be the band hall. This is the old rubber gym. So, as you can see, we're already going up the walls. And this was uh last uh Thursday, Friday. So, uh we've gone a little further since then, but uh moving right along. Uh a lot of the interiors and the uh MEP have already been installed. So, uh we're still looking at roughly October, November completion there. So, looking good. We'll take a few tours soon. Uh these are a few mockups for our finishes. Uh so it's getting good.

118Now this isn't coming soon, but uh it is good because we've got long lead times. It's good to get to a point where we're deciding on these things. So uh over the course of the summer, you'll start seeing some of the framework go around. But these are the interior and exterior finishes. They're nowhere near final decision. uh we've got to look at grout and things uh that settle, but these are placed right outside and we'll have several items that are going to be finishes, fencing and things like that coming. So, just wanted to show show you a picture of that. We are kind of keeping the end in mind. Uh so, our challenges, uh we have made a lot of progress. It is still some challenges that we're dealing with, but our encroachment and our

119parkway um we have an agreement in place that we're going back and forth and finalizing with uh the city of Fort Worth. Uh this will allow us to complete our storm drain. Uh we did have a conflict with uh some our gas line, but Atmos has been great about coming out. They've rerouted. That's the people that you've seen on the corner if you're driving by. And uh we are moving forward with um our our agreement. I put signatory in here on red on both of those because one of the things we're doing tonight is allowing uh Miss Smith Faulner to have uh authorization for signatory on these items because they're going to fall during the middle of the months. Uh right now this should be the only two we have and they're unique because it's

120we're working with another government agency. So this is not something that normally falls into most bond programs. Uh it's not something we've dealt with with BTC, but uh we need that from you guys so that we can move forward as soon as those are completed. It's basically a checkbox for the city of Fort Worth, and they've probably been burned in the past is why they require this. Um but IPRC plan review is complete. We've put it out for bid. We've got numbers back, so everything is moving forward. It is within budget, so we're looking good there. Uh and we do have some opportunities to um meet some more savings and we've met on that a couple of times already. The reimbursement plan has been approved. So as we pay BTC for the work, we will

121apply for reimbursement from the city and roughly within 30 to 60 days we will be reimbursed and I will keep you updated on how that budget looks holistically for the project. But all good news uh on the front here on the 2nd of June and hopefully we will continue that. And just a brief overview of um what the site is looking like and this is changing fast. Uh but we only get these once a month and this is kind of a a PDF of what we're using for our updates on our project meetings. But the the big thing is in green all that has changed up in the top right hand corner. So that is going to be the parking spaces which will lead to the security gate coming in off Melbourne. Uh so we're

122about 90% complete with that grading. Uh we'll have uh some of the underground little bit of electrical, some plumbing, water line going in over there. Uh the red is area A. So that's uh where we will be pouring our next slab on grade uh this Friday. Hopefully, if the rain uh stays away, actually, we're going to cover that up this week. So, when we do that, we'll be 66 uh% complete with our slab on grade and foundation is huge because even rain, I guess lightning could, but rain doesn't stop the steel from going up. So, you get above ground and you get slab on grade and we should be uh way over well over halfway uh at the end of the week. Uh and then the aqua down there in the A which is our

123connector. Uh we've got a few areas we have to uh complete as far as the um the pier and beam just to catch up. But we do have the uh retaining wall down there at the very bot bottom right hand corner um to allow uh or to prevent erosion moving forward. So everything's good. We've got the elevator shafts dug out. So it really is looking great. Um, and uh, I know it it seems odd just to have a bunch of good news for you, but uh, because we have had a lot of rain, but I will say I just want to take 10 seconds to say we've got a young, if you guys haven't met him at the at the um, at the gayla, uh, Israel Hernandez. He's 29, 30 years old and of all

124the jobs I've done, he is topnotch, and we are very thankful to have him. He pushes me hard to try to get things done, but that's his job is to get answers, but our job as a district is protect the money and to make sure we're getting what we asked for from the beginning of the time. And Miss Smith Faulner uh keeps me in line on that. So, I'm just kind of the ping pong ball in the middle. But, uh, thank you for that. And if you have guys have any, u questions for me, I'd be happy to answer them if I can. All right. All right. Well, thank you very much. Move on to item 8A, finance monthly update. Yes. At this time, uh, William Wooten, our chief financial officer, will provide a snapshot

125of the 2425 uh revenue uh collections, our expenditures by fund and function as of the month ending May of 2025. Well, thank you. Good evening again, Mr. President, board of education and superintendent. Today's a fairly standard report. Um, our discussion points. We're going to talk about budget snapshot, budget, financial performance, and next steps continue to monitor 245 year. Next slide, please. So, you've seen slide before. Basically, I want to just highlight uh if you didn't see it that we going to end a net positive fund balance and uh just want to show it. It's duplication for us to smile. As Cameron said, I don't get a chance to say very many nice things up here. Um, next slide. So, this slide is very important because what I did was with anticipation that this was going

126to be my last uh uh financial report because typically school districts don't report June. The audit is that replacement, but I'm going to have to do it in July. Uh, I get to do it in July. I'm sorry. Um, so what I want to show you that last year, this is audited numbers that we spent $49.4 million. This year, our projection uh based on everything we did, we slowed down discretionary spending is going to land about 43.2 43.3 million dollars. And so that that's the big swing. Um and that's be because um we've we've been really uh under good leadership. So next slide. So this is the tough part I want to talk about. Right. So, we you haven't heard this yet, but the auditor is going to tell you uh we received the uh

127credit rating downgrade. And there's really three major credit uh rating agencies. It's Standard and Poor, uh Fetch, and Moody's. Moody's is is our credit RA agency. So, what happened? Moody Moody's downgraded our general obligation bond rating from A2 to A3. Um what that really means is that we're one notch um below in the A category. Um why the rating drop? Speaking facts, right? So Mo Moody's called me maybe a month ago and asked me a question. He says, "Why did you guys tell us that you projected a $1 million deficit and you landed in a $4.7 million deficit?" So we had to I had to answer that question. uh and that sparked them to go back to uh their committee to figure out what they wanted to do. And so needless to say is that

128the the uh based on the auditor's report of a $4.7 million deficit uh and also that mean that we we fail our fund balance fell below 19.8%. Which will impact the district's first rating. Uh this year the first rating may be okay because the data hasn't caught up yet. Um why it matters? deficits raise red flags for investors. A weak fund balance equals a high in borrowing cost. Uh just like our regular credit rating at home. What we're doing about it, we're controlling spending. Uh right now we've uh turned off the the incumbrance. Uh I mean we we pretty much stopped spending, slow down spending. Uh if you using a credit card, we're going to ensure that you don't spend on 199 budget because we want to protect our fund balance. We want that fund

129balance to be above 20% of our of our total income, you know. So, and we're rebuilding obviously we're rebuilding fund balance uh to 20% plus. And then as we said earlier, we're going to target a balanced budget for the 25 26 year. Um, anybody any questions about that before we move forward? Comments? All right, next slide. I have a quick question. What is what is our fund balance right now? What percentage are we at right now? Uh we're we're about 19% right now. Okay, so we're close. We're we're close. Okay. Um we're really close. Good question. Next slide. So I wanted to show this slide because this is what the auditor looks at and this is what you guys adopt the budget by function. Uh I wanted to show you that we are monitoring the

130budget. The blue really means that's what we actually spent. This is based on a $45.9 million budget. And we know that budget is is $2.6 million over budget. And so this is just an example of what sometimes the data I look at uh salaries. We spent 37.4. Our budget is set at 38. So we are within that budget. The orange means that we with we are within the budget. Contracting service is the same thing. Uh 2.3, our budget 2.7. general supplies and so forth. But I just kind of want to give you an idea a quick visual when we talk about when the auditor talks about budget to actuals and uh this is what they're really talking about. So uh next slide Mr. President Penny any questions from the board? That's all I have, sir.

131Just coming. Um on the now you're up next. 8B budget amendment number two. Thank you. So it's kind of a segue in we talked about the budget the actuals. This is what we do to ensure we don't bust a a budget function, right? So we stay within our um allocation. If we don't then we have to come to the board for approval. So these are two decision points today. We're going to approve a budget amendment to re reallocate funds across functions within the general fund. You know these are legal legal reasons. Uh this action is required by TEA and board policy when changing the original intended use of funds. And the next we're going to approve the transfer of funds from operational functions to instructional support to directly support student learning and access. Next slide

132please. So when we talk about budgetary control, there's two types of budgetary controls. One control the superintendent u uh is in charge of and and the other one's a legal requirement for the board to change. So as long as we are uh budget budget transfers requires prior approval from superintendent or designate to move between same function and same fund and I'll show you that in a minute. Budget amendment requires prior approval from board of education. It's a legal requirement to move between same fund and different function because at that point we're asking for the purpose of change uh from what was intended uh at the June adopted budget session. Next slide please. So when we talk about the budget transfers, this type of transfer is within the same fund which is 199 that's the pot

133of money and function and that function could be 11 which is instruction 23 uh 31. Uh this does not require proof from the board of education. Some examples of allowable budget transfers are just go to the bottom one. You look at 199 that's the maintenance operation pot of money uh and the purpose is 31 which is counseling. So that really long as you move from a 31 19931 to a 19931 the superintendent uh has preview over that one. Next slide. Budget amendment is what we attempted to to accomplish today. That's this transfer uh this type of transfer same fund different function legally requires prior approval by the board of education before money is moved between the same fund and different functions. Some examples of budget amendments are uh when you look at 19931 which is

134counseling and you want to move it to 1991 133 which is curriculum. So you it was attended for the the guide career career counselors but now we're asking to take that part of money and use it for curriculum that requires the board approval because when we approve the when you approved the budget last June you approved we you approved it with the intended purpose. So, the board adopts the budget with a specific purpose assigned to each function. Any changes to a function alter its purpose, shifting the resources and necessitating approval from the board of education. Next slide. This is what we're going to do today. So, I'm going ask you to approve. So, we're asking to shift resources uh from district operations to instructional support. So, that's that's really what we're we're doing. the top

135part. We're taking money out of out of those accounts and we're moving it to the bottom uh to make sure that at the end of the year that we don't bust a function and that we have the required resources to meet the actual obligations uh for that particular program. Just to uh clarify Mr. Wooten because this is uh to prevent what happened last year. Nothing is coming. I just want everyone to understand nothing is coming out of fund balance. It's within the existing budget that we're moving the functions. And I think that's last year what it it was not clear and spelled out this way and uh the money was moved from fund balance into the general funds. And so I asked Mr. uh Wooten to be sure and explain and show what exactly functions

136is it coming from and where is it going so that everyone uh is transparent and we all know uh where the money is moving and that it is not coming out of fund balance. That that's a good point. Um Miss Branch, would you show the actual um amendment? This is really what the auditor is going to be looking at when we uh show him our fund balance. So, we're looking at this. So, scroll up a little bit. The the last um budget amendment we had was as of 1216 and that changed the revised budget. The new one is going to be as of today proposed amendment uh if the board say the same. So the the the um top half of that that's the uh local local funds uh state funds federal funds nothing's changing

137there the middle column is what I'm asking to transfer between functions so that's uh instruction on down to people projections uh scroll a little bit I want them to see that the net net is zero so total expenditures is 45.9 uh the net change in between the expenditure zero and proposed a me amendment is 45.9. So as as superintendent said it didn't change. Now if that number changes that means that's it's coming from the fund balance. We're but it's a it's a net zero at this point. We're just moving money between functions which we're just changing the purpose of what it was adopted for. And you go to the next page. Next page is uh really the the you know once it's approved these are the accounts that I'm going to go and uh move

138money around. So it's kind of outlined there. So that's kind of how it's going to happen. That's the sausage behind the the scene. Um that's it Mr. President. Any questions from the from the board? That's all it's all I have. And you're much smarter at this than I am. I mean, I'm not at all. So, bear with me with my question. Um, what effect will changing the purpose of the dollars have on some of the operations that we're taking money from? So, uh, absolutely none. uh the reason why I'm moving money from district operations they uh based on projections they have more than enough to move to instruction. So it's it's uh then the second part of that that we slowed down spending so the district operations were able to have a little more cushion

139in their account. And so based on projections and talking to the other budget managers, uh what all they had encumbered this year is what they were going to spend. And so we we have a little more cushion in those accounts. So that's why we're moving money around. And to clarify and add to that, um, Miss Gman, because what I'm thinking is, you heard William speak earlier in the meeting that we're putting $200,000 back next year to pick up on HVAC and roofing. And so, uh, we know that, um, that area has been neglected, uh, during, uh, this time. And so, we have earmarked the money back into the budget. Uh, and we actually have a plan with roofing and we're we have inventoried our HVAC and we'll uh Mr. Lasher will be bringing that plan

140to you on how the $200,000 will be spent because that was my concern too uh just because we were uh not uh replacing that. We don't want to get behind on our facilities and so that was the additional money for next year that uh we're working on. I know later in the strategic plan we talk about some of our capital improvement plans that we have to do this summer. So that's right. No, I think that's a good point. I mean, yeah, like superintendent stated is that like some districts spend they allocate the money for that year and they spend it. Well, maybe they don't need to spend it, but just because they say, "Well, we're going to buy maybe football helmets you got to do every year. We're going to buy brand new football uniforms."

141Well, the ones you got are really good. Uh so we're not doing that. We're looking at assessing the actual requirement if we need to move forward with it like HVAC. If the H back don't break then we we can use that money for something something else. And so we'll have a plan in addition to that. We have the 800,000 that's in the replacement plan. Uh Mr. Lasher, myself, uh Mr. Bowser and uh William had the um uh department heads come and present their replacement plan to us for a 10-year plan and then we are prioritizing what will be replaced uh next year. And so it's basically like a 10-year plan. What have we spent money on the last five years? Because we need to pick back up after COVID some of that changed. And so

142now we also have uh $800,000 set aside for such things as uniforms. Uh that's in the regular replacement plan and it will be uh Mr. Lasher will show you that um perhaps maybe in July. So this this reallocation is for this year. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. And um it's it's to make sure that we we we're budgetarily in compliance. Um instead of wait till the end of the year and we bust a function that looks like to the world that you you didn't plan ahead over spent in instruction and you didn't didn't do any projections based on uh what you needed for that requirement. So each program has to be adequately funded and how much of that is salaries like It's uh uh this right here. None of this is salaries. Um none of it

143is salaries. Oh, none of salaries. No, ma'am. This is this is u none of this is salaries right here. And so this is resources. Yes. This is about maintenance and operations. Yeah. So the other thing um that I'm thinking uh Mr. Guten is because June is very hard to predict predict and salaries were encumbering because teachers get paid July and August, but our fiscal year actually ends in June. And so I think one thing that got us in a little trouble previously is there wasn't a good plan on how to encumber the money in June for uh July and August because of our when teachers are paid. Yeah. So, is it possible that we're going to be watching the salaries and as we encumber for the teachers, we still have time if because 98 thou

14497,000 is a little close for comfort for me and I and it's to me it's very hard to be that close. So there is a possibility we're going to watch that and if we think that we're going to go over the budget the uh June 16th is when you would let us know absolutely if we need to pull money out of fund balance there could be a little bit for cushion so that we don't go into deficit without the board approving that. That's correct. Okay. because for all transparency, we want to be sure that um the uh board is aware of that because that's really close to me and I feel like I've learned a lot, but that is still very close and uh predicting that and especially that June um paycheck for our teachers

145is still a little uh difficult to predict because it's three months worth of pay at once. Okay. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's why I wanted everything to be very transparent because I feel like previously uh perhaps um you knew that you were doing a budget amendment, but we uh did not understand that the money was uh coming out of our savings and fund balance. And I think that we didn't have a good idea of how much they had planned to come out of fund balance because the number that I was given was a million dollars and then when um Mr. Wooten got the phone call that's exactly what uh Moody was uh told and so I think it was a surprise that that much money was actually pulled out of fund balance. 4.7 billion, right?

146and and I think I appreciate the transparency and the visuals because I think yeah I it's never been explained this to this degree. So thank you for that Mr. Wooten for sure and um that's all for you and just the and I think we all can appreciate the responsibility that we're seeing in getting us to where we are and where we can be healthy again. Not that we're unhealthy, but that we can be healthier, that our doctors will be happy. So, I think that's good as a team. I I feel good about all the decisions of the team and how hard they've worked. And again, I I just want to continue to bring up the only kink that um could impact us is if we fail the property value study. and we're very close uh

147on the edge and we will not know to December but that would actually impact our budget in January in the middle of our fiscal year. So that's why we cannot go into fund balance in case we we appeal and we lose the appeal but we have uh the chief appraiser uh who from Tarant County who is actually helping us uh with with if there isn't a need for an appeal. I think one question that I've had since all this happened is we have some auditors, right, who clearly were supposed to be finding or alerting to these things. I don't know. Is that something that they should have done? That's a good question. Um, most audit auditors would say that they don't do a detailed uh review. It is an it is a more or less

148a spot audit. They sample different parts of the organization and they do run uh analysis in the background. If they see red flags, maybe a large deficit uh in in an account, they they will look at it. But uh if you want a forensic audit, those things right there go in detail. And then even then, you have to tell them exactly what you're looking for. You know, they're they're not going to just say, "Let me look at from A to Z." If it's purchasing that you want to look at, then they're going to do a forensic on purchasing. if it's a the general ledger, they're going to do that. And so, and also I asked that same question when I received the phone call in um I think it was that September day uh that

149I received and I asked that question um should I have been notified of this and what they're doing is auditing. Was it done correctly? Well, yes. Um it was brought to the school board. The amendments were approved by the board. And so when you look at the legal legality of it, everything the auditor is looking for was it legal? Not they're not really concerned about um you know did we mean to go into fund balance. It's more like did you do it legally? And so that was what was explained uh to me because that was one of my first questions is um wait a minute I thought the number was a million because I had you know I told Dewey uh that's pretty much what um the understanding was that we we would uh be

150about a million dollars and and again when it was shared I was like I really think that that's what um what was understood and So um but I don't think there was a real intent to go into that much. It's just we didn't now we have a lot of controls and my intent is to be sure that monthly we are presenting where we are the best we can. It's just that June is still to me I'm still concerned to be sure that I'm understanding how we're encumbering the money and we're running reports from Skyward and that is a very close budget for my first year of really understanding how to monitor this tightly. Yeah. Can I say one thing? The superintendent, you're correct. The never underestimate the power of the board, right? So that approve

151what you give uh once the auditor knows that the board approved it, it's in writing, it's it's pretty pretty much a powerful thing. You can you can spend down a whole fun balance and u um uh it'll still be legal, right? There there are some impacts, but it still be legal. Sure. Yes ma'am. And I think on u when I was asking the auditor what is the number to receive all uh 10 points on um the first rating that we want three months worth of um our uh spending budget. And so we really need to get that up to about 910 million. Thank you. Thank you. Move on to item nine, the consent agenda. As at this time, we will consider the cont consent agenda as presented. Is there a motion? Is there a second?

152I move to approve the superintendent's recommendation to renew professional contracts for principles, directors, and coordinators subject to assignment. Is there a second? I had to turn this on. I second. Is there any further discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 70. Item 10B. Consider approval of professional contract non-renewals or terminations. Is there a motion? Oh, we don't have Good, good, good. Sorry. 10 C then consider approval of new hire contracts for the 2025 2026 school year. Is there a motion? I move to approve the new hire contracts for the 202526 school year subject to assignment. Is there a second? Tracy second. Is there any discussion? It's a first um and Are these mostly certified teachers? Yes, except I believe there is a district. Yes, I need to turn my mic on. Yeah. So, there uh

153unless they're a CTE teacher and I think it says industry based certifications be uh and if uh in that case we can hire them as a CTE teacher and also under our DOI. Any further discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 70. Item 10D, consider approval of proposed contract recommendations on the 2025 2026 organization chart. Is there a motion? I move to approve the contract recommendations on the 2025 2026 organizational chart subject to assignment. Is there a second? I second. Is there any discussion? Uh yes, that will be our secondary RLE uh coordinator. And uh Jennifer currently works at region 11. And so I talked to Dr. Brown, Pam Brown, and uh we were able to kind of take her from region 11 and so she will be uh fulfilling the role for Irma Marsh

154and the hospital. Is there any further discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 70. Item 10E, consider approval of low attendance days waiver. Is there a motion? Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 70 10F. Consider approval of budget amendment number two on the month ending May 30th, 2025. Is there a motion? Is there a second? I second. Is there any discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 70. Item 10G, bond projects to be completed with funds set aside at the Casper High School south cost soft cost budget. Soft cost. Is there a motion? Yes, it's in there. It's in green under our soft cost when um just want to be sure I understand when uh Mr. Halman uh was explaining uh the three budgets. So the

155soft cost is something that the district uh will be uh um actually overseeing and we've done this before uh especially with technology. So when you look at this there are actually um several items on the list. So you have 10 G1 which is some asbestous abatement and then you have 10 G2. So, the category that we um when we created the agenda, we wanted to put all of the construction items for you, but you're going to need to take action on each item individually. So, you'll want to state like 10 G1 consider approval of the purchase of asbestous abatement at Caspay High School addition renovation project as Mr. Lenny Lasher, assistant superintendent, has recommended considering approval um of the coverall management and associates for asbesus abatement service at Casper High School not to exceed the

156amount of $49,920. And so you would want to do that and then uh have your um motion. So is there a motion for 10 G1? I move to approve the specific statement high school by coverall management and associates for an amount not to exceed $49,920 as presented. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? I just have a real quick question. This is under $50,000. So why are we being asked? Because it's so close. Uh and again for all purposes of transparency uh I didn't want you to think that we were manipulating the numbers so that we would not have to come to the the board and so that's uh the reason that we wanted to come to the board with that number because it was so close to 50,000. I appreciate that. Any

157further discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carry 70. Item 10 G2, consider approval of the purchase Ben Q interactive flat panel flat panels for CHS additional edition renovation project. Is there a motion? I move to approve the BenQ interactive flat panels for CHS addition renovation project as presented. Is there a second? I second. Give it to Janice. Janice is good. Is there any discussion? So these are for some reason I thought these were like sound panels. I went through the interior decorating but these this is an interactive digital panel like these. Okay. Okay. I thought I want to see what those look like. Is there any further Sorry. Sorry. No, you're fine. Is there any further discussion? They're not fabric. Please indicate your vote. Motion carry 70. Item 10G, consider approval of the CHS edition

158renovation division 27 data cabling project. Is there a motion? ation 27 data table project as presented. Is there a second? Second. Is there any discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carries 70. Item 10H. Where are the G's? Consider approval of community facilities agreement application with the city of Fort Worth for the CISD high school additions project and delegation of signatory authority to the superintendent on related contracts. Is there a motion? I move to approve the dele uh designation of signatory authority to the superintendent on related contracts as presented. Second. Is there any discussion? Please indicate your vote. Motion carry 70. Now on to item 11, information items. Questions? Okay. Sure. I had a question. I didn't call again. It's a simple question that you do not have. No, I'm wrong. It's not on this. It's

159not here. It's under the strategic plan. jump discussion items of education dates. Uh we have a meeting uh hopefully a quick meeting on the 16th of this month. Yeah. Two weeks six o'clock. And that's for budget. It's a budget meeting. Yeah. budget and our hearing to adopt the budget. There will probably be some loose ends on there. Yeah. Uh that we'll need to circle back around on uh and if we need to do any more budget amendments and on hiring could be and BTC also that week SLI in Fort Worth. Is anybody going besides me? just that morning for the legislative update. Sure. That's all I could do. Are you going for the entire time? I'll try to get all my all my training right in there, all my hours. Summer is the training I

160think is preferable during the summer. Yeah. I do want to share for the June 16th meeting. I won't be here. I have a work event. All right. Anything else on the key dates here? Now to item 12B. Consider approval of the schoolboard operating procedures. And I will preface this way. This is looking towards the future. This is not looking back. This is looking toward the future. Is there a motion? I approve as presented. Is there a second? B. B. Second. Is there any discussion? I did have something that I wanted to look at on the schoolboard operating procedures 4B talking about agenda items being placed on the agenda. Um I'd like for us to have a discussion about when let me read this real quick. Um what our practice is going to be moving forward.

161put um agenda items on to be voted for that they have to be at least a discussion one month ahead of time. Let me back up with my words here. You normally we have always had been presented something to a discussion item before we voted on something. So I would like to hear some recommendations from the superintendent on how we can get back to that practice so that the school board is we only have three days to really study some things and I think that that's best practice for us. So I just think that I would like to hear some recommendations because like for instance tonight we had to vote on some things. We had to take action right then but most of the time we don't have to rush things and so if we

162could get back to the practice of that I think that that's best governance practice for us. I do agree. I think that when we had the three months, that was really unreasonable. Uh because there's a lot that happens within three months and um I think that's it. Yeah. So, if you could because I think you're the best to decipher what those items should be and how to word that. And if we do need to make a um quick item, I think I can do it try to prepare you in a board update. Yeah. And let you know that it's coming. I try to do that, but there's a lot that's also in the board updates. So, um I think that I can work on trying to at least give you that information so that you're

163not hit two or three days before. Okay. on I do know that as far as our bond this one came up very quickly so that it would you know would cost us money if we were not able to get that approval. So so that we will see this item again for another approval then for this operatives procedure so that we can have that in writing. Okay. And I don't know that it needs to be a policy or if it just needs to be an operating procedure. Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all I had. Is there any other further discussion? Wait, we're going to see again specifically your comments or what we what was added to the operating procedures for today. Our discussion is about uh do we have a we seconded the motion? Yes,

164we do. We're in discussion. So discussion is about the procedure that was uh recommended. Um and so we had a discussion about a different procedure which we can Yeah. So we'll see it next time. We maybe Yeah, we can. Right. Well, maybe not June 16th, but July. Maybe August. July. August. But tonight, yes, it's on the items in red. Yeah, I stated last time that it would be great to link um there's reference of where things were pulled, but given that this could live online, obviously if you print it, you're not going to click a link if it's printed, but because it's online and we can access it um us having links direct to where everything's getting pulled from. And I don't see that added links on the on Yeah. Like if you if we

165were to bring it up, it's page 15. Um so according to section 255.003A of Texas election code, we could link that um link again. It mentions another election code. Um and I think it's just helpful if we were to put a statement of who knows if at any point in time something were to change and we don't have reference there. So what are we following the code or are we following what we wrote here and who is keeping an eye on that? Who's updating that? There's a lot that needs to be done in that sense too. So then if we do that then we're going to have to do that to the entire standard operating procedures because there's probably stuff in there that's not linked. Yeah. So it just won't be on that probably that

166section. Yeah. And I mean, it's summer, so maybe it's a perfect time to do it, but yes, we need to do it through the whole document. And I wouldn't I mean, I personally wouldn't think that I I will vote on speak on my vote. I can't approve this without it having that change already. Um, and then yes, we do need to do it for the whole be consistent on all of it, not just certain sections of it. So, yeah. So I'm just trying to understand what we're what you're proposing then that so you want to link to every policy that's in the operating procedure. anything specifically where like especially if it goes to Texas election code um let's see you've got district policy BDA BD AE everything that's got a link because let's say that

167policy or election code or something changes where we're linked where we are referencing but we didn't update what we said so then who's deciding what we're following that and we can put a statement that says because you know it should there be discrepancy we follow the code or we follow um the policy rather than procedure but that needs to be added along with the discussion of like who is keeping an eye on whether changes are happening and I would als I would propose that this is our document so it is up to us to keep it um accurate and updated and current yes so that that does fall on our shoulders of respons responsibility. So, I don't know. We we need to have now that discussion. How would will we do that? And normally, and

168I know our practice has been that we go over the operating procedures at least once a year, but I don't know, but that could have been because we were fixing things. Sorry. And I mean, and to that point, we haven't gone over it in a while. So maybe we say instead of or we vote on this now, but then we do need to review this document in its entirety and add these references and links and statement of when there's discrepancy, what are we doing? Did I make the motion to approve this? I would be willing to amend my motion to to um say that there's policy all through Tracy, I think you can education code. And if it's going to exist online, I agree for that one. So, could we add sources? I think there's

169a page on here that has sources and then it has like um the links instead of going and because then I think it would be messy just putting the links in all of more of a footnote or concordance. Wait, what do you mean? Like putting um a source and then having that um I don't know whatever link. Yeah, like a link and having them on that one page. So it's just not everywhere in the document and then it makes it look messy. Well, the link it's going to hyperlink to the existing text. So we're not even adding text other than the clause that I'm saying if things change, if there's discrepancy, what would we do? the link is going to hyperlink to existing text that's already there. Um, if we were to do sourcing, it's

170going to s have the same issue to where the sources the sources are there. We don't have we could do a footnote, but it's the same issue to where like there could still be discrepancy. And then at that point, what are we following? Where we want to like now I'm on the next page, page 19. We've got penal code. We've got um different things just in here that I think we should be linking. Yeah. If we hyperlink it, then it just changes the color. It makes it clickable. It's hyperl. We're not adding any text. I kind of think that's a a good idea to link it because when I first came in, I started looking up all the policies and they had changed. And so what I had to do was go into those and

171actually change when we were going through uh the board policy because some things that were online had changed. But I think that might be a good idea if you take existing language and you uh when it says a one of the policies or um it refers to um I don't know law or or whatever that it links it because Every once a while we probably need to go and look and see if the language has changed because so many times I go back and I'm like, "Oh, that's not what I read a year ago." But there's no way to tell us that it updated. And that might be part of the procedures u when you review it to just be sure that our uh operating procedures match what the new guidelines are. Well, and think

172about how many updates midnight's given us just this year, right? everything. They're coming fast and furious. And so that would be a great way for us to like stay on top of that as opposed to, you know, hope the link would change, right? The link would keep current, right? You got this dynamic changes happening with the link. So as that changes and our clause says if there's discrepancy, we follow policy. because I was having to look it all up, Ariel. I would have to go find where this was because I wasn't sure. And I think that if you could click it, then we could check it to be sure there weren't changes that we weren't aware of, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's just effective. And it could even I don't know that it affects what we

173have now since this is so new but it could even be a place where we say like in general some statement about whatever subtopic that is but we're following XYZ so Texas election code or whatever and then it's already linked so we can see there rather than writing our own language or if we're copying it why even link it just say like here's what we followed less redundancy ask for this code right I think the only positive Sometimes I read this and it's hard to understand. And so I think that sometimes you might want to summarize um the main idea and then link to um the language that that I find I have to go find some uh cliffnotes version to explain uh what I'm reading. So sometimes it might be that having that summary

174general summary helps you understand uh because when you go to that document some of them can be difficult um to understand. Maybe there's just a piece of it that we want to highlight, but if someone wanted to read the whole thing, then they could go and and read more. It's good to have it at our fingertips in a meeting. Yeah. So, so an amended motion. Is there was there a second? I guess I need to say the amended motion, please. What are we doing? approving the school board operating procedures. Um, subject to linking hyperlink subject to the board's discussion of adding 4B and hyperlinks. Is there a second? Second to be approved at a future date. Second. Any further discussion? Is that adequate for you Ariel? That's adequate. But it brings a question of when

175are we when or who is adding like yes board it's our responsibility but so let's say we we walk away from this and come back next meeting like oh who did it nobody who's doing this yeah in all reality it's it's whoever links it it's a school the district who keeps keeps that as a uh in a uh piece a document on online living document. Live and document. Yeah. No, but like who's doing the like who's going to come in and link this everything or are we doing a workshop? I don't mind a workshop. I'm saying I don't want to come another meeting and it's still not done. We're like, "Oh, I thought you were doing it or we didn't decide or [Music] Yeah. However, I don't know that a workshop needs to be had

176just to do hyperlinks. It's just who's going to prepare this document and maybe it's like we break up secretary or I'm sorry. There we go. You go first. Well, I was like maybe we just break up pages right now. It's 21 do 21 pages. You take the first five. Y'all two take the first five. Y'all two take the next five. Like we need some attack, some action. Okay. Well, I'm not understanding why we That document lives online on a school based website which really kind of throws it on the school on the district editable access. So you can pull this PDF and edit PDF and put it on like just like David did to throw this in as as suggestions. Like there's no reason we can't add everything we're trying to add. Sure. It lives

177there. Angela, can we ask you to do this and then we all have to bring you something nice? Yeah. What's a realistic timeline? This fair sounds fair. 21 22 pages. Sounds fair. August. Yeah, that's bless her heart. [Laughter] Is there any further discussion? Thank you, Angela. Thank you. [Laughter] And summer vacations, please indicate your vote. Motion carries 70. We talked about SLI. Oh yeah. Was it Senate Bill 569, Tracy? Yes. I had it it I had just put 56. I had gotten it wrong, but I had to correct it. Yeah, I think with Angela. And this is more of a a legislative update. Yes. this I didn't necessarily want this to be on the agenda, okay? Because I was watching every Senate and House hearing because that's, you know, fun for me. Um, but it

178isn't a bill. Let me put it this way. It's something that I think that we need to just look at and see what's how education is changing and how we have to change with it. And this is about virtual learning. So, it's not ne necessarily something I think we need to worry about tonight. But thank you for putting it on there. I have a question going back to our our board um operation. Is there any way that this is just a thought the you know the board members code of ethics I mean I was I was reading this the other day and I thought it was pretty I think we should all sign it like when we start after an election that we sign this and date it just to remind us because I don't

179know about y'all but I don't read this all the time the board ethics the code and just for us just to sign it just to say hey we read this or read it together just like as a reminder, I think we had that discussion that we did think that we need to read this at least yearly. You know, I'm not sure that we need to necessarily sign it, but we do have to adopt it. I think the other thing that I've talked to other school boards that they do as practice is that they basically train new school board members. We don't do that. I mean, I think that's something that we need to think about, you know, as far as um training new board members to to really teach and I think that's like a

180good place to start. Absolutely. So, well, that is a good a whole onboarding piece, right? It's not just show up and figure it out, but let me show you. And and those are require requirements. So because I will be meeting with Janice on as a superintendent part similar to when I met uh with you and Areola, there's certain um items that I need to cover. So I will be covering those same items. I think we have 60 days uh in order to cover those, but that's not like everything. That's just kind of what um my job is in order to be sure that Janice has the the basic information uh on kind of things that my responsibilities are. And so I do think um that TASBY uh has a an agenda that lists all of

181the items that are good like your first year, your second year. And the other thing is a mentor. Um, I think that it something that I think I find helpful just like I have a coach, but a mentor that you pair a new u board member with so that when they do have questions and maybe they're uncomfortable with asking those questions, they can jot them down and then uh get with their mentor and they can walk them through maybe why, you know, there's certain procedures that we have. Uh, I think that that's always great to have somebody that's coaching or mentoring me and and I've talked to like like I said other board members that have like a whole procedure, right? Like a 101 course and I can remember Ariela and I going for the

182first time as delegates like it's like yes, we'll go. We had no clue what we were doing. Like again, no apprenticing, no onboarding, no like guidance. So that's that's a blind sight for this board that we really need to think about. So again, we do better when we know better, right? So and I think I think that we could on TASBY's website, they have the online classes and a lot of the explanations. So uh we could say the first year here are some online classes uh that we would think that a brand new uh board member could go at their own pace uh and and pick some of those out. Survival, right? and and there are five hours worth of legal requirements so that you have to take and so and that and it's very

183beneficial and even region 11 you know it doesn't even have to be tas so so so we want to make sure we're putting as a discussion item for a future operating procedures a mentor piece so is that Angela can take note of and put it in the appropriate place. I think it would be under board relations probably. I will go as far as say that we need another item existing regularly on our meetings that talk about what we want on future meetings. Other than when talks about the agenda, how to put something on the agenda. Yeah. Other than I mean make the item, you know, 11p school board agenda request of this more of a discussion item so that if I wanted something on an agenda, I could do it at a meeting, not necessarily

184between meetings. Yeah. I mean, is that what I mean, let me research that. Yeah. Yeah, research that. It's opening up up to a lot of things. Let me research that. Yeah, we have done that. Did that short briefly a discussion? I don't know. It's dangerous. An action is what I got to figure out if it's dangerous like not Yeah. Oh, that's well that's maybe yeah and I I think it's a great idea but we have to look at at what is the process of putting things on the agenda and there is it's the president and the inh the superintendent and you can deny something to be put on the agenda of course then there's other processes that follow that so research is a good word research but I do I appreciate the sentiment. Maybe what

185else? Anything else we miss? Uh 12D D as in so professional learning the link was about Houston conference coming up coming up. So I don't know if it's is it too early to at least needs to be on our mind. Mr. Rder. Yeah. I got check my calendar. Angela, do you know I I think we had in the board update uh the registration begins when the registration begins for uh the Tasa Tasby convention. And again, is that something that we want to do as a team or is there something else that we want? That's right. It's usually always at home coming. It has been the last few years. Yeah. So, I would I would recommend that we become prepared to talk about that in July. You know that was to do. Oh, the start. Yeah.

186So, let's find out by July. The July meeting is Okay, that's good. Yeah, with that, can we get an update? Um, just budget-wise, is there still enough funding for each one of us to go to state and national at minimum? I mean, we got to consider the financial constraint for next budget cycle for July. Well, even this what just talk about and I'm sure it's there, but you know how like you provided a breakdown before of like about this much for travel and conferences and the Christmas dinner. So, on the schoolboard budget dashboard, it does have how much money is left, but we have frozen everything through June. And so, in July, we'll get the new budget. Okay. And uh I think that you could take the budget and look at it at that point.

187And so the dashboard will roll over again. So you'll get to see the new budget like this this coming academic year. Okay. Okay. Mr. President, if we could look at 12F as well, strategic plan progress monitoring. Sure. Just real quickly, I did notization where it's at, but it was talks talking about the in-depth cleaning of our schools during the summer and goal three. Go. Yes. Goal three. Basically, I was just kind of wondering what does that entail? I know, and the reason I'm asking is I know that at the at the banquet at the in the cafeteria, I saw some seats that were ripped and um we were scrubbing floors because we wanted it to smell good and and look good. So just is it that type of in-depth cleaning where we're replacing? No, it's

188usually stripping the floors and so Lenny can talk to that. Yeah. So what we do is with this year of having Joy James and Castlebury uh campuses open um are actually closed um with summer school. We're taking our teams and going through those. So basically every summer what we do is pull everything out of the classrooms. If it's carpet we we clean and uh disinfect the carpets. Uh we also do that at Christmas time too. So it's more than just once a month. We do a deep clean on those as well. Um we also do things of touch-up painting in the front areas, the halls, things of that nature. But then also depending on what campus, if it does does have the LVT or the flooring with that, it's a little bit less uh maintenance

189on that than it is like your carpet and things of that nature. But also in the same time with those campuses that do have uh summer school going on, we're doing some deep clean in those areas that when we come back in July, we really only have three weeks um for those campuses. So, what we do is we move crews from campus to campus and then we've got those on a schedule as well, both from a custodial standpoint and from a maintenance standpoint in terms of striping, touching up exterior windows and things of that nature. And just real quickly, what is the dust like in the high school right now? Manage Yeah, it's it's not that bad. Um, obviously with the ventilation and things of that nature, it is. Um we do have a lot

190of traffic with construction coming in and out. Um sound was more of an issue um in that basement area when they were doing uh renovations in the um for the band hall, but for the most part it's a lot better. We did fight some water um drainage um when we had those high uh days of rain and things of that nature, but that has tempered down uh quite a bit with that as well. and it's a lot more manageable. But for a construction site, um, and with schools going on, it's really no different than what we saw at Irma Marsh with those renovations. Thank you. Before uh we adjourn, can we go back to board operating procedures again? And so, um, I know that Abby are I wanted to be sure. Abby, can you hear

191me? Are we streaming our meeting? Is it working? Okay. So, it's it's okay. I was just wondering for board operating procedures, you know, if we're streaming our meeting, you know, do we need to put procedures in place on recording the meeting? And just so we know, is it edited or is it just data meetings? Yeah. Well, it's live. Yeah, it's four hours. It's live. I had the same question for liabilities and protections and that type of thing. I don't And I don't know what questions to ask, but I agree. Well, and also I do find it a little um harassing to have a board member's husband recording when we're recording uh live. And so, you know, what is the purpose? I I thought that if we began to record so we could hear it, but

192I'm just wondering for operating procedures, is that appropriate? Is it something we might want to discuss? Um, just because I find it a little uncomfortable and harassing. And so I think that that is something that maybe we need to talk about in our board operating procedures or I can get with Dennis. Can I ask for um hold on clarity? You're saying if we can add just specifics on whether we are doing this live or if it's recorded. Okay. But like not trying to shut down opportunity for anyone to be able to see it in any other way. Okay. So yeah, I mean I don't see why we wouldn't why we wouldn't be adding that we now record as of said date. It was decided in whatever meeting now we record. Here's where you find the

193recordings whether it's raw or whether it's edited. All of the specifics that we could provide in procedures. and a I great statement on this perhaps feeling harassing to you. It reminds me of Tracy's comment of um last time saying like we're probably not going to be comfortable with this. Like it's it is very vulnerable in a sense like you're at this table, you have this seat, but again like we're here. We this is 100% very real and raw. And so it's might feel uncomfortable. It might feel harassing. It might feel anything. Um, and it's good for even us to just really figure out like how do we want to better lead um, and just be a very collective board in what we're doing and perhaps even in like a board workshop work through that feeling

194of being uncomfortable or vulnerable or anything like that. Um, but as public officials, I think it's great that we're now streaming. Um, so again, I actually last time I asked what led to that decision for us to now there were changed minds on recording meeting. Um, and you mentioned like it was some TLI or administrative. So, I wanted to say thank you for anyone voicing um their desire to have this recorded and available to the public because we should have been doing this a long time ago. I agree. But now that we're recording, my question is why would a schoolboard member be also recording? And that's the question that I have because we have our mocks and everything. I just think it's part of our procedures is that is is it something that um why

195would we need that? I think we have the first question that we have to ask is it lawful? Yeah. against the law to publicly report something and I don't think it is and so we can't tie the hands of American citizens in and but I think it's more about board um uh ethics or maybe our behavior now if board members were recording that I think we would have a different discussion but I think that there's a constitutional right that we well there there are some guidelines that I've read that if we're going to record that we set certain places where people stand and record and that we create guidelines for it. Okay. Yeah. So that it doesn't feel that way. Sure. I think that that would and so I think I'll get with Dennis to

196for that and maybe they can give us some samples or some guidelines. Yeah. And and I think back to what Ariela said about ground truthing, right? if we can ground truth in the the unlawfulness or you know what ethics violation or if it's just making me feel a certain way well that's not you know you know what I'm saying so I think if we can ground truth the thought and what we want to put in place in some sort of law ordinance whatever we want to call it I I think it makes sense okay well I will follow up u with Dennis uh because I've read several um different uh I guess ideas or recommendations uh for recording. But honestly, I just find it a little uncomfortable or or odd that a schoolboard member has

197their husband here recording when we're already recording it. And what is the the purpose? So, I'll I'll reach out to Dennis and just find out legally. So, is it live streamed and recorded? Yes. And I will and I will speak for um like a forum that was recorded and then lost. So I think that's the other parts of like control, you know, it's like it it's it's like you can't pick and choose again. We have to make sure that we're being was the forum on Facebook. So I don't Yeah, Facebook really to me would not be uh appropriate. I think that what I see mo most school board uh have are their YouTube channel. So, Jacob is our YouTube channel set up our streaming so that we can have an archive of it that has

198all mics and is uh can you turn your mic on? It's funny stuff. Uh yes, it's indefinitely backed up. Um and uh you know if we wanted to make that the official record of the meeting then not only would we back it up on YouTube we would download it and we would keep it for retention purposes for x number of years uh whatever is required. And so that might be good to do to find out legally you know if we start recording what what do we do how long do we have uh retention guidelines because we have retention guidelines on our documents and even on electronic things. So I I think it's just uh would be good practice to include uh some of that in there. I even agree and thank you for bringing that

199up because um I will say too I completely forgot but when we look at goal two of the district improvement plan and increasing you know improving trust and communication with stakeholders in the district there's a lot of trust still broken and unsure in our community. Um and one example is when community members said like where's the forum video of the public forum that happened? uh I think it was like a year ago now and we're like, "Oh, it's on the district page. Like, let's go find it." And come to find out it was deleted. Um and so when we look at like hoping to address um and improve trust, like rather than fix the past, I mean, well, if we could, why not? Like, we can just make that live again or anything that could

200have ever been deleted. Um but more so just ensuring that like we are doing the best that we can and perhaps even just asking questions like hey what is it that could help improve this trust that's happening. Um but I will say I personally received comments from that about that issue about uh the Facebook about videos being deleted. Okay. So were they deleted or just Facebook doesn't retent retention? So, it has the one though from three years prior to that. So, like there's years prior to that that still exists, but somehow that one video was deleted. Are we sure that it's deleted? Okay. Yeah. Abby, can you look to see? Okay. We asked and it was deleted. It's gone. When I've looked up the past forums, the ones on YouTube are there, but the one

201on Facebook from a year ago was not there. Okay. that that that clarifies for me. And like multiple years prior to that are there. So it's just like gaps like to your point like picking and choosing kind of it seemed like to trust and and we look at optics. Yeah. Optics. Not that right. So what I think we need is to we have a retention policy um for some of our uh digital um documents. And so I think that we could add now uh a retention uh policy or guidelines for this because I think that five years from now, six years from now when someone's like, "Oh, I don't remember it that way." Then you know it is out there for someone to go back and reference because a lot happens after five years. So

202I agree. I understand now. That makes sense. Yeah. And all in all, I will say it again, even just this made us better. Just communicating like in a time where there's disagreement, there's uncertainty, there's very vulnerable feelings has already made us better. So, thank you. I just one I'd like to add just one thing that I was very uncomfortable with you calling out a school board member um husband. I think that that could have been handled a little bit differently. I think that made that made me very uncomfortable because I didn't know what to do with what you were saying and it made me very uncomfortable at the same time. Sure. So I think that okay we need to look at how at operating procedures and what is legal because um we have to be

203very careful when we start um naming names or talking about board members. So just identify Thank you for responding. Sorry. I keep trying. It's okay because we because that's I think we're such a board that we love discourse that way. We work well that way. So, well, it reminds me of just like I think it was two meetings ago, maybe three, same thing. Like any identifier of who it is you're talking about probably shouldn't be happening and we have that discussion within us, but if we want to just like blatantly call out, sure, but is what is that doing for us? What benefit is that coming from that? But you know what? It's just not her feeling that way. It's also me feeling that. Okay. Why are you recording? Yeah. You know, that's great. What's

204what's what's but again it it goes both ways and I think just talking it out has helped. So absolutely. Thank you. And I think it's feelings versus lawfulness, right? I think that's that's what we got to get at, right? Like I can feel all kinds of way, but it's not breaking a law. If it's not illegal, if it's not, then you know that's that's our constitutional right potentially, right? So you've just got it because it is an open meeting. So again, I don't know what the laws are. I I don't know. Yeah. And I did look it up and we we probably what it states is we should have very specific guidelines about the people that are in the room that are going to record. But I think the deeper question is or would fall

205under board members code of ethics, you know, um about that. And so I just think that we can get some advice on what that is. Yes. And even record, we wouldn't be having this live stream if I asked like last time, why are we now changing minds and all of a sudden recording and it was one of the things that we kept hitting on that you shared Renee was, well, someone's recording it. Like great, like now we've gotten progress and more of the public can see our meetings happening. So again, we're better for this. And to be transparent, we recorded the students because we wanted to um to be sure the parents could see the celebrations, but we didn't pursue recording more because I know there was a board member that uh had a conversation

206with me that said, "Well, we're a smaller district. We really don't have to." And I could see their point. and I thought okay u for that person you know to respect that person then um absolutely uh that's fine but I just think that if we're looking at why were things deleted and not archived then I think that that brings the time up then we we do need to um begin to record and to archive it but if it's on YouTube and Jacob you said that that is that will be on YouTube. It's not going to be deleted because of retention guidelines with YouTube. Can you check that? I will check that. But uh there are currently live stream videos on YouTube from 20 something years ago. Okay. And so if the purpose is for retention,

207I think we can bring back to you that we can have guidelines so that we can have that retention. And I think it's just simple things like if you are going to be recording somebody might bring a tripod. Okay. Well then you can't obstruct anybody's view. So let's have a designated area. And again I think it goes back to like we talked about last time our local advocacy plan that this is a way for us to advocate to our community instead of having us. Good progress. Great discussion again. Once again, so what our hearing based on Ariela's suggestion earlier is we need to get back to uh updating our schoolboard operating procedures. Do I need another? No, we're fine. It it'll hold for another meeting. I mean, we had some good discussion. So, um I

208move we adjourn. context. Yes. Um that is the book that uh I selected for the ALT retreat and it also is driving our theme. You know we had goal for the gold and so I think that camp courage has started this summer with our students. You've probably seen some of the things that we have uh posted. And so we are looking at courage and encourage starts with encouragement. And so our theme is uh leading with encouragement with the encourage with the courage uh in capital letters. And so we that is our theme for next year. And so we I I really think that in in the times of everything that uh being vulnerable, I had to sit here and think, okay, this is how I'm feeling. I want people to know. And that's not always

209easy uh to be able to uh you know, speak out. And so I think that that's the step of the courage and being vulnerable with people. And then I think that the second part is the encouragement. Uh we've been through a lot with Star and um just difficult coming out of COVID and we're get I feel like the kids are getting back on track. We're all uh getting on track and I think we've lost the art of encouraging people versus finding a fault. And so the whole idea with our ALT uh group is to look how we can and when you read the book, you'll see your war room and you're going to see your encouragement strategies with your staff. And so if we're always picking out what's not happening um that is uh we're

210always finding fault or uh with things that our teachers are doing, our principles. If we change that thinking into a growth mindset and more positive, how can we start the year and really support that? because I think it'll go a long way after what we've been through over the last um you know five years, three years year for us and and I I think it's time to put everything aside be able to have conversations and also have the courage to lead and also to encourage one another so that we're a better team whether it's cabinet alt principal group and I I really think that next year that um this is going to be very important for us to move in and continue to move in the right direction. Anything else? No, you're fine. I move

211you adjourn. Hearing no objection, we stand adjourned at 10:19 p.m.