March 3, 2025 – Board Meeting

001I will now call this regular meeting of Goose Creek CISD Board of Trustees to order the time is now 602 Mr kesi was the meeting properly posted Madame President the meeting was properly posted and do we have a quorum we have a quorum of all seven members present thank you sir GL you know I will now yield to you Dr Bolinger for um opening exercise recognition and acknowledgement thank you sir okay great good evening president brought Tim school board members Dr O'Brien the opening exercises for the March 3rd Board of Trustees meeting will be provided by students from Crockett Elementary School the pledges will be recited by Annette pinoa and melani Navaro first we will begin with the with the opening exercises with a prayer led by Mr Ricky clim so everyone at this time

002please arise for a prayer and remain standing for the pledges everybody bow your head and Gentlemen please remove your caps dear heavenly father we thank you for this evening where we can come together as a community and make important decisions that affect our school district ask you as we make those decisions that you guide us and help us remember that each each decision has a student's face on it uh please give everyone safe travels home tonight and lead us and guide us in Jesus name amen amen Al to the flag of the United States of America and the for it stands one nation God indivisible and jusice for all alexas one State under God indivisible thank you you may be seated crocod Elementary choir students will be performing uh three songs the marine him mini

003met the bear and bottle of Pop students include Annette andoa Camila Robel pton Pope melani Navaro ulis Moreno brissa Cruz Leonel mat iene Navaro Miguel Angel Seria Ronaldo Cabrera yiel C Alan Zaria and medella Vargas the students are under the direction of choir teacher Mr Albert bear and also principal Miss Talis anaan so at this time we'll turn it over to you f [Music] [Applause] un [Applause] [Music] [Applause] the [Applause] [Music] y Four B pop five b pop Six B Pop s b [Music] V [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] vinar v v [Music] vinegar vinegar F chips vinegar pepper pepper pepper salt yay [Applause] all right awesome job and if we have any parents of these students please stand at this time to be recognized we want to thank [Applause] you all right awesome job okay

004thank you thank you okay we'll move on to rec recognitions and acknowledgements once again awesome job crocod Elementary at this time Kendall David and Kevin roesy will come and recognize our Avid demonstration schools good evening president BR tens Dr O'Brien and board members it is an incredible honor to stand before you tonight to celebrate a historic achievement for our district EF green Junior school and impact Early College High School have been named Avid demonstration schools let's give them a round of applause real [Applause] quick this recognition reflects the hard work the dedication and Excellence that Define our schools Avid National demonstration schools serve as models for College and Career Readiness and earning this distinction requires a rigorous evaluation process tonight's announcement is even more special because impact Early College High School is the only Early

005College High School in the entire nation to receive the demonstration designation with this resignation Goose Creek CISD becomes one of the only two districts in Texas to have three Avid National demonstration schools EF green and impact now join Goose Creek Memorial High School which earned its status in 2019 this achievement underscores our comp our commitment to ensuring that all students have access to skills and opportunities that will prare them for lifelong success this success would not be possible without the incredible leadership at these campuses at EF green Junior School we recognize the dedication of principal Dr Alicia Babin AVID coordinator Veronica Phillips and Avid teacher Kaylee Morales their commitment to Excellence has transformed EF green into a model of Student Success at impact Early College High School principal Laura Rus and AVID coordinator Adrien shappy

006have led with passion and purpose helping their students break barriers and set new standards Miss Reyes do you want to come on up as they come up we just want to say to our teachers students parents and Community thank you for believing in the power of education and to our Board of Trustees your vision and support make achievements like this possible yeah bring up this Rec recognition is not just a title it's proof that Goose Creek is leading the way for breaking barriers and success so let's give one last congratulations to EF green and impact on this incredible [Applause] accomplishment we also have um our incredible Impact Staff site team and students from our panel joining us this evening for e okay uh once again congratulations to impact and EF green this concludes our recognition

007so at this time I'll turn it back over to you uh president BR Tims okay we will now move to our citizens participation and citizen participation is a time during which the board will hear public concerns or public comments for those who have properly signed up to address the board at regular board meetings the board will allow public comments regardless of whether the item is on a topic on the agenda posted which uh with notice of this meeting each speaker is reminded that he or she is limited to his or her presentation to maximum of three minutes which can be further reduced or limited by the presiding officer please also remember you should respect confidentiality concerns refrain from attacking the personal character of individuals students staff members board members and addressing concerns or comments pursuant

008to state law the board policy be legal the board could cannot consider or take action on concerns at this meeting unless they pertain to an item on the posted agenda for this meeting any deliberations or discuss DEC decisions on an item that is not posted for consideration at this meeting shall be limited to a proposal to place the subject on the agenda for further board meetings future meetings okay we now have those who have signed up I will call your name when you will come to the Podium there uh and Mr kesi he will keep our keep the time for you and he will let you know as as you proceed we will first our first one on is Marge Matthews Miss Matthews as you're coming to the microphone please make sure the microphone's on

009speak into the microphone you'll have three minutes to speak the time will automatically begin when you start talking and I will let you know when you have one minute manying I'm sorry I mispronounced your name uh Marga thank you thank you I know everybody calls me all kind of different all right good evening uh board trustees um all the people here thank y'all for being here um so whatever is currently in place within our education system is clearly not working we owe it to our children to develop something better something that can improve academic outcomes across the state and provide every student with a solid foundation for Success it is unacceptable by any standard to have more than 50% of our kids failing to meet great level expectations this is not just a statistic it

010is a crisis and it demands immediate action the blue bonnet curriculum represents an important step forward in addressing the challenges facing our education system and preserving the historical and cultural foundations that shaped our nation as both a parent grandparent and a concerned Texan I commend this bowl initiative believing that the blue Bonet curriculum will better prepare our students and teachers for Success the Texas blue bonnet award program is design it is designed to promote reading reading among third to sixth grade students by encouraging them to read variety of books selected by Librarians and Educators the program benefits students by encouraging and love for reading exposes students to high quality literature and diverse perspectives and improving literacy skills enhancing reading comprehension vocabulary and critical thinking promoting independent Choice students who read at least five books from

011the list can vote for their favorite fostering engagement and decision making developing L long lifelong learning habits encourages students to explore new topics and perspectives through literature which which people who prefer a secular education do not need to be concerned about the Texas blue bonnet award program it is not religious and does not promote any specific Faith the blue bonnet book list is selected based on literally quality diverse perspectives and student engagement rather than religious content one minute why the blue bonnet program is secular focus on literacy and critical thinking the program aims to develop a love for reading comprehension skills and discussion rather than religious instruction diverse book selection the books cover a range of variety of cultures and themes but they do not advocate for any religious Doctrine public school appropriateness since Texas

012Public Schools follow laws separating religion from State education the blue bonnet list does not include books that serve religious teachings the Texas blue bonnet program is a secular reading initiative and does not specifically include biblical teachings or religious texts however some books on Blue Band May list contain themes of morality perseverance kindness or historical references to religion like moral lessons preservance and Faith historical and cultural context see so the blue Bonet carul many educational Frameworks likely emphasize values such as character development Community involvement ethics personal growth moral ethical teaching service to others lifelong learning respect for diversity personal responsibility which all children lack and they need thank you so much for listening thank you we next will have Miss guaba Holland Miss Holland make sure you speak into the microphone and you can start when

013you're ready it is time to return to traditional teaching in our public schools that is why I am here this evening to support Blue Bonnet learning Miss Holland speak into your microphone please oh I'm sorry is that better let me put that over there okay do I start over or just start over I'll give you full time start over Okay it is time to return to traditional teaching in our public schools that is why I am here this evening to support Blue Bonnet learning the blue bonnet learning curriculum will help our teachers by providing ready-made lesson plans saving time and allowing them to focus more in on teaching it will provide to I'm sorry it will provide a supportive environment for students to learn and Thrive the curriculum will Empower parents by providing them with

014explicit materials and family letters fostering a strong partnership in their child's Learning Journey it will help students understand our history and its connection between art community literature and religion without providing direct religious instruction the program will also help students understand uh core subjects that should improve their academic performance Goose Creek CISD students will receive a comprehensive education when taught the fundamentals of math and reading using Blue Bonnet learning the reading curriculum includes stronger phonics instruction which is a research research proven method of teaching students to read and a move away from whole word reading in the long run this should improve student performance and star scores the blue bonnet learning curriculum reminds me of my years of attending grade grades 1 through six at David G Bernett Elementary which was located in the Worster community

015on Bayway drive back then teachers could focus on each student's needs while teaching the three Rs Reading Writing and arithmetic and had the support of the parents they also instilled moral values and allegiance to our state and Country I urge you to vote for the blue bonnet learning curriculum in its entirety by doing so we can ensure that our students receive a comprehensive well-rounded education that prepares them for the challenge and opportunities of the future it is time for a significant change in our educational system our children and teachers deserve and need better thank Youk you miss Holland we next have Mr Nicholas rice please uh good evening everyone um I did not have time today to prepare lengthy remarks so I'll just say I associate myself with the comments of the other two speakers

016in regards to the blue bonnet but I do have a a couple of notes that I want you to think about you know anytime religion is introduced into a public school curriculum controversy is inevitable but it's critical to understand that the Texas Education Code 28.2 already requires public schools to teach content from both the Old Testament and the New Testament so this is not a new idea it's just simply acknowledging our nation's Heritage so while controversy is unavoidable we must not lose sight of the bigger picture which is improving outcomes for our children and ensuring every student in our district has access to a quality education thank you thank you Mr rice okay we will now move to um five on our agenda approval of the minutes um the minutes from our last regular board

017meeting February the 17 2025 was provided to all board members uh do I have a motion for approval I'll move to approve we have a motion from Miss guy and a second from Mr Clem any discussion any changes with no further discussion all in favor please raise your hand we have a full quum um no thank you okay we will now move to you Dr obon thank you discussion items thank you Madame President number six discussion items 6A superintend reports number one will be a presentation on budget update Dr Bolinger and Miss Clark or CFO she our next presentation will include singing and dancing so um y'all can go ahead and set the president for this presentation as well Matt can dance what the budget's fun enough you don't need to see me sing or

018[Laughter] dance representing Dr Levan's presentation so you're safe for a minute all right so good evening Madame President Dr O'Brien Board of Trustees tonight we're going to have our second of several um budget updates that we'll do throughout the spring as you all know and uh Dr Bolinger has been kind enough to join me in the fund so thank you Dr Bolinger with that we'll just move right on into the content um we're going to talk about the legislative update uh the legislature that's going on right now and what's happening um some of the budget committee items Dr Bolinger will discuss then the budget reduction considerations and then we'll talk about calendar and next steps so uh the Senate Bill the Senate passed their um School finance and voucher Bill early and and it it

019passed out of the Senate and out of their committee and what they had in their bill is $6,500 um increased from 6160 for the basic allotment um this is a side by side of the actual uh School finance bill um versus the um voucher Bill and what uh public Ed gets versus what the um the charter schools and and private schools would be receiving so you see it's 10,000 per student on the school vouchers side and um one other thing of note is that um it the provision there is not a provision for moving to um enrollment versus average daily attendance which most other states do I think we're one of like seven or eight now that that do it on um average daily attendance versus enrollment so um that standard would not be uh

020held to the private school uh private schools or the charter schools so those are just two of the major differences there's some others here um I won't read those all to you but um they are part of the differences um the house bill that's the school finance bill is House Bill two and then the house bill version of the voucher bill is House Bill three so just FYI the Senate kind of put their items together on here on the side by side so as I said um on the House Bill two um the basic allotment would be increased to 6380 now the Senate's version is 6,500 so you see right off the bat there's a difference there and they'll have to um go in conference committee and uh decide how they're going to merge these

021two bills and what they can agree on as to what will come out as the final bill um the one other thing of note is the house bill version create or increase the 30% compensation increase uh to 40% so that means uh 40% of the gain that we we would receive by the increase in basic allotment would be required to be spent on compensation so uh just to kind of get an idea of how much that would look like with on the Senate Bill version which is the 6500 um the gain would be somewhere between 9 and 10 million total and 40% of that would have to be spent on um I'm sorry I had that backwards 30% would have to be spent on um compensation for teachers nurses and Librarians on the house bill

022version um it would be the 40% that would have to be spent on teachers nurses and librarian compensation specifically and then the balance could be spent on uh well they made it real complicated so 75% of the 40% would have to be spent on teachers nurses and Librarians then the other 25% of the 40% could be spent on any other uh cohort of employees other than Administration and the same would go for the house bill unless they changed it um 75% for teachers nurses and Librarians and 57,500 for other than administrators so basically the difference is Senate bill would bring us about between 9 and 10 million additional funds and then the house bill version Which is less would bring us somewhere around between 6 and7 million total so um you see if we put

023at least half of it towards uh raises in um the Senate Bill version that would almost cover the cost of a 2% raise which you'll see in a future slide here in just a minute also of notes on the house bill version there's going to be um 600 $5 million increase uh to support the to increase the special education allotment which has been as you know uh significantly underfunded over the last several years we've just spent so much on uh you know testing and identification and so forth that it's just really really time for them to support us more on special ed there's another bill on it's and actually it's part of the Senate Bill too property tax relief um it raises the homestead exemption to 140,000 for homeowners um 150,000 for seniors that would

024save families on average $496 per year um of course that's all of the things being held equal so and then if you have Market increases we have no control over that so I'm not sure exactly how they got this number here this I screen grabbed this but you know it's it's it's just an average um it also eliminates uh school property taxes for about 67,000 homeowners and wonderfully it would get rid of uh school property taxes for 80 to 90% of seniors so that's fantastic that's great it also has a hold harmless provision um it doesn't say how long the hold harmless would stay in effect because a lot of times they'll say we'll hold you harmless for a couple of years and then like by year three or four maybe even five sometimes then

025they do away with the whole harmless until you now you're on your own so uh that remains to be seen and then there's one other uh Senate Bill uh 26 of note which is also a teacher pay raise type bill but it's not actually part of the compensation as it was discussed in the other bills this is a separate bill it would be an allotment for uh veterans longevity that sort of thing so they do again differentiate between urban and rural districts on how much they give teachers um if there are more than 5,000 students it would be 2500 for a raise after 3 years and then after 5 years um they would get 5,500 conversely at the rural districts with less than 5,000 it would be $5,000 raise after three years and a $10,000

026raise after five um it expands the teacher incentive allotment to 100,000 provides free pre for children of Texas teachers and also includes a new liability teacher Protection Program so we'll be waiting to hear the details of that um also I'm sure you've heard the news across the state um folks are coming out with their reduction plans and how they're going to balance their budgets this year because now as you know we are in year three and it's become very difficult to reduce we've gotten all the loow hanging fruit the last couple of years so now we're just you know uh scraping and and doing all we can to find reduction but you see here some some painful reductions that are coming down the pike with several school districts leanders cutting hundreds of teaching positions Aline

027closing six elementaries Fort Worth is considering closing 20 schools Soro and El Paso iscs are cutting over 300 teacher positions Northeast is closing three schools Amarillo closing three and Plano closing four so um the reductions continue and and it's just it's really tough whenever you get to um your year three in reductions uh just to give you a recap of what we accomplished for this year's budget that we're currently in we did pay a 4% General pay increase for all employees uh and we also Implement implemented $13 million in budget reductions including uh non-campus positions districtwide adjusted high school and Junior school schedules and applied Staffing ratios to Elementary to help us get to um the budget reduction number that we needed all right with that I will turn it over to Dr Bolinger to

028discuss the budget reduction committee okay thank you Miss Clark so we want to talk a little bit about just the budget uh reduction committee process and what we went through and so we reconvened uh like like Mr Clark said this was our third year to uh go through this process and so we had a we had a committee that um provided input um primarily what the committee worked on the committee was named Doge Department of Goose Creek efficiency and so I'm just kidding uh I was told not to tell that joke but could not help it um the uh so the um there are three primary objectives the first one was uh to really just make sure the committee understood what's going on in the state of Texas um as it relates to um the

029lack of State funding and some of the challenges that we're we're facing and so we we wanted to make sure we were all on the same page secondly we wanted to make sure that the committee had a had a good historical context on um on what Goose Creek has gone through over the last three years like in for for example um over the last two years this is year three so over the last two years we've reduced um 302.5 positions which equates to almost 8% of our full-time employee staff and so that's that's pretty significant um 51 of those positions are district level positions um or support service positions and so um it's uh so like like Miss Clark said it's been challenging in year three because we did have some low hanging fruit year

030one going into year two but now um a lot of a lot of the easy cuts are gone and so that's that was a challenge as you'll see here in a minute for the committee U and then also just really making sure they understood some of our uh challenges as we go into the 25 26 school year um and how we're going to navigate those challenges that was really the objectives that we um that we faced this is a makeup to the committee we had we had a a we wanted to make sure every every Department was represented by at least one person so we had a good blend of District level and campus level um positions on the committee the committee was about 20 individuals and we met three times um over the last

031month and a half um during our our meetings first of all again we talked about the financial landscape of public schools in Texas and sort of what we're facing what's going on in legislation we also um identified as a committee which programs we feel like are most important um when it when it comes to Student Learning when it comes to student safety um which programs are off the table um and then and then we also developed action plans and we surveyed the committee and anonymously so we could get feedback um so we can look at that feedback to see see how each individual felt after we had quite a bit of discussion this is just a visual that shows that um we broke into small groups and worked on action plans to try to get

032to that that number and you'll see here in a minute that's $6.8 million so this year after we've made after we've Consolidated Lamar Elementary after we made some additional Cuts already um we have $6.8 million to go and what was interesting in this activity is that only one only one group out of six groups actually hit that that number so it was very difficult to do and the group that did hit it um had some pretty unrealistic cuts to get there and so um so the point being that it's a it's a very hard task to uh to cut going into year three and as Miss Clark mentioned we're not the only District I believe that I can't remember the statistic but close to over half of districts in Texas um either pass deficit budget

033or or had to make major reductions to get there um after we met three times executive Council reviews the reviewed the survey data from the committee um we had we had discussions and then what we did was we prioritized all of the items on the table like like we did in previous years with tier one and tier two um considerations tier one considerations are uh we we considered more more realistic and more doable to to make that reduction tier two are met with some controversy and it would be a little bit bit more more challenging to um to reduce but but we wanted to show you those two groups and so we're going to go through um just just a real quick snapshot of what the what the budget committee proposed and also how we

034broke that up into tier one and tier two Mr Clark do you want to talk a little bit about this slide sure and that one uh committee breakout group uh that did make it to the 6.8 million was very dogey they they very dogey so um so on the budget reduction totals here you can see uh this some of the slide is from last times especially the top version here we had a beginning budget deficit of 1.8 and that's because of the 4% raise the board opted to uh provide for all employees and then we had the board reduce the tax rate by a penny that cost about 1.5 million then we had health insurance um supplement that the board approved to um help keep premiums low for employees that was 3.5 million and then

035we have an in a decrease in um Ada which decreases our um Revenue as well by about 640,000 on the positive side we had increase in uh investment earnings 2.5 million and then a transfer in of workers comp of 1 million a transfer in increase in CIP of 700,000 and then a school consolidation saving us 2.2 million and then just as a placeholders you can see um for the illustration purposes a 2% raise would cost about $5.2 million which gives us a beginning deficit of about 6.2 million and on line 13 we had uh two items uh starting that increase the deficit one is child care for 460 one is uh prek transportation for 381 and then we also had a few items that reduced the deficit um we reduced some positions and made some

036adjustments for about 93 million excuse me 93,000 I wish 93 million um that would be very dogey um then we had HR early retirement incentive was discontinued for 50 we also eliminated the sign on bonus for 20 and then I closed a position in payroll for 72,000 which gives us a beginning total budget deficit of 6.8 million and then I'll turn it back over to Dr Bolinger okay so so um budget consider or I'm sorry bu budget considerations from uh from the committee include these items here and so we felt like these items were um more or less more more doable including further reducing Consultants to make sure that all PD is done uh in house or or the vast majority of PD is done in house um there was a software two software programs

037that were identified that we could do without um which led to $100,000 um further reduce conference attendants to make sure that we're tied on on who's going um out of town out of state travel um to be careful with uh to have a have a procedure in place to make sure we're restricting as much travel as possible um the way that we staff custodians um on our smaller campuses is a little loose and so we felt like by tightening that up to help it match some of the way we the way that we staff larger campuses would would be a savings of $200,000 um if we Implement a policy that's more restrictive for our White Fleet and for our vehicles uh concerning uh traveling outside of a 30 m radius there would be a savings

038there um reducing just on a percentage level we did this last year and so so if we were to do it again with campus and Department budgets then there's a there's a million dollar savings there that's across the board at some point we can't reduce anymore because certain items we have to we have to you know pay for to function and so um so we had a lot of conversation on what that would actually look like and then there's some other positions listed here um if we made an adjustment with our nursing staff to our small campuses um that are nearby uh a another school with an RN if we placed lvns at three or four campuses that would be a savings so we do have one LV in right now and so for example

039um we have we have certain neighboring schools and so if it was a small campus where we put an LV in there there would be some Savings in that regard um two positions were identified in our early learnings that U that we could eliminate and then also um being stricter on our our field trips and so these were the tier one items and I'll show you the total here in a minute but that's that's tier one considerations so these are not by any means easy but these are easier than the than the next list um for tier 2 considerations which would be more challenging um if we restructured how we do library Services there would be a savings there you know that's controversial that was tier two last year and so if we were to

040continue that at certain elementaries that would uh that would produce some savings um talked about PLC days and maybe eliminating uh PLC days and is there an opportunity to bring back a late start a high school like we used to have a long time ago maybe not weekly but um to make sure we hit those minutes but may maybe every other week or every third week that would be a possibility again the committee is brainstorming at this point but um by by reducing the PLC Peri I'm sorry I said PLC days I didn't mean that I meant the PLC period certain core teachers have PLC periods and so if you were to reduce that and do the late start there would be some savings at the high school level in that regard um um virtual

041school was on the table we know that virtual school provides a lot of uh a lot of positives with our students who are Homebound and so that there may be some additional cost if we were to eliminate virtual school that we're not foreseeing but that was put on the table um there were some other District level positions that were identified um also in Support Services also with programs there's certain schools uh that have low enrollment in certain programs maybe in Fine Arts maybe in CTE um or special programs and so if we were to um move those students or allow them to go to another school um similar to what we do like for example uh at Sterling we have swim only at only at one school because they have the auditorium um there may

042be a a savings there you can see that number's very low so we weren't targeting many programs there but maybe one or two and then also clerical staff was brought up at at the district level offices and that would be an additional savings so again these items are are not fun to talk about um Miss Clark and I would rather not be up here going through this list but again the the committee um put this on the table and we we we wanted to presented as considerations since how we're wording that we know there's a lot of work to do to uh to flesh it out to um to to finalize what that reduction would look like here's some numbers to consider as well so tier one totals 2.7 million a little over 2.7 million

043if you're remember the number is um 6.8 million that we're trying to get to um so tier one is 2.7 tier 2 is 3 million and so if you add those two together it's it's 5.7 million and we're still not there and so if we were to if if the board were to give us the direction hey we need we need an absolute balanced budget we're not pulling it all from the from from the um 1999 account then then we would have to find 24.5 additional positions to get to that 1.1 million and that would get us to our 6.8 and so um that's been the conversation with our committee and that's that's um there you go oops okay thank you so um on this slide you see the $6.8 million U beginning budget deficit

044is carried over from that other slide and then you have the tier one itemization here coming out to 2.7 million and then the tier 2 itemization coming out to just over 3 million and that 1.1 million uh would result in a reduction of um additional positions that would need to be identified and reduced to balance the budget completely um we in years past we you know we've kind of done a lot of work to try to make it happen uh I know it's still difficult these are all very very difficult I mean most of these are just you know uh items like he said that we we would rather you know we would rather keep um you know they all have Merit everything that we have um we're not just you know uh having programs

045just you know whatever comes our way um these are difficult decisions and uh require a lot of thought and um on this particular slide this kind of lays it out so um does anybody have any questions on this particular slide or any of the ones previously so far quick question going back to the previous slide on line number three are we anticipating I'm sorry it's like that one right there on line number three health insurance increase yes sir that's the one that caught us off guard last year are we anticipating that number to stay there even with the changes that we made or is there a potential for some Savings in that number well this is going to be through um December and so once we go out for bid we're going to go out

046for we we'll go back to the market in the late spring of this year last year we got a late start on trying to get everything done done because of the surprise that we got in late summer of of the increases and so um we would hope that it would be possible to have some more savings but as health insurance goes it doesn't tend to go down so it'll probably just be a wash at that point it it could be a wash it could be a slight decrease it could be an increase it just depends on what the market is doing when we go out so um health insurance has just had astronomical increases all insurance basically health insurance vehicle Insurance you know all the insurances home insurance uh have all just gone through the

047roof so I I would like to say we're going to get a decrease but I that would be very optimistic in my book so and we are we did try to do the contribution to keep employee premiums down because otherwise we would have had to pass that on to employees yeah I did want to point that out that the board has authorized an increase to the amount that is contributed to the employees insurance side right um the contribution the district makes they did last year correct sir and so U what this is is what what the insurance carrier would say is we're not charging employees enough for the insurance rate so uh that is where the shortfall comes on the on the um deliverer side or the user side and um the board is picking

048up the difference here yes with that deficit of 3.5 yes sir now we hope we have some mechanisms in place and um you know that will help reduce costs overall for our health insurance plan but again because it's a new plan we have to get that data and make sure that um you know we've we've done our due diligence and in calculating costs so um hopefully optimistic but maybe not a reduction and I'll say that Dr acres is is planning on in at a future board meeting presenting an update on um on where we're at with insurance and so you should be hearing that within a month yes can you remind me what the rest structuring of the library Services looks like yes at our small campuses um we have a a librarian share two

049campuses similar to what we do with our um ssas and so we did that at it at our smaller we had an enrollment cut off and so campuses that were below that enrollment they would share so if we were to extend that that would be it we'd probably raise that enrollment number to to add schools to it okay if we were to adopt that that item and one more question um for the virtual school have we looked at the possibility of open enrollment for that campus only yeah so and I'm not the expert on this but I'll tell you that from what I've been told is we are not allowed to have open enrollment based off how the school was opened initially um with with the tea code that we are not allowed to convert

050it from Clos enrollment to open enrollment correct me if I'm wrong anyone in the crowd but I believe that if if it were established as open enrollment school we could do that but but we were told that that's not a possibility so like if they withdrew from another school sign the home school paperwork and then decided to enroll or one more idea how long would we have to close our virtual Academy before we could reopen it correctly what about local school districts neighboring school districts that don't offer virtual school but have a need for it can we pick up those kids as long as they are not in so there's no way it can be like deed or one of those other things that we're we become a co-op yes well let's jump through it

051but back to Dr B but they want all of our other services yeah okay thank you back to Dr blender's point the ruling by Texas Education Agency was it cannot be changed from its origin so however we open it up that's what we're stuck with so uh not like things are frozen in time or anything but that's that's the current ruling that ruling could change or this legislative session could change that current ruling but our commissioner is the one that made that final ruling so far okay so uh the 6.8 plus million deficit that we're talking about right now how is that number derived what is that based on that's based on all the items on this sheet here no I understand that but how do we know we need to how do we know

052that's going to be our deficit we do we have a beginning figure well we start with the uh the revenue from the previous year and then we make all we're assuming the previous year is going to be our res Revenue correct FL so go back up to the 2% pay raise it is that an across the board is is that teachers nurses and Librarians the 5.2 million that's everybody that's everybody and it's just a placeholder because we're waiting for task let's let's say we get somewhere between the5 and $9 million um daily or basic allotment increase and we have to spend 35% of it on pay raises what would it change that number to approximately it would be I used to be math wizard no longer if we got 10 million just say 10 million

053for round numbers um it if it was 40% it would require 4 million to be spent on so raises we we could let the state bump teachers nurses and Librarians and be a almost be a wash we'd have to pick up all the other positions if we wanted to bump everybody the only caveat on that is that you cannot adopt a budget based on prospective law it has to be current law so anything that's in the Senate bill right now or the school finance bill you can't pass your budget based on that unless it's signed into law um so we could you know certainly incorporate this 2% knowing that the possibility exists for one of these so for a version of a school finance bill to pass so maybe everybody in this room could start

054contacting their senators and their representatives and ask asking for a state law that requires them to pass their stinking budget before we have to pass ours that would be great now because the the educational savings accounts are an emergency item I mean but you just don't know what kind of uh confrontation is going to happen between the house and the Senate yeah because if they get in into you know a huge controversy and then nothing gets passed then I mean we think that it's probably going to pass this year but you never know until it does so the governor declared it an emergency item what that did was it allowed the Senate and the house to come together to make a proposal back to the governor's desk within 60 days if it doesn't happen within

055the 60 days it's as if it's not an emergency item any longer it can go out into the entire six-month session if that helps it is currently fast tracking though it is it is definitely fast tracking in in and out of the senate committee in less than a day oh it was huge I mean hugely fast with the Senate now the house is is a little it's taking a little bit longer and which makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes because they you know house is a little more fragmented right more more components more compartmentalized yeah yeah streamline two more questions hopefully go by faster than that one uh back where you mentioned we're going to reduce conference attendance to one per year is that a districtwide is that a administ creative why

056what what who is that going to affect I can respond to that um so again this is what the committee put on the table and it would have been a districtwide uh policy that we'd Implement okay and then and those estimates are pretty rough so yeah yeah when uh and on the same slide reduce department and campus budget budgets for a million dollars is that a we ask everybody across the board to reduce x% or do we do it by X dollar per kid in in your department in your program in your what how do we get to that number so not every area can be cut like we can't cut utilities I mean because they're going to happen regardless and we can't cut you know special programs because we have spend requirements and so

057forth so every eligible area would be uh you know up for the reductions so but is it done by a basic percentage number by a per kid number we would do it by percentage yes all right thank you mhm can you talk a little bit about the um White Fleet and what is that currently at how many vehicles are we looking at and is that a reduction from where we are right now 30 mile radius it it would be because it would be uh putting in place the policy for any uh any folks that have White Fleet um assigned to them if they're further than 30 m radius um they would need to drive their own personal vehicle in in and then get the district vehicle correct me if I'm wrong I think I'm pretty

058sure that's how it's done uh so is that currently not limited by mileage at all I don't think I can speak to that a little bit Dr Price probably could too it is but it's um because sometimes um maintenance Personnel are called to the scene of a broken hydrant or something of that nature uh they're allowed to take their vehicles home and they can get to a site quicker also in the morning so those are the reasons are rationals given by the supervisor of each department um but this would put that would take away the discretion of the supervisor it would say all White Fleet if you don't live within 30 miles of the district you will not be taking your vehicle home so that's where the savings are it's it's sort of like the

059two mile radius for transportation it's it's it's there to what degree are we going to enforce it right now we're doing it for for convenience allowing White Fleet operators to take their vehicles home so they'll have quick access to make repairs or answer to an emergency call or things of that nature I'm sorry Dr Price you could answer that as well as I could how how many vehicles are we looking at and how far are we talking I mean because our taxpayers may say we haven't done the analysis on on who's in or outside of that 30 mile radius but that that has been the protocol in the past it's 30 miles it's just the enforcement has been subject to who's working and we know that there are some some of those that fall into

060that category because we get calls saying why is goose Creek's vehicle you know at this location or whatever you know and it might be outside that 30 mile radius so we we don't know how many but we certainly can do the analysis and find out with an address urge uh I would like to see the analysis on that um because you know it are we getting our money's worth out of that um that seems to me like a huge amount and if someone's driving from 30 Mi away to fix a leak here in our district well an extra 5 miles to pick up the vehicle probably May save us a little bit I I I'd like to see more numbers on that and we're only talking White Fleet we're not talking about police vehicles correct

061that's correct okay it does include okay could we separate out police from the others on that and have more analysis and I think during the conversation correct me if I'm wrong um was individuals who who live outside that 30 mile so they're driving it back and forth every day over time so if we have five or six Vehicles doing that then then that'll add up over time and so um so if they're driving back and forth with their personal vehicles and they have their White Fleet here in the district um that'll save them some mileage also if there's any kind of reduction in White Fleet over time once once a car needs to be replaced and we choose not to replace it we restrict the number of cars that will also be a savings well

062that's the other thing in the back of my mind we're putting a lot of miles on these vehicles every day and it's just a matter of time before we have to replace them based on mileage and wear absolutely i' just like to look at that a little bit closer um there's something to be said too that if you live in our district and you work in our district then maybe that would be a reward to uh sure part of part of a compensation package for those people absolutely that's what that proposals to do right to lock it down any other questions all right so um the next slide is just uh budget reduction considerations and next steps so um whatever the uh marching orders the board gives us this evening uh we'll bring back um

063the items that you all are lay out some options for you all in the next um meeting that we have on April 7th but if the board were to opt for a um special meeting to go further into the budget reduction plan I have penciled in a couple of dates here um March 24th and um April 1st and those are just proposed dates those don't have to be hard and fast but if the board wanted to do that uh that would that would be available or other dates as proposed and then April 7th we do really need to approve it on April 7th because everything uh beyond that as far as the Compensation Plan and the and the budget adoption in general um hinge on getting the budget reduction plan approved upfront because otherwise you

064can't um you know finalize Staffing and do all the things that need to be done uh by that point so and the Compensation Plan approved that as well so um does the board have an opinion on whether they would like to engage in a workshop or is everybody the alternative would be for me to provide uh updates and the weekly update to the board any forthcoming information you would collect from our legislators or anything of that nature that develops I can include that or we can have a face to face it's um the pleasure of the board it looks to me like we're going to have to eliminate the words tier one and two and just call it B budget reduction plus some more positions if we're going to have a balanced budget correct right

065so yes sir maybe we should be talking about that a little more just my opinion I would agree with that doing well I think the the the idea on feedback from Administration is which of the items listed on tier one or tier two uh that we've invested in you have invested in as a board as much as anyone else um that you would prefer not to uh consider or look at those are the things I would be soliciting in the weekly update well I I'm just going to put it out there right now I don't want any more teacher positions cut hardly at all just saying yeah and I can speak on that is is we're in agreement with that we feel like we're staffed lean and mean at the campuses and so um I

066think further reduction at the teacher level would would negatively impact student learning that's how we we all feel we we we don't want to cut that so we've if you notice the positions that are listed here a lot of them are auxiliary or or non-instructional positions or you know and those positions are important too I think it's important to note that they keep the district running but at the same time the most important position is in the classroom thank you for that uh good to hear send out some emails letting find out what they're doing and are we using the attrition model again on this yes yes I'm going to ask every time yeah yeah that wasn't mentioned either we TRC you yeah that's the model we we use every year I mean that's the

067one we've adopted so that's that's the key is to you know we want everyone to um you know maintain there does come a point um should funding be Frozen and not be provided during this legislative session where conversation may have to take place uh where the district would have to file what's called a financial exigency and once you file that EX see pink slips are permissible at that point it's not anything any administrator wants and I know it's not anything the board wants but if you don't have the funds to support the systems in place that would be a Next Step Beyond threee consecutive years of budget reduction that is correct is I'm just going to ask this out loud is there any possibility that we could sell some of the properties we have that

068can maybe compensate for some make up some of the money we're missing or needing uh and and do we have properties that we cuz I understand we do so sure I'll start that then then Miss Clark can probably add to that we do we do have a portfolio of properties um that could be considered I think that the challenge with that we've we've we've attempted to do some of that in the past um due to the dollar amounts they don't move quickly and so I think that's one item to consider the other is it's a one-time uh Revenue stream and so it it does help us for that one year um but then but then the next year that we can't count that Revenue the second year and so that's the challenge with selling properties

069but we do have properties that are available I don't know um how many are of high interest with developing well all of the ones we're not using and we're just sitting on them if we got rid of them I mean whether it's a onetime deal or not we need to get rid of them in my well I'll tell you that that we've placed several properties for sale and they don't move quickly just either because of their location um but it is a possibility I just know that just in my previous role it was very difficult to sell properties that we have for sale right they're just not liquid it's not moving they're not it takes a certain buyer to but it's money that we do have and even though it's in assets you know we

070we get rid of them we could you know keep a lot of the people we got and you know I just think that it's just if it's just sitting there I mean you know we've been doing this for 4 years we should have already been selling off some of our properties and we're going to continue for the next few years I can tell you that that we're going to be struggling not only this this budget we've been struggling every budget since I've been here we were counting on the legislature to help us out and they have not and I told y'all back then and then that we they're they're not looking to help I'm not in the way that we need help yeah so you know we got to do what we got to do

071to to budget and live within our means to to make it and you know instead of seeing these reports like you gave to us tonight were El Paso and all these other PE are cutting schools cutting positions you know we need to start thinking ahead and start you know bringing all our assets into Focus so that we can cover our budget because if we don't do that and we depend on the legislature it ain't going to happen and just to be clear we have properties for sale but the one the one on Baker where old pper used to be has been been for sale we have a sign up the the old bus barn has been for sale but I'll just say again they they are for sale um we we're they're just not any

072buyers for those properties yeah I understand yes I'm just bringing up for discussion because we're in the middle of budget talks and absolutely you know we can sit here all day and have workshops you know what do we have to talk about I mean what I just mentioned is the only assets that we have so and you can't count on the state you know and especially with governor abet and them uh moving on choice and allowing more money to go to private you know schools and stuff like that but yeah no stone left unturned for sure well I guess just a good reference point just to know where we're at you're you're asking what we've done over the last three years the budget reduction has been we've done that and where we're at today is

073we're 500 students more than we were in 2019 with a budget that's less than it was in 2019 so we've done everything in our powers to as Dr B say streamline our our fiscal approach and um outside of your recommendation to sell properties we own that won't sell I mean there's that's what we're here doing tonight is presenting the uh the other measures that we can actively pursue and and commit to um I'm happy to sell any property we have I mean they're just not moving right now either they're not favorable or they're not are we advertising like on the proper now like if we're selling your house same way you know we need to get hey we're this is gcisd we're trying to sell the the bus barn you know if we get the

074ball rolling I think you know we might be able to you know that's a lot of teachers right there that we can pay I'll give you an example we had one property for sale and someone offered us 10% of its value so we declined of course yeah I'm not saying be stupid I'm just saying hey I'm just saying let's let's put it out there and let's you know let's focus on where we have assets to pull from we don't have anywhere else to pull from We're landlocked we're stuck well that's kind of the point we're making it's up to the state at this point uh any other questions from board members not really a question but I felt like the the budget Workshop we had last year was was helpful and so that would be

075my preference in favor of a workshop as well instead of weekly um is there a preferred date between the two uh mentioned uh well the only thing is on the 24th um I have on my calendar we have an anti-bullying committee meeting at five o' from 5: to 6 but if it was after 6 or different or on the first I'm good and if we need to move that anti-bullying meeting uh meeting for the special called board meeting we can make that adjustment okay so either I'm good either is that anti-bullying one for adults only or is that with the children this that's with the students then I I would recommend we don't do that I mean I'd be in favor of just come from that meeting go straight here if you would miss guy

076it's fine so the other prop April 1 or any other date that you all I'm available I'm not available on the first I'm working nights anybody else okay we'll uh arrange to send dates to the board for consideration in the near future what time would yall would we have the meeting we typically go 30 minutes before normal board time and it's a workshop format on the floor the 24th I believe is a no the 1 is a Tuesday the 24th is that a I think that is a Monday thank you very much we appreciate the presentation good information to consider next up we will have Madame President Fine Arts update this is where the singing and dancing begins I believe doc maybe not that guy we're very expensive just so you know so we are

077happy to have you here this evening presenting with Dr lvan we thank y'all for being here all right thank you guys so very much it's a pleasure to be with you guys today so uh a great welcome to president Barat Tims Dr O'Brien Board of Trustees uh we are very proud of what we're doing in the fine arts department and we've had a history making year so we look forward to sharing that with you and as you can see we have some special guests that we'll introduce on the way along uh I can guarantee to you the only way that this presentation will be dogey is we will present a department of great Educators so that is the only way we will be doy no doy as a department of great educators so nice I

078had to say it twice I like efficiency better you'll find that we're quite efficient as well Mr R find your own words yes sir so uh as we move forward of course we align everything that we do with the Goose Creek uh CISD strategic plan we all are familiar with these goals and the Goose Creek fin our department is made up of five basic divisions music visual art dance theater and L Spirit which is the moniker for cheer as well uh some of the basic Department class offerings that we have you see we under music we have Elementary music band choir orchestra we have visual rap city which is actually an ASL choir that is housed at GCM uh if you haven't had a chance to see them they are amazing and uh we offer

079General music at the Junior School level uh at visual art of course we have Elementary art art 1 through 4 AP and dual credit art dance we have a very successful Junior School Dance program dance one through four at the high school level and of course our fantastic drill teams theater we have Junior School theater as well as high school theater and dual credit offerings for them and we have the cheer elective uh we are very blessed to enjoy uh over the past four years we've actually track some data so the fine arts department has grown approximately 39% over the past four years so uh we're very proud of that and our educators are working extremely hard to uh get more students involved uh in our programs so let's start with music uh of course

080we all know Friday Night Football we've been there we've had a very very successful season all of our bands have performed fantastically bands drill teams cheerleaders uh we've all been involved in a really enjoyed solor stadium and everything that's going on there and I want to share of course a little bit of footage while I'm speaking of the uh Friday Night Lights experience which we have every single year in stalwart stadium so it is a recruiting event where all the Junior School band students and and dance students come and watch the bands perform their competition halftime shows and it's a great event extremely well attended everybody really enjoys it and we have a grand time I do want to give a shout out to uh a former employee but current employee when he gave me

081his word to do it uh Mr Ed martier and also the construction members of the construction Department are responsible for this Drone footage uh I can tell you the year previously uh Ed as a parent just kind of attended and there was construction going on so he had a good excuse to be there and uh I kind of asked him on a whim I like hey would you be willing to fly the Drone cuz I think we'd have some great footage there absolutely so then of course yeah and you you'll see Ed walking through with the 360 camera if you see a a a small man in all black it looks like he has a fishing pole that's Ed and uh Ed gave me his word left the district and follow through on that uh

082in spite of that and was there uh bright and early and even members of the construction team came out as well to help so we had two drones and a 360 camera so they're responsible for this footage so but again it was a great event and this is one like the one time all three bands are in the same spot and are able to show Unity uh have a grand old time and um it's a fantastic thing and I tried to draw this out so you could see all of this footage because this is some great footage but I will not do that so we'll just for the sake of time we'll keep it moving um so of course during fall music we have the marching contest all three high schools receive sweep Stakes ratings

083and all of them advance to area competition in Sol and Ensemble we had uh 140 students advaned to State Sol and Ensemble across all divisions and 121 All Region students so uh something we would like to enjoy as of right now is we have a special guest with us directly to my right uh Miss Mariana Rodriguez she's the assistant band director at Lee High School she is a Lee alumni so she graduated as a former drum major of the Lee High School band went to A&M Commerce and uh it was so nice she had to do it twice and she came back and she is the assistant band director to her band director uh Mr pulan so I wanted her to come and say a quick word about uh the band experience in music all

084right hello good evening uh board of directors it's nice to be here thank you to Dr for the invitation and for the time um as Dr Lan stated I'm an alumni of Lee High School went through the program went through all of the programs here started at days ofala ended up at Horseman started band there and I just fell in love with the saxophone once they put it in my in my hands um it's really really nice and also kind of weird to be on the other side seeing all like the kids doing the things that I was doing when I was in high school and I was the child that would be in the band director's office all the time sitting there hey Mr Bon how are you doing what are you what are

085we doing today in band class all kinds of stuff like that so being on the other side seeing the kids go through the same motions that I did even though the building looks a little different now it doesn't exist anymore um but seeing them go through the same things that I did seeing them build the friendships having them hang out in my office now it's been a pleasure to see and the Band program is doing great job right now it's really nice to see the communication between all three schools we're going to do a jazz festival here in a couple months it's going to be a really good time so yeah the program has done a lot for me I'm grateful to give back to the district that raised me so yeah thank you for

086your time thank you okay thank you Miss Rodriguez go that's it uh here's a few photos of the visual rap city choir that I told you about so they put on some uh events in fact I just saw that they uh scheduled their event they have a Grammys event coming I believe it's on March the 6 that GCM uh got that notification today so that's not reflective in upcoming events so just know that um it's fantastic they they play music and they actually sign along with the music but it's more like theater as well uh they have people host it um there's one familiar face that you'll see in the top right here in just and you'll hear from uh that young man in just a second uh that's a great host of that event

087so that's a fantastic thing that not a lot of people know about uh but miss Bon and Miss L Luna do a fantastic job there they really pour into their students so moving on into theater uh we've had several fall Productions uh juliia Caesar Elf the musical which actually came here for 12 days of Christmas we' have an improv show a fall musical uh the play that goes wrong at uh Sterling but it did go right I promise you and uh also we have minimum performance requirements uh for junior school one play and uh they have that one act play competition but I want to shout out EF green because they went above and beyond and attempted a musical and I had a successful production of The Lion King Jr uh so they did that

088just recently so I want to give them a special recognition for going above and beyond expectations there uh we did have the yearly Junior School one act play contest uh that was won by Highlands Junior School it was very well attended I'm pretty sure uh Mr Richard is behind me very excited in the very back thank you Mr cesy I'm not going to turn around cuz I already know what it looks like probably uh but uh as you can see he's energetic in this picture and he's energetic in the way that he educates students and he's also a student Choice Award winner so uh he is one of the bright stars of our district and uh the highlands group along with all the groups were all spectacular they were absolutely spectacular and the quality was

089amazing uh speaking of amazing uh Julius Caesar was actually chosen to perform at the state thespians Festival so this is held in Grapevine Texas and this is like the Super Bowl of high school theater and only nine theater troops in the entire state are chosen to perform at this Festival I'm G say that one more time only nine say l only nine out of under the SE a large amount of theater troops in the state are selected to perform at this festival and GCM was one of them so uh in order to speak on that for just a second we have the gentleman that played Brutus in the play uh so be sure to face frontward don't don't turn your back um uh the award-winning actor Mr Ruben Fernandez from the GCM Memorial Theater Company

090hey hi um so um from the very start of the production we knew how ambitious the idea of Performing Julius Caesar would be and so we put in the work we persevered and we put on a proud show for our audience and so much in fact that we were invited to perform a 40-minute cut of our show at Texas thepan Festival now to say this was an honor would be the truth albe it an understatement for this experience it really gave us an idea of how much we were able to accomplish with a little bit of teamwork and a whole lot of uh ambition I would guess I would say so um uh me and my company were both forever grateful um for both our directors and the entirety of the GCCISD fine arts department

091because without them we wouldn't have the chance to put on a performance like that um we wouldn't have the opportunity to have a life-changing experience such as the one we had and we wouldn't have the ability to celebrate our yearly tradition such as March being theater in our school's month something we're very passionate about and they are very glad to help support us with my name is Ruben Fernandez I'm from Texas thespian troop 8132 representing Goose Creek Memorial High School and thank you for your time hey well said well spoken you can't tell he's an actor at all right he did good he did good yes sir yes sir was fantastic young man so uh moving forward in the presentation before you move on when is that going to take place that was in mid

092November okay yeah it's already happened it went well yes sir it went fantastic I was there those pictures that you saw are the ones I took from the front row and uh those kids did a marvelous job the production here in locally was great but they cranked it up like six notches for the for the state performance it was absolutely amazing I'm actually starting to get goosebumps thinking about less than 10 schools performed out of a thousand school districts that'd be there one percenters then yes even less than that because it was nine there you go there it is and that was that was from Mr Ria so the Ali theater partnership we enjoy um this is in our second year we've also had uh some residencies that you heard about last year but this

093year one thing that we added along to it is the alley theater has provided professional development every single PLC day for our theater teach and they have really really enjoyed that uh they even have one thing that they really talked about they had a great workshop on neurode Divergent Learners and how to reach those students in a more meaningful way and it's something I think everybody could benefit from but uh that was a fantastic thing that the the theater teachers really noted uh moving into visual art um it is also uh youth art month this month so there's lots of things happening in the month of March and uh we consider we still enjoy great success in the visual art Department as you can see we had our rodeo art reception and uh we hosted

094our normal 500 to 600 people here in the lobby they were packed in I know we had lots of people Miss guy was there Dr O'Brien was there we had lots of lots of guests and uh we enjoyed great Award winners there uh two people that I really want to focus on is Elias aganaga and Marco Alvarez they were both selected for auction this year uh Marco Probably sounds familiar because this this is his second year in a row being selected for auction uh that kind of doesn't happen uh at the time I thought that no one had done it before I think it has only happened one other time in Goose Creek history and it's been a while uh so our students artwork is amazing and we truly enjoy that time also another thing

095at the national Ceramics competition we have Miss Melody McMurray uh that is a picture of her piece there and uh she will be going to a national competition in Salt Lake City Utah and uh that is among the best ceramic work in the nation uh kindergarten through 12th grade so she will be participating as well and she is the daughter of the orchestra director at EF green Miss Cindy McMurray and the orchestra director at GCM Mr Nick McMurray where in Utah is she going Salt Lake City to where in Salt Lake I have no idea okay I was just curious it's it's a conference so it's held at a hotel so they'll be going through there at a Convention Center yes sir uh moving on into U Spirit uh this year all three High School

096cheer squads participated in the state cheer competition uh it was a fantastic time all of our young ladies got a lot out of it and really enjoyed it and uh it was a great learning experience and we look forward to attending every year as a standard of measure every single year another thing that based on the industriousness of the three cheer sponsors we had the big three showcase uh so every single cheer squad in the district descended on GCM and spent the day performing every single Junior school every single high school and uh to showcase the cheer squads and they had a grand time and that was the first time in history this event was held and this is something we're going to enjoy for years to come moving on into dance um another history-making

097event all three High School drill teams scored a sweep Stakes for the first time in gccc history at the tdaa Fall Dance assessment uh these assessments are actually in line with the U music assessment so you get a one two three or four um you do earn sweep Stakes rating similar rubrics and there's a spring assessment in fact the spring assessment is tomorrow uh so our all three of our drill teams will be traveling to Katie for the indoor portion of that um couple things of note uh the celebrities just won a grand championship at their last competition and the star officers just W grand champion at their last competition as well big shout out to these ladies because every year they do the dance spectacular at leag college that is extremely well attended um

098this is where they preview all of their competition routines and the community comes out to see those things uh a couple people I do want to shout out before I get too deep is and they I full disclosure I tried to get them to be here but they actually have practice today uh we have two of our staff members that are actually clutch City dancers for the Houston Rockets one of them is pictured in their in their Miss Galvan formerly Miss bird song uh both of them are GCCISD Alum so we want to shout them out as well um and here's a couple pictures from the dance competition season as you can see the girls have done an amazing job and also uh as we do every single year we enjoy to have three tdea

099All State dancers uh these young ladies do a fantastic job and in fact we have one of them here sitting on the pan panel today on the far end we have Miss reys Harvey who is the colonel of the Sterling Stars that's going to speak a little bit about the dance program hello my name is Ree Harvey I'm a senior and Colonel of the Sterling Stars I'm a four-year varsity team member and a Gentry Junior High dance student as well as an Allstate dancer the dance program has shaped me into the person I am today I have not only learned the skills and love for dance but more importantly I have learned to be responsible and that that with hard work much can be accomplished this program has also provided friendships a Sisterhood and a

100support support system that will follow me long after I graduate being within the program has given myself multiple students many opportunities to achieve goals we didn't realize we had a chance of reaching the teaching experience and time spent as students of this program will allow us to graduate better students and young adults even through all the dancing the life lessons and things as me well that is what I will hold with me forever this wouldn't have been possible without the fine arts department thank you okay thank you guys so much um due to their request because they don't want to sit up here with me the entire time uh guys you can go back to your seats thank you so much I was trying to think of a smoother way to do it and it's

101like it's it's just not going to work so they're they did good it I promise this is a smooth uh moving right along one thing that I do want to mention is our 12 Days of Christmas that we have every year at admin um it's a fantastic time and we'll see we had uh some special participants if you look in your top right hand corner you will see the dynamic duo of Mr flood and Mr Foxworth who were roped in to play in the Lee High School orchestra uh Mr flood is playing the finger symbols and Mr Foxworth is playing a very mean rain stick and uh I believe they're going to go on tour at some point I think it's Splash and drizzle or something I think is the name Blues House of Blues

102here they come uh they'll be they'll be appearing at uh venues near you you can you can book them um but it was a fantastic time they really enjoyed that and the kids really enjoyed participating with them uh speaking of enjoyment I want you to look in the bottom leftand corner if I can be serious for a moment uh for the first time we had the Lee High School life skills dance class come and participate in the 12 Days of Christmas and it was something they really worked hard on and I wanted to have this picture because if you don't know what Joy looks like not happiness not contentment but real Joy like palpable joy that is what was on the face of every single solitary student that participated in this and I know we

103haven't talked about the Arts effect or the hashtag Arts effect in a while but that's what that is the look on that young man's face who was having a very good time by the way uh that is what Joy looks like and that's what the Fine Arts can provide for students uh moving into academics I want to make a few notes uh very quickly uh of course normally half of our high school top 10 are high performing High uh fine artart students there is no difference in that um I do want to make just one note about some data and a data comparison so National Data shows that students that participate in four years of Fine Arts courses score 150 points higher on the SAT than their counterparts that's roughly 99.4% here in Goose Creek

104performing art students scored 99.4% higher than their counterparts on the spring star assessment so we are consistent in the academic performance nationally here in the here in Goose Creek so our students not only perform on the stage on the football field and in their performance venues they also perform in the classroom uh some things coming up in the spring we have uh spring assessment concert and site reading uh throughout all music divisions uh this week not only is Spring Dance assessment we also have Middle School and High School orchestra going on this week uh kind of in tandem with a little bit of overlap but in March uh we are very book solid so our kids are going to be all over the place uh high school went act plays State vase which is the

105visual art Scholastic event uh that will be taking place as well as all the uh spring programs and state Sol and Ensemble uh that normally happens over Memorial Day I would be remiss if I did not make you aware of this just so you know that the state legislature has in introduced House Bill 172 and Senate Bill 549 which introduced the need for dedicated Fine Arts funding to the public education Finance system we've kind of been here before a couple years ago they've introduced similar leg legislation uh in a nutshell it's they kind of want it to work similar to CTE just the idea that CTE is very expensive it takes more money to run a CTE program and Fine Arts is expensive and it takes more money to run a fine arts program uh

106as of right now actually updated it this morning uh House Bill 172 has been filed as of uh the 27th and it's actually gone to committee and uh Senate Bill 549 has kind of been sitting there in committee for a while as well so just so you know that that's moving right along and that concludes our presentation do you guys have any questions not really hopefully it will mean an increase I'll be honest with you Mr clim there's not a lot of language in the bill itself uh having pull it up pulling it up literally it just says we want a dedicated allotment full stop so there's no they haven't really figured out how they want to do it yet yes sir it just means more money for you guys right for the Department yes

107sir it should hypothetically for example you know weighted funding is like $1.3 doar per dollar of of academic funding so that would be weighted funding for some other event so they're asking for the same thing well once we put Matt flood and his counterpart on the road we'll take some of those Pro put some of those proceeds to the Fine AR Department here we go there it is oh you hear what he said Matt Matt you hear what he said he said might be a deficit jeez my mic was off thank you Dr lean y'all y'all are tearing my boss up man I need y'all to be easy thank you all very much our next superintendent report is titled Goose Creek cic's educational specification standards presented by our director of facilities and construction Miss Brenda

108Garcia welcome ma'am good evening um that's going to be hard to follow I'm I'm so sorry thanks a lot Dr lvan um let me pull up I don't think your presentation's boring Miss Garcia some people get excited to learn about educational specifications okay good I'm I'm glad that would be me uh good evening uh president bar Tims Dr O'Brien and Board of Trustees I'm here tonight to um give you some information about our educational specifications for Goose Creek so I want to start off by giving you some information in 2021 uh the tea adopted a new set of um school facility standards for construction uh under title 19 and so these standards establish um they establish a standard for design and construction uh for for space and uh basic square footage requirements for our facilities

109the it this standard also um the tea also required the board of of T I'm sorry the Board of Trustees to approve um this educational specifications the uh the Ed specs are written program and they are the guides that we design our our facilities by whether it be new facilities or major Renovations okay so um so what do they what do they have what do the Ed specs have they have uh information about our instructional programs and also the configuration of support spaces so for example what type of programs um should should be included in specific camp in a specific campus type those are the type of uh the type of information that's in there so uh one of the things might be does a campus have space for one counselor versus two counselors depending

110on an elementary school or a junior school for example um they also uh outline Educational Concepts and then the standards um they help to provide some consistency provide some Equity from campus to campus so we've built some new elementary schools recently and um they kind of have the the same standard and so for example if we were go going back to do any major renovations to older facilities we would look at these standards and and try to as much as possible uh achieve these standards that have been set in place so I wanted to point out a couple of things that we did um to to arrive to the standards and um we went through a a strategic process in order to arrive at the standards we um have information from District leadership uh principles

111and then uh most importantly input from students as well and in this uh picture that you see here we're doing some experience mapping an experience mapping exercise where we're looking at um how spaces relate to one another in a specific campus we also reviewed the typology of spaces um so we looked at visual examples of learning environments we discussed um what type of spaces would be beneficial to what we want Goose Creek's future learning to look like in each of these type of spaces and then um from these activities we really the the result was um some overarching themes that um we we achiev from our students and then from our staff but if if you look at both of these lists um they they really have a lot of similarities um things like Pride

112uh belonging welcoming uh inspiring and calm spaces these are the type of uh spaces that our staff and our students want to learn in so the result of all of this work was um our educational specifications it's a 45 page document and I believe that you do have a copy of that as well and so moving forward this document will be used to um to achieve um our our learning goals for our educational spaces in any future capital projects do you have any questions yes please so is the the tea came out with their standards in under title is this similar to board policy where we get laws and then we have to write local policies as how we're going to carry them out or did you just have to regurgitate what the state gave

113you to make it look like it's our own it's actually very very similar to that their their requirement was that we set standards so I'll give you an example um and I've done a comparison across many different districts some districts we have a 45 five page document and we wanted it this way it's a lot more high level it gives us a little bit of flexibility um within our project planning there are districts that have like volumes one two and three and get down into uh every detail about every corner of a space and so we thought that was a little too overwhelming and we wanted to have a little bit more flexibility so adopting this document we're checking a box for tea it's going to be another living document it is is a it

114is a living document and we have to come back to you in 5 years to approve another one so we'll be able we'll revisit it and make it's not a sh sitter no okay great thank you no any other question any other questions that's it thank you so much thank you thank you Miss Garcia okay we will now move to uh number seven on our agenda the ction items and we will allow um Dr O'Brien to read all the items and then after that uh any items that the board members would like to pull for discussion or separate consideration then we would do that after he reads those thank you Dr o' Ryan thank you madam president number 7A one order cancelling election for single member districts uh number one two four and five declaring

115each unopposed candidate elected trustee in districts 1 2 4 and five in accordance with section 2.53 A of the election code I think that calls for a round of applause sorry maybe we should vote for that first yeah number two pull that one low attendance waivers for Travis Elementary on February 12th 20125 number three Goose Creek C's educational specification standards number four blue learning is option for Math and English language arts curriculum materials and number five tax refunds Administration brings these consent aobs to the board for consideration recommending approval okay would the board member would like to pull any items or separate uh consideration or discussion I would like to pull 7 A4 for discussion I have a comment do I have to pull it though we're pulling four pulling four not on four I

116mean on uh on one on one on canceling the election can I just make a comment surely sure we have four more years of this wonderful stuff now it's just wanted to point that out okay is the low attendance waiver that water day yes sir it was the utility district not not weather related but there was low attendance at that one campus okay sure okay then I'll make a motion to accept one two three and five as presented I'll second move okay okay we have a motion and second uh by Mr clim and second by Miss guy all in any more discussion all in favor raise your hand unanimously approved now we we will move to you uh Mr Martinez for uh your discussion Miss Jack Miss Jackson you're welcome to come up Dr Martinez

117anyone else Miss Callahan Mr Martinez yes so um we've heard am I speaking into this we have heard um um concerns from the public about um some of the content included in um this action item the the blue bonnet learning as an option for Math and English language arts particularly with um religion and we've heard you know a couple speakers today talk about the religious aspect of um 784 and so I combed through the blue bonnet uh curriculum that is found that you can find on GCC and I really was not able to find anything that really stuck out to me as being problematic um so like for instance there is some reference to religion as um you can see on page 183 of the fourth grade rla unit 1 um and it is um

118a passage called um stick Keen by John mure and in this this um passage there is mention of a missionary but not any particular religion that the missionary is a part of and then uh going on we see that um we have experts excerpts from letters from Heaven um by Lydia Gil which is in unit three in the in the fourth grade and so with a title like that you would expect there to be overt religious themes uh in the the ex that are provided to the students but I could not really like there was no mention of a specific religion there was um mention of of an afterlife or of of uh spirits but not you know the th those things are found in many religions you know all across the world so that

119it can't really be seen as um a direct um uh instance of specifically talking about Chris Christian religion or or what have you so so um I was wondering if there is any um of the curriculum that you could point to to for me to see um that really would be concerning uh especially in this religious context I take it first okay so what I would say is we come through it as well and that's what Miss flushi was explaining the last time there's only three to 6% and most of it is exactly what you're talking about the one that we did find was um they use the song Amazing Grace so we discussed that as you know kind of a group and if we we would have a committee together that would say um

120we would just replace that hymn with something else that wasn't directly related as as you know Christianity but most of it is in the aspect of History right I did see um some more curriculum about the Middle Ages and uh of course it talks about um how the church was a major part of um the Renaissance and um you know there's no objection there that's that's history um you you are correct and I would like to to remind the the group here that it is amplify which is what we have already been using for three years with no um concerns from our parents what we do like about this is that it is out there for anyone to see so if a parent saw um some kind of passage or something they had concern with

121and they have an active participation that they can say hey I want my child to see something different for this or I have a concern so everything is out there for the public okay that that's very reassuring thank you you're welcome another example would be the Golden Rule uh we learn in kindergarten right that's found in 20 different religions for example so thank you so in the interest of transparency how much is this going to cost so the reason we worded it on there as a possible is because we have seen the amount for um math and we're going to be fine with the math component we're still waiting on the additional information for the um reading language arts component and that's why we left it that way there was a tea meeting that they

122actually went through all the calculations with us I'm trying not to make because you're going to make me laugh right now they went through everything to assure us that it is going to be covered we also met with um Sharon Jason which is overseas our IMA and we do not foresee any concerns at all at first we did and we um had an extensive meeting with uh Region 4 that was kind of clear as mud to be honest but the TA meetings have been more um clear and I do feel like they're really wanting us to have a structured curriculum that focuses on the alignment to the star are so I do feel like it's going to be covered but we're wanting to proceed with caution to make sure sure what about ancillary materials that

123would include that they have the $20 additional for print but there's no way that we can say that we're going to get everything for every single student right so right now we're calculating um 20 students more for the regular gened student material and five students more than what we're calculating for the bilingual students do you anticipate any chance I mean I know there's always a chance but is there any large chance that we're going to get to November and suddenly we're going to have to buy $5 million worth of blue toothpicks I don't foresee that for for manipulations or whatever I don't see it like I think of the old C- scope and they had all those kits you know so that doesn't seem to be a issue at this point for that but we

124do know that we're not going to be able to buy every single um you know alternative material out there we're going to have to pick and choose accordingly and you're putting that carefully in your budget it's in our IMA funds okay so thank you you're welcome I just want to say I never had any concern about it whatsoever with any content and um you know I know that the state of Texas and governor and the legislature we're trying to improve our scores and schools and it's something that we needed and so there was never any concern thank you'all for doing what y'all are doing thank you anybody else have a question liia didn't me leave anything okay all right thank you'all actually I I do have a comment it just and it's nothing that anybody

125here can take care of but anyway it makes me sad that we're having to kind of purchase material to teach to ATT test that really makes me sad for our students but anyway that's beside the point I would agree with you there as well maybe there isn't there legislation out there to do away with this test we hope that's going to be that way for years to come it just thank you all we appreciate all the update Mr Martinez everything was satisfied for you on your question as we proceed for yeah I just have one more comment and this isn't something that you have to answer um about being uh concerned about some of the uh curriculum in Blue Bonnet um I do confi find it cons a little bit concerning that there there was

126a hymn uh to be taught just because um like we have been assured this isn't priz but as I said before um the hymn itself is a form of priz because it does um you know Champion the the Christian religion and it is uh specifically for um uh the preaching about how you know God is great or um uh this is is is a true religion and what have you so um I think we definitely need to have those committees in place to make sure that there uh is nothing in this that would uh be discriminatory to any other religion uh that attend our school and what I would say to that is that we do have that in place and Miss Jackson acknowledged that that hym would be removed by the policies that we

127or procedures we talked about previously Mr Martinez I uh applaud you for digging deep and Diving deep into this uh I think one of our speakers earlier I think as Mr rice said when something like this comes up taglines are thrown out in the media and people make assumptions and they don't do what you did and I think when you dig deeper into it and see these facts for yourself um they're not what you're led to believe and and I appreciate all three speakers and Mr Martinez for you digging deep into it like you did because you you kind of confused me when you spoke on it today versus when you did a month ago or at our last meeting so it's good stuff and it's in context with the history of our country is

128all I'm going to add I mean if you know the history of our country and what it what our country country is based on then you realize you know why the context is in the in the book The Way It Is and everything I saw in there it was strictly referenced it's not preaching or teaching it all right as a matter of an being a consent agenda item I'm sorry I'll move to approve thank you second third third a motion by Miss guy second by Mr R um all in favor please raise your hand one two three four five six and all oppose any abstention one abstention it's been approve with six to one in one extension thank you okay we will move to 7B um Dr o Brian for future board agenda items board

129training and board meetings outside of um Miss Clark's presentation for a future meeting um budget Workshop okay and then we also need to propose meeting uh for May for the unopposed election uh could the board members when we go in and close session would you look at May 12th on your calendar and see how you look on that date for it to be we had a a broad range but looking at some other individuals who need to be here on that day their calendar had was available for the 12th if you don't have it just look at that six through the 14th and see what you may have when we go to the back and close session okay we don't have to do it right now but we'll review it more because I have another

130date that we need to talk about for the superintendent so just as a reminder what what the president just said was in May it's a hectic time of the school year we're trying to wrap up the year preparing for graduations and what have you and um it'd be less burdensome for the board as well for us to have only one meeting versus two in the month of May and it's um on a Monday the 12th is so we're kind of used to Mondays so that's what we're looking at that date as well thank you okay now the board will now and we will move to agenda item uh C uh we will now the board uh will now recess in a closed session pursuant to one or more of the following section of the Texas

131government code section 551.071 07 72 073 074 075 08283 084 and 087 no action will be taken while the board is in closed session the time is now 7:59 thank you the board will now uh reconvene in an open session the time is now 8:56 p.m. no action was taken while the board was in closed session Dr O'Brien I'm going to uh proceed with you to uh for item um e on the agenda e f yes ma'am uh consideration of personnel we bring before the board for consideration this evening uh to approve the elections and accept the resignations and retirements as presented I'll move to approve motion has been made by second second by uh Mr clim uh could you all show your hand in favor all in favor raise your hand any oppose any

132extensions approved by all thank you all right the two administrative positions include a selection of a licensed specialist in school psychology intern that' be Kellis Roberts approve I'll second motion was moved by Mr clim second by Miss guy uh all in favor please show right hand any oppose any exstension I approved Administration brings before the board uh to approve the selection of a director of counseling and College and Career Readiness Miss Jennifer Fiera I'll move to approve second Miss Sky uh move to approve make the motion Mr Guy Mr kesy second Mr guy oh I'mma turn my mic off what I want to say okay all in favor raise your hand any oppose no it approved all seven thank you item F Madame President is consideration of an adoption of a resolution approving contingent fee

133legal service contract including um finding uh findings needed for submission of contingent fee Legal Services agreement and request for expedited review by the Texas Attorney General Administration recommends approval of item F I'll move to approve Mr guy you got a second Mr I'm afraid to now second Mr C Mr miss the motion Mr all in favor raise your hand is getting late okay I know how to fix it record approve thank you and the complimentary G consideration and Adoption of contingent fee Legal Services agreement with Thompson and Horton LLP Island and bonnan PC and ohanlan dith and Castile PC so moved Mr Guy Mr C made the motion of Miss guy second all in favor raise your hand please I'm glad everybody right hand getting mad at okay that didn't fix it unanimous knowing me

134I hope the real Mr guy is sleep consideration of districtwide intruder detection audit report findings alternative security measures required Administration recommends approval move to approve second okay Mr C pleas moved Mr clim second all in favor raise your hand please unanimously thank you all Madame President Administration uh would make that next motion for adjournment okay there have been no further business before this board this meeting is adjourn at 8:59 p.m. good night :00