Granbury ISD Board Meeting - October 20, 2025

001I heard a speaker. >> This is what Stacy was saying. Speaker. testing. One, two, three. All right. The time is now 402 and I'm calling uh call this meeting of the Granberry Independent School District to order. Let the record show that a quorum of board members is present, that this meeting has been duly called, and that a notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. The board will now adjourn into executive session pursuant to the following sections. Uh section 551.072 discussion of purchase, exchange, lease or value of real property. Uh discussion of officers, employees and personnel matter uh to deliberate the appointment, employment. uh superintendent evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline or dismissal of public officer or employees. Uh staff recommendations. Um the time is

002now 4:03. muted. two. The board is reconvening following the executive session and we will now go into our facilities assessment workshop. right there. Sorry. I'm excited to introduce Scott Bean, who will be leading the overview of the facility assessment and was part of the committee that conducted it. First of all, I want to thank the board of trustees and the administration for letting us come in and work with you, work with your staff uh to begin and this facility assessment for the district overall. And we're excited that we were be able to be a part of that. Uh and we're going to just jump into a few things and roll with it and let you know some of the findings. Uh tonight's primarily an overview of what the dashboard is and what those are. We

003will provide you as board members a login uh this evening or tomorrow morning first thing to where you'll have access to all of the data on that dashboard and you can start to dive in on that for your district specifically to to where you can see what all is there, what's identified and deficiencies and and those areas as well. So, I will assume I think I have the clicker. We'll get rolling. Uh my name is Scott Beam. As uh Haley said, I am a former superintendent of schools for about 17 years. Uh been in public ed for 31 as a a teacher first uh with the a mechanics degree on that side of it and then uh taught a for a while, became an elementary principal and then got really wild and jumped into the

004superintendency. uh enjoyed uh being around kids in that part of it and East Texas and central Texas. Uh Anderson Shyro was my last district, a smaller 3A school outside of College Station area uh where I was superintendent when I retired in 23 and uh went to work for TASBY the very next day. honestly traveled down and did that and uh they had done some work for us and they needed some help and I felt the need to move forward and go into that direction and so I became a facility consultant with TASBY to work with school districts about their facilities and what we can do to help you out with those. So, a little bit about me on my background. Uh, we have the the header, the guy heading on that horse right there is

005my son. Uh, he's a graduate of Weatherford College and, uh, that rope is amazing cuz it paved his way through college completely. And, uh, it's amazing what the little things do. He works in Granberry at Fastback Rope Company right now after he graduated from there. So, uh, he drives to Granberry every day and it's been a pleasure to work here over the last few months and I could have lunch with him occasionally. So, it's a little bit about me. Uh, what do we do in a facility assessment, educational facility assessment at TASBY, uh, a lot to be real honest. We evaluate a lot of categories overall for for each facility. And in Granberry, I broke the facilities into 27 different facilities uh for the district. Uh which we we group some buildings together if their

006ages are pretty close. Uh if they're independent campuses, we keep them separate. Uh an example would be Emma Robertson's gym is a lot newer than Emma Robertson's elementary campus. So it's broken apart to where it's two different facilities when we start to look at that. Uh what do we look at? We look at the site. We look at the building systems and components, safety, security, educational adequacy, support spaces, ADA accessibility, staff wants and needs because you had staff, principles, administrators, athletic director that provided us with initial surveys of their facilities or the areas that they're responsible for and we evaluate that as well. And then portable buildings, we don't really assess those because we do not believe that's a great educational setting in our side of it and we recommend districts attempt to put permanent

007structures up for their students. We know it's not always possible. Uh and sometimes you have to do what you have to do as a district and portable buildings are the only resource that you have. Exterior areas that we look at as I mentioned site is the size. Is it large enough to handle all the traffic flow? Is it large enough to handle what student activities may be going on on that campus? Is the parking area uh acceptable? Is it accessible for people that want to come and visit your campus? How's the topography and drainage on that campus? Is water moving away from that building or is water moving towards that building? Pedestrian services, our sidewalks, do we have trip hazards? Do we have areas that we have concerns about if people visit our campuses overall

008to handle the pedestrian flow in and out of the district? Uh street traffic, vehicular traffic, how do how do our parents get to our campuses? Is the flow okay? A lot of that uh when we do assessments in the summer, we don't get to see. So we rely heavily on our surveys from our principles on how the traffic flows on and off the campuses. And then canopies are students covered uh between buildings if they have to walk outside or not. Uh that's not something that's very important in all districts by any means and that's a local district decision on how you want to deal with canopies. Additionally, uh the meat and potatoes is building envelope, roofs, foundations, walls, doors, and windows. Uh we talk about the building envelope extensively in our assessments and uh because

009that's where mitigation and outdoor environment comes into our buildings which begins to deteriorate those buildings and it causes us to have a lot more uh mechanical issues or maintenance issues in those buildings. So we pay a lot of attention to roofs, foundations, walls, doors and windows. ADA compliance. I am not a compliance officer, but I have a high level understanding of ADA to make sure that we meet the ADA recommendations that we should. Few of those could be noted in your district as well. Playground, athletic, and PE spaces. Uh we evaluate those. I will be honest, our assessment is primarily for educational facilities, not necessarily for athletic facilities. So you'll see some numbers that may look a little different on football fields or field houses or things of that nature, but uh uh we still

010do uh cost cost evaluations on those the same way. Then campus security systems. Uh with all the safety concerns nowadays, a campus is never going to be safe enough at the end of the day. So we're going to find a few areas that we can work on in all districts. Uh personally, I've worked with districts and talked to the safety security officers and they say we're 100% as good as we can be. I'm like, I promise you we can be better because we can never do enough in safety security for our students. Uh so we're going to continue to to identify those areas and work through that interior areas that we evaluate. Uh same way with ADA compliance. Uh a great example of that is water fountains. Do we have a high water fountain and

011a low water fountain at every station where there is water fountains? Uh heating, ventilation, air conditioning, our HVAC systems, how are they operating? our electrical infrastructure with our lighting and our communications and a data infrastructure. Uh are we do we have LED lighting and how many of our lightings are are our light fixtures are covered up to to make the room a touch darker for our teachers or students or whatever else. uh where we can adjust those with quality LED lighting, plumbing infrastructure and restrooms, drinking fountains, flooring, what they are, doors, walls, cabinets, ceilings, campus security systems again internally and then life safety systems of lighted exits. A lot of schools it it's amazing don't have lighted exits throughout schools. Uh your campuses were were very well equipped with that. No worries on that side

012of it. Additionally, uh additional areas in interior uh specialized learning spaces with sped rooms and life skills rooms. Your libraries are the adequately sized gyms, athletic facilities, science labs, are they adequately sized and equipped? Band, choir, music spaces, art spaces, computer labs, workspaces for our teachers, cafeterias, and kitchens. Uh is that space large enough to feed the number of kids going through the line daily? uh is our nurses clinic towards the front of the office area or close to the office area when we have an issue going on with a student and then our reception space and administrative spaces where are they located within the campuses. So as you can see that's a lot of information a lot of data that we look at overall uh for your evaluation there were four of us in

013district uh we began the evaluation on June 3rd 2025 and I completed all the uh the dash dashboard work and all the notes and all the summaries September 24th of 25 it was myself our manager of the North team, J James Ree, an environmental uh specialist with TASBY, Jason Buster, and also uh a guy that's moving over to the planning side and the facility side is Jason. And then we had an intern out of college that worked with us that collected data, measuring rooms and documenting uh details of uh what materials were in every room uh named Reese Moore that helped us out with that. Uh so uh it was a a extensive process overall. I was in campus on campuses personally for about 20 days. During the time frame we were there. Uh I

014inputed the majority of the data myself into the dashboard as far as writing summaries and a specialized report side of of the facility findings. Uh and I think that at the end of the day and I believe at the end of the day, the data and the resources that are provided through this assessment is going to be very vital to the district and future planning for this district and to how to deal with maintenance and operations pieces of the puzzle for what we have. Our facility assessment uh is a like for like. So when I walk into a room and I measure it or I identify the materials, I'm identifying a carpet floor, a uh tiled floor, a tiled wall, or like if I'm in a bathroom, it could be a ceramic tile wall in

015a bathroom. It could be a 4x two ceiling tile or 2 x two ceiling tile or it could be a deck. uh we identify every one of those types of materials in our dashboard to where we have a complete line of of of what materials are in this district and on every campus. And actually there's approximately 172 possible building components that we evaluate in a district. Obviously not every district or every campus has all of those but we have the possibility to do that many. So moving forward when uh you get your login this will be the screen that you will see in the beginning. Your username will be your email address and then you will have a password uh that you will create uh when you get the email from Nexus which is the

016company that created our dashboard for us. And you'll reset your password and then you'll begin to have access to the live data on the dashboard. I'm going to go through a few of the uh example pages and then we'll dive into one of the campuses here in a minute. Just a little bit of it uh just to to show you around and how to move around uh through the through the dashboard. So this is the homepage that you'll see in the beginning. You can see and I'm I'm struggling to read it. Uh uh all the information in the center is uh where the campus is located, how many square feet the campus is, if you were to replace that facility, how much it would cost in today's dollars based on square footage to replace that

017type facility. Uh the condition budget, which is the deficiencies that were determined through the assessment, the things to bring it up to a new or like new status. uh total enrollment of the campus and then capacity numbers of the campuses. All of that is there. Then down towards the bottom, each campus would be listed for you to click on to get that information for each campus. Across the top right, uh priority projects. If you were to click on that tab, when we are live, all the priority projects that were identified through our assessment would be listed on the far left column. uh any additional projects will be in the middle column and then on the far right once we complete projects in a year from now when I come back and the district's completed projects

018will have a completed column that'll be identified and we can mark those off. Additionally, probably one of the best tabs in there is the HVAC tab on the on the next one over on the right where it's going to have every HVAC unit uh in the district, its age, model number, serial numbers if we could read that. uh and it gives a color-coded uh view of exactly how old your HVACs are for every facility in the district. Uh we use a partner with us, E3 Energy Solutions, uh to help collect all that HVAC data and they are a an affiliate associate with TASBY and in doing that with us and they help us out. The next tab over is the roof assessment tab or the roof tab. All the rooms from every campus will be

019listed there uh as you scroll down and they're identified what's going on with them, their age as well. We'll have a running number of age on each on each roof to where you know when replacement should happen. For example, a white single ply membrane roof has about a 15-year life expectancy. How many of those roofs are over 15 years old and the district needs to be planning for replacements of those? That'll be identified in that tab. And then there's pictures as well. Uh facility update survey uh will roll to Dr. Vin. She'll probably do that at the end of uh about eight months from now, nine months from now before I come back in a year to do the ver first year annual walk. She will fill out an annual update survey identifying everything that

020the district was able to take care of that is on that assessment. And then I will come on campus and district or in district and walk facilities and uh verify that those projects were done and mark them off of the assessment at the end. Equipment list. It's a new tab. That's why that's uh I forgot about that one. We had districts uh especially larger districts that we've been doing this with want another place to input their own equipment for capital outlay type equipment and uh so we added this tab uh we can sub submit and send you a uh spreadsheet where you can upload your own equipment data go into that tab directly to where if you got boilers maybe you have tractors and lawn equipment major capital outlay type equipment that you want to

021keep track of of age you can upload that data uh into that link place uh in that tab there and you'll have all that for your district as well. So that's relatively new uh to the dashboard. Priority projects, as I mentioned a while ago, everything's listed. Left side has the campus name and each priority project that was identified. Center column is additional projects when funds become available. And then the far right one completed Hback summary tab. As I mentioned, we'll have every campus. Actually, this one had to be modified a bit. And this is just a snip obviously of of what it would look like. But when I first did Actton Daycare and uh had the dashboard completed, uh the HVAC hadn't been replaced yet on that campus. HVAC had all been replaced now on

022that campus. It's been updated and republished to where it's all green on that uh daycare facility. roof summary page. Same way what I described, all the details, uh square footage of the roof, what's going on with it, what our recommendation is based on its age or uh how far past uh replacement it may be will be identified there as well. Going to a specific site. So, if we clicked on Granberry High School, the main building site, again, looks very similar to similar to the district page, but this is only going to be data for that specific facility on the high school. Again, this is a snip, so we're going to only get a portion of it, but you're going to see the square footage of that. It's nearly 400,000 square foot of that high school

023building, which is a large building for sure. a replacement cost of that condition budget of that fill condition index which is a ratio of replacement costs versus what we're saying are deficiencies in a condition budget that need to be identified and addressed. Again, the tabs at the top uh priority projects, HVAC, and uh roof assessments are all across the tabs at the top the same way as the district page. If we look at facility findings tabs, here's where we're going to have the the data. You know, that campus was originally built in 73. It's been renovated in 79, 85, 95, 96, 97, and 2016, if I remember correctly. Uh, and is in very good condition uh overall in the big picture with its age. Uh, so uh you've done a you've done a good job

024with that for sure. Square footage across the top. Replacement cost is a big number. And uh we can explain some of that in a little bit. Condition budget and then the FCI is 5% which is a very low number overall for a campus and a and a very good number. Underneath that you'll see the green, yellow, and red on uh issues. If it's good and it's green, it doesn't there's really no issues that we need to be thinking about addressing yet. If it's yellow, we have a few concerns. It's fair. Maybe some issues that we need to address in the next 3 to 10 years, 5 to 10 year. 3 to 10 years. And then if it's red, there's probably some areas that we need to address in zero to three years uh on that

025campus that we want to look at in a deeper uh deeper dive and deeper uh intel into it. Facilities details page where uh I've described this honestly is where the rubber meets the road. Uh on the far left is where you're going to see all the identified areas or all the identified building components that we uh address or we look at. The green dot, same way. no issues going on. Yellow dot, minor or moderate concerns. And then red dot, we have major concerns or we need to do some replacements there. But it has the uh the type of building structure, whatever it may be. And we'll say vinyl, tile, or carpet, something like that. And then it'll be graded on or have much percent of the building. Then it'll be graded on none, minor, moderate,

026major, or replace. And then it's going to provide an automated budget estimate for that. And then in the notes is going to be kind of a detail of what's going on with that area and what's taking place with that area overall. Hback for the high school campus, a snip of that. Same way. Uh great data there. Honestly, in in my opinion, the HVAC uh tab is probably the best tab overall to where district can see a snapshot of exactly what the age are. And one of the most expensive things that you have to deal with and plan for is HVAC in your district. And then the roof uh looks just like the the the district page. It's just specific to the two roofs like on the high school. The majority of it's a white single

027ply roof. There's a very very very small section of gravel roof over the audi uh the auditorium entrance right there that's never been replaced overall and and it doesn't actually have anything going on to inside. So, I'm not sure I would do a whole lot with that personally besides just trying to make sure it doesn't leak and become a problem structurally underneath that for the sopets in that area of it. All right. Uh, we're going to get into the homepage. Yes, sir. And we're going to go live on a few things. All right, thanks for bearing with me. Let me get Cranberry up. All right, we're going to start through the dropdown. We'll start with a drop down. Go to elementary and let's pick on actin elementary briefly where y'all can see that overall. Again,

028it's going to look just like I showed you on the snips of the high school. uh on this campus specifically, the map on the left is a live map with the GPS coordinates on that where the exact location of that campus is. So, you'll always have that. We name the campus, the address of the campus, the year it was built, and then all the renovations that were taken uh had taken place on that campus. 90,000 square foot campus replacement cost is about 51 million and a condition budget of about 12,180,000 which gives us an FCI score of approximately 29%. Which is >> Scott you explain that um that percentage because you've said it a couple times. want to make sure that we understand what the facility condition >> uh it's the the condition budget the

029deficits or the issues going on with the campus where I've identified findings that need to be addressed eventually or I feel like as a consultant need to be addressed. >> So the lower the number the better the building. >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yep. Uh that's just when when that number gets into the 70 mark, we start talking to districts about replacement of buildings because it's going to cost more for the district to put money into it than it is the actual buildings worth. And that's what we want to look at. And y'all have very small handful of those buildings and you don't utilize those a lot honestly in your district. uh executive summary would be at the very bottom and uh you know I'll read it if y'all don't mind. Actually constructed in 78

030with additions renovations in 90 91 2001 and 2016 portable classrooms added in 98 2001 most recently in 21. Campus is currently operating at approximately 92% capacity. While the overall condition of facility is good, it requires consistent annual maintenance particularly in hight touch areas such as walls, floors and ceilings. Given the high utilization rate and reliance on portable classroom, it's recommended that the district begin planning for permanent campus addition to include increase classroom space. Additionally, 35% of the total HVAC tonnage is at or beyond life expectancy and should be scheduled for replacement. Roof systems are also approaching the end of their lifespan and a proactive plan should be developed to address these needs with regular maintenance, target investment and priority projects. Facility has potential to continue to serve the district effectively for 15 to 20 more

031years. That's at a minimum honestly at that uh every one of the facilities will have a summary similar to that of some sort giving my recommendations ultimately of what's going on and what the district can focus on. Facility findings tab. Again, it looks just like what we saw in the snip. A lot of details at the top. The condition assessment where uh I rate those. And I'm just going to go through a few of those. Like exterior, there's some stucco cracking on the exterior of that building uh where they're detaching and they're coming off. And that's just building integrity. We don't want our building uh exterior to to have uh insects or water migration into that building. So addressing those, fixing those uh the building envelope of the brick and the masonry work where we

032have some uh issues going on with needs to be regrouted and repointed around there to where we don't have water going in. Very simple, no major things going on, but things that need to be addressed. Overall, as I you can see, foundation uh issues. There's uh no concerns. Nothing I saw on cracked foundations or uh masonry that was cracked through the exterior wall. I'm saying a brick that's cracked in the center of it. Probably there's some foundation issues going on on that campus. And you'll see some recommendations in here that you probably need to bring an engineer in here and do some studies with that. Find out what really is going on. What's the root cause? There's a lot of black land around here. you're going to have that happen. Land's going to move. Things

033are going to happen. So, trying to to get a hold of that early on. Again, sitewise, uneven pedestrian spaces produce some potential hazards of tripping. Uh address the roof at the bottom of that. And then we go to interior wise. Overall, we're talking about uh refreshing wall surfaces, painting the walls on a regular basis, having a schedule for that. I believe y'all have some pieces of that schedule already in place in your district and uh so I know that that's going to be addressed as you have. Another one that gets overlooked a lot of times is uh 2x two and 4x2 ceiling tile and that's an environmental piece of the puzzle with HVAC units running and uh the the dust and things settling into classrooms when the when it begins to sag we have more

034issues with concerns with air quality overall at the end of the day. Didn't see anything major there for sure. Then listing this campus, the priority projects will be on the left. They're identified. Additional projects as money becomes available on the right. The utilization in a graph of 92 approximately 92% capacity. So it is pretty high of uh 82 827 students enrolled 895 for functional capacity. And then it also gives our FCI score uh over there on the far right. Educational adequacy, how is the facility overall for our students? You can see good across the board for the most part. Again, uh safety security is always a concern. I think we can always have more cameras and and be safer overall. Site playground uh there there's probably playground equipment that is a little bit worn, a

035little bit used. Maybe we needed some more fall zone material in there. So, it's going to be marked as a yellow at fair. You probably replace falls on material every year on your campuses. I was there early summer, middle summer. It may have not been done yet. Then at the bottom, you're going to have pictures uh that we take on every campus, interior and exterior pictures. Uh I will say the majority of the pictures that are going to be identified are going to be deficiency type pictures. I do try to get pictures of good things that are going on on the campuses as well because I don't want it to think that everything is terrible. But um at the end of the day, we're trying to identify deficiencies and what's going on on the campus

036to where you can create a plan for the future facilities details tab. Uh again, it looks exactly like what I showed you on the snip. Uh where we have identified areas of concern. Uh this is where the the money meets the road at the end of the day because we give you an estimated budget of what it's going to cost. And the first question we always get asked is where is that number coming from? Right? Uh we use RS means construction data. We have a subscription with that company where they get updated construction costs across the United States and some of that is narrowed down into Texas specifically to where it's not just the cost of replacement but it's the soft costs that are involved in replacement. If you have to have some architectural or

037engineering work done as well, those are estimated in there. I will promise you one thing that we want to be high and not low because you're going to use these numbers as planning numbers for your district. And uh we do not want a number in there that is low and you come back and tell us that we missed the mark and it cost you an extra 100,000 to do a project where we thought it would be about you know 150,000 anyhow. So, uh, uh, we're going to identify that and we're going to be a touch high, but we do use RS Means. We recently signed an agreement with a construction company in Texas and they're going to begin to provide us updated construction costs that they're using inside uh, schools with the the school districts

038that they work with. It is a paid service that we're getting from that construction company. Uh, they offered to give it to us at TASBY and we want to pay for it. We want it to be completely transparent on our end that uh we just want better numbers uh that are out there for construction costs in public schools. So you can see that's a pretty long list going all the way down to the bottom. Uh actually there we're going to say other projects there at the very bottom where you can see and I highlight that uh we need additional classroom space to get rid of permanent facilities. There's an estimated cost of about $6.6 million in square footage of 15,000 square foot to make that happen if you needed it. So, just giving you some

039planning cost numbers more than anything. Thank you. Uh then, uh the left side, safety, security improvements, things that are going on there. uh middle budget cost about $8 million in actual construction costs is what it would be if you were to uh to try to do a construction project for that. uh 3 million in soft cost of whatever it may be on permits and engineering or architecture that are out there in soft costs uh overall drawings and all to bring a a cost of about 11 million 1 million in HVAC needs and about 58,000 in roof needs to give you a total budget of the 12 million that's identified and a 29% FCI score. We also throw cost of escalation in there for 27, 28, and 29 uh at about 5 to 7% inflation because

040we know that schools aren't going to be able to do all these projects at one point in time. That's never the the thought process from us, but what is it going to take to do this down the road or in the future? And you have some planning numbers utilize that with overall is what we're trying to make sure that we get to you. HVAC data again. Uh you can see that and y'all are y'all are doing exceptional well. Y'all replaced a lot of HVAC this summer and it's my understanding y'all are talking about that to do that some more. It's exceptional. You got to stay ahead of that no matter what. Uh, a lot of this data is uh is just a visual for your maintenance folks to know what's going on and to know

041where we need to target or focus specific units for the future. It's expandable all the way out to as many as we have on that campus to see every one of them. And then some charts at the bottom to show you the amount of uh by age what it looks like and then by tons what it looks like of what needs to be replaced for the future or plan to replace in the future. Again the roof tab assessment of the main building and then assessment of the gym all the identifiers. main building has about five years left of life expectancy. That is a metal roof building, so that's about a 30-year roof generally. Uh not saying that it needs to be replaced at 30 years, but we need to make sure that we're maintaining that

042throughout the 30-year time frame. Checking fasteners, making sure we don't have trees rubbing it, all of those factors that come in to uh the us becoming or having leaks inside of our campuses. and then maps, I mean pictures at the bottom of uh what's going on on top of it. We strongly recommend and you'll see it on every one of our summaries uh of a roof. I think that's at the very bottom that our staff needs to be on the roofs twice a year and after any type of weather event and that's a recommendation that we make. we've got to be there. Uh and at the end of the day, the roof is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle to make sure that our buildings stay secure on the inside and we

043don't have external things happening uh and migrating our building. So, that is an example of a campus and how to maneuver around uh that campus. We'll get back to the [Music] So, a lot of information, lot of data. You talk about 27 facilities uh and what it is. Uh it was about four months of work on our end to to get all of that ready from the day we stepped foot on on on the district until it's done. And uh uh it was a huge priority to work with Granberry and work quickly with Granberry to get that information out. So what needs to take place? We need some facility planning to take place and y'all already have a start on that. I've seen documents on the cope. I've seen other things and other specific items

044that you have in spreadsheets as a district where your folks are planning for what's going on. But we need planning to be a focus uh that provides a direction for the future board's administrators. It aligns with facilities uh with educational vision and it communicates what the needs are to the community. And the planning breaks down into capital or maintenance. Capital planning is large projects. Maintenance projects are what our maintenance guys can do and there is many many maintenance projects through this that your maintenance staff with the skills levels that you have can do. So what does it look like? We talk long range planning is the is the the best part of it setting up and figuring that out and what it will look like for long range planning. And then we sit down or

045y'all sit down as a district about maintenance planning and identifying the the ugly stuff. But there has to be done that takes place. And that's why the rear end of that elephant is there. It's not pretty. None of the maintenance planning is pretty. It just has to be done though. And your district has to work through that maintenance planning. Uh again, maintenance and improvements projects. And y'all have already started that. I mean, it was so nice to work in a district this summer to where I got a schedule of what campuses y'all were going to do maintenance on to where my guys could be on other campuses or where y'all had Hback. I don't get that very often in districts that I go to. We run over each other. I knew your floor schedule's unwaxing.

046I knew all of that. It was excellent and I certainly appreciate that and that's what helps speed this process up for us as well. So, there's a lot of pieces of a puzzle that Granberry ISD has in place that are excellent and we with this assessment want to help you fine-tune that, focus in on the areas that are high needs and then what can be pushed down the road a little bit to where we find other means of funding sources to make sure that we can take care of that overall. And it's your data benefits. We want to be proactive and preventative instead of reactive. School districts in general are reactive no matter what in facilities. We do not place enough money in our facilities for maintenance of it. I ask school boards everywhere that

047I go and present uh across the state, the north region because that's my area. What is our largest investment of this community's tax dollars? Physical investment is our buildings. We've got to make sure that we fund those correctly to where we can do the maintenance that we need to do on them and make sure that we keep them up to date to where they can last as long as they can last. Next question. Do you know the average age of the educational buildings in Texas? That's the ones that we teach kids out of. The average age of the educational buildings in Texas. No clue. 50 plus. 40 to 50. 40 to 50 average age. Granville's educational facilities were 36 on average right now. Just so you see where your mark is. You're a little bit

048below that. You have areas that you want to address. You have specific maintenance issues that you want to make sure that you take care of. Hopefully, this document will help you out. Maintenance planning uh is how we're using our resources. it's transparency, how we're being good stewards, and how we're making early wins to take care of our facilities as as best we can, as quickly as we can. That's my information. Uh, if you've got questions, you got comments, you've got thoughts, uh, what I ask you to do as a board when you get your loginins is dive into that information. Take time. It's going to take a lot of time. It doesn't happen overnight. Like I said, there's 27 facilities. Some are very little need, some are pretty large needs. Overall, read the summaries. Read

049all the data that's a part of it. See what it is. And then you as a board, best practice recommendation from from Scott Bean or Tasby, however you want to say it, is to sit down and have workshops of what do we need to address? What direction do we need to go as a district to reach our goals that meet our educational goals for our students, but also our facility goals for our district to keep our facilities the best that they can be overall. Uh, a great story real quick is I work with a very small district in East Texas and a very poor district in East Texas and I was there during my one-year annual visit about 3 weeks ago and the soup and I were just having a conversation as we do uh

050about what was going on. Their board dedicated $200,000 in maintenance project planning for the next 10 years because they know that it's that important. That's way outside of what I've ever heard generally from small schools of what they're dedicating. But it's putting in the work as a board, as a team, with your maintenance staff and your superintendent and everybody and the stakeholders that are involved to make the best plan overall for your district of what you can do to make your facilities the best they can be for your students at Granberry ISD. Uh, lot of information. I think it's an outstanding tool. Yes, I'm biased on that side of it, but my job, the way I feel like as uh being in the school business for a long time is I want to provide you

051the best data that I can provide you uh and and help you reach the goals of your district that you want to reach. We're a service organization at TASBY and we want to be a partner of whatever we can do to work with you to keep your facilities uh to the best that they can be and you're investing everything you can invest overall for your kids at Granberry ISD. >> Thank you very much for that report. That was a very detailed report and very very much appreciated. Board members, do you have any questions? All right. Thank you, >> Dr. Morowski. >> I just want to make sure that word knows that we are going to be using this um in our we have a workshop I believe the beginning of November. We'll be talking about

052some of this um and it will play a key role. So, and I want to thank um Scott for being here and giving us such great information to make future decisions on and make sure that we're transparent with our community and and budging appropriately to be proactive and reactive. So, thank you so much. Thanks. >> All right. The uh board will take a recess at this time and we will reconvene at 6 o'clock. Thank you. We would like to welcome everyone to our meeting tonight. It is now 6 o'clock and we are ready to begin. We'll begin with an invocation led by our trustee Mike Moore. >> Good evening everyone. Will you please pray with me? Dear Lord, we're we're thankful for everybody here tonight as we support our students, our teachers, and staff. May

053they all feel encouraged and know the positive impact that they have for our district. Father God, we are very thankful for them. Lord, please open our minds and open our hearts and give us the wisdom wisdom to make the best decisions for Granberry ISD. We love where we live. We are grateful for our district. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen. >> Amen. >> And now we will have our pledges led by students at NBC Elementary School. This is our treasure team at Bakas are part of them and they were chosen by their teachers to be leaders at our school. And they're going to introduce themselves. Hi, my name is Christopher and I'm in fifth grade. Hi, my name is Isaac Morano and I'm in fifth grade. Hi, my name is Lie Steer and

054I'm in fifth grade. >> Hi, my name is Jadira Wabo and I'm in fifth grade. >> Please stand up for the pledge. >> I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Honor the protect of this flag to the one state one and indivisible. All right, Dr. Pad, do you have something to show for us today? >> Absolutely. A lot of great things to show. That's pretty loud. Never thought I'd turn the microphone away, huh? All right. So, good evening, Superintendent Morowski, President Gore, and Board of Trustees. My name is Lacy Padet, and I'm the proud principal at Bakus Elementary. I honestly have been so excited about this evening and cannot wait to

055share all the wonderful things happening at Bakus Elementary. I would like to first introduce our admin team. We have Lacy Clark, who is one of our assistant principles. We have Stephanie Slimeac, who's our assistant principal intern. And then you met Carmen Chandler who is our counselor. And then we have Hyro Martinez, our instructional specialist. And we have Chelsea McCord, our other instructional specialist. And we'll highlight our teachers here in just even have a fan club here tonight with our teachers. So we'll highlight them. So let me go ahead and figure Okay, there we go. Last year, our team worked together to really update our mission, our vision, and our motto to better reflect who we are as a campus and what we value the most. Our mission emphasizes cultivating a love of learning and building

056critical thinkers. Our vision highlights our commitment to providing safe, inclusive, and nurturing environment. And our motto, and the kids could probably say it with me, I can achieve, I will succeed because I matter, captures the heart of our culture at Bakus. It's the message our students hear and believe each and every single day. These statistics were last year's numbers at snapshot. I wanted to share these with you so when you see our accountability slide next, you'll have a good idea of what our numbers were for the 2425 school year. Bakus Elementary served 594 students and actually got up to about 605 students by the end of the year, which was a significant increase from the year before of 454 students. Thanks to the addition of our bilingual dual language program, which has brought many new

057families to our campus, we have 63 staff members, including 41 teachers, who are dedicated to supporting our students academic and social growth. Our campus is very diverse with 77% economically disadvantaged getting up to over 80% last year uh with 18% of our students receiving special education services. 29% or a third of our students are emergent bilingual students and we also serve 16 Mckin Vento which is our homeless population. That was last year. This year we are currently at 14. Overall, Bakus is a growing and very vibrant school community and we're very proud of how our staff is our staff continues to meet the needs of all of our students as our campus continues to evolve. So, take a look at this slide. We are very proud of the academic progress our students have made. Overall,

058our campus rating increased from a 74 C to an 81B, which is a solid B. A big step forward for our country. Absolutely. And looking at our academic growth, we saw one of our biggest gains, moving from a 75 to an 83, showing that our students are not only learning, but continuing to grow at higher levels year after year. In closing the gaps, we also improved from a 71 to a 75, which shows our targeted supports are helping more students across all student groups. And we're especially proud that Bakus earned a distinction for being the top 25% for comparative academic growth. A clear sign that the hard work of our teachers and students is paying off. We are very, very proud of this slide. At Bakus, we're um very proud too to offer specialized programs

059that meet the diverse needs of our students. Thank you. You want to do that? >> Sure. >> Thank you. >> Put them to work. Our one-way dual language bilingual enrichment program serves nearly a third of our student population and is designed to build bilingualism by literacy and bicultural awareness. Instruction intentionally is structured across both English and Spanish, math and English, science and social studies in Spanish, and literacy in both languages to help thrive academically in both languages. And I know y'all had a chance to listen to Bronner, so they're kind of our sister school. we share our uh bilingual program with them. We also have we actually have two specialized programs. We also have an ASUS program, a specialized setting within our special education services that focuses on developing academic communication, emotional and social skills.

060The program emphasizes safety, respect, and responsibility while providing individualized support through a team of one teacher and two pair of professionals. Our goal is to equip every student in that program with tools they need for success success both inside and outside the classroom through positive behavior support as well as a tiered system of support. Now I'll turn it over to Miss Clark. So this year our academic focus is on strengthening instruction and supporting both teachers and students. Teacher teams collaborate bi-weekly in professional learning communities to review lessons, analyze data, and adjust instruction. We continue to align and internalize the Blue Bonnet curriculum, through learning walks, ensuring that consistency across grade levels is there through our multi-tiered system of supports and our what I need or win time. Um, students receive targeted support and enrichment. So

061staff growth is supported through coaching, mentoring for our new teachers, and guidance from instructional specialists. Our work emphasizes high lever strategies that have the greatest impact on student learning. At BACAS, strong relationships and that positive school culture are at the heart of everything we do. Through capturing kids hearts, teachers build trust, connect with students, and create supportive classrooms. And through our positive behavior intervention support system, it helps to set those clear expectations. We have a schoolwide common vocabulary, consistent routines, and we recognize those positive choices that students are making. Combining the relationships of capturing kids hearts with structured behavior supports of PBIS, it creates a safe engaging environment at our campus. As a capturing kids heart rising star campus, we use the Excel model to empower students, establish classroom social contracts, and provide those students

062with leadership opportunities within their classroom. Leadw worthy character traits are celebrated monthly and our process champions team helps sustain these practices. Programs like reset or a break and our ready body learning minds give students tools to self-regulate and refocus together. These systems ensure every child every child feels valued, capable, and connected. I'll turn it over to Miss Slimeac. Good evening. At Bakus, we want every student to feel connected and have a voice in our school community. We offer a variety of opportunities for students to get involved, such as the Backus treasure team, the principal advisory council, and student ambassadors. Our students also enjoy house rallies, positive principal referrals, and celebrations like the backest bash, which recognizes achievements, behavior, and attendance, and fosters school spirit. Through capturing kids hearts, leadworthy traits, student surveys, and special events

063like career day and first responders day, students are engaged, recognized, and empowered. Additionally, our academic UIL activities provide fun competitive ways for students to stretch their learning and skills beyond the classroom. At Bakus, keeping families informed and involved is a top priority. We communicate through our family newsletter and this week at Bakus updates as well as social media and class dojo so families always know what's happening. We offer music programs at every grade level, engaging family events, and both parent teacher conferences and student led conferences to provide multiple ways for families to connect. Families also have opportunities to share feedback through surveys, get involved in our parent teacher organization, and participate in the home room parent program. Additionally, we support our Purple Star and military connected families through special activities and resources, ensuring every family

064feels welcome and connected to our campus. We have a few students from our treasure team that would like to share what they love about Bakus. Hello, my name is Yudira Aad Yadira Awad. I have attended Bakus Elementary since I was in preK. Now I'm in the fifth grade. One thing I really love about Bakus is how happy Dr. Padet is always. No matter what, she finds a way to smile and makes us feel excited about the day. One thing I love how we get to go on field trips and have experiences. Our teachers are super nice and always always ready to help. And I can tell they really care about us. I love how everyone looks out for each other. Even when it's raining, people are outside opening doors with a smile. The special teachers

065like music, art, and gym always have fun activities planned. So, we are never bored. I feel really lucky to be at Bakus where everyone stands by your side and wants you to do your best. Hello, my name is Landry Stefer. What I love most about Bakis is the positivity and the effort everyone puts into making our school such a great place. You can really feel how much everyone cares about us. The back kiss bash was so much fun and we truly appreciate everything they do to keep a smile on our face and help us learn and grow. Thank you. >> Thank you. The heart of the school is our wonderful teachers that are making magic happen each and every day in their classroom. I would like to recognize the ones that are here with us

066this evening. Please stand. We truly appreciate all they do. Thank you board for supporting us and helping us shine. We'd like to thank all these boys and girls for coming up this this evening. Are there any parents that are here for these kiddos? If so, would you please stand? We'd like to recognize you. And Dr. Padet, I'd like to tell you a story. Dr. Vadet, this is the story I'd like to tell you and your your teachers that are here. Um, of course, I I don't know how many of of you know this because this has been a long time ago, but um Are y'all going to take another picture? >> Oh, okay. Y'all go ahead and take a picture. [Laughter] That's fine. No, we need those pictures are important. I have a special place

067in my heart for Bakus Elementary because I I was the principal at Beckas for nine years. And so I walk those halls and I my I left a place in my um piece of my heart there uh whenever I left out. But uh one of the things I used to tell my teachers was that uh one thing that we need to remember was that Netty Bakus was a real person. Uh she was a first grade teacher in Granberry uh many many years ago and from what I understood she was a very strict first grade teacher. The people that knew uh Natty Bakus said that you just didn't pull many tricks on Natty Bakus. And uh there are actually some people in the community that still remember Netty Bakus. And so I tried to remind my

068teachers that as we uh went out on our dayto-day uh business that we wanted to make Netty Bakus proud that if she were to return to Netty Bakus Elementary that uh if she were walk the halls that we wanted to make her proud and I guarantee you that if she were to walk the halls of Netty Bakus now she would be extremely proud. That you have made her very proud. the teachers and the students. You have continued uh working very hard and continuing uh the mission there and uh uh I am very proud and I guarantee you that Miss Netty Bakus would be very proud as well. So congratulations on a job well done. You are doing an outstanding job and we're all very proud of what you're doing there. So thank you. All right,

069thank you so very much and we will move right along now. We uh after our school update, we will now have uh public comments and we have one person that has signed up for public comments and that will be um Monica Brown. And uh we will go over the guidelines for our speakers. Uh each speaker will be uh limited to three minutes. And uh be sure to uh identify yourself uh by your name and your address. And if you're speaking for a group, please identify the group that you're speaking for. Okay. Hey, my name is Monica Brown and I'm talking about the library books. There's 24 pages of resources that have been purchased recently. I wanted to make sure the public is aware that there are two, three books here that have been rejected by

070Granberry ISD. This one is called Texas Before the Lonear. It's a publication of the Texas Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. And the lady who's doing this is um who's rejecting these books. These were given to every private school in town by the Daughters of the American Revolution. They all received it. the Hood County Library received it, but I have a letter from Miss Dawson saying she would not receive it, and she's blaming it on HB900, which was the law that was passed to stop sexually explicit books. So, this also has TEICSS in it. So, it's an incredibly gorgeous, wonderful Texas book. These I offered to the school years ago, founded on Freedom, No Better Letter. Both of these are free and beautiful and plenty of copies for the entire district if the district would

071receive them, but Leah Dawson again said no. Um, I'm really sad about that because I don't think Netty Bakus would approve at all um that kind of rejection and that kind of um lawmakers in Austin laughed when I told them that the excuse is HB900. Um, and it's all in writing. Leah sent it to me in letter and she also sent it to the Daughters of American Revolution ladies here in writing to say legislature not to address any individual school individual by name. >> Okay. Thank you so much for clarifying that. >> So, I'm kind of ashamed of the situation, but it is what it is. And when I look at your book list, one of the books is called Hollow Boy. All about all the girls being murdered, disappearing, and the boys being hollow.

072That's kind of interesting, isn't it? Super healthy, super academic, mostly fiction, smut literature over and over and over again. So, if I have anything to do with it, and I might not, I'm going to get better things put in the library. Won't take them out. Let's leave all that stuff in there and let kids have a choice, right? Like apple instead of Snicker Bar, that kind of thing. So, um, policy says y'all are educators and you can look at the book and decide and you can also take into account the community. Saying you can't isn't true. It is not true at all and it's a shame. educators. Netty Bakus. No way. I know Terry McNew. She knew these ladies from way these these people from way back that started these schools. And you're right, they

073had beautiful character. They had moral standards and they had logic about what they put into student libraries and the impact and effect it had on the children. And unravel me. Everyone look that one up. Still here. I gave all the detail about it and it was like talking to a sack of rocks. And I'm sorry. I wish it were different. It is your legacy. You leave and you can do what Netti did or you can you can ignore it. All right. At this time, we will have a public hearing on the first report. Emmit Whitefield. >> Thank you, Miss Lana. Right in front of you, you do have your uh first rating. It's a report. It's in your packet. There are also uh some in the back for uh anybody who would like to have

074one of those while we're going through it. This up just a little bit. So, this is our public hearing on the first report. And um the first report, what is the f what is school's first report? The further the school's first report is the financial accountability rating system um that Texas school districts are were developed by TEA in response to Senate Bill 875 by the 76 legislature in 1999. Primary goal of the school's first report is to achieve quality performance and transparency in the management of school districts and financial resources. Under the school's thirst report, each school district is required to to uh provide a report each year on the data that tea um gives us a rating on. It's supposed to have the the rating in it. It's going to have the performance ratings

075compared to the previous year's rating. It's going to have additional information that was required in 2007, which would be like the superintendent's contract. However, it's not in this report because it's posted on the website and that meets the letter of the law on that. There also be some summary disclosures pertaining to superintendent and school board for financing. The 2025 ratings are based on the 2324 data and are published on the TEA website within two months of receiving the final rating. Uh we have to do this public hearing to meet the letter of the law as well. The current rating system has 21 indicators and assigns an A through an F rating. Uh it's basically um there the 21 indicators are going to have um one through four will be uh did you uh submit your

076AFR by the deadline. Was there an unmodified opinion was number two. Number three is was a district in compliance with all of its debt payments. And number four would be did the district make timely payments to the IRS to the workforce commission and the IRS. When you get into the five five through 21 that's when the meat of the report starts to come out. Five and six they're a past fail and it has to do with fund balance in net position. Seven there seven through nine have to do with cash flow assets and liability ratios and revenues. Number 10 is not evaluated but it is worth 10 points and they give you those 10 points to start off with. Number 11 is solveny. Number 12 is your debt ratio compared to your taxable assessed values.

077And number 13, this is the one that we like to talk about a lot, is your admin cost ratio. That's your function 21 and 41, which is your leadership as opposed to uh in a ratio to your student um direct student uh instruction. Ours is a 0740. The standard for our size district is a 12 point or.125. That's the stat the standard for a district our size. If you get that, you only get six points. This is a 0740. So we get 10 points in that corre that that category. 14 and 15 have to do with with enrollment and pupil pro projections and our staff ratios. And then 16 and 17 are past fail but that has to do with our PES. Is our PES data within 3% of our AFR and was our AFR

078free of material weakness. 18 and 19 are were points and they are AFR was free of material non-compliance and that we did post this information on the website and then 2021 our past fail and that's discussions with board over funding changes and that's what we do in July when we talk about our budgeting and then where was there a TEA repayment schedule and we do not have that the report contents will have what is school first and it'll describe what schools first is have the it'll have the district's rating. It'll have the district status detail for the 2425 school year which is based on 2324 data. It'll have the prior year comparison. It'll have how the ratings are assessed, the glossier of terms and the required disclosures which would be again what we talked about

079the superintendent's contract which is on the website. So that meets that criteria and then any reimbursements received by the superintendent or board members for the fiscal year which would include meals, hotel stays or any um any uh conferences that you went to and any other information that's pertinent to this. The first rating ensures that Texas public schools are held accountable for the quality of their financial management practices and they improve these practices. The system is designed to encourage Texas public schools to better manage their financial resources to provide maximum allocation possible for direct instructional purposes. So, how did we do? We answered yes to all four of the first questions on that criteria and we scored a 100 out of 100 on indicators 7 through 15 and 18 and 19. It's achieving the highest rating

080possible under current school's first system which is a superior achievement. 21 of the 23 years that this has been in place, we've had the superior achievement and the last three years have been a perfect score. Earning this top financial rating for the 10 consecutive years demonstrates a deep commitment to managing taxpayer dollars with integrity and transparency. It it shows financial excellence, sound budgeting, and accurate reporting. Recognition of effort goes to the school board, the finance team, the auditors, and all the administrators in the district in achieving this distinction. That is the public hearing for your first report, and I'll answer any questions or listen to any comments you may have. >> Are there any questions from the board? >> I just have a comment. Go ahead. Basically, I'd like to say uh the job that

081you've done for the three years I've been here has been outstanding. I think it shows in the reports that you've had and I appreciate all that you've done for our school district. >> Thank you, sir. >> How I I was just going to ask um I don't know how many school districts there are. Wes, I asked you this. One of the very first questions I asked when I first came on the board was how many school districts are there? This was on the subject of districts of innovation. And then how many were out of all of those? So I have the same question for you. Out of all of the school districts in Texas, something like 1,200. How many of them? >> Actually, there are about 1,68 first ratings. >> Say that again. >> 1,68

082first ratings. And how many of them rate A? >> There were 912 A's, 409 at 100%. 409. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay, that's it. That's all I was going to ask. Thank you. >> That's actually quite impressive. >> Yeah, >> it's not just something that just stamped and everybody gets it. It is something that you earn. It's quite impressive. Yes. Any questions or comments from our board members? >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Hatfield. Excellent job. >> All right. We will move on now to achievement spotlight. We have our community donations. Um Billy, can you read those for us? >> Absolutely. So, donations from the community. First we have a donation from Oakwood's PTO to the campus facility fund to supplement first grade field trip of $1,15. Donation from Kudo Homes to Mano Captain Campus

083Activity Fund to fund signs for Steamar of $858.20. Donation from T Energy, Gina and Bean Ben Moore to Manbrano campus activity fund in the form of adult and child beverage cards in the amount of $800. Donation from Texas Paint to the Mano campus activity fund in the form of paint for the campus mule of $500. Next is a donation from Stonewater Services to Mano Campus Activity Fund in the form of refrigerator, the teachers lounge in the amount of $448.93. A donation from A+ roofing to Mambbrano campus activity fund or pickup car tags in the amount of $2,36642. donation from an anonymous donor to Manbrano campus activity fund in support of the campus in the amount of $5,000. A donation from Zuk Crew, Inc. to Bronner Campus Activity Fund for stuffed animals, outfits, and backpacks in

084the amount of $1,525. Donation from the Optimus Club of Granberry to GMS activity fund for RLA dollars and cents in the amount of $1,200. Donation from Living Water Infant Aquatics Cindy Markham to GMS camps activity fund to purchase students PE shirts in and out of $100. Donation from Valencia Ditto to GHSCTTE Department campus activity fund for educational training education and training in the amount of $2,500. Donation from an anonymous donor to GHSCTE Auto Tech Department in the amount of $300. A donation from the Optimus Club of Grandary to the Junior Optimus Club student activity fund to purchase uh Uncrustables for the athletic freezer for the kids. in the amount of $400. Donation from Ultimate Trees TE's to the GHS Stillways Student Activity Fund for fan apparel donation amount of $1,313. A donation from project graduation

085for transportation project graduation event in the amount of $1,192.50. a donation from Shot and Kirk Hyundai to the Athletic Campus Activity Fund for the NFHS streaming service of $1,000. A donation from First National Bank of Granberry to the Athletic Campus Activity Fund is an athletic website sponsor in the amount of $4,000. A donation from First National Bank of Grand Athlete Campus Activity Fund for gold card sponsorship in the amount of $445. A donation from Barry and Barry DDS Jason and Elizabeth Barry to the Athletic Campus Activity Fund for sponsorship in the amount of $1,000. And finally, a donation from Tyson's Foods Inc. to the child nutrition campus activity fund in support of the department in the amount of $2,500 for a grand total of donations this month of $28,5545. We'd like to thank our community

086for all of these donations. Be sure and if you see any of these folks out and about that you thank them for these donations. $28,554. That is quite a large amount. We certainly do appreciate that. All right. And now let's move right along. We have some uh National Merit uh scholars that we would like to recognize. >> Okay. Um I'm Dr. Morowski and board. Uh thank you for having me. Um, you know, it's funny because I was asked, you know, do you have time to come and uh, you know, shine a spotlight on a couple of your students and and I'm like, of course. Uh, that's literally what we do this for. Um, and you know, at Granberry High School, we're making sure that students only do three things um, if they want to be

087successful, and that's be involved, work hard, and be kind. the two students that I'm going to introduce you to, uh, if you don't know them already, um, you're probably going to get to, uh, at some point in the future because what they've accomplished in the National Merit Scholar Competition is pretty incredible. So, um, and I'll get to that in just a moment. U,, Grace Blevens and Eli Forest, can you come up for me, please? Here's this. Congratulations, Jim Le. >> Now, I I'm not sure which way we want to face J. Let's face the board because, you know, they're the ones that were that are recognizing you guys and all that you've accomplished. So, uh when we talk about being involved, work hard, be kind. I I know uh both of these uh folks are

088involved in things outside of the academic world um which, you know, can be very challenging when you're when you're trying to achieve at a high level. Uh, I know I know Miss Blevens, you're the the Optimus president if I Yep. Opt Optimus Club president. I'm sure there's additional things that she does who seems already clapping. Um, and Eli, you're in the marching band. So, uh, I know um I know that uh that's a very high achieving group uh as well. Tremendous. If you haven't had a chance to listen to them, the amount of work that they put in is incredible. But here's what I mean by hard work. when it comes to the academic side of things, I want us to be great at everything that we do. So, we know the Optimus Club is

089great. We know that um you know, the band is great and that their academic performance is great. And this is how we know. 1.3 million more than 1.3 million students across the United States entered the National Merit Scholar Competition College Board. Um, only the top 34,000 students earned commended status. These two earned commended status. So, if I am doing my math correctly, and they said they would check it, I believe it's 1.266 million human beings you guys beat in that competition. Is that correct? >> Close enough. Okay. You said close enough. I know it's right. I'm pretty good at math, too. I wasn't terrible. Uh but I know um uh you know, in in just look at these two. I mean, they're they're two of the kindest people you're ever going to meet. So, they

090are the shining example of of what we hope Granberry students uh grow to become. So, uh job well done, both of you. Uh congratulations. Uh and I'm going to let you guys tell everybody who's here with you because you don't do this. Don't don't look at me like that. She's looking at me like, "You didn't tell me I was going to have to speak." You're going to have to let us know who's here with you. Invite them up for a nice little photo with the board. So, tell us where you want to go, what you want to do, and who's here with you. Okay. So, we're going to start with Miss Blevens. Go ahead. >> Hi, everyone. I didn't know that I would be speaking tonight as Mr. Fish just told you. So, my name

091is Grace Blevens, but you already know that. Um, and I want to go to Rice University in Houston, and I want to be in school for a really, really long time. So, I want to get my undergraduate degree in molecular and cellular biology. And I hope to use that to get a master's or professional degree in genetics. And the people that are here with me, I have my wonderful family behind me, and they're about to come up and take a nice photo. Um, and so I have Do I need to like introduce them by name? Can I introduce them by name? >> Yes. It's like you know their names. >> I think I can remember. >> So I have my dad Eric Eric Blevens and my wonderful mom Sarah Blevens and my brother Jake Blevens.

092and they're and I could not be standing here without them. So, would they please come up for a photo? >> Go now. >> Yes, sir. Go now. >> All right. Uh, as you know, my name is Eli Poris, and I was just as unprepared as Grace was, so I'll try to keep this coherent. Um, >> what was it for? >> Where do you want to go? What do you want to do? >> Oh, right. So, so far I'm planning on going to Oklahoma State University where I will be planning on studying electrical engineering. And uh and with me is my family. My mom Amy Forest, my dad Aaron Forest, my sister Caitlyn Forest, and my brother Wyatt Forest. All right. Ready? This is what public education is all about. One big happy family right here.

093Okay, this scene needs a picture. Congratulations to these two students. We are so proud of them. >> They did not give me any parameters. >> Oh, he shut it off. I I do apologize. I was not given any parameters. So that gives me, you know, >> Mr. You did a great job. >> Oh, thank you. >> Yeah, I figure if you defeated nearly 1.3 million people, you probably should get a moment. Yeah, that's pretty good. >> Thank you, Mr. Fish. Outstanding job. >> Thank you, ma'am. >> We're proud of those kiddos. >> We are. We're very proud. Um, and then next up, I know we have uh >> the shot and Kirk. >> Shot and Kirk. Yep. And I believe it's uh Hartley Kennedy. Is that right? Okay. >> Hello. As you said, my name

094is Hartley Kennedy. I work for the Shot and Kirk Automotive Group. Um, and every month we give a $500 check to a Granberry High School student. And so I'm proud to announce that Daniel Hernandez is our student of the month. Um, so we can give him a round of applause for that. Um, I'm going to read just a little bit about Daniel and what he has plans for the future. So Daniel learned hard work from his father. Oh, is it working? Hello. Okay. Sorry. Daniel learned hard work from his father and respect and his faith from his mother. His Catholic faith has been his driving force, keeping him grounded through difficult times. Daniel is currently in his second year of teaching kindergarten and helps with Wednesday confirmation classes and serves as a Spanish mass usher.

095Is it okay? Sorry. Uh he serves as a Spanish usher. While he once considered trade school for automotive and welding, Daniel found his true calling. This fall, he will attend St. Joseph Seminary College to major in theology. Proud of his roots and eager to continue his journey in faith and service. Hi, I'm Darren Hernandez and I would like to say um the members of the board GSD, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much and thank you for this opportunity and it is true as well that I felt the call in as well for what I want to do after high school is a big vocation that many people they get but they never answer it that a lot of people, they get it, but they don't want to continue. They say, "Oh, I that's a

096good calling, but they're not ready for the calling." And I had it, and I'm going and I accepted it. And now with my church and the bishop, Michael Austin, they're helping me as well to enter my first year seminary. And it's going to be a big vocation that I will give and I am willing to give. And as well I want to give a shout out to my mother and my father and my brother but he couldn't attend fortunately but I want to give them a shout out as well because they helped me throughout my life and as me as a first generation Mexican American they came to this country so I can be successful and so I can be someone and I can live the life that I was promised. >> Yes. And for

097parents want to watch too. Okay. All right. Congratulations. We're very proud of you and we we look forward to seeing what what holds what God holds in your future. It should be great. >> All right, moving right along. We'll go on into the superintendent's report. >> All right, board of trustees and members of the audience, I have a couple of updates want to make sure that you're aware of. Um I've had some questions about uh the uh Senate Bill 10, which is the requirement for u classrooms to post the ten commandments. And so I want to make sure that our community knows to expect we have a donation coming through from uh community partners um so that we can provide um that poster um in every classroom and so be look on the lookout for

098that donation will come through our green sheet um next month. I wanted to make sure you're updated. Also some exciting events happening this week. We have coffee with the CFO tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. If you have any questions about school finance, great place to go and have a casual conversation with our CFO. Band Community Night, which actually is more than band. It's got our um I believe it's got our cheer, our choir, um our JOTC tomorrow night, 6 o'clock in Pirate Stadium. So, it's going to be a fun event. I will be there. It's going to be fun. October Madness is on Wednesday and it's like meet the Pirates, the basketball pirates. So, they will be there, all of the basketball players um on Wednesday night um at 5:30 in the James Juan. Um also

099next week is um N or actually this week is National School Bus Safety Week. So, it's a great time for us to to think about our student view has rolled out K through 12. Those are where the students scan on and off with their badges. Um, and if you're an elementary student, your um parents have access already to the app and that will be coming for our secondary students soon. So, um, great time to focus on school safety. Um, also, Ranch 95.9, which I think is a radio station, has designated Granberry versus Ail the game of the week. And so, it's a contest to win $3,000. So, you can help us reach the finals by casting your vote. I'm not sure where to cast it, but they say you should cast it so that we

100can get $3,000. Um, and move or move to the finals in order to see if we can get $3,000. >> 95. What does it say? 959 the ranch.com. Thank you. All right. Um, last thing is today marks the first day of our schoolboard elections. with the perfect opportunity to model for our students the importance of participating in the democratic process and demonstrating how to do so with respect and grace. Every vote is a voice for the future of our schools. And by showing up with positivity and purpose, we remind our students that leadership begins with engagement. So just a small reminder for this the importance of the next couple of weeks. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you very much for that. Uh we'll now move on to uh action items discussed in close session.

101We need to consider staff recommendations. Do I have a motion? >> I move that we uh approve the staff recommendations as discussed in close session. >> All right. I have a motion and a second. All those in favor, raise your hand. All right, that is approved. 6. Moving on to consent agenda items. Is there anything that needs to be pulled? >> Yes, >> we have already pulled library. >> Yeah, let me find my note. Sorry, I had one. >> Is there anything else? >> One more. >> Which one? >> Sorry, I have three copies of the agenda and my notes are different on each of them. >> Well, uh I the one about um SP12 >> B. Thank you. >> It it moved around on the That's the only >> be 12. >> Okay. >>

102All right. So, let's go ahead and address item B. >> Ready for me? >> I'm ready. Uh, so I I just wanted to speak u in favor of the intent of SB12 advocating for parents rights and that we should be a community that embraces the idea that parents are the best and strongest advocates for their own children as the norm set forth by this law and in a few minutes I think has adopted by this board and our district um through that resolution. Uh and where the exceptions to that I think are few where the parents may not be. Uh so I want to also offer the assurance to the parents of our students that this law and this board um and the resolution thereof uh comply and complying with it uh will not take

103the extreme views where it's been reported that school nurses were refusing to administer band-aids for a skin knee. Um and with a nod from Dr. Moroski that we'll execute this uh this district's compliance with the law according to its good naturatured intent and that it's reasonable and practical. >> Correct. >> Thank you. >> That is correct. All right. Do I have a motion >> to accept consent? >> I'll make that motion. >> I'll second. This is this uh the motion will be to approve consent items A through K through >> A through K. >> So moved. >> We have a motion. >> I think now I'm second. >> And Tim is a second. Everyone uh all those in favor raise your hand. It's approved. 6. All consent agenda items. We'll move on to discussion items.

104Discussion item A, discuss and take action on the district improvement plan. Tammy, good evening. All right. Well, this is going to look very similar to last month where we did campus improvement plans and they look similar because we are all pirates rowing in the same direction. So, we are here to talk about the district improvement plan for this year. The reason is to inform you of how we go about determining our district needs. Who puts their two cents in on the district improvement plan? what's the focus of that district improvement plan, why that's the focus, and we're here tonight because policy requires it. Um, so Texas Education Code and both our local and legal address the requirements of presenting this plan to the board and getting it approved. This is going to look drastically the

105same as the campus improvement plan because it is a very similar process. the district leaders get together and go through this district improvement planning process just like the campus leadership does on campus leadership teams. And so the a calendar is very very similar as well. So in June and July, we go through a needs assessment. We're looking at all of our data and then we have our district leaders all take their areas of um the strategic plan and they set their goals uh for this next coming year where they need to be doing their work and so that's the district improvement plan design. Um the presentation to the board for approval is in October. Um so here we are and then we'll have reflection um same time frame as the campuses in November, February and

106April. The end of data review starts coming in. We start doing all of our appraisals. We have some preliminary data. All of our budget work is getting done in the spring and that resets the cycle for the next district improvement plan or district needs assessment that will drive um what we keep and what we keep working on and what we keep focusing on and where we take us next to continue to improve. So the data that's considered is very much the same. Okay, but we're student data at a at a higher level. Okay. What the district is needing for students um at the curriculum and instruction level or the teaching and learning department level um is a little bit different than maybe what is happening just at Bakus, right? So um the student data as

107a whole, human capital data as a whole, the budgetary needs that um EMTT and his team uh bring forward and what everybody brings forward to him and then um the community connection data that we're getting um from the district level. So that timeline we already went over. This looks very similar because you guys created it. This is our district improvement, our strategic plan. Okay. And our priorities, priority one of student achievement, two of human capital, three of culture, and four of our facility and financial stewardship. Everything we do at the campus level last month um is is in these four areas. And everything we do at the district level is working to this end as well because that's what we came up with as our strategic plan. So, you'll see that um I put together

108the one-pager to match that and put some of the different ideas from the lengthy thick district improvement plan on a one-pager for everyone to see. And we have post, we'll post this one, we've posted the campus improvement plans that are at a glance on the website as well because you all appreciate it and we're sure that probably everyone else appreciates a one-pager. um and then they can dive deep into that stuff if they'd like. So, if we're looking at um priority one under academic achievement and growth, this one is mostly um taken up by our teaching and learning department, our high school and our CTE department and our um special populations. So, the implementation of blue bonnet math is obviously a heavy right for our tier one curriculum that we are working on. the lasso

1093 grant reading for our researchbased instructional strategies that is taking up a lot of the teaching and learning department's time rolling out the curriculum um well so that we can raise our tier one instruction across the board also targeted accelerated intervention including uh reading and math on both on both sides and then programming for all of our special populations so the special populations for special education is is what they're focused on. And in the teaching and learning department, we also focus with our ELEL's and our GT um populations to make sure that everybody is taken care of. And then innovative course offerings, that's more our CTE and it also kind of goes into that CCMR. So nice little segue to CCMR, which is mostly the high school and CTE. um the AP and dual credit

110offerings, doing the TSIA2 so that we can um qualify all of our children for a CCMR point to show that they're career college and M military ready and if they are not putting some interventions in place so that they can get there before they leave us right and then increasing our internships and practicum experiences that's all you know Todd's realm so he is working to that and they are doing an excellent partnership to track all of that data and that's a big undertaking as well. If we go to safety and well-being that's teaching and learning has the counseling end of those um types of things. the MTSS coordinator, Angie Molinary, working with the counselors um and then campus principles and um and then if you count safety drills and those types of things, we have

111the safety and security department as well um having some of those goals that we are pushing in that area. And then for studenting involvement, I would say again GHS and CTE hold the bulk of that. the athletics department, um fine arts oversight, and then um our CTSOs's uh student organizations for CTE clubs for our CTE programs so that they can um continue to explore their passions. So those are the people who work deeply in goal one. Goal two for human capital that's going to be uh mostly in the HR department but not entirely. If you look at recruitment systems though our partnership with Charlton State continues with teacher residents and um Wes Jones and his department has worked very hard with that as well as all of the campus principles having residents on their campuses.

112exploring uh the international teacher program because we've had a hard time getting all of our bilingual spots filled and so um that's a trial this year. That's a new thing for here and um and it's been successful so far. So that's kind of fun. We're continuing to expand the job fair um and then exploring opportunities for um for our teachers to continue to treat them well, have them be well supported and valued personally and professionally. For retention, I would say it's HR, teaching and learning and our campus principles. Again, um we rolled out this this year a district-wide mentoring program that is the same across all campuses. So all new teachers get similar supports in place and that is being monitored by West Jones um with some of the tracking um procedures that are in

113place for that for that program. And so that's a heavy lift for HR and um teaching and learning had a little hand in that and so did some of our campus principles. Teaching and learning also has been working very hard uh for TIA Tuesdays and this is our data capture year. So TIA will stay on there for a while. And then our little bucks and stuff, those are those are retention strategies for us. And then the training and development observation feedback um and and those types of things are driven through teaching and learning our teaching and learning department along with the instructional specialists. So um that's a that's a big lift for them. So for retention, recruitment, and training, HR and teaching and learning takes the bulk of those. When we're looking at Oh, that's

114goal four. Sorry. Goal three. Goal three, Granberry Culture. We have these um neat new advisory teams that our superintendent has been in charge of that is going to be um making sure that everybody's connected and that we get good feedback from all of those um connections to know that we are moving in the right direction and meeting everyone's needs. So that with the communications department works very very hard on um our Granberry culture, monitoring and evaluating and holding all of those meetings and increasing our communication through newsletters and the website and everything like that. So the superintendent department I guess or office as well as the commun in in partnership with the communications department makes that big lift happen. And then when we look at goal number four, you're looking at facilities, technology, and the

115business office making sure that our facility assessment is done, which was incredible tonight. And I think that will be very nice moving forward. Um, getting that facility assessment done so that we can start having those good conversations about what it's going to take to keep our facilities is in a good spot is good. the replacement cycle for technology devices, buses, and furniture and and making sure that our um infrastructure for technology um stays up to date so that we can continue to have all of the things that we are really relying on is a big technology lift. Um for transparent and effective budget practices, the business office, facilities, technology, and the communications team. Um there there has been so much information pushed out to our website. I don't know that there's much that we are

116not able to find on our website. So it's a big lift on Ryan with the whole refresh of everything and making sure everything is up to date. Um, so keeping that ready to go. And then our safety and security grants for alternative re uh revenue sources for the safety and security team partnering with the business office. Everybody's a big team around here and we have lots of hands making sure that we are pushing this strategic plan forward and continuing to improve. So what to expect? our formative checkpoints throughout the year um are going to happen in November, February, and April. Um we'll get input from the advisory teams to see if there's anything else that we need to add. Any surveys that are midyear and end of year and internal feedback that we get, we'll

117add to that that to the group to see if we need to do something immediately or just put it on the plan for next year because it's a living document and we continue to make improvements. What questions do you have for me? [Music] Nice job, Tammy. >> Thank you. >> I like your color coding behind the slides and everything that correspond to the I see that. >> Thank you. Thank you for noticing. Even >> I love that. Um if it wasn't apparent, I just want everyone to understand how very so much work goes in from our departmental leaders here to make um your vision and the community's vision um continue to push forward in GISD and the things that happen here and the awesome things that are going on is not on accident and a

118lot of it is the leaders in the room. >> It is a very big lift and and I realize it's a big lift. we've it's everybody having to work together and looking for at all the problems and all the solutions and getting them all coordinated together and it it really is fantastic and the way I can find everything I want on the website has been wonderful. I do appreciate y'all appreciate that. Thank you. Great job. All right, we need to take action and approve this. Do I have a motion? >> I'll make that motion. >> All right, we have a motion by Tim to approve the district improvement plan. Do I have a second? >> Second. >> We have a motion and a second by Karen. All those in favor, raise your hand. All right,

119we have a 60 vote. The plan is approved. Good job. All right, we'll go on to the next item. Discuss and possible action to nominate a person or persons to the Hood Central Appraisal District Board. Dr. Moroski. Yeah. So, it's time for us to um nominate up to five individuals for this board. And so, um I had several names given to me um that we've collected up here. There's more than five. And then, of course, we'll take nominations from the floor and I'll let you handle kind of how you guys want to select that. And then once it's elected, we'll send that in. Remember, this is just the nominations. This is not the voting process. So, we're nominating the five individuals that we feel should be on the board. >> That is correct. We do

120not uh elect anyone. We merely uh nominate people. And uh we do have some names here that have been uh suggested. Those names include Scott Bradley, Eddie Rodriguez, John Highmith, Rick Fry, James Wall, and Richard Hoffs. Do we have other names? >> I would like to add to the list Mark McDonald. >> Mark McDonald, others. >> Can we make any comments about the names? Are we discussing the names? >> Um, >> it's discussion. >> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's all open for discussion. And >> are those all the names? >> Yeah. Are those all the names? >> Um, that's all that's on this list. Yes. Do you have others you'd like to add? >> No, I just have No, I just have a couple comments about um Rodriguez and Fry. Um I I would like

121to say that I do not believe they should be nominated. Um they were already on the board on HCAD with the misappropriation of taxpayer funds. We were all given a red book last year explaining all of this. Um they tried to set up a home office corporation. For what purpose? Nobody knows. uh they were part of trying to do shell companies and land swaps. I think we need to have honesty, integrity for the taxpayers and I don't think these two need to be on the on the uh board there. >> All right. Any other discussion? >> My my comments are very similar actually. I have the red book, too. Um, to say that I'm not very comfortable appointing anyone or nominating anyone who was seated on the board during that period when the HCAD new

122auditor found entries, errors, and omissions. So egregious were the errors committed by the outgoing auditor that the new auditor required HCAD to restate the prior two years audits. The outgoing auditor was Snow Garrett, by the way. So that uh will also inform my decision on our other discussion item. uh not less than $200,000, $217,000 of a write-off just during that period. Um so anyone who was seated on the board from February, 2023 forward is uh problematic for me. Um, even the minutes in the in the uh that were recorded for the March 20th um HCAD meeting say uh suggest the refusal to dissolve the home office corporation that um Mrs. Loward just mentioned and instead the board agreed, this is a quote from the minutes, the board agreed to uh remove the item from all

123future agendas so that it would no longer be discussed. that board accepted those budgets in question and I think that during that period they were asleep at the wheel moving making a motion seconding approving by vote and ultimately signing those erroneous budgets. So, and I'm only talking about the past three years that red book goes back 10 years plus. >> I think Rick was kind of thrown into it. that was that was his first year on the board if I correctly and I have a great deal of respect for Mr. Fry. So I just wanted to mention that. >> I know how first years on the board can go. >> Yes. >> Um I'd like to say that uh I talked to Scott Bradley. He is interested in being on the board. Um he mentioned

124to me that Rick Fry does not want to be on the board. that he's done his time. >> He does not. >> Okay. We can nominate no one. We can nominate one. We can nominate as many as we want. So, it is at the board's discretion. I just need a motion. >> I'll make a motion to nominate John Highmith, James Wall, and Richard Hay. on the board. >> Could you repeat repeat those, please? I I think he's But he's only So, let me make one discussion for Richard. Hey, the comment was that he's already on the board, but I think he's up again because he's only he's only filling the gap. Yeah. >> So, I think that that is still a valid nomination. Uh those names again, is that what you asked for? >> Yes,

125sir. Um, on the list there, third, fifth, and sixth, uh, John Highmith, James Wall, and Richard Hay. >> I'd like to add Scott Bradley. >> And then I would like to add Mark McDonald. I talked to Mark and he would like to continue on the board. >> That would be our five. >> That would be five. >> I need a motion. I'll make the motion that we accept those five nominees and present to HK. >> Those nominees include Scott Bradley, John Highmith, James Wall, Richard Hoffs, Mark McDonald. >> Okay. Is that a motion? >> That's my motion. >> Need a second. >> I'll second. >> We have a motion and a second. All in favor, raise your hand. That passes. 60. All right, we'll move on to our next item. Discuss and take action on

126an investment policy review resolution. Mr. Whitefield, >> thank you, Miss Alana. Board, in front of you, you do have our annual investment policy review that we go through every year. Um according to public funds investment act and our CDA legal and CDA local uh we review these once a year. Um the these the CDA legal and CDA local serve as our investment policies and I've reviewed these to ensure that we are in compliance. CDA legal also states that the board shall adopt a written instrument stating that it has reviewed the investment policy, the investment strategies and a written instrument so adopted shall report any changes made to either investment policy or investment strategies. It CDA local legal also states the board shall annually review, revise and adopt a list of qualified brokers and are authorized

127to enga that are enga authorized to engage investment transactions with the district. CDA local states that the superintendent and others that are appointed by the board to serve as the investment officers. And lastly, the government code requires that the board approve of independent sources of investment training. And in view of these requirements, we've attached a consider u a resolution for your consideration. Um there are there is attachments of CDA legal, CDA local, um the uh investment uh brokers that we'll use and the resolution does address who would be the investment officers for the district. Uh, it's a recommendation that the board adopt the attached resolution stating the board has reviewed the investment policy and strategies, adopt the list of qualified brokers, and designate the investment officers and and approve the independent resources of investment training

128as required by investment policy and Texas government code. >> Any questions by our board? >> You vetted these brokers and comfortable. There are 10 they're pull investment brokers and there's only one that's added that's different and it's the one on the top and he is under the same qualifications as as Logic Text Lonear all of those. Thank you. >> So really the only person we're adding is going to be our current superintendent. Correct Dr. Moras >> for the investment officers. Yes. And she has completed her training at the first of this month. So, she has completed her her obligation to be trained. >> You did it already. >> Very good. >> She's not on this investment report that you have tonight because y'all haven't approved it yet. But yes, she will be on the next

129one. >> Okay. >> I move that we accept this uh policy. Let's see. Let me see how I say that. accept the investment policy review resolution as presented. >> I'll second. >> All right, we have a motion by uh Barbara Townson and a second by Tim Bolton. All those in favor, raise your hand. Let's approve 60 vote. Moving right along. We'll go to D. discuss and take action on the purchase of five 77 passenger student buses. Mr. Whitefield, >> thank you. Miss Lana, um board confirmed you do have the proposal for five 77 passenger buses and one 54 passenger bus and I want to verify that is correct. >> It is correct. >> 54 um that would be the special ed bus. So that'd be five regular buses and one special ed bus. Um currently

130there are five buses on the ground that we can get within anywhere from 30 days to 6 weeks. So those will move pretty quickly. Um they will go into production on the special ed bus and it'll be six to seven months. Um in the budget amendments you did have uh where we amended into fund balance for the committed fund balance that we declared in August >> and we didn't recognize the complete loss on those last budgeted last year. So we're just going to reissue those that those funds for more buses. And these trucks are ready to uh buses are ready to roll. >> The fi the five are on the ground and we can get them anywhere from 30 days to six weeks. So they'll be really they'll be pretty quick. >> That's good. >>

131Fantastic. >> Do I have a motion? >> I have discussion. Do you want that after discussion? >> Uh so uh I just want to take a moment to praise my fellow trustees and especially Dr. for a return to practical and responsible sanity and putting maintenance, repairs, and replacements of our bus fleet operations on a regular and predictable schedule under M instead of an INS budget debt for bus purchases through bonds. Uh that praise extends to the engagement to do the same uh for being better stewards of our real estate assets as well. >> Yeah, thanks to the team. They are um really planning ahead. So, thanks Do I have a motion? >> I'll make that motion. >> Do I have a second? >> I'll second. We have a motion by Mr. Bolton and a second

132by Barbara Townson. All those in favor, raise your hand. As is 60. We will move on to our next item. All right. will discuss a recommendation for the district audit services from a RFQ. >> Thank you, Miss Alana. Board, in front of you, you do have the uh evaluation of the RFQ ser audit services for um discussion this month. Um it was comprehensive evaluation of six qualified CPA firms on RFQ10009. Uh we all recommended Snow Garrett as our first choice as external officers with Patillo Brown Hill as our second choice. It was individual um evaluations by myself, Husine and Kathy. Uh you can see the averages there and you can see our individual scores. Um you can also see that they were um scored on firm qualifications and experience, team expertise and continuity, school district

133specialization, meeting our timeline requirements, quality assurance and peer reviews, and references from comparable districts. Um again, we are um recommending and you can see the snowgar strengths on there. You can see the timeline commitments. On the second uh second recommendation, you see strengths, key personnel, and the considerations that uh there were some concerns for and then the other other firms that were considered there. There's a few things listed for them as well. Uh we recommend that the board approve next month the Snow Garrett as the external auditors for Granberry with Patilla Brown as the alternate selection for both and both firms demonstrated ex um pardon me exceptional school district expertise proven track records with comparable to Texas ISDs qualified teams committed to our engagement ability to meet our timeline requirements and strong quality assurance and

134peer reviews for your discussion >> as as has been stated this is not start uh voting on this at this time. This is merely for discussion. So if you have questions, feel free to ask at this time, but we will not vote on it. >> Discussion only. It is >> discussion only. >> Okay. >> And team, as a remember, as a reminder, we are going to vote on this next month. We're trying to give plenty of time for questions, especially if there's questions from our community. Give us time to answer those. um board members if you want to make a meeting of course um with the CFO or somebody from his team you have access to information um that may answer some of your questions as well it's really response to make sure that there's

135time um and so we're discussing this month we ask that next time you come ready to discuss and vote >> right thank you for that just in general not specifically about this but that policy is a good one and thanks for giving us that >> so you want us to be can we say things now or you want us to wait till next time okay >> discussion discussion. Um, okay. It's only common sense and the Security Exchange Commission best practice to change the auditor every 5 to seven years. We've had Snow Garrett for seven years at least. Um, they insist on we shouldn't insist on transparency. So, why would we expect less for our GISD with a $98 million budget? Some of the surrounding districts have utilized other companies in Snow Garrett and have saved

136money. Our own HCAD discovered a significant savings by changing the auditor from Snow Garrett. Additionally, the new auditor discovered discrepancies with HCAD and HCAD previous audits and them were all conducted by Snow Garrett. Again, common sense tells us that it is certainly not wise to have the same auditor company and the same auditors year after year. Um, my one question I have is uh what does it mean minimizes the the learning curve? Um, we need I'd like to know how GISD would be significantly different than any other ISD and why would uh you say that there's a learning curve. Uh, Patilla serves 37 Texas ISDs and Snow Garrett audits 22. Patilla was established in 23 has 25 years experience with government entities. Patila is certainly equal and the uh argument can be made they exceed

137the experience of Snow Garrett. And what does slightly less local presence mean? And why would slightly less local presence matter or impact GISD? Our auditors are not first responders. Patella reported us reported that their staff obtains 40 hours of local training and their staff maintains current expertise in governmental auditing. I uh do not see on our paperwork where Snow Garrett reports any annual training. Uh, Patillo is also members of the a uh LCPA GAQC. >> It's a mouthful. >> It was. And in the uh in the words written that we have here, Patillo is a strong alternative for the betterment and safety of GISD and taxpayers. It is now time to change the auditor for GISD. I believe that our own HGAT experienced is also justification to try an alternative to Snow Garrett. Snow Garrett's

138ex experience is their CPA manager has been with the company for seven years and GISD for seven years. The CPA engagement partner has 24 years experience. CPA concurring review partner has 30 plus years governmental audit experience. Patillo CPA engagement partner has 25 years school district auditing. Their concurring partner has 25 years school district auditing. The manager has five years school district auditing and the senior auditor has three years school district auditing. Uh Patillo has exceptional school district experience too. They've got 37 districts. They have a proven uh track record with comparable Texas ISDs. Do they? Well, what about Snow Garrett? Because I'd like to see letters from both districts. If we're going to be comparing their track record, we need evidence. Patillo has qualified teams. Patillo uh doesn't it meet the time requirements? Who says

139that they don't? We don't know that. Quality assurance and peer reviews. Can we get examples from both companies? Those are uh my comments for it and I um my suggestion is that we change auditors. Okay. Thank you very much for your for your uh points. All valid. >> Any other discussion? >> I'll go. Actually, I'm a little She said seven years, but I think you told me something more like 20 what years? Snow. >> There was a break in the middle. Yes, we had patella brown once before. >> Oh, is that it? Okay. But still 20 years, but with some some break in there. I understand. All right. So, I think change is good and and I I saw the same recommendations. I went and looked them up. My own um the company that I

140work for, we do it every five years as well. um just for change and refresh and so that uh our our interface doesn't get too chummy um if I can say it that way. Uh so I think change is good. Um I I that I don't know if cost was a consideration is is uh did we say patio patillo >> patillo >> we are not allowed to use cost as a consideration in RQ. >> All right fair enough. I just I heard the comment about how uh how they're paid. That's fine with me, too. Um so I I think change for just change sake. Um I'm not knowing except what you presented here, but that we've used them before. So that's good to know. I didn't realize that was the case. Um and I see

141your scoring and me I I appreciate that too. I meant to open by saying that I appreciate the uh objective uh scoring that you guys went through to to try to come up with a recommendation on those objective numbers. So, thank you for that. Um I see that you score them the same all the way through EMTT for both of those both getting 94 slightly lower average overall when you factor in um the rest of the scoring, but that's going to be my recommendation as well next month. >> Thank you, Mr. Balden, any other comments? All right, we will be voting on that next month. >> Love that process. Thank you. >> All right, we'll move along now to reports and we will come along to the annual Pardon. >> We forgot one. >> Oh,

142okay. Okay, that was in Okay. approved school library collection procurement list and I'm going to start off just because um Leah is not able to attend today and so um I know we have at least one board member to have some discussion up here um but this is a new process that we are going through based on the new legislative um information that we got about how our district procures books and so this is our first time so I'm excited that we get to share with you all the process that we're using and so I'll take any discussion May I? >> Yes. >> Okay. Regarding SP13, with the passing SP13, Texas has now set standards for ISD library books. Texas has established safeguards, and all ISDs must adhere to them. ISDs can no longer acquire

143or retain materials deemed harmful, indecent, profane, sexually explicit, or perversely vulgar. present. The process for GISD is as follows. Teachers can submit a list of books they would like to see in the library. The district library coordinator reviews this book list and then provides the list to the trustees. Trustees are responsible for re reviewing this list of books and if they deem any are inappropriate, they can submit a book or books for further review by the district uh library coordinator. The most recent list of books for review totaled over 700 this month. The local uh school library council review committee was not adopted by GISD. Therefore, SB13 responsibility falls on the district library coordinator and the trustees. Parents, you still have the right to challenge a book in GISD if you believe a book is

144inappropriate for your child's age. Additionally, GISD has established a plan so parents may select alternative library materials for their child. GISD will post online list of books to be purchased by GISD for the library. Parents, you have 30 days to review the list of books to be purchased for the libraries. This list can be found on the GISD website and parents are notified when this list of proposed library books is posted. While uh while parents are responsible for what their children read, GISD is responsible for what books are in the library for students to check out of the library. And therefore, we all play a role in safeguarding our children from age and appropriate material. May we all take this responsibility seriously, protect the minds and hearts of our students. you will say soon. Oh

145yeah, I just want to say um so we worked hard to kind of get this process down and it is new and so they did have a list of 700 books to go through um and uh we did pull one to review a little later and so um you know I just want the public to know that there is a process um that I think is going to work well for us um to have many layers to check to make sure that uh the books that we purchase going forward are appropriate and I know we've done a lot of hard work and so um acknowledge the work that's been done in the past to be overcommunicative with families. Did you have any? And then I'll have That's all. >> No, we do appreciate everybody that's

146involved in the system and we want do want to let our parents know that they most certainly are involved in this process and we do appreciate their input. So, thank you Karen for your remarks. >> Uh just just a little more comments. Um one uh thanks for that. The process is good and I like the process. Uh so I concur. I think I like uh in particular I like that uh that we er on the side of caution that when anything is challenged then we'll we'll look at it separately and immediately. So I I like that process. Um I I I sound like I'm gushing tonight because I keep keep giving you praise for everything, but um but under the new library process um I want to encourage parents to be engaged and to contact

147your trustees and to uh look at those that are uh posted online and and let us know what you think of that. >> Be part of it. >> All right, moving right along to reports. Once a year by law we are >> we have to approve the list. >> Oh, okay. I'm just in a hurry. >> Okay. >> So, with my comments, I'll make the motion that we approve the list as presented. >> All right. We have a motion. Do we have a second? >> I'll second. >> All right. We have a motion to approve the library list and we have a second by Mr. Moore. All those in favor, raise your hand. Right. We just approved 60. Now, can we move on? Okay. All right. Moving right along. All right. Uh we will move

148on to reports. And the first report is the one that we are required by law for continuing education reports for the board of trustees. And it it's is a report that is required that we have to say if we have met the requirements for board training and this is the report. >> I'm getting a scolding now. Look, look at the look I get. >> And everyone on the board has met their requirements except for Mr. Bolton >> with one exception. >> And Mr. M Bolton has not met the requirements for the open meetings act. >> He has not met the requirements for the cyber security. >> He has not met the requirements for the child abuse prevention. Would you care to explain? >> No. >> I'm a busy busy guy. >> I keep making promises

149that I'm going to >> We are He is going to get it done. It is important. I know we're laughing up here. um because we have been communicating for a while with you about it. Um but it is important. We know it's an important part of a trustee job and so we will continue to encourage you to get those each one of those completed. >> I'll do it. I'll do it. >> I'm sorry. I do take it seriously. I laugh because you guys know me and I laugh. But you know, >> but you did go to training. I This is really I don't really don't it up. >> I really am confused. >> No, but everyone else exceeded expectations. >> Exceeded. >> And it is a reminder that the other ones you did everything that

150you were supposed to do. So, thank you. Yes. Let's give them some applause. >> Okay. Give yourself a pat on the back, everybody. >> All right. We'll move on now to categorical spending. And from that, uh, Mr. Whitefield, you may move on to financial statements and cash flow and investment. >> Thank you, Miss Wana. Board in front of you, you do have a categorical spending for information. These are purchases made between 50 and $100,000 that we do do make purchases uh through auh approved uh source that you've approved earlier on. Uh the purchase was made through the buy board. It was the branching mines purchase and it was for $91,223.50. If you have any questions could answer that. >> Moving on. >> Proceed. >> Uh you do have the financials in front of you. These

151are for the month end September 30th, 2025 for the general operating fund. These are expenditures that happen between September 1st, 2025 and September 30th, 2025. Revenue collected to date equals 11.41% of the budgeted amount compared to 4.8% in 24 and 25. expenditures to date represent 11.19% of the budget as compared to 12.99% in 2425 and I don't see any um thing that stands out to me on those particular things. >> That's an improvement in both directions over last year. >> Yes sir. >> I'm taking credit for that. >> Yes sir. Moving on. You do have your cash flow and investment report in front of you. This is the first month, so it is going to look a little bit different than the last month, which was through August. This is for September. Um, we did

152collect $26,872.85 in interest for the month of September. And that is comparable to last year as well. And that is all I have. >> Wait, does that count the monies that we collected interest from the 16 million? >> Yes, sir. >> But how's it so comparable? >> 16 million. Currently, you can see if you'll look at the very end column there on First Financial Bank, they it's not an investment, but they give me the same rate as uh textbook. They call they say the same rate as textbook. It's a little different, but they're giving me 4.3% in First Financial Bank. And you can see that I had 10 million starting at the first of the month and I added the 6 million over there. It was in Lonear, but I went ahead and moved it

153over into First Financial Bank, so it's all together. Um, but it is at that one is at 3 4.305% interest. I was just >> Yes, ma'am. And it is working for us. >> It is working for us. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Excellent job, Mr. Whitefield. >> Excellent. >> All right. With no further basis, >> our meeting is adjourned.