001Good evening. The time is now 5:00 p.m. I 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 notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code 551. The board will now adjourn into executive session pursuant to the following sections. Texas Government Code 551.074 074 under personnel to deliberate the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline or dismissal of a public officer or employee for staff recommendations. First sergeant Jose Guerrera and new JOTC marine instructor and the superintendent evaluation. We will also be discussing under Texas government code 551072 real property to deliberate the purchase exchange lease of real property if deliberation in an open meeting
002would have a detrimental effect on the board's position in negot negotiations with a third person to discuss the sale of real property consisting of 3.5 acres more or less of unimproved property in Hood County described as lot two block one Actton Elementary School edition located at 2850 Actton Road, Granberry, Texas 76049, and to discuss real property consisting of 86 acres more or less of unimproved property in Hood County located at 1301 James Road in Granberry, Texas, 76049. Also under Texas Government Code Chapter 551.071, 071 consultation with attorney to consult with its attorney when the board seeks advice about pending or contemplated litigation or settlement offer offer or when the attorney will have an ethical duty of confidentiality. The time is now 5:02 p.m. Thank you. Okay, the time is now 6:05 p.m. The board is
003reconvening following executive session. We will now reconvene by beginning with an invocation led by Miss Nancy Alona. Would you bear with me, please? Our most gracious heavenly father, we thank you so much for this beautiful day. And we thank you, Lord, for this beautiful season. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity together here this evening to talk about the business of our school district. Lord, we pray that you'll be with each and every member of our school district as they enjoy this summer season. And Lord, we just pray that you will grant them safety and allow them to be back with us when their school season starts again. Lord, we thank you that we have the opportunity to talk about our students and their welfare and their education. We pray Lord that you'll help us
004to make the best decisions for them and for our district. We just pray now now Lord that you'll be with us during this meeting. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Thank you, Miss Lana. Now, if you will please join us in the pledges to the US and Texas flag. 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 Texas flag. I pledge algiance to thee Texas. One state under God one and indivisible. Thank you. And now we will begin with our achievement spotlight. First up, we have our UIL social studies second in state. [Laughter] is not here. So, if you'd like to say a few words about this team here, you guys right
005here. I I cannot turn down the opportunity to talk about my students and my program. And I want to sell both um and brag on both to you. Uh this is the UIL social studies team. Uh this is Cameron Ward, Quinn King, Peter Carroll, and Carly Joe Burnfield. Um they are uh well uh Quinn and Pete just graduated. Um both were in the top 10. Quinn was uh your validictorian for Granberry High School. And uh I would uh they did place second in state in social studies. Um and I wanted to thank you for recognizing them tonight. We fall under the umbrella of UIL academics. Uh the university intercolastic league that governs sports competitions and marching band and so much more. Offer also offers competition in academics. And this umbrella includes events such as accounting
006and spelling and social studies and mathematics and number sense and science and so many more um events where our students compete. Um over the last five years the rigor and competition in UIL academics across the state of Texas has increased tremendously. Um it is um both Argal High School and Alo High School um were our biggest problems uh this year. They have focused a lot on um UIL academics and for really good reason. UIL academics increases um AP test scores and SAT and ACT test scores and study habits. Um and and these four students learned so much this year. uh while competing and they had to well for one thing they had to beat Alo three times. Um and we did each time um uh but the value in UIL academics is tremendous. Um and
007once they reach the level of the state competition, all four of these students are eligible for a unique set of scholarships. And um hopefully I'm counting on Pete and Quinn or at least one of them uh since they have graduated and applied for that uh to receive one of those scholarships. Last year, Granberry High School student Connor Babish, uh, who placed second in chemistry in UIL academics, received a scholarship from, um, TILF fund, which is Texas Interscolastic League. Um, anyway, by reaching the state competition, uh, they can apply for those and Carly and Cameron can apply next year even if we don't make it back to state, but we will. Uh we began with 15 students in UIL social studies and each year the competition um subject changes. Last year we focused on India and
008uh Eastern Asia. Uh this year we focused on the beginnings of political parties in the United States from Hamilton through Andrew Jackson. Uh it was a lot of years, a lot of history, a lot of government, a lot of Supreme Court cases. um a lot of documents to read and these four students studied diligently consistently um giving their time and effort and many evenings many afternoons um and many weekends to learning this material when I don't think any of them maybe other than Cameron even want to pursue a career in social studies but the studying itself and the learning of the material is so beneficial So, um, this is the first time I've ever had a team, uh, place at state, and I am incredibly proud, and I love these four, um, and the rest
009of the 15 very much, uh, for their commitment and just for being them. Um, my heart is full and I'm very proud of them. So, I ask, uh, that you please continue to support UIL academics. Uh we had about 115 Granberry High School students compete in UIL academics this year. 115 is quite a bit. Uh so please continue to support them. Um please push the students and coaches uh to continue to succeed and to go even further because this program is so worthwhile. Um and if you would like to say anything about what you learned by competing in UIL academics, um I would be very grateful. But I did not prepare you for this moment. So we can take a picture, too. We'll move on. Okay. All right. So, let's take a picture. Okay. And
010if there's any parents and family in the audience, could you please stand and be recognized? [Laughter] That way a little bit. Perfect. Perfect. Okay, congratulations. [Music] Of course. Next up, we would like to recognize our community partners presented by Miss Barbara Townsen. It is my delight today to uh let you know of those people in our community who have donated uh money to help our students here at Granberry ISD. We have a donation from GHS volleyball booster club to the GHS volleyball campus activity account to supplement travel to the Portland and Friendship tournaments of $8,13.88. We have a donation from Pinnacle Bank to the Grand Volleyball Campus Activity Fund for camp t-shirts of $250. A donation of a clarinet from Anastasia Monty to the GHS band of $200. A donation from World's Finest Chocolates. How
011many of y'all have had to buy that stuff? From sales bonus to GHS AVID student activity account of $125. Donation from Texas Cowboy Symposium Homer Robertson to the GHS barbecue team student activity account of $5,000. Donation from Matthew Carlton to the GHS HOSA student activity account for registration fees $135. donation from Dustin Turnbound to the GHS a mechanics campus activity account to the support that program of $300 donation from civilian marksmanship to the GHS MCJ ROC rifle team to support their program of $2,000 and a donation from Granberry Door and Window to the GISD community relations for $50 gift cards for teacher appreciation, which came to a total of $1,000. The total donations for this month from our community to help support Granberry ISD, $17,113.88. And I just want you to note, please, if you
012see any of these uh people or go to any of these businesses, thank them for their support because community outreach, community help is always appreciated. Thank you so much. And we have an update on our board committees, Miss Townsen. All right. Um I am have the pleasure of being on the policy committee and um wanted to let you know exactly what that is and what we do. The policy committee was formed in March of this year. It was a the purpose of the policy committee is to review our current policies, assure that GISD is compliant with all legal policies, which I'm sure you can imagine after the 89th legislative session there's going to be a lot of updates from a legal standpoint and then assure that all corresponding local policies align with the legal and
013then bring to the board any local policies that may need to be amended. All throughout the year, the committee is comprised of representatives from across the district. We have campus administration, CTE, curriculum, special education, facilities, business, HR, board of trustees, and then Miss Tammy Clark and Dr. Courtney Moroski. Currently, the committee, we're meeting monthly, and we have completed a review of section A of our policies. And if anyone is interested in seeing where our board policies are, if you go to the website, go to schoolboard tab, go to the bottom of that and you will see board policies. And if you ever have a night where you can't re fall asleep, try it. And that's my report for today. Thank you, Miss Townsen. And next up, we have our superintendent report. Dr. Moroski. Okay, so
014I have a lot of great things to say. Um, so buckle up. Uh, first of all, we want to acknowledge that this is our last week of summer school. So, we appreciate the families getting students to school. It really helps um fill in some of those gaps in the summer and our teachers that have worked hard um and tirelessly and also our departments like child nutrition and transportation. So, um last week of summer school and and and students are doing a wonderful job. Also, uh the legislative session has ended and what that means is we have a lot of work to do on our end. Over the next few months, we'll be bringing to you lots of updates on legislation and recommendations going forward. I know some of us are anxious to get those conversations
015underway. Um, something exciting is that we have final approval from TEA for our teacher incentive aotment application. So, as a reminder, that is a local committee that designed that application. So, um, it was approved by TEA and we're excited about that process. Um, also a couple of updates on things that happened last time. So, um, if you remember, we had a budget amendment, uh, brought to us last month that included a revenue source of $16 million, and it's been the subject of of many questions. And so, I'm going to give you an update about what we know at this point. So we are still uh waiting on some finalized information but um we know some things to know are that um TEA and uh well the comproller sent a letter to TEA and us notifying
016this of not notifying us of the amount that was coming and so TEA sent the money to us. We have no official way to send any money back and we don't even know what the money back would be at this point. Um what we're anticipating is that when they go through an audit process at TEA that we um will be notified at that point of any remaining amount of money they would like sent back to them after they sent that $16 million um to us. Right now it's sitting in an interestbearing account. So uh we're holding on to it. We are not spending it. We're waiting for any kind of finalized information from TA once we get that um once they get that information a little more under control. Also, last time we were together,
017the board uh approved us putting in some waiverss for attendance um for those low attendance day, which included the flu days. I'm happy to report that those have been approved. And um it took our attendance rate from 94.22% to 94.41%. And even though that sounds like a small amount, um a good estimate of that amount of money that we'll be getting is 90 almost $92,000. So, it was definitely worthwhile for us to complete those waiverss. We're excited about that. Also, um, on our website, when you go to granberryisd.org right now, um, there is a new box that pops up for you to join our community newsletter. So, if you're a community person and you want to get updated information, all you have to do is go to granberryd.org and that will pop up and fill
018in your name and your email address and then you'll start getting quarterly updates from us. Um, as well as information needed um, at the time. Um also um we have got two more uh celebrations. The first one is that we have made an official uh new hire for a high um interest position in the district and I need to know is Serge first for Sergeant Jose Guerrera in the audience today. Just wanted to see. So um we I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Never mind. Uh we'll get to that in just a minute. All right. And the last thing that we want to celebrate is our uh board president, Courtney Gore. And we want to congratulate her on completing the master trustee status from TASBY. The master trustee designation is awarded by the um Texas Association of
019School Boards to schoolboard members who successfully complete the leadership TASBY program. This year-long program is designed to enhance leadership skills and deepen understanding of board governance and advocacy. Currently on our board, Barbara Townsen also holds a master trustee status. I believe these two trustees are two of four total from Granberry ISD that have reached this status. And for other sitting board members, the application is due July 1 in case anybody else would like to apply to join that program next year. Um, do you mind taking a picture down there with us? Okay. And I'm going to give you a pen. Okay. Thank you. Let's give her a few. [Laughter] [Music] Where's your phone? Perfect. Thank you. [Music] That concludes the superintendent's report. Thank you, Dr. Moroski. Okay, moving on to public comments. We didn't have
020anybody sign up, so we'll be going straight into consider action items discussed in closed session. First up, we have consider staff recommendations. First Sergeant Jose Guerrera, new JOTC marine instructor along with other staff recommendations. Do I have a motion? Madame President, I move that we accept the staff recommendations as noted, especially First Sergeant Jose Guerrera. Do I have a second? I'll second. I have a motion by Mrs. Townsen, a second by Mr. Bolton. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, raise your hand. Let the record show that is six in favor and one absent being Mr. Mike Moore. And I'll say a couple I'll say a couple words about um our new first sergeant who is taking the place of um uh first sergeant sorry Rosita I can't remember Rosita's first name. Uh okay.
021Uh so our new first sergeant Ger brings with him an impressive 20 years in the Marine Corps career filled with operational leadership, instructional expertise and a commitment to mentoring others. He is originally from Alice um Texas but he is joining us and he's moving to Granberry. Most recently he has been deployed um overseas in Okinawa and his other deployments include places like um Philippines and uh some other locations. Iraq. Perfect. In Okinawa. All right. So that is our new first sergeant who is going to lead. It's hard to step up into Sergeant Rosita's role. Um he has been a staple in that program for 15 years. And so um we believe that this um new replacement will be a good fit for our program. We're excited about that. Yes, he comes very highly recommended and
022we're very excited that honored to have him here with us. So thank you. Uh, next up is discussion and possible action, including the adoption of a resolution to approve the state the sale of real property consisting of 3.5 acres more or less of unimproved property in Hood County described as lot 2, block one, Actton Elementary School edition, located at 2850 Actton School Road, Granberry, Texas 76049. Do I have a motion? Madame President, I move that um that we adopt the resolution for the sale of the property, the 3.5 acres uh just as you described in um in the description that you just read. Do I have I have a motion by Miss Alana. Do I have a second? A second and a second by Mrs. Lowry. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor raise
023your hand. Let the record show that is six in favor and one absent being Mr. Moore. Uh there was one other property we discussed and we do need to have a few more further discussion on that before we make a decision. Uh so we'll be moving on to the next item which is our consent agenda. Does anybody want to pull anything from the consent agenda before we take a vote? E. Item 11 E, the J1 visa host school agreement with the International Alliance Group. That's on page 61 of your board book. Not right now. Well, it's up right now. Well, it's a presenter. Yeah, it's consent agenda. So, if you have questions, you can Yeah, definitely. Now is the time to ask them. All right. Well, it's not exactly a question. I just think that
024it seems to me that it's a good solution to source the bilingual talent that we need. Um, and I just wanted to confirm with you, Dr. M and uh Mr. Jones that that you like this program as well. I'm going to um pass this to you. You can talk about the reputation of the company and what we intend to do. Yeah, we just uh started looking and we couldn't find bilingual teachers and so I started doing some research and found this um international program I comes highly recommended. The San Antonio teacher of the year was from this program last year and uh countless other states. uh but across the world they're they're putting people in place uh so we can hire uh good certified uh teachers. Yep. Thank you. I just wanted to give you
025a chance to elaborate on that. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bolton. Any further questions or discussion? I have a question for Wes. Um the insurance uh information in part of this uh that we have it says that we don't pay that but on page 73 it says that we have to offer the teacher a choice to enroll in it and then in whatever she chooses if she chooses the IG then we have to pay the teacher's um coverages for the uh health insurance which is it which is it I I asked that question and she said uh that has been there but uh to to my knowledge and her knowledge, nobody's ever taken that because theirs is so affordable. But we won't we will then pay their health insurance or we will not. We
026will not. Can I ask is that something that we need to reconcile with legal? We can definitely do that. So the question I think is that um there's a bit a bit of conflicting information. The memo says that we do not pay their insurance, but in the contract it says if they elect to. So unless you have confirmation from legal about that question. Well, legal legal reviewed it. Okay. But like I said, their their insurance is so much cheaper than ours would. That's why they always they've never had a situation where they've taken the school district's insurance. They take the IG insurance. They take the IG insurance. Right. But I still think that that language would need to be reconciled if there's conflict. I didn't catch it, but but u it says too that I
027a will submit an invoice to the host that covers the annual fee for the I a package plan. That's just part of our regular fee. That's our fee. Our regular fee. Okay. We do pay that company, I believe, $9,000 per 9,000 is the fee. Not per applicant, per person that we hire. We pay that to IG, which includes that's what the the packet cost is. But after you back out all the other cost, it it saves us money and then just kind of a wash. And you say that we hire, but they don't really carry our logo on their paycheck. They're I a employees that So, we did a lot of question asking today. Um and so we actually they do sign a contract with our district. And so we have a table that includes
028the um the salary and then what's backed out of it compared to what we pay um our district. And I can I can follow up with you guys. They are our employee. They they are our employees, but we do not pay the same amount. So when you see a salary, a lot of times people don't understand that we're also paying more than that as a district for employees. So that those are the costs that we're talking about is those extra payments to TRS, they won't be made. And then the health insurance and then there's social security. We would not be paying into that program. So appreciate that. Thank you. Good questions. Any further discussion? Hey, do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda items? I'll make that motion. I have a motion by
029Mr. Bolton. Do I have a second? I have a second. And a second by Miss Alana. Okay. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor raise your hand at the record show. That's six in favor and one. Mr. Moore is absent. Okay. Moving on to discussion action items. Item 12A75 in your board book. United Way of Hood County proposal discussion presented by Dr. Courtney Moroski. Yeah. So, I'm gonna start off. I'm gonna call Crystal Moore to the podium to answer any questions, but um I'll preface this conversation with um United Way is currently residing in one of our buildings. It is a building that is attached to Decker Gym and they came to us with a proposal. Currently, they lease the building from us um on a monthly basis, but that limits some of the um
030grants that they're available for. Um, so they came to us with a proposal to either um do a 99-year lease or for us to sign the deed over to them. So we talked to our facilities committee and our district people and and we would like to recommend to the board that we sign the deed over. However, we know this is um something that you'll want to be a part of the conversation and so that's why we're bringing it today. There's no action today. It's just a discussion. So, um, they're she's here to answer some questions or, um, to say any statement that you'd like in regards to this and then depending on the will of the board, we will come back next month with some action items at that point. You want to say anything,
031Crystal? Sure. Um, so, United Way, for those of you that don't know, we um have moved over to Decker Gym. We are using that space as like a community hub. Um several of our nonprofits have moved in with us. We're offering trainings for them. Um workshops and self-care workshops and also space. Um a lot of them don't have brick and mortar and so they're having to go to Starbucks and pay for coffee to have to work and now they can just come to our office. In fact, Head Start, I'm sure you guys are all aware, they um they're actually officing with us this summer so that they so that their employees don't have to drive all the way to Stevenville. Um and those are employees that are working with our GISD um students. So, it's
032really we we want to restore the gym to its original um state so that we can get the community back in that gym and use it and which is going to promote a healthier community and um really just allow the community back into Decker Gym. Um it's every time somebody walks in to see it, they tell us a story because they grew up there, they played basketball there, their kids went to Boys and Girls Club. Um it's just this beloved place and um we're honored to be in there, but we could really do so much more if we had the ability um to write capital campaign grants. So that's that's kind of Thank you. Y'all y'all have done some great work already this far getting that place restored and it's been amazing to watch. I
033had my first dance recital on the stage in that gym. Thank you. I would like to include if the board chooses to go forward with deeding that building to them, um, we would write in their clause that said if you moved out, United Way moved out, that that building would return to the school district in better shape than we're giving it to them. So, I just wanted to make sure that was clear if you decide to go forward. And and having them in there has completely turned that property around. And I don't know if any of y'all have had an opportunity to walk through it before United Way went in, but it was it was something else. So, y'all have done a great job over there. Thank you. Thank you. We still have a before
034room. If you haven't seen it, you can come and see what it looked like. It doesn't do it justice, though. Oh, scary, but we've we've had a lot of community buyin. um junior leadership Granberry came in and worked on the decor gym side to get the classrooms ready um so that Christmas for children could come in and use it for distribution which saved them over $8,000 for the year being able to use the gym and not having to rent other facilities. Um, leadership cranberry came in and redid the offices and put together donated furniture so that we could office out of there. A+ roofing um came in and replaced the roof at no cost um to Decker Gym and the community has given donations to work on the floor and uh we just we've we've
035been very very blessed um by the community really stepping up and helping us with this project. Thank you. Any further questions for Miss Moore? I have one real quick question. We talked you talked about two different options for GISD consideration was a 99-year lease and the other was the um this dealing and over which is what uh I guess we're kind of leaning toward. Um it says that ownership allows United Way to access largecale capital grants and federal funding. Can you speak to those that that it would open uh versus a 99-year lease? Yes. So, a lot of grants, I'm not saying we can't get any grants with a 99-year lease, but having it deeded over will open us up for more state and county and city money because it belongs to us. They and
036really private foundations are where we're going to be asking the most money for those larger number. um grants and they really like to see that the community's bought in completely and so they know that that building will be ours and that that that the school won't come back and make it a school. They won't just come in and take it. It's it's really just a um a good faith type deal. they they they won't put capital campaign dollars into a building that that you don't own or that you you don't have ownership of. Well, thanks Crystal for that clarification. Also, really good job over there with building. It looks really nice. Thank you. Do you have some ideas on what kind of uh what you would like to see some of your vision from where
037you're going to go from here? Yeah. So I mean the ultimate vision is to have this social security this social services hub where a family that is in need can come in tell their story one time to one person live that trauma one time and then they can get all of the services right there in that one space. So if they need um we're actually experiencing it right now. So we've got operation back to school signups. The families are coming to United Way. They're signing up for Operation Back to School, but at the same time, they're being able to sign up for Christmas for children and for back to school clothes shopping. On the same day, they're going to come in for Operation back to school, and they're going to one of the requirements for
038that is going to be filling out the application for free and reduced lunches. So, that's going to help us help you with um that paperwork side, but just allowing everybody to come to one spot, tell their story one time, get the authorization and the eligibility requirements done one time. Now, they're ready to get services all over the county. And that's kind of what we're doing. we, you know, as far as the social social services side, um it's it's going to it's going to enable our community to come together, take away duplication of services, save the donor dollars, um and really work on long-term sustainability, and be able to move that needle and get these families that are in generational poverty to a point where really we're we're working with the kids and then as they're
039growing up they're seeing that things can be different. It's not a overnight um you're not going to see changes overnight um on the generational poverty, but that's that's kind of really that's our goal is to move that needle. So, it's a step in the right direction, making those resources more accessible to the community at large. Absolutely. And then in turn, we can't force families to fill out that paperwork for free and reduced lunch, but if it's part of the services that you're offering and one of the requirements that y'all have, then that intern allows us to touch those families in the district as well. Absolutely. And you're also coming up with a volunteer network that you're going to be able to allow different organizations to use. Correct. Yes, ma'am. We're working on volunteers. It's really
040we're we're kind of becoming a community hub for the nonprofits as well. I mean, we're doing CPR training um and certification that we're paying for for the nonprofits. We're doing capacity building workshops, budgeting workshops, um volunteer programs. really trying to get it to where the community can come to one place if they need help, if they want to volunteer, if they want to donate, they can come and find the group that they are most passionate about um and and joining that force. Thank you. Any further questions? I don't have a question so much as uh I appreciate all of those uh services that you provide and all of that. Aside from that, the discussion on the board is about that building and those buildings and um a historic town like we are. I appreciate all
041those improvements and restoration that you're doing to those what locals at least would call historic buildings. So, thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, if um if it's uh okay with the board then um do you want us to bring more information next month? Yeah, we can clap for her. um we could bring forward next month some information, legal information that would include um deeding over that land to you guys or would you like to discuss that next month? Yes, please. Okay. Yeah. Action next month. Okay. Next up is item 12B. It's page 78 in your board book. Uh preliminary budget discussion by Mr. EMTT Whitefield. Thank you, Madam President. board, you know, you you have had this budget discussion in your board book to go over. I'm going to hit a couple of the highlights
042in it. Um, I did place a new one in at your dis today because there were some changes. TEA did update their formula and when we get to that point, we'll talk about that and go through that part. Uh, the first part of the the preliminary budget discussion is the fund balance. A year end last year we had an unassigned fund balance of $25,899,167 and we had a signed fund balance of $1,290,000 for a total of 27,189,167. That is well within our limits. It's above the 20% that's required by board policy and is considered a healthy fund balance at about 29 or 30% of our operating um budget. Having said that, there is a we we do expect it to our fund balance to grow this year with about $13 million, but the majority of
043that is that $16 million that depending on the timing of their audit when it goes back. It could happen before the audit is done, but it could happen after the audit is done. That's the reason the budget amendment is there. It affects my first rating and it will probably affect it either way. if they take it back before I'll be over budgeted at that point and it'll probably still cost me a couple points. But I had to hedge my bets on that to make sure that it was going to be in the best interest of the district that we had it amended at that point. So, but with the conservative spending, conservative procurement processes that we have, we don't expect to realize all of our the deficit budget that we had before anyway. So, there
044could be a potential of us adding fund balance no matter what at this year. But we we'll know more about that as it gets closer as the audit starts to ra wrap up. Um when it gets to that point, we will bring recommendations on where we want that committed fund balance and how we want to put those numbers in there and those recommendations will brought to y'all because y'all have to commit fund balance and uncomm it. So that'll take that place and we'll bring those recommendations to you. Uh the second part of this discussion will be revenue and of course uh values have increased uh across the district for uh taxable values. Um, but what we're what's not being reflected right now is $140,000 homestead exemption. We're still getting numbers with the $100,000. Uh, they
045will provide us with those numbers with the 140 and it will be on July 25th. So, we'll be kind of in a little crunch time because even TEA has to give us our maximum compressed tax rate, which we'll talk about here in a minute. And they have to have that to us by August the 5th and that will come after we have our next budget hearing when we use all these numbers. And those numbers will be they'll fluctuate a little bit because uh local funding and state funding have an inverse relationship. So when uh local revenues go up, state revenues go down. When local revenues go down, state funding goes up. We're going to get the same amount of money. This will be in different places. So our preliminary budget hearing next workshop next month
046will have all that information. Those will change, but by the time we get to August when we're going to adopt the tax rate, everything should be a little bit more set in stone and we'll know what's going on there. Um, you know, the House Bill 3 in 2019 and Senate bill two in 2023 did kind of a affect how we do calculate those those rates. Um, it did put a two two and a half% cap on the growth that we can charge on those. And that's when we get to the compress the maximum compressed tax rate. That's whenever they develop this tax rate and they tell you this is how you got to calculate it. And so your new your new sheet there actually has TEA's formulas in there and state compression takes last year's
047maximum compress compressed tax rate which was 68.55 um and multiplies it by a formula that takes the 1.025 which is the maximum growth we can have and you divide it by what the state considers going to be statewide growth. So the general appropriations act for this year for 2025 said the growth is going to be about 5.6%. So you do that calculation and then they have another mechanism where they can reduce uh that maximum compressed tax rate because they have extra funds out there in um the coppers. And so you can see that down there that's at 3.31 cents that we subtract there at the end. Okay. So now the maximum compressed tax rate for the state is going to be 63.222 cents. Now max compressed tax rate at the local level or the state
048level whichever one compresses our tax rate the most is the one we have to go with. So you know in years past or ever since we've been doing this in 2019 our local compression the calculation is the same calculation but we have to start with our compressed tax rate this year which was 61.69 and then we go through that same calculation. When you do that you get to the 55.82 cents is that that calculation. Now I'll remind you that the limit TA is mandated that no district can be less than 90% of the high of the highest. So they set a range. So the range on that would be the floor which would the floor would be 56.89% 89 cents and the uh state rate is 63.22 cent. So that's going to be your range.
049So even though we would calculate at 55.82 the floor will be 56.89 89 and that's that's the maximum compressed tax rate that they're going to give us on August 5th. Now having said that in November 2023 we also passed the VATRE which allows us to add 17 cents to that. So that you add the 17 cents to the to the 56.89 and that will be pretty much what we're told our tax rate has to be on the maximum press tax rate part and then the voters voted for the 17 cents. The next part of it, uh, we do calculate our budget on a 99% collection tax rate and that's pretty consistent. U typically it runs 98 to 99%, but we go ahead and calculate it on the 98 99% and it's always been very well
050um has has handled it very well. Um, there is new funding for House Bill 2 and you you all have been hearing about this in the news. Um, what does that mean for GISD? A couple of things that that we'll go over here. Um, teacher compensation increases for teachers that have three to four years of experience will get $2,500 added to whatever they made the prior year. Teachers with five plus years experience will get $5,000 added to what they made the prior year. So, we'll calculate a new teacher um pay scale and I believe we're going to try to bring that next month to get that approved so we can get some things in start. We know that's going to happen because the state's going to fund that. So that's that'll start happening. There's going
051to be um an additional $45 for adjusted ADA. That's going to be for other staff raises. That's what we that's where we'll have to do our calculations to decide what other staff raises. Now that's for other staff other than a campus administrator or a central administrator. There's no there's no uh uh allocations in this bill for those particular things. That would have to come from local funds if we decided to do it. Um, it is also has a new allotment of $106 per enrolled student per enrolled student, not ADA. That is going to be for other things such as transportation, utilities, insurance, and we know those three things right there. We've already had amend for the fuel budget. We've already had that the budget amendments tonight were for utilities. So, those are going to be
052things that that that's going to absorb into that. So, that's that's another part of it. And that that equates to about $843,000 for the district. That's just on the first runs for Mo Casey and Tasbo. Those are it's kind of an average of what we're going to get on that particular um uh part of it. Um it also inh safety aotment from $10 a student to $20 a student and from $15,000 a campus to $33,000 $540 a campus. And that would give us about $260,000 again on the first runs that we're calculating. Um statewide they they allocated $250 million for new education special education funding. Um they also added a funding of $1,000 initial full and individual evaluations. Now that will start the next year, but the the special ed funding that they've appropriated with
053uh intensity of services won't start until the 26 27 year. So, but it's it's going to be in there. And then they did increase the basic a lotment by $55. Now, we know that we needed about $1,000 to catch us up with inflation of the 22% inflation since 2019, but they weren't. There was no way they were going to do that. So, we're going to get $55 on the basic lot. We're going to take it and use it. Okay. Um, could you uh talk a little bit about the initial full and individual evaluation, what what that's about? So, I wish there was a special ed person here that could do that. Uh but we we are required to do the evaluation um whether they're our student or not. Um and it's been unfunded up to
054this point. This $1,000 uh I think on the dry runs that I saw that they it's about $300,000 because we do about 300 of those evaluations every year. So we'll get it's about $300,000 into special ed. Okay. For that particular Thank you. piece. Yes, ma'am. Go up go up one more line. And I want to be clear on statewide 250 million. There's no breakdown of that effect on our district. There's there's no breakdown on that. And when when I talked to Shelley and Tamara and them uh that group, they feel like the intens it's not going to be that much more money for us, but it's just going to be funded different for those intensity of services. We're going to get less money for some kids. We're get more money for those kids. And they
055don't know how that's going to fall and how that's going to affect us. And if it's going to be more money, if it's going to be wash, it could be less. Yeah, depending on what the intensity of services are. Right now, we're not we're not giving any value to it local. We don't have a mechanism to do that with yet because they haven't really told us how it's going to look. That's the reason they're putting it off till 2627 because I'm not sure they've figured out exactly how they're doing. Thank you. But they will. All right. Thank you. Okay. Um we are projecting um student growth of about it looks about 106 students. That's a 2% growth. we do expect to keep growing and we do expect our ADA to increase with the continued use
056of the raw weed program. Um, state aid and recapture. We're still going to end up paying recapture in all this uh new laws. Just it's just the the nature of the beast at this point. Um, this year we're expected to pay about $3.6 $6 million in recapture and it'll either be that amount or a little bit more next year depending on how the calculations work out and after we get assigned our maximum compressed tax rate. Um expenditures when we talk about those we did a per pupa allocation to every campus just like we always have done. Um we took one day a time one moment in time and we rolled all those students up to the next grade at each campus and where they were going to be going to next year. And then we
057just kind of left kind of made a a calculation of what prek and kindergarten would look like based on the uh demog demographic report and kind of did it that way. So uh we we calculated those for them. Um central office department budgets didn't increase any. Now, we know we're going to get more money for utilities and transportation, and once we figure that out, those will be those monies will be put into those budgets, probably I, if I had to guess, it would be for utilities and and fuel mostly will be what we use that $106 for, even though it does have some other things we use it for. Um, staffing formulas will be utilized. Again, um, anybody that leaves the district, um, it it goes to Dr. Moroski's desk and she gets to determine
058if that position is needed or if it's not needed at any at any point one point. So those Wes takes those to her and we go through a calculation on that. Um on their salaries uh we made great strides with the VAT. I mean we got them got them up into where we felt comfortable with, you know, we had the $60,000 starting. Um, and then our like I think our we go at the 10 year uh his uh tenure experienced teacher that's you know we ranked 12th in the in the in the metroplex of paying teachers at that 10 year um level. Um again the other salary schedules we do the same thing. We've made great strides with the VAT being able to bring up you know our minimum wage at this point is $15
059an hour where you know the national level it's 760 735 or something like that. I'm not sure, but our minimum wage now on any pay scale is $15. So, all the having said all that, HB3 or HB2, I apologize, is going to add um raises onto those teachers. That's a $2,500 and the $5,000 level. Zero through two-year experienced teachers didn't have anything. But what we will present to you will be about $1,000 on each of those levels because we can we have like I said we have the $55 that we can use or the $45 could could be part of that as well because they're not central administration and they're not campus administration. And again on those two categories of people we'll have to um do it from our own coffers. It's not going to
060be funded throughout House Bill 2. But we'll bring that to you once we get more u guidance on how we're going to do that. Okay. And that's kind of that's it in a nutshell. Um, you do have a budget calendar on there and next month we'll go into a little bit more in depth of the budgeting process, your role, our role, and those things. If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them. Go back one second to uh you kind of said in passing, it's not in the text, but I've seen the chart that has uh you mentioned that we're number 10 in in the metroplex. But where are we in terms of our immediate neighborhood? We're above everybody in our immediate neighborhood. Yeah. Um like the Glen Roses and the the
061Stevenvilles, we we are above in certain areas. We're above those depending on what level what level of experienced teacher you're talking about. Um because our zero year teacher is at $60,000. We'll bring that to you um next month and it's going to go take us to 61. I don't know where that'll put us on that metroplex, but the place that we would lose a teacher to might be Weatherford or it might be uh Fort Worth and we want to be competitive with in those markets. And that tenure a teacher with 10 years of experience, that's where we feel most comfortable at because we're at number 12 in the Metroplex there. And um that's that's the teacher that's seasoned and you feel comfortable. I I feel like hiring those teachers and that's a good powerful tool
062in your toolbox to be able to retain good teachers. Prior to the Vader, we were way down. We we were we were pretty low. Yes, sir. Like number 50 or something in the in the area. Yeah, we we were down we were down on the list. Pretty low. I'd have to go pull that number. I could get the exact numbers. I'm sure uh HR has that that history and we could find that. We're we're grateful for the community's support in passing that so we could make sure we're paying our highly qualified teachers well and so that we ma remain competitive with the school districts that we were losing them to. So we're grateful for their support. Also, you're saying that um the top couple of reasons why we get to become a school board is
063to set set the tax rate. You're saying we're basically funneled down to one number on that. We can't really change it. Yes. When they do when they do that calculation, we'll be at the floor because of our property values and and it will it will still generate a recapture from the state even with that maximum compressed tax rate because we can't be we can't be less than 90% of what the state says the maximum compressed tax rate is. And that that range is on that new sheet that I gave you in there. The top of the range will be 63.22 cents and then the floor will be 56.89 cents. the state constrains this board's ability to lower the tax rate on the M on the M side. That is correct. Yes. Yeah. We don't have
064that freedom, that local control that we always talk about. It's not really there. Any other discussion or questions? No, but we'll break this down in more detail in our workshops. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Thank you, Mr. Whitefield. Next up, we have our CKH capturing kids heart 2025 update discussion and approval presenter Miss Stacy Brown and Miss Carla Wilmet. Good evening board and Dr. Morowski. In front of you, you have the Capturing Kids Hearts contract proposals um with price negotiations along with a generous grant that Capturing Kids Hearts has um awarded us which includes a board training and we're super excited about that so that you all would be able to fully experience the Capturing Kids Hearts uh strategies and see what it's all about. Uh also the grant would include process champion training
065and process champions are on each campus. They're our cheerleaders. They're our motivators. They keep the momentum going. And so, we're excited. We thought we were going to have to cut that part, but Capturing Kids Hearts graciously offered us um a grant for that. So, we are very excited. The purpose of our presentation is to highlight the process, the progress made by Capturing Kids Hearts implementation and seek board approval for the CKH contract for the upcoming school year. CK is an integral part of GISD's efforts uh for connectedness and relationship building between students and teachers and staff and students and students fostering positive culture uh positive school culture and research shows that if you have a positive school culture that directly impacts student achievement. Capturing kids hearts is a relationshipbuilding approach. Oops, I need to go
066to the next slide. uh relationship building approach to teaching intentional strategies to create a safe environment. They also focus on character building uh traits such as integrity, empathy and responsibility. It has it helps students take ownership of their behavior and we are in year two of implementation for our secondary campuses. And if you remember last month uh stars received the national uh the national showcase school award and that is amazing. There's lots of uh campuses especially DAPs. I can't remember how many. Where's Miss Brown? Was it number four? There's only four other DAPs. Only four other DAPs that have received that national showcase award in the United States I believe. Um so that's really impressive. And then we're in year one with elementary and we have our early learning center and our five elementaryaries uh
067just finished year one of their implementation and they all received the rising star award which was amazing. Capturing kids hearts directly ties to our strategic plan. We had community members come in and with our culture committee that was a big part. Uh they wanted to have some help with some things and it directly impacts our strategic plan. It's in our district improvement plan and all of our campus plans. This slide is our capturing kids hearts end of the year survey. We had 4 uh 28 responses which is very good for a survey when Mr. Cox sent that out uh to all the parents. So a great response. There's two columns of numbers. The right hand column is the baseline or the beginning of the year numbers uh that the parents rated Cap uh the capturing
068kids hearts program. And at the end of the year, that score is on the left. And you'll notice the left scores, many of those are in green, indicating growth. And I'm just going to highlight a few of the areas that we grew in. Uh number two was that parents feel welcome at their students school, which was one of the things that the strategic plan was trying to address. So that's so exciting that that improved. Number eight, parents feel heard uh when they bring a concern to admin or teachers. That went up. Number 14, parents feel like there's a partnership with a school to help their students be more successful. So, all of those are so exciting and we feel it's directly impacted by our capturing kids hearts implementation. On this next slide, we um have
069our disciplinary uh records for secondary. Since they've implemented it for two years, we pulled their disciplinary records and it shows a decrease in disciplinary actions by 283 offenses. And that's that's a lot. Uh the only place we did not decrease is our DAP placement due to the requirements for mandatory placement to DAP DAP for vaping. Um and we love our acronyms in school in education. So wanted to go over a few of those. OSS that top number is out of school suspension. That went down 105. That's awesome. ISS is in school suspension. That went down 47. Then it says part ISS that means partial day ISS. So like a half day of inschool suspension that went down by 199. So that was really good. And then partial day out of school suspension went down by
07095. Um what this means is students are remaining in the instructional setting and we know that in order to make good grades and for achievement to improve, you've got to be in class listening to that instruction. Um, we asked uh some of our staff members and students uh for some feedback on what capturing kids hearts has meant to them. And I'll just go over a few of those. One person said, "It's not just a program. It's a part of our culture and who we are. It um consistent routines and language so kids know what to do. So many smiles from kids and adults because everyone knows what to expect." And then my favorite one, it's a quote from a student to a capturing kids hearts process champion. And this student said, "You always see us
071for who we are and value us. You greet us. You call us by name every day and I feel seen." And if that doesn't speak volumes, I don't know what does. Um, we um are open for any questions if you have any questions for us. Uh, and we'll go from there. anyone [Music] you get the button to go. Um I went through this training last year. It it was outstanding training and u they put you in out of take you out of your comfort zone pretty well and uh I just uh feel like um I learned a lot about this. Is there further training and how is that training going to go forward with all the teachers that went through it last year? Is that going to be uh the same people going through the
072same training again or different training or an addition or how's that work? So, August 5th and 6th, one of the trainings that was included in um the the proposal, uh August 5th and 6th would be our new hire training and they would be going through CKH1 like what you what you did. Um then we have process champion training and that's for the the group from each campus that will be our motivators that'll keep that momentum going. uh that's in the grant process. Uh hopefully whenever we set a date for you guys to get the training that's going to inspire uh us and then we have a strategist who come is in constant contact with us from CKH that does campus visits. They come and visit with uh Dr. Moroski, myself, Stacy Brown, and Tammy Clark.
073Uh we go on campus visits with them to see how we can improve. And so it's continuous um training and continuous feedback from the company and then we are always reflecting on how what we can do better. Did you have campuses go through a refresh here at the end of the year? We did. We did. We had a recharge. Thank you for for mentioning that. We had a recharge for our secondary campuses since it was the second year of implementation. We just wanted to make sure everyone was still on the same page um and get them fired up for the new school year. So, and um more than likely we'll try to implement that for secondary if not at the end of next year hopefully the beginning of the following. And I think that strategist
074has been a key component in making sure that this program has been so successful. I know to really reap the benefits of this program. It needs to be implemented with fidelity and that strategist has allowed that to happen to ensure that we're aligned across the district and implementing this program with fidelity that it deserves. Absolutely. And that was one of the key things that drew us to capturing kids hearts was that strategist and the um accountability and the support. U many other programs had um good ideas but that keeping that momentum going forward and that accountability that's the piece that we were looking for and that's not to discount the educators that that are actually doing the implementation. That is that has been amazing to see and it's great progress and I'm thankful for every
075one of them including you. Thank you. I'm going to take you back a couple of slides to your to your big red box and give you a chance to elaborate on that a second. That that's that's red because they changed the rules out from under you. Yes. That said that essentially mandatory sentencing that says if right if you come in with a vape, you're getting uh suspended. You're getting the alternative placement um like BTC is our GAP. So it's automatic placement there. Yes, sir. Yeah. So, but but a year from now when you present these same numbers, you can see an improvement in that. I mean, it's possible that you'd see improvement to that because they changed the rules out from under you, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I got a couple more for
076you. Okay. Um you didn't get into, but this this board is here to make a decision about uh the funding and and approving that funding. Are you going to carry on to that or is that I know that you have there there's certainly more lines in here, but I don't know if you're presenting those there. We well the funding we had it broken into two proposals. The uh first proposal was were the things that would happen before school starts. Uh we're going to use title one our carryover from title one. And typically uh we get 15% of that. We received 100% of that back. So we had a little extra there. Uh but we can we have to spend that before September 31st. And so there are stipulations on what you can spend that on.
077Staffing is not one of them. Uh, so we feel capturing kids hearts with title one and title four and I apologize that was a typo on your um memo. It says title six, it's not title six, it's title four with uh safe and secure schools. And uh that is another way that we're using that money for capturing kids hearts to help those building those relationships and make the schools places that kids want to be. And the the bottom line effect I think I'm going to ask you but maybe this goes to Mr. Whitefield. But the bottom line effect is that uh those expense the expense that we're that we're about to consider approving is offset by revenues that come in from those federal programs. Federal Yes. Federal funds. Uh it's no it's not any local
078tax dollars. It's all federal funds. Y thank you. I think it's also important to know our especially for our public that when we talk about bullying and those type type of issues in our school, this is one of the ways that we're trying to address that issue. And that is making sure that our students value each other and that that we help uh them learn to do that. And that's first of all by knowing that uh we can do that by showing them how to do that and in capturing kids hearts. We demonstrate that daily by recognizing uh them as they come into the school and showing them how to um just be respectful of each other and modeling that for them. And so u bullying is an issue wherever they go, not only at
079school but out in the community. And so this is one of the ways that we hope to um address that issue and um hopefully we can uh make an impact on our students on a day-to-day basis. Yes. Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, do I have a motion to approve the CKH training initiatives as outlined in the presentation? I'll make that motion. Have a motion by Mr. Bolton. Do I have a second? A second. And a second by Mrs. Lowry. Any further discussion? Hearing none. All in favor, raise your hand. Let the record show that is six in favor and one Mr. Moore being absent. Okay, next up is our reports. First is Community in Schools presented by Miss Lindseay Gardner, president uh Garner, I'm sorry, president of Community in Schools. Thank
080you. All right. Good evening everybody. I'm Lindseay Garner. I am the president and CEO of Communities and Schools of Greater Tarant County. I'm also a Granberry Pirate, class of 2000. And I wanted to uh first for anybody who might be newer to um communities and schools, what it is, what we do, and what our focus is. I wanted to just really quickly um give an overview. So, Communities and Schools has been serving uh on a national level for 45 years um in the state of Texas for over 30 years. Um we at Greater Tarant County our affiliate is uh 33 years old and to date we are now serving 11 uh different school districts spanning a 4count area with obviously Greenberry being one of those. Um we thank you so much for your partnership and
081our model um is very consistent across the board in that we hire and place qualified caring individuals um for communities and schools of greater Taran County. That is specifically licensed social workers. And we place them on campuses full-time to provide ongoing case management support for students who have been identified as needing wraparound services to help identify barriers to their success and create individualized case management plans to connect them and their families with local resources and if if needed uh get them there if they have no uh access to the the local services. And we also provide mental health counseling in districts where we are contracted to do that by our clinical staff. So those are um folks who have bachelors or masters in social work and have since gone on to pursue their clinical lure
082um and can do one-on-one mental health counseling for free uh directly in schools where students are. And that's really the beauty of the program is that they're able to meet the students where they are. So our process is first and foremost gain parental consent when we have a student who is referred to the program. Um and then we use TEA established at risk criteria to determine eligibility for the program and if a parent consents to their child uh participating then they are enrolled and then um we they are obviously partnered with the uh school social worker who has been assigned to that campus and they become a part of their case load. And so then that social worker is going to go about meeting with the student, the family or caretakers and perhaps maybe do
083an in-home visit if that's required and go about putting together an individualized case management plan to address the student and families needs and connecting them with local services and resources. Um we also help and and this is prek through high school that we can serve and um we also help with setting goals. So particularly when you start looking at your middle school and especially high school students looking ahead to what are their goals for the future and help with college career military readiness planning and it's really just a a full comprehensive wraparound support services to ensure that students uh have what they need to be successful in school and we are officially partnered with the Texas Education Agency for this program and CIS is in a very unique position um in that we do we
084are alloc ocated some legislative funding. We are in fact the only service organization who has consistently for over 40 years received legislative funding specifically for at risk student support and we are rigorously evaluated just like you are by the Texas Education Agency. So they give us our program outcomes at the end of every year and uh we turn around and provide those to our school district partners. Moving on. So, um, I wanted to quickly go over again in the two types of services that we provide. We were contracted last year for both case management support and mental health counseling services in Granberry ISD. And so, the number of students that we were contracted to serve for case management was 225. We served 238 um in Granberry High School, Middle, and Bakus Elementary. And then, uh,
085we provide services in three tiers. Um, tier one being schoolwide services. This might uh have to do with a social worker who's starting at the beginning of the school year sitting down with the principal and talking about what are your goals? What are what are the biggest needs for this campus and how can we tailor those supports to try to help meet those goals? So maybe it's increasing parent engagement, attendance, all of this. Um, small group would be tier 2. So maybe I'm a social worker and once I get going on my campus and I'm identifying that there's actually a a cohort of students who are dealing with a similar situation. You mentioned bullying earlier or anger management. So there are some types of struggles that might be best um I you know I if
086you identify it getting those kids together for lunch group or some sort of a group where you can um talk about those things together and they can know that they are not alone. they're not the only one on that campus who's having that struggle. And of course, the bread and butter of our program is that one-on-one individualized case management support. Um, so really quickly, the number of hours uh for schoolwide supports provided last year was over almost uh 7,700 small group service hours 645 and one-on-one uh service hours were 973 service hours. For the mental health counseling services, we did have a mental health counselor um assigned to Graanberry to serve um a case load of students at Granberry High School, Middle and Actton Middle. And we were able to provide 358 individual counseling hours.
087So um you know, that's a wonderful number of services provided at no cost to your students. And I mean, we all know how expensive um and sometimes inaccessible mental health counseling can be for a person who needs it. It can be uh transportation can be a determining factor as to whether or not particularly a low-income family ever sees a mental health therapist if they need that. It's very cost prohibitive. So being able to break down those barriers and provide that at no cost to students where they need it is is in just invaluable. So um I wanted to go into a little bit more detail again about the uh we'll really just provide you some specific examples. What do we mean again when we say schoolwide supports? So, um there's a you know list on
088your presentation that you can see is some examples of tier one services that we provided last year. Um examples of tier 2 small groupoup services that we provided. So, for example, assistance with college applications, um teamwork and communication, social skills building, and our one-on-one interventions, specifically crisis intervention for, you know, when families are in crisis. Um basic needs assistance is always going to be again kind of the bread and butter of of what we do. Um checking in with attendance. We have a chronic absenteeism problem. And so you know making sure that we always say we show up so students show up, right? A lot of times it's going to be just even that one person that um is going to be the reason a lot of times why a student wants to get up
089and come to school in the morning is to see Miss Soandso. So, um, I just wanted to give you that snapshot, um, in terms of outputs. And again, we're always at a summer is always a little bit of a a squirrely time for outcomes in that we won't actually have our verified outcomes from TEA for um, another month or two. And we of course will uh, provide those in a timely manner to our contacts here at the district um, to answer this is the what, so to answer the so what. And if I might have just another couple of minutes, I wanted to uh, share something. I've I've spoken with y'all in the last couple of years since we've started partnering. I've never I've never cared to really share about my own personal experience and
090really explain why I am so personally passionate about this program, but I thought I might do so this evening. So, um again, I I am from Granberry and you know, CIS didn't exist um at least in this area um when I was in school and you know, my my parents divorced when I was in middle school. Um and my mom became a single mother what felt like overnight and a lot of things changed obviously very quickly we moved out of our house in Pon Plantation and moved into a very different type of house and not immediately there was a family that um graciously let my mom and my sister and I stay with them um for a period of months while we found other housing arrangements. Um so I remember that family very well. I
091remember the car that uh was given to my mom to drive around and what I remember about it was the sagging uh ceiling, you know, in it. I remember I would just drive and hold that thing up and just think, God, but I guess it was good we had a vehicle, right? Um right or wrong, I remember my friend circle shifting a little bit. Um I think that's kind of a natural thing when um your circumstances shift. Um, and I remember my mental health. Um, I don't think that necessarily a teenager and and thankfully we're getting better in our recognition of all of that. Now, I didn't really understand what was happening then, but my mental health was declining. Um, and I would sit and cry in class and I didn't I didn't know why,
092you know, I just I was a I was a great student. Um, I was an athlete. I was in choir. Um, but my my life had changed very dramatically and I was really struggling. And I mentioned that uh in terms of my involvement in various things because during those years, you know, we were u intimately involved in our church. We went to the Granberry Church of Christ. It was right across the street from the high school. And because we had that community, I had folks that actively reached out to me. Lindsay, do you need anything? Please don't hesitate to come and tell us if you need anything. Um you know, I had coaches. Um Lita Andrews was a coach of mine and Tammy Jones was a coach of mine. Um, Joey Hope was my choir
093director. I had those people in my life checking on me and I knew that they were concerned for my well-being and they wanted to see me succeed. My passion for this program is what about the kids who don't have that community? Not every kid has a church home. Not every kid excels in extracurricular activities. Whose job is it to find out what they are carrying in their heavy backpack? and whose job is it to make sure that they have the support that they need? And I can't tell you how many times over the years, I've had some years to think about it, of how different my story might have been if I hadn't had that community of support. So, I just wanted to say to y'all, thank you for your trust in our organization and
094thank you for investing in these students in this way. Um, it is our mission to make sure that every student has somebody in their corner who is a champion for them to make sure that they have what they need to succeed. And so I'm very grateful that you've chosen to invest with us and we certainly hope you'll continue in the future. Any questions? Is there any questions about what CIS is or isn't? I would just like to say thank you for everything your organization does for the families in this community and the support that y'all provide is very much appreciated and felt throughout the district. Sure. We're honored. Questions, concerns? Any questions? I know you're waiting for me. Um, so, uh, do does this cost us is this funded by the state? I heard you
095say we are partially funded, it's yes and yes. So, if you looked at a pie of our revenue, yes, it does cost the district. It's it's unfortunately not free to the district and that is because what the legislature provides to us doesn't nearly cover the total cost of our programs. We have a very robust um development um plan every year where we are highly dependent also on what we can raise from private philanthropy. And so between the our legislative dollars and our private fundraising dollars plus what the districts um pay that is how we're able to make up our annual budget. I do know it's a 50-50 proposition. I do know that when we looked at this program, we needed services for our kids. And when we looked at having to hire those individuals in
096district, the cost was insurmountable. And this program met all of those needs at a fraction of what it would have cost us to hire those individuals for every campus. And and the services that y'all provide are so comprehensive, we we couldn't have competed with that. I'm gonna let Stacy Brown talk about the funding real quick because there was a direct question. Yeah. Yeah. Scoot on over. No, I'm just kidding. Just real quick. Do you want me to sit down? No, you stay up here with me. Okay. So, um, we fund community and schools federally out of our title four for safety and security. And so, um, we pay twice a year. I think we do each semester. And so the cost for next year to keep two of our community and schools personnel, we had
097four with ESSER and now we have two. So moving into next year, however, we do have um some capabilities that um Lindsay has done a great job in the back figuring out, okay, hey, listen, we know funding is down. We know these things are happening. Here's what we can do. We can give hours and we can do a variety. So, we're working on it, but we didn't want to bring you the proposal without you guys having the presentation first. So, it's basically about 97,000, whereas if we were hiring, uh, it would have been a little bit closer to, uh, 200,000 if we had hired four people. But again, in the same way we talked about it with CKH. So if you think about CKH, CKH is that overarching umbrella and that's where everybody we start
098with CKH and we're teaching them and we're working with everybody on the campuses and we're investing in our teachers and our kids and having our kids build their skills so that they can work with other students, right? Whereas this is more indiv individualized. I get the I get the No, no, no. I just question just back on dollars. So in the same way that we talked about CKH has offsetting revenues that come as part of that title four program. Yes. That we'll this is in this federal funding. Yeah. And and our office takes care of uh titles one two three and four. So the federal programming we have the opportunity to say okay what is it we really need? What what can we do and what's the best way to fund it? All right. Now
099you're saying we have two for this coming school year. However, we're working on an option and next month when we come forward, we'll tell you what the option is going to be. And they are based at We have one at Bakus. Is that correct? Currently right now we have one at GMS, one at Bakus and then we had one at the high school that was shared between all of the secondary campuses and then another for the um our mental health um we had at the high school as well. So we were spending close to 180,000 for four and we were using ESSER. So ESSER is gone. And the ESSER funds are gone. They are no more. That's right. Right. Yes. And so can I go back to Miss Garner for a second? Yes. Thank you.
100I mean to say thank you. Um I'm nice. Um so then how do you establish that scope back on your third slide? I think it was your third slide that you have a original scope was 225 students and you were able to address the need of 238 students in total. And is that uh where we talked about having four counselors? What do you call these folks? I'm sorry. So, um we cap um we cap our social workers typically at 90 students for their case load. Now, again, three tiers of services. So, that's that tier three level of service. So, uh and our contracts exist on multiple levels. We contract with the district for how many students case managed, one-on-one case management. We're going to serve many more students with that schoolwide services obviously. Um but
101but that is the case managed students. So we contract with TEA to serve a certain number of students per year in this area and then um we we meet that by partnering with local districts and then partnering with you to serve however many students you direct us to serve. So and we try to cap it at 90 per campus for one-on-one case management. And then how do you go about I'm sorry. Did I somebody else in there? Thought I heard you talking. Um, so then how do you identify those students? I mean, you know what your capacity is because you talk about 90 for each of those and now we're going to we're going to take that down to two. You say social worker. I said counselor. You said social worker, right? We're just picky
102with who we I just want to be careful. I want to address them the right way. I don't want to disrespect anyone. I mean, this is their this is their uh livelihood. Um then how do you identify I mean that your capacity was 225 and you served 238. So then there's something in there that helps you to recognize where that need is or identify those. So are you asking how a student qualifies for the program? Uh yeah I guess so uh TEA has 13 established at risk criteria. So that is a kind of a starting point for us. And there is one that is a bit more open-ended too for just a family in a crisis situation or a very low income situation. Um but you know first and foremost if they meet one of
103those TEA established at risk criteria then they would be considered a candidate for communities and schools but and then it's going to be up to whether or not the parent consents for them to enroll. And is there some intervening point where one of our staff counselors would would pass them on to you? Yes. So the referrals can I mean a child could self-reer into the program. Um it could be a parent that referred them. It could be a teacher that referred them. So the referrals come it could be another service agency that refers to the communities and school social workers. So the referrals come from all sources. All right. Thank you. So um I'm sorry. Now I'm going to get a little deeper. So now I want to know oop sorry. Now I want to
104know about uh some level of oversight in the same way that I was asking if they take those I'll use your word refer from from our counselors or otherwise by survey can I say survey the 13 questions or 13 criteria. I'm going to invite our COO Lauren Sly to come up here and help me with some of these questions. So I want to make sure I understand what you're asking. Um, are you asking about oversight or if we share um if there's some o were you asking about if there's overlap with the school counselor in terms of No, I I don't I I don't think that maybe you you can address that too, but that's not what my question was about about overlap so much as um I have a little bit of concern that
105we're that we just turn you loose. you come into you come into our schools and you make this is fairly intimate and I don't mean to say inappropriate but that's intimate contact with our students and their families and this board doesn't have any insight over that and I don't know how much admin has insight over that and I don't know how much our own with I'll say it the same way I said it before with a GISD logo on their paycheck has insight into what kind of content there is in your counseling and what and how that plays out. So, I would love for Lauren to talk about the process of uh as we get started on I'm sorry. I know that's probably heavy. No, no, it's a fair question. Um, we want I want
106to turn over to Lauren to talk about our campus plan and how we communicate with the principles or whoever they designate for us to report to on a regular basis. Yeah. Thank you. And and being mindful of time, I am happy to sit down and open up all the policies and procedure manuals that we have to go against um just constantly. So yes, like Lindsay mentioned, one of our first steps when we get a campus is we're developing a campus needs assessment. We're going in, we're meeting with the principal, we're meeting with the counselors, we're meeting with everybody. Sometimes that is the janitor who holds all the keys to all the rooms and they see things that other people don't see and we're saying, "What are the needs on the campus?" Sometimes campuses say, "We
107know exactly what our needs are. Here's where we need you and we're bringing you in for this purpose." And sometimes they say, "Yeah, no, we need help. We know we need help. We don't know where to start." And so sometimes we come in and make that plan. Depending on all of those things, we are going to sit down with the principal and say, "Okay, what are our goals as a campus? Are they already going to be in that strategic plan that y'all have laid out, or is there some specific things that you want us to focus on as a campus?" And depending on what those are, we're going to list those out. We're going to start developing service plans on just what kinds of services we're going to provide. Does that look like we need
108more group services? Does that look like we need more of those individual services? Do we need more of those tier one services to come in and provide more community resources or more presentation style services to students or more touch-based like that's the food um clothing closets those are the they just need access to one-time based services those are those tier ones and then how deep do we need to go so that's the first step then constantly we are going to be in contact with our campuses nobody should be operating on CIS that doesn't know what CIS is doing it is one of our chief goals and chief trainings that we provide all our staff is that they should know your name and who you are and what your job is. They on a minimum basis
109are going to be communicating what their case load and who's on their case load is to their principal and that filters down here to school counselors. Us as an agency are also sending all that information to Stacy frequently. um we are sending in just who we're working with, how many times we're seeing them, the types of services that we're providing, and of course, as we're gathering the school grades and all those things, once we get the outcomes from that, we're going to be saying this is who's improved academically. And we like to break it down even like here's how they improved in English. Here's how they improved in math. Here's how they improved in STAR. Uh we're getting into attendance. Here's how they improved in their average daily attendance. And then here's actually what we
110saw was they came in at a particularly low point and then we saw a drastic increase and why they might have improved. Uh we like to break down as much as y'all want to. We provide a survey as part of our assessment with students on their behavior that go over some of the same things that the CKH is kind of covering, but that is approved by TEA. We'll provide sections and breakdowns on where they improved and how they improved. Did they improve in their self-efficacy? Did they improve in their ability to uh respond in difficult times? We call that grit. Um you know, those type of things that we're going to break down and say here's what your students struggled with the most this year when they first came in. And then here's where they
111improved and how we ended. We also look at from year to year, how did we improve or change on those areas? And then of course we're tracking behavior. We're tracking their conduct grades. We're tracking um just in general how many ISS OSS and responses did they get and did we see improvement there as well. So oversight we got it and we're happy to share anytime but if I break all those out we're going to be here all night. Yep. Okay. I get that. I appreciate that. Thank you. But you're welcome to come to our office. We'd love it. I would love it. This is my this is my nerd out time. like this is what I do. I'm a social worker, but I'm a policy person. So, and because we are because TEA administers our
112funding from the legislature and evaluates our outcomes, they set the outcomes that Lauren was talking about that we track on students improvements in academics, behavior, attendance, their grade promotion and graduation rate, overall stay in school rate. Those metrics are set for communities and schools throughout Texas by TEA. Here are the targets you will meet. And then they tell us at the end of every year how did we do and we tell y'all our processes and procedures also come to us from tea. So rest assured there's a lot of accountability and oversight at that level. And then as Lauren said we have we establish really good communication on campus and then with our um our key district contacts as well. So we about parents we also update our parents regularly. We stress parent contacts. Those home
113visits are not just for if there's a concern. And sometimes that's relationship building, all of those things as well. So, so we have accountability and oversight built into the program, not just with the parents, but with the campus and the district and the state through TEA as well. Thank you so much. Those were good questions. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions? Well, thank you'all so much. We appreciate everything y'all do. Thank you. Okay, moving on to financial statements for period ending May 31st, 2025. Mr. EMTT Whitefield. Thank you, Madam President. Board, you do have the financial statements for May 31st, 2025. It does include all the the transactions that occurred between September 1st, 2024 and May 31st, 2025. Revenue collected to date equals 93.57% of the budgeted amount compared to 86.97% in 23 and
11424. expenditures to date represent 71.26% of the budget compared to 69.96 in 23 and 24. Um, you do have those reports in front of you. If you have any questions, I will do my best to answer those. Any questions? Okay, moving on to the CLA cash flow and investment reports for period ending May 31st, 2025. Mr. Emit Whitefield. Yes, ma'am. You do have the the investment and cash flow report in front of you. Uh you can see that in May we we did get $340,651.77. You can see compared to April that that's a little bit higher and that's that extra money that we do have in investments right now because it is in the interest bearing account. Any questions? Okay. Hearing none and with no further business, this meeting is adjourned at 7:37