001[Music] the time is now six o'clock and we will now reconvene into open session and we will be beginning with an invocation led by ms graft lord i just thank you for today and i just pray that we continue to serve our community with integrity and honesty in jesus name amen all right and we will now go into the pledges and they will be led by paula mcdonald all right i thank you all for being here this evening we always enjoy having the public here to hear what's going on and we are going to start now with one of my favorite parts which is the academic spotlight and first we have mr jeremy ross for the national rule and small town award there we go so it's my pleasure trustees and dr glenn to visit
002with you today to recognize these students that are have been named as the award recipients for the national rule and small town award this is a an award criteria based by the college board based on the students psat initiatives that they took last year as well as their performance on ap tests last spring so we have several of these students additionally you know in addition to test scores they have to have an overall 3.5 gpa obviously take the psat and at least two distinct advanced placement tests they must score in the top 10 percent of their cohort of the psat test or score three or better on those two distinct ap exams and a three or better gets you college credit for that class so that's that's recognizable and so the students if you're here
003i know if they're busy if you are here please come forward and i'll call your name we have abaya work abigail boyd drew diaz and barnes ava williamson avery thomas ezekiel sham jack barefoot jillian tremble cameron wells and spencer burnfield congratulations and while they're getting their picture taken do we have any of the proud parents here tonight if they could wave or stand up please [Music] doing chickens guys come on this one [Music] foreign [Music] congratulations [Music] i don't think we've ever done that one before mr ross was that brand new award it is new yes ma'am okay thank you well we now have mr sam houston and he is going to present us with the hood county news freelance writer good evening ladies and gentlemen i thought it was important to be here tonight
004i want to introduce two outstanding young ladies to the board and to the community julian trimble who's the daughter of jason and becky trimble and please stand up and emmy vaughn who is the daughter of chad vaughn and wendy vaughn and i think both her parents are here tonight they're both seniors at gisd and both of these girls have gone to work at the hood county news as freelance employees now this is paid assignments and emmy's a photographer and jillian is a writer and you may have already seen some emmy's photos in the newspaper and in fact they're more going to be in their saturday and jillian's first story is going to be in the newspaper on saturday and i wanted to introduce these two young ladies because i want to give my thanks to
005the gisd staff the administration their parents and everybody that's had a part in the formulation of these two young women because i promise you they have this enthusiasm and dedication and their efforts are reflected in the product that they produce you know it's a great reflection on the job that gisd has done to have these two seniors able to come into an award-winning newspaper and play a very vital role and i mean that seriously like i said it's paid this is a real deal it's not some make-believe little internship so they can kill some time and put it on a resume it's a serious project and they're doing a great job and i only hope my staff and myself can continue to foster these young women in their careers so they end up being the
006success that i know that they're destined for and i i just cannot give my sincere appreciation enough to the board the staff the faculty and their parents for the great job they've done and i thought you should recognize these two young women well as we're also thanking them i need to thank you mr houston for allowing our students to have this opportunity as well thank you so much laughs [Music] i truly do appreciate the businesses and town and the community members in town that really do help us to allow our students to reach their full potential and it's it's the community as a whole that makes these children the best that they can be and thank you parents as well okay we are now going to move into the superintendent's report dr glenn thank you
007madam president a few things to report on first a couple of shout outs i do want to recognize our curriculum department led by stacy brown and also our high school counselors especially karen harrington they have using a federal grant they were able to uh to work out getting the psat funded for all of our economically disadvantaged students in grades 9 and 10 this year so that's exciting as we begin pushing out college readiness for those kids also a brag from the region 11 service center they have chosen bacchus elementary to conduct interviews and training modules for reading academies which will be shared statewide and they were actually going to use all elementaries in gisd but i think just for filming purposes they consolidated it down to backus and certainly proud that our teachers are going
008to be recognized across the state for that training module also this is constitution week and i've already seen some of our elementary principals and middle school principals sharing things that are happening across our district as it relates to the u.s constitution in our curriculum so thank you for that i'm also excited that in just about every campus plan i noted that we are now striving to have all of our campuses a hundred percent purple star campuses and for those of you who don't know what that means i didn't either and it's a an award that tea put out in 2020 which recognizes uh texas campuses that meet uh go above and beyond to meet the needs of military students and their families and so i think that's certainly a great thing we're striving for uh
009trustees our enrollment is now just barely under eight thousand if you count little bucks we're actually over eight thousand uh but what jumped out to me is uh we are now at 56 percent economically disadvantaged and so our number of students who live below the poverty line continues to climb in this county um we are continuing to focus on attendance that is a new initiative that we're pushing this year as we look at funding and how we are funding is funded as a texas public school district a one percent gain in attendance is the equivalent of about a half a million dollars so if we look at ways that we can generate revenue we know that our attendance rate has been low when compared to other districts our size in our area and so we
010feel like that we can easily improve that in the neighborhood of three to four percent this year which could generate one and a half to two million dollars in additional funding speaking of funding uh emmett and his staff are preparing for audit season and so we hope to have the the financial audit presented to you guys in at the latest i guess december the auditors will be here but uh they're going to begin actually setting up this month and from there i just want to uh congratulate mr ross and his staff appreciate everything that went into homecoming weekend we know that is a huge event seemed like uh it's definitely the largest crowd that i've ever seen in a football game and just thought it was very well done even with some of the hiccups
011that we encountered and then two reminders to the board of trustees one wednesday we will have breakfast with the board at gms at 7 45 a.m and then also president of gef stacy mitchell would like me to remind everyone that 50 fellows is october 15th this year and for those of you who don't know that is our education foundation and they have raised for the district over an eight year period nine year period uh 730 000 that they put into grants for our teachers pretty amazing and her goal and so so stacey has pushed out a goal for the foundation to be at a million dollars in giving to granberry isd by next year and with her leadership we know that's definitely attainable so madam president that's what i have for you tonight thank you
012dr glenn okay from there we are going to go into our open forum public comments we have two agenda item public comments so they will be five minutes apiece and the first one tonight will be ms monica brown thank you for having me again i'm going to talk about ehaaa it's basic instructional program required instruction all levels i've spoken quite a few teachers and upper level gisd staff who didn't know what ehaaa is which i fully understand because there's a magnitude of data you guys have to go through so i just wanted to uh something i discovered in studying about what gisd is all about and it's not just gisd if you go to granberry independent school district online you go to school board and you go to policy you can look up any policy
013e h a a e f b e f a e f b is the one that lets you know about library materials efa lets you know about general instruction materials so this eha tells you if you go to keller isd you'll find the same thing so i was surprised but it says the required curriculum of course is english language arts and reading mathematics science social studies that consist of texas united states and world history government geography economics with an emphasis on the free enterprise system and its benefits nothing goes on and talks about languages other than english it talks about health physical health mental health suicide prevention physical education fine arts career and technical education technology applications and number seven says religious literature including the hebrew scriptures the old testament and the new testament and
014its impact on history and literature i mean we all know that it's the one of the most famous books in all the world that's right here e-h-a-a i'll be glad to give you a copy and then it goes on to financial literacy and when it goes on to digital citizenship positive character traits etc it's under the topic of required curriculum a district that offers kindergarten through grade 12 shall offer a foundation curriculum that includes all of these items okay and then it goes on to character talks about common core that you can't teach it which i know we're all aware of that it also talks about sex education it goes about it goes out about these track school health advisory council it's excellent i mean it's an excellent idea everything here it's a goal it's
015a great goal it says your content of your human sexuality instruction should present abstinence as the preferred choice of behavior for unmarried persons of school age it should devote more attention to abstinence into any other behavior emphasize that absence is the only method that is 100 effective in preventing pregnancy sexually transmitted diseases infection with hiv or aids and the emotional trauma associated with adolescent sexual activity it goes on and i just want people to know what eha is because it is the policy of the district and it's actually throughout the state of texas and so it doesn't boggle your mind if you find the library has books that are about that promote non-absence is my turner gone okay uh are you okay still you can you continue going we're having issues with that's okay and
016i don't want to go long i have someone to be so um and then the efb it has to do the library material so i just i'm going to need help i've asked for it i know it's coming what does a citizen do that kind of got drawn into this process to challenge two books that have been put back in the library by the district i need to understand and the community needs to understand the logic of why both of them are sexually explicit books and they're fiction so i don't understand but i know it's coming i'm getting an answer soon and then i don't know if people consider him the man who started all this book review but matt krause is going to be in town next week on september 27th he'll be speaking
017at brazos covenant ministries 1950 acting highway doors open at six and meeting starts at 6 30. he'll be speaking on the books centering our school libraries it's a national issue it's not just granberry so i just want you to know that that is going on and i really don't have any more that's all i wanted to say tonight and just kind of go over what ehaa is you can find it on the granberry independent school district website under school board under policy you can print off a copy and study it and understand better what the policies are thank you you miss brown and i do apologize about the timer i'm sorry if that kind of took you off but you covered everything you needed to so thank you very much all right next up we
018have uh ms nancy alana good evening it is my pleasure to stand here before you this evening and first of all congratulations you on the test scores they're outstanding and i congratulate you the teachers the administrators the students everyone involved with that so congratulations on that uh the item that i really wanted to to uh discuss has to do with um our national motto which is in god we trust and i saw something that kind of prompted me to come tonight to remind everyone that over 20 years ago our our national motto in godwin trust was placed into all of our schools and into all of our classrooms and all the offices so this is not a new issue it's not anything that we have rejected in the past or not even considered it is
019something we proudly did over 20 years ago my concern was that this has been brought up again by a political group and i would caution the board about accepting donations from political organizations i don't know if the attorneys have been consulted i don't know how legal this is it may be perfectly legal but if i were sitting in your place that would be something that i would want to know for sure that before accepting donations from one political group that i understand if i do it from one i'm going to have to do it from the others as well so i don't know how legal that is but i did want to bring that forward as a concern of mine and that's all i have thank you thank you [Applause] and at this point that
020closes our public comments and we move on to consider action items discussed in closed session uh for that we're going to consider staff recommendations thank you madam president a very short personnel report in front of you tonight prepared by mr jones one highlight i would like to recognize kelly pollock as kelly with us tonight she is not kelly is the new uh assistant principal at emma roberson and she'll be taking a tabitha bleaker's place who did a great job for the district but we know kelly will do a great job and we're excited to have another administrator grown from within so personnel report is in front of you at all it will be our recommendation that you approve it as presented thank you sir do i hear a motion madam president i'll make the motion
021that we accept personnel uh i guess we have a single single hire transferring a couple of resignations as person jackson and i'm sorry i'm sorry dr mcdonald seconds all those in favor raise your hand that was unanimous thank you all right we are now moving on to a discussion in action consider consent agenda items are there any items that would like to be pulled out and discussed at this time madam president i i have can you hear me in the back some gentleman pointed out last week that i mean last month that he couldn't hear me um once again i want to pull out the donations from the folks in this community for a pilot license scholarship for this wonderful program that we have where students in granberry isd in classroom settings can become actually
022certified pilots it's pretty expensive licensing and so first united methodist church donated fifteen hundred dollars and hood county children's charity that donated a thousand to help fund other pilots license for one of our students gms their children's charity lunch program has received a donation from the church of christ for four hundred dollars the junior optimist received a donation from the optimist fought in the amount of 360 to fund a freezer for their fun football fundraisers ghs robotics received a 500 donation from bwe and for our school supplies in supplies and and money kroger donated sixty three hundred dollars this year that's a total of ten thousand sixty dollars this month that's been donated for um various activities and we want you to be sure and thank the those folks when you see them a reminder
023about donations board policy cdc states the board delegates to the superintendent the authority to accept unsolicited gifts on behalf of the district i would like at this time [Music] to raise the issue that we did have a donation of the in god we trust signs uh i want to thank julia pannell because she in 2004 i think spearheaded the same campaign and raised donations i on this board nor any other member of this board has the authority to accept a donation from anybody and i am concerned by the political implications where three candidates and a sitting board member were photographed with that board member accepting the donations and three opponents to sitting board members sure makes it a challenge to work with a team of eight when someone is actually sitting out there and accepting
024donations to a pup for folks that oppose sitting board members folks i have a concern about that we like your donations i love your donations but it shouldn't be political and i thank miss alana for pointing that out thank you madam president any other comments all right um i will look for a motion to accept the consent agenda items adam president i move that we accept the consent agenda items as presented i suck at that motion thank you ms gore thank you dr harrington all those in favor please raise your hand that was unanimous thank you moving on present check minutes for the 2021-2022 school year ms stacy brown [Music] good evening everybody i just wanted to present to you uh the shack minutes basically we took a all of the minutes that we took
025over the four meetings that we had during the year i must present those to you we've been very lucky we have several board members that sit on our shack several community members parents etc and just as a summary we focused in on the new rules and laws that were given to the shack committee they changed in december of this year and had several requirements that were connected to them we considered some specific outside agencies that presented information on some of our health takes as part of an opt-in procedure that we will be having for our parents regarding any of the health takes that are specifically geared towards any type of human sexuality whatsoever again that is an opt-in option that is not shown without the parents specifically approving that their child attend those presentations all
026those presentations are posted you can go and you can see all of the presentations that were approved by the shack committee they also had multiple parent nights for parents to be shown the presentations prior to you guys receiving them and so that was kind of a big topic for us as far as the shack we will continue that process again those organizations specifically child advocacy center browsers pregnancy center mission granberry who present at different levels of our school they will be presenting their specific i guess presentations presenting their presentations and parents will get the opportunity to come and view them as well they are on the website etc all the videos from the shack meetings are posted those are now to be recorded all of the minutes are posted on the website as well individually
027and so do you have any questions about that information stacey just on the minutes uh i believe we had two trustees on the check in addition to melanie grant we had courtney gore and i noticed she wasn't on there was one set of minutes and i will i will tell you i apologize the minutes were taken by a conglomerate of people we had some shifts in uh some people came in and started taking minutes and then they resigned and then we got somebody else to come in so i apologize we will standardize those minutes so that we make sure that we add those and um ms gore if you will just let me know which dates that you were off of i know i found you in a couple of spots and i talked with
028i think davilan davis to get to make sure that you were added back in on the website so i apologize for that okay i i wasn't really calling out a technicality i was i was really making the point that we had two trustees that were very involved and an integral of that process absolutely approved of the presentation so yes thank you yes i would like to thank both ms graft and ms gore for being on that and all the other community members as well as faculty that worked on that committee that was extra time you had to take and it was important assignment to do so thank you all so much for for your time and your effort we have our four meetings scheduled for uh this year and if we need to add additional
029ones we will uh the regular meeting notices have been posted they're posted 72 hours at least prior to they are not texas open meetings act but we do a lot of the same things with regards to the shack so our first one is this wednesday september 21st and then the others are following in november february and april so heads up all right thanks so i guess do we accept the minutes that is correct we'll ask for more okay madam president i'll move that we accept the shaq minutes as presented with the one modification to add the score thank you mr jackson and i need a second thank you mr moore all those in favor please raise your hand that is unanimous thank you very much all right the campus improvement plans this was the biggie
030for this month miss clark let me catch up here just two seconds okay not a very good moment i will get my book out of all this stuff okay so um the principals and their administrative teams and their campus leadership committees have worked very very hard first um doing their needs assessment and then setting performance objectives and strategies to align with our g2025 goals that are applicable for them so many of the campuses are aligned in some similar things they set goals for increasing student academic performance of course career and college readiness increased student attendance increased safety and security measures leadership opportunities character education end of life individualized instructional support through observation observation feedback coaching i'll slow down continuing solid community partnerships and participation in gef grant opportunities they've also prepared a campus plan at
031a glance because the plans can be pretty cumbersome so the plans at a glance are for you and for their campuses to know a summary of what they're all moving towards there was one amendment to the aes it was originally we were having a partnership with uh not just tarleton for the student interns and that didn't get um modified when we just went with tarleton for the student interns and that will be um that has been fixed online not for yours of course but um the updated one before we post them online will be indicating only the partnership with tarleton so it is recommended that the board approve the campus improvement plans as presented any discussion tammy i would just like to say for any of you principals this is a lot of work we
032know how much work goes into this so please thank all of your staff members who've spent countless hours on this and one thing i know i'm going to look forward to next year is that we're not going to have any mention of covid right we're not going to see that anymore but you guys did a great job they were easy to read and i i specifically really was impressed with the transparency you guys presented to us as far as what your needs are and what you're doing to address those needs and how we can help you so thank you and please please tell your staff thank you they did a great great job and and for those who are out there that haven't been involved in this this this is a 470 page document that
033we're looking at that it covers all the campuses and one of the things that it does is it looks at what happened with stars and how the scores were and then where they want to go and tammy i'd like you to take a few minutes and explain you know if you were at 60 and you decide the next year you're doing 64 why did you pick 64 not 62 or 67 yes so a lot of the times when we're setting our campus goals with the principals they will be looking at not only what happened last year with star but also what happened with the rising third grade class the rising fourth grade class and their data from the previous year to set realistic goals so if you had a really strong fourth grade class and
034this third grade class that is coming up struggles a little bit more um it might not be appropriate to gold them based off of the outgoing fourth graders numbers and so we sit down with the principals and me and dr glennon and jimmy dawson and we have a good conversation about what's realistic but what is going to push everybody to continuously improve our performance and and set some some pretty rigorous goals for everybody so that we know where we're trying to head which is always better so and also it's based on more than just stars it's also i noticed that there's character designations how do you come up with those and what are those and how are they defined so a lot of the different goals were set in by g2025 those were board goals
035that will stay through 2025 and we align our all of our our problem statements and our uh our needs surrounding those um guiding principles and goals that the board said at that time for the direction that we were going and um trying to incrementally get there from when they were set to to achieving them in 2025 until you guys come up with another set of goals so the character ed we try to have conversation with curriculum and instruction and um and our campus principles to decide on what what program we're going to use to lean on and in order to teach those principles to our school and there's safety things there's commuter park community partnerships as goals that you guys set fiscal things which is my friend emmett and and then how the campus can
036work with that and then um yeah facilities technology all of the different areas and so we have a district improvement plan that leans on those goals and then each of our campuses try to figure out how what their part in that is and based on the needs assessment what they need to be working on to improve their their campus for the overall goals of the district if that's excellent any other questions or comments anyone would like to make yeah i just wanted to comment on here when i was reading through these seeing how involved our community is with our schools and those community partnerships and how vital they are to ensuring the success of our children in this school district and how we all thrive we're all better for it um like the partnership that
037back has had with ruth's place and another one um in kudos to paula for helping encourage this one the forward training center and the stars academy that we have that partnership in helping those students succeed it's those community partnerships are vital to this district and we're just so grateful that we have so much community support and it shows so thank you other comments confession is good for the soul and i didn't get these until this morning shortly after eight o'clock so for those of you that know what i do to your campus improvement plans every year you are really glad i'm sure having said that i did stand them and a couple of things i noticed you uh use preliminary data i i suspect you're going to go back and amend that since you have
038your uh permanent data uh i liked what we were doing about the the new district writing goals uh software program that you use in developing this look at how you're going to grade yourself or rate yourself with no progress or accomplished or continued or discontinued whatever those are i'm really concerned about funding source some of you listed teachers or programs that are funded by state comp the sr program special ed title one whatever as we're looking at some of those programs going away or the possibility of receiving less outside funding principles please look real closely and identify those dollars that might go away and if it's a valuable program that helps our kids achieve then look at how we can adjust what we're doing to keep being successful with our kids so those are just
039off the top of my head three hours of dealing with these plans and if i find something else y'all know what i'll do i'll call you but thank you again for not only developing them but for really using them because it appears to me last year you did an outstanding job and it appears to me that you fell right back into that good outstanding job but that's on a quick look but thanks again any other comments all right at this time i asked for a motion i move that we accept the camel's improvement plans as presented and i will second thank you dr harrington thank you dr mcdonald all those in favor please raise your hand and that is unanimous congratulations principals all right believe it or not we are moving on to reports mr
040whitefield annual federal programs report thank you madam president board in front of you you do have our annual report on federal funds that we will be utilizing this year not including the t-class the total of those grants and federal programs will be about 10.342 million dollars and then of that 10.3 million dollars about 4.9 million of it will be spent in payroll costs 732 000 will be in our contracted services and 3.2 million dollars will be used in supplies and materials there are other operating costs of 185 000 and then capital outlay of 1.5 million dollars which includes the sr funding for the hvac systems that are now uh in process there will also be about 1.2 million dollars of indirect costs that are charged or charged to the federal grant and brought back into
041local funding um and then with the total grants like i said we're 10.34 2 million now that does include a school improvement point grant that is not on your list because it came in later but that's about a 43 000 grant and then your t class totals to about 1.639 million dollars and on that one decision 1 and decision 9 were both declined but that 1.6 does not include those that funding amount and that is your federal grants that we will be using this year i really appreciated the way you gave the brief explanation of each one so i understood exactly where the money was going so thank you that credit would have to go back to the federal program directors oh yeah they asked for that they're okay they're smart people then any other
042comments all right then i will ask for a motion oh that's right we're on reports now that's right okay thank you yeah you've already spent so very good for that huh okay continue on mr whitefield financial statements thank you again madam president board in front of you have the financial statements for the year ending august 31st 2022 you can it's the same financials that we looked at every month there are an additional about eight hundred thousand dollars that are not in the expenditures here they will be expensed prior to the audit there will be a few more accounts payable that we have to book back to august but those will change a little bit but the impact of the budget revenue reflected is equal that 100.94 percent of the budgeted amount compared to 101.56 percent
043in 2021 and then 101.44 in 1920 and then expenditures to date represent 97.29 percent of the budget compared to 96.47 percent and 20 and 21 and 89.94 percent in 1920 and there will be like i said a few more entries made for the audit so that number on your bottom line will change so how much how much of that budget lapse in how much can we expect to be able to bank there's about a three percent lapse on expenditures in there uh but if you said 800 hadn't been recognized yet what what's that where does that put us about 1.4 or 1.3 i think preliminary estimates were lower than that yes sir but we'll we'll be what i'm asking is what what's going back in the fund balance the savings account for this budget lapses
044it would be it would be really a guess at this point i can say i mean based on our conversations we're conservatively saying about a half million dollars yes sir but uh but it could be it could be more but you know we always this time of year trying to keep it conservative knowing that we'll let the auditors uh come in and shake loose the remaining funds okay there are some gatsby entries that they'll make yeah thanks and uh you you received my email that for next year i don't think we need the two the two comparisons i think we could just do last year's and the current yes ma'am i think we're far enough past covered now we don't need to worry about that little blip that we were seeing yeah and yeah where
045it could be beneficial just looking at it would be just as gas prices continue to fluctuate up and down and also food prices you know we're still dealing with some some variables there so we're one year but i don't think we'll need to i think right right now we feel like things are stabilizing but if they don't uh and we see a big spike in gas or something else we can certainly always go back to the the multi-year comparison and just continue on mr whitefield yes cash flow statements yes ma'am uh board and printing you do have the cash flow and investment statements um we are moving away from the long-term investments and we've talked about that over the last few months but we did receive about 771 000 in interest for the month of
046august bringing our total for the total year about 219.5 219 500 two dollars in total interest for the year which is significant compared to the first six months of the year and what what was our budgeted amount well those are different funds but in the budgeted amount if you look back at the financials uh the budget amount for the for the general operating fund was a hundred thousand and we ended up with 164 000 in interest that's what i thought i read yes i wanted this man but that's that that uh the investment report is a multitude of funds yes so there's there's more than just that on there thank you and probably the only good thing about the rising interest rates is we're starting to see a little more return on our investments and
047that's the reason we moved into the short term because those interest rates are higher at this point very good and last but not least report of categorical purchases between 50k and 100k yes ma'am the budget impact from the uh from the categorical expenditures are 180 thousand 110.79 that was with two different vendors ixl learning for a license renewal at 85 995 and then heinemann greenwood publishing for uh uh fmp lea grades k through five and ninety four thousand one hundred fifteen dollars and seventy nine cents and that is your categorical expenditure reports and the last report on my list thank you mr whitefield all right at this time we have finished everything in our agenda so we are now going back into public comment to handle the non-agenda items and the first one up will
048be and let's see i have [Music] i have eight uh let's do three minutes a piece for this think we can do that we good okay then the first one up will be miss julia pannell [Music] thank you very much let me pull this damn i'm one of those sharp people can i do this sure i can superintendent glenn school board chair townsend members of the gisd board sitting on the dice my name is julia pannell my husband bob and i have been active members of this community since we moved here in 1993. i'm here tonight to voice my concern over information i read about a group collecting funds to place in godly trust posters in gisd schools here is granberry's true story i know it's true because i lived it in august of 2003
049governor perry passed house bill number 219 which stated that the approved in god we trust posters may be placed in public schools the key word there was me i sought out the correct way to do this is i wanted to be a part of keeping the word god in front of our students and to encourage learning about our national model current school board member barbara harrington will remember this story here are the steps we were instructed to take go before the school board for approval william harris was then superintendent they approved it totally all funds had to be raised by outside sources we did that the posters were to be ordered from the suggested company from governor perry's office the company was in fort worth we did that they were to be framed so that
050they could be considered a piece of furniture and not be left up to the decision of a teacher as to whether or not they would be used it was an approved board decision the money raised from the citizens in the community of four days was over five thousand dollars the appropriate posters were ordered the more expensive permanent style frames were ordered and as you can see if you've seen them and we have one it's still good today 16 people met in the gym we framed and wrapped up each poster citizens bought hundreds of framed posters and delivered them to each school in their own trucks and vans the number for each school was directed from the superintendent's office superintendent harris sent a note to each principle of the board decision the frame posters went up
051in each library four-year classroom across gisd nancy alana who has places here tonight a previous board member was a principal when this happened and used it as a tool to teach the students about the motto and what it meant i contacted superintendent glenn and was pleased to learn that the framed and godly trust posters were still in conspicuous places on each campus here in the administration building and also at the bus barn in a call today to austin i was told that these same posters were still very appropriate to be used to fulfill the last mandate i'm almost finished when i finish so my message tonight is to applaud the citizens of granbury and gisd for being aggressive in their thinking over the years and to encourage any new funds raise to date for such
052a product project or to the teachers if you ask any teacher they'll have a way they can spend that fund so once again gisd and the concerned citizens of granberry led the way almost 20 years later and the in god we trust posters still remain up and still look good i have one this is my personal one that i have over for our trainers in but you can see the poster and the ones in gisd are in brown wooden my stop frames but they're still beautiful and they're still there 20 years later thank you thank you this canal next up we have john m graves [Music] make sure i get it all here good evening i am john graves i've lived here since 1985 and yes i do remember when all the posters went up
053throughout this district in fact i still have one at my house that was sent to me but anyway um i would like to wish you all based on the joys of all the banned books this is national band book week i also remind you that if you don't want your child to read the book then don't let them we are parents do a parental role the kids will still find it in other formats even if you pull them out of all the libraries they have their way of finding stuff that they want to read but the other thing is reading's extremely important for these children's education no they don't need to read all books we should all agree upon that you know there are age-appropriate books anyway but reading is very fundamental half my family
054on my father's side were all teachers reading teachers mainly except for one that was an algebra and a coach anyway and i would also venture to say that most of y'all probably read most of those books that have been on the banned list that have been put out but anyway just putting it out there the other issue i'd like to discuss is ethics you know grand veracity was well respected for years because they were out they were the gold star for so many districts wanting to see how an effective board team of eight functioned and how you ran your district they were requested to speak all across the state and spoke at most conferences and never paid to go to those conferences because they were speaking and educating others anyway but recently as i've had
055to travel some when people realized that i was from cranberry their first comment was i'm so sorry that your your kids are in that school that's sad from my point because this doesn't work it doesn't appear to other cities that granbury works as a team of eight that needs to be addressed and it needs to work you know citizens of this town have an issue but when you're going to districts that are very controversial at the present time and they're having condolences keller gray von colleyville that's a little eye-opening to me anyway um also just say remember when you're on the board and you're doing board functions and out representing as a board member you should always be looked at as having the highest of ethical standards you know what you do when you're not
056as a board member that's another issue but remember you are representing this district and always maintain the ethics that's it short and sweet y'all have a great night thank you mr graves next up we have carolyn reeves [Music] thank you for letting me speak my name is carolyn reeves and i moved here a couple of years ago i was never i didn't really come to school board meetings but i keep hearing all these different changes happening in the schools and i keep hearing about these books being banned and because pornography and i don't either way whether they're there or not my problem was more that you spent my tax property taxes on these books but the other thing is is some of these books i hear are still in the library and i'm wondering do
057can teachers pull them and start reading these books to our students you know during class time is that appropriate or are they pushed aside and only the children can check them out i don't know i know very it's very vague on what these books where they're at or what the process is and do our children have access to them i'm not really concerned about my children checking them out but i'm more concerned of are these teachers now bringing in these books to their rooms and reading them to our children that's my concern right now i appreciate you letting me speak thank you very much thank you miss reeves next we have mr dave eagle [Music] we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal that they are endowed by their creator
058with certain unalienable rights that among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness that to secure these rights governments are instituted amongst men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed now that's in the declaration of independence and our constitution was signed 11 years later are presented 11 years later and the same people that wrote the declaration of independence were involved in writing the constitution and what this that one sentence in the declaration talks about where our rights come from and our forefathers were under a divine intervention in my opinion when they wrote these words because they postulated that our rights come from god and our rights pre-suppose any government our rights are already here i say that because i've come across a an idea that's that i've seen that really gives
059me calls for concern with school boards and school boards across the state of texas it's not just this school board it's schools all public schools all over texas all over the country are going through some growing pains and some differences of opinion and some debate about books many things but there's a law firm that represents most of these school boards and it's called the galagos firm walsh galagos and they give a module in your continuing education and tell you that you are a trustee form of government now i will tell you that that is a fiction there's no such thing i looked i even looked it up and i've got to go through this quickly because i thought i was going to do five y'all switch on me every time but there's also a concept
060here called the team of eight now what does the team of eight mean well volleyball has six players on the court basketball baseball has nine players on the court but they're all playing for one goal and to win that game that is not the way our elected officials should operate whose common goal is it with the team of eight the superintendents the president of the board some lobbyist some special interest a former trustee a current trustee let's think about that because sometimes everybody doesn't agree and we need to be able to disagree and talk about our disagreements and and to come up here and make a the irony of the somebody becoming a former school trustee coming up here in a current one saying let's not get political the irony of that is that was
061political that was a political statement that was made everybody's political right now so i'm making that comment because we got we've got an election coming up and uh it's going to be an interesting november 8th thank you thank you mr eagle [Music] next we have mr christian harris good evening thank you for the opportunity to speak my name is christian harris owner of jch painting here in town 62 years old at age 47 i brought four of my daughters into this wonderful community and they all went through the gisd school district you guys are doing a great job obviously there is a storm on the horizon very serious days lay ahead coming from the bay area i go back twice a year and if you want to talk the fruit of secular thinking i could
062talk with you about it for a long time but god took me off the couch i'm not a republican i'm not a democrat i'm a christian took me off the couch five years ago and put me onto the game and so we've been uh we've been doing some neat things here in town uh we started a mission that meets at brock's and we've had a number of people saved seven baptisms three weddings it's really exciting we're not a church yet we'll see what happens but as i was thinking on the landscape of what we have to look forward to in 25 years if we knew what this community would be in 25 years we would be packing this place out knowing what was on the horizon i came up with three ideas just as i'm
063thinking outside of the boxes i see the finish line from my own life number one start a mentoring deal eight of the top ten uh granberry contractors are born again christians i am one we would have much to offer your students that give them an alternative to develop a trade or a discipleship mentorship in a trade that would lead them in a path that would honor christ every time the church and i'm talking about the biblical church appeared on the horizon of a secular state the community improved it did not just did not disintegrate it was advanced for men women children in the workplace don't believe the lives of people that come up here and just kind of spout what they think about what christianity is that's not christ so what we have here is
064an opportunity in my realm where i know eight of the top ten are born again believers and we would be i know i've already begun talking to them about possibly passing the baton think about that i'll be back secondly it just seems like um this open mic thing is a is a mic dump everybody can just spot i mean i heard last last month that some guy said that god created homosexuality and that's not a knock against that particular sin nobody with sin is going to enter the kingdom of god but when somebody comes up here and says a foolish thing like that and it's just allowed just to resonate through the corridors here it makes sense that there should be some kind of open forum or debate i'd love to debate that guy i'd
065love to be able to go toe-to-toe and have an open forum where we can discuss some of these things that might be another solution and finally as i wrap up i believe that maybe a chaplain for the school system might be appropriate i think teachers especially believing teachers that are unable to connect the dots between their field of study and god are kind of being left out and i think that they need to know not only the law but the supremacy and majesty of christ and that might be a thing that would be encouraging for our own teachers thanks thank you mr harris next we have mr mark back to the lowery thank you sir next we have mr ms donna cole just as i spoke last school board meeting i have 22 years of
066prison in jail ministry and i'm speaking about the books if there's just one pornography book in the gisd library that's one too many safe place school is considered by many parents to be a safe place for our children it's not a safe place if pornography is readily available for our children to easily access it in the school library for 12 years a prison ministry and working with rehabilitation curriculum that is a victim-based curriculum i've been aware of the resulting fallout of incarcerated individuals and the statistics are rising i took my stats from the tdcj year in statistical report and there are four sections in it the first section in the report is labeled violent and it has 62.4 percent uh offenses on record homicide is 21 percent robbery 24 assault 25 but the section that
067really does resonate with me and disturbs me quite a bit is the sexual assault sexual assault against a child which is molesting of a child or rape of a child indecency with a child forced to commit sexual acts and violent sexual offense and sometimes they end up in death that section is 30 percent which is nearly one half of the total violent section of that report drugs is second with 14.3 percent whether it's delivery possession or manufacturing these two make up 77 of the record dealing with rehabilitation curriculum there is a question in there that we ask each one of the offenders how did you get started in this path of crime and it doesn't matter what the offense is all of them have the same answer at a young age i was exposed to
068pornography at a young age i was exposed to drugs at a young age i was introduced to penophilia at a young age i was raped at a young age i was a victim of aggravated assault i pray you the school board see the clear correlation between exposure at a young age to the pornography and the results of fallout from pornography we need the books removed from the gisd libraries k through 12 back when you first were made aware of it there is no educational value in these books the books are in question can i the books in question can and will do harm to our children do you care do you dare to do the right thing for your children for our children thank you mary cardone thank you for hearing us boom i'm here
069to also um say to you i have two points about the pornography in your library the school library i want to say again i am a pastor in this community i live on pinnacle ridgeway by the way i'm a pastor in this community and have been for 25 years i've ministered in this community for 40. i also have experienced with young people who have been unbelievably messed up by that material i don't understand what is happening when i read that texas teachers have as their keynote speakers this year in austin three drag queens i don't understand that there's nothing educational about that there's nothing about reading writing rhythmic there's nothing about the basics in any of that i'm here to say to you as a pastor i can look back through the history of this
070nation and tell you that we would have had no abolition no second great awakening no civil rights movement had it not been for pastors it was suggested to me recently that i stay inside my church i am called to a city an estate i'm not called to four walls of a building and biblically no pastor should be so i want to say to you that i will be here until the last pornographic book is out of this library because those children are our future that's our future if as a pastor if i were to have a 19 year old come into my office and tell me that in his or her family a 13 or 14 year old even up to 16 was being exposed to pornography by someone older i would have to report
071that legally because it's considered sexual abuse why is it not sexual abuse in our school libraries the second thing i want to ask you is what can we do about this wall between us i've heard so many comments tonight about the the wonderfulness of the community being involved in the schools being involved with you we want to be involved with you i believe if we had worked together not one book would still be in that library i don't judge you i don't judge anyone but what i do judge is the sin and the evil a sexually explicit material being shown to young people and somebody trying to say it's okay because it's educational i say a biblical word hogwash that is not true i will end by saying i'm going to ask you for a
072face to face with two or three pastors in this area i want to talk with you i want to bridge this divide i've read ugly comments on both sides and i say let's stop it and work together i think we're all here on the same team for our children right okay [Music] madam president we have no other business tonight all right the time is now 7 12 and we are adjourned thank you lord [Music] you