Granbury ISD School Board Meeting - August 22, 2022

001no [Music] i don't like it good evening the time is now 5 pm i call this meeting of the granberry independent school district to order that the records show that a quorum of board members is present that this meeting has been dually called and that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings act texas government code chapter 551 the board will now adjourn now 5 pm i call this meeting of the granberry independent school district to order that the records show that a quorum of board members is present that this meeting has been dually yeah okay this board is now adjourned into executive session pursuant of the following sections section 551.074 to deliberate the appointment employment evaluation reassessment duties discipline or dismissal of public officer or employee section 551.076

002discussion regarding the deployment or specific occasions for implementation of security personnel and section 551.072 purchase exchange lease or value of real property the time is now 501. the time is now 6 pm hello six o'clock folks the board is reconvening following executive session the time is now six o'clock and we will go ahead and begin with an invocation led by mike moore absolutely will you plea please pray with me father god we are so thankful tonight for everyone here and and we're thankful for the great start of the new school year and lord we pray that you will be with our students and our teachers and staff as they go throughout this new school year give them strength and give them guidance and lord we pray for guidance and strength and wisdom for this meeting

003as well that we may make the best decisions for granbury isd and lord we're also thankful for our fellow school board member mr mark jackson who is at home recuperating and we're thankful that his procedure went just fine lord be with us through this evening and our journey home in the name of jesus that we pray amen amen thank you and now we have the pledges and the presentation of colors please stand the fire of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice indivisible [Music] oh [Music] so [Music] okay thank you very much okay at this time we will have the public hearing on budget and tax rate mr whitefield thank you madam president thank you board thank you for being

004here tonight as we present this proposed budget to you in this public hearing we're going to start off with the general operating budget you can see it this is our revenue for that general operating about 89 of our budget is made is uh collected in taxes and prior year taxes and penalties and interest the rest of that budget falls into other local tuitions other local uh parking fees pre-k tuition and so on and then we have our revenue our state revenues our per capita revenue our foundation revenue that totaled just under four million dollars and then we have our federal revenues down there towards the bottom to start with child nutrition indirect costs and federal indirect revenues and our medicaid revenues and that makes up the remainder of our revenues which is about 83.45 million

005dollars we'll move on and talk about the function of course you know the functions are where we spend the money in our budget the majority of our budget is spent in instruction it's about 61.3 percent of our budget net of recapture and we know that our recapture is down there in function 91 and that is what we send back to the state there are some increases we know that function 11 is going to increase because that is instruction and when students increase our teaching staff increases there is a decrease under function 13 which is our staff development function and it decreases about 379 thousand dollars in function 31 we decreased about 660 000 compared to last year's budget and that is due to the fact that those are those uh expenditures are moved over into

006our idea b federal program in a special ed the increases that we're going to look at are under function 34 which is our transportation that has to do with fuel increase costs and we all know how that's hitting us at the pump and then increase under function 51 which has to do with utilities and i'm bringing custodial in-house as well and then function 91 there is an increase of 2 million 335 000 and that is our recapture that we send back to the state for wealth equalization breaking it down into our object codes you can see that 83.5 percent of our budget is for salaries and that is net of recapture and then we break it down into contracted services supplies and materials for the classroom and other offices other operating expenses which have to

007do with uh our staff development as well um debt service there's nothing in the proposed budget there will be some later on in the year as the audit moves on and they tell us what we need to put in that situation and then our capital outlay is about 696 000 and that totals an 83.54 million budget the highlights are that the revenue is an 83 million fifty four thousand thirty dollar revenue budget and the expenditures will match that and make that a balanced budget it is an increase from last year's balanced budget of 7.286 million dollars and i'll point you back to our recapture at this point is about 7.4 million dollars this includes an 1800 increase for teachers three percent increase on the midpoint for all other employees we increased all bus drivers to

008seventeen dollars an hour plus ten cents an hour for every year continuous service to gisd it increased bus driver leads to eighteen dollars an hour plus ten cents an hour for every cont every year continuous service to gisd and increase child nutrition staff workers to fourteen dollars an hour with ten cents per hour for every continuous year services gisd and then our new child nutrition managers on the campus to 16 an hour plus 10 cents an hour for every year continuous service to gisd the geo projected fund balance is 29 million 375 000 and that is as of 831 2023 and there's again there it is in graph form you can see that i've had it leveled off from 2021 that was our fund balance at that time i have not increased or decreased it

009for this budget year because the audit is still forthcoming and um there are still a few uh uh payroll accruals that need to be made and everything so we know exactly where we're going to land on that phone balance so having a balanced budget for it would stay the same if everything was spent at 100 percent we're going to talk about the debt service budget this is the opposite side of the tax rate you can see that option one up here shows it at a 19.5 tax rate for debt service that makes the revenue budget for that particular uh option at sixteen million six hundred eighty four thousand dollars with expenditures of six smith sixteen million six hundred eighty three thousand dollars that includes the defeasance of eight million four hundred eighty thousand dollars saving

010taxpayers eight hundred sixty eight thousand six hundred sixteen dollars over the over that bond option two is at fourteen and a half cents that creates a revenue budget of twelve twelve million five hundred sixty one thousand nine hundred forty dollars with an expenditure budget of twelve million five hundred and fifty eight thousand dollars 152 which would allow a defeasance of four million thousand dollars saving taxpayers five hundred fourteen thousand two hundred fifty dollars over the life of that bond the summary for that there are two options option one is nineteen and a half cents option two is fourteen and a half cents and it gives you a uh surplus approximately of nine million dollars with the nineteen and a half cents and making the fund balance at eleven million two which allows for that eight

011point four million dollar defeasance at the 14 and a half cents it will give a surplus of 4.8 million dollars allowing for that defeasance of 4 million or 4 million 645 thousand dollars the breakdown of it this is what the budget would look like we've talked about this just a second ago but it's 16 million 684 000 on the revenue side 16 million 683 000 on the expenditure side with a difference of a thousand dollars and thousand thirty one dollars and then the next slide will show you where that defeasance is at the for uh eight point four eight million dollars a 8.48 million dollars and that would save taxpayers to 868 thousand dollars again there's the budget for the 14 and a half cents and that's the option two showing the 12.5 million dollar

012revenues and that 12.5 million expenses again allowing for the defeasants of four million six hundred and forty five thousand dollars the child nutrition budget did not change from the budget workshop is gonna be a balanced budget at four point one million dollars that does include the indirect costs that are the the district is allowed to charge and uh recruit back to the district for funding of administrative costs the revenue is projected to decrease as well the expenditures because this year the state will go back to the free and reduced application and they're not funding students at 100 percent the fund balance for child nutrition will be 1.3 million dollars we will be using that in the next year to replace steam tables dishwashers and the appliances that she needs in those kitchens the tax rate

013currently is a dollar eight and that is the 94.38 mmo with a 14.5 debt service the proposed rate on option one is a dollar for 96 which is an mmo rate of 85.46 and a debt service in 19.5 option two is the m mno at 8546 and a debt service of 14.5 cents for a total tax rate of 99.96 here it is in graph form and you can see that it continually is a stair step down and the two on the right are the proposed rates of a dollar for 96 and a 99.96 tax rate total tax rate that's a pretty quick overview of the budget for the public hearing so we'll entertain questions does anyone on the board have a question no we are not voting on it right now good question [Music] anything

014else right now thank you emmett we do have one public comment that wants to be made and this would be the time for that so would miss rhonda williams please come up good evening trustees dr glenn i just want to quickly say that please don't raise our taxes it's really just the wrong time to do that our economy is really uncertain and all of our families are in a lot of pressure and a lot of strain financially i'm asking not to tax our people out of their homes we certainly have a number of people that are in fixed incomes dr townsend if you raise taxes it'll be your sixth time i believe in your six years the economy is just unstable and so i'm asking you just to hold off on that and to be

015the best possible stewards of the existing resources that we have thank you for your time thank you miss williams madam president yes ma'am uh just for clarification in the last uh six years uh in 2014 our tax rate was 126.5 it was that at 2015. in 2016 it went down to 1.25 cents 17 it dropped to 121. 18 it dropped to 119.5 19 it went to 1 12 five twenty it went to one eleven fourteen we dropped the taxes in 2021 to one ten point eighty eight so uh why while the people's taxes have gone up or evaluation and i can say this because when i moved here in 96 and paid 116 000 for a house and do not have one square foot more under the roof of that house my tax evaluation for

016next year is four hundred and seventy two thousand four hundred and fifty dollars so what's happening to the people all of us and and you need to know we're aware of that uh i especially like the fact that you'll come forward but we're and obviously i'm my taxes are frozen but i put together a scenario for people who are who were in my position our situation and their taxes would have increased since i've owned my house from eleven hundred and seventy two dollars a year to um more than almost five thousand dollars a year so for those of you that are out there it's important for me and and i'm feel like my federal fair my fellow building members feel the same way this gives us heartburn we know you're hurting and we know what's

017happening and we look at this stuff and i don't every year i i do an analysis and think okay what does my neighbor next door who lives in this house what's this going to do to them my advice to you is contact your state legislators and let them know they're killing us at the appraisal district because my my appraisal this year alone jumped from 370 last year to 470 250 this year and we didn't do a thing at our house this year so the system is flawed but folks your board members are working hard to do everything we can to help you because we are taxpayers too and we feel the hurt i also want to point out there's requirements in hb3 with when you have growth like we've seen in our district where certain

018formulas are triggered and you have a maximum compression rate that kicks in that doesn't give very much local control over the m o side of the taxes so our hands are a little tied when it comes to what we can and cannot do as a board with the tax rate any other comments people want to make at this point [Music] all right i would like to make a comment if we're we're we're on the budget correct not public comments we're still discussing the budget public hearing for the budget and then we'll also vote on that and have more discussion later but i'm in agreement with the speaker i mean i talked to over 200 taxpayers at first i wasn't i thought i'm a dave ramsey person i like to pay off my debt first that's

019how i live my life but when i talk to the taxpayers because that's who we work for that's what we represent i applied for a job in november and the voters hired me i represent you and the voters overwhelmingly told me that they're hurting they're hurting and they need relief now and they're not concerned about the schools what we owe they're concerned about their debt and their bills so i agree with the speaker and um i'll have more to say later but i think we need to do what's best for the people that's who we represent okay thank you miss fact so anyone else that wants to make a comment at this time all right so we will move on and we will be voting on that later in the agenda okay at this time

020we're going to move on to the achievement spotlight you know i always i always hate how the rotc leaves because it doesn't give us a chance to to properly recognize them but i do now that they've left i do want to call your attention to something for the second year in a row our rotc program was named the marine corps outstanding unit it's the the highest honor that an rotc can get in the entire nation and and what's super cool about it is it allows for our commanding officer which is colonel casey it allows for him to write uh letters of recommendation for kids to get into military academies and it carries yeah it's cool and that's uh and that carries the same weight his letter carries the same weight as a as a us

021congressman or a u.s senator and uh and so uh something i do like to brag on and they're not here but but first sergeant road zetas and colonel casey they are phenomenal and uh and the average yes the average uh the average public school the average public school in the united states sends a kid to a military academy once every seven years and in gisd we average about one and a half per year and i believe we were at three last year and so it's it's just phenomenal the the job they do and i don't know if this still applies but i know it applied last year we actually had a gisd graduate in all of the military academies so that is there's five yeah so that's uh that includes coast guard and merchant marine

022as well as army navy and air force and so anyway just a shout out to those guys and what they do also shout out to our principals gisd we had over 8 000 names in our system whenever the school year began and now we're starting to to realize those kids in the classroom the number i had at the end of the day today was 7897 which means that tomorrow we will we will cross 7 900 kids in our system which is absolutely amazing i know our counselors are working hard uh shout out i see mr ross in the back i know that he uh he was working hard to put like 60 kids in the system last week the counselors have just uh probably been burning the candle at both ends getting those kids in

023class and and so we have a lot of other highlights at this time i see leah dawson here i do i do want to brag on her lia would you mind coming up to the podium leah has leah as you guys know she is our library materials coordinator student services coordinator but library materials falls under her and and you have worked so hard in the last month and our librarians have worked hard and you put in a lot of time um and and that's i kind of want to brag on you and our librarians but but i i want to give you just an opportunity to say a few words because i know you have been trying to put to rest with what has been kind of an issue here in our district last few

024months yes thank you so as you said my name is leah dawson i'm the new district student services coordinator for gisd my role is to oversee the librarians nurses and counselors i want to thank you for this opportunity to serve and support in this position typically when moving to a district level you get a lot of congratulations but i'm going to tell you i have gotten more condolences than i have congratulations for accepting this position however i also want to make it clear that i did apply for this job and i knew that it would be extremely challenging i believe in libraries and i believe in librarians and i know from my nine years of experience as a campus librarian and as a campus administrator they are the heart of the schools and play a

025huge role in the lives of our students i wanted to share with the school board parents and community about where we are with libraries and the library books to give you a complete update i would be remiss not to share the positive things that our librarians are doing in our libraries in the first week of school they were already doing amazing things in their libraries they were doing makerspace activities teaching cyber safety lessons using innovative technology and building relationships with all of their students our librarians are constantly helping their teachers and students with technology issues as well as teaching engaging lessons our librarians have been working diligently going through their collections to weed any books according to the texas state library and archives commission weeding criteria as they do every year books are weeded for

026many reasons oftentimes they are falling apart have poor content are outdated molded and haven't been checked out for two to three years or multiple other reasons which you can find in the tsla reading criteria we have begun and are committed to continuing this process with our current collections throughout the year our priority is to ensure that library materials are age appropriate not sexually explicit and suitable for all students after hearing of some of the issues that were happening using the gofallet.com website which is a service affiliated with follett destiny our online card catalog system i called technical support and was told they had never heard of this the technician later informed me that it is not current with our collection because it has a 48 hour or longer lag gofulet.com has a disclaimer on their

027website stating they do not warrant content and will be free of any errors or that it will even be corrected after multiple conversations with their technical support team i was advised only to use the district link for the most accurate up-to-date card catalog searches therefore on august 9th we did a website maintenance to update the online card catalog for each campus as well as the gisd homepage to have the most current up-to-date card catalog available for students parents and community members the district has also implanted implemented a new setting and destiny giving parents the option to opt in to receive an email every time their student checks out a book this will allow parents to discuss the book choices with their child that day if they so desire parents may also reach out to librarians

028at any time to let them know of any book selections they do not want their child to check out as of today we have had 32 formal challenges and 17 of those challenges have been completed we are making huge strides and completing challenges now that the summer is over and our staff is all back on contract with our new policy concerned parents or community members may call and schedule a phone conversation send an email or set up a time to meet with the librarian or the principal to informally discuss a concern about a book i hope this update has been helpful and informative and i want to thank you all for your trust and support as we serve all gisd students that was good thank you thank you very much stacey stacy brown is out

029there come on come on down stacey brown i just want you to share real quick uh i would say it but you and the principals deserve the credit for uh the scores and so uh so i want you to i want you to get the applause because you guys have done an amazing job well i will tell you i i want the principals to get the applause um i i help support them in in educating the kids um but they are boots on the ground as you've heard before so uh specifically with our final star and eoc information our district ended up being rated a an overall 82 which is up and you can see in the yellow highlights that is showing the increases from the preliminary scores i came last time and we talked

030about preliminary scores specifically we received an email from cambium which is the tea approved vendor and they indicated that specifically on the english paper math test for fifth grade two answer choices were out of order which resulted in some students not receiving credit for a correct response therefore on the final star eoc our scores actually overall went up and in on some campuses it specifically went up significantly resulting in four a campuses four b campuses and one barely see campus so credit 100 goes to our teachers our staff our students and our parents so all right great job thank you miss brown and we'll also uh we'll also have more distinctions and a longer to report along the report on that and i think miss dawson stepped out but truly she has done a great

031job not only empowering parents to make decisions as it relates to library materials but really working with our librarians and to implement the policy the board has adopted so i just cannot give enough credit to to our staff on the campuses uh for their leadership i see some signs out in the audience so i'd be remiss you keep holding it up and i appreciate that so i do want to address i do want to address item 12h which is the shared service agreement with the the hood county i will tell you that i had a conversation today with the uh the county judge and also a commissioner and in the shared service agreement just so you know what will likely not happen uh tonight and i'll tell you why it's because um the county in

032visiting with a county judge he was like look we we don't want to to be we don't want to be under the umbrella of the school district we just want to purchase the the dog outright so it stays with its handler and can serve the county and we are all for that so um okay so i will tell you uh trustees just so you're aware uh when we get to item 12h uh there's there will be no need for action tonight because i've been informed by the county they will not approve the shared service agreement so there's no need for you to approve it when they're not going to approve it i also contacted our attorney and our attorney said that uh as long as we get market value for the uh for the canine

033and in the items that the uh um the sheriff's department is interested in uh then then those items can be sold off and that will allow our department to to go reinvest those monies uh into securing our schools for our kids and uh and so it really seems like a uh it really seems like a win-win and so can i ask a question absolutely so i just want to clarify is annie going to be able to stay with her handler uh that will be up to that will be up to the uh that'll be up to the county but i assume that sheriff needs is committed to that i will tell you that ron massengill and sheriff deeds both indicated to me that they wanted that to happen and so they want to go ahead

034and purchase it outright so they're in control of it so why was it on their agenda in the first place and then removed it has not been removed they told me they wouldn't adopt the shared service agreement tonight um earlier today the county okay they said they wouldn't it's very interesting in the timing because i know that officer hastings filed her on for school board and then this was on the agenda and now we're not discussing it when when we could take care of this tonight and annie could be his and so it raises a real big red flag and transparency issue for me i don't think there's a red flag or a transparency issue i think the county judge said today that hey they want to purchase the dog we can't we can't make

035a gift of public funds you know that and certainly certainly the county judge needed to be involved in the first place it wasn't good it could have just started with the sheriff's department but okay well we've had conversations with both and they're both excited and i don't see i guess i don't see your appointment scrap would you care to elaborate my hope is that annie stays with her handler that's my hope and that's what i want to see happen i just think it's it's interesting that it was on the agenda and now it's it's not it just she doesn't look right so our attorney said this is how it needed to be placed on the agenda and so we were following legal counsel to make sure that that happened and you were aware of that

036because i told you that in a conversation actually i emailed you today and you never emailed me back okay well if you email me late if you email me late today yes sir it was this afternoon at 1pm we've spoke and you knew about that miss graft no no dr glenn that's not true okay whatever academic spotlight mr clark i'm just going to bring guys [Music] madam president uh trustees dr glenn thank you for this opportunity just gonna be pretty quick i just wanna i thank you for this opportunity to recognize this team that we've put together this year i'm pretty proud of it cumulatively there's uh over 226 years of experience in either law enforcement military or security work amongst the team there's over 100 hours of law enforcement in particular over 80 hours

037of military 80 years of military time and about 35 hours in or years in security work of that about 28 of it's in school security specifically this group cumulatively has put in over 700 hours of training to get ready for this school year and that's a combination of fire arms training uh scenario based training and cerebral training uh law training on the law uh in addition there's three things that i'm going to talk a little bit about that are some of our focuses this year to try to make sure that we put our best foot forward keeping kids safe number one is perimeter defense so doors we have a policy that we're checking exterior doors and interior doors that they'd be closed and locked at all times we put that into play and then dr

038mcdonald brought uh from another school district that she had heard about a campaign called stop the prop we've expanded on a little bit with stop the prop and keep it locked and so that's something that we're doing as all my guys are patrolling every day they're checking classroom doors making sure that they're closed and locked checking perimeter doors making sure that they're closed and locked and having single points of entry one of the other things that we're doing is our s2 system that we've had for a while we've discovered that it has some capabilities that we haven't previously been using and that's to notify or send a text message to a security officer or an assistant principal when a door has exceeded its threshold time meaning an exterior door has been opened somebody propped it

039or somebody's holding it for a long period of time and it can now send a text message to say hey this door door number such and such is uh needs some attention and so we're beta testing that right now on this building actually and we've done some beta testing on broner as well so that's something that should be live everywhere soon another program that we have started even prior to my arrival but i've been part of instrument of installing it and that's the raptor program so we've already had raptor for a long time for our visitation management that's where when a person comes to the school to those single points of entry they give them an id that id gets ran to make sure that that person should be on a campus with kids and

040then it prints out a photo id sticker for them to wear and that's something that we've been using already for a while the new additions to the raptor program will also allow all staff members to be able to report uh things from their phone so they could uh sound a fire alarm or or send an alert that there's a shooter somewhere in the building they could report that kind of stuff they can also report that they are somewhere safe and that they have xyz amount of children with them and or that they saw something and somebody going a certain direction or doing a certain thing and so all that's falling under the raptor program it also has a drill management package which allows us to manage all of our drills to make sure that we're

041conducting all the state required drills and having all the proper feedback from those drills i spoke with the fire marshal today previously the state requires us to have four fire drills a year previously for for other reasons we've had a fire drill every month and so we talked today and we're gonna go we're gonna curtail it to the four fire drills and add some lockdown drills and some security related drills into our program this year so this is the team and thank you for uh thank you for having us here and recognizing them and mr clark thank you mr clark i would like to give you some props on the uh we met last week and i really appreciate your time and we were talking about that idea and that actually came from some trustees

042that i are very good friends with on montgomery isd so i want to give them the credit and we talked about how we could expand on that to stop the prop and keep it locked but i want to tell you how effective already i know we haven't even implement implemented it but my fifth grader came home day one how was school the first thing he talked about was how it was so important that when they left if they went to the bathroom or to run it you know wherever they needed to go that the door was going to be locked and it was going to be a little bit of extra work on everybody but how important it was so i just want to let you know that already the teachers are doing it thank

043you administration thank you teachers because little fifth grader he gets it and he was excited so thank you so much for what you guys do thank you okay at this time we're going to do a public comments and i have broken them up for agenda items and then we'll do the non-agenda item public comments at the end so we have the first one is going to be and please forgive me for anyone that whose name i say incorrectly million hughes [Music] good evening um my name is miriam he's as she stated i am a parent i have a child at ams and i also work at the granbury high school as a receptionist so um i was going to speak on like you said the agenda for the item that was on the agenda so

044i'm going to go ahead i've written up my speech i'll go ahead and speak it so i just wanted to speak on the item of the agenda concerning the shared service k-9 agreement with the hood county sheriff's department again this was before the information i believe that having this agreement is a wonderful plan of action for our schools and keeping our students and staff safe this is not only for peace of mind for those in schools but for parents as well as a parent with a child in school this certainly helps put my mind at ease so thank you again so hopefully we can figure something out another reason that i think it would be a good idea i mean number one is making sure that annie stays with her handler um you know when

045you train those dogs they're train specific for their handler and so that was probably one of my biggest concerns as well and i also want to take this opportunity to say thank you to jeff hastings for his years of service with isg gsd yeah he deserves it he began when my second child was in middle school that was about 10 years ago give or take a couple of years he came in as the dare officer but became so much more to us he built such a great relationship with the students at every campus his passion was not just about safety and security it was also about creating those bonds with the students and trying to make a difference i know he did make a difference in my children's lives and i saw him make a

046difference in many other students lives all the while ensuring the safety of all the staff and students so i just wanted to say thank you to officer hastings publicly for your time with gisd and the impact that you made on so many students and staff you are appreciated thank you miss hughes next up we have dwayne calderon dwayne colder nope oh i thought that was mr colder so mr calder's not here oh okay thank you very much and then we have uh mr dave eagle [Music] before i get started is it three minutes or five i see the clock going back and forth so what do we have here three okay first of all uh based on what jeremy glenn just said about the uh canine situation it could be that the judge and i

047have might agree on something the first time in two years if uh if indeed we're gonna work at trying to actually purchase the animal and the equipment so i'm very i can't say outright but i would say i'm leaning that direction so i appreciate that uh what i wanted to talk about quickly and i thought i was going to get five some i'll be dis general disgruntled again here item 12g and this is uh adam says consider delegating authority authority to the superintendent to obligate the school district under chapter 49. the problem i have with that agenda item is worded it's vague i had to do a lot of research to figure out what this is about and i'll start with education code 1151. section 11 151 in general and in pertinent part states subsection

048b the trustees as a body corporate have the exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of public schools of the district i'll continue with subsection c of 11 151 that says all rights and titles to the school property of the district whether real or personal shall be vested in the trustees and their successors in office and chapter 49 of the texas education code has to do with finance options for local revenue levels and excess of entitlement i have a philosophical and a policy issue with delegating authority that's invested in the elected officials into an unelected person so i'm just making my point that when you delegate this authority to someone else that's not elected you're delegating your power and duty to an unelected person there i have an objection i just wanted

049to point that out i hope that you reconsider that uh because you were elected to take care of the finances and you're the ones that are to be accountable for that and i don't think delegating it to somebody that's a problem we've got in this entire country as elected officials delegating what they need to do to somebody else that can't doesn't have to answer to the taxpayers so that's my point thank you thank you mr eagle madam president i have a question is the usual time five minutes for speakers it goes from three to five minutes depending on what we wanted to do mr eagle was there did you cover everything you wanted to cover you still had another 50 seconds okay i'm asking is it usually five minutes though for the people to speak

050the way that we have it in our uh in our standard operating procedures it is whatever we want to have it to be anywhere from three to five minutes so i would request on behalf of the voters that we give them their full five minutes to me it doesn't matter how long i sit there that's their right so if they need five minutes can we please give them five minutes i just asked him how much if he needed the other 50 cents that's it those are all the speakers for tonight thank you very much okay thank you mr eagle okay let's continue on then all right okay next we're going to consider action items discussed in closed session thank you madam president you have before you the personnel report as prepared by mr jones and

051his team it will be our recommendation tonight that you approve as presented i also want to congratulate mr jones as we look across the the state of texas and the shortages um i know that you and your team have done a great job of making sure all of our positions are filled here and so i know we even have one coming up today so well done that's probably more of a kudos to the principal but i you know your hr so you get credit okay do i have a motion madam president i move that we accept these staff recommendations as presented and i will second thank you ms gore thank you dr mcdonald all those in favor raise your hand that is unanimous with one absence all right moving on to the consider consent agenda

052items are there any items that anyone would like to pull out we still have one oh i'm sorry i'm sorry we have one more closed session item consider action on school marshall and school guardian plan procedures and personnel authorized to carry on district premises i apologize yeah and just as a note to those individuals in the audience that a lot of this discussion took place in executive session under section 551076 is everyone knows gisd does participate in the school marshall program which allows individuals to carry on school premises so this action night will be approved likely little or no discussion because the identities of our marshals are kept concealed do you have a motion [Music] madam president i move that we accept the school marshall and school guardian plan procedures and personnel as presented and

053discussed in closed session thank you ms gore do i have a second i'll second thank you mr moore all those in favor raise your hand that is unanimous with one absence okay now we're done with closed session and i go on to the consent agenda items are there any items that someone would like to pull out and discuss madam president as usual i want to give a big hurrah to the volleyball boosters who have donated fifteen thousand dollars that's travel for those young ladies to be able to do a very special tournament and thank them for that and then our military moa which many of you in here may be aware of or know someone in it they have donated 7 500 to jrotc and because of some special children needs at aes uh bret

054dawson audison has donated six hundred dollars i can't even read my own writing brett i'm sorry well you're friends uh i tell that aes children's charities so again to help students in case you're keeping score that's 23 dollars in one month fantastic are there any other items to be pulled out and discussed okay do i have a motion for the consent agenda items madam president i move that we approve the consent agenda items as presented thank you mr moore do i have a second i second that thank you dr harrington all those in favor of the consent agenda items please raise your hand that is unanimous with one absence okay we are moving on to consider renewal of property crime general liability educators legal liability and automobile insurance with texas political subdivisions mr whitefield thank

055you madam president boyd in front of you you have a action idol for approval it is the property crime and general liability for the district last year the property and casualty insurance costs were 573 795 dollars this year for 22 the price increase will be to 753 thousand three hundred and eighteen dollars the increase of the cost is 179 523 which is a 31 percent increase the increase is due part to the state of the proper the property value market and gisd property values increased by 27 million dollars the property deductible has increased from 50 000 to 100 000 per occurrence and a deductible of one percent per location with a 500 000 minimum per occurrence applies to wind and hell is very similar to last year the like i said the 27 million with

056a 13 increase but the increase in premium will be a 31 increase this year the 22 23 budget that was proposed earlier has sufficient funds to cover this okay so it shouldn't be a problem the recommendation by administration is that the purchase to purchase the property crime general liability school board legal liability and automobile insurance through the texas political subdivisions joint insurance fund at a cost of 753 318 for the 22-23 school year the coverage will be with a 100 000 property deductible and a one percent per location with a 500 000 minimum wind and hell deductible effective september 1st 2022 through august 31st 2023 mr whitefield just refreshed from me what does this school district hold in dollars in property value upwards of nine billion dollars thank you it's not nine billion in our

057buildings that's everybody's house in business just to clarify right yeah yeah the probably the property value across is upwards of nine billion yes ma'am okay is there any discussion any questions do i have a motion madam president i moved that we approved the insurance as presented by mr whitefield thank you dr harrington do i have a second a second thank you ms gore all those in favor please raise your hand thank you that passes unanimous with one absence okay next we are at discuss and consider adoption of an order authorizing diffusions and redemption of a portion of granberry independent school district's unlimited tax refunding bonds mr whitefield thank you madam president board in front of you you do have the bond redemption orders of the two options that were presented in the proposed budget are

058there option one is the series 2015 and 2020-a for divisions of eight million four hundred and eighty thousand dollars saving taxpayers six hundred 868 dollars in future interest payments and option two series two thousand fifteen at the presence of four million six hundred and forty five thousand dollars saving taxpayers five hundred and fourteen thousand two hundred fifty dollars in interest payments and in order to start the process for adopting the budgets this is the first step i will entertain discussion madam president uh based upon the fact that what i've stated earlier about trying to give every break that we can to our taxpayers uh i move that the board adopt the order authorizing the defeasants and redemption of the portion of the indo cranberry independent school district unlimited tax school building bonds series 2015 and

059the amount of four million six hundred forty five thousand and all matters incident and related there too is there any discussion for that and i have a second this is in the defeasants and when we do the defeasants we're going to be taking options one or option two yes ma'am [Music] correct in the defeases okay so like i said earlier um i was in agreement with mrs williams the speaker that we had earlier as far as the property tax is go goes because the property value has increased and we do set the tax rate to get the revenue we want so the way that we look at if we go off the property assessments that that increase exponentially voters when we're talking about the tax rate that's not what voters are really looking at they're

060looking at how much their bill is so um we did publish the rate in the newspaper and i i know that the school district did who who published that rate in the newspaper that was the notice by the appraisal district that were required to post by law right i know that i was just asking who comes it comes out of the business office we as a board approved it okay that um document that document put out the district increase is that the average taxpayers bill would increase by 448.43 if they live in the gisd district if you add the county and the city tax that would be an additional 323 dollars so the low income families tend to rent and their rent will go up again the landlords will be forced to raise their rent

061and if we raise taxes we are pricing people in our community out of granberry i hear this board talk about serving the low-income families in our community and my question is how are we helping them by increasing their taxes in a stagnant income with inflation and ever increasing gas and grocery prices we were elected to serve the people in our community and not fleece them if we set a tax rate that increases their property tax this much in this economy and then come back with the bond that would be a gigantic increase in taxes again like i said i heard from over 200 taxpayers they let me know that they wanted the lowest tax rate that we can give they're hurting financially some responded that they're like i said earlier they're not worried about paying

062off the school debt early they're just worried about making their bills um everyone's cutting back and i believe that we should do the same i've heard some on this board say that when the bond failed we heard the people our people need immediate relief and are we going to do what is best for our community the bottom line for me is that i cannot in good conscience vote to increase the taxpayers bill on average 450 like i said before i applied for a job in november when the voters hired me to serve and represent them i work for them and that's their desire so i and for the option of the lowest tax rate would be 0.9996 that still raises their taxes that's what she made motion she just made a motion for for the

063lowest tax rate yeah the next game yes my apologies then and we all were hired for our jobs and and for a lot of years we've all tried to take care of these people and again i'm going to ask them to go to their their legislators and see if we can get some help well thank you because originally we had voted for the higher tax rate initially that would to clarify mr graf's point it was it was we published in the paper the higher tax rate but the board has the ability to go lower tonight right which is why we did that so that we we could right yeah so i second okay so the motion has been made by dr harrington it has been seconded by ms gore all those in favor of doing

064the option two for our defeasants please raise your hand that passes unanimous with one one absence sorry i'm having trouble talking all right this is this is kind of confusing for everybody and i want to just kind of get this understood we have to set the budget first and then once we set the budget then it sets the tax rate but because we had to talk about the tax rate to figure out the budget we haven't set the tax rate yet but we now know what we're going to be setting for a tax rate because we just set the budget trust me it all makes sense in the end give me give me two or three more items and you'll understand what we're doing okay next consider adoption of the 2022-2023 general operating child nutrition

065and debt service budget mr whitefield thank you madam president board and freddie you have an action item for the budget adoption for the general operating the child nutrition and the debt service budget they were presented earlier in the hearing and that was called at 6 pm on 8 22 22. there were a few changes as we discussed in the general operating budget due to certified values as well in the as in the debt service budget uh child nutrition had no changes in it whatsoever and so we have adopted the defeasants in option two so that means that our option two presentation for the budget will be at fourteen and a half cents correct the mno budget will be at 85.46 that's 85 85.46 which includes the tier two funding so for a total tax rate

066of a total tax rate of 99.96 that's well that'll be the next option that'll be the next item so i understand yes first um in the uh in the hearing we did talk about the uh budget for general operating and i will just touch on a few things here uh about 11.4 million dollars of that budget is our special populations that we are mandated by the state to spend and that is about 15 percent of the total budget net of recapture so that's that's it that's not flexible on that um in that same budget we have the increases in fuel prices and then we also have an increase in utilities which is starting to strike as hard pretty hard right now too and you can imagine over the uh the facilities that we have what

067those costs have gone up for all right recapture has gone up to 7.484 million dollars this year and that is an increase uh in the when we were in the budget hearing of about 2 million dollars 2.3 million dollars over the last year over last year's budget now there have been some settle ups and we're getting closer to this number this year but we're still not above the seven million dollars for this year however next year it will go above seven million dollars with the uh the uh eight five four six that we're going to talk about a little while so to adopt these budgets the budget will be for him for mno which is a general operating will be 83 million 454 000 30 the debt service budget for option two will be twelve

068million five hundred and fifty eight thousand one hundred and fifty two dollars and the child nutrition budget which is a separate funding is going to be four point one million a four four four million one hundred nine thousand two hundred fifty six dollars for your approval do i have a motion uh madam president i move that we accept the budget as presented and i will second ms gore made the motion dr mcdonald seconded all those in favor raise your hand are y'all raising your hand i didn't see it just wanna make sure okay it is unanimous with one absence all right now consider the adoption of the 2022-2023 tax rate thank you madam president board in front of you you have an action item to adopt the tax rate for the coming school year of

06922-23 uh we've just discussed that the m o rate will be 85.46 and option 2 will be 14.5 cents on debt service for a total tax rate of 99.96 per 100 valuation it should be noted that the the 8546 is under the maximum compressed rate that the state sets for us and that is this that is this year's m o rate that that's the lowest that they're gonna they won't let us go any lower than that well that's going lower and they want us to go any higher that's right okay so we're that's where we're at so that's stuck and then so what we did is we played it with the ins and got as low as we could yes ma'am okay that's what i needed to hear any discussion other than that [Music] mr

070whitefield if i uh read the data right by adopting the m o r i mean the uh ins rate that we're adopting to pay off bonds it just barely covers our bonds for next year is that right it covers our budget plus the defeasants that you approved yes all right and two uh two action items ago right which were legally required to meet those requirements like we we have to pay the bills so to speak from the states so the m o and the ins has to meet those obligations yeah and so just just briefly um so the agent the agenda language the agenda language as it relates to our as it relates to our tax rate this year we were at a dollar eight eighty eight that sounded about right and so we were

071about to lower the tax rate to an overall tax rate combined of 0.9996 and so 8.92 however when that when that motion is made when that motion is made it still has to say a tax increase it does and explain briefly just for people in the audience reason it says a tax increase and talk about how our recapture payment is affected through that it is effectively a tax increase however those funds we are not allowed to go below a certain level uh ta sets that rate under texas education code uh i apologize and that's fine i don't think anyone needs to know the number that what i think the real number that people want to know is how much of granberry isd taxes uh have to go back to the state to be distributed to

072other districts we're in recapture we're sending back point four five four million dollars for because of the ada and recapture which which in effect keeps us from even compressing it more right right thank you yes sir and then and the the tax rate that we're adopting here will set a budget that will cover our bonding expenditures plus the defeasants that you adopted two action items ago okay any other discussion or comments and just to re affirm that we are one of before we've even set this tonight we are one of the lowest school tax rates anywhere in the area glendale except for glenn rose and they have a big madam president i move that the property right tax rate be increased by the adoption of a tax rate of 0.9996 cents which is effectively an

073increase in the tax rate and thank you for explaining ahead of time that that's the language we have to use and not in our right we're we're reducing your taxes by the maximum we can which is 8.92 and i'll second that okay the motion has been made by dr harrington and it has been seconded by dr mcdonald all of those in favor of this tax rate please raise your hand all right that is unanimous with one absence okay moving on consider resolution committing fund balance mr whitefield i'm busy tonight thank you madam president uh policy c e local identifies the financial goal of the district to be should be self-sufficient and balanced and they could carry a balance in the general operating fund to be able to maintain fiscal independence in case of a financial

074need or crisis that is equal to 20 percent or greater of the operating expenditures currently the following are our committed fund balances that we have construction renovations of 5 million capital expenditures for vehicles and equipment at 1.2 million dollars other purposes instructional improvement fund is at 300 000 the following committed fund balance amounts total 9.9 we are adjusting the ones that we just talked about and are proposed to keep the district above the 20 percent requirement as well as bring the district more in line with the optimum fund balance that will be determined by our 2122 audit this will commit funds for the upcoming portable classroom additions that will be needed in the district and by combat by committing funds to specific purposes there's evidence that the district has a planned purpose for these funds

075the proposal would be for construction future land purchases and renovations to be 7.4 million dollars capital expenditures for vehicles and equipment to be 1.2 million other purposes which include portable classrooms 1 million dollars other purposes which is the instructional improvement fund to remain at 300 000 there's an attached resolution that you have and the recommendation would be that the board approved the purpose the proposed resolution to maintain committed fund balances as presented any discussion comments questions approximately how many portable classrooms will that get us in buildings ten buildings and how many do we need right right now i think we're okay and um i do think as we talk about safety and having conversations about safety we'll probably look to put as many kids inside of our buildings and expand the size of our classrooms

076before we go out to portable buildings i really um we do our best i know we have portable buildings on three elementary campuses right now we prefer not to have those and so if we have to enlarge our classes a little bit inside of our buildings to keep our kids inside and safe that that's our preference but at the point where we can't do that then then we'll have to look at portable buildings and and trying to make them as safe as possible right now i would say the pressure points are probably mambrino is getting close to capacity broner is obviously an issue we already have portables there and aes is is right now pretty good they're they're used to managing larger numbers and what they have ams is potentially going to be a concern

077and then at some point the the high school could be an issue for us so but this year this year we feel good and we'll wait and see what numbers look like after september 1st other comments or questions do i hear a motion madam president i move that we approve the proposed resolution to maintain the committed fund balances as presented thank you ms gore and i'll second thank you mr moore all those in favor please raise your hand that is unanimous with one absence moving on consider delegating authority to the superintendent to obligate the school district under chapter 49 mr whitefield thank you madam president board in front of you you do have the chapter 49 delegation this is for your approval each year the district executes an agreement to purchase attendance credits the purpose

078of this agreement is to enable the district to reduce its total local revenue level to a level not to exceed the level established under texas education code 48.257 and pursuant to tec chapter 49 sub chapters a and d and the rules adopted at the commissioner of education as authorized under authorization of texas education code 49.006 as passed by the 86th legislature and house bill 3. the voters approved this agreement as one of the methods in which gisd can reduce its wealth per student as required by chapter 49. the option continues to be the most viable for gisd and in previous years this agreement was approved and signed by the board of trustees and then mailed hardcopy this delegation of authority does not take that from your hands you still approve it and you still sign

079it it gives dr glenn the authority to upload it to tea which is required at this point so how i upload information to uh the texas education agency is through a a website known as teal and and so once you approve it and you sign it all i'm doing is uploading it to tea directly on your behalf so i'm not taking authority out of your hands i'm just using a simpler method to get it into tea's hands the only method that's true there is specific board minute language that needs to be stated for this to be approved and just for those in the audience uh chapter 49 it used to be chapter 41 and two districts uh better known probably is the robin hood plan and so this is how the state takes its recapture

080back to from isds madam president for the 2022-2023 school year we uh delegated contractual authority to obligate the school district under texas education code 11.1511 c4 to the superintendent solely for the purpose of obligating the district under tec code 48.257 and tec chapter 49 sub chapters a and d and the rules adopted by the commissioner of education is authorized under tec chapter 49.006 this included the approval of the agreement for the purchase of attendance credit thank you dr harrington would anyone like to second that [Music] dr mcdonald seconds that is there any other questions about what that is about i want to make sure everyone has a chance to ask and state any problems they have all right all those in favor of the motion please raise your hand that is unanimous with one absence

081moving on consider shared service okay we we're just taking that out is that correct that that is correct uh off and just to clarify uh from earlier yes we have we are in a percent agreement with the county i appreciate uh commissioner eagle's comments that uh that we're going to work out to make sure that uh uh annie does stay with officer hastings so just want to be very clear on that but there's no need to do a shared service agreement to make that happen the shared service agreement would have enabled that to happen it's just going to happen another way so no action tonight thank you very much okay so we'll just move on to consider special education standard operating procedures miss kurtziner good evening trustees and dr glenn you've been provided with the

0822223 special education operating procedures and it is required by tea that you approve them before we post them and then once they're posted we'll link them to the region 11 legal framework so the areas that the the operating procedures cover our child find evaluation and what we call fape which means free and appropriate public education so there are lots of pages and i'm sure you enjoyed reading those operating procedures if you have questions i'm i'm here to answer them [Music] shelly our our parents i hope in a more simplified form are made aware of their rights and their responsibilities mostly their rights for their students and y'all continue to help them yes um on an annual basis they get a shorter version of that called procedural safeguards yes ma'am and shelly i know you guys

083have a huge job and you have a lot of students and i continually see you guys stepping up to the plate so big with special education so thank you so much you're welcome thank you any questions [Applause] um following these procedures we are also going to start working on behavior and discipline because that's really big in our district and following the pandemic we saw even a lot more behavior issues with children and so i just want to report one kind of cool thing going on in collaboration with region 11 and baylor university uh we are going to train a teacher on every campus to be a registered behavior technician and and i think that's going to really benefit our kids so just wanted to share that shelly uh tell them how many new enrollees we've

084had 72 new sped transfers in four days oh wow wow you will take care of all the fantastic i know you will yeah thank you for what you do thank you so much okay then at this time i will entertain a motion i'll make a motion that we accept ms kurtzinger's report as presented and i'll second thank you okay all those in favor please raise your hand okay that is unanimous one absence moving on to consider technology purchases mr wilson ladies and gentlemen of the board you should have in front of you a memo outlining some of the expenses and expected purchases the technology department will be outlined this includes our student information systems our ability to do the network of both wide area network and local area network equipment replacement and refresh cycle firewall

085filter endpoint protection and printer contracts not only is mr clark's ability to keep the schools physically secure it is our job to keep them cyber secure so there's outlines some contracts that are exceeding a 100 000 that require approval that we know as expected expenses for the year there's also outlined of what we plan to use for the entire year down to the detail so if you have any questions feel free to answer and these are all in the budget as far as mr whitefield's concerned correct yes madam president they are [Music] other comments or questions i will entertain a motion president i'm moved that we approve the technology purchases thank you mr moore i'll second that thank you dr harrington all those in favor raise your hand and that is unanimous with one absence

086moving on consideration and possible action by the board to approve and allocate funding for the following agreements for the 2022-2023 school year copier and service agreement with xerox document solutions mr wilson [Music] madam president and board it is with regular reluctance that we actually give you some background history with this information so we've had document solutions for 25 plus years um with the pandemic and growing concerns of receiving product and issues we have been unable to get product and supplies from our vendor a third-party hosting company document solutions and the agreement with xerox in his place we've been waiting on equipment for almost 15 months with some of the uh the inability to print copy school district is unacceptable though it is our recommendation the board does not allocate funding for the 2022-2023 budget and

087copyright service agreement with drugs and documents what do you suggest in its place uh we have evaluated and with uh canon solutions and in outlined in part of your minerals you should have contracts regarding all the canon um information they have in stock allocated warehouses and ready for our ready for delivery pending our approvals so essentially it's a recommendation to move on from xeroc let that contract lapse and then move forward with uh canon document solutions that is correct and when does that end when does that contract with xerox they probably end at different times i would imagine yes so with xerox document solutions our contract was per device with cantrell with canon is overarching so will we be able to start that immediately so we can get relief on that yes ma'am and there

088will be some buyouts of the older equipment remaining leases if need be and we've been assured that we we can get some assistance with that we can and pay that on the back side so there will be very little overlap where we're paying two companies for the same thing and ultimately overall it's a saves the district money compared to what we're receiving now yes annually i believe we're around a five thousand dollar savings from what we were paying um and the contract is a longer extension and the equipment works even the vendor is local and we can get the equipment and guarantee service agreements i'm pleased to hear we're not going back to the old purple mimeographs [Laughter] sorry sorry dr plan don't know what it is well i you probably don't but i guarantee

089you there's some folks out there that when i smelled those papers when they had when i first started teaching in 1984 we had those machines all right is there any discussion that needs to be done on that other than what we've already done then i would like a motion please i'm sorry i'm lost okay oh okay the action uh to allocate uh funding for the following agreements for the 2223 school year copier and service agreement with xerox document solutions did i hear him say not approve or that we would do you want us not to approve this i'm sorry okay so we will not approve this well then you do we have to then approve the cannon no so what he what he's asking is to approve the and approve and allocate funding for the

090following agreements those agreements are in your packet so take out the copier and service agreement the copier and service agreement with xerox is part of the the package along with the canon agreement so so i'll second it okay thank you okay so we have a motion by mr moore a second by miss graft all those in favor please raise your hand all right that is unanimous with one absence moving on consider approval of amendments to the 2022-2023 school year mr dawson thank you madam president as we discussed in our last meeting how we can take control of some of our times with our required school minutes uh this year we have added five minutes to the school day which has given us four and a half additional minutes for flexibility within the calendar so for

091this small amendment we're just looking at two days in the fall and two days in the spring we're hoping to move some of these days from a monday to a friday where they're heavy activities two in the fall are out of town football games which have a lot of buses a lot of staff teachers coaches and students they'll be traveling and in the spring we're looking at about 10 of our uil academic coaches traveling to lubbock again for ual academics they were very successful last year just puts a big strain on the on the campus uh whenever that many folks are are leaving so those uh items i'm hoping to that we can give a little relief we can't give it all to them right now because there are some days that we're just going

092to have to to cover up uh those classrooms although as we begin our 23 24 calendar and details i'm certainly going to dive into more of those options that we talked about at the last meeting so i present this uh just this small amendment for this school year as presented so this isn't changing the number of days off this changes where two of those dates are so that there are two days that we're just moving and then there are two days that will be added as staff days it does not affect our work calendars from human resource standpoint it does affect some days two days that students will not be attending school due to staff days in this help when you change it for those friday activities this helps with the sub load this also

093helps with students who miss class on those days as a band parent myself i know when my daughter's out of school all day on friday and the other students for the football games or other band activities it can take all week to get caught up on just that one day of school work that they've missed for being away so i think this will help in several different areas and with transportation yes and transfer conversation with all the buses that have to go out of town for those those games and things what i like is that aside from august and may every single month has some of these days which is great because i know teachers need the rest as well i think some of the feedback that miss oliver received that she communicated to us

094this morning was that parents really didn't like the mondays they preferred having that friday and it also plays in well with mr jones in the hr department knowing that fridays is our heaviest use sub day good point any other discussion do i hear a motion madam president i move that we approve the changes on the 2022-2023 academic calendar as presented and i will second thank you miss gore thank you dr mcdonald all those in favor please raise your hand it is unanimous with one absence okay at this time we have our financial statements and these are reports only mr whitefield thank you madam president board in front of you you have the financial statements for the month ending july 31st 2022 the statement includes only those transactions that are from september 1st 2021 through july

09531st 2022 and the revenue collected to date equals 98.55 percent of the budgeted amount compared to 97.73 in 2021 and 99.29 percent in 1920. the expenditures to date represent 82.68 of the budget compared to 84.9 percent in 2021 and 81.97 percent in 1920. we've talked about these on multiple occasions but the functions that uh they're actually within the percentage rates but it's because of your budget amendments in prior meetings uh the increased cost of fuel that we've used and now we are looking at the increasing utilities as well as well as moving portables out to the elementary schools and and setting those up so that is your financial reports for july 31st 2022. thank you then why don't we just go right on to the cash flow and investment report yes ma'am board in front

096of you you also have our cash flow and investment report for the month ending july 31st 2022 um i'm relating to you again that we uh we've got moving away from long-term investments and moving more into the short-term investments and you can tell on your report that the july of 2022 we added 79 506 dollars to our investment revenue so it is starting to turn around and look better with the short-term investments the long-term investments are still lagging a little bit but we are letting those mature out and we're moving those into short-term investments thank you does anyone have any questions for mr whitefield on either of those two reports all right okay at this time we have covered everything that we have in our meeting and we now have i'm going to open it

097back up to public comments for the non-agenda items we have 17 of them so let's get started the first one will be ms sharon shilander [Music] and sure i get five hi trustees and dr hollande one of my subjects sorry i've got a little bit loose but i want to talk about tonight is that i got a copy of the recommendations being considered by the state board of education for the new curriculum in history and social studies i'm asking if the anybody from the gisd has attended or has had anything to do engaged with this state board of education and some of these recommendations that they're receiving i'd like to i have some concerns about some of the subject matter and how to be presented to our students i'd like to bring a future attention

098and ask do you have plans to make sure that the subject matter is taught objectively and not subjectively uh if these recommendations are approved when i'm being in high school u.s history will have kids learn about abortion and context and analyze the debate between liberalism and conservatism including the diverse perspectives of abortion i don't think abortion is one of the things we should be really discussing with our children in school so much is i think it's a appearance in the student and their doctors should he talk about anything with abortion world geography gender and gender inequality index i don't know what that is but it sounds a little bit like maybe some crt creeping in world geography ethnic sovereignty again not sure what that is but again it sounds like some more of the crt

099us government struck they're going to strike i have struck you with strike civil rights act of 1964 and put in tek's guide i don't know what tek's guide is i'm not that knowledgeable thank goodness but um i don't think tek guide should take the place of the civil rights act of 1964 that was very important ruling sociology defines sex gender and sexual orientation and differentiate among their distinguishing characteristics again this is one of those i think how it's presented to the child i understand there is some classes that need to be taken but i really don't want any of the t lgbtq may be brought into that um k through eight grade four and they're adding describe ideas central to judicius sorry including monotheism and ten commandments as moral and legal code tek does not

100include christianity in discussing the ten commandments and monotheism um if you don't know what monotheism is recognizing god which is what many of our religions recognize rate 8 explain clash between mexican-americans and immigrants with the texas rangers tek guides says texas rangers were used as an instrument of oppression i think this has been kind of disputed since the rains and that weren't used and it was an oppression i don't know if this means back in the day or whatever it just says the mexican-americans and immigrants so um again i'm not sure what this is but i think it's something that needs to be discussed and looked at um i'm very proud of our texas rangers they've been very great law enforcement so i think they do a great job grade 8 compared the goals of

101pride and explain how individuals identified with and participated in multiple movements so i don't know if this means that we're encouraging our children to get involved with movements that are taking place and um so i just have some of these questions and i'd like to know if you guys have any um uh plans or whatever engaging with the um state board of education on these things so just like to bring to your attention thank you next up we have monica brown [Music] oh thank you for having me um i'm smiling because i thought about bringing brownies tonight just as a joke um i wouldn't bring any i made i would buy them from so well it is funny because it was an object lesson done with young children and we had a good time with

102it so if you believe everything nbc says then god bless you i thought of a few things i could say about that you know nothing but when i was struggling with that c word uh or nobody cares but anyway mostly i came to not to talk about sorry [Music] the experience i've had here i do think parents should look up ehaa on the grand bay independent school district website i'm not supposed to address you guys i also want to tell dr glenn thank you for issuing an apology to me for how things went the last time i was here mark jackson also issued an apology to me he didn't do it publicly but he did i apologize and i appreciate that um yeah [Music] if you don't hear from parents there might be a reason

103why because they join these committees and they don't get the right paperwork i meant to bring it to you tonight to give it back but they don't get the right paperwork i had a term to know how to handle these meetings but eha each ehaa is something everybody should read including the teachers efb is the one that will tell parents what the library material should be and i'm really thankful to know that a few books have been removed permanently from gisd libraries student libraries i'm also disappointed to know that a couple of them have been kept and i need to understand why it's not just me there's quite a large group of citizens that are concerned that do want to know what you're thinking and how you justify what you're putting back in the libraries

104one of the books is simon vs the homo sapien that was in almost every school here including elementary there are some ebooks that you need to know about that are in the elementary schools right now so i tried to bring it to people's attention and i tried to say please don't let clean it up before you let the kids in but anyway so another thing i just want to say that i've been happily married for 32 years i've been faithfully serving god if you look back when i was 15 years old i committed my life to jesus christ and i do i'm not ashamed of the gospel i'm not ashamed of what god says is true i'm not afraid of any one of you or any national news program or anybody else it doesn't matter

105to me i came to do what i was asked to do and i did it and there's been great resistance there's been flat out lies i'm sorry to say super sad but i do believe every one of you are believers i do and i know i make mistakes too so i'm i'm not going away i didn't come here for a political agenda as someone said people were hissing at me early on that i was going for school board well sculptor was never in my mind ever i had plenty of other things to do but i was asked to serve and i served i got thrown under the bus multiple times spoke the truth and there have been flat out lies coming from administration i'm sorry about that but that is the truth and i hope

106that changes and like i said we have seen some books removed i copied a lot of people on it today and there's at least two right now that we need to know why why is it being kept why do you call it educational material why doesn't it align up with efb i'd like to know why i know there's other people here who want to know why and i'd like to see that change for the students if you really care about them and i do believe you do i don't think anybody here doesn't another funny thing i learned is there's 16 000 books in one of our elementary schools and the librarians can't handle that so then maybe we need to reduce it down and make it quality maybe that's a good idea maybe we use

107half the space for classrooms i don't know i don't really have more to say so i was hoping when i came to granberry very excited i grew up in rutherford and knew about granberry and always at night and i still do but i really hope that it's not about looking good and not being good i really hope that very frustrating very sad we have learned a lot my family has learned a lot my children have learned a lot and i heard some of the administration had death threats well i've got them too i asked for this not to be public i asked for this not to be formal but dr glennon said make it formula you did nothing then leah dawson said make it informal if you had just talked to the librarians that's never

108what happened okay the one librarian left without any discipline there's no correction and the other one's still here so i don't understand it i don't understand how you can walk in these libraries and not see what i saw [Music] thank you miss brown next we have adrian martin [Music] hello i'm happy to see some of the focus on security tonight i think all parents would agree that our children's safety and then making it home every day from school is the priority i also commend the new cell phone rules in an attempt to cut down on the horrific classroom bullying that we saw last year on the flip side we know that books are continuing to be purged we know student library aides have been banned we know a group of non-parents have pushed for these

109book removals and continue to do so being a taxpayer does not grant special privileges over student staff and parents i do not want random people with no education background or experience determining what books my child can read what curriculum they learn and what clubs they can join just because you can get up at every meeting and rant and rave does not give you authority over my child's education your personal religious beliefs people in this room and on this board should not be affecting my child's education either our schools are not to be used for personal political agendas and our children are here for education not religious indoctrination i implore the board to put an end to trying to appease these extremists focus on retaining staff providing providing excellent public education and a safe and welcoming

110learning space for all students [Music] speakers speaking about what great christians they are great go tell your pastor our schools are not your church thank you next we have patty cisco thanks for letting me talk i will say too that my grandson came home and said security has really been beefed up in high school he feels good about that and i do too um i was beyond dismayed recently to read statistics reporting unusually high teacher turnover here in granbury and throughout texas yet not surprised given the current political climate across the state study after study has shown that the number one factor determining a child's scholastic achievement is that child's teacher so we should all be alarmed by the rate at which excellent public school educators are leaving our district for greener pastures yet instead

111of our community supporting and uplifting our educators we're allowing a specific faction here most of whom don't have children attending gisd schools to demonize and condemn them this partisan group claims we're stalking library shells with pornography and insist on the removal of more and more books that they deem inappropriate they insist that these books be removed which tells my grandchildren who are in fact students here that this group not my family will determine what they can and cannot read they claim teachers are grooming children really can you give me a specific example of actual grooming taking place in granbury isd more to the point can you name a specific teacher who turned a kid gay or transgender there is a difference in grooming and supporting marginalized kids they claim teachers are indoctrinating children encouraging them

112to become woke liberals by definition to indoctrinate is quote to imbue with it with the usually partisan or sectarian opinion point of view or principle yet their goal is to do just that indoctrinate my child with their partisan sectarian convictions they claim that teachers unions have a stranglehold on our schools when in fact texas is a right to work state there are no teachers unions in texas my retirement check is proof of that i'm scratching my head trying to figure out the basis for these groundless claims but i'm pretty sure i know we do have an election coming up i prepared for six years and spent 39 years in public education as a teacher a counselor and an administrator never want to do that again i have brought up six children all educated in public

113schools like all good teachers and educators i worked every day and many hours each night for decades to assure that my thousands of students left public school with a solid academic base that would launch them into higher education in the workforce and i still hear from a lot of them i did my best to guarantee that they would become responsible independent critically thinking tax paying adults so i'd like to say i know quite a bit about public education and i'll always support public education with my heart and soul to the critics i say this if you want to send your children to private school i support that if you want to homeschool your child i certainly support that but if you're here to attack cranberry isd or force my child to conform to your personal

114ideology i'll speak up i implore you members of the school board rise above the partisan politics the division and the culture wars support and nurture your teachers and focus on making granberry isd a role model for excellence in education for all children thank you mrs cisco next we have faye landon i didn't really come to prepare to speak tonight but decided i'd better i'm a proud member of memorial lane board of directors and we appreciate the students that y'all have sent have provided for us to start over we appreciate all the students that have come to our uh many programs that we've had and participated in our programs memorial lane is the only park in the united states and probably in the world that honors police officers firemen as well as our military and now

115we are the very first part to have a space force medallion this big thing uh honoring the people the men and women in the space force on 9 11 we always have a ceremony and because 9 11 is on sunday this year we're going to have to have it in the evening we'd like to invite everybody to come to 9 11 at 7 o'clock down in our memorial lane some of your students will be participating again in some of our in our program down there we'll have music and we'll have some wonderful speeches we invite y'all to come thank you thank you next we have miss g moons [Music] thank you all trustees madam president and superintendent i actually was going to say thank you to leia but she left she did a quick response

116to a book that took me several months to read but i have another thank you beside her response she included a link that we can go in and look at all the books that are in all the libraries and the book that i was challenged to read was adult material it wasn't children's material and i believe 100 percent in every parent raising their child as they see fit you are not in the role of raising the children the parents are but they don't get to see everything and they are busy and they don't have the time to come in to every library in every school and every teacher and see what's going on and neither do i so i'm only nipping that a little bit and the book that i read was absolutely adult triple

117x and someone whoever you are removed the book before they did the review so thank you to whoever that was because it was several months of doing that so thank you and as we know artists um writers they tend to have their own genre they'll write in their own themes they have their own patterns and you'll like if you're stephen king personally regular his are all in one way i can't get opening the book on those that scare me too much even from the cover um but the genre remains the same and so though i am thrilled that that book that i read is no longer in the high school this author sarah moss has several other books and i'm troubled because two of her books are in the emma roberson early learning this is

118for the wee little ones not even talking about questionable of high school age or if they're adult minded for it or not so that's a grave concern so i'll be reading those whoever will remove the other book you can remove these two ahead of time as well but i'll be reading them court of thorns roses and cor thorn of glass as someone spoke earlier and said that we believe in your heart that all of you are christians and that may or may not be true i don't know but i truly believe that you want the best for each of the children that are here in your school it's evident by the effort that you put in the security issue this team that was brought together for the security and safety that looks like a lot

119of effort has been put in for the safety and concern and a board member said that her son came home and said and you noted that all the extra effort is needed and appreciated and that's what we're asking too is all the extra effort is needed and appreciated you didn't create this problem but y'all inherited the problem we brought the problem to your attention and we need you to address it we need you to come to solution if one of the libraries have 16 000 books i can't imagine as a librarian trying to filter through there to make sure everything is adequate for the children but that's the problem that's been brought to you and this is a talented group you can come up with solutions you know the problem is there it's been noted

120since january so please continue clean it out for the kids that's all the growing group of citizens are reading this material we don't want to come in and remove pg-13 we don't want to remove r-rated stuff we're talking about sexually explicit triple x ugly stuff that doesn't need to be in there that's not how we honor these kids and you know there's so many old sayings it's like if you see one problem it kind of makes you think are there others this has been there years y'all didn't create this so what else is here in gisd is there other things that we need to be looking at there's a lot of keen eyes that are coming and looking because if this problem existed and you didn't know about it we need to find those other

121problems and bring them to your attention thank you for your time can i ask a question i'm going to ask a question can i i have a question if you don't mind the uh sarah moss the author the author that you mentioned yes are we sure it's the same author some authors yes ma'am i went through and i used her link that she provided the updated to make sure i was looking at the same author materials from one to the other okay and are you are you saying it's the same sexually explicit material at the elementary campus it's the same books yeah absolutely same books i have it at manbrino library the two books are at membrano broner elementary oak woods intermediate library the granberry high school there's another book of hers that is still

122there that wasn't the one i completed yet reading and because you have to completely read the whole book sign the thing and everything so it i apologize but it's really difficult for me to get through some of these books um and the act in elementary so same book at the high school that's at the elementary school yes ma'am which book is that this is a court of thorns and roses and thrown of glass and the one who glasses the only one left is at of hers at the high school then bacchus didn't have it if i if i looked up bacchus okay didn't have it that's the one place that didn't have any of her material okay thank you okay any other questions you were just looking that up [Music] okay so if they're an

123ebook i'm sorry i'm ignorant um as an ebook what does that mean through the fallout login but i'm gonna see what other ebooks are there i'm wondering if this is a setting somehow search function because it's the only librarian that has the elemental library and that library did a year ago so as a student at the early thing they they're allowed to look at ebooks is it accessible no no well pictures and things that i don't know okay but it's listed and that's what i was told is okay because leah sent me a thing said anything in this link is accessible to these schools so feel free to look so that's what i did well thank you so much for bringing that up that's something we'll definitely look into i do appreciate you thank you

124okay moving on we have mr rositas welcome back [Music] tonight i would like to address the board and community at large regarding some recent controversy that i have heard about regarding thank you regarding some recent controversy that i had heard regarding an lgbtq plus um club at the high school or i believe as they were referred to themselves as the gsa the gay straight alliance um i would like to remind the board and community at large about how any action taken to impede the function of this club is anti-american and should not be allowed to take place the first is regarding the requirements for forming a club at ghs from my knowledge i tried to look at this before coming here but it was rather hard for me to find but i am a semi-recent

125graduate of a graduate of ghs having graduated in 2021 and while i was there i learned in my ap us government class from my teacher that if i wanted to form a club at the high school i would be allowed to no matter what that club was even if it was a political club i would be more than more than welcome to form one of those clubs all the requirements were is that i had to be student-led and student-run and have a teacher sponsor this club fulfills those requirements it is student proposed it is student-run and has a teacher sponsor therefore it meets requirements to be a club at our high school barring the the code of conduct makes no discrimination as far as the content of the club second i would like to remind

126the educators before me of a case that they all are aware of tinker versus des moines independent community school district decided in 1969 that said that students are allowed to express their first amendment rights within the schools they attend the exact words that were used where students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate students are guaranteeing freedom of expression in the school as long as i'm sorry in the absence of a specific showing a cons of a specific showing of a constitutionally valid reason to regulate their speech so seeing as this club is not disrupting the school day in any way there's no reason that any action should be taken regarding limiting this club at all finally i would like to discuss title ix which of

127course you all know that you were heavily bound by convening that this is a public school in the united states of america as of june 16 2021 title ix prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and discrimination based on gender identity ghs gisd as a whole are bound by title ix it will be a violation of federal law to oppose the free operation of this club in closing this club is constitutionally required to be allowed all arguments based on morals faith or otherwise are therefore moot this club has a right to pray to practice and operate regardless of any of the feelings or political opinions or religious beliefs of any members of the community or members of the board at all this is a completely valid club and violating their constitutional rights i think would be

128more of a firestorm than any potential outrage that could be generated by students freely expressing themselves if anybody would like to learn further uh if anybody has any further comments i would urge them not to attack the students or even the teacher sponsoring this you may if you would like to address me my phone number is 682-500-5515 you can email me at j-r-o-s-i u-chicago.edu any invective or vitriol i would hope that you direct at me and not these young students who are working their way through life or a teacher who knowing the climate of this town was willing to support these students in their journey once again that is 682-500-555.15 j-rocthus uchicago.edu i yield my time thank you all right the next one is and i'm afraid i can't read the last name on here

129it's herald begins with a g thank you well i'm going to change my subjects i was going to talk about books since i've been involved with the library advisory board library foundation board for a long time but let's talk about a thought that i had and that's the anybody who is antagonistic towards gays and uh feels that uh they're something that should be discriminated against i just wonder if people will think about this uh i think we can all agree that all the babies that are born are pretty much a product of the creator and and the creator has picked those in there have been scientific studies that show that in the animal world about 10 percent of animals in multiple species are gay and they are in humans too and i can imagine when

130some of these people who discriminate against gays get up to their final reckoning and they say oh i read a book you know that was 2 000 years old and i'm following your admonitions and god says oh really well i created all those babies i created diversity and that's how i wanted to do it and uh up here we like harmony amongst all people and we hope that harmony would exist on the earth too if you want to discriminate against [Applause] certain parts of my creation you know there's a fellow down there who runs a different organization that tends to propagate discrimination and hate and such and you know you might be happier down there than up here where we like harmony that's my comment so i think the people who want to propagate hate

131and discrimination should think about what their final reckoning is going to be when they have to address the creator so i have a little bit more time so i can discuss books and and on that i'll just mention one book i was did much my education in boston and long before my time hard to believe there was a book called ulysses by james joyce that was banned fortunately when i got there it was not still banned and i wrote two essays and won writing awards at mit about that however when the movie based on the book came out that was banned in boston and i had to go down to rhode island to see the movie but i'm happy it wasn't banned and about 15 years ago publishers and writers reviewed the books of the

132english language and that book that when it first came out was banned in boston a popular term was then ranked the number one novel in the english language by authorities so the school system teaches ideas we teach facts that was more when i grew up that there were more facts than ideas but ideas are what are important and we want to train the kids in school to think for themselves to have new ideas and they're going to be the ones who make the future some of us who are older nothing i'll admit to that you know were brought up in a certain set of rules and ideas and such and now our children were brought up differently were exposed to different ideas and we shouldn't be judging we have the authority but the parents should

133be judging because we want to expose our kids to the most ideas let them think for themselves and try not to ban books because we've seen what happened in germany where first they banned books then they bet banned the then they burn the books and then they burn the people who read those books thank you thank you sir moving on to thomas tag kareem is that correct yes good evening it's been a long evening for everybody tonight right thank you guys for allowing me to speak and thank you i'm new to your town and and i'm learning quite a bit tonight so fellow adults in the room and the board of trustees thank you for the job you do our children our kids are our future and they deserve to know the world and the

134wonders within it and they deserve the ability to be inspired they deserve the ability to wonder and discover they deserve to be motivated motivated by their dreams by the dreams of of of a generation that uh has a lot of challenges ahead of it and we as a society we as a community we as a state as a nation we have a responsibility to support this and support it in ways that we can because the power is in the books they read i'm going to quote a few people here first i'm going to quote christopher dodd he said our nation's children are our greatest asset and our most precious treasure nelson mandela said our children are the rock of which our future was built and will be built our greatest asset they are the leaders

135of our country the creator of our national wealth and those who care for and protect our people dr seuss i hope we haven't banned any of those books have we dr seuss described the expansion of the mind by reminding us that the more that you read the more things you will know and the more you learn the more the more places you'll go you remember that book taylor swift i i'm kind of a fan she said i i wouldn't be a songwriter if i hadn't read so many books that i loved as a kid and i think that when you escape into a book it trains your imagination imagination what a great word to think the big and to think that more can exist president barack obama once said reading is the gateway for children

136that makes others learning possible and malala those that don't know malala she was afghanistani or afghanistan and a child a a young woman that was able to be able to be educated yet she said one book one pen one child and one teacher can change the world and i believe that i hope you do too folks i'm a pastor i'm a pastor who's taking some time away to discern where i'm going next you know i don't want to be here tonight and you don't want me to be here tonight talking about books do you yet i have a unique perspective of a unique perspective as a pastor that i've learned to exegete i've learned to discern i've learned to appreciate those things that are found in the bible understanding that it's not just written word

137but also we learn about the bible too that the context matters and i understand the importance of context yes i may not interpret the bible narrative the same way that you do it the same way that some other people in here do but at the same time i'm not saying you're wrong i'm just saying we can both be right now i want to touch on something else because when people like tim dunn from midland and the wilkes brothers from cisco texas and matt krause and jonathan sticklin and empower texas which i know them when they can influence our schools and our teachers more so than you guys do or then we can or that our kids can that the teachers can that's wrong that's a problem like i have no problem with faith-based education there's

138a place for it in our world and there really is and those that want to educate their children with a face-based education is great but not at the cost of our public schools [Music] you as elected board you have the ability to provide the very best the very best for these kids like malala and to keep up with an ever-changing world that they live in it's a moral choice and my prayer is you hear god's voice and that the right thing can be done for the kids of granberry to stop the destructive behavior of the adults in the room and to move frankly toward a smaller children view our child view i'm going to wrap up because i hear my times up but thank you so much for letting me speak next we have rhonda

139williams much to say about books so you know here we are it's almost a year later and some of the explicit books are still in the library i appreciate the efforts that are being made but it is at a snell's pace um i know you have some people reading books and like they're reading one book between five people so one has to read the book finish it notify the next one or maybe there's seven people it's five or seven and so they finish it and pass it on so that'll be seven opinions and that's great because you have a wide variety of people it's just that it's taking a ridiculous amount of time you know the governor of the state of texas we can like him or not but he is our governor and said

140those books were supposed were to come out it was a mandate so i don't know why it continues to take so long um the checking out of a book you know that the parent gets notified i think that's a good step but the fact remains that that's after the fact it's after the fact if there is some explicit material in there and the child has already read you know a few chapters by the time the parent gets the text notified of the book either looks it up and finds out what's in it or tries to read it for themselves then that child's been already exposed to some material that that can be damaging to them it'd be great if we could just trust you guys to put the correct material in from the beginning and

141we wouldn't be standing here doing all this i hope that we can come to that place that we can trust that the material in there is age-appropriate and then we won't be having to have all these discussions so i appreciate your time i'm not going to use all mine because i spoke earlier but um thank you one comment i want to make sure that the public understands that once a book is challenged it is removed from the library until a decision is made next we have miss wooster and thank you so much for putting the pronunciation down so i could get it right thank you so much for saying it right nobody ever says it right thank you all so much i appreciate being here my name is nancy wooster i'm a proud progressive democrat

142and what i know is an overwhelmingly conservative republican county don't think i don't know how lonely it feels but my voice still deserves to be heard i believe that it's wrong for a superintendent to threaten his librarians to hide their political views if they are not conservative it's wrong to change the rules under cover of darkness and secrecy so that you can ban any book you disagree with it's wrong to target books that make students of color and members of the lgbtq community feel less than because you're threatened by their sexuality what are we so afraid of that our children will learn to think for themselves it's wrong to ban books because the history written therein threatens you or hurts your feelings we will never correct our civil our civilization's mistakes if teachers are not

143allowed to teach it and something is very wrong with our teacher turnover it's one of the highest in the region i know why they're leaving i have heard a lot of them say they feel pressured i'm not going to change anybody's mind today not yours and not any voices here i'm not going to change any of the loud voices who see pornography everywhere and they're taking out a rest on live arrest reports on librarians i'm not going to change the minds of people who think it's okay to threaten others with their words or their guns or their religion my late husband graduated from gisd my very successful children who i will tell you all about if you would like to ask graduated from gisd my grandchildren will graduate from gisd i support gisd and i

144thank you all for the work that you do i just want you to know that i am here my voice is here and i won't be quiet and i'm not alone thank you next we have mr eagle [Music] or did he leave alrighty donna cole well i'm on a totally different note it's about the books yes and good evening to y'all but i want to bring your attention to the cause and the fallout of the pornography books [Music] i want to bring your attention to the cause and the fallout of the pornography books we're not banning books we're asking for pornography to be removed from the school the following statistics come from peer reviews from the american sociology association psychology today and professional counselors the american academy of matrimonial lawyers personal lawyers and while i

145was working in the court system this is also takes in the physical year of 2019 the statistical report from the texas department of criminal justice also the physical year for 2020 for the statistical reports from tdcj which is texas department of criminal justice my personal experience is 22 years of prison ministry i've had five years in the hood county ereth parker and tarrant county jails i've also got seven years with bridges to life which has been in the hutchins state jail the sanders estes unit in venus bridgeport correctional center men's and also the bridgeport correctional center for women the lindsay state jail in jacksboro and also i've got three years as a cap as a chaplain and a court advocate and i'm telling you porna destroys not just adults but children's lives just to summarize

146there's just some of the uh from the books that are in the library dealt with forcible rape drug use sex with multiple partners and language that even a husband and wife would not say to each other the books are smut books exactly what they are so please take words to heart with the following things i'm going to tell you now many parents have placed restrictions on their children's phones tv movies reading material etc so let's go back to the definition of pornography in the representation of sexual subject matter that is in books media magazines animation such as cartoons writings films video and video games they are erotic and lewd and are designed to arouse a deviant behavior of sexual interest the bottom line is where it's known as the gateway to abuse the action of

147degrading of women to an object an addiction that reduces moral clarity and actually changes the structure of the brain especially the frontal lobe dealing with personality self-control and decision-making there is a reality of expectation which is school is considered to many parents to be a safe place for our children it is not a safe place if pornography is readily available for our children to easily access it in the school libraries k through 12. so being introduced to pornography at a young age conditions young minds to further addiction into their relationships and marriage pornography has been proven by counselors divorce attorneys to weaken commitment in marriage porn addiction is up about 60 percent in divorce cases and involve one party have an obsession interest in either pornographic websites materials books magazines this is according to the

148meaning research the emotional fallout of a divorce of a marriage or a relationship the children suffer the most my personal experience of 22 years in prince's ministry and rehabilitation curriculum for 12 years and so i must call your time's up well the bottom line is in all of this the people have said at a young age they were introduced to pornography and they are in the institutions prisons and jails thank you ms cole mr craig maybe see all right good evening everyone um tonight is i'm sorry time is short so i'm going to try to be as brief and pithy as possible to say that the porn issue has caused much lively discussion in the community is quite the understatement much confusion has arisen over this topic so i'm going to offer two things that

149the proponents of the porn as well as the fence straddlers and wallflowers are utterly incapable and unwilling to do and that is to give clarity and truth clarity is something that the left absolutely hates with every fiber of its existence and refuses to do since having clarity would mean it actually has to define by what it means by a particular word then be held to it translation clarity is far more important than agreement the issue of the porn in the schools point one is not a matter of somebody's opinion we are not arguing chocolate versus vanilla it is however a matter of objective right and wrong this is not a political issue it is a moral issue additionally there is no such thing as moral neutrality the only question that remains is whose morality is

150going to be enforced when i get up here and voice my position it's a fair question to ask why do i take the stand that i do am i making an appeal for my straight white privileged christian nationalist homophobic transphobic toxic masculinity absolutely not my opinion is completely irrelevant your opinion is completely irrelevant what matters is the truth the two plus two equals four kind of truth spelled with a capital t that applies to all people in all places at all times and does not change no matter what anyone wants to think so for the truth bond tonight i am making is that i'm making an appeal to the truth that we are all all of humanity are inescapably bound and trapped in inhabiting something called reality now whether one wants to believe that this

151thing called reality is a result of some supreme deity or whether one wants to think it's a result of some meaningless purposeless blind random chance accident either way reality operates in a particular way and we are faced with one of two options that even a three rule recognizes either a conform our desires and behaviors to the way reality actually exists or b try to foolishly deceive ourselves and others around us that we can change reality to fit our desires folks it doesn't take a phd in rocket surgery to see that these porn the pornographic in general sends sends a message saying that sex can be with whomever whatever whenever wherever and however you like and it's just a purely physical act no different than just picking your nose at this point some might be singing

152you know craig you know you can't impose your morality on us to which i would say why not would that be immoral but more importantly folks this is not my morality this is not my opinion i did not invent the idea that murder is wrong that rape is wrong that stealing is wrong i did not invent that i also did not invent the idea that there are only two genders and that men were made for women and women were made for men and the best way to protect and stabilize and promote society is when one man and one woman only come together for one lifetime with the express intention of procreation i didn't invent that that's not my morality it's not your morality it's the morality the one that thomas jefferson said was self-evident now

153if there's somebody out there that has a problem with that their problem is not with me their problem is the way the objective truth of how reality actually exists and operates so i close with this and it's a genuine invitation to anyone and i mean anyone who can show me where i'm missing anything i'd look forward to a sit-down conversation over a cup of coffee with anyone because if i'm really missing out on something that makes a positive impact on our kiddos and their lives then hey i'm all for it but on me of great faith i'm certainly not holding my breath thank you did someone lean on a light switch back there or something [Music] hey you don't know how to fix it great all right okay forget it thank you thank you you're

154thinking that song blinded by the light okay mr daugherty jerry dougherty i'm somewhat afraid that the thoughts that i want to express with you tonight are not going to be on quite the lofty plane that some of the previous ones have been because i came with a bone to pick tonight i had the opportunity to meet in late july in a meeting with some folks that were given responsibility for trying to deal with this book issue and i met with mrs clark and mrs dawson along with three other people and we had a really good meeting and i went away from that meeting greatly encouraged about the fact that i thought that we had uh maybe uh charted a course that we could all live with and that we could get this issue behind us

155and taken care of and so i frankly decided that there would be no real purpose served by me coming and talking to you all again even though my original purpose in coming at all was to try to move the board to getting out in front on this particular issue well my good feelings got trampled all over in less than 48 hours in spite of the fact that the f these seven of us four six of us that were in the room had all agreed that we would not take to social media in order to discuss what had gone on in that particular meeting because the librarians were not back at work yet and the administration felt they needed time to be with them before this kind of thing got splattered all over the place well

156in less than 48 hours one of your board members saw fit to go to social media and draw some conclusions about that and so you have mrs gore to thank for the fact that i'm standing here talking to you again when i didn't really intend to talk to you now i have a copy of what she put on social media by the way i don't have anything at all to do with social media so this is really my opportunity to address what i think was a circumstance from ms gore who was not at the meeting took the opportunity to misconstrue and draw conclusions about what came out of that particular meeting i also thought it was interesting that in the facebook posting that she made she took the opportunity to complain about having to address

157herself to her constituency and i thought that was really interesting for somebody that i had voted for in the previous election that she really doesn't want to waste her time trying to straighten out my misunderstandings but what was even worse about that particular thing is that she presumed to tell me what i know her statement in there is that she names the four people that were in the meeting with the administration and says so they so they are aware as well what are we aware of what do i know well she says that no one wants porn in the library's period i do not know that in fact i've had it amplified for me tonight that i do not know that i resent the fact that you presumed upon what i know i really do

158not like people telling me what i know when i absolutely know that the contrary is true and you didn't ask for my advice but i'm going to advise you anyway get off of social media in discussing school business this is twice now in the last two months that you have presumed on something about a meeting that you weren't present in now having said that let me very quickly tell you that i still think that this board needs to get out in front but it's a little late to get in front you need to come with a resolution that puts this board on record by vote as to exactly where you stand on this issue and what you expect from the employees of this school district with regard to getting this material out of the libraries

159and out of the instructional program two last observations in the 30 seconds that i have left i do not disagree with the ladies that talked earlier about that they did that they wanted their children to have access to certain kinds of books and literature and they wanted to be the ones that had the choice in that and i absolutely agree with that i don't mind what books their children read but i do not want the taxpayers to have to provide those books to them my last observation is that we've had a lot of rhetoric about lofty ideas now i've looked at some of this literature and if the idea of lofty ideas is race rape rather incest pedophilia bestiality um abusing women uh student and teacher sex if those are the lofty ideas that they're

160wanting to promote through the literature god help us all [Applause] ms lowry dr grimm trustees thank you i listened to giglio and i learned about a remarkable protein called laminin this protein molecule is in the shape of his cross there have been comments about be nice be polite kind patient truthful since we're all created by god embedded with a molecule in the shape of his cross within us i absolutely agree so thank you mrs dawson for your hard work on the library books we appreciate all you're doing the work is ongoing as the amount of non-educational sexually explicit books is extensive and so many are still remaining in the libraries we do not appreciate information coming from some trustees that the books are all taken care of it's all good this is not the truth

161it is a work in progress and mrs dawson is working hard but the work is still ongoing i have a question why are we risking our children's future with books and curriculum that do not educate them with truth but provide material that damages the healthy development of their brains a brain on pornography or sexually explicit books is shown to be worse than a brain on heroin this is well documented i have several articles one from a harvard scientist on the detrimental effects of this kind of books media pictures that they have on the child's brain dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is central in our drive for personal reward when teens take part in stimulating our potentially addictive habits such as pornography there is a flood of dopamine in the brain with repetitive increases of dopamine

162released into the teen brain it is rewired to crave the same effect teen brains are most sensitive to dopamine at around age 15 and react up to four times more strongly to images perceived as exciting the teen's brain is at its peak of dopamine production and neuroplasticity making it highly vulnerable to addiction and rewiring as their brain is not yet finished developing before someone says there are no images or pictures available to the children words form a very powerful image that stays in the brain some trustees have made a statement on facebook the trustees do not want sexually explicit agent appropriate books and have no educational value in the school district however the truth is there are still books remaining in the library the adults and trustees in the room should not allow the destruction

163of the minds of children all adults should be showing our willingness to care about the children in this community cleaning up the libraries and the school room books is a good start education and truth are two keys to our children's success and their freedom children who do not receive a good education do not know what freedoms are being taken away from them or the lack of education they may be receiving until after they graduate from high school school should be a place parents can trust the educators of their children to provide the educational building blocks needed for a classical education full of truth knowledge and hope for a bright future for each and every student it's hard to know what a child will do with the education they are given the goal of a public

164education should be to produce well-educated citizens we can proudly say came from granberry independent school district okay i need y'all to stop landing on the wall back there okay miss mayberry you asked me to let you go last thank you [Music] excuse me dr glenn and school board trustees my name is denise mayberry i am an active volunteer in granbury isd now for 15 years my husband and i facilitate a 20th age group bible study i would like to congratulate our children teachers and parents on the district of the high schools we have some of the best teachers around local parents of hook county we live in one of the most conservative counties in texas if you wish to keep it this way please get involved volunteer at your kids schools get to know their

165teachers and staff be present in their lives board trustees i believe that most of you on this board are most likely christians we have been praying for you now for a year is your fear more of the aclu or of our heavenly father are you more concerned about your business are you more worried about your spouse that teaches or your child at school i believe you have made a commitment to these children for education and protection when will you stand bold and tall another concern because of the delay of this book issue the progressives have grabbed the power in our high school each of you personally allowed them access to simply walk in the front door they are now hurting confused children and that feathers the evil please think hard on this and i have

166a quote too it's by jesus christ if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around your neck and drop to the bottom of the sea pray hard thank you for your time and consideration thank you miss mayberry and with no further business we will adjourn this meeting at 8 41 pm you