Granbury ISD School Board Meeting - May 16, 2022

001so uh [Music] today okay the time is now the 6.05 is reconvening following executive session hello good evening hello thank you we will have we are now going to reconvene into open session and we're going to begin with an invocation led by ms gore dear heavenly father thank you for this opportunity to gather here tonight we pray that your presence fill this room and guide us as we go through our meeting and make decisions that have the ability to affect the lives of so many in our community we pray father that you be with all the educators students and their families as they start their summer break we pray that you protect them during this time of rest and pray that they're able to get the rest that they need to come back refreshed and

002rejuvenated for the next year we also pray for the seniors that are about to embark on this next journey in their lives we pray that you guide them every step of the way as they step out into the world and make their mark thank you father for this opportunity it is in your son jesus christ's name that we pray amen thank you all right and next we have pledges uh let's see by emma students i'm missing one might be in a sea of people yes please stand and if dylan is out there in the sea of people [Music] make a peep be missing one okay are you ready okay hi my name is oakley my name is okay and please tell me when the text is i pledge allegiance liberty and justice for all good

003job hi my name is andrew my name is andrew miss goldschlager and miss costco please join me in the texas pledge honor the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one indivisible and in spanish and in spanish formidable thank you and one is three and one is four [Music] so [Music] uh [Music] i can't say that i could have done that when i was three or four years old they did awesome do we have any proud parents out there while these are pictures of being taken all right and from there we're going to go into our achievement spotlight and the first thing is going to be with a ghs principal jeremy ross with the ghs class 2022 valedictorian and salutatorian [Music] all right matthew corey can you join me up

004here please [Music] you have your speeches ready what did you think you were no it is my honor at this time of year uh to uh to introduce you to our valedictorian and salutatorian for the class of 2022. our salutatorian is mr matthew walters he will be going to cornell university he is graduating graduating with the 6.205 gpa he's been involved in basketball swim choir national honor society basketball baseball i'm sorry i can't read my writing baseball baseball baseball and um these two this afternoon when they're in my office we were going through some of these things and and corey didn't know what her gpa was but matthew knew both his gpa and corey's gpa so so class of 2022 salutatorian mr matthew walters and he wins the shirt contest today so our salutatorian our

005top finishing graduate for the class of 2022 is ms corey bronner she is going to mississippi state she has a 6.213 gpa that she did not know but matthew did she's involved in hosa academic uil wit national honor society and she also has been a multi-year member of our swim team so class of 2022 valedictorian miss corey bronner [Music] i don't get to give orders longer [Music] and do we have any proud parents out there in the audience [Applause] [Music] one thing i can say about these two individuals and a lot of the kids in these in this class not only are they smart but they're involved they do things for the community and they're just great people to know and so i am really proud of our class at cranberry high school all right

006next we have miss julia pannell for the 5th grade memorial day as a contest winners [Music] thank you i'd also like to introduce mickey allen who's actually the event chairperson and has done a great job superintendent jeremy glenn school board trustee president barbara townsend and members of the gisd school board trustee sitting on the dice i'm julia panel chairperson for the friends and memorial lane we're a non-profit organization and so what we do our goal is to always honor and remember those who serve as career our volunteer servants as firefighters law enforcement and our military heroes tonight in connection with the upcoming memorial day remembrance which will happen at memorial lane we come to bring you two announcements the first is about the five campus winners who wrote essays about what memorial day means to

007them along with this announcement we would like to let you know that from this day on the essay contest will be known as the jc campbell memorial esta ese condes i still get emotional over jc i still miss him but he loved his country his city and he loved educating students so what do we do we get to present to you the five winners representing each campus so if you'll help me recognize and they will get a gift tonight of the special carved wooden eagle over the flag from memorial ring also our freedom bracelet the day of memorial day at the park each will get a specially designed certificate when we announce the number one winner we would like for you to come to that so when you come forward as i call your name

008briar shenawark representing oakwood elementary stand right over there yes claire bowell representing blonder sofia ferguson representing acton elementary virgil ferris representing the steam academy ryan sherwood representing bacchus elementary i want you uh students hold up your bags can you see how they're all different they have one thing in common the red white and blue on top because we're all here about memorial day they have the same gifts on the inside but each bag is different because they're different they're all winners and their essays were just marvelous it was really difficult so thank you we invite you to come hear them at 9 45 at the park on memorial day there will be a free shuttle so you don't have to walk so let's welcome in other parents here can any of the parents wave while

009we're there we go proud parents [Music] foreign [Music] yes [Music] so miss julia are they going to read their essays on memorial day or when do we get to hear them what we can do now okay very good thank you [Music] very good thank you [Music] and i've been asked up here so i'm going to say it again 9 45 am is when they'll end up having that announcement made on memorial day and next we have our cranberry marine corps jrotc national rifle and physical training teams and world robotics team all right thank you school board for having us here tonight to recognize our three national teams this year so the first set of cadets we're going to recognize are our um the rifle team our five-time national rifle team so they went out in

010march to compete at camp perry and came home with our fifth fifth national trophy so we'll start out with cadet folsom you guys go ahead and come up we're here for the gift bags but i didn't bring any all right hayden crawford arlington slaughter martin wells that's big wells mcgrath little wells that's her sister so this is your national rifle team so then in april we went to daytona beach florida for the national physical fitness competition and we had we took kids out there so they ended up we had five events that they competed in out of the five events uh they meddled in three and then we had uh we were in sixth place overall out of about 40 teams and then we had sarah patreon the year sarah was the fittest female out

011of all the jrtc's in the nation so so when i call your name so cadets borrel that's you bro all right there we go light if he showed up milligan lopez ruiz folsom against up here cook garcia larson hutchinson trado wilson so this is your national pt team and then in may we took our robotics team to jrotc nationals we were the only marine corps team to compete at that time and so they competed against 70 of the best jrtc's in the nation and they ended up getting second place in the nation so pretty impressive those cadets were cadet leyland ricky hernandez zach leyland slaughter obina and wilson and then after they competed at the jrotc national level they ended up competing at the world level for the first time and just a couple of

012thank yous we have first i'd like to recognize mr becker wherever he's at back over there he's our volunteer rifle coach he comes in every morning on his own time and spend and afternoon and spends time with the rifle team and mentors them and we couldn't do it without him and then this jumper who's going to recognize her kiddos here in a minute she spends you see i've farmed all this out so i'm smart i'm a good marine corps officer you know so the um uh the time that he spent that miss jumper has spent with our robotics team as well when she came to us two years ago said you guys want to start this and i said i don't know anything about it but i can fund it so uh so thanks to

013her and then most importantly thank you to first sergeant who keeps me on straight and he's the success behind all of this and keeping together especially the physical fitness team so thank you guys for for recognizing us thank you guys the jrotc program here at granbury high school as far as i'm concerned is a crown jewel of gisd and i so appreciate everything all have done to make this work [Music] yes thank wow [Music] i just really can't say enough about this program thank you all so much and next up we have angela jumper to talk about the national robotics team which she has also been helping our no njrotc team so thank you so much mrs jumper i'm not as tall as he is i'd need a ladder i just want to introduce these

014guys to you i'm going to call them up first and then i'm going to actually let our number cruncher tell you what kind of season they've had this year basically when we went to the world competition to put it in terms that i couldn't put words to it the closest i could come to is an ever-changing physics and calculus 3 test that you've ever had that lasts from 6 30 in the morning to 7 pm at night five days straight that's what these guys did all week at worlds so i'm super proud of them um i'm going to introduce brute force mason clark caleb hammond matthew shoot and riley beatty and silent but deadly abby pruitt brayden seabourn and jeffrey hunzinger so these guys instilled fear around the world um literally every meet that they

015went to they took away qualifying spots from other teams because they can only go once brute force qualified 13 times at every single meet that they went to this year with the exception of the one that we went to in norcal where we gained the skills to actually break the top 16 bracket at worlds super proud of them silent by deadly qualified multiple times as well to go to state they performed very well performed well at worlds and i'm going to let mason give you the numbers for numbers people so at my banquet for robotics i took a second to crunch numbers in my personal speech so out of the 18 000 teams that competed at the world champ or sorry in the entire season of robotics with the 800 that compete at the world

016championships we finished in the top 70 placing us in the top point four percent in the world in robotics for rotc teams that competed in their first in-person uh world champ or national championship event they placed second of course making them the second best rotc teams in the world or in the country to be in vex robotics competition and for our awards my team uh was able to achieve 14 distinguished awards in our season which i believe eight of them qualified us for the state championship and seven of them of course meant they were stolen from other teams i don't feel sorry for those other teams and then at the world championship no matter how hard it was we achieved the energy award which is uh distinguished to teams that have good commitment and speaking

017skills and communication skills at the competition and we were one of ten teams in the entire world to get this award and ladies and gentlemen we are only losing two seniors so look for us back on the world stage this is also a community driven organization and abby is a senior she was our president this year and she really drove the community mission our mission is to spread the love of steam throughout our community our region our state and our country and in doing that they have mentored and started over 40 teams in north texas of them being in gisd from third grade on up and an additional eight in hood county alone so ladies and gentlemen your 21 22 grenberry robotics world qualifiers and while mr meador gets a picture set up do we

018have any proud parents out there just wave those hands good job [Music] sorry i forgot i didn't forget about you but i could not have done this without my assistant coach michelle she like does everything i forget i'll drop it to you [Music] okay [Music] um [Music] is thank you [Music] and this jumper you might as well not sit down because i now have a a presentation by ms monica brown from the home school co-op michelle you too okay where are you when they when she mentioned mentorship you did great she's mentoring teams all over texas she's even mentoring homeschool co-ops and answering any question anyone has and when you look at what the robotics program is doing when you say love all things steam we all need to recognize how powerful that is it's

019a it's a bandwagon we need to get on right so i want to give her a mentor of the year award in front of all of you people and the people who are watching online because she has literally poured action and heart into these students the student that spoke just a minute ago he was speaking at the banquet and he talked about his personal transformation so he had the intelligence with all that to do the stem program but his personal skills have just gone through the roof and when they went to worlds they were in meetings with people from tesla and google big names so when they say what they did it's it's even underspoken so i want to give you this award and i wanted one more thing before i do um angela mentored

020my group in hosting 50 teams just in march this year they were all from independent school districts and this is a little group that's a homeschool co-op private school model so she has reached out to us and helped us to fly in the world of robotics i know it's changing live she started 20 teams here in granberry in the independent school district last year so that's pretty amazing and the last thing you didn't bring it up but she has robotic camps this summer for any student to join in on so that's something you may want to check into junior robotics is for older students and younger fourth through sixth grade and the older students will be used as mentors these guys okay and there's also the unified program coming on which is for special ed

021students to also be trained by your students am i right we're going to start some unified teams which is where you pair a gen edge student with a special needs student on the same team and they compete against they compete in any of the competitions but they will have competitions of their own and their direction is going to be to land at the special olympics okay okay and she had students at the special olympics like a weekend ago correct demonstrations just a couple days ago okay and this is truly for both of you but we just want to recognize angela as thank you for mentoring so many people in and out of the district [Music] thank you both so much for being community servants really great thank you so much okay moving on to our

022state golf meet contestants tanner larson and mason lewis being presented by our golf coaches not a golf coach really in fact that would be very comical if you watched me play golf i got a text from coach ward he wasn't feeling very well and so i'm here to recognize mr tanner larson as our participant in the males state golf tournament so i have to excuse me i have to follow my script otherwise coach ward is going to get angry with me he says thank you board members and thank you dr glenn we are here to recognize tanner's accomplishments this year in golf tanner won two tournaments this year winning the cleburne invitational with scores of 69 and 72 and winning the district tournament with scores of 80 and 75 at regionals tanner shot a final

023round let's see shall the final round 71 to capture a mental spot for state tanner made the all-region team he recently competed in the state golf tournament in georgetown and shot an 80 and an 82 good for a tie for 55th place tanner is just a sophomore we're looking for many great things from him in the future great season tanner congratulations while you're shaking hands i'll also i'll also mention mason lewis mason is in georgetown right now defending her state title so we wish her all the best she completed day one today day two is tomorrow so good luck to you mason all right and next we have our culinary teacher ms langdon to come up and talk about barbecue one of my favorite things hey everybody thank you so much for having us here

024i'm brianne langdon and i'm very honored to be able to present to you tonight three of our four team members our fourth team member had to work tonight so i'm gonna have them come up and i'm gonna say a few words about them um we're gonna start with our captain maddie hildago isabella sanchez and elroy king iii come on up guys as they make their way up you'll see that isabella is carrying a very large trophy um that is because we won state with our beans this year so we compete in five categories um first you have to advance from a regional contest to be able to go to state we competed in two regional contests this year at our mansfield contest we were able to secure a spot to advance to state and we

025placed second at regionals with our beans our five categories are beans dessert chicken ribs and brisket and so at our mansfield regional we play second with beans and um we were able to secure a spot to go to state but um i wanted to kind of give everybody a little bit of information about what barbecue is because it's not just learning how to cook barbecue right guys what are some other things that we learn fire management teamwork flavor profiles math time management retail cuts of meat food science there's all kinds of things that you're learning so it's not just uh we're here to cook some brisket which we're very good at as well um so but yeah for state this year we actually won the bean contest maddie's ribs had 14th overall there were 86

026teams at state so it's a it's stiff competition you guys and i was super super proud of them to be able to see what they were able to do i wasn't able to be at state because my sister got married the same day so in true teamwork fashion one of our other teachers coach john allen took them down and he said it was a great gig because they did such a great job all he had to do was sit there and watch and taste brisket and beans and everything else throughout the day so um we're super super proud of them and i am graduating this entire team um but i already have two or even three teams coming up in the wings and they've done an amazing job of being mentored so those teams this

027year and i am very much gonna miss them so um elroy maddie and isabella and do we have any proud parents out there that get to taste this all the time and if you were on the square they did a great job [Music] hey you guys they just had a fundraiser on the square where we got to try their food so if they do it again make sure and get tickets it was fantastic very good they did a great job if you all didn't have a chance to go to gallery on the go on the square last week you really missed it um they set up and you could go ahead you reserved a lunch and have lunch out there the weather was gorgeous and the money is going to internationals earlier this school year

028and they're our business uh professional association so um yeah we do that every year or is the second year to do it and yeah this is something our second year for our barbecue team so that's right um yeah i'm really excited about what the future holds back be on the lookout for a lot more fun things and if you know any barbecue people that are awesome we love having mentors there you go okay thank you so much and can you tell we're at the end of the year we have lots of achievement spotlight the next one is uil academic team regional qualifiers miss leatherman good evening and thank you for recognizing our uil academic students this evening in uil academics we compete in multiple different events against all of the schools that are in our

029uil district which are the same as many of our sports and so this year we finished as the district runner-up but we advanced 23 students to the region competition at texas tech university in lubbock and i'm going to allow the individual coaches because we specialize in an academic field obviously we have to have multiple coaches i obviously could not coach physics so or accounting for that matter i am the social studies coach and the coordinator and so i will allow those individual coaches to introduce their students that qualified we have a few students who could not be here this evening due to i believe a jazz band concert and some other events that were taking place but i would like to begin with recognizing my social studies students and then cindy jackson will recognize the

030science students tammy bodine will recognize the accounting and spelling students and once again ms jumper is going excuse me going to recognize her computer students who all advanced and we have a few others that i don't believe are here this evening that qualified for the region competition individually outside of the team the thing that i was most proud about is we took our four large academic teams to region to compete and that made me super proud to compete as a team and not just qualifying as individual students but i will start with my social studies team led by our captain carter mckay and our other our other our other senior megan cummings annabelle dykes and our fourth team member is skyler mitchell the social studies team finished second at district but then went to region

031and finished third beating alito who had beat us at district which makes me super proud okay and now cindy jackson with the science team and tammy beaudine and angela jumper if y'all could come on come on and introduce your students good evening i'm cindy jackson i'm the academic uil coach it was funny how cindy said of course i couldn't coach physics and honestly i can't coach physics either the science team actually takes a village to coach because they can be in three different disciplines of physics biology and chemistry i am the chemistry expert and i have to beg bribe and plead other teachers to get with the kids to coach them and wade green who is our head physics teacher at the high school went to region with us to help us out and so

032i was very very grateful for that he's not here this evening but without further ado um let me go ahead and call up my kids and bring them up um kaylie black is not here she was the captain of the team she's a senior and she did an amazing job encouraging the team and it and just just teaching them when i wasn't present she would teach them all things chemistry and just encourage them to grow and build their ability to to do and do science and answer the really hard questions sully brown is my other senior who is on the team gene williams is the other one who qualified for region he's a junior and connor pearson he's also my other junior i'm very excited that these two will be coming back the science team

033placed second at district and we were able to get to region on a wild card ticket so we didn't think we were going after ryder pretty much screamed us we did we did cremalido i'll just put that in there as well but we we found out later on that we were going to region on a wild card ticket and we were very excited i'm very i was very very proud of them they continued to work hard coming in after school even with everything that they're involved in and we competed against eight other teams at region and they defeated six district champions and brought home a third place title and i believe next is tammy beaudine to introduce her teams thank you so much for recognizing our uil participants as you mentioned earlier our kids are

034involved my eight qualifiers are so involved i only have one that's here tonight but i'm still going to recognize them our accounting team placed first at district and then we went on to regionals where we got runner-up third year runner-up so who knows maybe next year we'll be the one that moves on my two captains are alex call and lillian welch also qualifying with katie funk and thank you griseldalanda sorry i'm always forgetting a little something anyhow i'm extremely proud of them they come in every week to practice our uil kids they go and compete on saturdays while others are sleeping we're up on a bus and we're headed to practice or headed to our meet so i'm incredibly proud of them i'd also like to recognize my spelling team i only have one person

035here daniel will you come on up daniel plays the district and he was part of our team that advanced and we were second runner-up in spelling and i'm extremely proud of them our captain emily dolan also we had uh mon vegasia and we also had anna snow those are my two newest people that joined us i'm incredibly proud of them thank you so much for recognizing them they do the hard work it's me again and yes these guys are very tired this time of year but i'm going to bring them back up here we compete in computer science and computer applications computer science is not computer programming which is what they're in my class for every day it's it's completely different it's like learning french and saying you understand how to speak german but these

036guys love it so much that they do it all so we also compete in computer applications which is more of your your office applications you know databases and manipulating queries and stuff like that so for computer science a regional qualifier was zachary leyland who also infiltrated the ranks of alito at district for the first time in the six years that i've coached this and he's a sophomore so watch out his two teammates did very well also in computer science but as a team we qualified in computer applications matthew shoot and brayden seabourn come on up so matthew zack and braden um did both competitions as a team [Music] so i think this is everybody who's here right are there any other ui students [Music] and while the picture's being taken do we have any proud

037parents out there wave your hands thank you for what you do with your students [Applause] um [Music] all right guys [Music] okay [Music] uh [Music] okay [Music] thank you [Music] i really want to say how much i appreciate the teachers that use so much of their own time to make sure these kids are ready for these uil competitions it's it is a whole another job a whole another full-time job and you guys do a great job and you make us proud so thank you so much and next on our list is the dyslexia grant recipients good evening i'm patti parsons for those of you who do not know me i'm the assistant director for special education shelly kurt singer couldn't be here tonight so i get this amazing opportunity so thank you trustees and dr

038glenn for putting us on the agenda tonight so it is my absolute privilege to present the two gisd teachers who were selected as the recipients of the dyslexia grant award tea realized that we have a big need in the state of texas to increase our evaluation capability because of dyslexia so they put out for a grant and we applied for that grant so we have we were awarded the grant we have funding for two and two uh teachers for tuition books and fees to become certified educational diagnosticians so that will pay for their entire master's program so this is amazing so they're gonna complete their masters and then over the next two years and then they are agreeing that they will work for granberry isd in the capacity as as educational diagnosticians for a minimum

039of three years but they're going to love us so much they're going to stay away so our two recipients it was a very tough competition we have some amazing educators in our district we had 24 applicants shelly kurtzinger and i interviewed not quite all 24 but we really really are proud of our um our choices so first may i present melissa black melissa is a fourth grade reading teacher at broner elementary and she was our k the broner campus teacher of the year in her interview it was obvious that she is very passionate about educating children she is also moving she's been a general ed teacher previously she worked in special education at the very beginning of the career and she's moving back to become a special ed teacher for the two years while she's

040working on her masters so melissa black congratulations there you go [Applause] next i want to introduce you to excuse me as i fall lindsay mcpherson lindsay is a first grade teacher at oakwoods she is a granberry high school graduate grow our own and who has also had some special education experience working in the early childhood um area she has been recognized for leadership roles at oak woods and next year she's going to be the intervention program specialist on her campus for two years [Laughter] so thank you so much [Music] come around [Laughter] [Music] oh [Music] thank you [Music] this is such a fantastic opportunity not only for these two educators but for all the students that are going to be affected and helped because of what they're going to learn so thank you thank you

041thank you for getting these grants okay mr jones you get to talk about the leap academy thank you madam president leap stands for leadership experiences for aspiring professionals and so at this time i'm going to have the cohort come forward at this time [Applause] dr glenn actually started this leap program three years ago and so this is our second cohort and uh these are our bright stars of the future uh they met every month before our board meeting with the principals and directors and worked very hard and learned from them but like i said we have a bright future and many of them are already administrators or are becoming administrators so doc miss townsend is going to pass out our nice trophies that were made our first maggie walton you have to look for and

042janice mueller couldn't be here tonight she had a family emergency but she's not here but we appreciate her and prayers for her and her family kelly godai melissa mchugh denise mendel troy volkman tiffany pounds angie payne molly whizzenhunt and leslie gallery congratulations to our 21-22 cohort you've graduated [Music] okay [Music] is mine [Music] oh that was one hour [Music] okay that is all of our achievement spotlights but man have we had a good year this year what all right we are now ready for open forum and public comments uh same information i've given you each time all speakers have completed a form that was handed in to mr jones before we started our meeting tonight the speakers we have um 13 so i'm going to have each speaker have three minutes and we will have

043a timer set and when you hear the little beep beep beep time to stop is it going to be a loud beep tonight okay the board will not be able to answer any questions that the speaker asks we will just listen politely i ask the audience to please respect each speaker and the board may ask a question of a speaker for clarification purposes our first person tonight will be karen lowry [Music] dr glenn school board members in reading an article from the texas scorecard i'm appalled that our tax dollars paid for one or more of the librarians in our independent school district to attend the texas library association the tla conference that celebrated hazardous sexual behaviors and defended offering sexually explicit books to students tla's conference also included sessions on promoting lgbt sexual behaviors and

044keeping controversial pornographic material on kids school bookshelves tla instructed librarians on how to teach young children to be fluent in the language and ideas of social justice crt which states that individuals should be promoted or punished because of their skin the color of their skin i recently read librarians libraries contain books books contain ideas ideas always have consequences and bad ideas have victims believe it or not there are some ideas that should never be made available to the people to act upon in this case allowing sexually explicit books in our school-age children's libraries it appears under the school board's leadership gsid is actively promoting sex instead of educating our children in critical things children are supposed to learn in school if it is your intent to teach children knowledge critical thinking wisdom and subjects basic

045to their success in education then break your ties with the tla set up a sound transparent procedure for allowing books into the school library do not use our tax money to support the ideas of the tla by allowing sexually explicit books into the library the books the tla want to keep on our children's school shelves are written by adults let that sink in these books have explicitly written and described children having sex with teachers sex with other children fantasy books describing sexual acts tell us where you see the educational value of these books as you are voting and discussing library policies and procedures tomorrow think about your son or daughter grandchildren niece or nephew reading these books in our library bad ideas have victims in the book of matthew 18 6 7 yeshua says but

046whoever causes one of these little ones who trusted me to stumble it would be better for him to have a heavy millstone hung around his neck and to be sunk in the depth of the sea woe to the world because of snares for snares must come but woe to that man through whom the snares come in the power of yeshua's name amen thank you miss valerie next up will be nancy rochester nancy worcester thank you i've spent the last 30 years trying through puppetry music and story to teach children that bullying is wrong bullying i say is trying to prove that you're better than someone else with your words or actions you're not better than someone else because of your color shape or size you're not better than someone else because of where you live

047or who you love or where you go to church or who your mom and dad voted for because on the inside we are the same and now 30 years later i feel like i'm having to say that to adults when i heard the superintendent say to librarians if you aren't conservative you better hide it i was appalled but i was not surprised because i've lived here for 45 years i know how conservative this town is i know the feeling of keeping my mouth shut at a church or a civic group because my opinion was in the minority i know the feeling of being in a casual group where everyone simply assumes that you feel the same way politically and if you dare to offer that minority opinion on human sexuality race politics or religion you

048must be prepared for the eye rolls and the pitying headshakes but i will not be silent anymore i will not hide anymore there are people in this county now so emboldened by the fact that some of us are all hiding it that it's now okay to silently and secretly ban books that we disagree with banning books that you disagree with is a cowardly bullying maneuver when you ban books because they further a different opinion than yours on race relations human sexuality or anything else you're saying i'm right you're wrong your opinion doesn't count and that makes you a bully so what happens when we ban books because we disagree with them based on our ideas of race religion politics or sexuality we create the other and what happens when we stop seeing the other is

049just as human as we are matthew shepard pulse nightclub charleston buffalo thank you next up we have mark lowry [Music] my name is mark lowry school board dr glenn it's uh clear tonight we have tremendous success in this school district it's also quite apparent to us now that there's a cancer growing in the school district and while some of you sit in your chairs you've allowed that cancer to grow in this school district and now you have an opportunity to eradicate it if you read the book material this is not about division about people's thoughts this is sexual pornographic books dr glenn i had the privilege of listening to you this past saturday what a tremendous story i encourage you to talk about the miracle you experienced with your own family um you need to

050i encourage you to continue to share that story for as long as you can because it truly identifies there's a god and there's miracles out there you won't know until you're in heaven why you got that miracle but we know god could have changed the circumstances that just as easy as he gave you that miracle i think that he's encouraged you and strengthened your faith through that miracle and now as a time such as this i ask each of the school board members to seriously search their soul and look at this material that's present to our children is sex with teacher it's bestiality it's pornography simply put its sexually explicit material to underage children and this should not be in our school district period what i encourage the school board to do is tomorrow morning

051direct the principals and the librarians to remove these books i know you'll say the libraries are shut down that's probably an end-of-year audit so books aren't out all summer i don't know take the books off the shelf don't ban them put them in a box seal them and lock them up until you can establish a legitimate legitimate book review committee the school board needs to define what is sexually explicit material pornography age inappropriate material define that for gisd i understand here on the agenda you have something out of the tf local it still puts the responsibility according to this on one person in gisd if that person's bad the system remains the same i encourage you i encourage you take the books off the shelf define the define the terms of what you don't want

052in there do a legitimate book audit if it wasn't for monica brown and my wife we wouldn't even know the danger of these books in this school library because the first review was a fraud then do an audit on the school library because there was more books that weren't in the original list of 133 more egregious more egregious than the books that they actually did this hypothetical review on and the librarian or whoever had the authority to put these books on the library that needs to be investigated and it needs to be determined whether that employee under the hr guidelines is still worthy of being a gisd employee what i leave you with is this have the courage in ephesians 6 it says stand up stand firm three times have the courage when you feel

053fearful look also to the bible cast your cares to the lord he will sustain the righteous he will never let them fall the bloodthirsty deceitful men will perish but i trust the lord trust in him he'll protect you this is the righteous way to go get this pornographic stuff out of our libraries thank you next we have martin seabourn i'll try not even take three minutes uh just as a parent i just wanted to uh give my thanks to all the teachers my wife and i when we got here when my son was starting a elementary and the gratitude that i have for the teachers and the other students i appreciate so much i think this is a wonderful school district we moved from the metroplex and i thank god every day for being here

054and i want to thank dr glenn did a prepared for college and he helped us a lot and reached out to us and we'll get back with you but i want to thank everyone on the school board for everything you do so thank you very much thank you mr seaborn and next we have tammy kurluna oh okay um next up will be dave eagle [Music] i'm not going to talk about the books i wasn't sure i was going to say anything but i will just want to throw my two cents in on the homeschoolers participating in uil and i think they should be allowed to compete in public sports in texas article 7 section 1 texas constitution says that the state should make suitable provision for support and maintenance of efficient system of public free

055schools and there are some legal arguments that have been advanced not in texas yet about denying home school students the right to or the chance to participate in public school sports one of them's a due process argument and there's also an equal protection argument both of those arguments have not been advanced in texas but they probably will be if the school board chooses uh it's to not look into this seriously i know it's been argued that public schools have limited resources and homeschoolers could take away from that but i'd argue that's absolutely not true families of homeschoolers are still paying taxes so not only they paying for public school but they're paying for to homeschool their kids so they're paying for school but their kids aren't in there so actually they're providing extra resources for

056the schools many home school parents do so for religious reasons they want to have their they don't have their kids in public schools for religious reasons and that's i think that's a legitimate reason but they would like to get their kids into sports so being able to participate in sports i think is a very important part of our entire community and so i would point out that one of the main detractors from having homeschoolers participate in public school sports is the texas high school coaches association and they have a written the high school association actually has a written code of ethics and one of them and i know the time is running short but item number two under article three coaches responsibilities to the players the coach must remember that he she is a living

057example for all boys and girls in the school's community i said all that's in their own code and you know we hear these terms inclusive diversity all the time by certain folks and yet buzzwords actually and it's like why don't we want to include these kids in the sports systems so anyway i'm urging you guys to take a close look at it uh you work for the taxpayers and i appreciate everything the coaches do and the faculty does absolutely but you also work for the taxpayers and a lot of them have are home schooled on their kids so why don't you let them play ball thanks thank you mr eagle next up we have harrison funk okay i i would like to i'm going to be talking about the book issue i'd like to say

058that the board has done plenty of great things for this community and i'm not going to detract from those uh this is an issue where this has been a very continued lapse in judgment i'd like to call the board and superintendent's attention in the case of minor cerrini versus strongsville city school district when an ohio school board voted to remove catch-22 and two kurt vonnegut books from their curriculum and libraries they were sued by parents for violating the student's first amendment rights the sixth circuit court of appeals ruled that school boards could remove books from a school curriculum but could not remove from the library citing first amendment concerns i'm sure you're all familiar with while the ta's new guidelines and governor abbott's directive set up a process for the removal of books i would

059hope you would stand up to something that violates the primary supreme court case concerning book removals board of education island trees union free school district versus pico removing a book like this book is gay tells every queer student in granbury isd that despite what we say about promoting a safe learning environment where all students are valued they really aren't when is this book when is having a book in a library meant endorsing its content a queer sex ed book is too explicit for high schoolers but a book with an extremely violent gang rape and the classic section is untouchable this is a conservative community and despite talking about how the other side has tried to politicize this issue dr glenn and the school board have made this political issue to coast to another term of

060superintendent and board members when a student questioning their sexuality or gender identity whether you agree with it or not is looking for resources about it you have removed a safe resource to cover yourselves and enhance your political viability it makes me sick to think that i cannot trust those put in place to be leaders in my school district to be other anything other than cowards instead of standing for what's right you stand for political expedience sleep well like i know you will thank you mr frank and next we have jean mirrens am i pronouncing that right first of all what a fantastic night to be here to celebrate the accomplishments and hard work of those young people that we saw that's what this is all about the concern for the students so first of all

061thanks to all the many teachers and educators and things that are behind that because that's what all the hard work's for i come from a long line of family of educators it's tiring it's hard work a lot of not not huge pay and so that's something you have to be called to do and so i applaud those people that step up for that i heard about there were some book issues so i volunteered to read give me one of these books to read and the code was to look for things that are age inappropriate or sexually explicit in explicit and the form that the granberry isd has gives great detail instructions and one of the things here it says you must read the book in its entirety and sign the form at the bottom okay

062so i began this book and i can tell you my page 20 this book should not be in a student library this is adult material now i will push myself to finish reading this because i'm not going to sign anything with my name on it with a description that y'all say age inappropriate or sexually explicit i hope you can change this form to us being able just to find some material in them but i'll finish reading it and when i turn this report in this review and on this book i want to be handed the review signed by someone who read that book who put it into our libraries who said it is age appropriate who said it is sexually in line for it and it supports our curriculum because from reading what i've read

063i can't see how this would support any curriculum that a good hard-working teacher who has put so many hours in those students that we saw tonight i can't see that so when i turn my hand i want the form with the name of who read it to put it in that library i looked for the motto or your mission statement and i couldn't find it but i did find some great bios dr glenn you have an amazing line of education you are prepared for this position there is no doubt about it um and the fact that you co-authored a book for daily devotionals if you knew this book was in your library for these students i don't see how you would know to keep it in there we come to points in our lives that

064are pivotal decisions when we come face to face with something and when we finally i'm so sorry when we come to those pivotal moments we have to make a decision on who we are but more importantly whose we are because you will not be judged by us here one day you will be judged and i don't want this held against you thank you miss moons next we have greg harrell members of the board of trustees dr glenn good evening i know that uh each of you sit in a very difficult position and many times as you gather to in this setting i know that it's a very thankless job that you do and you probably wonder from time to time why did i ever step into this role for sure but i just want to

065say before i start my comments thanks to each and every one of you for what you do thank you for your service we appreciate it one of the things that i'm sure that you do find think uh thankful and that is a positive about your job is what we just saw here this evening as we went through the achievements of the students certainly that that's got to be gratifying to each and every one of you as you shake the hands of those kids that have done so well and really taken up their time to do things that are above and beyond what a normal student does so i appreciate what we saw this evening and having said that what i rise to speak about tonight is i would like for you as you take up

066the item or the issue of including homeschooled kids in extracurricular activities here in the gisd programs i would urge you to please include these homeschoolers give them the same opportunity to rise to the occasion just like we saw these kids tonight as a matter of fact as i look at these photographs that line this room you can readily see that all but save two of the photographs are kids that are involved in extracurricular activities these are the things that we remember about our school days so as you take up this item i would just urge you to please please allow the homeschool kids access to the gisd programs and thank you once again thank you mr hill next we have sherry johnson good evening my name is sheri johnson i was here last month to

067speak against book banning and here i am again i really learned a lot by listening to some of the previous speakers i taught in public school for almost 30 years and i never once in my entire life i came across any books like the ones y'all are talking about bestiality and sex with teachers nope never saw anything like that and i doubt if any of these kids on the wall have ever seen them either we did read things like harry potter and in 2014 a study of elementary and high school students found that children became more empathetic toward lgbtq folks immigrants and refugees after reading harry potter harry potter a story of a child who's different different from his peers i remembered that even back in the 90s when i was reading that book to

068my fourth grade students there were people who thought that harry potter glorified witchcraft and should be banned all i know is that i read harry potter and my kids and they loved it everyone loved harry potter and as far as i know none of them have become satan worshipers at least not not that i know of as human beings we develop fear and anxiety around the things we don't know or understand books can be a gateway for fostering ex acceptance empathy and appreciation for others books can provide representation to children who come from or identify with marginalized communities this highlights why educators often talk about books in the classroom serving two purposes one summer mirrors while others are windows mirrors are books in which readers see themselves represented meaningfully windows are books that show the

069reader the perspective and experiences different from their own we all need and deserve to have access to both types of books banning books that marginalize people and deal with difficult topics shuts those windows and smashes the mirrors banning books can stunt children's curiosity about the world and other people which is why most educators believe schools have the opportunity and the responsibility to serve as a resource center and sanctuary for students many of them don't have the resources one way or another to buy books or to find them at the public library exposing children to books that serve as windows and mirrors encourages them to seek out more of their own so they can keep reading and learning about themselves others history and the world outside their home what do we achieve by insulating our kids

070from uncomfortable truths and i'm not talking about explicit sexual behavior because i've never seen that in any children's library books okay i'll just say please reconsider any sort of book banning i believe it endangers tolerance free expression and democracy thank you ms johnson next we have craig mayberry [Music] all right greetings board members and dr glenn these past few months have been very especially trying for you and your families because you've been receiving a lot of backlash and pressure from a very very vocal minority in this community and i just want to let you know that i as well as many others in this community support this endeavor said backlash can be found by looking back no more than the march school board meeting where susan woods described herself most notably as a child's protective

071worker and therapist she thanked the board for introducing her to out of darkness and made the claim that i'm told it's pornographic but doesn't meet that criteria in any way she then accuses the school board members of taking the book out of context okay can please someone educate me on what the proper context is for a children's protective worker and therapist and take her out back boys put your hands on your titties put it in a cornhole last month's meeting in april showed ms adrian martin falling in perfect cadence with a radical rope left when it finds its motives threatened that is you throw out a couple of red herrings to distract from the conversation at hand and replace it with emotional dribble she implies somehow that by not examining the contents of any of

072the books and returning the ones that have been removed that somehow the perceived bullying of children of kids who identify as lgbtq and other marginalized people will magically vanish is that what gisd is doing targeting and personally going after each kid who identifies as lgbt of course not but are we going after the hardcore lgbt agenda that is militantly growing and going after all the children it can get its slimy tentacles wrapped around regardless of grade level the answer is an unapologetic you damn right we are are we going after those who wish to try to manipulate and indoctrinate our youngest most vulnerable minds through drag queen story time that boys can be girls and girls can be boys and then men can give birth and all the while never answering the question what is

073a woman yep yes we are and the way to do that is the same as any other conventional war that is you first start by cutting off the energy and the fuel to the enemy and in this case the fueling the lgbt agenda is the rapid acceptance and normalization and celebration of pornography because god knows that common sense and good science won't get that agenda very far folks we need to return to reading writing and arithmetic we need to we need to be teaching the abcs and 123s and not the lgbts despite the honest and sincere and hardworking teachers and staff who try to do their best the public school system at large in this nation has been transformed from a place of learning to a place of creating mindless political activists pushing an agenda

074they know nothing about with this porn on the shelves and the high school being left as it is it will make its way to the lower grades to be forced upon the unsuspecting pure minds of small children and folks do not be deceived for one moment for those parents and teachers who dare question this attack the diversity equity and inclusion police will be present to enforce compliance by hijacking the strong arm of the law the lgbt translation you will see it our way or we will hurt you that's what we call tolerance and those who shout tolerance are the most intolerant of all thank you melinda joe ray dr graham members of the board i want to thank you for letting me address you today there's an old arab curse that says may you live

075in interesting times and uh you know it sounds rather innocuous but i think we live in interesting times and sometimes those times are very hard to navigate through there are lots of people in our nation from all different walks of life who feel very strongly about various issues many of them on all sides for good reasons and i think sometimes when we're in the public forum and we were in leadership positions it's important for us to take a step back and remember why we're here i was a school librarian for 30 years 20 of those were here in glendale isd [Music] i was also assistant technology coordinator i was also uil coordinator for the middle schools i was also on occasion a v repair person in various things as we all who are in the

076business do whatever it takes to get the job done for the kids because that's why we're here [Music] we're here for the kids and we're not here for just one kind of kid we're here for just one income level a kid or one race of kids or one religion of kids or even one nationality of kids because now we have foreign exchange students who come to our schools and so we need to remember our job as educators and our job as a community is to help these kids that's what we're here for and if you love these kids that means that there's not going to be any kid who feels persecuted there's not going to be any kid who feels like that because they're different they're a bad person or they don't count it's not

077going to be the kid who's disabled like i was who nobody cares if the kids laugh at them or call them names it's going to be teachers and administrators who every day spend their time putting themselves and their kids on the front line to try to make things as good as they can get them for those kids and hours of the day that they have them and so surely to goodness if all of us put the kids first if all of us irregardless of our political point of view of our background of our beliefs on certain issues and so forth if we put loving these kids first [Music] then we will have done what i believed my entire career god had called me to do thank you and i think that we can take a

078lesson from history since history is one of my things when grand very first started there were three men who really started public education in granbury young hannaford jesse franklin nutt and ip gordon ryan voters man was a barn man she was a handicapped man this way i'm sorry but you're three minutes sir okay okay thank you very much next we have jerry donkerty i hope i pronounce that properly it's close enough it's been mispronounced by everybody in the world i mean good company then board members mr superintendent i come here tonight as a person who is a retired texas educator of 35 years and what brought me here was how distressed i was when i began to hear and read some of the material that were found in the libraries and the classrooms of granberry

079isd a district that i've lived in for 30 years now and so i i want to address the board first of all it hasn't been that long ago that this board was struggling with how to protect the physical safety of the students and you all went to work and you did the job you made some hard decisions about how to allocate resources and how to take care to make sure that these students were physically safe in the classrooms in granberry isd today you are confronted with a similar problem because what we have at threat right now is the mental health of the students in granberry isd these topics in these books distort human sexuality they demean women and they run the threat of hurting the mental health of the students that we're charged here with

080the responsibility of taking care of i contend that you have as a board already at your disposal in your own policies that you have adopted the legal authority to get these materials out of the school without having to go through all of these bureaucratic maneuvers that people are being required to do ef legal says that if it is perversely vulgar if it is educationally unsuitable you have the authority in fact ef local says the board has the ultimate responsibility for getting these materials out of the out of the circulation in the school i don't know but a couple of you personally that are on the board but i'm going to assume that all of you know what to do and that is to do what is right by the students of this school district and

081if you're having difficulty making some kind of decision as to whether this is the right thing to do or not i would encourage you to resign your seat so that someone with greater discernment can be placed in that seat now dr glenn i want to address you for just a moment because not only do is there a need to protect the students but i think you have a responsibility as well to protect your staff and this this particular issue is not just an educational issue it is a legal issue the texas penal code title 9 chapter 43 makes it a criminal offense to distribute this kind of material to anybody under the age of 18 and that is a felony offense so encourage you to take that into consideration as you decide what to do

082or not to do about this this situation and while you're looking into the books in the library i would suggest you take a quick look at what's going on as far as the poetry reading and the prose reading and the dramatic interpretation things that are being done at uil events because i've been a judge for the last 10 years at those activities prior to covet and some of the filthiest stuff that i've ever heard in my life is being read by high school students so i'll conclude with just one final comment there are those and some of them are in this room they want to make this a free speech issue or a censorship issue and i'm here to tell you that even the most ardent advocate for free speech has always adhered to the

083philosophy that you cannot yell fire in a crowded theater and i'm telling you that these materials are yelling fire in the most crowded room theater in this city and that's in the classrooms of granberry isd and we need to get them out and put the fire out thank you sir and our last comment tonight will be from monica boone thank you for having me all of you i moved to granberry in 2020 and i really hope it stands up to the reputation it had when i came the word i have on my heart is repentance just to think about that as adults that not all of us had a hand in what's happened here but we are the ones who are present to solve the issues anyone the lady who spoke earlier who said she's

084never seen any of these books granberrytexasbooks.org and you will get an eyeful the last book i read was 600 plus pages and it was a whipping for poor quality number one but also sexual content that anyway it was stupid i'm sorry i don't know how else to describe it and i'm sorry that someone pilfered it on our children so you need to understand it is a far bigger problem than you realize and you also dr glenn realize you have educators just like that one just like this one and i'm sorry to point fingers but we have librarians who who are misunderstanding what is healthy and good for children we are not talking about public school public libraries no one's even talking about hood county library we're talking about student libraries we're talking about graphic inappropriate

085material for children as young as age 11. we have teachers in this district who are reading about loud and delighting in it and teaching children to do the same and really i i challenge all of you to figure out what you're afraid of and conquer that and the man who just spoke mentioned this being a felony i believe that's accurate and we need you to stand up and do something he put us through hoops and really unfair to the to me and to karen to document this you have leaders in your system that were on the school board i'm sorry the book review committee principals teacher of the year award winners who just like that put it back didn't bother to look and when we brought it up that there was explicit content and we

086described it which was really difficult to do something we never imagined we'd be doing and they still put it back so you have people who are supposed to be gatekeepers for children and for student libraries who are handing it to them and purchasing it with our dollars so repentance is the word that's on my heart pastor mary carton could not be here tonight what she wanted was to plead for communication from you to us so we understand what you're doing and what you're thinking and also i know the new policy may have more librarians and independent school district employees on those committees and i feel like that's already headed in the wrong direction to have too many of them i think you ought to have people of good moral standards people in the community that

087maybe even are voted on pastors like paul duncan he would never steer you wrong and he'll put you in a safety zone with your books you don't have to have these ultra controversial books in your library and literally you have thousands of books so what harm is it to let go of some of them and that's all i have to say thank you miss brown all right that ends uh public comments and we are going to move forward with a consideration of the consent agenda items are there any items under that that any board member would like to pull out just some comments uh madam president i want to give a shout out to the daughters daughters of the american revolution for uh donating 1202.07 to uh the mjrotc it's obvious that that group does

088well and is good for kids and we appreciate that to kyle woods at state farm for donating two thousand dollars to back us for their color run and to first national bank or a donation of 291 dollars to actin elementary for their uh transportation to langdon ranch a total this month of almost seventeen hundred dollars that community has donated to activities for our students you see any of those folks or if you happen to patronize any of them please tell them thank you i would um i would like to if we could pull out item number six first review of representative patterson's pledge regarding district vendors to discuss is that something yes ma'am i can make a statement on yes ma'am okay i have some time to think about the this this weekend and so

089um i would like for us to consider discussing partnering with other local districts and legislature to implement policies that would prevent sexually explicit books from getting into the hands of our children i do recognize that we will be discussing stricter policies going forward handed down from the tea but it would be nice to have an extra layer of protection and to also support the other districts and 27 state house representatives that have signed on to this pledge i believe the majority of our taxpayers and community would also appreciate us taking this proactive stance pledge states that we will not knowingly partner with purchase from or associate with in any way a vendor who has supplied pornographic materials to schools and not allow pornographic materials to remain on campus i believe we have both seen and

090heard from our last three or two meetings the majority of our community does want us to adopt strong policies that clearly define procedures and processes related to our library materials the po the public has asked us to make a plan communicate that plan and work on that plan and i believe that signing that this pledge is a step in the right direction in signing this pledge we're taking the sten a stand against such vendors and hopefully because of this stand the vendors will have to adjust the availability of pornography i believe has no place in our schools when our children have access to sexually obscene books in school it removes the parents rights and we must always remember that the child belongs to the parents and parental rights always need to be protected these materials

091are damaging to our youth and we play a very pertinent part in protecting our children's innocence i have been in contact with house rep jared patterson's chief of staff jeffrey waldock and he is working on defining and detailing the language of what exactly they define as obscene books and i've also requested a list of known vendors that they know sell these types of books that we can be fully aware of which specific vendors we need to avoid thank you does anyone else have any other comments they want to make on that at this time [Music] the language is a little concerning it's very vague in the letter i think there's absolutely nothing wrong with aligning with these people but the language is so vague that i think we need to drill down and get that

092language a lot tighter so that we know exactly i mean the main comment was the associate to associate in any way well for all of us on this com on this board right now we don't there's no way we can know what every single vendor and that's not just books that's all materials that we look at as as a school district so i just think i would like to have that language and as melanie said they're working on correcting that so that's what i would like to see before we sign off on anything and i know we're working on our own our own policy and i think that is um we definitely have hurt our community so with our own policy we need to hear that we need to create a policy that fits our

093district with the correct wording that we're not extremely vague on i would agree and i appreciate you reaching out to rhett patterson and trying to get some more clear definition on this because the way it's worded right now it's there's no way we could categorically go through everything we've ever purchased and know if it ever included anything like that so it's having that more clearly defined moving forward and having a statement that fits our district i think would work really well i would also like to add that when we do come up with the pledge that we will take that we also include what our policy is going to be so it will be very clear and transparent to everybody in the community as well yeah i appreciate this craft for bringing that forward and

094and the good news is i think that both our state representative shelby slauson and our state senator brian bergwell have our backs on this so uh just as dr mcdonald said i look forward to a little more we want to be even more specific than the patterson pledge it's a good one i like it i'd sign it but but we just need a little more definition so i look forward to it thank you any more discussion on that particular one thank you for bringing that up ms graf is there any other item under consent agenda items that would like to be discussed madam president i just moved that we accepted consent agenda items as presented i second it motion made by mr jackson sent in by dr harrington all those in favor raise your hand

095and he opposed 7-0 okay we're going to move on to consider and possibly approve an amendment regarding the purchase of real property by the district consisting of 74.355 acres more or less consisting parts of our merit survey abstract number 355 the s heron survey abstract 687 the bbb and crr company survey abstract number 74 and abstract number 75 situated in hood county texas located at 4734 acton highway dr glenn thank you madam president thank you trustees you have before you tonight an amendment to a purchase of real property specifically this is a one acre track located adjacent acton middle school the the title of the property was not uh original not conveyed to the current owner of the 74-acre track uh it is still in her grandfather's name who is deceased along with her father

096uh who it would have fell to afterwards um so that is being worked out with the title company and so if you uh it is your desire as a board to move forward with the uh the purchase of this property that will have to be billed out in a second uh agenda item at a later date any comments or emotion i'd definitely like to speak into the pro the property in general and i know when i was here in high school in the late 70s we had board members who purchased property that we are now able to use a good example is acton elementary and at the time when the property was purchased way back then i know i'm old it that they were getting a lot of heat for that but we're so glad

097now that they were forward thinking 5 10 20 years down the road so that we have property to build schools as our community grows and it is growing we all know that we i mean you can walk down the street go to the square and you can find people from a whole lot of different states moving here and it's not slowing down we're seeing no signs of it slowing down so i think it as one it is one of our charges as trustees to be looking at property and we heard the voters we heard the voters in this last bond election we heard you loud and clear but buying property is a different matter entirely we are charged with that we are charged with sitting here thinking about school boards who will be here after

098we are and so as mark twain said they're not making any more land and it is getting tighter and tighter for any of you who've tried to buy property recently you know this to be true so i think it's very important that we are forward thinking that we are looking to find property that's available that can help our district grow when we're ready to grow because we are growing and we just we can't ignore that so i think it's just really really important that we continue to identify and secure land necessary for long-range future growth of our school district and and to be clear uh dr dr mcdonald's comments uh this the funds being used to purchase the property or designated fund balance so essentially if you think of every year the district receives money

099and our board has been good stewards did that money they continue to save that money into a savings account and then out of that savings account they designate a portion of funds for future land purchases so uh not going out for any type of note or anything like that it is money that was designated specifically by the board of trustees for future land purchases one more thing i think it's important that we've we've heard the we've heard the voters but we've also heard a lot of comments that well they were bold going ahead and buying that property and again i just i feel like it's so important to say we we need to buy that property probably five years ago whether we need it right now or not if we're going to need it at

100some point we've got transportation and bus barn issues it's not just all about schools there are we need places to store materials so there's a lot of things to consider so i just think that is something for everyone to understand that aspect okay at this time are there any more comments if not i would like a motion i'll make the emotion to amend the purchase of the real property as presented i'll second okay the motion was made by dr mcdonald it was seconded by ms gore all those in favor raise your hand and that came 7-0 [Music] all right next consider approval of broner elementary job order contract for music classroom renovation and repair mr whitefield thank you madam president uh trustees before you have an item for uh the conversion or modern renovations for

101conversion of music practice rooms into a classroom on the broader campus of the six um available ways to do this the job order contract administration believes that this is going to be the most cost effective and easiest way to make this minor renovation this summer um and it is there it is administration's uh recommendation that the board approved the job order contract for the renovation this room in the price range of 130 862 dollars and exactly what is this going to give runner it's going to give them a classroom where their practice rooms are where the band band practice rooms music practice rooms were it'll convert it into a classroom so that we on that it's on the northeast side so so one or two classrooms sorry it's i believe this is just going to

102create one class i believe it's going to be one classroom is miss ross so there is uh so currently what you have at broader you have a campus so we've had to add portable buildings to it's a campus that was originally a middle school last year we came through and we created 10 classrooms by converting all of the old athletic locker rooms in into i guess what would be kindergarten first grade rooms uh mostly kindergarten probably and and now what you have is an old band hall if you're familiar with what a band hall looks like lots of practice rooms so real small probably six by six eight by eight rooms and a lot of them and so those walls have to be knocked out um you're going to have to i'm sure do do

103work up in the ceiling and convert all of that space so possibly maybe you get two classrooms out of it for sure one large classroom but long term for the the building itself you're talking about making better use of space and then also when you consider the price of a portable building which would yield you two classrooms but you're still going to be looking in the same neighborhood of that 100 000 plus and you're not building yourself anything that's going to be permanent so again we're trying to make use of available space inside of our buildings because that gives our kids the most safe and secure learning environment again any other questions do i hear a motion sure madam president uh possible please i move that we approved the renovations at the broner elementary school

104of the music classroom i'll second it thank you motion is made by mr moore seconded by ms graft all those in favor raise your hand [Music] no opposed 7-0 okay next consider substitute pay incentive mr jones thank you madam president in the past we've tried many things to increase our substitute fill rate uh and it's it's gone back and forth but at one point we were at 89 90 and since then it has dropped to 69 i think with uh some effects of covid and other things uh but um we have jennifer yonkan to thank for this incentive we plan to keep our current uh pay rate and then after 15 days which is the minimum that a substitute has to to work they will go to 105 each day from then on for the

105rest of the year so we're hoping we always have a nucleus of uh substitutes but we're hoping this incentive will bring in some of those outside uh subs that will work a little bit more and reach that 105 and uh and to increase our fill rate so is that like they work a couple days one week and then next week they were a couple more days and then eventually they get up to 15 days yes ma'am it is school year yes ma'am okay mr jones i have a question uh since we obviously don't have enough days left this year to fulfill this are you proposing this for next year next school year yes ma'am thank you and that 105 would put us at the highest paying in the area for subs yes sir so adam

106preston i moved that we approved the substitute incentive pay as presented out second motion made by dr harrington seconded by mr moore all those in favor raise your hand 7-0 thank you very much mr jones moving on discuss and consider policy and or procedures regarding hb 547. presenter chad cheesy and alan thorpe madam president as they uh coach cheese and coach thorpe make their way i just want to remind everyone we had discussion adam on this last board meeting and the board requested to get coaches input so a survey was sent out for ual coaches and directors that included um fine arts ul academics everyone at the secondary level that participates in ul activities and i appreciate coach uh coach cheezy and coach thorpe presenting tonight thank you mr dawson [Music] i'm coach season this

107is coach thorpe and we're simply here to present the results of the survey that was sent out to our school employees we first want to thank you the board for giving us a voice in this decision as we know it's a tough one but we appreciate you reaching out to the people that are already employed by your school district on on their feelings so as mr dobson alluded to 70 people responded to the survey of the 70 that responded 47 were athletic coaches 10 were fine arts teachers or directors nine were uil academic coaches and four were program uil program directors to make up the total of 70. the results which you've already you were given a packet but so that the audience knows the results came back as the following 8.6 were six people

108voted that they were for this and open to the opportunity of allowing non-enrolled students to participate in extracurricular activities 17.1 or 12 people said they were on the fence they could support the decision either way 74.3 percent or 52 people opposed to allow non-enrolled students to participate in extracurricular activities there were also an option for comments those comments were given to the board and i will not repeat all of those as it would be here a while but uh people in our district certainly let their opinions and their feelings be known within those comments there were some themes some statements made that you continually saw and read throughout the comments coach thorpe and i went through and grouped those into different areas and i'll share with you four of those themes that we came across

109regarding academics will the academic accountability and the academic standards for home school students be equal to what the public school student endures on a daily basis the second one many of the responses feel that teen culture and camaraderie play a major role in their programs they also feel this is built not only in athletics or on the stage or in the band hall but in everyday classrooms the cafeteria and hallways how will the home school athlete or student affect the current team culture the fourth public school students must go through the daily grind of six academic classes an extracurricular class a quest class in addition to performing for the club organization or team before or after school how does this daily grind compare to what the homeschool student goes through on a daily basis and

110the last [Music] teachers coaches and instructors take pride in getting their required teaching certification and in the delivery of their classroom instruction they also take pride in teaching students in their extracurricular activities [Music] they feel that these are equally important and would like to see the same students attend both settings we are currently a 5a school district based off our enrollment there are 21 total schools in the state of texas that currently allow non-enrolled students to participate in extracurricular activities in the 5a division alone there are 253 schools two allow non-enrolled students to participate in extracurricular activities in the 6a classification which we're headed toward quickly there are 246 schools in the state of texas and again two allow non-enrolled students to participate in extracurricular activities the results from the gis employees and the stats

111from the state are simply for you to know no other reason we're just here to present the data to you when reaching out to some of these schools coach butler asks for their policies so if in fact you went forward with this we will have something something to have a guideline of the schools that that have home school students participate many of them do not have their own policy [Music] they'll cite things as too many questions too many loopholes and they really don't want to put themselves out there with a policy so they just don't have one and we're able to obtain a few and those were put in the packet so at this time we're here to use the board to know that we're here to work with you in whatever decision that the

112board decides is best for gisd at this point we will answer any questions you might have if we have the answer thanks again for allowing us to present the results from our district i have a question um are you guys aware of you you talked about socialization of homeschool children so are you aware of what percentage of homeschool children engage in outside of activities outside of their homes and how many have you looked into any research to see um or talk to any of those families as far as what extracurricular activities they might already do well i'm sure that i'm sure they participate in activities and uh again we're just presenting the information from our from our colleagues um as as many know extracurricular activities drive a bunch of students and so it wouldn't shock

113me that homeschool students are certainly involved in activities outside of academic classes coaching yeah i mean i would i would think that they would participate i know there's sorry i know that there's activities out there that they do participate in i have not done the study to find out the number that that do that i think that's what you're asking yeah it's something i looked at and you made a good point as to the high school kids and what would it be like if you know with the mingling with the homeschool children so i did look it up and 98 of homeschool students engage in an average of five activities outside of their homes they have high community and civic involvement things like field trips scouting 4-h political drives church ministry sports team community volunteer

114work so they have many opportunities for social interaction beyond the classroom and that research also shows that they're typically above average in social emotional learning development as well and that research included peer interaction self-concept leadership skills family cohesion participation in community service self-esteem and because of those extracurricular activities that they participate in they're already mingling with a lot of the public school kiddos thank you i had a question about the uil realignment snapshot there's still conflicting info on there on whether they do count or they don't count i can answer that currently uh they do not count toward reclassification that was on the commissioner's rule and it looks like when realignment comes around again that topic will uh come up again so it's only a two year window according the information coach butler sent me

115this afternoon yeah we we reached out the same as dr green we reached out to ui lod and that was the answer we got that because he didn't sign the world change they do not count towards your okay and then as far as you know reading through all of the feedback that we got um there was some concern about chasing after parents for grades like i know right now coaches can easily access skyward they can check on a student see where they're at and having to go after the homeschool parents for grades was an issue for a couple i think districts that had implemented this is there a way that we can implement this where it puts the responsibility on the parents like if the parents don't have these grades submitted by a certain date

116then that's it and however many strikes you're out i'm not sure on policy you said a lot of these school districts don't have one but i'm just thinking of ways to be able to implement this that doesn't create a lot of extra work for our coaches yeah from what we've can determine uh we've been trying to research this uh what we saw in the article on the home bit on the home school stuff is that they're required to take and you could probably help they're required to take an achievement test at the first of the year and that is the only measuring thing that we can find for the year if they pass it the first of the year they're good so where our kids have to have grades submitted every six weeks uh it's

117a from what we have understood from talking to the other home school the people that are doing it they call ask a parent how they doing they're doing good so you're going off the word of the parent so the standard's different from what we can see okay and let me say this if that if that's a concern i think we as a district could require homeschool grades to be submitted to us and if the kids don't submit their grades we can consider them ineligible so i would think that would have to go into the policy made by the district i would choose to do that i would like to answer your question too i'm speaking for my children they do have grades every six weeks and they have transcripts and they also take the iowa

118state test every year as well and i'm looking at weatherford independent school district their policy here and on here it is talking about name of curriculum copies documentation of credits um so it it's so it does look like there are ways to implement to make sure i think there will be i think there'd be ways to do it absolutely i think you would have to or you would have an exodus of your students going oh we can do this and i think i think we'd have to make a pretty strong policy right there and then that other concern was the eight-hour rule like if the students are going to be participating in this they have to show up at the practice times that are available there's there's no exceptions that are being made for coaches

119to have to work outside of those hours that they normally would work to just work with the homeschool students i would i i would think that if we allow them to play then they they come to our practice right they have to practice with our kids at that time okay and one of them on that note one of the concerns that has been raised by some who have uh gone into allowing these youngsters to participate in uil activities is the course load because every youngster that's in our school has a full course load often they say they find that the homeschool students will be in actively studying two or three subjects at a time and uh having fewer hours every day where the youngsters who are currently in our school and enroll there would be

120having six classes plus their athletics there again i mean i can i can speak to that the coast the course load is very similar to that of public school and they have extracurricular activities too we have transcripts so i don't see one of my oldest went to public school for a couple of years and i would say the course load is we really mimic and try to keep up with as far as course load goes the public's what the public school is doing if that helps and i had i really did a lot of thought on this um at the house bill 547 and i'm glad that we took the time to hear from our teachers and coaches so thank you guys for doing the extra work on this and most of the public most

121likely does not understand the immense uil requirements that these teachers coaches and students must abide by they are very strict and as we all know in looking into the whole uil it's it's like reading the constitution sometimes i mean it's it's you've really got to dig and get in there so the recommendation tonight is to discuss and consider the policy so let me begin by saying emphatically that yes there are many home school students who will benefit from participating in uil activities i am completely for this however it is imperative that as in any new program the implementation of the program is paramount simply saying yes without having a good solid plan of action would not be wise i've always believed and practiced the notion that with any great idea there is much pre-planning that

122must take place therefore in order for gisd to implement this program we still need to have and put into place a solid plan first there are still a lot of unknowns regarding one a direct line of communication for home school parents to address their questions and concerns with the district i propose that we have a designated staff member at the admin building who would be the point person for both the parents but also for the teachers and coaches this point person would also be the gatekeeper of the responsibility of collecting and reporting the grades for the homeschool kids the parents would have the responsibility of uploading the grades and required documents to the district by specified dates the teachers and coaches then would be able to access these documents easily thus verifying eligibility two we

123can easily i say easily i'm not an i.t guy girl but perhaps we could create a portal through our district web page where parents can easily upload the needed documentation that could then be verified by the date for each student because we know with uil these dates are critical and they have such strict guidelines so having this portal where parents and coaches can access i think would be really an amazing thing are you about to kick me under the table [Music] three just as there are required parent meetings for the various activities the home school parents would need to be in attendance in order for them to receive the same information that the enrolled students receive and so perhaps a pilot program would be advisable to get us started and again when any organization takes

124the necessary steps to properly implement something new the odds for success are greatly increased so finally i want to thank you teachers and coaches who took the time to complete the survey you guys are on the front lines of these activities and your input is essential also having been a uil science and athletic coach in the past i know the amount of time that you pour into these commitments so from the surveys we received from the school districts that are already implementing this program the feedback was fairly positive the common concern was the communication aspect to and from parents which again leads me to believe that having a point person at the admin level is a critical path for the program of the 70s responses from our professionals i also took out and read every

125single one of them the main one academic requirements who will determine the various home school curricular programs compared to what an enrolled student must have two behavioral requirements i thought that was a really wise one to to discuss students enrolled in school must maintain and follow gisd student behavior plan if the home school student fails to follow those same guidelines how and who will they be held accountable to three the logistics and i think this is a real important one for us to think about of kids and parents and everyone who coming and going into and out of our schools for practices tryouts etc this will put an extreme pressure on the front office personnel and those people are busy if you've ever been in a front office four that brings to the next point

126of safety regarding the logistics of anyone coming into and out of our building safety must be considered and additionally students who are enrolled all have all the required paperwork and documents to properly identify them with homeschool students this process would need to be insured as well in-class support the uil teachers spend a lot of time in class providing their advice strategies and planning for their activities the home school student would miss out on this important aspect and that's pretty much for the uil science and one of the art teachers or one of the art comments was that the art has to be supervised by an art teacher the entire time to be eligible so that would be a difficult thing to do so i mean there are some issues that we have to think about

127then there's the abuse of illegal drug policies how will the homeschool student be held to the same standards testing and consequences of an in-school student then we have the 98 percent attendance that's required for in-school student participation so we'd have to address that as well for homeschool and then we have the no pass no play certainly something that needs to be addressed many students do not get the privilege of participating in extracurricular activities because they didn't pass a class however the rigors of in-school requirements meet up with their requirements of the various homeschool models and i'm not pointing all that out to be a naysayer i think it's important i think it's a very important topic that we need to look at our kids are all important but it's not as easy as flipping a

128switch i think we've got to do some pilot programming and work out the kinks so that we can do if we're going to do it we do it really well and we'll be a model for other districts thank you i i would like to ask last month i i had pointed out 30 districts out of 1080 roughly in the state of texas have adopted this house bill 547. uh i i never asked a question i failed to but uh how was that placed on our agenda madam president or dr glenn was it brought forward by a fellow trustee or was it brought forward because we had immense demand from the community to enroll their kids under this house bill i trust he asked for it to be placed on the agenda uh but i have

129had parents reach out to me uh in support of uh hb 547. so how many roughly would you say the community have have expressed interest if we move forward to me directly the number has been low how low under 10 under 10. okay the reason i bring that up is because any program we implement that's been said comes with expense and it comes with immense administrative matters uh tasks that have to be done along with it i looked in the packet and uh huddle isd i'm not sure how big is huddle isd i would imagine probably at least our size about our size six six thousand so they implemented this program over a year ago they have zero students zero home school students riley isd has 12 and i understand there were about 1200 kids

130in their high school and then waterford isd has quote a few uh i did try and reach out to a trustee up in weatherford and unfortunately uh he never returned my call but i talked to their president they have eight they have eight so i i i'm a big homeschool fan i've had neighbors i've i've been involved in faith-based organizations that have large populations of homeschool folks their kids are very bright and i would i would stack them up with the best of our kids but i'm looking at this as i always have on this board more with my my old banker hat and finance mind and kind of business aspect is it practical is it something we have so much demand for we need to implement and so i know it's been said i'm

131a big believer i said this last month in fact these folks pay their taxes and they deserve every right to step on our facilities to use them to use our buildings and so on when we don't have them in use for for the public ed kids dr glenn are our facilities athletic facilities i know we've talked about this are they available to homeschool co-ops and other groups after hours when they're not used by the isd we do have facility use forms so they can fill out to use them yes okay so they can use our fields they can use our gymnasiums they can use our our stage at the high school as long as it's not in use and they've gone through the proper steps yeah a lot of times they have to pay sometimes

132they'll come up and and we'll visit and we're able to work something out but yes okay thank you those are two primary questions i had thank you gentlemen let me let me just say i'll say something um and i know it's a i don't really feel like it's a big decision but we're giving it a lot of time tonight um i'll brag on our coaches um our coaches do a great job and they work hard for kids and and that's across the board and i'm proud of the work they do with our student athletes and if it is a parent i i were choosing to keep my my child at home and homeschooling for for any reason and again i'm a huge public school advocate but uh but let's just say i'm keeping my kid

133at home i'm paying my taxes i live in the district if if i were given the opportunity to put my child in coach cheesy's football program or coach thorpe's basketball program i would jump at that opportunity not only to be surrounded with great leadership and coaching but also to be surrounded by great kids from granberry isd which you got to witness here if you've been here since the beginning of this meeting i think we're over analyzing something that is really not going to be as hard as we're making it out to be you're talking a weatherford isd 9000 students we're talking about less than 10 kids i truly believe it i mean dr mcdonald did a great job outlining a policy she could probably sit down with miss bodine and who's over academics and and

134coach butler and in script up an easy way for the the kids that are interested in playing to participate i don't think it would be a heavy lift certainly this is a decision of the trustees it's a policy decision we'll leave it in your hands but i think at the end of the day if we have the opportunity to do something good for kids and it's within our power to do it i wouldn't uh i wouldn't divert from taking the opportunity and i agree with you 100 dr glenn but again it will start out small but as we grow that program is going to grow so i think the better bones that we have for it the better it's going to be for all kids so that that's why i think we do need to

135really think through the logistical part of it yeah i would suggest that we actually write the policy i mean again i said this last month let's write the policy and bring it back so we can we can have something tangible and approved i'm for it too in theory i mean if if we all come together as a team and a community why not give these kids those great opportunities but let's let's let's get the horse before the cart and go write that policy and bring it back for consideration one of my heartburns and all of this having been a uil coach we went to these coaches these teachers that you saw that have spent hours and hours and we went to them and asked them what is your desire and while i've always put kids

136first i'm going to tell you that it gives me heartburn to think that we asked and 70 different ones responded and overwhelmingly said no and that we as a board are going to sit here and say well too bad what you said so that gives me heartburn because if we don't support those folks with when we ask them something if we're not going to take the recommendation then we shouldn't ask them and it really gives me heartburn that we asked them and they said no and we're stepping up and saying well we'll go forward so just well i heard also i didn't hear a resounding no i heard that we need to do it correctly we need to do it right and that we do need to involve our teachers and our coaches with feedback

137to make this thing a win-win on both sides [Music] a couple other points i'd like to make one when i was talking to mike best who's the president of the school board at weatherford they also had their coaches give a resounding no but he went back to them at the end of this year and asked them what they thought and they said it worked pretty well so there's there's some fear of the unknown that's also in there the other point that he made that i thought was really good is if we put this in place and it doesn't work for granberry isd we can stop it it's not something that once turned on it never gets turned off we have that choice i just had one more comment if i might my last i promise

138so i talked to mike best as well and he said something that really stuck with me he said if we're for children then we need to be for all children and that was something that really really stuck um with me and then just i'm sure a lot of people know about them but i just thought this was um a pertinent story that tim tebow who was a two-time national champion heisman trophy winner first round nfl draft pick former pro baseball player four-time hit the list goes on and on quarterback for the denver broncos and new york jets because he lived in florida which is a right to play state even though he was homeschooled he was a for he was able to accomplish all those things because because he was able to play in florida

139at the time and so homeschoolers have had equal access to uil activities in now 36 states with great success some of these states have been doing this for nearly 50 years and not a single one of these states has ever experienced a regulation increase as a result of allowing homeschool equal access to the uil activities homeschooling legislators across the country have made it clear they believe homeschool homeschoolers should be able to participate in uil which is paid for with our tax dollars and homeschool students come from diverse demographics it is something that i ran on when i was running for office and the kingdom community's opinion matters i ran on this issue and i was elected so it's obviously something that our community and voters are wanting because times are changing i think i'll just

140add that the uil is only in texas it's not across the nation i think if we had some kind of clear guidelines or policy to implement this it might ease some of the concerns that we saw in the survey i think a lot of that just comes from the unknown not knowing how to implement this and with the lack of policy in other school districts it kind of doesn't give us any way to get our bearing so if we had some kind of guideline policy in place to be able to implement it that it might alleviate some of those issues that were brought up in that survey final question dr glenn are we paid water on a homeschool account if they're enrolled in our uil activities we are not okay thank you all right any

141more discussion [Music] do i hear a motion or help we go from here i'll make a motion that we adopt the policy and our procedures regarding house bill 547 for home school students to participate in uil activities do i hear a second i would just ask what policy is there we're not there's no policy in the board book to consider at this time with uh the board's approval tonight we would put together a policy drafted with coach butler and uil academic coordinator i believe it's still miss bodine no miss leatherman there we go [Music] so in other words really what the motion would be is that a policy would be put together yeah so so again it's uh with your approval and what i'm hearing mr jackson say is if we write the policy he'll

142approve the policy you know we're going to put the heads in the room and say hey write the policy now because it it'll take some time to put together they'll go through the labor knowing that their labor is not in vain with approval tonight i'm just saying it to dr mcdonald's well-thought-through points that she made i i don't want to approve of what if i mean i want to see the policy i want to see every minutia in the policy before i print it i've always done that any other policy we've had before us we've never approved kurt blanche you know go write it so so what i would say is uh with with miss graff's motion if uh you're proving that we are going to have homeschool allow homeschool kids to participate next year

143and then we'll just bring you policies and let you refine the policies but we'll go ahead and move forward with homeschool kids participating is am i hearing you correctly but under what guidelines wow there's no policy currently written right let's prove something that's another look at i guess what i'm saying is it'll be the responsibility of the administration to bring a suitable policy uh to the trustees that you approve but we'll know that ultimately we can start letting homeschool families know that we're just waiting for board approval you're going to approve the policy once you're once you're good with it the kids will be able to participate is that yeah i'm just making sure i hear you correctly well you're saying if we vote yes for this tonight once we have the policy we have

144to build for them too no he's saying we'll we'll approve essentially house bill 547 to be implementing granberry isd and we'll write the policy and bring it back to you later wait and we'll and we'll keep bringing the policy back until you're happy with it right or or what you're saying is write a policy we may or may not approve it and we'll just keep going back and forth hey we have a motion if there's a second i'll vote the my conscience but at this point i well we we we're here to serve the will of the board so you tell us what you want done so at the moment we have a motion on the floor to accept home school students participating in uil activities am i correct that was not the motion madam

145president she read it verbatim off the board book it was discuss and consider the policy and or procedures it wasn't to accept home schools if if the motion dies i'll personally make the motion to accept homeschool colts home school kids into the district subject to final review of a board policy being presented to us if that's what we're trying to do here is i'm not opposed to it in theory if and then let's let you hear if you would like to second what mr jackson said so go ahead and i'll go ahead and withdraw my motion thank you mr jackson would you like to give us a motion [Music] madam president i'll move that we construct a policy to allow home school kids per house bill 547 to participate in url activities in granbury isd

146subject to final approval by the board and i will second that motion wonderful okay we have a motion by mr jackson and we have it seconded by ms graft all those in favor raise your hand all those opposed okay we have five four two against thank you board we'll get with coach butler miss leatherman and we'll bring a policy to you this summer when they've had the opportunity to work out the details all right next consider revisions to cranberry isd district policy removing ef local and adopting ef ace a local and efb local drafted by tasby per t-e-a model policies with the slight uh modification that i put in as well yes ma'am thank you madam president so in update 119 tasby policy service offered a split policy option for gisd um and so their

147recommendation is that we remove our current policy ef local that's the board policy regarding both instructional materials selection and challenges of those materials as necessary and they split it into efa that addresses the selection and review of instructional materials and efb that addresses the selection and review of library materials and so both of those um new policies are in front of you there are a couple of edits that are shown on the on the efb local and so it is recommended that the board approve the removal of ef local in its entirety and replace it with the efa local for instructional materials and efb local for library materia materials so that we can properly address selection and review of all materials in our libraries and in our schools as presented any comments or questions from

148the board [Music] do i have emotion madam president i move that we accept the uh remove the ef local in its entirety and replace it with both the efa local for instructional materials and the efb local for library materials as presented and do i have a second on a second that motion okay the motion was made by ms gore it was seconded by dr harrington all those in favor raise your hand madam president may we have discussion about the motions on the table go right ahead actually i'd just like to make a comment we've heard over the last several months several speakers on the topic of books in our libraries it has covered the spectrum from left to right right to left it's been a difficult position for the board members as some of you

149have acknowledged i just ask for little patience and a little grace at this point those who know me and some of the others around this board table know what kind of people we are and how long some of us have served on this board and served this community and always had the kids central to every decision we've made give us a little bit of benefit of the doubt we're under tremendous pressure and you have to realize i i'll just tell you quickly about 10 years ago unbeknownst to most of you in this room the aclu sent some some communication to the district basically they were about to sue us because we opened our meetings with prayer now i've been the board president of two stints during that time and since and we still open our

150meetings with prayer so if you want to question my heart and my spirit you can i just ask give us some grace be patient we're trying to bring with this policy order to this chaos order to this process because folks like it or not we're in the public sector and things just take a hell of a lot longer than any of us like but have a little faith and have a little trust we're called trustees for a reason because we're entrusted with your most valuable resource our most valuable resource our kids are very future so as someone famously cast stones at the board as we went through the pandemic i asked you now hold that stone in your hand and maybe just drop it on the ground and give us a little more time because

151you know what we're going to do the right thing you may not all agree with it and we may not all agree as a corporate body up here but i can assure you i've had four kids go through the school system one still in the high school i would never expose them to anything vulgar vile pornographic as some of you have said but i will tell you i am angry because the misinformation i'm hearing on both sides of the spectrum left and right on the right in fact the last speaker pointed out a book called the lawn boy it's in your libraries it's ugly here's an excerpt from it guess what she didn't bother to check the author of the year that book was published it was a totally different book the book we have

152was totally benign another example from that same person is a curriculum that apparently we had over 100 books on that curriculum had been touched in 10 years those books have been collecting dust so with this policy we're about to enact please watch please be engaged stay plugged in look at the policy closely we are tightening it down we're going to put up defenses to make sure these some of these books don't enter our libraries again and it may take time to figure it out the ones that are distasteful because i have many friends on the left by the way two of which of the three that wrote that open letter to this board i have served with i know those men's hearts i think they're really pretty good men i consider them friends when we

153served on the board together so guys we're neighbors here and for those of us who call ourselves christians you know the ultimate lesson treat those like you want to be treated so show a little love and grace to your neighbors thank you madam president he addressed us may we respond i did not arrest you mr lowry i did not [Music] the one you're talking about proving is talking about one one employee and i don't know what books he's reading but the ones that we've presented is talking about about bestiality sir you had your time to talk i i understand what you're saying he just addressed us madam president i i called the art at the meeting back to order and mr lowry uh you have an opportunity to come back and and address that next

154week but you know in fact by robert's rules of art you're out of order and so i will note that and invite you back and in doing that i would like to say i i'm sure again i didn't mention your name no sir i and and here's the christian love i'm pointing to i never mentioned your name i never personally attacked you i stated miss statements of fact that i know you won't disagree with because it was misstatement of fact and all i asked was for little grey sir it was no personal attack that you're making it that way madam president i call uh point of one [Music] okay we have a motion in a second how many are in favor how many are opposed past the seven zero [Music] excuse me stacy brown good

155evening board how are you oh thank you all right you guys in front of you you have uh basically a summary regarding the pe health resources specifically that are attached for your approval selected by the gisdpe health teacher textbook selection committee in addition statute specific lessons were reviewed by the local school health advisory council both committees have recommended the attached resources for your approval and all pe health resources have been open for review and public comment from february 17 2022 and your your memo says specifically april 21st of 22 however because we didn't bring this to the board earlier in april we did extend that window through may 9th of 2022 so just so that you guys have a little bit of information i'm sorry for uh changing that at the board table so um

156questions [Music] i have some questions yes ma'am but i want to start up by saying thank you so much because both of you spent a lot of time with me explaining things and so the questions i have i have really some statements and just some concerns um that i want to talk about and then if you can just um help i guess for the people on the public too a lot of these things we've already discussed sure for the public to hear these things too these are some things and you know it's about quaver ed um so if you don't mind um my concerns with the company are whom they partner with and who sponsors them um there's an old saying if the camel once gets his nose in the tent his body will soon

157follow that's my concern so these are some of the reasons why i oppose quaver ed for kindergarten through fifth grade for one it's only online which means any of the curriculum can change at any time and quaverid updates four times a year which means that unapproved and unknown content could be in the classroom for this reason also i believe books would be preferred over digital but that's just my opinion the same concern is shared by the state board of education quavered has emoji-based screening and health tracker apps for monitoring children's emotional states and this removes parental rights and tracks our kids so i'm concerned about the student data and privacy also that they're aligned to castle and i looked at who funds castle that would be bill and melinda gates the zuckerberg initiative that gave

15816 million that's just a few and the rakes foundation most of these sponsors are social justice equity diversity and inclusion organizations which doesn't represent the majority of our community or our voters i don't think that they would approve of that type of material so i think it's important that we always work to find out what's behind all curriculum they also partner with panorama which is under fire for the way it uses data and impacts user psychological health i know that we've discussed some of this but i think that this would be important for the public to hear because i know you have answers and i've heard some of them but for others to hear those sure absolutely you guys i forgot to introduce uh jennifer ryan she is our multi-tiered system of support coordinator and

159she really kind of led the charge from the standpoint of since november and december of this year we've been receiving communication with the state board of education as well as through tea on the approved resources and then she put together the local committee of educators for pe and health teachers as well as a couple of our board members to be involved in it specifically to address the online concern that you were referencing specifically for online it is written into specific requirements associated on the proclamation of textbooks that publishers cannot change the specific material that is online without submitting a formal request to the state board of education to update the content or substitute a new edition of any adopted material which means they would have to go through the process in order to get it

160approved before they could change what we've seen so that that's a big a big deal for digital uh specifically online um the second question that i know that you mentioned um specifically surrounded a specific assessment and that was one of the questions that came out uh during the public hearing with the state board of education and we have it in writing specifically from quaver and then on the state board of education website that they specifically do not have a an assessment on student emotional health or behavior they removed it at the request of the state board of education teachers are not required to give data or share data with regard to regulating any emotional health through quaver and no data comes from student would come from students that is tracked or shared with anyone outside

161of the teacher themselves within the district um so we definitely wanted to make sure that we answered those questions uh with with regard to the emotional concerns um as well as the online concerns yes and you really stacy brown and the entire shack committee did a tremendous job vetting multiple programs all of which were approved by the state and the district was required to select one of these programs uh or go without a program and so uh and so certainly uh what just briefly for those that don't know would you briefly describe the shack committee that uh that vetted this program sure absolutely so the uh the school health advisory committee is made up of community members parents educators counselors a variety of different positions within the district and they specifically are required to have

162conversations surrounding the health curriculum physical education school counseling as well as the human sexuality piece that we have talked about before with the board regarding what well and will not be taught and parents always have the right to opt out yes sir yes sir actually they have to agree to opt in they don't have to opt out they have to opt in perfect so so you and your committee did a great job and trustees again we we put together a large group of community members and staff members and parents that came up with this recommendation and as an administrative body we do we also endorse the recommendation of the shack committee and bring it to you tonight for your approval thank you sir how many times did the shack committee meet it was we met

163specifically over this three specific times as well as then the meetings that were with our uh our committees for the textbook selection so it wasn't something really fast it was a long time february and we had our initial meeting with all groups elementary and secondary and then we had a second meeting with them all inclusive it was open meeting as well all the materials have been available in hard copy and digital since that first meeting and then we've also had a couple sub committee meetings with our chat committee and they were able to make the decisions based on senate bill nine and this associated issues that they're supposed to vote on regarding the health concerns and curriculum that goes through that review process before we did a formal selection preview to you guys okay thank

164you for clarifying sure and i just like to add i served on that shack committee and i got to see every one of these lessons that were brought that's being brought before the board tonight and i really do appreciate all the long hours that y'all put into this i know that was a lot of work and you made it so easy to be able to navigate and find exactly what we needed to see to be able to give a recommendation so thank you thank thank you for taking the time to look at all those no thank you madam president i moved that we uh the board approved it the pe health instructional materials for adoption and proclamation 2022 including quaver for k5 uh catch pe for six through eight texas fitness and wellness grades 9-12

165and through 12 the uh good heart will wilson digital and texas health skills for middle school as presented and recommended by the committee a second okay we have a motion by dr harrington seconded by ms gore all those in favor raise your hand [Music] all those opposed okay we have uh six uh four and one abstention and that abstention is nice graft and now we move to reports dr glenn thank you madam president when we leave tonight we'll say man that was a long meeting but uh the reason it was a long meeting is because we had an hour worth of recognitions and and that was a good thing and as i look out in the audience and i see our coaches and our teachers and our instructional specialists and our principals and aps the

166good work that was accomplished this year all year along through our achievement spotlights is a direct result of your leadership and your hard work and your dedication so is this your winds down on behalf of this board of trustees and our central office administrative team thank you for what you do for our kids for pouring in your time and your talents to make sure that we have a great school year each year and so as we prepare to graduate and celebrate with the class of 2022 i'll remind everybody that this thursday night we'll have a senior awards followed by sunday a baccalaureate service all of this times and locations can be found on the district website but it will culminate next week with thursday and friday thursday is stars graduation which is traditionally hosted by

167acton baptist church and so we look forward to that at 7 pm next thursday and then at pirate stadium 8 o'clock on friday we'll have a ghs graduation and so i want to make sure that everyone's here tonight and has the opportunity to watch online we do limit tickets i wish i could just invite everybody if we have overflow we always will let you in but we are looking forward to celebrating with these seniors as they close one chapter in their life and they start another one last point of order i did have a an individual reach out to me today to talk about the the possibility of a four day week and so i know we've already approved our school calendar for the year but since trustee reached out to me we will put

168a report together just to weigh the pros and cons at our next meeting so i'm just kind of giving you the heads up on what that may look like again our calendar for next year has been approved but the the four-day week as far as uh as far as having that conversation moving forward with teachers it's not something that i've ever really dove deep on because it feels like it would be a burden on parents but as we enter a day and age where teachers really are stressed out and they're leaving their profession um a parent actually came to me and said hey it's uh it's not as big of a deal as you think to us and in fact we could really get behind something like that so i don't really have the details

169on it but since i was approached to get more information we certainly are willing to provide a report if that is something the board would like to see next month all right moving on discussion of hood county appraisal district property dr glenn again yeah thank you trustees this is something that we've talked about for some time now and that is the hood county appraisal district which marks mark jackson is actually a a member of that board and serves as our representative for those of you who don't know that are in the audience the granberry isd is responsible for about 62 percent of the annual budget or really every dollar spent through hcad so hcad is in the process of wanting a new building in order to to help facilitate that while also being good stewards

170of our own dollars there is a parcel of land owned by the district that really is too small to be used for a a school building and it's actually located right next to another school and so there's the opportunity to possibly look at an exchange of the current facility which is adjacent the isd for this five acre parcel which is what they're looking at the advantages to the district are pretty simple if they were to go out and spend a half a million dollars on a piece of property we would be responsible for 62 percent of that so you're talking about 360 000 dollars that would come out of the district's uh savings to pay for uh that piece of land for hcad in addition to 62 percent of the total building costs so it's

171it's a win-win for the district however there are some legal hurdles that would have to be climbed so the district would actually have to publicly post that land to see if we could obtain a more substantial offer and then again if there were a trade between two entities both appraisals would have to be valued on our end we could have it our property valued less but the property we're trading for could not be less than the property that we would be trading and so um if this is something that you want to move forward with um well let me say this this is something you're going to see us i get you more information probably in the coming days you'll get an email from me and it'll walk through the legal requirements to move forward

172with this but in addition to that and i may open it up to mr jackson i know no not at this time the vhcad is they're still working out the funding for this and so i don't want to get too far too far out in front of our skis on it but i want to make you aware that they they are interested in a piece of property and it does serve an advantage for gisd to at least consider it and so in the coming days you'll receive an email from me that'll outline the legal requirements if we were to make that swap happen all right moving on financial statements for mr whitefield why don't you just go ahead and get that done with the cash flow thank you madam president uh board in front of

173you you do have the financial statements that include transactions between september 1st 2021 and april 30th 2022. to date the revenue equals 93.16 of the budgeted amount compared to 92.67 in the 2021 year and 95.59 in the 2019-20 year um you can look through those financials and see if there's some fluctuations in different areas of that revenue however when it comes to the property taxes we based on the year-to-date uh report that i received from mr rowe at the hcad department we are on target to receive those taxes so we will realize that within uh within the year expenditures to date represent 56.05 percent of the budgeted compared to 61.07 for 20 21 and 60.45 in 1920. there are some notable things in those expenditures we've talked about them in the past the increased cost

174of fuel increase of travel since we are on the road more often these days and then the portable is under our plant maintenance it doesn't look as high at the bottom in there because there's some things in our budget currently that we have not recognized or encumbered and they are down there and you can see those in that function 81 series and that are your that is your financials for april 30th 2022. and if you have any questions i'll be glad to answer all righty why don't you just keep on going yes ma'am uh the next thing on your agenda is your cash flows an investment report um you can see that this month we actually did make a little bit of interest we have and it's listed on your memo as well we have

175started pulling away from long long term investments because right now there is a better return on the short-term investments i think in the past it might have been kind of a flip-flop on that however uh we feel like uh to enhance our cash flow and to get that better interest rate it's in our best interest to move to the short-term investments and that is your investment work very good thank you next uh well we're gonna keep you going report on categorical uh purchases between 50 000 and 100 000. yes ma'am we brought these two things to you as informational only the first one was a purchase from dell under the dir contract these are teacher cart replacements in the amount of eighty-two thousand two hundred nine dollars and sixty cents and then the second one

176was from hufflin mifflin harcourt and those are it's the go math uh texas k through five and that is under gisd bid 20203 and that was in the amount of 73 321 dollars and 60 cents okay very good okay now we will consider action on items discussed in closed session thank you madam president last action item tonight is the personnel report is put together by wes jones and our hr department i also want to recognize our principals who have done a great job helping to start filling positions early as you know it's it's always best for the district when we can uh start plugging holes in may instead of waiting until august so it's our position tonight that you approve is recommended madam president i'll make the motion that we approve staff recommendation recommendations as

177presented thank you mr jackson now a second thank you mr moore and all in favor raise your hand and that passed 7-0 all right with no further business we will adjourn this meeting at 9 12. thank you board thank you board