001um [Music] all right the time is now 502 pm i call this meeting of the granbury independent school district to order that the records show that a quorum of board members is present and that this meeting has been dually called that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the texas open meetings act texas government code chapter five five one the uh purpose of the we are now going to go into uh executive session for the following sections 551.072 discussion of purchase exchange lease and value of real property 551.074 discussion of officers employees and personnel matters the time now is 503 pm we will have a recess until 605 when we will reconvene an open session [Music] good evening everybody glad to have you here today we will now reconvene in the open
002session and the time is 605 and we'll begin with an invocation led by mark jackson don't you bow your heads and pray with me loving and gracious god you are indeed the giver of all good gifts and we thank you today for all your blessings for the successful outcomes of our school events and for all our staff members both the teaching and support members we ask that you bless them abundantly and we continue to seek your wisdom lord your guidance courage and strength be with us in our deliberations tonight and help us to be wise in the decisions we make for the good of all those who have placed their trust and confidence into our leadership lord give us the insight to lead with integrity better decisions may reflect what is right and good keep
003us from short-sightedness and pettiness help us to make decisions that are for the good of all and guards from blind self-interest in your greatness of humility to always seek your will in all that we do and say all the glory be to you loving god now and always through christ in the holy spirit forever and ever amen good evening school board and dr glenn if you have not met me yet i am melissa ship the assistant principal at bacchus and i have two fantastic fifth graders with me today i'm gonna let them introduce themselves and we'll do our pledges [Music] i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all on earth texas flag
004i pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god one individual foreign [Music] mrs [Music] and are the parents of these two students out in the audience today if you could raise your hands thank you so much [Applause] all right we're gonna move on to the achievement spotlight and we have oakwood's elementary principal chelsea gibson with area spelling bee winner all right we are here today and this is miss anchi and um she is our spelling bee champion for oakwoods and then also for the district and just a little bit about her she loves to read loves to write story books and songs and this year she decided that she wanted to give the spelling bee a try and made it all the way and here we are today so as a first year student
005with the spelling bee so she did a phenomenal job we are very proud of her and she's also ecstatic about going to tcu to represent as well so she is looking forward that you with this i'm going to congratulations good job for following me and miss gibson miss gibson am i correct we're not talking about just elementary we're talking about elementary and middle yes ma'am it was between her and an eighth grader and they kept going back and forth for multiple rounds and she was able to do and she's in which grade yes me that's wonderful so very from so all right we're gonna come over here we're gonna shake everybody's [Music] okay [Music] thank you and i'll bet you the proud parents are out there in the audience somewhere if you'll just stand up
006for a moment [Music] okay next on our achievement spotlight tonight allstate dancer uh and that's going to be presented by our granberry high school stowaways director shelby sargent good evening um i'm presenting lou johns de la garza she is our two year captain for the star wars drill team um and this year she joined 244 texas dancers from across the state to represent our team at the texas dance educators association convention in january and it's a very high honor and she represented stairways with grace and hard work and dignity just as she does every day in school so it's my pleasure to present her and i'm just very proud to have her as my captain um and just the job that she has done this past january representing our team our district and just pirate
007pride so for you [Applause] [Music] um [Music] and i'll bet you'll lose moms out there somewhere oh there's you dad's here too [Applause] all right we've got some pretty spectacular kiddos here today uh next fort worth stock show art contest winners and that is going to be presented by the granberry high school art teacher kelsey daffone good evening everybody i have several kids up here to brag on i'm going to start with emily pyles emily actually represented granberry high school individually so she was one of over 200 kids in her age group and she plays sixth place it's one of 14 individual wins in the last 30 years for granberry isd pretty big i also had eight other very talented artists who submitted together as a class portfolio and we took the win this year
008which helps our department win five thousand dollars for supplies and it's the 25th win in the last 30 years so those students that are able to be here with us carl robina lucas brown and kaylee wadsworth let's say their names them the ones that couldn't be here tonight were abigail greene brooks pierce ivan perez ethan klinksgale and jocelyn dominguez these students are also very involved in other activities so i love that they can carve out time to represent us in such a way like this pretty cool thank you [Music] yes [Music] is that for melanie give that to melanie and i bet you there's some proud parents of these youngsters as well if you'll stand up thanks so much for sharing your talented students with us all right and there's more next we have an
009informational highlight on capstone dual credit courses from jacqueline bradshaw and priscilla lombaras good evening thank you we're here to talk about the ap capstone program that we are hopeful will launch at cranberry high school fall of 2020. the ap capstone diploma program equips students with the independent research collaborative teamwork and communication skills that are increasingly valued by colleges and of course are necessary for career readiness as well the ap capstone courses are skills driven offer student choice and incorporate through course performance tasks that are completed during the spring semester which are locally scored and externally validated by the board and members of our community students can and are encouraged to choose topics connected to other ap classes they are most interested in for further exploration and deeper understanding which is attractive to some students we
010like to call them excuse me passion projects the seminar overview that i would be teaching the ap seminar miss embarrassed would take the ap research so seminar is a foundational course that engages students in cross-curricular conversations that explore the complexities of academic and real world topics and issues by analyzing multiple and competing viewpoints students would be encouraged to explore topics through interdisciplinary lenses of choice such as scientific historical economical science with mrs lombaris for example so they would go from me and they would matriculate to her and her research course the next year using an inquiry and investigation or investigative framework students would practice reading analyzing articles research studies foundational literary philosophical texts etc students learn to synthesize that information from multiple sources develop their own perspectives and research-based written essays deliver design and perhaps
011one of the most exciting aspects would be to defend oral and visual present presentations both individually and as part of a team in front of other not only members of our high school but members of the community too so it's sort of like a foundational course for a pre-master's program ultimately the course aims to equip students with the power to analyze and evaluate information with accuracy and precision in order to craft communicate and defend compelling evidence-based arguments as they make connections between various issues and their own lives so we would love for this to launch fall of 2020 ideally we would really like to see at least 10 students enrolled and we are hopeful that that would double by the next year we've seen dual credit take off something about choice that's important for students
012and i think there are plenty of students to go around and share and the prerequisites there are no prerequisites for seminar for ap seminar as a foundational course but there is a prerequisite for the ap research they'd have to take the seminar course first i think it would definitely benefit our students to come with strong reading and writing skills but at a minimum students that are curious passionate and possess grit are welcome and will do just fine with us they have that so i like to turn it over to ms sumbers please hi i'm priscilla limbres and i would be teaching the ap research class currently i do projects uh that pretty much set the foundation of this course the problem is that the kids that participate in this do it on their own free
013time you know so they come and sit with me during lunch time on saturdays i open the lab for them probably the best shining example of the student that we aim to create through this program is scout skaggs google her you will see the long list of accomplishments that this young lady has has done and in sitting with her this week she's a senior now and looking at the time that she has dedicated to this and just looking at the time that she actually logged she has put in about 386 hours into her research if you think that a school year is about 180 days for the kids she has pretty much earned two courses worth of work and this was just her own passion project and a lot of times when i approach students
014their question is do i get any credit for this and so here is our solution for this because we have the talent out there um to do these projects they have the ideas it's just the time to actually see it through my area of expertise is the stem fields however my course would not actually launch until 2023 so that gives me about a year and a half to do the legwork because honestly i want this to be student driven by student choice and so i'm already in the talks with several faculty at tarleton state university in the fields of agriculture music art that would be willing to mentor our kids so that they have those experts that they can rely on to carry out these passion projects at the end of the year they will
015have to write a four thousand four thousand to five 000 word essay which if this is your passion it's going to be very easy to do and we will the plan is to actually offer a night where the students will present to their work and the whole community will be invited so you can come and learn from just the amazing work that goes on at granberry high school so to the parents that have kids that are 10th graders and below we're going to be recruiting so keep your eye on the news and we'll be out there thank you excellent oh any questions sorry yeah so we want to recruit yes yes already yes ladies i had a question you said that the prerequisite was the seminar course is it an ap credit also and then
016they go into the practicum and there's ap credit so there's an opportunity twice there yeah so they would they would go with ms bradshaw first and get the foundation from her and then once they get credit for her course and they come to me and we would be working in close connection with one another to a line well as soon as you said something about scout skagg she had me i mean she she was just phenomenal and the work that she put in for her and with her was just fantastic i'm i'm excited to see what the future looks like for this particular so thank you very much good job thank you all right now we're going to move on to school board recognition month thank you madam president uh this time it's my great
017pleasure to uh to recognize our board of trustees for january which is school board appreciation month across the state of texas and if you'll bear with me i just want to read an excerpt from governor abbott abbott's uh proclamation in texas we place immense value on our youth we protect them guide them and prepare them for a successful future because we know they are the next generation of leaders for our state and nation we also understand the key role education plays in young people's lives school boards are an integral part of the fabric woven into the tapestry of the texas education system they work with parents educational professionals and community members to create a successful learning environment for our students texans know they can count on their board members along with other dedicated school administration
018officials to create opportunities to discuss important issues develop innovative solutions and empower educators while remaining focused on their students futures at this time i encourage all texans to recognize and honor the hard work and successes of our school board members who play such an important role in the education of students across the state and i would echo those words for our own trustees but just to go a little bit deeper our trustees each year are dedicated to serving this community jumping back to august they they reviewed our budget and lowered our tax rate for a sixth consecutive consecutive year uh year in and year out the board is dedicated to adopting a balanced budget to make sure they're fiscally responsible with taxpayers money this year they recognize the hardships placed on all of our teachers
019our bus drivers our paraprofessionals and they awarded stipends uh retention stipends of a thousand dollars in the fall and another five hundred dollars right before christmas for the efforts of our teachers and staff to keep schools open knowing that uh covid was a strain and teachers were putting themselves at risk they awarded ten days of paid leave for any individual who was a staff member of this district who happened to be stricken with the virus so they could stay at home or be at home with their kids and their family in addition to all that they stayed resolute making sure that our schools stayed open knowing that that sending our kids home for remote learning was not a good option academically for kids above and beyond all that these trustees they take time to go
020out on the campuses and meet with teachers serve them breakfast they go to games their parents grandparents some of them and uh and most of all their their champions for our staff and for our kids i'm proud to work with this group i'm proud of the job they do and you as our community should be proud of them as well please join me in thanking our granberry isd board of trustees well thank you dr glenn and thank you uh audience today um i don't think you're going to find anyone on the board that does this for anything out of complete love for the children of this community that's that's why we're here that's why we do it trust me it's not the pay okay moving on to public hearing of the annual taper report and
021our presenter will be miss tammy clark our assistant superintendent all right good evening thank you for having me so um there are some great things on the taper report and then there are some things that i have to just tell you because it's part of the mandatory reporting so we'll go over the highlights of the taper report instead of campus performance objectives which i put in board book some highlights of the campuses i'm going to go over the district performance objectives and the progress we're making kind of big picture and then the have to's the accreditation status the special ed compliance status our safe schools reporting and then our performance of previous years graduates those will be faster because we go any further explain what paper oh yes ma'am our taper is our texas academic
022performance report it comes out every fall about december we were waiting until january for this one because there's a special little gms got reviewed when the rest of the state did not and that's going to be upcoming so i'll tell you about that the glossary link you can get online and it was also in board book as well so some of the highlights that you'll see as we go through this is gisd in 2021 outperforms state and district average passing rates across the board and then something that is we've been focusing on our emerging bilinguals also outperform state and district passing percentages on all of our academic tested areas for all approaches meets and masters so that's quite an achievement our graduation rate is higher than state and region averages our dropout rates are lower
023and then our ccmr numbers there's a lag year there the numbers for the 2021 taper report are actually from 1920 and so our numbers are lower compared to the rest of the state but it's been an area of focus for a little while now and i expect that the next couple of years those numbers are going to come up based on some of the programming that we're doing and we'll talk about that some more [Music] so let's talk about elementary campuses in red is the state averages in blue is region 11. i'm going to make this higher because i'm kind of awkwardly just lifted okay there we go now i can stand up tall or kind of tall so then blue is region 11 and purple is our numbers so in third grade through fifth
024grade those numbers you can see that last year us keeping our doors open and our commitment of our teachers to really digging in with every student while they were there really paid off and gisd is higher across the board in all elementary than our state and regional kids and so keeping the doors open was absolutely the right answer for our kids in middle school similar results with the exception of seventh grade writing and we are definitely going to be stars changing the testing is changing and it's going to incorporate writing anyway so we have a writing initiative across the whole district where we're going to be writing across the curriculum but our numbers in gisd for 6th 7th and 8th also are very strong compared to state and region averages for our eoc numbers we're
025very close to north texas and our state counterparts and above in a lot of the subjects in english too that's our biggest gap we've made some programming decisions a couple of years ago that are rolling up for english too so i expect next year our english two numbers are going to be surpassing our region and state numbers there as well so i just want to say thank you again for making the commitment to keeping the doors open and and supporting our staff for whatever we needed to do last year our our kids performed there was a coveted sign we were talking in in the state some of those seminars and they talk about anywhere from three months to a year of covert slide depending on what content you're talking about and our kids fared better
026than our than the state students and so i'm very proud of the work that our our schools have done and i'm thankful that we were here to do it some more taper information that is that i pulled out are a lot of the members that go for ccmr again these numbers on 2021 are are sometimes the 2020 2019 numbers and so there's a little bit of disconnect with some of our cte members and our college ready numbers that are lower than the state averages but for ap dual credit course completion and college ready grads we have made some programming changes where for college readiness we have some dual enrollment courses that are going to really help some of those course completions go higher and so that should help our state percentage comparison we also have
027a college readiness course in english and a texas bridge course in math those courses are specifically for students who are testing below college-ready levels and that's going to help get them there so that we will have more college ready grads and our percentages there will increase and then cte has been seeking industry-based certification opportunities especially for the ones that match the programs that we already have that are amazing so those numbers that are not underlined are where we're under the state averages but we have things in place to answer those and then we're like i said doing better on graduation rate and sat and a ct average scores [Music] so our highlights this is where you can read into the campus by campus but across the district we're doing some things that are really worth
028bragging about observation feedback coaching that really started with the bacchus tip they've been working with [Music] with the state of texas and they brought in a observation feedback coach and what they were doing is getting trained to give personalized pd to teachers based on teaching like going and doing teacher observations and that was going so well and the teachers were being so very responsive it was just setting up a really good helpful culture of growth there that they started talking about it and then we brought it to all of our campuses so all of our principals aps and instructional specialists have been trained to coach teachers with this observation feedback coaching and eight district level employees have been coached to support those principals and is's on those campuses so that we can continue that culture
029of um of growth of our teachers in tier one instruction so that's pretty cool uh stacy brown is going to come up here and talk about esther and we've spent a lot of money on interventions in math and reading due to covid's side that was the intention of a lot of that money so every campus is doing it a little bit different some are doing pull-outs some are doing classes and some are doing with tutors but they are hitting interventions in math and reading and our improvements are looking really good from beginning of year to middle of your data reading academies for k-3 teachers if if you know a k-3-3 teacher in reading you need to give them a big hug they have had a lot of extra work on their plate reading academies is
030basically like taking a master's course in foundational literacy and they have they have gone through this training as have their instructional coaches and the administrators that are over those levels so that we can improve instruction for foundational literacy so that's a lot of extra on their plate in a year that's been pretty tough but it's what's best for kids and it's the direction that we're going and they have just all been fabulous with that and then there's some really engaging parent and community partnerships that have happened we have guest speakers from nasa that have skyped in nfl athletes emma had a fireman come and talk and some authors come and talk and so some community partnerships like that we also partner with hood county substance abuse the child advocacy center brazos pregnancy center mission granberry
031lots of community partnerships to give our kids a really round education and then some leadership and real world experiences every single campus has some really neat ones i tried to highlight some of those in your board book so i won't talk about all of those but i could sit up here and brag about each campus quite a long time but for time's sake we're going to keep moving so here's the mandatory reporting stuff last year in 2021 no districts were rated so you get a rating of not rated declared state of disaster but due to senate bill 1365 gms had been previously rated unacceptable and we were able to request an alternative evaluation from the state because of the progress that they had made in 2021 and they met eligibility dp rated acceptable so gms
032got a campus rating of acceptable so that is awesome um special education determination status uh in 2021 we were marked needs assistance it's on a scale i think of one to four we have some threes we want to be ones some of those threes are in sped discipline referrals out of the classroom and in programming for regular setting for early childhood we've had some conversations with our discipline and what we can do to keep those kids in class but still do discipline we've brought in some restorative discipline practices and and training on that so that we can try to keep kids in the classroom so that they can learn and then spread programming and regular setting for early childhood we're probably moving to a place where we're going to need them to be certified anybody
033that we hire forward from now certified in special education so that they can get those minutes in that setting and that will take care of that needs assistance target areas we're always going to be targeting star performance we always want to get better in that in every sub pop all the way across the board for safe schools discipline action summary in 2122 there were two incidents that qualify for that both of them were more drug charges and that's just something that you have to report [Music] and then another thing that's kind of interesting is mandatory reporting of graduates in first year of college how they did so our graduates of 2019 how they did in college in 2019-2020 you can see that there's quite a few that are not trackable and not found that's because
034this is only reported from texas public universities and texas public colleges so any of our graduates that went to a college outside of texas is not going to be included in these numbers nor are any of our students who went on just to have a job or went into the military so those things aren't reported but for the ones who did go to college you can see that a lot of them are doing pretty well in college so our area of focus of course we're going to continue to strive to improve academics a lot of that is going to be targeted in early education and foundational literacy with the reading academies we're having a reading and writing initiative that will continue until our numbers improve and all kids are able to read and write that
035is just a foundational skill individual and responsive instruction through small groups or centers based learning especially in the younger grades supporting our teachers through observation feedback and continue that program so that our admin supports their individual growth where they are as a teacher and what they need to work on and then grow students through restorative discipline practices and keep them and get them to know what's right and what's wrong they know what's right and what's wrong but some restorative practice so that we can keep them in class if that's at all possible we also want to bridge the gap between all of our student subpopulations and we're doing a lot of work there we've done a lot of work there and our emerging bilingual members are amazing and we're going to continue to keep that
036a focus all kids can learn supporting and connecting with staff schools community everybody is in it together for the same purpose of growing our kids and then providing as many opportunities as possible for our students so that gisd is the educational destination for all kids and empowering them to be competing in an ever-changing world which is our mission and that is all i have unless you have questions tamia i don't have questions but of course i have a comment yes i am so proud of our parents who stood up in the light of all the unknown and all the scary changes who sent their kids to school i'm so proud of the teachers who work through all of the issues that with which they have dealt the last couple of years i am proud of
037the administrators who continue to find a way not to burn out i'm so proud of dr glenn and the leadership who has put together calendars that were more likely to keep our campuses open and all of your you had i think 27 or 28 places you reported and the majority of which our students were excelling on every grade level however i had to do one step further i took the youngsters who were in the third grade in 2019 looked at their scores as fifth graders in 2021. and parents if you're not proud of this and teachers if you're not proud of this shame on you because in reading in 2019 when they were in the third grade 70 percent uh approached are were above grade level showed mastery and as fifth graders that 70 went
038to 80 those same youngsters i'm talking about the kids that went from third grade to fifth grade those youngsters gained 10 percent in performance at being approaching or being above and those same youngsters in mastery went from 27 percent to 35 percent in a time when other schools were shut down and they continued to have the coveted gap there was not a covert gap for those kids thank you teachers and parents in math in the third grade they were 75 approach or above as fifth graders they were at 83 percent and for the mastery the third grade they were at 25 and the fifth grade they were at 40 percent folks y'all are doing a heck of a good job and thank you so much all of you for what you do thank you for
039pointing out all of those numbers because there's been a lot of hard work behind those numbers and i know that the teachers really appreciate the extra that you do for recognizing their hard work thank you [Music] and no other questions or comments from anybody else on the board okay [Music] we have people who want to speak at five minutes a piece you'd be here over an hour and a half i'm going to bring it down to greenland's [Music] citizen stands as agenda or non-agenda items in the public comments by regular board members comments addressing agenda items will be heard at the beginning of the meeting and they have allotted for 30 and do them minutes [Music] um i want to go ahead and let's get them all in here [Music] and uh mr moore our
040vice president will check it out the board shall not tolerate the disruption of the meeting by members of the audience if after at least one warning from the sighting [Music] folks we need to keep that call we're all able all right okay [Music] and the first one i have here is daniel pierce i don't know if there's a clock usually the county commissioners have a clock am i going to it cool my pleasure so uh i don't like coming down to here and talking about these things because it's unpleasant uh because people want it to be unpleasant so i'm not really going to speak too much to the people of the board or the people here i want to speak to whatever few queer kids are actually in granbury school district i want you to
041hear from somebody who made it who made it out of here and who's come back and i just want you to know a few things i want you to know a few things about the people who are pushing this who are trying to get books yanked out of your high school library who spent years trying to get books yanked out of the public library one of the people on this board basically campaigned into that based off of that activism and just a couple things about me i graduated 99 i'm a high school i'm here i'm bisexual and i knew some of that when i was in high school but i couldn't let myself know that i had to live in a state of denial and self-hatred for years years bearing it and that's really what's
042at the heart of what's happening here right now and what's been happening for a while there are people who want us to hate ourselves because they hate us and i hope you who are in high school here take that to heart when you allow them to program you to hate yourself you are giving them victory it is difficult to deny them that victory quite often especially as a young person who has so little to grasp on in the world but it's worth it and i hope that you survive and i hope that you find that victory that you deny them their victory you see they hate us usually because they hate themselves or they hate someone in their life or they're just hateful poisonous human beings and gay people are an easy easy target and
043always have been that's just the reality of our world i want you to know a little bit about queer life i'm one of the most vanilla conventional boring bisexual white men that is out that you will probably ever meet that doesn't matter the people who hate us will never love you if you lick their boots if you if you pattern yourself after them i've spent a large chunk of my life trying to understand this complex this dynamic how to understand myself reflected in other people it's very difficult and i can't offer you a lot of details because being a young person now i have to assume without children of my own is incredibly difficult with the internet and i want the parents in this room to know that whatever our political differences which are almost
044certainly severe you have is that me can i say my last finish the sentence you have my sympathies because it's incredibly difficult to raise children now and it will probably only continue to get more difficult completely independent of people's political opinions because of technology thank you for your time thank you mr peters next and if i pronounce names wrong please forgive me darcy welled welch i'm sorry darcy ladies and gentlemen of the board my name is darcy welch and i'm a sophomore at ghs thank you for taking the time to listen to me today as i speak about the bill calling for the removal of books from our school libraries i feel this new book banning bill is irresponsible ignorant and even dangerous many books on the list from representative kraft contain helpful information about
045abortions sexual education and human rights books that mention lgbtq plus people make up over half the books listed removal of these books could lead to miseducation of teens due to lack of consistent information which could add to mistrust in parents teachers and other adults in their life this constant need to control youth and their development shows a systematic problem within this school system so many histories such as those as lgbtq plus people indigenous people and that of the true history of our country will be a race if this book ban follows through one of granberry high school's own seniors kennedy tackett started a petition to stop the book ban in just four days it had already gotten 646 signatures one of the most liked comments on the petition came from ghs senior caitlin sucampo quote
046i don't need others to decide for me what's comfortable and appropriate for me to read i'm here to get educated and i should be able to go to my library for the necessary resources to do so stop censoring my education uncomfortable with the book you picked close the book and put it back on the shelf end quote what is the board hoping to achieve by bringing this into fruition why must anyone decide the acceptable level of comfort before a book is removed from the shelf among other comments on the petition one student mentioned that quote any and all forms of book bans are attacks on educational freedom and librarians should not be discredited in their ability to choose books that are appropriate and educational end quote in conclusion this ban would have adverse effects on
047the well-being and education of our student body as students we deserve a complete education free from bias we want to learn about things that may not be the prettiest or the most comfortable but we as students are entitled to complete knowledge not information that has been disseminated thank you for your time thank you very much darcy next up we have kennedy tackett [Applause] hello everyone my name is kennedy tackett i'm a senior thank you i'm a senior at the high school and today i'm here to talk about the books under attack in our libraries i want to start this out simple the job of the superintendent and the school board is to not only protect the students in this district but to make them feel like they have a place in this community but i
048gotta tell you from what i'm seeing so far you are failing at your job when i caught wind of the height excuse me when did the books being torn off the shelves at the high school's library i was astounded i looked further into the situation discovering that there was a committee soon to be formed to review the controversial books of the krauss list the fact that a committee is being formed in the first place is a major issue an analysis of the 850 book list found the following likely reasons for inclusion 60 percent because of lgbtq plus eight percent because of race and racism thirteen percent because of sexual education something that is not taught in all texas schools mind you these books are educational not pornographic i'm enraged that these harmless books are being
049attacked and i'm not alone on this i created a petition on friday morning to allow other students and members of this community to have a voice where they may not be heard elsewhere as of 3 pm today we have 654 signatures with lots of comments from supporters i want to read a few a few of these to you from students one writes i don't need others to decide for me what is comfortable and appropriate for me to read another writes blatant racism and hobophobia is easily seen in the choices of the books they are trying to ban finally one that i find to be quite powerful freedom of speech until it's something they don't like as to as to the comment made in the hood county news article stating that due to our conservative climate
050these discussions are to be had at home i am deeply concerned because of these i mean first of all because we are in a conservative climate those conversations are not really had trust me i walk through the halls of the high school every day hearing nothing but slurs and derogatory comments towards the minority groups included in this list second it's plain and simple if you don't like it put the book down no one is forcing you to read it stop the census censorship in our district wake up to the reality that we are all different and we should all embrace each other with love not blatant hate thank you thank you kennedy next we have lori yanish thank you good evening good evening i've been an educator for 13 years i'm a parent of two
051kids um in the schools here i really just want to take this opportunity to thank you for your dedication to our kids for making the difficult decisions and addressing these issues with the kids at heart to those of you that are sorry to those of you that are upset about the removal of the books i just want to remind you that kids do not see things hear things or experience things the same as you and i do as adults and to many kids this content is shocking it's confusing and it's even disgusting to them and honestly i feel like it should be to you too um so again just thank you for standing up for us and helping us to protect our kids um i know it's a difficult job thank you lori next we
052have linda hassan you really have to lure it now good evening removing pornographic or sexually explicit content from our school libraries is absolutely the right thing to do our tax dollars fund the materials they're in and therefore books that are not appropriate for our children have no place in the shelves of the library if parents want to expose their children to these things then by all means do it in their own homes i'd like to know how the books arrived in our school libraries who's in charge of the books what is the process for vetting books so what is the district's policy regarding regarding ordering vetting and placement of books at this time thank you linda alyssa carter [Music] hi my name is alyssa carter i'm a student at ghs and the issue i'd like
053to address today on the stand is the misinformation being spread like a wildfire community in our schools i first found out about the book review through the staff members students and social media because of information that was being spread i was under the impression that books were being banned permanently not to be reviewed but to be packed up and put in a storage unit to be forgotten about i only found out the truth because i had to inform myself but the i fear that half the people here don't have the proper information and continue to blame the school board for something they have no control over the fact is that governor abbott and the tea have made this decision for all schools in texas not just granberry on november 1st 2021 for beaut for books
054to be reviewed not to be banned though we have to acknowledge that some books will not come back to library because they have no place in the school life very every emphasis on the school library it will still be able to be purchased and read online or in the hood county library the list that was sent out by mike krauss has 850 books to be reviewed statewide by every school district however it is my understanding that granberry has only a fraction of these books it is important to note that the books being reviewed are because they either have topics supporting abortion crt lgbtq plus or have pornography it is because texas does not support the topics being used in these schools for education that they are being reviewed in the first place thank you alyssa
055and next we have mindy techit hello everybody thank you for the time i just wanted to read gisd's at two parts of gisd's own policy a district possesses significant discretion to determine the content of its school libraries a district must however exercise its discretion in a manner consistent with the first amendment students first amendment rights are implicated by the removal of books from the shelves of a school library the district shall not remove materials from a library for the purpose of denying students access to ideas with which the district disagrees a district may remove materials because they are pervasively vulgar or based solely upon the educational suitability of the books in question that's the supreme court in 1982 the second part of the policy is the following principles shall guide the board and staff in
056responding to challenges of instructional resources a complaint may a complainant may raise an objection to an instructional resource used in the school's educational program despite the fact that the professional staff selecting the resources were qualified to make the selection followed the proper procedure and adhered to the objective objectives and criteria for instructional resource set out in this policy a parent's ability to exercise control over reading listening or viewing matter extends only to his or her own child access to a challenged resource shall not be restricted during the reconsideration process except the district may deny access to a child requested by the child's parents the major criterion for the final decision on challenged resources is the appropriateness of the resource for its intended educational use no challenged instructional resource shall be removed solely because of the
057ideas expressed therein thank you and next we have chris teckett you know just me wes okay all right public schools get kids ready to go out and be successful in the world that is so much more than just reading writing and arithmetic public schools allow kids to see many perspectives to be open to possibilities and to understand differences what is being talked about taking books off of shelves that books are somehow harming our kids that's being pushed by the same people who are actively looking to tear down public schools they are advising parents to get kids out of public schools they're working to get legislators elected who will support taking public school funding and creating vouchers from it that will allow the well to do to go to private faith-based schools and those who can't
058afford the tuition will be trapped in underfunded public schools they are working to inject their religion into what should be a place where faith is not imposed look you should be and likely are here because you believe in public schools but you are following those who want to tear apart the profession who demean educators as professionals and i can't understand why we would go down that path public schools aren't here to deliver the education to all kids that this parent or that parent wants for their own child parents should be able to excuse or remove their child from elements that they aren't comfortable with which is current district policy for something that is challenged a book or a lesson it doesn't impact all students and it preserves everyone's first amendment rights as per the supreme
059court public schools are here to get kids ready to step into society meaning all of our kids have the tools to be successful are able to learn about where we've been and where we're headed next about differences and how valuable they are and about finding themselves and that's why we're here speaking up based on my open records request that i just received so thank you faith um there have not been any requests so far from any member of the community for removal of books this school year yet here we are having this conversation um we are aware that boxes of books were being removed from school libraries on tuesday january 11th including anything that referenced lgbtq or sexuality not a handful of titles boxes we are aware there wasn't any formal process followed especially not
060following the policy that mindy just read just a directive given where the district is violating that same policy and now we get a committee which i hope truly is legit and not just fate accompli we are watching we will stand in the gap we will go the extra mile for every single one of our kids thank you thank you chris susan wood thank you my name is susan wood i'm a retired counselor and educator i'm speaking in regards to the books that have been pulled for review let me first say i believe it is the right of every parent to tell their child whether they may or may not read a particular book i am however strongly opposed to telling another person's child what they may or may not read the freedom to choose what
061you want to read is the ultimate expression of liberty imposing your standards and beliefs on the community at large is not acceptable the school is here to serve all students and the books are available to those students should not limit them when a student reads they are able to expand their understanding beyond the confines of their current situation studies show students who read develop more empathy that they gain the opportunity to walk in another's shoes reading can show us different viewpoints and life circumstances we can see the world through another's eyes as another ethnicity culture social class gender profession or age books can tell us what it's like to lose a limb immigrate to another country be born into poverty to survive tragedy taken together this can change our relationships with others in the real
062world i'd like to close by reading a quick excerpt from forged by reading by beers and probes the only way to avoid discomfort is to avoid the issues if we can avoid talking about and reading about problematic matters issues that might require us to rethink values and assumptions then we won't feel the discomfort that such difficult thought might entail if we banish from our minds from our libraries and our classrooms in the examination of politics religion race environment sex justice and the like we might protect ourselves from the possible discomfort we might experience all we have to do is trivialize the curriculum to the point that few will be bothered by anything if we can make instruction completely insignificant utterly irrelevant to anyone's emotional and intellectual life then absolutely no one should rise up to
063protest the threat we pose to treasured beliefs valued affiliations or well-established habits of thought and action total irrelevancy absolute insignificance and unwavering stasis are effective strategies for avoiding the discomfort of thought and change please don't let education become irrelevant thank you susan isabella guzman good evening my name is isabella guzman and i'm a senior at granberry high school whenever i first heard about this book banning or we are aware that it's not a book banning but more of a book review we do know that i didn't really at first i just i didn't care all that much because i'm a senior i graduated four months and i thought nobody really goes to the library much anymore but now more that i thought about it the more i realized how ridiculous this is i am queer
064i am brown and i'm very proud of that and i am well aware of the censorship that has happened to my people over the centuries i'm well aware of this and i think it is horrible and i don't think that little children should be shocked or disgusted by our identities and by the books and even people who don't identify with those identities there were books one was called i'm pregnant now what do i do for teen pregnancy sexual education which we don't have at the high school we have no sex ed um so teen pregnancy sexual ed lgbtq plus like love stories and safety and race and activism which has been so important in my identity as one that is the direct result of colonialism and the survival of my people and i think it's
065disgusting that even in 2022 we still have to have these discussions about censorship thank you isabella hi um thank you school board and dr glenn for this opportunity to speak to you on this issue this controversial issue about the books this is a sensitive issue that has long been in the works and infiltrated our minds and social fabric ultimately falling into the lapse of schools today we've seen this coming for a long time and now it is here it will take courage to face it and find a solution that our children remain safe and well educated in the ultimate educational goal to inspire them to help them create new things help them critically think in solving problems and to become healthy well-balanced citizens who can contribute to society by continuing to grow and flourish our
066responsibility as parents and educators is to do just that to ensure that our children thrive in these tumultuous times and what they read in their libraries plays a big part in that i want to be clear i am aware of the very sensitive issues that our social challenges have in our communities our schools are microcosms of what we face today we are witnessing a polarization in our communities that stand for different value systems and they culminate in our school boards today this shows in our books and the choices that we are making one group of parents stand for and live by the founding fathers judeo-christian beliefs which are found in our country's very beginnings tradition and customs to ensure order and law were taught in our homes and schools as a course that valued self-discipline
067and self-restraint training children with morals and customs that supported traditional views of the family and social behaviors in order for their moral i'm sorry in order for their community at large i repeat for their community at large to function in a healthy productive way both economically socially and spiritually through time in passing years and opposition to religious traditions and practices emerged purposely and methodically the secularist view is that it has its own moral relativism secularists have the idea that because nobody is objectively right or wrong everyone is ought to tolerate and i'm sorry everyone ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when considerably large disagreements about the morality of particular things exists they hold a different moral standard and that has been evident in schools for some time i see a society that has
068evolved in the last 50 years that came from a judeo-christian foundation that our founding fathers evolved to now a very secular relativism i think we need to review the books carefully uh fairly and i hope we can get some information on what those books are who comprised the group or the committee that you put together and what were those people that were put on the committee because everybody's included in this public school decision thank you thank you shelley [Applause] jillian tremble [Music] hi guys big shocker here to talk about the books um i do have a speech prepared but before i did want to address something said by someone else here i i'm so sorry the name has completely slipped my mind but someone had said that a lot of these books are being banned
069because the youth find them disturbing the youth find them like just disturbing and they're hurting us and as a youth i'm 16 i'm a junior at the high school i have never in my experience read a library book that i've been disturbed that has really bothered me and if i have i would have just closed it and put it away that doesn't mean it needs to be absolutely removed from any sort of circulation so like i said my name is jillian tremble we're into the speech now i am in the top three percent of my class i'm on track to graduate with uh with a multiplier in my degree and with distinction and i don't say any of this to sit here and talk about myself or to brag but i simply want to emphasize
070to y'all who it is that is upset about this book ban and it's not just delinquents who want to read smut it's honor students who want access to the full extent of their education i'm not going to sit here and talk about the complete slippery slope that book banning leads to because i learned from a book that i checked out from my school's library that i don't need to resort to logical fallacy to make a point i'm simply going to say that no government and public school is an extension of government has ever banned books and banned information from its public and been remembered in history as the good guys i also want to question who is making this decision i count probably i'm going to say 10 people here i'm not going to waste
071my time and count but and then one politician and whoever's on this board that's under 50 people sitting and deciding the information that thousands of students are going to have access to and those people like everyone else like myself included are going to be subject to prejudice i don't mean this in a racial way i don't mean this in a sexual way i mean it in the purest sense of the word being that their opinions are gonna change what books that they think are and aren't appropriate and i think that that is entirely undemocratic opinions should not justify what information children have access to because we need to be able to see all sides of opinions whether they're wrong or right to determine for ourselves what's wrong with right or we raise mindless citizens i
072understand that at 16 i've not yet legally earned the right to decide for myself what is and isn't right for me what i'm here to question is that i i'm not going to throw names because i know that's their livelihood but i've yet to talk to a single teacher who's happy about this my parents did not receive anything about this this was not put up to a vote so i understand that adults have to make decisions for me but the community has the right to decide as opposed to i mean 50 tops people putting in their opinions toward this and limiting everything else i thank you guys for your time and i hope you make the right decision thank you jillian next i have jenny thomas [Music] i am jenny thomas thank you [Music] and
073i thank you for the time to speak i'm one of those traditional people i'm old i believe in our country i believe in our education system i'm a product of public education i have what probably 15 teachers in my family i think that it we have a responsibility to our kids to your kids to all kids to be prepared by our public education system i think that it's good i think that it should be continued i think that we should have the opportunity to review these books and see what they are because we are the ones that have gone before and made this the nation that it is i'm proud to be part of this community and i've seen some good things here and i think that we're doing a good job i love that
074the reports that i've heard here today all the speakers have had you know good input i am aware that there's other things besides these books that are a concern one of them is the fact that uh we're against 1619 misrepresentation being taught in our schools that's not what happened we need to be teaching 1776 history we're against common core being taught we're against crt we need to know and be aware that yes everybody does have a voice me included i'm not dead yet i want my kids and my grandkids to know the values that i had and why they worked because they have this united states has sent more missionaries more uh people to educate other nations than any nation in the world to this day we have that distinction dr glenn i was so
075happy to hear your particular input tonight because that's part of what we need to know we need to know that we are doing good that we are getting there the t what did that time do those reports were very telling we need those reports and we need to be communicating with each other i myself am very much a product of the library when i was growing up our school burned and i had read most of the books that were in the school library at that time now i had a teacher i had a teacher that took her time to check out books and feed me from the town library and so i i've got a lot of my education before uh it was time to read them in school tell the two cities are still
076one of my favorite books and the the thing is that we need to be able to read part of that reading let me say one more thing you can where do we see these books that are under review who's on the committee that decides and how do we get on the committee thank you miss thomas [Applause] next we have katie coleman [Music] hi can you hear me okay um i just want to say thank you to everyone who is here because we means we all care about the kids and um how awesome is it that democracy works and we can come talk to you guys so thank you for listening to us um i'm concerned because often what happens when people um look over books for review um even if you have the best intention
077you're just trying to look out for your kids i know it's that only one side of the story gets told especially because and y'all are all right and y'all are picking the committee are they all going to be white can we have some brown people on that committee too that's extremely important because we have a lot of brown kids and we're only going to get more and their story needs to be told representation matters it's going to affect the way they learn um so we just we need to make sure that the committee has um that there's oversight and that there are people who are going to make sure that we're not just going to try to erase identities and then i just want to talk about the kid who goes to the library to
078look at books probably doesn't fit in with all the other kids so it is the person who maybe is gay and needs to see themselves in the stories so they don't feel like they have to be erased so that they are not bitter and hurt the rest of their lives and the last thing i want to say is that my friends my best friend is a vegetarian which it's okay with her if i have chicken i don't have to pretend that chicken doesn't exist because she does she thinks it's bad for her and her kids and she chooses not to feed them that and i will never give her kids meat but she doesn't expect me to not give my kids meat and i think we just need to respect our teachers and trust that
079they know what they're doing they have degrees and i would much rather my children learn about our history even the difficult parts in a classroom with a qualified teacher who can help navigate the discussion than on social media which is where they're going to learn about it by the way they're not going to learn about it at home they're going to learn about it from social media from their friends and it's going to be nasty so we need books thank you guys thank you katie [Applause] next we have megan cook is it good okay my name is megan i have two kids in our school district they're uh fifth and seventh graders this year they have grown up in our school district and one of the concerns that i have about the book review is
080that as a school district your role is to remain neutral that means a political and a religious and when we look at the list of books that are on this up for review it is very concerning that in our political in our climate right now everything is very polarized and as a school district as a school board i would encourage you not to make this a polarized issue but to teach our students how to reach a consensus through leadership and in my mind that means making it transparent who is on the committee making sure that the committee is representative of our school district and the diversity that exists within our school district i think also i would encourage every community committee member to read the books that are up for review and i think that
081they should also have to offer a justification to us as parents as to why that book may end up being removed from the library i feel like that is a thorough and objective way to help make sure this review occurs in a way that benefits our children that being said books to me offer a whole new world a world that doesn't exist in my day to day books are to teach about humanity and empathy and connection and i feel like when you take that away especially when you take the representation of lgbtq students when you take that out of our libraries you're hurting that you're not fostering those beautiful character traits that i want my children to exhibit so i'm just asking that as we as a school district look at these books that we
082do it in a way that really honors our students and is a neutral and a political and a religious because that's as a public student as a public school system what we need you to be thank you thank you megan [Applause] dave eagle uh thank you for letting me speak today and actually i agree with the lady who just spoke about the committee being diverse and having several different people review the books i do agree that they should read the books and i do agree that they should justify their stance if they reach a stance on the books i agree with a hundred percent so but i wanted to bring a little bit into this discussion about a small offering in food for thought i'll start with a supreme court case united states versus american
083library association a 2003 case which trumps in a 1982 case the facts on this case were kids were going into the library and getting on the internet and looking at porn now potter stewart said in a famous case from 64 is what is porn i'll know it when i see it well if we ask everybody out here they've got their own viewpoint of what is good what is porn what isn't so that's a matter of opinion but this became a big issue across the country parents outcried all over the country congress ended up enacting the children's internet protection act and that act forbade public libraries to receive federal assistance for their internet access until they install blocking software for certain age groups now a group of libraries liberal patrons the ala other interest other interested
084parties sued the federal government and said that was against the first amendment sound familiar the concept with the case was age appropriateness for the children and this was also in context to a library receiving public money which the school library receives public money and there's many many interests and many many people that are represented in a public school so the school the court reviewed this and stated that it is not a violation of the first amendment for a library to filter or block material for underage kids or other depending on their age and if the library receives public money which the school library does all taxpayers have an interest all taxpayers have an interest in what's the school is doing and so it comes down to a balancing act between the rights of the parents
085to expect the school how they're going to write what their kids are going to be exposed to versus the right of the kids to see the material i'm not advocating one side of the other like i said i agree with the lady who spoke just before me i think a thorough review is in order i think the committee needs to look at these books and i would welcome them hope they read the books and give us feedback because we need to find out but i haven't heard any titles or anything else so i think we need to get specific thank you for allowing me to speak i never got to the end but we'll get it i'm a lawyer what can you say thank you dave and our last one for this evening brent northcutt
086well now for a complete change of pace i'm not here to talk about books and i don't envy your uh your situation there that's going to be a tough one i i know but uh thank you for volunteering for the job brent northcutt i have north cut farmers insurance and investments over on jones road and i'm here to talk about the proposed bond election that i hope the board decides to go forward with all students are equipped with skills to be inspired contributing citizens excelling in any chosen endeavor within a dynamic society those words really struck me and it's more than just a mission statement it's a plan of action and not only is it displayed beautifully on the back wall back here but i wonder how often we consider those words it's not just
087your job it's not just the administrator's job it's not just the teacher's job it's not just the coach it's the community's job and that's what i want to ask for this evening is let this go in front of the community humans made up the long-range planning commission how many of those 83 do you think voted in favor of going forward with this project you couldn't get that 83 for 83 on any subject if you had a year to put it together that kind of consensus the return on the school's investment is amazing when you consider the far-reaching uh implications of it i've been in this community over 35 years and i've heard people say over and over and over i just want cranberries to stay the same i just i don't want to see it
088grow too late it's not going to happen i'm sorry it can't happen it's going to grow like it or not what do we do we got to manage the growth when businesses come into town and they look at or individuals coming to town to relocate well like the three best small town uh three years in a row from usa today people are going to come want to be part of that what do they look at when they come here they look at hospitals they look at roads they look at available workforce they look at the school district and becoming an education destination a four for one this is what the long-range planning committee has come up with an education destination the growth that we're seeing in this community is phenomenal and it's going to continue
089we've got to manage it we've got to get out in front of it we know what happens when we don't get out in front of it we can talk about wastewater we can talk about traffic it's not a pretty picture we got to get out in front of this my clock timer has crickets because that's usually what i hear when i stop talking and that's it okay now may i summarize very quickly okay uh let's put this in front of the voters times of the essence we're only going to grow and grow and get out of room and by the way money is still on sale it's going up the longer we wait the more expensive this is going to get i sure hope the board decides to go forward in the community for a
090vote on this issue thank you thank you brent before everyone leaves i just wanted to say thank you to this community this was a tough tough public comment section and it was handled so well because of you and i want to thank you for that right now thank you thank you miss townsend i do want to thank especially the the students who came and spoke i know that is tough i do not enjoy public speaking uh you did a fabulous job to our community members we appreciate you coming and giving input it is always valued i do want to clarify a couple of points on behalf of the district representative krauss did put out a list of 850 books that he was concerned about governor abbott sent a letter to tea actually requesting pornographic and
091vulgar materials be removed from texas public schools as you know the texas uh texas education is a responsibility the state which essentially makes uh governor abbott our ceo as far as the concerns about removing books let's not misrepresent things we're not taking shakespeare or hemming way off the shelves and we're not going and grabbing every uh socially culturally or religiously diverse book and pulling them that's absurd and the people that are saying that are gaslighters and it's designed to incite division abbott said that students should not have access to vulgar or pornographic materials in schools and our district totally agrees with that those are exactly the type of books we removed the books i removed were vulgar the writing was sexually explicit in my opinion pornographic it has no place in the hands of 13
09214 or 15 year old kids and our school owes our community an apology forever having allowed it into our schools we will conduct a full investigation and put processes in place to ensure it never happens again and i hope and pray every school district in texas will do the same because like many communities and superintendents i never thought it would happen here when it first came up during my tenure i have witnessed radicals come into our boardroom and go on to social media platforms to distort the truth exaggerate issues and bad mouth our trustees to those individuals please know like the little boy's cry of wolf you have lost all credibility to the majority in this community we will not back down from you we will not let you divide our school and community and
093we will stand up for what's best for our children i want you to know this tonight i'm going to go home and i'm going to get a great night's sleep because unlike you i've actually read what's in those books and i'm proud that they've been removed from our shelves and we've made the right decision for kids ms townsend thank you for allowing me to comment our administration is ready to move into the consent agenda mr dawson our assistant superintendent for those of you who want a copy of what's been removed so you can actually read it i'm gonna allow him to go place it outside we'd ask that it'd stay out of the hands of kids and so he'll ensure that it does at this time we will move on to item number nine that
094consider and at first it'll be consider consent agenda items are there any items in there that any board member would like to pull out and discuss just to discussion and thanks to the financial bank for supporting our high school culinary team with the fifteen hundred dollar donation uh cranberry pirate boosters club with a donation of a thousand dollars for additional travel and brightworks car wash in support of the gisd customer care program donated a hundred dollars so again if you see those folks out and about tell them thanks that's a total of twenty six hundred dollars that was donated this month our community is very good at supporting our school district and i do thank them very much are there any other items that would like to be pulled out at this time and discussed
095by the board madam president i don't have an item i want to pull but uh maybe to bring a little levity to the room i do have a tongue-in-cheek question for our superintendent as i know he is a memory a member of the local rotary club what on earth did they do to uh upset the people of harvard lakes why are they wanting to meet in our facility yeah i think they were outgrowing harbor lakes and there was some issues with the the food service as well i don't want to bad mouth harbor lakes or speak on behalf of the rotary club but it was uh they were at an impasse and and so they were looking for for an opportunity to to relocate obviously we do allow our rooms for rent and so we
096will take that to them i think long term they hope that if the uh the bond is ratified they would love to meet in the galley and have our kids make their meal which which would be actually pretty great and i think the galley would like that as well but they currently don't have the space for that either so um a stop gap i think the the rotary club will keep looking and and certainly we're happy to work with all of our civic organizations in the interim thank you any other items to be discussed madam president i mean that we approve the consent agenda items as presented in our second motion has uh been made by mr jackson and seconded by mr moore all in favor any of those opposed it passes unanimously next consider
097approval of the long-range planning committee's resolution with final a recommendation to the board dr glenn thank you madam president as many of you know because you served on the long-range planning committee in the fall we went through a a very long process studying the district's growing demographics looking at our tax rates looking at what the impact of a bond election would be and it was pretty amazing to see our community come together saying the time is now for an investment in our schools it's a rather large investment but i think the the community recognizes the fact that uh in order to be successful we have to be proactive and so it is my uh privilege tonight to recommend on behalf of the administration and the long range planning committee that we approve the resolution as
098presented is there any discussion since it's so long can we just post it without reading it that is correct and so it is it is on the district it is on the district website it is 10 points and i will say this some of the points will require some fine tuning some will take years to implement because we don't have the facilities to do it but certainly it is a great working document and for this board to review annually and we will put it it is already on the website correct you can find it on the gisd website under long range planning committee and thank you mr meador for all the postings uh he's done a great job of actually archiving all of the meetings that that is correct i mean there were several meetings
099where we brought in a demographic expert we had a bond expert come in we had an architect come in and talk to us about was available there's a lot of information out there and i really would like the community to take the time go and look at it a lot of time an effort was put into that by the 83 people that mr northcutt discussed anything else to be said do i have a motion madam president um a move that we approve uh they are approved the long-range planning committee's resolution with the final their final recommendations to us is the board and dr harrington thank you dr mcdonald motioned by dr harrington seconded by dr mcdonald all those in favor raise your hand all those opposed it passes unanimously moving on to the next point
100discuss and consider adoption of an order calling a special election for granbury independence school district thank you madam no thank you madam president and again a few uh procedural things that we have to take care of i want to be clear to the public when our trustees make the vote to call this election it doesn't it doesn't mean they are endorsing it it doesn't mean they are voting yes uh it means that they want the community to have a voice i think that's clear and uh i think that's an important an important point to make uh clear and so the long planning committee has had the opportunity to provide input and now our trustees is going to take they are going to take that next step and in may allow our community the opportunity to
101uh to have input there is still a lot of work to do from the long-range planning committee members and also from the district to make sure information gets out to our community this is a rather large community and people are going to have a lot of questions about this bond and so on behalf of the lrpc i would recommend that trustees call an election to allow our community to have a voice in whether or not we should ratify the recommendation of the lrpc discussion by board members madam president i'd like to make just a quick comment um this will be the biggest and boldest bond initiative this school district this community has ever seen and i know a couple of us were on this board when we passed the 2013 bond and that really pals
102in comparison to what we're proposing today um it was said earlier tonight i believe it was brent northcutt that we are growing we can't stick our heads in the sand here we've got to get ahead of this stay ahead of it much like we did in 2013. so this is probably the last thing i could say publicly in support of this as as it was said once we passed this to go to the voters we can't actively advocate for it but we can certainly answer questions and disseminate information so i would encourage you to talk to any of the trustees up here should you have questions specifically about the bond but with that i would like to unless there's other comments to go ahead and make the motion to send this bond to the voters
103as presented well second there and there is there's actually specific language yes there was specifically we need to read the uh the resolution no it's on special elections it's on a page page 182 of your packet mr jackson okay thank you pardon so our move that we discuss it's not on 182. in italics oh okay sorry i should have highlighted it's my fault yeah well y'all can't see this it's a ton of black and white words on it on a page i move to adopt the order with 355 million for proposition a and 39 million dollars for proposition b i'll second motion was made by mr jackson it was seconded by ms gore all those in favor please raise your hand all those opposed it passes unanimously yay all right so we're just going to
104get started right away we are going to consider the approval of an architect for proposed 2022 bond project dr glenn thank you madam president again we did a request for qualifications i had a number of firms actually submit those qualifications to us the trustees just for history for those of you in the audience selected three large firms that were all incredibly uh credible uh had impressive resumes they narrowed it down to two went on site visits and then actually sat down and interviewed another one today a small a small group of trustees and and so now that we're down to two i can i can tell you both have been vetted uh references have been called and uh um either choice uh would be uh would be well received i believe by the administration and
105community and so uh the discretion on which architect you choose is truly the pleasure of the board i'll move that we uh approve stan tech as the architect for the proposed 2022 bond for this particular bond and that ms gore it made the motion and ms graft did the second all those in favor raise your hand up yes well i i think a point of clarification needs to be made for the public this is culminating months of discussions with the various architectural firms site visits but more importantly one facet of this is we will not be hiring this firm to do any marketing that our own homegrown bond committee will be doing any marketing and promotion of this bond is that correct that is correct okay thank you sorry madam president that that is a
106very good point um this is going to be done if if this community wants it this community is going to have to push it and that's that's exactly what we want to have happen so those in favor of stantec as our architect please raise your hand any opposed it is unanimous hi yes ma'am thank you very much um this is just in regards to our instructional resources and our materials selection to make ef local match ef legal there's words when when governor abbott's letter came out and regarding it prompted our review of our libraries and what's in them but also our processes and procedures and our policies and so this is just going to align those two policies we still have some work to do to tighten up our processes and procedures but this is
107going to align um the policy so that in the event that we do have a book that is in our library that is vulgar and overtly sexual it can be removed without review and then i i just want to add to that again the uh the direction we're going as a district and i want to give a special shout out to stacy brown who has agreed to chair uh the the library book review committee moving forward it's not a a committee that we want on the back end removing books what it is is a committee that we want on the front end looking at the material making sure it's age-appropriate making sure that it's educationally suitable and then placing it in our libraries we don't want any one person to have unilateral authority to make
108these decisions so total confidence in stacy in our curriculum department and know that they they'll be working with a great team to get the work done on the front end are there any questions comments from the board may i have a motion i make a motion to amend um the amen to the amendment to the policy ef local to align with ef legal thank you miss graf do we have a second second thank you mr moore all those in favor raise your hand all opposed it passes unanimously moving on to consider approval of cte aviation bid rfp 2021-32 mr whitefield thank you madam president uh board before you you do have the rfp for the cte aviation kit in avionics it's my understanding that there are three parts to building this uh kit plane this
109part is the avionics part and it uh has two vendors on it avionics technologies and rams designs where we will be able to purchase those parts this particular award is good through november 30th 2022 and the purchase will be between 100 and 175 thousand dollars prior to that date um i don't have any details on it but mr gibson is in the back if you have any questions about the avionics piece to that but it is a administration's it is administration's uh recommendation that this would be approved thank you any comments questions i've got a question for todd have have we moved away from or something changed with the eagles nest project that originally we we got this off the ground no pun intended there have been many puns in the process of this aviation
110takeoff if you will um yes we have so we've got great volunteers and mentors and we have donors into the program and they have all suggested that we step away from the eagles nest project and go with a different kit which is made by rand so even a recent development in the last couple of months is we've had a gentleman that has decided he wanted to donate the price of this plane to granberry isd which is going to allow us to be self-sufficient and be able to go forward with this year after year and that's why we need this bid so that we can purchase our next kit for the for the next year so make sure i'm understanding you because the way it did work the initial kit was donated by eagle's nest we
111built the plane and sold it to buy the kit for the following year so is that what we're still doing because it looks like we're being asked to approve the money to buy a kid but i thought you just said we have a donor donating the kid i'm confused so well let me i'm going to backtrack a little bit with the eagles nest that is how it worked mr dawson do you can you tell me when we took over from eagle's nest and when we got away from eagle's nest kind of how that process works we never sold the airplane it was always under the non-profit of eagle's nest project and so now we do have a donor that's stepping in and is going to be working with donating the money for us to be
112self-sustaining and so we're in the process of working with that knowner i guess through gef and some things there that we can sustain the aero engineering program if that helps it it does thanks just let me know when it takes off something else just to make sure you understand that the the avionics he's talking about isn't really the airplane it's the electronics in it to let the airplane know where it is okay okay one other comment if any of you are interested they work on these planes every tuesday tuesday and wednesday yes ma'am in the morning then rod for you to come up and put a rivet in it or two in it but you need to go and see these youngsters and these volunteers that give up their time every week uh and and
113we're finishing the third plane is that right the fourth plane the fourth place thank you i lost count in all those takeoffs so uh but by all means uh any of you would be welcome to show up at the high school check in and go back and really look at what these high school youngsters are doing with regard to this outstanding program and with that that we approve the cta cte aviation bid rfp number 2021-32 and i'll second that dr harrington made the motion dr mcdonald did the second all those in favor raise your hand all those opposed it passes unanimously we are now moving on to reports dr glenn thank you madam president thank you trustees a couple of brags to get started uh congratulations to jason pilato our swim coach district championship and
114boys and girls nine years running which is outstanding also kylie peterson is taking the deca team to state and i know we just restarted that program so i don't know if we've ever been but if we haven't first time ever um if we have then it's been a very long time um also uh jrotc uh congratulations to uh the colonel and first sergeant 13 national championships now so we continue to be a leader in the field of rotc across the state of texas and then finally to our choir miss fisher tmea which is kind of like the state championship require uh they'll be heading down there i believe this this month um and so they will head down to perform and so so proud of those accomplishments and those things don't happen if our schools
115close and so our schools have remained open i will tell you the uh uh the not so good news is that uh that last week we reported our highest number of covid cases since the pandemic began we had 429 which is kind of rough estimate when you take all students and staff combined it's about five percent that's high it's incredibly high but i'm uh i'm happy to report that from from our leaders on our campuses and at the uh administrative level the central office level uh the majority of these cases are very mild uh the workers who are coming down with it and the kids who are coming down with it they're returning as soon as our isolation period is is over and uh and they're moving on and so it would not be possible
116if we didn't have the staff coverage and i know it has stretched our principles then our curriculum department our technology department our business office our hr department we are sending staff everywhere to make sure that that we have coverage a special shout out i see our director of transportation brian crothers who sent up last week bus drivers to campuses to cover recess and to help teachers with lunch have breaks and and so it really is a the the term it takes a village uh really really does apply to to granberry isd and and i appreciate the leadership of our campus principals our campus assistant principals uh everybody is really pitching in to make that happen and so if you have the opportunity to see a teacher or a principal or an ap or an instructional
117specialist or someone in the curriculum department that has now become a full-time sub tell them thank you they're they're really going above and beyond attendance attendance is low with with the pandemic as well but we'll continue to monitor that and hopefully wait and see what tea decides to do as far as a possible hold harmless they've indicated that funding will be there for districts that remain open so that will be a report for a later time and then also we have some individuals from the bond steering committee some of them have left some of them are still here but uh but thank you uh thank you so much those of you that served on the the lrpc tonight tonight was a great night for our district we really are casting a vision to become an
118educational destination and more importantly do good things for kids that's what it's all about at the end of the day trying to make the best decision for our kids and maybe if we can leave it better than we found it let's do that as well too so trustees that's all i have for you tonight thank you dr glenn okay miss brown let's hear about esser i love you the only thing better i know you guys are thinking that two back-to-back reports from me is three reports from emmett when i'm done welcome all right you guys so um i've got uh just a real quick presentation this is part of a required presentation um as we document our process through uh all the esser funding and so uh the first part obviously sr funding is divided
119into two sections for uh tea in the student academic services and then a staff and student health and safety plan and so those two things are separate the majority of things that we're going to talk about today are going to be about the student academic services so um growing up in a military family i will tell you that my dad was a big fan of technology that worked what it is on i am let's try it again all right see i turned it on there you go jeff thank you see with me okay that's awesome all right so um growing up in a military family my father was a big proponent of you make the plan you worked the plan you review the plan you tweak the plan you run the plan you tweak the
120plan you review the plan you work the plan over and over and over so that kind of feeds into this in june we came to you several of us from multiple departments uh that we made the plan that targeted five areas for esser spending and it it really was divided into those five the safety and health of our staff and students obviously falls into multiple areas in that in that top five right there so now that we have done make the plan hit it jeff we're going to go through and we're going to talk a little bit about working the plan and there's a lot of information on this slide but i wanted to make sure that you know that our biggest target area was adding additional personnel resources and professional development we felt like
121that was really going to help us close the gap and you've heard a lot about closing the gap in england when you get on the tube they tell you to mine the gap and so that's what we were doing with this money we were really trying to mine the gap that we knew was coming from our students and so we added all of these specific personnel to our campuses just a real quick brag i know you know the targeted quest stipend our eoc testers at the high school they retested in december and the results for those students was almost double the percentage of passing and i really believe that it really has that targeted quest stipend targeting those students and so big brag to our high school for implementing that so moving on through additional
122personnel a lot of people a lot of intervention teachers a lot of management from the intervention program specialist watching the program etc next page jeff all right second part of working to plan we're going to talk about the resources this is a list of all of the resources that we have purchased so far with our esser funding most of it is directly correlated to implementing what our campuses need as well as making sure that our our staff has the materials that they that they need to do the job and you'll see a little bit of data coming up in the next presentation that talks a little bit about phonemic awareness and phonics and quick phonics screeners and through the process of the reading academy we've noted some some target areas for us and so kind
123of getting ahead of that and using that esser money to fill in those gaps next one all right so professional development i know the list looks small but i got to tell you it goes a long way so observation and feedback district leader training we have a tremendous amount of leaders that were trained on observation and feedback as well as kind of a coaching the coaches model and so that lets us streamline our instruction and it lets us say this is who we are when it comes to instruction so esc 11 extended services contract gave us additional options for professional development at the service center as well as extensions on our our data servers uh from the standpoint of all the things that we could do with the data etc skyward training we're doing uh
124kind of do some upkeep some diving deeper with skyward training we've got response to intervention training we've got handwriting without tears up there that one is it's coming so we have not completed that one yet we had to do a little bit of a postponement so that one is a little postponed and next so now we're going into technology just to to review kind of working to play with technology we've done crowdstrike lightspeed we've done additional technology for broner replace batteries on campus in the event of a power outage that will sustain the network and then we've also done an additional router for that okay all right next one jeff and then we'll wrap it up with 345 here necessary facility improvements we only wanted to put the things on here that we were planning
125or had spent thus far and so our facility improvements they've done are working through some specific analyzing of the hvac systems and prioritizing which hvac systems need to be fixed first and so that's coming soon so we're going to be bringing that to you soon we had it employee retention stipends as well and i know dr glenn has mentioned that uh earlier um the summer stipe and the christmas stipend and the high needs campus stipend stipend those amounts are directly reflected in the total expenditures of the slide that has to do with personnel so that's included there and then our indirect costs which we take right off the top our district will use the indirect cost to recover administrative costs of managing the grant etc and so we've claimed 98 000 but we have been
126allotted 1 million and so as we continue to add that in we'll update you there revising the plan tweaking the plan over the course of the next six weeks we're going to be going and meeting with district and campus leadership teams they're as excited as you are about it and we'll post a link also to a community and parent survey in order to gather feedback and additional unique and innovative ideas you know that they have as well then tweaking the plan all revisions to the specific plan will be posted we will do minutes agendas from the meeting as well as the compiled survey information uh following the end of our very last campus and district meeting all right so questions i have a question okay um the handwriting without tears you said it was postponed
127what's the the training was postponed yes so what do we have a projected yes i think we had end of uh our beginning of february mid february it was the end of february okay so have personal experience with this program and it is amazing we got so lucky we have a trainer in our district that is a teacher that came to us so we snagged her yeah and um yeah so she's going to be is she here there she is right back there is 20. there you go all right any other questions you guys for the s or update all right let's talk about map reading math growth data yeah okay all right so jeff can you be my crew okay one more time all right so it looks kind of funny on the screen
128um so we've got two different tests that we use for growth our kinder first and second graders in reading do an m-class growth measure all right and so this represents specific the the percentage that are passing at the target of that test so it gets a little confusing where it looks like we're like flatlining the problem is is that the target moves and so if we have 46 percent that are hitting the target at the beginning in kindergarten that the target is only 306. the target at the middle of the year is 371. so in order to meet that it looks like it's level but it really isn't so it really is showing that our kids are growing um and that we are increasing between the two targets does that kind of make sense okay
129um we did grow kids with a target that moves that's a good thing can't do that when the doors are closed lots of work that we have in going on right now with the reading academies additional materials gap filling with interventions through esser which we just talked about and and quite honestly you know um kinder first and second pre-k kinder first and second is a true passion uh for trisha suit and so when you put her on something she gets it done so i'm just going to brag on her for a little bit all right any questions on m class growth all right so let's talk about reading growth when we talk about map this one goes from second grade through english two and so same same type uh target change when we talk about
130an average of where kids should be you guys have the average of where they should be from the middle of the year and then where we are as a district and so we continue to grow if you'll look at second grade which is the first one it reflects the same thing that m class does that that's a target area for us that's where we want to boost our our students our kinder first and second students and then if you go all the way up the only other grade level that falls below the average is sixth grade and um they are unique individuals if you know them um and so uh we continue to try to design unique and innovative things for the kids in the classroom keep them hooked keep them engaged um and it's
131it's a tough it's a tough test so um going on to math we're going to talk a little bit about growth from kinder through algebra one and that is the color i'm sorry i was like i ran out of colors i'm like all right gold purple and black okay so when we do the beginning in the middle of the year you can see that the growth is trending up as well really really bright spot is our algebra one we are making huge gains with algebra one uh 90 um and you'll see soon um have a projection for uh passing the star so that's that's really good at middle of the year so all right all right and then our last two our last one is bright orange district map data reading projection data this is
132the reading projection data that if we took the star and in the spring we didn't do any other intervention we did nothing else but just kind of coasted on this is what they're projecting our scores would be across the district now i'll be honest with you guys um we don't stop i don't know if you know that about the people in the audience the principals and the teachers they see students have weaknesses and they target those weaknesses we are intervening we're intervening during school after school saturday school we are closing the gaps of our students and so this projection if we did nothing would look like this we don't do nothing is that okay we don't do nothing so questions on that i have just make sure that i'm understanding what this is saying yes
133let's take fourth grade reading okay 69 of the children right now would pass yes that is the that is what the linking study says that if we did nothing else that we would be there right our fourth graders in reading would pass and and that's me being acceptable that is acceptable yes yes that is acceptable um i i will tell you that encompasses so masters meets and acceptable obviously would it's all together yeah okay just want to make sure i'm reading this correctly thank you correct all right and then the next page is math data and so you can look at this one uh specifically uh same type situation check out fifth grade yeah all right guys any questions anything else you need from me anything that can help give information can't brag on stacey
134enough uh and her department but i see in the back uh trisha uh is uh stacy's right hand and she's quiet and unassuming but uh just like me yeah right they they both have had a lot thrown on their plate especially with a lot of the federal mandates that have now come down with esser funding and and they write all of those grants to help secure those dollars to the tune of over 13 million now yes and so uh both of them have just just done a great job the whole department has but but it starts with leadership and so we're grateful to both of you guys thank you and i'd like to just say as a parent of a now fourth grader who you had the privilege of when he was in second grade
135when everything shut down and so as a parent who watched these littles go from school to nothing well not nothing i mean but for them it was trying to switch gears and watch you guys and our teachers in this district do what they had to do to make sure the kids still got educated and now to come back from that like this you guys that is impressive way to go awesome thank you guys thanks stacy all right we have our annual facilities report from emmett thank you madam president uh just do a quick review of our facilities i don't know what i would think this would work for me so i'll let jeff do it for me as well um move on to the next slide here just uh where we've been where we what
136we've done this year um these pictures represent the kindergarten classrooms at broner that were renovated this year down in the bottom left corner that's the ag barn and that's the new um fire suppression system that we have put in is now a nitrogen system that should take away some of the maintenance costs that we've had in the past because it's filled with nitrogen so things can't grow in those air pipes and rust them out so the maintenance should drop off from that and then there's a few pictures here some more cameras that we've added because we continually add cameras to places where we don't have visions in schools and one last time i'm gonna brag about february we all remember that when we were all at home for a week or more when other school
137districts did not get to come back my guys prepared our district so that when we came back we were in school again it cost us a total of about 10 grand in pipe bursts when other school districts were spending hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get back open so one more brag you won't hear that one again hopefully keep going that's good i'll take it that's a good one okay next one jeff so the guys take care of 11 campuses 11 departments with about 1.5 million square feet of space 543 acres that they make manicure and an athletic fields 13 game and practice fields that we take care of our operating budget is just shy of six hundred thousand dollars and our utility budgets at 1.6 million dollars we process 400 447 requisitions which
138represent 6.5 percent of total requisitions in the district and we completed 3720 work orders with 16 000 man hours in the past year jeff are you our utility report card our electricity usage continues to be reduced through energy conservation measures um automated hvac systems that we control here centrally lighting sensors in ninety percent of our classrooms and more more efficient fixtures in the classroom it saves us about seventy dollars a classroom water usage continues to be uh produced through energy conservation measures with a uh water uh water efficient toilets with a sensor flushing and more fish and ice machines urinals and faucets district wide so where can we improve i'm not gonna lie to you these were on my list last year these are high dollar improvements but they're still my goal to get done
139um automating that hvac software for these four campuses these are the last four we don't have online but to do that it's gonna cost me about 750 thousand dollars to a million dollars to automate those so that's where i'm at on those still my goal to get it done can i get it done next year maybe light sensors in closets so the lights don't get left on in closets retrofit our t8 lighting system with led fixtures and the district currently has 369 hvac units that are over 20 years old tying back to stacy's report this summer we have an rfp out or it's fixing to go out where we're going to replace 53 units and that's going to be at the high school at aes and ams the trick with the ams one is that
140the ams and gms hvac systems are very similar they have an outdated board that we can't even buy anymore we bought the last one in the world two months ago literally there's no more we replace the one we replace the hvac at ams we pull all those units down we have those boards that we can use at gms to keep those units running for a much longer time a minute how many how much uh how much of our esser money is being used to replace hvac we have 1.5 million dollars is that the 53 units that's our goal to get 53 units for 1.5 we're hoping that we get all 53 for that yes sir this will be a time whenever we're using helicopters to mount hvacs on roofs however the beds come in we're
141going to get as much as we can for 1.5 million dollars we're continued to our energy audit walk throughs kevin did one during the break we're much better we do have a lot of areas that we can improve and we know where those are and we're going to go through those eventually with the administration team but we have a lot more uh important stuff on our plate as it is right now so we'll get to those um again the hvac controls they're on my goal list for this next year or this year and we know that's going to cost us about 750 000 to a million dollars to do that the middle school roof replacements and administration administration building is out of warranty so it needs to be replaced middle schools are like a year
142out on their warranty and those need to be replaced i can tell you that this building will be between 350 000 to five hundred thousand dollars replace this roof and the middle schools will be another seven hundred fifty thousand to a million dollars each to replace those roofs and then the last slide always like you to see your team 205 years of experience in these guys i guess including me but uh those guys right there they're the ones that keep it running behind the scenes and i can't tell you how much i appreciate them any questions thanks emma i really appreciate you thank you and then as soon as you get it back to your seat we can start talking about all the financials and just go from the statement to the cash flow just
143keep on going thank you madam president in front of you you do have the financials for the period ending december 31st 2021. um you can see that the revenue collected to date equals 36.272 percent of the budgeted amount compared to 17.46 percent for the 2021 school year and 42.02 percent for the 1920 school year the notable effect on those revenues is going to be the property taxes in any one month probably taxes fluctuate but you can see that we come closer to being in line with the 1920 year as opposed to the night the 2021 which was coveted related uh delays uh further down you can see the expenditures today represent 33.30 percent of the budget compared to 32.4 percent in 2021 and 32.01 in 1920. some notable things on that um under the instructional
144resources there's there's a extra instructional specialist in that budgeted area and then in 13 you can see that our travel for staff development was increased there and it shows that in that percentage uh under function 31 which is guidance and counseling has to do with our special ed department and they reallocated some of those special ed funds to their federal idea b grant so it kind of reflects in that area and then the last one of course is our bus drivers under function 34 you were gracious enough to give them a raise and it is it shows on on financials and and that's okay that's what it's there for they're taking care of us and what we heard earlier is that they're at lunch right now taking care of the campuses and helping teachers go
145to lunch and getting their breaks in the middle of the day so it's money well spent in my opinion okay moving on to the cash flow statement uh not much to say about that i thought the interest rate is still uh pretty non-existent i'm going to say that uh it looked november it looked like it was going to start coming out of the hole we took a backtrack just a little bit in december but we look forward to the depreciation becoming lower on one of our major investments that is what's uh pulling it down in the past we have separated those out but on the financial statements when you see the audit they're included in the same place so i wanted you to see that's what's happening in month month and um i'm hoping that
146january february we start to pull out of that hole just a little bit more and that is your cash flow and investment report thank you very much emmett okay we're going to move on to what we covered in uh closed session um one of the items that we covered this month was the formative review of the superintendent there are several areas that we look at three in particular academic improvement how are we doing as a district i think after what we heard from stacy and what we heard from tammy today i would say that that's pretty darn good second thing we're looking at uh for dr glenn is navigating covet how are we doing as a district navigating covid with him in charge again we gave him an excellent rating on how we're doing the
147next thing we looked at was long-range planning are we looking correctly at the 2020 goals well i think the fact that we accepted the long-range planning resolution that the long-range planning committee put into account to us to this today shows that we think he's doing well there also um the next thing will be how is the bond going and we just put tbd on that one so um from the board to dr glenn we feel you are doing an excellent job and we feel that we have the right person in your position at the moment thank you thank you um other than that uh do i have a motion uh for the actions that we took during closed session or staff recommendations madam president i move that we approve the staff recommendations discussed in closed
148session do i have a second i second it okay where the motion was made by mr moore and it was seconded by dr harrington all those in favor raise your hand all those opposed it is unanimous thank you all so much for being here this evening thank you board the we are adjourned as of 8 29 pm