00130 pm this is the regular monthly board meeting being held on june 7 2022 we have a quorum with all members present please join me in a moment of silence to observe as you feel appropriate please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance and the pledge to the texas flag led by terry high school seniors cadet lieutenant colonel armani welch and cadet major jocelyn kalindo oh and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all texas thank you uh you may be seated dr nivins are there any recognitions or awards yes uh president humphrey are some recognitions and awards i'll turn it over to miss sonic hamilton good evening president hunt board of trustees dr nivens and our wonderful community tonight we have the
002pleasure of recognizing an outstanding athlete george ranch high school senior shane gardner shane would you please come forward shane gardner finished third at the uil state track meet in the 110 meter hurdles with a time of 13.73 seconds to claim the bronze medal at the 6a level [Applause] you guys first through third place in this event we're separated by a mere .03 seconds at the finish line and shane is a member of the class of 2022 and is a school record holder in the 110 meter hurdles this was shane's second trip to the state meet during his high school career and he is now preparing for a college track career at the university of pennsylvania shane is coached by longhorn track coach nick olivieri and he is joined by his mother this evening nidra and
003stepfather tracy whitehead we'd like to present to you shane and his family [Applause] as they're taking their photo i want to let our audience know that tonight and moving forward we're making photos taken during the recognition portion of our board meetings available to the public via our district website users may visit the board of trustees tab go to the menu on the right and click recognition photos and from there you can just select the board meeting and you should be able to view a gallery of the photos taken during the recognition portion dr nevins this concludes our recognitions for this evening we thank you for your time we usually so trustees we have one more recognition and uh he is in the back so mr jamal would you please ask mr joe cluster to come
004out front please [Applause] so ladies and gentlemen ladies and gentlemen uh tonight tonight is mr clutch's last board meeting and he's been the man behind the scenes to support us in lamar sized for a very long time and so the trustees and i we wanted to make sure mr clutch knew that he was very well loved in la marcie isd very well respected and uh thank you yes sir and a man that holds excellence at the highest standard and so with him tonight is also his wife mr speaks [Applause] one more all right the uh next item on the agenda's introductions dr nivens are there any introductions no mr president mrs johnson are there any public comments are there any board reports um one of the things i guess i would like to say after
005attending all the graduations and many of us did is thank you to dr nivens and all his administration and everybody that put forth some fantastically organized delightful and memorable graduation ceremonies i think the parents were delighted the kids were excited and everything went out without a hitch and i guess we all prayed real hard because it didn't rain so we were very very lucky and you know i know there was a lot of volunteers that were working the parking lots and i heard people talk that come back and say you know done very well so thank you again i know it's not an easy task to put all of that together the last day that teachers were in the schools i did stop by several of the schools that were kind of having a changing
006of the principles some were retiring and moving on to other uh portions of their career and with enough food and a lot of happiness all the teachers and everyone took to the administration changed successfully and i was happy to be able to be there to see how well we orchestrated that and then i stopped by for a few minutes to the end of the year i want to call it um adults field day or i don't know what but y'all had such a good time they put forth over the transportation center they were playing a kickball and throwing an axe and just having a great time and it reminds me of the scene from santa claus to the movie where he gives them all their childhood games and they're all sitting around playing y'all just
007look like little kids having a good time and that i hope that will be a tradition that we will continue because everyone needed a day just to be themselves and by putting them all in the same t-shirt you don't know how many people in blue we have they were all in blue shirts that was transportation and maintenance and operation we have an amazing group of people that are supporting our schools and everyone and thank you again to all those people and i'm glad they had a good time any others i was just going to echo what she said about the graduation the administration did a great job all five other ceremonies um i would like to say um seeing all the schools do the re keep up the traditions from i was out at jane
008long watching their end of year parade where all these students got to parade around the neighborhood and they stopped at the senior center and performed there and just to see families coming out and celebrating their kids was a great way to end the year and just it's good to see people that things are the way it should be i'll add that we had a another budget committee meeting and we're going to hear a presentation on that later in this meeting but the focus of the committee is still on uh student achievement and also uh ensuring that our staff has the proper raises and they're fairly compensated so um that continues to be the focus of the administration in those meetings and of the school board and the numbers are starting to come more into focus
009but that's continue continually going to be what we're going to be looking to all right dr nivins is their superintendent report yes sir so really briefly uh i appreciate the trustee's acknowledgement of graduation but i was fortunate all i had to do was show up and have dinner and it was the team led by dr osagie that did a good job a great job planning that entire thing and getting everybody in our district involved in the parking lot uh bus transportation and shuttles with mike jones and his team and you know you name it everyone pitched in and so to the team i really appreciate you guys for making the day for those outgoing seniors a great day and um it was it's truly a great day when you're able to send young people out
010in the world and you just pray they're ready you just pray they're ready to pray they'll make the right decisions um but we appreciate that and then lastly is uh i was also you know so uh some of the staff and and the trustees were able to meet my dad and so my dad came to watch my son graduate he graduated this year also from the mars isd and as i've said publicly he's the best man i know and so my dad came and uh it was good for him to be around so it was it was it was a joy for me as superintendent and as a dad to take part in so right at this time we'll take action on the consent agenda and current action items we will pull items 9-a consider
011approval of memorandum of understanding with kicks kickstart kids program 9b consider approval of contract for construction of lamar cisd police station and 9c consider approval of salary increases are there any other items that the board would like to pull at this time all right hearing none may have a motion to approve the current consent agenda and action items with the exception of items 9a 9b and 9c trustee danziger moves sir second trustee welch any discussion hearing none i call for the vote all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed say no the motion carries all right dr nivens will uh start with nine a might have a are you wanna do the presentation yes sir okay yes dr nick so trustees i have our athletic director the fantastic fabulous everything you want
012to say coach nelson to come and talk about k-star because nelson is floor is yours ma'am thank you dr nivens good evening trustees this evening's presentation is a brief overview of the memorandum of understanding with kickstart kids about their character through karate program which is available to us in lcisd kickstart kids is a physical education program recognized by tea that teaches character through karate to students in grades 6 through 12. it is started in 1992 and currently exists in several houston area school districts some of them are listed here lcisd is proposing piloting kickstart kids in one middle school next year with the hopes of growing the program to additional middle schools and additional grade levels as we see success and continued interest in the program in our school district kickstarts impact these are some
013statements from area school employees you can see here fort bend isd talks a little bit about the importance of middle school and connecting with kids at that grade level before they go on to both junior high and high school and in pflugerville one of their school administrators talks about the connection that kids were able to make in the sixth grade through kickstart kids those students that aren't necessarily athletes or cheerleaders or in the performing and visual arts that they were also able to continue with as they continued in their secondary education this short video probably tells it best because this puts it into the words of the students who experience the program first day of party it was like the best day of my life [Music] it taught me values that i can use not
014only here inside the karate room [Music] it has actually helped how to protect myself and with my friends [Music] and they say really great things about it and what it did for him too the way that we identified interest in lcisd is during course selection with our incoming sixth graders at each of our middle schools they were given the option to express their interest in kickstart kids and we went back and looked at the number of incoming sixth graders at each campus that that expressed interest in registering for kickstart kids we compared that both with the projected number of incoming sixth graders and then the percentage of that incoming sixth grade class as you can see the largest percentage of incoming sixth graders was at poly ryan middle school for uh interest in the kickstart
015program so lamar cisd is is proposing that we pilot the kickstart program at poly ryan middle school for the 2022 2023 school year the cost of the program is a hundred and ten thousand dollars annually but lamar cisd's portion of that would be seventy thousand dollars in funding and kickstart kids secures the other forty thousand dollars in funding it's a three year commitment which then would allow us to grow the program sixth grade seventh grade and 8th grade with the option to extend it into the 2025 and 2026 school year the kickstart kids program for that amount of money provides a full instructor all equipment for what they call the dojo at the school uniforms for participants enrichment activities and that's for up to 200 students on the campus the students will complete a registration
016form and pay an annual fee of 50 there are waivers available for those students who show a financial need the fee that the students pay helps offset the cost of the uniform over the course of the year and helps to pay for entry fees for the four tournaments that they travel to each year lamar cisd would provide a dedicated classroom transportation on a school bus to those four tournaments the use of the gym or auditorium for belt ceremonies and then to support the program both in the community via the website at the school etc what questions do you have about the program i can try to help with can you be sure to let us know if chuck norris comes down because i'd really like to meet him yes um i'm serious about that but
017that was kind of a joke um so the i didn't really understand that it was full time until the presentation so is this so is this a class in their normal schedule that they that the kids go to yes sir the course would take place of their physical education class instead of going to pe they would go to kickstart as their pe and so would the instructor be in a lamar employee or would it be more like a contract it would be a contracted teacher through kickstarts they would be a full-time teacher at the campus provided by kickstart kids and our cost would be seventy thousand dollars this year and for the next three years and then if we add it to other campuses seventy thousand dollars per campus per year the way the mou
018for this year reads that that is correct will this mou allow the administration to add it to other campuses without board approval or is this only for ryan middle school this is owner for ryan middle school so everything additional we have will be trustee approval thank you is it at ryan or wright it's a polly ryan okay i thought wasn't it when we talked about it being at right no probably ryan has been the campus yeah okay well i have a comment um uh actually when i was a middle school principal many many moons ago we had kickstart program on my campus when i was a principal so i have first-hand experience with the kickstart program and i was sent to a middle school that was considered chronically violent and we had one year the
019first year i got there we had one year to turn around or we were going to be shut down by the federal government and so my counselor actually brought it to me and said you know this would be something good for our kids and our character and so we instituted the kickstart program and actually became the largest program in the state of texas and uh we went from severe discipline problems uh to a lot of students being able to have work with character and integrity class work it just really changed the whole culture and the climate of the campus and so and yes chuck norris does come to the belt ceremonies every night he'll just pop up uh his people don't even know when he'll show up but he does show up and uh so
020he came to ours and uh he's a very nice gentleman and so if he does show up we'll know with them at the you know when he does and then we'll let the trustees know that chuck norris is in the house all right is there a motion to approve the memorandum of understanding with kickstart kids program trustee welch moves is there a second trustee human act is there any discussion hearing none i call for the vote all those in favor raise your hands and say aye opposed say no motion carries all right next trustees we have to consider approval contract for construction on the mar sassy police station i'll turn over to mr gray buchanan board of trustees and dr nevins tonight we want to bring forth a discussion and possible approval of um action
021on our police station this project was uh designed and advertised in may of 2022. we had seven contractors um uh enter a competitive seal proposal on may the 26th our construction budget uh for that facility was four million eight hundred ninety thousand five hundred seventy three dollars the top rate contractor after negotiations and we ranked them and we were able to lower it another 870 thousand dollars we were only able to lower the construction calls to eight million four hundred thirty six thousand three hundred sixty three dollars due to it being so far over budget where we're um recommending tonight for the board of trustees is to reject all the proposals for this and let us go back to the drawing board to be able to get this project across the finish line in budget
022are there any questions about the police station all right thank you sir can you talk about why we think it's over budget lower price what we've looked at is um the electrical package um low of the lighting and the gear um it came back considerably higher than what we anticipated along with some hvac also we're looking at some contractors that were very tight in their bidding proposals but right now they're just they're not hungry for enough for work so they were giving us some large numbers at this point in time so we're going back to drawing board to see what we can do and how we can reevaluate it to get it back within the proposed budget was to achieve the goal for the district but we're still okay having where they're housed right now
023but i know that this does put us back in trying to complete this in a timely fashion right that is correct they're currently at bryson's crossing um it was going to take us roughly a year to get this constructed and be able to get them to move in this may delay it another three to six months okay thank you any other questions all right is there a motion to reject the contract for construction of la marcie isd police station trustee lambert is there a second trustee human act any discussion hearing none a call for the vote all those in favor raise your hand and say aye opposed say no and the motion carries next mr president we have considered approval salary increases and so miss uh jill loeb with our cfo will come take the
024microphone good evening board of trustees dr nivins i'm here tonight to present our proposed raises for several of our employee groups first of all i'd like to talk about the teachers and other classifications of positions that are on the teacher salary schedule our raise for them for this group is a flat one thousand nine hundred fifty dollars per year uh it's equivalent to an average of three percent for all current employees our new teacher salary at the beginning of their career step zero will be sixty one thousand dollars and the employee groups addressed are teachers counselors librarians nurses and several other professionals this is what our bachelor's degree salary schedule looks like you'll see step zero at sixty one thousand i'll give you just a second to take a look at that miss lovely can
025also say one thing about that right quick sure uh and so uh i recently held the second meeting for our my teacher of the year teacher and paraprofessional of the year and so we uh in the fall we did a rotation and we went to every track and we met with all the teachers and prayer professionals of the year and i just asked them simple questions and got feedback from them and in the second go-around we just had last week and so they came back and just got some feedback about what did they see you know the things that they discussed you know that they see some improvements some changes from administration but one thing i want to clear up was one of the teachers informed me what the group informed me that there is
026there's a rumor out there that uh you know new teachers coming in will make more than a veteran teacher and uh that didn't make sense to me i didn't i don't understand i said if you look at the pay scale if i'm a new teacher coming in i make 61 thousand dollars if i'm a 10-year teacher i'll make 65 500. and so they just say that was a rumor that needs to be addressed and so you know everyone gets a pay increase every single year and so i just want to say publicly we don't have any veteran teachers making lower than sixty one thousand dollars per year in our school system or after this is after the board takes action and so i just need to say that publicly because they said that's been a
027rumor uh ever since they've been here and uh one teacher said she'd been here 18 years and she's heard that every year and so i just want to say that that's that's not the case is that if you look at the pay scale that's what everyone uh is pr is proposing where everyone's out it'll be next year so so real quick to his point that 18-year teacher going into her 19th year she would get a raise he or she would get a raise from 68 750 to 69 250 and then this 1950 on top of that no it's a flat 1950 this is a hiring schedule this they do we do not do a raise plus a step some districts do their compensation plan that way but ours is a flat flat dollar amount so
028it's 19.50 this is just a hiring schedule so that you said hiring schedule that means that this will be the salary structure this would be the salary structure for all employees on that pay scale next school year yes for instance if someone has 18 years of experience and they're hired by us they would receive 68 750 as their first salary with lamar cisd otherwise continuing teachers receive one thousand nine fifty i think once upon a time we did do steps plus the pay raise we did and so you could kind of know where you fell but since you it's been a while since you took the steps away so i guess what they're probably thinking is if you're a first year teacher three years ago and now you're and you were getting the same increases
029every year you'd be there if we were giving the same increases correct there's maybe probably a lot of different ways that some might interpret because different districts pay in different ways you know i'm just thinking for us i can see where that information would be out there like that because you'd think if they're starting higher than where i started how am i moving up but this this kind of puts it on paper so we can see the increases i'll share that in our budget committee meetings we've had discussions not only about making sure that our teachers are paid well but also about it's a very competitive hiring environment for teachers and that this would keep lcisd at or near the top of compared with other districts in our area because you don't want someone leaving
030here with maybe 10 years experience going somewhere else and seeing a higher incoming salary than what they'd be getting right and then the master's degree is one thousand dollars higher than the uh then the masters is higher than the bachelor's schedule but again this is a hiring schedule our second category of raises are with the custodians in our district what we're proposing is that we establish a separate pay schedule for custodial staff based on our current schedule the starting salary would be twelve dollars and seventeen cents for pay grade one we would provide consistent increases for each of the pay grades above that uh two and above and then they will also receive whatever midpoint raise is awarded for the other employees on the midpoint schedule and right now what we're budgeting is a three
031percent of midpoint for all the other categories but we're only bringing the custodians scale to the board right now because we want to establish a separate schedule for them what has the starting schedule been for custodial staff uh 11 i don't think i have that up our and their contract is year-round or it's 230 days for most there are some that are 251 that are more supervisory level okay but the general custodian is 230. okay the third and final category we wanted to discuss tonight is the child nutrition fund those employees are paid from the child nutrition fund which is separate from the general fund of course there are federal revenues and there are also user fees or lunch sales that contribute to the revenue of that fund these raises would also or this this
032proposal also establishes a separate pay schedule for the child nutrition employees it's also based on the current year schedule here we're proposing that we include a three dollar per hour increase for all pay grades and we will also be doing some pay grade reclassifications and then the employ these employees will also receive whatever percentage of midpoint raise we award to the rest of the employees under the 2223 compensation plan any additional questions what about the tax rate are we i will have information about the tax rate in the next presentation the tax rate is is not part of the child nutrition discussion but the general fund and the ins fund this is the of course by law we have to use the the maximum or the minimum compressed rate sorry i said that wrong the
033maximum compressed rate [Music] for the state as well as any tier two or enrichment pennies that we add to it so that rate's going to be around 85 and a half cents compared to the current yes which is 87.2 cents any other questions i do have one more what about other folks in the district bus drivers maintenance department paris those kind of positions right now our proposed budget includes a three percent of midpoint raise for all three percent yes thank you all right thank you is there a motion to approve salary increases trustee danzagar moves is there a second trustee bronzelle seconds any discussion hearing none call for the vote all those in favor raise your hand and say aye aye all those opposed say no motion carries we'll now have reports and presentations on
034the information items all right trustees i have mr buchanan up to talk about uh our bond update good evening board of trustees and dr david snipe we'd like to have a discussion on some bond projects that we have just to update the board we had 36 pay applications in the month of may totaling just over 7.5 million dollars huggins has some addition and renovations going on m scott is the general contractor for that job they've already started the demo that is the picture that you see there they're scheduled to be complete in july of 2023 austin elementary has the uh an addition and security vestibule going on there as well right now bass construction is the contractor um the peers that is what you see on the right-hand side the art classroom that's being added
035the peers that they're pouring in and then the demolition has started this week and they're expected to be completed in july of 2023 jackson elementary has the additions going on you see the front new office area that they're putting in with to add security vestibules that's the slab that's being poured right now it's scheduled to be opened in november of 2022. bowie elementary has um that additional office space you can tell that they've already poured the slab and they have the steel erected there they're moving along at a pretty good pace they're scheduled to complete in november of 2022 and then beasley elementary general contractor they started the demolition this week and they will be scheduled to be completed in november of 2022 and then the lamar consolidated high school tennis courts sterling structures as
036the general contractor right now they've already started the demolition my fact we hit a water line one one evening they had to stay till almost midnight to get it all fixed but we were able to get the water back up for the next day and it currently is um projected to be completed in september of 2022 are there any questions about our bond projects thank you sir thank you all right next we'll have safety security update from our chief chief dallas warren uh and i think he'll be joined by our director of safety security uh mr david paula thank you dr nivin's trustees tonight i'll give you a high level overview of the safety and security practices that we have in place at lamar cisd first i want to start off with active shooter training
037all of our school resource officers complete the alert active shooter training this is the program that is recommended by the texas school safety center and each summer we reinforce that training and they do scenario-based trainings to reinforce those skills that they've learned in that we have really reunification plans in place we have two sites that we have trained for reunification in the event that that is ever needed we have social media screening everybody knows that social media is a place that a lot of threats are usually advertised or are made before there's any kind of actual event that occurs we have a company that we contract with that screens social media they screen between 15 and 20 000 posts related to lamar cisd every week any identified threats photos of threats or any type of
038threatening image that has come in is forwarded to a team here at lamar cisd we review those threats to see if there's any type of action that we need to take to mitigate those threats we have locked and controlled access exterior doors at all of our facilities the standard is that all of our exterior doors should remain locked at all times anytime an exterior door should has to be open for any period of time the standard is that we will have a staff member assigned to that area to keep watch for any threats that may occur we have a single point of entry for all visitors to our campus facilities signage directs those individuals to our single point of entry at the front of the building when they come into that facility they find themselves
039in a security vestibule it's basically a locked box that allows the front office staff to visually screen that individual and determine whether or not there's a threat and then allow that door to be unlocked to bring them into the front office once they are in that front office they undergo our visitor screening and registry process during the visitor screening we screen for three important areas first whether or not that individual is a registered sex offender secondly whether or not there are any court orders or legal documents restricting their access to any of our facilities students or staff and then we also screen them for any past threats that they've made to any of our students staff or facilities once they complete that training or complete that screening they're given a visitor badge they're then allowed
040into the remaining part of the facility that badge identifies where they're supposed to be at once they get enter the facility they will see that all of our classroom doors are remaining locked during instructional periods a few years ago we upgraded all those classrooms with the classroom intruder locks those locks are specifically designed to prevent forced entry into our classrooms we have video surveillance at all of our facilities the current standard is that we will have a 360 degree video surveillance of all of our facilities we will also have video surveillance of all of our entrances all of our exits in the common areas such as gymnasiums and cafeterias we also have video surveillance of the main hallways in those areas we have law enforcement personnel that are assigned throughout the district every secondary campus
041has law enforcement personnel assigned to it and then every elementary campus has an sro assigned to them that means that our an sro may have four or five elementary campuses assigned to them and they will rotate their time throughout the day to those various campuses we have security personnel they are assigned very similar to what our police officers are we have a security officers assigned to every secondary campus and we have security officers assigned to four of our elementary and special sites drill requirements we have extensive drill requirements all of our campuses follow the standard response protocols we have five different actions that those campuses take in event of any threat towards that campus that is secure lock down shelter evacuation and hold we practice those those procedures by conducting drills at each campus at
042least twice each month those that drill standard is almost twice what the state uh mandates parents should receive a message of those drills prior to any drill occurring and we also notify all local law enforcement entities when we are conducting those drills we have random k-9 inspections at all of our campuses you all met jumbo the other day our newest member of the police department jumbo will be conducting random classroom locker and vehicle inspections to search for narcotics and weapons throughout the coming school year and of course we also have behavioral threat assessment teams those teams review threats that are made towards them when threats are made either towards themselves or to others to do harm a report is made to a behavioral threat assessment team to follow up to mitigate those threats and of
043course if a weapon is involved in those threats then it's up to the police department to respond to that as well and determine what that threat level is and whether or not it's a credible threat with that i will answer any questions that you might have of course my question is about jumbo um how is he does he work every day yes ma'am we're still learning his his capacity uh but yes as a matter of fact jumbo just i'll also point out that jumbo just graduated last friday and i'd like to congratulate his handler officer edge finished top in his class so they both did very well in the in the training and uh but to answer your question yes he will be working with that officer every single day throughout our our campuses thank
044you you're welcome i just i have a question or two but i i think it's more appropriate for a closed session but i do want to say i really appreciate the job you guys do and especially right now there's there's a lot of attention on school security and anytime you need anything as far as personnel or or equipment tell dr nivens and you got a yes vote out of me automatically i mean this is important to me i've said it many times security is important to me and lamar is academics and i will always vote whatever you guys need you guys are the professionals and i have people email me asking me questions and i keep telling them whatever chief and our superintendent say we need let's do it so thank you chief i know
045this was a very high level uh description of what we have and i know a lot of parents want to know more about the details on their child's campus and i've got kids in the district and i would want to know all those details too why can't you share more specific details with the community yeah that's that's an excellent question and and what we do is we we we do not want to reveal any of our strategies any of our plans that could undermine our ability to respond effectively to any type of threat if if we put those plans and procedures and made them public people would be able to then study those look for vulnerabilities and and really undermine the safety and security plan that we have in place for our children and chief
046if we often hear about safety and security see something say something so if uh a community member or parent or a student sees a threat or sees a vulnerability in one of our campuses who should they contact you know my email and the the police department's email our phone numbers are readily available on the on our district web page they can easily contact us through there they can report it if they want to do it anonymously they can report any type of threat through the crime stoppers program but the easiest way to do it the quickest way is to contact the police department directly we immediately somebody send somebody out to investigate those threats or that that vulnerability and then take action to correct it thank you um i wanted to say that i appreciate
047the fact that we take all the online posts and then we are screening everything regarding lamar cic so thank you for putting that into place and making sure that that is done with diligence um because again like some of the other like john already said said that safety is you know our top priority for our babies want to make sure that they all go home better than they came to us and so that the online world is a scary place too so yeah it is and and i i was when we first started that i was really surprised at how many posts they actually screened like i said current numbers run almost 20 000 posts a week that they're screening for us any other questions thank you thank you chief all right trustees next we
048have a uh we have our budget workshop update from our cfo miss jill ludwig good evening again uh this presentation will cover items 10d as well as items 11 a through c those were actually future action items first of all the budget update as you recall the board of trustees is required to adopt three budgets the general fund budget the child nutrition budget and the debt service fund budget starting with the general fund you see the the components are of course revenues and expenditures with property taxes and state aid being the two greatest sources of revenue and personnel and benefits being the greatest source of expenditures with um you know everything else making up a small component where we've been this year as mr hunt mentioned earlier we've done a lot of things a lot
049of revenue estimation a lot of budget cutting and various activities to get to the point we are now we've presented allocations to campuses and departments they did their data entry we made some adjustments we've had a couple of workshops with the board budget committee and also we've had some strategic planning meetings with our internal teams back in april we were looking at a thousand twenty three million dollar uh proposed deficit in the 2223 budget then after a few cuts in may we were at about uh 20 million deficit and now we've actually gotten to the positive of about half a million dollars so we're looking good we in the budget committee meeting we talked about enrollment projections attendance and of course our values and then also our first priority which is raises for all staff
050which we discussed earlier and then also providing providing hiring incentives for new teachers to the district the reductions that i mentioned earlier within the last month we've made or accumulate to about 20 and a half million dollars we've made some staffing ratio recommended changes with the bulk of which going to the secondary level we've also kept our non-campus budgets at the same level as the current year 2122 budget we've also increased our estimate for attrition which is actually a reduction of the salary budget and then we've delayed at this point in time some staffing proposals by the cte and ccmr groups that was about a half a million of the 3.8 million you see there in the non-campus budgets we did hold steady some of the non-campus budgets in the areas of maintenance and operations
051because that involves the upkeep of our buildings also property insurance the central appraisal district fees and also legal fees and then transportation costs which is the bulk of that is for the fuel for the buses focusing on the general fund there are three major categories of revenue in the general fund from sources local sources state sources and federal sources and you'll see that less than one percent of our revenues come from federal here is a pie chart of our revenues and you'll see 214 or 54 percent 214 million or 54 of our budget comes from property taxes and then 155.5 million comes from state aid so that's about 93 of our budget from those two pieces here is the detail of those amounts you'll see that other than property taxes and state aid trs on
052behalf which is a book entry where we reflect our portion of the trs benefits paid to our employees accounts with trs that was 20 million and also 3 million for our medicaid revenues i wanted to point out that our total revenue budget is right at 397 million property tax revenues uh come of course are generated by our property values in the district right now it looks like there will be at least 24 percent higher than the 2021 values which the 24 percent is humongous compared to the previous five years which averaged at about six and a half percent growth we're using 95 percent of total values on the recommendation of the chief appraiser and chief appraisers values have to fall within a prescribed range in order to meet state guidelines the largest category of revenues
053in the state category are come from the foundation school program and also per capita allotments in our board budget committee meetings we discussed various ways that we could estimate state aid and the two biggest drivers of state aid are enrollment and attendance and so you'll see in the middle column it reflects the moderate scenario of both attendance and enrollment we're looking at about a 2 300 student increase in enrollment for next year and we're using 94.5 percent as our attendance rate so that'll generate the 155.5 million dollars in federal the bulk of the revenues come from indirect costs rotc reimbursements and also shars and mac which are medicaid programs moving on to the expenditure side of the budget we're right at 397 million again with 333.5 million being salaries or personnel and benefits that's about
05484 percent of the budget and then the next largest category would be your professional and contracted services which also includes utilities and costs like that that's about nine percent so again 93 percent of the budget on the expenditure side relates to those two areas and so here's a pie chart of same moving on to the debt service fund we're showing total estimated revenues of 101.5 million dollars with the bulk being 96 million in property taxes uh and also we've got um about 100 million or so in expenses in this fund with about 30 million going to bond principle and about 71 million going to interest on our bonds our key points of interest in this area are keeping a level um or consistent debt service tax rate and also keeping increased debt capacity meaning the
055ability to issue additional bonds and also this budget will extend the life of our accrued interest because with the additional tax revenues we're not having to use some of our capitalized interests that are in the fund balance moving on to child new nutrition that is our self-sustaining budget the estimated revenue is about 20 and a half million for next year and as i mentioned earlier it comes from breakfast and lunch sales and also federal reimbursements this is how the expenditures stack up there about nine and a half million to payroll and benefit costs 12 million for all the supplies the food costs and various things like that uh we are planning we've got a we're expecting to end the year with about an 8 million dollar fund balance in in the child nutrition fund and
056that exceeds some of the state levels that are that they allow for us and so we're needing to draw down that fund balance so in addition to making some uh strategic expenditure decisions we're also providing raises and restructuring salaries a little in that fund we think that'll draw down the fund balance slightly over the next few years and by you know a few a couple to three years out or so enrollment and sales will again level off that fund with respect to the tax rate the current year tax rate for 2021 was 1.242 or a dollar 24. the m o rate was a little over 87 cents and entrance interest and sinking for debt service is 37 cents what we're proposing for 22 23 is the a flat tax rate same a dollar 0.242 and
057the m o rate will be about 85 and a half cents that's 0.8046 is the maximum compressed rate that's required by tea will actually get our mcr assigned to us in august sometime by tea and that'll confirm that rate but then there's the additional five cents we add locally for uh tier two enrichment and then our interest in sinking rate would go up to 0.3874 so about one and three quarters cents higher but we would be able to keep a flat rate that will help us to increase our debt capacity with respect to the future action items 11 a through c there are a number of truth and taxation requirements that we have to meet um which requires publishing several things and including various things in our budget we do a couple of tax rate
058calculations which is the first one being the voter approval rate which was formally known as the rollback rate a no new revenue tax rate and then the board is required to call a special meeting to vote on the proposed tax rate as well as the date for the meeting that you'll discuss the budget and the tax rate so that's that's a couple of the items this is just a snapshot of the notice that we have to publish there's a lot of calculations and things that we have to tell the public which follows these things but i wanted to point out the tax rate and the date that you're needing to approve also with respect to transparency house bill 2723 requires that we publish tax rate information on our website and also have public hearings and
059then also tax code 26.04 requires us to add an appendix to our tax rate that actually presents those calculations of the rates that i mentioned earlier and then finally this year we have to designate an individual by name that calculates the no new revenue rate and the voter approval tax rate any questions on any of that so just for clarity we're lowering the m o rate but we're raising the bond rate so the flat rate is the same yes and that is to help us pay dr nimmins told me this has helped to pay off the debt a little bit faster without raising the overall rate that the taxpayers are paying yes thank you all right thank you very much uh one more uh so we didn't talk about our fast growth allotment yes uh
060so can you briefly uh talk about that just so everyone in the room can't stand with that what that means and uh what that did to our funding also sure um if you'll recall toward the beginning of the presentation i talked about the various scenarios that we've gone through in order to balance the budget um at one point in time well let me just put it this way i've already done 26 calculations of our state funding this year but in between some of those calculations we were notified that the state is going to prorate the fast growth allotment so every district that's eligible for the fast growth allotment is being prorated by 17 so our typical fast growth allotment calculation for this year would have been 25 million roughly and now we're going to receive
061about 20 million so 17 for us is right at four and a half to five million dollars or so that we're not going to receive so that contributed us to us having that deficit the reason for that was that too many fast wrote the statements growth districts yeah the state has a certain amount that they can allocate across the whole district and when the actual calculations for all the districts exceed that amount then they have to bring everybody back down um so that they that their their cap can cover everybody so it was 17 this year we get punished for being all right thank you mr ledway and we have one more future action item yes i have uh uh dr jones coming up to talk about some policy additional revisions first dr jones will
062talk about our library policy revisions and then next we will have mr bates that will discuss uh another policy revision dealing with our school mascots all right mr president board of trustees and dr nivens tonight i have the pleasure of discussing policy options related to ef local which pertains to instructional materials and library books as a reminder earlier this school year lamar cisd created a library book selection committee that included teachers campus administrators district administrators parents students and librarians the purpose of this committee was to define a process and procedures for selecting new books for lcisd libraries to do this we met four times and reviewed a variety of resources legal and local school board policies texas association of school board information items sample procedure documents from other districts and other resources from organizations like
063the american library association the committee developed a procedure that reached consensus as best practice for lamar cisd and was shared with the board of trustees in march 2022 since then a few things have happened uh on april 11 the texas education agency shared a recommended efb policy with school districts shortly after on may 16 the texas association of school board shared a recommended ef efa and efb policy with those guidance documents the library book selection committee reconvened to review the key similarities and differences of those policy recommendations and provided feedback regarding their perceptions of what is best for lamar cisd each of you received a binder should have one of these either at the policy meeting or tonight and it's full of great information for you related to each of these policies it includes original
064versions of the policy draft documents notes from our committee annotated versions of the policy documents and a combination document that includes committee preferences lots and lots of notes and things inside of this this binder for you currently lcisd has a single policy for selection and review of instructional materials ef local moving forward we have the option to continue with the single ef policy that covers instructional resources and library books or we can move forward with two separate policies efa that uncovers uh instructional materials in the classroom and efb that covers library materials we have included a recommended efa and efb policy that encompasses the feedback received from the library book selection committee to help provide some clarity of all the options at this time i've also identified some key elements found in each of the
065policy proposal documents that i'll share with you just real briefly so in the tea efb policy uh some key elements they included avoiding inappropriate materials and reference penal code 43.24 a2 43.24 b and cipa they provide six book selection uh criterion and then provide an additional five selection criterion for fiction narrative nonfiction and graphic novels they require all library materials be read prior to purchase all new library titles approved must be approved by the library core coordinator and this board of trustees challenge materials go to a district committee and that committee must include two parents and challenge materials must be reviewed within 10 days of receiving the challenge there is also included in that policy a 10-day preview of new titles for parents prior to student availability that would take place once in the fall
066and in the spring as that policy reads right now it also includes a bi-annual inventory so a full inventory of the library twice a year and then the board of trustees would also approve the subscription to text quest text quest is a collection of library databases curated by the texas state libraries and archives commission we do we have been a part of that subscription for many many years the tasb efb policy the key elements found there is that the district shall establish processes for parents to review library materials it also includes avoiding inappropriate materials it references penal code 43.2482 43.24 a1 and cipa it provides 15 book selection criterion and students age 18 and above may challenge library materials in addition to parents and community members challenge materials go to a district community committee which
067may include parents challenge materials must be reviewed in a reasonable timeline and the superintendent established established his system for regular maintenance of library materials the combination document that we put together that includes elements from the tasb and the tea policies it has that the district shall establish processes for parents review library materials it also includes an avoiding inappropriate materials section which references penal code 43.2482 43.24b and cipa it provides 15 book selection criterion which is a combination of the tea and the tasb policies it does have students age 18 plus may challenge library materials including the addition to the community and parents challenge materials go to a district committee and may include parents and challenge materials must be reviewed in a reasonable timeline and the superintendent shall establish a system for regular maintenance of library
068materials we do have documents that we'll make sure we share with you all that we didn't have in the binders today that outline all of these items and a few little smaller key elements from each of those policies as well are there any questions trustee welsh you were the you're the chair of the policy committee so if you'd like to share a little bit about the process and your comments on the policies um yeah and then zach and kay can jump into it as well we had a policy committee meeting on may the 31st where we we dug into this pretty deep and i had talked to the head of the tasby policy department on the telephone and i wanted to understand what the difference was from the teas recommendation and the tasby recommendation that
069had just come out a day before and it took me a little bit of time to get that person on the phone but we did um that i would really we're not going to adopt this tonight we're talking about in july is that correct so i would really recommend all all seven of us to read the tea policy in and of itself and then the tasmi recommendations and then what the administration is proposing the tea has a lot more teeth to it one of the things that i'm going to try to get into the proposal and i hope you guys will support me on this it's in the tea recommendation is that the administration give the board a list of books they want to adopt 30 days before they are in the libraries and the
070administration has taken that out if i'm not mistaken is that right dr jones or the committee maybe sir the committee recommendations did not include board approval as a requirement for purchasing library books and so what we talked about in the policy committee was a lot of our materials stay in the library for up to 18 to 20 years so we're talking about a 30-day delay potentially for a book that's going to stay in there for up to two decades so what i said that i would like to do with this that list because there's so many books i would like to take that list and put it out for the public consumption let the public come and read these books or at least read the titles and you put it out on the internet and
071you've got a lot more eyes focusing on this stuff and then because there's no way that anybody in this administration or any of us can read all these books in that amount of time but it would still allow those titles to be viewed publicly and there was concern about the 30-day delay if i'm not mistaken but personally i don't i don't think that's a big deal i mean we have a problem with the current system we're taking some other steps to to fix those problems but i think this is another set of eyes and that would also give the seven of us the final stamp of approval before they go into our libraries um okay zach i don't know if you guys have anything to add from the meeting there is video of that meeting
072if you guys are interested in dr nivens can give you that link i saw that the video is posted public to the district's youtube page and all that so that is there um i would like to say that the committee and the administration did definitely do their diligence on making sure that i mean everything was addressed and talked about so i want to give uh a thank you to those community members that showed up and spoke out and um that were in that you are valued part of this this committee in this process and all that so um yeah so like i mean like john said to the rest of us like the in that binder it's chock full of information that you just have to sit down and digest and figure out okay what
073is best so i like i will echo what he said for us just to actually get in there invest in time to reading and all that so well and i appreciated all the hard work that dr jones and his committee and the librarians they are in a task of trying to keep up not only with the books that are in their library and then find the new books and i think you stated that the meeting that there's just eight books i know that's eight books too many but you have eight books under review right now so um do you when those eight books have been reviewed and whatever the consequences are will that information be brought back to the board i'm sure yes ma'am i'm sure it all goes to the superintendent uh all the
074information and i'm confident he'll share that information and and i think i just reiterated in the meeting that i i don't have a problem with bringing the titles to the us but as far as trying to find which books to adopt or not i'm going to take it to the experts and that's you and your committees and your librarians and i feel like i trust the people in the room i it doesn't hurt having more eyes and ears but i would hate to decide on a book because a couple people said they didn't like it you know even when we read grants we let three to five people read a grant because everybody sees things in a different way so we just have to be careful in that respect and one thing i would like
075to say in like what she mentioned with those eight books one thing i would like the public to know is whenever those eight books were brought to the attention they were immediately pulled from the library so there was no like hey we're going to let it sit there while we take time and invest it no we took action as a district right away on those things so i'd like to just again publicly say that we are taking this seriously and that we are doing our diligence and that the team itself and i know kay mentioned the librarians and um i know our librarians are amazing and they invest a lot of time and effort into that so again just want to say thank you to them as well and the thing that i want to
076reiterate here is and i can get in trouble for this because i want to i want to be heard clearly kate likes to say on this issue she wants to trust the experts i respect our librarians and the education that they have with them on duty we have we have this problem and it might be because of the volume of material so this is not about them as individuals and trusting them or not trusting them is the way i see it i see this as there's just so much information coming in and one of the criteria and we talked about this in march is it an award-winning book well i mean anybody can give out an award these days and the stuff that was read in this boardroom and other boardrooms across the the region
077with the vulgar material a lot of those books were award-winning so i think that that we need to step back and we need to remember first and foremost we're talking about libraries for minors these are not public libraries this is not a first amendment right to publish and sell this is the kind of material that we want we are the ones that holding the standards in lamar cisd and what are our standards going to be for minors is it going to be material that that inspires and causes critical thinking and those kinds of things or is it are we going to allow two or three pages out of 300 that are very vulgar because well that's the way kids talk anyway or is there you know a a slant in a book that would kind
078of disparage a certain group because of ethnicity or religion none of us would want that but what if there's just two or three pages quote unquote i think that that's a reason to dismiss the book with all the other great material in the world with all the other great literature in the world that's a that's a my my estimation that's the book that should not be in lamar libraries so i would i would challenge you guys to think like that a little bit when you read these different policies over the next six weeks and we come back in july and adopt one of these i have a question dr jones how many do you know offhand approximately how many books we have in the libraries i think the number i shared at the policy meeting
079was over 500 000 books that we have in lcisd unique titles in lamar consolidated isd so to miss mr welch's suggestion that the next meeting you wanted to put out 30 days early do we buy books at just one point or a couple points here or do we do it on a rolling basis and if so what would that process we do on a rolling basis what would that process look like for putting it onto a website so the public could view it yes sir so right now purchasing of library books does happen throughout the year there are not set times the librarians they would be following our selection procedure and working with their principal to ensure that before the principal approves that purchase um that they followed all of those and said that they've
080met all of those guidelines but it happens throughout the entire school year it's not set timelines per se would that pose would that pose a problem then if we're doing it on a rolling basis to have a website where we could put it there for 30 days or could some books go on there and then they just automatically roll off after 30 days just logistically could we make that work logistically we would have to define what that system is going to look like um of how we pull the the book lists and how would we publish that um and pulling all of that material i don't know what that would look like we would have to figure out what that process is and being able to put in their dates of this is whenever it
081was published so that it can go on and written in the policy it does say it's for a first time purchase of a book so we would also have to keep documentation of this is a book that has already been purchased in the past so it doesn't roll back into that that list but last school year we did purchase over 20 000 unique titles so it's still a large sum of books so mr welch the tea policy or what you're suggesting would you just want title and author would you want publisher would you want date what information would you want on there um i i don't believe the tea recommendation and correct me if i'm wrong dr jones required or suggested that the publisher and all that kind of i think it just recommended the
082title and the author uh and it would just be a a list on a sheet of paper or a pdf um that would put some more eyes on it and and like i said if we were talking about the kind of material because i had the question of how how come there's so many books that we need to get rid of and add another 20 000 every year and he gave a great example of a electric scooter of a book that describes an electric scooter that we won in our libraries well that's a that's a great addition and maybe we're going to take out you know how to make a wooden scooter i don't know something like kids are not into wooden scooters right but i don't see it i don't see any any reason
083why we wouldn't want to even add that kind of stuff to the list i mean we have a problem with the way things have gone um and especially when you get to some of these novels or or some of these nonfiction with a certain angle i i don't see any reason why we wouldn't just put some more eyes on it out there this this so the list would be what the professionals want and the administration and then we would take it and we could we could sit on it do nothing or we could put it on the internet and invite our public the folks who put us in these seats to say hey does anybody have any interest in these does anybody know anything that's not good about one of these titles and people would
084probably go out and research it themselves and come back and if we did that i do think we would need to make sure that we create a procedure for them to identify what is in our selection procedures guidelines that say this is a title that should not be brought into the lcisd collection just to ensure that we're we're being careful to not we we don't want to be uh we want to be careful whenever we're working with that to make sure that we're not purposely keeping books of a certain topic off of our shells just because we don't like that it's because of these guidelines that we don't want the book in our libraries and so we want to make sure we have a very specific procedure for here are my concerns with that book
085as to why it doesn't align with our procedures i think one of the main things that we can talk about or just mention again is that it does reference that penal code and that it is something that is whether it's pornographic or whatnot that's the kind of stuff that we want to make sure that our minor students do not have access to or don't that we're not readily saying okay here we're trying to teach you this or want you to act this out or put any of those thoughts into any of our students minds under our care and supervision so it's that it's under it's referencing that penal code code regarding the pornographic material i was going to actually your questions president hunt um i was a lot of those were the same ones i
086had and so to your point i think that's um good mr jones that if if we're going to offer the 30 days then yes that we show them you know please make sure have a way that we can they can vet you know if it doesn't meet this criteria please know that it's not going to be considered even for review and so i think that's very helpful and that will um just make it a more efficient process but i i do think it's important because we're the ones that they come to as a board when when it doesn't go well and so i think as us being the ones that have to um listen to it and you know and frankly i was embarrassed by some of the stuff we had so but i'm accountable
087at the end of the day and so i think it is um if we can make that work to have something to where we can be proactive instead of reactive in this situation i think that's a very proactive approach and so and those of us that will hear about it the most um are able to kind of get ahead of it as well so that's that's my two cents so i just like to say that uh thank you dr jones your committee for for the work uh you know as as everyone uh has been paying attention to this this topic now for quite quite a while uh as we see as we see the tv interviews and we hear everything uh it's an adversarial conversation and you know as a team of eight lamar cisd
088this is not an adversarial conversation it's very clear we do not want pornographic material in our books in our schools for our children to read because i remember sending out a letter at the very beginning when we pulled those first eight books and said we will fight for the innocence of our kids and so uh unfortunately there are people out there that would like us to have that material in our libraries but we do not and so i was going to say publicly this is not an adversarial conversation in our school system we are fighting the same fight what we have to decide now is how do we fight that fight and what's our process of fighting that fight because once we start circumventing our processes and procedures then we have chaos right and you
089know and no one can work well in that in that uh in that in that environment and so i just want to say that publicly because as you start as you continue to hear the conversation it becomes very aggressive and it becomes very angry and uh you know as adults our students are watching us and when we approach each other and we have conversations in that tone and tenor then it shows our young people how how they should respond when they get our age on how on how they should behave when they disagree and so what i do appreciate about you know lamar sasd and our community and our trustees is that it hasn't been that that level of a conversation it's been a very uh civil conversation that we've been able to have to
090come to an agreement because we're all fighting the same fight and so i just want to make sure i say that because people on the outside would think that there's some internal turmoil and there's no internal turmoil here we all are on the same page we don't want our students reading that we don't want them exposed to that we just have to figure out how we're going to fight this fight the best way that we can all agree on yeah i agree and it's it's it's important to make this a non-personal discussion this is about ideas this is about standards it's not about me or or anybody else in this committee or any librarian this is a about the standards we're holding in the ideas all right so that's the future action item we'll bring
091it back in july and so next we'll have mr bates talk about cw local update this one is a fairly short conversation mrs received thank you dr nicholas good evening board of trustees uh this next version of the uh presentation is for a proposed policy update for cd the cw local which is the current policy that we have uh and currently the cw local policy governs the board's ability to have final authority on the naming of schools and what we're wanting to propose as an addition to this policy is the naming of mascots also the final authority wrestling with the board of trustees and that's to better ensure that we're uh assuring the the community that the names that we have for our mascots are appropriate for and meet the expectation of the board of
092trustees in the community as well so the proposed recommendation would be the following as i'll read the superintendent shall determine the process to seek appropriate stakeholders input when choosing a mascot for a district campus and the the final piece is in consultation with administration the board should have final approval in selecting new elementary middle school and high school mascots as far as the final process for approving mascots so i'll pause for any questions or any additional discussion and this was also discussed in the policy committee so mr welch miss danziger mr lambert if you have any comments in the process um i this this came about because of the new phelan elementary opening and then and they're going to be called the knights as in knight in shining armor yes sir and from what i
093understand that was not going to come through one of our board books for approval and in the past my three years on the board so far it always has and so evidently that has been overlooked in the official policy and so i'm my desire was to simply add it to the policy so that we are the final ones that say yes this however that process came about this this makes sense this name this logo this animal or whatever is appropriate for for us and we're the final ones that say that so it was that simple um i do want to say that because we have middle school and junior high we might need to add the wording junior high to that as well all right thank you sir thank you all right are there any
094other items on the future consent agenda that trustees would like to pull for discussion at the july board meeting all right hearing none it is 6 59 we're adjourning the closed session pursuant to texas government code sections 551.071 551.072 551.074 and 551.082 the open meetings act to discuss personnel land acquisition or consultation with our attorney