Lamar CISD Regular Board Meeting - March 22, 2022

001thank you independent school district is called to order at 6 32 p.m this is the regular monthly board meeting being held on march the 22nd 2022 we have a quorum with all members present please join me in a moment of silence to observe as you feel appropriate okay please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance and pledge to the texas flag i pledge of allegiance and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberties okay dr nivens are there any recognitions this evening yes ma'am madam president we do have a few recommendations i'll turn it over to ms sancho hamilton good evening madam president board of trustees and dr nivens lamar cisd is proud to present to you our state medalist in both wrestling and swimming from this

002winter the following young men and women completed their seasons at their respective state meets they and their teammates proved to be some of the best in the state of texas thanks to their hard work perseverance and commitment to excellence we are honored to be joined by the dedicated and proud coaches of these athletes as well this evening i'm going to call the students and the athletes up and the coaches and then i'm going to read some more of their accolades from foster wrestling coached by scott kimball we've got maddie canales our gold medalist ulster wrestling coached by adam adam a we've got seth smith bronze medalist in a 200 pound weight class full sure swimming coached by matt thomas we've got avery dillon silver medalist 200 yard freestyle gold medalist 500 yard freestyle girls 200

003free relay team bronze medalist avery dillon ellie paisley emma nowatney and kaylee kennedy so let's start with our full suit charger wrestling program and you all may come to the front our facial charger wrestling program was on the state podium this year when junior seth smith claimed the bronze medal in the 220 pound weight class at the 5a state championship seth won his third place match by sudden victory with a score of seven to five seth has claimed two medals in two trips to the state tournament seth and his teammates are coached by coach adam [Applause] the foster falcon wrestlers cheered as sophomore maddie canales had a great had a gold medal draped around her neck after claiming the 128 pound 5 8 state championship maddie has only lost one match in her high school

004career and traded her bronze medal from last year's championships in for a much shinier gold piece this season maddie and her falcon teammates would like to be pencilled in on the board's calendar for next year as they finish six but next year we anticipate a much higher finish and they have their eyes set on a team title soon the falcons are coached by scott kimball [Applause] and the churchill full church girls swim team continues to raise the bar and add records and recognitions to the natatorium wall the charge of 200 relay free relay team finished with third fastest time in the state and claimed the bronze medal the relay team includes junior ellie paisley freshman emma nowatney sophomore kayla kennedy and freshman avery dillon in fact in her first high school season freshman avery dillon

005claimed a full set of medals from uil she added to her bronze on the relay with a silver in the 200 yard freestyle and finished with a gold and state championship in the 500 yard freestyle the chargers ended this year's 5a uil state meet as the fifth place team in the state of texas and cannot wait to get back into the water the charges are coached by matt thomas [Applause] are the parents of our athletes here would our parents please stand parents please come to the front they want to owe our kiddos our kids students please come to the front for our group photo and the coaches citizen coaches please return to the front for the group photo okay uh thank you cool congratulations everyone [Applause] sorry that's coach matt tomas sorry mr tomas okay

006tonight we're also recognizing foster high school visual arts students mia huckman mia please come on up here mia's painting partners in time was selected as a 2022 houston livestock show and rodeo reserve grand champion in the school arts division now on sunday march 13th mia's painting broke a world record by selling for 265 thousand dollars it sold for 15 000 more than the grand champion painting now mia's portion of the auction sale will be 14 000 just so you understand quite how impressive this is 3 000 pieces of artworks were submitted by 95 school districts in southwest southeast texas as well as 54 private schools 739 were selected to advance to the next round of judging including 13 from lamar cisd out of the top 739 pieces 72 were selected for the auction and this

007is the 12th time since 2000 that lamar cisd has had either a high school grand champion or reserve grand champion in the arts contest so in addition to being a visual arts student mia is also part of the falcon bands color guard she was also in this year's production of the wiz she's a visual arts student of miss monica erasia at foster high school and she's the daughter of michael and vicki huckman would parents please come forward me you can shake it right hand and then we'll do a group photo [Laughter] okay let's do a quick group photo please yes yeah yeah but i trustees we're the teacher yeah we need the art teacher yes definitely come on up there you go got him okay my big smiles cut it cool right thank you so

008much one more round of applause for mia and dr knives this concludes our recognitions for this evening i'm sorry there we go thank you are there any introductions yes yes there are yes there are introductions uh i'm still wild about two out of six five i know right uh miss music please come up good evening board of trustees dr nevins so i want to introduce to you today kevin croft so we've got a familiar face going to take on a new building kevin croft is a may 2007 graduate of shriner university with a bachelor's degree in english he received a master's degree in 2008 in educational administration from shriner university mr croft has 14 years of experience in education including five years of teaching experience six years as an assistant principal and three years as

009a principal mr croft is currently serving as the principal at poly ryan middle school and he is joined today by his his daughter who's by his side and he also has his son here so mr mr crump mr kroff will be the new principal for phalen elementary [Applause] uh okay uh miss johnson are there any public comments if you wish to address the board you must fill out a card and submit it before the presiding officer calls the meeting to order while speakers generally have five minutes to address the board the presiding officer may establish an overall time limit for public comment and adjust the time allotted to each speaker when necessary to accommodate a large number of speakers however no speakers shall be given less than one minute all of this is in compliance

010with hb 2840 each speaker tonight will have five minutes while the board values from values hearing from members of the public trustees may not respond to comments as they are prohibited by law from discussing or deciding any subject that is not on the board's publicly noticed agenda speakers having complaints against individual district employees or trustees may only address the board after filing a complaint form and in the manner provided for in board policy dgba employee complaints fng student and parent complaints gf public complaints the presiding officer or designee shall determine whether a speaker has filed a complaint according to policy any speakers who complain of individual district employees or trustees during public comment will be directed by the presiding officer to stop addressing the board and will refer to the speaker to and will refer

011the speaker to the appropriate complaint policy please state your name when you come forward our first speaker is michelle raw all right good evening my name is michelle roth i am here to again address the board about the rezoning of summer lakes from aaron dondo elementary to williams elementary i have got gathered some additional information since the last time i was here last month about why we should not be rezoned some of the main points i know i did email this information to you guys as well i put together a survey tried to get it out to as many people as i could i was unfortunately not able to go door-to-door like i was the last time we had some illness in our family and i didn't want to pass that along but after the

012conclusion of this survey i have found that the vast majority of the owners who did fill out the survey said that this is one big reason that they would move out of our community so out of 56 people 41 people said this decision would cause them to move our subdivision has a thousand homes in it so if you put that out there that's 72.3 of the homes 723 owners of homeowners in our subdivision that would be willing to move if that's accurate data based on this small number of the people that i was able to get um however i mean even if a quarter was willing to move that's 250 people which could affect the schools in many different ways one i mean you're taking children out of the subdivision which could affect lamar's state

013funding because you won't have those students there um but it would also present a hardship to our community because that many people moving out of the community at once will definitely damper our community and others wanting to actually move into it the other reasons some of them that i have here there's a new commissioner that was just voted in that is now taking over the benton road project which we don't know whether or not he's going to keep the same agenda with that or not if it's going to stay on par for what the project plan is which is about a year to 18 months from my understanding before it's complete so there's the traffic issue that we discussed before but now there's another kink in that um we also have the separation of our

014community we are summer lakes and summer park together summer park is staying at arendando but the way that this was voted was that summer lakes would then be going to williams elementary so you're dividing our community up so we won't have that unity anymore another reason that we need to look at this again is the instability of our children's learning it could potentially create a negative effect on their educational growth and how they learn having to switch from place to place after already going through two years of a pandemic they're already compromising enough the children are also the fact that i found that our subdivision has been rezoned multiple times over the last few years it seems like our subdivision is being targeted that we're constantly being the ones shuffled around whereas other communities aren't

015um and then also something that came to light tonight before i got here was that at williams elementary they are on the maroon track which is i believe ryan reading and george ranch high school and even with this change summer lakes will still be on the silver track which would then separate our kids yet again so they're going to air dondo now they're getting separated from all of their friends and everybody there to get moved to williams then they're going to get separated from all their friends at williams because they're then still going to be on the silver track which is right in randall so i feel like this is just it's not been handled very well i feel like that you know what came out the last time that you guys did this rezoning

016in a different manner that you know we have to look back at this we have to get the community's input on this we can't just go based on you know just the parents who are involved in the elementary school level at this point the community needs to be able to make this decision as a whole thank you the next speaker is heather statzer as stated my name is heather statzer and i am here to also speak again on the rezoning of summer lakes i want to tell you that i appreciate you allowing the opportunity for michelle and i to come and speak again in front of you i know that we speak for many as she said but we are the faces currently right now um that are that are leading this um she touched

017on many of the things that was going to be brought up on mine as well one thing that i'd like to just go back and address that i had some concerns on as far as when we spoke last was williams numbers when they were asked what william's current enrollment was it had to be looked up it wasn't a known number which made me a little concerned as far as if i were a parent and i am sitting in this room i would want to know what is the projected path of the numbers because williams was overcrowded we did crowd control rezoned but what is summer lakes and all the other elementary schools moving to williams what is that going to make their number be is it going to be near needing to be rezoned again

018in a couple of years and if so what schools get rezoned what neighborhoods get rezoned and the traffic pattern it was as well stated that it was looked at in previous years um as as somebody that is about to move into that school i would like to have known that the traffic pattern was a concern already because of overcrowding and that it had been addressed or was going to be addressed and had a a plan in place as far as knowing what we're going to do but it was stated when asked that they hadn't looked at it since several years prior um as well as the communication of it i know that there was an email sent and i am not the most savvy person as far as understanding a map my husband tells me

019that i am coordinating like geographically the worst person to know where i'm at um however i think that in doing so it would have been nice for the community to know that it was being done differently um maybe then i know i would have looked at it in a different perspective i would have um came at it from a different direction of knowing that and i respect you guys i know with new leadership comes hard choices right and making hard decisions for the future and for the better and we i'm not a mom that comes and um makes my child i don't shelter my child from hurts and pains i really try not to um but i'm speaking to you tonight as a parent first but also somebody that's invested in lamar um us being

020in a pandemic is by no means secret to anybody i have invested my time and my energy and my heart into eredondo elementary when there was no subs available today this morning i am there at 7am because we needed bodies up there why was i able to get there before some of my other team because i lived in summer lakes i didn't have to cross a railroad track i didn't have to deal with several lights i was able to be there in under five minutes and be in a in the cafeteria or in the gym sitting with students and making sure that they are safe and comfortable and um protected and in the middle of a crazy storm um so going back to sorry going back to the the communication piece i just um would

021like to bring it to the attention of if we were going to do it in such a different way that for future it might be better to allow the the community to understand that as well and to see that it it is going to be handled differently if that made any sense um and uh lastly the summer park and summer lakes community being split summer lakes is the mothership of summer park and summer lakes we have the pool we have all the community events are hosted at our pool or at our large green and you again as michelle stated are asking us to remove friends remove peers remove things that children have had removed for two years are just now regaining to be stripped away again our mental health of our children are important and

022i think that that is something that needs to go into play i have sat in my living room i have sat in my laundry room i have sat in my home in various areas of my home crying real tears with my second grader who's afraid that she's not going to get to be with her friends again she lost it in kindergarten she didn't really have it in first grade because of the protocols necessary protocols and then just now is she getting to experience what school is like for that to be stripped away again i thank you for the time and the opportunity to come and speak to you thank you our next speaker is d.d sullivan hello my name is dd sullivan and i came to speak about possibly naming a school after lynette brown

023lynette brown was my teammate for 23 years at taylor ray she was the first friend i ever made she reached out to me to make to make sure that you know that we would be a team she loved the children she encouraged them to be creative and to be involved in self-expression she loved creating lesson plans she enjoyed making lesson plans because she made lesson plans that made the kids think and the kids learn and the kids were very involved and knew all of the the different parts of art it was very important to her she was absolutely an exceptional teacher just top-notch um like i said i was a teammate of hers for 23 years and she was always reaching out to all the other teachers she wanted to help the other teacher she

024wanted to help the new teachers you know how can i help you you know what about this what about this and making suggestions she was just amazing she worked really closely with the school administrators she was in their office she was in their ear she was giving suggestions she was taking suggestions she was also always welcoming people she taught at taylor ray elementary for about 25 years she was there for a very long time um we were there for so long that we started the the parents of our kids it started to be that we had taught the parents that it was you know it was such a long amount of time past students still talk about her fondly and about her lessons she loved being a mother to her two kids she was a

025great mother she was always a team player she'll always be remembered for leading yoga exercises in the gym sometimes it would be like a no day like it was testing or something and we would have all the kids in the gym together and lynette the art teacher would get up there and lead the kids in yoga poses and the kids loved it and we loved it it was fun for everybody everybody loved her she was also involved in girls on the run which is a program where they take fourth and fifth grade girls and teach them running skills but they also teach them how to grow as a person and she was involved in that that was very important to her she was very very dedicated she was dedicated as a friend as a mother

026as a teacher and as a volunteer and so i just wanted to speak for just a minute on her behalf and make sure that somebody said what about lynette brown maybe we could name a school after her thank you so much appreciate it thank you thank you um do you have any board member reports let me start at this end miss danziger let me get my microphone on i always forget um it's been kind of a busy few weeks since we've been away after the last board meeting of course we had men who cook which i think was an absolute success knowing seeing all the people there and thank you dr nivens for your delicious shrimp i think you're going to make a little more next year i like it went fast um also um

027the i think march 1st organization that's dear and dear to my heart is the fort manchin retired educators association we collect books throughout the year and this year jane long was the recipient of our books and we went into every kindergarten and first grade class and every child was able to pick out a brand new book and we wrote their name in there and they were so excited and i just want to say the children were um so gracious and loving and and uh happy and i it was a lot of fun and some of the other retired teachers that came were so pleased with the classrooms that they visited um then of course we had read across america that week and i ended up reading over at velasquez and of course austin elementary which

028is also near and dear to my heart too and and they had celebrated uh dr seuss so i come dressed up like dr seuss characters which is kind of fun and a couple weeks ago dr nivens and i got to go visit the red track secondary schools and i'm so proud of the excellent classrooms that we visited and the students they were all engaged in doing activities that i had no idea if i could be doing it but i was very pleased by all the schools that we saw and it was a lot of fun i'll mention two things that i've done since the last meeting uh one was attend the international festival at arrodondo elementary which was fun it was the day before spring break and i got to see folks from all the

029way from pakistan to a men a man wearing a kilt and in the set up so it was it was a wide variety of folks the other thing on february the 25th i went to the george r brown convention center and was a judge for the deca competition deca and this is a competition where students from four of our high schools participated in with other students from around the state and i was there as one of the judges of entrepreneurial projects by other high school kids from across the state so i got to be one of the judges and and i appreciate the invitation to that so did get to take in some one-act plays at foster and i did read over at is that velasquez at velasquez um trying to think it seems like

030we've been gone for a while and it does kind of that was it for this month men who cook a lot of us went to the same things yeah all right yes i have something a couple things um i i spent one morning uh friday morning out at 16 21 and just got to hang out with the students and uh took donuts out to him and just got to hang out in that beautiful space and uh ingenuity was down that day so we just got to hang out and talk and um dr smith mr torres and their team and all the teachers there are doing a fantastic job and uh the students were bought in and excited and they were like kind of bummed they couldn't do their schoolwork which is awesome so it was

031kind of backwards but you know um then i also got to be part of njhs got to go out there for at wright junior high their induction ceremony which was pretty awesome my son was inducted way to go you did that right um and then also uh got to be a part of the shaq committee and all that and so being on the shack i'm a non-voting member representing the board on that and my first experience with public school systems was at our previous district and it was on the shack and so um for anybody and anyone are spots available beyond the shack we always need more people i also want to put a challenge out to the males and the men and all that to be participants of that there are only two males

032that come to the shack myself and our assistant director of athletics coach gebbard so um we definitely need more people to speak into that um it's a great opportunity for our community to get involved in what happens in our schools and all that it's a great onboarding step thank you um i was able to attend several of the things we've already mentioned it was a good time um we all show you you missed out on the cupcake wars that we got the judge cupcake wars those were nice amazing at wright junior high that was very fun i ate 12 cupcakes but i only had a bite of each one of them in like 30 minutes less yeah like it was it was and i don't even really like cupcakes so but they did a really

033good job um so that was do what you had to check my sugar levels after that one um um i was able to watch dr niven's in action with the pto and fort bend chamber events that he held and so it was great um i really appreciate how much he's reaching out to the community and trying to get everybody involved and on board um and like a lot of the got to read at velasquez a lot of different fun events so that was good month dr nivens do you have any reports yes ma'am really briefly um along everyone else uh had a had a great time at some events uh thank you miss danzig about my my shrimp my uh my son wouldn't eat it but everybody else did so that's always good it sounds

034good but he don't think his dad can cook um uh two two main things though uh one is i had a chance to read the velazquez with dr henry uh and her her camp is over there and i read to some pre-k babies and it was the most fun i've ever had and they were so engaged and one young lady said this is the best story i've ever heard and uh and those y'all know i'm a big crybaby and i almost lost it and so you know i didn't and uh that was a great time and so i appreciate dr henry and her staff uh for putting that on and inviting me to that but also this morning as as as recently as this morning you know we had the storms come in and uh

035you know right around 6 6 30 you know the storms came in and um you know our phones started blowing up we're all on the phone together and we're talking about you know do we need to delay and we're like well it's too late to delay and so i talked to some staff members and they were like it's too late to delay because parents are already dropping their kids off so we need to make sure we have people at the campuses to receive students and so i'm just so proud of our staff because they said we need to get out in the weather because we have parents out there already dropping off their kids and we could have easily said no you know we're just going to hold up and wait for my own safety

036but we have staff members in our district who did that and i just bring that up because you know a lot a lot of folks just don't know what our principals and our teachers and our counselors and our our teacher aides our bus drivers our child nutrition workers they just don't know everything they do for our students and uh and they put themselves on the line just to go out to make sure that when mom is taking her kids to that school and it's raining cats and dogs that somebody is there to receive them so mom can go to work and dad can go to work and uh you know we got a lot of we got some negative press about it but the the silver lining around that was is that we have people

037out there receiving students because parents were already out on the roads taking their kids to school and i just want to thank the staff i mean from the bottom of my heart because uh it's a big deal it's a big deal and a lot of people don't know what all you guys do the guys looking at me they don't know what you do um but i do and this board does and it is greatly greatly greatly appreciated ditto okay thank you at this time we will take action on the consent agenda and current action items we are going to pull on the consent agenda we're going to pull 8 c nine and then action items nine a one are there any other items mr welch yeah i'd like to pull uh eight l eight l

038yep okay can we pull eight uh n eight n i feel like i'm calling bingo okay any others okay so do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda and action items with the exception of items 8c 8 l 8 n and 9 a 1. i'll make it mr witch makes the motion do i have a second second mr lambert seconds is there any discussion okay all in favor raise your hand say aye all right okay none opposed motion carries okay so we will now read the resolutions beginning on page 26. whereas administrative professionals are valuable members of educational teams in schools and their administrative operations and whereas educational administrative professionals contribute in many ways beyond their most recognizable function as an administrative assistant and whereas their assistance is particularly important the daily activities

039and operations of a school district and whereas administrative professionals serve our educational community by providing support for students and staff and whereas educational administrative professionals assist school and district personnel as trusted communicators with parents and community members whereas their connection to the community aids in communication and positive public relations within the community therefore be it resolved that the board of trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district declares the week of april 25th through 29th 2022 as educational administrative professionals week and encourages members of the lamar consolidated independent school district staff and community to express appreciation to our educational administrative professionals whereas school librarians play a critical role in the educational process through involvement in reading and research and whereas school librarians serve as an instructor for early literature appreciation and share a unique knowledge

040of literatures as a way to learn and as a recreational pastime and whereas school librarians serve as a resource director for each campus as well as provide instructional support for teachers and students and whereas school librarians teach students to use research as an extension of the learning process that will help students throughout their educational career and whereas school librarians play an important role in curriculum development textbook selection and review of instructional materials and whereas school librarians maintain a knowledge of instructional technology and educational programs that serve as a resource to students and staff therefore be it resolved that the board of trustees of lamar consolidated independent school district declares the week of april 3rd through the 9th 2022 as school librarians week and encourages all members of lamar consolidated independent school district staff and community

041to express appreciation to our school librarians adopted this 22nd day of march 2022 whereas parents and family involvement in children's lives is critical to their success as children and adults and whereas volunteering is one of the most important aspects of parent involvement and whereas volunteers are invaluable to our schools teachers and students by greatly extending and increasing the district's resources and whereas the goal of volunteer appreciation week is to bring a greater awareness and demonstrate appreciation for the many hours of labor provided by by the volunteers in our schools therefore be it resolved that the board of trustees of lamar consolidated independent school district declares the week of april 18th through the 22nd 2022 to be public school volunteer appreciation week in the lamar consolidated independent school district adopted this 22nd day of march 2022.

042thank you all okay so we will start with agenda item 8 c let's see that is on page 22. um do i have a motion um okay so thank you mr estrada so i had some questions about the last item on page 23 which is the performing and visual arts department is requesting a budget change to pay for 72 students from all six high schools to travel to the international thespian festival this summer in bloomington indiana so we're being asked to approve a hundred thousand dollars from instruction to go to extracurricular activities so i just had some questions and so thank you for answering some of them um via email already um so my my first question was is the request for a hundred thousand dollars to send students to a festival a common request

043the answer was not it is not a common request this is the first time we've had so many students qualify for the national thespian conference so um which is exciting but will you kind of describe what that means to qualify what they had to do to get there and that type of thing yes ma'am uh so we we send students from all six of our high school theater programs and um entry fees to the texas thespian festival happens in november and those entry fees are either paid individually or they come from fundraising projects productions on the campus level we pay for uh transportation to get the students to grapevine uh where it takes place over um four days and so if they place at the texas thespian festival they qualify for the international thespian festival

044it's international because it's all 50 states the territories plus wherever there are um american type theater programs around the world so the last time i went i met someone competing from dubai so that's why it's called international it's uh it takes place in june it's usually on a college campus uh this is the first festival after the covet quarantine and it used to be university of nebraska now it's the university of indiana in bloomington we are transporting um as of today 65 students plus staff and one administrator we're flying the kids up transporting them from indianapolis to bloomington where they will compete they will take clinics they will acquire skills that will bring back home and strengthen their theater programs on campuses okay so they had to qualify at the state level yes ma'am and

045then they they won or they placed in a certain they they uh they do place at uh at a certain at a certain level and so they are competing they're in individual events or they're in group events okay theatrical duets group musical in solo musical solo monologue anything theatrical there's an event for it there's even stage management there's a technical theater okay so it's not just if they want to go they had to place locally first they had to play okay [Music] so i asked you what instruction was given up in order to fund the trip and you said the performing and visual arts department budgets annually for musical instrument instrument replacement um and the director which is you um you decided to delay the ordering instrument replacements for this year in order to fund

046the trip so um i'm not familiar with you're over the whole budget for finding the arts correct so i know we've had a committee meeting about fees and instrument fees and so this is why this kind of popped up for me as well that so for taking away a hundred thousand dollars from buying or from the instruments how does that um next year if we if if 72 people qualify again how do we delay that budget i'm i'm just so so if if i can if i can expand a little bit on uh on the function on the instructional budget um i think a more accurate way of describing that would be to purchase replace multiple fine arts project expenditures it can be musical instruments can be banned instruments can be orchestrated instruments it could

047be pianos we've also used that fund to replace um theatrical one-act playsets so there's a standard uh set of equipment props that are used for a one-act play production and every school has sometimes they have to be replaced sometimes a light board in an auditorium goes out and it we have to we have to replace it so it comes out of one fund for the most part though that's musical instrument replacement we cycle through instruments and they need to be replaced when they have increased repairs it's usually more cost effective to replace an instrument rather than to keep repairing it right and and with with uh with the volume of instruments that we have in our inventory across all the secondary schools uh we we just now we just budget for it with increasing prices

048that's where all the money was so i had to i'm taking 100 i'm asking to take a hundred thousand out of that fund and shift it over to uh fund travel it the money's budgeted i just didn't with increased transportation costs it's it's caused me to have to prioritize and reprioritize different uh expenditures um so normally um so if we had say 72 people go next year we wouldn't be able to tap into the band i mean when i guess my concern is is is this going to be something that we need to re-look at for the future um you know and because if we're going to have a lot of people qualify or how we um do we ask for fees or something towards i guess renegotiate the budget if we're going to have

049a lot of people qualifying which is fantastic right and so but at the same time i i'm leery of taking it out away from band to do something that um is probably a growing thing for us especially adding more high schools and um so as we as we move forward in the budgeting process we we learn from the experiences that we have and we we adjust accordingly so and then increase travel costs we took two bands to the state marching band contest and transportation costs were higher this year uh cost of charter buses cost of overnight hotel for that many kids so it it there were some there were some unexpected expenses that that caused that uh extracurricular travel money to be depleted in a rate that we weren't expecting so rather than ask for

050an additional allocation i'm just asking if we can move the money from where we have it where it's still unspent and move it instead of having to bust the budget okay thank you yes so mr estrada i think what the main question is so for next year we if we have more students qualify what do we learn this year to help us budget for next year like are we going to continue to move money from instruments or will we put in the budget next year expecting i expect that we're going to budget accordingly because i i think we're going to continue to have lots of success and as our as our theater programs are improving we're going to qualify more kids mr welch so you get you have a travel budget to take the kids

051to the state competitions and the different things but it's been depleted faster than the district anticipated is that correct is that partly because of fuel costs are there other factors also mostly it's it's transportation and travel costs and we had more success this year so we have a lot of buses everybody knows about that but whenever you go on these trips you also charter buses so we don't use the yellow school buses to go to san antonio is that correct that's correct and why don't we do that well it's not a long trip necessarily it's um it's the length of the of the time that that the buses are being used so we're taking we would be taking uh school buses out of service for two three days i see so it's it it's a

052it prevents a hardship in the local district while we're performing and competing in san antonio thank you miss dancer um of the students that are going do they have any out-of-pocket expense that their parents need to be aware of or we do we cover everything we typically try to cover everything there may be a meal on the way and a meal on the way home but they're in college dorms so they're eating in the college dining hall everything is covered from the time they get on campus the time they land here in the past i know we didn't participate in this because of covid previously how many kids have we taken in the past years out of curiosity the number ranges it's been uh when i when i first entered this job it was you

053know it was 20 in the 20s um as our programs have grown yeah and we've uh we've gotten better um that number's climbing the last the last two years that we had an in-person festival i think the most we've ever had was 59 so this is a great success for our district it's a good problem for us to have yeah this is something that we should be extremely excited about and we should be honoring our theater programs and there are kids that i mean they're they are paying they're paying to compete at the entry at the texas state level yes and that's a that's a tough competition it's the largest state festival yes in the system and the theater kids do pay up front they pay a fee to be in the theater programs they

054pay for the state um festival that they go to and they pay dues and they pay everything else so for us to be able to send them to this if they qualify i think it's a very good thing that we're able to do so that's my opinion thank you i think it's good too it just when it says it comes out of the band i just want to make sure that we don't hear from the band same where did a hundred thousand dollars go right because that's i just want to make sure that it's like anything else you have to prioritize and when the funds are there we we have a prioritized list every year and the top of the list goes first and sometimes we have just like in your own budget at home

055sometimes you have to push those back i'm moving that hundred thousand all the time i mean well not that much hundred thousand here i mean [Laughter] any other questions all right thank you i appreciate it okay uh we will vote all in favor raise your hand say aye okay and then oppose motion carries okay next is item a i'm sorry eight l thank you mr welch yeah i guess we should oh we need to sorry do i have a motion to this i'll make a motion mr welch makes a motion do i have a second mr hubenak seconds okay thank you um i sent this question to the administration beforehand because i thought it was uh i wanted to have the answer but i also think it's it's worthwhile to put this in public this

056has to do with the 2020 bond that as a board member i really dug into a lot and really challenged the administration um just to keep everybody honest and just because i'm a taxpayer myself this has to do with the tennis courts at lamar high school and i thought at the time two three days ago and i was really trying to get all my my thoughts together and i was digging into a booklet that we got from the pbk architects the long-range planning facilities master plan i thought it was a cost that went out to the public at 1.7 million dollars but evidently i was that was an estimate up front and that's not what the bond committee passed that's not what this board passed and that's not what the public approved so that i

057don't really necessarily need an answer on that so i do want to uh read the other part um that sterling structures bid this job in november of 2021 at 3.63 million dollars and the administration requested that the board rej or recommended that the board reject that bid which we did in december of 2021. uh now sterling has come back with another bid at 2.23 million dollars and i believe the administration is going to recommend that we approve that tonight so my question is what's the difference in their bidding from the 3.6 million to do the tennis courts to their current of 2.23 million to do the tennis courts right and so when we received the bids back in december the scope of that project was to provide 10 tennis courts on the other side of

058mustang on the same side as the new sub-varsity field and field house and when those bids it wasn't just sterling's bid it was all the bids came in over budget way over budget and so that was when the recommendation came back to reject all and re-scope the project so in can you define what rescue means would you when we we we pulled back and and we looked at everything just make sure we hit the items in the bond issue and not get additional items and look at where we were running over and so when we came back and redesigned it and relooked at it we looked at it at just replacing the tennis courts going from eight tennis courts to ten lighted tennis courts on the same location where the current tennis courts are and

059that's when this bid the bids came back in sterling is the one recommendation recommended at the 2.3 million is that does that answer your question it does it does answer my question um do you have the number of what it went out to the estimate to the public and what the public approved the the what went in the bond was 2.7 million 72 million 798 000 and seven dollars which included construction costs and all soft costs which is your design your architect your geotech your material testing the whole shooting match what sterling's number is is just construction of that 2.7 what about the tennis season the programmatic side of things like for these for lamar where will they play will they have to play all road matches um the junior high courts right now the

060junior high uses the high school court so the junior high courts aren't capable of hosting matches of teams and the locker rooms that were built for the tennis team over on that will they not have access to that because of now it's on the opposite side that money that was invested in that at the beginning of the bond for tennis and the coach's office and all that what does all that look like with and nikki's here miss nelson's here the athletic director but all of our secondary high schools use the junior highs use the high school courts and that's why we were going from eight to ten so that it was for the whole conflict right currently our three oldest complexes have separate junior high courts and our three newest they're combined and that's what

061we're moving to at lamar the new complex at lamar when we designed and built it we attempted to create locker rooms with enough space in them to house potentially soccer wrestling and tennis it's one boy's locker room in one girl's locker room they're not designated by sport there's a boys coach's office and a girls coach's office again not designated by sport and so currently the tennis coach at lamar has an office space at lamar consolidated high school and there's a girls tennis locker space and a boys tennis locker space they've just got the flexibility now to put those tennis lockers in the new complex or keep them somewhere in the current complex based on what works best for them as a campus once the project continues to move through this process and we've got a

062more accurate timeline we'll start working on the logistics of where they'll practice and what we'll have to do to adjust their team tennis schedule in the fall okay so because they're finishing up spring i think this week next week it will be finished within the next couple of weeks junior high tennis will play right on the back end of that okay so the junior high will be able to they'll still be able to use the facilities for this year that's what we're that's what we are not going to hinder their their play okay but for the fall season it will be hindered we're hoping that it will be completed by september okay it will be altered and we will have to come up with a plan for that but once we get a timeline from

063construction then we'll work out a plan for how we're going to adjust for that they will be able to complete their entire season and they will have practice space okay but will they possibly have to be bussed to another campus so they were the whole home court and all that kind of similar to what we've had to do in the past with swimming or when we've had our uh a few years ago when we were putting turf down at our stadiums and we had to alter spring football practice and those kind of things so the parking that was going to be at the or the new what was going to be new parking where the tennis courts are going to be now it's fine without that right like we have enough spots parking yes because

064we also added some at the at the sub-varsity field across the street okay trying to get all the parking off of mustang yeah yeah that's busy yeah thank you okay so take a vote all in favor raise your hand say hi hi to me none opposed motion carries next is do i have a motion to consider the approval of item 8n which is the elementary school number 34 design development miss danziger make some motions mr 100 seconds mr hunt so i had a few quick questions first um what is the the eta on opening this school we are scheduling to open this school in august of 2023 and then on the site plan it has a 1 8 of a mile track and that's not at all of our elementary schools so what's the criteria

065for having a track versus not in most of our new locations um the track has been an ad and we've been trying to keep to an eighth of a mile track as a standard some of the locations that had their pta ad tracks some of them went larger than an eighth of a mile but it gets we're trying to keep to a standard of one-eighth of a mile but some of the so when did we start putting in tracks because i don't you correct me if i'm wrong does lindsay have a track does tamron have a track um i don't believe they do and and um and i have to admit is it going to be in the construction documents yeah and so and that's fairly new in the last few projects so since we've

066built say tamaron we've now started to make it uh we're adding tracks to all of the elementary schools in the in the construction program at all the existing elementary schools no so since since yeah moving forward yes sir we're adding track we're adding that to the construction processor is that part of the plans for the newer elementary schools that don't have it to go back and add a track we have not talked about putting that in the plans right now but that's certainly something that we can do for future bond issues okay and what what are the tracks used for i mean is it just for pe classes or and i don't know if i'm the person to answer that um but i know that they do go outside for recess with the tracks they

067have field days on the tracks as well as the community walks on the tracks after hours okay so the gates would be accessible to the community while school is not in session most of our campuses are after hours okay and then usually on the site plans there's space that if we need it there's space for portable buildings um and this one i didn't see any space that was specifically designated for that but is there space here that if the need arises since this is an area where there's going to be a lot of growth is there space where portables could go there is space we don't want to put them on the drawings because we really don't want them i hear you they are we do have the design to where it can accommodate portable

068buildings and with that that space is available it wouldn't inhibit playground space or anything for the kids not with the normal number of portable buildings no sir we have places that we can put them without impeding anything sometimes if it goes over that special needs drives end up getting taken that's happened in the past okay okay thank you i have one question um is this one of the first elementary schools of the 2020 bond yes ma'am so were all the elementary schools of the 2020 bond the ones that started putting a track in actually terrell which is in the 17 bond in morgan in the 17 bond and uh phelan is they'll all have tracks they'll all have tracks and now 32 and 33 and 34 are the 2020 bomb i just wonder the same

069thing why were some picks others but because i know the year that one of the schools i worked in we had to raise the money yes ma'am yes ma'am okay so just going forward then every elementary school from now on we'll have it that's right yes ma'am okay mr mckeever this is going to be built for 750 students is that correct we are also putting an alternate in to add the two more classrooms to make it 800 to try to meet our new master plan principles the bond was created with the previous master plan principles so we are going out and have an alternate to add that additional capacity can you explain alternate bid regular bid original bid and alternate bid explain that sure we have normally when we go out we'll have a base

070bid which is everything we must have in the base bid and then there'll be an alternate and alternate means it's it's uh the contractor says okay if you want to add two more classrooms then it's going to cost you this much so alternate bid will be this much more than the base and so you can when it comes in then if we have enough funding then we can take alternate number one or alternate number two or alternate number three um with the funding that's available and how the bids come in does that explain that like add-ons yeah they always trying to get you yeah so basically basically it's an option and so you know our base bid we'll have everything it'll be the 750 students and then uh since we did increase the master plan

071principles to 800 we will put an alternate bid in now for the two more classrooms and if it comes in if the original bid comes in under budget and the alternate comes in under budget and everything is at budget then we'll add them but if the alternate uh comes in and makes everything over budget then we'll have to go back to the drawing board and probably and just not and reject that and then but we know in the new bond we'll make sure that all of our campuses are designed for the 800 like we said for the master plan principles so right now we're just trying to go back and see if we have the funding to be able to add that now and so that's what the alternate build does for us you have

072questions okay all in favor raise your hand say i then oppose motion carries okay next is item consider the approval of instruction instructional material recommendations all right boyd i have coach nelson that will come up and talk about instructional material recommendations good evening in april of 2020 the state board of education issued proclamation 2022 which went in line with their release of updated health teeks which take effect next school year k through 12. this past summer in the summer of 2021 during the legislative session the texas legislation charged the school health advisory councils or as we know them the shacks with making a recommendation to our local school boards with the health instructional materials we would like you to approve for us to use in our health classrooms our shack reconvened in personal meetings this

073fall after our covet year of meeting online but we found some benefit to having those online meetings as well as it allowed more faculty to be involved without having to miss class and also allowed more parents to be involved without having to leave small ones at home or leave the workplace so we continued with webinars as well as in-person meetings when we reconvened this fall we met in october november and january we met in november a week after the state board of education approved their final set of instructional materials for consideration and the lamar cisd school health advisory council recommends the following for grades 6 through 12 when it comes to health instructional materials this is the one set of instructional materials which was also approved by the state board of education for being 100

074in compliance with the teks for help the new teks which will take effect next school year as well our conversations also continued as we talked about what we were going to do for our k through 5 students and how we were going to ensure that they received health instruction and we will be meeting this summer with those involved in providing that health instruction including some of our child nutrition science educators counselors to make sure that we spread those teaks out to ensure that our our little ones get that health instruction as well and we will continue providing our health resources on the shack website as we have in the past for parents and educators any questions thank you so i was able to appoint well i was going to say thank you um one of

075our board members so mr lambert was a participant um at the shack meetings and he's our board representative so i'd like to get hear from him as well yeah um being on the shack and in this position i'm a non-voting member so whenever they were having their discussions and all that kind of stuff i just had to sit and observe and all that um and after going through the health curriculum that the state has recommended um for me as a dad that was my first thought okay what what am i going to have to explain or um what do i support and all that kind of stuff and so through the curriculum and everything in there i feel comfortable and safe allowing my own children just to go through this class and all that and

076one thing that was kind of um in lcisd and everything it's health is not a required requirement for graduation so when i asked coach nelson about this uh she told me that um only four percent of our high school students actually take health um so for me that's kind of shocking and then it's split up by semesters so in all reality two percent of our high school um or secondary students at a time are actually taking health and um after going through the curriculum and looking at it um it kind of also spurred some other thought of like why the heck is this not required because there's some good stuff in there about just healthy living from emotional to physical through our bodies and through just everything that this the curriculum itself said i was

077like man we need to have more of our students participating in health more than just two percent at a time doing that so um i test you to get 98 more um getting involved in that thank you zach would say challenge accepted challenge accepted no but like as a as a school board member and as a uh first of before that i'm a dad um and i would feel fine and safe and i went through our executive committee of the shack and i uh shot coach nelson an email today and i asked them all individually is there anything in here that would cause you to question this or want your student or your child or you as a teacher wanting to teach this and all of them said that they support it they feel confident

078and they feel comfortable with the instructional material and all that so as a non-voting member i you know i do agree with what they are putting towards us and again another challenge man if we can get more people involved in the shack it's a great starting part of getting involved in their child's education and actually speaking life and speaking truth and speaking honesty and all that into our students in in a good way so thank you thank you for attending all of those and i i was able to grill zach a little bit myself and he was up for the challenge so i appreciate all of his efforts and there's future stuff coming up with the shaq as well about you know we're looking at emotional health and all that is talked about in this

079curriculum so um great job coach on leading all this thank you thank you any questions okay we'll take a vote so do i um is there a motion to approve the instructional material recommended i'll make that motion okay mr lambert makes the motion do i have a second miss danziger seconds any further discussion all in favor raise your hand say aye aye okay none opposed motion carries all right i believe that was it that um okay we will now have presentations on the information items yes ma'am madam president we have dr mossad who is our chief learning officer to talk to us about our middle of the year map performance data well good evening madam president members of the board and dr nimmins the district has been laser focused on implementing the district campus improvement

080plans as well as monitoring the implementation of our campus improvement plans data sets are the best means of documenting success of any plan thus i'll be providing key data sets from our winter map testing from beginning of the year to middle of the year as well as our benchmark testing that has happened in march of 2022 as we review the year past in star covid learning loss is real and so there are a lot of successes that we get to celebrate but you will also see throughout the data you're going to see also some challenges as we look at map growth it is a measure of student performance with a ritz scale it is the most stable mature scale in the industry which gives you an accurate measure of student performance regardless of whether they're

081performing on above or below grade level we can see the growth of all of our kids all of our kids because it's an adaptive test we assess at the beginning of the year the middle of the year and at the end of the year and as i proceed with the presentation anything over a three statistically in this data set is to be celebrated norms were published in 2020 and so before they published that report they were looking at score sets in the 2017 season so all of the norms that you're going to be see that you're going to see that are highlighted are pre-coveted norms school-level norms provide a context for comparing grade level achievement and growth in a single school relative to other schools across the nation so what you see here across the

082area is a consistent plus three across the board as you look at first through seventh to eighth grade you're seeing a narrow of growth as you go upgrade levels and that is just a factor of child development per se because it is common as kids become older or meticulate matriculate in a system the less growth that they are going to have compared to your early years if you look at the another thing that map shows us it gives us predictions based upon their performance at the middle of the year compared to the boi and their growth rates where are we looking at with star performance if you take third grade out of our second grade excuse me out of this accountability set the projection projection for map is that we would be at 75 approaches

08335 meets and 10 masters we're always seeking at that 90 30 or 90 60 and 30 is a goal that we always continue to seek but this is currently right now based upon the middle of the year and predicted growth without any acceleration of growth that occurs in the second semester as you look here you can see also majority of the areas have that plus three with the exception of seventh eighth and ninth grade and then you see some decreases in ten eleven and twelve that is also not necessarily uncommon when you start looking at high school because general reading and general math is not normally the frame of assessment or frame of teaching in high school they become more specialized courses and content specific courses nevertheless it is still concerning and we are working

084with our high schools at this time particularly in english 1 english 2 in regard to ensuring that our kids are prepared for the state assessment in this area that's coming up in april as you look here for ela star performance again if we if everything stayed constant with the current growth without acceleration we would be at 78 percent approaches except 46 percent meets and 23 percent masters if you look at science k through 12 you see again plus three across the trajectory with eighth grade showing uh not as much growth in this particular data set but as you begin to look at the prediction for map and or for star uh for fifth and eighth grade because those are the taste tested grade levels it's 79 percent approaches 41 meets and 16 masters but also

085a special note is that particularly in math and particularly in science there's a lot of content that has not been taught yet and so that is also needing to be taught and then um we're in predicting a higher level of achievement at that point when they cover the remainder of the curriculum as we begin to look at algebra 1 you can see some great gains with 8th graders and these are more advanced kids at that 8th grade level with a plus 10 growth from the beginning of the year to middle of the year five for ninth grade at algebra one and four at tenth grade that is a smaller subset too and is also showing growth life sciences ninth grade biology of a plus five with tenth grade at 1. it's special it's important to

086note that for 10th grade graders that are taking science a lot of the sciences that they're taking are not life science focused think about chemistry it is more physical science focus than a biology class as we begin to look at benchmarks you can see that there is a lot of celebration to do we know we have some challenges with third and fourth grade and particularly with fifth grade science when we look at our benchmarks at 66 percent right now in the approaches area but again special to note that uh there's a lot of content within science and math and that has not been taught at this point but an area of concern that we are focusing on moving forward as you look at sixth grade sixth grade is trending in the right direction with the

087exception we are a little bit concerned about sixth grade reading and again our planning and area superintendents are working with the district the campus principles to ensure that we have appropriate plans of support and then you begin to look at the junior high seventh grade math remember this is a different population than what you see in seventh grade map testing because a lot of the kids that are taking advanced classes in seventh grade are not part of this assessment for the benchmarks where you see the drastic drop that you see here with 67 percent in math and then eighth grade 66 and social studies once again we have the content that has not been delivered but nevertheless continues to be a concern as we move forward high school benchmarks also were delivered uh we are

088looking at english 2 being most concerning if we look at english performance at the high school level again area superintendents working with principals to ensure we're working with teachers to plan areas of intervention and support and then finally what are our next steps so i've provided a lot of data what are we doing now to get ready for state attestments assessment in the spring continue to focus on high quality tier one instruction for the remainder of school of the school year to teach concepts not yet covered when i refer to tier one instruction i am meaning first line instruction as topics are delivered at the first time are we doing it at the highest level possible determine curriculum adjustments and at campus and district level for reteaching opportunities both our district content coaches our contact

089coordinators are working with our principals to ensure that we have appropriate supports provided from a district perspective and then of course at the campus level they're working with teachers and their coaches at the campus level to provide the necessary supports at the whole class we're spiraling concepts for re-teaching that's part of the curriculum rewrites that we do often times to support our campuses we also have small groups if you go into an elementary class especially you'll see a lot of small group instruction happening to re-teach a lot of these areas intervention time that is happening in during the school day both at the elementary and secondary level and of course tutorials before school after school and on saturday as well do you have any questions for me i i do could you go back to

090that screen with the math and the second right no go back one more no go up there you go nope there we go so sorry seventh and eighth so are all students being tested or were like if child in algebra would they not take that so you're pulling out some of the kids that are doing a higher math so you're a condensed curriculum if you're going to be projected to take algebra one in eighth grade so that population that's set to take algebra one is not taking this benchmark currently at seventh grade because the curriculum is different okay so basically when we're looking at this we're not looking at all students correct okay that makes what you see in the other one for the map data is all right that's why there is a difference

091of the 20 difference drop it's a factor not saying it's not concerning but it is a factor okay but that makes sense yeah okay thank you so for these students i looking at that seventh grade one um the last full year of school with normal rigor was fourth grade for them that was uh fifth grade shutdown was fifth grade so they were in sixth grade last year coming virtual and on campus so with that math and how compounding and how much it jumps in those three years and then i look at like the english two that was probably what their eighth grade year yes and math was very hard was the most challenging let me say to teach virtually and a lot of that is because of manipulatives um so it was very it was

092way more challenging virtually um uh for for our kids and we're seeing the impact with that go ahead mr walls uh so the the poor performances that we see in some of these areas uh it's because of the covet slide mainly is that is that the administration's assessment well you can't predict it to be one thing or another but we do believe it's a factor yes i'm saying that the coveted slide when you look at these norms that are set up as i said we're celebrating the plus three growth that anything plus three that is a positive um however um we know that those plus threes or those diamonds that i showed you before were actually created before coven so nationally we don't know how much more they dropped after the coveted pandemic to a

093national group of kids so it could be possibly a factor when we look at star performance from last year to the year before the last time we tested we could see a definite drop in a number of our campuses yes so therefore we are doing a catch-up also in responding to that to teach concepts that they might not be as successful currently we're having to re-teach concepts to provide a foundation for them and then also teach we're having to play catch-up a little bit um are what do our numbers look like compared to some of the other isds around us i do not have that with me but i believe that we are comparable um a lot of the different districts are seeing the same kind of impact from uh coveted learning loss and some

094actually when you start looking at the star performance of last year fared worse thank you so on some of the earlier graphs as the grades grade level increased the writ growth decreased what do you attribute that to it's common when you look at the statistical data when you start talking with map what they see and particularly at the early years there's so much learning that is happening and acceleration for a lot of the kids at elementary consistently across when you start seeing tests like this you see more growth at elementary and then as they get older that growth starts to wane and that is just statistically because remember this data is comparing us to a national subset not just texas and not just our regional area okay and uh second question map is new to

095the district this year and we pay for it with the esther funds what are some of the challenges that campuses have experienced in implementing it and how has it gone i would say the greatest challenge that we've had has been the technology and that our technology department has worked closely with our principals to troubleshoot those different issues at the campus level we at school leadership as well in my department have worked with our principals to help them set up different ways and how they're going to assess so that's been the greatest challenge but it's also getting kids to sit down for you know a test on a computer it's your first test you're going to have a little bit of an implementation challenge period and so what we heard from principals though is that the

096second round of testing went way much because everybody knew what they were doing and they already knew the challenges that were in front of them and what they needed to do to respond to them so we're seeing some positive remarks to it and the data sets are pretty comparable to what we're seeing with benchmarks okay that's great well i know that some of the campuses are already doing their star testing this year on the computers right and that we're all going to have to do that soon 23. yeah the kids need to get some practice with it yes which this tool provides for us okay um so when we see the end of year results um are we can we get a comparison from the middle mid-year to end of year absolutely um just because

097i know like you said some of the material has not been taught yet so that's a big factor as well and so i just like to to see that um and then for the goals are we setting so it's the plus or three and above is is healthy growth um is that so is that going to be something consistent that we always go for or that is like like you were saying were you saying like with the national average a two might be healthy growth right now we just don't know but before covet it was a three yeah okay so technically a two right now could be healthy growth we just don't have that debt okay absolutely so the the the diamonds that you saw in the presentation those were set before coven yeah and

098we know nationally we've had a learning loss yeah um and so yes okay all right any other questions right thank you so much thank you all right trustees wouldn't i have dr jones to come up talk about our library selection procedures good evening madam president board of trustee members and dr nivens tonight i have the privilege of providing you a brief summation of the committee work to create a formal procedure for the selection of library books in lcisd as you may remember to do this we formed a committee that represented a variety of stakeholders across la marcie isd some of whom are with us tonight if you want to wave all those great smart people back there uh so great to have them here and to be have them part of the committee as a

099reminder the purpose of our committee was to define a process and procedures for selecting new books for the 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 the american library association from the variety of resources we reviewed we were able to create a library book selection procedure that is unique to la marcie isd that emphasizes professional reviews age appropriateness educational value and the professional judgment of our librarians the procedure includes a process to follow for books that do not follow a standard characteristic which includes additional library and review and community input to begin it's important to remember that before i'm going to talk through

100this chart for you here in just a second but to begin it's important to remember that before a librarian starts the process of re reviewing books for their library they do an analysis of their current collection and their campus needs they look at things like the most circulated genres they ask for input from students and staff and investigate any curricular needs that that need to be beefed up inside of their library once they have a better understanding of those needs that's whenever they will either put a list together based on that analysis or work with a trusted vendor uh to put together a book list for them to then review once they have that book list that's where they will start working through this selection process the majority of books will fall into one of

101the three categories on the left the first option is two positive professional reviews from a peer-reviewed unbiased professional journal second is a reputable author and or publisher which is known as an author or publisher that consistently receives favorable reviews but they don't have any reviews for their current work a great example of that i call this the dog man book dave pilkey if you have a elementary student you know that they love the dog man books and mr pilkey puts out dogman books very regularly and so over time those books may not get reviewed as often anymore because they know they're very high quality so we know these books are going to be really high quality so they're going to be they're going to be looked at in that way another example is for our

102our non-fiction books like capstone capstone is known for its extremely high quality non-fiction materials so those types of things would fit inside of that category and then the last item there is meets curricular or diversity needs this may look like look like a specific text text for something like an auto tech class that this is a very specific curricular need that we need to address if the book fits one of these three criteria and is identified as age appropriate uh by the interest level the book moves right on down to that okay to purchase and most of our books that we would be purchasing inside of lamar cisd libraries is going to follow that path for books that do not fit into one of those three categories but the librarian still feels it would be

103valuable to add to the collection it's going to follow that middle section they're going to first check that the age level is appropriate but whether it is a is listed as appropriate or not for that campus it's going to move on to a librarian subcommittee that will evaluate the title and evaluate its appropriateness for purchase that's a committee of five librarians and four out of the five have to say yes this should move on to be in one of our libraries if at that point it then moves to a subcommittee uh if that sub committee approves it moves to a campus review committee that includes at least one teacher one campus administrator two parents and the campus librarian because we want to make sure our community understands this doesn't fit our normal procedures but we

104still feel this is valuable and we want you to see why we think it's valuable and for them to approve to move on if that committee approves the book can then move forward with being purchased so next steps is we will be reviewing the procedure document with lcic librarians and campus administrators to ensure that they understand this new procedure and expectation develop a systematic audit schedule to review current books in lcisd that the ones we already have on the shelves now we have these expectations let's make sure that what we have on the shelves meet those expectations develop training materials for the campus purchasing review committees we've asked parents and teachers to be on those subcommittees but they have to make sure they understand the legal requirements of what you can and can't say nixes

105a book for making it on the shelf so we want to make sure we're providing training for them so they're comfortable in making those decisions and then make available the ability for parents to receive notifications when a young adult title is checked out by their students that would start in the 2022-23 school year so at the beginning of your forms parent could say i would like to receive a notification if my child checks out this book and then if a child checks out that book that evening they would receive that email notification so it would be implemented next year are there any questions mr welch i got a lot the mark and solid isd uh collection development procedure yes sir you guys sent this to us so i have a couple of questions on that

106um i respect the librarians and their education they've gone through to get to this point how did the current books in question the one that was read in this boardroom and that's made a lot of the news around how did they get into libraries currently because we've had professional librarians with the proper education making determinations that those books belong on our library shelves without knowing for sure the specific examples i don't know that i can answer that question sir i can say that some of the books that are in question maybe would have passed through this process that they would have been looked at with these professional reviews but we're also looking more closely at these items now and so we can look at that and say you know what this is maybe a concern

107item that we want to dig a little bit deeper into now but some of those books following this procedure would have made it through that middle section and wouldn't have ever made it into the process without being a more formal thorough review but without knowing the specific examples i don't know that i can fully answer that question as far as the reputable author and the award-winning i think that's not a good criteria let me just say that like that because uh people who put out those books that were read in this boardroom and some of the others in katy isd specifically in their boardroom they had 30 minutes of that kind of stuff some of those authors were award-winning quote unquote and some of those authors were reputable according to certain publications i really don't

108think that that's a good criteria i think i also want to make this comment i've seen a lot of this in the press and i've seen a lot of this i've gotten an email or two about this this is not this is 100 not anti-lgbtq this is about vulgarity whether it's heterosexual or homosexual this is about hate speech this is not censoring based upon lgbtq stuff so i want to i want to get that out there and i'll push back against that narrative that's been pushed around the us and in the media because the media especially the local media the houston chronicle specifically and channel 2 has been very irresponsible in reporting this in a very slanted view um so this committee will prevent in theory those kind of books and getting in our our

109libraries is that correct yes sir well so i guess the way i want to address that question is this defines a very specific procedure that should be followed whenever looking at a book so what this did not say was that oh this book has received this award it's gonna and it's identified as interest level for this grade level and it's gonna move on what's still happening in the background there is i still have an incredible librarian who's looking over that book and saying you know what after reviewing this a little bit more further even though it meets these characteristics i don't think it's right for our community and so there's still that professional inside of there that while there is a path that says you can pass go there's the there's the expert there that's

110looking at it and evaluating that book and that's what i want to re-emphasize when the hubbub of this whole thing dies down and everything does there's a motion that's hard to carry for a long time talking two three four five years from now the process that you're describing right there the professional review of the individual librarian is how we got here in the first place so this needs to be constantly in the forefront of and we need the parent involvement we need the librarians not to have the personal bias saying this isn't and let me say this this is not about the first amendment right to publish the material and sell it in the united states this is about the right of a author to have their library their books on the library shelves of

111lamarci isd or not it's a much different standard um i'm just i just don't want this whole thing to to die down and then you know 10 years we're right back here at the same place because there's absolutely no no place whatsoever for the kind of stuff that was read in this boardroom to be on the library shelves of lamar cisd so i i appreciate the work you guys have done i've heard some things about it and i hope this is going to stop some of the stuff from getting in there that's been there up to this point thank you can you go back to the diagram just real quick so potentially the books that we that were mentioned all that they could have been brought in by a reputable author or publisher a trusted

112vendor and we our librarians may not have seen it because we trust that vendor that here's a lot of books or a list that is approved for this age of this age it is possible but any book but it's much more likely that those books would have been going through the professional review process because as mr welch mentioned some of these books are award-winning books well if they're award-winning books that means there's going to be have had a lot of eyes on them and the reviews are going to be more thorough in there the the idea of the reputable author and publisher is more in the in the line of there aren't reviews available for this book because it is from this reputable author that puts out so much content so quickly that but is

113consistently always well reviewed and deemed appropriate in our libraries that it it's not i don't want you to look at that as oh that's a free pass to no reviews have to be looked at it's we there aren't reviews available for this book but because of the history in lcisd of knowing these are good books that these are right for our kids that's where it gets to move on i think on a previous side it said you said trusted vendor so if we trust a vendor we're going to assume that everything they put out is going to be on the open up no sir so that trusted vendor line is in creating that book list and we're going to trust that book list is good no sir the book list is what goes through this

114looking process okay the book so we would go to one of our trusted vendors and say mr vendor i have these needs in these genre areas and these non-fiction categories can you help me out because they have professional catalogers that their job is to build collections and help out with that so they're going to build a book list for our librarians to review and once the librarian has that book list that's whenever they're going to look at this procedure and they spend hours going through each book and saying yes this meets off of this category this meets off of this category and they do a thorough look down of that so that trusted vendor is give us a list to start with because that and of itself is a monumental task right i think i

115could just picture opening up a brand new library and having one library and expected to read how many books 10 000 books on it yeah so i mean that's physically not possible in this summer before a school opening so i mean you're correct so there is some of that like hey and that's where the professional reviews will come in handy or not in handy that's part of why we subscribe to professional reviews to get that information so how many of these things we were already doing that we're just now putting it down on paper and saying this is our policy anecdotally the idea of the walking through the main system is probably what most of our books would have gone through that would have qualified in that way anyways uh the middle section is where

116that's the newness that's where okay this doesn't fit the standard categorization we're gonna make sure walk it through these paces to be extra thorough right right are you um a couple of questions or comments um if there's books on our shelves now that someone is concerned about do you take them through this process again if there is so if as our librarians are looking through if they see something that they feel doesn't meet that doesn't meet this criterion then that's whenever we would review that book yes ma'am they looked at it and they said yeah we need to take a look at this and see if this is appropriate or not yes okay also i had printed this out because i like to have things in my hand i like the list of the needing

117at least two positive professional reviews and not just from amazon or barnes and noble so where you can get yourself in trouble is because they're trying to sell the books these are trying to actually give us a good review for us to go by is that correct yes ma'am yes ma'am okay they're peer-reviewed professional that's what that organization does and at some point do we look at a book and say this is not appropriate in this library but maybe a 17 or 18 year old it needs to be in a high school library or it needs to be in a different section that's where age appropriateness comes into play that a book um you know if you look at the twilight series you know twilight series is not going to be appropriate at our younger

118grades but it's going to be a book that our older grades are going to want to read and they're going to have interest in it and so absolutely there's going to be books that it's going to say at this age level yeah this is appropriate now versus at these younger grades it's not well i know that i had we had kids in second and third grade reading all the harry potter books and there's people that don't think some of those are appropriate but well and that goes to the very back of that procedure document where at the end of the day we also want to make sure our families understand that your personal uh expectations of your child make sure you're aware of what your expectations are and communicate that with your child and be

119in the know of what they're checking out from the library that we want to partner with our parents we don't we don't want a book coming home that mom or dad would not want their child reading and so that's a communication with the parent and the child so it takes a village to picture our children are reading yes ma'am thank you well first i wanted to thank the members of the committee um and and thank you dr jones um i know that the members of the committee that are here that y'all gave a lot of time to this and met several times and it's not an easy subject and dr jones for leading the effort thank you how many folks were on the committee we ended up with a 45 total okay at was did

120this plan reach full consensus 100 okay every person every person voted to that this was good to go now nobody i don't know that anybody necessarily was like we can't we should never adapt this over time but it was a hundred percent said yes this is a good procedure to move and that was parents administrators librarians everyone okay and um one question that i had on the graphic novels particularly is it says uh that we should follow the publisher rating guidelines below does every graphic novel have a publisher rating not necessarily and so this is we knew but graphic novels do have sometimes these types of ratings so we wanted to make sure that we delineated those pieces in there but there may be times where in the professional reviews of a graphic novel it'll

121be easier to delineate oh it's right for this grade level but we want to be inclusive and make sure we were including that concept so if it doesn't have a rating then it would just go through the ordinary process the chart that you have on the screen okay and then you mentioned emails to parents could you elaborate on that sure so uh the goal will be at the start of next school year there will be a beginning of your form uh they parents fill out all of those wonderful beginning of your forms i used to build them it was fun um and we will be adding one next year that explains the idea of if your child checks out a young adult book would you like to receive a notification of that and then what

122that does is inside of our student information system it puts a little flag that we can import into our library management system and run a daily report that says anybody with this flag that has checked out a book that's identified as this send an email and let them and let the guardian be aware okay thank you yes sir thank you thanks somebody's always got me thank you um so i just wanted to find out like get a timeline and maybe it's all all of these are for 2020 for the fall right uh no ma'am um so i would be reviewing the procedure document with our librarians at our very next library meeting which happens at the beginning of april that we this is important and so we need to start work doing this work now

123um developing a systematic audit we want to start that now at the end of every year it's very normal for a librarian to review portions of their library so let's be purposeful in that and say we want to make sure we review these sections i mentioned earlier you know a standard elementary library will have ten thousand books you're not reviewing ten thousand books in in the spring but we can identify that we wanna look at the graphic novels in the spring because those maybe are more concerned and we wanna make sure we have high confidence in those areas uh so that's the idea of that systematic audit and being purposeful so when i guess when can the board expect maybe an update then on you have like the audit schedule and the training materials that

124you're going to develop and then what those emails look like that kind of thing that we can i would like to get an update to see what all that looks like so i was trying to give you some leeway there but you're i'll wait you're ready to go i'll take fall so full okay i think fall is going to be good but there will be work being done right but i mean when we can expect to kind of see the results okay um and then also i think we had thrown this around before but having the list of the resources the books that are on our library somewhere on our website uh any anybody can access our full library catalog um so if you go if student logs in with their credentials into destiny library

125manager they a guardian can see every single books i mean like someone that doesn't have a child in the system i would have to investigate how we could make that happen i i don't think there's an ability to do that right now easily as far as just logging into a system i would have to investigate that for example and i say that because somebody will email me and say do you have this currently in your libraries i don't have a clue you know i mean i have to go ask somebody i'm somebody else so it would be helpful if it was if we were able to have it on our website somewhere a link to these are the resources in our libraries and i can just say you can go look you know that kind

126of thing so i don't know what that looks like but i would like that to be something we offer if possible okay i can investigate see what we can do thank you um oh i had another question on the campus review committee how and how who how will the committee be members be chosen and how often will that be um updated so we that's gonna some of that's gonna be at the principal discretion they're the leader of their campus they know their their community and so i would rely on them to form that committee one of the things if you read in the document one of the recommendations is you already have a campus improvement council that is already helping meeting to address campus needs that council might be able to meet that need and

127be able to address those concerns when reviewing a book it doesn't necessarily mean you have to physically come together it could be a virtual meeting and the benefit for that committee coming together is any book that comes to that group will have already been reviewed by five librarians with a minimum of four of them saying yes this is a good book i'm not saying they should just rubber stamp that and move on but they a lot of eyes have already been on that book and so but that's how that committee could be formed principal discretion ultimately okay so can we get an update on that as well what that actually looks like when you're all ready for that sure because it says there's a parent at least one teacher administrator the librarian um then a

128campus administrator yeah so five people and then the two-thirds majority would get that okay okay i think that's it for me i just want to say again thank you and to all the librarians i know as a former teacher this sounds like more work but i hope not i hope it's something that they can work with and it becomes easier as they get used to the process but thank you to all our librarians because i know how hard they work in our school districts and what they're about to do and about what they're about to do yeah thank you mr jones thank you all right board next we will have a avid uh advancement via individual termination and implementation by ms lindsey troutman madam president board of trustees dr nivens i'm excited to be here

129tonight to talk to you about advancement via individual determination or as dr nivin said more commonly known as avid avid's mission since its creation in the 1980s has really been to prepare all students for college and career readiness and we know that's ramped up to not just crossing the stage but being prepared when you get there and not returning home short of finishing college or your career avid is currently implemented across 7 000 schools in 47 states across the united states and impacts more than 2 million students k-12 including 62 post-secondary institutions within that 1290 of those campuses are within texas and 179 districts are avid districts you might recognize a leaf klein fort bend humble just to mention a few and you can really see the why of avid in play with the snapshot

130of data from texas 77 percent of avid seniors take a course of rigor and that can be defined as advanced academics in the realm of cte ap dual credit practicum courses anything that's preparing the student to launch into their pathway of success graduation rates of avid seniors is 100 with a 3.4 average cumulative gpa and of those seniors 81 percent of them apply and enroll in four-year institutions and this doesn't even include two-year technical schools but more importantly they don't just apply and enroll they maintain on average average students complete their degree in a timely fashion and at a higher rate than non-avid students 42 for avid students versus 11 of students who finish on time in their career programs and this is because avid is a multi-layered support system not only for students but

131for staff admin and districts to really meet their campus improvement and district improvement plans as it pertains to college and career-mindedness you can see these layers here across the district and the campuses there are strategies with their lovingly called wikor writing inquiry collabora collaboration organization and reading and these strategies are provided to support teachers admin staff students as they prepare students for college and career readiness so that's the first layer that impacts all students campuses teachers the next layer is the avid elective districts do have the ability and the flexibility to decide where the avid elective can be required or a traditional elective it will be recommended in this implementation plan that we catapult all of our students at a young age before decisions of programs of study endorsements and their path to success that

132they take an elective course in their junior high middle school year sixth or seventh grade and then it continues to be a true elective students who want that additional support to be college and career ready can choose us as an elective through their secondary career so the beauty of avid is the power in it it impacts students across all campuses in our district but the avid elective also provides additional supports so within those supports again it's not just about the students it's also about the teaching staff and the admin and aligning the strategies that work best for the needs of their campus and their students through instructional practices that refine teachers current practices but are also training to take back the elective courses are taught by lcisd teachers and they're provided additional supports and learning

133to support students for college and career readiness as well as tutors brought in to support the rigorous coursework in preparation so it's not just for the students in the courses of rigor but what do you need to be feel comfortable to enroll in those courses i think something that's really timely to mention is the level of support provided for admin and teachers is also a retention factor teachers and keeping quality teachers it depends on the supports that they feel are there and avid districts on average up to 10 to 15 percent retain their teachers versus non-avid districts so the proposed implementation plan would be a 2223 rollout with the district and high school campus teams each avid campus will have a site team to support this work do the learning and then be able to

134sustain the work on their campus based on their learning in this year we would prepare for the ninth grade elective course to roll out in 2324 and then the implementation plan would roll forward one year down in one year up each year with the middle school and junior high or new teams having one year to shadow ask questions to learn all the way up so you can see 2324 the ninth grade role we would have the junior high team shadow the high school teams especially to unite color tracks and systemic supports vertically 24 25 we would have electives eight to ten and then prep for seventh and eleventh grade so we're always catching each kid on either side with a goal of electives seven through eleven and twenty five twenty six and then a full

135implementation in secondary by the year twenty six twenty seven i could share a lot more about avid but i want to hear your questions any questions i would just say that i've heard really good things about avid and all that so thank you for bringing this to this oh and the main question of how much it's going to cost us that's a great question so over its implementation the first year would be about 44 000. that does include the professional learning so there's a requirement for a certain amount of teachers to go so your site teams can maintain on your campus you don't want one admin to leave and then you have to start all over and the next year it would be a hundred and two thousand because you have the junior high teams

136coming on in the third year it would be 122 000 on average this includes the professional learning all of the supports all of the strategies the training of the elective teachers in the fourth year you reach the peak year that's where middle school junior eye and high school will have teams in their learning and you're building the sustainability to do the training on site now instead of going to the institute that's 149 and then it will go back down to 77 and then start to maintain and plateau out once that sustainability of learning is built here any other questions now i had one question so is this replacing anything that we're currently doing or this is an addition to what we're currently doing um i mean it's just a new uh it's new and so

137it can stand alone avid can but it's also a really great balance to other programming i mean if you think about how many things are linked to college and career readiness not just accountability but our enrollment and advanced academics our indicators and our scores for getting those advanced academic indicators so while it is a program that comes in to enhance that and can be on it can also enhance other things that are already here so i think that that would depend on the implementation again there's the flexibility on the rollout by grade level and timeline i too have heard good things so yeah so thank you um it's been in other districts how long has this program been available uh in texas it's been here for 25 years it was developed in california in 1980

138and was so successful that it was then mandated in california to be part of the college and career readiness it was developed by teachers and i think that's one of the things that teachers really love about it is because it's with the in mind you don't just say hey know how to study teachers need to know how to teach study skills and note taking and that's a whole thing wrapped in its own so 25 years in texas 1980 creation san diego uh then implemented and then spread and still spreading it's hitting canada and australia so well thank you so much all right do we have the presentation for mine the next one there we go do i need should i go up there i can do it from here yes [Laughter] okay this is the

139discussion of board self-assessment march 2022 effective school boards take the time to regularly evaluate their performance they want to understand the areas where they are effectively governing and the areas in which they still need to improve our evaluations are important because they hold us accountable and give us an opportunity to have honest discussions about what is working and where improvements need to be made ultimately our evaluations should lead us to making better decisions because they help us to focus on our underlying philosophies and goals we recently conducted a board self of assessment using tasby's exceptional governance tool and will share our results this evening six of the seven trustees took the self-assessment and here are our results so standard one is governance and roles also aka unity as a board we are expected to provide

140responsible school district governance in this category we scored an 89 89 percent for always and or most of the time standard two vision as a board we are expected to set and communicate high expectations for student learning with clear goals and plans for meeting those expectations in this category we scored 95 percent for always and or most of the time standard three structure as a board we are expected to create district-wide conditions for student and staff success and this category was scored 89 percent for always and or most of the time standard four accountability as a board we are expected to hold school district the school district accountable for meeting student learning expectations in this category we scored 86 percent for always in or most of the time standard five which is advis advocacy as

141a board we are expected to engage local community and represent the values and expectations they hold for their schools and this category we scored 86 percent for always and or most of the time any questions okay okay so now we will review the future action items dr nivens all right madam president we have discussion for rfq actually um for real estate agent broker services and so uh mr mckeever would give us a very broad overview of just the services that they would provide not any actual land or anything like that but just the services that our agent and broker would provide for president williams board of trustees dr nivins uh very quickly i will go over this we did go out for an rfq and we actually received these qualifications today and we have four

142that have submitted qualifications principles what we're looking at are some knowledge of principles and methods of showing promoting and selling uh property we're gonna make sure that the texas education government laws are in legal codes and court procedures that they have experience in that and the procedures and documents for purchasing real property there is a process for that and we plan on bringing a recommendation to the april board meeting and it's very quickly dr dr randall i almost said dr randall i'm sorry [Laughter] any questions all right thank you very much okay are there any other items on the future consent agenda that trustees would like to pull for discussion for the april board meeting i don't know what's happening anyone okay hearing none um it is now 8 40 p.m we are journeying to

143closed session pursuant to texas government code sections 551.071 551.072 551.08 551.082 the open meetings act to discuss personnel land acquisition or consultation with our attorney we are now back in open session it is 1004 pm we have a program with all members present are there any emotions to be made i have one i move that the board of trustees approved personnel as presented do i have a second mr lambert seconds any discussion all in favor raise your hand say aye none opposed motion carries any other motions madam chairman i move that the board of trustees give notice of proposed termination for good cause for the following term contract employees fong win and melissa hargrave have a second miss danziger seconds in a discussion all in favor raise your hand say hi and then oppose motion

144carries any other emotions do you have a second second mr welch seconds any discussion all in favor raise your hand say aye aye aye aye an oppose motion carries any other motions and or extension of administrative and or professional contracts as presented you have a second i'll second miss bronzel seconds any discussion on favor raise your hand say aye unopposed motion carries um are there any other future agenda items that needed to be added are there any upcoming meetings or events job fair all right wonderful meeting is adjourned it is 10 05 pm