001thank you trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district is called to order at 6 30 p.m this is the regular monthly board meeting being held on november the 16th we have a quorum with all members present please join me in a moment of silence to observe as you feel appropriate all right please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance and pledge pledge to the texas flags of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice around jesus christ dr nivins are there any recognitions or awards no ma'am there are no recognitions this evening okay are there any introductions yes ma'am there is one introduction i'll turn it over to miss music good evening board of trustees dr nivins so tonight we have with
002us our newest assistant principal at george ranch high school markeisha coy is here with her son aiden markeisha coy is an august 2002 graduate of texas a m university with a bachelor's degree in nutritional sciences she received a master's degree in 2007 in business administration from the university of phoenix miss coy's 11 years of experience in education including nine years of teaching and two years as a math facilitator mrs coy [Applause] miss fossak are there any public comments yes madam president 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 com public comment and adjust the time allotted to each
003speaker when necessary to accommodate a large number of speakers however no speaker shall be given less than one minute all of this is in compliance with house bill 2840 each speaker tonight will have five minutes while the board 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 in the manner provided foreign board policy dgba for employee complaints fng for student and parent complaints and gf for public complaints the presiding officer or designee shall determine whether speaker has filed a complaint according to policy any speakers who complain of individual district employees or
004trustees during public comment will be directed by the presiding officer to stop addressing the board and will refer the speaker to the appropriate complaint policy when you come forward please state your name our first speaker is rebecca clark oh dear don't start yet can i close it okay so good evening um that's the timer on it oh my gosh okay thank you don't start start over here okay okay i'll just get right to i think that we can all agree that children should not be exposed to or have access to pornography vulgarity or illegality and certainly not in their schools and on the taxpayers dime yet this is what is happening in lcisd i have spoken before about such content being made available in book fairs school libraries online libraries and in-class assignments in lcisd
005there is a growing coalition of parents grandparents and concerned community members who have grown weary of our children being exposed to this type of content instead of being protected from it i have put forth a proposal to mr bates and dr mossage to form a committee comprised of parents and faculty who will be charged with performing an internal audit of the current content of the lcisd libraries online included in class materials and book fairs once the audit of existing materials has been accomplished we implement a permanent vetting system in place such that every item must meet certain standards before it is allowed in the school district in any capacity now lest you think this is all hyperbole i have selected a couple of pages from a book available for checkout here in lcisd yeah earl
006i'm gonna eat her [ __ ] huh yeah do you even know how to eat [ __ ] um not really papa gaines never sat you down said son one day you're gonna have to eat the [ __ ] no but he did teach me how to eat a butthole when earl's in full-on gross-out mode you have to play along or you'll feel stupid god bless that man yep i wish he would teach you some [ __ ] eating technique but it's a little complicated that's a shame i would need some diagrams and whatnot well tonight maybe you can draw some up son i don't have time for that i got like 20 [ __ ] over here that i need to eat is that right yeah i'm on a [ __ ] deadline you've got 20 vaginas all lined up in a row uh what the
007hell what the hell no one is talking about vaginas greg what the hell is wrong with you man that's nasty i'll skip over now shut the [ __ ] up you care so [ __ ] much about what other people think you gotta be secretive as [ __ ] gotta go around sucking everybody's dick pretending like they're your friend because you care so much about what they think let me [ __ ] tell you nobody gives a [ __ ] about you nobody thinks [ __ ] about you you ain't got no friends you ain't got nobody who gives a [ __ ] [ __ ] about you okay okay [ __ ] everybody at school could give a [ __ ] about you man i could keep going we've got f every other word uh stop your [ __ ] crying [ __ ] ass okay that's only a snippet from this book and it's only one book
008and i have quite a long list of others just like it i could literally walk out of here and go file a legitimate police report for the district having pornography being made available to minors i cannot fathom that any parent would be calling or writing any one of you to complain that this type of material is not being made available to their children i'm so mad johnny can't check out books with sexually explicit content it really ticks me off that little sally has a book with no expletives in it this is a no-brainer i'm in communication with several state reps including representative matt krause who has initiated an investigation into school libraries and have made him aware that there is content in this district that needs to be audited but we can get ahead of
009the audit as i have a better vision for our district a vision of lcisd as a trailblazer and ultimately the gold standard a fair and safe learning environment for all children who attend school here one that protects children not exposes them one that nurtures them not degrades them i honestly believe that if we work on how to implement this plan now and get ahead of the audit that will be coming parents and school districts across the state and yes the nation will one day look to lcisd and its administrators and say we want what they've got how do we do it and we can gladly show them thank you [Music] our second speaker is ernesto brown brown okay good evening my husband and i are deeply concerned about the literature that is giving to our
010sixth graders also to our elementary school uh daughter one day we came home she started to tell us what the contents of the book touching spirit bear was about and i started to research a little bit more and i thought that it was extremely violent bloody gory and it showed a human degradation that we don't think it's appropriate for our daughters we went to the school already and they told us they are aware our children is not going to be are not going to be participating in the reading of that material but i think it's also inappropriate to kind of segregate them in school and it's also inappropriate for the rest of the children because i have thought deeply about this and i think that it creates in the long term a psychological damage for
011our children all of them assisting to school most of the books that i i have in here most of them i did a quick uh research and they have uh above maturity level content they are brutal the violence is extreme it's terrifying it's distrustful israel is uh it has uh suicidal notions um yeah they also have historical inaccuracies that it's not as as damaging because that's something we can talk about how different things are perceived in a different way however most of these things [Music] develop on an uh dysfunctional families broken families fragmented families and it keeps our children uh life is hard we know but it's sort of a depressive view of the world in which they constantly had to be there my child my daughter has a friend whose goal in night was
012to become a serial killer who already said she wanted to commit arson she said she would prefer to live in a foster home because she's not having a good at her home and how is it that going to school so that she gets more of these that she probably is living at her home probably she's just grabbing attention we don't know but how is it that giving her more content on these uh subjects is going to make things easier for her we're worried about the violence in high school we're worried about the violence in middle schools and we feel that if we continue with this trend it's a danger for our children to go to school we don't want to to be away from our community we want to be a part of it and
013we want to build together so we need to do something in this respect we also went to the content the material context that is available for social studies is um inappropriate for our children because they are showing the news there every every day they were shown 10 minutes of cnn in which they could not do anything else i don't want uh my daughter to be upset or concerned about different things that it's even hard for us adults to comprehend and to elucidate therefore uh i already went to school again she already was separated from that and i still think that it's not appropriate for the rest of the children and it endangers the community in which my daughters are living their day to day [Music] i had taken some time to evaluate the literature for
014sixth grade out of approximately 30 books i was only able to recognize one which i think it's an interesting book none of the classic literature is available as a supportive educational material for our children and i think we need to get together to do something because apparently i am the only parent that so far in that school has been has noticed that has noticed what has happened in there many parents probably are working and they don't have the time to do that it's time consuming to look at all of that so i'm also proposing to form a committee of parents so that we are a part of the selection process of this literature and educational resources for our children in social studies thank you thank you that's all madam president thank you okay are there
015any board member reports i will i got to go out to um bowie and george junior high and navarro middle school recently and hadn't been to those schools in about two years so it was good to be back on those campuses i've done a lot of other things as we all have in the last month but that's the most recent that comes to mind all right thank you mr lambert excuse me november 5th we were able to take 381 of our high school cte students on a field trip to wharton county junior college so um those students from all the high schools got to go visit the campus um i got to be able to speak on behalf of being part of the chamber but also a business in the cte area here and so
016these students they went around met local employers here in fort bend county they were able to sit and listen to a panel of some local people that graduated from wharton junior college and then they heard about the real life dollars and earning potential that can be made right here in fort bend county so it was good to see our students our students seemed excited and they were going around meeting all these employers and seeing all the things that are available for them after graduation nice dr lazar did great all right thank you anyone else yes okay and a lot of good things are going on in back getting back to normal in our district um i was able to go to frosty market a couple weeks ago they didn't have it last year thank you
017lunches of love got to do their walk for uh childhood hunger this weekend which again is so well supported by our community and they really do so much for our children and this saturday night i was invited to the pro grad foster senior serve and it just does your heart good to see how hard those kids work and the parents work to put on a wonderful dinner and support the the students for their graduation and then i was having to do nana duty in austin and about the same time there was a fall legal seminar at the tasby building which ended up being like 15 minutes from my daughter's house so i did for the day do that seminar and if uh any other board member in the future because i think most of them
018are not going to be close by now and they did have a virtual in november 12th it was very enlightening there are things that they talked about that we do know about that we've heard about but then they did a lot of updates because we've had so many special sessions and uh made clarity some of the areas they did was on parental rights board member advocacy opening open meetings after coven 19 legislative updates so those are things that are i mean things that we are working with day to day and there's some areas that if any other board members would like some of the information i got i'd love to share but anyway it was very very interesting and i got to be around adults for a few hours so that was nice too thank
019you a couple things did you want to talk about the epicenter you go ahead we did have a ground breaking for the new epicenter that's going to be opening up oh gosh i'm not sure what the date is not this year but next year yeah sometime so that's going to be a great facility for our community and hopefully we might be able to host some graduations there in the future amongst other things excited about that it's exciting thank you i got to go to for a bit the george ranch student senior serve and so that was uh it's always fun to see all the creative ideas and um everybody comes out of us it was a neat time and also dr nivins and i got to present at the fort bend chamber and so it
020was well attended and well supported by our administration and so it was a good opportunity for us to share with the community about the good things happening here so all right dr nivens is their superintendent report yes ma'am so we were able to host our first ever building better communities luncheon and we invited 15 all 15 of our mayors and our city managers and our individuals from the county engineer and individuals from the county to help us with our construction projects and so of the 15 i think about seven showed up eight showed up along with some mayors and city council and some engineers and we were able to have a great conversation about the vision of the district and uh you know what we're trying to do but also just to be partners in
021helping us make sure that we have a great timeline and as as we start building building more buildings you know as everyone knows that we are a fast growth district and i think we have about 250 portables in our district and so there's quite a few there's over 500 classrooms portable classrooms in our school district and that's quite a few and so you know we're just having conversations about with our city managers and our mayors about permitting processes and things like that that we can expedite so we can make sure that we get campuses up still get quality campuses up but get them up sooner and quicker so we can make sure that we have our students in a great environment thank you okay at this time we will take action on the consent agenda
022and current action items we will pull not item 9 a 1. oh wait that is that's already in action okay are there any other items that the board would like to pull this time at this time uh i have a question on 8r do you like to pull that it doesn't necessarily need to be pulled i just want to ask the administration a question or two about it so however we need to do it can we just do that now it needs to be pulled okay let's pull it all right i'd like to pull a n [Music] yes say you're good all right anybody else okay so um may i have a motion to approve the current consent agenda and action items with the exception of items 8 n 8 0 8 r and 9
023a 1. mr welch makes the motion do i have a second i'll second mr hunt sorry he beat you mr hunt seconds um any discussion okay hearing none i call for the vote all in favor raise your hand say aye and then opposed motion carries all right first we will read the donations on page 24. alex would you read that madam president there was an addendum at your speed oh yes thank you the dolphins elementary pto donated 5160 to purchase eight water bottle stations for dolphis elementary school the frost pto donated six thousand six dollars to purchase think up math materials for frost elementary school and the women's club of sweetgrass donated ten thousand dollars to purchase a television for the cafeteria and shade structure and other playground equipment at jane long elementary school all
024right we appreciate the donations very nice okay so we will start with item 8n on page 83. okay do i have a motion to consider the approval of design development for elementary school number 32. miss danzagar mesa motion um mr humac makes sense so i just had a couple questions on this one so um i noticed on well it's not there's no number but on the site plan um that there's a spot for marquis and i know that in the past the district hasn't provided the funds for marquis for schools and that it's been up to the ptos to put together the money for that is the district now providing the funds and is that being built at the same time as the campuses or is that just a marker showing where the marquee would
025go it's markers showing where it would go the fact that we are in so many different municipalities some allow marquis some do not some have different stipulations on them but we do identify an area where where the marquee if placed would go and we get feedback from some of from former campuses of what the best location would be as they look at traffic flow where would the most folks see it as they drive up to the school so it's just an identified location would it is there any type of pre-like pre-wiring that would be helpful to the campuses and cut down costs when they do eventually decide whether they're going to have a marquee or is that already done well let me let me interject because that that's a part of the conversation that we're
026going to have as we talked about building better communities with the mayors and and the city managers because uh you know all the different municipalities have different um regulations on marquis and so as we engage in those individual conversations that's going to be something that the district is going to pick up those marquees and so as we start the design process we're going to have conversations with the cities about what can we do and then we'll start phasing in uh different approaches because it would it would be beneficial if we would be able to have uh digital marquees instead of having our staff go out there with that big long stick and those you know letters slapping the board and so those are conversations that we're going to have but the expectation i have is
027that we pick that up after we have a conversation with the city government about what they what they will allow us to do but that's the part of the conversation that we'll have okay so at this time is there any type of i mean is it just that's where it is or is it pre-wired for something to be out there and i realize that you might not know because you don't identify the location we do pre-run conduit but we don't pull wire but there is conduit that's in the ground okay great but again we are we're gonna we're gonna take care of all that we're not gonna put that on school okay good deal um one other question on this and not for this because i know that we we recycle the elementary school plans
028so that way we don't have to reinvent the wheel each time um but one thing that i've noticed just from dropping my daughters off at school is that when you look at the site plan there's page 10 the the staff and visitor parking that's where folks will go in and park and then if they need to walk their kids into school they'll they'll park there and then they'll go across where it says parent drop-off there's usually like a a walkway yes has has it ever been considered to or is there a way to put the parking some other place so that there's not kids passing in front of the parent drop off so like if you move the parking lot to a different place so that way the the car line wouldn't have to have
029kids going in front of it does that make sense it does uh and we do get feedback from our the campuses that are in this design and and make tweaks and work with our architects on that um as we look at traffic flow and where we're where the staff has to park we need to figure out exactly what's going to be the best location for that scenario that you've talked about we spent some time taking a look at that traffic flow and i understand what you're saying the the challenges as we fit that uh onto the site that there is a that that is the best location for that staff and visitor parking sure okay and i know a lot of the campuses are set up like this like my kids elementary school is set
030up the same way where the parking lot is there and it might just be logistically with the setup that we have now but i'm sure at some point we're going to go back to the drawing board and get lots of input and maybe rework this a little bit and so just something that that i notice and other parents that i've spoken with have noticed as well right and and when you look at it's actually for the layout of the campus where you've got the entry points so you want to put the parking adjacent to the entry okay that's all i had so let me and so for future reference at the end of the day uh team this is something that you have to approve and so engaging in those conversations early will be beneficial
031for us and so we have our architects in the room and so it doesn't cost us anything to go back and ask them those questions and so we can ask those questions and if it's if it's feasible and if it's not going to cost an exorbitant amount of money that's outside of the bond then we can do those things but we want to make sure that whatever we present that you're comfortable with with voting for and so uh yeah those are good comments because i'm sure that you're getting comments from other parents in the community and so you're bringing that forward which is what should be happening and so we can take that back to our architect and he's actually sitting back there taking notes and then we can see if it's feasible and then
032we can bring the report back to the board and let you know all right thank you sir thank you okay so i'll call for the vote all in favor say hi raise your hand all right none opposed motion carries okay next item is 8-0 on page 84. do i have a motion to consider approval of design development for agricultural facility number three i'll move mr hunt makes a motion mr lambert second discussion i do i just had again a question on this one so i noticed on page eight on the site plan for this that there's only 14 parking spaces is that enough i mean there just there won't be more than 14 people there at a time typically that's a good question that's something we need to take a look at that's a very
033good question okay it is kevin directly off of the repeat from this uh number two and all of those areas are not concrete or gravel so if we need to expand gravel very easily i guess there's not been an ag barn number two a reason to expand that very much and that from having been there people kind of just parked there is no real structure everybody lined up so far are folks just if there's no spots they just kind of go off the beaten path here and they park where they can it's all on the gravel i'm just what i'm saying is there's no structure like mines okay like your typical parking lot touches out here in the around the building because there's trailers and other things that are kind of parked at those locations
034as you look at the white area that designates the handicapped spots that is concrete the other part is gravel that's the salmon color and in those okay i see i see what you're saying okay that was the only question i had okay thank you i have a question yes what um the perimeter fencing because that's going to separate that and the elementary school right there what is that fencing is it like chain link or is it going to be like the it's chanting like is it like an eight foot high or is it gonna be just a normal typically six feet six feet yes six feet on that all right any more discussion okay so hearing then i call for the vote all in favor raise your hand say aye all right none opposed motion
035carries okay next we have eight are which is page 91. and mr lambert kind of asked a little bit what i was going to ask yes the way it's worded let me let me make the motion so excited sorry [Laughter] do i have a motion to uh consider approval of security fence insulation i will make that all right thank you mr welch making a motion mr human at seconds mr welch would you like to go first uh to ask my questions yes yes okay the way it's worded in the board book that you guys gave us it's very vague uh for installation of security fencing throughout the district district is there specific areas that are already targeted or in mind there are we had a list going into the 2020 bond of areas that needed
036additional fencing and or panic gates and hardware so we had that list and we brought that list as part of that line item for the safety and security that also allows us to to be flexible if we need to adjust that but yes we do have that in there and at various campuses throughout the district it's already been i remember those discussions about the 2020 bond we were talking about that in this room um so these might be the fences that are four feet higher and then some other that are taller typically six feet six feet and then when we do that again if it's for access and egress those that fenced area also has panic gates and hardware okay this is this will include taylor ray and travis correct correct taylor ray is actually
037two different uh fencing projects there's one defense around the existing portables and then an item that was added by the 2020 bond committee was to fence the uh the playground area that that track it'll be like the grassy area between the two schools correct okay any other discussion questions okay so i call for the vote all in favor say aye raise your hand not opposed motion carries okay next item is 9 a one on page all right boy i'd like to bring up uh ms ludwig our cfo bringing up good evening board of trustees dr nevins i'd like to talk about our sr3 part 1 use of funds plan we call it part 1 because the state distributed two-thirds of the total allotment under sr3 and the second the remaining one-third will be released at
038the end of this month or the beginning of next month so as you'll recall in october the board reviewed the sr3 part 1 use of funds plan part 1 relates to the first two thirds lamar's total allocation is 21.77 million dollars these are one-time funds and they're intended to support a comprehensive learning recovery effort in texas and these are three-year funds so this is a three-year award the state and all the districts pretty much in the state expect to amend these funds or this award numerous times over the three-year period so we refer to it as a living award this is administered by the tea and all recipients of the funds have to adhere to certain requirements for eligibility to draw down the funds we have to follow federal and state procurement regulations we have
039to file required applications and reports we also have to post a use of funds plan on our website which is there and it states how the funds will be used by the district we plan to implement a coven 19 prevention plan and deploy mitigation strategies to safely reopen and stay open we operate facilities for in-person learning we're addressing learning loss we're required to earmark 20 percent of these funds to address learning loss and then we have to also show in our plan how we plan to spend the rest of the esser funds during the summer and during the budget process the board budget committee did discuss numerous options of how to use these funds of course to approach the limiting the learning loss that has occurred from the coven 19 pandemic and also to mitigate
040further impact of the pandemic on student success we did take stakeholder input and gather the and to determine the best use of the funds we did provide those results of the surveys during our budget process preliminary work has begun we have started the acquisition of screening assessment and curriculum software the establishment of temporary stipend and pay categories and other strategies that will contribute to educational excellence in all functional areas of the district as required we're implementing covid19 prevention and mitigation plans we'll be purchasing disinfectant wipes for technology equipment and supplementing the district's heightened cleaning regimen we will be addressing learning loss we will actually be earmarking more than the 20 percent that's required we'll be using those funds for increasing tutoring for direct remedial student instruction we'll be providing social and emotional support programming will
041provide behavioral supports for students with disabilities and those that are in special ed courses and will also do some summer school programming with the funds the remaining funds will be used for software various types for screening and assessment and also for virtual access to courses we'll be buying instructional materials for all students including those directed toward resource and inclusion classes and special ed we'll be spending a substantial amount of the funds on substitutes substitute teacher costs and incentives technology equipment for students additional personnel units for reading and math at secondary also a substantial amount for extra duty pay and other staff stipends and pay categories and we'll also allocate funds to address funding shortfalls in the general fund and in the employee benefits plans with that i'll be happy to answer any questions you might
042have mr lambert has a question uh with the extra technology purchases and all that i don't know if this is a question for you or uh technology but will this essentially get us to a one-to-need district or will this help us get closer to that um i probably david would be better at answering that but i think we're probably already out of one to need and i think it probably approaches approaching a one-to-one right now we have about 22 000 laptops and i can't remember it's around i think 12 000 ipads so we're already approaching a one to need or we're already at one to need really we were able to meet the needs of all the virtual learners and everything um we still got a little ways to go for a one to one
043okay so with this one if we're at the one to need now if are they able to take it home or these want to stay in their laptop carts at they're the ones they stay on campus okay we did check them out to virtual learners during the pandemic but so if we have students now that currently um say they need to take a computer home because they're in ap or pre-ap classes they have to do their homework at home is do we allow that it doesn't get us there it's up to the campus the campus can certainly check those out okay yeah thank you any other questions all right thank you miss lovely okay so we need to vote on that so do i have a motion to consider approval of esser three part one
044use of funds plan this stanza makes a motion of a second mr hubenak seconds all in favor raise your hand say aye all in favor and unopposed motion carries all right so we will now have presentations on the information items yes ma'am i'm out of president board now we will discuss our bond refunding program program we just completed so ms lugwig is back so this is what we discussed last month we were going into pricing and selling the bonds this transaction will close on november the 30th and it turned out just as exciting as we had hoped it would um you as you'll recall in september you adopted the order to sell the bonds that would refund some outstanding bonds those bonds were originally issued in 2012 and 2016 and the refunding bonds will cover
045refunding those bonds and also pay the cost of issuance of the of the new bonds so we issued bonds with a par amount of 141.415 million dollars and we did not extend the life of any of the previously outstanding bonds and the re the refunded bonds or the previously outstanding bonds that we refunded uh totaled 156.575 so you'll see that we issued less an amount of bonds than we had previously outstanding we anticipate the gross savings to the district to be 39.98 million so right at 40 million dollars and that's on a cash basis the present value savings is 34.854 million dollars and that would be over 22 percent of the refunded bonds which is unheard of and we're very proud of that the average interest rate of the bonds refunded was 4.57 percent and
046the interest cost of the new bonds is right at two and a quarter so it's substantial substantially less so with that i can answer any questions you might have any questions way to go yes wonderful thank you thank you very much the market has a lot to do with it as do our underwriters and our financial advisors so we're very blessed yes that's awesome thank you all right next we'll have mr bates to talk about our 22-23 student course selection catalog all right thank you dr nevins good evening board of trustees tonight's information item is an overview of our newly overhauled 2022-23 student course catalog the course catalog is a complete listing of state and locally approved courses for lcisd students in this booklet that you have in front of you it can be used
047for parents to assist their students in choosing courses for the upcoming school year the student course catalog is intended for our secondary schools and the makeup of our secondary schools of course are middle school sixth grade students junior high school students grades seven through eight and of course high school grades nine through 12. inside the course catalog parents will be able to find our various graduation plans and of course the graduation requirements that are associated with those graduation plans and they'll also be able to find a detailed course description for each course that the students and the parents are choosing to attempt for the next school year they'll also be able to find additional information such as additional resources or potential funds that may be associated with the course such as if there's any band
048rental fees art supply fees any fees that may be associated with advanced placement testing or of course any potential costs that it comes to students that are attempting dual credit courses the course catalog is organized in order from high school down to junior high school and then middle school and of course at each level each of those levels begin with the traditional courses of english language arts mad science and social studies and then you'll have the additional enrichment courses which we know as of course the electives uh of course such as fine arts uh pe health uh tte courses technology application of course in fine arts the course catalog believe it or not it's also used by our high level institutions so any of our students that are attempting to gain college credit the universities
049may go back and refer to our course catalog that we have in place to ensure that the students of course that they took with lcisd met the rigor and of course the course description aligns with what they consider to be the college course uh and that's for typically our students that are attempting dual credit uh through or work for credit through dual and credit dual enrollment i'm sorry dual credit dual enrollment and of course uh for advanced placement and next i'd like to i'm really excited about a future course that we're looking to add to lcisd and it's targeted toward our sixth through eighth grade students this program is called the kickstart kids program and in this program it teaches students character through martial arts or karate it's an alternate pe course and it's another
050way that we want to ensure that our students are having the opportunity to be connected to the schools and being taught character we know that we have several programs that do a great job of that any area of athletics but everyone is not an athlete any area of course through finance but everyone's not a musician uh so we wanted to make sure we had an alternate opportunity for students to kind of learn those character lessons as you can see on the graph in the great big red area the kickstart program is housed out of the houston area so the houston area is kind of their biggest client and we're looking to make sure that we pilot that for the first year uh here in lcisd some of the courses that are uh character traits that
051are taught throughout the year are courses of or lessons of honesty loyalty courage discipline respect dedication kindness and responsibility and as the students matriculate in progress throughout the program as you can see each twice a year they have a belt ceremony where students are kind of awarded the next level of death they've earned and as you can see you may recognize this face uh this program is founded by the great chuck norris and from time to time at the base at the belt ceremonies typically at the end of the ceremonies he may actually make a presentation to try to inspire the students so with that being said up next i'm going to present to you lindsey troutman the director of college career military readiness for additional updates in the area of advanced academics thank you
052very much good evening board of trustees i'm excited to be here you'll note in the course catalog there's now an additional section between pages 19 to 27 which gives some additional detail to our advanced academics courses all the way from a brand new logo but all of the courses that we currently offer and of course this is always evolving that includes the texas core component areas so any college bearing course that you can find that fits in that texas core as students work across this goes all the way from ap dual credit in dual enrollment it then has our currently approved courses with lone star college always evolving and continuing to add as we add those college credit bearing courses it then goes into descriptions of some common questions or faq that parents generally have
053between on-ramp stool credit ap what's the best way for what the the student's goals are so every course has its benefit with college credit but it's really based on our students academic goals and so it gives some of those common layouts transferability cost all of those things and so we're really excited about the added section and now it's my great pleasure to introduce dr lazar the director of cte good evening um before we enter into the next portion of this presentation it's really important for you guys to understand how cte courses are structured so we have a total of five endorsements that students can earn upon graduation from high school and three of those endorsements cte courses are broken into what we call career clusters then within the career clusters there are programs of study
054and the state defines what courses can go in those programs of study what you see on the screen now is the enrollment percentages and each career cluster for the 21-22 school year i went through all of these and i did a five-year data analysis on enrollment for each program of study within these career clusters programs of study with an enrollment of one percent of less other than our shared programs that have a capped enrollment were identified and will be removed for the 20 to 23 school year student enrollment in the courses that you see on the screen enrollment and interest in these programs they've been consistently low over the last five years and you've been provided with the data that shows all of the all of these statistics that start on page 175 of your
055board book please know that we will continue to evaluate the data to determine student interest and also our community labor needs to make sure that we are implementing um programs of study to feed students in a pipeline that are ready for the workforce on the screen now are some additions that we're adding for the 22-23 school year in order to align with the courses on the state approved program of study we are having to make adjustments to the following cte programs of study for the 22-23 school year all the bulleted items are additions or adjustments being made to the bolded programs of study listed on the screen we're adding business management and retail management as new course offerings we're adding a dental assistant pathway due to student interest we are also adding a practicum and
056pharmacy to our pharmacy pathway and we're replacing cna with patient care technician we will be offering two pathways in computer science students will be able to choose to take the ap route or a new academic route geared towards certification attainment and career readiness and computer programming according to the state the welding program of study falls under the manufacturing career cluster a lot of our welding students obviously want to compete in ffa through manufacturing and all of that good stuff but unfortunately they have to be enrolled in an ag class so we're going to be keeping the dual welding pathway but any student who is welding and wants to stay on campus that student will be transitioned to the applied ag engineering pathway which is still welding but it falls under the ag cluster for those
057students to participate in ffa and finally due to low enrollment in the upper level courses of the plant science program of study we'll be adding the advanced floral design course as well as a practicum and floral design to facilitate and encourage cte completers in that pathway at this time we'll take questions i have one yes ma'am okay and i understand okay the early learning is that if student wanted to have a pathway towards going into a field of teaching and education um so there are two programs of study under the that career cluster currently one is the early learning and one is the teaching and learning the intro courses principles of education if you look at that and what's happening from that course they're choosing to go teaching and learning but not early learning okay
058so we still have a pathway to education yes okay thank you i was rewarded [Music] yes dr lazar would you go back one slide sure so the programming and software development program and study how is that different from the information technology that's the computer science program that's what computer science falls under the programming and software development program of study it is like computer maintenance okay and in these programs that where uh not the programs of study that we're not going to have the principles courses in them that did have fairly good enrollment are those courses still so that's a good question we will be keeping money matters if you notice that is a there's large enrollment in that and it's a very beneficial course so we'll be keeping money matters we'll be keeping principles of
059information technology as well as lifetime nutrition and wellness those will be elective options but they will not be attached to a program of study okay because it seems like those courses are you know a lot of students are in them but then the courses that come after the students that make sense okay thank you yes that's a good question i had that question too did you have something mr lambert um so i i was just gonna make a comment i guess well one this looks really nice i know it's been updated so well done looks good um also the kickstart i'm i'm excited about that i know dr nivens i'm talking about that but i met a lady that works for them at the fort bend chamber and she was so you know she was
060so passionate about it and she was crying about how wonderful um she sees the confidence built and the students and so many more things than just the actual athletic part of it you know so i'm excited that we're going to have it yeah so yeah that's it i was going to say good job team yeah good job this is this is uh this is something that that we are venturing in and making sure that when students leave us if they want they have the ability to graduate with an associate's degree and so as i've always said it's a double-edged sword because if a student graduates from an associate's degree they have to be mature enough when they go to college to be able to matriculate forward in the system and so as we're having these
061conversations we're also gonna start having conversations about uh counseling students that if they go to if they go that path how do we make sure the student and the parent are aware of what the expectations will be because then they'll be a 18 year old college junior and so uh that has his own challenges that's his own challenges but you know uh everything we do is not for everyone but everything we do is for someone and so that's what i want to do is meet as many needs as possible and then finally on the kickstart program i had it on my campus when i was a middle school principal many moons ago and my middle school was considered to be a chronically violent middle school and we brought chuck norris and his team to our
062middle school and completely transform the culture and the mindset of our young people to have more self-respect uh to have more respect for others and their peers and it was uh transformative to what it had what it did for our middle school back then so anyway i'm just excited and uh dr bates and his team uh mr bates and his team are doing a phenomenal job so i appreciate well yeah i'm gonna speak it because he's doing it yeah he's almost there uh but phenomenal job team thank you thank you all right board next we'll have our bond update from mr junti oh good evening again so a few items to make you aware of as we always share uh we had 61 pay applications in october we were busy for a total of 7
063million 100 1 853 and 83 cents a couple of projects to update you on first is fletcher morgan elementary school we're taking substantial completion this month any day and furniture installation will also begin this month we do want to point out a couple things about the site as you look here this these connectors this is the responsibility of the developer and at this time they have not yet finished tying into the roadway there will also be some roadway improvements that will occur this is the responsibility of the developer lcisd has has done everything on their part to take care of the roadway so we're just waiting on them to take care of this final part also an additional issue is right here there will be a traffic light we have been informed by txdot that
064that probably will not be operational until february so in that process we've already had conversations with our wonderful lcisd police department and with uh the principal and we will make sure that every day until that is operational that we've got folks there to make sure that that intersection will be safe and uh for our kids and for our families before you move forward mr johnson let me interject so again a main reason why we were having our conversations with building better communities and talking with our mayors and city and city managers i'm not sure if i'm able to say her name but actually the the tie-in and the traffic light was actually delayed significantly and then i called i called an advocate of the district and she sent one email she sent one email and
065all of a sudden we have movement and it's going to be there in february but before she sent that email uh we were told it may not be operational this school year at all and so uh anyway but that's that's the power of relationships and the power of advocacy i have a question sir um is the developer dragging their feet or is that going to be done on time by january we have been notified that this tie-in will be will be finished by we'll be finished yes okay so there's no concerns there when it's done we'll be excited again we do we want to name the developer to put a little pressure on them publicly we have confidence that that developer will have that done so very good again at this point the main thing
066and again there'll be some additional work that would be done along this area for an extended turn lane uh but we we do have every confidence that this will be complete by the time school is open is that the only way into that school is off of or is there a back way there is a back roadway that will be completed through here okay all right um there are several roads that are just north of it that are under construction and working on tie-ins as well as the subdivision that will be in this area that will also have a roadway time and we've had it so that when they do have those roads developed that they will filter in correctly into the path of how they're supposed to yes a traffic study is part of
067the process when we build the campus and we do that uh to make sure that that occurs okay so there and i i think part of what you may be asking is is the entire uh development going to come out this this and that they'll have other access egress points as well mr hunt i have a question yes sir is that is that a makeshift roadway that we when we went and did the tour that one is that going to go away or is that yes that was the construction entrance okay kevin are they doing away with that thank you that was up that's bumpy ride so we're moving along uh just another example of some other work that we're doing in our bond work this is williams elementary school uh when this roadway was
068updated upgraded it created some different access egress challenges for the campus so we're adding some parts here uh moving a basketball court adding some new concrete bus drive here for better traffic flow as well as we're extending the canopy here this was some work that was done to the front of the campus in the last bond and now we're extending the bus canopy so those kids will be out of the sun in the rain waiting for the bus any questions all right i just wanted to say to dr nevins so thank you for working on building those relationships because that's really helping benefit everybody um to make be able to make a phone call or send an email and get that kind of stuff done so well done working on that yes on those relationships
069it's wonderful yeah so our next item i want to update you on our technology service center uh so uh this is a side view of our current development center uh where technology services is located uh you may not know that and and we'll show an aerial view in the next one this is the original administration building for the district that they're housed in that was built in and it is also besides tech services being there it is also our network operations center or our noc so obviously this is serving a purpose that it was not built for uh this gives you an idea where it is the orientation this is lamar high school this is the junior high and the development center is in between them there on stadium drive and the main entrance is
070actually off stadium drive these are some pictures from the interior of it uh you know a technology center has some unique uh things needs one of the challenges we have is as the district grows and our technology needs grow we have a need for more staff and to house more staff this current building has no room for growth and it also serves they receive technology shipments and then they make ready and then they take them out to the campuses really don't have a great make ready space at the at the current development center uh in the 2020 bond uh it was earmarked up for three million dollars to renovate the development center that renovation really was to renovate the interior space of the building but it did not really address the mep or mechanical electrical
071plumbing issues which would be also significant dollars as i've stated the technology needs for the district and for their staff and and that that building really their needs are unique so that's when we need to engage an architect with design experience in that type of facility to assist us in taking a look at all our options including building a new facility so what are we going to do we're going to go out for an rfq for that and take a look at an architect to design a new technology service center that will also have a network operations center inside it and we're looking at all of our options in terms in terms of how we do that whether it's a standalone building whether it's an add-on to an another new building we're making so we're
072taking a look at those options and what's going to work best for the district especially in the long term for growth any questions on that i'll make a comment that's where i signed my contract when i first came it probably doesn't look much different it once housed where they ran all if we needed uh copies made that were in bulk they did that yes when we uh updated the service center they moved to uh the new facility right yes it did sure do yes we need to do some how um with that space how often are like semis coming in dropping off technology being on stadium drive that's pretty tight right there as it is is there i mean drop-off pickup of things coming in and out of that building is that hectic or is
073that it is a challenge it is a challenge to receive those um especially if they're palletized yeah yeah so when you don't have a really good dedicated dock for that is there a duck there um david what is the receiving area look like there's a garage door at ground level and it's on the back of the building so there's an alley we can get some larger box trucks but a semi would not be able to make the turn around there so with students potentially in that area you have large delivery trucks coming in and all that is it i mean it's close to the junior high in the high school but that area is closer it's on the high school side yeah where the garage door is in our comfort area awesome it's it's fairly
074well separated um it's right close to the high school cafeteria entrance but there's a pretty good separation there's some space between it and it's not a traffic area for students on the back of that building on the front side of our building there is just the new guy asking questions yeah sure yeah it does not have a dock high area so that would be a need yes absolutely okay mr hunt so just to clarify there's three million dollars in the 2020 bond to renovate this building but is the plan shifting that we're not going to do the renovations of this building and instead we're gonna look for an architect to build a new building with those three million dollars yes we're exploring the options of what would be our best use of those dollars okay
075uh what we get the most bang for our buck okay thank you so mr hunt the idea was when mr jonty first brought it to me the idea was to say we have three million dollars uh for the current building and you know i'm from the country in oklahoma and i say you know that's like putting lipstick on pig and so could you not raise peas growing up so but anyway i know we are about to start building our uh or growing out for our police building and so if we can find a way where we can uh design that on the same property and then we can get the labor and materials in bulk along with the police station then we can save money on that and so that's those are the options we're
076going to explore and see how if we can get our tech guys and ladies a brand new building for that three million dollars or a little bit over that and i have to go out and build a whole new building standalone building uh outside of a project we already have going on well it seems like no matter what we could put duct tape on this building but eventually we're gonna have to come back and there's no room and we're growing and growing growing we're going to need to build a new center right that's correct just the size does not meet our needs of the staff we already have staff that are not in that building that we're housing elsewhere but if we can get it to piggyback on another project that we can get those
077materials and that labor at a bulk bulk expense and it won't be as expensive hopefully good idea all right any other questions all right thank you now i'm going to have a miss tomas come up and and give you an update on our channel good evening so so this first slide here is just to give you a snapshot of the history of participation for breakfast and lunch and where we are now so the year prior to covid which was school year 2018-19 breakfast was at 20 and lunch was at 53 for school year 2019-20 when school closed due to covet in march breakfast was at 22 and lunch was at 57. for 2021 where we serve both in-person meals and curbside meal distribution breakfast was at 17 and lunch was at 44 and for this
078school year so far breakfast is at 24 and lunch is at 64 percent so this slide shows how we compare to our neighboring school districts for school year 2122. compared to again we are at 24 for breakfast and 64 for lunch katie is at um 17 for breakfast and 60 for lunch stafford who participates in the breakfast in the classroom is at 35 for breakfast and 60 for lunch and fort bend is at 14 for breakfast and 50 for lunch so you're probably wondering how we choose products for our menu so we are a member of the school purchasing alliance which there are 35 area school districts usually utilizing spa as their co-op and before any entrees are added to their order guides it is tested by students in a minimum of 10 school districts
079district taste testing so this year we've completed our first one for this school year this past week where we did two culinary arts classes at george junior and we tested a whole muscle breakfast chicken patty from three different manufacturers we also have plan testing for elementary and secondary pizza a new corn dog and a few new vegetarian entrees also student surveys in 2019 we partnered with prairie view a m and we have dietetic interns who are completing their internship here at lamar and so as part of their internship they conduct student surveys and plate waste studies and when we use that information when we make menu changes this past summer we did our first culinary ideation with lando lakes where they brought out two corporate shops and they tested 17 different recipes on students throughout
080the district so we had students ranging from kindergarten to 11th grade come out and after each recipes the kids held up a thumbs up or thumbs down and so we're planning our second one for this summer so challenges so the first challenge we have is usda has increased sodium restrictions for school year 2122 by decreasing the allowable sodium by one-third they plan on another cut for school year 22-23 again usda has implemented a 100 whole grain requirement for school year 21-22 while in the past we were able to use a white pasta or a white rice that is no longer allowable this school year moving forward staffing shortages we are currently 30 staff members short throughout the district and this does not include staff that are currently on tdl or fmla but we would like
081to report we were able to hire 10 employees from the support services job fair in october so manufacturing disposable shortages currently we are receiving between 30 to 40 product substitutions a week from our food distributor which affects around 1800 cases of our food that are currently on our menus weekly manufacturers are cutting entire production lines due to supply shortages or staffing not only does this affect food but also disposables so we use disposable trays to help combat staffing shortages that are elementary but currently there is a nationwide shortage of disposable school lunch trays available so i'm going to share a few of these things that that one monica is very humble and she doesn't talk about all the work that's going on behind the scenes very often to make things happen and for example when
082they talk about those menu substitutions that's a very challenging situation and they've handled it by getting other items and and still having to qualify with the usda and tda for the menu items so they've done a really good job filling in when all of a sudden things do not become unavailable and again she talked about the shortages of disposables as everyone's dealing with shortages everyone started using disposable trays so they became a shortage of them because everyone was doing the same thing so they her team has been able to really reach out to other suppliers and be very uh proactive in getting additional cases of those so that that continues to help as we go through that employee shortage the other one that's listed on there is the gordon's food service case cap we were
083alerted that our main food supplier was going to limit the number of cases that the district received each week based on an average that they had for us i want to emphasize that when that happened we were still able to have them deliver all of our perishable goods our frozen foods refrigerated to the campuses but non-perishable monica and her team has had to organize along with other district employees to go pick those up on the weekend bring them back and then they deliver them to the warehouse and you're seeing a picture there when those palace pallets are there then our staff has to take the time to break those down and then deliver those to the campuses so it's been a a very challenging uh again set set of uh issues that they've dealt with
084and they've done a really terrific job with it and and again we're pulling in other employees to assist with that as well so and so when he says other employees we mean bus drivers they get off their route and then they stop driving the bus they get off their route and then they go and help unpack food for our young people and so that's a phenomenal job guys [Applause] what kristen mentioned is we actually had to hire an 18-wheeler company this past week to pick up over 2 000 cases of food and it's actually our office staff that breaks down the pallets so it's dress casual on mondays we break down the pallets and that's after we've broken down half the palette so those are ready to be distributed to the schools so with that
085comes price increases so due to substitutions and again nationwide supply chain issues we are facing product price increases so our original 100 beef hamburger patty we process for the menu cost 45 cents and it's an item that the manufacturer can no longer produce we are now paying a dollar fifteen per hamburger patty so we are receiving weekly notifications of increasing pricing on almost all of our items so plans for the future so we will continue to use beef products without fillers and then we will continue to use whole muscle chicken so when we plant a menu there's two options for chicken it's either a pressed and formed which is basically stamped out in the exact same shape or it's 100 white beet here at lamar we only use the 100 white meat chicken products we
086will continue to buy local products when available and then we will be testing the spring a customizable menu concept at our secondary locations where they can do build your own subs or build your own tacos so that's coming this spring to test at one of our schools before we roll it out questions i have two questions um the stats you talked about with the breakfast you said 24 currently are the is that 24 of the lamar students who utilize the free breakfast yes yes are there any additional students who just come here and pay for a breakfast is that is that an option that is not an option so only 24 of the whole right right breakfast is always hard at our elementary schools we have some that some of our sites that serve 80
087to 90 secondaries unfortunately they don't they're not big on breakfast so it's more like 10 percent at our secondary the other thing is just a curiosity said there's orlando lake chefs that come and they so that food that they make is that those recipes incorporated into the cafeterias yes we try to incorporate them so all of those are school foods that they come in and test for our kids how about that yes i the children that are not eating the school lunch i assume they're bringing lunch or at the junior higher high schools do they have other options that they can pay for and that right uh a la carte or items yes so some of them could be coming in and eating the a cart and not the right so it could be chips
088it could be side items so we just have no control over that okay that's yeah i have a question so with the with the changes like from the white pasta to the whole wheat only is that only with the free and reduced lunches or can use every single lunch so you cannot serve any white pasta and so that's if you how does it how is that like why why is the is there only one choice if we have a la carte as well does that make sense one part still has to follow the usda guidelines even because we're selling it during the lunch period so there are certain rules that have to be followed gotcha okay um and then remind me if you will why do we not use resu the result i can't the
089reusable trays if there's a shortage i know i'm assuming it's labor-intensive right we do use them at all of our elementary campuses but if we're short staffed that's a way to fill in by them not having to wash the dishes but at all elementary campuses they do have the hard trays gotcha okay um this school year again every campus has breakfast and lunch for free whether no matter who you are that's federal yes okay we took part of waivers that were released by usda and once upon a time the reason we used the throw well the trays is because the dishwashers would always be breaking so we had both ready to go that was one of the problems but so with you mentioned the price increase of the hamburger patties and so if we're getting
090the waivers from the usda are they except they're supplementing that cost do we no they do not supplement that cost there um this year they have increased the reimbursement rate so in the past let me have it down last year our reimbursement rate was 353 for lunch they have increased it for this year only to 431 but it will it could potentially go back down it could potentially go back down yes all right well thank you for all the hard work good job thank you okay so now we will i think that's all the information is correct yes ma'am okay we will now re review the future action items all right so we have mr junti again we talked about architect contract for middle school number six okay thank you um so middle school number
091six is a uh 2020 bond item it's in the silver track as we open randall and wright uh the middle school is on that we'll be on that same site so this is an example right now of that that site and this is a possible location for the future future middle school we know it's going to be somewhere on this complex we're actually exploring a couple different options and talking with our folks on the instructional side of what would be the optimal place to put that so you can see there are some planned areas there so one of the things that we're seeing again we've got pbk that will be the architects because it will be a repeat design of our our middle school that we're currently building so pbk will build that and the
092current 2020 bond item for that middle school is is 34.7 million dollars any questions what's the projected start that's that's a good question and one of the reasons we're bringing this forward is because in our original projections when we opened right junior high with grades six seven and eight there would be a few years before they would reach capacity that has happened much earlier than uh than we thought so we are accelerating the timeline on this so when we can get started we're hoping for an opening oh kevin um well you're about a 90 000 square foot facility and if we can get started now we'll start construction say april um and the repeat design saves us a little time without having to go through a total redesign so yeah i know the staff at
093wright is very excited about this getting started and and we are trying to be responsive you know we need to be agile and responsive because it is in the bond we we need to control that process of when we get started on and get it completed we hear them and so so just to be clear for everyone in the room we were not supposed to start construction on this for a couple of years because this is the first year right has opened and so i want to make sure we're clear on that this is the first year that building has been open hadn't been opened a full semester yet and they are above capacity already but they were not supposed to be at capacity for another two or three years and so that's how fast
094we're growing and so that's why we have expedited uh middle school number six on the silver track is to relieve uh relieve the crowding get right another questions all right and our last future action item is uh mrs lovely she'll discuss our special education rfp so we're in the process of establishing an annual contract for professional services in the area of special education as you'll see on the screen we're looking for professionals to provide behavioral support physical therapy skilled nursing services occupational therapy those types of things our intent for this uh process is to solicit vendor qualifications so it's an rfq and it's from firms that deliver all these various services we're going to review the submissions and select the most qualified vendors we look at such things as firm experience certifications references credentials the
095ability of the vendors to meet our schedules criminal history insurance and things like that the special ed department worked with purchasing on the rfq specifications and the award recommendations we are looking for hopefully a five-year cycle the award will be an annual contract with an option of four additional one-year period contracts there will have to be mutual agreement between the district and each of the vendors the purchasing department i notified 13 vendors vendors that registered at the purchasing department website and we also advertised in accordance with state regulations the qualifications were due the proposals themselves were due on october 15th and so the review process is going ongoing right now and next month a recommendation of vendors will be made to the board what funds will we use to uh these would be um any
096and all types of funds from the specialists okay all right thank you so much you're welcome okay we will uh i'll be taking any items on the future consent agenda that y'all would like to pull for discussion for the december board meeting okay hearing none it is 7 56 we will now go into closed session we are journeying to closed session pursuant to texas government code section five five one point zero seven one five five one point zero seven two five five one point zero seven four and five five one point zero eight two the open meetings act to discuss personnel land acquisition or consultation with our attorney we're good okay thank you we are now back in open session it is 8 38 p.m we have a quorum are there any other motions to
097be at the board of made thank you somebody turned into madam chairman i moved at the board of trustees suspend teacher troy moore without pay pending discharge do you have a second missed insert or seconds any discussion all in favor raise your hand say aye aye none opposed motion carries are there any future agenda items to be added i was going to request one but i think i'm going to handle it behind the scenes for now okay so any others um are there any upcoming meetings and events thanks again thank you thanksgiving that's right pig dinner tomorrow night it'll be our first time going to the pig tomorrow night [Laughter] okay the meeting is adjourned it is 8 40 p.m