LEISD School Board Meeting 08/23/2021

001you here at 6 30 i'm sorry at 707. we're calling actually we're just coming back into general session from closed session at 7 07 pm uh so the first item as we come back is the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all texas flag the texas flag i pledge allegiance to these texas wednesday underground one an individual thank you and now also we have pastor sutton from point church with us today for our invocation yeah let's all pray father and evan thank you so much for a night when uh so many who care are gathered in this place so many who care about uh the most important people in our lives

002our children thank you father that uh there are people that in this room that may disagree mightily on how things should be done but they're here to work together and to to find ways to ensure that our kids are protected and educated and given the best possible start in life we pray that that would be the first thought in our minds as we go through these exercises and father i thank you for those who have dedicated literally years of their lives uh in this kind of service so let this be a night that many remember not because of any sort of controversy but because how they raced to respect each other's opinions and come to the best possible solutions we love you lord thank you for working through people thank you for the miraculous things

003that happen when people do come together in love and respect and thank you for our kids we ask your blessing on all of them here at the beginning of the school year for their protection and for their enlightenment and it's in jesus name we pray amen amen reports um let me ask uh mr introduction and roll call here here mr jason olson here mr david here on english are there any objections to moving citizen input up to before um superintendent spotlight and report to superintendent no that's we can certainly do that okay uh ms willis do we have citizen input [Music] yeah we do have um some students here yeah let's let's because i don't want to keep our students it's a school night and even though these are high school students i'm sure they'd

004all love to see them as well yeah and this is this is something i think our community will be excited about so um our athletic director here so i'm gonna ask our deputy superintendent to come to the podium and introduce and we'll get our students in here to show some awesome new uniforms yeah perfect thank you superintendent gallagher president montmartre board of trustees uh good evening and uh we are excited that we got bumped up uh we have an incredible crowd and we are going to show off some really awesome brand new uniforms and so i'm i'm not going to waste any more time i'm going to bring coach young up here our new athletic director and he's going to do um a quick update for the board and community on our athletic programs and

005he's going to talk about the awesome opportunity our student athletes have with under armour enough being a spotlight district and so it's an agreement that they're working on and getting our student athletes the very best of equipment and so we're very proud of that amongst other things so i'll turn it over uh coach young and let him come up and this is his very first time in front of us and so he'll do a great job and we want to welcome him and doing doing the point so coach young all right i appreciate the board for having me thank you [Applause] i really appreciate you guys having us here tonight we have a great group of kid coaches you know we've already gotten going here for now for several weeks we have uh you know

006cross countries already going on their third cross country meet this week this has their second match tomorrow our volleyball team is off running they're in six right now they've doubled their win total from last year and we're just a couple weeks in and not just the wins and losses with them but just their their change in culture and what i see from those kids and coaches is just awesome i see a big difference i'm really excited about that group uh football gets started this week uh we have our first varsity game in l.d bell we we kick off with a jv game here thursday night so we have a lot going on golf in a couple weeks i talked to the golf coach he's excited he's got a couple boys and a girl that he

007thinks have a chance to go to regionals haven't had a person go to regional golf in a long time here so he's excited about that so we have a lot a lot of good things going on a couple things that i wanted to share once uh one is our website one thing that we've really been working on and i i hope that you get a chance to check it out we've we've tried to streamline everything make things as easy as possible and we use me because if i can find it and i can navigate it then i know we've made this really easy for everybody and we're really excited about our website and how easy it is to find tickets to bond games so please check that out if it's a chance our coaches have

008done a great job of putting that all together another thing we're excited about is the under armour package that we have and it's such a great thing for our kids you know part of building your program you want your kids to have the best things that you can possibly provide them uniforms equipment facilities in the school district and board are dedicated to that and this underarm agreement is a great start you know it's a it's not just the uniforms it's coaches tables and the in the girls and boys coaches offices chairs signage in our buildings stadiums so there's a lot to it we're really proud of it and i thought what a great idea to have these kids come up here we have some good-looking kids and some nice good-looking uniforms and let them kind

009of see you to see kind of what they all look like you guys come on in [Applause] we have some football volleyball uniforms awesome and uh we're excited about like so you know i know the kids are the coaches are and the part being great is looking great they definitely look that and one thing too uh john he committed to uh central arkansas last night so that jump congratulations that's a great accomplishment so uh again thank you guys all as we know when we get started you can you can find all of our games easily online tickets and everything so please come out enjoy uh see what great things not only these athletes are doing but our band team cheerleading all what they're doing the work they put in it's going to be a great

010year in athletics and we look forward to seeing you guys all out there thank you [Applause] coach thank you and and there's no better way to start a board meeting than with students so thank you so much that was a a great way to start so yeah i know we do have another group here yeah can we do that real quick yeah and um before we get to the the um public comments i do want to recognize um a group that's here you know every year one of the great things about there's so many great things about little misd but one of the great things that we do here every year is our back to school bash we've been doing that for um i believe five years for the last five years and what's amazing

011about it is we all come together it's not just district personnel that that um is at this event it's community members it's vendors it's um people that come and volunteer to give to our kids and there's one group that um i want to represent tonight we started this little mistake community partnership award last year and we did this as a way for the district to say thank you to those organizations that give to our kids and give to our district so there's a group here tonight um and i know that everyone in this room is probably driven by it it's right down the road it's d3 salon so i'm giving a little commercial here for the salon but yeah the d3 salon it's owned by debbie hadfield and she is here with some members of

012the salon so i'm going to ask them to come to the front and i want to take time to thank them for what they do so for those of you that don't know and y'all can yeah just stand up here for those of you that don't know this group right here and actually debbie it's more it's and and what they do they bring all of their tools everything and they volunteer to give haircuts to our kids at no charge and over the last four years and i say five but technically it's four because we didn't do it last year but i believe you've given haircuts of upwards of 500 or even maybe even a little more i know we don't keep track but i know it's in that range of 500. so you know when

013you have a community organization or a business someone that is willing to give their time we as a district need to say thank you to you so we're really proud to give you our it's actually the third time we're giving this our community partnership award so i think we have a photo [Applause] so just thank you thank you thank you you guys are amazing i actually stopped there a couple was going to tell you and um this is what we call a weekly haircut so thank you and and um thank y'all [Applause] and and again debbie thank you so much for what you do for our kids because that's really what it is you do this for our kids so thank you and we truly truly appreciate i'm you sometimes um thank you my name

014is jenny mccullough i live at 3508 bristol cone drive in little elm and i just want to say good evening to the school board trustees and administration and i stand here tonight in support of your your continued support of governor abbott's executive order number 38 that encourages the people of texas to exercise personal responsibility for the health of themselves and that of their family with regards to the chrono 19 virus thank you for supporting my rights and responsibilities as a parent grandparent and taxpayer by upholding requirements of e038 paragraph 3a and 4a this is not a time to cause division but a call for unity is in order we tonight are going to be discussing our abhorrence of two divisive curriculum make masking students and an aversion to the possibility of crt in our curriculum

015we want this to be addressed with cool reasoned heads with an outstretched hand and offer of partnership to you the trustee board and from we the community this is the way that we can reasonably move forward to tackle the many issues that have been so divisive for many we as parents and grandparents just want the best for our children and our country and we all stand against racism in any form especially in school curriculum and expect that that would be your goal too and that's simply what i want to say i just want to thank you again for supporting parental rights and we're here to help you and that's what we just want to offer tonight thank you [Applause] same thing mr hawkins name and address i'm seth hopkins i live at uh 11209 meredith

016drive in frisco texas uh i'm not going to be as eloquent as the first speaker but i grew up i've grown up in in texas my entire life i grew up and was born in harris county houston and i can tell you in 1982 i was the minority in harris county houston uh i i might have one white friend i grew up around hispanic people and black people and those were my friends my wife is mexican my dad taught me at a really early age that racism is evil and he grew up with parents unfortunately that were prejudiced and he grew up in the south pasadena and he remembers the segregation and he had to live through that and he felt at a very young age it was wrong and uh so you know he

017did everything he could i remember at seven years old my dad sat me down and had a conversation with me about bigotry and racism and how um as i would get older i would see it sometimes and how i should not allow that to stand and and so you know this whole ethnic studies or crt or whatever it is i i don't need i don't need my children to hear that it's divisive it's wrong it's evil it's racism and it's being touted throughout our nation as the opposite of racism i have to be made known of my white privilege well i can tell you what i held a job at 11 years old 11 years old was the first job i had and i was a shop i was shophand and i would sweep around

018the floor and then i did that until i was 14. every summer every christmas every spring break i held a job my entire life and then i volunteered to go serve a mission for my church and all i did was go learn about other cultures and people and their issues and their successes and that for me you know i'm good i don't need a state or a government to tell me that my opinions are wrong or righteous or unrighteous i have the ability to choose how i feel and think and i don't need anybody else to tell me and as far as mass mandates go i mean the science is bunk um you know i took ppe courses and unless you got an n95 respirator nothing is going to stop what comes through that mask

019and wearing that at prolonged periods of times is very detrimental to your health it'll ruin your lungs and so my my child is asthmatic my wife is asthmatic we have to take special precautions i can tell you my son is perfectly fine walking the schools without a mask and i don't want to be told that he has to have one i'm his parent and so i appreciate the time and that's my opinion [Applause] i'll my name is george mccullum my address is 3508 bristol cone drive in little elm texas and i'm going to speak in regard to ethnic studies last meeting ethnic studies was approved for the curriculum it was done without a synopsis of the direction of the course with no recommended books readings comparative programs from other isds or anything else that would

020indicate thought into the subject further an administrator made a comment that this is how the process works i find that amazing my career in business leadership i never approved a project unless there was a viable plan that embraced the direction of the company and had the promise of bringing in positive results this approval came with nothing else but an indication it would focus on african-americans and mexican-american studies this in my mind is reminiscent of a quote on obamacare from nancy pelosi and that was you have to pass this bill to know what's in it as we all know now there are many negative unintended consequences with passing a bill that no one voting on it knew what it was comprised of i find this elective course one that is rife with potential unintended consequences first

021the very nature of the course in its essence is potentially divisive in our increasingly divided society we do not need our schools to offer courses and division instead it would be much more productive to teach courses that find common ground with all americans we are not by our nature hyphenated americans our schools need to be teaching unity not division we are all americans we as citizens are required to owe our allegiance to america not to any other country and that has to be part of a civics lesson plan it is not to say one should not be proud of their familial culture my wife and i are proud of our ancestors scottish heritage we have people here whose families have come from all over the world living as citizens in our country and they have

022every right to be proud of their families heritage that's what it makes that's what makes america great we are a picture of blended cultures that come from every corner of the globe and that's what makes the american culture what it is a rich tapestry of the best ideas from everywhere teaching two separate ethnicities in a course called ethnic studies doesn't anyway do justice to our country doesn't define unity but rather i think the opposite thank you [Applause] next up we have uh is jennifer montgomery so same thing name and address and i'll call out one minute warning jennifer montgomery 3024 bay breeze drive little elm good evening mr montemayor school board members and administration i want to say thank you first for your support of governor abbott's executive order number the tech that the texas

023supreme court has recently upheld this order encourages us to each act personally responsible for the well-being of individuals and our families as protection for covid19 as with other illnesses as a parent i know that the isds encourage families do not send your kids to school sick do not mask their medic mask their symptoms with medications again i wanted to i want you to know that i support and i thank you for honoring my responsibilities as a parent and as a taxpayer and i'll continue to monitor the health of my student and my family and we'll take reasonable appropriate actions as necessary i am a parent firmly against racism and i stand as an anti i and i stand as an anti-racism acts activist however on the june july 19 leisd school board meeting two new

024classes were approved for lahs that have left me with several questions both courses were submitted as submitted and approved as approve it now and we'll find out what the curriculum is later well part of me understood the explanation of the process that was given during the meeting but i still wondered why the administration didn't provide curriculum information from the region 10 to the school board prior as a reference for consideration it was suggested that the region 10 provided scope and sequence would be used but to my knowledge that was also not submitted to the school board as i listened to mr english's life experience concerns the impact of racism and racial divide i couldn't help but feel that i needed to make a response first we are all americans and i stand here tonight ready

025to fight racism second i thought the ugly head of systemic racism and jim crow laws put to place put in place by the democratic party for over a hundred years had ended in 1964 however it is morphed into a marxist ideology slide it is sliding through the back doors of our schools karl marx himself was a racist that believed in class stratification in his view our fellow americans of minority descendants lord looked down upon in the most grotesque of ways unfortunately we have activist groups taunting training as marxist and are using these ideologies in our school i call on the school board to take a stand and approve policies that do not support marxist ideologies marxist organizations etc i strongly agree disagree with mr blackwood's comments that he made at the school board meeting the

026school board's obligation is to ensure our classrooms are not teaching children ideologies that are harmful to their character we should fight together against organizations and frameworks that seek to instill racial division and hate thank you thank you [Applause] all right next we have mr jared fuller all right mr fuller name and address and i'll call out one minute mark jerry fuller uh one two three one seven red bud lane frisco texas uh i had uh two kids that are grown now go through little elm schools so if any of y'all were here 20 25 years ago did a great job thank you very much now my grandkids are actually in little elm school district having a wonderful time scott richardson and berry most awesome principal that walks you know awesome person so everything is wonderful

027now uh something's come up here this is odd to me because um well all these awesome things were going on all these years nobody had to deal with cobit vaccine mass fuss and fights racial relations brought into question okay well it's odd to me it's sad that y'all have to deal with that and you know compassion goes out that's just the way it is though you know that's the hand you're dealt i can't say i was a paramedic for 30 years officer in fire department race relations are a big deal to me because i saw something that i was real proud of our nation i saw in the streets how everybody acted colorblind basically is what we were we got a job done and it was colorblind people what uh what the media and what

028was brought back to the world was systemic racism that really really really come on man you know misbehaving in the streets became prevalent it became instantly prevalent that was the problem not racism so i support people now that they're concerned and they want to raise their kid and they're wanting to formulate those opinions in their kids themselves they're wanting to take responsibility they're actually trying to do you a big favor so that you can do arithmetic reading writing take care of that education and take that off your plate so they're really doing a favor by by by wanting to create that so i'm not proud of the people putting pressure on y'all like it's your job to keep them medically safe and mask them up or um you know basically anything outside of just educating

029them you know come on let you do your job they need to do their job so i support all that so anyway that's that's all i got about that i will say back to scott richardson i mean not scott uh steven richardson excuse me um y'all put him a few school boards ago y'all built a school on one way in and out and now he's having to be a traffic director instead of an educator one of the educators in this county and he's out there directed traffic so build a school on a single way in and out come on man y'all got to fix that thank you mr tour [Applause] what's cool name mr tom sizemore sorry his name and address and then i'll call out one minute mark all right tom sizemore 4805 ray

030roberts drive um i've lived here in frisco for about four and a half years i like to tell people it took me a bit to get to texas but i'm never moving again um i got four beautiful children love them to death um i've coached for three years in the lisa um baseball clinic down here coach with a few people here um my children are some of the very few that live in frisco they get to come to little elm isd so to speak about mass and ethnic studies which i'll call it critical race theory because that's what i'm going to call it um i wrote down a few my thoughts i'm going to speed read here because i'm only given three minutes i'm seeing some people kind of losing interest but i think you

031should be listening to your citizens that pay taxes and vote for you so how dangerous is this virus based on studies done by professor john p and this of stanford university know that we're dealing with the virus there's an infectious fatality rate of 0.05 in persons 70 years older this also falls in line across the entire globe this compares quite well to the ifr of most influenza viruses yet the draconian and massive reactions to sars coca-19 have never been employed during influenza season i've never seen during flu season that you pushed massed on anybody given this knowledge it is more than perplexing as to why our governments at the behest of their public health advisors have accepted as a fate a comply what we refer to as a great deception or lie convincing us of

032inevitable and severe consequences if anyone is infected with coventine which is ridiculous i did have covenant 19 none of my building trust me we serve straws we share lives we share beds none of my children got sick yes the public lied to and deceived from day one by governments and their medical advisors in the media medical cabal with its incessant messaging that we were all at equal risk of severe illness they subverted science this caused irrational fear and hysteria and it is held on this type of deception and the resulting unfounded fear has been driven by the media despite a thousand-fold difference in risk between old and young we suggest that this has always been known and yet this disinformation and related falsehoods would spread seemingly both willfully and knowingly by our leaders and the

033media and now i'm seeing a little elm isd leaders uh uh starting to push that agenda let me push over to critical race theory because that's what it is and that's what's being hidden is critical race theory racist yes critical race theory begins by asserting the importance of social significance of racial categories rejecting color blindness equality and neutrality and advocating for discrimination meant to level the playing field these things lead it to reproduce and enact racism and practice it also explicitly says that all white people are either racist or complicit in the system of racism by virtue of benefiting from privileges they cannot renounce if you see my three-year-old daughter go up to a black kid and and tell her she sees color you're blind as a bat i can't believe how much we're starting

034to try to push this ethnic study our children deserve better they deserve a better education and if this board doesn't do it trust me this state will stand up to it and these people right here care and they vote for you thanks [Applause] next we have mr jared heath so again name and address mr heath and i'll call out one minute good evening my name is jared heath i live at 2612 peach drive um we i have a very short amount of time so let's go ahead and just look at some real peer-reviewed research and documentation which i don't know if you know but the typical facebookers probably not doing um let's look at the efficacy of cloth mask and prevention of novel coronavirus infection transmission a systematic review and meta analysis published in uh

035june of 2020. i'll give you the punch line there's a paucity of literature that means there's no literature on uh on efficacy of cloth face mask and preventing sars cove to infection transmission we know this it's it's right there that's this review aims to update the available most recent evidences on efficacy of cloth mask face masking prevention of viral uh infection transmission so i won't read you this whole thing what it says essentially is that uh if you're using a quality mask it might work but because we're all using cloth masks it's absolute bunk it doesn't do anything it will never do anything and as soon as you do this it's over that's not how ppe works that's not how any of this works this is not science i suggest you start reading some real

036science so you can figure that out let's look at some more oh that's a plain of isd excuse me some of the literature over in denmark this is going on throughout the world um this was published in march of this year has found that um i lost my spot a little bit that using cloth masks face masks are really not at all effective not any more effective than enemies against the virus um we can go step after study after study here am i trying to convince you not to wear a mask no you guys want to write that's wonderful you have your choice we have a choice and if someone disagrees with that science that does not make them a neanderthal that does not make him some hillbilly who doesn't doesn't get it can't read

037that means that there is a reason to make a choice and it is our god-given ability to make that choice one minute now what's the problem then with masks well part of it oh by the way deliberation all of this they know what i've just told you they know that the face masks don't work they know that this is all a farce uh but you have to look at where this red thread leads why do they care so much that we wear masks when they know that they aren't at all effective well now in new york all teachers are required to get an experimental vaccine the mask and the vaccines are symptomatic of a larger problem uh which are that members of school boards elected government officials everywhere know uh they think that they own

038you and they think they only and they think that they own our bodies and they can tell us what to do with our bodies they think that we're all a bunch of dumb droops who can't read literature who can't read peer-reviewed literature and make our own decisions and this has to stop now regarding critical race there i spoke about uh the effects of critical race theory as well at the last meeting and the ladies spoke about the the marxist influence there hi mr heath we are watching you [Applause] okay next we have uh miss julie ortac that's right address and i'll call out one minute hi my name is julie orsack i live at 3044 big leaf drive in little elm i am a licensed professional counselor in private practice and i just have two

039points to make one on the critical race theory thank you for not teaching it i believe it's really confusing to our kids a lot of our history we know already is being taken out of our textbooks which i disagree with and so other schools are teaching this crt our children need to learn history as it was the truth how it went then they can actually see and form their own educated opinions about what happened how far we've come have we not come far enough what needs to come next um and i think crt is just divisive and very confusing for our youth regarding masks thank you for following the governor's whatever sorry i don't usually speak um in my many years of life and counseling i've noticed our children are young and younger people don't

040really know the differences i mean you can tell okay communism yes they don't know the differences truly the realities between socialism and democracy our republic so the mask mandate takes away one of our basic rights i don't think we can let our base constitutional rights be taken away one by one and i think people are being deceived by it the truths about it as they've mentioned and then it gets slid in very sneaky and it's just one little step that takes away our rights so thank you for your time [Applause] name and address and i'll call out one minute all right good evening school board volunteers administration thank you for giving us an opportunity to voice any concerns that we have my father was school board president for 15 years oh sorry rebecca lataz 1700

041strathmile drive colony 75056. um i'm here tonight um because i'm vehemently opposed um to my child-wearing mask so i have three children two of them are in elementary school in the school district and uh we moved here from out of state six years ago and they're thriving and kids are thriving in a little while every day are so excited they were out of school for 18 months because of this pandemic and they were so excited to get back to school last week and be able to not wear a mask and be able to see their friends my children are super active in multiple sports and they get to connect with children all last year through the pandemic through sports we focus on keeping our children healthy um physically spiritually and mentally and so i'm just

042grateful that last week they could go to school without a mask and see smiling faces with the majority of those kids coming to class in the in the school we're a part of so it's k-5 without masks and breathing fresh air with their teachers i'm asking you tonight to please uphold governor abbott's executive order 38 parents should have the final say over what their children were should wear or wearing masks while in school please honor my responsibility as a parent and as a taxpayer i will never send my children to school sick ever and i don't think any of us as parents do that that's so irresponsible if we've learned anything it's to keep everyone safe and to stay distanced if we need to a year of wearing masks has really hurt some kids not

043only physically but psychologically i hear all the time about anxiety of children over the last 18 months one minute thank you masks do not do anything we've learned that you've heard other people speak about that tonight i've seen them hanging off of kids ears pulled down below their mouths filled with mucus saliva dirt bacteria breathing in co2 i just want us to think about any of the damage we could do these children especially k through five young elementary students who need to see faces who are learning to read who need that connection when not at home thank you for your time [Applause] thank you miss lotez um next we have uh cadillace just release name and address and i'll call out one minute sorry about that that's all right hi so my name is kyle

044lee said about 1954 joe pool drive in little elm so the pressure is obviously mounting for massive mandates and there's a few things i'd like you to keep in mind as that does and now i think most teachers would be a little hesitant to speak in front of a school board but i have the luxury of having kids here living here and teaching in another district so let me tell you a little bit about the experience so far last year it was like a great yard everybody was quiet we couldn't do group projects we nobody want to talk to that mask didn't just stop the virus maybe it kept them from talking up and cla speaking in class this year they're alive they're engaged they're active they're happy to be speaking up working in groups

045and i i would hate to see that end by slapping a mass mandate on them now there's some other thing too i wanted to talk about one one thing i always hear is you don't care about like children or dying or freedom or whatever it is right and it goes back and forth both directions so then it's a bit over dramatic but i just want to remind everyone that just because you believe in a different solution that doesn't mean you don't care right so it doesn't matter if you want to hand out fish or if you want to teach somebody to fish you still know somebody was hungry and you still care okay we also hear about believing in science another old cliche the idea is that just because one neural branch of science says

046that this response may work doesn't mean we shouldn't follow it without question you know first of all there's a lot of different types of science i call it associated economics and the most dangerous of all political science we have to weigh all the how all that together affects our children we can't just let one area dictate everything and we certainly don't do that in the rest of our lives do we do we all eat exactly as a nutritionist say to exercise like we should what's that you're thinking oh well that only affects other people okay let's talk about driving do you follow the defensive driving manual perfectly do you follow every single traffic light every time do you drive the safest car possible no well you could kill somebody with all the with the car

047can't you it affects somebody else the point is that we make trade-offs we make choices and we take calculated risks so none of this is black and white and one last thing i want you to consider is that bringing up bringing a math mandate also introduces a security risk you may have heard of the third-year-old mother who disguised herself as a 14 year old daughter was able to make it through the entire day in the school before anybody challenged her that was only possible because of a mass mandate it wouldn't have happened without one and finally if you do do anything if you if you have to do a mass mandate at least have some sanity in it please let the band play without a mask with a hole in it because all this says

048what does this say you're wearing an ass so we could say you're wearing a mask this is [Applause] next uh miss christie miller my name is christy miller i live at 1433 sun breeze drive i'm here today because i believe in freedom and personal responsibility i decided to speak tonight you can tell that i'm nervous because i wanted to thank the board members and administrators for respecting the governor's executive order to give parents back when it comes to asking our children thank you all for giving us that choice there are a lot of parents that stand with you in this decision i'd also like to mention that every parent here that's speaking tonight we all come from the same place we all just want what's best for our kids we may not agree but just

049know that i respect anyone who's willing to stand up for what they believe in especially when it comes to their children eight months ago my husband son and i left everything and everyone we have ever known to move to the great state of texas we believe then and still do now that texas stands for freedom we are all blessed to live in this great state at one point last year the governor of california told us that we were not allowed to sing in church meanwhile he was eating out masculists at fancy restaurants telling the rest of us we couldn't even travel past our county line parks trails gyms and small businesses were all closed many of them will never reopen we knew that leaving everything behind was the right thing to do for our son's

050future he was unable to attend school in person at all last year in california while texas and other states had opened their schools without major issues our son was struggling with online school and we had had enough it was wonderful to get him back into school in person once we got here he finished eighth grade with straight a's we're so proud of him but can you even imagine trying to make friends when everyone's wearing a mask all of our kids have endured so much over the last 18 months i'm so thankful they will no longer be forced to wear a mask in little home schools i'm so happy that when he started high school last week he had the freedom to choose if he wanted to wear a mask or not in closing i'd quickly

051like to talk about personal responsibility since the start of coba 19 18 months ago 335 children have died under the age of 17 in the u.s over 94 percent of these children one minute were pre had pre-existing conditions such as diabetes and obesity that means 315 of these 355 children were already sick before they were contracted before they contracted the virus with this being said i'm begging parents to please take control of your children's health please cook them healthy food and encourage them to go outside and play where they will not only get exercise they will also absorb natural vitamin d from the sun did you know that over 80 percent of cobit patients were deficient in vitamin d please don't put all your faith in a piece of fabric or shot to protect your

052children please help them to have strong healthy bodies that have a better chance of fighting the virus should they contract it please stop supporting fast food restaurants and teach your kids about real health please put your faith in god and choose to control the things that you can control like lifestyle exercise it could be a huge difference in your children's lives thank you for your time [Applause] thank you miss miller next we have uh melinda prester this person's name and address and i'll give you one minute good evening my name is melinda preston i live at one three three seven zero bayfly frisco we're right on the border so tonight i'd like to talk about math first of all i want to thank all you guys i want y'all to look around the room everybody

053in this room cares about our kids and that is huge have you seen a meeting this big here in little elm you haven't yeah it's amazing because we all have our kids so i have seven children i have five grandchildren and one on the way you guys are going to be teaching some of my grandkids and so i'm here for my grandkids i want to talk about the case against mass for children and adolescents now this is kind of speaking for the choir but i want you to know some of the information but doctor this was written by dr mccary a professor of virology at john hopkins school of medicine and editor in chief of medpage today and author of the price we pay dr meisner chief of pediatric infectious diseases at tufts children's hospital

054and served on the fda's external advisory panel for cova 19 vaccines these two doctors collaborated on an article two weeks ago in the wall street journal please feel free i mean and i recommend everybody read that article the essence of the article was as follows so i'm summarizing number one there has not been one peer-reviewed study that indicates mass-made sense for school-age children this is evidence that masking children has has bad effects on children without offering them or adults around them any protection at all many children struggle with mass children with myopia have issues with their glasses fogging up and i have i have children who struggle with that as well masks can cause severe acne and other skin problems in children i have that a dear friend of mine's child uh got staph infections

055literally was diamond very very ill masking discomfort causes learning difficulties i have a grandson who has a speech impediment and he's struggling with people wearing masks and being able to understand what they're saying wow okay um i'll hand this off to you guys uh children mask mouth breath that's a huge issue psychological harm because of masking and ever is an even greater worry uh mass do not alleviate the risk of coven 19. we know that hospitalization of children october 19 recently is 0.5 per 100 000. so if massacre useless uh children why mandate them and that's when i'll leave this with you guys since you just have some brief um information but also my doctor when i took my daughter and he said please take the mask off we're seeing so many children with lung

056issues from rsv how many how many adults have ever had rsv we're having so many people with rsv and issues like that so thank you for listening to the governor he's made a good a good point so thanks guys [Applause] okay now i'm going to mess this up uh mr zach magikrun who said your name correctly and your address zach the jackson 8400 hickory street frisco and i have kids uh that's not a very good public speaker it takes a lot for me to be up here but here goes i honestly don't judge anybody that is wearing a moss because they are obviously convinced that this helps with this disease well folks i've seen enough doctor testimony that mosques actually cause damage whether psychologically or physically i refer to you america's frontline doctors to name

057a source of information you're breathing in your own carbon dioxide for at least seven hours a day five days a week this can't be healthy this information is acknowledged by many doctors that mosques are more harmful than good i saw a documentary of a doctor that took two athletic women tested the oxygen levels prior to the exercise they exercised and then they had the mask on and they worked out with the masks on their oxygen levels dropped and this was documented for those who still believe that mosques are still the answer stay home home school school through zoom but do not force our children to mask up we the parents let us parent our kids lastly i am completely against anything to do with crt or equivalent because it has different names and like what

058a fellow said the parents are watching okay we do not stand for racism under any circumstances and we won't have that education taught our kids because that's not the kind of education that we give our kids thanks [Applause] thank you uh next we have uh michael peterson mr peterson's name and address i'll call out a minute of mike peterson 3913 shadewell street um in the hackberry area um i uh i'm privileg i really appreciate that i'm able to speak today it's my first attendance here my excuse my attire we just got done with an hour and a half baseball practice just down the road here i love attending the youth helping and developing um in the sports i'm an hr leader of a fortune 50 company and i overview 5 000 employees and i understand

059the decisions that you have to make i have to do it every day and i understand the hard part of being being able to teach kids i am a professor of a well-known university i'm on my part time and i understand the challenges that you're going through as well um and i am a father of three kids i have a fourth on the way in a couple hours or a couple days depending um i have a wife who has um been a nurse in this great area for three years and she has been pending patient after cover patients before she became pregnant a covered baby as many call it and she has saved many lives in this community and has perhaps some in this room and i look up to her and she is my

060hero and she's giving me to speak to not mask and muzzle our children she understands what pp is she knows what ppe saves lives and that's not going to happen in our schools with how they're being done i want to share that 20 minutes of a mask being worn becomes saturated and effective it's uncomfortable and it stings and you want and i don't understand why we want our youth to potentially put that on for eight hours and in order to help the fearful minority in this community parents can decide that misery upon their own kids if they really want to but i don't think it's a decision that should happen within this group um i i support wholeheartedly abbott's decision to let me be a parent to be an american and even greater a texas

061american to raise my family of what's of how i'm supposed to raise my children um i wanted to lastly state how disappointed it is that our neighbor and their districts have gone against the community and hope that's not a pattern that we see within this group um we do have many and who even who aren't even here today that that do not want mass upon our children we don't want to go through this circus again i don't want my kids to come scared every day that they have to wear a virus i hope that you can support us as families our families and parents and even our nurses here in this area that masc our children will not help this circus that's going on thank you [Applause] thank you mr peterson okay next we have

062uh karina ordonez is here okay welcome back to that next christina escobar shorter address and i'll give you one minute good evening my name is christina escobar shorter i live at 3405 blockside in the colony and i'm a proud parent of two children who attend prestoge elementary i'm also a board member of prestwick's pta i'm an involved parent as is my husband who's not present he's with our kids at soccer practice my kids like any of yours love to learn love to hang out with their friends and love to have fun a loving safe environment is of utmost importance to our kids all of our kids like any parent it's our goal to provide a healthy and safe environment for our children like all public school parents i adhere to the district's immunization requirements i

063make sure to keep up on all checkups and inform the school if they fall ill i teach my children to wash their hands and cover their mouth and nose when sneezing and as a community we do these things to keep each other safe we have stop signs we have crossing guards we have speed humps and we make sure kids are immunized before they attend school and some like my family and others we wear masks to stop the spread of covet we do these things to keep each other safe but for some reason many people have a problem wearing a mask our doctors and scientists tell us that mass scoring is what we can do to immediately stop the spread of covet 19. the pandemic's still raging and cases for both adults and children continue to

064increase i am here tonight to call new board members and superintendent to mandate mass squaring for all staff and all students regardless of vaccination status the supreme court rule the texas supreme court ruled last week uh that governor abbott's mandate cannot be enforced we you as a board and and uh mr gallagher now have the authority and are empowered to make the choice for mask wearing in our schools for children who are not yet eligible for vaccinations which is under 12 if you're unaware mask wearing is the easiest way to combat covet 19. as of 4 pm today in prestige elementary of two positive cases and of students and one of staff we're only on day four of school um and this is in fact if parents are even reporting that their kid has contracted

065uh covid um my neighbor's 11 year old daughter tested positive for covid the past school year she was hospitalized weeks healthy had no underlying conditions hopefully she survived this is real the virus is real whether you like it or not it is spreading and code is in our community code isn't my kid's school it's now in all of our schools it's in little elm school district i've said this before how many kids have to be hospitalized miss school potentially their own family members and their school before you the board act i urge you all board members to demand mandate of mass scoring for all students and most uh staff we want our kids to remain in school we want these students and staff i'm demanding the requirement of masks for all students and all staff

066thank you thank you mr uh uh karina we're done chicken all right we have uh mr your daughter michael eisenmanger just naming that oh [Music] uh michael eisenmanger 3512 balburni colony my name is doc doc michael eisenbeinger i'm a professional scientist so um let's see a chief science officer for two companies i also am the research and development head for a four billion dollar business uh focused on global innovation so when people say do your own research not to toot my own horn but that's what i did for a living and so uh that's all great but most importantly for this evening i have a first grader a second grader in bristowic elementary and uh they're really excited that i get to come here and advocate on their behalf a little background it's a duty

067of a scientist to consider the entirety of of the work you can cherry-pick studies to prove the cats or dogs and the sun won't rise but it's our job to look at the entire body of research and form a conclusion and a recommendation but always be open to new data and other perspectives after doing this myself and the other scientists within the professional community and i clarify that within the professional science community which is typically unbiased by government influences and political agendas within the professional scientific community it's now clear and obvious the children are not carriers and they're not symptomatic in most cases it's a scientific asterisk you put on something there's always going to be just an outlaw and always going to be anecdotes but it's my job at our job as professional scientists

068to avoid the anecdotal evidence and one-offs but focus on the trends and the macro effects of this virus with this now being understood by the majority of scientists that children under the age of 12 are not affected by this and most importantly are not affecting others such as professionals that are surrounded by them requiring the students to wear masks whether they're effective or not does not make sound science the risk-reward benefits for having them wear masks clearly wouldn't lead anybody to uh choose not to wear them being a scientist i'm not really good at speaking in front of people so uh i'll skip to the end and just say that if you think about it we all love little anecdotes so i'll just leave you with one last year i i don't i lost my

069page but far more children died last year from traumatic brain injury basically getting hit on the head than they did from covet under the age of 12. so if we want kids to wear masks then we might as well mandate helmets in the classroom and i think that's pretty ridiculous justice is ridiculous to wear masks in the classroom thank you [Applause] thank you dr eisenmanger uh next we have john montes mr montez just name and address and i'll give you a one minute notice uh john montes um 701 addie lane in mckinney texas so i thank you board members elected officials and and volunteers and everyone uh for this opportunity to speak so um i'm came to speak on the mask and math mandate so yeah unfortunately our leaders in the public health sector and

070political leaders have allowed the debate on mass and sound guidance to become muddied and politicized and it's being used to divide us and exert control if our leaders in public health and government stick to the empirical evidence and what we know uh let's see here they stick to what we know uh instead of the clear unpoliticized guidance the american people well you know the moms and the dads the hard-working law-abiding citizens professionals or business owners or leaders in the private and public sector will overwhelmingly do the right thing when they interact with each other there are those in our political leadership that relish division in several cases the mass mandate authoritarians exhibit the example of the mask for thee but not for me attitude and they keep getting caught doing it we see the youtube

071videos and we see that uh and on the one hand the auth the authoritarian who preached with good intentions many who recovered positive and being shipped all over our cities and towns across the country so i urge you as uh public elected officials representing your constituents you know don't be intimidated by the scary and hyperbolic messages that may show up in the sewer pipes of social media common feeds or every letters and calls claiming that mandates are the angel but the other side wanting sound unpoliticized mass guidance are the devil don't don't give in to that those are the political tactics of those that want to create the vision so my message is simple on these signs you know masks and sound guidance you know it's okay if you want to wear masks it's okay

072when i go to work in my building to the other shirt someone supported masking but when we get into our social distance area we're taking off if you want to wear masks that's fine there's no issue with that but mask and politicized mandates will lead us down the slippery slope to greater top down command and control so well that said that's yeah well [Applause] do we have any other forms filled out uh is miss kernel done this in the room yet nope okay um just wanted to thank everybody for for coming out as someone said it quite well anyone that stands up to have their voice heard um takes a lot to do that and uh i thank everyone for doing that tonight so with that we'll move on to the rest of our agenda

073items all right board members and i also uh president matsumoto is superintendent i do want to thank all of the community community members as you can imagine my email box has been filled with um thoughts from both sides so i want to thank y'all tonight for just the respectful dialogue so thank you very very much and that's what makes little mystery great is the people that are in this room our kids so thank you all so much for being here you're welcome to stay for the rest of the board meeting please feel free um so we are um back on superintendent spotlight and i'm gonna ask our executive director for uh human resources ashley brown to come to the podium for a special introduction for a new staff member here in little misd who's going

074to do an amazing job thank you superintendent gallagher board of trustees all of our guests in our community it is my pleasure to come to you this evening to introduce our very newest member of our district leadership team miss lisa shockley miss shockley is going to be joining us as our new executive director for special populations and she's quite an accomplished educator ms shockley has been in the special education realm since 1997 so it's 24 years of um gaining expertise knowledge in a variety of positions in in several different districts she's been eagle mass south saginaw isd northwest isd he isd keller isd and most recently mansfield ist she started as a special education teacher then went into being an educational diagnostician and then she's been a supervisor of sped a director of special programs

075an assistant director and then again in mansfield isd most recently she was the executive director for special populations there so she brings with her a wealth of experience and we're so very glad that she's going to be joining our family on a personal note um miss shockley has been married to her husband joe for 28 years they have one child maggie a daughter and maggie just got dropped off at her new college home in missouri this past weekend so lisa and joe were having some empty nest syndrome going on there she her daughter maggie will be playing tennis for the william jewell cardinals in missouri so in her spare time miss shockley is really into fitness she likes to run she likes to swim tennis though is her favorite sport and her daughter maggie is

076her favorite athlete in this new role here in little elm isd she's most looking forward to continuing the work to engage equip and empower the students of little elm isd so i would without further ado like to introduce and ask her to come to the podium to greet us and share a few words miss lisa shockley [Applause] thank you so much thank you president montemayor um superintendent gallagher and board members i just want to say i'm so excited to be part of this incredible community and this incredible administrative team i'm looking forward to continuing the mission of little elm to engage equip equip and empower our students um i have been so impressed with um just my few days here um working with this team and we i see great things going on in little

077elm and i hope to continue that good work so thank you so much for this opportunity welcome to the team and i want to add something so you know facebook is a wonderful tool but it's great for memories it was actually five years ago to the day when i was on the board in mansfield when mrs shockley was um appointed to her position in mansfield so the former superintendent called me when he learned that she was coming to little misd and he said i don't know how you did it but you got the best executive director for special education that he's ever worked with so we're um honored that ms uh mrs shockley is here with us and uh couldn't be happier to have her join our team and again welcome [Applause] all right next

078and she's already there i'm going to ask cecilia jones our director for communications uh to come up to the podium for uh just a special announcement and uh just great more great news for our high school and for our students thank you superintendent gallagher president montenewer board members um if you've never thought a good idea could come over a cup of coffee i'm about to prove that it can um actually what i'm about to share with you happened um oh disgusting over coffee a coffee shop with desmond bibbs he is a community engagement manager over at cutx and i don't want to steal his thunder because i'm going to bring him up to the podium and he's going to share his exciting news that we have in store for not only our high school kids

079at little high school but for our teachers and even our community so desmond why don't you come up and share the news [Applause] alrighty thank you cecilia um to our little one boy trustees administration and community at large uh thank you for this opportunity i stand before you today on behalf of our organization but our ceo eric poynter our board director current ctx family and so for those of you who may not be familiar with the credit union texas uh we're we're a small bank that's been around since 1931 we started out uh with a strong passion for our educators we used to be called the dallas teachers credit union and so uh today we we operate as the credit union of texas and so as the city of state we shared a cup of

080coffee and with my role particularly i have an opportunity to go and engage communities to figure out how can we how can we provide additional resources and so um we got to talking and you know i just shared with her some of the previous experiences i've had around our bank at school programs today we call a smart bank and so with our smart brain it's an initiative that we started in allen it did have opportunity to be the first but basically it's an initiative where it's run solely by our students and so i advocate to go out there hire student bankers student branch managers student marketers and these individuals they go out and market to their peers uh with a with a physical space that we put inside of the school and so we're we're

081pleased to share that this partnership will take place here in the very near future the one niche that little m will have that others won't is this uh location will be accessible to the community at large so in other locations uh it's exclusively locate you know accessible to the students and faculty but with this it will be accessible to the community at large and so we're really excited about this partnership you know for us uh this is not a this is not a way for us to go out and see how many checking accounts we can get for us it was really important to provide this resource to make sure that students have access to uh real life work experiences and so in my newer texas as well and i'm originally from michigan so in

082all of my findings i see that isds are trying to separate themselves based on the real life experience they can bring the kiddos and so have an opportunity where students are are operating in a branch and we do compensate them students who work there they receive a one thousand dollar scholarship each year service that they provide uh we go through and and interview these students every year so it is pretty competitive but we make sure that the entire student body can take advantage of the resources and we do that by making sure that the students that we hire we teach them our financial literacy curriculum and in turn they go out and provide that education to all of its peers and so we provide a ton of resources to make sure that everyone can benefit

083the video that will show is a great example of how we try to keep our students at the table regarding everything that we do uh you know traditionally you know covet has been a little wacky but traditionally we bring our kids in over the summer and we want to make sure that they can experience everything and so it's important obviously in the bank we're doing deposits and withdrawals but it's important to make sure that these kids can see firsthand the additional opportunities that are there within our organization so when we bring them in for training they're walking the halls with our ceos and other influencers in our organization and so specific with this this is digital content that will push out to the administration to the students and the community at large to make sure

084they're aware of different services that we offer because when individuals sign up for an account that makes them eligible to participate in our pay for grades program that this will talk about so students for every a they can get 25 bucks for b they can get five dollars and so this video particularly is a creation of students that have started from brainstorming to coming up with their own scripts to adding props uh this is their work in its entirety all we did was just go through and do some of the editing and so um i will have any questions that you all have but i do want to make sure that they can take a look at this video to see what what our students have done and what little elm students will be able

085to do as we move forward because again we want to keep them at the table every we do this partnership up next two entrepreneurs from the credit union of texas [Music] hello sharks i'm nolan this is sophie and we're from cutx and we're pitching the pay for grades program how many of you have spent countless hours doing work for what seems like nothing well with our pay for grades program students from grades 6 through 12 can earn up to 150 each semester for their hard work that's right just submit your report card to the smart branch and earn up to 25 for every a five dollars for every b and up to five core classes and one cte class so can any student participate in this paper grades program not exactly they must be a

086cdx member however student accounts are quick and easy to open okay so can i enter that pay for grades program multiple times over multiple years of course students can enter every fall and spring semester every year [Music] thank you sharks [Music] that's perfect and so again in closing this is one of the many examples you know that that we've seen through this partnership um what i'm finding is that you know the more responsibility we give these kiddos the more they just continue to amaze us um you know education that we're in and i i will end on this note but it's really important to make sure that you know the board understands that um you know with these type of partnerships they're very expensive okay when we go to our branches they are set up

087just like our traditional branches and so we have hundreds of thousands of dollars we've been in there um there's new construction costs and because of the community piece we wanted to take some additional caution to make sure from a security standpoint that you know you all are put at ease and so we take care of any of those financial costs that's associated with that the biggest thing that we you know seek partnership from the board of trustees on is just having a place to dwell and everything else outside of that is something that we take care of and so as individuals you know start to open up an account uh we're excited because they'll be able to go and get their their logos logo on those cards and students have on a polo gear it'll

088be branded with you know the isd and their logos and so we're excited because we know once we get the students involved they'll probably give us ideas that we haven't even thought of yet so i welcome any questions that you all have but i am grateful for your time and we really look forward to this partnership i just want to jump in very briefly the great thing is two things one you just said it the cost of the district is zero okay there is going to be some significant um outside construction because they are going to have a wall uh we're repurposing an area by the bistro i can't wait for you to see the renderings of what it's going to look like two it's going to be run by our kids so our kids

089are going to be working the bank with adult supervision we will have it will be secured that was one thing we wanted to make sure that this even though it was going to be open to the public we don't want um the public just have open access to the building uh during the school day but what an opportunity for our kids so i want to thank cutx for that so board members questions you may have just a real quick comment i was actually at a family reunion in el paso a few weeks ago and i was speaking to one of my cousin's daughters who's in high school and she actually participates in this program and i didn't even get to ask her for all the details and now i know now i know the details

090this is an el paso oh okay and so i'm glad that you all went out for coffee [Laughter] likewise thank you thank you the scholarship so a thousand dollar scholarship for the students who work every year that they work yep so twofold um each individual that we bring on board um it's my intention to make sure that they go through an interview process so we work what that process looks like is we'll partner with cte basically for children who are in that endorsement of business marketing finance et cetera and those are the kids that we want to market to and upon the school giving us however many kids that pull from there then we want to go through that interview process then apply some selection once they complete that year successfully absolutely we'll go through

091and give them a thousand dollars for every year of completion and so in our other schools we have students that have come on board during their sophomore year and so and these are good kids and i tell you now the real gym is for us that once kids graduate there's several kids right now that i would be happy to put into a 50 60 000 job right now because they're doing some amazing work but as if they continue to stay with us for each year they can earn that one thousand dollar scholarship uh totaling however many years of service and then lastly for the entirety of the school school body uh every year um students who who participate by having an account they'll have an opportunity to go as long as they turn in their

092um have an account and they submit like a 500 word essay or so they can take advantage of a 2500 scholarship so our board of directors you know including myself we go through and review those so there is something in it for students who may not work at the bank as well so we try to make sure that all across the board we're going to provide incentives and resources that will be lucrative and valuable for the students so incredible opportunities for our community most importantly for our kids i do want to can you give us a kind of a rough timeline of when we think we're going to be able to do the ribbon cutting because i want to invite all the board members to the ribbon cutting is the question um just a rough

093rough i would say worst case scenario um first of the year yeah so um so that's quick yeah if oh yeah i mean we anticipate construction may be done i'll be meeting with cecilia and the rest of the team here so we can talk about marketing and how we can quickly integrate ourselves this school year we're going to be able to do the ribbon cutting oh absolutely absolutely absolutely we'll get with them as well with student selection obviously you know we want to support you know how you all are picking through classes and things like that so we may get creative in that standpoint i don't see any you know challenges that will pass from being able to make it happen this school year great question any other questions i thank you for your time

094and again we're looking forward to this partnership uh we'll have to catch another cup of coffee real soon to see what else we can come up with alrighty thank you you i will tell you this you can catch as much cups of coffee if it keeps costing us zero dollars so i'll pay for the coffee next time all right thank you uh cecilia also your work on that without you this wouldn't have happened so thank you so much for your leadership on that next i'd like to ask our deputy superintendent uh mr ross roberts to talk about our last cohort for class which was interrupted briefly i believe because of covet am i correct on that that is correct okay thank you so thank you superintendent gallagher board of trustees uh i have the honor

095tonight to um to really talk about and uh to thank our community members for serving in our class which is community leadership academy for supporting success and like mr gallagher talked about it was um you know somewhat kind of sent down a different a different path and so out of respect for their service i wanted to bring the members in tonight and have closure with that cohort i've talked to a couple of members uh this evening and because of kind of the wacky year with covet and missing some of the sessions towards the first of the year i'm sure the community members will be able to jump in on our 2021 cohort that we will begin in september if you remember and and talking to the community that is watching and and the community members

096uh and personnel involved in tonight's board meeting if you remember uh this was mr gallagher's brainchild this is kind of in a nutshell this was a great opportunity uh for us to build uh critical mass within our community and build community leaders that actually see our inner workings of our organization and able to share our story with other community members and so i kind of explain it like this that you know watching sports we have what we call armchair quarterbacks and sometimes uh in our profession we have uh armchair educators as well and so from a distance it's easy to make decisions um you know so on and so forth and i think uh with this uh cohort and with this program we are able to bring in community members that actually see behind the

097scenes and get off the couch so to speak and become active members within our organization and community so with that being said there were many topics covered we go from governance to finance um to curriculum safety and security the list goes on and on and those are sessions that we have with um with our class teams so at that time uh at this time with that being said i would like to call up our class members at this time and be recognized up at the front uh so you guys please come up and um the scenes yeah yeah well and and that's one thing you you see kind of um how uh the different path that we had to take because of covid so i want to thank um the singh family for coming and

098being very supportive as always uh you know being a council member and being a part of our class and really gaining that experience we can't thank you enough along with dr thompson uh we have one one of our very own in fact yeah come on there too in fact what i've done special for uh dr thompson is that we have created these really nice certificates for all of our class members and so to expedite this as soon as i get done i'm going to walk with you guys out here and we have your certificates available for you but i actually pulled dr thompson so that everybody could see that we have some beautiful certificates created for our class members and i uh and i will uh deliver that now uh as one of our very

099own board of trustees so we really thank you for all your service and things i'm i'm going to put you on the spot now that you stepped up okay i can do that and so i talked to mr singh and why don't you take just a few seconds and kind of talk to the talk to the um uh the spectators about the benefits of myself right so um actually how i ended up in class was i for coffee was meeting with leanna come here yeah go for coffee um and so that was how i um got introduced to class um i would encourage any citizen who's curious about the district want to learn about the district get involved in class um the experience was enriching for me as a parent um it was helpful for

100me as an educator i'm definitely helping to solidify my interest in being on the school board it helps you to understand where you can help um but what i learned from being in class was that there were just phenomenal things going on behind it's like under the hood you could see that we had a good engine and the the car is running fine and here's what we're doing to kind of make it run even better and so we're really helpful for me to be behind the scenes and see what was going on so i appreciated that experience well thank you very much yes we appreciate it and she and if you want to come up please please do um yeah um i always say that um seeing my board members up here superintelligent teacher and

101stuff i always know that job is harder that class was much harder and stuff and it like you have to work with this thing and then what happened so really it's very very difficult job they have but then their job can be easier if community come together and learn what's going on because it's easy to make okay make a decision or think about what they're doing but when you learn what they're doing behind what they had had they dealt with what challenges they have you understand the challenges and stuff that's also you can learn the opportunities how can you help together so again it's take like this beauty race kids for that i think it's a great program first of all join the program love can you have and i'm the staff love the volunteers

102up there plus they would also like your money to help the teachers and staff and stuff so please help them out so it's great program thank you very much for that thank you very much for your service i will walk out with you all to get your certificate one one fun fact that i left out is that i i believe that i figured up uh kind of through the years uh we have built capacity within our community by anywhere from about a members and so that is ongoing and like i said we have the 2021 cohort is what i'm calling it we've received all of the interest from our community members through the application process and and we have processed them and we'll have anywhere uh from about 20 to 40 new members and so

103that our first session will be uh in september so again thank you for the scenes uh dr thompson thank you and uh anybody other class member out there that is watching virtually or whatever i want to give a big shout out and a big thank you for your involvement and mr roberts i want to say since many couldn't be here tonight we will get the certificates to them we can even put them in the mail so i want to make sure everybody gets theirs and again just i want to also add thank you um tony and crystal great supporters of the district um really wonderful they donated um i think 300 backpacks um so thank you so much for the back to school bash and then of course dr thompson thank you um and and

104that's a great commercial for joining class so thank you so much that was impromptu something very good so thank you mr roberts um one other uh i i left off 6a which which is a resolution recognized in our new middle schools uh our state representative who's a great supporter of little misd and um he's always there when i need to to make a phone call about something going on on in austin but our representative jared patterson uh planned on meeting here being here tonight but could not because he's still in austin they're uh still in session so we're going to move that to september he really wants to come and recognize the two middle schools which we're happy to have that recognition well i'm way off here i'm still on reports of the superintendent so

105at this point i would like to invite dr mecca up for our curriculum and learning update so we're on reports the superintendent good evening superintendent gallagher and board um i'm here to give a curriculum and learning update for august as always in august i give the you know first couple of weeks of teachers back and some highlights that we went through we started the last week of july with what we call welcome week which is new teacher orientation new teacher new teacher and new staff onboarding and we had a wonderful time with them talking to them about our core values and our culture our mission and our vision here in the film isd as well as our cornerstones they spent some time getting their classrooms ready and meeting with their principals during that week as

106well and we truly enjoyed getting to know them and personalizing the experience and over and over we heard that not only do we talk about little mystery being a family but they really realized it's what we stand for and what we mean simply by the welcome week that they attended with us so that was a very successful event after that we started with two weeks of professional learning with our staff we had an amazing convocation um which many uh of you attended at the um at the uh stonebriar community church in frisco uh we listened to a great speaker who then came in that afternoon and worked with our campus and district leadership on building culture in our schools and in our departments here at office um we had the it was an amazing time

107to be able to open our doors or meet the teacher we weren't able to do that last year and so to see all of the students and the parents come for meet the teacher was an amazing event then we went right into something new this year that we did to help with our transition between levels so it was for our pre-k and kindergarten students as they entered elementary it was for our sixth grade students as they are middle school and for our high school students our ninth graders and it was we called that prep the pack and it was the first year that we did that and um it was a time half a day for them to spend getting to know their new campus um doing some administrative tasks i spent some time at

108each of the campuses but i was really impressed enough to say thank you to technology uh to see all of those freshmen uh checked out their laptops that that morning and how quick it was uh anyone that has had a child here in the nose sometimes it's the after the first second week of school before students are issued their laptop and so uh mr burcham and his uh technology department really worked hard to to ensure that our students have those in their hands and that those freshmen did that then after that they took a tour of the campus they learned where um how the halls were numbered it was just a fun event for them and then the teachers cooked for them and served them hot dogs that afternoon um same with at the um

109elementary school i was visiting with um oak point as as prep the pack started and the parents were dropping off their kids and then going into a orientation and all of the elementary schools conducted that prep the pack the same way but what a blessing it was for those babies our little you know pre-k students and our kindergarten students to be able to come to school without everyone else there and so that they could see their teacher go to their classroom learn how the drop off and the pickup pickup line operated how do we go and get our food how do we walk in the halls and and to see the um the joy that all of the teachers had to have them in the schools and i do believe that it truly did help

110us on the first day of school with our pre-k and our kinder students who sometimes have that anxiety of being separated from their parents um and so that was a very successful event that i know that uh it was a first for us but that is something that will now become a tradition here in lum i wanted to give you an update on our enrollment and as you know we um we keep a running time of our enrollment on our demographic dashboard now these enrollment numbers here we do not change they're static except for the graph that i'm going to show you until snapshot day which is the last day in but we uh we do maintain this graph which is our seven year trend graph from 2015 to 2022 we have been updating this

111graph this year the line is the red line let's see if we can make it a little bit bigger for you so on the first day of school we opened with 7836 students and if we look at last year we opened with 7 778 students so we did come in above where we were last year on the second day of school we added um over a hundred to seven nine sixty five on friday was eight thousand and two and today it looks like we're coming in right about eight thousand ninety eight give or take one one or two and so um we are pleased with with the how we started out the school year and as always as you can see our trend compared to previous years we are seeing that growth that we have

112seen in previous years as the days go on and we expect to um start uh leveling off probably about the middle of um middle to uh end of october um is when we tend to see our full where we will end up for the year and so that is our enrollment and we will update this every day for the first 10 days of school and then the day after labor day and then typically on the first day of every month thereafter and then the other thing that we wanted to show you today was on our main page and it is our safe logo site this is a site that we started last year as we were getting ready for the start and we have uh maintained it for this year we have updated our 2120

113protocols uh parents can stop here and can can keep abreast of protocols as they are as currently are in the school district and back to school um and then what what do i do campus nurses so that those parents can report any uh confirmed positive cases or as well as any students who have been medically quarantined by a medical professional other things here we have an faq for covid with frequently asked questions and this gets updated as well we have technology support pages students that are have coveted or that are quarantined we are still maintaining the students lessons in the learning management system even though we are not doing virtual teaching but if a student is sick at home even if they don't have covet if they have strep throat or chickpot or pinkeye and

114they are at home they can log into their teachers learning management system and do the work this year they are counted absent but it saves time for the parent having to come up to school to pick up the packet for the students we're just driving all of the students and parents towards that teacher's learning management system for their coursework so they can stay caught up with their class we have information on the student devices and the internet and um how do you log into those online textbooks and the learning management systems so we have really tried to make this a one-stop shop for parents if they have questions about covid what are their protocols how does my kid get into the learning management system how do i get into focus etc and then we also

115have our our code dashboard that we are updating and this gets updated daily at 4 p.m monday through friday we are not updating it on the weekends and yes and we are not we are not updating it on the weekends and we are not updating it on um non-calendar labor day or thanksgiving break so if the students are here we are updating this by 4 p.m every day so today we have one student case and one staff case um there's been some questions about there's you know discrepancies i know there's more kids with covid there are only more kids with covet in the community but they were not enrolled on the first day of school and so we started this dashboard as of the first day of school which was the 18th for anyone that

116was in our campuses that then became coveted positive so if they had coveted before school started even if we knew about it we didn't put it on the k on this uh dashboard because they weren't in our buildings yet and the reason for that i want to jump in dr mick is because as a parent and this is something we chose last year this was not required by the state but we as a district chose to use this dashboard and we again chose to use this dashboard so parents would know so they would see so if a student is coveted positive and has never been in our building we do you know obviously we're worried about that student we want them to stay healthy and and come back to school but what we wanted to

117give them for we wanted to give parents the information as to if their child was at school with a student who uh was covered positive so if the student has not been in our school we did not feel that that that's not the purpose of this dashboard correct this dashboard is to let um know about exposure cases that are occurring on our facilities and so um that's my curriculum update this this this month it you know just dealt with what we've been excited things that we had the prep the pack and the welcome week and our professional learning with our teachers as well as our enrollment and then this uh safe lobo site can i add one thing dr mecca this has been and again i've been here now six years this has been um

118if not the smoothest um certainly one of the smoothest starts of the year that we've had uh my we visited her our team has visited every campus um you know the the campuses are running extremely efficiently smoothly and i heard a couple parents speak tonight you know kids are happy to be back but i can tell you teachers are too and we did hear um several teachers and the the word that i've words i've been hearing from teachers that are new to the district is um they're just happy to be here so uh that's a a testament to this board the culture we have our focus in the district on cornerstones and really the culture that we have overall so i appreciate the board on um you know with the leadership there any questions i

119think the only thing i wanted to add so i you know i have a freshman that did prep the pack as well really enjoyed it i thought it was very well done um i want to say to the high school for the sophomores juniors seniors that was very organized that was probably one of the best that i've seen over the years it was organized the kids came in they knew where to go all the tables were set up very well it flowed really well i you know it just seemed you know very well done um i did go to the campuses for the back to school events meet the teacher night um the one thing that i did see so walker for example i know parking is a is a challenge that maybe they want

120to do some staging of sixth grade one hour seventh grade then eighth grade that just was one i think we've already talked about that okay good yes and actually it's really a model uh that oak point elementary the size that they are actually uh split and had uh different times for different groups of kids okay so that's something like that with the high school maybe doing similar to what they did absolutely for both strike and walker just kind of staging it that way we've already started talking to them so actually the principles brought it to us uh at walker and strike and that's what kelly and kelly and that's what they wanted to do so it's something that's real common in secondary campuses excellent but other than that i think everything went really well oh

121one other question i'm sorry i don't know how big of a challenge it would be and so i'm just gonna ask you can say no on the dashboard is it possible to get percentages so percentages of cobit positive yeah like here's an example today we're at what is it at eighteen hundredths of one percent point zero zero one eight five two three one am i saying that correctly eighteen hundredths of one percent um i don't know that's something we can look into i'm not quite sure last year it got complicated because not all people on campus this year they are that george they were on campus for part of the day but not yeah i don't know that that i think it it would help um let us look into it i'm not going to

122promise yes because i don't know quite how to do that other than by hand we're all looking at cecilia because she maintains the dashboard but we'll bring it to her yeah i i mean of course there's a way but we just want to make sure that we do it correctly so perfect because it's not going to be a running total right it'll have to every 10 days i mean they fall off it'd be every yeah so that's a good point mr flores so while there's 15 student cases today and i don't know this i'm just giving an example tomorrow there may be 13 because maybe two of them fall off so although there may be 18 tomorrow so it all depends but yeah the case is what we've done with the dashboard and we did

123this last year we really want it to be active cases because we're trying to get parents what is the information that they really really want well they want to know the active cases i have their dashboards with the county accounting other school districts where they just put them all on there but we really want it to be active cases on campus i think that's most important so yeah let us look into how to do a percentage because i do think that um it's more information for parents so we'll look into it and i just was just kind of looking back at the demographic dashboard because if you and i don't know how you would do this but when you're kind of comparing last year to this year i mean that's the biggest difference is enrollment

124hasn't changed much but there was a difference between online enrollment versus actual in school so we had 7 000 or whatever enrolled but again what you know there was 5 000 actually in school versus 2500 or so that we're enrolled online yes we started the school year last year at 60 so about 60 percent of that 7 700 were in school and 40 percent were at home do we have that of aspects just just from a history standpoint for that year i have all of that data yes but i don't think we have curriculum if i'm wrong we're not we don't have last year's data on enrollment trend even last year i didn't differentiate because they were our students whether they were at home or in school yeah it was all last year we did

125keep maintain on the safe lobo site we did maintain every quarter the numbers and the percentage of students that were in school and were at home but for this purpose for enrollment every student was enrolled whether they were in school learner or a virtual learner and so that is what this enrollment dashboard represents on district site is our total enrollment last year and then total enrollment this year okay that makes sense okay thank you um let's take a quick break all right second item is oh sorry about that the plan id consider approval of spending meeting minutes from august 5th 2021 is there consider approval of special in favor yes okay so action items we have a person that's considered approval or nominations for the bcad board of directors so that's the um um all

126right any questions have somebody there's four of us attending so it's got to be one of the attendees so you're attending yeah you want to know you're gonna do it really i just feel like i'm being snaked into something it's inferior it's invigorating it's enlightening it's enlightening this for the team i'll take one for the team as the rookie on the board i'm gonna take one for the team this time we playing volleyball and dodge ball and kick just for that okay all right [Music] [Laughter] lunch um we are going to pull item 10c off the agenda because i would like mr english to describe what that is so we'll have that to next month's meeting and then so moving on to item d so consider approval of act on delegation of authority to approve

127the agenda for the purchase of attendance credit um the netting chapter 48 funding all right as one of you said earlier i think it's going to be the shay show for the next seven or eight items and so we'll kick that off um so i i understand that little misc chapter 48 and chapter 49 separations that began with hospital three are relatively new uh terms but for the current year we paid um recapture and um for our with the estimates that we have with our taxable values and our student numbers we will pay recapture again next year and so there are specific um procedures that we have to go through to proceed with our tax rate and so forth and it requires a specific motion but districts are um to those who capture payments if

128they have local revenue of what's considered in excess they don't call it recapture anymore they call it excess revenue i don't think anybody in the state has excess revenue but that's not a name that we got to choose so um if it would please the board for us to continue with this tax rate setting in budget we don't have a lot of choice in this but i do need a motion and it's listed there in your agenda any questions about that this allows us to net our payment against the payments the state makes to us i moved for the 2021 2022 school year we delegated contract authority under texas education code 11.1511 c4 to the superintendent solely for the purpose of obligating the district under the tec 48.257 and tec chapter 49 sub chapters a

129and b and the rules adopted by the commissioner of education as authorized under the tec 49.006 it's included approval of the agreement for the purchase of attendance credit netting chapter 48 funding excited thank you all right any other questions and comments on that thanks all those in favor all right thank you and awesome sounds consider approval and could consider approval to designate officer to calculate tax rate let alone isd okay so under um a new ruling for the texas and i mentioned this during the hearing earlier in the texas tax code the board has to designate the person who will calculate the tax for the school district and although we work in collaboration with her office michelle french the denton county tax assessor collector is the official calculator of truth and taxation and this is

130under the requirements of the texas test code 26.04 and so i would ask that the board approve michelle she has already done the calculation and this is a new requirement so we wanted to make sure that we fulfilled this prior to adopting the tax rate is there a motion is there a second second mr olson uh any questions or comments on that all those in favor thank you then we have uh considered approval of order authorizing redemption of bonds yes sir and i understand that this is not going to be unfamiliar to most of the board but in order to manage our bond portfolio and and really again carve out the capacity for issuing new bonds and take advantage of market conditions we are recommending that the board approve the redemption of these bonds um

131and really through early payment and it will be in february of 2022 which sounds way out there but it's in this fiscal year and so someone will have the opportunity to read the full resolution on this particular one yes so resolution of board of trustees of little elm independent school district calling for redemption authorizing the deposit of funds with a paying agent slash registrar and resolving other matters related there on two whereas little elm independent school district here known as the district has previously issued its its fixed and various rate limited tax school building bonds series 2020 the series 2020 bonds and whereas the district has sufficient funds and the interest in seeking funds established for the series to fully redeem and defeat all or a portion of certain outstanding maturities of the series 2020

132bonds as specific as specifically identified on digital one here too such bonds to be here and after referred to collectively as the refunded box and whereas the district in accordance with the resolution will deposit funds and amounts sufficient to fully pay all principal and interest due and owing on the refund bonds on on february 15 here in the redemption day with umb paint un umb bank n a the paying agent um slash registrar for the refunded bonds here and as the paying agent and whereas the board of trustees the board of the district fines and determines that it is in the best interest of the district to call the redemption and to fees the refunded bonds and that refunded bonds shall be redeemed on a redemption date and whereas the meaning at which the resolution

133is considered is open to the public as required by law as required by law and the public notice of the time place and purpose of said meeting was given as required by chapter uh texas governmental code as amended now therefore be resolved by the board of trustees of little um independent school district section one findings the findings and determinations set forth preambles here on two are hereby incorporated by reference for all purposes section two the positive funds the the transfer and deposit of available interest and sinking funds and the amount equal to three million two hundred twenty five thousand representing the principle of the refunded bonds plus interest accrued in such refunded fund bonds to the redemption date with the paying agent for the refunded bonds and hereby authorized directed and approved section three redemption

134of refunded bonds a the refunded bond shall be paid on the redemption date as set forth on schedule i attached here schedule one attached here to and a redemption price equal to the principal amount thereof plus interest accrued thereon to the redemption date item b the secretary of the board and any other officer of the district is hereby authorized and directed to cause a copy of this resolution to be delivered to the paying agent for the refunded bonds the delivery of which shall cost shall constitute notice of redemption and notice of defeasement to such paying agent section 4 notice of redemption the paying agent for the refunded bonds is hereby authorized and directed to give notice of such redemption to the owners thereof pursuant to the order authorizing the issuance of the refunded bonds section

1355 execution and delivery of documents actions to be taken the president and secretary of the board are each hereby authorized and directed to consent to accept execute a test and a fix the district seal to such other agreements assignments certificates contracts documents instruments releases financing statements letters of instruction authorizations for the expenditure of funds of the district may be required written requests and other papers whether or not mentioned herein as may be necessary or convenient to carry out or assist in the carrying out the purpose of this resolution and to take any and all actions required to be taken to effect the purpose of this resolution in accordance with this resolution and the laws of the state of texas is there a motion second all right is there any questions or comments the second also

136has to read the full resolution [Music] uh any questions or comments on that all those in favor all right thank you very much now we also consider approval of adoption of the budget for 2021-2022 as we discussed earlier in detail at the hearing over the past semester and reviewed like i said even in more detail earlier the administration recommends the adoption of the budget as presented you have hard copies there of the summary budget i will say once again that on the student nutrition fund i would expect that we would have an amendment later in the year just once we know what the participation rates are at that time i also generally bring an amendment to the board that i would call a net zero amendment where we would move function categories or the amount

137in each function once we have fully vetted out and examined in a 360 examination of each individual employee and there are over 1100 but we will set forth with doing that with each of our principles over the next three weeks and so it could be that obviously someone's salary is not going to change but someone's definition in which function that they're defined in could change from an 11 to a 13 or 13 to an 11 to a 31 and so forth and so one would be reduced the other would be increased but aside from that then um the service funds recommended there includes the three million dollar resolution for a reduction that you just named as well and that is also included in the 47 cent calculation for the tax rate um of that fund

138and so um if the board has any other questions about the budget i'd be glad to take those now is there a motion to approve the budget as presented so moved there a second okay questions comments on that okay all those in favor thank you very much you're not done yet consider approval of adoption of the tax rate of 2020-2021 so much is the same as the budget and now that the budget has been adopted we need to adopt the tax credit that will support it and so in the order that is prescribed by the truth and taxation laws the administration recommends the adoption of the tax as presented um and that adoption would be a tax rate of 0.9 0.9603 for the maintenance and operation and 0.47 for the interest and sinking rate okay

139their motion to approve the 3000. is there any questions or comments on those all right all those in favor thank you very much um consider approval of notice of intent to change the fiscal year start date yes still mean and so as noted in your agenda i would like to bring the recommendation to the board that in order to better serve our campuses that we change our fiscal year end date to the july 1 fiscal date and what that really does is help to envelop the academic year with the fiscal year so that the dollar that you're approving that you just approved for september began september 1 but school started last week then those are split between two fiscal years and that is not so much of an accounting nightmare it is a little bit

140of them but we're not recommending it for that purpose but what it really creates is a hardship on our campuses and our departments to get schools started because the purchase order cutoff has already occurred for the fiscal year but they're trying to start an academic year and so i've already had some department some people that are attentive and read our agendas that have contacted me and said thank you thank you thank you that we're going to do this i know that it will really serve our campuses very well because especially as they're growing and have to add things for their staff it is very difficult to do that whenever you're closing down a fiscal year there was a reason about half the state as far as school districts about half the state is on july

1411 about half as much september 1 and there was a little bit of a reason not to do it for a very long time because of the way that the tax calculations were but now that tea assigns our rate and they assign that to all districts and after the july 25th certification of values it really does not impact our overall funding it says how much comes locally versus how much comes from the state the total is the same from that so um i am bringing forth you the recommendation that you would make that change which would mean that this current fiscal year that you just adopted a full 12-month budget for would actually end in 10 months and then july 1 of 2022 would begin the first 12-month year for the new fiscal date there

142are some details that we have to take here with texas education agency and i've been through that process before and it's not very difficult for us to and before i even continue on that i i meant to do this before we adopted the budget because i was just in the tail end of developing that budget that budget was developed so much by dr karen weissman and i'm so appreciative of her but also the incredible staff that i have in the business office jesse and beth are amazing i'm so so thankful to have them uh here and they've done so much of the the footwork on this and so i wanted to recognize them and and we've talked about this change uh as well any questions about them is there a motion to approve the change

143of the fiscal year mr flotus their second second dr thompson is there questions or comments yeah i guess i do are there any financial implications from having a month year for this coming year that's a great question the financial implications of this there absolutely are um they're positive there is a one-time injection of fund balance that's really just a book move because rather than um rather than booking the expenditures for the months of july and august that would normally go into this fiscal year those will be included in the 22-23 school year 12-month so you you will have a an increase in fund balance which the board will be able to assign for specific purposes as we have assigned or as you have assigned other fund balances and so it doesn't really impact the revenue

144so much because the revenue is earned in this academic year and so what it really impacts is the the cost savings on paper at least from the july and august of um is that emotion that has to come to the board next year to move that or anything no well no that that will be something that will be handled at the end of the 2122 audit whenever that audit comes to the board and we will have a recommendation to assign that fund balance okay can you also and i don't know if you've explained this but the benefit really for the campuses yes so yeah again the campus and and them being able to plan and make orders for the upcoming school year so you'll still have a close down of a fiscal year but that

145will come in april and may of the of the school year when they are winding down their school year naturally and then we open for business on july the 1st so they have plenty of time in the new budget with their new funds that are for that specific academic year to make orders and receive them in time for school to start and i want to add one more thing the the it's really interesting this fiscal year that we're currently on this fiscal budget year really is designed and was designed back when school districts really didn't start until after labor day so you know as we look at it now this the the there is a nice benefit that one time infusion but the calendar doesn't really line up with how we operate um and and

146i i don't know the number of districts but i would say the vast majority have already all the ones that i know and have worked with have already made that switch so i think there's a 600 or over that have made that change over the last decade or so so the special meeting that we had today will have to be moved up for next year correct yes sir so yes we still have to have that public hearing prior to adopting the budget we just won't adopt the tax rate still until this time of year because those certified values don't come out and so it might change which category a revenue would be in whether it would be in local or if it would be in state but it won't change the total of it but

147you will still have the public hearing to discuss the budget and we will have that in june so just as a reminder we have it on our calendar that we keep on the board in the that we'll need to change the the meetings that we have each month good point is there any other questions nope okay all those in favor all right thank you very much all right and i don't see jesus i think you're still up again i'm still up i consider approval of a financial reports for june 2021 oh actually i think i have worked for that oh i'm sorry on the risk management consider approval of the tasmi risk management fund so tasby is our risk management carrier um we have had conversations with them about getting us our quotes earlier next

148year so that we are not coming to you just before the renewal but this year we did receive them and it was hard for me to complain that they were seated a little late because our total increase is only hundred and ninety dollars which is just phenomenal considering what the between the winter storms the wind and panel damages i've been with tasby in a different district and we have had substantial increases in our premium so i'm very very grateful to come to you with 4 300 increase in premium even though i'm frustrated with them it was a little bit late coming in they come in with no increase they can come in a little bit later but so i'm recommending you that we continue our coverage for each of these policies with them we have

149our um unemployment our workers comp our property automobile school liability privacy and information security as well as violent acts uh is there a motion to approve this uh insurance one so moved is there a second second any questions all right so all those in favor thank you very much all right and then suggestions for jesse all right uh consider approval of the financial report for june 2021 mr weiss good evening superintendent gallagher uh board of trustees the reports are presenting it to you tonight this chart does include the final budget amendment that's presented later in the consent agenda just showing you the impact of it the 73 590 increase there in local revenue that's the receipt of fees for like their athletic camps and facilities rentals over the summer and those costs will be used

150to pay for uh payroll and other costs included by the programs uh the remainder of the adjustments are transfers between functional areas within department budgets to cover uh forecasted year-end costs the uh if you can see by the the green highlight uh this amendment won't have any impact on expected fund balance uh board policy requires us again to maintain 24 of total operating budget expenditures which is about 20 million 770 000 so we're meeting our requirement there for our capital outlay fund this is updated as of july 31 all projects are on track from budget perspective and we have a little over 48 million dollars in uh project budget dollars remaining on the approved projects for our debt service fund we did have enough money to pay our debt this year you see by the

151blue highlighted cell we reached our revenue goal and we our payment in august earlier in this month was about 20 million dollars we had a little bit left over there you can see the orange cell and if you view the green cell at the bottom we are expecting to reduce our fund balance a little bit at the end of the year and the administration recommends approval of certain june 2021 financial reports as submitted is there a motion to approve these reports that's submitted so move is there a second thompson there are questions or comments all those in favor all right thank you very much all right do we have any consent agenda items that needed to be pulled out separate um yeah i've got one question i'll see can we see okay uh yeah so

152item 11c is there dr mikka can you speak that or that would be ashley actually oh sorry um yes item 11c consider approval of the 2021 2022 employee handbook yes i can speak to that okay sorry sorry ashley the one the one section i did not see in there i was scrolling through it and i'm just curious i cannot remember if we had this in the past do we not have any policies on social media for staff we do when it comes to social media communications with students so we have um social media in general like what they post what they post things like that i mean i just know that it's been issues in the past at other districts i'm just wondering if we i thought for some reason we had had one in

153previously maybe i was thinking of a different one yeah we don't we haven't had it in you know the recent years the the past four or five years of employee handbooks that i've reviewed and looked at also tasby has a model employee handbook that we really model hours after and tasby also doesn't have a section that specifically addresses um employees posting and their use of social media i will say though that the general ethics the code of context of ethics for educators um speaks to representing yourself for you know that your representation of your district that you know you need to conduct yourself professionally in all modes of communication so it kind of very generally addresses um social media um in terms of professionalism and communication and we have consulted with actually two different attorneys

154on this because we have multiple attorneys we work with um [Music] there is a free speech aspect too that i don't know if you want to address that um we're somewhat limited and the things that you had mentioned cover any issue that we might run into we have had i mean being fully transparent without addressing names we've had to address employees in the past with social media that's the reason why yeah question yeah i don't have the reason why mr gallagher brings up a good point i think the reason why tasby's model as well as our attorneys don't advise to do it is because of the free speech element and and that employees do have free speech it's limited when it comes to their employer and aspects related to their employment but they do have

155that piece so i think the generic kind of code of ethics that states professional communication all forms of communication is covers us okay all right that was my main question on that okay so consider approval of the 2021-2022 employee handbook is there a motion to approve some moved their second second is there any questions or comments additional questions or comments on that all in favor perfect uh any other items i'm good all right perfect so i'm all in favor of approving the consent agenda with the exclusion of item c you just previously approved is there a motion to approve that so dr thompson is there second mr olsen any questions on that nope i was in favor all right the consent agenda process thank you very much um i guess for my comments just want

156to thank everybody for staying um i know it was a little later than we were kind of expecting for this one but i wanted to thank all the individuals that did come out on both sides of the issue that came out to speak tonight that took time out of their schedules um i think i think there was a lot of a lot of good information there so definitely something for for all of us to consider but i want to thank everybody that came out everyone that watched and uh and all our you know the staff that are here today uh making all this possible and you know here's the best of luck to the start of another great school year all right guess i'll start on my right this time oh that's normal um i

157wanted to say thanks to cecilia for taking people to coffee and making miracles happen i mean that was huge we not only have this great partnership but there's scholarships for students possible jobs after school financial literacy i mean it's all wrapped up in the bowl everything that we're trying to do is literally like right there and and in the zero dollars and zero cents that was like ice cream and cherries and everything so i just wanted to acknowledge that beautiful whatever was in that coffee [Laughter] thank you for for your effort there i just wanted to acknowledge that it was beautiful thank you thank you staff for staying late appreciate it appreciate all the comments from the community and more importantly thanks to staff at all of our campuses for making last week very smooth

158really you know seemed like every year just it's keep getting less unless we're so close to zero on the first day in the first week it's awesome so thank you to everyone for putting in the long hours and everything to start off the first week of school great so thank you i'd also like to thank staff and all the community not only was it showed up tonight but the ones watching and the ones that have sent all the the emails in over the past couple weeks and everything uh we do hear your concerns we do understand your concerns uh just one thank you very much for participating thank you uh i echo the sentiments that have already been stated i did have one thing that i'd like to just bring forward for a future agenda

159item um if we can just i want to review the bed local um for the and just amend the time for citizen input um i would like to see us maybe construct that a little bit better for citizens have until either a return from closed or we maybe we can have further discussion on that as well as the length of time they have to speak just like that on the agenda so we can have further discussion on that and then my second item also is if possible i would like to get um the survey data from the survey that went out for the ethnic studies if we can just get that data just so we can review it because it was a year ago and i forgot what i did yesterday well we'll get that

160and send it to the board thank you i think the most important thing from tonight is um let's meet the lobo night on wednesday and what are we wearing so no i do have an item um i wasn't present here last month when these two courses these ethnic studies courses were approved and quite honestly i would have wished that we could have had some dialogue as a board under a workshop or some other venue right where we could have talked about it there's just so much controversy as you can see tonight surrounding these topics i would like to ask that we have a workshop or we have more discussion before we bring to vote when we do have curriculum and and the books that we will be bringing forward to the school district right we

161don't i don't want to just show up to vote on something that i'm not familiar with that's it all right and board members i just i'm going to keep this very brief i want to thank our team for staying late um although it still is before 10 o'clock i'm looking at my watch correctly so um thank you all for staying late um board members thank you for your support your your leadership um as you can see tonight we had a a great dialogue and really great uh feedback from community members and you know i i will say this you know my email is is it's on the website i respond to every single email that i receive from uh community members i will continue doing that um you know everyone here has a voice uh

162this board i can assure you and this administration is uh really we're we're doing our best to make the best decision for every single member of our school district and i just appreciate the support but i also welcome the the challenges and the questions lastly i want to say thank you to our students for an incredible first week of school as i visited every campus our students are happy to be back at school it is refreshing to see them to hear that they want to be at school and and that's something that really we all love as educators and uh the very last people i want to thank obviously our staff members but our classroom teachers what a great first week of school and just thank you for everything you do and we're here to

163support you so thank you so much to our students and to our classroom [Laughter] that was teachers i think that was that perfect okay all right so is there a motion to adjourn all right is there a second second and there's terrelson uh all those in favor of a journey all right motion passes at 9 50 p.m you