001I don't even know welcome glad to see everybody here for our regular meeting for the month of December as always we start our meetings with the Pledge of Allegiance and today we have a group of students from Hewitt Elementary and Miss Whatley well good evening president rustic our board members and Midway community um Hewitt Elementary has six clubs on our campus and for the first time we were able to offer a sign language Club as a club our students are introduced to sign language and the deaf Community they learn basic concepts of ASL a few songs to sign along with common uh seasonal terms I'm pleased to introduce to you tonight our fifth graders that are part of their sign language club and their sponsors who will lead us in the American pledge we have
002Liam Macon Haley Haley fithian Michael Salazar Dominic Davis and Julia Williams also we have Emily Lattimore as our sponsor Susan Gideon and Anna Sewell and so if you'll bear us if you go ahead and stand up and we're going to say a little bit slower because they are going to sign it as we do it I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you [Applause] that was great thank you all so much students and then as we always do recognition following this Miss watts is going to help us tonight and we've got some outstanding recognition turn it over to the superintendent okay okay president rustic members of the board and parents
003and students members of our community thank you for being here tonight it's always our pleasure to begin our meetings with student and staff and District recognitions and we have several that we are very proud to recognize this evening before I've stopped I do have someone's cell phone left up there all right all right that would be very very important uh to do so I'd like to start with uh introducing Ms Pam Watts Miss Watts will be assisting us as the representative of the board and we're going to start with our holiday card artists every year the Midway ISD sends out holiday cards to other school districts in the area as well as some of our Community Partners and we're all so proud to showcase our student artwork and our students submit and we're able to
004choose one ones from different schools each and every year and so this year the cover art is from Chapel Park Elementary School and I'd like to introduce those particular students that are here tonight so miss Watts if you'll start with that I'd like to introduce Emily Lambeth is Emily here what about Alana Mora is Alana here come on forward Alana come forward see Miss Watts thank you right there and Hannah rodkey is Hannah here there's Hannah come forward so these are from Chapel Park Elementary School now we had snowmen on our Christmas card and they were designed by Park Hill Elementary students so what about Juliet Dominguez is Juliet here Mohit Irfan Brady keston Elena is Brady here all right Brady come on up Brady Elena Rivera Ross Ainsley Sauer is coming up Lily Liliana
005schwelenbach Gabriella Torres and Tessa Weaver Tessa here tonight all right artwork for our annual holiday cards is designed as a volunteer commitment from our teachers our students we appreciate our Fine Arts staff so much including our teacher Sue Ann Smith at Chapel Park and Lauren Lively at Park Hill are they here this evening come on come forward please and we certainly appreciate y'all's commitment to fostering student creativity all right so before you leave I see I see um two proud principles from our Park schools Chapel Park and Park Hill any parents want a quick photo parents anybody didn't get one all right come on come on up get a good photo instead and show off that pretty holiday card in your artwork look aren't they fabulous aren't they fantastic all right one more round of
006applause for our students and teachers thank you so much all right thank you so much next I'd like to introduce to you Miss Allison Smith she's our principal at Midway high school for a very very special staff award that we are so proud to award tonight so Miss Smith I'll turn it over to you thank you Dr kazanus and board members so tonight I get the honor of presenting um Miss Susan Jones I'm going to have her go ahead and come on up so Miss Jones the national speech and debate Association recently announced Midway high school computer science and debate teacher Susan Jones as a winner of The Diamond coach award the diamond award is the highest honor for coaches to achieve as a part of the national speech and debate Association and recognizes a
007professional career that combines excellence and longevity in speech and debate education this prestigious award is presented to coaches who earn points through nsda from Team participation student achievement public service and Leadership work Jones received 15 000 points to earn her first diamond award and as a coach has been instrumental in this the success of Midway high school speech and debate program and she travels almost every weekend for our speech and debate kids so congratulations Miss Jones thank you all right next I'd like to present a recognition and an award to the district and this is for What's called the first rating in November the Texas Education Agency announced Financial accountability ratings for school districts across the state based on financial data from the 20 21-22 school year for the seventh year in a row Midway
008ISD earned an a rating indicating Superior achievement in financial management practices and students we scored 98 out of 100. is that pretty good pretty good so now we just have to work on those extra two points this next year don't we and so we're certainly grateful for this recognition and support of our community as we can strive to be good stewards of our tax dollars and of the dollars that we use to educate our students and so I'd like to introduce to you Mr Wesley Brooks who's our assistant superintendent for uh Finance so Mr Brooks on any others and your staff here tonight Cindy Poyner this is they know but we have a couple of them that are here tonight so please join me congratulating Midway ISC finance department thank you all right so the
009boat and for the board members uh did I miss anyone here so uh in the consent agenda board members do see that December 2022 grants for great ideas uh from the education Education Foundation or on the or on the consent agenda but I'd like to uh welcome the foundations executive director Susie Pagel to present the grant award-winning teachers which is her final time to do this as she is retiring yes it deserves a lot of uh you know me this is her last meeting before next month so before we do that I want to take a you know since I have the mic I get a few words in to to do that uh we're very grateful to Susie for over 26 years in public education and uh really cannot express to all of you
010the impact she has made here in our district and in doing the Mets this is 22 in Midway 22 years she is our one and only Education Foundation executive director we've only had one in the history and uh for 22 years she has been leading this outstanding organization which has now really become a lightning a star across Texas she consults quite frequently other school districts to help them with startups of their foundations because of the model that has been set here at Midway ISD our foundation has continued to grow we have continued to award I think was it over 2 million now 2 million dollars in Grants to our teachers and staff members here in the district and we can it's continuing to grow uh record-breaking year again with with donations both from individuals our
011staff as well as our corporate partners and she has certainly created uh this Legacy here in the district we are having um to honor Susie officially January the second uh at our mid-year celebration here in the district and so in late and then later in the month I know the foundation is honoring her with the reception uh so I couldn't think of another opportunity Miss Watson she'd helped me there with our retirement gift I mean what do you give it's it's tough but we to find something where we thought we'd get you cutting boards that we give all of our retirees and special thanks so please come forward before you do your Awards to honor you on your retirement I saw that envelope as a little card called red card means she can come to
012all events for free so we hope to see you back at events for free and so as you can imagine ladies and gentlemen and students how hard it would be to feel fulfill I mean feel her role as executive director that's tough shoes to fill as I said after 22 years and so but uh and can collaboration with the board of directors of the Education Foundation and and committee members here in the district we did our search we used a search Firm Foundation Innovation to assist with that and been in that process all of this fall semester to name a new executive director and we're very fortunate uh tonight that I can introduce this individual to you and that is to my left Miss Ashley futurist futurist please come forward come up with hers Miss
013Dietrich is not far from home she's a 2005 Midway High School alumni she graduated from our from our high school she has been working in the central Texas area in related fields in foundations and fundraising and we're just thrilled that she's coming back to Midway ISD and will be part of the next generation of the foundation and its growth and so welcome uh we're so also fortunate that Susie's not officially retiring until the end of January so you have some time to pick her brand to really pick her brain and uh and as certainly as with retirement not going too far maybe give her the month of February off that's the TRS rules but then then uh in in March weekend we can we can come back and pick her brain some more so please
014join me in congratulating Miss Pagel as well as welcoming this futures all right so now I can turn the microphone back over to you Miss Pagel for Grant awardees because we have a bunch of those usually I'm the one that gets to surprise people I was not expecting that a little off script uh we are thrilled we were able to go back into the classroom last week to make our prize Posse Awards when we come into the classroom with big checks and Loud cowbells and balloons it's amazing what principles will let you do when you bring money like that into the classroom and right before testing something I don't know sometimes during a test that's my favorite [Laughter] yeah it's just like that it's just like that so we are thrilled to announce that that
015we gave away just over thirty four thousand dollars last week and we are here to congratulate the winners uh but first I want to call up our president Christy Miller the Education Foundation president this is her last month as an officer too or at least as president and also Jennifer getterman who is our Grands chair and we'll just you just have to keep that job forever it's not so it feels stand over there and greet our winners uh the first one is from Castleman Creek Elementary Denia Boykins if you'll come on up her Grant her Grant is for coding collaboration it's robots spheroes and and Bee Bots all the things for 23.50 2 350 and that's named in honor of Winton engineering next is a grant named in honor of Dr and Mrs George casanes
016for their ongoing support of the Education Foundation Chapel Park Elementary Katie Talbert won a grant of 5 890 dollars thank you and this one's very unique it's called feed your mind book vending machine to promote literacy a book vending machine also from Chapel Park is Back to Basics with Bas it's a benchmark assessment system and that was one by Missy Keane Kristen Kegley Jennifer Davis bliff Guerra Nancy Markham and one other person the name got cut off who else is it thank you come on down and that that Grant was for four thousand four hundred and fifty five dollars and is named in honor of Extraco Banks next from Park Hill Elementary we have block party Christy beige Tasha heffer Camp Jocelyn iski Angela Parsons Madison Peach and Jay Jalen reinwalt come on down foreign
017awarded this time and it's for seven thousand nine hundred and ten dollars for an Imagination Playground blocks set we're going to come over and play yeah next uh at Park Hill is Morgan Sauer LMNOP loving Makerspace in our Park thank you and that Grant is for 1415 dollars for Makerspace activities named in honor of Jim Turner Chevrolet next from Spring Valley Elementary Sydney Jones the information station is for interactive easels and manipulatives Sydney are you here oops did you have to miss tonight that's named in honor of Lone Star Truck Group next from Spring Valley Elementary is di Coachman and Michelle Cooper kupaczewski the grant is manipulating understanding a school-wide math manipulatives library for thirty four hundred dollars and that's named in honor of BC materials Ready Mix Concrete Wade and Christy Miller thank you
018Courtyard classroom is seating equipment for gross motor movement and raised garden beds at River Valley Middle School Andrew spearbrecker Jennifer Wilkinson Wilkerson and Paul Carter Lee come on down and this grant was named in honor of Chuck and Lisa Lewis next rolling into purposeful bulletin boards for Midway high school Vanessa dulock it's paper cutter rack with rolls The Ready Set teach classes are going to take over the bulletin boards at Midway high school foreign and finally light it up photo studio lighting props and accessories for Midway high school Jamie beavers for Studio lighting kits props and accessories for her classes and it's 1 480 and it's named in honor of Midway grad Amanda Cunningham realtor congratulations okay yep go make two rows come on down in your life and get on the other one [Applause]
019thank you [Music] it's always about Miss Edwards always about Miss Edwards [Applause] thank you Miss Miller I was going to make the announcement that we take a short break but everybody seems to know the routine and so we'll start in just a couple of minutes foreign all right completely okay I think we're ready to go now um I'm gonna have to uh everybody is in the holiday spirit and then I gotta wrap the gavel um annual Financial audit report it's that time of year uh patillo Brown and Hill are Auditors have completed the audit it's on the consent agenda for the board's consideration but before we get there we've got uh Clayton Rogers here from Patilla Brown and Hill to visit with the board about the audit Clayton floor is yours well it's good to
020see I didn't chase everybody off don't take it personal well thank you for having me um as you said I'm with Patilla Brown and Hill and we have just put the wraps on the fiscal year 2022 financial statement audit and so I am here just to cover the results of the audit um very very briefly and answer any questions you might have um we have hard copies of the annual financial report all 80-something pages of it um I was not planning on going into any of the detail in the interest of time I did meet with Wesley and Dr kazanus last week and we did go into a lot of the detail and talked about some of the financial highlights and suffice it to say um like unlike the first rating we don't give you
021a letter grade but everything's good so um just as a refresher what we do um as part of the audit we don't look at every transaction we don't look at every dollar however what we're looking to do is what they call reasonable assurance and so we're that reasonable Assurance is that these financial statements in our opinion are materially correct in accordance with accounting principles and at the end of our audit I'm happy to report that we're able to give what's known as an unmodified opinion you'd know it as a clean opinion what that means is in our opinion these financial statements are in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in every material respect again that doesn't mean perfect it doesn't mean down to the dollar um however what it does mean is that the information
022that's in here in our opinion is consistent with the accounting records of the district and with accounting principles and is useful for decision making for individuals users of the financial statements such as yourselves the Texas Education Agency perhaps most importantly your bondholders um a few things corollary to that we also perform we render another opinion as part of the federal single audit that's simply a compliance audit that is required by federal law based on how much Federal money you get and we pick certain uh Grant programs that you have this year was the Esser funds that everyone's been talking about and of course those federal funds come with a lot of strings attached to them and so when we pick one of those programs we do a deep dive on that program and look at
023a lot of the big significant compliance requirements that are attached to it and make sure that significant compliance has been achieved by the district and at the end of that audit just like the financial statements we render an opinion and I'm happy to report we're able to render an unmodified opinion on the district's compliance and so in in some financial statement audit clean opinion as good as it gets single audit opinion over compliance clean opinion as good as it gets a couple of other things that we just bring up for the purposes of your role as the board since we're dealing with taxpayer funds we're working under government auditing standards which deals with a number of other puts in a number of extra compliance requirements on us as the auditor and that we're required to
024report a number of things to you as the board if we had run across significant issues with internal control significant fraud or abuse or significant uh other issues like non-compliance with laws or regulations that might affect the financial statements and some of those might be like Bond covenants or the allocation of your property tax revenue some things of that nature again not looking at every law and every regulation but the really big high level ones that affect the financial statements we had passed around a letter that contains all of those things but I'm not going to go into it because fortunately there were none of those things to report and you will be perhaps unsurprised that it's a very dry read because of that probably was anyway but so I'm not going to um Dr
025kazanus asks that I give like the hour and a half version of this but uh I you know told him you might not appreciate that we work hard on that we feel like everyone should see the no distance however if you do have any questions or if you're feeling a little insomnia I would be happy to crack this open and talk about some of the financial highlights um but if there's one thing you took away from uh one of what we talk about here it's that from our perspective there are no surprises in this document um we're not here to tell you that you're in good Financial shape um that's something that the district's financial management is going to do however some of the things that they're going to talk about and that they've been
026communicating to you throughout the year um days cash in order days expenditures and cash how much fund balance you have um how is the district sitting with respect to the first trading which was discussed earlier um all of those types of things that you have been seeing are going to continue to be the case if you were to do a deep dive through this and really compare to the information you've been seeing the big changes are not because of anything wild or crazy going on it's the stuff that only gets adjusted once a year some long-term debt numbers the TRS liabilities those types of things that really only show up in this document and nowhere else however from our perspective it was a smooth clean easy audit and as I close I would really like
027to thank Wesley and his staff as well as Dr kazanus and everybody we worked with at the district as well as yourselves for really making a team effort making a coordinated effort to make it as smooth and easy even audit as possible I guess it's a relative term audits are never easy um in fact Wesley's probably ready to not see us again for uh six or eight months until fiscal year 23 um but they were all very forthcoming um willing to help communicative and had everything in shape that we needed to turn the audit around quickly and easily and be able to give you again a clean opinion over the financial statements so I'd be happy to talk about the audit process or answer any questions you might have or I can easily exit stage
028left questions uh we're good I think Clayton good thank you thank you so much absolutely thank you appreciate you coming out here and speaking of Wesley the monthly Finance report good evening members of the board um I'll give you a second to pull up the financial report for the month of November um we can skip down and look at page four of the financial report we do have kind of our first projection there on the the right hand side the chart of our average daily attendance this is just based on the first couple six weeks of data so of course as we accumulate more six weeks worth of information our projection will get more precise but um we budget 8042 of ADA projecting 8135 and really the number to look at is the wada a
029couple lines down from that the weighted average Ada kind of encapsulates all those special population of numbers of students there we're projecting ten thousand four thirty three higher than our budget of ten thousand two thirty six so for state aid what that means just taking that in counts it would be about additional 1.2 million of additional stated from what we budgeted which is good news our expenditure series you'll notice from page one are trending a little higher what we've spent as a percentage of our total budget versus last year but again we'll we still have quite a few months to go in the fiscal year so we'll keep you um updated on that and as we progress throughout the year I will move now down to page down to page 12 of the financial report
030to look at our bond budget summary it's really pretty similar to the last couple times I've presented this document I'm looking a bit of a favorable variance of about 5.6 million since this report was put into the board packet we did get a little more information from our construction audit team which really didn't really didn't move that bottom number very much there were a couple projects that you know maybe were going to be more positive but kind of offset but more negative so so really we're looking at about five and a half to six million at this at this juncture of kind of what we're going to have left over for our unused Bond project funds um and I know later in the on the agenda um the board will have an opportunity to kind
031of discuss um how to maybe prioritize uh those unused bond funds and and maybe come up with a plan uh but the last two pages just for your information um our architect um Huckabee Drew up um some uh projections of some possible uh projects that uh the original Bond committee had had looked at for athletics at the high school New locker rooms uh practice gym uh team meeting Edition and just to kind of I'll go over that first one with the on page on the last page the practice gym it has the square footage total construction cost which includes that contingency amount of 193 000 and then FF e is a percent it's just it's based off a percentage of the construction costs for furniture fixtures and equipment for a total estimated cost of 4.7
032million that was that's for the the practice gym now it's your mind you kind of simulated what we did when we when we originally did the bond um you know Huck could be gives us these numbers based on similar projects that they've done looked at across the state a price per square foot but we don't know the actual cost of course until we actually put it out to Bid And so just like in our bond some of our projects came under uh what we estimated and some were over depending on kind of the bids we get back and sometimes the scope of the projects changed as well but they should be pretty straightforward as far as the scope of the project um uh Huckabee did say we can if we're ready to put it out
033for a bit if we like to do that we can have contractors bid and we can reject or accept any or all of those items so one through four we could accept or a number of them or we could reject them all depending on what we get back so just to kind of give you an idea we already have construction documents uh no no we would have to have to get that ready um construction documents in the uh estimate that is a good question they are okay Mr Freeman says they are yes so so and and then you know all of those together you'll see kind of there at the bottom an estimate would be nine and a half million um you know so of course that's a little outside of what we have left
034over but um that kind of gives us an idea Mr Brooks included those as well but also you'll notice later in the agenda tonight we can look at that plus some other things it was also repeated there in the on the subsequent agenda item so we'll go through those maybe yeah we'll go through those if you don't mind in more detail when we talk about but he's here yeah your way in the back there question on the bond funds remaining yeah on the screen so I noticed I guess I'm expecting these to to drop closer to zero faster than they are I noticed the chapel Park and Park Hill each have well over a million left to complete is that I mean we still feel pretty good about where that plane is going to land
035or what what is it that's left to complete that's not FF e right yeah so so still um on our um everybody I don't know well the 1.9 um is still due to genre we're in our contractor oh okay so they're just a small percentage that's still yeah okay you know until every everything is finished our construction auditor you know finishes their audit and signs off on everything then we'll finish that out we always hold out final payment for all punches as we should punch list items to be finished any more questions on the financial report s not Wesley okay very good uh thank you we will uh move to the library audit process Aaron you're going to uh cover that one for us sir thank you president rustic members of the board Dr kazanus
036um so as you may be aware we've had a library audit underway for books I just want to kind of go over also our formal reconsideration process that we adopted back in September so we do have established policies and our Library materials need to be or need to comply with these three things here that we have listed the school library program standards and guidelines for Texas cipa or children's internet protection act and then also the penal code the particularly the sections for harmful material or obscene material and so I just want to briefly go over the selection process and some of the safety precautions that we do have in place and we did look at this a few months ago but just as a brief reminder our Librarians look at a 14 point criteria list
037to try to make the best selection possible they are not always going to be able to read every library book that comes into a collection because sometimes they're purchasing hundreds of books at a time that come in all at once and so they look at awards lists they look at the Texas library association's recommendations they look at neighboring District lists they also look at review sites such as Common Sense Media or parents guide in different sites like that they also like mentioned above look at some safety measures as well like CPA they want to make sure that it is in compliance with the penal code as well one of the main things that they're looking for also is age appropriateness for the the book because you can imagine a an eighth grader may be you
038know allowed to read a certain book or a book may be appropriate for an eighth grader but not an incoming sixth grader they're such huge gaps between just those Middle School years especially we also have some other safety measures such as continual review and weeding that the Librarians are doing just on a weekly and monthly basis we also have an established complaint and review process and also there's a young adult designation like I mentioned for Middle School to alert the Librarians and to alert students too that a certain book might be more appropriate for an older audience and then finally the library materials are all self-selected there is never a book that a student is compelled to read that's in any Library so we do have some guiding principles when a library resource is challenged
039formally and the first one is that we as a district need to remember that although a librarian is trained to select the books and is is you know going through according to policy this 14-point criteria list there may be times where a parent or a Community member still objects to a particular Library material and we need to take a look at also that control over and other guiding principles of control over Library materials extends only to a parent's own child and then finally access to the challenge materials during the formal review process is according to policy not to be restricted except for possibly two the parent's own child so that one of the major criteria for the final decision like I mentioned briefly before is age appropriate appropriateness of the material for its intended use
040that sounds easy enough but it gets a little more complicated when you have multiple readers review in a book and we're learning that as we're going through this process but no challenge material shall be removed according to our policy solely because of the ideas expressed therein so what should a person do if they object to a library resource or a library book and they would like it to be reconsidered well the first thing that we ask people to do is to talk to the librarian or the principal of the particular Campus A lot of times an informal agreement can be reached we can put a note or a pop-up that comes up on the screen when the librarian is checking out a book for a particular child to not have access to a certain book
041so there are things that can be done informally but if a formal objection is going to be raised then we and I I should have used different language here because the policy actually actually says that a complaintant shall make a formal challenge to a library material on the form provided by the district and shall submit the completed and signed form to the principal and what this does is it triggers the formation of a reconsideration committee which is comprise or comprises the librarian and at least one instructional staff member and then also and as we're learning going through this process that other members of the committee may include other District level staff members parents possibly other teachers community members and that is something we're learning that's a good idea to have a larger group than two
042because sometimes you're going to need an odd number is what we're we're discovering three maybe five so the reconsideration committee then the members will read the entirety of the book or the challenge material we have developed a rubric for the book reviewers to kind of go through it's a sort of a flowchart and the the focus is on the penal code language the person has to ask him herself is there obscene or harmful material in the book and then also is there vital or important or serious I believe the penal code uses the word serious literary value or value that's contributed and then they they need to really do the best they can to determine the age appropriateness as well so we did have books that were brought to our attention and again as a
043reminder we're going through an internal audit right now we are not under the policy driven formal reconsideration because no one has formally um brought that to to us through our forums and following the process however we have had 43 books brought to our attention and so we decided we need to go ahead and take a look if books are potentially harmful for students we want to take a look and take appropriate action so four of the books on the 43 book list were determined right off the bat to not be in any of our Midway libraries thankfully so because one of those books I saw some excerpts from and it just knocked my socks off I thought oh my goodness so those four books are not even a consideration six books have been read reviewed
044and have already been pulled from our Midway Library collections either due to sexual representations that are not age appropriate or some some of these books had not been checked out for multiple years and so they needed to be weeded out anyway we do have 13 books that are currently still under review and there's a lot of reasons for that either we have to have that third reviewer come in we have a person still the second person may still be reading the book and still is thinking through and trying to make those determinations and I do want to make sure that we understand that it may not be as black and white as this book stays this book gets removed there may be some nuanced decisions there it could be that a book is moved to
045an older campus maybe from middle school to high school it could be that a book is determined to be put in a special section where it's by request only potentially and so there are different decisions that can be made but certainly if a book is determined to be inappropriate and obscene it will be removed as we have with a few others already now we do have 20 books on the list of 43 that have been reviewed again through our internal audit so they have been read they have been looked at but and they have been determined to not contain any sexually explicit content however they may contain themes to which some people object based on ideological reasons or differences but as our efb local states that no challenge Library material shall and I have to
046specify that word shall it's not may be removed solely because of the ideas expressed therein so these particular books the 20 could potentially be formally reviewed through our reconsideration process if a parent or Community member follows the procedure for reconsideration of Library materials but as of right now those books according to the policy are not in that formal reconsideration process so once we have completed our internal audit and once we have gone through those 13 books and the decision has been made a report of all of the findings will be written up and submitted to well the superintendent so again Dr opinion I was quickly and thank you very much I think Dr Pena and I think also leading this is Dr Stacy Boyd our director of Elementary curriculum and education as well as of
047course our Librarians our Librarians certainly have been intricately involved in this process so really board members if you're looking at what Dr Pena just presented to you was just a way to capture what you approved in August that is this policy efb and uh Dr Pena just kind of put it in in terms of operationally so that is the the process that this could be how it would be handled and we just wanted to be proactive and get in front just to so everyone understands what it could look like uh and so halfway through this presentation you might recall yes we were presented a list of books and that's why um we thought why not look at our process of review of the books and just begin it and so that's why then the second
048part of the presentation was talking about the different numbers how many weren't checked out and all that kind of thing and so they're still in the middle middle of this and still working through it but um again I appreciate their their efforts and work because this isn't easy uh this isn't an easy process whatsoever there are so many materials and books and Publishers and things like that uh in our in our in our world these days and open sources and so um I know they're working diligently in this area but we just felt like you should see operationally what this process would look like and so after that I'll just close with in policy if there is one it'll follow through the policy and there could be at some point that that comes to the
049board and it would be though on the specific title incorrect yes sir if the decision is made at the complaintant or the person who brings forth the reconsideration form doesn't agree with then they can go through either f and g local or GF record questions from the board get a couple um so has anything changed on the prevention side I mean so we had four books that we need to remove are we doing anything have we changed any procedures on the front end to keep objectionable objectionable materials from making it in to the system so um no not formally to the to what's in policy but I do know that there is a heightened awareness with our Librarians and you know books that are coming through that even could be potentially questionable we are getting
050better at finding sites that do legitimate and good and thorough reviews of books so in those ways yes but nothing nothing formal that that we have added one of the things that in policy does say that we can have other other professionals as well we're still kind of thinking through how that practically would look because um having a standing committee the Librarians are ordering books just all the time and so we're trying to think through practically how potentially we could add another layer but I couldn't tell you right now what the ideas are okay um and the other one is is probably I see as the bigger challenge here the subjectiveness that comes out of this oh yes right some ideas are deemed harmful and that's some of the language that we've you know is
051talking about so so my view those ideas harmful some may not how are you going to navigate that how are you going to navigate the subjectiveness of the material in the ideas it's easy it's cut and dried if it's seen you know materials that that's a no-brainer I think yes all of us but there are there's some yeah that would fall kind of in that gray area where it depends on the reviewer you know uh do you consider this too far or not um we're dealing with that right now uh and that's why there were some books that we had already moved to the you know we're going to potentially move these books out and kind of we brought a few back in to just have more people read for that very purpose and that's
052why we're thinking through um the the practicals of you know what's written in the policy we do have the ability to form a larger committee I like the idea of formula larger committee but then we also need to consider what kind of training you know we do a lot of inner Raider reliability training with um people who go in and determine you know what a walk through is and you know grading teachers and that sort of thing so we kind of need to set something up here with this some districts that I've talked to some Library leads have just a committee formed when the issue arises others which I do like have a standing committee that they pull from regularly and then they're able to kind of do some ongoing training and take and look
053at books as a group of you know however many people are on the committee when it's just kind of not in the middle of the formal process they can kind of determine like are we all kind of agreeing that this passage is obscene or this is not but we're still working through that Mr tell us being to change or strengthen the policy it sounds like some of what you're talking about is kind of going beyond the way the policy is written currently I mean should we look at that look at the policy and that's that's up to you in my opinion I don't think so I think it gives us the flexibility it doesn't it necessarily just you know put us in a box because if we had a lot of specificity we might be
054learning that oh it really isn't working right now so this process with these 43 books we are learning um quite a bit through it and I think in the end what we'll come up with when we you know develop admin guidelines and kind of put I flesh out what's in policy we should end up with something that most people there's not ever going to be everyone but most people are are happy with and it also works practically for our teachers and for our professionals that answer you real quickly to answer your question yeah if you don't mind no is you're never going to take subjectivity out I'm just going to be honest with you uh of your viewers so we can't develop right a policy that takes any subjectivity out when you're talking about Library
055materials a book and so I think what I heard and what I keep seeing happening too is the process but also the age-appropriateness of it and so I think that is one thing too we've learned and looking at if it was a Elementary maybe on an elementary shelf it should be a middle or at least middle should be not you know up until high school things like that too because that that has helped us somewhat yes to look at our full Collections and see something should not be at a certain grade level they should be a little bit older uh grade levels things like that too and so I just think age of Brokenness has been and also a helpful in a review of this but I think what I heard Dr Pena said and
056Dr Boyd in committees that you do you have to look harder at reviews sources of reviews of the books too as well and and good sources of that that's right to help to help because it's as I said it's Monumental when you look at sheer volume of you mentioned having this audit committee um here you write would it be helpful if you had for you a regular meeting committee like we did with the shack but I'd love to say the more complex an issue is that the more critical it is that we look at it from multiple points of view and you've already spoken to that would it be helpful if we had something in place where we had a regularly meeting committee that that's just all they did however often they needed to get
057together yes we um at the last Mast meeting we did kind of go through an exercise to kind of help look at that rubric that flow chart um I'm keep calling it both because it kind of is its own uh animal and we're still tweaking it but they help to contribute to that and we did let them know that although that decision hadn't been made yet that it they may end up being that committee because we do have regular meetings we have Community representatives and parent Representatives as well as teachers from multiple from every campus and so it it stands to reason that that would make a whole lot of sense we could then provide that kind of training we can invite Librarians to come in kind of explain the selection process and kind of
058schedule that throughout the year as well um so we're we're considering that we've already taken up you know a step towards that um but we haven't again written up the admin guide we're kind of getting through this process first really wanted to see what we learned from it what were the mistakes that we made along the way to come up with the best um steps and guidelines moving forward bringing it so that you're not having to do the funnel all this information all on your own let us know thank you I appreciate that yes yeah I was just going to say because I know I remember three or four months ago when we approved the policy we had a little discussion about it I think it's I think it's actually good that you're having a
059chance to put this into practice sort of unofficially right right now so two two questions one I know we're not in formal reconsideration but do you have others in the community involved right now in these books or the are you still really primarily with Librarians and and teachers who are looking at these at this stage right now we are working with Librarians and instructional staff and to be quite honest we've really have been recruiting um to have people read and we've tapped a lot of our curriculum and instruction people um I couldn't tell you definitely but I have the I believe most if not all of those folks are parents of kids in uh in Midway schools now but they're professional staff sure yes and so um but then on on this at this particular
060stage because this is volunteer what we're doing right and that's right I know we're not informed and the staff that we have that's what they're put their trust and Librarians that they will missions and understand the community that we work in now you know that they work in in their parents too as Dr Pena said so that none of these have been officially challenged right and so I think that with the committee that they have used is is my opinion very good and act is above and beyond that we're asking others to do they're just voluntarily reading and helping really those particularly let me answer my question was to see are we are we able to explore how it works to bring parents in yet or not that's the reason because they haven't been official
061no right um so the other question I guess is the the status of these books the ones that are the list that you said have been provided are we communicated back to that person yet are we waiting till the rest of these 13 are finished to do that no we have not yet I was planning on communicating with the superintendent first um and then going with his Direction after that as far as how much of course I need to go back to policy and touch I'm still I'm still learning it's a lot there's a lot in here um but we certainly want to um be as forthcoming as possible we want to also eventually have our process our forms the committee potentially um out there for parents and community community members to see just not
062quite there yet well thanks for going through this and for the Librarians who are involved everyone else too so appreciate it thank you you're welcome anybody else to Aaron on the 13 books that are currently still under review I take it none of those have the history of not being checked out for at least six years because if they had that they'd have already been pulled yes sir some are popular okay what do you say what did you say some are popular oh that's what he said the 13th summer popular yeah so see how some are being checked out you know regularly and um again those some have been re I believe I maybe miss you know representing myself here but I believe of the 13 all are at least completely read by one person
063there may be a couple that are getting finished up like here in the during this week but there are several that need to still be completed by the second reviewer and some might need to go to a third reviewer and if I heard you use the phrase several times and I just want to be sure that I'm understanding what y'all are contemplating and that is as y'all work through this basically District initiative process for these going forward not necessarily having board policy that speaks to this sort of internal review that's not a reconsideration formal process under efb which is the district just doing its due diligence not a board policy but y'all intend to develop administrative guidelines so that going forward as people come and go from different positions we've at least got something that
064everybody knows internally this is how we handle it yes I believe it they aren't there yet but that's that's ultimately where the administration intends to end up yes however the librarian does reserve the right to weed The Collection go through the collection remove books when when they deem it's appropriate and so this is not intended to you know take that professional professionalism away from them but yes we do want to develop the more specific procedures that are not outlined in policy who beyond the instructional person and the librarian will be on the committee how often we'll meet the kind of training that we'll give those people uh how you know how many if if it will be a parent of that particular age group or will it be a Community member you know those kind
065of nuanced decisions we still want to work through and how and develop those right and I wasn't suggesting for a minute that the administrative guidelines and that process would you serve The Librarians and their professional role that's not the point I just wanted to be clear that was where we wanted to end up and that was outside of the formal reconsideration process because we already got a board policy that speaks to that yes sir yes sir but we will we will have an administrative guideline that matches efb local just to provide us with more specifics on how we can make sure that we're fulfilling the policy while while also taken care of is much of the subjectivity and things like that that we've been already contending with right I know it's a consistency between District
066or schools in in their libraries you know that's probably a challenge you got lots of libraries and and yeah having some consistent guidelines here yes we do want to have guidelines across grade levels and across levels here at Midway so again I'm you know these are the the things that we need to develop once a book is pulled is it pulled only from you know the Midway Middle School library collection but not the River Valley Middle School library collection and those kind of things that we're still navigating we haven't dealt with that now these six books that have been pulled have been pulled from all Library collections but as Midway grows and we add more schools down the line we want to make sure that our practices are you know just doing the right thing
067for for kids and for parents anybody else all right we have a person uh Mr Blue that signed up to speak to this agenda item Mr Blue we appreciate you being here this evening under our uh board policy folks that sign up to speak to an agenda item you have three minutes to address the board I think we have so that we don't have to have our um any board member try to keep a clock and that sort of thing and to give the frankly the the person that's standing where you are the courtesy so you know okay I understand that absolutely thank you so much for your time the floor is yours okay thank you um I am Denise Ballou um Debbie Anderson is with me we are on a committee uh through the
068Republican women mclenny County Republican women one of the top priorities for next year in Texas is the sexualization of children and library books is a big thing as you all know and uh it's not just at Midway it's all over the United States and Texas you know who who would think that we'd have this problem in Texas but I want to thank you ahead of time Dr Pina has been wonderful Dr Voigt has been wonderful I feel like we're in a team effort here which is fantastic because we all want the same thing we all want to protect our children and so Dr Pena has gone over so many things that I feel like I was needing to cover but I don't think I need to cover that now on those two penal codes in
069the efb um on 43.24 it says cell distribution or display of harmful material to minors and it does say minor meaning an individual younger than 18 years of age and more information on that of course in that Penal Code penal code 43.21 goes over the definition of obscenity and it says under subcategory I would think you would say B depicts or describes sexual acts sexual intercourse masturbation and it goes on arousal performance and what all those words mean in legal terms so to speak um I know there's a an appeal process and we're going to look into that after all of this gets accomplished we thank you so much because I know this is a lot of time and effort um it's hard to imagine why any type of sexual book is even appropriate in
070a school library um you know our children are just being um they're being attacked at every level uh social media you know there's so many TV commercials whatever but with our schools I would hope that we could protect our children from being exposed to this stuff and I understand age appropriate and yes that's very important one of the books that was at the middle school I talked about oral sex I'll just be honest with you so um that book has no place and thank you for you know thank you for those that are being removed personally speaking I don't think any book that deals with any type of sex is appropriate for a school library but thank you for all the work you're doing and we are here to help in any way that we
071can thank you thank you thank you Miss balloon we appreciate that and I think you have uh very appropriately captured where this district is in the interest of trying to make sure that the materials in our libraries is appropriate for our students and age-appropriate being a very very key consideration anything else from the board on this one before we move on all right very good Midway Middle School construction update we're limited to one school now buddy [Laughter] board members I want to say thank you thank you for what you do and also thank you for five years ago you voted to allow me to be part of the Midway team hope it's been as good for you as it has been for me looking at excess bond funds buddy so yeah and to answer your
072question a little more in depth Mr Witt closing out things there's there's a process during the construction we hold five percent of every subcontractor's contract until the end that's called retainage and we haven't even paid out all of the retainage yet because some of the subcontractors haven't satisfactorily finished what they were obligated to do in their contract most of that retainage has been paid out over the past few months and then Huckabee also has a checklist for closeout documents and that would include things like the as bills all the warranty letters uh different things that they require and they're not going to approve the final payout until all of those things are met by the set by the contractor and there's one other thing but it left me thanks five years ago oh yes yes
073yes the other things one of the final payouts will include a change order to reduce the contract amount by the money that we didn't spend and so that hasn't been done and that's not probably not going to be done until Debbie Townsend finishes her audits uh John Irwin contacted me last week about getting that process started with their project Saudi Cloud so those those should be coming in the near future uh to the middle school phase two we moved in to the north side of the building during the Thanksgiving break everything went as planned we did have to move a portable building from the AEP over to the middle school that gives us 14 portable classrooms six of those or three of the buildings are ours that we own and the others we are renting
074from mobile modular thank you by the way for giving the teachers the day to set up their classrooms that that really helped that really made things go well and thank you for letting us move things to to an earlier time of that transition because something has come up now that we're needing that extra time for uh we have an unforeseen issue with asbestos there are a couple of existing exterior walls from the original building that we are having to cut through for either door openings or Windows and once we pull the outside brick off the waterproofing that was used on the block that's inside has it contains Asbestos and so we had asbestos abatement contractors come today and look at it and we're hoping to we're planning to get bids on removing that we'll get
075the bits tomorrow and hope they start at the end of the week so that's going to be a couple of week process so it's good that we had a little bit of extra time for that because we we didn't there was just no way of knowing he was there because it was between the brick and the hate out block wall and I mean you couldn't see it until they took the brick off uh one other thing that is changing is during Christmas we're going to turn over the cafeteria and so they're building temporary walls and one thing that we did change is we're going to build a scaffolding Bridge across the end of the gymnasium so because we have to have a level way to get to make our Ada PA Ada path go from
076the north side over to the pack and it was to come around in front of the stage but but we have figured out a way that we can build a temporary Bridge across the end of the gym and Brad has signed off on it uh and it will allow us to get more work done in the cafeteria before summer gets here so and one good thing that came out of that is because of the way it's all going to be put together uh the cafeteria people will get to continue to use two of their serving lines because we're going to have cat we're going to have lunch serve lunch in the red gym but it's still going to be cooked in the kitchen because we renovated the kitchen last summer and but they're going to
077get to use two of their serving lines that we didn't know we were going to until last week so those two things came up since I sent this report out to you uh loading and unloading of buses has moved back to the north side that's good we put temporary awnings over some of the wood ramps to help with the Rainy conditions uh like I said during the Christmas break the cafeteria will be walled off and so that and the courtyard will be closed down for the remaining part of the spring semester the renovation work in the front parking lot which includes redoing that parking lot and removing some of the berms that will all take place in the summer and the furniture order we have started on that uh hope to get a some numbers
078on that next week is that what she said any questions but I know I had sent you a note about lighting that a grandparent had asked me about getting in and out of the pack with the lighting and I know from this it looks like the courtyard's completely closed so what what is the Ingress Ingress for the pack of the lighting Center so that day Abel was over there looking at that with Daryl and they they think they came up with some solutions to help with that we are trying to Daryl wanted to keep that porch right there in front of those that first set of doors that go into the backstage he wanted to keep that accessible so that's why we moved our fence over there as we can but Daryl needed an outlet
079fixed so he could put a temporary light up and he's gotten that fixed and then Abel was also looking at some of the wall packs and I think he was looking at maybe changing the bulbs in that in that porch because those lights roam but they weren't very bright so he was looking at changing that so I think we I think we've got it improved so that's the that's the Ingress and Ingress for the pack then for the Springers are a different way the back they can come in the back way over by the gym okay so that's the plan yeah okay because at some point we'll have to completely close that up and then they're going to have to come in the back way of the gym but instead of doing that the whole
080spring semester Daryl asked if we could just give him that that little walkway right there to help okay I know you're still [Music] you're still because how many zeros so we got one bid uh and it was 70 000 was the bid and then it'll take about 10 of the Isis the comp the company that oversees it and monitors the air and gets it tested and all that and that's why we ask for some more bids because we felt like that one was too high so but it'll be under that okay okay contingencies there's this one there's 300 000 in contingency for the owner for the contractor and we're going to take this out of their 300 000. uh we're down to about 200 000 left of our owner's contingency just wanted to see what
081kind of impact this might have on all the extra money it's not going to have it should not affect the total contract amount at all we're still fine with our contingencies and allowances we had that's why we hired you five years ago anybody else all right good deal thank you buddy thank you thank you buddy uh excess bond funds and the usage thereof let me just say we got a number of people that have signed up to speak to this agenda item I'm not going to take those up now I'm going to let the administration make his presentation first but the board asks questions make their comments I know Miss Vic could not be here this evening and she had sent me an email and I told her that I would make the board aware
082of how she felt about this item keeping in mind most importantly this is a discussion only item tonight the board's not going to take any action with regard to this item the board will have to have a future agenda item where actual action by the board making a decision or decisions of how to spend the excess funds because at this point in time I understand that we're not in a scenario where we have no idea what the number is going to be but as Wesley alluded yeah we might we might still have several hundred thousand dollar swing one way or the other so I think for me I won't speak for anybody else I want to know pretty close what the number is before we start making these decisions because it's most people that have
083been paying attention know even though our projected water numbers if they hold for the remainder of the year we'll get some help we still are under water on our budgeting and we'd already spent significant money out of the general fund and so we're real tight on being at the board number and at a healthy number financially for that so that's not to say that the board can't make a decision down the line to spend some from the general fund but we don't have a lot of leeway there if we want to keep the fund balance and arranged that's what the boards wanted to do before so that said Wesley I saw your name on this I saw George's name on it who's going to talk I'll start and then Wesley Phillips a number or two
084so so members of the board members of the public that are here this evening uh in our board packet um as Mr rustic said he took a lot of things I was going to say I appreciate that very much but just as a couple reminders um about this Bond project this was in the 2020 Bond project and one of the things uh that of course want to start with is is of course we're in an enviable position we're in a position where these projects were under budgeted on time and things like that so uh we're very very fortunate we've done everything that was in the 148 million dollar bond proposal that was presented to our community it passed 66 at the time in November of 2019 and so we have completed and or almost completed
085as Mr Freeman talks as our last project is the uh the Middle School renovation so we've done everything uh that we said and so what I wanted just to to remind folks about in the board and those listening about is is that included though we were have been able to do some additional items that made sense to do in the bidding in the process and that included for example um the the Technology Center so we had a certain amount in our bond proposal but not near the amount that was needed to complete the building the former emsi building that we now have are Information Technology Center in as well as our training center for the staff and our Horizons program our non-traditional high school program that is now has its own home that was formally
086in horrible buildings and things like that and so having that there and having that in Under One Roof and with with new roof new hvacs was phenomenal to have that building so that that has been completed signed and delivered we also remember um in the Fine Art area had uh the request for a band practice a lot and and served also the Dual Purpose for more parking at our theater in front of the high school that was done as an alternate you remember and when we bid out the Career Tech Center it was done so it's been completed we have that now it's been used already for a full season we also had as an alternate widening the the drive in front of the high school that we now have at least now a lane
087for temporary parking things like that so that was in addition uh to our project so we're thrilled about that fine arts equipment was part of it but not did not make it and but Mr rumhoffer has been able to do that more equipment in the Fine Arts area I don't have the detail of everything but included with fine arts equipment with some renovations to the pack that we were able to do so that that has was bid and we're able to do those two you might recall um Spring Valley Elementary School being able to improve the front drive and have that connected in the drop and then a road built in the back for egress as well so we were able we've done that as well because it's just a really a pitch need for
088it with all the Spring Valley Road improvements that were being done by TxDOT and things like that and finally in what Mr Freeman just talked about on one of the things that caught my mind was the front of the of the middle school that wasn't necessarily at all talked about until now and with the renovation in the front the front parking lot and the things like that so that that will also be completed in part of it and so very again thankful that we were able to do that we are as I said in this position but frankly this normally happens later it normally happens when all really all bills are paid and then you do have a solid numbers Mr rustic said having a solid number is critical all the projects I've been a
089part of this is probably number the fifth overall bond in my career going through and deciding happens at The Bitter End at the very very end when you really have paid the bills but it's good to talk about it and maybe part of it was triggered on yes we have a lot of needs other needs in the district but also would like to because of the nature of that with uh with inflation and construction and so yeah it's fine we do need to talk about it and start getting in hearing from the board um in the community about what some of the priorities could be I would certainly wish that number were higher I'm looking here without my glasses but it looks like it's 5.6 to 6 million dollars where we stand in as Mr
090Brooks said that could waver a little bit but we're not expecting major major changes from the final Closeouts for River Valley Middle School for Park Hill Chapel Park and the CTE Edition because we're very very close to to finalizing those and so that's kind of a rough number so now let me talk real quickly about the the bond steering committee back then our our strategic planning uh what occurred um in in summary the number of 148 million dollars was chosen we were able then to reduce our tax rate a little bit present that to the public in the bond pass but cut from that was uh specifically the last item out of 10 was some of the athletic uh improvements and that included locker room expansions uh mainly locker room expansions and some remodeling of
091the current high school and so um that was not included in the 148 million dollar Bond we learned that from some some surveying we had done earlier in the summer before the bond with our community about tolerance and dollar numbers and things like that in projects Athletics are tough too there's in the future all of athletic type of expenditures would have to be a separate item on a referendum we can no longer put them together like I just mentioned 148 total million dollars was our bond if you have anything with Fine Arts and or Athletics they'd have to be separated and voted on separately by the public and so those are what's what are called Bond referendums and so what um Mr Freeman and and Brad Shelton athletic director and in consultation with our architect
092Huckabee and just looked at some options and so let me start there if you're looking in your board packet and Miss win if you could pull that up uh for the public there uh let's just start this was potential locker room practice gym editions just a rough drawing this would be basically if you're looking at the arena of Midway high school to the left of that there's a little bit we're looking at using if we could every inch of the property that we have there at Midway high school and looking at this reasoning the behind the practice gymnasium is we actually have less gym space and a break you know at Midway high school than we did when we were at uh the current Midway Middle School it has three gyms whereas this uh we
093have the arena in another gym and so that always has been in the back of the Mind as we've grown as a district at some point locker rooms locker rooms haven't changed since the school was built it was built and designed for about 1800 students I mean you know in terms of the locker rooms we have 2 600 students we have more participate participants in all of our Sports and so again that's just like squeezing in classrooms you're squeezing in locker rooms and so that's why just briefly why that discussion was there and why it bubbled up to one of the top 10 things of a possible bunt so I just wanted to be clear and so as I said there you go go there you have in your board packet um it's when if
094you'll go to the next page with some of the costs I think Mr Brooks was talking about them Mr Freeman's been talking about them I don't know if you can okay thank you just looking at the practice Jam again there this is not our competition it's with seating but maybe about a volleyball locker room expansion there for JV and varsity uh football locker room possibility team meeting rooms and so you can see some of the different options down there if you did them all that 9.4 9.5 million and breaking them out uh as well and so there's different costs and so these are preliminary preliminary cost estimates they haven't been of course uh bid we don't have a contractor uh on staff doing this at this particular time they're just uh some rough estimates and
095so that is as you can see really uh would be uh pick and choose if you will we don't have the dollars to do all all of all of that at 9.5 million dollars Mr rustic is correct in looking at our general fund we did spend some general fund dollars last year that was just audited that the auditor presented to you part of that went in was was I believe about 1.7 million in fund balance expenditures last school year for Capital Improvements and so you do we do have to look at that I appreciate that um discussion of being careful and cognizant of of our own General dollars if any of them could be used so that's there other things though that kept bubbling up and so Ms Wayne if you'll go good was just
096being in tune to the community being in tune to our ptas to groups was I'm not sure which one you have up good the pricing for playgrounds and so again Mr Freeman after we did construct Chapel Park and constructed Park Hill and worked with two different vendors for playgrounds and went through those yes we're very proud of those and we know that playgrounds do need improvements across all of the districts and so again these were just quotes not bid numbers there's correct me if I'm wrong if I'm wrong Mr Freeman a couple of main vendors main construction that build these right right yeah so if we went this route of course we'd go through a process put it out for competitive seal proposal and go from there but this is rough estimates of what could
097be needed again we wouldn't want to go back we'd want to work with each campus each PTA uh get some student input it'll be my advice my recommendation about the actual design of the playground you know build up to what we did I had a committee of students that helped with Park Hill in Chapel Park when they were designed so again it's just but some hearing so far what was said some things that might need to be done so as you can see that total estimate is 1.7 almost 1.8 million dollars for um the other six elementary schools in the district I wouldn't call it a hard number but it's a good estimate right Mr Freeman okay and then finally uh that's in the board packet we had some discussion though about digital signage across
098the district and so again it's all being Equitable looking at campuses and areas that have digital signs that type of Technology it's better and better every time there's a Year's robot and so we've been working with the same company that for example we've just recently replaced the scoreboard at Panther stadium daktronics and daktronics has uh was able to give us some quotes at looking at our district Marquee that's right there on Mars drive and um Hewitt Drive as well as looking at as you can see some of these other Spring Valley Castle on South Bosque Woodway things like that for for digital signage we're able to do signage for example River Valley Middle School we would look at that at Midway Middle School under its renovation I think with its renovation package things like that
099but so that that as you can see a number not as large as some of the other numbers 280 thousand dollars but I'm sure there have been other things that again this was just a start to the process of looking at and beginning to get some dollar amounts right for for consideration uh where we are but I think I wish the number was 10 12 million dollars at this time but it but it's just not and so we are going to have to prioritize and make some decisions the board will uh about how to expend those let me just remind everybody too remember these are dollars that have to be spent though on Capital Improvements these are not dollars that can go into the general fund and be spent in any other way um paid
100on teacher salaries or anything like that the the the bond program the bond funds is one fund and you spend it in for Bond projects approved by your voters as well as what's in excess what this board decides to to expend it on it's not part of the the general fund dollars to be used for the budget so um any questions so far before you go to Quest done yes yes I'm going to let the take the liberty of letting the board know what Miss Vic is about this and then question because obviously she's not here to ask questions but I want to get this out and then the board can ask questions make comments and then we'll hear from the folks that have signed up to speak to this agenda item so miss Vic
101eliminating the numbers because y'all got the numbers in front of you she says that she would do this with the excess Bond proceeds renovate all the playgrounds renovate the lockers to create the new volleyball locker room build the addition for the new football locker room that totals roughly 5.55 million if we've got additional money beyond that and there's enough of it there like another million build the team meeting Edition her view is she is fine with spending from the general fund to pay for the Marquee expense as she expresses it she strongly believes all the schools need to updated and inclusive playgrounds that's definitely her first priority that would benefit many students many families um she knows we need and want a new gym but she thinks the locker rooms are needed now definitely for
102future growth she knows the kids would feel better in the bigger spaces and that message would be sent home by doing that part of it she mentions that she knows we've had theft issues and the additional locker room space would help and that her view would be that ultimately the new practice gym would be for our next bond package she doesn't specify time frame from her viewpoint of when that would be but that's uh that's what Susan had to say about this and so very good questions from the board for the administration or comments or discussion from the board on this greater earlier today where we were going just reviewing the history of the bond package and the mission of the facility study committee that went through a deep dive of the district you know
103top to bottom end to end was to accommodate future existing and future growth we are all of these things are great I would love to see us do all of these things I don't I think they're all fabulous presentations but at the time when we create when that package was created we did not have enough space for the kids that we had and the kids we had coming so some of these Capital Improvements like like roads and and playgrounds and things like that that incredibly important but that committee was tasked to prioritize things as I correct me if I'm wrong but but to make extra room and as you've said a couple of times Dr kazanus the locker room project was just as much of a priority three years ago as everything else but we
104only had so many funds that we could put towards it and it was a tough decision at the time I felt like a parent being told I've got to cut my baby's arms and legs off to fit the Cradle and we've been Brad has been very very gracious and very patient but we've we've been saying for a long time we know your your athletes need space as much as everybody else needs space but at that time it was a 12 million dollar addition we didn't have it then we haven't had it yet we don't have it now so um I'm not committed to a decision tonight obviously since we're not making one I think Miss Vic made some great points I just wanted to offer that historical perspective thank you can I ask a question
105real quick the the on the signage question you said Midway Middle School but are we what you're looking at um I'm guessing Hewitt the digital sign at Hewitt is already a daktronic sign or is it just one that we don't feel needs replacing but it's digital already so that's why it's not included okay that was and spiegelville as well are they how old is the one on on Mars it was what's the what's the expected lifespan or uh TV because you can replace certain equipment but I will also say we went with a much more affordable um Hardware provider and so we also get what we paid for and there's also been a lot of conflict between the local sign installer and the hardware company pointing fingers at each other of where the problems lie
106um so the installer says that the Hardware's fault answered and then the partner says it's not it is not a warranty issue so if we were to do this is that the same that the same system would be on every campus would use their kind of install their own equipment and make contact for it so whether it's the installers called or the hardware fault they uh thank you and so that is why that says replace it with diatonics as opposed to we could spend less money just preparing the current equipment okay I'll add two just for transparency so you guys are aware I had I'd had a parent back in October ask me and I forwarded the question on to Dr kazanus and to and to Buddy Mr Freeman um about lighting behind the sort
107of between the stadium and the high school back along Old Hewitt um Lots times banned kids cheerleaders song You Know walking through there you know after a game there's just a concern they've had as an ongoing inside they had given me some ballpark costs on that which was 30 to 45 000 probably to do that lighting I don't know if that's something we wanted to throw in here or not but I wanted at least let you all know that I have that conversation and get that out there so I'm glad you brought that one up too this is another thing maybe and we didn't price it but and it's not on the list but of course some of the areas of the district are owned by the district when I'm what I'm referring to is
108roads and so old Hewitt Drive is the districts that in front of the high school not not what Big Creek Construction is doing in Mars Drive you're doing a great job with that finally you know through the city that's happening but turning into the high school that old Hewitt all the way down to the baseball softball fields and eventually to the soccer field is a district so at some point the district has to consider that road [Music] you always have and I'm not minimizing what Mr wits exactly right minimizing that I'm just saying there's lighting needs in the district plus there will continue to be Paving and parking lot type of issues that that uh either for this excess funds or future Bond projects and Roofing and HVAC yes but we did a lot of
109those yeah yeah and I didn't even mention those you're right but we did a did our due diligence on our Roofing and hvacs with this bunch so George what about additional cash in ins that that can only go towards debt to debt you can't take that out and apply it to a capital project the excess funds would have been used in the past and correct me if I'm around Mr Brooks of course to help us manage our tax rate with ins as well as being able then to use sometimes those dollars for prepayment of bonds or help us when we're managing the tax rate over the life span of a bond 20 years and it helps keep it balanced so that we don't ever have to raise the tax rate with with that unfortunately the
110state doesn't let us save up money and then go spend it they forced us to go take out a bond yes all you can do is as I said balance out your text right over over a period of time or paid the bond off earlier yeah it's unfortunate other comments questions from the board I have one more yes sir I just wanted I know that the auditor is gone but just take a look if you don't mind if you all of you have the book in front of you that look what he just passed out just as a reminder genkis I wanna I'm gonna hit this home the last thing that I do is this is Bond dollars and you do have a general fund amount but if you look at page five of the
111of the financial highlights that's what you go to with an audit page five if you look at the top four bullets you'll notice the fourth bullet one of the numbers or the phrases you always hear about in school districts is your fund balance get your savings account at your excess it's the rainy day fund and the state legislature calls it so it's ours so if you look at that that I don't want to say it's deceiving but it does say 30 of the general fund we have in fund balance 23 roughly 23.4 million dollars but if you'll flip over to page 13 of this book I just want to bring it to your attention if you look under column 10 the general fund at the bottom you'll you'll see where we have total fund balances
112of 20 this is the general fund of 24 million 109 488 but you'll also notice though that there is a a line I'm assigned assigned for for next year's budget which means the current budget we're in this is something new Auditors hadn't done before is they looked at the budget that we all that you approved with a 22-23 school year and that budget deficit is right there so it's not necessarily back to the bullet point four that you have 30 percent to spend because it you have to be very careful with that because we're monitoring that's why Mr Brooks went through the books to show you yes Ada average daily attendance is up water is a weighted average daily we're going to be getting you're going to be getting budget projections by February we always
113wait till about February March to begin showing you how we're doing on the budget that makes sense so um you'll also notice though for we do have Capital expenditures there 350 that's called the remember in the 400 000 for construction are um committed from balance amount of amounts and so we always commit those I know January Mr Brooks will come to you to look at those commitment amounts you could do things like that you could say committed amount and it could go to signage as you said it could go to a plan of upgrading playgrounds you could do that under the committed fund balances as well that's a possibility just not all at once like this particular in your board packet here showing you that we showed you having them all done at the same
114time the 1.7 1.8 million dollars okay does that make sense so is it really the number left is that almost 20 million dollar amount 19.7 so that's the the what's really left unassigned fund balance of the district from a process standpoint Mr board president what um obviously there's no action to take tonight but if if there were to be action to take what is it something where we would the administration would bring the recommendation to us or would we would we form some Committee of three of us and right I mean how would we do that the board I mean I think the board could ask the administration for a recommendation or for pricing or something on certain things yeah pricing absolutely but ultimately the board's decision so we would just put it on an
115agenda in the future for action for unused bond funds and then we would decide and make a motion and do whatever yeah I like what Thomas worded hers it would be I think collaborative I wouldn't want to say that would be necessarily one Administration recommendation okay that's right it would be collaborative work it might be better in a workshop setting instead of a regular meeting maybe but otherwise but looking through those and being able to see what projections are and add them up and see you know how close you get to what you have a Nexus okay um grants so things like playgrounds I mean are there State Federal Grant opportunities out there that we could pursue and then sometimes you may if you're in collaboration with your city we did explore um with the
116city of Woodway at Woodway Elementary but that was not able to be pursued for whatever reason you know in terms of qualifying for it and because that's shared land share or not land but shared with the city the Park yeah yeah the original one uh opportunities to monetize anything especially signage I mean they're just like we do with the stadium I mean it's a witch projects or signage science yeah we're sure sell rights to the playgrounds too I mean sure Dallas Cowboys right well that would be another thought is is there an opportunity to partner with the Education Foundation to go raise those funds with some kind of value add to our to our sponsors and that may be ideas some of some of our our guests may be bringing but but my takeaway is
117there are lots of different wallets we can consider looking at Beyond excess funds that's the right now the most accessible biggest pot of money we have in front of us but it's not the only option I really like what Miss Vick said she she and I have kind of are in agreement on that is the way she lines stuff out I would I would be on board with that in theory second comment would be I like the idea of the playground and I would love to take credit for this but a Community member is the one that told me this but if we are able to use some of the excess bond funds for the playgrounds then that would mean every campus at Midway got some big fit of the bond because right now you
118know certain campuses have not had benefit but High School Middle School River Valley Chapel Park Park Hill they all have had some benefit of them off but if we use some of this access bond funds for the playgrounds that need it all 11 campuses as well have had some money so I thought that was a really interesting point just throw that out there I like that anybody else I I do think it's interesting Dr K you mentioned that the the school the locker room facilities the high school were built sort of the expectation of a campus of about 1800 students I know that maybe conversations down the road about how many people are really in that building say six or eight years from now so depending on how many high schools we have in this
119District so I think that's a maybe something for us to consider as we weigh this too maybe not but maybe something to consider well I had to get too much credit to the guy that's retiring but I don't think that a workshop is a bad idea once we have a closer to more definitive numbers to have a focused discussion on all these matters so yeah we were able to get to 148 million and with a lot of discussions so yeah but a bunch of that took place at regular board meetings Pam as you recall to long board meetings anybody else are we ready for public comment let's hear it all right public comment if I don't get your name right it's because some of you write almost as poorly as I do um so bear
120with me um you know we're going to get the timer up yeah I was going to give them a minute there we go we're we're getting there uh first and I'm just going to go in the order that folks signed up so uh Wendy Williams Got The Look of the drawers was at the top should do that usually SW people are obviously right that's right that's what I'm saying thank you for being patient and waiting for us um that he's in the right place because last year after Christmas break he went skipping into school and I'm not sure that many kids do that so um and I just appreciate everything um I want to open up by thanking all of you guys for your dedication um Dr big man has made a good point earlier
121that you guys are really always good stewards of our Tech helpers I don't because I've worked in the district I see it in action I've seen its Connection in the classrooms and so I just appreciate that um it is because you um of what you have done and it's such a wonderful job in partnering with the community and seeking out feedback we're comfortable to tonight um so hopefully I do um and in the spirit of giving and caring and sharing you know we are in that season of giving hopefully you decide to give to um and as a parent who's been keeping up with the bond kind of funded projects across Midway um again thank you for your time and the energy that you put into all of the projects my family and I are
122committed to counseling Creek Elementary and making it the best experience for all students to attended over the years there are some areas that I've noticed that have needed to be improved first is the name for covered walkways I've gotten report on I've been going into the school making sure that my child is dry and having to go back and change being good work at the same time so I do see that covered walkways is a huge need in our school um let's see also the second issue is the need for playground structures to be upgraded um I appreciate that this response to that um our campuses autonomy campus and making sure that we have Equitable facilities across our campus is a is a huge need for us and if it's something that we we've noticed
123and then finally I'm going to advocate for digital funds for our campus being located off you at Drive our campus have the opportunity to reach a larger audience and share our community events with the community along Hewitt Drive I've seen that Child Apart as a child of parking thing to do and I believe that our campus would benefit from it and I'll add your ideas of being able to offer from that as well to be able to hear something incredible opportunity to make such kind of improvement and I wanted to make sure that I shared my input as a parent and Community member thank you for all of your tireless work and your dedication to the district and your willingness to allow parents let me thank you laughs next on the list is Jody Kopp
124c-o-p-p I think I I thought it might have been capped but I look at the oh and Jody and thought yeah I think that's right she's getting your batteries she's getting here you got you got a second to warm up our last speaker talking about our tax rate we traditionally had one of the lowest tax rates in McLennan County involves so as opposed to people thinking ours is always one of the highest yes yeah we're traditional one of the lowest ones so after this we're going to do a fine School s Workshop so please stick around that's almost as exciting as the annual audit report okay sorry yes sir well howdy my name is Jody Kopp and I'm the proud father of two amazing boys that use wheelchairs for their Mobility Calvin is a freshman
125at Midway high school in Lawson is a fifth grader at cuet elementary our family has been a part of the Midway system for 11 years as Calvin dance school at age three due to their rare mitochondrial medical condition a condition so rare that roughly 20 known cases in the world and Callan and Lawson are the two oldest my wife Melissa and I have been trailblazing and advocating for their care since birth sadly I'm not here from my boys this evening their time for accessible playgrounds in Midway ISD campuses has come and gone I'm here to be a voice for future wheelchair users coming behind our boys that will hopefully have an opportunity to interact and play with their peers rather than having to sit on the sidelines our boys have attended Woodway and Hewitt Elementary's
126through the years we've had countless teachers apologize to us for not being able to include the boys more that's not saying they didn't include the boys and we absolutely applaud their efforts it just wasn't as easy due to the materials used on these playgrounds Colin often came home with splinters in his hands and knees from the wood chips used at Woodway Elementary due to his high pain tolerance we sometimes didn't see them for days until they would blister while if you in elementary he would constantly get stuck in the pea gravel and be unable to move his wheelchair without assistance completely hindering his ability to play with his friends and peers Lawson which he faces this challenge now at Hewitt Elementary as he was moved to the Hewitt campus to have access to the accessible
127playground for his final year in elementary school so far he's tipped his wheelchair over three times while just trying to be a kid and play Zombies with his friends my wife was a part of the committee that worked hard to obtain the food playground but her voice was diminished by those worrying typical children wouldn't have anything to do on a playground for a kid in a wheelchair if you haven't seen a playground in person I'm sorry to go see the two-foot drop-offs in narrow sidewalks the areas where some of the differing materials meet and obstacles this creates or the fact that wheelchair user is only able to access one part of the grant But please understand I'm not here to overly criticize what has been done because the playground is certainly more accessible than the
128previous one but immediate safety improvements could be fixed now in certain areas with the excess bond funds we love the Ada but the Ada is a minimum and some of the materials currently being used are difficult for wheelchair users such as wood chips and pea gravel even though these materials are approved by the Ada I'm aware of the other materials such as poured in place cost more but they also tend to last longer and are better for everyone we've been told for years that a plane was in the works to build truly accessible and inclusive playgrounds to children of all abilities can play together which helps build lasting friendships opportunities for funds for playgrounds are not easy to come by and it seems to be the perfect time to use the excess bond funds for
129this purpose in a very real way some of the best education begins on the playground I feel my voice by not having a voice early enough so I'm here tonight to be a voice for those coming behind us while the numbers of wheelchair users seem tiny in comparison to the general population they are indeed here and just want to be kids I appreciate y'all's time and I'd love to hear inclusive whenever Miss Vic said that and hearing from some of y'all thank you very much because it's needed for all these kids thank you thanks thank you [Applause] all right next on the list uh Trudy Alcorn hi again I'm going to follow it too because I timed out are you ready uh closer Dr kazana it's president marusic and distinguished members of the board my
130name is Trudy Alcorn I'm the parent of a fourth grade student at spiegelville elementary I also have a junior at the high school and a college freshman who graduated from Midway I would like to begin by thanking all of you for your service to our community and more importantly to our students your leadership and dedication to our district has made the Midway the highly respected institution it is today when we moved to Central Texas five years ago choosing a school district was our first priority although there are many excellent districts in the area my husband and I were very impressed with the Midway system and all the amazing opportunities it has to offer Even in our short time here we have seen Midway constantly grow and prove largely due to the generous bond election in
1312019. I'm here this evening to speak towards the use of those remaining funds along with you I am passionate about providing the best educational experience possible for my children and all the students within this district with that being said I'm very active on both campuses volunteering through the PTA I've seen firsthand all the improvements made to the high school and the direct benefit to the students I now respectfully ask that you consider allotting much needed funds to the Improvement of several Elementary campuses specifically outdoor areas and playgrounds speegleville is a small tight-knit community but unfortunately it's one of the older facilities in the district and would greatly benefit from some much needed upgrades I am very proud of the impressive new facilities that Midway has recently built or remodeled but I too feel there's an
132equity issue among our campuses the playground area spigoville is extremely excuse me extremely outdated and frankly in my opinion a safety concern in its current state the area is not accessible to students with mobility issues children literally have to be carried to the playground by an adult after being made aware of an audit by the Lee Park and play it shows many areas in which the playground equipment is outdated and in dire need of upgrade or repair as with Castleman another outdoor Improvement that would be highly beneficial to our students would be a covered walkway I have dropped my son off many times in bad weather and watched the staff do their best keeping the kids dry with umbrellas that's just not a productive way to start your day the final item I'd like to
133bring to your attention are several other exterior issues at spigoville that have not been addressed we have areas where bricks are missing from the building and laying on the ground several spots with exposed irrigation lines and large sinkholes in areas that are easily accessible to children all of these items are a safety concerns about children and adults alike now that we have the funds available I again respectfully ask that you consider allocating money's Monies to spiegelville and the other elementaries that are in need I understand we are small and off the beaten path however it sends me to see a spiegelville could truly benefit from improvements while other campuses are featured in news articles and social media I truly appreciate this board and your Timeless dedication to our schools and I thank you for your
134time and attention tonight addressing these Community issues thank you thank you all right Mary Zane or Jane Zane I had it right the first time Nelson it's been James I know my life so either one ready uh good evening my name is Mary Zane Nelson I'm the parent of a second grader and a Pre-K student in Castleman Creek Elementary I first want to express my gratitude for your leadership in this district and your dedication to our students in this community I'm a new parent in the district however I have a spouse who works in the district for over a year now um and one of the things I appreciate most about this district is the way that you all seek our input and you want to hear from us that is much appreciated and it
135is powerful um I'm a licensed clinical social worker and I have a background of many years in school social work and so I just wanted to share my input from that lens um one of the things I'm most passionate about is ensuring all students have access to the things they need to be successful and one of the things that research has pointed to time and time again is the vast importance of that recess and outdoor time having have an improving student social and emotional capacities as well as their Readiness to learn multiple Studies have pointed to how recess improves children's attention to academic tasks but more importantly recess is linked to improved classroom Behavior an improved teacher morale in that case a research demonstrates that fidgeting and misconduct increases the longer a child goes without
136recess and following recess there is a drastic decrease in these same behaviors one of my boys is a classic example of one who desperately needs recess to be successful in school recess and time on the playground not only allow him to get the Wiggles out but also allow him to get his sensory needs met I can visibly see the calming effect that that outdoor play has on him and I am certain his teacher would say it's the same I always say a big prayer when it's a rainy day for her um additionally recess facilitates children's Social Development and social competence recess provides students with an Avenue to practice social skills conflict resolution peer-to-peer negotiations and more these same skills we utilize daily got their start on the playground I could spend all night talking to
137you about the vast importance of recess and outdoor play but the final point I want to make is one about school pride I'm proud to send my children to Castleman Creek we chose that school specifically um and I want their experience to be Equitable to those of other campuses um our current reality is that with our playgrounds they're not up to standard they are constantly needing to be repaired they aren't accessible to all of the students at Castleman Creek right now and they're too small for the size of our population I want to strongly encourage the board to allocate some of the remaining bond funds to improving the playgrounds at Castleman and the others in the district that are also in need of repair thank you so much for your time thank you thank you
138foreign next I have Crystal Lowry Dr kazanes president and distinguished members of the board thank you for having us tonight and for considering our feedback I know that you guys are faced with some really difficult decisions like many of you have said all of these projects are worthy and um I know we'd all like to do them all and so I'm going to kind of piggyback on what many people have shared already tonight but um my name is Crystal Lowry and my daughter is a third grader at South Bosque Elementary School and I've had the privilege of serving on our PTA board for the last four years I'm here tonight on behalf of our campuses families to ask you to consider allocating a portion of the excess bond funds to the update and maintenance of
139the outdoor equipment on our older Elementary campuses such as South Bosque the new schools and Renovations within the district have been incredible and my hope is that with just a fraction of the remaining funds available we can make necessary improvements to the rest of our elementary campuses and allow them to also be touched by the 2020 bond election how fast he opened in 1990 and our school Marquee is original to the building its foundation was repaired with PT PTA funds in 2000 2007 that it again is leaning considerably and has not only become an eyesore but is also a bit of a safety hazard at this point as new digital signs have been installed across the district we've realized the impact of our campus not having such a sign and the capabilities that come with
140that in this age providing digital information has become the expectation and such a sign would allow improved engagement with not only our families but the Greater Community and would also allow for information distribution the highlighting of student and staff staff achievements and like we've talked about some tonight the opportunity to further fundraise and recognize our sponsors and communicate the use of donated funds at both the campus and District level on the opposite side of our school is our playground and we're fortunate also to have an adoptive playground but its functionality has really deteriorated in recent years Although our special needs population has increased considerably the playground equipment and the ground surface needs updating at our campus we're fortunate to have very involved and generous families at South Bosque but the 54 000 budget for the
141digital sign and the 330 000 proposal for the updated playground Falls well outside of our PTA fundraising capabilities and we have tried maintenance of outdoor spaces to create Equity among the campuses across the district seems more appropriately addressed by District funding I know that creating such Equity is a priority for our district and allocating again just a fraction of the excess funds would allow greater consistency across Midway with with 4 000 elementary students most of whom spend at least six years on their home Elementary campus providing functional outdoor spaces is a necessity and that should be a priority for our district at this time so thank you all for your consideration thank you thank you [Applause] thank you all right uh Becky cram good evening Dr kazanis president rustic and distinguished members of our board
142thank you so much for having us here this evening my name is Becky kram and I have two students at South Bosque Elementary in third grade in kindergarten two little girls I am also an active member of the PTA board and a member of the Midway Education Foundation board and I'm here to you tonight to talk to you a little bit about um specifically South Bosque a need that we have I know we've touched on it as we said already a little bit this evening different needs that we have and you guys have huge decisions to make on how you want to allocate those but specifically I'd like to talk to you about the need for a digital signage I know Crystal's already touched a little bit about our current sign and there are several
143um schools in the district that already have digital signage in place I believe six of the 11 and we are asking that you consider that for South Bosque of allocating a little bit of those fun towards our school as you know also South Bosque is actually the only facility right now that has a one-sided sign even the other schools that are looking for digital signs to upgrade they all have two-sided signs and ours is one that only has one side and why else do we want to have a new digital sign we want to promote and enhance ourselves within the community this would give us the opportunity as you know with covid and with all the different restrictions we have in place not many people can enter schools as much as they used to as
144frequently as they used to this would allow us to showcase our staff more in photos images Flyers things of that nature as well as our students that are approved of course to be shown additionally we want to engage with our parents and families more I know many of you have seen the very long lines that can form in front of this building going into South Bosque and all the way up up to the school and it would allow us opportunity to promote different events coming up send out reminders information and we could do it real time digitally we don't have to wait as of right now we create Flyers we print them and we distribute them so it actually would also give us more funding within our PTA to to use for other things versus
145printing those flyers and our parents use a significant amount of time to print those in color and you can't see those when you print them because PTA doesn't have the funds to print those in in color this would allow us the chance to Showcase those additionally we could use it to fundraise for events as Tracy touched on earlier we could use it to recruit to get fundraising for sponsors and we could also use it to thank our sponsors and finally equality between the campuses as we said there are 11 campuses six of them have these digital signage has this digital signage already and we would like to be considered to have that as well we pride ourselves within the District of all of our schools being equal and I know during the rezoning efforts that
146we really push that all of our schools are the same they're the best schools you can't go wrong at any schools that you were at so I would like the opportunity to see equal among all the schools with the digital signage as well thank you for your time and your leadership thank you very much and Jennifer getterman Dr kissanas president rustic and distinguished members of the board I want to thank you for your service and your time to listen to us tonight my name is Jennifer getterman I'm the parent of three students at South Boston Elementary School I also serve on the Education Foundation and on the PTA and serve as the substitute teacher for Midway ISD I want to talk to you tonight about our playground at South Bosque we currently have two playgrounds
147a large playground and an Adaptive playground as well as a track that are utilized by every single student on our campus Pre-K 3 to 5th grade the track was funded by the PTA in the early 2000s the swing structure on the large playground is original to the campus from 1990. the in the early 2000s a zipline was added to the playground in 2003 the Adaptive playground and the surface was installed the surface is currently the original surface from 2003. um in 2018 the PTA funded the canopy over the large playground and just last year the Education Foundation funded the musical instruments on our adaptive playground to give our wheelchair-bound students a spot that they can enjoy there are safety concerns on our adoptive playground that need addressing the surface on the Adaptive playground is uneven
148and it's coming up which makes it difficult for our four wheelchair-bound students to enjoy the swings can't be used as intended because they are missing safety straps and harnesses to secure those students and the weird wheelchair accessible swing is missing chains in class to secure and anchor the wheelchairs we need updates to make our playgrounds comparable to the others in the districts the precedent that the PTA fundraising will maintain and repair our track and playgrounds has led to years of delayed repairs and created a safety risk for all our students through replacement of our track exceeds exceeds our allotted budget to the point where additional fundraising beyond what we currently raise is needed over several years I'm current bid to replace our track is sixty thousand dollars our PTA fundraising supports projects are already in
149place and our goal is to continue to fund those projects instead of taking them away to fund and maintain our playgrounds and tracks our donors also feel that the PTA funding should be used for student experiences and teacher support rather than maintaining our playgrounds every PTA is limited to the opportunities for fundraising with some communities having significantly more limitations the national ptas website states that ptas frequently turn over their funds to school administrations such as basic such Basics as books equipment and maintenance not to mention extras such as playground equipment and vending machines the undue burden on ptas and communities to fund and maintain something that we feel is a district concern is not feasible thank you so much for your time and consideration thank you very much and last but not least Ashley Beck
150nald it was a gas it was a guess instructor events and president rustic and members of the board my name is Ashley becknold I am the parent of a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten student at Castleman Creek Elementary as well as a sixth grader at Midway Middle School I want to first start by opening and thanking you for your dedication to Midway ISD we know the past few years have brought a lot of challenges and hardships as well as changes to Midway but your steadfast leadership your commitment to our students and staff your compassion as well as other things have led us through it across the country we know that school boards are divided on lots of issues luckily we have you and your Unity your willingness to collaborate and we thank you for the stability that
151you bring to our district I'm here tonight to provide Community input regarding the remaining funds from the 2020 bond election as a parent and Community member one of the things I want to always make sure we are considering of course is equity as you've heard across the district the bond election has made incredible improvements like Dr casinos was um speaking of earlier we have our new elementary schools our new Renovations of Midway Middle School the CTE Wing at the high school and additional projects across the district these changes continue to elevate our district and make us one of the best public school districts in the state of Texas one area I believe needs to be considered is the Improvement of the elementary campus playgrounds across the district but specifically at Castleman Creek Elementary built in
1522009 Castleman Creek is a beautiful campus but one thing that has always been lacking is a quality playground that's built to accommodate the size of our population and its varying needs currently the majority of our students will play in the bus Circle or even in the field by the playgrounds instead of on the playground and following the completion of Chapel Park and Park Hill I've been made aware of an audit conducted by the Lee Park and play as you were I'm speaking of earlier and while that this audit was not a pass or fail audit it was brought to our attention that there were lots of repairs that need to be made I'm talking with Dr glazeman I'm on the PTA board as well I know that there have been multiple work orders put in
153for our playground to tighten bolts or even replace bolts um Stakes coming out of the ground so multiple structures that have been needing quite some improvement in my professional life I'm a Early Childhood specialist I'm a certified teacher Early Childhood through fourth grade and I work at the region 12 service center I have a master's degree in educational Administration and my career presses me to advocate for equity in all instructional materials for students and here I am advocating for Equitable access on our playground thank you [Applause] questions comments from the board hey buddy would all these be like summertime or be ready by next fall the like playground projects if we appropriate the money form closed captioning not available is that something that's been talked about at the community level and we can talk about
154in Workshop time what what the kids would do while while sections of the playground were under construction but we know Castleman Creek will play in the bus Circle yeah dude where you could best Japan right so without this standards and Equipment a lot of the equipment that was small just what they could afford sure in longevity of that cheaper equipment do we know the length of a construction time depending on what needs to be done is it several weeks several months I I think Sean said that three three four months he could get all this done a lot of the equipment has to be ordered right there's a delay right now right so that's another problem sure the numbers that that were on our packet for each school is that does that include things like
155surfacing or you know drainage issues or anything else or is it just so it sort of covers everything and are we are we are we met with each school to make sure we're confident because I know some of the emails okay okay so this is one vendors here's what we said okay so it's close in other words yes but okay that's fair one thing I know about our principals and teachers is that y'all are Innovative and fluid and know how to Pivot um but I would charge our principles and maybe PTA boards to start thinking creatively about where we would put the kids while these things were under construction so they can get their wiggles out I'm a big believer in that yeah the last thing I'll say is I'm I'm incredibly moved by what
156Mr Green said that this one working on these playgrounds will make sure that every campus in our district has benefited from from the bond project um you know I think um yeah you all make a really strong case thank you for coming by the way yes I appreciate it anybody else I'm just thankful we're in a sweet spot where we're big enough where we can do projects on this scale but small enough that we can keep our library contents consistent that we can that we can be the same across the district we've talked to a lot of folks from bigger school districts but it's just not not visible and so like where we are indeed on behalf of the board for everybody that stayed and wanted to speak um thank you it's incredibly important and
157clear incredibly powerful to have the opportunity to hear from members from the community and uh we appreciate folks staying so late to do that so thank you and you're welcome to stay for the rest of the meeting [Laughter] laughs thank you so much yeah right exactly yeah foreign okay two okay uh consideration items the consent agenda we have minutes from a number of our meetings including special call meetings we have our board policy eie uh some early graduation requests our new club that was presented last month our calendar our audit we've already talked about the one budget amendment our grants that Susie had the pleasure to present glad she was here to do that proving construction delivery methods and then the resolution regarding the exchange of real property any board member wish to remove any
158item from the consent agenda election room number 11. we will pull number 11 and number seven please and number seven anybody else if not do we have a motion to approve consent agenda items one through six eight nine ten and twelve so Move Motion by Mr Alford second second by Mr Witt all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed that motion carries unanimously MISD calendar call it I just I'm looking at here to make sure we got the date for Good Friday corrected in that that we had discussed a couple of meetings ago is that right yes it's highlighted on the 20th it's March 29th then that's what that is okay and then we left the Monday in April so there's a there's there's at least a day break in April right I see
159that okay that's all that's all my question was just making sure very good anybody else on seven if not do we have a motion to approve consent agenda item seven so moved motion by Mr Witt second second by Mr Tullis all in favor say aye aye aye aye any opposed admission carries unanimously uh Mr Tullis yeah I um on number 11 what projects are we talking about going with CSP that would be none at this point that would be none it's not it's not necessarily to be approved that was just in case the board approved tonight or wanted to prove something okay because it it's not just for future efforts a couple of things I heard talked about talked about uh working directly with different vendors whether it's uh on the signage or the playgrounds
160you know those obviously don't sound like csps so anyway I just that that was my confusion it was in just in case so we do we need we need to improve it approve it do we just drop it off the consent agenda my view was and I was hopeful someone was going to pull it because if nobody did I was going to because I'm with you I think in light of everything we don't need to take action on 11 tonight we will have plenty of opportunities going forward to with the administration's input and recommendation look at construction delivery methods for whatever the projects are everybody good with that yeah no objection all right then we will defer on 11 and we are otherwise then through with the consent agenda we have One Professional recommendation to
161approve I'm sorry I was looking at the wrong line Thank you thank you you were correct um I wouldn't have enough on the page so um on the addendum do we have a motion to approve the professional recommendations as presented second second by Mr Alford any discussion if not all in favor say aye aye aye any opposed that motion carries unanimously um we don't need to go into closed session on any Personnel Matters from you right okay right answer are we ready for closed session otherwise okay so it uh or do you all want to take a short break though I'm trying to take a quick little break and we're going to take a five minute recess then we'll come back are we gonna go straight from right to close well we can go ahead
162and announce we're going in closed session now if y'all want to do that yeah we're not going to do it in here okay I'm sorry I misunderstood I thought we were coming back in here okay so what we will do then is at 9 25 p.m we will go into closed session under Texas government code chapter 551.074 and 551.0821 all right and we'll be across the hall but everybody take care of your personal needs before you go over there well all right I'm gonna jump again thank you for the permission yeah I want permission