001Good evening. The time is 6 pm on October 16, 2025. I call this regular meeting of the Rockport Fton Independent School District to order. Let the record show that a corner of board members is present. That this meeting has been duly called and notice that this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. Begin the meeting with prayer led by Trustee. Dear heavenly father, we thank you for this community that we call home. For the families, the teachers, and the students who make such a special place. As we gather tonight, we ask for your wisdom and guidance over every discussion and every decision made in this room. Help us work together with open hearts and clear minds, keeping the best interests of our children at the
002center of what we do. Bless our educators who give their time and care to shape young lives, our staff who support them daily, and our parents who walk beside them. Lift up those who serve and protect our schools in our city. May you grant them safety and strength. And let all that is done here tonight honor you and strengthen the spirit of unity within our district and our town. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. >> Amen. Please remain standing for the pledge of allegiance and the Texas pledge. Thank you very much, cadetses. This evening, our color guard is led is led by cadet Colen, I'm sorry, Colin Mole. Cadet Mole is a third-year student of the Navy Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. He is a command p command chief petty officer of the unit.
003He commands the armed exhibition drill team, armed regulation drill teams and color guard. He is part of the academic team and physical fitness teams. Cadet Mole plans to join plans on joining the Navy in an engineering field. He plans on a 20-year career in the Navy. We also have with us Cadet Nicholas Schultton. Cadet Schultton is the fourth year of the is in his fourth year of the program. He is the academic team commander. He is also the community volunteer service manager. He that keeps track of the hours served. He is also a drone technician for the unit. Cadet Schultton plans on attending Texas A&M Corpus Christi to study aerospace engineering. He plans on working in the airport as an avionics technician. Thank you, gentlemen. All right, that brings us to agenda item four, district
004celebrations, Dr. Austin. It's so special. I'm coming all the way over here. So, this month we have two celebrations. October is National Principles Month. And tonight, I want to take a moment. You'll notice there's only two of them here. Uh to recognize our incredible leaders who guide our campuses every single day. Being a principal is not a job. It is a calling. It's early mornings. It's greeting students. It's late nights at games and performances and endless hours spent coaching teachers, comforting parents, believing in kids, writing tea tests, feedback. Um, and it's believing in kids who need someone to believe in them the most. Our principles, I often tell them they carry the weight of the world and every decision that shapes the culture of our campus. And they do it with heart, integrity, and a
005relentless commitment to student success. They are our instructional leaders, our culture builders, our crisis managers, and encouraers all rolled into one. So, to our principles, two of them are actually attending a dinner tonight with our next celebrated group. Um, Dr. Carter, Miss Cox are being recognized at our region 2 Omni dinner tonight for principles of the month. Last year was Denise. Jerry, I promise you'll get your turn. Um, and we sent Miss Molly Adams with them to celebrate with them because I had somewhere to be tonight. And so, principles, thank you so much for all that you do, leading with our pirate core values and holding the line when things get hard. So, tonight we celebrate you. Come on up. So, as you guys take your seat, October is also National Human Resource Month or
006Texas Education Resource. There's all kinds of things out there. And I'd like to shine a light on one of the most demanding and sometimes I feel like least understood department which is human resources. Um and so the life of an HR director and team. Molly is at the dinner tonight but we have her team here with us. Our HR team lives in a world where every day is a balance of policy people and paperwork. Wouldn't you agree? And one moment they're onboarding a new teacher who's ready to change lives and the next they're navigating certification roles, benefit questions, and I look at Angela. Um, I don't even like to say this one. Investigations, staffing shortages, all usually before lunch. HR, they don't just manage people, you care for them. They are the steady voice on
007the other end of the phone because everybody knows when something goes wrong, they don't call the principles first, they call HR, right? And so, thank you for being the quiet champions and ensuring that every employee is valued. Our HR team, they always model grace under pressure. That's exactly how I would uh describe you guys. And so, it reminds us that strong souls start with strong uh people, and we're grateful for all of the countless, sometimes unseen hours that you guys put in. So, thank you. We have Angela and Chelsea. All right, that brings us to item number five, which is public comment. So, we do have someone to speak tonight, so I'll have to say this before. The board welcomes comments about the district from members of the public. Anyone who has signed up to
008speak in advance of the in advance of the meeting in accordance with the board procedures may do so at this time. The board asks that each participant's comments pertain to district business and be no longer than three minutes. In addition, the board has adopted policies to provide prompt and equitable resolution of complaints and concerns for employees, students, or their parents, as well as the general public. Copies of the district policies and procedures of public comment and filing complaints are available at the superintendent's office or on the RFISD school board web page at rfisd. us. And we have Kathy Kaine tonight. person, not a short person. All right. So, my name is Kathy Kaine. Um, first of all, I would like to thank um Dr. Austin for spending time with me and sharing details on the
009district finances. I also would like to thank her team for being responsive when questions have been asked. My concern today is the propensity of individuals to attack those who have questions. I asked via Facebook post for the cost per student by peer group instead of tax rate. Thanks again, Dr. Austin, for providing it. Of course, once that information was shared, it makes sense to see a comparison of the Mino cost per student since the requested two golden pennies are increasing that rate. I shared three. Did you know district supplied graphics in several rings? I didn't state which way I plan to vote. I didn't disparage the district. I asked for information. I don't control individual comments in public groups. I can only control what I post. A friend shared what Michaela posted about my family.
010The direct quote, "Individuals pushing negativity are allowed online. They bully, attack, and spread false information. I have a challenge for you, Michaela. Where in the post I made did I do any of those things? All I did was ask for a different metric to be shared, a metric I had discussed with Dr. Austin. In that same thread, JD Villa posted again a dread quote, "We should start a petition to have them move away. in your response, happy to buy the moving ban for all of them. I cannot begin to tell you how unprofessional that comment is. You're speaking as a school board member on an issue that is directly related to the district. Kenny, in my opinion, as a leader of this group, you should have stayed away from that post and not made any
011comment. This type of bullying behavior is by two of this school board is why people are afraid to ask questions. They fear retaliation. I'm not asking anyone to stop using social media. I'm asking elected officials to not attack taxpayers that are asking valid questions and clarifying points. Social media is a costeffective way to get the information out to the community. taking a post that asks for information that I, as a taxpayer, have a right to understand and calling my family bullies and offering to move us out of this district is beyond reprehensible. >> Thank you. And just a reminder for anyone in the community, uh any kind of questions, you can always email ask a pirate rfistd. us and the district will get uh back to you quickly. All right, that moves us to agenda
012item six, board of trustees report. Are there any committee reports? Nope. Then we'll move to 7A bond 2022 project update teal construction and clayome architects. I am a little bit taller. Okay. Uh evening. Um, let's go ahead and go right into the presentation. We'll try and keep it brief. I know sometimes I can get a little bit longwinded. I'll try and moderate that. Um, project status as of right now, the Rockport Fton High School additions and renovation project. Billing wise is 82% complete. Uh, we've authorized 32.01 million. And our current scheduled substantial completion is February 202. Um, and I'll let Jam talk about the work uh ongoing and so last month um got a lot of flooring down in our classrooms. Uh a lot of finishes happening um throughout the school. Um continuing installation of
013the elevator. Uh we've um got some concrete outside. Uh and we are continuing um some low voltage wiring and uh installing fixtures and a lot of um HBC work in our uh athletic area and moving progress along in there. And then coming up this month, um we'll continue to see a lot of those finishes going in. Um we'll start uh getting pinging down in corridors, starting on the second floor, working our way down. Um you see on the exterior of the building there's canopies going in and continue that work continuing a lot of the site work that is remaining uh out there. Um pushing to to get uh our classroom open. Um we did have storefront doors show up this week which is exciting and so they'll continue to install that uh throughout the month.
014Um along with all the mechanical and plumbing and electrical work and a lot of that are happening in all your athletic area, the locker rooms and we'll go through and look at some pictures. So, uh like Jamon mentioned, the plumbing fixtures are going in. You can see um restroom partitions that are going in, drinking fountains uh throughout the throughout the whole building. Additional finishes. I was there earlier today. They were they were in there painting and and working on ceiling grid and uh working on mill work. Um a lot of the finishes are you know when they start going in it takes a lot of time. There's a lot of people on top of each other but it comes together. It really starts to look like a building very quickly. Um here's an example of
015a classroom. Obviously not completely finished. There's still some um electrical and low voltage devices that need to be installed and uh some touch-up work. But I mean we have flooring mill work. The lights are on. Uh the walls have their first coat of paint. Um and then uh here's just one example of some of the mill work going. Uh one of those is a work room and one of those is an office for staff. Any questions? I've just got one. First off, apologize for missing the the meeting today. Um and I haven't had a chance to talk to anybody to get an update. Uh but in regards to the substantial completion date of February 2026, um is this the final date? Is this the date? >> This Yes, it is. This is what we're targeting
016is the end of February >> for the complete project. >> Yeah, I Yeah, to be clear on that, the project actually does have two phases. So there are we have to finish building the new spaces, move move staff and students into them so that we can uh tear down some older parts of the building in order for us to there's some paving and some uh some landscaping that goes in that side. So that is what the February 2026 represents. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Any other questions? Sorry, you have something. All right, thank you. >> All right, brings us to 7B featured campus report. Fulton Rockport Fulton Middle School. We have Mr. H. Get it. All right, there we go. Yeah, you man, they are tall. I'm not that tall. All
017right. Well, first off, thank you so much for having uh Rockport Fton Middle School being represented tonight. And so we wanted to showcase a few of the things that we've got going on at the middle school campus. Uh hitting into our priority one with student success, we wanted to highlight just a few of the great things that we've got going on with our clubs and organizations. I know our big thing is really pushing to get more kids involved. And so what we've got here, just looking at a few of the pictures, uh our hope squad, which has really been kind of the anchor of the whole program for the district, started at the middle school and has really been flourishing. Uh we've actually got elections going on tomorrow for uh Hope Squad President, which is
018getting pretty heated right now. Um we haven't got to the speeches yet, but that'll that'll happen. Um but they really are one of the biggest supporters and big backbones for our campus. Um a lot of great students in there. Very large program. And then um probably one of our next largest programs uh to the top left there is Mr. Fox and his Armadillo gang. And you can see there they are from uh their tour of the Fulton Mansion. And then we've got some students here uh with our science also looking at just I put it in there. It's not necessarily one of our clubs and organizations, but it's part of our programs that we're doing in the classes to get the kids more interested in some of these uh STEM research areas. And so seeing
019them work with some of the the materials that they have was was great to see. Uh, a couple of these that we haven't had quite a chance to get really out and evolved a lot with the community and get pictures, but was our Taffy, which is one of our newest programs, the the Texas Association of Future Educators, which we started this year a little worried about it because we initially had about eight students sign up for it, but we ended up getting uh talking to a few others, we end up getting that number up closer to 20 and really seeing the way how those students are just excited to take part in that and they really want to help out and I've already got a couple of those kids who are asking me if they
020can help be mentors or help with tutorials with some of the younger kids in seventh and and uh sixth grade. So, we're really excited to see where that goes and Miss McKenna does a great job with them. So, um some of the other things that we got going on, we got a couple kids here uh as we are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, they got to go break a piñata out in the courtyard. They were some of our highest readers for the month and so they got to take part in that and of course get some candy. And then the top right, if you haven't quite had the experience of a middle school pep rally, come on out Tuesday during flex period. Um, bring your earbuds uh to cover up everything. Um, it gets a little
021loud in there, but uh Chelsea Rodriguez does a great job putting those on and getting everybody excited for the games that week. Um, kind of continuing on with our student success, one of the big things that we've introduced this year is a flex period. It's about a 30 minute period uh right after our third period class. And so what we're really looking at with that those first nine weeks, we focused on student ownership. We focused on uh the executive functioning skills like organization, planning, time management. Um, and with that, what we ended up doing was we started where every Monday the students get into Skyward, they check their grades, they check their attendance, they set goals for the week. Um, some of them we had to work on from moving from just having a goal
022of like I want to play football this year to how do we get that to be weekly and what are we really focusing on this week to ensure that we are going to be able to play um in the coming weeks. Um, some of the other things that we're really offering for the students to help them excel and really get ready for high school are college and career edge uh, exploration class, the Spanish one, art one and digital media, which is all going to be high school credit for those students. And with that Spanish one and the art one in particular, that helps them take away one of those credits that they got to worry about. So, when they get into sophomore year and they get those double block classes in their pathway, they they
023don't have to look so much for having to drop something. Um, and they can still participate in athletics. They can still participate in band. Uh, we've had Texas Workforce Solutions come on on campus to help us out. We've still got the podcasting going on. Took place at the state of the district and also had our seventh graders go to the You Choose Career Expo um over in Robstown. At the middle school, we like to have fun. And you can see us right there in the middle. A couple of our staff dressed up for our Willy Wonka book fair. We uh enjoy some staff lunchons. We've got a new peace room that was put together uh with a education foundation grant and so we got a chance to celebrate that this month with our uh teachers
024bringing them in have offering a little bit of lunch for them and just a calming relaxing place for them to go to. Also a good place for students that that they can go to if they need that space to have a little bit of time. Uh, as far as our academics go, there's a group of us, uh, participating at the literacy framework and of course in front of the huge mum. Everybody had to get a picture in front of that. Uh, we've got our choir singing happy birthday to a lot of our staff as they go throughout the year celebrating Hispanic heritage. And one of the things that we've got going, we've got a couple of uh, trainings coming up that we didn't get a chance to. They're starting next week uh with Melanie Meyers
025and some more literacy work and then uh the map users conference coming up for a few of our teachers as well. And that map users conference will help them to understand how to use map and use that data to turn around and improve instruction. our uh priority three with the community with Hispanical uh heritage month. We did get a chance to interview a few of our uh families, a few of our parents and they came in and were willing to talk with some of our students. And so once again, our students getting that real world world experience with working in a podcast room, but also interviewing and having that conversation and really building those social skills. We did have uh Miss uh Ivon Mundine does an amazing job with our attendance and gradebook, but she
026also still reaches out to the community and had a bunch of parents who were really confused on some of the new aspects of Skyward Q. And so she started putting together where instead of just waiting till we could have a specific day, if she could get eight, 10 parents together to come up, then she's sticking around and helping train them on how they can get into Skyward, how they can check their their students grades, and also some of the other aspects like if they happen to be absent, how can they submit a a attendance note? So, uh she's been a big help there. And of course, we've had parents coming up and helping us with the book club or with the book fair, the Hispanic Heritage Month, and then threw in there our rowers report,
027which is our weekly newsletter that goes out to the parents. Now, some things that we've got coming up. Again, we've got a lot of things that are happening here soon. Uh, actually tomorrow, we're going to be walking over to Walmart to celebrate the Walmart grand reopening with our band and cheer. Uh, really excited to hear that. Our band's going to be playing the national anthem for them. We also have our our third annual fall festival coming up uh October 27th. And we did reach out to Ace Hardware just to see if they could help us out with some couple of hay bales. And they actually donated 20 hay bales to us. So, we'll be going over there here shortly to pick those up and uh thank them for their donation. And with our uh priority
028for our facilities, these things always happen. You know, we we want to celebrate everything, but we didn't get a chance to because it happened today, but we had our door check audit today and we passed with blank colors with tea. And so that was a big deal. I know uh Chief Story was a little nervous. Um she's always just nervous. She's always waiting. She's reminding everybody every day, make sure your doors are locked. Make sure you're checking doors. If you happen to be in the hallway, just check the doors anyways. So, I know that the the doors get checked plenty. Um, she's also started uh recruiting some young deputies here. You can see in the top picture, she's got one of our students uh who she's been working with who goes out sometimes with her
029and helps on the door checks and she follows up and makes sure that he did verify that the door was locked. Um, and then some of our traffic directors here, this is our morning drop off. They're helping out there, guiding parents to pull all the way up to the front so that we can get everybody through the line as quickly as possible. And then one of our other great celebrations that we had uh just recently was a grant from the Coastal Bend Bay bays and estuaries that's going to be funded by the Sitgo Caring for our coast grant. And that's going to be that courtyard area that Miss Anita always took care of and always did uh her gardening in and and set up the growers and was really trying to show how families can
030sustain on food that we can grow. And so we're looking to we got just under $8,000 for that that we'll be able to start improving that area and really make it into a a beautiful garden and also another great place for people to come and see. And for our uh highlight for the middle school, um this is Joseph Fox. He is one of our seventh grade Texas history teachers and probably one of the uh best local historians. He's got a plays a strong part in the local historical society along with Taft. He also plays in uh the Joe uh the Joe Fox band and also participates in many things around. Uh usually you'll see him dressed up in some of his old garb that he wears to the classroom for the students, but um Joseph
031Fox is our celebrated educator for this month. >> So you get to come up here, Mr. Fox, and take a picture and be celebrated. Oh, >> and with that, is there any questions? >> Will you give us the details of the armadillo thing on Saturday now that Mr. Fox is up here? >> Absolutely. >> I'll let Mr. Fox talk about it. >> Well, thank you. Uh, it's great to be here tonight and I appreciate the uh it's an honor to be recognized. Um, the Armadillo Gang, we have a couple volunteers from our group who are going to be roleplaying as historical figures from Rockport's past. We're going to be doing a Now, they don't have a cemetery at the Fulton Mansion, but we're not going to let that stop us from having a cemetery tour
032there. So, they'll be uh telling these stories from our area's past. Um uh from 10:00 a.m. to noon on Saturday at the Fton Mansion. So, got some interesting ones. We got um uh we have Braxton Yarnell playing uh portraying George Fton. So, I can't wait to see that. Yeah, it's gonna be good. Um, we got a few of our other groups playing. Uh, we got somebody as James Power. We have somebody playing uh Mary Emer, who was the last known Kuranqua woman uh living in the in the area. We got we got a lot of good stuff. So, yeah, come on out. We love to see you there. Yeah. Heat. While you're going back to your seat, the timing was a little um tricky last year, but Joe Fox was also awarded um the James
033Vaninga Outstanding Teaching of the Humanities Award last year. So he's, you know, he's he's got some clout out there. >> All right, that brings us to 7C, Odyssey After School Program Annual Report. Tiffany Collie presenting. Okay, so I'm like way shorter than all of them. I can like barely see over the podium over here. As he said, I'm Tiffany Collie. I'm the executive director for the Odyssey after school program. I am starting my seventh year and it is honestly the best job you will ever have. You get to play with kids all day. It's organized chaos at its finest. Uh, first I want to thank all of y'all though because of your support over the years, we are able to be successful. And if it wasn't for that, I don't think we would be as
034accessible to the community without without y'all's support. And I'm going to mess this up because I do every year. Um, so we have been I told you I'd mess it up. Oh, there we go. We are going on our 23rd year of being in business of serving our kids in our community. We do prek four years old through 6th grade, but we also have volunteer opportunities for 7th through 12th grade. We do get a lot of kids that come from the National Junior Honor Society. They actually ride the bus over to us and they um do different activities with our kids. Sometimes by the time they get to us, we have kids that are struggling to complete their homework. So some the seventh and eighth graders will sit with the kids and help them with
035their homework, which is a great help to our instructors. And we are open all school days. And on early release days, we actually open at noon or whatever time school is released. And then we are there till 6:30. No, six. I lied. 6. Sorry. The next thing I was going to say is professional development days. We are there till 5:30. So, one of the big things I took over whenever or one of my goals when I took Odyssey is how do I meet the needs in the community and one of them was professional development days. Parents normally have to work on those days. So, we are actually open on those days from 7:30 to 5:30 for kids to come. And they actually don't even have to be Odyssey kids. It is open to everybody in
036the community. and it's only $25 for the entire day. So, one of the things that I am going to talk about today is price and how much we charge and how we keep it affordable for our community because that's one of the important things. And we do have 106 kids in our program and we do a twoeek summer camp. We started that a few years ago. I looked at our community and saw that we don't really have a full day summer camps. A lot of them are half a days. And so that's one of the things that I really wanted to do. So we are open for two weeks right before school starts because that's when a lot of the camps do start dying down. And we are open 7:30 to 5:30 Monday through Friday
037for those two weeks. And we take the kids on field trips. We go to this year. I think we went to Goose Island twice. I love Goose Island. Those people are awesome out there. Um, but we have we have a lot of fun. So, speaking of costs, so we have reduced tuition and then we have full paid tuition. 40% of our population is reduced tuition. They only pay $50 a month for their kids to come. 50% is full pay, which is 170 a month, which when I compare that with other programs in our community, we are way down there in costs. Um, we want it to be accessible and affordable for everybody. And if we have a family that comes in and they can't pay that 50 a month, we have some awesome donors in
038our community that we reach out to and try and help the family offset even that 50 a month because we want kids to be safe after school. We want them to get a snack, get help with their homework, and have enrichment time where they're learning with their hands. So, because of the generosity of our community, we added a new van this year. So, now we have two vans, which I'm sorry, I am like really excited about because we don't have to rely on the school transportation, which they do a great job, but they definitely get busy, especially after school hours. So now we can fit it's there are two 15 passenger vans and so we can fit an entire class and go to Goose Island. Uh this month um every class last month and part
039of this month every class went to the Fulton Mansion and so we want to take them to see our community to do things in our community. Um, with the summer program, we do take home to Corpus and do because we have more time in the day, so we can take home and go visit other areas, but it's very exciting. But this is because of the generosity of our community, which we have a very generous community, and we are very thankful for that. So, at Odyssey, we have two events coming up. We have lights on after school which is a na a nationwide event celebrating the importance of afterchool care. So we will be having a glow party. Kids are all very excited about it. I'm a little nervous but we will have fun and we'll
040be dancing and doing all the fun things under black lights. But then every year we have two fundraisers because this is what offsets our cost. Our first one is in November. It is the Coastal Bin Day of Giving. And so on this day, every donation that is made is doubled. So if you donate 10, we get 20. So in 24 hours, we have the opportunity to raise $50,000. And that helps offset that cost because on the previous slide, if you looked, it said the true cost is $370 per child. And we are not charging families that. And so our day of giving helps cover payroll so that we do not have to pass that along to our families. And then of course in February we always have our purse bingo which is lots of fun.
041It is lots of fun. Um anybody have any questions? No. Okay. Well, thank you and thank you'all for always supporting us. Thank you. >> That brings us to 7D School Health Advisory Council, also known as SHAK. We have Candy Morris presenting. All right. I'm presenting on behalf of Heather Cheek, our health service coordinator, couldn't be here tonight. And Ian is also uh he was our senior last year and he became our shack chairperson. So that's been really great. He's very good at parliamentary procedure and keeping us in line during our meetings. So we've enjoyed having Ian as part of our shack. uh we just wanted to go ahead and review with you all the four meetings that we are required to have and these are the times and dates for that. They'll be on the
042website and we also have added a virtual option which has been helpful. So we have in person but we also tune in so that people that can't be there can also listen in. So just really quick what is shack the student health advisory council? that is required by the state to have and basically just a committee or advisory council to talk about student health and wellness. So we bring in our nurses, our counselors, PE coaches, other teachers, uh community members, whomever would like to join in. In fact, we're looking for more members and we talk about different things with whether it be health related, mental health, drug prevention, bullying, different things like that. So, just a little overview of last year, some uh activities and things we talked about during our meeting. We completed the
043wellness plan. Uh we look at that every year. We also added in a high school, became a health a healthy South Texas school. The others continue to maintain the recognition. So, we excited about that. So, now all four campuses have that healthy school recognition. We collaborated with uh Amistad to provide community resources and other different doctors, different people from the community come into our meetings and give us resources. Um we have had more attendance um over the last year with that virtual option and I see a typo. Sorry for that. Uh discuss the current health curriculum that was adopted by the board years ago. We've continued to review that as well. And then of course our amazing child nutrition department was recognized by TDA as best of the bunch. So we highlighted that. And then
044we've set some goals for the new year. We want to continue to increase our attendance or involvement. We have a lot of staff that come, which is great. Uh but we still are lacking some spots on Shaq for community members. So we continue to put that out there. I know Miss Cheek did recruit some more students. So that's going to be nice and helpful. But we like to see our students get more involved with these things. Um, and so of course just having the discussions between health and wellness and really increasing some discussions about bully prevention which uh we are going to be presenting on Monday night at our um community event that we're having. The counselors and nurse Cheek will be there to talk about bully prevention and drug prevention and just overall wellness
045well-being for our students. So, we're going to continue to talk about those things during SHAK meetings. We want to maintain healthy South Texas schools for all four campuses, and we want to really enhance our Shack website and put out more communications maybe on social media and other things for uh for parents. That's Shaq. Questions? >> Thank you. >> No questions. I just want to remind the board that the uh state requires the school boards to approve committee members for the shack and that will be in the uh consent agenda under 10 C I believe later on. Thank you. All right. 7E district and campus improvement plans. M Robbins All right, good evening. So, this item is also attached to an action item that you'll see um a little further down in the agenda. Um the
046good thing about this is that this should really not feel very new this evening. um we're just required to make sure that the board has access and is clear about um the development of these plans so that you're ready to approve specifically the goals and objectives. So, the plan will include those strategic priorities, those strategic objectives, and then it gets more specific as we look at progress measures for campuses, long-term outcomes, and then those strategic actions, which I'll highlight here in just a minute. Um, just a note, as part of our requirement for use of federal funding, we do make sure that every dollar we spend from uh those federal funds is tied directly to an action in those campus and district improvement plans. It's kind of that it's that accountability system for our federal
047dollars. So, you are very familiar with those four district and campus strategic priorities. This is not new for you. You Oh, wow. that's really translating in some interesting ways tonight on the screen. Um, so we've got those four areas that you know about. Student success, parent and community engagement and partnerships, staff engagement, development and well-being, and finance and operations, efficiency and sustainability. You've been hearing about this balance scorecard. So there are those strategic objectives. I'm not going to read those to you. We've talked about them at length at our round table this week and we've been discussing those objectives throughout um really the summer and the fall. Oh wow. I don't know what happened there. Um so those campus improvement plans with critical actions are what we are you are getting a little bit closer
048look at in those attachments. And so here's where this slide just kind of breaks down what those differences are. So you already know about the 4 by12. Um those are actually the pieces that the board is required to approve by law. So you approve those strategic priorities and strategic objectives also known in policy as goals and objectives. So the language is just a little bit different in policy but we're calling them strategic priorities and objectives. And then that line that third bullet in gold is what shows where it's a little bit different for campuses. So as you review the plans, what you'll see is that we get more to those actionable steps by the time we get to progress measure which is very unique by district and campus and it shows how progress will be
049tracked. I do want to just elaborate on one piece that we talked a little bit about at our round table this week. Um we do sometimes still find those areas that need a more tightly measurable goal and so these plans are designed to really be a working document throughout the year. So, some of those campus improvement plans and even the district plan will continue to create more action. Like if we notice a goal that's not worded with a really tight um focused smart goal language, we'll make sure that that is that that is cleaned up. Um we have those districtwide long-term outcomes. And then that other component that's very individualized are the strategic actions. That's where our principles are given um that autonomy to work with those steps that they need at their level. Remember
050that they work with a campus plan that includes parents, family members, um staff to really review those and make adjustments to them. And that's where they get very specific with their actions to make sure that those funds are spent directly on things that are designed to improve student achievement. Um, as you review the plans in board book, you would have probably noticed the one difference is that breakdown of the progress measure and the strategic action. So that is an overview of the plans. They are all linked in board book. Um, do you have any questions? >> All right, you'll see that action item coming up. >> Thank you. >> All right. 7F 2024 first public hearing. Miss Henderson. I am short. All right. This is the um first report for the to the board and
051it's also a public hearing on the first report for our um fiscal year 2324. This first is the financial integrity rating system of Texas. It's the accountability uh report card for the district uh in the in the finance world. Um, and I am proud to announce that RFISTD received a superior A rating for the 23rd year in a row with a perfect score of 100 every year. So that's we've been doing they've been the state has been doing this for 23 years and we have received one every year they've done it. Um, this rating system has six indicators with either yes or no answers and the district must receive a yes on all six or you automatically receive an F rating. There are also 15 indicators that are given points for the degree to which
052the success of the indicator has been achieved up to 10 points each. So that's where we get our our hundred from the first the first superior rating is due to the work of not just the business office staff but of all admin together working together. But I do also want to give credit to our business office and our team staff for the work and hours they put in that is that helps make this superior rating possible. Our staff work hours during breaks and so that required monthly deadlines are met and the payroll accounts payroll and accounts payable are processed on time. I call them they were the behindthe-scenes staff that get things done. This was uh started in 1999. Um the primary goal of first is to improve the management of school districts financial resources.
053And again, we received an A rating, uh, which you get an A by receiving a score between 90 and 100. The first report is in your board book. There's also copies in the back that available to the public. We'll be putting this online and getting these out to the campuses. So, they're they're available for the public at any time. Um, here again, for the for 23 years, we have received it. 13 of those 23 years we received a perfect score. Uh in your report is the history of first how it started how it's changed over the years. Um you have the district's 2324 report and for comparison to the 2223 report you also have state statistics for 2324. report also includes disclosures for 2324 first that we are required to to put in that report.
054So all that is in there. Um this is a slide of school districts across the state their ratings over the last two years with uh this year's preliminary which is the blue. Um as you can see the numbers u the number of districts receiving an A has increased over these years while a AC while RFISD has remained an A rating. And at this time I'll ask if the public uh like to make a comment on this or if the board has any questions. I don't believe so. Thank you. >> Good job, Kathy. Thank you. >> All right, that brings us to 8A. Consider take possible action to approve the general fund budget amendment as presented. Miss Henderson, >> you should stay up here. So, when we had the efficiency audit that we did for the
055for the Vader election, um there was some differences in some of our function codes and I called some of the districts that were on our efficiency audit. I also talked to some districts in the area. Um the um the expense we have to the appraisal district we I have been putting it in function 41 when they changed it and I don't when it's 5 10 years ago they changed it and said okay they have what the function 99 at that time it didn't appear to me that the appraisal district should be in that function 99 we moved the uh tax collection we pay county to that function they changed the description ions over at some point and I just did not review it. But as I was talking to other districts, the other districts are
056putting their um their appraisal district cost in that function 99. So when it it's pulled at the state level, when they were pulling our expense and comparing us to other districts, they're only pulling function 11 to 61. So our 700 and some odd thousand that we paid to the appraisal district is in function 41. So it made that c cost look higher than the others because they weren't included in that. So Dr. Austin and I uh talked about this and so we're bringing this to the board to move the expense of the appraisal district from function 41 to function 49. I'm sorry. Any questions? I had one. I think I asked Dr. Austin. Is there a um the funding for elections? Could that be put in function 99? >> No, that that's strictly a board
057um >> general fund expense administration for you. >> All right. Any other questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion. >> I've got one. >> Yes, sir. >> I'm just interested. Uh Kathy, did did this find did it result in maybe a review of other you know the entire >> list? Did was there anything else that caught our caught your attention that >> there there was we looked at some individual functions knowing our expenses >> um and and kind of compared and again I talked to again we know this is from 2324 but I called around to some the CFO one again asking what was your property you know what would your property insurance cost so knowing that ours you know was 2.8 8 million in 23 24 and of course most of theirs was very
058much lower. So that we pulled that out and it made that function of 51 not as seem as as high per pupil as our peers. Uh the other was we we looked at again at at this at the CAD cost and then we looked at legal cost because you guys just got a comparison from other districts of what there was that year compared to ours. Any other questions? All for a motion. >> I move that we approve the general fund budget amendment as presented. >> All right. A motion made by Mrs. Jarnell, second by Mrs. Randall. Any further discussion? We'll take a vote. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. 70. Go to 8B. Consider take possible action to approve the purchase of special education bus. >> Okay. So, >> so this was actually brought
059up uh that we were planning on replacing this may have been almost two years ago now when the bus at the time was 15 years old. Uh so we went out and got three quotes. Uh we went with one that's provided Thomas bus that matches most of our fleet and it was right at the middle of the pack with the other quotes we had. So, this bus is now 18 years old that this would be replacing and this would also be paid out of the idea B federal grant funds. So, it's 155,000 and I put on here not to exceed 160,000. >> Any questions? I'll look for >> just this Mike. Um, just to be clear, is all the money is coming out of a grant? >> Federal grant. The IDAB federal grant. Yes, sir.
060>> Thank you. >> I'll look for a motion. >> I move that we approve the purchase of a special education bus not to exceed 160,000 to be paid out of the IDA federal grant funds. >> Second. >> All right. Motion made by Mrs. Jarnell, second by Mrs. Randall. Any further discussion? If not, we'll take a vote. All in favor? Any opposed? Motion carries. 70. All right. 8 C. Consider take possible action to approve interlocal agreement with lo local law enforcement agencies. Dr. Austin. >> So, I do have my name on it, but I also have Sean Fletcher's name. So, Mr. Pletcher is, I would say, under my tutelage, right? Um, there's a lot of compliance and paperwork when it comes to safety and I wanted Mity and her crew to really focus on on campus
061what our law enforcement is doing on campus. And so, I've asked Mr. Fletcher to come alongside. I think he's got a 16-week uh scope and sequence that he's learning all about safety. And this month, we tackled ourus and interlocal agreements. These are not significantly different than last year. So Fulton is actually listed that you will do it every year. So that's why it's coming. We did find an error in I think it said Rockport PD twice and it should have said Fulton to Rockport. So we corrected that one in the Fulton one. And then the sheriff's office, there was really only one ad and that ad same as last year. Um, we had both legal counsels look at those and the ad this year was that if in an event the sheriff's office came uh
062onto our campuses that they would take over and do incident command. That's naturally their role anyways, but we just put it in the agreement and that is what is in front of you. I want to thank Mr. Fletcher for coming along and learning. There was no money attached to that and he said yes still. So, um, but he did work with our law enforcement to get these. So, if you have any questions, he is here. Luckily, he read the agenda and saw that he should be here, right? So, if you have any questions, I can answer them. Mr. Pletcher can answer them, but they are very similar with those minor changes. And then you can see that there are two different motions. scared to turn on my microphone after. >> Okay. So, I just want
063to make sure that if we have a situation and there's four different entities, >> everybody's made aware that the sheriff is in charge. So, we've had multiple conversations, not just at our safety meetings, but we also actually you're going to hear me talk about an attendance waiver, but we had a debrief after one of our events where everybody was in the room and we always talk about so it's incident command, who comes on first, but there's also a shared command structure. So, every time we come together, we talk about what does that command because there's going to be a command post at central, there's going to be one on the and then they're going to be going in. So, we've talked about all of those things, but they do know that that's the sheriff's office
064role, but if they don't make it there, we've talked to Rockport PD and they know that they then take infinite command because we only have one officer on our campuses and and I would not be pulling Mity to go over to Live Oak. And so, as soon as the first responding agency, then they would take incident command into our sheriff's office. Now, our sheriff's office also said like if they've got it going, they're not going to come and make and mess like Yeah. that but they will watch um so there's a whole lot of protocol and talk and conversation that goes into that and Mike is going to make sure this mic does not do that again. They're trying to figure it out. >> Did you mention that Rockport uh police department we would do
065anou for them too? >> They are they actually already have one in place. Um it's very similar to the sheriff's except they didn't have that incident command um statement because sheriff's office has that but they did it last year. There's not a date on it. So we're not renewing it every year once this is signed. And as long as we don't have any changes, sheriff office doesn't have any changes. This won't come back to you. Fulton just happens to be a year. We're going to ask them next year, can we make it until we change? Yeah. Um, but it went to their city c their council yesterday and so we didn't want to make that change since it was already going. >> All right, I'll look for a motion. >> I move that we approve
066the interlocal agreement between Rockport Fton and Oranis County as presented. >> We have a motion made by Mrs. Austin, second by Mrs. Jarnell. Any further discussion? All in favor? Any opposed? That motion carries 70. >> I move that we approve the memorandum of understanding between Rock Fton ISD and the Fton Police Department as presented. Second motion made by Miss Austin, second by Mr. Burton. Any further discussion? All in favor? >> Any opposed? Motion carries. 70. Move to 8D. you consider take possible action to approve the 20252026 request for low attendance waiver. >> So on September 24th, 2025, a threat was made against RFHS. It was it resulted in a significant decline in our attendance that day. While the threat was ultimately deemed unsubstantiated, many of our parents chose to keep their children at home on
067that day on all four campuses and it leaded that led leaded led to attendance being extremely low. So I believe our attendance on that date was 6329 and what you can do is you can then submit a waiver with um evidence as to why to tea. Once the waiver is uh accepted, you will then that will replace with what your average was the year prior. But we have to have a board motion to submit that waiver to TEA. >> And that's for the entire district, all campuses. >> Yes, sir. It would be for the entire district. Um 93.86. If the waiver is approved, each campus gets that. We have already made a local code for all of our parents who chose to keep their children at home. it was an excused absence. Um, but then
068this waiver then gets the 93.86 from TEA for that day. >> Any other questions? >> Kathy, you want to do some quick math for me? What's that in dollars? I don't have the answer. So, she's got a calculator. It looks really big. I can get it for you at a later date. That's an exact number. >> It's We're roughly >> What do we get then about roughly about $60 a kid a day? And I'd have to go back and see if that's correct. We Let's get that to you, Mr. Vogel, so we get you the right information. >> Any other questions? If not, I'll entertain a motion. >> I move that the board of trustees approve the submission of a low attendance waiver to the Texas Education Agency for September 24th, 2025 due to a
069significant drop in attendance resulting from a safety threat made against a campus on that date. >> We have a motion made by Mr. Burton, seconded by Mrs. Randall. Any further discussion? If not, we'll vote. All in favor? I. Any opposed? >> Motion carries. 70. That brings us to agenda item number nine, our superintendent report. Dr. Austin. >> All right. So, I'm actually going to do something a little different. I'm going to start today with report. Uh we had the first of our three-part series of our strategic roundt on the 4 by 12. Um there is a very wonderful picture of very colorful plan. Maybe there it is. And so first I want to say that at any time if anybody wants to check out our 4x12 strategic plan. It's not as pretty with all the
070icons, but this is the actual plan. It lives on the about us page and you can go see the four priorities and you can see the 12 objectives, the actions, the yearly progress measures, and the long-term outcomes. So that is on our website on about us and that's linked to that. So then after that plan was adopted in February uh we did kind of a soft roll out with uh then this summer a hard launch and at inservice it went to all campuses and cascaded down. What we talked about last night is our team presented those four priorities to our board of trustees. Our campus principles met and this is where really the strategic tactical and operational role came together. um no ranks, no titles, and we dove into this plan and talked about our
071first kind of uh progress check. We will have three of these and then a final evaluation of the plan for the year in the summer. And so, priority one, um I'm not going to speak too terribly long what everything is there. Jessica already actually spoke on it on our district improvement plan, but it was student success. And you heard from Jessica Robbins and Eric Sosa. We went over the progress around truly those things that we believe are high lever items to increase student achievement and participation in our groups. Um that was followed up with our HR director who we are celebrating tonight. Um she's in spirit because she's at the Omni eating dinner. We did staff development, engagement and well-being with Molly. She highlighted what we're doing, our efforts to strengthen our employee retention, their
072well-being uh through culture and intentional professional learning. And then how we recognize our incredible staff. Then we move to Gil Perez, who never has to come here to these meetings, but I would say Gil will stand up, but he that does all things uh social media and communication and crisis communication. and him and I tackled parent and community engagement involvement together and gave you guys an update. So, here is where I'm going to do a plug. I'm not going to say shameless plug because it is 100% a plug to tell parents that we are putting a lot of effort into Monday, October 20th for a parent engagement night. We wanted to call it Pirate University, but we thought they would think it's too much. So, we are calling it Pirate Parent Pathways. And it's truly
073a night for parents to come in. They have an option to choose from 10 sessions and learn about things like Skyward, nutrition, future pathways for their children. I know our middle school and high school are actually doing tips and tricks for reading and um writing success at home and math and science success and we have teachers leading those sessions. We have communities um community groups coming to have tables for them. There are free giveaways and there is going to be free dinner and we're trying to do everything we can to get our parents. And so right now, and it is Monday, we only have about a handful of parents signed up. So principles, I need you to get that out. Parents, please sign up. That is truly what priority three is. It's getting our parents
074and community involved. They are our biggest partners. And then priority four, we followed it up as Mike said, always what he has to go last. Mike Noatney, Missy Story, and Kathy talked about our finance and operations. We gave you safety updates. He talked about his long-term plan, and Kathy talked about her progress with her audit. I'm truly excited about the valuable conversations that our board of trustees had with our leadership team and our principal team. Um, I want to thank I call them my blue angel team for being there. They got to sit there for two hours um as we went through the scorecard. It's more than a plan, y'all. it is the path of how we're going to ensure our students and staff uh get the excellence that they deserve. So I want to
075thank our board of trustees and that team and every time we have a round table I want to give an update like this to our community and so there we go and then I'm going to now hand it over I think we have who do we have? >> Yes. So tonight you'll hear from Christy Wedi who's our director over our ESL program. She's going to present the annual ESL program evaluation. >> And Dr. Austin, I do have a question about >> Sorry, I should have said, do you have questions? >> Yeah. >> Sorry, Christie. Hold on. >> Sorry, Christie. Um, so I was I was a tad I'll say I was a tad in unfortunate in that some of the board members got to uh go in pairs around the group and got to hear
076some other conversations. I got to go by myself and so I don't I didn't never got to hear any of the comments or the feedback that was provided by other board members. Yeah. >> And I'm just wondering >> first off what happens with that feedback? Yeah. >> And how does it influence >> this pay? >> So we actually have a meeting set up with the executive team. It's set up uh Tuesday Dina. Yes. On Tuesday. And so I asked you guys to kind of give us a quantitative rating. you know, we don't get a grade, but I don't know if it's the teacher at heart in me. I need to I need to know a quantitative measure. So, I asked you guys to give us a zero to four rating. Um, and then there's a
077lot of notes that y'all took on that like sheet for us. And so, I'm going to sit with our team and we're going to dive in. I've actually already started making adjustments. Jessica got a a text this morning said, "I have a lot to talk about. Can you come see me?" Um, she was really nice because it was boss's day and she brought me lunch. Um, and we actually sat and already went over feedback just because there's some things we want to start putting in place now. But on Tuesday, we're going to review that feedback from all of our board members. Where do we think we're at based on those conversations? There are some adjustments we need to make into those program uh those yearly goals to make them more smart goals, more measurable. And
078so that's all the feedback that we were looking for. And what I reminded you all that night is that as a board, you adopt the priorities and objectives. The goals really are we try to meet the need of where we're at so that we can even go higher. We talked about adjusting those House Bill 3 goals because our MAP scores actually ended the year higher than what we had done the year prior. And so we will make adjustments like that so that then you can see those in the next round table. Any other questions? Miss Wedi. All right. So, you have before you um a copy of the program evaluation for ESL for 2425. It's very similar to the one from the previous year because as I mentioned last year in 2223, we had great
079success with our program. We went from not exiting any students to exiting 11. So we replicated a lot of those strategies and actions last year and we went from 11 students reclassifying and exiting to 14. So um and those are different students not the same students. So we are continuing to work with our students and grow them. Um we continued our summit K12 program which is something that we attribute a lot of that success to. as well as last year we we've always had elevation and it has a professional development component to it and we've kind of used it intermittently. Last year we had a focused effort and all core content teachers were required to complete modules and implement activities. They had to do one every other month and so we did that and so
080I think that also attributed to our success. We've continued that again this year. So the teachers that completed modules last year are were are now our year two. So they have another set of modules that are different that they have to complete this year and then all of our new teachers are completing the ones that those teachers completed last year. And I'm hearing lots of good things about teachers enjoying the activities. A lot of it's just good practice that you use with all students, but it works very well for our emergent bilingual. And I think that's it. We're continuing to try to get more of our teachers ESL certified. Currently, most of our students are coded as ESL pull out, which means their RLA teachers are ESL certified, but I actually coded some kids as
081we're getting prepared for snapshot submission uh the other day. And we have a whole lot more, especially at Live Oak and Fulton where I was able to code contentbased, which means all of their teachers are certified in the core content areas for ESL services. Any questions? Okay. Certified teachers. I think I might have had that in here off the top of my head. Oh gosh. Yeah, that's Yeah, I mean I would say 35 to 40. And we're get we have some more that are having to get it because like in prek oh there's only one teacher so we have to get them certified. So some of them are working on it right now. No. No. Yeah, that's one of the other things. They have to get their teaching certifications that they need to actually teach
082before they can even get their ESL. So, we have some teachers that are still working on those pieces that need ESL, but they have to get the other one. They won't they can't even get approval to take the ESL test until they do that. So, anytime we have those altser people coming in, we have to get that taken care of first. All right. Thank you. All right. We're going to move to Kathy and her business office report. >> Well, you have the I told you I'd bring you another August cash flow, so it's updated. We did several um payables in September that were coded back to 2425. So I just brought you an updated uh complete year for 2425 and then you have >> September's for starting 2526. >> Um couple of things to bring
083to your attention. On page two of the business office report, you'll see 2425. That's where we stood at the end of September. Um still have the We sent about 5.1 million um no I'm sorry about 2.5 million to the state for recapture this month. So you'll see that update. >> It's in their board book. The one you're talking you're referencing is number two in their board book. >> I'm sorry. >> So So the 2425 is is updated but there still are some expenses and revenue that I'll be updating this month before we send everything to the auditor. And the only other thing I want to mention, if you look at the tax report, September is always weird. We go we end our current year uh tax collection at August at the end of our fiscal
084year where the the county goes one more month to the 1 of October. So this is not showing any current year because it's it's not current year for us. And with uh the Vader election, the tax notices will not be going out till November. So, we won't even have any current year collections in October. >> Any questions? >> I have a question. I was just looking at the um new long sheets that you're giving us and I I really only looked at September versus September and there's quite a difference from last September of 24 to September of 25. And I just wanted to know if you could explain some of those higher expenses. >> Part of it's the salary increase. I would say a good portion of it is the salary increase. >> Well, there
085the main the main ones and I I didn't even look at instructional specifically was general admin, um tech and pe um community service. Those are all significantly higher from a year-over-year. >> I will look and see the difference whether there were several uh memberships that we normally pay in September. Maybe they weren't paid until October next last year. I go back and I'll look at those uh for you and get you some information and a lot of these expenses in September you have in the check register that you gave us. >> Yes. So, a couple things. When we do post on um board book and you kind of see an area that you're like, oh, then when she gives you the check register, you can go like I know it's not easy, but then sometimes
086you can kind of look in like are there any big ticket items that I want that's I'm just telling you what I did as a board member and then I go look to see if there's something that sends out that then I could pull. >> I looked at that. I just wondered why it was more. And some of it is all. >> Yeah, >> I I'll look and see if I can see some big items that maybe would have would have caused that. I was just making sure there's no more questions before I moved on. All right, I'm going to do Molly's report for her today. And so let me move to there. Kathy has a lot of things in hers. All right. So we have uh of course her motto as she always starts
087with start here, stay here. Um we are very excited to introduce Jenny Vanderbloom as our new mentor coordinator. She started October 6th and already has been reaching out after the state of the district. We've had a lot of interest in mentors and so she will be working right now. She's housed at Live Oak. Thank you, Denise. Um, if she falls in love, she might stay there, but we did talk about probably moving her more central at the middle school high school next year. She's already telling me no. I knew that would happen. Um, so we're truly excited. Let's see. Molly actually says, "We're excited to share a special moment for our RFIC employees. For the first time, one of our staff members have received support through the SI sick leave bank." Um, that was a
088program that we started if you guys remember. And so it's it's coming to fruition and colleagues are seeing that it's extremely important and they've been donating their days and now we do have a staff member able to use it. Um in addition mentor coordinator and then not on the screen I just want to say that our goal is 95% attendance and we truly have been seeing an increase in our achievement in this first grading period as in comparison to last year. You saw that our yearly rate was 93. we already are hitting a lot of 95% days that we just didn't see last year. So, we have high hopes for attendance. And then in your board book, you do have where our current bankies are if you have any questions. Um, yeah, on their attendance
089rate, um, I know it's a high school is missing a lot of it. Um, what are we doing for truthy charges? >> Yeah. So, actually today we had a district attendance meeting. Molly ran it while I was doing the construction meeting. So, we meet monthly with our attendance committee, which is our high school uh assistant principles, our communities in schools, everybody that deals with truency comes and meets with us. Laura Rios and Judge McInness join us as well. And so there's requirements by law what we are required to do with truency. They get a letter at 3, five, seven is a meeting. Uh 10 you are able to file on them. We try to do a lot of preventative work before we file. One we want them at school reach out. Then we also work
090with Laura Rios who has a lot of more uh truency prevention measures that we use. Is it transportation? Is it other things? And so that's kind of what we do. they have incentives um at the campus level that they do. We did fund uh some small monies to make sure that they're working on encouraging students and littleer children, parents because the parents who bring them to school, but yeah, high school has historically run that. >> So, how often do we file truency? Um is it once a month? Is it? >> Yeah. I will tell you that once a month they probably get someone from us. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, it's you've got to go when they meet their days. Unfortunately, we already have a lot of kids getting to days.
091And so, again, we have the notification letters, but the most important is getting them in and creating a plan with their parent and the student. And then when they hit 10 days and as long as they haven't brought in excuses later in that plan, then we do file truency. And if you want a number, I'll get you a number of how we filed at the end of last year, how many we filed, and then I can get you uh if we've done any so far. >> Okay. I was going to ask basically the same thing, but I was also going to ask what are we doing at these campuses to encourage student attendance and encourage parents to have their students there because I completely understand why those kids aren't making that choice. It's the parents.
092But at the high school, we you know, we do have high school students that'll do things like I used to. >> There's a lot of operational things we do and I bet it's in their campus improvement plans. I truly say that because one of the things we have truly talked about is what is the plan at the campus level. I don't have the specifics for you tonight, Lonnie, because I just didn't read them before. Uh I do know that we talk about it monthly. We talk about it at the principal learning lab. Um mainly for the academic reasons um is why we want them here. Um the parent nights we will be talking to them. I actually get the first 15 minutes at the parent night to talk to them about attendance and grades and
093how they are part of this strategic plan. That's my plan. Um and so it's truly a team effort and I'm going to speak as a teacher. I can see the difference with students who are at school whose and I teach at a grade level that it is on parental involvement to have their students there as I can see a huge difference between those students who are at school and the ones who are already hitting that 10day absence mark and and it also I question you know involvement at home and that emphasis on the importance of academics. So, I can see it and I know that it's being I know that it affects our students here as well. >> They're they're doing it at the campus levels. I know there's only two principles here. I can
094only speak for the middle school because that's my only parental experience, but they're rewarding the children. They're incentivizing them pajama a day, you know, water burger with Mr. Howell, whatever it is. There are incentives going on on those campuses for that too. Here Denise is listing off all the things she's doing. Any more questions for HR? We're going to move to our athletic department and coach Reyes is here tonight. and I know she's been coached well by coach Sosa who's at the JV game. >> Yes. Uh thanks for having me here. Uh we'll jump right into the athletics board report. And just to talk of the participation numbers as far as the athletic peri periods concerned um still very consistent. Um very consistent there. The numbers are pretty good. Um our inseason participation numbers right
095now again uh we're pleased with those. Football we're at as a complete program 218. Team tennis is at 29. Cross country we have a team total of 40 and volleyball as a complete program 190. So uh we're real pleased with those numbers. our UIL eligibility. Uh we talked about that last meeting. Um we are on a nineweek grading period, but UIL does have especially the first six weeks of UIL elig eligibility. Um as a whole, we're not too pleased with the with the seventh grade um passing rate. Uh however, this is in season and offseason um combined uh with all the at all grade levels. Um also it's kind of like an introduction to the seventh graders learning the no pass no play. Um but um as a coaching staff um that did really get
096our attention and it's something that we're really going to work towards. Uh we know that we could be better in that department and we will be. Uh but overall for the boys as a complete program we're at 86% passing rate. For the girls 87 and then collectively 86%. Uh for our inseason sports um it does look a lot better. Um again for seventh grade that there is areas of improvement that that need to be taken care of there and will be. Uh but as a as a whole for the football program for a middle school to high school uh they do have a 91% passing rate. Uh the girls volleyball is at 95%. The complete cross country is at 95% as well and team tennis is at 93%. So uh we are more pleased with
097those numbers but still uh we want to make sure that we're upholding that standard and and we want to be in that high uh like 95 above is is the goal. Um, moving into our celebrations, uh, Coach Sosa did definitely want to recognize Mr. Advando Narango. Um, he's been running the chain crew for over 25 years, working at the both at both middle school and high school football games since 1999. and on February 3rd, he was a special guest for the honorary coin toss um at the varsity football game. So, uh they were definitely um excited about having him as a guest and appreciate all the work that he does for for the program. Also, I did want to mention um Coach Sosa is very humble, but uh I did want to throw in that
098he was recognized as the Dave Campbell's Texas football coach of the week. And I will say it was a big win over uh state ranked Quero. And I know this is a huge honor for him, but more importantly, I know like he dedicates that and and he's giving all the credit to his boys and his coaching staff. And uh that's just the type of person that he is. Um, a lot of people talk about like South Texas, this was a shocking victory and stuff, but I know Coach Sosa, I know the work that he puts in. I know his coaching staff, uh, how hard they work. I I'm in Coach Black's classroom every day and I see the film on the white board and, uh, so I know that they put in a lot of
099work. Um, the expectations were there. Uh, the boys of fall completely. uh their mindset is definitely that 212 degrees and uh you know when you have a coaching staff that that believes in in the boys and the boys believe in their coaching staff uh there isn't anything they can't do. So huge congratulations to our boys of fall uh to coach Sosa and his amazing amazing coaching staff. So and they do play this Friday at Engleside. So please come out and support. >> Any questions for coach Reyes? Well, this is um more for uh Mr. How follow up to what we were talking about on Tuesday night. Mr. How the um seventh grade failure rate for the same six weeks. Uh it was a failure rate of 31% for the athletes, the the male, what was
100the seventh grade six weeks. >> I was trying to get that pulled today. Um, Miss Avon who's been at the Skyward training the last three days. She was wrapping up the finalizing all the grades for our nine weeks and making sure that we had everything posted correctly for grades. I'll have those first thing tomorrow. >> Okay. Thank you. >> I just want to make a comment on that on on Tuesday's meeting that was brought up about the seventh graders and the poor scorers. Um, and coach Sosa the way he is, he I mean he holds himself accountable for that. Uh, he didn't have excuses. is he had solutions. So, uh we had some ideas being passed around maybe starting in the sixth grade pre-athletics teaching about UIL rules and the no pass no play. Um
101you know, historically we see that in kind of in seventh grade because that's the first time they they're introduced to sports and and the six week uh grade mark. So, uh I I'm just happy with coach Sosa and the way he presented it and uh and uh I think that number is going to increase next year. And I want to reiterate, I should say, um, in talking with coach Sosa, I was impressed with how he owned it. Um, no excuses. Um, he was aware of it. He talked about what they have already done. I was impressed. So, very good. >> All right. If there's no more questions, guess what, Mike? You're up. Operations report. >> Okay. Okay, so there's a couple of projects I wanted to highlight here. Uh we had some HVAC replacements done
102in the past month. Uh there picture that is the existing our current admin area. Uh in the background, maybe a little difficult to see, but we had to get a crane come up because we had to go over the new twotory addition to get to those units. Uh we replaced two two unit three three units up there. And uh I'll be honest, I admit it went way smoother than I thought it was going to. It they got it done. And I mean in a couple hours while staff was there, we still kept it comfortable inside while they were working. I don't think we got any complaints about it being hot while we had those units. We did them one at a time and it went very well. So very proud of the guys for doing
103that was maintenance and our HVAC crew came together and got that done. And then on the right there, that is that LED lighting for pictured there is baseball, but it's also for softball. All the retrofit is complete. The baseball lights are actually functional, but the whole thing hasn't been handed over yet. remaining of it is just finishing some more controls and that should be wrapping up. Hopefully the end of this month we'll be all done and baseball and softball will have new upgraded LED lighting. Baseball looks great by the way. It was on just a couple nights ago and uh it it lit up. You you're definitely going to be able to see. Okay. And then so this is the first time doing the operations budget for the 2526 year. So this year we started
104with 788,500 And so far we've encumbered 261,558. Again, it's big number beginning of the year and this is income encumbered. Doesn't mean that we've spent all that, but all of our yearly agreements that we pay out through the year are all done come September one when we get that new budget. So that's why that number is so high. That money hasn't necessarily been spent, but we've encumbered it because it'll be taken out throughout the year whenever they charge us. So that's why that number is so high. Uh so remaining 526,942 And that concludes my report. Any questions? >> No, I don't I'm certainly not making a big deal out of it. You say it's encumbered, but then right next to it, it says the same almost the same exact numbers. Actually, a little bit $30
105more has been spent. So, is that just a typo? >> Yeah, it's typo. It's exactly the same. That that number changes. I apologize for that. I thought I had it right. But yeah, no, that's supposed to be the exact same number. That'll change. And again, that's that's that large because it's just that was our this is our first time reporting since September 1. So after that, that number will not be going up that high. It's going to be much more lower like it was last year. I asked you about this on Tuesday and you let me know that um what had happened with it. I would I had had it brought to my attention that the tennis court lighting was an issue. Um I know you said there was a switch that needed to be
106fixed. >> Yeah, there's a switch on the outside off a stadium drive that we have some issues with sometimes. It's been broken a few times, so we have to get that replaced. And it's also that switch is only activated a certain time. That way no one can just go up there and activate it during the day. And so there was two things that were kind of causing that and we're we're addressing it. All right, if there's not any more questions, that concludes the superintendent reports. All right, that brings us to agenda item number 10, which is our consent agenda. The superintendent may consolidate items on the agenda summary for possible group action, or any trustee may suggest group action on any items to expedite the meeting. Board, are there any questions or items you would
107like to pull from from consent agenda? And if not, I'll look for a motion. I move to approve the consent agenda. >> All right. A motion made motion made by Mrs. Jarnell, second by M. Mrs. Randall. Any further discussion? If not, we'll take a vote. All in favor? I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries 70. All right, that brings us to item 11, which is close session. So at this time the board will recess into executive session pursuant of the Texas government code section 551071 551072 551074 and 551076 and the time is 7:37