001we have six six yeah we have six trustees present our our president will be joining us shortly we could please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance we don't have any body signed up for public forum our superintendent report will be moved down to nine four we're moving it down to the after the shack we're going to begin with closed session as authorized by five five one point zero seven one it's last five five one point zero seven four of the Texas government code for discussion regarding construction renovations of district campuses and level three grievance of Micra upon doe and discussion regarding rescission of accepted resignation submitted by Caroline you [Music] you hey we are back from closed session and I think we're hopping around a bit so we're at item seven first and then we'll
002go to mr. Cruz is ready but I'll entertain a motion on seven [Music] I'm going to direct the superintendent to come up with a plan to dispose of surplus metal and move forward with the plan if it is financially benefit if it is a financial benefit to the school district Thea any further discussion okay all in favor okay yes so six in favor with Mississippi upon the abstaining that takes us to 7b miss Hanson I moved to deny Caroline broaches request to Reese and submitted an accepted resignation second motion second to discussion seeing none all in favor the motion okay so four one two abstentions Christian McLaughlin that motion carries okay that takes us to item 8 mr. Cruz yes so I was asked to come up here and do a presentation on the public
003comment law oh you have some PowerPoint materials in front of you so I'll just kind of go over the presentation on the first page of the material steps in front of you at the very bottom as you see there before this past legislative session we did not have any laws that regulated public comment in the state of Texas under the Texas Open Meetings Act so moving on to the second page of your material the bill that was introduced is hospital 28 40 hospital 28 40 now has a new section by five 1.000 7 of the Texas government code the first thing that it addresses is what you see there at the very bottom of your materials which is addressing the board now the law requires that the before the Board considers an item on their
004agenda that they has to give the public an opportunity to speak before or during the consideration of that item there's has been a lot of talk about this because people especially superintendents have asked me well do we have to take all of the action items and put public comment before it or before the informational items what does it mean well we do have some guidance and if you turn the page you have we're relying on the Texas Supreme Court opinion that you see there and if they're the court kind of define what consideration means it supports that quote when the majority of a public decision-making body is considering a pending issue there can be no informal discussion there is either formal consideration of a matter in compliance with the Open Meetings Act or an illegal
005meeting so basically our advice to school districts is that really the word consideration should be before anything that you're going to be discussing receiving information on whether or not there's action so it should go before public comments should go before your informational items and before your an action items it should be kind of you call the meeting to question you do you know your you know Pledge of Allegiance so on and so forth and get the public comment out of the way right away we I did have four and the reason why this is an item is because there are some boards that I work with that really had public comment until the end of the agenda that has never been the practice here but we did have that and that's the reason why you
006have that specific language in the code now time limit and speaker limits it's here at the bottom and you all know that before we had restrictions right we were not gonna be having if there's 50 people that would come to public comment we were not gonna listen to all 50 of them now we have to because the law says that you can't group them or have people delegate a certain spokesperson that is already out of out of the the rules now what the law does allow you to set reasonable time limits so if you have for example three minutes five minutes per speaker you can reduce it based upon the number of speakers that you have for that night to 30 seconds 45 seconds a minute because we're not gonna you know no City Council
007County Commissioners court or school board is gonna be at a meeting where they do nothing other than public comments right so in the next page what about public criticism of the board that the law does say that it cannot be prohibited but there has to be basically criticism with respect to following the First Amendment and I have for some First Amendment basics on the next page for you as you know the First Amendment applies to all Texas public school districts and we do not inhibit you know the First Amendment freedom of speech either at a public board meeting or other at other places but we do have limitations with respect to forms and you do have they're at the very bottom the types of forms you have basically three types of form you have the
008traditional public four you have your limited public forum and then you have your non public forum the non public forum is the easiest one that's the classroom right you're not gonna be able to talk about burning of the flag and stuff like that because teachers have to teach social studies you know so we don't really allow just anybody to walk in there and say expose their views the second one is the open public forum which is basically sidewalks streets that's what we have our protests around our country right so that is we cannot restrict it at all what we have here and the courts have said that the public public comment policy is governed by the limited public forum so the limited public forum it's basically as the war as the word connotes right it's
009limited you can have and then the next page you you have there in terms of limited public forms allow boards to basically set regulations so long as they don't discriminate on the basis of your viewpoint so for example if you allow somebody to come up here and talk about how great your geometry teacher is then you can't come up and you can't if another speaker comes up and then says no this geometry teacher is not good we're not gonna allow that once you allow it for one you have to allow it for all because you cannot discriminate based upon their viewpoint so but what can you do if somebody wants has a you know channeling of a complaint like for example tonight that you all heard a complaint in closed session right you at the
010very bottom it says you direct the speaker to follow the grievance policies and we have policies for students and parents F and G for employees you just hurt one dtpa and the third one that you have is for your public which is G F so there if they do have a complaint you wanted to come up through an orderly process the next this page is recommendations of public comments restrictions now you don't have to allow just because you allow speakers you can't allow them to come up here and use profane language obscene language that the board president can say no you're out of order you continue with that we're going to out ask you to refrain or be escorted off the podium what about time limitations there is a specific provision if people are going
011to be speaking Spanish so if you have for example somebody that comes up here and speaks you know if the English speakers get three minutes if you're going to have a Spanish speaker and you they're gonna need a translator then you give them six minutes you have to give them basically double time on the next page what about what kind of comments do we get do we get comments that relate to the agenda or other comments as well the law basically says that you basically can restrict your public comments to only agenda items so if for example the true leaders are not on the agenda then you cannot comment on items that are not on the agenda but that is a policy for the boards I have boards that restrict it to only agenda items
012and I have boards that basically welcome anything dealing with district business till there is an attorney general request this is the only attorney general request that was filed on October 25th 2019 and it's basically asking the Blanco County Attorney submitted a request for an opinion asking basically when in terms of public comment it says that we have to have it before or during this particular person felt that basically they had 20 items 21 items on a commissioners court agenda for Blanco County and that they they the Commissioner's Court were required to hear him at it each and every agenda item the as you may you know believe the Blanco County Commissioners Court disagrees with that because if you allow that for one person then the question is can you restrict public comments to only a
013certain portion of the agenda at a certain time limit that's the question before the AG's office our opinion is that yes you can you can set reasonable rules that basically says you're not gonna have at each and every agenda item you're gonna have it at the very beginning and that's at the only time that the board is gonna have public comments and then you also have in terms of limiting the right of people to speak in terms of the the amount of time that is also a reasonable regulation that can that can be had so so that's my presentation of the public comment it's not really a long long long we obviously because we just began implementing this September 20 2019 we only have five five one point zero zero seven and the reason for
014this I do want to tell the public and and you all as well this new section of the Texas Open Meetings Act does not arise out of school district issues it arose basically out of a City Council that in in a part of our state was not allowing public comments beginning they were allowing at the very end and they had very basically onerous restrictions for allowing the speech to get out there so because of that City one legislate or thought that you know what we don't have a law relating to public comment that's put one in the books 2840 is passed by the legislature and now you have it as part of your Open Meetings Act under five five one zero zero seven do you all have any questions for me yes so we need
015to make revisions to our current policy correct so what the yellow material that I have in front of you that's the one that Marcie just gave me that's basically what tas p has kind of put out there and they're gonna give you options so i think you need to work with your policy consultant from tasbeeh they'll give you the recommendations as but yeah certainly you should probably make sure that your policy is up is updated for sure mhm well I mean I think so right now you already have public comment and obviously you know you're not you know in any type of violation just make sure that when you come up with a policy it's something that is in line with the presentation I give you you should be it's not gonna be too many
016revisions to be truthful because I've been working with others need to revise the part about grouping grouping for sure yeah you have it at the very big we don't have to have it after each agenda we just can't force them to go in to elect a one person to speak what we need to take it out of policy thank you all right thank you Merry Christmas to everybody as well thank you mister board president if there are no objections from my colleagues I would respectfully request that we move up item 11 be any objections to consider an 11 be at this time all right no objections we'll do it 11 be consider approval of youth service position not to exceed $20,000 per year for two years are we there any presentation or are we just
017sharing what we know about this and voting do they want to talk the one of y'all want to talk about this okay always welcoming our partners from City Hall good evening my name is drew Wells I'm the director of parks recreation for the city of San Marcos and with me I have Jessica Ramos who is our youth services manager for the Parks Recreation Department so we really don't have a presentation prepared for you tonight on this agenda item but we are here to answer questions about the program in the initiative that we are trying to get support for but I can't provide just a quick little brief summary and then if and then if there's questions from that please please don't hesitate to ask so this this position is the purpose of it is to
018try to implement the youth master plan that was adopted in 2013 and we the core four entities the four entities that are supporting this initiative are the school district the course the city of San Marcos Hays County and then Texas State University these four entities have gotten together and have seen the need and a desire to create a position that will be focused on implementing the different components and aspects of our youth master plan and what we thought we would do is contract with the nonprofit organization Community Action for them to have this position in their area to implement this and and what we how we were structuring this is that the city would fund half of the expense and then the other three entities that's full district the University in Hays County would fund
019the other 50% of the program equally so that's why the portion is not to exceed twenty thousand dollars the the city of San Marcos would be the contracting entity with Community Action and then we are developing that contract right now and then we hope to have that here in the coming weeks prepared and then in that contract we'll kind of spell out what the deliverables are what we expect for them to provide back to the the core for group and and then on the vacuum what we are doing the city of San Marcos is that we would have memorandum of agreement with each of the other three entities to basically spell out how we would fund this position and the programs that community action will enact on our behalf so that's kind of a brief
020summary of what the program is and then again Jessica now we would be happy to answer any questions if you have any as the county have the county and university approved an allotment of twenty thousand per year for two years the Texas State University has approved that the county I do not yeah I do not think that they have considered that the Commissioner's Court but I know that they are generally on board with this initiative but I cannot answer that okay well at this point we would be looking to community action to actually hire this employee and it would be their employee and then the Community Action would contract with the Corps for entities to deliver you know the that's correct they would be supervising that employee and then the employee would be working with
021the Corps for entities in various capacities and then also be working with the Commission on children and youth - yes and and then we that that's correct and we will be pretty specific in what those deliverable items are various reports and then just that they will be reporting back to the school board to the school district Oh correct correct and yes and before we before we execute the contract with the Community Action we will make sure that the school district the the county and Texas State that they will see the language within that contract to make sure that your interests are in there and then there will be a mechanism for community action to report back to the core group to ensure that those interests entrance are being met we have provided input to the
022MOU in this position would actually coordinate with the Commission on youth which a trustee Halsey and some of our district personnel are a part of and they're they're kind of like we can't do nobody couldn't one person this person would do for the for an ADIZ brink like if we have an issue with the student that is above and beyond they so this is this is a recommendation that came from the Commission originally up through the council and then to the core four and the original idea was that there are some programs that that don't lie entirely within just one of those domains and so you have to have a real concerted cooperation between those entities in order to do them and so the first two initiatives that this person would be charged with bringing
023forward would be a community-wide mentorship program so I know that we have started at the high school through the gear up a mentorship program but it's trying to do that more expansively throughout the community so that it goes beyond just the gear up cohort and and the other one would be to do to bring forward a community-wide mental health initiative that pretending to the positive mental health of our youth again we have a lot of resources within the district but tying those into something that is more broad-based across the community and more encompassing of businesses and parents and first responders and sort of bringing everybody together to ensure that we are doing all that we can to provide for the positive mental health of our kids and then just further background when we met with
024the county city and university that that's when we first saw the subset of the board I think it was me and you as when we first saw the early job outline and we were we gave some feedback and we were expecting that to be revised and be a little more specific than it was and at that time I didn't know how I can't say all board supports this you know we got a vote there's seven of us but I did commit to putting on the agenda which I have and so that's why it's here tonight because I think they needed some direction in my office of serving on that group that's how it did was there a market study that said this type of position should get paid 120 grand or how did that happen
025well the and this is a not to exceed amount we are we have had since the meeting the core for meeting we have had meetings with community action to discuss the dollar amount to make sure where it is how it would have fit within their organization and it's not only for the salary there's going there's a little bit of expense for overhead and and for some programmatic expenses and so forth so we're still having those discussions to nail down the exact dollar amount but we do not it will not exceed for what the school districts portion more than that twenty thousand dollar amount and we felt that you know we needed to at least commit to a two-year period to you know give them an opportunity to get the person in place and to get
026them acclimated to you know the community and what the job is and then and to give them a little bit of time to get it up and running so we want it to be a two-year term initially okay well are there other questions comments concerns anyone none I guess individually I really like mentoring and obviously support every mental health thing that's come before this group that I can recall but I don't know if another government employee is the best solution for either of those and it seems like a lot of money but I will entertain motion make a motion to approve motion can to second any further discussion motion carries six one no I opposed it yes six one all right so that takes us back I think to the superintendent's report yeah yeah we're
027gonna go with popcorn okay okay report item nine a trusting we're going to be three informational items the GT update our extracurricular update and then our shack update good evening school board members I'm Debbie Smith can you hear me coordinator for Advanced academics GT and a couple of other things so I'm here to talk about the GC and ap update tonight as you know we redesigned our district model about three years ago and we did it with the idea that we wanted to do two things we wanted to increase our whole school enrichment and give a lot of kids others our opportunities and we wanted to stop doing just to pull out system that would create gaps in learning for our identified GT kids so that was part of the driving force so we have
028a tier 1 which is rigorous instruction in the regular classroom pre assessment would lend opportunities for students to participate in tier 2 which would be possibly a pullout with the GT teacher because they've demonstrated the learning that was going on in the classroom it could look like a push in but they would do extended learning some kind of project-based learning it could be problem-solving it could be critical thinking it can be a lot of different things depending on what they decide to do and then tier 3 would be an independent study opportunity we've also increased the school-wide enrichment opportunities through academic UIL science fair and some other things and all of the GT specialists kind of help with that so this is just a slide that shows you some of the things that our GT
029specialists at the elementary level facilitate and/or coordinate academic UIL gob there's a whole list of things that they do and there's really only a couple of things that are strictly GT kids all of the other things include all students for that whole school enrichment these are some pictures of our kids participating in maker space the regional Science Fair and then showing some problem-solving and collaboration through the steam and stem activities where they're trying to stack the cups and stuff the instruments that we currently use for GT identification are Matt growth a couple of years ago you charged me with screening grade levels we screened K second and fourth with portfolios and we did pretty good finding kids that needed to be referred that had not been referred and we did refer a lot of kids
030ourselves this map screener has given us a really really great opportunity to screen all grade levels so we use that this year and the recommendation is 95 percentile in reading or math we felt like we would miss kids if we stuck at 95 percent so we looked at 80 percent and above to make sure we didn't miss kids that might need to be screened then of course we do an achievement test which is the Iowa Raven is an ability test the sig stands for skills for identifying gifted students and it looks at categories with a Likert scale teachers fill it out parents fill it out and it looks at several categories creativity general intellectual leadership and then just the specific academic areas we still do a portfolio for creativity for K through 5 and then
031we have a student interview for secondary kids these are our current numbers by school at the elementary level and our secondary there's by school and then looking at our demographics when you break them down if you look at the chart at the bottom it says GT the ratio from GT to district is 10 percent or identified that's really pretty much in line with what a lot of districts do the high the Hispanic and Latino ethnicity that percentage is 61 percent of the ones that are identified our special ed is at 1 percent 504 is 3.5% el7 and eco dis is 39% we have increased in many of those categories from years past we still have some work to do because ultimately we would like those numbers to mirror the demographics of our district or get
032as close to that as possible that's also the what the state plan wants us to do but we've kind of tweaked our testing as we go to try to bring in more qualitative evidence because when you rely too heavily on just quantitative evidence it's really hard you're gonna miss kids that way especially some of those special pops that are difficult to identify anyway and it's actually a statewide nationwide problem with certain subpopulations so the state of Texas in House bill 3 came out with some stuff for gifted and they wants you to identify areas where you need to improve and then create a deficiency plan the things that I would like to focus on or to increase or we're going to focus on as the district is to increase opportunities for school-wide enrichment on all
033the campuses we're doing a good job but I think we can do better expand our qualitative testing piece so that we can have those numbers mirror the district's testing percentages and then increase our opportunities for the social-emotional GT specific learning and then moving to ap our current demographics show that we have a total enrollment of 519 unique students of that group there are 304 that identify with Hispanic Latino we have 10 that are in special ed and you can see the rest of the numbers there so we feel like this does demonstrate we do have open access and we do encourage open access to AP there's still some work to do and there's still some students we can look for one of the things we do is use the AP potential report from PSAT to
034kind of help us find kids and funnel them into that sooner we brought in laying the foundation training for teachers last year to kind of help with pre AP and AP and math and language and language arts or English and we send teachers to training on a regular basis in the summer on a rotating basis because at one point we were getting reimbursed every other year first for teachers for training that's that practice stopped this year but we typically do it every other to every three years that we try to send teachers and we actually have some extra teachers trained that aren't currently teaching a section just so we have some backup and we can grow our teachers say unique students so you mean if they are in four classes you can do them once
035correct okay questions miss Hanson back to the GTA identification instruments for just page eight are on the cigs is there a parent meeting to discuss you have a GT kid what they do may seem normal because that's what you see every day but compared to the others which you may or may not have the opportunity to compare they may be rated lower by the parents if they don't have some kind of information we have a parent information at every session at every campus in the beginning of the year we have to have it in the fall before we open our referral period and at that time one of the things that we talk about is the SIG's and how important it is in fact this year I really implored parents and unfortunately not all the
036parents come so we're going to try and follow up with we send home an information sheet and encourage them to call and contact the GT facilitator when we send that out because our teachers can do it online but our parents still have to do it on paper so we will encourage them to ask because not only that but if they only have one child at home they don't have a point of reference to really assess them and then unless somebody is on page nine what are the plans to increase enrollment especially at Mendez in Rodriguez I mean not been Roman placement well I looked at that too that troubled me when I saw that there were 20 students so I did some some work there and some of those of those students that were there
037we had been hovering around 40 students over the last few years we had several students that withdrew some of those students did move on to middle school we had several students that transferred to other schools within the district one of them was Rodriguez that we lost them to Crockett in DZ even some of the new ones that we identified we had two of those withdraw to went to Rodriguez some were identified for middle school because there were fifth graders and then we had one go to Bowie and one to DZ so we definitely know that's an area where we want to encourage the makerspace our GT teacher works with all of the students on a regular basis trying to grow those I've asked my GT teachers on every campus to use that map growth number
038and we also have a thing called Frazier's tabs which is just kind of an observation piece and I've asked them when you've got a student that you feel like you've worked with and they weren't referred for any reason go in and use those tabs and do some observations we're trying to limit that so that it's not a hundred kids they're having to look at but really using the tools that we have to make the best decisions but we want to make sure we're getting kids that don't otherwise get referred so we're looking at all the different ways that we can do that Gigi teachers Authority how many GGG teachers do we have seven yes ma'am what well I can go through the hole at Mendez we not only have a GT teacher but she's bilingual
039certified as well and at Rodriguez we have GT teacher that is actually Asian at Travis we have a bilingual GT teacher at Crockett we do have an Anglo teacher at Bowie we have an Anglo teacher at Hernandez we have a Hispanic bilingual teacher so it's pretty diversified and they're not going to know what to do right what is the processes what does it mean for my student my channel to be considered well I think one thing that we're doing as a district is we're trying to work more closely with our bilingual education department and make sure that you know we've got some bilingual coaches that are very involved at the elementary level and the other levels and so we we try to work with them we start with the parent meeting that we have to
040have we have translators there and then follow up with those parents that when we have to refer kids because parents did not we have to send home and explain the parents why are we referring their children and sometimes that involves a conversation to really explain what we're doing we're open to doing whatever we actually have the resources and manpower to do because it is a like I said it's a statewide nationwide issue of equity in identification so we want to find these kids we need to find these kids and I think it helps that we do have some bilingual GT teachers in place in some key areas mr. Kim - thank you been watching the changes take place and I really appreciate them I think the elementary campuses especially with the implementation of the UIL
041programming throughout the elementary campuses has made a significant difference and the curriculum changes in the integration of the Ala program at the middle school is really great thank you share concerns about how we are identifying and ensuring that there's equity in the identification process but I just want to make sure to also you know Rodriguez we have a significantly smaller school there so numbers wouldn't we wouldn't expect them to be there not at full capacity yet so presumably that number would increase is that school population increases and then for Mendez in the other schools that have the dual language program I just want to make sure that I understand that for instance at Crockett there's no Dual Language Program so students that are in the dual language programs it at the other four campuses we're
042not also having those those dual language students are not also in GT right we're considering what I think I was told before is that dual language program is the GT program right well you still have to identify the students campaigns so if they're in dual language they can be in dual language and be identified GT but they don't have to be identified GT to participate in dual language right but so so these numbers include everyone that I would find in E school through our peens system so that would include kids that are sitting in a dual language program yes does that mean that they have gone throughout the all the suits have gone through all of those tests to be identified or that they've just been identified because they head to 80% to 85% the
043ones that you're looking at on that slide were identified last year they're currently being served we are just starting our testing season in January and so those are the students that we were able to look at using map growth to find those kids that had not been referred by parents and/or to make sure - one of the things I'm trying to do in training through our nature needs is to help them understand that we're when we're looking at students and for terms of identifying for GT we're looking at strengths not deficiencies and so that that's a process that takes time to teach that and for them to understand because teachers want to fix what they need to fix and that's what they're they're working you know with struggling students and so those that don't have
044experience with GT yet learn that there's a different way to look at kids thank you mister board president mrs. Smith thank you for this presentation similarly like my colleagues their comments about Mendez's numbers are concerning to me as someone who has advocated for full time GT facilitators at every camp is an argument was made we don't need them at every campus because the numbers are so low at some of our campuses and at that time and during that conversation in dialogue I said well if we have a full time GT facilitator those numbers will go up so seeing the numbers as is is concerning to me in my day job I have the opportunity to see you know all men to second third fourth and fifth graders and I can assure you and as you
045know they are very gifted students at Mendez elementary school so I look forward to whatever strategies or plans are gonna be put into place to increase identification at that campus because those students are there I know we all know they're there so obviously identifying them as the next step but thank you I agree and thank you okay thank you next we are going to item 9 a to extra curricular academic performance good evening is this alright good evening president McLaughlin members of the board it took me superintendent Cardona and members of cabinet my name is Tanisha Presley and I'm the proud principal of San Marcos high school our purpose tonight is to share with you where we are with extracurricular participation at San Marcos high school and then we I've also brought along some friends
046who will help us talk a little bit about our college career military readiness initiatives at at st. Marcos high school and what we've done from August to date to support our students I want to take you back about almost 10 years where budget cuts where the state cut our budgets and there was almost a five billion dollar budget cut and in that time the conversation came about in many districts and ours included on what are we going to do to to continue to serve our students part of that conversation turned into well we'll cut out extracurricular activities that conversation didn't happen in San Marcos and it was happening in surrounding districts and so the the highlight was we want to take away Fine Arts that was the first first thing that people zeroed in on
047so as those conversations were happening there was also an influx of research that came out about the importance of extracurricular activities and the impact that it has on our students and our school culture and so what the research findings were is that students who are who are involved and connected on their campuses have a higher likelihood of high higher academic achievement in turn it also has a positive effect on your school culture which includes students who may not be engaged or enrolled in some of your extracurricular activities so I'm going to talk a little bit about where we are as a campus and then I'll ask coach Soto to set and come in and talk about what we're doing to some of the some of the gaps that we might see so currently we have
048two thousand two hundred and fifty-six students who are these are names on rosters so we do understand that there may be some overlap in students who are maybe in athletics or band and also in National Honor Society right now we don't have a strong platform to track students so the data that you see tonight was manually aggregated for the purpose of this presentation and while going through that process we're also looking at some different different platforms that might be able to help us better track our students in the future we are currently on Tuesdays and Fridays on Tuesdays and Thursdays I'm sorry we do offer transportation late transportation for our students mostly its students who are staying for academic enrichment or tutoring we want to be able to offer more more days in the moment
049where we're paying two hundred and ten dollars per bus per day and if you factor in anywhere from two to four buses that can give me an exact on it fluctuates depending on the number of kids that need transportation it can get pricey rather quickly so that's something that we're we we want to improve upon and it is a work in progress so if you go back to if you go back to the slide where we talked about the over 2,000 students that are involved in extracurricular activities at San Marcos high school or names on rosters you'll we extracted our athletes that's our largest over a third of our campus or approximately a third of our campus are are enrolled in athletics that's 648 students we want so so we'll use that we're using that
050group as our as our big conversational piece tonight because that is our largest elective on campus when we look at our instructional data or our our performance data we see that 43% of our students scored meets or better and 66 quarter approaches are better if you that's our whole school so if you pull that 648 students that large elective out the kids that are connected you can see on this next slide that students who are enrolled in athletics had almost a 20% or fewer students score below approaches and almost a 10 percentage point higher in masters than those who are not enrolled of course we know our district goal is to is to grow each student at least one year academically and so we can't talk about about Yoshie data without talking about student growth
051and progress so as a campus and remember just remembering that progress is measured in English too and Algebra one so that's why you only have 2 subject areas represented here over half of our students showed expected or accelerated growth in English 2 and almost 90% of our students overall showed limited growth in algebra 1 here's where we saw an anomaly because overall our students performed better in in English and so the research says if you are connected and engaged in extracurricular activities or participate then you're more likely to perform better what we saw in if you look at this slide in English two students who were enrolled in athletics did not did not accelerate at a higher rate or progress at a higher rate as a students who are not however if you go to
052the down to the bottom you can see our algebra 1 scores and you see that students our students who are enrolled in athletics almost scored almost four times than though in masters than those who are not enrolled so the purpose of data of course is to show us where we are where we've been and to help us rethink how we can move forward more effectively and so I'm going to invite coach Soto to the podium so that he could talk a little bit about what we're doing this year and how that's how that's working out so that we can continue to improve our academic performance what would look like and this is kind of what it came to basically we have two periods second period in seventh period and we divided those periods up by
053team to be able to facilitate study hall and character training within those advisory periods so basically if you are a first period athlete football boys soccer boys basketball you work out through first period and then you get into the showers and change about 15 minutes prior to the end of the period and then you end up going to breakfast from 9 o 8 to 9:30 and at 9:30 all the books open up all the computers open up and we start a study hall with on Mondays its football and wrestling as basketball cross country and boys soccer go to some type of character training or if it's close to grade report time they may stay in study hall longer and those those groups change per day so Monday like I said football wrestling will be in
054the study hall while boys basketball cross country and boys soccer will be in character training and then Tuesday they switch Wednesday switch back Thursday and then Friday Friday they're all in some type of study hall so that's the way we kind of facilitate the morning second period again if it's a grading week where we've got our IP are coming out for eligibility or a nine week course they may stay in study hall the whole time 7th period before our eighth period aesthetic period we go straight to study all on that and it's the same similar split with the teams being split between boy girls basketball volleyball girls soccer girls and baseball and the other split being softball tennis swimming golf and again they work a good 3040 minutes in their study hall or character training
055and then they go dressed out for athletics so that way when athletics starts at 3:12 they are there getting to getting their workouts begun at the time that the the period starts this has worked out well for us it's also worked out well for the fact that we can bring in other entities and come talk to our kids we've sent the kids to the Career Center to sign up for their FAFSA we've sent them there to sign up for college entrance exams abstract testing all these type things so it's just a good time for us to get our kids where they need to be throughout the sports and then also get them the help that they need to prepare for EOC to prepare for eligibility to and nine weeks tests right now our average unweighted
056kill'em to GPA throughout our 600 or so athletes is a three point three four and our average weighted cumulative GPA is an eighty eight point five two so we're pretty proud of that that runs about the way it's been going for the last seven years that we've been here kind of charting this we're normally right around an 88 I think the lowest it's ever been is an 86 87 somewhere in there so we have 177 students in second period Advisory and 130 students in 7th period advisory there are some athletes that go to a second period class in a seventh period class and are not in the Advisory period for some of them it may be an edge annuity class where they're catching up on credits where other ones it's a class that they need
057for their diploma plan so there's quite a few kids as you can see in the Advisory periods some different things that we've also used for kids is something that our school put out was the the road to EOC testing and we use these dates to influence our kids to go to get the tutorials after school Saturday and in school also so if we have time during that second and seventh period we usher them to those tutorials when we can and we have our coaches influence them to go to some of these tutorials for the EOC testing miss hurens burger got us a list of all of our athletes so we know all of their LC scores and I've had each coach take out the kids that are in need of some help to tour with
058tutorials for the EOC so that way we can help influence those kids by any means we need to give them to tutorials if you catch my drift additional tutorials that we have the science was awesome it was already set up second and seventh periods so again pushing those kids that need some science ELC tutorials or or just tutorials in general during second and seventh period the science teachers have a couple key teachers that work those the tutorials during second and seventh that help us move those kids initially those kids that way English has a seven figure coach that he's new coach to the district and teaches English he helps out on Tuesdays and Thursdays with these kids and then of course math and history have their tutorials set up after school as you saw earlier
059last year we've got most of our kids on the Khan Academy to help them kind of get a more acute area of studying because on that you can narrow down to the objective what you need to learn so we've used the Khan Academy also as coaches we've put them on those on those tutorials and then also the teachers in our in our district have done that also Thank You coach do you know which team has the highest GPA as a girls volleyball I think they know girls volleyball is pretty far up there right now I would I would think it was them but the ones that are always in the running to swim golf and and girls volleyball but girls volleyball is there nationally-known what their their GPA every years that they get recognizes I
060think it lasts three years in a row thank you Oh miss Castillo their schedule allowed them to go to be in second and seven period athletic advisory then they're there if their schedule didn't allow them to go because they needed a class then they go to class yes and some of them are after school like if you look at the top says after school and then Saturday and then in school the one on the right is in school if we can get them there we do we are working on that I had a meeting with the the math of the English math and science coaches to try to figure out something during seven second and seventh they did are we were already into the semester so it's gonna be too hard for them to kind
061of manage that science Atari had it done so we were good with science so we're looking to that in the future as you know this kind of got in late in the summer so we didn't have great planning with it as far as getting that set and getting it rolling but we're working as well as we're going through it we're learning a lot of different things and we know it helps so next year or possibly in the spring if we can't trying to get some tutorials in that 2nd and 7th period is going to be important to us that's how we got the English teacher he was a coach he had 7th period off he said he could do two two periods a week for us so that's how we got that one so we're
062constantly looking for those teachers that kind of can help us during that second of seven three if not we have four to five coaches sitting with those kids helping them with tutors or with their own study halls so we've got coaches that actively monitor and move around and help these kids with their studies saucy we in the past allowed students to opt out of ELC is based on their PSAT scores and such or and are we have we been doing that and are we going to be doing that it has been allowed but it's that's gone away for this year the Commissioner has ruled we can't do that because it's in violation of federal law does that mean then that those students there who say a student was able to opt out of the EOC
063because their PSAT score was high enough that then we would see and they were an athlete we would see their grade point average reflected in that number but we would not see their AOC score test like with the are they in that job there they are over ELC data would show up in the meats category if they opt out used 250 so both middle school damn programs have significantly increased and so we've now seen a slight increase in the high school band program but we also offer other programs with the implementation of mariachi if the schedule does not allow but with the eighth period day now students should be able to take band and mariachi or band and the additional electives so now it's just a matter of making sure that we're scaffolding and siphoning
064the students up into the program so there it's not true the program is shared on the Thank You mr. board president mr. Presley is what years the athletic advisory period in is this its first year at San Marcos high school yes sir what was the schedule like per student-athlete last academic year last academic year they were on a seven period day so what was the length of that athletic period where we 52 minutes so we've extended it to include I guess all the way up until 1006 now I'm just trying to get like here's for me every year so was at 55 minutes and now we've extended it with the athletic advisory to 1006 a right and what was the I guess justification of extending that one cohorts time period versus English or science or
065history or what have you when we went to the eighth period day we knew we were gonna have extra periods extra electives we offered it to other other programs we were the only ones that wanted to do it for sure so we moved forward with it and kind of devised this thing is it was growing and the the main deal was to get our you know we asked to teach Bell to ball in in English and and algebra and everything else when athletics were the same way we want to use bell to bell but it's hard when you have to get dressed out you got shower you got to get them breakfast and things like that so that's how that second period evolved and if we were going to do it for one varsity athletic
066period we needed to do it for the other varsity athletic period cuz technically kind of the boys are in the morning first period and then after school is kind of more outdoor more the girls sports or in the eighth period so we wanted we wanted equality there so that's why we did it during second for the first period athletics that is varsity athletics and then the seventh before the eighth period athletics which is a mixture of mostly girls but also boys sports so that's kind of the direction we had it with it we wanted to be able to get them a lot of us practice before school so a lot of these kids weren't able to eat breakfast because they're starting practices at 6:30 7 o'clock in the morning so it was just kind of
067a good thing for our kids to be able to keep them involved get them to practices on time get them get get the work out of the period that we want that we needed to get and then still get them into breakfast in the mornings and the tutorial part of it has really proven to be our kids really like it because some of these kids are going on a Tuesday night and they're not getting home to 11:30 at night 12:30 at night and then they don't want to do their homework but they know they've got 2nd period or seventh period that they can sit there and get it done and quite a few of them take advantage of it and it helps that we have you know we have four coaches with basically four to
068six primary coaches in those study halls to help monitor walk around make sure the kids that are there are on task so when you know the 10:30 or 9:30 whatever time I think it's 9:30 rolls around breakfast is put up and the computers come out and we're walking around managing these kids making sure that they're doing something on there that's academic I appreciate that information coach so for example on Monday our in our board packet in the presentation it says I guess boys soccer cross country they what time do they arrive for practice in the morning if it says that they're eating breakfast from 9 o 8 a.m. to 9:30 if what time did their day start if they're in season take football and boys soccer if they're in season their practices start in my
0697 o'clock in the morning so they're out of season like take for example the first two months of school boys soccer was not in season so they were able to they start their period when the bell rings okay and they go through their full period get their shower and then they can some kids will eat before they start at 8:10 and some people some of the kids will just wait until the 9 9 o 8 to 9:30 D it's just up to them on that so so theoretically in this example as a student-athlete I could come in start practicing at 7:00 go shower change before 9:00 and go have breakfast by 9:30 and be done for the day with practice my athletic practice I'd be done by 9:30 and based on administrative decisions best practices
070what you deemed prudent was to give build in a 36 minute advisory period for student-athletes to do either study hall or a character training correct and I guess the purpose of this information for me one is if that is a model of success for a cohort of student athletes I know one of the concerns that we had moving away from mega lunch was that other students would not be able to be afforded those opportunities built into the school day of tutoring or extracurriculars when they can't get on the bus in the afternoon and the afternoon or the evening so I guess if it works for a specific population of students I would like to see it done campus-wide and what that would look like if a daily advisory for tutoring and tutorials and character training
071if all of those things are valued by San Marcos high school and the ISD then every student should be afforded those opportunities as well we're doing the best to produce the best product we can in taking the data in as we as we go again we're trying what we feel is the best for San Marcos kids and so thank you for bringing that bringing that up mr. arredondo we have started a series of conversations with our students and our parent and teacher bodies to talk about ways that if we decide that we want to go in the direction of of a mega lunch then where those conversations are starting now again it goes back to what we were saying earlier tracking our students is is difficult and so if we are doing something similar then
072we want to make sure that we can do it with fidelity and with in a nice structured environment we've looked at several different types of Bell schedules and there are schools who have mega lunch twice a week and three days a week they have you know two or three lunches so I think that's a conversation that I mean it's a conversation that's happening it's certainly something that we want to consider just we did double block a few English and algebra 1 courses so it's not strictly but their situation looks a little different so there's here's where content we're staying on pace we're going with everyday instruction and then that second part of their period their second block is more remediation and what additional supports you need academically thank you and again just to echo I
073may not follow the coaches on Twitter I see the character training that is being done with these student athletes and I think it's phenomenal I think it's extremely impactful and again if we could open up those types of opportunities and even those resources when it comes to tutoring and interventions that are built into the athletic Advisory period to all students I think it's evident in the data that this is moving the needle with that cohort so again whatever resources or support you need from myself as an individual trustee know that it's there because clearly it's working with our student athlete population thank you thank you all right are we ready for the second part of our presentation I've asked miss April Chapman Mustafa and mr. Doyle to join me we want to talk a little
074bit about our college career military readiness initiatives on campus what you see in this slide is an example of a living calendar that's maintained in our college career military readiness center by our CCM our advisor this just captures September we started planning this calendar in August and so it stretches from August to June and it's our May and there are quite a few pages so I just wanted you to have a sample of what one might look like in August we started working with our seniors and actually we started working with our teachers to really stress the the value and and impact that each teacher on our campus regardless of what they teach I have on a student's college college readiness factor in September we started with FAFSA nights and those continued weekly and have
075continued weekly from September to now I believe the last one is tomorrow if I'm not mistaken last one for the semester senior survey all of our seniors take the senior survey in September and this data is used or this information tells us which which students want to go where after high school whether they want to go to a technical school a four-year college enlist in the military and we use that information to draw students into whichever specific advisory or presentation they might need need to attend in October we continue with our FASFA nights and the hill hill country college fair and senior advisory senior action day which was amazing our while our 9th through 11th graders were taking the PSAT all of our seniors were in the 800 and 900 wings of the building and
076they were able to interact with several different colleges and universities and advisors from those universities we had recruits recruiters from different branches of the military our SEL counselor had a couple of sessions where she helped students talk learn stress techniques or distressing techniques and time management and organization we've also tested over 200 students in TSI and a hundred and thirteen FAFSA applications have been submitted at this point in the year we also are at 53 percent of our of our seniors who have submitted their college applications so we're we're on target or are 85% goal college readiness for our 9th through 11th grade looks very similar to our seniors however the conversation is different when you're in the ninth grade again we started with teacher in-service we also our district sponsored avid conference which was
077led by our district officials and facilitated by our our own teachers which was was incredibly amazing gear up has done an amazing work with our freshmen students and our freshmen parents they started with a parent night in September and continued to hold what we call masters classes for our parents both in October and November and I believe we had our last one last week yes and so that class is geared towards parents and it's to help our parents not only manage their personal finances or learn learn ways to manage their personal finances now but also to start planning for when your student is in college what is that going to look like for a parent financially and I mean imagine the gift of being able to start planning in the ninth grade and and not
078be caught off guard by the expenses of post-secondary education good evening board the following slide showcases some of the activities that we are doing to help connect our students into the workforce first you'll see that our CTE department is heavily involved in our local business and industry through partnerships and also advisory committees and we get those feedbacks from those industry helped shape our programs last year and we held a spring hiring event and we look to have that again this year the bottom picture you can see we had a partnership with a plus and in also with Embassy where we brought in for that hiring event HR reps to help teach our students to better understand how to build a resume and also how to interview and how to conduct yourself professionally in that interview
079process students were able to leave that session with that applica excuse me that resume in hand and those skills under their belt again we look to continue to grow that spring hiring event this spring this April also some other activities that we're doing is to always increase or have strong internship programs but also increase those opportunities for students these are some of the internship opportunities but not all our partnership with Embassy Suites epic piping local veterinary clinics the picture at the top of the slide is a really interesting picture the young man it's kind of hard to see holding the cat actually went through our vet tech program last year earnest certification is now employed with a vet office who those two young ladies are now vet and vet interns this year and so he's
080helping to train our current students in the program we also have partnerships with Hays nursing home and also seat and ICU and Kyle but again we we do have partnerships with the ctmc and again there's others out there we also do a lot of career awareness events our Job Shadow event that with our juniors and seniors but we did open it down or push it down into our eighth grade level this year with a great success to allow students to see career opportunities and different career fields that they can pursue as they move through high school and into post-secondary we also have a destination college and career day that we started last year at the 8th grade level again we look to continue that at the 8th grade level but also at our ninth grade
081level as well and then also within all teks NCD courses you have career exploration and career acknowledgement throughout all those teams and so before i go into the military about miss Castillo about increasing numbers and so one thing that Mike and I did this year was that we met with our elementary counselors because one thing that we recognize is the importance of building capacity in our adults the love of extracurricular starts when they're little and so informing our school counselors on what those programs look like so that way they can better educate our parents and so that we can hope to increase some of those numbers and so our goal is really just to build capacity and our adults because we know that our kids will ask will miss what is this about or I'm
082thinking about doing this and so the better educated they are the better we can inform our students and then increase those numbers as well and so when we look at the military readiness and so again it's the the look of how things have gone for this semester and so in August we had the National Guard come in to speak to the teachers about what does that look like joining the National Guard and in enrolling in the military and so our goal would be to increase that by having the other branches come and speak to the teachers as well because again the goal is to increase capacity and adults so that way our students look to them to be able to guide them and so we want to make sure that they're fully informed on what
083enlistment looks like and so in September of the branches of military Red Hill Country College and they were there to meet with parents and students to give them information about the military and inform them on what that looks like in the enlistment process and then the other part of that is the ASVAB testing and so we had about a hundred and five seniors test for asked that this semester and so they also received the career expert exploration interpretation and so that was really huge because it's not just as bad it's not just about enlisting in the military it's also about understanding yourself and potential careers and so that was really key for a kids and then we'll have it in the spring semester as well testing for those kids and then during senior action day
084military was there as well and so November and this is not just November this is every single month the military branches are there on campus to meet with students and so one thing that our college and career advisor does is all right we had we did a senior survey and so the kids identified areas of interest and so if a student stated that they were interested in the military she would ensure that if let's say if I'm interested in the airforce when they're on campus she will ensure that they have an opportunity to meet with them so that way they can get the information that they need and learn a little bit more about military and so personal graduation plan so our 10th through 12th graders currently have a personal graduation plan on file they
085meet individually with their counselor to update and modify that plan and so the discussion looks like they're talking about courses for next year they're looking at their endorsements they're talking about their college and career plans and then also ninth grade or eighth graders moving to ninth graders meet individually with their counselor to start that process as well and having that conversation about endorsements is so key because we want the kids to understand what the program looks like but again moving that down to elementary so that way they can start to learn at a younger age what those programs look like and again that's just building capacity in our adults and also each senior and junior is assigned a mentor through the college and career center and so the mentor with the kids to again have
086that discussion about their college and career plans it's not just about college and so we want to make sure that our kids are having those healthy conversations with adults that they start their planning a lot sooner so we can support them through that process babe any questions thank y'all very much presentation to item 9a 3a Shack Student Health Advisory Committee mid-year report good evening board trustees mr. Cardona and those in attendance my name is Eduardo Rios as co-chair of our school health advisory committee with Jennifer Vogel I will be presenting our mid-year review in preparation for the 2019 2020 school year for the first time we did pre planning in May of 2019 and I can say with all confidence that we are reaping the benefits of that planning with this year's legislative session concluding
087we were prepared for whatever came our way in addition to the items that we identified and planned for last May this allowed us to hit the ground running when school started in fact some of our working groups met before school started we set seven objectives for the 2019 2020 school year as of this mid-year review we have accomplished five out of those seven the two remaining objectives will be covered in the spring 2020 and they are evaluating all the campus CIPS for shack requirements and evaluate emergency procedures these two evaluation activities will yield items that may be included in the SHAC planning exercise this coming May to identify the new set of objectives for the 2020 2021 school year so what did we accomplish this fall our district suicide awareness event was held in October
088are beyond the talks talk program has been revamped and delivery with ordination of our middle school principals who are here will occur during the school day in May after our annual testing completes our Fitnessgram results were reviewed the legislative updates were reviewed and the youth risk behavior survey otherwise known as the YRBS was completed in November here at the high school the results will be available in February 2020 and finally Shaq did minor changes to the bylaws of Shaq to reflect a change in the name from subcommittee to workgroup any questions or comments before I can conclude yes I have a question about the couple questions about the youth risk behavior survey yes so did all students at the high school take that no so we working with the the professor at the Texas State
089we wanted to get a sampling so they targeted in a specific class about 200 people and he only wanted a sampling of 200 folks but they did go through and complete the complete survey questions terrific I think this is great and long overdue and I'm very excited to see that and so I'm wondering when exactly we think that we're going to see those results and if they will come forward to the board from Shaq with a recommendation on action it will probably be included in our in our in our planning but we're going to review them in February when we get them and then probably you know figure out what we need to do with the information as we go through it so we definitely will be presenting something we don't know exactly what we're
090gonna be getting just yet but it probably will lead to some actions that Shaq will tackle for next year because I think to our earlier action item on the moving forward of a community-wide position to oversee services one of the real problems that we ran into on the mental health coalition that sort of stole us out for a little bit is that we don't have the status is not sure where the interventions need to happen on a community-wide basis because we don't know specifically like is that this problem that students are having overwhelmingly or is it somewhere earlier in the trajectory I think this will be really critical and helping us identify that and figure out where to past interviews it's a significant accomplishment to get that this year so we're excited to get that
091information since we saw a copy of that questionnaire that was administered to students were there any students found that were in dire need for counseling or help well since we haven't seen the results yet they were actually compiled and the database was given to the professor and his team to go through and analyze we don't we don't know exactly if if anything's showing obvious from that because we haven't really seen any of the results it was all it was all collected by the professor and his team and it's gonna go through and be analyzed and processed it was anonymous - yes I was just concerned there was some questions on there that would indicate serious need for sure Treena I think the anonymity the anonymous nature of the of the the survey also aided in
092some of the kids hopefully giving real answers okay thank you very much this is the conclusion there's two upcoming Shack meetings in the spring January 9th and March 12th but I also want to say on March 7th we're actually doing the SMC ISD Health Fair it's Saturday at 8 a.m. and the SAC and Happy Holidays and safe travels if you are on the road we look forward to our full-year report in May we were on track to meet all our 2019 2020 objectives and this mr. president members of the board so I get to finish that and my presentation is only about 45 pages now I'll try and go through this real fast so you've heard a lot of different talks about it's really about systems that we're trying to put in place whether it's
093attendance whether it's GT whether it's identifying kids and that we're missing it's all really about the systems and it takes a it takes a while to put those systems in place but just to put it in perspective before I begin you know when I got here we had about 230 kids and eight unique AP courses and we're about at 531 in about three years so just just let that sink in of certifications we've like I asked my Goyal like the number of certifications now some go for you know credit for the state I guess and some we value OSHA 10 this is one I think that we all know kids need ought to be safe and I think that was about it was an enormous increase from when I got here like from a hundred
094to five hundred and something and then we talked about GT we talked about dual language we talked about early college we've talked about avid we thought about gear up we've talked about many things we haven't talked about the 5,000 out of our 8,000 kids k12 last year that were on a college campus visiting so it's not like we're not trying to do things sometimes it may seem like we become overwhelmed but our early college cohort which had about 52 kids is also addressing trust equal CEA's specific issue around kids that are economically disadvantaged since 75% of them have to be economically disadvantaged so it's an exacta mirror of the district and our cohort is pretty much an exact mirror of our district so you know we have done many great things to put systems in
095place but a lot of work still to go but our teachers and our staff members are moving hopefully with a greater sense of urgency so we'll talk a little bit about accountability systems and what that actually means like whatever that accountability system means I'm not going to talk about eight through F but just whatever the accountability system is attendance tardiness checking out textbooks and library books those are all like systems of accountability and I want you to think about what is it that we're trying to do as a system are we trying to vaccinate kids in the short term to be like well for a little bit of period of time or are we actually trying to get them to be healthy when they walk the stage like they understand the full dynamics of being
096a career College military ready graduate I think we will all agree we want our kids to be healthy and understand what it takes to be successful in life without remediation right and how we affect student outcomes in a positive manner and we want all those systems to be aligned to achieve student outcomes at scale like that's just the reality of our system whether it's a valuation accountability budget organizational whatever it is right they all have to be in alignment if they're not in alignment we're gonna get a bad graduate but we're gonna have a graduate that struggles and what I'll say about this is it doesn't matter if we have a good organizational structure if we are not all focused on student outcomes climate and culture will eat everything I put in place and that's
097just a reality and I like to think about it in this terms we all know this right there's a hole in the boat but the guy on the other end of the boat is like I'm glad that holes not on my end completely missing the picture of what it is and ZAPPIN we're all in this together from the board all the way down to the custodian we are one system and as as our system goes so art go our kids and their outcomes and any kind of system that we put in place any kind of system has to have a cycle of continuous improvement it can't be that we ever have anybody in this district say we're satisfied with where we're at right now or I've done my job it just cannot happen and so
098that cycle of continuous improvement has to have support it does have to have pressure whether that's a good pressure or a bad pressure and it needs to be very transparent and I think in some of these cases we have done a really good job of putting that stuff in place in other places we have still work to do and it's work that's always iterative we always reflect on what it is that we're trying to do and then we change what we're trying to do to stay ahead of our kids and so I just want you to see this is the conversation that we had with our team leadership last week this is a conversation I'm having with you so that we're transparent and everybody in this community knows what it is we stand for and
099what it is we stand for is student outcomes and ensuring that our kids are career college and military ready all right and I think you have seen from the high school presentation from last week's presentation from Deb Smith's presentation from special education presentation we're all trying to align the system to meet our kids where they're at and then move them a minimum of a year growth as we go through right and we talked about the three C's clarity right we we put that out in data 40% of whatever scored at a proficient level we put that into context and we might say with the year before there were thirty four percent and we gained six but the reality and the candor is why we only progress that six percent each year it's gonna take us
100a whole lot while a long time to get to 100% so I just want that to be out there right we have all these conversations and some of them are they they're not they're difficult to have it's easier for us to have conversations with kids about their data that is for us to have conversations with adults about our data and I was thinking about this like why is teaching I always hear from community members about reading math writing in particular why is it so hard to teach reading right it's a simple math problem really decoding and language comprehension equals reading comprehension right and we all know that with any simple math problem anything times zero is zero and so I want you all to think about that as I go through this anything times zero
101is zero and so I do have a couple of activities for you right so if we can all just take a moment and look at this writing sample and I'm gonna read it and you can read it to the frogs and the well one summer day two very hot and thirsty frogs looked long and hard for water at last they came go well the bullfrog said let's jump in the careful frog said what if there isn't any water in the well the bullfrog said come on we have nothing to lose let's jump in before long the Frog hopped away from the well refresh refreshed and no longer thirsty right so as board members you're sitting up there thinking to yourself one why is he reading this out loud too but I have a really good
102sense that mr. cardona can comprehend and can decode words because he did so relatively easy but what happens if you can't decode words again it goes back to anything times zero is zero and that's the system we're trying to fix it gets a little bit more difficult right if you want to read along or you want to read in your head the giraffe is the tallest land animal in the world from head to hoof it is between 14 and 20 feet tall that means a giraffe is taller than the roof in someone's kitchen but shorter than the telephone pole in someone's backyard one feature that makes a giraffe so tall it's is very long neck another feature that's for long anybody no thanks there you go one last feature that makes a giraffe seem even
103taller as its long slender anybody allows it to grasp leaves at the top of the trees right so we can decode and you can see in this room we have some cabinet members that I need to work with because they weren't a team leadership [Laughter] if we can't comprehend again anything times zero equals zero and this is why whenever I talk to principals and principals meaning I talk about things like the work on the wall and the basic and miss Seaton sitting right there and she could not her head yes or no decoding and language comprehension have to be both taught explicitly systematically and cumulatively much like math they build on each other right and if we have a gap in any specific area then we have a gap in our data for kindergarten for
104third grade on grade level reading for sixth grade and there's some interesting research out of the University of Florida Center for reading instruction that says that you know for first graders decoding is the primary thing right that's why we want to expose kids early on decoding is is really a predictor for reading comprehension right by grade six that flips language comprehension is really the predictor for being being able to read to comprehend write and grade 10 research shows the language comprehension is much more highly predictive of reading composition right and so it's important because that's really the world of academic language right and in order to build on reading comprehension right we expense I've already said that instruction has to be explicit systematic and cumulative language comprehension is built by background knowledge vocabulary knowledge language
105structures verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge and what does that look like at the younger age the more you expose kids to books about frogs or salamanders or whatever then they'd be able they are able to get a depth of background knowledge on the right hand side are books for older kids and what that allows your brain to do is to branch off if it's about frogs they start understanding what reptiles are and what salamanders are and what alligators are right strand I I talked about vocabulary knowledge right this sign may be ambiguous right for some of y'all that's really funny right and why is it funny because you understand what the definition of the word ambiguous is if you don't understand that that's there's a problem right language structures this is one of my favorite
106it actually just came out in something else goose I don't feel like playing games right now again this I talked to principals a lot look at the work on the walls look at the work that your children bring home right a good way to look at grammar and syntax is to look at writing and the work on the wall do they use subject verb agreement do they use complex sentences if the work is wrong on the wall they probably have a reading comprehension problem that's student right and this is the the point syntax and grammar or academic language it is the language of school verbal reasoning bretzel why is that funny right y'all are all inferring why is he have a pretzel in his hand right should have a bottle of water but the ability
107to infer requires that we use text evidence and we have background knowledge and I see our teacher shaking their head yes which means I'm on the right track that or they'll catch me after the meeting and this goes to the literary literacy structures we want our kids on the deep end that's why earlier in the year I made a comment about different types of vocabulary we shouldn't have different types of vocabulary we should have the hardest type of vocabulary and when we scaffold and bring the kids up so that they understand that type of vocabulary and I want to leave you with this and this isn't meant to disparage anybody or anything it's data that I look at and it seems like it might not be you will not be able to see this but
108I'll talk my way through it this is our San Marcos CISD library check out for the year up through today and I want to give a kudos to the elementary schools all of them for you know typically six to ten books a year is what you want kids going into the library to check out that's the research base and all our elementary schools are on track Crockett in particular she won't even in her library for like the first two or three weeks of school and she's like a twenty-two thousand books checked out for their 600 kids now it could be one kid checking out 20 it could be trustee Hall Z's child and it reads a lot I don't know that I say that to say this does not also include the vast library Lexile
109library that our classroom teachers have employee in their class they have Lexile books in their classroom that are their own their own this does not include secondary schools who use a one-to-one devices so kids are reading on those this does not include that but if you want to know about the high school I'll go ahead and tell you they've checked out 687 books for this semester so that's again a Pisa but that's a book right that's a data piece it's not what really is going on because teachers are assigning things on their laptops right there's also books there's ap is not included in this their textbooks not including this we we understand that but it's still you should be checking out books I end with this shax talked about this mr. Rios has talked about
110this and this is something that we're addressing in terms of health and wellness of our kids this is an issue it's an issue that we're far behind on it's an issue that Shaq will have to address so that we can the board can change its policy in some cases so you know our hands are tied in some cases if things come back as THC it's a mandatory expulsion for kids for the other things I think our policy at some point is going to have to shift to become more restorative more counseling more social emotional supports there is an underlying cause the good news is right if you look at it less kids are smoking cigarettes the bad news is they've increased in vaping particularly around products i put Jul here because that's the target of
111American Heart Association right but it you know we're probably it's the national average says 26.7% I know our athletic director took a survey of athletes and they were about at 30% athletes that had tried vaping that's our athletes so and I know some of those questions I don't know if the vaping particularly was in the YRBS but I think it was so this will get us some better data I think that we all need to look at you can see it's up 78% among high school students 48% among middle school students you know what what kids don't understand is that it's not risk-free they have it hasn't gone under under gone market review by the FDA this is what struck me from the Center for Disease Control was that a jewel pod does anybody know
112what the jewel pod is the little pod contains the same amount of nicotine as a pack of cigarettes a pack of cigarettes in a jewel pod and some kids are going through two and three jewel pods a day the effects that CDC there's a lot of research around this if you want to look up Center for Disease Control they have a whole department on teen vaping got to hear the expert in the country probably in the world on teen vaping and what it does to teenagers and changing their blood structures what what the chemicals do to attach to the blood it keeps kids from clotting the younger you are I think what's scary is that it's been marked marketed to youth and this is what's interesting is the flavors mimic the flavors we all find
113in the grocery store and the conversation with the American Heart Association was superintendent from around the country and with leading experts really kind of made me feel when I got back from that conference was like we are way behind in addressing this social media the power of social media you can see this is data from American Heart Association we have looked at at things to address this but education quite honestly I think the quicker we educate our community the better off we are you know products devices that you put in school there's a lot of debate around whether like smoke detectors and restrooms they they'll tell you they're effective they still did its the data is still out there what I think we're doing is Shaq is taking this on with the American Heart Association
114we have a lot of resources through the American Heart Association miss Vogel actually knows as Amy through the American Heart Association who's gonna be working with us on starting some community-based dialogues we already do many of our schools do the Healthy Heart kids challenge that's a way we have begun implementing this and some of the character ad programs that we're looking at but we really need to take a more assertive approach in addressing this issue and I'll leave you with this I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas Happy Hanukkah happy Festivus whatever it is that you enjoy I hope everybody gets rest we have really worked hard our teachers have really worked hard this semester really hard with the administrators and with all the staff in trying to move our district forward but I don't
115know if everybody's gonna be able to read this but if you could just take a moment can you'll see that if you're closest can you read that some of y'all it ruins the effect I would say read it some of y'all over already started reading it and then I'll tell you stop and read it from the bottom up this was written by a 15 year old student in North Carolina who really puts things in perspective I'll send this to all the teachers it's really good activity to do with kids but it puts everything in perspective and with that I am done for the last superintendent update of the decade okay ten consent I'm gonna pull a but otherwise pull B or C no entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda items I'll make a
116motion to approve consent agenda items B and C okay pushing my hair down ii by Halsey oh my favorite right and then let's handle these one by one I mean haven't updated because it's incorrect the way it is all right so yes anyone to make a motion to approve the minutes for the specially called meeting of November 4 2019 thank you no second ocean Hansen second by Arredondo well on paper six and one abstention from the upon the September 11th I mean November 11 okay most of I can to second by Hansen [Music] and we had a meeting on November 18 okay Hansen second I heard the upon though all in favor six and one abstention by can to and December 2 Hansen second by can to to approve the minutes that especially called meeting
117of December 2nd 2019 favorite alright that takes us down to the last item item 11 a consideration and possible action on ranking of offer roars that submitted proposals for the SMC ISD days of all elementary innovations so we receive those bid you have the rankings attached this is for the board to consider those rankings the top two are calculated by formula and then the bottom four are calculated by the committee we each scored submit our scores and that's how the ranking is developed thank you yes share it on this side make a motion that the board approve of the ranking as presented and delegate authority to the superintendent or his designee to negotiate a contract with the top-ranked proposer for consideration and action by the board at a future meeting most married under a second
118by Halsey any discussion all in favor 7-0 second second by be upon do all a favor