001in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act section 551.043. Yeah, I can I can hear myself. Yeah. All right, audience with the board. The Seguin ISD Board of Trustees designates a time for audience participation at the beginning of each meeting to hear persons who desire to make comments in accordance with board policy B E D local. Those wishing to speak sign up before the meeting begins stating the concern or noting the agenda item they wish to address. Um tonight because of the number of speakers we have, audience participation is limited to 2 minutes. The board will not deliberate on any subject that is not on the posted agenda. Also want to [snorts] point this out cuz I I have a feeling in this pile we have some students. It's very strange for us to not
002be able to talk back to you, but we can't. And so just know that we don't have questions we can answer and we don't we're we're not able to say much except thank you. So we do want y'all to understand that. Um just in case you've never spoken at a board meeting before. So you have 2 minutes. Oh, Grace, will you be there? Uh we have a timer here. Grace can also give you a warning. Um when you have Uh when you have 30 seconds left. All right, our first speaker is Vanessa Cosso. Um and the subject is possible action on employment for employee Ibarra, an AGB employee. [clears throat] Good evening board, um members of the board. My name is Vanessa Cosso and I'm a parent in Seguin ISD. I'm here to speak in
003support of Ms. Ibarra and her team. I understand that certification is important, but I'm asking you to also consider the real proven impact happening in our schools right now. My daughter Kaylee is very quiet and naturally shy. Before joining any program, she stayed in the background. Since joining the Starling Dance Team and Theater at AJB, I have watched her grow into someone with confidence, courage, and resilience. She practices constantly at home, replaying the same songs, taking over our living room, pushing herself to improve, and she asked for feedback, and generally wants to be better every single time. That growth came from Ms. Ibarra, Mr. Paul, and Ms. Angelisse. In just 1 year, they have instilled discipline, confidence, and a true sense of belonging to my child. But what they do goes far beyond one student.
004They provide consistency every week, every month, practices, rehearsals, performances, competitions. These students always have structure, guidance, and support. Because of that, they are not just participating, they are succeeding. They are placing in regional and national competitions. They are representing their school at community events, district events, university events like TLU, and even performing on larger stages like San Antonio Spurs pre-show. At this time, Ms. Ibarra is also leading theater, directing productions, while also teaching theater classes during the school day. That is multiple programs being successfully led by one dedicated educator. And beyond achievements, they show up for their students in real life. Thank you. Our next speaker um Eva or Eva, sorry, Carter. Discussion of possible action on termination of probationary contracts. All right, you have 2 minutes. There's a time. Okay. Hello. Good evening, board
005members. My name is Eva Carter, an eighth grader at AJB, and I'm here today regarding Missy Barra's job. When we first heard about what was going on about Missy Barra leaving, it felt like my whole world fell apart. Realizing that the person that had helped me so much and made me the person I am today would be leaving me. For me, personally, she she has been like a mother figure. She has supported me, encouraged me, and stood by me in ways that go far beyond teaching. She was there for me in my highs and my lows. I was in a really dark place in my life, and thanks to her, I was able to get out and express my true self, and I started acting and dancing with confidence. Even when she was going through
006a hard time herself, she would still come to school just to teach and come and see her students. That kind of care isn't something you can replace. It isn't something that a piece of paper can prove. It's not something you can easily find again. It's rare, and it matters. I hope that those of you making decisions taking the time to truly understand who she is and what she means to her students. Because of people like Missy Barra, because people like Missy Barra don't just teach, they change lives. And that is something worth fighting to keep. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Okay, our next person is Ashlyn, I'm sorry, Mosley. Same agenda topic. Good evening board members. My name is Ashlyn Mosley and I'm here to speak on the impact Missy Barra and Mr. Paul
007had on my life and on many students at AJB. When I entered when I entered sixth grade, I was struggling to find where I belonged. I tried band and it wasn't the right fit for me. It was through theater that I discovered dance, the two programs that have shaped who I am and giving me the place where I feel confident, supported and motivated. Without these teachers, I wouldn't Sorry. I would not have found activities that keep me grounded and excited to come to school. Missy Barra and Mr. Paul do far more than teach. They guide, encourage and believe in their students. Under their leadership, Our theater and dance program had have earned awards and recognition, but most more importantly, they have created a safe and welcoming environment for students who may not fit anywhere else.
008For many for many of us, there is they are a second family, the people who makes make school feel like the place where we belong. Removing them would not would not only weaken two of the strongest programs on our campus, but it would also take away the support system that so many students rely on. The loss would be deeply felt in both emotionally and academically. They help us they helped us grow, they pushed us to our to to reach our potential to reach our potential and they make a difference every single day. Without allowing them allowing them to continue their work is invested on this invested in the students who depend on them. Thank you for your time. All right. Um our next speaker is Emily Brisco. Hello board members. Thank you for your time
009in listening to this. I have no speech prepared for this, but I'm going to say this from the bottom of my heart because I think that Missy Barra and Mr. Ball truly deserve it. Um, Missy Barra has been the best teacher that I've had from me in California to Texas. Um, she's been amazing and she has helped me regain my passion in dancing through love and affection and kindness. And she has helped me gain my passion in theater. And I think that y'all should just take that into consideration, especially with all these other certified teachers that sometimes kids don't like, but then Missy Barra over here is amazing and there for sure is she's just amazing. And y'all should take that into consideration when thinking about her employment status. And yeah. And um, even the
010parents love her. Um, my parents love her because she's amazing and my parents love Mr. Ball, my parents love Miss Angelis. We all have the greatest times together. And Missy Barra has been the best teacher ever and I could not thank her enough for it. And without her I just feel very empty inside. And please take that into consideration because I don't know if y'all understand how much of an impact Missy Barah has brought on these students of Seguin ISD. She has given us so many rehearsals, so many She gives us costumes even when she can't afford it. That's how much of an impact she wants to make on us. Thank you for your time. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Shalon Chinawa. I'm sorry. I have a hard to pronounce name and
011so you can let me know how to how to do it. Will you say your name for me? Thank you, ma'am. Thank you, board members for this moment. Um as you can see or as you can um tell Ashlyn Mosley is my daughter. So, some of a lot of her speech I won't take too much of your time cuz a lot of her speech that um she came up we discussed together. And I just wanted to say a few words to y'all. Monkey. The N-word. Four eyes. Big back. Too fat. Bubble butt. Those are some of the words and some of the um the phrases that were used as describing Ashlyn Mosley. Everybody can't be a jock. Everybody can't be the head of the cheerleading team. Everybody can't be football. However there is a place
012with Missy Barah's program and Mr. Paul's program that encourages that group of unique kids that don't that cannot be a jock today. Maybe they're not physically fit to be you know in the it girl group. Maybe they're not pretty enough according to the it girl group. However, we have theater that make these kids come alive. And that touch them not just their brain, but their soul. That gives them futures to look forward to. That gives them every day to come to school. And that also gives them a group of people that they can go to, that they can also relate to. That a lot of schools do not have. And between elementary school and middle school, and middle school to high up to high school, that transition is so important to where these kids are
013trying to find their selves. And with that program that they have developed at ISD of Seguin ISD, it gives these kids something to look forward to. Something to talk about. Something to feel a part of. Something to where these group of people, hey, these are my people. I found my people. I can come to work with pride and with my rep with my head raised high. So, again, thank you for this opportunity to speak, but please reconsider all of the opportunities that has been given to us by Ms. Ibarrientos and Mr. Paul. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, our next speaker is Crystal Hafner? You can say your name for me, too. I'm sorry. Hafner? Hi, I'm Crystal Hafner. 2 minutes is not much time, so I'm going to wing this. I'm one of those moms
014that loves Ms. Ibarrientos, Mr. Paul, and Ms. Angelis. Um I also want to give huge credit to the kids behind me that are speaking because this is absolutely terrifying for adults to do. And obviously, they love their teacher that much to come out. My daughter and I both wrote you emails. I'm sure most of you were able to read them. If not, please make sure they're forwarded. So, I'm not going to go over those again. But I do want to bring attention to something. I'd imagine that all of you on this board and every single person in this room had a teacher that at some point made a huge impact in their lives. I remember mine, my fourth grade teacher Mr. House, and I also remember one of my teachers that Miss Brodknax that saw
015me getting in trouble in fifth and sixth grade by hanging with the wrong people and told me, "Don't do that. That's bad news." I will never forget those people for as long as I live. And I'll be honest, I have no idea what credentials they had. They could have not even had a degree. I have no clue. But the bottom line is the impact that teachers like Miss Zavala make are things that are going to be with these children for the rest of their lives. I'd imagine you have one person that you're thinking of right now that did the same thing for you. And I understand how important credentials are. I have been a lot of things. I've had a million jobs, including being a nurse and including working for a nonprofit for 4 years.
016I know how important these things are, but I also know that the things that they have, the dedication, the love, 30 seconds. the sheer amount of passion that they have have made these programs what they are. And if the kids speaking aren't enough, then that all of these things that they've done, the accolades that they have, they placed first place in two UILs for drama, for theater. They've also been to nationals this year for the dance team. So, I feel like you're not only doing a disservice to these students and the future students that are going to go to this school, but you're also doing a disservice to the entire ISD if these these people aren't here anymore. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, our next speaker is Paris Faith Hernandez. Did I get that right?
017Did I get your name name right, ma'am? Okay, thank you. Hello board members. My name is Paris. I'm a sixth grader at AJB and I got to experience being on the dance team with Missy Barra. Not just dance, but theater. And a lot of us really enjoy it. Sorry. For myself, um Missy Barra, she has done so much for us and great things for singing as well. And I truly [snorts] I wouldn't know what to do without her. A lot of us at AJB would not be who or where we are today without her. We as a Starlight dance team are looking forward to another year, another great year of dance. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah De Leon. Hello. Uh my name is Sarah De Leon and I'm here in support of the current theater
018teacher at AJB. Oh, Sedona. Hey. Uh can you hear me now? Okay, I'm here in support of the current theater teacher at AJB. Um uh my son's been in her class for about a year and he's gone from shy to a social butterfly. I had the pleasure of volunteering during one of their plays and it's very obvious that Missy Barra and her family volunteer a lot of their time to make the theater program what it is today. Um I hope that this board decides to support her work and doesn't do anything that may stop her from supporting the kids at AJB as she has been. Um thank you for your time. Thank you. All right. Um next, Jan Ashcraft. Hi. My name is Jan Ashcraft. I'm here to speak tonight as a concerned citizen and
019as a volunteer with the Be Smart program for secure gun storage education. We're a national nonprofit program that provides free resources for all adults on how to protect children from gun violence. And I'll emphasize the free part because I know that uh that's important for our public schools these days, for our budgets. As many as 4.6 million children in the United States live in a household with at least one loaded, unlocked gun. Every year, 350 or more children in America under the age of 18 gain access to a firearm and unintentionally shoot themselves or someone else. Additionally, more than 700 children living in America die by gun suicide every day. Safe gun storage at home equals school safety. School shooters most often acquire their firearms from the home of a parent or a close relative.
020We just saw this recently, the boy that shot a teacher and then took his own life at Hill Country College in Uvalde, used a gun that belonged to his grandfather. Be SMART is an acronym that stand Each letter stands for something that adults, both gun owners and non-gun gun owners alike, can do to protect our children. S is secure all firearms in your homes and vehicles. M is model responsible behavior. I wasn't ready for 2 minutes. Um anyway, um I'll just go on and say the the Keep 'Em Safe Texas information that is used by most school districts is adequate, but supplementing it with our more comprehensive Be SMART program is a win-win and uh keeps you under the guidelines for sending home storage safe storage information to parents three times a year. Um I've
021I'll leave some information back there, so you guys have my contact number, and uh please visit our excellent website besmartforkids.org. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Briana Viegas. Um okay. Good evening. My name is Briana and I'm the mother of McKaylee Schmidt. I am writing to formally express my appreciation and support for the dance program and its leadership with within the district. McKaylee has been a member of the dance team for the past 2 years. What began as a simple and an unexpected moment while picking her up her schedule as an incoming middle school student became a life-changing experience for her. As we were leaving that day, we noticed a dance team sign-up table. I encouraged her to try out not ever imagining how greatly this decision would impact her confidence, well-being, and
022future. McKaylee has always been a quiet child and preferred to keep a very small circle of friends. As her mother, I worried about her social development and emotional health, especially with how challenging school environments can be today. When she decided to try out for the dance team, I was extremely nervous and fearful that she might be disappointed if she did not make it. I will never forget the day she called me and said, "Mom, I made the team." The moment was truly unforgettable. Since joining the team, Mikaela has grown tremendously. She no longer struggles with anxiety, and as a parent who shares this condition, this improvement has meant everything to our family. She has gained confidence development developed strong social skills and found a true sense of belonging. Ms. Ybarra and her assistant coaches have
023played a vital role in this transformation. This program is far more than a dance team. It is a family. Because of the structure, encouragement, and accountability provided, Mikaela has remained focused, stayed out of trouble, and maintained excellent academic performance, earning all A's and B's. As a single mother, this has relieved an incredible amount of stress and provided support that I'm deeply grateful that I'm deeply grateful for. I sincerely appreciate the school district for supporting programs and educators who make such a meaningful difference in students' lives. The dedication shows Ms. by Ms. Ybarra and her team has had a lasting positive impact on my daughter and our family. Thank you for your time, commitment, and continued support of programs that truly change lives. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Uh next is um Addison Spacik. Spachek,
024sorry. Uh just like Pape, Poppy, and Pape in this town, there's two ways to say that. So It's all right. It's all good. Thank you. Hi y'all. I'm going to read off my phone because I have I have social anxiety very bad and this is freaking me out, but I am here for Ms. Ybarra. Um good evening, members of the board. My name is Addison Spachek, and I am a sixth grade math teacher at AJB Middle School. I'm here to speak on the positive impact Denise Ybarra has had on our campus. While I understand certification is important, I do want to reiterate that this teacher does have a valid teaching permit through the state of Texas. Her theater and dance programs don't just build talent, they build motivation, confidence, and accountability. Many of my highest
025performing students are involved in her programs because they care about staying eligible and take pride in their work. In a time when it can be very difficult to get students engaged, very difficult, [laughter] she gives them a reason to come to school and succeed beyond academics. She is shaping students' futures and creating a sense of belonging that carries across our entire campus. Passion cannot be taught, and it is one in a million to be found. Thank you for your time. [applause] Sorry, next is Natalie Dean. Good evening. My name is Natalie Dean. I'm an eighth-grade student has Missy Barra for the past 3 years of my life in both dance and theater. I'm here because of the decision you're about to make. Missy Barra created a dance program from nothing and turned it into a
026national award-winning team. We've become champions at regionals, and our team is something students wish to be a part of. Our theater program is stronger than it has ever been before. Before Missy Barra, the school had to go through multiple teachers, and the program never really grew grew or stood out. But now, we're winning, we're improving, and the people are noticing us. Even the mayor of Seguin has come to watch our shows because of the reputation she has built. She puts her own money, time, and effort that goes way beyond what's expected. She is the reason students found a passion in dance and theater. She pushes us to work hard and become leaders. I wouldn't be the captain of these amazing girls behind me without her. And so and so many other students feel that way,
027too. And she even has national qualifying students for theater and varsity dance team members in the high school. These span from 3rd-year students all the way to 1st year. Right now, dance and theater are some of our most strongest and recognized programs at our school. That didn't happen overnight. Before I finish, I ask for one last moment from you to really hear what I'm saying, every word and every syllable. You're not just deciding about a teacher, you're deciding the future of students like me and the one who comes after me. So, is it Is it truly worth it to take away their dreams, their opportunities, and something that's clearly changing lives? Thank you. All right, our last speaker, Brandon I'm going to let you say your last name. It's Gillett. It's hard for me to
028pronounce, too. Thank you. Uh good evening, board members. Um you've obviously heard so many examples of the personal um and emotional impact that Ms. Barr and Mr. Paul have had on the students. Um I have watched my daughter blossom and thrive under this program. Um I've never seen her work so hard on anything. Um the hours and tireless efforts and financial input from both of them um is unprecedented from what I've seen um in teachers. And um the third thing I wanted to talk about was I got to witness the UIL play that they won. Um and the criteria they had to meet for that was they had to set up everything, perform the play, and tear everything down with no supervision, all on their own. Um and if that isn't proof of effective education
029in action, then I don't know what is. So, I think they're a huge asset and it would be a big loss for everybody. Thank you. All right, we move into item three, closed session. The board will adjourn into closed session pursuant to the following sections of the Texas Open Meetings Act. A, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.071, 551.074, 551.129, consultation with legal counsel, including possible telephone consultation with legal counsel as necessary to address legal concerns, implications, and answer any legal questions regarding posted agenda items. B, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.074, discuss personnel matters including appointments, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of an employee. C, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.072, discuss the sale, purchase, exchange, lease, or value of real property. And D, pursuant to Texas Government Code Section
030551.0 821, deliberation regarding a public school students. It is now 6:29 p.m. Going into closed session. Mhm. Okay, we're reconvening to open session at 7:17 p.m. Um Going to move on with the pledges to the United States and Texas flag followed by a moment of silence. So, leading us tonight in the pledges is Aaron Vasquez, a fifth grader at Jefferson Elementary. Where is Aaron? [applause] I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Now, for a moment of silence. Thank you. Okay. Um unless there is an objection, uh I am going to move our agenda around a little
031bit. Um so, the first thing um we are going to move to an action item that is action um item 9D, possible action to terminate probationary contracts at the end of the school year, Mr. Newman. Sorry, unless there's an objection. Do I hear any objection? Okay, thank you. Board, this is just an action item for discussion and possible action on termination of probationary contracts. Board, before we jump into anything, uh a little bit further any possible motions that come with that, I wanted to bring up a couple of quick things just so that everybody is aware, specifically you, but also we have quite the crowd in the room, and so I thought they might be interested in hearing some of these things, too. Um part of what you have in front of you is a
032list of educators across our district um that may be phenomenal educators, but have not met the credentials necessary to be able to hold the positions that they are in, whether that's certification or other items. Um it's challenging because we have to make decisions that are sometimes difficult to make based off of what's best for the district, what's in line with the legal requirements that we must meet, uh as well as what our values and our expectations are for educators, myself included, uh and anyone else who works in this district. I I [clears throat] want to be very clear that regardless of the outcome of any type of vote uh based on the decision that the board makes tonight, that one of the biggest things that I want to be very clear with everyone in here
033is we are going to put students first and make sure that they have the programs and the necessary things to be successful at school here at Seguin ISD. And that means that even if we have educators who cannot work with us because they have not met the necessary credentials to be able to hold those positions, does not mean that those programs disappear. It does not mean that we stop operating those programs. It means that we continue to put in the effort necessary to make sure that those programs are as successful as possible. Um we are all school districts across the state of Texas are challenged right now with funding. You'll get a presentation later on tonight about budget presentations. We're all meeting the same exact challenges that have to happen, but we can put our
034money where our mouth is and make sure that our programs are with our students that need to have that. Now, that said, I want to also acknowledge that they're difficult decisions because that's what adults do. You guys have heard me say this countless times. It's supposed to be hard for the adults. It's not supposed to be hard for the kids. It's our job to do that work because that's who we are as the adults that run the school district, that operate the school district, that teach in classrooms every single day. Uh and so I just wanted to get that out of there um so that you had that. You do have a list in front of you of proposed terminations and my recommendation is that you approve the termination of the identified employees' contracts. Thank
035you. I have a question and it it's something that we've asked, but I I want people to to be able to understand. So, we have some educators on here who might need to take a test, they might already be in a program to get their certification, but they haven't done everything. Um, if we do this now, do they have any time to get these things done before the end of the school year? Is it possible to take a test and and do something to go toward your certification or to get any kind of certificate? What are those options? Uh, yes, there is. So, uh, if you approve this list, they will go on a termination of their probationary contract, but I have informed the folks that um, can, um, achieve their certification or their intern
036certification that, uh, if they are still requested by the principals of their campuses, that we can turn around and rehire them, and we've set it up so that they don't skip a beat. Does anybody else have a question or did that Madam President, I move to deny the termination of the probationary contracts as recommended by the Human Resources Department. Okay, I have a motion from Mr. Dwyer. Do I have a second? For failure of a second, um, I'll look for another motion. I propose the termination of the probationary contracts as recommended by Human Resources as the termination will serve the best interest of the district. I'll second. Okay, I have a motion from Ms. Miller and a second from Mrs. Burns. Do I have any discussion? Uh, yes, I wanted to say that when we
037hired Dr. Lee, uh, one of the things that we tasked him with is ensuring that the policies and procedures of the district were followed. Um I want to acknowledge this is an extremely difficult agenda item um for everyone in this room. Um I appreciate Dr. Lee um following through on what is a hard thing, but what is a policy and procedure, um and just I think it's important that we follow state rules and regulations. Um I encourage um anyone that if a negative outcome should occur today, I encourage any of those teachers who are in that situation, please get the correct certification. Um we want you in this district. I want I want you in this district. Get that correct certification so we can follow those rules and regulation and provide the best for SCUSD
038students. I think it's clear that, you know, um a lot of the educators on the SCUSD um people don't know about. Um but I I see people that um I see on campuses daily that I I see the amazing things that they do. Um they're on my own child's um campus. Um and I really do hope that they'll take those steps and um get on the on the road to that certification because um I want to I want to visit them in their classroom next year. Is there any further discussion? All right. Um all in favor, raise your right hand. Opposed, same sign. Motion passes 5-1 with one of our members being absent. Thank you. Thank you. And thank all of you. Have to get in the right place in my paper. All right. Moving
039on to item six, recognition and campus presentations. Starting with 6A, superintendent's reports. Board, a couple of quick announcements that we've got going on across the district to our parents and communities. We just want to say thank you to all of our students and staff as we've gotten to the end here of start testing. Today was math testing across our elementary campuses. I know that our campuses have put in a lot of work to prepare students and our students have spent the last few weeks testing. We also appreciate all of the families for your support. As you may have noticed on your way into our central office that we are hosting the Our Town Seguin Art Exhibit which shares stories from our community. you'll have a moment to take a look at that outside. Athletically, our
040high school baseball and softball teams are both district champions and are in the playoffs. This Thursday, baseball opens the bi-district play at home against South San while softball opens its second round at Leander. The high school boys and girls track teams did very well this year. Both teams were also district champs. The boys won area and the girls placed second. We have 30 students competing at the regional track meet this weekend at Hero Stadium. 23 track athletes are part of the all-district team and 22 are academic all-district. In golf, our high school boys team is the district champions while our girls teams finished second in district. Both teams also qualified for regionals. We have 10 high school tennis athletes who placed at district earlier this month including seven who have qualified for regionals. And then
041our middle school baseball, soccer, softball, and tennis teams are still competing so we hope you'll get out and support them. Career and technical CTE-wise, career technical education-wise, we have three Seguin High School seniors who competed in a video in video editing for the Technology Student Association state competition, marking the first time that Seguin ISD has ever participated. We also have our first have a first for our host of program. We'll be sending a student to compete at the International Leadership Conference this summer. Our FFA students have competed in several area stock shows this spring. Our high school milk quality team has also qualified to compete at state. In cosmetology, several students have recently passed their written or practical exams for their cosmetology license. We have nine students who participated in the Certified Nurses Aide pinning
042ceremony on April 15th to mark earning their Certified Nurses Assistant certification. Our construction trades team also recently earned several awards including the best in show at the Construction Industry Education Foundation competition. Our construction program also received a $20,000 grant from GVEC. A special thank you to our construction boosters for all of their support. Want to say thank you to our local businesses for hosting students on our final job shadow day of the year and participate and for participate in senior career day. Thanks to Texas State Technical College for hosting NBLC students at Tech Day to learn about potential careers and our new agricultural science facility is nearing completion. Stay tuned for details on the ribbon cutting and celebration there. Fine arts-wise, Seguin ISD is among the NAMM Foundation's Best Communities in Music Education. That's less
043than 8% of all school districts across the country received this honor. Want to say thank you to our music educators and student musicians for making this possible. Three of our high school art students received top ratings at the State Visual Arts Scholastic event over the weekend. Our art students presented more than 150 artworks at the district art show on April 14th. Thank you to the American Legion for hosting and to all who supported our students by attending and purchasing their artwork. This year's high school one-act play cast is the district champion and advanced to area. Our theater departments in in all are busy. Barnes will perform Wizard of Oz youth edition starting Friday with shows on Saturday and Sunday. AJB Theater wrapped up its production of Disney's The Little Mermaid Junior and Seguin High School
044will also present Mamma Mia next weekend so get your tickets now. Finally, I just want to say congratulations to all of these students and staff on a very very well done job. We're proud of your hard work, dedication and perseverance. We're here in the last few weeks of school let's finish as strong as we can. Thank you. All right, next we have board member reports I'm going to start with Mr. Dwyer. Uh it's the end of school it's super busy. I get invited to so many great things. I get to go be part of so many great things. I don't get to make so many great things because I'm busy and working as well. Um but I want everybody to know I appreciate all those invites. Of course the last month we've been doing construction
045meetings wrapping up projects at the AG facility in McQueeney which is all very exciting for our district and I've been trying to make as many exciting events as I can. I just wanted everybody to know I'm very proud of all the Matadors and keep up the good work. Thank you. Um I'm going to just pick one or two of the things I've done again. I love getting all the invitations don't always get to everything but I try as hard as I can and it's always lots of fun to get on campus and visit with the children and do different things. One of my favorites was going throughout the district and giving their teachers their new TIA teacher of innovation designations. That just made me really happy being a former teacher myself so I enjoyed going
046all around to the different campuses and handing those out. Again, I'm on the construction committee as well and we are almost up to substantial completion not quite we're doing punch list things on both properties and it is exciting. So I can't wait to uh uh have the day to open up my school in McQueeney. Mr. Bright? Yes, uh it's the end of the school year, so it's super busy. And then we're also preparing for next year, so we had a great uh budget committee meeting certain that kicked off that was fantastic. Thank you for the business office for putting in that effort and we still have a few more to go with that. Um it was really great to me go over to McQueeney um see a student recognize for her drawing um for um
047what's it called? Fiesta? For the Fiesta medal that was done for her. Uh I was able to be there when the construction uh class got the grant from GVEC for all their hard work. That's really fantastic and they're already putting it to good use. Um and then I really probably the highlight of my month was I got to read to the fifth grade class to a fifth grade class at Rodriguez Elementary and as busy as we are like that just kind of nails it home and like why we're sitting at why I sit up here on this dais is to be able to go and read to the the elementary school kids and inspire them and it's always great cuz probably the last question I'm asked on my way out the door is how tall
048are you? So, um with that being said, it's been a great busy month. Next month is going to be even busier and I look forward to seeing everybody at all the great events. Um I there were several highlights of the month for me. It was hard for me to choose, but the one I want to talk about uh is I was going on a tour of the high school CTE facilities um and classes. We have such a large variety of options for our students. Um some great facilities, some amazing teachers. Um to see all those kids engaged um in all of those different options. Um love that. We do have continued work to do in CTE to make sure that they have all the support and the resources that they need to be successful as
049possible, but the trajectory right now of our CTE programs um and the impact they're having on our students and communities, it's pretty amazing right now. On the March the 27th, I did a walk-through at the McQueeney, and that project is coming along real well. I was very impressed. And also, I echoed Lisa's comments on the CTE tour. It was great. There's a lot of different activities that the students a lot of different areas that they can join. And I also learned why I'm not a pilot. April 7th special board meeting, April 9th Ace Ballet Folklorico Club Showcase. That was a wonderful performance by the kids from all the campuses. April 24th, the fourth annual Matador Family Bash. And then today earlier I did a webinar sponsored by the National School Board Association that included expanding,
050strengthening, and retaining the educated workforce. Federal, state, and local solutions. Very interesting webinar. That's all I have. Thank you. Um I've have been to quite a few things. I also um I'm getting a taste of what it's like to have a senior in April and May, and it is uh not fun. So. Um I enjoyed the Family Bash. Um got to serve on the budget committee, which is always um interesting. We learn um so much. Um got to see us host um UIL One Act Play and compete in One Act Play. And then I also got to see um our teams that were in state DI. Um and it's always a great representation of our um school. They were um uh one of our teams was chosen to represent Central Region in the Parade of
051Champions at the beginning. So, uh we had Seguin kids uh doing that, and um they came in third. So, um that's really awesome. And um it's just uh we have a great reputation in Seguin and DI and we continue that and so that was exciting to see and I think we will all see each other pretty much every day from now until May 22nd. So fun. All right. Okay, next we have student staff board community recognition with Miss Allen and Dr. Lee. That maybe that's it. Okay. Trustees, we are going to present our student of the month first so we'll play our video and then I'll bring them up to me all of you. [music] I'm Aaron Vasquez and I'm elementary student of [music] the month. I choose Aaron to be superintendent [music] student of
052the month because he is a trustworthy student and he's a model of what every student should be. I can depend on him to do the [music] right thing. He's just a great kid. He's got a great parents and just an outstanding student. If I could have it [music] tomorrow, I would want to be an MLB baseball player. If I don't make it in the major league, I'll [music] probably want to be maybe something with schools like teacher or something or principal or assistant principal like my mom. [music] Hello, I'm Cara Solis and I'm a secondary student of the month. Cara is a really kind [music] student. She comes to school and she gets to work every day. She asks for help when she needs it. She advocates for herself, which we love here um in
053order to be self-sufficient. [music] And she's just kind to all of her classmates. I definitely want to do either something with business or law. All right. So, if you will all please help me one more time, welcome our elementary student of the month, Aaron Vasquez from Jefferson Elementary. And your family can come up, too. All right, Mr. President. Where's everybody else at? Go go go go go go family, get on up here for a good picture. You dressed You dressed up for them, right? Just stay Just stay still cuz I know we're going to want to Yeah. So, you guys can come here. Yep, here. And I think I saw her, so I hope she's here. I'm honored to welcome our secondary student of the month, Cara Solis, from Mercer Blumberg Learning Center. Almost. Oh,
054one more, one more, one more. [laughter] Okay, one more last round of applause for our students of the month, Aaron and Cara. And now, I'm going hand things over to trustees. You're going to be down here a while. I apologize, but I'm going to hand this over to Dr. Lee. All right, board. Everyone else who's here, so happy to see you guys. Let me tell you this is my favorite part of meetings because we get to recognize several different people. And each month we recognize someone who receives the superintendent's Apple Award and they are kind of an employee who just goes above and beyond and does lots of things. We have a special treat tonight because we're actually recognizing two employees. And our first one is actually the March Apple Award winner and they just
055weren't able to be here. We had some scheduling conflicts that came up and so I'm going to read a few things and I'm going to start with teachers have to be experts in their field. They have to be patient. They have to be kind and they have to be supportive of all students including those who may learn differently. And I'm sure that our March Apple Award recipient would agree that there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to teaching. It requires dedication. In fact, several nominations for this month's winner used one particular phrase to describe this person. Specifically as someone who goes above and beyond for their students. One nomination read, he goes above and beyond to sit down with every student that he crosses paths with to make sure that they know their value and
056instill in them the integrity to choose to a better path for themselves. This Texas A&M and Texas State graduate became a matador when they joined Seguin ISD in 2002. Since then, they have served students in grades 5 through 12 for nearly 25 years. Throughout these years, the recipient has been known for encouraging students that they can still be successful no matter the challenges they face or will face. One co-worker says, I have never met a teacher who loves his job as much as he does and the impact that he makes is amazing. A past teacher of the year, this recipient has been recognized for their work to improve their students' success. A few years ago, students at the juvenile detention center earned two credits. As of tonight, I'm proud to share that our Oh, yes.
057As of tonight, I'm proud to share that our students at the JDC have earned 52 and 1/2 credits with a few weeks left in the school year. In reading these nominations, I see someone who exemplifies our district values. They build They build meaningful and trusting relationships. They promote a growth mindset and lifelong learning, and they encourage students to rise to the challenge. We are lucky to have educators in Saginaw ISD who are committed to their students and their work. That commitment can change lives, and I do not doubt that this month's winner has done just that for more than two decades. I'm honored to introduce our March Superintendent's Apple Award recipient, Mr. John Schnautz. [applause] [laughter] I'm just going to point out Mr. Schnautz. Um if I was on your campus and you told me
058to do something, I would do it, too. Uh board and everyone in attendance we we have one more Apple Award recipient that we're going to recognize tonight. Uh ask anyone who works in Saginaw ISD, we always have a million things happening and it's all hands-on deck. For the April recipient of this Apple Award, this is not just a job where they clock in, work at a desk, and leave. This person is described as someone who works hard to demonstrate that Saginaw ISD is committed to building futures together. We asked a few of their coworkers about their work ethic and contributions to our district. Here's a little bit about what we heard about them. [clears throat] It does not matter what he's doing, where he is, or how busy he might be. If a student or
059campus staff member needs help, he'll drop what he's doing and rush to lend his aid and expertise. And no matter the situation, even if all others are caught in the stress of the situational whirlwind, you can count on his warm smile and kind, calm demeanor. He's always willing to help in any area that will benefit our students and staff and or families. He never says no and puts Saginaw ISD first. He has lived a life dedicated to service, having served in the United States Marine Corps prior to joining Saginaw ISD. Thank you for your service. Since 2022, this person has been a vital part of our student support services department, serving as a case manager and most recently as the student support and safety coordinator. He helps enforce and implement critical safety measures that protect
060our students and staff and supports campuses administrators as they address issues that could compromise safety or security. I know firsthand that this husband, father, and grandfather lives our district's vision. Saginaw ISD is a community dedicated to shaping brighter futures through connection, inspiration, and creativity. I'm grateful that we can count on him as part of that community as he works to build meaningful, trusting relationships and to put students first, always. I'm proud to introduce our April recipient of the Superintendent's Apple Award, Jose Ruiz. [cheering and applause] His family's here. I hope they came out. There they are. [applause] You bring family with you? Oh, good. Yes. [laughter] Come on up. Come on up. Y'all jump up here. That's my favorite part is the recipient never knows they're winning or receiving it and we typically try to
061sneak their families in somehow where they have no clue that they're here and so One more. One more. Awesome. [applause] Yes. Okay. One more round of applause for our Apple Award winners. [applause] Okay, tonight we are going to honor some more students and actually they are going to recognize y'all as well. So, we have the members of the Seguin High School Matador Color Guard here as well as the indoor percussion band. Um they are fresh off state competition where they both won second place. Um so, several members are here to help celebrate that and I believe they are going to present you with something. So, I'm going to let them come on up, make that presentation, we'll take a couple pictures. [laughter] Yeah. For me? Yep. I didn't want to spoil the surprise. And we'll
062actually we'll end up taking the photo up here cuz there's a lot of y'all. Y'all keep going. And I am remiss I did not introduce their leadership. I apologize. So we have our director for color guard Heather Brown is here as well as Yes. [laughter] And our director of percussion Eric Medina. Okay. All right. We're going to group everybody together. So students Yep, we can have y'all all come toward the center. Here we can have a couple of you come over this way as well, please. Ooh, congratulations. All right, and then I'm going to invite Christie Miranda up here for our final presentation of recognitions. Well, good evening. Um, we're going to continue the celebrations. Tonight, um I have the honor of celebrating our teacher incentive allotment, also known as TIA, designated teachers for 25-26.
063Tonight, we're going to be celebrating our new designated teachers and our teachers that were previously designated, but they've earned a higher designation. Um, and we'll be celebrating them this evening. Okay, do you have the clicker? That would be great. So, just TIA is one of our strategic plan priorities. We have a goal where we aim to re- increase our designated teachers from 17 to 100. Last year was our very first year to designate teachers in Seguin ISD, and we were so excited with our first cohort of 17 designated teachers, and we are quickly moving towards our goal of 100, and you'll see where we're at tonight. So, the goal is of TIA is to recruit, retain, and reward our amazing high-impact teachers. And so, that is why we get to celebrate them, and the state
064gives us an allotment, which allows us to then take that money and add it to compensation for our teachers. It's really exciting. Um As a resi- We have three different levels. We have recognized, exemplary, and master. Um a recognized teacher, on average in Seguin ISD, generates an additional $5,000 a year um for 5 years of their designation. And they're also in the top 30% of the teachers in the state. Um an exemplary teacher generates approximately a $10,000 bonus every year that they get for 5 years. So, a nice compensation for them, and they are in the top 20% of teachers in the state. And our master teachers generate, on average, about $19,000 for 5 years. And they're They get the distinct um honor of claiming that they're in the top 5% of teachers in the
065state of Texas. So, that's It's a huge honor. So, tonight we want to recognize our 38 new and higher designations, teachers that have earned designations. So, we're going to start with recognized. So, tonight we're going to come up, and we'll shake hands, and then we'll take pictures. So, we'll do all the recognized teachers together. Um So, for Kinnevey, we have Jesus Castro. We have Skyler um Lofton. At Vogel, we have Cheyenne Edwards. Samantha Hamilton. Laura Patronella. Maria Perez and Chelsea Shelton At Ball, we have Kimberly Miller. Yeah, come on up. Yes. [laughter] At AJB, we have Stacy Veatrice. Do you want to go shoot? And then Rodriguez, we have Mandy Goins. [cheering] At McQueeney, we have Lori Dukes. And we have Madeline Haas. At Weinert, we have Cassandra Gonzales. [cheering] Veronica Hernandez Oh, there she
066is. And Carol Munich [applause] And at Seguin High School, we have Christy Rodriguez. [cheering] [applause] And Jessica Gonzales And these are our recognized teachers that have new and or actually all of our recognized teachers are new designations this year. [applause and cheering] Two rows, two rows. [laughter] [applause] So now we'll move on to our exemplary teachers. Those teachers that have earned a new or higher. Some of them were recognized last year and they've moved up. At [snorts] Kanneky we have Tatum Brown. [applause] We have Leticia Gutierrez. We have Stephanie Weaver. [applause] We have Kaylin Hernandez. At Vogel and Penny Pence. At Ball we have Carolyn Akey. [applause] We have Mary Guadarrama. [cheering and applause] We have Sarah E. Lopez. We have Dalia Molina. And we have Vanessa Ramirez. [applause] And this was the first year
067for ball to be included in our TIA. So, congratulations. At Rodriguez, we have Laurie Ramirez. [cheering and applause] Congratulations. And then at McQueeney, we have Lauren Steptoe. And then at Ramirez. [applause] And at Seguin High School, we have Ezander Bien. Congratulations. Okay, and for that third designation, master teacher, again, just top 5% of the state, we have at Kenneky, we have Stephanie DeBose. [applause] We have Laura Jones. And we have Stephanie Couch. [applause] [laughter] At Jefferson, we have Deborah Rideau. [cheering] And at Ball, we have Krista Green. At Pollan, we have Marie Cavazos. I apologize. And we have Dawn Lawhorn. [applause] Just very briefly for our TEA recipients, we do have some refreshments right outside FOR YOU. WOO! [laughter] ALL RIGHT, THESE ARE THE THESE ARE THE THINGS we love to see. It's very exciting
068to be able to recognize our students and our staff. We're going to move on to item 7A, Seguin Ready to Read project updates with Jackie Sylvius and Hannah Farmer. Okay. Good evening. President Crittenden, Dr. Lee, and school board members. Um, I am so excited to introduce you to Hannah Farmer. She's the associative associate Yes, assistant director at the Seguin Public Library, and we have been working together for many, many years. Um, but then she came to me with this wonderful idea, and it just grew, and it's amazing. So, we wanted to share it with all of you, and it falls directly in line with our Seguin ISD strategic plan priority three to uh enhance our positive community culture. So, I'm going to pass it over to Hannah, and Okay, good evening, trustees and Dr. Lee.
069Many in this room know me as Miss Hannah from story time, uh or LEGO Club, or summer reading, but um, I I did as the assistant library director, um, get to work a little more on this project that I've been dreaming of. The Seguin Ready to Read project is a partnership between the public library and Seguin ISD, and aims to provide public library cards to all kindergarten students in the district. Um, and specifically during a field trip to the public library, where the students then get to check out one book from our easy reader collection. The library secured grants from the different logos seen here, uh from the Texas Book Festival and the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, which allowed us to buy multiple copies of books when we usually just keep one copy,
070like uh books like One Fish, Two Fish, other Dr. Seuss books, Pete the Kitty, Elephant and Piggie. The list goes on in English and in Spanish. While the students and teachers benefit greatly, I largely think of Seguin Ready to Read as a parent and caregiver outreach program. Um Oh. This is what I need. While school librarians teach students how to use the library and encourage a love of reading and instruct students in information literacy or how to know fact from fiction, public libraries have the unique ability to engage caregivers. Um when they attend story time, parents learn songs and rhymes to do at home. When they attend weekend and summer events, the entire family learns a topic like astronomy during the recent eclipses, pictured in the middle there. There are classes just for adults, book
071clubs, tech help sessions, and more. And I've seen firsthand that literacy produces literacy. It's generational. The more that caregivers read, sing, and play with their children, the more words those children have, and the research bears that out. Um a study from the American Library Association um of 3 to 5-year-olds showed that those 3 to 5-year-olds who'd been read to at least three times a week had twice the vocabulary. HEB even uses this research in their Read 3 initiative, read three times a week. Uh but the more I provided books and story times, the more I I analyzed our statistics at the library, the more I I recognized the other side of that coin. Intergenerational illiteracy can cycle through our communities, too. Um just as some adults bring their children or grandchildren to every single story
072time um or do all the right things for literacy at home, many families in our communities never visit the library. Other adults have a lot of other challenges to contend with that keep them away. We may only see them when they need to print a document between shifts or fill out an application on our public computers. They may want to help their kids with their homework, but they don't have time or a quiet place. And we also know that approximately 21% of adults in the US have low literacy skills. So with all that in mind, I wondered how could we reach these adults who often don't even have library cards or if they do, they might have old fines and fees from when they were kids, thus blocking them from getting a library card. And
073a partnership could help us meet our shared strategic goals. Um the ISD can help us reach more students, more families, and we focus heavily on that age zero to five. And then the district aims to improve community engagement and and reading scores um by third grade. And I'd seen other library card programs at larger libraries, but I knew we could scale it to Seguin. Mrs. Sylvius and I had been working together on scheduling school presentations to promote summer reading for years. Um and I knew that she was now the lead librarian at Seguin ISD, so she and I began meeting regularly in 2023 to discuss this partnership. And at the same time, our library director, Sylvia Christie, who's here tonight, told me that a Seguin ISD board member had mentioned to her the possibility of
074a literacy partnership, and she wanted us to move forward with that. Um so big thank you to trustee Guerra for having that conversation with Sylvia a couple of years ago. Um then we just kept going. Mrs. Sylvius scheduled a meeting with Seguin ISD leadership last spring. We discussed student data privacy because we would need that student data to create library card accounts. And um in May of 2025, parents began opting in or had the option to opt out of sharing that information with the public library during kindergarten registration. We met often, and Mrs. Sylvius presented to the school principals. I presented to the school librarians and the kindergarten teachers, um so that everybody knew what to expect. Public librarians visited the classrooms in the fall, as you can see in the photo here. To explore
075the differences between school and public libraries, we showed them a picture of the library on a giant library card to get them excited and gifted each classroom a book a big book in this case to encourage repeat reads. Um to encourage that repetition because the research shows the importance of repetition even though it may drive us adults crazy to read Brown Bear Brown Bear for the 57th time. Um our IT departments, the city of Seguin IT department and Seguin ISD IT, securely shared data um that we would needed and then we created those library card accounts and then the field trips were scheduled. This makes it all sound so easy, but And then these photos I really wanted to share with you from the field trips. In order to host these field trips, we we
076had to cancel our regular library story times, baby time, toddler time, and preschool story times um during the week. So, we packed in all 28 classes during the first 2 weeks of February to try to minimize the disruption to our regular story time families. And it worked. It was worth it. We saw over 600 people on the field trips that include students, teachers, parents, chaperones, and we issued 444 library cards to kindergarteners. We also gave away over 40 free books to students who were unable to get a library card, but they were still able to come on the field trip. And we sent home parent letters with instructions on returning the books. We also decided not to bill for any unreturned books from the field trips, especially considering that we received grant money um to
077expand that easy reader collection. Finally, we've already seen more than 11% of those cards return um to the library to check out more books. They've come The students have come in and been the tour guides for their own families and some of them bring their library cards back in the same little baggy we provided to them on their field trip. You can see the card in the plastic bag there in that photo. [snorts] We can see they're developing confidence and enthusiasm for reading, and we look forward not only to providing cards and field trips to next year's kindergarteners, but also to continuing to track the progress of this inaugural group of participants, and we want to triple that amount that have returned to the library by the end of this summer. So, we'll be sending
078out um email newsletters to parents. We've already sent one about um some of our adult programs, like our workforce education program for adults, and we'll be sending out more about the summer reading program. And that was crucial of that data sharing to get their email addresses. So, thank you so much to everybody involved, the teachers, parents, the board, Dr. Lee, the leadership team, and especially to Mrs. Sylvius. Oh, and the school secretaries for scheduling the buses. Exactly. Thank you all. Okay. Oh, there's more photos, too. Does anyone have any questions or comments or I don't have any questions, but just for like future book reading um I read The Bookwoman by um Heather Henson, which is a really cool story about a librarian who would go into the mountains on horseback and give books out.
079So, I thought that was a really cool book to read for the fifth grade. So, Oh, that's a cool Yeah, the packhorse librarians. Yeah, the packhorse librarians, yeah. That Bookwoman, that was the name of it. Thank you. I just want to add that it's a great collaboration between the city and and thanks for the presentation. Uh this program is only going to flourish, and there's everyone knows, the majority of us knows involved in education, that the sooner the kids grasp the reading, the better they will perform at school. So, once again, thank you. Thank you. And I just wanted to add, I was one of those parents who probably had a library fine, so I was nervous about going in with my library card. It's okay. daughter really wanted to check out books, and she
080was able to get one in her name, and I was just really impressed by the library and really how they teach even young they treat young kids as patrons of the library. Um and they get all the respect. So, thank you so much for all that you're doing and the respect that you really give to kids and empowering them to kind of be in control of the verbal literacy. I love Thank you. Yeah, you know, we spend a whole lot of time there and I appreciate the resources that the city of Seguin puts into the library and um all of y'all that work there and this is an amazing program and I'm so excited. So, thank you so much for everything. Thank you. Well, I wish my grandkids were closer. But, um if you were
081to volunteer, are there forms to fill out to come help volunteer at that Oh, yes. We We need lots of volunteers and um you just come and fill out a form at the library and and we'll get that processed. Our entire bookstore at the front is run by volunteers. Mhm. Thank you all. Thank you so much. Okay, so after the recognitions earlier, I was about to ask anybody if they needed a break because um my brain wasn't working and um apparently it wasn't working because I skipped over the Jefferson presentation. So, if Mr. Gatto would please uh introduce our next presentation. President Crinn, Dr. Lee and trustees, it is my pleasure to introduce tonight's campus highlights as provided by Jefferson Avenue Elementary. Jefferson sits in my district, district two, and serves more than 380 students
082in kindergarten through fifth grade. I am proud to welcome their principal, Maria Guerra, as she shares as she shares her data, campus culture initiatives, and key priorities and goals for this next school year. Mrs. Guerra, we look forward to your presentation. Good afternoon, school board president, Dr. Lee. All right, so we're going to dive into the agenda for um my presentation. We're going to review our attendance data, discuss current priorities. This will include looking at our benchmark data to understand where we stand. Um we'll uncover we'll cover our instructional priorities for STAR um which was up until today. Uh ensuring that everything was aligned for our student success. Um we'll also look ahead to our goals and priorities for next year, setting our clear path forward. We are going to cover um instructional priorities, student
083leadership, as well as our campus culture. Um this slide will um cover our attendance goals. We've been implementing several strategies designed to improve our student attendance. Um that was one of my main goals when I first came on. Our uh attendance was pretty low. Um so first what we did is we held weekly attendance meetings. This included CIS, um student services, our counselor, our attendance clerk, and our assistant principal. So these meetings ensured that everybody was informed, working together to meet our attendance objectives. We also launched pop-up attendance celebrations. These events were designed to recognize and motivate students and of course improve our attendance. We also organized our parent or guardian meetings to make sure that any concerns were directly um involving our stakeholders. And of course we were trying to mitigate any issues that
084were happening. Um also we were collaborating with our truancy officers and student services to provide more comprehensive approach to some of the attendance challenges that we have, particularly in my community. One of the big things that we did is we incentivized um a reward system. So we had these attendance raffles and um they were really fun. They're really engaging. You're going to see a video shortly of one of our students winning one of the drones, which was one of the big ones. So, I'm sorry on the west side, you're going to see a lot of drones cuz we've had a lot of success with it. So, in the next slide, you will see Corbin Jump up. Yeah. I got a drone. Did you see that? What you get the drone for? What you get the
085drone for? For attending to note That's awesome. Yeah, so today just to see their smiles is amazing. Um we just had another student win and it's it's just it's great. I mean it's just it's a great thing to see. Um next we are going to cover a little bit of the star and benchmark data. So, on one side of the slide, you'll see our star data from this past year and then our benchmark data. Some of the big things to note is um our RLA pretty comparable from where we were last year to where we were in February. Um math just to let you know, we didn't cover all our ticks just yet as we were testing in February. Um some of the ticks weren't taught entirely yet or part of it was. So, that
086was part of the dip. And then in science as well, very comparable to where we were in in spring of last year. Something really exciting to note is we had hired a new teacher probably January and we've seen just amazing things, kids loving science, you know, using the lab and just having really engaging lessons. So, we're really proud of our new teacher. We did have a lot of you know, just deep dive into our data and we noticed quite a few trends that were pretty exciting. About 5% to 4% of our sped students did heat hit meet, which is really exciting for them cuz we saw growth. Um in in our grade levels, for example, in our in our RLA, 82 of our students had missed the next year, be it approaches, meets, or masters
087by just a handful of questions on this benchmark. Um, in math, it was about 68 students. And of course, about 12 students across the board to six in science missed approaches by one to two questions. So, the next big thing is what we were going to do with that data, and how are we going to best support these students? So, what we did is we first started with diving into that data, focusing on prioritizing those high-yield TEKS. Um, next we emphasized um analyzing that student performance with the highly tested TEKS, and then grouping the students accordingly. Um, we had our teachers do a lot of explicit test-taking strategies. Um, and then of course, we had our Loman Test Prep, and then twice weekly PLC uh to really hone in on some of those um skills
088that we had to refine for our students. Um, these priorities set the stage for um a lot of success that we hope to see in the coming um STAR in the summertime when we get our scores. Uh, one of the big things that we did do is Saturday school and after-school tutoring, which we did see a lot of success. And on Saturday, it's tough, you know, we're competing with uh sports, we're competing with a lot of the extracurriculars. So, but we still had a pretty good good turnout. So, now shifting onto next year, as far as our instructional priorities for the following year, big push is going to be our uh strong tier one instruction. And the way that we're going to do it is data-driven. We're going to have PLCs, we're going to focus
089a lot on that data, um targeting the small groups, and helping our our teachers really hone in on those skills. Uh, with the help of C&I, they gave us a tracker for our phonics, so that helped our teachers in K12 really focus on those phonics skills um to really build those foundations. Uh for PLC, we're going to continue working on analysis with student work. We had a STEM grant this year, so what we're going to do with the remaining funds is send a lot of our teachers to um PD, one of them being um in The Woodlands for math, which is really exciting for them. We're going to be sending our um IC to some PLC PD as well, and then my APs as well. So, really excited to build their capacity. The other part
090is building up our partnerships with our community. One of our biggest um pushes this year was our partnerships through CIS, through um St. Andrews. They donated quite a bit for us, be it for the teachers or for our students, which was really exciting. Um When there was that uh scare with um the SNAP cards and things like that, what we did is we partnered up with St. Andrews, with HEB, with the help of Miss Stash, and we got about 20 turkeys plus sides to be able to donate to our families, so that was amazing. Uh the other thing we're going to do is continue collaborating with other campuses. One of the big things we like to do on our campus, whenever we're going to have a big event, for example, our um our uh I'm
091blanking. Our carnival is we invited AJB Mariachi, and the reason why we want to keep doing this is because we want to see our elementary students see what is lies ahead of them. So, a lot of our fifth graders got to see a potential elective that they get to pick. So, we're going to actually have on May 8th, we're going to have the high school ballet folklorico come. Our campus actually had a really big turnout for um the ACE ballet folklorico uh showcase, and so I really want them to see like, "Hey, look. It's I mean, it can happen at AGB or at Barnes, and then this is what you get to see at the high school." So, you're more than welcome to come at 8:00 in the morning. You get to see the high
092school perform. All right. The next thing is building our student leadership. So, we created our student council. They did a lot of amazing things. They did uh fundraisers. They had a St. Valentine's Day dance. One of the exciting things that they were able to fundraise um our different sports balls for every single grade level, so they can go and have something to play with during recess. And the next big thing is a gaga pit. So, that was really exciting for them to see. On the next slide, you're going to see our president, as well as another um student council member, just talk about what they've seen um at Jefferson, what they hope to see, and some of the goals that they've they've accomplished. Okay. Okay. So, what is something the adults on this campus, the
093teachers, the admin can do to better the school or to help you guys better the school? Create relationships and trust with everybody and everyone they can. And Um Like what he said, make good relationships. Um Help them. It would be That'd be a lot easier. The better the bonds, better the relationship, and the better the school can be. That's very true. Now, you mentioned when we were talking earlier about um game nights. Can you tell me a little bit more? Um game nights would help the school be enthusiastic about coming to school, enjoying time, and it would be a good time for teachers to know parents, and just learn a little bit more about the school. Yeah, and make school fun. Mhm. And do something enthusiastic that everybody can enjoy, no matter how old you
094are or if you're a parent. All right. Um, what do you think was the biggest accomplishment of student council? Probably our race so far. it has probably been the Valentine's Day dance. The pep rally was really fun, the pep rally. And creating student council was the biggest. Yeah? Creating student council was the biggest because we were able to be all of the people in student council were able to be role models for the kindergarten first graders and some of the second graders who just got here and the new students. And it just feels good to know that we're role models for them. It helps school be a better place in all. Yeah. Cuz without us and student council being so enthusiastic and helping our school out, Mhm. the school wouldn't be as good as it
095is today. Yeah, I like that. And my final question is, what would you like to see the incoming student council now that you guys are going on to middle school? What What do you want to see happen from them? I want to see the school lining up with the excitement enthusiastic um, kids coming to school every day, no matter how hard it is, rain, snow, sleet, hail. They should still come to school. Yeah, and help them make our school grow and make our school better by maybe like teachers knowing the parents so the parents get out there kids come to school every day. Um, If we have kids that come to school every day and like be leaders of the school and come to school every day, that just shows other schools that this school
096is a fun place because if they're coming to school every day, that means they enjoy school. I mean, they enjoy learning and that means this place is a good place for them to be. Yeah. I like that. Now, you've been here for a while. Um What did What do you like about being a fifth grader this year than all your other years here? Probably Um we've had so many different activities, Mhm. game nights, and we started doing like a STEM night. Mhm. It's probably been a lot of activities and relationships I've made. Nice. I've met a lot of new people over those years. Nice. Cool. All right. And I've got one last question for you. Um What are you going to miss the most now that you're leaving? I'm probably going to miss I'm probably
097going to miss um like seeing um the kinder first and second graders in the morning coming to school Mhm. and actually caring to come to school. Um assembly, seeing the school in the morning, Mhm. in assembly in the morning. Um the teachers as well. to miss the school lunches because those cafeteria ladies, they cook for us every single day Yeah. and they rarely get chance to cook for themselves. Yeah. That's true. They spend a lot of time Yeah. in that lunch room. Good you too. All right. Well, thank you so much, boys. Thank you. Thank you. So, um something that I did I wasn't expecting is them talking about how all the students were going to you know, coming to school every single day. And I'm like, "Yes, it's reaching them." So, not just the
098parents. So, that was It was fun talking to them. Um the final slide is just how we're going to build our campus culture. And we've done a variety of different things. There's this game where the teachers had to, you know, exchange beads if they won rock, paper, scissors and then we had this snack layout and the teachers, the way they paid is just writing a nice note. Just kind of continuously building that campus culture. We just went to a training through our stronger connections grant where we got a lot of different ideas and some goodies to continue on our campus. So, those pretty much they just of what our priorities are for next year. If you have any questions. Mhm. On that last slide, the lower left hand picture, that was is that like your
099resource officer with Yeah. Yes. He's our He's actually off duty Seguin Police Department and he is He's usually on our campus. And he was those kids are part of student council. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yes. all like the safety monitors? Mhm. They open car doors on Fridays only. Oh, nice. Yeah. Yeah. Which is really neat cuz the kids the younger ones are like, "Oh, my gosh, a big kid, you know, opening the doors." So, they love it. That's awesome. Mhm. Feel like that's a segue into Crime Stoppers. [laughter] It is. Except there's a presentation before that. [laughter] Thank you so much for your presentation. and thank your staff also. We'll only do. Thank you. Great job. Great work. All right, moving on to 7B, our ACE program updates with Miss Sidenberg. Thank you for allowing me
100to be here this evening. I My name is Allison Seidenberger and I am the project director for the ACE program. And so, thank you for allowing us the opportunity to share some of the things that happened in ACE programming. Oh, I get I get to click it. All right. Just a reminder, I think most of you are aware, we are in year five of a five-year grant for cycle 11. So, this is currently our last year of the existing grant. It will end this summer. And so, July 2026 is a big month for us because that is when we hear about our cycle 13 year one award, whether we receive it or not. And so, fingers crossed. We worked very hard on our application. Had earned quite a few of the priority points that were
101delegated for the grant through the work that we have been doing and our efforts to this end. But, we will not know an answer until July of 2026. Put the two side by side just so you could see how they will be very very similar should we be awarded the cycle 13 year one grant. We will continue to serve the same nine campuses, all seven elementary and both middle schools should we be awarded the grant. We will continue with our child nutrition and transportation still be provided free of charge to our families as well as the program itself. One change that will be different as we will go from a 1.7 million-dollar budget to a 1.5. And consequently, we will run program during the school year and focus on the afterschool component of what we
102do and back off of the summer camp. So, this this summer is our last ACE summer camp. That said, we hope to integrate some of those opportunities that we're able to afford our kids through summer camp into the enrichment portion of the time that we have with them during the school year because I absolutely do not want to lose the experiences that we're able to create through utilizing all of our partnerships with like the outdoor learning center with the library and and things of that nature. So we will work very hard should we be awarded to continue to provide quality programming in all of the areas that were were expected to meet. Okay. [snorts] Within TEA they monitor our data. So we have data that is collected on us as a federally awarded program and
103we have criteria that we have to meet. And so every program within the ACE umbrella receives what's called a dashboard. And so I've just taken some screenshots of some components of our dashboards for you to see evidence of how that looks for us. And so the thing that I'm very proud of is we are at 100%. So green is good. Yellow's like kind of watch and red is like well you're off track. So you can see we are at 100%. We sustain that pretty consistently. Anytime we drop off it's just basically a delay in our budget processing to their capture of it. It is never anything programmatic and that makes me very proud. On the bottom left is our student attendance and on the bottom right is our family engagement attendance. These are two big
104components of expectation. I am very proud to say that to date we are at 100% actually plus. Calculated it for you. We're at 108% of our student met regular attendance. So we have within our program numbers have to at least serve 750 students at the criteria expected. We're at 811 as of yesterday. And then with our family engagement we're at 226% of the expected amount of participation. And so, we are definitely working to make sure that we're not only on target, but but going beyond for our community. Within what's called Five to Thrive, that's what ACE programs are under and that's kind of the the new platform for both cycle end of cycle 11, for definitely cycle 12, and going into 13. Within what's called Five to Thrive, there are four activity types. And so,
105these are the cornerstones of what's expected for a quality program to offer to their students and to their families. And so, you can see them here. We have academics, looking for as much school alignment as you possibly can create through your programming, enrichment, and the focus not only on enriching the academic experiences, but also whole child experiences as well. And so, you can see there that's our ballet folklorico showcase. We had 85 students program wide that voluntarily signed up for that club. Mr. Rincon and Grupo Folklorico, including two former Seguin High School program participants and graduates, were our teachers and put on a beautiful show and had all the kids able to celebrate and showcase all that they had learned and worked on for the entire spring semester. So, it was really really neat experience
106and that's just one of many. With college and career, within that list I'd like to go to that bottom point. We are and you've heard a lot and I know several of you mentioned like the CTE visits and that sort of thing. One of the biggest things in my mind for ACE is it's an opportunity to show kids what's available to them within our community and within our schools. Having been here and and been part of high school, middle school, and elementary, Um, understand the importance of being connected to your your school community. And so we work very, very hard to expose our A students during program to what opportunities are out there. So the pictured um uh seen there is our students at one of our ROTC visits trying out the flight simulator. So
107they're they're aware, I think y'all mentioned that, right? It's pretty cool. Um, so um just making sure they know what's out there. And I tell them when they visit, I don't care what you latch onto, what's your what's your thing, just find it. There are so many opportunities available to you. Be it Early College High School, be it um Theater Arts, be it uh any of the Fine Arts, be it um Athletics, ROTC, Ballet Folklorico, um Audio Visual, we do that visit this week. There are so many things available to them and we just want them to find that and get connected. So really want to celebrate all the wonderful things going on in our district. And then lastly, family engagement and as you heard me mention a moment ago, um we definitely make sure
108that we have those monthly opportunities and oftentimes more than one in in many instances and um really enjoy spending time with our families. Um one of the things that you have in front of you under your little treat that we have for you is a new item and it's called the Impact Report. And the Impact Report is the uh TEA's way of showing compliance on the federal side of things. And so used to you had to hire someone to help pull all your data and put everything together to show federally that you were in compliance and doing all the things that you were supposed to do and kind of advocate. So TEA has streamlined the process and it is is an Impact Report that they're able to generate and create with the data that we
109enter on a daily basis. And so this is the first time it's come out. It runs a year behind, so you're looking at 24-25 and next spring we'll get 25-26. But this gives you a good indication of where we stand as a program and it's something that you we can share out in instances like this so that people know and can see. So with the five-to-drive, we want to be in the green and as you can see we are. So in every area we are green. Um one of the things that I want to highlight is in the three key strategies, community partnerships are very very important. So it was so exciting to see Hannah and Jackie come up because we go to the library fall and spring field trips. We have a um collaboration
110in February. You have the pamphlets also at your spots. And so what we do is we have an art and writing competition at the campuses, choose five from each campus and display them in the library for a month. And then we have a family event that culminates with them coming in, seeing their child's artwork, and um also at the same time learning about what programs are offered during the summer and after school so that as a family, hopefully they'll come to the library and do some things together. So they do fun activities day of, but then they're also made aware of what's available to them within our community. So that's one example of our community partnerships and we have nine um within within our program. To name a few, Seguin Public Library, City of Seguin,
111Connections Individual and Family Services, Texas Wildlife Association, Grupo Folklorico and a number of the high school organizations. So. All right, and then I think we're missing a couple of slides. Okay. I'll show you. [laughter] I don't know where they went. Um so this is another part of the impact report. Hopefully you have it in front Um so on that um on the back it just shows you that last year we had 829 students that met regular attendance. If you recall a moment ago, I shared with you that we're already at 811 and we still have the end of this month and um then all the way through summer. So I would suspect that we'll we'll surpass that number. Um 1,056 families that were engaged and um again, we've met every single campuses. That's part of
112what went into our priority points um was making sure that we were on track with that. Okay. Got it. Okay, thank you. All right. And then um apologize those were out of order. Um and so with that again, it's just capturing um all of that data that we're putting in so that you can see evidence of how we were on track, right? How it was uh green on that first uh visual. All right. And then with the next one, um this is a result of like conversation that we have. We're assigned a TEA coach that meets with us monthly, that comes and does site visits, that walks through program. Matter of fact, we had our visit for spring last Thursday um at Pot Luck Elementary. So they come and actually visit sites, walk through a
113day of programming with us and give feedback. But part of what you do in those monthly meetings is talk about some of the impacts um that you have within your community. And so it was very exciting as we were trying to generate um our story for for this particular portion of this report um to talk with Commander Jackson from the ROTC program. Um, we partner with them and go about four to five times a year and take both AJB and Barnes, which means it's two nights. One night of the week is AJB, another night is Barnes, and do various activities with them. And so, what he shared with us that I had no idea is that 40% of his incoming freshman group this past fall were signed up and interested in in ROTC because of
114their exposure through ACE. So, I thought that was really neat because my hope is that cosmetology could say the same thing and, you know, early college high school could say the same thing and so on and so forth because we want those kids to find those connections and be part of all the positive things that are out there because they are. Um, and so that was a really neat experience to hear that. You'll under the grantee profile, you can see that we serve a very diverse population, always have and always will. All right. And I'm going to go back then. In my mind, this is what would then be next. All right. So, on on our data tracking tool, so um, as I shared with you, we're we have data in all the areas. So,
115we're monitored for attendance, academics, specifically math and reading, um, engagement and behavior, and then also, um, family engagement. And so, something that we wanted to do as a program is we're in compliance. We have the numbers, but now how do we grow and improve the work that we're doing, right? That continual cycle of how how do we improve ourselves and and do better work for our kids and for our families. And so, what we started is a data tracking tool um, that allows each of our site coordinators to be more comfortable and familiar because they're not all of education education backgrounds, um, with the content and the vocabulary and all of the things with regard to academic performance, but then also tracking not only academics, but all of the other components that are equally important.
116And so, we are actually going to be uh part of what's called a grantee um highlight, and we are presenting to all the other state uh programs on the work that we've done. It's still a work in progress. We're learning, but we are definitely making strides in the right direction, I feel, by being asked to present on it. And so, um each one of our site coordinators has a data binder, kind of old school. I'm like a I want to touch it, right? And so, um we have that, and then we maintain a student-by-student data set on all of the components that we have to track on them. Are they coming? Are they participating? Are their families coming? How are their How is their behavior in school? How is their uh daily attendance at school?
117Um and then how are they academically performing? Because it's everything about the child that we're focused on. Okay. And then I have just a couple of examples. So, these are some screenshots from the presentation, just so you can kind of see the the level to which we're working toward taking the information. Currently, we are focused on because we're getting it started, right? We're looking at quarterly academic data, um in addition to conversations with coaches and teachers within the school to to hone in. But we're using that information to drive uh the instructional decisions that we have, the grouping decisions that we're making, uh and that sort of thing. And so, our hope is that as we continue to grow in comfort comfort level with this, that we will be able to hone that in and
118have more frequent evaluations and data sets. All right. As I mentioned, we are uh culminating our summer camp experience this summer, but we are very proud of everything that we're able to offer through this um experience, and we will serve a little over 250 students between elementary and middle school um in all of the many things that we offer and you can see everything from community service to being in the outdoors to steam to academics to um production. It's all there and so that's exactly what we want. We'll tap into the outdoor learning center. All of the wonderful things. You are all invited third Thursday in June the 18th for the Willy Wonka show. Um so we'd love to to have you there. Um and then lastly just want to say thank you um year
119five of five. I came in year three and so picked it up from there and have have taken to the end. Uh this program I hope has um been of service to our kids and to our community. Um and so transportation, child nutrition, Pete Silvius, Elizabeth Moore, Christie Miranda, Joseph Cantu, Shantel Van, our team of the site coordinators, the YDPs, our family engagement, Miss Bobby Parsons. Um and then all of our community partners um including the high school uh teams that you know never turned away. Like if I come up some crazy idea and it means we have to add a route here and feed someone somewhere else. Everyone's always like sure, we got you. So um I just want to say thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart to
120all of these individuals and to all of you for allowing us to serve our kids. So that's it. Board before you jump in on any comments and and before Miss Seidenberger gets too far away from that microphone, uh I just wanted to take a moment. She gave a lot of credit to a ton of people across the district. The person that she didn't give credit to was herself for the amazing work that she does to make that happen. And I know we have talked consistently about fingers crossed. You know, we feel confident but we just never know what the state is doing and so I think it's just very important for Miss Seidenberger and her entire team to hear how important that program is, how much they do make a difference for kids every single
121day. And we're going to do everything we can in hopes of being able to continue that work after this summer rather than it being this summer. And so I just wanted to make sure that Ms. Eidenberger also got credit of credit for the work that she does. Any questions? I just have a comment. I when I saw the agenda and I saw that ACE was on our agenda, I thought again? Has it been a year? Um but going through the presentation and then hearing you speak as well, it is incredible how much that program has grown over the last year. Is it the things that were going well last year have maintained but then in addition all of the addition things. So I'm really excited, fingers crossed, what this program will look like next year
122and the next year under your leadership. It truly is remarkable how much that program's improved the last year. Thank you. I just want to say thank you for all your hard work and all your staff's hard work. I see them all the time after school and all the events that are happening when the schools are putting on but also like the the partnership that you're forming especially with the middle school into the high school with our CTE programs. I believe that's huge. It's really huge for them to see the opportunities that they have and I really want to applaud you for doing that because that's that's great. That's really great work. Thanks. Thanks. Very important. I'd like to commend you on your presentation. That's always fun to present things to your peers and have them
123admire them. So congratulations on that. I am in McQueeney and I often go over there just to visit the school or see things and if I'm there after school, I always walk in some of the ACE classrooms and I love what I see. That's really good stuff. I remember when we were applying for this grant and we didn't get it a couple times but this is exactly what we were looking for. Like, this was the dream. And so, thank you so much for your work in like making this possible and and um yeah, it's amazing program. So, thank you. Thank you and your staff. Uh did go to the Battle of the Brains performance. It was awesome from all those campuses. They did a great job. Yeah, they did great. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you
124all for your time. Thank you. All right. Um next we have item 7C, Seguin High School um student Crime Stoppers, um Dr. Correa. All right. Uh Dr. Lee, school board president, trustees, uh I don't don't really have much to say. This in in in my opinion is the Sierra Mosher show. I'm really uh happy and glad to have her and these amazing students, um members of the Crime Stopper organization there at Seguin High School, here to present information, give you information about what they've been working on and what they look forward to work on in the future. So, take it away, ladies. Is this clicker linked over there? Awesome. Hello. Good evening. Thank you everybody that has stuck around to this moment. I appreciate it. I want to thank the parents that stayed to support
125their children. It means a lot to have you share them with me at school and in my program. So, thank you from the bottom of my heart. So, today I will introduce to you the mission of a student Crime Stopper program. And once again, I'm a classroom teacher, so I'm going to give you your agenda. So, by the end of this, you will all be able to list the ways that student Crime Stoppers will work to improve the safety of Seguin High School. But, first off, what is Crime Stoppers? Does anybody know? It's a classroom setting. You got something? Oh, okay. Okay, good. Good. Now I can finish with the presentation. Okay. All right. So, a little bit about Crime Stoppers, we have our Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers and it's comprised comprised of a diverse
126and active and dedicated community representatives. So, I have a couple of them in the room that I'd like to thank real quick. We have our president, David Riley. We have our vice president, Tim Colby. We have some additional board members, Moses right here, and then I have Eileen right beside her. And then myself, I'm also one of them, and Ms. Burns. So, thank you Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers, and we work together with local law enforcement to provide anonymous tips to help solve crimes within our community. So, Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers, since it's been started, has cleared 52 or has cleared 83 cases, made 52 arrests, and has awarded over $13,000 in awards for anonymous tips. So, if you haven't started following Guadalupe County Crime Stoppers yet, you can scan that QR code and find their
127webpage, and you can stay up to date with all the things that we're doing within the community. But now, this is where I'm going to let my students start to take over, cuz they're going to tell you what it means to be a student Crime Stopper. Student Crime Stoppers is a student-led program that promotes a safe school environment by encouraging students to anonymously report safety concerns. It builds a bridge between students, school administrators, and law enforcement to prevent crime, bullying, and potential threats before they escalate. Um what's our mission? We will bring positive leadership to confront cri- crimes on campus, transform our culture, and remove the negative stigma of reporting to P3. P3 is completely anonymous reporting system where students can safely document crimes, concerns that may be deemed unsafe. With this two-way communication system,
128students will be able to communicate with the person from law enforcement / administration team. If the tip leads to a successful outcome, the student will receive a reward. And I just want to say that with this system uh students don't have to be afraid of reporting to teachers if they don't feel comfortable. The system is completely anonymous and they could even report it like through computers and like systems that you could find easily at school. So, one of the concerns that students have on campus is trying to remember how to find where to do the P3. We know that cell phones are no longer allowed in classroom settings from 8:35 to 4:05 on our high school campus. So, what we came up with was a short access code using Bitly. A lot of teachers are
129now using it instead of posting QR codes, you know, for warm-ups, exit tickets, things like that. So, the students on our campus are already pretty aware on how to operate a Bitly. So, if they can just remember that last half of it, it finds a faster way to get to our P3 reporting form that's directly linked to Seguin High School's campus. That will also bypass them having to select what county they're in, what city they're in, then what campus they're in. So, if they're trying to report something in a fast, anonymous way, it just makes the process a little bit quicker for them and they can get it to us a lot faster. Okay, they're a little nervous. I mean, thankfully the room cleared out for the most part, right? So, these images up on
130the board are from where a select number of my students got to attend the 30th annual Student Crime Stoppers Campus Safety Conference that was hosted in Amarillo this year. So, on the board you can see that we're standing with a very tall cop. He is known as the tall cop. Officer Galloway works with school districts and anybody that's in public safety to talk about the drug trends that are happening on campuses. So, we were able to listen to a lecture provided by him where they tell students what to look out for student crime stoppers like things like, "Huh, that doesn't look like a normal bag of candy. We should probably report that on P3, right? To be safe." So, he gives them some insights on what to look for to make their campus safer. They
131get to have uh moments where they speak with local law enforcement, ask any questions that they may not have the opportunity to do so when someone is on duty, you know, actively doing their job. So, they're all set there for students to engage with them and learn about the roles of public safety and how to make their campuses all safer. And not only do they get to speak with officials, they get to speak with other students across the state of Texas. So, I have two up here that were able to attend with me this past February. They were able to meet students from Odessa. We had some from Amarillo, some Beaumont. I mean Wichita Falls. I mean, they were from everywhere and they're all coming together with their like mindsets of what they can do
132to make their high school safer. Now, they started moving into middle schools, which hopefully we can get going on a few years down the road once we get this one rolling, right? But, our high school students, they all collaborate and they come up with ideas on what they're doing to promote their P3 and how they're making their campuses overall safe safer. So, we just talked about some of the benefits while we got to look at their lovely lovely pictures. Also, we found out the importance it is to have some form of a website for your student crime stoppers to operate with their coordinator. So, the student crime stoppers, they have where they post like a crime of the week. They have their P3 tips. So, if somebody's vandalizing like the school logo or something like
133that, that may be the crime of the week where they highlight like, "Hey, if you know a tip on this, click this link right here." And they're posting it on their social media pages. And oftentimes with their crime of the week, they may even up the reward money to try to solve that crime faster. So, one of the coordinators that I met with that has been really helpful to me during certain time frames, they'll raise the amounts of certain unsafe behaviors that's happening on campus. And they'll raise that awards normally around the holiday seasons. And then you can see a lot of students are like, "Oh, yeah, this is how they're bringing that to campus." And their student crime stoppers are able to go in and combat that right then with local administrator and law
134enforcement and figure out, "Okay, yes, this is what we need to be on the lookout for, too, on our side of the campus." And another thing that they were able to take part in was listening to a speech from a father who lost their daughter to a drunk driving accident. And when we listened to his speech, it was very emotional. And in the city of Amarillo, where all all of it happened up there in the panhandle, they do a thing where they take a promise. So, for prom, they do a promise to be safe and sober. So, our student crime stoppers at Seguin High School has also started this initiative. So, we have our Seguin promise. So, we are rolling it out in the classroom cohorts. We wrote it out on campus a little bit
135with students, and we have some of them with their certificates here that they can show that we're going to print out and we're going to award with students on campus on Friday. So, that way it's a physical reminder that they took that promise, that they were going to be safe, sober, they were going to make a plan, they were going to look out for everybody that was involved, and they were going to make sure everybody got safe rides home. So, if you want to, you can look at the form right there by clicking that QR code. But that bitly, where all the arrows are pointing, that's what's getting shared into the Google Classrooms and on our Matcast tomorrow. So, now students won't have to sneak their phones out to scan that QR code, right? They're
136using that Bitly. So, our student Crime Stoppers are trying to get everybody using these Bitlys. Bitly? You're welcome. What in tarnation? Where's he at? Okay. So, if you want to keep up with this amazing group of students that are making history right here in Seguin, follow their Instagram page. They have not made a post yet because they've been working on their first campus initiative on what they're going to do to promote school safety. So, this prom one that is rolling out, our goal is on Friday when we're passing out all these certificates, we're going to take a picture of each student that's done it, with their permission of course, and we're going to make like a little fast-paced collage with a nice upbeat appropriate music that we're going to share and say, "This is what
137our student Crime Stoppers are doing to keep our community safe. This is what we're doing to show students that we're out here doing good. We're not doing anything negative. We're trying to remove that negative stigma of reporting unsafe behavior. We're trying to show that we're going to work together to keep everybody safe cuz we care about everyone here." Do I have any questions? I have a question for our students. Um kind of put you on the spot, but if you would each one of you would just tell us how you found out about Crime Stoppers and why you decided to be part of Crime Stoppers. Well, um I'm Ariana. Um I'm a freshman. And whenever I joined Ms. Mosher's or I was uh I think Yeah, I was in eighth grade. I saw that there
138was a law class. And the thing is I adore law. Like it's something I really want to look forward to in my future. And my thing is that I was in her class and then she's talking about like, "Oh, yeah, my Crime Stoppers. I this program and stuff." And then she kind of like not too much in the background of it, but I kind of got the idea of it where it was a program where they just like help the school make the school a better environment and I was just like "I want to be that." And I want to help grow the environment into a better place, especially for students in such a in such a like a big environment. I want to make an impact. So, I filled out my application whenever she
139said that there was like applications uh that people were able to fill out. So, I took the opportunity and I put my heart into it and explaining why I wanted to be in the program. And I was really surprised and shocked [laughter] because I I've never wanted to be a part of something so bad and I really adore the program and really what we're doing right now is just the start of it. I know I'm just a freshman, but really look forward to more things in the future in my next 4 years in this program, especially with my favorite Ms. Mosher, but I just love this program and her so much. I really do want to make this big of an impact on people and on students. So, I mean that's my Yeah. Thank you.
140So, last year I heard about Crime Stoppers cuz this was our first year, but last year they were able to go and participate it in it. And I really adored it. Like it sounded amazing, so I joined it this year. And I just want to make my campus a safer space and I'm hopefully looking forward to um being ambassador for Crime Stoppers. It's really hard to get into, but I'm trying to get into that, so. So, I heard I first heard about Crime Stoppers through my mom. When I found out that she was a member, I was immediately interested. I asked her all kinds of questions about it, wanted to know everything that there was to it. And then when I heard that she had the idea of doing it for our campus, I was
141like, sign me up because I feel like it would be very beneficial not just for me, who's a junior or soon to be graduating seniors and our underclassmen, but the eventual students who would be coming into Seguin High School and having a safer school environment, a better environment, and realizing that as she said that it doesn't have to have that negative stigmatization with it, that it's safe to report something that you feel is wrong. And I just wanted to be able to be a part of the beginning steps of making such a huge impact on not just my community, but everybody around me. Um, I'm Kaylin and I'm a sophomore and I joined Crime Stoppers because I really want to work in law enforcement when I'm older. So, I wanted to do every part of
142law that I could get even if it was joining a program that I'm late to most meetings too. But [laughter] But yeah, I joined and Ms. Mosher made it really easy to feel comfortable even if I wasn't sure how to do my application or if I wasn't sure if my application was good. She was just very helpful with just do it, just get it over with, just see if you get it and then I got put in, so. Okay, so I'm a junior and this is my first year. The reason why I joined was because I recognized that law enforcement is just such an essential aspect of any community, whether it be in like school or whether it be in just like a regular community like Seguin. And I feel like the Crime Stoppers organization
143will do so much good for Seguin High School because in order for students to actually, you know, learn they have to feel safe in their environment, especially like in a learning environment because why would you want to be worried about things that are unrelated to school whenever you could be learning? Um my name is Alexa and I'm a junior and this is also my first year. Um the reason why I wanted to join was probably cuz I'm I'm also looking to be like some type of like law enforcement in the future. And I don't know, like this program just sounded so interesting. And I thought it would be cool to be like the first steps, like my peers have said, in like the process of making Seguin High School like a better and safer environment.
144And yeah, that's pretty much it. So, one final thing that the students are hoping to start distributing out on campus are stickers cuz everybody has water bottles with stickers, right? Or everybody has iPads and phone cases with stickers. Maybe even some of our students are putting them on their Chromebooks that they have to remove at the end of the year, right? But the little stickers that they have, it shares the bitly at the bottom of it with our logo. So, it's just another way that students can maybe put it on their water bottle, have a reminder that we have our students Crime Stoppers program here. We're going to start promoting our P3 to remove that negative stigma with it. And hopefully get it to where they see it as a tool on campus and not
145something to be afraid of. I'm really proud of all these young ladies up here. Like I said, they are making history. So, expect big things to come from them. Thank you for your time. Thank you all. That's wonderful. How do you follow that, Mr. Newman? [laughter] All right, item 7D, human resources, uh personnel information, professional employees. I need to get some HR stickers. Uh board, this is our uh list of professional resignations and new hires. Is this typical for this time of year? If people are wondering at home. Yep. Yes. Okay. Have these positions been posted to job openings for Seguin ISD? Yes, they have. We've been very busy posting. Yep. Are we uh expanding where we're posting at for people to find them at more than just our website or Uh yes, we are.
146We've been talking about strategies as far as um locations where we can post. Uh we have to we we haven't we've looked at signing up for the ESC 20 uh position postings, but um we have to make a commitment on that and it's just an added cost that we haven't done. Um and then we're just looking at uh expanding to other locations like Tazza and other places for teaching positions. And we have to pay for that? We we do for the service center one. So, ESC 20 out of San Antonio, ESC 13 out of Austin, both of those provide job postings, um like posting boards, but you do have to subscribe for those. It's usually $3,500 maybe, something like that. Yes, sir. So, there's a fee for that? Um we can also post like coaching
147positions on like Texas High School Coaches Association or Texas Athletic Director or Association of Athletic Directors for Texas. Um each one of those also charges a fee to be able to do that. It's much more nominal. I think Texas High School Coaches Association is like $100 to be able to post on there. Um we can post on TASA Career Center at no charge. Um and we have posted several positions on there um intentionally, but we are working very hard to expand our postings to attract as many great people out there as we can. We're also using a product that's called Handshake, um and that's free, and that's a uh college career uh center location, and so it just posts to about 30 different colleges across Texas, um and that's free. So, the real popular one
148is called Indeed. I don't know if you've heard of that. Yeah, so we get picked up by Indeed. We um are part of our package of using Frontline application tracking system. Uh they post to what's called K12 Job Spot, I believe, dot com, and then Indeed is what's called a scraper website. It pulls um it pulls like jobs from other sites, and so uh the K through 12 Job Spot um is one of the sites that Indeed pulls from, and so it does show up on Indeed. Awesome. Thank you. That's awesome. Thank you, Mr. Newman. I know there's uh working in Austin, I hear a lot of buzz in Austin, and also even here living in Seguin, hear a lot of buzz in San Antonio. Uh the changes and difficult challenges that they're having also.
149I think there's a big pool out there this year more so than last year. So, I think we're eventually going to get to where hopefully we're okay. Yeah, definitely posting I think in Region 13 and Region 20 are great places. We are unfortunately hearing about other school districts that are um having to do layoffs and things like that, but um possibly Seguin ISD can pick up some of those teachers. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you. All right. Uh 7E 1 um Seguin ISD bond construction update. Mr. Speer. Good evening, board members, President Crittenden, Dr. Lee. Uh I'm actually going to enjoy today because we were so far along in the last two projects. Uh we've had a lot of construction that finalized everything with the flooring and just the final items that we have to
150install. So, hopefully you'll get to see the photos and you'll enjoy it, but uh we'll start right here. So, the ag science facility is 93% complete, and the McQueeney Elementary School is 94% complete. And through the photos you'll see uh approximately 93% complete for the ag science, the main barn's approximately 97% complete. The contractor's installing the first phase of the pens for the hogs and the steers. Uh phase two installation will include the remaining panels for the lambs, goats, and steers and the lockers. Once the pens are completed, they will then install the water lines and the power drops to those pens. So, the poultry building is approximately 95% complete. The heat lamps to be installed in the next couple of weeks and completion estimated by the end of May. Electrical work and lighting occurring
151on the existing barn because we couldn't get the lights to come on. There was no power. So, we added the power and the lights to that. The main power feeding the existing barn will be completed by the end of May as well. So, as you can see on the left, this is the broiler area. Everything's in there. We're just getting ready to install the heaters, which are the main component to finish it off with. And then on the right side, you can see the concrete, the louvers, the doors, everything is done. And on the right side, you'll see in another photo where they've actually added more of the topsoil. So, as you can see, these are the pens for the steers and we've put the sand in there. It's about a 12-in deep sand pit.
152Um and then on top of that will go uh will be whatever the CTE program wants to put on there, hay or grass or whatever their decision is. This is the wash bay for the animals. This one, I believe, is for the hogs and the pens. They can use any of them though for the animals. And as you can see on the left side, I just wanted to show you one of the fans. We have three blades that are like 9 ft across and they do distribute the air uh quite efficiently. The one on the right, as you're looking down, uh it's just to show the depth of this barn because I'm pretty sure everyone's been there, but if you haven't, it is huge. Here are some of the pens. The one One the left
153is for the steer. As you can see it's about approximately 5 ft tall because of the steer. The one on the right is for the uh the hogs, and it's a little lower, but you get the idea. That's what the pens are going to look like all the way across. Here is the ones for the hogs, all of them completed uh on gates are closed uh and they'll get the uh I'm sorry. The grass will come in or whatever they want to put for a filler for them to lay on. As you see on the left side, that's the uh the goat and lamb walker. As you can see, there's like a a trail. There's an inner fence and an outer fence, so they can walk them in a circle if they want to hand
154walk them. And right there is an actual automatic walker. It does not have the arms put on it yet, but when it does, you can just hook them up and it'll automatically walk the lambs or the goats. And again, you can see we're we're installing all the dirt, getting it ready for the seed. Any questions on the egg facility? Okay. Just real quick, on around the sidewalks around the outside, is that you said seed? Are we sodding that or is that like grass seed? And then they're also talking about the contractor going ahead and doing the hydro mulch. I think they're Even though we're required to seed it, they're considering hydro mulch. That's what I I was going to ask is are they seeding or are they hydro mulching that? So, originally it was seeding,
155but now they think it's going to be more beneficial for them, even though it's not much more of a cost, it will be added not to us, Sure. for them to hydro mulch. Perfect. Um the Queen is approximately 94% complete. It's expected substantial completion is to be early May of 2026, more like mid-May. Uh we've already done significant inspections. They're just tidying up those items that we found. Um the contractor is currently working on the punch list items throughout the school. The fire alarm panel is 97% complete. However, since I've written this, it's probably at 100% and it just needs to be tested. Uh floor waxing is going to begin May 1st. Um yes. Uh and to be completed by June 5th. That's both second and first floor. Furniture will be brought in starting around
156June 9th and completed by July 24th. Now, that is to say we do have a few items we have to bring from the old school, but majority of the equipment and the furniture we're bringing is new. As you can see, so to the left here is is what we call the pod. You have the classrooms here, here, and two on this side, and another over here. So, there's each pod has five classrooms, whether it's kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and up. And this is the common area for them. They can use it for whatever they need. And then to the right, this is the actual classroom I took a picture of. So, if you walk in the door, this is what you see. Uh it looks a little bigger from the photo, but they are
157actually a a really good size classroom. thing is going to look gargantuan in compared to what they are in now. [laughter] Yes. Yes, exactly. In fact, first time I drove up to it, I thought it was a high school, so. Um this one just showing you the lighting that we have here, the stairway, and the wrapping around everything. It's it and the artwork. It's a gorgeous school. I We get a lot of compliments on it. This is going out the the back door. Just again showing you the polished concrete, the flooring, the lights, and the ones you see up here are for the sound dampening because of all the hard surfaces. And then you can see the gym right in here. And then you can see the gym right in here. [clears throat] So this
158is a science lab. We have all the tables. To the left, which you don't see, there's another room here. It has the eyewash station, storage facility and all of that. We have the goggles right here. And then three sinks here, one here, and then what you don't see is the one sink back over here. So a lot of tables, a lot of uh area for the kids to work on. Uh this is the art room. So same thing. In here is where the kiln room is. It's closed off. Uh two sinks here so that they can wash and clean everything they need to. And then their working space and storage area. I'm happy about this because now I get to show you this photo with the actual artificial turf in there. So typically what you're
159going to see is you see the three steps here. These are more commonly going to be used for outdoor learning environment. This can be used as well, but you notice you have to come down here. This is more of I guess a play area or just a commons area that they can use outside. What's really unique is that there are these areas, there's places in the hallway. There are many, many areas for the teacher to bring out groups or separate groups or whatever and just get a different atmosphere. So it's got lots of very useful spaces. Uh this is when you first come in. So this is the beginning of the admin area where you will walk in. And then once you go through here, you have the counselors, the AP, the principal, uh just
160the various offices space that need there. You have your clerk here and then another one here. On the right, which is next to this, uh is the clinic. So there's the clinic office, the cabinet where they store all the items lockable or whatever. This right here is the storage room, which also has a refrigerator in it. And this is the restroom and a shower for students. Again, just wanted to show you the artwork here. It's throughout the school. It's about four different areas. This is the uh walk area. It's roughly really close to about a half mile once you walk the whole thing. And then you can see the soil we put here and they've added trees since then. Um This right here. And of course the gym, you can see uh you have four
161four squares on each side. The white is for the volleyball. The black is for the uh basketball. The uh coach is office here. There's restrooms for the kids here, adults on the left side. And that's and then behind the coach's office is where the storage room is for all the equipment. I did It went a little Yeah. Uh again, just another walkway with the lighting and you can see all the natural light. This school does have quite a bit of natural light, which I enjoy. And then we have about five aerials for you to see from different angles. So, as you can see um the front parking area over here. This is the loop where the cafeteria's over here. Um library is back over here. Another one a little further away gives you a better
162idea of the entire campus. Again, the backside or I believe that's the south side. And that would be the east side. And that will be it. Is there any questions on McQueeney? Yeah, I got you. I got one question. Can you go back like two slides for me? Yeah, so that back right corner that's squarish around here? Yeah, that area right there. Is that the What is that? Is that the septic's area? No, actually the septic area comes back in here. So that's like a big open that's going to be like a big open field area? It's just an open area. Yes. Is it going to be grass? Is it going to be grass like It's going to be Okay. vegetation What do we have a lighting plan for that yet? Or is there going
163to be one? Like for the fields? I was I just see possibility of supporting some of our youth sports. I thought you might say that. Yeah. Shocker there. be where you were going. [laughter] Be a great place for marching band, right Josh? [laughter] Outdoor theater. Oh, just a walking area around it when I when I went there last month. I was really impressed and Florin was telling me the bike riding we're going to be having around on the inside the fencing. I think it's like a half a mile or a quarter of a mile. around that loop. So it's it's a pretty big loop. Half a mile half a mile. Yeah. The contractor is going to take some professional photos and video. So we'll and they're going to share them with us. So we'll pass
164those on to y'all and get them online. Okay, the here's the financials and these don't change a whole lot because remember the POs are encumbered at the beginning of the project. So, unless there's additional POs, they don't really change a whole lot. Um I just want to point out that everything is under budget. The budget available is the same thing as um the amount under budget. We did add that to the presentation this month. Um but as you can see we're under budget and everything. We still have uh quite a bit of money in safety, fencing, and equipment. Um we are waiting for some you know the the possible possibility of the police department would um use up some of that money, but um Ruben and his team are working on several things in that
165category. Uh we will be closing out the Barnes parking and drives and the Barnes Middle School classroom expansion as soon as everything is completely closed out there. So, you'll see that go to zero. Obviously, we still have money in New McQueeney. We have the deceleration lane that you will see come out of that by their next uh board meeting cuz that PO will get encumbered. Uh we do still have some money left in egg science. We're buying uh equipment right now. We just purchased a couple of new pickup trucks out of that, so you will see that number change at the next update. Furniture, we have a little bit of money left in there. We are going to do some additional ordering for campuses for some high needs, uh some things that that they've been
166requesting. Plumbing and H vac, that will also be encumbered very soon, so you'll see that go down and then a little bit of money left in technology infrastructure. Do you all have any questions in regards to the financials? Okay. Okay, we have our first budget presentation for this year. Just a reminder, we adopt our budget in June for the 26-27 school year. Our fiscal year starts in July, so we start talking to y'all every month beginning with this month and at the very end you will adopt a budget. This month we're going to talk about state funding and enrollment and how that is related to our budget. Look at some historical data. We're going to look at enrollment trends and our average daily attendance trends and how those affect our funding and then a little
167bit about staffing over the past several years and how that has affected our budget. Just want to point out that priority five of our strategic plan has to do with strategic operational stewardship. So as we are going through the budget process, we have a very big concentration this year on decreasing the budget deficit in a way that we can carry that forward past the 26-27 school year. So we have three parts of revenue for the most part. The foundation school program, the available school fund and other sources of revenue. Those other sources are interest income, rent. So for instance, Arlan's and On the Grind, we get some rent money from there. Athletics is going to be gate receipts and then insurance recovery is if we happen to have an insurance claim in the month and
168we do receive any money for that. We never budget for that, but we do budget a little bit of money for those other three categories. Very small part of our budget. The available school fund is also state revenue that is also a very small part of our budget. It is just a per student amount that we get every year. It doesn't change significantly from year to year. The foundation school program is made up of tier one and tier two revenue. I want to point out that our property tax collections are part of our foundation school program revenue specifically in tier one. It's called our local fund assignment, but it's our property tax collections. I have a picture of our revenue here, so you can kind of see the proportion of each category. The foundation school
169program is the dark blue. It's actually the light blue as well, but I wanted to point out that the light blue section is our local tax collections. And then the dark blue is the the remainder of the foundation school program. You can see that the available school fund and our other sources are very small portion of our revenue. Uh the typical idea in school finance is that when that light blue portion gets smaller, the dark blue portion makes up for it. Often times you hear the state say that they're contributing more um than than they have ever in the history to to public schools. The reason that they're contributing more is because of homestead exemptions and property tax relief. Um doesn't mean the school district school district is getting more. I got to back that
170up. I'm going to have an injury. Um doesn't mean the school district is getting more, but it the state is contributing more. Yeah, I just wanted to add one thing, not that Luz is not explaining it well. I think she's doing a fantastic job. It's just I get a little bit on my soapbox here about the state saying that they're giving us more money and they're giving us more money. Yes, the state is giving us more money to replace the money they took from us from local revenue. We're getting nothing Yes, sir. in it is what it really comes down to. They're just contributing that and saying, "Look how much more we're giving to education." Well, you're not really giving us more. You're just supplanting what you took away on the other side. And I'm
171all for lower taxes, just to be clear. I pay taxes here in Seguin ISD, too. I want the lowest taxes that I can possibly get, but it does affect public schools when when the state starts manipulating property values and things like that. Yes, and that's obviously been a push recently and we're going to see it again in the next legislative session. Um that is something that's been a a for the business office this year specifically because we we didn't see that hold harmless come through like we normally do as quickly. So, we're working through that and we'll keep y'all y'all posted. Um we've seen a recovery of some of that, but not all of that at this point. So. So, tier one of the foundation school program, again, there's tier one and there's tier two.
172Just like there's tier one and tier two tax rates, we're going to talk more about tax rates next month. But, the foundation school program tier one, that money is meant to provide students with a basic instructional program. It is just basic school. Uh it is based on refined average daily attendance, which that's the number of students that come to school each day uh divided by the number of days of instruction over the whole school year. It's an average of the whole school year. And most most of this money has required spending. All of it has required programs. Um most most of which have allotments. And I'll show you some examples of those. They'll sound very familiar to you. Uh this portion of the funding includes the basic allotment, which is 6215 per kid. It went
173up $55 in the last legislative session from 6160. But, that's a very common term, the basic allotment. That's where this is in our funding. After the basic allotment, the foundation school program tier one adds in other allotments. Here's a few of them. Uh special education, early education allotment. You're familiar with special education. We receive money based on our kids. And uh we are required to spend most of that money. And we are required to provide services with that money. Gifted and talented, we're required to provide those gifted and talented services for all of our kids, uh even though we actually don't get funded on all of our gifted and talented kids because the state caps that that amount. Um And this this revenue makes up almost 75 to 80% of our total budget. So, this
174is a very large portion of our budget, but the state says, "Hey, you you do have to do these things." This is This is just kind of a visual of all of those allotments. The large blue area, that's our regular um allotment. That's just for basic instruction like we've already talked about. You can see all the percentages of uh the rest of our tier one funding. The one thing I wanted to point about out about this one is that 6.7% that you see up there that says tier two funding. That's the second part of the uh foundation school program we're going to discuss, and that is where we have free reign. That's enrichment funding. We can decide what we want to do with that. The rest of this funding we we can make decisions. We
175can say, "Hey, we're going to have this many teachers to this many students." Uh we do have some decisions that we can make within that, but again, that is that is money that the state says we're going to give you, but you have to do these things. Okay, so we have tier two of the foundation school program. Uh that's what I mentioned. That is enrichment funding. That's where we can decide that we're going to go above and beyond a little bit more. And this is based on our district's tax rate that is above the maximum compressed tax rate. And And we will talk about that through the budget process, how the state does set our maximum compressed tax rate. Um now, that's not how they've always done it, but over the past few years, that
176that's how they do it. And then we have uh a rate above that. That's where our golden and copper pennies come into play, and that's where this enrichment funding comes from. Uh the way that this is figured is it is is it takes all of our allotments that we talked about in tier one, and it divides it by the basic allotment, and that comes up with what is called a WADA, which is weighted average daily attendance. It's another common term in school finance. And our tier two funding for 25-26, which is going to be pretty much the same going forward in 26-27, depending on our kids, but it was about $4.6 million. So, we have $80 million of revenue in our school budget. So, 4.6 of that is tier two funding. This is that funding
177that we talked about last year when we did the Vader that we were going to be able to increase that funding by about two and a half million dollars annually. Uh just wanted to remind you before we look at this slide, average daily attendance is the average number of students who are actually present each day. So, if you have one kid at school for one day, your ADA is one. And it looks over the whole year and takes an average, and that's where you get your ADA for the end of the year, which completely drives our state funding. Clicker. Doesn't like me. I included this slide because I I think I included some of these slides this year because I think it's something we need to look at from year to year. Uh I'm going
178to explain what it is and then point out some things about it. You can see I've got the uh last several fiscal years on here. Um on the left, followed by our enrollment, and then our average daily attendance for that year. And then a ratio that that's just comparing our ADA to our enrollment for each year. So, the higher this ADA to enrollment ratio is, the the better attendance we have, essentially, and the more money we get in state funding. And I want to point that out because even very small changes in our attendance can dramatically in fact impact our state funding. If you see here for 25-26, there's a slightly higher ratio than what we had in 24-25. Uh one reason for that is we have a little bit higher attendance this year. So,
179uh there's been an improvement in some processes with attendance. You saw in the Jefferson presentation that they were offering some incentives to the kiddos, and that that 1% can make a huge difference to our school district. We will look at this amount again at the end of the year because this does only include the first four six weeks. We do see a little bit of a decline at the end of the year typically, but it's still you can see that our number here this ADA is 6379. Last year our ending ADA was 6373. So, it's it's more, but we're 100 kids less than we were the prior year. So, that's meaningful. I just have a quick question. Yes, sir. 2021-22 Yes, sir. 2020-21, 6899 for enrollment, but yet we got a high Yeah, so those
180are COVID years. Um the state did some hold harmless during the years of 1920 through 2122. Uh they it was during COVID, and kids weren't coming back, and so they basically raised your ADA even though you didn't have it. So, those are Yeah. Yeah, so those years kind of are a little skewed in all of these slides. This is just the same thing in a graph form. Um you can see the enrollment at the top in blue and the ADA in red. Just the closer the red is to the blue, obviously the better our funding is. And again, the COVID years you can see are a little funky between 1920 and 2122. The day that we don't talk about COVID in school finance will be great. But, hate to keep talking about it, but it's
181still pretty meaningful in our story. Um based on historical data, we we do expect a decline next year, and of course the demographic study that y'all already saw, we do expect a little bit of a decline next year, but then we hope it will it will start to pick up up after that. I did want to put together um some enrollment trends by grade spans. So, first off, I have pre-kindergarten. Again, you can see I have the years on the bottom and then the enrollment on the left. Pre-K, we did drop a little bit in 2024-2025. Right here, and went back up in 2025-2026, but we're still not back up to where we were prior to that. Kinder through fifth grade, we actually increased last year. And then we dipped right back down in 2025-2026.
182Middle school, clearly we're seeing an increase for whatever reason. High school, uh we did start to come back in 2022-2023 here, and then have consistently decreased our enrollment at that campus since then. But, none of these campuses are back to where they were prior to COVID. And that is not a Seguin thing. That is a statewide thing. Um so, it's just how it is, but it's it's important to understand that um it's part of our story, but it is part of the story for the whole state of Texas. This is another um slide that I would like to continue to look at every year. Again, it has the years back to '17-'18 and our total student enrollment for each of those years. And then these are three staffing categories that had the largest change between
183those two years. This data comes from PEIMS, which is our public education informa- information management system. It is where we send up our data to the state daily now. Um and then at the end of the year, in summer PEIMS, it all becomes final. So, um here we are with our student enrollment at 7467 back in '17-'18 with a teacher FTE of 464 teachers. You You see in 2021, we started creeping up in the number of teachers that we had. And then here in 23-24, you see a a dip and that's probably due to vacancies that were not filled. Um people schools had a hard time filling positions then. You're going to see an increase in these post-COVID years for all three of these positions. That is also another thing that is very real for
184schools across the state of Texas. There was a substantial amount of federal funding given post-COVID and most of it had to be used to recover from learning loss from COVID. And so you see an increase in positions like teachers, other professionals. Those are positions like instructional coaches, coordinators, academic deans. Those are positions that are not necessarily like cookie-cutter normal school positions, but they were very common to be added after COVID to help make up for learning loss. One thing I want to point out about these is um the dollar amount. So if you were to look at the dollar amount from 17-18 to 25-26, of course the biggest part of the dollar amount in the total amount of those salaries is going to be from the change in the salaries, increases in salaries. 25-26, we
185saw a very large increase in salaries for teachers. But if you take if you do the math and you account for the total salaries in 17-18 to 25-26 for teachers, that's a $7 million difference. For other professionals, that's a $3 million difference and the same for educational aids. And I really want to point that out, not because uh to be negative, um but because that is an opportunity to really have an impact on our budget as we are looking for attrition. As people are leaving, we can reevaluate those positions. We had 464 teachers in 17-18 and 7,400 kids. We have 7,100 or almost 7,200 kids now, but we have 501 teachers. So, we have not decreased staff in line with our enrollment. And and I also want to point out that administration that was here
186during these time periods did not do anything wrong. Everybody thought that the kids were going to come back, especially in this area, because we we're going to be growing like crazy. So, the thought was, "Hey, we don't have to get rid of these staff members right away, because the kids are going to come back." And then they didn't. But now we're at a point where we have to be very intentional about positions that we are absorbing when people leave voluntarily, so that we're not one of those school districts that is getting rid of people involuntarily. Y'all have any questions about that? It's kind of a lot. I had a question on slide five. Okay. Which one was that? Um that's the foundation school programming pie chart. Yeah. So, this is the money this is the
187money that we're given for these programs. Do we have another one or can we see another one in the future side by side that shows how much we're actually spending on these programs? Like cuz I know like we're given that that 14.3 for sped, but it's what we're given. But I because like you were saying same thing for the GT kids. Right. We have more kids in that program, so we're this is what we're given for it, but this is how much we're actually spending. Yes, I can give you some of that. This all of these spending requirements are tracked by what's called a program intent code. It's part of our coding system. And um we track enough of those expenses to meet the required spending and have a good idea what we're spending. So,
188it it'll be very close, but yeah. Yeah, I can do a comparison. just curious at how much more we're spending than what we're actually Yes, sir. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. Yeah, I'll add that. And then um going And you will see when we pull those numbers, especially for special education, what we are spending versus what we are receiving is going to be considerably different because we're just not funded well for special education. And that's that's yeah. what I'm trying to drive I'm in. the public. Yes, and and you know, when we look at those staffing numbers and our student numbers, we have increased our special ed student numbers drastically over the last few years. Part of that is because dyslexia is now under special education. So. Lot more special ed kids now. I just
189know that we're spending way more than what we're getting and I just want the public to most part, yes. Um and then this is more of a Dr. Lee question, but looking at what we were talking about as far as enrollment being what it is, um like starting some type of marketing campaign was very interesting to me um to see that Northeast ISD is is advertising on streaming services about open enrollment. And they're showing some pretty cool stuff. Yeah, we've had some where you are in the San Antonio area, you can enroll in Northeast ISD. We have had some initial conversations about advertising in our area specifically, not necessarily out there out there. Um I have joked and I I say this 100% like in a humorous way. I have joked about uh purchasing or
190renting a billboard in districts that are reducing staff saying now hiring Saginaw ISD um because we are looking for good people. And so, we've had some initial conversations. We've not had any like hard moves yet just because we're trying to figure out what our options are. Um I did not realize that we had the opportunity to advertise on streaming services or things like that, but those are things that we can definitely start looking into and figuring out what options are. Um we have had conversations as a as a leadership team, especially on making sure that we are marketing the district, getting us into a situation where people want to come to Saginaw ISD, uh and how to make that happen. And you know, a lot of that occurs through uh academic growth and achievement growth.
191And so, we've got some work to do there, which we we've all acknowledged and know, um but absolutely will look and and see how how much more aggressive we possibly have as as options. I know that costs us money and we're talking about budget, but sometimes you have to spend money to make money. So. I tell Liz all the time, it's just money. Again, that's a joke for anyone watching at home. That's not for real. Um but Spoken by Dr. Lee. [laughter] Okay, this next um I just have a quick add to that. Um I know I've been on the board on going on 8 years in November. And accountability has been a big one here in Saginaw. Once we get it up, like Dr. Lee, you know, the plan that he has to bring
192it up there, we have to get that up there. That I think will promote the school itself. Um This chart it This is This shows our general fund budget categories, which are basically broken up into salaries, contracted services, supplies, and then other operating costs. And this slide is important because it shows that almost 80% of our budget is salaries. So, again, when we have an opportunity to absorb through attrition, where we're not going to affect learning in a negative way, then we really need to take advantage of it. Looking at positions that might be considered more of a luxury position, or if we have very uh small class sizes, we can make a huge difference in our budget through salaries. If we're looking to to cut costs, we will talk more about increasing revenue at
193our next budget presentation, cuz obviously that would go a long ways as well. One thing I wanted to point out about contracted services, it looks like a big portion of our expenses and I don't want people to be confused about what that is. That does include things like main like contracted maintenance and repair, plumbing, that kind of stuff, but it's also our utilities, uh required services such as fire alarm monitoring, elevator monitoring. Utilities is huge, so as you can imagine. So key takeaways I really wanted to prove with this uh presentation is this that our state funding is based on average daily attendance. Attendance is a big deal. We can move um we can bring in a lot more funding by just increasing attendance by a little bit, but that is not also something that
194is not just a Seguin issue. It is as y'all know, we've talked about it before after COVID kids just don't come to school like they used to. So um so changes in enrollment like uh Mr. Bright mentioned, if we can increase our enrollment that is a also huge for our budget. A large portion of our funding is tied to a designated allotment set by the Texas Education Agency and we do have to follow their guidelines um for those amounts and that almost 80% of our budget is salary. So that's where we can really move the needle on expenses. Um therefore the decrease of staff through attrition is essential right now. So very grateful for our chief of human resources, Jeremy, this year. We work very closely and having a ton of communication, him and I
195and our whole leadership team. So I'm very confident that we will make great strides for that and I'm also going to shout out to our high school principal, Mr. Muñoz. Um this is the first real effort I've seen from a campus administrator since I've been here. Nothing against the others, they've had their hands full. But um very excited about his process for really looking at staff and student numbers and yeah, Monday morning 8:00 or 9:00 meeting with Mr. Muñoz on staffing like made my whole week. So, that's great news. [laughter] Uh next month we're going to uh look at tier two funding. So, uh golden pennies and copper pennies, what are they and how could they impact our district? So, do you all have any more questions? I'm just great graphics by the way. This
196presentation is really I'm wondering if you can we can find a way to put it on this district website under the business office. Yeah, I'll put it on there. Yes, thank you. Y'all are my stick figures. My my first uh fall here we looked at stick figures. So, I'll have to bring that back. [laughter] Thank you. Oh, and um just have the financial statements, new vendors, and purchases over 50,000. Yeah, so we have our financial statements for March. Uh keep in mind this is 3/4 of the way through the school year. We have April, May, June to go still. There's nothing really that stands out on on the financials for the general fund or child nutrition or debt service. Just everything as to be expected. Uh of course I'm happy to answer any questions that
197y'all have on these. Okay, we've got new vendors. Those are pretty self-explanatory. And then our purchases over $50,000. This is for your information. Um but if you have any questions or comments. Were those trucks on that purchase information form or are those the trucks that we're talking about for the Yes, sir. They're for our new facilities. Uh Ag So, I think these actually were able to buy um maintenance vehicles uh for McQueeney and Ag, and um and then you'll see a couple tractors come through for one for the Ag facility and one for McQueeney. And and two new Ag pickups. So, we have to use those We'll we'll use those maintenance vehicles just for those facilities. Is that coming out of Bond funds. Bond funds? Yes, sir. All right. Any questions about any of that?
198There's like almost no one over here. I know. [laughter] It's kind of sad. Looking at Grace over this side. Okay. Any questions? All right. Thank you so very much. Okay. So, um we did not finish all um everything in closed session uh before we came out. So, we're going to go back into closed session. We'll also take a few minute break before we do that. Sorry. Uh oh, pardon. Oh, okay. Um so [laughter] So, that is that we we could do it not what we could do 9A and 9B. So, Ms. Silvius can um go home and read a book, get some sleep, whatever she wants to do. Uh unless there are any objections. Can I make a request that we do 9B first and then 9A? Um yes, unless anybody has any objections. Okay.
199So, we're moving on to 9B, discuss and take action on recommendations of library material challenge committee. All right. Good evening, President Crittendon, Dr. Lee, and school board trustees. Um, let me get to my right place here. Um, tonight I would like to present the reports and determinations on the Excuse me, on the following books for your consideration and approval. Um, you can see the list there in the agenda and um, I just want to quickly like you did the last time just give you a breakdown of the numbers. Um, we had over 50 volunteers for these various book committees. Um, that included about 397 hours of reading. Um, I spent about 10 hours or our whole group spent about 10 hours in meetings. Um, I spent about 40 hours of prep work for all the
200meetings and 30 hours um, writing the reports just to give you an idea how much time um, this has taken up, but I cannot say enough how much I appreciate the people who volunteered to be on these boards. We have parents, we have district residents, and we have staff and they do an amazing job and we have really good conversations. Um, so I would like to uh, recommend that all our committees recommended that all the books uh, remain in the high school library. And I'm going to open this up for questions if you have any. I only have I have one question on on one specific book. Okay. Um, I know that the the challenger I I I don't really show in here what the challenger challenged the book based this off of, but I'm
201very curious about the Sherlock Holmes book and why that ended up on the challenge list. Any any ideas about why this Sherlock Holmes book ended up on the challenge list? Um, honestly for most of these books, for all of these books, um, we have to guess because the challenger does not say. So, um, when we read this book, um, I didn't read this one. If I don't read the book on the committee I just act as the chair and I don't vote. Um but what the committee thought maybe is because there are some characters that are gay. Um there's nothing explicit. Um if it talks about any um drug use or alcohol use it is all discouraging. Um there are consequences for everything. And that's um the language was not an issue. Uh I think
202I remember them saying and most of it was like English kind of slang cuz it was it's set in England. Uh yeah, but we have the same question pretty much with every book. Not quite sure what we are what we're looking for. Can we request for the individuals or individual to ask you know the reason why the it's being challenged? Uh so we went through that just briefly um with one of our [clears throat] legal counsel uh just to ask specifically and essentially once the form is turned in then the form is turned in and we have to move forward with it. We don't get the opportunity to say that the form is incomplete or anything like that. Uh and so we don't have any more information. If I'm not mistaken almost all of these
203challenges were one reason why photocopied and then the books themselves are just handwritten in. So there was a photocopy of the reason and then the title of the book was just written in on each one of those photocopies. Um and so we we don't have any insight to what it was other than other than that. Um unless they turned in something with it. And occasionally we will get some things with it and so they'll have like some excerpts like but even with some of those you read the sentence and you're still like okay, I don't understand. Sometimes they'll give like a uh account of like how many times they said you know different words. Um but for the most part um we're just we're reading it and then we are making guesses. Well, what happened
204is that TEA they put out a generic form and it for challengers to use. And they gave districts the ability to edit it to add our own questions and we added our own questions. We put it on our website. We put copies with Miss Palasig. Um And the the the specific challenger took the generic form, TEA's generic form, and used that one. So, did not answer the questions that we require for our challenges. So, there's a a lot of questions unanswered. Yeah, so our our form asks people if they've read the book. Um and it asks a few other things that that generic TEA form doesn't doesn't ask. So. And also says that you're required to read the book before you put in the challenge. Can we include that in each Like for example, these
20510 books that whoever turned it in didn't read the book or didn't have an answer any questions? I'm not sure what you mean. As far as whoever's challenging this book and then the committee goes over these five categories, I believe. Well, somewhere in that form can they put on there I know the name of the person is already there, or persons, but if that individual read the book or did or did not submit a reason why they're challenging it. So, if I understand what you're saying, the like when we meet as a committee, do they know that the challenger has not read the book and we're not sure what why they're challenging? Yes. Yes, so whenever we whenever I put the minutes on our website or when Mr. McCrary does, um it has that information.
206It'll have the questions that the challenger should have answered and that they were left unanswered. And then also um I just lost it. Oh, then of course in the audio, it'll also who if somebody wants to listen to the audio I read that every time also. Do we have any policies and procedures in place to ensure that future challenges are put on our forms? We We have our forms posted on the website that are available for download and for online submission. Yes. Um and some people have used that. Yeah, um the the bulk of our challenges who that have come from one person, um they started out using the electronic form and filled out the questions. But then when it came to the paper form, that stopped. Can we require moving forward that our form
207be used rather than the TEA form? I don't know the answer to that. I'm going to have to check with a couple of people to double check that. I think also part of our issue that our committees are dealing with too is that at the beginning of the school year following the legislative session, the state had said that the Texas State Library and Archives Commission was supposed to create library collection development standards. Those were supposed to be released to public schools no later than April 1st, 2026. We've not received those yet. So, we're also kind of cuz that's one of the questions on both the TEA form and on our form is what portion of the collection development standards were violated. The TSLA, the Texas State Library and Archives Commission standards were violated. Well, those
208standards don't exist. And so you can't answer that particular question necessarily without going into the old standards. And we just we don't know what those are yet. We're still waiting on those from SB 13 in the most recent legislative session. I just wanted to add that in there. I just re- reading through the challenge committee's work and all of these individuals reading through the book and then being unclear what was actually being challenged. It would be very helpful to know the content that maybe someone missed something or what what it was, so. I think anything we can do to ensure that our forms can be used well. Is that a board policy that needs to be created? Or is it I I don't think it's I think it's part of the Senate bill that requires
209the potential use of the TEA standard form. Um and I think that that's the problem is that this individual went to TEA, got their standard form, which is really not even a full form because it's it's a draft for school districts to be able to put on their letterhead and and make sure and they just filled that form out and brought it in. Several of them. Yeah, I mean I I earlier was trying to emphasize that how can we make it easier for the committee and also especially the public. For example, somebody from the public will pull up one of these 10 books and by the title and say, "Okay, why is this being challenged?" But yet it only has the name of the person who challenged it. It doesn't say why that person feels
210that it was challenged. I think if something like that was in there then they would say, "Okay, this is ridiculous." We would Most of this stuff is ridiculous in my opinion. Right. So, when I give an in your report, it doesn't have that challenge information. I can add that, but it's it there's nothing there. It's just a copy and pasted thing. Um so, I'm happy to add that as well, but in the Right. We could easily start giving you a copy of the form for that particular book at the end of a report and we may have to redact some information. I'm not sure. I'd have to ask some questions. We may have to redact some personal information that's on there from the challenger themselves. Um so, that we're not releasing but like we could
211give you a copy of what they have questions to give you an idea also of what the committee is trying to figure out. Is that on the minutes though already? Is that already someplace? Yes. Yes. On the website? Mhm. Yeah. Yeah, it's in the minutes um, and in the audio. Cuz I read through um, what the questions are. All right. Yeah. Thank you. Yes. Mhm. All right. I would like to make a motion that we approve the recommendations of the library material challenge committee. I second. All right. Have a motion from Mrs. Miller and a second from Mr. Geta. Is there any discussion? All in favor raise your right hand. Opposed same sign. Motion passes 5-0. Thank you. So now we'll move on to 9A, approval to purchase district library books. Also Miss Sylvia Miss
212Sylvia. Um, so in compliance with SB 13, our March book list was upload or April book list was uploaded to the district's web website on March 27th, 2026 to allow the public and school board time to review the books our certified school librarians would like to purchase. Um, this list includes books to be purchased with bond money for the new McWhinney library. Um, and I respectfully request that the school board vote to approve all titles on our book list. Do we have any questions? I have I have a few questions. Okay. Looking through this list and kind of looking at with the highly challenged books um, that's been around. There's like five that made the list. Um, Flamer by Mike Curato, Dress Coded by Kerry Firestone, Rise Up, How Can I How Can I Join
213the Fight Against White Supremacy, Land of the Cranes, and Grounded. I just we're already dealing with a lot of a ton of challenges. Like, do we see five titles being absolutely necessary to purchase at this time? So, I have a quick question. Um Flamer is not on that list. And Dress Coded is also not on the list. Cuz Flamer is currently being um challenged, and so no way, no how. Like, it's like off the list. Nobody's buying it at all. And then Dress Coded um I know that it's in um two of our middle schools and an elementary school, but I didn't see it on this list, either. Oh, it's right there. I'm not giving you problems. I'm not giving you Cuz I did a search on our on the live website, and I didn't
214see it. So, what I'm what I'm noticing right now, because what what what you're both saying is what's in the exhibit does include that book, Flamer. Where did it go? Let me make sure I'm not lying to you. The one that was on the original agenda. Cuz when I'm looking at the one that's on our website, Flamer isn't on there. So, dress-coded is in the exhibit, but it is not on the one that's on the website. No, it is on the one that's on the website. Dress Dress-coded is on there. Hm. Okay, my apologies. Um I don't know what the difference is or why there is a difference, but I'll double-check that. I I don't know where Flamer That one's the That one I don't see. I do see dress-coded on there, though. So, you're
215not totally crazy, either one of you. Thank you. It's appreciated. I want to talk just about a few titles on the books. Um in general, is that I want our elementary school libraries full of quality books that elevate our students. Um reading through this list, in addition to dress-coded, uh there's eight additional titles that I just do not feel like are appropriate for elementary school libraries. Um there are four more titles that address topics um that I think are appropriate for middle school readers, but not elementary school readers. They include topics of witchcraft and paranormal events. Um not as spooky Halloween, like fun Halloween, but literal witchcraft and re- real um non-fiction paranormal events um that I just don't feel like is appropriate for our third, fourth, and majority of our fifth graders to have
216exposure to. Um there is a title that is actually a profane word in the title, Hell. Um it's called Halloween. Um and then there are three titles um that remind me of the kids in class that get attention by making farty noises with their armpits. Um sure it gets your attention in, but is that really the way to get attention? Is that really a quality book to create quality students? Um and then the last is a title that was running for potty training age kids um discussing pooping and where it's appropriate to poop. Um I feel like it's completely appropriate for two and three-year-old kids, but not for elementary school kids that are reading the book to be the farting armpit kid in the class. Um there are two titles that have the word butt
217in the title and they say butt several times. I don't believe this is an appropriate word to use in our elementary school libraries. We teach our students to use the word bottom instead of butt repeatedly. Um typically when butt is used verbally, it refers to either a harsh discipline word or a sexual reference, neither of which I think is appropriate in a quality elementary school program. I don't think it is a body part that is appropriate for us to be talking about um for our elementary school students. So, with that I just and I I want um I want Jackie an opportunity to um kind of give some viewpoints on that, but I really do urge or invite my urge all the board members to vote against approving adding these books. Um voting to accept
218these titles is voting to accept titles on poop, butt, witchcraft, and paranormal events. None of which I think are is a proud moment um for us to gain IC. I don't believe these topics align with priority one of meaningful learning experiences, and I have faith that our librarians can engage children in reading and using quality reading materials and not providing these books. All right. Let me I'll start with you just cuz you are most recent. Um so the I understand the Halloween the Halloween I'm not sure why it's necessary to put hell in there. Um I do it I understand. Um the and I have to get my thoughts straight here. Um the book that is talking about pooping uh for younger students, uh the book is about where animals poop and then it brings
219in potty training. Um we do have younger students in our elementary schools who are working on this, whether they're in a special ed class or they're a kindergartner still working through it. Um every book in every library is not for every student. Uh so we try to meet the needs of all the students across the school campus. Um from the time when I was an elementary librarian till now just I cannot tell you how many times students ask for a scary book. Um the students who veer towards that will ask for it. The students who don't want it, they won't ask for it. Um and we know in our community by College Street that we've got thousands of people who enjoy Halloween. Um so it's not out on display, it's in the 001 or something
220like that section in the non-fiction section again. We purchase books that interest different students and not every student is going to want the book. Um the there is one book called Butt Sandwich and Seed and Tree and that is a story about um a student who is autistic and he and his brother go and try to help their coach find a missing wedding ring. And so the autistic student has given himself the um name but sandwich and then he gives his brother whose name is Cedar him the nickname tree and then that's how they bond over finding out what happened to this this name. So yes, preferably you know, we don't the kids are not learning butt from that book, but they could learn how to be um around a student with autism and how
221to relate to a student like that as well. So it's kind of deciding one which one. I know that there are other books that can get students to learn about other other kids with autism, but I mean sometimes unfortunately you do have to have that got to thing and then they do read it and then they do have that moment of oh, okay, this is what I can learn. I'm not learning the word butt for the first time, but I am learning about students with autism. Um Let's see what else. Did I cover all the books? Okay. Mr. Bright. Um so Dress Coded is so first do you know what the issues are with the books that either you or someone else has? I I No, I don't. I just know they're on the highly
222challenged list and I'm with all the challenges that we're already facing right now and the amount of time that that's taking up between volunteers and your time and everything else put together just trying to avoid that right now. I feel like it's kind of in our best interest and it's out of these 50 pages we've got like five titles. Mhm. Um and I can understand Dress Coded. Um it's about middle school and um students feeling um upset about getting dress coded and how some students are treated and then what they can do to kind of combat not combat that, but kind of figure out how to be in that environment and help each other um with that. And I mean I know at the high school we need uh our kids get dress coded. Um,
223so I would maybe, but it's already in our schools. Um, so I'm not sure why it is on the list. Um, the other book, Rise Up, and it's talking about combating white supremacy, I think. Um, for elementary, probably not. Um, but what our librarians do to follow our policy, if there is a book that has a grade level that is on their campus, then they can order that because you are going to have fifth graders who are at a higher interest level, um, that could start reading some of those middle school grades. It's not a huge, um, ordering category, I guess. Um, but I think it it talks about something that that is a challenge in our society. So, it is a way just to have conversations about it. Um, Land of Cranes of the
224Cranes, it's a story about an undocumented family. Um, the father gets taken by ICE and the family is living in a detention center. Um, it's appropriate for grades three to six. Um, either our students are living with this or they know somebody that's living with this, so I would um, think that it's good for our kids to see themselves in these books. And then Grounded, um, I'm going to read you what it's about and then I'll add the part that the issue is. Um, the book is about four kids stranded in an airport after a convention and how their unifying goal becomes finding a lost cat. The part that is the issue is that they are Muslim. So, it's a Muslim convention that lets out. They are at an airport. Um, the planes have all
225been uh, airport closes for some reason and it takes each of these kids who are Muslim and they get together and they find a cat in the airport. As a parent, I can look at that list and I can submit a form and say, "I don't want my child to check this book out." Um as a parent, you can look at this list for the 30 days and say, "Okay, these are the ones that I might have issue with." And it's online, the form is online. After that, a parent can get into the catalog and they can make a list of books that they don't want their kids to check out. And that's always been the case. Um parents have always had the ability to say, "No, I don't want my kids to check these
226books out." Even if the kid brings it home, they can bring it back right away and say, "Please don't let my kids check out books about X, Y, and Z." To date, we haven't had any of that from parents. They have the option. Yes, yeah, they have the option. I just wanted to provide the board [clears throat] as a whole like what what your options are when it comes to library materials and approving it or not. And so anytime that we are purchasing books or books are donated, technically they have to be approved by the board, especially if they're new materials, especially. Each of you as a board member can propose changes before the board takes action on that donated list or proposed list. Um so essentially, if if Mr. Guerra has a concern with
227a particular book, he can propose that that comes off of the material that's approved. Um and if the board as a whole agrees with that, then that's just the process that it goes by. So each of you have the opportunity if there's particular books that you want off, if you'll say whatever those titles are and propose that, then you as a board would just vote on whether or not you want to take those off or leave them on. Um and then you either approve or reject the library materials once you've come to a list that you all agree on. I just want to provide you with the policy of like what those next steps look like. So, with that, I move to remove I move to remove uh Butts on Faces Volume 4, Halloween, Butt
228Face Entry, You Poop Here, Haunted Hospital, Horror Healing, Healer and Witch, and Petrifying Playtime from the approved book list. And I was like, "Can you provide that list, please?" Do I have a second? Second. Okay. Uh discussion. For me, I'd like some time to look at I mean, I looked at this huge list, but if, you know, there's some things that demand a second look, I'd just like to have a little more time to We can. Um I know that y'all are in discussion right now. We can't have those books pulled if you're concerned about them being controversial, um and could potentially bring them back to you at a future meeting um for different consideration if that's what you want. Um I'm just trying to give you as many options as I can give you
229is what I'm trying to do. Just a point of clarification, if we vote on the motion that is on the floor, then is can it be brought back? Yeah, do you have to change the motion? Like take them off the list and then bring back that motion? I would assume that that means that you are not approving it for purchase at this particular meeting. It does not mean that a board could not approve it at a future meeting. So, take for example, if this were a an October meeting, the board could potentially say, "No, I don't want to approve this particular thing in a December meeting where there's the potential of after a board election that there is a new board, that board could then make the decision to approve something. Like I'm using that
230as like the most drastic possible way that something could be. So, I would assume if it's pulled from this list right now, it just means that it's not purchased with this bunch of books, with this particular listing of books. That doesn't mean that it couldn't be purchased at a future one where y'all would vote on it at at that particular meeting. I hope I'm being helpful. Any further discussion? Nancy, can you can you read that motion back again? Okay. Not the list, just the wording of it. Did you Okay. It was to pull the particular books from the approved list. I Do you want me to I can read them again. I emailed them to both of you, Nancy. It's okay. I'm just trying to make sure I'm hearing the right I've got them. It
231would be to remove Butts and Faces Volume 4, Halloween, Butt Face and Tree, You Poop Here, Haunted Hospital, Horror Healing, Healer and Witch, and Petrifying Playtime from the approved book list. I just wanted you to have to read that. that. Um Always a team player. And so then we'll have to approve the rest of the list separately is what I'm Yeah, you would basically be approving to remove those. If that vote passes, then there would need to be a motion to either remove other books or to approve or deny the list after the ones that have been removed. So, I'm willing to to vote to remove those if we can have a little more, you know, a look at them. Uh that would be great. And I appreciate you taking the time to We need
232to vote on do Yeah, this is the discussion. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Oh, okay. I was like [laughter] I I'm This is my discussion part. Um uh is what I'm saying is I'm I'm willing to vote on that, uh but I would like to have some have a chance to, you know, bring them back after after looking at them. So, for me, the door's not closed on them cuz I I didn't look at all these. I I had no idea. So. Yeah, I looked at a a ton of these. I I Googled a lot of them uh based on the names uh and the levels and everything, but I I not all of them, so. Any further discussion? All in favor, raise right hands. Opposed, same sign. Motion passes 4-1. And then, is there any further
233discussion on the I just want to make a comment. I'm a firm believer in choice, not censorship. And add to that, the parents can always turn the form in. We need to consider the district as a whole. Thank you. Um all right, if uh is there any further discussion or do we have a another motion? I move that we approve Yeah. Approve the purchase of the amended list of district library books. Do I have a second? Second. All right, that is a motion for Mrs. Miller and a second for Mr. Bright. Any further discussion? All in favor, raise your right hands. Opposed, same sign. Motion passes 4-1. Thank you. Now, for real, we're going to take a 5-minute break and then we're going to go back into a closed session before finishing out the rest
234of the agenda. It is 10:24. We'll see you guys in closed session at 10:30. Mhm. Okay, we're back from closed session at 11:43 p.m. Moving on to the consent agenda. Um Policy BE local states that consent agen- the consent agenda shall include items of a routine and or recurring nature group together under one action item. All such items shall be acted upon by one vote without separate discussion unless a board member requests that an item be withdrawn for individual consideration. The remaining items shall be adopted under a single motion and vote as applicable. A, approval of board minutes of regular meeting March 24th, 2026, special meeting March 26, 2026, and team of eight training April 7th, 2026. B, approval of tax collection reports for March 2026. C, approval of proposed budget amendments for April 2026.
235D, approval of donations received March 2026. E, approval of investment report for the third quarter ended March 31st, 2026. F, discussion and possible action to authorize administrator to enter into a lease agreement with OTG Coffee LLC. And G, acknowledge public information request for March to April 2026. Do I have any board members that want to pull any of those items from the consent agenda? I move to approve the um consent agenda as read. Second. All All I have a motion from Mr. Bright and a second from Mr. Getha. Any discussion? All in favor, raise your right hands. Opposed, same sign. Motion passes 5-0. All right, moving on to our last action item. Right, sorry. Hold on. Monica. We did D. Oh, do I have a I have an old agenda up here. Okay. Um I
236will fix that. All right, so approval of instructional materials allotment. This is our annual certification of provision for our curriculum. The certification is to make sure that all of our curriculum is uh aligned to TEKS and state standards and make sure that we're following the Texas education laws. There is a process. We have to complete all the forms, then the board has to approve all of the curriculum, and then we'd submit it to TEA for approval. You should have the survey in your packet, and it's just all the information I'm about to give you. It's just a little wordier. So, going through the curriculum, this is pre-K through fifth grade. Uh we have no changes here. Everything is continuing from last year. Our pre-K is Savvas Three Cheers pre-K curriculum. And for social studies, it's
237the Scholastics Let's Find Out. Our literacy for uh RLA and SLRA is the new Blue Bonnet. That's the only one that's new. I apologize. That's That is new. Um our math Blue Bonnet is continuing. Our science Savvas is continuing and our Texas Studies Weekly is continuing. For our middle schoolers, we are continuing RLA with our Amplify Texas. That was adopted last year. Continuing with math Blue Bonnet, Savvas for science, and Navigate Texas for social studies. Our 9 through 12 RLA is McGraw Hill, which is StudySync at the high school level. We will be going to Blue Bonnet for geometry and math. That is new. Um as Blue Bonnet progresses, each year they adopt a new subject. Okay? And then Savvas for science. And our new adoption is Investigate for social studies, and this is the
238state curriculum aligned to Navigate Texas, and then the next um grade level is Investigate for social studies. And that's our curriculum in a nutshell. All of it is aligned to our Texas state standards and abides by our Texas Education Code. Any questions? I had a quick question. Is the the state still an incentive an incentive to use Blue Bonnet? Yes. Even the new edition also? For the for the higher grades also? They they give us um a per pupil [clears throat] allotment uh if we're using Blue Bonnet specifically in our IMA funding that we would not get if we were not using it. I was just wondering it was just for the first year, I guess moving forward. It'll be for our math and our RLA piece for Spanish and English. And you believe you
239get that every year? Mhm. Every year. And I think I saw bilingual ed is also in there, right? Yes. Also has a Spanish piece. In fact, Blue Bonnet for the English language arts curriculum is one of the only curriculum out there right now that is HQIM, like actually HQIM, uh that has a Spanish component to it that's fully completed and not still currently in progress. Yep. I have a question about those curriculums that are in the new adoption. What is the implementation plan for those? Um is there a different implementation plan for those this year than there has been in the past? Yes, there is a different implementation plan. We have teachers already coming in. We have a committee coming in um at the beginning of May. Or no, next week. No, this week. We're
240at the last week of April. They meant last week uh for the initial meeting. Um last Wednesday was their initial meeting to create the instructional framework and then they meet again tomorrow um where they'll go over research-based instructional strategies uh and identify those things and then they have two or three more meetings after that where teachers are actually participating in that adoption in that rollout plan. Yes, and then once Is that for all new adoption curriculums or just Blue Bonnet? This one is specific to Blue Bonnet. For the RLA piece cuz that's the new one that we adopted. Now, we are doing professional development also for the rest of them. So in May, that that last week where we have our professional development days, um we do have professional development for the rest of the
241contents um to kind of review for next year, um those pacing calendars, to kind of dig into their TEKS, and just kind of to revisit and refresh what's coming for them. Yeah. And then also the other new ones that are included in here are very limited to specific subjects. Uh primarily that's social studies at the high school level. And so there's a small group of teachers and it's not necessarily full social studies. Any other questions? Did we get much feedback about the Blue Bonnet ELA curriculum? Not really. We got It's been good. Everything they've been working really well. They worked really well um last week and it's been they've been playing with a platform. Yeah, we've we've not gotten We've actually gotten some very positive feedback about the way that we're rolling it out and
242involving teachers in that process. Yeah. And Carnegie's helping implement the rest of that professional development plan moving forward once we assess once they kind of assess all the teachers' feedback and all the things. All right. Any other questions? I move to approve the IMAT certification for the 2026-2027 school year. Second. All right. I have a motion for Mr. Bright and a second for Mrs. Miller. Any further discussion? All in favor raise your right hands. Opposed, same sign. Motion passes 5-0. All right. So, now we have 9D. Um consider approval of administrator contracts. Uh board, you have in front of you a list of administrator contracts. Board policy D A D C local uh says that the superintendent has um sole authority to make recommendations to the board regarding the selection of contractual personnel for the
243positions of campus principal and district level administrators at the director level or above. Uh you still maintain that authority to be able to grant those and so what you have in front of you are all of the positions in the district that are either a campus principal or a district level administrator director and above in front of you for renewal and contract extension. We discussed those in closed session and so my recommendation is that you approve the superintendent's recommendation to renew and extend administrator contracts as presented. [clears throat] Does anybody have any questions? I move to approve the administrator contracts as provided in closed session. Second. All right, I have a motion from Mrs. Burns and a second from Mr. Geda. Any further discussion? All in favor raise your right hand. Opposed same sign. Motion
244passes 5-0. All right, item 10. Unless I'm missing anything. I did I [laughter] Sorry, I don't know where I got the other agenda from. Um board comments and requests. Just come see Wizard of Oz and Mama Mia. Those are my only requests. There you go. Move to adjourn. I'll second. All right, we have a motion from Mr. Bright and a second from Mrs. Burns. All in favor raise your right hands. Opposed same sign. Motion passes 5-0. We're adjourned at 11:54 p.m.