Seguin ISD Regular Board Meeting 11.18.25

001been duly called and notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act section 551.043 of the Texas government code. We'll start with audience with the board. The sigist 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 beed local. Those who wishing to wish to speak sign up before the meeting begins stating the concern or noting the agenda item they wish to address. Audience participation is limited to five minutes. The board shall not deliberate any subject that is not posted on the agenda. When we have more than five speakers, we can shorten that time. Uh we have 16 people signed up tonight. So we will be um giving each person two

002minutes to speak. So, um, when you're coming up here, if you'll come to the microphone and make sure you're all the way to the microphone. Once you start introducing yourself and talking, that's when your time begins. Uh, Miss Duncan here can, um, help you with a signal or you can also look at the clock here. It's your preference and we'll ask you, but if you wait to come up all the way to the microphone, that's when we'll start your time. It'll just make everybody be heard um, better. Um, I'm going to call uh people in five person blocks just so that you know um that you're on deck. Um uh but then I'll call your name to actually come up here. So the first five speakers tonight will be Michelle Sangerhousen, Patricia Buckley, Kim Saunders,

003John S. Carter, and Helen Carter or Susie. So that first one is Michelle Sanger Hassen. Hi. Um I was here last last meeting and um wanted to bring up books and the issue of control of the books and age appropriate books and there was a lot of back and forth between parents and other groups in here about what's age appropriate banning books. I kind of heard we kind of heard both sides of it. I want to say that the first amendment in the constitution does not protect obscene content when directed towards minors under the age of 18. Just want to make that clear. Several of the people wanted to specify that it was foolish and it was ignorance on people's part to restrict explicit and sexually content books. And I do not feel that it's

004an ignorant choice to ban books that are not appropriate. You can call it banning, you can call it restricting, you can call it whatever you want. I just want to say I think we should clean up our libraries. New Bronals is doing it um and it's affecting a lot of their books and I have lists I have a full pattern of books that they have already gone through and they are very um detailed about what they're doing with restricting books going through and seeing if they're SB13 compliant, if they're age appropriate for the right schools. So, I have all that information that I'd like to present to the board. Um, but y'all can look at at your own discretion if I if you're okay with that. Um, but I think that one of the things

005is I kept hearing that teachers can't teach without this information. And I feel that I learned respect by showing and giving it to people. That's how I learned it. I also learned about reading high quality literature. I didn't have to read smut to basically call it that because I didn't have to read that kind of stuff growing up and it didn't make me less worldly. So I think that we give respect, we earn it and we show that's your time. Thank you. You got to get close to it. Yeah. Make sure your mouth is is near to it. Okay. Patricia Buckley. Hello. My name is Patricia Buckley. I'm a retired educator from this district. First of all, I'm speaking on the same topic about what we're choosing or not choosing for our kids to read.

006So, good evening Dr. Lee and members of the board. Thank you first of all for your service to our school children and our district. I'll be brief. We elected you. We elected you. We trust you to make good decisions on behalf of the children of Sigin ISD. We have come here in solidarity to say that we believe in you. We trust the decisions you make on our behalf. Would those in the audience who feel likewise please stand? Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Kim Saunders. Good evening. My name is Kim Saunders and as a graduate of Sigin High School, class of 1987 and a teacher of English at both the high school and college levels for over 30 years, I am in favor of public schools providing opportunities for students,

007including access to reading materials that students can choose to read in public school libraries and public school classrooms. I want to thank the SIGN ISD board of trustees and superintendent for doing the challenging work of making difficult choices for our students. Thank you for standing up for students and parents ability to choose for themselves which books to read. Thank you for not allowing a book banning group who travels to various districts schoolboard meetings to determine what should be available for our students to read. You have before you arduous work and some people will almost certainly ridicule you tonight. Thank you for holding your students and community's best interest at heart and using as your true north, using that value as your true north by which to make your decisions regarding whether to ban books here

008in Sigin. Our neighbors in New Bronals allowed this group to scare them. But I know that you are too savvy for that. No amount of finger wagging, calling you sinners, or guilt tripping by this group will work. You know that you have a wealth of support and gratitude from Siginites. We've got your back. We also have the backs of our librarians. Libraries are sacred places. People seek refuge from the world, ask for help, find solutions to problems in libraries. Librarians and assistant librarians are the hearts of those spaces. Our school librarians are servant leaders, doing out aid in the form of books and other kinds of assistance to myriad students each day. They also carefully choose which books to purchase after conscientiously considering the content and discerning what our students and our community members need

009and would benefit from. Our community has trusted these stewards of literature and information and will continue to do so. We will not allow the bullying of others to belittle them. We will wholeheartedly support our school librarians. Thank you. John S. Carter, pornography is addictive, harmful, and should not be in school. Why are you allowing pornography in our schools? Why do you provide books to the children that are not allowed in Texas prisons or inmates to read? Many of the books in your school reading list depict how to do unhealthy and unlawful things such as addictive drugs, incest, sex with a minor, beastiality, necrophilia, torture, and murder. Are you aware that pornography is addictive causing brain shrinkage of the frontal lobe resulting in reduced decision making and impulse control? Porn creates chemical cascade in the body

010with increased cravings for more vile porn, violent sex, and can end in murder. As with Jeffrey Dharmmer, books such as Crank, which is in your school, uh should be immediately re removed. They are harmful to the students and teachers. Weekly we hear reports of teachers sexually abusing students. Recently there was one in the neighboring county just convicted last month or this month. Why do you allow porn in the libraries that is banned by the Texas criminal justice crank? For example, the US Office of Sexual, sex offending, sentencing, monitoring, apprehending, registering, and tracking called SMRT describes how child pornography can play a role in a learning, reinforcing pathway. Um, offenders may use it to normalize deviant behavior, reduce empathy, empathy, and internalized distorted beliefs about children. You are providing this pornography. At your time, sir. Thank

011you. Thank you, sir. Next is um Helen Sue Carter. you know, the books, a number of books have been challenged and they should have been removed from the shelves. I'm curious as to why since you have received official challenges that you have not followed the law and remove those books so that the children will not be reading them while you are doing the mandatory reviews. Um if you don't remove them, you're going against Senate Bill 13. And if you would remove them and take a look at them yourselves, I think you would see what is really in them. All these folks who you've hired in the past, your former librarians, your former teachers, and I'm a former teacher. Um, they haven't read the books. I have read some books. And I don't know if you

012have, but you need to because you will see that these are howto books on how to do harmful, illegal things. and they result in the children's inability to really focus on their academics. For instance, if little boys are reading the freedom writers diary, they will learn this. The weed made everything less real. All the depression, the anger I was feeling. The weed also allowed me to be in the room with other boys who didn't care that I was hiding my sexuality. It was my masculinity coping mechanism. All the hood boys smoked and so did I. As we kissed, he began unzipping my pants. It was clear to me at that moment that he wasn't new to this. He reached his hand down and pulled out my dick. He quickly went to be to giving me

013head and more and more. It's just over and over explicit descriptions of how to do a myriad of sexual activities with another boy. Is that what you want to read to your little grandsons and your children? That's your time, ma'am. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Our next five speakers are Jim Davis, Lori Davis, Lynette Linux, Debbie Limebach, and uh Dolores Ariano. My pronunciations just get better and better. Thank you. Yes. Take this example. Don't be afraid. This won't hurt you. You'll like it. I promise. He kissed the length of her torso down to the small naked bead. He had taught her something new, something awful, worse, something wonderful, something every girl should know the joy of, though of course she shouldn't learn it from daddy. This is profane and visa described in SB13. I dragged

014my tongue over his teeth, swallowing his groan of pleasure as his hips rolled, gentle thrust, and he pushed in and in. This is in your books. I was moaning his name when he she himself inside me in a powerful slow thrust that had me splintering around him. We moved together, unending and wild and burning. And when I went over the edge the next time, he roared and went with me. These are in your books. This is what kids are reading. Whatever educational or psychological spin a professionally trained librarian should try to put on this has been removed from the TDC and it should not be in any school library. I want to now read from a band book. Marriage is to be held in honor among all and the marriage bed is to be undefiled

015for fornicators and adulterers God will judge. To teach miners the honor of abstinence, pro proper respect for opposite sex, and the blessing that self-control will mean to the establishment of healthy families, it seems, has become taboo. I'm not a prophet, but I can predict that the immediate consequences of refusal to remove these books will bring an increase in sexual promiscuity, which will contribute to teenage pregnancy, STDs, HIV, and many other heartbreaking consequences that go along with the further breakdown of a possible strong family unit. This is temporal judgment. Justice war and the surrounding cities which likewise indulge in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural. That's your time, sir. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lori Davis. I am Lorie Davis. We keep hearing about how we wish to ban books

016and take away rights and no access is being denied. Anyone can go and these profane and indecent books online with but not with our taxpaying dollars and not to put them on display for our children to destroy our children. There's a difference between banning books and opposing evil. Who upon actually hearing and reading these books cannot consider this pure evil? Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Injustice continues because those who cannot stop them do not act. There's a holy God to whom we are stand we will stand accountable. Scripture says, "Let those who love the Lord hate evil." Who will stand up for me against evildoers? Who who will stand up against those who do injustice? And I'm here to say we will. We will work to protect children. We will stand for good,

017morality, purity, and integrity. Our battle is not with you personally. We hate the evil and the sin. But believe it or not, your battle is not with us. It is with God. And I'm asking, where is your fear of God? Fear God, not man. You have the authority and the power to remove these books. Please do so. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lynette Lennox. Okay. I've started your time. I've started your time. Thank you. Good evening. I have stood before you before. I have pleaded with you about Senate Bill 13. I have emailed. I have asked question after question after question. I have tried to get clear answers. I've gone as so far as creating legal challenges regarding these books here in Sigin ISD because I could not sit back and ignore what is

018happening in our schools. I'm not doing this to cause trouble. I'm doing this because I deeply care about our children and about their innocence, their safety, and their values. We're supposed to be teaching them as parents and custodians of we have the right and the duty to make sure that the materials our kids are exposed to are appropriate and as a district, you have obligation to follow the law. That brings me to Senate Bill 412, that it makes it easier to hold y'all accountable and have legal processes in force for y'all. It requires every district in the state to take responsibility for what is in our libraries. It says you must review those materials. You must review content that is sexually explicit and perversely vulgar. And you must do it openly with transparency and accountability

019to the parents and the taxpayers of this community. This is not optional. This is not a suggestion. It's not Lynette's law. It's Texas law. And yet we still have material sitting on our shelves that violate those standards. Books that have no place in front of children. Every day that goes by without action is another day that our district is out of compliance with the Texas law and out of steps with the families that are here fighting this. I'm asking again for you to take this seriously. Stop ignoring us who are speaking up. Follow SB13 and follow SB4 412 and show the families of Sigin that you put the students first. Our children deserves classrooms and libraries that are safe that reflects our community values. Thank you for your speaking. I remind you you have two

020minutes to speak. Thanks Debbie Limebot. You're next. I've started your time. Profane and indecent content are not vague or subjective. They follow the FCC standard. Profane content includes extreme vulgarity such as the f word language the FCC has ruled grossly offensive and illegal to broadcast when children may be listening. And decent content includes descriptions or depection depictions of sexual organs or sexual activities, graphic sexual talk, sexual acts or explicit bodily imagery. These definitions have been since the 1970s. In Sigin High School, the book wicked include scenes such as the widow kissed the puppet husband, pulled off his leather trousers, he had two full sets of male goods, her daughter took the front, the widow took the rear as they bucked and squealled. That is an example of indecent content. None of this appeared in the

021musical or movie because it could not. The profanity, brothel scenes, and graphic sexual content were all removed to comply with FCC standards. Another book on the shelves at Sigen High School contained profane explicit lines. You can see the words that are in there. I'm going to eat her [ __ ] Do you even know how to eat [ __ ] No, but I know how to eat a butthole. These are lines a child can access in taxpayer funed school library. Yet, you could not legally read them aloud on TV or radio without violating the federal law. The presence of these books illustrate our libraries have drifted outside longestablished national standards. We also hear the argument these books meet students where they are, that a grim story with a hopeful ending somehow justifies the graphic content, but the ending does

022not erase what the had to read to get there. And anyone who says this content is educational is ignoring that the Texas Obscinity Exemption Act no longer applies under SP13. Our duty is to protect children, not normalize profane and indecent content. There is no educational justification for exposing minors to profanity and decency for graphic sexual content, especially not with text. Thank you. Dolores Oruralano. Very sorry for my how how is how do you pronounce your name? Ariano. Okay. Thank you. Hi, my name is Dolores Mika Ariano and I reside in in the Kyle area. I've taught public and private school the ISB for about 30 years. I've seen it all. It is an honor and privilege to be here this evening to express the huge concern for what the children are learning and the textbooks

023that are in the library or classroom. When I attended Texas State University, I was taught academics and electives to help me train and educate students in grades K through 12. Never was I taught to deviate from academics or the basics. I was taught what I needed to succeed in the profession that my parents would be proud of since I grew up without a dad due to his death when I was only 10 years old. The books I used did not teach how to have sex with someone outside of marriage, how to put on a condom, how to position myself for sex, how to have multiple partners, how to have in sex, etc., etc. Therefore, I was able to instruct my students in a healthy, positive, and encouraging way. Isn't this what we all want? Just

024recently, I read a book a couple of nights ago and I broke down in tears that our children checking out books and reading these things in this material. This material is this material encouraging our students to learn instructional academics. This material is instructional and teaching kids to participate and experiment in illicit sex or learn how to. Children are impressionable, creative, and curious at any age. And reading what I read brought arousal in me as an older adult. What is this doing to elementary, middle, or high school students? This material has a content warning and I implore you all to please consider if we do the right thing, test scores will improve and so much more. Better behavior, respect and so forth and so on. Thank you all so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. So I'll

025read the last six just so you know what order you go in. Uh, Forest Fletcher, Eric Norman, Tess Cudy, Anders, Abigail Cretendon, Ann Craig, Marissa Via Varto. Okay. So, sorry. I don't think you nailed it. I um I will never get a job reading people's handwriting. Mr. Fletcher. Good evening. I am not here to discuss the books. I'm here to discuss something a little different. Um so good evening everyone, members of the board. Uh my name is Forest Fletcher and I have been nominated for the a position on the Guadalupe County Appraisal District Board. I'm a proud Sigin High School class of 2004 graduate and I've spent more than 20 years working in the construction and HVAC industries. I hold an active HBAC master's license and own a local business that specializes in new construction,

026renovation, and cost analysis. That hands-on experience gives me a clear understanding of how property values are created, what goes into every structure, and what fair, accurate assessments truly mean for our community. Beyond my trade experience, I've made community service a central part of my life. I'm an active member of Sigin Rotary Club, a graduate of Sigin Citizens Academy, and currently serve as a treasurer to the Sigin Area Youth Leadership Academy, which I'll know is safe. I also sit on the Sigin Education Foundation board, the advisory board for Main Street, and serve as an ambassador to the Chamber of Commerce. I'm also the founder and president of the Brighter Futures Foundation, which is a 501c3 nonprofit that provides scholarship and mentorship and youth sports programs, including our Brighter Futures Golf Academy, which will be launching at

027Starky Park when it opens. These initiatives directly impact Sigin ISD students, helping them develop confidence, leadership, and lifelong values. Each year, my company also proudly adopts Potline Elementary, supporting their staff and students through donations and involvement because I believe when local businesses invest in education, we all benefit. Altogether, my background in construction, business, and community service gives me a well-rounded perspective on how appraisal district decisions affect homeowners, taxpayers, and school districts alike. I'll bring experience, fairness, and accountability to the appraisal district board. values that reflect the heart of Sigin. Thank you for your consideration and I hope to gain your vote. Thank you. Thank you. Next is um Eric Norman. My work in the community puts me in touch with people in all stages and walks of life. In the past few days, I've spoken

028with a young man trying to be the first in his family to earn a college degree. A friend who owns a local small business. A woman in her 70s collecting food from the pantry. And my young neighbor, a recent grad of Sigin ISTD who works at the steel mill. We talk about the cost of renting an apartment, sales trends, how healthcare costs keep them up at night, and how they're excited to see new businesses coming to SIGN. You know what? No one's ever brought up kids accessing inappropriate material in school libraries. Bookbs are not wanted and not needed in our community. So why are we discussing it here tonight? This is about control. I don't want to hear it's about following the law. That excuse was used to justify immoral things like segregation. Bands like

029this led by presumably well-intentioned speakers like you've heard tonight read provocative lines out of context to cause a scandal. They hope that in the chaos you, our school board, will cower from public outcry and comply with their request to avoid a fight. But they underestimate you. They underestimate us, the vast majority of reasonable people who don't have time to devote to stirring up culture wars. I and many others are here tonight to speak in a unified voice in support of our public schools, for public school teachers and staff, and for our librarians. We'll be here to support them wherever and whenever they need to because we know our history. Our rights are described as inalienable, but the reality is that without constant defense, they're not as permanent and endurable as we'd like them to think.

030So, we're here to make it clear that there is no grassroots support for book bans. On the contrary, there are many more of us who who oppose them. And more importantly, there are a lot of families in the district who rely on our schools to broaden their children's world in a challenging and safe environment. And we're here to support you all as you do that. Thank you. Thank you. Tess Cudy Anders. Good evening. Thank you so much. Um, I just want to begin by saying I'm sorry. I'm I'm sorry that you have to listen to 15 of 16 of us, I I'm assuming, talk about the issue um related to books because what I wanted to call out tonight is what I see as one of the most serious threats to us achieving the vision

031of this district, which is, you know, to develop exceptional students who become exceptional citizens. And that threat is distractions. Um there are real issues that our district is facing. They're complex. Uh but the discussion around books and content is is not one of them. It I wish there was much passion and energy for this very narrow arcane perception of the literature that's in our school libraries. I wish there was as much energy for the issues that are actually driving um poor outcomes uh for our our children. uh for a focus on the actual social determinants of health and well-being that have played a factor and continue to play a factor in the outcomes of our district. Um if we could really focus on that, we could move things forward. And and so for those reasons,

032I want to say to you guys tonight, um please don't let anyone drag you into a conversation in a protracted way about removing books because that is a dangerous distraction from what it is we really need to focus on. you have a new strategic plan that requires discipline and focus to get through those goals and objectives to our ultimate mission mission and vision. And the way we do that is to respect each other's expertise. We're going to let our librarians and teachers be experts in education and let us as parents be expert in our own children, their intellectual and emotional development. We cannot do your job and you should not do ours as parents. So, let's not at the end of the day, I'm asking you to resist giving oxygen to fire starters who would

033distract you with little conflrations and instead spend your time and energy and resources on fighting the real fires and lighting the good fires so we can move forward. Thank you, Abigail Cretendon. You have two minutes. This thing's gonna Hello, my name is Abigail [ __ ] I'm a seventh grader from Jim Barnes Middle School and I am speaking against the banning of books. Reading means so much to me and my classmates at school. Reading can take you anywhere you want to be. Reading lets me see perspectives of a her of a survivor, hero, or even sometimes just an average teenager. Ever since I have started reading books, I see the world with more empathy, imagining how others feel about situations that occur at my school. Reading helps students exercise their minds, gain empathy and understanding, and give

034them something productive to do. The rate of cell phone use by teenagers is growing every day. We should not be prohibiting them to read books they enjoy. We should be nurturing their love for reading. Books can teach students how to react in certain situations and how to deal with problems that a lot of my peers struggle with. Another thing is that many people say that some books should be banned because it is too much for their child. I respect this decision and I am glad that parents are acting in their child's life and standing up for them. I do think that while their child won't be allowed to read that book, it should not force all students to be prohibited from reading that book. Take for example in first grade I wanted to read a

035book called Inner Glass Grimly. This book contains original fairy tales that are a bit too harsh for a first grader. My mother wanted me to wait until I was in fourth grade to read it. I listened and waited until fourth grade. Once I read the book, I enjoyed it very much. I do agree, however, that I would have not enjoyed that same book when I was younger. I believe that my mom did the right thing to not completely ban the book from being mine, but wait until I was mature enough to read it because after all, why should my mature self not be able to read a book because it is too violent for a six-year-old? The books in the library should not be banned for having mature content. If parents do not want their

036child to be exposed to something that they deem too mature for them, they should simply tell their child not to read that book. That's your time. Thank you. Thank you, Ann Craig. Uh I'm an Craig. Uh I'm a me I've been a resident of Sigin for four years and I'm a lifelong United Methodist Christian. I went to public schools from kindergarten through high school and was wellprepared to attend college and graduate school. We read books and talked about controversial topics when I was in school. All throughout school, we read a lot of thoughtprovoking books. We read to kill a mockingb bird, a racially driven court system and the power of white leaders to stand up against racism and injustice. We read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle about corruption and the unsanitary conditions in the meatacking industry.

037Both of these books changed everything in the way we think about our country and our world. These books would be condemned today by some of the critics in this room based on the killer mockingb bird would be rejected as DEI material diversity, equity, and inclusion. and up in St. Clair's The Jungle would be rejected as socialist. We didn't read these books to be told what to think. We read these books to be taught how to think for ourselves. We discussed them. We let people express their opinions. We also read the Bible. It was like one of the first times that the Bible could be read as literature. And we read the rape of Tamar in the Old Testament. We were high schoolers. We were old enough to read about that. We were not being taught

038how to rape. We were being taught how to think. So when children read things that seem provocative, they need to think for themselves. And I encourage each of us to think for ourselves as well. That's your time. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Marisa Ka Viel. Um, resident of Sigin. My family has been here for uh, I don't know something like 30 years or something like that. The issue today is about censorship. It's not about any particular list of books. It is about controlling the thinking process of our children. The the issue here it is not because we are so enamored with education. It is more that we want a self-imposed ignorance for ourselves and we want to promote that into our children. That is not what education is about. That is not what

039this country is about. That is not what some of my family member has signed up to be educators. Educators. To me it is to enlarge and to expand and to give freedom to the mind of the children so that they can think of for themselves and not be squashed down and not to think about what is it that I cannot read but what is it that I can read that will expand my education. That's what it's about. self-imposed in ignorance. It is being promoted throughout the country. Let's not fall for that. You are here and we with a big load on your shoulders and we are here to support you. Thank you for all your work and thank you for all you do. Blessings. Thank you. We're going to take a couple minutes recess because

040we may do our recognitions before our close session. So, uh, we're in recess for three minutes. 6:38 p.m. It's a contest. Who's going to get to their seat first? I just want to see Josh do that. Please don't injure yourself. All right. Uh we're back at 6:46. Um we are going to go a little out of order. If there are no objections so that we can get all our recognitions uh through, we can recognize all of you. Um, we were all we are also going to start with our pledge to the United States and Texas flag and our moment of silence. And we have a student leading us in the pledges tonight. That is Maxine Reyes from Barnes. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for

041which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. And that moment of silence. Thank you. Next, we'll go to item 6A, superintendent reports. Dr. Lee, board, extremely excited to uh see lots of faces out there and uh not necessarily everyone signing up for public comment. We we sometimes appreciate uh having the ability to recognize our students and hearing from you directly, but it's also nice to not know that every single person signed up to speak or we'd still be waiting. A couple of quick things I want to announce uh for parents, for community, uh concerning academics, athletics, uh some of the things we have going on in school. Uh, first for parents, just

042a quick reminder, especially to our Sigin High School families, that the ninth and tth grade parent night is tomorrow night at the high school beginning at 6 PM. For our community, I want to say thank you to those who joined us this morning at Barnes Middle School for the ribbon cutting. Uh, we celebrated the work that was completed under bond 2022, which included additions to the library, the captorium, fine arts spaces, parking lot, and a classroom wing. Uh, we had a great great crowd there to be able to support that. If you are unable to join us today, we do hope that you'll join in celebrating the next portion completed under bond 2022 and that's the expansion of our transportation department. Stay tuned for details and our communications department will get that announced here very

043soon. We're also grateful though to those who donated during today's HOSA blood drive at Sigin High School. Your donations will save lives this holiday season. Sigin ISD is grateful for the community uh to the community and and our community partners for their continued support of the Sigin Education Foundation. Um, I know several of you board members were able to attend that, but it was an honor to join our education foundation directors as they surprised our teachers across the district with $119,000 in grants. Um, which is a pretty remarkable thing. We're looking forward to those fantastic projects that our teachers will accomplish with that support coming from our education foundation, our community. Uh academically, I'm excited to announce that we have 15 students that have completed their graduation requirements at MBLC this semester. Our first MBLC

044graduation will be held next month on December 16th. We hope that everyone will join us. Uh Dr. Duffik also confirmed that students have completed 282 and a half credits as of late last week. And so we're very proud of our students over there for all of their work and the staff that's working directly with them. Congratulations to Barnes academic UIL students who recently completed competed at the Basis San Antonio Shyano meet over the weekend. We had four students place in the top three for history, science, and spelling. Several Spanish spelling bees are being held across the district this week. Best of luck to all our students that are competing. I know progress reports went out last week. Students were in the final stretch of this first semester. Uh stay focused teachers. Uh I know this

045is a challenging time of the year. We're in the final stretch. Stay focused. We're here to support you. You've got this. Athletically, basketball season's tipped off for middle school and high school athletes. We hope that you'll come out and support the Toros, the Tordors, and the Matadors this season. Golf and spring tennis are getting underway. Congratulations to Hannah Patterson and Brayley Lawson on their fourth place finish at the San Marcos thankful for tennis tournament. Congratulations to the Lady Matador volleyball team on a fantastic season. Uh these athletes advanced to area and put up a fight against Smithson Valley. Eight of these young ladies were also recognized with all district awards as well, including district MVP, offensive player of the year, and newcomer of the year. A lot to be proud of with our lady volleyball

046players. Uh we had some very hardworking athletes here in Sagin, both in their respective sports and in the classroom. Congratulations to the five tennis and volleyball students that were recognized for academic all state and the 11 volleyball student athletes who are recognized for academic all district. In CTE, our eighth grade students will attend the career expo tomorrow at the Sigin Coliseum. This is an excellent opportunity for them to learn about future opportunities in the workforce. Our pharmacy tech students and parents visited Lamar State College, Orange to learn about dual credit requirements and opportunities. Several CTE classes will benefit the Sigin Education Foundation's generosity through grants, including construction, engineering, law enforcement, and pharmacy. Uh so, a special thank you to the SCF from our CTE friends. Uh, thank you to the local businesses that donated prizes

047for our cosmetology students annual hair and makeup contest. Your support is vital to these programs. We love opportunities to see our students shine. Uh, and then finally in fine arts, our theater students competed at the Texas Thespian State Festival. We're proud to announce that our high school troop was named Allstar Troop winner with 10 national qualifiers and one all-star improv finalist. Congratulations to those students who competed in Corpus Christi. Congratulations to the mighty Matador band on a fantastic marching season. They placed 12th out of 27 bands at area earlier this month. Um they have a lot to be proud of and we know that there are big things ahead for them. And then our fine arts department was very excited to receive eight sigin education foundation grants this year. Our students will benefit from grants

048awarded in band, mariachi, theater, cheerleading, dance, ballet forko, visual arts and elementary music. So congratulations to all of those that were selected. So lots of great things happening across Sigin ISD friends and just wanted to celebrate all of the good things that are happening. Thank you. All right, board reports. I'll start with William. This I won't take up much time. My usual construction meetings. I got to attend lots of AJB football games and theater productions. Uh I did the Barnes ribbon cutting today which was very proud moment. That was an exciting thing to see come to fruition. Uh but the most exciting thing I got to do the last month was the price patrol with the education foundation. Touring all the campuses, seeing all the teachers, the staff, and the students excited about what they

049were doing and what was going on. And uh the giving out of all that money was very uh warming to my heart. So that was my I guess I'm next. I I do have a list of things that I've done. I won't bore you with all that, but I will tell you that um attended football games, volleyball games, send off for volleyball players, send off for the Matador band, which was really exciting. Um my puppy um Dapper also went and shared some joy before they the sendoff. They enjoyed that, I think. Also visited the Rodriguez pumpkin decorating contest. Um, and two highlight, three highlights for me. The grants that were given u from the Sigin Education Foundation, it always warms my heart. I've been with that organization since its inception. And to know that this

050month we gave away $119,000. I I really wondered if we would ever get that far and to also be able to start an endowment. So, I'm very um proud of the folks who serve on that committee and um look forward to what we can do in the future. Also very excited this morning at the ribbon cutting for Jim Barnes and I just want to say thank you to everyone who voted um for that bond and supported the efforts through bond 2022. Also um I had an opportunity to tour the A center. This is another thing that I've been so just makes my heart so big, my matador heart. I'm a product of a agricultural programming at Sigin High School and I really, you know, I would have done anything if we had that facility um

051when I was in high school. So, I'm really excited about the future of our CTE programs, especially the A program. Also toured the new McQueeny Elementary. Any McQueeny Elementary folks in the room? Well, we're talking about ball today, so um but it is that new school and its construction. I'm sure it will win some awards. It is going to be absolutely beautiful. I cannot wait for everyone to see it and experience it. Also experience the new um developments over at the transportation center. And it's amazing to me how little space they had before compared to what they have now. and that they were able to do all that they do for our students. So, I'm happy that they now have a nice facility and our buses have actual places to park for them. So, it's

052amazing. And I'll stop there. Thank you. I'm on the construction committee as well, so it's good to have some of the things being wrapped up and then we just have the two uh projects left with the A and the Queeny to work on. So, that focuses all my energy on those two. At this point, um, I didn't get to go to the Arttown artwork celebration on the weekend, but I did go by the library. If y'all haven't seen the art town art in the library, it's worth the time. So, go by and check it out. Um, it it was very beautiful. Um I am on the SE out the foundation committees and I was on the grant committee and did the groundwork on reading I don't know how it felt like a a ton of

053grants a lot of grants. I don't remember how many there were was all the grants and grading them and doing all that stuff. Unfortunately, I was out of town for when we did the but went to the campuses, but I was so proud of all the people that try to get a grant and encourage everybody every year to do the same. And um since we have so much wonderful guests from our community as far as money, um we also have I'm also on the Migra committee and we have that coming up in February. So, we are starting uh some of our projects to get that one going. I have the dessert table that I'm getting desserts for. So, that's my fun thing. I went to Ball's character day. That was the most wonderful parade that

054they had. They were all dressed up. I went to Veterans Day ceremony at McQueeny and that was very heartwarming. The music uh teacher did a particularly awesome job there. Was very moving and My turn. Thank you. I attended the Matador Special Service Department Halloween Funfest and that event is getting bigger every year. Uh was I was glad to see the event that they had in the parking lot for the trunk. So keep an eye out for next year. Also attended the uh Sigin Agriculture Facilities. I'm on the construction committee also, but I attended by video and I'd also attended the out our town ribbon cutting ceremony at the library which included powerful works of art that reflect the voices of and stories of our own community members gathered through a year-long series of platas that

055captured Sigin's collective narrative. The plan is to eventually display the artwork at the central office building to allow students, administrators, and staff to view the stories. So, if you get a chance, stop by the library and take a look at it. That's all I have. A highlight that I wanted to share uh for the last month is I was able to attend the SHA committee meeting um and hear a report from um our mental health counselors um and the work that they're doing uh in our district, which is quite remarkable. um they have a very limited budget with limited personnel, but to hear how they are working with school counselors, NCIS to expand those resources as much as possible. Um it it was awesome to hear about well uh considering it's only half the month

056of November and there's so much still to do with all the Thanksgiving stuff next week, which I know that we're all looking forward to. But um this week there's this this month's been very busy. the uh our town ribbon cutting was on on Sunday which is very very powerful moving um art exhibit. A little jealous that the library has it first. We were supposed to have it first but the July 5th rains kind of messed that up for all of us but it's it's a really moving exhibit and it's really great to be at the library where it's located at right now until it comes here. So u get out get to the library if you can to see it. I did a a tour of the construction projects with Linda. That a science facility

057is going to be truly amazing for our students, especially those that want to participate but can't because they don't have the facilities at home or whatever. We will have the facilities for them there. I counted 13 different um steer uh stands. So that's that's really impressive along with a plethora of hogs and sheep and the chicken house, the turkey house and u goats hog sheep and goats. So yeah, it's gonna it's going to be an amazing facility for our community and for those who want to um do some FFA projects like can't at home. Jim Barnes Middle School uh ribbon cutting was awesome today. Taylor Company did an amazing job with that and all their subs and everybody design BB Group and Fluger. It's just amazing that thing came done like early um and under

058budget. They got to do a bunch of extra stuff because of the how they operated that construction project. So, thank you to all of you for all your hard work with that and being cognizant of our taxpayers money. Um, Veterans Day programs around this district were truly amazing. There were so many. All the elementary schools did one. And then the participation of the of the ISD personnel, people and um in the parade was really great for me uh being being a veteran. So, I really appreciate everybody's effort on that day celebrating our veterans. Um and then uh that that's what I got. So, Thank you for Thank you for all that. Thank you. Um I attended the Matador Special Services um uh fall best. Sorry, I didn't write down the name of that, but it

059was wonderful. Um sorry, Halloween carnival. I I never know what things are called. Sorry. Um it was wonderful and I just want to thank everyone that was involved with that. care and the thought that you put into that event every year. It really shows and um it's just a great event for our students. Um spent two two days doing I almost said two years. It didn't really feel like two years. Two days working on the strategic plan. Um and that was wonderful to to see all the people who really care about our our community. Uh the surprise patrol. Um the Rodriguez pumpkin decorating contest where Lisa and I had a really hard time. uh choosing things. Um I did get to see the IE that our theater students uh did in monologue uh duet musical

060theater um uh solo musical theater and tech theater and they definitely made us proud with with those. And then the Barnes ribbon cutting today was very exciting because I've had a student attend before construction, during construction, and now after construction. And after construction is much much better. So, I think um everybody who worked so hard on that project, I know uh between uh getting the bond passed to um all the construction and and all the oversight, uh we appreciate you. So, all right, moving on to 6C, student, staff, board, and community recognition. Emily and Dr. Good evening, President President Cretendon, Dr. Lee, and trustees. It is my honor to introduce our November student superintendent students of the month. They are from Ball Early Childhood Center, Jefferson Elementary, Barnes Middle School, and Sigin High School. Meline

061Rukio, I hope I said that right, is our first student of the month from Ball Early Childhood Center. This this very very adorable prek student comes to school prepared and ready to learn every day. Her principal, Mrs. Riley, says she is a team leader and peer model on whom her teachers can rely to model classroom rules and routines. Meline's teachers say she is respectful and helpful. Her friends say she is smart and kind. Her parents are Kyle and Cindy Rukio. CONGRATULATIONS, MELINE. OUR NEXT STUDENT OF THE MONTH IS Corbin Ramos, a fourth grader at Jefferson Elementary. Man, Corbin, I didn't know you brought your own cheerleading squad. This is awesome. This student council member also earned perfect attendance, a spot on the AB honor role, and was named a rising matador from math, all in

062the first nine weeks of school. Right. Corbin's teachers say he brightens any room. They also recognize his respectful character, strong work ethic, and genuine care for mother for others. Excuse me. Corbin's grandmother is Carolina Burgerman. Congratulations, Corbin. How about this? Barnes Middle School is represented by seventh grader Maxine Reyes this month. This all A student was recognized for her kindness and her work on student council where her teachers say she represents her fellow students with integrity and character. In addition to the student council, Maxine is also involved in the National Junior Honors Society, UIL, and Theater. Her parents are Mark and Mary Jane Reyes. Congratulations, Maxine. A good one. Sigen High School junior Ellie Anderson is our final student of the month between volleyball, Early College High School, and the AVID Club. Ellie is known

063as a dedicated athlete, student, and team player. Ellie's teachers say she is responsible, dedicated, humble, and a hard worker who does not seek recognition for her efforts, but always makes a lasting impact. Ellie's parents are Carmen and Ryan Anderson. Congratulations, ELLIE. OKAY, we are going to move on briefly to our AP student recognition. We love every opportunity to celebrate our students and tonight's next presentation is a perfect example. I am very excited to introduce 66 students from Sigin High School. who passed their advanced placement exams. See, y'all didn't even know what you were clapping for. I'm just kidding. You did. These students earned a score of three or better on their exams in one of eight subjects, potentially earning them college credit. The maximum score on an AP exam is five. I would like to

064invite Sigin High School associate principal Diana Ferris and CCMR or college career and military readiness specialist Carly Vverde to come up. They will present our students with a yard sign along with Dr. Lee to celebrate their accomplishments. Miss Ferris and Miss Felver will introduce the students by the specific AP exam for which they passed. Several students will be called up more than once. Students, when your name is called, please come up to be greeted by Dr. Lee. Meet meet each of our trustees just as you saw the students of the month. And then we're going to have you stand to the side briefly so we can take a photo of you by your subject. All right. Awesome. And I'm gonna hand it over. Good evening. Um, I just want to also introduce Miss Dval, who

065is our early college high school director. And then I have two of our amazing AP teachers here that came to celebrate with us. I have Miss Bernadin, our art teacher, and I also have Miss Alexander, our AP biology teacher, as well. All right, so we're going to start with biology. Chang Chen, Zachary McNair, Rowan Puit, Nolan Shetfger, All right, the next subject is calculus AB Chang Chen. All right, so next we have our English language composition. We have Eleanor Kittinden. Oh, I knew I saw her here. She was here. Uh Braden Driggers. All right. So, we're going to continue with this one. So, Matias Garcia Lada, Cameron G, uh, Camry Gordon, Arabella Lacorn, Justin Peterson, Wen Patterson, Marella Beatatric Beatatrice Reyes, Julie Rodriguez, Madison Weeding Brooks, I love you. Okay, the next subject area is

066human geography. Evan Flores, Matthew Hoblin, Jackson Kchner, Kylie Olsen, Augustus Pond, Carter Roberts, Ethan Rosiski, and Donovan Sto. Okay, the next subject area is psychology. Carlos Bitis and Courtland Ward. All right. So next we have studio art 2D design portfolio and we have Bana Ablin, Olivia Buscll, Jessica Cruz, Abigail Espinosa, Lily Flanigan, Trinity Mloud, Andrew Molina Aubriana Robles and Michael Sanchez. Next we have US history Carlos Bidis, Donica Benavente, Matias Garcia, Wen Patterson, Rowan Puit, Marella Beatatrice, Reyes, Cypriana Torres, Courtland Ward. Sorry, I'm going really fast. Madison Weeding Brooks. Oh, and Julie Rodriguez. That's everyone. Okay. Braden triggers All right. Next is world history. Austin Burgle, Ian Casades, Nevie Santenno, Adrien Sedvantes, Aubrey Dan, Landon Dav, Jacob Dearman, Sarah Elliot, Yah Garcia, Lechuga, Uziel, Ednandez, McKenzie Johnson, Alexander Khalil, Kain Krauss, Paxton Lagor, Sophilia Mata,

067Avery Macau Ryder Mihal Maline Manchucka Maline Mai Logan Nash Caleb Pap, Kimberly Patino, Aiden Rivera, Michael Roman, Jordan Saleda, Clara Spencer Dibble, Thomas Stamnis, Ethan Tipple, Marissa Toritz, Griffin Welful, and Rebecca Wilkkey, and Jessica Cruz. Hold on. right here. I'll take your hand back over there. Thank you. Make it Don't mind. All right, board. Uh, real quick, we want to recognize one more individual before we, uh, move into a couple of other items, and that is our November superintendent's Apple Award. One of the best things about our Apple award, especially this year, is that our nominations come directly from the employees throughout the district, the people who keep Sigin ISD running. And while I have the honor of presenting the award, it's really inspired by those who make our district what it is and are

068working with our students each and every day. In this case, we received five nominations for the same employee uh who is now our November recipient. I want to share some of their thoughts with you because their words carry a whole lot of meaning. They described her as someone who is the first to lend a hand when a co-orker needs support and is always looking to fill a need. She goes above and beyond to ensure each child feels valued and excited to learn. She is equally admired by her co-workers for her teamwork, positive attitude, and constant willingness to serve others. Her impact is felt not only in her classroom, but throughout the entire school community. Those are the words of several of her co-workers, all recognizing the heart behind the person's effort to make Sigin ISD

069and her home campus a better place to learn and work. This month's recipient is a Texas A&M Kingsville's graduate who call who has called Sigin ISD home for more than 15 years. First as a paraprofessional and eventually as a teacher. Her co-workers say that she's a team lead dedicated to curriculum planning and family engagement with students who consistently show growth. She also represented Sigin ISD in her team's presentation at the 2024 Texas Association for Bilingual Education Conference. In her role as a bilingual prek teacher at Ball Early Childhood Center, she is helping lay the foundation for future leaders growing right here in Sigin ISD. And by the testimonies of her co-worker co-workers, we're very fortunate to have her as part of our team. Please join me in recognizing our November Superintendent's Apple Award recipient recipient,

070Miss Si Lopez. They're all going to go Not going to I know. I looked at it. Thank you. Thank you so much. Morning. That's always so exciting and we love to watch the people be surprised. We don't know who they are either and so we like to look around and see when the penny drops for them. So fun. Um, next is our campus highlight. Um, someone introducing ball. I am very good. President Kinton, fellow trustees, it is my honor to introduce this month's campus highlight from Ball Early Childhood Center. Ball provides early childhood education to nearly 400 of our youngest matadors in preK3 and preK4. Ball's principal, Mrs. Deborah Riley, is here to explain her school's vision of play, love, and learn, and how staff and students embrace those words daily. I have seen firsthand

071how play and love are incorporated throughout the day to create more effective learning environments in classrooms, the library, and even the hallways. Students are more engaged through the teachers creative teaching styles, energy, and compassion. A big shout out for this program is welld deserved. Miss Riley and team, I look forward to your presentation. I have the best crowd in front of me. Well, first of all, thank you for having us tonight. Um, it's always exciting to present in front of the board. President Krenon, Dr. Lee, and distinguished board members. This is my fabulous assistant principal, Hanado Mendoza. So, I couldn't do this job without him. But I also want to start with Clicker. You're the clicker guy tonight. This group right here. And half of them were here tonight, which is exciting. This is the

072people that do the work every single day. These are the people that deserve the credit. I just get to stand up here and and shout their praises from the world because I could not do it without this amazing bull staff. They make us look great. Okay, this is another picture of This Is Us. We love to celebrate. That is one of my favorite pictures right there. But I also want you to know this is us every morning at 7:15 a.m. This is how we begin our day. And if it wasn't for my amazing secretary Cindy Kramer who leads us every morning, this is how we begin our day in the right focus. Our motto, play, love, learn, captures what we believe is essential for every child's success and happiness. Through play, children explore, imagine, and

073make sense of the world. Through love, they feel safe, valued, and confident. And through learning, they grow their minds, their curiosity, and their sense of wonder. These three words guide every decision we make. From the design of our classrooms to how we connect with each of our families. Play. Through play, children explore, imagine, and grow. Play is the foundation of early learning. It builds the cognitive, physical, and social skills. Activities include dramatic play, sensory exploration and building. And play helps children solve problems and express creativity. Play is the work of childhood. Fred Rogers. How many of you remember Fred Rogers? Oh, yeah. Play. There's no other way to express what happens at ball every day except for through the pictures. And if you ever get a chance to look at our Facebook page, the joy

074in the children's faces, just the discovery, friendships, inclusive environments, look at the face with shaving cream. Now, how can you not get a smile on your face? The next word in our motto is love. And this is one of my most favorite quotes. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. Love is warm, nurturing relationships build confidence and security. Teachers build trusting relationships and model kindness, empathy, patience, and respect. Families are partners. Love extends beyond the classroom. We create a safe, nurturing environment where every child feels valued and seen. Visuals, teachers interacting warmly, family involvement, hugs, and smiles. Lots of hugs every morning. relationships. Teachers modeling. Families are partners. You recognize anyone in the middle picture? That's what happens when you walk in our classrooms. Just the

075relationship building alone between the each of each and our teachers, the relationships are there. They're the ones that are holding this place together. You know, character day. It's one of our favorite days. Can you guess who the big bad wolf was? And they get involved with what we're doing. They participate. They make it grow. And our learning. Oh, you mean we learn in prek? We don't just play. You know the rumor on the street is they just play at ball. Well, let me tell you about learning at ball. Learning in prek happens through hands-on experience. We follow developmentally appropriate practices that make learning hands-on and fun. Our play-based curriculum integrates early literacy, math, science, and art. Early literacy, math, science, and social emotional learning are woven through the daily activities. Children build confidence to express

076ideas and solve problems with the use of visuals, message board, storytelling, experiments, and counting games. Teachers guide exploration and questioning, encouraging curiosity. Children build confidence to express ideas and solve problems. Children develop a lifong love for learning. Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn. Outside in the garden areas. Sorting. Bubbles. Bubbles. Science. Matt man. Building the body parts. Foundations for writing. Sensory tables, mixing paint. What color did we make happens every day? Writing skills, storytelling, math manipulatives. I love the picture on the right. This is our three-year-old bilingual classroom. That is their own picture with the letter of their first name, and they're using Play-Doh. But look at how they're exploring. And they know that that's the first letter of their name in their three butterflies. Even

077one of our teachers has our play, love, and learn in her classroom because it's so important. And our best friend on the end, Hugabberry, comes out once a month. Family and community connection. Together, we make a difference. Families join school events and celebrations. We build strong community partnerships. We have open communication supports every child's journey. These are just some of the partners. On the left is Spirit of Joy. We couldn't do some of the things we we we do without Spirit of Joy. They build 23 backpacks. Is that right? Around 30 backpacks full of school supplies at the very beginning of the year. And now we have a coat drive going. another church on the end with Miss Debbie Brothers who was a former Sigin ISD teacher donating school supplies. Um bookf fair Thanksgiving lunchon.

078We had 300 today, Miss Cindy. 300 for lunch today and we're probably expecting at least 300 tomorrow. We have to do it in two days because our cafeteria is too small. So, bond 2026 and reading night. Sorry, I had to get that in there. Get in line. I know. Christmas parade and math night. Our families are such a big part of our campus. They come and we have families that volunteer. We have families that help support from the fire department. We have families that support each other coming in, walking in for to school every morning. It's just it's just a joyful place. So, what is our approach? Our approach is pretty simple but powerful. We focus on nurturing the whole child. We believe in play-based learning because children learn best by doing. Social emotional development

079because empathy and self-awareness are as important as academics. Right now, it's the most important. Individualized attention so that every child's strengths and needs are recognized. Inclusivity, ensuring every child feels welcome and celebrated. Family partnerships because parents and teachers together form the strongest support system for the youngest learners. This balance allows each child to grow not just academically but emotionally and socially as well. the picture some of our inclusive children working with um StMath in the middle building letters with wooden blocks. This is in our STEM lab and PE that whole child approach again the sensory enjoying that and the individualized attention learning to do the body parts on the face simple reading night. Um this is from open house or meet the teacher. So what do our children gain? What are the outcomes of play

080love and learn? Well, children in our pre-K program communicate confidently. They show kindness and cooperation. They think creatively and solve problems. They enjoy reading, counting, and exploring. They enter kindergarten ready emotionally, socially, and academically. Results of our approach. I don't know if you can click on this is our beginning of the year this year CLI benchmark report. It's hard to read. I know that this is an increase from last year. We're already sitting in our rapid letter names at 32%. My goal for the first 30 days, 60 days of school or the first 60 days was to be at 30%. Our uh rapid lighting our early writing skills were at 76% already. We have kids that are writing their first name already. It's amazing. Our overall social emotional behaviors were about really hard to read

081from here. 92. What is that? Read that. I have it 94. Sorry, I have it in my notes. Let me read. And then our overall math score, we're sitting at 66% already and our PA is already at 56%. So our goal for middle of the year is to be at 75%. With scores like this, we're going to get there and by the end of the year, we're going to meet that 90% goal, that 90% of our kids are ready to go for kindergarten. Thank you. Sorry. Go back. Should go back to Canva. There we go. So we are Matador Nation. We represent Ball Early Childhood Center, but we don't do the work they do. And every day, Mr. Mendoza and I get to stand up in front of them and go, "Wow." I sure if

082you're aware, but I was out on medical leave for a while and I was worried because it's October and we all know how October is the craziest month of the year. I didn't have one worry. It just flowed. It just it just moved. It just did what it's supposed to. Not because I was on campus. It's just because that's who they are. We are Matador Nation. Your youngest Matadors at homecoming. Tiny but awesome. When we play, we discover. When we love, we connect. When we learn, we grow. Thank you for supporting our vision at Ball ECC. We couldn't do it without you. Any questions? Thank you. And do come by and visit us. It is the happiest place on earth. I just quick comment. I just have a quick comment. Yes. We need to duplicate

083these campuses. I know we have to find money somewhere, but the data is there. It's been proven over and over. The research is there. view this the sooner they learn the better they'll do in kindergarten I mean in first grade also you know I'm proud to say this is my 38th year in Sigin ISD um I never thought I'd make it this far but my goal is to continue because my goal is to have prek for all in Sigin ISD so thank you All right. Thank you very much, Miss Riley, and everyone from Baja. Um, we are going to go back on the agenda to uh section three, close session. The board will adjourn into close session pursuant to the following sections of the Texas Open Meetings Act. A pursuant to Texas Government Code section

084551.071 551.074 551.129 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 551.074 074 discuss personnel matter matters including appointment 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 pent pursuant to Texas government code section 551.0821 uh deliberation regarding a public school students. Um the time is 7:48. All right, we're back from close session at um 8:43 p.m. um with no action from close session. Um if there are no objections, we're going to move a couple items up to the front so our guests here can go home and it'll

085just be board and SLT. So, and our communications sounds like a party. Um, uh, so if there is no objections, we'll move to 8C, our annual financial report for, um, the year ending June 30th. That's um Stephanie Harris and Liz. Oh, perfect. Good evening. My name is Stephanie Harris and I do serve as the engagement partner for the district. Very pleased to be here to present the results of the 2025 fiscal year audit to you. We've kind of changed up the presentation. If you recall from years past, we might have just jumped into the opinion letter and then highlighted some of the financial statements. I've got 10 quick slides and we're going to take a little bit different approach starting just what what is the responsibility of the auditor and how does the process work.

086Um, you guys have hired us to express an opinion on the district's financial statements. And in order to do that, we as the auditor will evaluate what is the risk based on management's internal controls that there could be a material misstatement related to the financial statements and that drives the audit process. So based on that, we're going to look and evaluate internal controls and assess risk um to plan the audit. Then we typically divide it up into three phases. The first which would be interim where we can complete all of the work that is done prior to the fiscal year end and this year that was May and June. Uh then we have final fieldwork or phase two and that began in September. And phase three is really just reporting and completion of the overall

087process which was October of this year. In terms of just what is management actually responsible for, they are responsible for the financial statements for federal and state compliance requirements and for establishing internal controls over those financial statements and compliance procedures. Now, you did hire us as part of the engagement letter as well to provide what we refer to as non audit services to assist the district with its financial statement preparation. There was a new Gazsby pronouncement this year, compensated absences. This did not result in a material impact to the financial statements and uh was chosen not to be implemented. This would be re-evaluated in future years. In terms of just misstatements, we did not identify um any corrected misstatements or we had no uncorrected misstatements or what we would refer to as a waved adjustment.

088In terms of just some of the other required communications we are required to have with the board, uh we did not encounter any difficulties in dealing with management this year. We had no disagreements over accounting policies or adjustments. To our knowledge, there was no consultation with other CPAs in which if there were, they would be required to consult with us. U no significant or adverse events that require your attention as a result of the completion of the audit. In terms of federal compliance and controls, again, a single audit is required over your federal grant programs when the district expends 750,000. For your next fiscal year, they have raised that threshold to a million. Uh this year, as part of the single audit process, we tested the special education cluster and title 4 part B 21st

089century. In terms of the results, very pleased to say that we uh propose to issue an unmodified opinion on both the financial statements as well as the district's federal compliance based on our testing of those two programs. Again, that does say draft because unfortunately we are waiting on the federal government to issue a compliance supplement as it relates to our testing work over the single audit process and procedure that has been delayed. Uh and currently TEA has extended the deadline for filing through February in hopes that the federal government will release the supplement before them. In terms of just some of the key financial highlights from the financial statements thisself, uh the district ended the year with total assets of approximately 378 million, total net position of 28.6 6 million very similar to fund balance.

090Um within those full acral statements you also had a net pension liability for your proportionate share of 28.6 million. That was a decrease in comparison to the prior year. Your net oped liability was a slight increase at 19.4 million. Your overall change in net position for the year. revenues less expenditures. Uh you had a positive increase to net position of 13.3 million. In terms of your fund level statements, the general fund ended the year with a very healthy fund balance approximately of 35.6 million. If you were to look at that in comparison of your annual operating expenditures, that represents approximately 45% of your 2025 expenditures. Again, the benchmark in general would be at least 25% in your ending fund balance uh plus or minus other plans that the district may have. Your overall change in

091the fund balance for the general fund was an increase of 608,000. One of the other key things that happened this year was the issuance of the 2025 bonds for approximately 44.2 million. We did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies that we would report to you um both in the audit report and management letter. In conclusion, uh the district's financial statements were materially correct and presented fairly. There will there were no material audit adjustments, no findings with respect to the financial statements or the single audit process. uh management and staff of the district uh were prepared for the audit process and responded very timely to our request. Uh would love to recognize Liz and the entire business office team. They do an incredible job. Be happy to take any questions. Any questions? All right.

092Thank you so much. We appreciate the opportunity to serve the district. Thank you very much. That was an information item. So, um unless there's any objection, we'll move on to an action item 10A, approval to purchase district library books. Jackie Sylvius. Good evening. I did not know that I was going to be speaking to all of you or I would have taken off my hat. All right. In compliance with SB13, our November book list was uploaded to the district website on October 17th, 2025 to allow the public and school board to review the books our certified school librarians would like to purchase. Um, we did not receive any feedback via our public comment form on our district website in response to the list. And I respectfully request the school board to vote in favor of

093approving all titles on our November book list. Any questions? Move to approve. Oh, you can make move to approve the list as presented by administration. All right. I have a motion from Mr. Bright and a second from Miss Duncan. Any discussion? Yes. I uh Miss, if you would just explain to us kind of the process that librarians go through to select books that end up on this list so we have a better understanding. Yes. Um, in uh in line with our policy, our school policy or our district policy, um the librarians have to choose two of a pretty wide variety of um guidelines when they purchase a book. So, it has to have at least two positive reviews from um a variety again of of publishers. So, it could be Kirkus, it could be book

094list. Um, and those are listed in our in our school policy, our district policy. Um, also when you are looking at a title, um, like say Permab, that's a publisher that we use now. Um, they're going to have the reviews listed there. They're going to give a a summary. Um, if it they're going to give the interest level, too. So, we know that our elementary campuses are not going to purchase a book that is more appropriate for middle school. our middle school is going to tend to steer away from YA. Um, if they do purchase a YA book, it's going to be on that way lower level. And then at the high school, um, we steer away from adult books. Um, it gets a little gray when you get into non-fiction books, um, because, you

095know, it's facts. Um, so we look at that in order to purchase our books. Um, I will say it's almost impossible to know everything that is in a book. Um, publishers will say that a book may have mature content that can range from sexual content to language to um, discussing topics that um, might be suicide, things that are going to be a little more, I don't want to say troublesome, but may cause a student to feel a little more like, oh gosh. So, I encourage, especially our middle school and our high school, not to steer away from something just because it says mature content. And I've asked publishers like can you give me more details besides just putting MC and that's what they are getting um from the people that they're getting the books from.

096So ideally if we could get a book read the whole thing and say yes this is great it has everything in it that we want and and if it has something that we don't want in it then say no thank you. Um but it's it's impossible. We have probably a thousand books at least that we order every year plus the 20,000 books that we have in the high school that were purchased, you know, over the past 50 years. So, it's really um communicating with our students. If you get a book and you find something in it that makes you uncomfortable, first of all, you don't have to read it. Like, shut it. Come talk to us, talk to your parents. um it is never a requirement that they have to finish a book if they

097don't want to finish the book. Um so it's really just communicating with them and having our parents communicate with kids. Okay, if you're reading something, come to me. Let's talk about it. Um and go to your librarian, your teacher, and and let them know, okay, wait, I wasn't expecting this in my book. Um, yeah. So, it's I I'm super thankful for um we work a lot with Flet, Title Wave, and Permabound, and they have put in so many measures to help us with um finding out what books we have in our system. So, we don't always have to get them approved because if it has matching ISBN numbers, we don't have to get it approved because it was in our catalog before September 1st. Um, and they've created a whole system with gold stars and

098blue stars and and just they sit down with you and walk you through every step. Um, so I'm really we are really fortunate to to work with some really great companies. Did that answer that? Okay. Okay. Good. Good. Jackie, I was going to chime in real quick because one of the things for the board, just so that you're aware of, in 2023, the state legislature passed House Bill 900, which was known as the Reader Act. Uh part of that law required publishers to apply a rating to every book. Um the publishers sued because of that and said that it was unconstitutional that that was not something that they believed was appropriate or right. Um ended up being an injunction was put on that whole piece. It went to the fifth circuit court of appeals based

099out of New Orleans um which is uh who heard that and fifth fifth circuit court of appeals agreed with the district court ruling and said no it's not appropriate it's unconstitutional. Um and that bill has been on hold since then. It was remanded back to the district court to hear and just last month the district court reheard a portion of it and said no. they agreed to the uh the fifth circuit's uh ruling on that. All that to say that labeling books and evaluating books with with specific um ratings is currently on hold probably pending a Supreme Court case would be my guess. I would have to assume that the state has appealed to the Supreme Court. Um it may be years before we hear from that, but there was at one point in 2023

100a push to have ratings on all books provided by publishers that would be universal across there. Um it's just on hold right now. Yeah. And I mean it takes so many like okay well clear definitions of each one because what may be explicit to one person wouldn't be explicit to another. and the law was stating that okay if somebody goes in and finds a book and they don't think that it's rated appropriately then that publisher Texas schools cannot purchase anything from that publisher again. So a lot of it is just definitions details that just weren't there. Um but I would if I can real quick um thank the business department for extending our purchasing deadline. Um, this new book approval has really I have not ordered new books yet for the high school. So, um,

101our October list just shipped and I'm so excited. Um, so I'm really thankful for, um, to Liz and everybody in the business department for extending our our purchasing until March so we can get as many new books in as we can. Um, and I also want to thank you guys um, from the bottom of my heart. Um, I didn't expect to cry, but I always cry. Um, thank you. I know that you are sitting up here. Um, and I know that it's not easy and I want you to know that we appreciate you so much because I know that it could go the opposite way so quickly. So, thank you for having um trust and faith in us and know that we are are doing our best and we love our kids and we love

102our jobs. We love our spaces that we provide for our students and literally we have the best job in the world. So, thank you for helping us to continue that and thank you for um providing a sense of calm because this is kind of scary. Um so, thank you for um making it not so scary. Um and you're doing a great job. So, thank you very much. Oh, yes. And remember on December 2nd, come to the high school for the Cocoa Lounge. Yes. And that is quite a great event and we'll have we'll have everything you need. So thank you guys very much. Any any discuss other discussion or uh questions? Yes. All right. Uh hearing no further discussion. All in favor raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes 70. Thank you so

103much. Thank you. Going to mark my agenda. so I don't try to go back to things we already did. Uh thank uh want to thank the board for the flexibility. We'll um someday we will get out before 9 someday. Um okay, moving on to 7A. Yes. First rating overview of the annual financial management report regarding the district's 2425 financial integrity rating system or first ratings based on the school year 2023 2024 data. Good evening, President Krenton, Dr. Lee, and board of trustees. Um this is our annual first hearing. Uh there is a first management report that's available to the public in the back. Um it tells where they can view the superintendent's employment contract um both for 2324 and current um and gives the link for that. And then it also gives um travel basically

104for board members and the superintendent for the 2324 school year. And there there's nothing else to um to put on there. Um so that's in the back and it's also in your board packet. Uh this is our first rating and this is our 2425 first rating. So just remember this is based on 232 24 data so it's always uh behind but as we go through this I'm going to tell you what our 2425 data will give us next year at this time for our first rating. So again the first rating financial integrity rating system of Texas um there's 21 indicators some of these are based on points and some of these are based on yes or nos or pass or fails. The first one is just that we filed our report on time. These are

105the dates that we filed it last year. Again, this year it's been um extended until the end of February, which is in line with September one school districts due to the federal shutdown. So, we we obviously passed this. We'll pass it again next year. Indicator two, this basically just says, did we have a clean audit? Yes, we did have a clean audit and obviously we just did have a clean audit, so we'll pass this one again next year. Indicator three, um, did we make all of our debt payments on time? We did. So, we passed this. We made them all on time this year as well. So, we will pass this again next year. Indicator four, this is in regards to our payments to the state and other uh, government agencies. We did make all

106those payments timely. We did again for 2425. So, we will pass that one. Indicator five is the net position. You saw that on our audit report. Basically, it just has to be greater than zero. It will be greater than zero for 2425 as well. This is kind of like household equity. It's not like your checking account balance. It's a little different. Uh some school districts have struggled with this in the past because of some of those like she mentioned Gazsby, some of those recordings um that we're required to do now, but we um we we have are above zero. So, we passed that and will again. Indicator six, uh this looks at how much you've used in fund balance and um if you did, it looks at your change over the last three years. So

107for 2425, we will pass this again because we did have a slight increase. Um if you if you don't pass this then they look at the number of if you have 75 um days of um you must have enough cash for 70 days of expenditures in your fund balance and and we obviously do and we will next year as well. Indicator seven looks at 90 days of cash on hand. Um, last year we had, if you remember, last year for our first rating, we had 193 days of cash on hand. For 2324, we had 142. So, and we we knew we were going to go down. Um, and for next year, we're going to have 150. So, we go back up just a little bit. So, we pass. We get 10 out of 10. We'll

108get 10 out of 10 next year as well. Indicator 8, it basically looks to see if we have enough assets to cover our liabilities. Then they do a ratio. So you must have a score greater than three to um you must get greater than three for your ratio to score a 10. Uh ours was a five. So that basically means we have five times as many assets as we do liabilities. Um for 2425 um it will be 3.9 and that is just because we issued more bonds. So our debt increased for 2425 but we will still receive 10 out of 10. Indicator nine, it just says, did you bring in more than you spent or vice versa, if you did have a budget deficit, then they look at uh if you have at least 60

109days of cash on hand. So for uh 23 24 um they they take out the part that you spend on facility acquisition and construction. So um we passed both levels of this um after you take those expenses out and we will again next year. So, we will receive 10 again next year. Indicator 10, this looks at our budgeted um amounts versus our actual at the end of the year. They want to see less than a 10% variance. This is actually not being scored this year um because of some different things that happened with legislature uh prior, but it will be scored next year and we will receive 10 points. Our variance will be 1.43%. So well under 10%. Indicator 11, this just looks at our liabilities that are due in over a year to determine

110if our assets are enough to cover and s sustain our payments. Um our ratio, you have to have a ratio of less than um or equal to 6 to score a 10. We're a little above that at 7381. So we still received six out of 10 points. That's still good. That's just because we have bond debt and we will receive um six again next year. Um as we pay off debt then our score will increase. Indicator 12. Uh this looks at our property values to make sure that we can continue to sustain our debt. you have to get less than or equal to a four in in this um equation to get the full points. So, we scored a 4.80. Uh that is um a little bit high, but that still means we get eight

111out of 10. Again, this is not bad. This is just because we have debt. It's very normal to not get a 10 on these when you are issuing bonds. As our property values grow, then we score better. Indicator 13, this looks at our administrative cost ratio. Um, we have historically been an eight out of 10 on this. Uh, last year we were at.132. This year we were at.116. So we did go down a little bit. Next year we are actually going to score a 10 out of 10 on this. Um, they're changing the way they look at it a little bit and we've also done some moves with um, coding that um, we needed to do. So, we will see that go up next year to 10 out of 10. Indicator 14, did the school

112district um have uh they're looking at your staff to student to make sure you're not adding staff as you're decreasing students or vice versa. Uh they want to make sure that you're not making big changes that aren't in line with your enrollment and your growth. This does look at total staff. This is not just looking at teachers or classroom staff. It's looking at our whole district staff. Uh we actually have about one staff member for every six and a half students. Uh we we scored 10 out of 10 and we will score 10 out of 10 next year as well. 15. This looks at our bianial pupil projections. Every two years we go in and we say how many kids we think we're going to have. We use our demographic data. Um we look at

113lots of different things when we enter that data. This was actually not scored last year, but it will be scored next year and we will get a five out of five. And that that's tied to another indicator I'll show you here in a couple slides. 16. This is looking at our PES data. This is where we send our data up to the state and they want to make sure that there's not a big variance in um in our actual what we're sending up in our annual financial report. uh you just have to be less than 3% and we actually have a 0% uh difference. So, we passed that one. And this is kind of like what you just heard from the auditor. They're just looking for material weakness and internal controls. We did not have

114any um for 23 24 25. 18 is similar. It's looking for material non-compliance. As you heard from Stephanie, we did not have any of that either for 2425. So we'll get 10 out of 10 for both years. 19. Did we post everything on our website that we were supposed to? We did and we did again for 2425. So we will receive the full points for this one. Uh did we did we talk about changes and impacts to our funding prior to passing our budget? We did. We did it again this year. So we will pass that indicator next year as well. And then 21, uh, do we receive an adjustment repayment scheduled? This is tied back to the bianial pupil projections. If you inflate that number really big, then the state will essentially send you

115more money and then they find out that you inflated that number and they make you pay the money back. So you end up on here too. So obviously um, we are not in that situation. So our total score for this year is 92. Um, that's a for superior achievement. It's really good. Next year looks like we will be a 94. So that's pretty exciting because we haven't been a 94 in a while. Um, and I just wanted to let y'all know that Stephanie is not our normally normal person that comes. Daniel is. Um, but Daniel's wife is in labor right now. She's been in labor all day. So he will come when we take action hopefully. And um, he's he's great. Those of you have that have met him, he um he's he's a pretty

116great auditor. So very very very smart. So, I really appreciate them and for her coming and and now they get to come back. So, and uh the audit looked really good, but that's that's due to our business office staff and our campus staff and and really all of our leadership team. It's it's not just about the finances. It's about everything. So, I'm very appreciative to all the great people that are part of that. So, any questions? I just want to say I had about five but you answered all of them. So, thank you. Wonderful. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Um moving on to 8A personnel information professional employees. Mr. Newman. Good evening. Here you have a list of uh professional new hires and resignations. Any questions? Thank you. All right.

1178B, first reading for consideration of the Texas Association of School Boards, TASBY policy update 126 affecting legal and local policies. Uh board, you've got update 126 from TASBY there. Uh a quick reminder, legal policies are not something that we adopt. They're just part of the law and they change. The local policies are what we actually adopt uh and adjust changes on. All of these changes in update 126 and those numbers are just rationalized based off of TASBY does sequential ordering. So the last major update that they did was 126. The next one will be or 125. The next one will be 127. Um but those are all based off of most recent changes from the 89th legislature. Uh so you have a fairly significant stack of those policies in front of you. They're del they're

118given to you deliberately tonight um and in your packet. We're not voting on any of those. We're not going through any of those necessarily. If you see something in there that you have concerns about, by all means, shoot me an email so that I can try to answer it. Um, but it would be something that would be put on your agenda next month or the next regular board meeting for consideration and adoption. Then it just basically gives you a full month or more to be able to look through all of those policies. Um, there are a couple of policies in there. Um, there's one that talks about board meetings specifically in the door board meeting dates and times. We've already made that adjustment. We're just waiting on TASBY to get that back to us for

119the adjustment. Uh we started doing our board meetings at six o'clock instead of 6:30. So we want to make sure our board policy follows it. It's the fourth Tuesday instead of the last Tuesday of the month. Um and so we reflected that. Of course it always says that the board meetings can be changed based off of what needs to happen in there. But almost all of those recommended changes from TASBY are just to comply with law. Um it's a TASBY initiated change based off of the legislative changes. So if you have any questions, I'll try my best to answer them. I just had one question. Um there are several of those introduce new systems that the school district will then need to do once yes once the board approves those systems. Do they need to

120be in place at the time the board approves or does the district have time to comply? Yeah, not necessarily. Um so we have to create the systems if there's not already systems in place. Uh and so most of those policies when you look at those what they'll say is that the superintendent is responsible for uh creating administrative regulations several times. In fact that's what policy is always going to say is typically the superintendent is responsible for developing the administrative regulations piece of it. And so that's something that we that we either go in and create or a lot of times we will also use uh TASBY has a um I cannot think of the name of it right now off the top of my head, but they have a separate thing that I can log

121in that gives us example uh administrative regulations for the policy specifically. So like sheets that need to be used for signing up or whatever it is. Um and so we either create those or we get those from somewhere else as quick as we can. Um, but it's also I'll be very honest, there are sometimes that we'll have a policy that says we need an administrative regulation that we don't even know it needs an administrative regulation until you start looking at it. Um, and so that's part of it uh that we'll look at. But it it it does take a little bit of time to develop those administrative regulations. Any other questions? All right. Thank you. Um our next three um are Miss Banks um financial statements uh for October 2025. And you have the financial

122statements for the general operating fund, the child nutrition fund, and the debt service fund. Um a couple things I wanted to point out. I added a couple of column col columns to this report. Um it's something that I do for myself, but I thought it would be interesting for y'all. its prior year comparison. So, um you can see the last year's budget um for October of 2024 on there along with October 2025. And then you can see the actuals at that point. Um this is a pretty early board meeting, although it probably was last year. Um the only discrepancies I really see are maybe a couple of entries, but it's pretty much the same as last year when you look at um percents. uh you'll see an increase in payroll, specifically in salaries. Of course,

123that's due to raises. So, um we we were lucky to um end the prior year without a budget deficit. About 2.8 million of that was due to prior year property value protests. Um I would love to see that happen again this year, but it's not likely. Uh those were mostly all due to um legislative changes that kind of blindsided the appraisal district and um so it caused them to get pretty backwards and upside down in their reporting. Uh so we had to protest those items and those uh results came back in September. So uh the one that came back in September was worth $1.9 million in revenue. So that was awesome. Um but um I would love to run across that again this year, but I doubt that's going to happen. So we're still sitting

124at a budget deficit, but in January we will bring back some revenue from uh some more of the legislative numbers that are still getting added to our software so that we can estimate those. And man, I'm hoping for an increase in ADA, so both enrollment and attendance. So, and absolutely, uh, we've already seen an increase in our CTE funding, um, and our early education funding as well, but some of that is due to legislation. So, any questions on the financials. All right, seeing no questions, we'll move on to E, new vendors. We have one new vendor. So, again, we might use them, but we might not. or we might already use them, but we can question. All right. F purchases made over $50,000. These are just obviously purchases that were over $50,000 for this reporting

125period. Um there's a large one on there. One thing I wanted to point out is that we did re This is for the weather damage. It's weather damage. It's actually old weather damage to three of our campuses that was discovered on an inspection. So, we opened up an old claim. We did receive a million dollars from our insurance company, but it's not going to cost a million dollars to do the repairs. Uh, those are single ply roofs, so they are not covered like our other roofs. Um, so you see this one for 1.4 million. Uh, that 437,000 is coming out of bond funds that we have set aside for roof repairs. You will see about another 1.2 two on um possibly the next board meeting. Uh and then that will um repair those three campuses.

126It is Seagert, Ball, and McQueeny. Not the entire roofs, but sections of them. Any question? Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Um next we have 8G D accountability improvements. Uh Dr. Lee. All right. Board. Uh a couple of quick things uh before we jump in here. I I Lisa, you had asked about regulations. It's the regulations resource manual that we will sometimes use from TASBY where they have created regulations that align. We adjust them based off of whatever our practice is. We're probably in a position where at some point in the next year, 18-ish months would be my guess, we need to probably do a policy audit with TASBY, which is where they send our policy consultant, who is a trained attorney to come in, they sit down with the administration, and we

127go through every single policy in the board book and board policy one by one. And you're looking when you do those, you're looking for what is practice and what is policy so that you can figure out which needs to change because sometimes the policy needs to be revised to match practice. Sometimes practice needs to be revised to match policy. So we're probably at a place in the next year, 18-ish months where we need to do that. I don't know when the district did their last one. So my guess is going to be it's been several years and you usually do them about every five years or so. Uh it's just a good practice. So that's probably where we need to go next. Um but it'll take it'll take a little bit of time for that.

128Um what I'm going to visit with you about tonight and give you a little brief presentation over is accountability improvement. A lot of the conversations that we've been having as a board superintendent team that we've been having as a senior leadership team that we've been having with campus leaderships and principles uh is about what do we need to do for accountability and and where do we need to go to be able to make that happen? Uh and so I've got a couple of different things on this agenda. uh you do have targeted improvement plan approval later on and is an action item. Those are the targeted improvement plans for the campuses that are required to do them based off of where their accountability was last year or the preceding two years depending on what uh

129their ratings were at that time. Um and so I'll probably touch a little bit on those without getting into a lot of detail on those. Um those targeted improvement plans are basically the surveys we have to complete to submit to TEA and they don't get as robust because TEA doesn't want them as robust. Um, but I'll talk about that when we get there. Um, so what we're going to talk about right now is nothing. I haven't talked at this microphone since uh you named me lone finalist. So, um just FYI. Uh so, a couple of things that we're going to talk about is just accountability improvement in general. Uh and so I want to start by just saying what is the purpose that we're looking at here. A big piece of that is that we're

130trying to strategically improve our academic performance of campuses. That's where we're going to make the difference is on campuses. Doesn't matter what I sit here and say, it matters what we're doing on campus. And a big piece of that is we have to have a critical focus on leadership both at the campus level and the district level as well as teacher support. So, I'm going to touch on several different things as we go through that. The first thing that we're going to do as part of accountability improvement is we're going to level our campuses. So, we're going to look at every campus in the district and we're going to level them a level one, a level two, or a level three campus. level. You can see all of the levelings that we have there. Um,

131as part of that, as part of our accountability improvement, uh, there's three levels. Uh, level three is our campuses that need the most support. And the way that they become a level three campus is they either have a D or a F rating in the current year or they had an F at one point in the two prior years. So, it's not just about where we're at at this moment, but also where are we coming for so that we can make sure that we have support. We have four campuses that fall in that window as being a level three. Jefferson Elementary, Barnes Middle School, Rodriguez Elementary, and Sigin High School. Those are the ones that I feel like need the most significant improvement uh that we need to see. And the not improvement, but the

132most support to be able to see the improvement that we need to happen. Uh we have six campuses that fall to a level two. a level two campuses based off of any campus that currently has a C rating or had a D rating at some point in the prior two years. Again, we're not looking at just where we're at, but also where did we come from? Those six campuses are Ball. Keep in mind that Ball does not get accountability ratings by itself. They are a paired campus with Kenny. So, whatever Keni's rating is, Ball carries that even though Ball has nothing to do with third, fourth, and fifth grade on Kenny Elementary. Um, and they're there because Ball had a Oh, well, we've blocked 4,77 ads for me. Um, because Ball Early Childhood is on

133that list because of Kinneck. They had a D in 2024. So, it's not about what they have now. It's about what they did have. Uh, AJB also had a D in 2024 and so they're a level two. Kenny because of the same thing that I bought, a D in 2024. Potline is listed on here as a level two campus because they had a D in 2023. Hotline's one of our interesting campuses that went from a D to an A to a B. Um that doesn't mean that we're all out of the woods. We want to keep moving forward. We want to get them to be a level one campus. Um Vogle had a D in 2024 last year and Winer had a D in 2024 last year. Also, we have two campuses that would be

134considered a level one campuses. That's McQueeny Elementary. Uh they've got a B currently in 2025 without having a D or an F in the two previous years. and MBLC who has an A in 2025 and has maintained that A. So what happens if you're a level three campus or a level two campus? We're going to talk about campus leadership development, performance monitoring, teacher development, teacher monitoring, instructional expectations across the district in those campuses and then instructional support. So what we look at is for campus leadership development, we start focusing on targeted goal setting and monitoring. What are they going to do? And then how are we going to monitor that to happen? And the way that we're going to do that is there's going to be bimonthly virtual leadership coaching. One of the agreements that

135we proposed to you a couple months ago um was with outside consultants to come in and do strategic planning. That was also some of the other projects that were listed on there is to provide additional support for our campuses depending on what we needed. Um monthly on-site leadership coaching where that happens. um quarterly instructional rounds where those campuses we are walking those campuses on a quarterly basis and actually having conversations about the instruction that we're seeing uh and then monthly instructional rounds also on those level three that's bringing outside people other principles to come in and look at those campuses also that happens with principal supervisor and with those external consultants as part of that work for performance monitoring we're going to set those academic go for it ask away. So, Monica is Monica is

136technically the principal supervisor right now. We have a vacant executive director um of leadership. Uh I don't remember what the guy's name was before. I feel bad. I'm so sorry. He wasn't here when I was here and so no offense to him if he is watching. Um but uh that position is vacant. Um the intent would be to look at our leadership team over this next semester to figure out how we want to structure that role and whether we want that role, whether we're going to bring it back, whether it's going to be restructured in a different way. We've just got to wait and see. I need to see I need to see a little bit more before I can give you a solid answer on what to do there. Um but performance monitoring, it's

137about sec setting academic performance goals and scorecard measures. Um, we actually started some of this work already last week when we brought in professional development for all of our principles and our central office staff as part of the work that's going on. They have accountability meetings every six weeks where we're looking at exactly where we're at and then annual TPS evaluations for those principles and assistant principles that are on that campus. So, annual evaluations. One of the kickers with what we need to do is our evaluations need to be aligned with campus performance. If they are responsible, if our leadership is responsible for the way that campuses perform, then our evaluation should be based on that. Also, as your superintendent, my evaluation is based off of how campuses perform in the district performs. That is

138the same thing for leadership across the district. And so, we're going to start seeing some shifts in the way that we do those for teacher development for a level three campus. That also includes bi-weekly training every two weeks on instructional strategies that will be led by the curriculum and instruction department. We're not talking about what you're teaching, but how you're teaching high impact researchbased high leverage instructional strategies in the classroom. And so we start rolling those out to staff. And then all core teachers in tested subjects especially have to have monthly instructional coaching and monthly administrative feedback cycles where we're talking about what we're seeing and what's happening in those classrooms. For teacher monitoring, because we've talked about leadership, what happens and then they're monitoring. For teacher monitoring, it's about making sure we have test

139goals beginning of the year, middle of the year, which we're already doing, but monthly test walkthroughs as part of the requirement from our leadership team. And then this is the one they will have three tests observations throughout the school year. Not just one, but three times between now and the beginning of the year and the end of the year. If they've already had one, great. The only way we can know what's happening in classrooms is if we are in the classrooms. That's nothing against the teacher. It's about making the teacher better. I think we have quality teachers on all of these campuses. Our goal is to make them better. Um, and then monthly curriculum calibration walks where we are walking campuses and we are seeing what is being taught and is it aligned with the

140scope and sequence of what is supposed to be taught in classrooms? Yes, ma'am. When you say we, um, who is the we that goes who is the we? What did I just say? I'm so sorry. Um, we go to the campuses. Who is the we? That's us. like leadership, central office leadership. Yes. Yes. Sorry about that. Thank you. Um instructional expectations are probably where it gets a little bit um more in depth. We have to expect that on these campus especially that we are implementing our HQI HQIM and the the high quality instructional materials and the district's instructional materials. Um they have to be implemented with fidelity. We don't miss we don't we don't steer away from it. this is what has to be implemented so that we can make sure that it's happening the

141way it's supposed to. And then they would have twice weekly PLC's. One PLC that is focused on instruction, one that's focused on data. Um the other thing is that for those campuses that are level three campuses, we have to see that they are using lesson plans, which if they're using HQIM with fidelity, the lesson plan is done for them. They don't have to. But if there are specific lessons changes that needs to happen that needs to be initiated by curriculum and instruction and they have to use those not self-created things. And then finally we look at instructional support which is we're talking about instructional coaches people who are providing support directly to teachers and eventually staffing where we are sitting at one instructional coach for 250 students on those campuses. Um that's not for every

142student that's for tested subjects. So, when you think about the high school and 2,00 students on there, we're not talking about adding eight instructional coaches, but we are talking about looking at instructional coaches and how they are used. Um, our instructional coaches have to be trained on instructional coaching and they have to actually provide instructional coaching to teachers and not substituting for classrooms when there's vacancies. That's not the support that we need to be able to see the improvement that we need to. For level two campuses, it starts to tear back a little bit. And so you see less on the campus leadership development. Um still performance monitoring is almost identical to what it is. They're just doing accountability meetings three times per year instead of every six weeks which would be six times per

143year. Um and then their annual TPS evaluation. You would see bi-weekly training on instructional strategies that are led by the principal not by the instructional the curriculum instruction staff but led by the campus leadership as part of that. And then core tested subject areas would have every other month uh instructional coaching or administrative feedback cycles as part of that on teachers. Same exact thing. Beginning of the year, middle of the year, monthly test walkthroughs, two observations throughout the school year and then bimonthly, every other month calibration walks as part of that. Instructional expectations are still use of the district's HQIM and the district's requirement. And then twice a week PLC's, one led by the instructional coach or the administration and one that's led by lead teachers so that we start building capacity in our teachers

144in in the teacher leaders that we have on there and then structuring instructional coaches at a 1 to 450 student ratio. Level one campuses totally different. Um you're looking at monthly leadership coaching, quarterly instructional rounds, that's with us. Um performance monitoring, they're setting those doing their annual TPASS accountability meetings at the mid-year point. Um teacher development, monthly training on instructional strategies that are led by the principal, new core teachers and tested subject areas. New core teachers and tested subject areas. Um would have every other month instructional coaching and every other month administrative feedback. We're already doing a lot of that work with Miss Van like that is who she focuses on as new teachers. Um, which also if you look at the box immediately below it on instructional support, that's why there's less instructional support

145because we have Miss Van filling in for new teachers. That's the primary focus. Uh, and then teacher monitoring, same thing, just one test observation, quarterly cal curriculum calibration walks, use of the HQIM the way it's supposed to be, and then twice a week PLC's that are completely led by lead teachers because we've got um additional interventions. So some other things that we're looking at uh central office development talking about us as leadership team in general um we're going to start every other week leadership coaching um for our our uh DCSI and principal supervisor that is Monica is our DCSI but I'm this is all of us in this case uh tip and tap monitoring in this meeting you're going to talk we're going to talk about targeted improvement plans um part of that work will

146be monitoring what happens in our targeted improvement plans and so we'll use our director of data and accountabil our assessment and accountability to help gather gather the data and monitor it to make sure that it's happening as part of that. And then we're going to redesign like I talked about um with evaluations or redesigning evaluations to reflect campus performance measures also. Um again that starts at the top and works its way down. For leadership training, we have monthly instructional leadership development that includes our principles, our instructional coaches, curriculum instruction, principal supervisors, uh SLT, the works would do monthly. And then in January and February, we'll have a full instructional review that will be conducted across the district. You will get a report about that instructional review once it's completed so that you can see what

147we're doing very well in in the areas that we have for growth. Yes, sir. I'm so sorry. That is part of the agreement that we approved last last month, two months ago. Like it was intentional to have an outside group come in and do the instructional review for us. Yep. Um we have already started some of the professional development that I talked on the previous slide, the monthly instructional leadership development. Um that's in there. Uh we started that in November last week. We had uh all principles, central office folks, curriculum instruction in here and our focus was solely on calculating or understanding state accountability. You have to understand the system if we're going to move the needle in the system. And so we had every campus here and their leadership team and they handcalculated accountability

148so that they could determine if some of the goals they were setting actually moved the needle or not. It doesn't do any good to focus on an area if that's not going to get us where we need to be to see those improvement. And then starting next month, we'll we'll do professional developments on the instructional mindset. We'll do instructional rounds in January where we will walk uh campuses across the district, classrooms across the district as leadership teams to look at what's happening in there. Those instructional rounds are not about teachers. I want to be very clear. The instructional rounds are not about teachers. We are going in and we are looking at what's happening. But it is about us and making sure we are calibrated on what we are seeing. Um if we see good

149instruction, do we agree that it's good instruction? What makes it good instruction? We don't even document which teachers rooms we go into. We don't write that stuff down because it's not about teachers. It's about just how we are seeing things. And then in February and March, we'll have training on instructional coaching specifically. How to coach instruction data informed dialogue in April and cadence of change in May. So, next steps, what we'll do uh after tonight is we'll start communicating out that accountability improvement plan, working with principles, um letting them know exactly some of the work that's going to happen because it will be shifts and adjustments for them. Um that's just part of the work that needs to happen. It's shifts and adjustments for us as an SLT. Uh it's shifts and adjustments for the

150district and we have to be prepared for that. So, we've got to roll that out. In December and January is when we'll start initiating all of that work that happens. January and February do the instructional review and then March, April, it's like rinse repeat. We start developing plans and changes for the summer and fall of 2026. Um there are a couple of things that I feel are important that we need to address in general. Um which is just the the the understandings that happen here. Um earned instructional autonomy. If you want to have full instructional autonomy of what happens across the district or in your classroom, you have to earn that ability to do it by being an outstanding instruction based individual. Um, so it's not a matter of us telling teachers they can't do

151something or they shouldn't do something. It's about show us what you can do and once you've earned that ability, by all means go for it. If you're a phenomenal teacher, I want you to have the instructional autonomy that you need to do. But we've got to get everybody on the same page of where we're at and what needs to happen. Um, higher expectations and monitoring. That's higher expectations not just in classrooms, but also for leadership, campus leadership, district leadership, and what needs to happen. Higher higher expectations for curriculum and instruction. Higher expectations on alignments of evaluations and academic achievement. Um, it's putting it's changing culture is what it really comes down to. Increased data collection. Um, so we've got to start working. Some of this has already started uh with last week's professional development on

152uh state accountability like what data are we collecting and what are we doing with it. There's no reason for us to test if we're not doing anything with the data once we get it. Um we've also got to start you the very last bullet point strategic abandonment of ineffective resources and programs. if they're not working, if they're not doing what we need them to do, or if we're just holding on to them because we have an emotional attachment to a computer program, if it's not doing what it needs to do, we don't need to use it. And so, we have to be clear in what how we're strategic about getting and moving away from there. And then just defined academic plans and practices. So, how are we going to define what we actually do? Um,

153and start identifying what our expectations are, what the sigin way of doing things are so that we can move where we want. The goal is to get our campuses to an accountability rating that is appropriate. Um, so in those targeted improvement plans, you will see that each campus has different goals that are set as part of that targeted improvement plan. Those are the goals that are necessary to get them out of the improvement cycle that TEA currently has us in because we have not performed where we are. So those goals are what we need to hit to move to that next level. Now, you will see a lot of the same thing in those targeted improvement plans from campus to campus. That is intentional. It's intentional because we have to establish good instructional expectations across

154the district, good uh professional learning community protocols across the district. We have to good instruction whether it's in a kindergarten classroom or whether it's in a high school English 2 classroom is still good instruction. Good practices are good practices. And so that's why you're going to see some of those things as identical um across campuses whether it's an elementary or a secondary campus or not. Um, any other questions? I haven't got anything thrown at me from anybody behind me. So, so far we're doing okay. No, I really appreciate the deep dive and it's refreshing. Thank you for I know you've been working hard on this and and it's not just me. Um, like I I want to be like I do want to be very clear on a couple of things. Um, part of the

155reason that allows us to do this is because I do have a team that is committed to making things where it needs to be. Um, they've heard me say this a couple of different times. I don't care what the title is. I don't care what your role is. I just want you to be good. And that may mean that everybody's got to help out a little bit. And if that means Ruben, Dr. Curio, as our technology and and safety guy has to help out in elementary campus, that's what we're going to do because it's all hands- on deck. Um, we've got to start moving and shifting and adjusting things and it is hard work. Culture is hard. The other thing that I think is important for you to know um and this is just the

156reality of it. We are not in the accountability situation that we are in because something changed overnight. It's not like something magical happened and all of a sudden we have low accountability. It it was an overtime thing that got us into the situation that we're in. And I don't know I I'll be I don't care what the excuses are. All I care about is where we're at, what we do next. I don't care what happened. I don't care what causes it. None of that matters to me. What matters to me now is what are we doing for kids moving forward. But it did not happen overnight. I need the board to also understand the improvement will not happen overnight. Like we are not going to see magical improvement from tonight until tomorrow morning because I

157stood here and said this is what we're going to do. It takes time to move the needle in a meaningful way that creates systemic change. That's not an easy thing to do. It's a culture shift and it will take time for us to do it. But I'm confident we can do it if we will just put the effort in where it needs to be. But with you saying this, this is not and if we have teachers listening, administrators listening, it's not a gotcha thing. Not at all. It's we want us to be the best that we can be and we our kids deserve that. They deserve that level of instruction. We have amazing educators across this district, but even amazing educators can be better than they are right now if they'll put the effort in.

158Um, and so it is going to be hard work. I've said this before. It's supposed to be hard for the adults. It's not supposed to be hard for the kids. That's our job. Like, and so it's supposed to be there. Um, but I feel confident that we can start initiating some of these changes and we will see adjustments and improvement where it needs to be. Um, we've just got to keep moving because it it it will be hard. Um, the other thing is that we will get complaints about the work that is happening. I own it. Like I own it right now. We're going to tell people that they have to do something different than they have done before and they will not like that and you as a board will hear complaints about some

159of those things. Um either we're in it for the right reasons or we're not. Um I wouldn't recommend it if I didn't think it's what's best for the district and what's best for kids. And so even if we have things that people that start complaining, by all means like send them my way. I will be happy to have conversations with anyone. I will always visit with someone. I will not budge on what's best for kids though. Period. Like that is that's my line in the sand. We're going to do what's best for kids. Any other questions? Happy to take them. I I'm really excited about the the ideas presented and especially that it's a team approach. Everyone's doing it together. It's districtwide. It's the similarities between them. The only um the thing that I I

160think as a board member the most complaints that I'm going to hear is about instructional um autonomy. Can you just a little bit more about kind of on the flip side of that about taking the creativity away from the teachers. I don't think so. I think you also have to remember that HQIM that highquality instructional material does not take creativity away. It does specify what has to be taught and when it has to be taught and the level of rigor that it has to be taught. um you can still be creative and teach it and teach what's supposed to be taught when it's supposed to be taught at the level of rigor that's supposed to be there. So it's not necessarily about taking away autonomy. You can still adjust lessons to reflect what's being taught.

161But if I walk into a fourth grade classroom at Potline or Jefferson or Winert or Kincki, in one day I should see similar things happening in all four of those classrooms in all four of those campuses because every child deserves the same level of education across this district. And that's where we have to make sure that we're not budging on this is what's supposed to be taught. This is when it's supposed to be taught and this is the level of rigor that it's supposed to be taught. Those are the non-negotiables. If you want to to make it themed because you want to have a a restaurant menu that the kids can pick from to do the activities, that does not mean a hill of beans to me. If it's good instruction and you can still

162have some autonomy there, but you still have to teach author's purpose because that's what we're teaching across the district in English language arts classrooms. Any other questions? All right. I have had a fantastic night. Y'all have a good night. Thank you very much. Moving on to the consent agenda. Policybe local states that the consent agenda shall include items of a routine and or recurring nature grouped 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 October 28th, 2025. B. Approval of tax collection reports for October 2025. C. Approve approval of donations received

163October 2025. D. CFB local updates. E. Submission of a class size waiver to the Texas Education Agency. And F. Acknowledge public information act requests October to November 2025. Do I have a board member who wants to remove any of those from the consent agenda? I would like to remove E. Submission of class size exception waiver to the Texas Education Agency. Okay, that's E. Any others? Madam President, I move for approval the consent agenda items excluding 9E. Okay. I have a motion from Miss Duncan and a second from Miss Miller. Um all in favor raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes. 70. Um so we will look at 9E. submission of a class- size waiver to tea Monica Lions. I I can jump in whenever I I'm ready to go. So, we do have

164a class size waiver for Jefferson. It is for a third grade class. Uh has gone to 20 three. I sent you the spreadsheet one. I sent you the spreadsheet. Doctor, you did. I think I may have put fourth grade in my email though, like now that I'm I'm looking at it. I think I told you for fourth grade earlier, but then I look Sorry, I looked to confirm on the spreadsheet. No, you're good. So, it is a Jefferson class third grade one. Let me question. I just like to make a comment about this. Uh I'm not a big fan of these. I I I kind of made that clear before like the first month that we had school and like brought this agenda item up. Um especially with Jefferson um being the school that it

165is had a fantastic accountability year last year. Um and that's from a lot of the hard work, but I don't think we need to be overloading that school, especially because of the age of that school and the size of classrooms and everything else. So, I really think that we need to be looking at um staffing of the school or um dispersing of the students to other campuses that have the space um however that needs to happen. But I I I think this this is like the third class size waiver for Jefferson at the third grade level, fourth grade level. We have two third grade classes at 23, right? But this so far this year, we're in November. Fourth, fourth grade is the one that's fourth grade is the larger. Um, all three of theirs are

166on a waiver already. Um, and this would be the second one in third grade. Um, and I agree with you. The hard part is we don't have that magic crystal ball that tells us if a kid's going to run in. like I I thought it was going to be fourth grade and I apologize because you we started the school year with 65 kids in fourth grade and have 74 in there right now um from Jefferson. Jefferson does struggle a little bit more because their classrooms are smaller, physically smaller because they are an older building. Uh in fact, I went on campus last Friday intentionally to look at a handful of classrooms that are overstaffed or that are that have higher uh not overstaffed but have higher student counts in there. Um, and I talked to

167Miss Gar about possibility and options. She has done some interviewing of candidates for a vacant fifth grade position that she currently has. And so, one of my questions was, do we have anybody else that you've interviewed that would potentially fill another area um to fit that? I I understand the the waiver issue. We're going to have waivers throughout the year because the state says we have to like we have to provide a waiver or we have to hire another staff member. Um, and I'll be totally honest, we don't just have teachers out there on trees right now that we can go grab that are that are quality. We might get lucky and get a handful of folks in December because they are young, brand new, firstear teachers uh that are in there. Um, I do

168think that we need to as a district start having conversations specifically about what we do when we have a campus that is overstaffed. Is there an overflow protocol of third grade is completely full for this particular building, but another campus doesn't. So, do we have a child that goes to a different campus even if they live in a zoned area? Um, we're just we're just not there yet. I I'll be honest. I've had some other fish to fry than that at the moment. And we also don't know when that's going to happen. And so, I I apologize. We don't want those classes to be over over student population, oversized necessarily. Um, but that's kind of the situation that we're in at the moment. Like, they are one over in this third grade. Fourth grade is

169the one that's larger. We've got two classes of right now in fifth grade or fourth grade that have 25 and one that has 24. That's as of yesterday when we got another fourth grade student. Are are there I guess like looking at it from my point of view. I'm looking at like do we have inner district transfers that we need to possibly revoke and send back to whatever campus they should be at if they've transferred into Jefferson? Like are we looking at those type of things or do they all live in the I'm just We did do that. But we did transfer earlier in the year to Rodriguez with a smaller class load for first grade at another campus um to satisfy Rodriguez's overload in dual language. But right now we don't have any surplus

170of teachers that would meet that criteria. I mean not surplus of teachers. Yeah. Of class sizes, right? I'm talking about students. if there's an interd district transfer that may be like hey oh for students yes we do have a in district transfer for students um right now it's parent choice um I understand yeah at this point we might need to start saying yeah I think that's and that's what I was referencing is that like we're going to have to develop a protocol of our classes are full on this campus and now it's time to start looking at well we have a vacancy at Vogle or we have we have space at Kenny or we have space at potlon or whatever and So, you're a third grade student that may live across the street from Jefferson,

171but if you're just now enrolling, we don't have third grade space. So, you have to go to a different campus, right? Um, I think that that is easily something that we could start developing and setting up pretty pretty well. We just don't have it in place yet. And we have had other waiverss for our campuses, other campuses. So, it's just kind of tracking that incoming student. Uh, a question. Are the parents parents in these classes that are above are they aware? We have we have to notify them um once it goes above like we have I think 30 days or something like that to notify and to seek a waiver. Is it is it possible to include in in that notification about other campuses that they could possibly transfer their children to? Sure. I'm sure

172we can revise the letter. It's a standard letter. as a parent to know if your child is an overflow classroom and you're driving them to school anyway, but you know the the school that is a five minute drive away. I asked you know that's 18 kids in it. Just about the protocol in general like I actually asked Miss Garrett that when I was there Friday I was like do we have a process of once we're full like we say hey sorry we can't take you at this moment. Um and I just don't think that if one has been developed um we will like we'll get is there even room for another class? Uh they can I know that they can fit at least one more classroom because I asked that question too Friday. I was

173like do you even physically have a classroom to put students in if we get another teacher? Like is that an option? Now that's focused on I want to remind like this waiver is for a third grade classroom. Fourth grade is the one that is really over that we've I've already talked to Maria about possibly adding a teacher there depending on how her interviews work. But you guys get the waiver because the law says we have to take a waiver to you and so it they'll they'll happen periodically throughout the year. Um and it may be because we go from 22 to 23 students which is what happened in this third grade room. And we do want to grow because our enrollment is lower than it was last year. So we like the growth just happens

174if it would happen at the same time at the beginning of the year. And I guess that's my other thing too is I keep hearing that overall enrollments down in the district. So then why are we not shuffling kids around to where if we could have classes of 18 at every third grade campus on the camp in CNC? Wouldn't that be better than having a campus that has 22? You know what I'm saying? Like I think I think it's a bigger issue than just that though. Um because some some buildings are more overwhelmed than others. Kenneck is extremely overwhelmed because they just have that many people who are living in their boundaries because of the apartments and and all of the multi- unit housing that's over there. Uh and so I I also think that

175we're probably not far off from having to have a conversation about redrawing district lines. Not district lines for y'all, redrawing lines of enrollment. Um especially as McQueen comes online next year. uh we're going to have space there and so it may be that we need to pull from some other areas to be able to do that. Um so there there are lots of things that we're going to have to put in motion over the next several weeks or next several months. We just we don't have a solution for this moment with that particular third grade classroom which is why we've got that waiver out there. One of the concerns that I have about approving this waiver is that uh knowing this is the third grade and not the fourth grade is that the board approved

176the fourth grade waiver for 23 students and now we're up to 24 25. We we're approving a waiver for You don't you don't approve. You approve for just over 22. Just over 25. Correct. We have to get a waiver for any classroom fourth grade down that has more than 22 students. Um, so it does not matter. That classroom could have 30 students in it. If it's on a waiver, it's on a waiver. That's one of my concerns as a board. We're approving to say we have no other recourse that correct at this moment, right? We don't know. Well, they're telling us that. What I think Lisa is saying is that we approved last month for a waiver of 22 or more for fourth grade. This month, those classes are at 25. Next month they could

177be a class of 27, but because we approved the waiver of 22, it's never really brought back to the board. So we don't know unless someone reaches out and tells us that. So this class size waiver for third grade at Jefferson is more than 22. Right now they're sitting at 23. Next month they could go to 30. We won't know. They don't have to tell. Yeah, we could we could have the same thing in fifth grade. Like they have 21 students in classes. If we have if we have enough students that move in, you know, three students move in, we're going to have one that's going to be 23. But once we approve the class size waiver, that waiver can go up to whatever number and we don't necessarily know about it. So if that's

178a report that you're asking for, that's a report that can be generated and given to you on a monthly basis, on a weak basis. It's it's not a report that has to be, you know, created. It's already a report that gets generated. It can be added on to the to to the thing. That's not that's not a problem. Yeah. I I mean I know I'm just for my cl you know for clarity across the board. It's not like because I was under the impression to be honest that every time the class size changed. So we approved the waiver for 23 at third grade level. Well, or fourth grade level. Well, now we know that that fourth grade level is at 25, not 24 or 23 what it was a month ago. It's gone up. But

179we didn't really, no one has said anything to us about it. It's not on any type of normal update that we get. So maybe that's something that we actually look at getting on our weekly updates or something. But that's something in the past. We have had it in a in a dashboard form probably remember certain things like that. So that's something that we can request to to come back for sure. And we keep we keep up with it. So that's that's easy. I wouldn't be a difficult thing for us to get to you. It's it's not that big of a deal. I think I think like I said the bigger issue is going to be. Um and I think that as a board you just need to know we are going to have waiverss every

180year and we're going to have a handful of them that happen throughout the year because we're required by law to have them if we get 23 kids in any of those classes. And there's going to be times that we have 23 kids in there without us having any for like warning that it's going to happen. And then sometimes the kids leave and we're back to 20. We could have 22 in all three third grade classrooms at Bogle and have a set of twins that move in. Suddenly we say, "Well, we need two waivers or one waiver and both twins in the same class." And like it's just one of those things that we're going to have to bring you and like you're just I mean I'm not saying you have to approve it, but the

181options are like we hire another teacher, but we're also trying to balance budget deficit at the same token. Like I mean it's it's it's a fine balance which is why we're going to have to develop a process for once we're full in a building like what then happens like okay you're enrolling because you enroll in sigin ISD you don't enroll in a particular campus and as a leadership team I mean we don't want classes that are overcrowded so we do have those conversations regularly to ensure that we're is it time to hire a teacher yet and I think you did mention Dr. leave a demographer sometime bringing a demographer so we can studies for the boundaries maybe not right away but I believe we're getting an updated uh demographer report um there you go so

182that should help once we go to the redrawing the boundary lines yes that should help yeah I don't know if we helped answer your questions or not guys but that's the answers we've got at the moment Madam President, I move to approve the class size exemption waiver. All right. I have a motion from Mr. Dwire and a second from Miss Duncan. Any further discussion? All in favor, raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes 70. All right, moving on to further action items. 10B, approval of the 2025 2026 turnaround plans or TAP and targeted improvement plans or TIP. We love our uh board, you've got those targeted improvement plans. Um that's what I mentioned when I was speaking earlier just about accountability improvement in general. Um you've got those for Sigin High School, Jefferson

183Elementary, Vogle Elementary, Jim Barnes Middle School, and AJB Middle School. Um those are those are presented to you. Um for approval, the state requires that we have a targeted improvement plan. Like I mentioned in my uh presentation, you're going to see a lot of the same information that's on there. The goals that are in there are the goals that they need to meet to be able to get out of the improvement status. Um, but you are going to see similar things when it comes to, excuse me, when it comes to like performance management and milestones. You're going to see similar things on tools to evaluate and implement training for uh for for classroom walkthrough tools, leadership coaching tools. All of those are going to be the same because we've got to standardize and put good

184systems in place across there. Um, also this format is the format that we had it put in for you. Um it's really a spreadsheet that we then have to upload um in ISAM if I'm not mistaken that does not look near this pretty. Um these will end up being posted assuming approve assuming that they are approved tonight. They'll end up being posted on our district website on the campus pages also um so that they are public for the public to be able to see them as well. Madam President, I move for approval of the 2025 2026 turnaround plans the tap and targeted improvement plans tip. All right. I have a motion from Miss Duncan and a second from Mr. Dwire. Any further discussion? Um I I was at first reviewing these I was very concerned

185that they were kind of cookie cutters of each other. Um after Dr. after your presentation just some clarification after your presentation is I don't want to put words in your mouth but do you feel that these campuses all right now have the same fundamental issues that need to be addressed first? Yeah, I would think every campus in the district has some of these issues that need to be addressed because it is systems and its processes being put in place and y'all heard me say that before. We're lacking some systems. We're lacking some processes. Um I do think our principles I think I think our principles I think our staff want good systems and processes in place because that helps guide some things. Um I those targeted improvement plans part of it is also the check

186box that is required by TEA. We have to fill these out. Um they have to be submitted. We actually have to submit them to region 20 before we submit them to TEA. We've already heard back from region 20 that they look great. Get them submitted. So what will happen is assuming that they are approved um they go to TEA and then we will get any feedback on them I think in January on whether they are approved or if there needs to be revisions on them. Um but right now I think they're exactly what we need to be able to to see some movement and accountability. I do and and student outcomes like student achievement because that's really the root. A followup from that is if unfortunately next year we're in a situation where we have

187to complete these reports again the assumption be they would be different next year and not I think you might see some things different I don't think that you would see everything change because some of these correct like you're going to see different goals you're going to see different adjustments on what's expected those things you're just not going to like is it going to be a completely different turnaround plan no or a targeted improvement plan it's going to be pretty similar to what we see now but there would minor changes based based off of what we see. Yes. But if there are any other questions, the recommendation is to approve those targeted improvement plans. Any further discussion? All right. All in favor raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes 70. Moving on to 10

188C. Official ballot to cast votes for the board of directors of the Guadalupi appraisal district for the 2026 through 2029 term and a resolution for the submission. Dr. Lee. uh board, you've got the official ballot there that comes from Guadalupe Appraisal District um for those 26 to 29 term um and the potential resolution that could be submitted uh as part of that. Uh there were four individuals that were nominated by the taxing entities. They're on your ballot there on page 379 of your book. Um as a district, as Sigin ISD, we have 318 total votes. Um you get the opportunity to allocate those votes however you choose. uh none for anyone. 318 for one. Divide them up by four of them. Divide them up by two or three. You can do however you choose to

189do that. I will be honest. I I have no recommendation because it's really y'all's choice on what y'all want to do. And I I don't I don't know any of the candidates personally enough to be able to to offer any any suggestions on any of it. Um but like you have that opportunity to figure out how you want to allocate those 318 votes. Uh, does anybody have a question? First of all, yeah. Uh, somebody can make a motion. We can have some discussion, whatever you like. This one's a little, you know, different. Um, I will tell you that I um called up the um elections office to find out where um everybody was a resident of that is on this list. So, candidate one and three um they both reside in shirt cibilo universal city

190ISD and candidates two and four both uh reside in Sigin ISD. Um, so if that helps you at all, I I just wanted to double check. Madame President, I move that we award all 318 votes to Dr. Alfred Burns for the board of directors for the Guadalupe Appraisal District for 2629 term through a resolution. Second. Okay. I have a a motion from Mr. A and a second for Mr. Dwer. Any discussion? I will. Um I kind of feel like very good candidates and I know that I've heard from others that don't just vote for one, but I think that I'm not splitting the vote splitting that between the two like it have it it is an even number I do believe there is a motion on the floor and we're discussing it so I'm just

191I'm just pointing out with there's some math that we've done already and and everything. So um uh will make it right and so um you can also see the entities and how many votes they get. So we are the third largest um Guadalupe County gets the most then shirt sibilo and then us. So, uh we're one of the sizable uh entities on here. Uh any further discussion? Okay. All in favor raise your right hand. Okay. Uh oppose. Same sign. We're need some help abstensions. Okay. Motion passes. 4 one with two abstensions. Yes. Yes. Um so uh raise your right hand if you're in favor. Okay. So, Dwire, Brendan, get a bright favor and uh Miller is no abstensions are Duncan and Burns. I'll be happy to share why, but I don't think it's appropriate. All

192right. Um any uh board comments or requests? So I have a request if we could add that um updated class size waiver class sizes thing to something we see regularly whether it be the weekly update. I feel like that's a lot though. A weekly update maybe like a bi-weekly update or even like when we get the agenda. We'll get it to you. We'll get it to you fairly like monthly at a minimum, but we'll also start working I had already written down on my thing to start working on like class size protocol like what do we do once we get to a set enrollment. Um I mean that will take us several weeks because we're going to have to think through everything and and and look at policy and make sure that we're not doing

193anything we're not supposed to. But I think the root cause issue for us is that when we have a campus that is overpop populated, what do we do then? Um, and that's what really solves it. Um, but as far as getting you guys class sizes, that's not a problem. We can do that easily on a fairly monthly basis or bi-weekly or whatever. Like we can get that taken care pretty easily. Completely like you'll get that in your report every single time. So, and then I just have one more thing. Um, I meant to talked about it earlier during the board reports, but I was able to uh after my Gualupe appraisal district meeting the other day, I uh went over to McQueeny because they were doing that uh bond oversight committee meeting. And I just

194wanted to say thank you to the following people for their continued support and work with the bond oversight committee. And that would be Kristen Moreno, Pat Tandre, Leon Hutchson's, Sam Erlick, um Kathy and Donnie Biker, Edith Xyoft, uh Pastor Marcus, Laura Rivers, and Steven Shortress. So, just thank you to all of you, all those folks for their hard work with that bond oversight committee and taking their time to continue to help shape and drive what we're doing with our bond. I just have one quick comment about the destruction that's going on in AJ Breezymeister currently. Um I encourage district staff to keep on those people about that. Uh this morning they started tunneling under our brand new sign. Uh they're going to run the pipeline dead center of our brand new sign. Uh so anyways,

195I know you guys will and you're aware of it, but just to make a comment about that. Keep on those guys. Yeah. just as a preparation for you guys. Uh you'll they're there's going to be a manhole every 50 feet because that's what's required by them as part of that easement and there's not going to be a whole lot we can do other than they have to repair it back to the way it was previously. Our language in that particular easement isn't as strong as the language we usually have in city easements, but if I remember that's also like a 2021 easement. I mean, I'm fine with a manhole every 50 ft as long as it's a manhole that's like on Court Street or any of those main roads we drive on. It's not going

196to be a What? Just remember what you have right now is also temporary. Like those are temporary. I hope so because I've heard that before, too. But are we talking like a whole repaving job with nice solid like a manhole level flat? Like that should be the that should be the expectation because that driveway is brand new. And that lane, it's not the parking lot lane. That's the lane that all the parents drive through. We we get it, believe me. And we're going to stay on top of them. Um, like we'll stay on top of it as best that we possibly can. I just like I need y'all to at least understand that like we are very limited on being able to stop anything from happening because of that easement. Um, we'll stay on top

197of them as far as making it the way it needs to be and we'll complain until they just basically tell us no because that's what we do. I give Liz a lot of credit. Um, she has stayed on top of it. Uh, her and her team, they have been looking at it. They have been um, working with them. We've even asked about a complete repaving. We know we're not going to get a complete repaving. Um, but it needs to at least be level and not like giant pumps. Like I I agree with you. Um, we're just going to we're going to have to look at it and see. Just try to stay on top of them. I just want to echo those comments because I did drive out there Saturday and took a real good

198look at the pictures. The main thing is they can bring it back to the original grading because there is going to be some low spots where some puddles will be developed and you know what puddles lead to it'll start tearing up pavement. So at minimum, you know, there's some areas where the the water, I guess, runs towards College Street, not hanging around in the I had a comment not related to AJ. Um is I just want to say uh this week is I think William and I it is our first anniversary on the board. I think it was one year ago. Um any I just want to thank uh fellow board members is that it has been a ride for the last year. Um, but I am really excited about where we are as a

199district um, this year versus last year and um, anyway, just appreciate everyone and everyone's opinions and us all working together for Thank you. I I wanted to point out that our next regular board meeting is January 20th. Nancy, our next board meeting is January 20th, our next regular board meeting. So, we won't see you in December, which is a change from previous years. So, I just want to encourage everybody to take advantage of all the fine arts and and parades and banquetss and things that you're invited to. The holidays are a wonderful time to go out and see our students and um there's just a lot of stuff to do. And don't forget that you have a trustee reading challenge going on. So, uh, go read some holiday holiday books to your, uh, to your

200students. Thank you. I have a motion for Miss Duncan and a second for Miss Miller. All in favor, raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes 70. Good night and happy holidays.