001we didn't ask we would like to read the pledge okay and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all on the texas flag i pledge allegiance to the texas midway independent school district board mission statement telus midway independent school district educates every student to be a lifelong learner a person of integrity and a positive contributor to society thank you jim our first item is public comment section the border item the next item on the agenda is public comment before we begin i will remind audience members of the board's procedures for handling public comments as found in board policy bed local because this is not a regular board meeting public comments are available to members of the public who wish to address a meeting item are
002limited to discussion of items on tonight's agenda anyone who wants to speak during public college must sign in prior to the start of the meeting and list the agenda in the agenda item subject they want to discuss each public comment speaker will be allowed three minutes to address the board any public testimony speaker speaker who is speaking to a trans translator will receive five minutes to address the board if you have signed up for an item not on tonight's agenda or being spoken of on a non-agenda item you will be disqualified from speaking at tonight's meeting and may speak at the next regular board meeting or anytime the subject is listed on a board meeting agenda the public addressing tonight's agenda items allows all speakers who have signed up before the start of the meeting
003to address the board regarding an item on tonight's agenda please keep your comments or criticism civil and courteous please also avoid using profanity and refrain from making personal attacks on others during your opportunity to speak last we ask that you do not discuss students who are not your own child yelling inappropriate uncivil or discriminatory comments will not be permitted i also caution you that your public comments should not complain about individual school employees by name or position or then your own or anyone other than your own child identifies students pursuant to texas government code 551.074 551.0821 and 551.082 as presiding officer an obligated to determine whether a person addressed in the world has attempted to administer debate resolve any complaints or grievances about which they want to address the board that involve district officers or
004employees in the event your comment in the judgment of the presiding officer constitutes a complaint or charge against any employee or officer it may be necessary for me to interrupt and ask you to stop and direct you to proceed with the school's district's formal grievance proceedings or have the item heard in an executive session depending on the nature of the complaint if a speaker is seeking board resolution of a specific complaint that concern should be addressed to the district's grievance process which can be found online including policies dgba fng and gf grievance forms can be obtained at any campus administration officer in the central administration office thank you and our first speaker is mia mccall my name is mia mccall and today i'm going to be speaking on item one so i was wondering if
005y'all could include a golf simulator into the budget it's only point zero zero one percent of the budget so um yes i would really appreciate that i've been playing golf since i was a freshman in high school i'm currently gonna be a senior when school starts back up i just got back from my golf tournament and i did pretty good i shot in 82 so okay but um i was talking to the ray coach there as we were scoring and she was telling me how they're putting a putting green in their school and i think that's pretty cool too but i'm just focused on the golf simulator right now but um i was also talking to the vets coach and she was saying how they also have a golf simulator and that like most of
006the schools including vets and ray both have um they have a golf class so basically like their eighth period they go to gable's honor or whatever course they use is their home course and they practice there until like as like a period you know like a golf class and tm does not have a golf class or any tools at all to like fund and i just i really do want a golf simulator and i play an scpga like i practice all the time for golf and i just feel like it would be more of a fair chance for me to have that practice because during like daylight savings and stuff i barely get any time to play or practice at all so and like very cold and rainy days those are those are really bad
007and it would just be amazing to just stay inside and practice golf here at the school or whatever um uh i think last year or this year at the very beginning uh we have a membership at river hills that's our home course but i don't think that the school board like funded it in time so we couldn't like practice there i had to play like as a member there because we didn't like put the money in in time for golf so um if i could consider that .001 percent that would just that would be amazing also golf has gone to st or at least qualified for state for the past 10 years like if y'all don't already know you'll probably know that though but yes so yes if y'all could consider a golf scenario they
008are only ten thousand dollars yeah thank you hi everyone i want to thank y'all for taking the agenda item number one into consideration this evening as you know i'm president of the tuloso midway all sports booster club and items like the agenda item number one are what we are all about we are full of parents of athletes we are former athletes ourselves we are people who are from here who love this school and want to make sure that we are as well represented on the field by our children by the surroundings around us you know one of the parents put it very well when she said that the outside should match the inside we have great student athletes who are becoming well-rounded employable young adults and that's not just because of us as their parents
009it's because of the coaches it's because of the teachers it's because of those of you who support them and proving a proposal like this is basically putting the black velvet underneath the diamond that is our student athletes this isn't just about football this is about track this is about our cheerleaders having a beautiful and safe place to tumble this is about outside vendors coming in to use our field and it's not even about the revenue i could go on about the residual effects of the revenue that something like this could affect but it's mostly what matters is the feeling of pride that our student athletes will have when they walk on to that field whether they're competing in track or whether they're in soccer playoffs or if it's another team that has borrowed our field
010to use for their playoffs all of that is just positive things and that's what we at the booster club have been doing since our inception and we're going to continue to do i hope that you seriously consider this proposal to the ben to the budget um and even if it doesn't pass we're going to keep doing what we do it's now that we have this great sense of community we're going to keep building on it what you've seen so far from the booster club is just the beginning if any of y'all were able to go to our spirit showcase last thursday night i know our superintendent was there mr san diego mr benavidez was there there was a tremendous sense of community where people are ready to get back that warrior and cherokee spirit and
011this new stadium all of these updates could really serve as a beacon so when people who live away or people even that are here that aren't able to make these events come for homecoming it's going to be really like a homecoming they're going to feel that sense of community and pride in toloso midway that i feel in my own alma mater that's all i want for my children and all of my children's friends so i just asked on behalf of the toloso midway all sports booster club to seriously consider this budget proposal and if anything else do it for the kids my my oldest is a senior he won't be able to see this but it will be standing for generations because of what you choose to do today thank you now we move into
012discussion action items discussing considered budget amendments to support athletic facility improvements mr mcnair mr president members of the board i'm going to give you two handouts one is a memo from our chief financial officer and the other memo the other document is some history behind our fund balance and if i could read this this is from our chief financial officer phillip carroll reducing the unrestricted general fund balance 5.5 million will not adversely affect the district's first rating it is estimated that the reduced fund balance will be approximately 4.5 months of general fund operating expenditures meaning that will it will be reduced currently it's 20 million it'll be reduced to 15 million 468 544 and that exceeds almost doubles the recommended fund balance the other piece of information that i'll also read so that our people
013can get a sense of where we're at in school years 1415 we had a fund balance of 9 million 826 66 261. in 1516 it was 7 million 97. in 1617 it was 8 million 999 019 in 1718 it was 8 million 386 875. in 1819 it was 15 million 445. in nineteen twenty it was sixteen million nine twenty two three fifty five and currently it is at twenty million nine sixty eight five forty four we have a master plan initiative that we have begun to roll out and it consists of short-term and long-term facility improvements the short-term nature is items such as this that would significantly improve the stadium we're not talking about a completely new stadium what we're talking about is artificial turf track scoreboard fencing new lighting new press box and to
014bring our bleachers up to where they're ada compatible currently someone in a wheelchair cannot turn the corner to sit in the bleachers they'll also be funds to do some minor renovations to whether it be a golf simulator as mia has proposed and and i have to say my first time ever in tmisd mia found me and she knew i was the lone finalist and she was lobbying for that golf simulator at that time very very very impressive there's also some improvements that i feel we can do to tennis swimming baseball and softball not at the magnitude of what we're looking at the stadium but this would give us an opportunity to do some things that we currently haven't done the long-term issues are with a bond we had two really good productive focus group meetings
015this morning and afternoon actually they were all this afternoon on an early childhood center and improving our fine arts band choir theater particularly at the feeder schools so this is part of that plan to bring our facilities up to the standards that i think you want as well as what the community um wants so having said that um i'll entertain any questions one question what is the timeline do you have any idea what the timeline will be well in really only conversations with one vendor and our athletic director we would play the football season and depending on how long that is we would start immediately turning dirt and doing the track we may have to we will have to play soccer in an alternative site and we will probably have to have a spring track
016season at one of our neighbors facilities because i don't think it can be done by track season what's important is that we get safety done out there because that that track is not safe right now at all for our athletes because it was done several years ago not i know it's been a long time and it does need improvements and i know the stadium does as well they've got a place for the wheelchairs to move into but like you say getting up the ramp to turn that corner with somebody in the wheelchair you can't really do it especially if someone's in a powered one it's almost impossible because that needs to be done we need to take care of everyone that comes to the game that wants to come to the games you know i'm
017i'm all for that because it's vitally important and upgrades and everything and what i'm glad to hear is our fund balance is very good but i'm also glad to hear it won't affect school first nicer which is which is something that we we're proud of around here well you're you're at 100 yes that's it's the highest you can get yeah we don't want to go anywhere but i'm glad that it isn't going to affect that i'm thankful that the seniors are going to be able to fight on the football field this last year and have a homecoming so thank you for considering that they weren't displaced to i don't think we can do that that i think our seniors whether they're cheer or band or football uh deserve a normal yes especially since i'm coming
018out of cobit yes these seniors were sophomores and pandemic kids [Music] my only question would be this and i didn't say it publicly because you know faster a million times already the 2 million problem the existing scoreboard right now it's pathetic we're getting it so that would be going up first for this season or what do we do for this season and you know that's a really good question i really hadn't thought uh if if we have the uh revenue the funds which if you approve them tonight we will um and then we decide the next step that you will decide is what procurement method do you want the district to follow do you want to do a buy board which is really fast and really quick do you want to do seal bid proposals
019which take a little longer do you want to be do you want to do what they call design build where that's a two-step process where you qualify and then you select those conversations will come next month or sooner but i will if this is approved tonight i will reach out to see if we can move on a portion of that which would be a scoreboard because not being in the construction business i don't see why we couldn't i was i'm at least at least something i mean we're going to have a home since we are going to allow the the senior home here i mean you know which is great i mean every time i'm like everyone else i don't want anybody to miss out on their senior year but my my thing is though
020i mean i wouldn't want to invest money in the repairs of this one and then and then turn around and get the new one and i agree you know because otherwise the extra money is gone and no one gets anything that's the same scoreboard i had when i was on the here i mean i'm just going to be honest with you the exact same scoreboard [Music] there is a vendor that does everything with which is on the by board which i've used in the past i don't know if there's a vendor on the buy board that just does scoreboards but i will find out okay but even the one you know he could probably come come through with just that scoreboard first and he's on the buy board already that that would eliminate a lot
021of time it would yeah that would be that we might be able to get it for our seniors this year because that that would be and most of the games i i went to all the games and my first quarter people can tell you it looked like a christmas tree yeah it didn't work well it [Music] [Applause] i don't think so i've um and as they're moving it oh no they're gonna move it to the other side that's the only way but even at that it's too far away but what what we can do is i can research it and then figure out what your desire is regarding the procurement and then if it is the by board we can bring the vendor in and we can ask questions that you want answered and and
022someone would i know my skill set uh it's not scoreboard construction uh and so we'll get someone that can't answer answer those for you maybe the next movement yes yes and how about the pa system with that yeah the kid with the kids the pa system is also in the scope of work okay and that's actually every facility out there that doesn't have a working pa i'll tell system what if they could fix the school board and the pa system for the beginning of this year yes i mean that would be great because that would be that's huge you can you can't understand a word there i've never been to a football player with the speaker i don't and that's that's been one of the things not only the scoreboard you know the twenty-five all
023of it it's amazing that as many games as i've coached to not coach the game here it's bizarre but it's but i haven't been on our schedule like everybody said if we can get that school board and the pa system working that that's that shows the public that you're exactly right it shows everybody that we're going in the right direction and we've got to bring tea and pride back and that's going to help anybody understand why it's nice to understand what they're saying yeah particularly when it's your kid exactly so any other questions comments please do you have any recommendations i do and it's in red just like my glasses it is the administration's recommendation that the board approved the 5.5 million budget amendment for tolosa midway isd warrior stadium and additional athletic improvements thank
024you mr verminty is there a motion to have the motion been said the board approved the 5.5 million budget amendment for tmisd stadium and additional athletic improvements okay any other comments questions let's do it okay all those in favor now holds [Music] congratulations coaches and educators and everybody i mean you're going to get your simulator i don't know i'm just saying [Laughter] if not for you he was trying to leave looks like i mean you know i mean the fund balance in particular there were several years there that uh there were all the verge of doing the deficit pledges here but some certain things but this is looking much better in the other circumstances and growth and everything which has made it possible and this is to let everybody know that we're going to be
025going in the right direction along with everything else that's in the works and everything especially for our district and the main thing is our kids and staff where everybody would be proud thank you all right well when you're a good stewards of your money you can do good things exactly very true thank you very much and now we've gone to discuss and consider approval of legal services contract with law firm hello j cruz and associates llc mr president members of the board i've been associated in a professional capacity with mr cruz and his firm for over a decade um he not only is astute with school education law but what i really take advantage of is it's like we're his only client which you just don't see that in a large firm this relationship that
026i'm asking you to prove tonight is on an at-will basis meaning that we do not have to use him exclusively but when i want to use him for particular issues then you have approved that which is in our policy for you to do um so i'd like to ask mr cruz to come up and say a few words on on his behalf sure chris can we get the parsley yes so very nice to meet you my name is juan cruz i am originally from laredo i have offices in san antonio as well and i'm very particularly fun to maybe meet a future associate of my office here tonight impressive right yes yes yes yes um i'm just going to tell you and i'm proud to introduce my firm i can just take it from here
027just real quick a little bit of background about my firm um first of all i was a former classroom teacher became before i became a school attorney uh come from a family of educators i think school laws was kind of in my blood uh graduated from uh law and then have been practicing school law for 27 years um we at the firm have to be remaining in contact with several legal issues that affect public schools entities across the state and really across the nation altogether and you see some of them here listed for you they're hot button issues and i think now more than ever uh in terms of school law school district school boards are in the forefront of the nightly news so i think for that reason you got to know what you're
028doing and be able to kind of talk and counsel clients whether it's a board or administrators about what to do and how to handle certain situations and these are some of the hot topics that are out there cyber attacks critical race theory pulling the books from school libraries and the new you know issues that came with abandonment of employment contracts which was basically um enacted in effect this march of 2022 and what we do is basically provide a lot of legal training ask the school law firm these are the issues and we're a full service firm right from anything to from special education to what you talked about a little bit tonight construction contracts bidding procedures you know and i know that for many school entities you want to get your projects done as fast
029as possible we will try to manage and help you out as best as we can but always realize that you know negotiations can sometimes be protracted depending upon the party that you're negotiating with we're available i think covet has taught us to basically be accessible either in person by phone or via video conference i wish that the open meetings act would have remained like we had it during the times of kobe to be able to meet video conference but those days are somewhat gone and uh i think one of the things is that you know not only are we uh available we are actually uh you know been doing this for a number of years uh had the strong relationship with mr van metry over at fremont and three rsvs though are capable of handling
030issues as they percolate on a day-to-day basis the training components are something that we and right now is really really heavy with training especially school safety legal training that i'm doing one in el paso one friday it's a three-hour session there's a lot of stuff that needs to be and i think what i tell people is listen prior to walden what was going on is that we did have a lot of legislation in 2019 about school safety but then cope it happened so all of those things were put to the to put to the side right now you know all of these lists that ta has put out plus a lot of other things that chapter 37 provides we're putting that in front of our clients to say you got to take care of it
031and we really have a very short quick timeline to get it done um so communication is obviously it doesn't really matter where we're at anymore because you have you know the world wide web at your fingertips through an iphone or whatever else maybe a tablet this is our client list and i put in red basically these school districts around this area that we represent including mathis pretty much drops down skidmore tienet and taft isd uh but as you see you know our clients kind of are all over the state of texas you know as far as midland um and what i'm uh very you know proud to say is that we are kind of in the forefront of a lot of uh decisions with respect to public entities the first one uh that is there
032for your review is the united independence greg abbott and that was about you know masks because as you know the government took a certain stance that some public bodies did not wanted to enforce masks so we had to litigate that issue um hospital 1669 is something that i fought for i wrote it i testified twice before the texas legislature and in short basically cheer complaints dance complaints debate issues those are important issues but we are a body of public school districts that should focus on academics so this law that was passed basically allows school boards to delegate to the administration complaints arising out of extracurricular activities will be basically handled by the administration and not take up the board's time that is permissive but it is there and something that uh you know quite unfortunately
033i had to litigate against a couple of parents that filed 75 extracurricular complaints in one year in one of my school districts which gave me the kind of i knew that something needs to be changed so this is what i fought for and i'm glad that it passed signed by the governor uh the harris county principal district that was we also do work for the texas legal assistance fund and we were hired to basically file an amicus brief which was basically a friendly brief to the court and that was ruled in favor of the appraisal district which now the texas supreme court ruled that stored gas is subject to taxation which is basically more money in uh public entities pockets and last but not least is the case that i basically handled and argued before
034the texas supreme court i'm over for clint independent school district and long story short that holding basically says if you want to sue a public school district in the state of texas you have to exhaust your administrative remedies which is basically dgba fng or gf local before you go for further into the courthouse we presently serve as external governance council for tea a position that i am very proud of because you know have been raised in south texas i think that that uh contract could have been given to any big time law firm from dallas houston tyler wherever the case may be and we're fortunate that we've been representing and working with the governance division what we do with the governance division is basically when you have a poor performing school board and ta takes
035them over then we counsel the governance division on how to go about certain issues that arise in public entities across the state registered provider for ta to basically give training to school boards open meetings act training by the ag's office as well we're registered for them we're members of tasby and nsba council school attorneys uh we represent a number of insurance companies that basically you know litigate in favor of school districts across the state of texas so our promise is basically to keep our clients interests first and at the forefront to make sure that your interests are met uh so long as they're you know in compliance with the law and real quick i'm gonna skip over myself just you know my partner at the law firm is sonia garcia she is also from u
036of h born and raised she put sonia focuses a lot of student rights and special ed lisa paul has been practicing a year more than i have she's an associate attorney she comes from the texas a m system having worked inside the texas a m general counsel's office and now uh part of our law firm as well has a lot of contract experience uh mario perez is another attorney with our firm that has been practicing basically on general education topics texas tech undergrad and law school rick pinovitis does a lot of special ed and labor and employment law university of incarnate word in st mary's alleria is from uh laredo as well but she does uh you know studied at loyola university both undergrad and law school michelle barton is in our san antonio office
037with our biggest case is being handled by michelle we have been uh hired by taft isd to represent we're going to trial in october it's been a trial it was been a craze that we've been handling for 33 years long story short the hurricane blew in in 2017 and in 2019 and really the facilities at taft isd are still not the same if not in worse condition so um you know we're you know litigating against 15 other attorneys in that case andrew is also in our sanctuary office handles a lot of civil litigation at business law for us and stephanie is in now in austin uh cornell undergrad and ut law and does a lot of open records and special ed in addition to um the um general contract law as well so that's kind
038of you know what we have i did put our contract there it's a two-page contract and it's like mr van metro stated it's an ad will it says basically that at any time either my law firm or this board decides to move in a different direction uh under the state bar rules basically you cannot have a contract with a lawyer for an extended period of time because it's your your entity it's the same as if you're going through a divorce or personal injuries also if the attorney is not doing what you would need for him or her to do then you have to right to be able to get out of that situation that's all i have thank you mr cruz that's very impressive thank you very much any questions hi mr cruz mr cruz
039my name is ben benoit i didn't have the pleasure meeting you i didn't go to san antonio yes uh but thank you for the invite okay uh my question is i pretty much know how the attorneys work like for the district right you protect the district at all costs whatever and that's my question if the district has done something wrong reference to a parent or a special needs kid or something would you um how would you handle that would you tell mr matry hey you know what you guys did it wrong and we got to fix the problem or would you just say you know what we're going to go to bat and just you know make sure that they don't have any claim against the school district or or you know that's a good
040question to bring me this i think the one of the chief things for a school attorney is to basically prevent litigation be proactive litigation and i'll be perfectly honest with you it's a rich man's sport it is very expensive to litigate and if you have not litigated cases you don't know uh what you're you know would a lot of attorneys have never been into inside a courtroom to be able to say that i've been inside a courtroom and personally inside a lot of cases cases are going to materialize in two or three years so why do you want to put themselves now mind you you got to also be reasonable so for example we have a case out of mathis right now it's a type of personal injury to excessive force case we do think
041that maybe there's some exposure of liability on behalf of the school district we have offered a certain sub money but we have six potential plaintiffs you know some some parents students that want very through their attorney want a lot more money what we do is just look at your verdicts around here you know if they do go to court are they going to get this amount of money um we think we're being fair and reasonable but at the end of the day the parents also have to meet us where you know the insurance company also believes it's a fair and reasonable settlement so i think that that's kind of my answer to your question that you know we will do our best to prevent litigation uh so long as we're dealing with a reasonable member
042on the other side whether it's a parent student vendor employee and sometimes they just the parents just want the school district to sometimes say hey we were wrong yeah you know and there's been instances of that and and uh but there's some school districts and there's some attorneys that represent school districts that say hey you know what you know don't even talk to them don't even try to fix it let's just go at them and and i don't want that for our district i don't want that for our community right i want attorneys that can come in and tell mr matt matry you know what well you know whether there's whether we're in the right or wrong one you know there to be communication and the attorneys to at least look at a solution before
043we we fight the parents you know i mean a lot of times we obviously work with the superintendent but it really emanates at the campus so we talk to the principals and see like how can we reasonably resolve this uh again it has to be a meeting of the minds right for two people to kind of whether it's an important a lot of what we deal with is a lot of it is employment matters to be honest um so but you saw some of those cases that can also emanate from a campus issue all right thank you because i do also want to thank you for the invitation until i said david unfortunately i did not make it um or are we when i get some of the communications you've had with uh mr nathan
044are you being added on to the other number of lawyers that we have or are you replacing them no it's an add-on in order for you to sever the relationship with an attorney you would have to terminate you would have to have an agenda item to terminate the other law firms or i'm not sure whoever you may have so this is an add-on it's not a termination of any particular firm mr could you would you know well just off the top of your head how many words different law firms we have as a district i only know of one we have two we have the beakers we're special and then we use walsh anderson okay you have the hoop especially oh yeah then i know of okay so we don't use that lady at austin
045anymore okay so how's it work any other questions comments mr bill mr president it is the administration's recommendation that the board approved the legal services contract with the law firm of j cruz and associates llc and him as seconded in other comments questions can we look into doing a replacement or the terminator or our agreement yes i will visit with the board president and then if there's you have asked for that if you can send me that in writing it'll it'll be placed as an agenda item i'll say it now okay any other comments or questions all those in favor as the post mushroom kiss thank you i really appreciate that and i i don't think you'll regret uh once you see the professionalism of juan and his team they're they're top-notch okay now this
046is the board portion of it uh debris from tasbee and that's the texas school board summer leadership institute [Music] one of the topics that i really was very very interested in had to do with i realized my lack of knowledge is special that was probably horrendously below what i found out that day um but i did i did step into the class and i did not type in the name of this photo i'm so sorry but basically it was just the uh it was the providing of the of the counseling service for mental health that came up came in contact with these students apparently across the state um there's only been like it's very i don't want to use the 0.01 percent has already been used but you know it's really low it's like maybe
047a half a percent or two i can't remember what it was but um but there has been very so there's been a very lack of understanding what our special needs students are our their representation on on mental health has really been come to find out that we even in just in region two we don't even have enough caseworkers and that that was very alarming to me because you know it's i'm sure it's hard enough to be a parent of a special need a student and then to find out that they have very few avenues to turn to so i'm assuming mr cruz is so busy most of the time but you know so i i thought that that was an interesting fact that that um it's it's taken the education system some time to bridge
048that gap but it seems like they've got a plan in effect and i was really glad to hear that because you know we need to we need to represent all of our students as board members and it was a very it was a very eye-opening class i was very surprised like i said how little i knew about it after so many years but that's what leadership is for so i mean i was glad to sit in on that not a bad thing about it is it you know don't graduate enough teachers there's not enough of them which want to go into the special education field which is sad there's ones that are qualified for it and we need more of them it's just somehow getting it across to them that their services are so vitally
049needed many sessions indicate there's a shortage of special ideas yes there's a shortage it's just like of all teachers but it's a special ed because i wouldn't have been obsessions and it was they talked about that that was one of the things that they brought up and they don't have it especially rural communities which is very unfortunate because i know when i taught it bank they had a co-op between all the little schools like well little seed orange grove all of them around there with bank city that's some way they could do it because they could they just couldn't get the special need people it's unfortunate i agree there's a shortage up there they'd like to be next i'll speak i think we all could agree that we're there friday morning with dr adolf brown
050his motivated kind of rebooted us for the morning i believe but if you're if you're youtubers i challenge you to just go to doctors well tagging on to what jan said that was probably the highlight of the conference for me that was having that man stand up and speak about judging kids um just on on their on their parents or or their academics uh that we don't know what's in their backpack we don't know what their what's going on in their lives when they before they come to school and after they leave school there there's something going on we have to try to reach out and get in touch with those students and find out what it is that is really there in their backpack as the as the dr brown said he it was
051a very motivational um uh speech presentation that he did and i i encourage you like jan said go on on youtube and listen to his his um his presentations he is very uh he's very passionate about uh about kids and about um finding out what really is happening in the students life because we judge them by how they they appear to us and that's not necessarily the case in their lives they just bring themselves with their backpack of whatever's in there and um and they just go with flow they don't necessarily um show what it is that they're really dealing with so i i do encourage you like jan said go on youtube and watch this guy he's he's phenomenal he is i i hope i'm not doing this from anybody else but he had
052the cornrow dreadlock thing sticking out of his head had a batman this baggy shirt on the backpack making pants and funny stuff and he says i walked around out here for 20 minutes and nobody said anything to me you know i'm going to okay but then he told us the story where was it it was in california was it san francisco and he was supposed to go in to give a speech to a bunch of individuals a big some auditorium stadium they had over there the security and police arrested took him detained him and took him off into another room to find out and finally the person that was sponsoring him had to come get him out that was just part of the way he looked when he came in you know because after he
053got in further into his uh presentation off came the baggy shirts and the pants and then off with the hair and everything he had a suit or something on underneath it he says this is this is you know he says this is what i looked like when i went to school but this is what i look like now yeah one of the things you said is stop where you've been but that's where you're going that's right it's a backpack some of them say some of them are very heavy and some of them aren't everybody's got what we don't do anybody else i went to one um a little different it was about healthcare and self-funding and it was raymondville isd superintendent worked his way through self-funding healthcare zero co-pay zero deductible and um zero premiums
054and cut deals with all the local doctors in town said hey you see our teachers i'll pay you write a check out of the office over there and uh he got it got it done and uh he fought the state and then the state now has where you can get out of teacher um insurance which y'all all know what teacher insurance is like you can knock down at the tears get out to your trs but you still get your teacher retirement insurance that's different whole thing so but it was very interesting and the way he did it was really neat he uh made it sound easy i don't know the whole plan was only 356 dollars and the conversation started in a parking lot between the custodian and the bus driver because they didn't make
055enough money to even afford health insurance because a lot of the other non-teachers weren't getting insurance and if you have insurance you go to the doc you can't you know you can't go to the doctor because you have to pay five thousand dollars for your deductible and so there you go you don't get anything done but this was really neat uh because the office over there was right to check directly to the doctors and so they got paid quickly they were happy and he was and he also said that he would give classes or something or tell people how to do it he has a website everything and he was he was very helpful with that he said he would come to any board overview it's something that's think about i mean we can't do
056that this year we already signed a teacher but just think about that anybody else so i went to some different kinds of classes i went to some leadership classes some governance classes and um some officer classes and um it was a really good leadership conference i can say that i learned a whole lot i don't know you can ask mr van matrey i was kind of walking around a little hot-headed very excited about coming home and working hard to get the governance of our board um back in shape um and we have a lot to do on this board um so anyways um we are um a team of eight and um i just kind of want to educate the public because i was educated quite a bit and i don't think the public is
057completely educated on what the job of a board member is and how um they are not a board member when they're by themselves you have to be in a quorum to have any power at all as a board member and i think it's real important that the public understands that and knows that and you do not have power within the district by yourself and we only employ one individual in the district we employ no other employees in the district we only employ a mr van matriar whoever sits in that seat so um we're his bosses and i'm fortunate actually i have eight bosses board members can't tell employees what to do in the district we have a superintendent that's in charge and we're not educators and we don't hold certificates for education so we don't
058need to be telling you or them or anybody else within the district how to do their job because you are all educated and certified to do their jobs so um that's another thing and that i learned i learned that all board members should respect each other in open session and closed session and um i will say that the governance of this board has a lot of work to do and when it comes to that and i think it's real important that each person that sits up here needs to remember that we're representing um tmisd and at that same time we have people that are watching us as leaders and it isn't very important that we are showing them how to be a leader and that comes with the governance that the community places for you
059when they put you in these seats um i'm almost done no too much longer and i think it's real important that you shouldn't run for the board or sit on this board with personal agendas and especially not any agendas for your own kids you need to sit here for all kids not specific organizations you sit here for all kids every single kid deserves the same thing um board members don't make promises to people in the public they can't fulfill those promises unless you're a part of the team of eight it was a breath of fresh air when i was reminded that tmisd needs to refocus on success and student outcomes and not individual adult agendas and i'm going to sit here and tell you that i'm sick of it and we're not going to continue
060forward like that anymore we are going to take government's classes we are going to get someone to come in here and help us the focus has to go back on students and their success and their outcomes we had approximately 42 board meetings this year we have 12 months in a year do you think that that was all focused on student outcome go back and read the agendas it wasn't it was adult agendas and we have to get back together as a team of eight and help this school district move forward well i gotta call point of order that that was not in san antonio i was yes it was they didn't say that when we had 42 board meetings i called that parent found out how many board meetings we had i'm just going to
061show that the governance has not been under control in this this boardroom and this re this conference reiterated how board members should uphold good ethics and follow board operating procedures so that the business of the school can continue to make tm isd better that's what i got out of it and it was very good governance and it was very good leadership and how a school board should function is there anyone else i'll kind of go along with what kim was saying because i went to a lot of sessions that dealt with team building team of eight board focus and everything and i there's one particular thing that i came away from it is a team of eight it's the seven board members and the superintendent that established the leadership for the district for it to
062all go where it can be going down through the system so that everyone can see it and see the importance of it but the one thing that i the biggest part of it was that 75 percent of board agendas should be student focused and in the past some of ours have not been that 75 percent of student focus and that's one of the things is part of the governance part that we need to get back to there's a lot of things that have to be dealt with otherwise you know budgets that can deals with students everything else you know it all has to deal with students but we have to stay focused on all of the kids every one of them from pre-k all the way to the seniors and everything in between everything and
063all the kids are our main focus since i've been on the board that has been my main focus but they brought that up and i'm going wow i started thinking backs and 75 percent student focus the other part of it was is during the portion of helping to build that 75 percent focus was the board agenda item should be tied to district goals in other words if it is an agenda item where does it fall within the goals no and that was one of the things that they talked about it helps to build the governance because people can see not only we as board members but the public can see that we set these goals and yet we are going back we're taking that governance part of it we're building on those goals and the
064thing was is team building is vital because i went to one session and they had all these board members from this one particular district and they're all up there talking about what they've done where they've been what they've gone through and everything like that him one board member he was sitting up here you know you know i didn't i came home with the wrong idea you got changed now i'm re i'm with the rest of the team and they all kind of looked at him and left yeah you were kind of tough on this weren't you he says i apologize i have my head in the wrong place you know and i'm sitting there going and he was up there presenting with them i mean they're all getting along and that that's that's the way
065the board needs to be and it was amazing that they had board functions social functions where they all got together and just talked about family what they did in their life what was going on didn't talk about school business and we were all sitting there listening finally asked the question well okay y'all did all these social events and y'all have people doing different things and going to different events and everything else they come back and you know talk about it more meetings and says well i can kind of see what it's doing but what's your main focus it's a team building we've got to know each other and what our strengths and weaknesses are yeah we might have differences opinions but we can discuss them like adults you can agree to this if you disagree
066that's right yeah agree to disagree whenever you disagree i'm becoming almost a year and that's what i came here because i don't see that the board works together for the community i've been living 12 years here and i've been trying to help others i know i spoke them i'm sorry i appreciate that but now that would have been a different comment section but it was all very interesting like kim said it was a very powerful tasby leadership you know because we had one year we didn't have it and it wasn't a very big one last year but this year they had the good speakers had good presentations and most of it was much like what it was in galveston there was a lot of stuff it was not only board focused but it was getting
067more to focus on governance and concentrating on kids and the well-being of kids and everything which is good as you know we do have lone star governance that's coming up i'm waiting for a response from tea that's going to assign us a coach that will be two days of very intensive training regarding student outcomes one of the first thing they will ask us is for miss castillo to send them a year's worth of board agendas and then they will take those board agendas and they will determine based on and i believe it is 75 percent how much of your time are we taking that aren't directly related to student outcomes well those board agendas show who called for the special board meeting i'm not sure what uh documentation we have other than um i've gone
068through it twice and as in in those districts i was the one that crafted the agenda and it was embarrassing to me that there were so many agenda items that i had put on the agenda that weren't directly related to student outcomes it was very aha for me so aside from the annual team of eight training that we will do we have that coming up i'm frankly i'm surprised i haven't heard anything from the agency because they did get back with me uh fairly quickly but the agency doesn't work with the speed that i would want but that's maybe with one working for team he can help that i don't know that training is very needed and cannot come soon enough in my perspective we're going to do it fasbe has theirs as well that
069was that stat saturday session that we went to that they gave us wrong code for that's right and they did anyway that was all about the stuff legislator and they have one on their own past behalf when it's a government study okay i have one more real quick paul i went to one the school down in the valley and they had a couple different schools they had 24 school board members so and somehow they all got along i don't know they had them all lined up in the front they had 17 of them show up there and it was pretty impressive to see because it was like three or four different schools they were all under one uh i can't find the name of the school system but it was really neat yeah and they
070said they're the only one in the country that has this many school board members they're exercised all by themselves to the state of texas several magnets and those whole school systems and everything it was interesting to hear them all and and half of them get voted in and the other half are appointed in that that was weird pointed by your county judge that's pretty interesting i met one of those war members is there anyone else okay if not we'll move on discuss and consider approval of positions eligible to receive non-chapter 21 contracts mr president members of the board we have a instructional director of technology and digital learning that i'm going to be discussing that individual if you approve this and she does not currently have an educator certificate but i've worked with her for
07120 years i worked with her and freer as in a similar position as this when i went to senton to be their superintendent she went with me and she's been there ever since and now she wants to come to run our technology and instructional digital leadership in tolosa midway isd she's phenomenal and in order for you to consider her you have to approve this agenda item [Music] would she be replacing someone or we had a retirement okay because what you're requesting is all this right here is this what you're not just one the director of technology yes that is correct every time that we update the list we have to bring it to the board a citizen policy and we're just simply asking that you consider the addition of that one position which is the
072director of technology and digital learning all of the rest you've already have yeah we had all those one of the best i just bring it to you for an update i i just want to make sure to clarify that's because you know just one just one okay and that's your recommendation yes well i have it ms castillo has it in red for me so let me let me do this it is the administration's recommendation that the board approve the position listed as those who are eligible to receive a non-chapter 21 contract thank you dan okay any comments or questions good replacement outstanding any other questions comments and all those in favor was the post motion case 730 thank you very much the board will convene and close meeting is authorized by texas open meeting act
073texas government code chapter 551 for possible discussion regarding duties responsibilities and possible sanction the board member mr ben benavidez and it is 8 10 p.m on the 11th of july 2022 it's 9 19 p.m april 11 2022 about an open test again there is no action to be taken from this closed session item however we appreciate you staying around but we are going to go right back into playstation because we have some positions to hire so we appreciate you waiting around and everything but there will be no action from our last closed session item okay the board will convene the enclosed meeting is authorized by the texas open meeting act texas government code 554 before possible discussion called the certified personnel discussing further bond chapter 21 contracts director of technology industry learning discuss employment and
074certified administrators academic peers director of regular instruction assistant director of curriculum and instruction it is 9 20 pm april the 11th 2022. 9 44 p.m we are back in open session mr president members of the board it is recommended that the board of trustees issue a contract for the educator professionally dual probationary educator term and non-chapter 21 contracts for the 2022-2023 school year as presented on the attached list thank you mr matrix i'll make the motion that will be in seconds any comments questions you all those in favor of those opposed motion carries 7-0 mr president members of the board has recommended that the board of trustees issue a non-chapter 21 contract for the 2022-20 school year to miss rosario salinas thank you mr bad matrix emotional administrative recommendation please 10 seconds you know for
075a second first second motions been made and seconded any questions comments all those in favor those opposed motion case 7-0 thank you mr president members of the board it is recommended that the board of trustees issue an administrator probationary contract for the 2022-2023 school year to dr allison schram brendan and miss kenneth moody thank you mr mayor matrix emotional administrative recommendation please ben and janie thank you any comments questions those in favor those opposed motion carries 7-0 thank you very much mr president members of the board this administrator has a contract for the 2022-2023 school year to work on a part-time basis it is recommended that the board of trustees approve this administrator to work on a full-time basis miss melanie mclaren thank you mr metro do you have motion administrative recommendation thank you kim
076seconds any comments questions all those in favor of the pose motion carries 6-1 thank you so much thank you so much thank y'all mr ben matry is there any further business no sir there is no further business i almost i entertain a motion to adjourn please they tied again everybody all those favor both hands are one hand did that make a difference it is 9 47 p.m april 11 2022 this meeting is adjourned