Waxahachie ISD Board Meeting 9/18/2023

001is now four o'clock I will call the meeting of the Waxahachie Independent School District Board of Trustees to order who's at the record show we have five trustees in attendance and this meeting has been duly called and notice this meeting has been duly posted for time and many required by law first item today will be our board Workshop we have a plan of action Workshop I believe uh Dustin Whitaker yard presented today yes sir good afternoon board Dr Hollingsworth over the last few weeks you've seen preliminary scores and you've seen the frustration and Desperation and disbelief in some of these scores that we've seen ourselves so one of the things that we feel strongly is we don't want to rely on these scores to tell us how our schools are doing but unfortunately that's how

002the state views us and gives us our scores so our confidence lies in the fact that if we provide Joy along with high quality instructional materials that meet or exceed the grade level standards the scores will take care of themselves so you can see up here on the board the last couple years going into covid our score was an 89. two years where the district wasn't rated no school district in the state was rated during that time when we came back out we had an 85. so as I said our preliminary scores have given us numbers across the board I'm going to go to this slide so this kind of breaks down the domains and domain three is we're waiting on from the states that's the closing the Gap domain right there so our scores

003in these three areas have remained relatively flat for the last couple of years but the area that we've got the most opportunity is in closing the gaps and that's our growth domain so last Monday commissioner morath issued a statement that they would delay reporting the scores we think that those scores delay was caused by the fact that too many schools would have dropped drastically compared to where they were previously so one of the things that just passed the most recent legislative session was House Bill 1605 and there were a number of things that this bill really drilled in on and one of them was providing increased rigor in the classrooms through the use of high quality instructional materials a byproduct of that is a way to reduce teacher workload and that's one of the things

004we're going to talk about tonight so House Bill 1605 really aims to increase the level of high quality instruction materials that our students have access to relieving teachers of some of those duties of finding the materials on their own and provides greater Clarity and transparency for our parents so when I was going through and putting some information together for this presentation one of the things that really drew me to this picture right here is that we could sit back and look at our scores we could talk about where we think they are in our heart where we think these schools should be based on the work that we see happening in the classrooms daily and expect things to change or we could adjust the sales and make the change happen ourselves so with this plan

005one of the things I want to go through with you are the three levels of support that we're going to provide to our campuses for the purposes of what we're discussing today we're going to really focus on the teacher and the instructional leadership support so as I mentioned the high quality instructional materials is one of the things this house bill 1605 really drilled in on this last legislative session went to a training a few weeks ago up at Region 10 is the effective schools framework and one of the things we came back with from that training was really looking at the high quality instructional materials so I came back and I was talking with Dr H and he asked me a question and he could tell in my pause and response that I had more

006to say and he might have regretted it that day but what that really told him was if it's good for these schools that were required to go through this training and it's good for those schools to focus on these things and the state identifies them as effective for all schools why wouldn't it be good for all schools here in Waxahachie ISD and so that conversation prompted more conversations with our district leaders and I'll go through the timeline and the layout the the times that we've had those meetings and what we talked about with those leaders as we moved through this presentation here so one of the calculations they showed us that presentation was a breakdown that teachers spend on their time planning so a very low estimate here we know that our teachers have a

00745-minute mandated planning time per day 450 minute average every 10 days if I break that time down it's about four hours per week which is about three days per six weeks or 18 work days per year that they spend on planning alone and like I said that's the low estimate most teachers are spending three or four hours outside of school in addition to this time planning for their lessons so if you look at the time all compiled there it's about 36 work days 30 that our teachers are spending each year working on these lessons for their classrooms so I want to give you a story here and this is actually something that I read and it was in some testimony about House Bill 1605 so there was a mother who had a daughter in the

008first grade for her first grade assignment she was asked to sort letters alphabetically it was a Disney themed activity parent thought it was cute the kids gravitated to it they recognized the Disney characters it's fun for them to do did you know that it's actually a pre-kindergarten teak that this first grade child was working on so in talking with this parent she has no way to evaluate the ability or the skill level of this lesson that her kid was given and so we know that teachers have gone out of their pockets into their pockets and they spend money on resources they don't feel like they have adequate resources so they go online so I actually went online and I typed first grade alphabet sort Disney and I came up with this link right here this

009is actually a screenshot from Teachers Pay Teachers and so if you look up there at the top the grade level says pre-k through 12th there is nothing about this resource right here the Lindsay to believe it's anything above a Pre-K level there's nothing that's 12th grade about this right here five dollars it's easy to go online I can buy it I download all the materials I can print it it's ready to go we know that our teachers are doing this we've seen it in our classrooms so there was a national study that was done I believe this is in 2020 that evaluated student work to see if it's on grade level the study found that even though 88 of our students were working on their activities that were assigned and 71 percent of those kids

010are scoring A's and B's their performance on benchmarks and state tests is not meeting the expectations of the grade level the research found that only 17 of assignments are on grade level so in any given week about one day a week are kids getting assignments that are on grade level Texas replicated the study tea replicated the study because everything's bigger in Texas our number came back bigger we're at 19 which is still about one day a week so one of the conclusions of the research is that if students are guaranteed access to grade level appropriate strong instruction and rigor we can shrink the achievement Gap significantly so part of this study they asked teachers to identify the areas of the places they're going to find their their materials they're using in the classroom so this

011slide indicates the sites that people would go to teachers would go to or what they would use to deliver their lessons in the classroom so the first material name up there says resources I created myself teachers paid teachers comes in at 50 percent YouTube things they create collectively with other teachers at school using a search engine and you can read the rest of that list there so the story that I gave last week and I was talking with principals was think about when you order something from Amazon Amazon has it Warehouse they take that package they box it they put the labels on it they put on a truck there are a lot of steps that happen in between the warehouse and my doorstep it could make it all the way to the last step

012and the Amazon driver delivers it to the next door or it goes across the street or to a different address it's not mine altogether and if you think about that in terms of lesson delivery that's kind of what we're doing with teachers we're giving them some resources and we're hoping that what makes it to that student's desk is exactly what it should be that it's on grade level all the time so another link here another site here showing you where teachers are saying they're finding the materials about 94 they say they go to Google so as they're going through their lesson they're trying to develop the lesson and create it and make sure it's engaging for their kids they identify gaps and so they go online and they find ways to fill those gaps in

013the instruction they'll go to Google and they'll go to Pinterest to find these additional resources to put in their classroom so one of the things that we talked about with the time estimate that I showed you a few minutes ago we've really tasked our teachers with two jobs that are almost impossible for them to do full-time with Fidelity so we've asked them to be curriculum developers and instructional presenters and so when you break down the time they spent on each of those activities you could make those two 40 hour a week jobs they don't have 40 hours to develop or to vote excuse me to each of those tasks so when we came back from this training one of the things that we were talking about as a leadership team was if we think about

014all the classrooms in wisd and as we continue to grow and open new campuses how realistic is it that every content area every lesson plan and all the instruction that happens in those classrooms is delivered on grade level it's kind of an impossible task because the teachers have not been trained to do all of these things so one of the things that we looked at when we were working on some information a couple weeks ago was the number of teachers that we've hired here in the district in the last two years so approximately 300 new to district teachers in the first or second year 83 of those teachers were brand new teachers either out of the workforce or coming to us from college with the degrees that were not in education so there has been

015a shift just like the shift in students after covet there's been a shift in teachers that are coming to us and I'm not bashing teachers in any way I went through an alternative certification program many years ago when I entered education but the programs that are in place now are not to the same level that some of those programs were back in the day we've worked with a lot of teaching colleges we're just not getting candidates like we used to we had a number of opportunities this past year to have student teachers come and work in our district and the universities couldn't fill those spots there weren't enough students going into education programs some of the big teaching colleges are not getting the same number of students they were getting three or four years ago

016so one of the ways that we can help address that issue is by providing high quality instructional materials and supports in the classroom for veteran teachers the novice teachers alike if we can engage these students on in grade level material they can start to read more complex texts earlier in the year they can manipulate numbers and engage in math in new ways than they've been able to do before so I want to point out a couple of things on this next slide here to you using these resources just putting them in the teacher's hands giving them access to this can increase the performance level of their students from the 50th percentile to the 80th percentile and using these high quality instructional materials has a higher return on investment than lowering the class size so we

017hear a lot about class size when we start looking at our campuses and it shows that putting these resources in the teacher's hands has a greater return than reducing the class size so a couple years ago when we went down this PLC Journey one of the things that a presenter that came to us spoke to us talked about was all means all if it's good for some of your kids why isn't it good for all of your kids and that was really the conversation that I had with Dr Hollingsworth when we came back from this training if it's good for some schools if it's good for the Marvins and the north sides and the finleys why isn't it good for all of our schools so we didn't want to put together a plan that only

018addressed the needs for a few campuses we want to address the needs for all of the campuses So within the PLC model there's four guiding questions that we focus on this is one of the things that our teachers talk about every time they get together in their plcs is what do we want the students to learn how we know if they've learned it what will we do if they don't learn and what do we do if they already know it so one of the things that we want to help with teachers help provide them is that first question what do we want their students to learn we want to take on the task of providing them with guided lesson plans to help show them back to the resources that will give them those high quality

019instructional materials and give access to all of our students in every classroom so you've got a couple of things in the folder in front of you tonight a couple of handouts and one of them is this slide right here and I want to leave you with this so you can go back and look at this later and really break down what a high quality instructional material is so we've got a number of resources that we've adopted here in the district I'm going to go back to 2011. the State Board of Ed and tea put in a minimum percentage of teaks that a material or a resource was required to address anybody want to guess on what that number was after 2011. it's 50 percent so we have done this to our teachers we've given them

020a resource that the state adopted or approved and said go teach with this but we're only going to give you half of the information you need so go fill in the gaps without training without instruction without those degrees and curriculum and get it to where it needs to be for those kids so we know just from that alone we've already set our teachers back we've already done it as service to them so 1605 reverses that decision now the adopted resources coming from the state are required to be 100 alignment with teks which is huge and there were some nape studies that were done if you look at 2011 forward when that material requirement changed you can see the scores Trend down I can only assume that with this change of 100 resource alignment the scores

021are going to go back up so a couple of weeks ago Dr Hollingsworth sent his insights and I hope that you get to read those we get those on Sunday evenings and this one really struck me we're built for growth and he listed out a couple of things that strong tier one instruction should be it should be aligned with the state standards and on grade level it should be engaging consistent and meaningful and one of the things that he talks about is that our data shows we've got many areas for us to improve when it comes to student growth interventions and tutorials are important that stated nothing is more important than the instruction our students receive in the classroom there is no substitute for engaging consistent and meaningful tier one instruction that's aligned with the

022teaks and the assessments great instruction that is responsive to students is the most important product of our work as a PLC I'm so grateful that we've already built these PLC structures in place because it's put us in a position to make this transition a lot easier across the district we've built in the time for our teachers to have and sit playing with each other to go through and look at the assessments to look at the four guiding questions of a PLC we've already put the focus in with our campus leadership teams as well because we took them to the same training we've invested the time in them we've carved out that time for them to come together once a month as a PLC and collaborate with each other work with the curriculum team the tli

023team and really zero in on what the number one important thing is which is for our students to grow we want every student to grow academically every year so earlier I was talking about the achievement Gap we talked about rigor talked about high quality instructional materials I think the biggest thing for us to focus on here is that teachers are still the number one factor in student achievement so that slide a few few minutes ago where I showed you just by putting the resource in their hands I can get them from the 50th percent to the 80th percentile just by providing them that still relies on the teacher they're still the expert in that classroom if we can make them more affected by providing them with a high quality instructional research excuse me the high

024quality instruction materials it's aligned to research that's what we want to do so again I reached out to a number of people across the state one of them that I spoke to last night and I've talked to him a couple of times today was done in Temple ISD and I talked to Dr the superintendent down there and he said commissioner marath reached out to them about two years ago and offered up a pilot of these resources and at first they said okay we'll try this at a couple of campuses so they picked some other lower performing campuses they picked three and they said we're going to try these on non non-tested grade levels within a couple of weeks those campus leaders came back and said I'm using this on every classroom so they rolled throughout

025that first year as a pilot the other campuses learned about it they talked about it in their instructional leadership meetings by the end of the year every campus every Elementary campus wanted to use these resources in their classrooms so their numbers that they were predicting over the last couple of months that an average of 72 percent of their elementary students are predicted to pass the star exam which is a 37 percent increase over their previous year's course that's a pretty high increase so if we can take these same resources and see the same percent increase there's no telling what we can do just by providing these resources to our teachers you're probably wondering why we're focusing so much on the teachers teacher is the program they're the ones that are in their daily doing the

026work they're the ones that are doing the frequent assessment they're using the research-based strategies they're taking all the data in their PLC meetings and figure out how to improve the instruction the things that they're seeing in the classroom what are the trends with the data what do they seeing students struggle with how can they go back and adjust that instruction to make sure the students get to the level they need to get one of the things you'll see through House Bill 1605 over the next couple of years is they're really moving away from lesson design to lesson internalization and part of that is because the state's pushing us in a direction where teachers are not going to be required to create lessons anymore they'll still have a weekly or a monthly framework of what will

027be done in that classroom but the day-to-day instruction should not be done by the classroom teachers we're trying to get ahead of this a little bit by part of our plan here so they'll move some of that lesson plan design time into lesson internalization and it gives the teachers more time to collaborate with each other to look at these lessons and figure out how to use their strategies their craft their skill to deliver it in a way that makes sense for their students Destiny I want to pause and and just key in on what he's talking about in terms of 1605 and what that legislation is going to mean it means that uh no longer will districts be able to compel teachers on their planning periods to create lessons let me say that again teachers

028will not be able to be compelled to create lessons on their planning period that's a big shift from the way we've always done education so that means that the districts that have provided good lessons to the teachers such as what we've done with Benchmark with the phonics program when you provide those lessons to the teachers you're in compliance with 1605. what it says is the teachers can spend time internalizing what's in this lesson that they're going to give putting it in the right order to deliver to the students you know that's what that time is going to be reserved for but that law will not allow us to compel teachers to use that time for the creation of lessons I think it's a really important thing for y'all to to realize and that's that this

029will absolutely put us in the right direction to be in compliance with that legislation yeah I reached out to miss robinshine to help me clarify the language and I we kind of read between the language that says we can't require them to do it but I can't stop them from doing it if they want to so it's I can't make them but I also can't stop them so one of the last things on this slide that I want to leave you with here is that every decision that our school leaders are making should sit around how to help make our teachers do a better job of serving their students and this is one of the things that we kept coming back to the more we talked about this the further we went into these conversations

030believe this is a video from Crowley ISD talking about amplify learning we are in our first year of implementation for Amplified Texas and it has been a game changer it really began with our why our mission says excellence in education for all students if we say we are here for all children does all mean all and if so is that represented here are we okay with the results that we have the teachers felt like our students were not at the level that they needed to be we wanted to adopt a curriculum that was going to be something that would level the playing field for all of our students we knew to meet that that part of all students we wanted to explore and discover what is out there what is Amplified all about we were

031kind of thrown in having no idea even what amplify was when we first started it just seemed like it was going to be so overwhelming and the content was sit and get my students would sit on the rug and they'd be like Miss Jones this is so long but as it turns out they were able to accept that and in term analyze so much content and oh my gosh on day three they were running into my classroom grabbing their readers begging to not close them they wanted to take them home and these are nine ten-year-old kids who just had a two-month summer break every unit just completely engaged these kids they did want to stop a lesson they wanted to can we continue Shakespeare Midsummer Night's Dream they wanted to go home and read their

032parts I had a couple students who learned their parts my kids really loved it and found it very intriguing seeing that these kids could learn this in first grade and take away things about American Revolutionary War and Westward Expansion and learning about the systems in the human body they're going to be ready the program itself gave the teachers a lot of buy-in because because they saw the change not only with the curriculum they saw it with their students amplify Texas has really been the mindset shift is really looking at a brand new curriculum it's just amazing how it's impacted their deep knowledge it's not just small stories but they have a deep critical thinking about it and their writing shows it our instructional coaches have really supported and helped us implement this because we were

033learning it together and there's just some feeling of camaraderie whenever you're going into something new together with coaching amplify teachers with the program I actually taught a lesson for all grades K through five so I could really understand the program so when it was time to sit down with the teachers I understood the barriers that they were facing I want their input and I want them to want to do this and to do it in a way that works for them and in a way that works for the classroom that they have I am here as a partner to support them fully with everything and anything they'll need throughout the implementation they are the First Source to connect with the students we sat together we read these teacher manuals cover to cover together all of

034the materials were great the image cards we could put up for timelines we could give kids the visuals the work the workbooks are exactly what we're teaching in class and go right along it's all been amazing just just the product itself and all the things that come with it that don't make a teacher go and search for things the way that we have in years past and it's made it a lot easier for planning and implementation there has been an overwhelmingly positive feedback you will hear staff say all the time oh my goodness I cannot believe what my students did today you will not not believe what they said in the classroom I've never had writers like this you're seeing student discourse just through the roof they are talking about content deep content they're using

035academic vocabulary that has never been discussed at that grade level before they're making connections between cross-curricular content with science and social studies that we has just not lend itself in the past to that everything was purposeful everything was thoughtful in this curriculum there hasn't been a piece that I didn't understand why it was there trust the process rely on your coach rely on your principal I promise you the outcome is amazing be willing to get uncomfortable treat it with Fidelity treated with Integrity do not water it down thinking that your kids are not smart enough or not prepared enough they are ready you will see their level of growth from the rigor of amplify unfolding your children so enjoy it and they can absolutely understand and analyze the highly complex text if we give them

036the background knowledge if we give them those experiences up front then it levels the playing field for all the most rewarding aspect of implementing amplify Texas is knowing that every student who walks through the doors of our classroom has access to high quality instruction through high quality rigorous curriculum we know that all students will rise to those expectations and we guarantee that when you walk into one of our classrooms all students will have grade level exposure to Rich content to deep texts and a high level vocabulary nothing like we've ever seen before [Music] so one of the things I want to hit on that they talked about in that video just to dispel this is a reading curriculum and even though it makes connections to science and social studies it is not the science and

037social studies teaks that will still happen during science and social studies times they're just using the reading curriculum to make those connections for kids that reinforces those things we will still teach science we'll still teach social studies this does not address that one of the things that I told all the campus leaders at our our meeting last week with DLT this is a shared responsibility this is all of us standing lockstep with our campus leadership this is not something that we're pushing off to them that we're asking them to go off and do on their own we've actually offered up our time to go and sit with these campus leaders when they talk with their campuses over the next couple of days to deliver the same presentation to them so they can see and they

038can share that message to their staff that it's us with them I know that they feel the pressure of these scores as they come back every year and I told them last may we feel the same pressure my department feels the same pressure we feel equally responsible for what's happening in these classrooms we want to be there to help them and I want to step out of the way when it's their turn to shine so I want to go back that 37 increase that I talked about in Temple if I'm thinking about Marvin biomedical Academy what would 37 increase do for Miss Polk what would that do to her campus take her to a high B low a maybe I think I would be okay with that level of increase I think that Miss Polk

039would be okay with that level of increase so as we move and we'll talk about this towards the next part of our meeting as we move towards the use of amplify for grades K-8 for our reading language arts programs I want to talk about how that's going to work so one of the things that we talked about with plcs was things that are loose versus tight so on a campus there are some things that are loose and some that are tight for us tli as a district high quality instructional materials making sure that our students have access to them is something we want to hold tight to we want to make sure that happens every day not just some days not one day a week every day of the week we'll use locally developed learning

040checks to provide evidence of their academic progress this could be four to six questions that happens real quick in the classroom something the teacher can ask their kids they can sit and work on it together and we've got that evidence of feedback that will come to us to see how those students are learning through reaching and utilizing those resources so all the resources that are listed here on this page of everything that's on there the one highlighted orange is the only one that we do not currently have access to in the district we don't own that one and that's amplify I want to add to that Dr Banneker as we begin to talk about what our plans were moving forward and the access to high quality instructional materials we already had all of these things

041in phonics in math fact fluency science the only thing missing was what we had in our reading language arts area of instruction and that's going back to just to revisit what he earlier told you Savas is our current reading language arts curriculum it was a pre-covet adoption it's predates that requirement that 100 of your teaks have to be covered in that material that's why it's lacking it's lacking in writing instruction it's it's lacking simply because it doesn't cover all the teaks so I said okay we've got to identify what areas do we not have what we need that's why we're spending as much time talking about rla is that's the area where we did not have on hand already what we need so if you if you do some digging around and you go to

042TA and you look up their instructional materials I'm sure each of you are going to go home and do that tonight you'll see that the amplify might be listed on there as a free resource and it was provided to districts but if you wanted the print material that actually gets to the explicit the systematic way of instruction those are the resources we've got to purchase for our teachers to put those books in their hands and the books in our students hands so as I look at the secondary core tier one instruction materials we've got the same story here we've got a great math resource science and social studies reading is the area we've still got an opportunity to provide better for our teachers so I talked about the tiers or the the levels of support

043that we're providing here as I mentioned a couple minutes ago one of the things this will do is provide our teachers with a lot more time that they can use during their planning time to figure out how to take these lessons and deliver them in the way using their skill their craft that fits their students we are not abandoning good teaching strategies in fact our veteran teachers and the ones that I've talked to in other districts from my phone conversations in the last couple of weeks have been the veteran teachers were the ones that were a little bit resistant in the beginning and then realized how much time they can save they can rely on the good strategies they've built over the last 5 10 15 25 years the rookie teachers that don't have those

044skills this gives them a huge leg up on their competitors so when I'm coming into a classroom and I have zero years of experience like the 300 or the 83 that I showed you in the beginning of this presentation I've got resources in my hand that save me a lot of time every week I don't have to go to Google or Pinterest or Teachers Pay Teachers to figure out how to deliver that lesson I've got it in my hands I talked about this a few minutes ago a ship from lesson planning to lesson internalization the teacher evaluation rubric is going to shift this direction it's one of the things that's coming out through house bill 1605. it just hasn't fully occurred yet so we've talked about this as a leadership team ways that we're going

045to start looking to see how can our teachers use this time to internalize these lessons versus planning these lessons we think that their PLC time will be a lot more productive they won't have to spend those time figuring out I'm going to work on the reading for this week you do the math swap lessons with each other I take your lessons we can take on that load and alleviate a lot of that research that they would have to do on their own so as we move forward with our plan and some of this information will come out to campuses tomorrow and over the next couple of days the district provided learning plans will be offered in these grades that are listed here on your screen so just to give you a timeline of the meetings

046and discussions that have taken place with campus and District leadership September 7th we pulled the principles together for a meeting in the afternoon we talked about the resources that we have so we did an audit of our resources ask them for some feedback what are you seeing in classrooms what are you hearing from your teachers what are the areas what are the gaps that you need assistance with in your classrooms reading kept coming up it was a recurring theme throughout those conversations so we pulled principles together again on September 11th we started going through some of the high quality instructional materials that we were learning about we talked about House Bill 1605 we went through a presentation with them and looked at some of these resources other districts are using we met on the 14th

047and we talked about this again with our campus leadership so at this point we've talked to all assistant principals all principals and everyone in the tli department which is all my team September 18th board Workshop we've gone through this presentation with our campus staff I've shared the presentation with them they'll begin having these meetings on their campuses tomorrow to meet with their teachers we've got some trainings lined up pending board approval later this evening to bring amplify in and do some training we have a resource that's up in Denton so it was pretty quick for us to do a turnaround and get some trainers set up for this program and then we'll start rolling out the first district unit learning plans on September 25th so I'll break down when those plans are going to come

048out I've got a much better document that shows them in Greater detail we're trying to get the plans out to our teachers at least a week or two in advance right now as soon as we can get our feet underneath us and get caught up these lessons will come out more frequently it's our Elementary classes and secondary unit plans will begin coming out on these dates so as we move into this model one of the things that we're really going to have to do I talked about shared leadership responsibility is making sure that our campus leadership has the support that they need to make sure they can roll out these plans and follow them with Fidelity and so we'll include calibration walks with these campus leaderships and we're going to be flexible we know there'll

049be some hiccups we know this will take time for teachers to digest these lessons to figure out how to deliver it in the classroom and we'll be there with them my team will be there with them and will repurpose the instructional coaches that are housed on five of our elementary campuses and our teacher learning coordinators that are on four campuses and we'll share that time to get time with the teachers yes sir I want to add in what he's talking about in terms of tli partnering with our principals to do walks instructionally this is exactly what we have done with Benchmark this year we started in the first couple of weeks and I heard conversations from Dr Banneker and his team from Ms Mott walking with principals and we how we doing on Benchmark was

050the conversation well we have seen it already in action on most campuses we haven't yet seen it at this campus in this campus how did that conversation go with the principal here's why we haven't yet get yet got up and running at this particular campus or this one how can we better support them we went in had specific conversations with those teachers with those principals how we can support those teachers in getting up and up to speed and within by the end of really the beginning of week three all of our elementary campuses were up and running so I want to point out there was not some kind of heavy-handed you know Sledgehammer approach how can we better support you what are you seeing in your classrooms having conversations with them but by week three

051we saw evidence of Benchmark across the the board I can tell you as we enter week six in conversations that I know just having personal conversations with our principals they are seeing teachers use Benchmark on a daily basis with Fidelity without struggle in that first couple of weeks there were some we we stubbed our toll here and there but we're not seeing that now and what I'm hearing time and time again from our teacher our principals and our teachers is how much they appreciate how laid out how well laid out that curriculum is that's a really good example of exactly what he's talking about right here Dr hollandsworth yes yes ma'am yes ma'am what are benchmarks because I've heard the word tossed around but I don't recall Benchmark phonics that's the that's the phonics program

052okay that's the phonics program yes yes sir I was I'm aware that I just didn't notice yes ma'am yes ma'am thank you so amplify actually has two components there's a skills and a knowledge Benchmark for us addresses the skills piece so we don't need that because we already have that through benchmarks so with amplify it would just be the knowledge piece of that program okay and we will not be using a getting that we will not be using amplify for math no math amplify is just for reading okay because we're rolling it out on the 19th for math according to the previous slide uh I guess my um so that's our math problem uh we haven't received the scores to the point that did we do okay use with our math program that we've had

053in previous year last year well let me be clear we have math we have uh stem scopes for math instruction at elementary and at Middle School junior high we have stem scopes for science instruction at elementary and Junior High okay that has been a resource that our teachers have had available to them there has not been an expectation that that would be the resource that they would depend on that's the difference the difference is moving to an expected use of the high quality instructional materials that are available go back please to that list again uh Dr binicker that shows the ones that we already so for example there you go there's Elementary this is what has been available to them stem scopes at K-5 math benchmark at phonics fact fluency and science stem Scopes those

054have been available to our teachers what we're changing and the shift here is the expectation of the use of those high quality instructional materials and tli supporting that use in the classrooms that makes sense okay and you do have this slide and the secondary slide in the blue folder you've got in front of Yale tonight okay any other questions I guess the speed is what bothers me a little bit um you know you started looking at it on 7th 11th and you know here we are a week later on the 18th so it's seems like it's really a fast how many districts are using this program I can't tell you a number off the top of my head I know that Dallas Fort Worth Burleson Crowley Temple Amarillo Everman Wichita Falls is there is there

055a place on the website that is listed not on our website let me know their website through amplify I don't know if it lists the districts that they're using that's where we got a lot of information and then from conversations with area leadership there were several districts that were asked to Pilot these resources two years ago which is why they had early access to them and you're right there is a sense of urgency our scores right now we need to act with a sense of urgency so we've we've done our research with these resources and again when we came back from the training went to a few weeks ago we were kind of posed with the question do we wait until the beginning of the next school year and delay that for our students keeping

056those materials out of their hands for another seven or eight months or do we go now and get in front of them as soon as we can I couldn't really justify waiting any longer if I can see the Improvement by providing these resources to our kids I don't want to wait so yes ma'am there is definitely a sense of urgency from us but I'll and I'm sorry Mr kriegel I want to add to to Dr what Dr Banneker said in the sense that the majority of these are resources we already have and that's that's really important these are things we already own and so Shifting the expectation you're going to use them that's really the main shift here the only reason we're having as much conversation as we are about amplify is it's the one

057thing we need to purchase everything else we already own questions because I thought of another question uh you said that so every year we will have to purchase this every year is that correct so amplify one of the things that 1605 did also was increase the instructional materials a lot of it so I think right now it's about 65 a student we get on a biennium basis right with this house bill 1605 it almost triples that dollar amount and then throws another 40 and another 20 on top of that if we're using these state adopted resources so it gives us money to continue these resources which conveniently enough is about forty dollars a year so the state supplemented that knowing that was the direction they were going to give us that money to continue the

058ReUse of these resources yeah so we will receive this uh supplemental money every every time I believe it's the 24-25 I am where that money would start coming to school districts yes ma'am my one question and I'm glad you said what you did Dr Hollingsworth about uh follow through because it's one thing to have these programs another thing to make sure that people do it I think that's been a big problem in the past you know we spend all this money for programs you say okay here you go but like you said there's not been any follow-through in the training do you expect the teachers to already know it what I liked about what you said was all the the backup that the teachers and principals are going to receive I think that's going to

059make a big difference and another thing you're right teachers are key you know they're the ones and so we need to do all we can to support them and I think this this is great yes ma'am Mr Schofield I believe had some yeah I have something to add there and a couple questions one I've been a part of changes the curriculum several times over my time in the classroom I don't bring it up in here a lot but I spent eight nine years actually in the classroom changing that stuff in the middle of the year is difficult um changing it without proper implementation is even more difficult my last stretch in the classroom came after a long time in private business and I was not given the materials that I needed to succeed in the

060classroom I got them I had some very heated conversations with our superintendent and curriculum people at that time luckily I I was fortunate to be able to have those because it didn't really matter if they fired me or not I was fine I have some concerns with that I also have concerns with us having programs when I hear this message you know you're kind of out of touch with it when you sit in this room boom everybody needs accountability if if the district is paying for materials we're taking standardized tests which I'm not a fan of but that is a rule that we're playing by today I do have a problem if we have not been using materials the same across the board in every classroom now my delivery may be different than Mr Robinson's

061delivery in our classroom but we should be teaching the same thing and if we're not and if we're not using those materials it's a big deal big deal I'm very disappointed to hear that we're just now making for lack of a different word mandatory the use of programs that we're already paying for I don't want to know where those decisions are being made but that's a that's a problem well I don't disagree with you Mr Schofield but I'm gonna I am going to tell you that for a long time and if you go back to exactly what Dr biniker talked about in that 2011 adoption related to Savas okay they uh the state gave two districts options and that in many cases were not fully covering the teaks by Design this is and I remember

062this was this used to be stated a lot of times in districts the curriculum that's adopted is not the only resource that teachers may use that was a that was a mantra that I have heard many times over the years it is not the only resource that you may use or must use and as but and I just want to say but in in our district that has been no different than in most districts that I've been in and so this is a shift my point with this is yes sir that if we have something that we're supposed to be using much like I said in my analogy with myself and Dr avenshine if we were teaching next door to each other his delivery of mine may be different yes sir there's going to be

063additions and subtractions in both but there has to be some standardization totally we have to be if we're paying for it we need to be using it and that's the shift but I agree with you okay um see we talked about the funding and that's great I was sent by my leadership potassium group one lesson that I looked at it was a kindergarten lesson and you know finite I know nothing about kindergarten but the first thing that I picked up on was that it said that all the students needed to bring their rhyming books to school to use you know then they everybody would use rhyming books and that if the students didn't have rhyming books then they should go to the library so I could see us not having enough rhyming books for an

064entire school for each kindergarten student to have those rhyming books so that would be an additional cost on somebody either on the district or on the teachers so the quotes that we've received contain everything we would need to utilize this program in our classrooms including the training for our teachers so it's one of the things one of my colleagues over here has worked tirelessly over the last two weeks working with Amplified to get the quotes for the right resources the right number of students and the right number of teachers on every campus including our special education teachers that are also doing resource in the classroom okay so it's just a happenstance that the the book required you know the lesson required these rhyming books you know that was just a happenstance thing I would have

065to see what you're reading ma'am I don't think it was just a okay one it's it's fine but I just want to make that Miss Krieger I don't want additional costs on us and I don't want to come in now the teacher's pocket absolutely or the are there are the schools popular you know I mean we only have so many dollars okay and then uh I am concerned about this teacher speaking I have some having some autonomy I know that a lot of teachers we have a lot of great teachers that are doing a great job and we're giving this to them and hopefully they'll be like the veteran teachers in uh Temple and we'll embrace it I hope so but they need some autonomy in how they teach it absolutely and then the third

066thing was I loved what you said Dr Hollingsworth um that it's not going to be a hammer down because uh we we don't need to hammer down on it we need to embrace it slowly I appreciate you saying that that's what that that's how you Embrace benchmarks or whatever absolutely and I'll just tell you that when we see a teacher not using the materials that are available you have a conversation with the teacher what's going on why we're not using that when we come back or circle around see it again we have that conversation I totally why are we not seeing that but if we see it multiple times then we will shift gears uh and you can call it a hammer or you can call it appropriate consequences or just accountability but we will

067shift into that mode because of exactly what Mr Schofield was talking about and I totally agree yes I want it to be an eventual and not a first time in the room you're not doing what you're supposed to do miss Mott you want to add something Miss kriegel I wanted to address the rhyming book our students with the um the resource the amplify they will be receiving all the materials that they need so without having looked at the exact lesson you're talking about that rhyming booklet is probably part of those student resources so it's not not something they would have to have everybody's got to have a different book because they would all have different Rhymes in them so they're using one rhyming book that's contained within the student resources so does that help okay

068sure sure and I guess I haven't read the list and it was everybody bringing their rhyming books right I think it's the rhyming book contained within the student resources yes is there a reason why more districts aren't using this program it's new um to be honest with you once I found out some of the districts that are using it I don't know why they're not like I said House Bill 1605 hasn't fully been implemented yet over the next couple years it will when you look at the state adopted list the resources that are out there this is one of the programs that's out there it's the shift that they're going to move if you want access to that additional forty dollars per year for materials you're going to have to use this resource so we're

069getting ahead of this now by starting in the 23-24 school year versus waiting for 24-25 anyone else um Dr vinegar will you be coming back and giving us updates on how this is going the implementation the follow through how teachers are grasping it absolutely I actually when I reached out the temple one of the things that they told me is there a demonstration site and so they've opened their doors I can take teachers I can take principles down there and go into any classroom any campus and ask questions bring teachers in and see how lessons are done in the classroom they've been open to this for the last couple years since they were a pilot district and so Dr Ott and his staff have opened the doors us to come down there and visit with

070them and see these in place they also have dual language campuses where they're using the resources as well be another great benefit for us to take teachers down there and see that happening as well okay thank you you're welcome from what I was talking with our our sales rep it's the additional the kind of the ongoing fee every year so we'll pay a little bit more of the first year when you get all the materials and then there's a you know replace the workbooks for students every year that's the 40 fee every year so the state has lined that up appropriately so it's about the same dollar amount as the resource these are 100 aligned to State Standards teaks 100 aligned to the teaks and that's one of the big shifts that 1605 did was

071reverse that 2011 ruling where they only had to be 50 aligned teachers could go online and if you go to Teachers Pay Teachers and you buy some resource most of them are common core aligned so we want to take that variable away Mr Schofield will you make sure your microphone's on when you're speaking okay yes sir we want to take that variable away and the resources that we're talking about here are 100 aligned to the Texas teaks and Mr Schofield just so you know it's illegal for us to purchase anything in the state of Texas that would be common core aligned they all must be aligned to the teaks yes sir anyone else thank you okay that will conclude our board workshop at this time the board will go into closed session according to section

072551.001 etsec of the Texas government code it is now 452. into Open Session it's it's now 5 46. we're going to reconvene back into Open Session at at this time I'm going to ask Mr Schofield to lead us in her invocation followed by our pledges of Allegiance by Sarah Campbell Gemma Lopez Charlotte Lovett and Rayleigh Rodriguez of Wedgwood Elementary shall we pray father thank you for the opportunity you give us to gather in a country where we can come together and to hopefully strengthen our community and raise our children please be with all the people in this room and in this District in this town to help us use our gifts from you to make this a better place in your holy name we pray amen right and then put your hands over your hearts

073and then start whenever you want I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all now honor honoring the Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas Wednesday under God one indivisible thank you [Applause] our vision is to be a district where Innovation thrives and growth is Limitless We Lay You choices because they make us unique and are critical to learning we value the collaborative culture that honors and supports all the positively impacts the lives of our students we value an environment belonging that respects individual differences and ensures equality for all your relationships next item on our agenda would be our recognitions Ms Bridges I believe we have several of those tonight you do

074good evening board and Dr Hollingsworth and I would first like to invite Fisher Vaughn and Luke Ballard to come up Fisher and Luke have been official representatives of Waxahachie High School through their participation in the whs fishing club on the Texas High School Bass Association tournament circuit they have competed at various locations such as Lake Fork Richland Chambers Lake Ray Hubbard and Lake Tawakoni Tawakoni that's what I get for not sounding out before I start reading it thank you notably oh look I have to read it again notably their most impressive performance was at Lake Tawakoni is that right Mr Schofield where they achieved 17th Place out of 168 competing teams their consistent success in fishing LED them led to them qualifying for both Regional and state level competitions reflecting their dedication and skill as

075Anglers in addition to their angling achievements Fisher and Luke are also valuable members of the Indian baseball team highlighting their versatility in excelling in outdoor sports Fisher and Luke have demonstrated their commitment in representing Waxahachie ISD through their participation in the whs fishing club earning recognition as accomplished anglers in the process congratulations Fisher and Luke [Applause] Miss Harris you want to come out good oh yeah [Applause] board next I'd like to invite Sydney Jones who works at Northside in our Child Nutrition department to come up hi come on come on come with her Popeye will give her a friend up here so a few weeks ago during northside's lunch period Ms Jones noticed that there was a student who was in some distress he was choking and Miss Jones very quickly reacted did the Heimlich

076maneuver and very possibly saved this child's life so we want to recognize her for being a superhero [Applause] thank you absolutely [Applause] all right board next I'd like to invite Veronica Schaefer principal of Shackleford Elementary Dr Hollingsworth this evening I would like to honor and recognize two staff members that have really taken a lead on our campus that they have taken on UIL coaching as well as taking on taking their classrooms out to the Garden so that they can Discover at a different level and so it's an honor to present to you Veronica Benitez and Jennifer Adams thank you [Applause] foreign [Applause] so before I begin today I do have a student leader that will be joining me hi my name is Sarah Williams I'm one of the student leaders here at chat good evening

077all right so today we will be co-presenting on how we are designing for Student Success and we are building leaders one goal at a time so with that this summer we were able to launch leader in me we were honored through the Kern foundation with a 25 000 Grant to launch the greatness that's happening currently on our campus so and later in me we do morning meetings and that's basically when we practice the seven habits but we'll get to you about in just a moment we've also taken the time to give students rules here on campus I've actually been interviewed for a role myself um Library leader it's been one of the greatest moments of my life here at Shack um we've also given the time to also celebrate those students who were able to

078get the jobs like me so as siren said we are working through the seven habits to build student leaders one of the main habits that we have to master is habit one be proactive I'm in charge of me these are some of our proactive leaders I'm a proactive leader myself you don't see me in this picture because it's by grade level um Lighthouse assemblies are when we highlight some of those leaders who do a lot for this for Shackleford so outside of this student leadership we're also focusing on our campus on wigs wildly important goals and so we set out on a journey this year as a campus to focus on attendance we want to stress the importance that in order to grow a student we want them on campus and so saren tell us

079a little bit about that so during the first six weeks in 2022 last year we had 95 the first six weeks this year we're aiming to get 98 and what we have is 97 percent so we're well on our way for meeting our goals and this is campus-wide when we set out a goal we knew that we had to be action driven so we had to track our attendance and so students are currently tracking their daily attendance in the classroom um to highlight some of the people who deserve rewards here are some of the rewards that we give um we give Brave books we give bikes and popsicles these are some of the many awards that we give here at Shack outside of focusing on what is wildly important with attendance we also are cascading

080the district scorecard and this has been cascaded to our campus to each grade level and to each teacher which will also Cascade to each student so we took map data for the first or beginning of the year and we looked at where do we want to be what is our Target and so each teacher has outlined a goal for the first six weeks and the second six weeks and we took it a step further and said what are our lead measures what are two things that we want to do well that show that we are growing students in addition to that we also want to highlight our Discovery Garden we have partnered with many businesses around campuses and very thankful for drug prevention resources um the Discovery Gardens kind of like a sensory garden you

081can hear the wind times and you can also smell the basil and rosemary um we also have students taking care of the garden um in Miss northcut too or businesses that we are collaboration with our B M Construction mint exteriors aoasis and Shackleford PTO Miss Northcutt our counselor has really taken to the green to clean by Stephen Covey and students are taking ownership of our spaces so that we can also not just have a literacy Garden but a Discovery Garden leaders aren't born they are made so follow the leader to Shaq [Applause] foreign that was awesome Miss Tanya Harris I'm not sure how you're going to follow that but come on up thank you so thank you board and Dr Hollingsworth Dr averitt for allowing us to present tonight um just a token of our

082appreciation to you all you do for whs tonight it is our pleasure to honor um an incredible staff member this staff member helped this summer working with us on the master schedule covering classes and mentoring students during summer school assisting with Summer testing he serves as our science department chair teaches pre-ap and dual credit chemistry organizes night school and nights tutoring was selected as a pre-ap national faculty member is an Adjunct professor for Navarro College and is always willing to help this staff member goes above and beyond they exemplify everything that we want in a leader at whs it is my pleasure to honor Josh Perry [Applause] and with a large campus we couldn't help but honor this amazing lady this person serves as our lead custodian at whs she has worked for wisd for

083eight years her biggest Joy when asked is keeping whs clean and beautiful she always feels appreciated by Mrs Harris the students and staff at whs she is ready to come back to work every morning every Monday morning and enjoys what she does parents who see a clean School know their children are in a good place she enjoys vacationing in Mexico but can't wait to return to whs Miss Maria Ramirez [Applause] side note side note side note Miss Ramirez served as my custodian when I was a baby assistant principal and I would work until midnight at night and she would refuse to leave the campus until I left because she didn't think I was old enough to be there by myself and I beg to have her back when I returned to whs and I was

084gifted her for my birthday three years ago and she's been amazing [Applause] okay is it not working tonight I would like to talk to you about all of the excellent things going on at whs on Wednesday of last week we were honored with receiving a letter from college board stating that 21 whs students received National academic recognition because they've maintained a 3.5 plus GPA for their outstanding performance on PSAT and or AP exams we plan to invite these students and their families back in October to celebrate them for this outstanding achievement and breaking news on Friday we received word that a whs senior Owen Bartosh has qualified as a semi-finalist in the 2024 National Merit Scholarship program [Applause] whale we look forward to honoring Owen in the October board meeting this is an amazing accomplishment

085and he was so excited um moving on last year we wanted to really grow leaders at whs and we implemented a program called whs cares um on September the 6th we presented our whs care Awards to students based on how they finished the 2022-2023 school year these students are leaders at whs they have maintained good attendance great behavior in an 85 or better in all of their classes these students were awarded platinum gold silver and bronze IDs these IDs each carry an award including but not limited to off-campus lunch the ability to go and study in collaboration areas as well as other Awards and prizes throughout the week each week and these are just some of our amazing students that receive their Awards in addition to this we are promoting a positive environment at whs

086an essential part of whs cares program is our positively awesome student recognition we highlight and celebrate whs students who demonstrate character empathy and service three of the five principles of whs cares program at whs students demonstrating good behavior are eligible for this recognition helping a student navigate crutches through the busy hallways inviting a loan student to share a at a table for lunch or returning a cell phone that was left in a restroom these are just some examples of some of the amazing things that these students did to show great leadership in a positive environment at whs we award students every day for being leaders at whs taking it a step further peer recognition is a wonderful way to celebrate the staff at whs staff members nominate their peers using the five pillars of whs

087cares character achievement responsibility empathy and service this gives us the opportunity to acknowledge those staff members who make our jobs a little easier and our days a little brighter at whs each month we award a gift to each teacher and celebrate them so we started strong at whs for the 2023-2024 school year we got off to a roaring start with 650 students that attended our freshman orientation we got the 285 287 sign back from Ennis or we better yet we kept the 287 sign with a 22-16 win over Ennis one of our seniors was recently presented with a two ten thousand dollar signing bonus to the United States Navy and we welcome friends and family to an amazing open house principal talk is now being produced by David Moore's practicum class in our Visual Arts

088coming soon to whs we want our students to think about life After High School so we've planned some exciting activities for the fall semester the Ellis County College Fair is Wednesday September the 20th at whs or at the Waxahachie Civic Center this is the seventh year that whs has chaired this collaborative college fair with all of with all of 10 schools here in Ellis County in addition over 600 students have currently registered for the upcoming PSAT a tool that we will use to measure college readiness whs students will be able to register in the fall for the ASVAB and learn all about all the opportunities that await them in a military career this is just some of the exciting things happening this fall semester at whs thank you again for allowing us to share a

089little bit about our adventure every day we appreciate your support [Applause] I'm going to invite nurse Melissa bousquet to come up and her award recipient is running a little bit late so we're going to have her do she's here all right good evening board thank you so much for allowing me to be here today I'm so excited to get to highlight not only one of my nurses but our entire Health Care department so about four years ago the board in its Infinite Wisdom granted our staff afloat position we have had a total of three different nurses serve in that position the one that is now serving has really brought the job to a whole new level our floats fill in in clinics when nurses are sick or have appointments or whatever they support with screening

090they just try to help out and fill all the gaps that we have at times well this particular nurse that's now serving as one of our floats has really gone above and beyond that call not only does she do all of those things but she's also great at supporting our new nurses being there with them sitting with them talking them through their day just helping them know the rhythm of a school Clinic hospital nursing is very different than School nursing so sometimes the transition into that role is very very difficult so we have a great person right now that does that for us and she just imparts her wisdom of 17 years I think that's right this is her 18th year so she just does an excellent job and just has a a way of

091getting to the heart of what these these new nurses need to hear so it is my honor to honor Julia Parker our district vote nurse [Applause] I failed to mention this is a mentorship award I left that part out but that's what this is [Applause] all right I won't take up much of your time I don't have quite the exciting things to share that Miss Harris shared but we do have a wonderful nursing staff and I want to share with you a little bit of what we do um sorry hit the wrong button okay here we go um I thought I would take each of our core values and show maybe how we uphold those core values as a nursing staff the statistics I'm going to share with you are from the 2223 school year

092our nurses saw 600 excuse me 63 456 students in their office as office visits so um we feel like that upholds choices in that wisd nurses work with students and Families to empower them to manage their own optimum optimum health for learning so our goal in our clinics is to get kids back in the classroom because that's where they need to be that's where they want to be sorry everybody's just going to get it so sorry okay our nurses also managed last year 654 covid cases which was way less than the couple of years before and we're really excited about that and we are praying and hoping that it's going to be even less this year but we feel like that showed our ability to collaborate wsd nurses use significant collaborative skills to help students

093and families navigate a difficult pandemic and it really a lot of collaboration and everybody working together to get through that if I have the touch okay last year our nurses administered 20 654 medications which is kind of sounds like a lot of pills doesn't it but um again our goal is to keep kids in the classroom and supporting them with medications is one way that we can do that and it helps give them a sense of belonging wsd nurses work closely with students and families to keep Scholars safely in the learning environment with their classmates despite their health challenges so that's our goal all right and then the last thing I wanted to share is that wsd nurses screened over well not that many kids but we did over 12 000 screenings some kiddos get

094three or four a year so it's a lot but um we kept our relationship with our community intact doing that because we need to uh sometimes make referrals to our community stakeholders for Optimal Health and student learning potential okay and then last of all most importantly our nurses had over 96 000 opportunities to invest in the lives of children we have the privilege of getting to connect with lots of different kids and lots of different situations and it is a pleasure for us to do that and it's our desire to make their learning experience just that much better so thank you for letting me share a little bit with you about our nurses thank you board and Dr Hollingsworth okay next item on our agenda is our public hearing tonight we will be holding a

095public hearing regarding the proposed 2023-2024 wisd mno and ins tax rates following the presentation we will invite the public to approach the party and provide input on the subject at hand the public hearing will begin with a presentation of Chief Financial Officer Ryan Calder would you call them I think Mr President good evening board Dr Hollingsworth uh you remember back in August we did a public hearing on the budget and the tax rates I told you we'd we'd do the tax rates again in September so here we are but current tax rates for 22.23 or 1.32.68 as a total and that is about 94.29 cents on the m o rate and 38.39 on the ins rate the proposed for next year on the m o side is 0.7575 and on the ins 41.29 cents for

096a total of a dollar 1704 that is a little over 15 and a half cent decrease in the total tax rate which is about a 12 percent decrease and then just kind of wanted to refresh where our tax rate trend is at this point from a high of 1.55 39 and the 2015 through 2019 school years the tax rate is proposed to be a dollar 1704 so that's a pretty significant drink decrease about 38 Cent decrease during those years any questions from the board okay at this time are there any individuals that would wish to speak concerning the proposed 2023 2024 wsd mno and ins tax rates at once twice okay we will now close the public hearing portion of this meeting thank you very much sir okay our next item is our open forum

097this is the portion of the board meeting where the board receives input from our patrons each person who addresses the board will have five minutes to speak on his or her issue because the posting requirements an open meetings act board members will not be able to ask questions of the patron nor answer any questions posed by The Patriot no action can be taken on any issue presented during the patreon comment section of the board meeting patrons addressing the board will be notified when they are approaching the last 60 seconds of their allotted time to speak when I call your name please step to the party and state your name and address for the record please Karen Jenkins Jenkins Mr McCutchen here is going to be keeping our time tonight he will let you know when

098you have approximately one minute to speak okay thank you um this morning I had no intentions of being here but as the day progressed I thought I'm going to make this board meeting also this morning when I started my first class I thought I'd be talking about The Outsiders instead a student raised her hand and said Mr Jenkins I have a question for you it's not that you're old but do you want to be buried did you want to be cremated or do you want to be buried well that had nothing to do with our topic but she was so interested in that I found the need to stop and we talked about that for a few minutes and then we were able to go back and address what we needed to address the reason

099I bring that up is that student is like all students I needed to differentiate for her I needed to stop and see what she needed teachers are different when I was sitting in the audience I was thinking of a quote these are the times that tribe men's Souls by Thomas Paine no I think right now these are the times that try teacher's Souls we have a difficult job every day things change the state changes things our district changes things right now we're talking about changing our curriculum I guess I'm here tonight to say please think about it I've been in this District 39 years I consider myself an exemplary teacher my scores are exemplary scores they always have been I work hard for that I think other teachers do too I do know we have

100teachers who probably need additional training but we also have teachers who know what they're doing in the classroom I have a big concern about a canned curriculum and I will be the first to say I may be completely wrong in saying canned curriculum because I know absolutely nothing about the program being presented for a new curriculum change but I question what do you know about the program that we're going to introduce and I guess my question to you is would you please please give it some consideration um I see four well one empty chair but four young men who sat in my classroom years ago for an entire year and I would have never given them a test without preparing them for it first and so I ask you please don't give us a curriculum

101without giving us a little preparation for it I would like to ask that maybe some teachers be involved maybe some English teachers be asked do you think this will work for our district do you think this will help our scores I know we're all here for the best interest of the students but it's a tough job every day we go in that classroom it's a tough day and looking at me right now you're probably thinking she had a really tough day um got a major headache right now but it was important enough for me to take a few minutes to come in and say we're all for Change and change is needed but please include the teachers and those decisions and let us have some input to know what we're about to face and again

102I think we're open for Change and this may be the best program ever I would just like to see us check it out before we invest so much Financial or monetary interest in it thank you for your time thank you Andrew White do you step forward and state your name and address for the record please again Mr McCutchen will be the time keeper and he will let you know when you have approximately one minute remaining sir good evening superintendent Hollingsworth board president and board members in the community we need someone just to own the debt we don't need explanations we don't need excuses we need people to own the data we have upward of a million dollars of salary sitting right here not y'all sorry right here the ccmr data at the high school is

103unacceptable the 2022 Elementary School ratings are unacceptable who's going to be held accountable teachers and some administrators are being intimidated in the school district it's been going on for years we heard in the workshop presentation we've had 300 teachers join this District in the last two years we have about 600 that's a 50 turnover in two years who's going to be held accountable now let's talk about amplify no one to my knowledge in this room has ever used it could be wrong board members I'm talking to you now we saw a 20-minute presentation at four o'clock and you got a red folder today is that enough to convince you to spend eight hundred thousand dollars on a product you saw that teachers are going to find out about this or maybe they found out today

104they're going to get trained in two days on September 20th teachers are going to get trained and they will start using this October 2nd it's unacceptable I'm not asking you to vote no forever I'm asking you to vote no until the district comes back with a more detailed plan in 30 days so let's talk about amplify because I deal with it every day in my district they said in the presentation it's going to save teachers time it will not for the first year it may save them time in years two and three I spent two days a week with my math Lead Teacher she's been teaching more than 10 years it takes her three hours to internalize one lesson but you don't see that in your red folder probably I'm not against Amplified I'm against

105a heart a quick roll out that is not well planned that's what I'm against because it can't work we heard a District representative say at four o'clock that if you give the teachers this product the scores are magically gonna improve increase 37 percent come on are we serious our teachers not that necessary just give them a product and 37 increase I don't know where that data came from but it's not realistic I can tell you that I've been doing this 21 years you heard from the video from Crowley ISD use your coach now all of our elementary campuses have assigned coaches on the campus every single day someone can correct me if I'm wrong later on there are some campuses that have instructional coaches full-time sounds like an inequity issue to me I feel bad

106for the principals and the teaching learning team that are going to have to somehow figure out how we're going to support all these teachers k through eight because at four o'clock we found out that all teachers now are going to be mandated to use these resources and I just amplify but all the ones that have been given to the district we heard board member Mr Schofield say why haven't they been in for why haven't they been required to use these before one minute and now all of a sudden we're going to start enforcing it the kindergartner lesson for week one is 50 pages it has 31 standards we saw on the presentation we have 83 new teachers in this District that I've never taught before I'm not sure how many of those are erka you

107are going to give these teachers these lessons one to two weeks in advance and they're supposed to digest several hundred pages of lessons Yar is setting them up for failure come back in 30 days with a more detailed plan of how you're going to support campuses and administrators and a teaching learning team that is understaffed and then I'll say y'all vote Yes I have no problem with 780 000 going to a product that has proven to be effective but y'all need to come back with the plan of how you are really going to support these teachers thanks Tom thank you Belinda Douglas step four and state your name and address for the record please Mr McCutchen will let you know when you have approximately one minute remaining hello I'm Belinda Douglas I live at 211

108Nocona Drive Waxahachie Texas uh the last time you all saw me was back in a school board meeting in May where I had talked about the effect of grooming children using the pornographic books that were in the libraries of school libraries in California well now I'm a resident of Texas and I find out those books are also here so obviously they're all over our great nation my question is I'd like to see an update as to what you guys did with those books because we asked to have the Librarians remove the pornography and if not we'd be happy to talk to our churches and we can all go through and do a sweep of the libraries um K through 12. just want to point out this is truly grooming and I have heard some recent

109statistics that were rather earth-shattering the statistic I heard that um when it comes to trafficking sex trafficking the number one uh city in the United States is Houston followed by Los Angeles and third is Dallas that makes Texas the number one state in sex trafficking and the children are being groomed it's breaking my heart and I think of all the parents would like to know what's happening with the books in the library system we want them out I think we all should see that I had also heard and I can't identify the city right now where two boys had gone into a restroom and raped a third boy all boys were 12 years old that's unacceptable the pornographic books are hard triple X homosexual indoctrination and I'm imploring you please don't let our community follow

110suit with these deplorable cities like Houston and Dallas and Los Angeles that's all I have I'd like to know what's happening with the books and if you can't do your job then we can help with the churches or maybe you need to step down but the books have to be expunged out of the libraries thank you [Applause] Sylvia Coulson let's call some please step forward state your name and address for the record please Mr McCutchen want to let you know when you have approximately one minute left to speak my name is Sylvia Coulson I live at 1315 Dixie Lane tonight I'll speak to the lie that is trans the deeply disturbing book that I read from in July almost perfect was reviewed a second time in August and the committee just ruled that it would

111remain in the high school library as I understand it this was because students may be experiencing similar things this book contains implicit sex as well as support for the trans lie consistently in this and similar books the good guys are portrayed as the ones who support the trans lies the ones who point out the truth are portrayed as the bad guys these books have been reviewed by the committee and remain in the library almost perfect high school unrestricted I removed my shirt and sat next to Sage she smiled at me when I tried to kiss her she fell backward onto the bed her body on display she was mine if I wanted her I touched her skin Logan yes Sage why are we talking now please be gentle it's my first time I kissed her

112but not on the mouth mine too we didn't speak again for another two hours being Jazz Junior High and high school mom got back to work on helping me win the right to use the bathroom I got to use the girls bathroom I could finally pee in peace he called you she lowered her voice a chick with a jazz on social media revealed that his vaginoplasty at age 17 involved a flawed penal inversion procedure which failed and was redone three times another book beyond magenta High School unrestricted while everyone else my age is saving it for a car or a house I'm saving it to look possible I'm saving it for a vagina the 57 bus Junior High restricted High School unrestricted to me gender fluid means I have the potential to be anything any

113gender at any time Nemo explained I can be male female masculine feminine neither both like Sasha Nema uses the they them protein nouns Leah on the offbeat high school restricted it has to be easier for people with penises does this person get you hard yes done people are prehistoric blank wads about gay stuff it's the fact that they went for it they had the B to say blank this blank that Georgia blank all of you homophobic blank blanks If I Was Your Girl High School unrestricted my turn I've gotten to at least third base in every bathroom at school she showed me how she drank a special medicine so that when she grew up she became a woman instead of a man when I was born my parents named Andrew Hardy and the doctors wrote

114mail on my birth certificate they had no idea who I was going to grow up to be I took a dose of hydrocodone when I was done dilating clarification that has stand for hours a day after a penile inversion it continues for years he reached under my skirt I nodded and we resumed our kids as his fingers danced at my thigh and found the top of my leggings which he slowly pulled down I am buttoned his shirt and slid it down his arms I lifted my sweater over my head and wasn't afraid I wasn't afraid we stared at each other for a moment and came to a silent decision I stood and wiggled out of my skirt while he set forward and checked his pants we looked at each other again and my breath caught

115in my chest I bit my lip and unclased my bra and let it fall to the floor he took me about the arms and pulled me back down he crawled on top of me he kissed me again and I wrapped my arms around him his fingers ran down my side and from there he passed over my hip bone and down further still I didn't stop him not to be crude but you're going to grow breasts Dr Howard continued they'll shrink if you ever change your mind and go off the hormones but they'll never completely go away unless you get reconstructive surgery I nodded and more importantly you're going to be sterile within a few weeks of starting the drug it might be reversible if you stop the hormones within your first year but after that

116point the effect is almost always completely permanent everything about the trans ideology is a lie trans women are not women they are men trans men are not men they are women trans rights are not human rights they are special privileges demanded by a few that remove the rights of women and children expansion example Sports competitions trans right activism is not a civil rights movement gender affirming care is sex denying abuse that mutilates healthy bodies and creates lifelong patients for profit protecting trans kids is is in fact grotesque child abuse that destroys their puberty fertility urinary tract system and future it is in fact genital mutilation similar to what is done to young girls in Africa this is the greatest medical Scandal since phlebotomies were used to cure mental illness in the 40s all medical societies

117either supported the nonsense or did not need to act against it hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are enriching themselves from these barbaric acts Norway Britain Sweden and Finland are Banning are severely restricting the drugs given to children for their sexual confusion if a 78 pound teenager said she felt fat should I affirm this should I give her a diet book give her diet pills recommend a stomach stapling surgery or should I gently guide her to a mental health professional who will help her to see that the way she sees herself is in fact not the truth the transculture is entirely a lie keeping these trans supporting books in our libraries makes you complicit in this thank you [Applause] Mr President if I may respond just uh to the question that was uh presented by Ms Douglas

118I will just tell you that we have an ongoing process by which uh our Librarians our staff members along with two members of our school board who are representative on that committee it is a laborious process it is a long process and by Design to make sure that we're being very thorough in that in that whole process so I wanted to share that with you okay moving on to item eight would be our reports item a the superintendent support be Dr Hollingsworth we're not moving there we go all right thank you Mr President I do want to start as I do each month I want to give you an update on where we ended the month of August we ended our school year uh in on May the 24th board with 10 851 students enrolled

119and attendance of 95.23 percent uh that is up as we end the month of August August 31st we had 11 041 that's about where we are right now with 11 041 students and uh attendance of 96.36 overall I wanted to also share this with you this is uh this is I found this to be very interesting data I asked our pims clerk I wanted to get a handle on how much Mobility we see and how much our student body has changed since uh covet and so if you the the year that covet happened for the first time was on uh in March of 2020. so March of 20 the 1920 school year you'll see that our total snapshot enrollment was 9481 uh total new to District was 1859. now that means you have some students

120who move out we have other students move in and that's not uncommon with uh with poverty you have higher Mobility I also asked our uh PM's clerk to our PM's director to give us information on which students are still in District so this 1859 that was the number of new student IDs that were issued across our district in that school year but look as we go forward to 2021 school year you had 1872 students who were new to The District in 2122 you had 2213 students new to the district and in 2223 we had 2 366 students and our our snapshot enrollment in that year last year was 10 837. thus far this year we've had 1 483 new students enroll get new student IDs and then look at that next column still in the

121district so if you add those together since 1920 school year 6936 of our students were new to Waxahachie ISD if you back out the 1920 school year because up until March the 13th it was relatively normal you're still at 6 000 students of our 11 000 students were not in Waxahachie ISD prior to that particular event I thought that was really really interesting data it was much higher than I anticipated that it would be and I thought it was relevant to share with you all right I wanted to also let you know one of the ways that we stay in touch with our staff is through our regular campus rounds I began our campus rounds today at Northside Elementary School and on all of the lunches I go in I visit with our teaching staff

122and our our front office staff they all come in during lunches we have a hamburger for them and then we give them some updates we gave them updates on construction on legislation and we reviewed our survey results from last spring this last where it says and now the listening portion of our program we close out each of those meetings by listening specifically to the concerns of our staff and the concerns of our teachers just to get their direct feedback in addition to that starting in October I am implementing a teacher advisory Council the teacher advisory Council will be made up of teachers from throughout our district at least two per campus and then we'll also make sure that we have representation uh adequate representation from some of our other areas of instruction such as special

123education our bilingual education Etc and this will be another opportunity for me to meet one-on-one with teachers on a regular basis to get their feedback we'll do that once for six weeks and I just wanted you guys to be aware of the implementation of the teacher advisory Council we also have and you may or may not know this a weekly check-in that we conduct with our elementary principles and also with our secondary principles it occurs at 8 A.M for elementary 9 A.M on Mondays for our secondary principles we talk about our goals for classroom and PLC presence and our principals make commitments of how often they're going to be in classrooms and they make commitments for their presence and plcs we also have a focus now on the use of those high quality instructional materials

124that we talked about that concludes Mr President my superintendent's report any questions or comments for Dr Hollingsworth okay moving on to report Item B would be informational report on House Bill 8. all right so a couple of months ago several of us went to Navarro and had a meeting with their uh dean of the college here and Dr Fagan one of the things that house bill 8 aimed to do for students was to provide a way for low-income students to have access to dual credit classes in high school so on the face of this bill is a great thing for our students and the reason I'm coming to talk to you tonight is we'll have to make Provisions in our Budget moving forward to next year to accommodate part of the change that's coming as

125part of this bill so through this students that are qualified as free A reduced lunch low-income students will have access to dual credit classes at no cost no tuition no books nothing that goes along with that class so the reason that we're here to talk about this again is part of that change is going to be burdened by the school district so I'm going to show you a slide here in just a second second that shows you the breakdown between two students one that is on a reduced price lunch and one that is not so if you look on the left side of that screen there you can see the price of tuition for a student that does not qualify for free or reduced lunch comes out to about 387 dollars on the right side

126of that screen there is the total that a district will now pick up for the cost of those students to attend dual credit classes while in high school so it's about a 200 increase that we're not currently paying for those students so we'll need to make Provisions like I said in our Budget moving forward to the next school year just wanted to put this on the radar now we just learned about this and wanted to share the information with you that's better that will begin next year it's actually now yes ma'am so we worked with Dr Fagan Dr Hollingsworth reached out and Navarro actually went back to their board and they made adjustments to their budget to accommodate this to to pick up the tab this year for students we estimated the cost to be

127about sixty thousand dollars so they have worked with us to pick up the tab this year and help us move into the next school year to accommodate that is this just for dual credit yes sir that is what we refer to as another unfunded mandate from from the legislature any other questions for Dr moniker all right so much thank you okay moving on to report item c will be informational report from vok to discuss the curation and design process that will utilize in the design of a comprehensive High School number two I believe we've got uh Jonathan all this right we're trying to we have Jonathan he's going to be virtually with us and then Sarah is in person with us uh there's Jonathan on the screen and Sarah's right here behind us and so

128I'll turn it over to Sarah good evening making sure Jonathan is there can I do a mic check with Jonathan first Jonathan can you hear us I have you do you have me we do we do all right very good um good evening board president Autry members of the board Dr Hollingsworth thank you for having BLK architect here tonight to discuss the vlk launch process my name is Sierra kaprowski and I'm an educational planner with Blk and joining us uh virtually is principal in charge Jonathan Aldis and he's the principal in charge of the new Waxahachie High School number two tonight we want to share with you the details associated with the BLK launch process this engaging experience provides a structured process for participants students teachers or to trustees and District leaders to provide input

129on overarching goals and themes and Big Ideas into the vision of Waxahachie High School number two there it goes [Music] foreign [Music] launch process consists of two two-hour meetings usually in the afternoon or evening to better accommodate participant schedules and if we're lucky Jonathan will buy us dinner during that time during the first meeting we will discuss the outcomes of the BLK curation meeting held at a prior date with District Personnel vlk curation was the process that gives us a deep understanding of a District's educational goals we discuss the culture and we discussed the future of teaching and learning and learning aspirations of Waxahachie ISD this meaning leads to a strong partnership and understanding before design efforts ever begin participants then work individually within groups to provide input and share big ideas through two different

130exercises with the outcomes of curation as the foundation individually participants will study this typology of space images and provide input on learning environments they believe would best resonate and facilitate the district's current and future teaching and learning expectations input is provided through the use of voting stickers which participants place on the images that resonate with Waxahachie ISD sticky notes are also provided for participants to add additional comments or further expand on their ideas vlk members take photos of the completed image boards and the sticky notes and we combine them all and all the input received the information is then shared with the district and taken into consideration when design discussions occur the second experience participants will engage in is a gaming exercise okay during this gaming exercise participants work in groups discuss high level adjacencies

131the user experience and overarching big ideas for a specific project input is provided through an arrangement of learning spaces and how the team believes they could function together as an overall learning campus this piece right here is actually the board the gaming board for Waxahachie high school and you can notice that there are gaming pieces Associated and it's very high level when we just discuss adjacencies how something would function together and we talk a lot about the overall student experience and user experience within that building participants arrange the learning spaces provide feedback on how they should function together and then list their big ideas of spaces that align with the vision of Waxahachie ISD this right here is an example of a completed game board where there is gathered input you can see the arrangement

132of learning spaces and you can also see the detailed Notes From The participants of which We Gather record and use as a data point when considering design expectations here is another example of gaming boards this is from Liberty Hill ISD launch day one you can see there are three game boards representing three different groups many times we find that within the participant groups there are very common similarities with adjacencies because the community shares the same vision they are all community members students teachers and so therefore they have a shared Vision on how they're like a campus to function and the adjacency should go together at the conclusion of the gaming exercise participants present their board to the other groups explaining their big ideas and the whys behind their design this is a wonderful time to

133actually hear from students explain their thoughts behind how the spaces should function with an overall learning environment voted on by all participants and then again taken as just input and vlk designers considering similar adjacent season function this is actually a great time when the kids present to hear their learning experience and what they would like to see within a high school and just not our high schoolers but it's very important this process to think about the user and those users right now are sitting maybe in elementary school and so thinking about involving the younger students and making sure there's an alignment of what they're experiencing now and that's being provided within the high school experience so hearing from those younger students in the future of the high school is a great time to do this

134so you can see here this is for a middle school but they're actually a little bit younger kids and we all know kids will tell you the truth right approximately two weeks after launch day one we have launch day two and all participants are invited back vlk members are summarizing the work from launch day one we go over the overarching themes we go over ideas and feedback and review from the typology of space exercise and we do all of this and review all of that before we present any Design Concepts participants are presented with Design Concepts based on launch Day One gaming exercise input from their notes and group discussions which are all aligned to the district's vision for teaching and learning and you can see here that there are three different Design Concepts there

135of where they took the big overall adjacencies and somewhat arranged them and you can also see that there are um similarities within all of them and we point those out with the group of the common the consensus within that big launch group The Design Concepts presented reflect the groups preferred adjacencies and the overall function of the building it is a very high level design process which will continue with specific user groups so this is not the end of the design process specific user groups are met with throughout the entire design process for several months to get down to the details so within aspects like this you will not see elevators or restrooms or we won't talk about Cubbies or colors it is a very high level experience just getting that overall User Group input participants

136give feedback and vote onto the Design Concepts for written the input is collected during launch day two and compiled and considered in the design process as it progresses and right here you can see all the sticky notes which are expanded thoughts on the actual design and the whys behind the specific adjacencies participants do vote they are given stickers to vote for their first second and third place choices those are then added up and it seems to be that there is a consensus behind an overall design again not detailed a very high level just as Jason sees when we talk about experience and function and with that I want to thank you for your time this evening and we look forward to our continued partnership with Waxahachie ISD and I'm happy to answer any questions at

137this time or direct them to Jonathan I do want to say thank you Sarah and also Jonathan for being here today these are specific questions that have come from trustees about what the process will look like as we go into designing a school that's going to be perfect for our needs and for our particular community and so I wanted them to be able to come and give you an overview of what that process looks like I know Mr McCutcheon had taken part in a similar process with the new steam wild and steam Academy yeah I actually had no clue what I was getting into when I went to that meeting I walked in with all those kids and teachers and parents but it was very neat to see for me the parents the kids and

138the teachers collaborate I felt like an outsider because they live in those buildings every day and they've seen different things from different schools and they were collaborating and putting different elements together and I don't know it's missed Miss authier in here tonight she's right there yeah um your son was our team lead I think he could have designed that whole school if we would have let him but uh it was a really neat deal beginning to to end well for the launch process for the launch process Mr Audrey or for overall design process the launch process is about two to three weeks with all the groundwork that's already been done so far it's just the two meetings spaced apart by an interval to give our team time to start to formalize a little bit of

139those sort of bubble diagrams that the teams put together for us so it moves pretty quick after that first meeting it I'll I'll further clarify and say that launch for us is just a great way to gather a lot of great ideas from a lot of varied sources and similar to what we did on Steam we were very clear that ultimately the Board of Trustees helps us shape that and frankly the people who teach in those spaces every day are going to work through details of like how a science lab functions and that's what Sarah was alluding to is there's a lot of meetings that happen after this that work out how the building functions we already know the spaces that are going to be in the building this is just a great idea it's

140a great opportunity for us to ask for and find frankly we get a lot of great solutions from your community and get a lot of buy-in from them because they also start to understand some of the constraints we have and you have you know the side has certain ways it has to operate the code has the ways the building has to go together so it's it's a pretty quick track once we get going on any other questions comments okay thank you both to you thank you thank you very much wanted to report D will be our informational report on wisd's ballot scorecard priorities 1.1 and 1.3 Dr Avery I've got several backup singers tonight this is going to be a team effort our Priority One balanced scorecard report specifically about student growth and our priority

141for every student to grow every year we're going to focus on academic growth and ccmr growth tonight and I'm going to start off with Miss Hilburn and she's going to give us a data review and give us some updates on our accountability system as it stands today good evening board Dr Hollingsworth uh I've actually got a new nickname it's data Dawn and so you can remember it that way but I've also hired a new addition and he's data dude so we're kind of known as data Dawn and data dude so uh it's good to be here tonight and kind of go over a review you know we know that the state last week decided to throw a little curveball at us and change some things but it's going to be for the good and so

142while I get into that I wanted to do a quick overview of really what accountability is and as a reminder it falls into three domains the first domain is all about star okay so it's how we do on that that could potentially be 70 percent of a campus or a District's accountability ratings then we have school progress it actually falls into two categories there's part A and there's Part B part A deals with all about growth which is relates back to our balance scorecard in 1.1 we want every student to grow so in in the eyes of the state that only happens for math and reading why does it only happen for math and reading those are the only two assessments that a student takes every year and so we want that student to grow

143for example from third grade to fourth grade and and we're helping to track that and then Part B is basically it's your relative perform it's called relative performance it's your economically disadvantaged percentage based off your star scores so what the state realizes is if you have a high eco-disc campus your star scores are probably going to be a little bit lower and vice versa so it does not punish you for that and then closing the gaps actually is a combination of domain one and domain two and a big piece of that is also the growth piece and so just to kind of give you an overview of the student achievement it's not the same for everybody meaning that Elementary Middle School domain one is 100 star but when you start looking at High School 40

144percent is based off start 40 is based off ccmr and I know Miss binnicker is going to talk to you a little bit about more about that in just a little bit and then graduation rates are 20 percent so as we talked about how things have changed so we we kind of said an ever-changing of landscape so really what does it mean that the state came out and said hey we're putting the brakes on we need to go back and review this a little bit first thing star's not changing in that our star scores are what they are our growth is what it is and that we already know uh based off what the state's given is did a student grow from one year to the next what they're looking at here is first of

145all I'll talk to you about domain 2A and it talked about academic growth and so what they're looking at is that calculation of how they figured up growth so it's basically the the cut score that cut score is probably going to change which means our scores are probably going to change why is this an important because it could count 70 percent of our overall accountability so take back for a second domain one was about about star scores domain two is really about growth you get to take the higher of those two so let's say a campus gets higher on academic growth because this state changed the cut scores that counts 70 percent of that campus total accountability academic growth also counts for domain 3 and closing the gaps and so you can see there domain

146three counts 30 percent of a campuses and a District's overall performance and so if the state comes and changes these cut scores it's a game changer and and what scores could be so I kind of wanted to explain that a little bit what are the timeline implications for this so now the state's saying they're going to take a review they're going to look at it they're going to come back late October early November and tell us what those cut scores scores are and give us those ratings so that means taper's not going to be released till early March so you won't see me probably till then you used to see me around December that I went over taper and then your school report card and federal report card that means that's going to be late

147March so it kind of pushes there and honestly we start testing in April so we're almost a full year from the last time we took star scores until we're going to end up getting this information one things I'm super proud of as long as with my system is our data dashboards and our house bill 4545 now 1416 tracker we did them last year as well I shared a little bit of those but I refer to them now as their dashboards on steroids we are helping teachers we are helping campuses we are helping administrators breaking down the data so they don't have to do that we break it down by teacher we break it down by even a class we break it down by school we break down the learning standard the teak we're showing growth

148and so at this point I've kind of put up on the right hand side we have a district data Hub and so a teacher or administrator can go to this Hub they can click on the dashboard that they want to see so of course we've already done done star we've just finished map we will have interim assessments and then you see all the core that's related to star in fact by the time at the end of the year we will have done about 250 data polls and what I mean is students take an assessment when they're done once the coordinators give us that date we pull that data we put it in a dashboard we share it with teachers and campuses so they can review the data to see how kids did so then we

149can make a quick decision on hey what do we not do so well in and if you've been the teacher in that classroom I remember those days where you you know you killed that lesson you thought you did a great job and then they took the test and you went what just happened so this data will help them in making ensuring that kids are understanding what they're rolling out and then over there through the bottom right we have helping teachers helping campuses keep track of students that need accelerated hours accelerated hours are based off students that did not meet standard for Star maybe they did not meet standard for star two years in a row so a student could need and they've they've revamped it and I think it's for the good it's now 14

15016 but we also have to track this for the state the state wants us to make sure that we're getting the hours in but they also want to know what resources that we're using to help those students and so it's it's a little less than 30 seconds a student uh access is this they put their name in what really already logs their name uh what the accelerated subject was and then they logged the time and my data dude guy did a spreadsheet and if I needed 30 hours of acceleration and I was in um except I was in class or a pull out for 30 minutes it automatically subtracts that 30 minutes from my 30 hours and lets the teacher know I need 29 and a half so there's no having to figure that up

151or sheets everywhere and dealing with it that way so then the last piece we wanted to come up with some glows and grows so when looking at the data that we have this the star data grade 8 math showed growth for all three Junior highs and all performance levels when I talk about performance levels we're talking about approaches meets and Masters and then grade four math they uh grew in meets for all campuses why is that important when you start looking at domain three and closing the gaps a certain percentage that only counts for students that get meets or higher so when we look at meats and Masters it's important then grade five math showed growth in approaches and in meets and so math had a had a good showing for star and then English

152one and English two and you've probably heard me say before those are the two probably most difficult EOC a high school student will take and we showed great growth in that English one showed a five percent growth for approaches English 2 showed a seven percent growth for approaches and then U.S history was 96 percent they always knocked that out of the park but that 96 percent was actually where we were product covid so they they've already got that back up where we were and then some grows that we want to to look at and focus on grade three through five reading language arts what needs to be an area of focus we want to continue to focus on domain two eight that falls back on our balance scorecard in 1.1 a that we want every

153student to grow a new piece to start in the redesign is the way writing is done if you remember fourth grade writing and seventh grade writing was taken back a couple years ago the state has now replaced that with what we call short constructed responses in extended constructed responses the short constructed responses are for grades three through eight all subjects in all the eocs and so students have to write out an answer versus picking A B C or D and then you have your extended constructed responses which more align with what the writing test was that they have to write it's really a prompt that they have to write on and so it's an area of focus because a student could earn 10 points and across the state this was an area of concern an

154average Elementary student earned between two and three out of ten points a secondary student earned between four and five and so not only a growth area that we want to look at but it's also a growth area across the state and then as always we want to look at the meets and Masters and make sure we keep those kids up because I know like Miss uh Harris was up here talking about our National Merit semi-finalists we want more of those students and that will help us keep up keep those students on track and so for me and my team we look forward to continue with with data dashboards and helping support campuses and looking that data and how we can grow all right so one of the ways that we're tracking that this Miss Hilburn

155just talked about was some of the the assessments we're doing in our classroom so the one that I want to talk about with you guys tonight is map we've heard a lot about map one of the things we've heard is we test our kids too much it takes too long so I wanted to point out a couple of things about math that we've really tried to refine our processes this year and mimic a star-like environment so the test is about 42 43 questions depending on the content area and one of the things that map has told us is those tests should take about 45 to 55 minutes what we're seeing is that kids are spending upwards of 60 to 90 minutes on this test and that's kind of a good thing what that tells us

156is that the kids have reached a level on that test that is above grade level the more difficult the question is the students start pausing on those questions and we just need to get the teachers to encourage the student to pick the guests the pick the best guess the best pick the best answer and move through that test so it's not a bad thing the kids are getting to that point it's actually a really good thing they've reached a level where it's above their grade level one of the things they also told us is that kids are going to miss about 50 of the questions that's okay this is not for Mastery of content this is to see where the student is so we can get a Baseline and see how they're growing throughout that

157year I talked earlier today about the use of high quality instructional materials like I said a couple of weeks ago we got together with our staff we started assessing our resources that we have and identified some deficiencies and that's what I came to you this evening and the 50-minute presentation you heard earlier was all about high quality instructional materials I left you some information in your blue folder that highlights what those resources are and it defines it from the state and we're working to address the gaps with the use of these resources the Sprint one right as we continue our work with the PLC process teams create agendas and take notes complete with action steps in their work to provide high quality instruction as we go deeper into our PLC work this year protocols will

158be developed for specific types of meetings such as data analysis and the lesson internalization that you've heard about tonight teams will use data from ongoing formative assessments including map growth and reading fluency and District developed quick checks and unit tests principles have also formed guiding coalitions at their campuses this team of teachers work hand in hand with the campus administrator to set goals and move the work of the campus forward principals will be submitting a calendar of scheduled meetings and share information from PLC agendas and minutes to inform professional learning decisions so we'll be taking that feedback that they're Gathering from their teachers and use that at our department level to make decisions campuses in tli are also working to strengthen the mtss systems for student growth and providing students that need extra support that

159support they need and partnership campus leaders and tli will continue to conduct learning walks these walks will be conducted in kick or housed in kick up which also provides metrics and we're able to look and see some hot spots of areas that we need to address for training and to help them also in implementing our materials that we have at Dr Johnson and I want to follow up with Dr Hollingsworth mentioned earlier in his report about our weekly check-in meetings that we have with our principals Mrs Martin I we have a meeting each Monday morning via Zoom we have these check-in practices looking at our district classroom look fors as well as we've added the emphasis on high quality instructional materials we also will be conducting as part of our TA Tia process a monthly

160t-test calibration session we had our first one last week it went really really well this is going to help our principals as they go in and observe teachers and make sure that they're all on the same page because it's very it's critical that we have our walks and excuse me our observations calibrated for Tia process principal said we want to streamline our walk-through processes so we look we had about six different forms we were using an engine for you after a brief discussion we limited that that down to two so HR is helping us fix that Ninja for you so that's more user friendly and and again of course we review our walk through dad every week we sit down via Zoom together and have these conversations and they are very rich okay um 1.3

161talks about every graduate we want our all of our graduates to be college career military ready and we want our ccmr numbers to increase every year one thing that's interesting about what you've heard about is uh the new rollout for scaling for ccmr the proposed change is significant in the past around a 65 percent ccmr rate was scaled to a 91 or an A in the new system that would be scaled to a 71 and to receive an a for ccmr or 90 you'd have to have an 88 percent ccmr score which as you can see that's a pretty significant jump in one year that that was also not released until last spring which was a full um almost full year after the data points that would be used for that rating had already been

162earned or so to speak that hay was already in the barn okay because it is a lagging indicator so 2023's rating is based on 2022's graduates for which the rules were changed after they graduated so if we take a look at this this is another example where our previous uh around 66 65 percent score was a 91 now that would be a 71. and here's just a short little small data table of what ccmr scores look like for whs and for Global obviously Global is 97 Global is a full Early College High School where every student has to take dual credit so it's going to be different than whs but you can see whs is right there at 66 percent which was which was scaled to be an eight here's an interesting graphic when you

163look at what the current or the excuse me the previous uh ccmr cut scores how they would be applied to districts across the state excuse me with a graduating class of between 501 to 2000 that's where we land and you can see that 69 percent of the districts in the state with a graduation class that size would have received an A on that ccmr rating and down you can see B's are 20 percent C's nine and D's whatever's left over now if you take a look at the new scaling you can see what an impact the news Canada will have on districts with graduating class of our size if you turn that on its side you would see what most people would call a bell curve a bell-shaped curve which with actually a little bit

164tailed right I believe I can remember my statistics I'm trying to remember that but you can see only seven percent A's and 16 percent F's so that's a major major change and again this is just a what it looks like across the entire State all districts and you can see where the current rating system or what was in place before they made the shift and then what it would look like now this is across the entire State and again very similar to a bell-shaped curve I just want to point out to the board and to the community that this is an important slide because it really indicates why it is that a lot of districts are joining in on a lawsuit currently against the Texas Education Agency for this very reason it is a moving

165of the goal posts in the middle of the okay that's the bottom line and that's why it is a major concern to a lot of districts around the state thank you Dr h uh okay uh obviously we're going to get into a little bit of details of 1.3 all right so one of our key strategic actions is to implement publish and sustain a district-wide college readiness framework to inform staff students and parents we know that we need to have more students taking advanced level courses in order to push them further we are working with region 10 a partnership with region 10 to have our counselors be trained in What's called the effective advising framework I believe that first meeting is tomorrow we also are working with our counselors at middle school and high school to

166make sure that we inform parents as they come in from grades five to six six to seven seven to eight eight to nine about the course selections that they have we know it's critical especially for math that algebra that algebra in eighth grade or or quicker makes a big difference in how a student will progress into high school we did we want to see our AP dual credit and pre-ap numbers go up we did see a a slight seven percent increase in the enrollment in those courses from 2122 to 22 23. um so one another tool that we have is when our students take the um the pre the PSAT that we get what's called a report of AP potential based on those scores um in Don's office they they will get those letters out

167to our counseling staff to make sure our counseling staff gets us in our parents hands so that we did that last spring and we'll continue to work that work with that and hopefully we'll even make that more robust in the future to make sure parents can make good informed decisions with their students about the courses that they take and make sure that they're challenging themselves one of the things we want to ask students is you're taking one Advanced course can you take two you're taking two courses can you take three because we want students to push themselves um also we've heard mentioned earlier today about our ccmr score I've talked about it some and we know that we want that to go up the state's moving the state move move the goal post so to

168speak and uh for the most part schools have been very good about meeting the challenges that the state's given us we've done it over and over and over again and we will do it again okay but one of the ways we have to we have to be very intentional and making sure that all of our students have access to a way to earn that ccmr point now one of those ways is to utilize the Texas College bridge program which is a college prep math and College Prep English curriculum that is self-paced we will we are enrolling students more and more in that program right now as of now we have 174 of our seniors enroll in college Bridge math and 121 in English we're expanding this to High School of Choice and as needed at

169Global not as much at Global of course but High School of Choice has a different rating threshold and we believe we can we can score a very high score with ccmr rate at High School of Choice by encouraging our students to graduate from SMH SOC to complete Texas College bridge when they grew up before they graduate yes question Dr yes ma'am uh is this in addition to the four English is that they're required or is that or is it is the class the fourth English or is it an additional class I believe it's Edition okay college prep class yes ma'am thank you okay um also to increase enrollment success and advanced academics this is our first year that we that we put into our um accelerated pathway at Junior High for Math and Science we're

170really excited about that we have a a cohort that's going to a zero hour at whs with Miss domini as their teacher these are students from Howard and Finley we have a cohort also at uh Coleman with the teacher on staff there um this process is of course is ongoing right now we have 39 students in accelerated math they're taking sixth seventh and half of eighth in the sixth grade and they're taking High School IPC in the sixth grade so that's going to push those students up past algebra one near how to Geometry and all the way to Biology one by eighth grade so when they graduate they graduate when they leave Junior High they will have math credits and two math credits and two science credits before they enter into high school we it

171is our it is our hope it is our mission to push more and more students towards those upper level science and math classes that will help Mrs Harris have more and more and more National Merit Scholars finals as that's our goal and obviously we're going to continue to look at our participation rates here we use map scores as our as our cut points and we'll look at those every year and evaluate where our students fall again we want to increase our participation and our average scores on ACT SAT and tsia tsia is another College interest test we give those on campus and we did see some increase in our participation last year but with that increase we saw a slight decrease in our scores and again we did see an increase in our in AP

172participation but our performance was relatively flat all right and I want to turn it over to Mrs vinegar now to talk about ccmr at CTE good happy birthday he is all about meeting ccmr and our CTE programs so first of all all programs of study in wisd are aligned with an industry-based certification so somewhere in that program they're going to see an industry-based certification opportunity we continue to work with the counseling department to ensure that our students follow the the correct course sequence to complete a program of study and this is really important now because now the student doesn't just earn the industry-way certification and it checks off that ccrmr box for them they also have to complete the four-year course sequence along with that certification um where am I sorry uh CT is participating

173in region 10's effective advising framework and we're collaborating with administrators across the district to do that here in wisd we will also continue to utilize our CTE student planning guide which is posted on both the CTE website and the wisd website we're working on one for Global high school as well that's just a really great tool for our students especially for our 8th grade parents to look through that highlights all of our programs moving on we currently offer dual Credit in several programs at whs and Global this year we've added cyber security at both Global and whs we're adding EMT at Global and we've added diesel technology in partnership with TSTC at whs as well we had planned to add construction trades the class was just too small and didn't make so we'll continue with

174that next year and we're also looking at adding business as well as we've discussed the final course often the fourth course in the program of study is the course in which students have the opportunity to go out into the community to participate in internships and jobs and we're always looking for new ways to partner with industry leaders in the community who are willing to hire our students to give them that work based learning experience next we've made some significant additions and adjustments to our CTE programs at the junior highs the state has shifted to a new course at the junior high level it's career in college Explorations the state is offering us the curriculum for free for that and so this the teachers are able to work with that with the students the really great

175thing with that is it's also in partnership with the Texas Workforce Commission so all data in that text and that textbook even though it's online is live all the time so as Workforce data Trends change the information that the students are getting it changes it with that this year we added pltw gateway to our Junior highs as well I have had so many students and teachers reach out about how amazing this program is the students are loving working with it I've even had a teacher say that he will never retire as long as he gets to teach the pltw Gateway and I guarantee you we will take him up on that and then last as we continue Outreach with our elementary schools for CTE our CTE teachers and our students participate in the career days

176at the schools that little elementary students love working with the high school students and I know it's a really a big highlight for our students and teachers as well and then last our industry Leadership Council meets quarterly to join us in conversations about the local Workforce needs and to analyze Workforce data that's provided to us both by the Texas Workforce Commission and by Interlink North Texas we work with industry leaders to identify high growth high-wage careers in the greater Ellis County area and the greater DFW area and these are important conversations for us to have with those people in the community as we are looking to plan for Comprehensive High School number two people and last but not least talking about increased exposure and awareness for arms or Armed Forces post-secondary opportunities and to implement

177a JROTC program we are excited to tell you that we have received permission acceptance to offer a naval jrtc program in Waxahachie ISD we were in the early planning stages of that we were given the option to let it start in the fall of 24 that was the option that we we selected because we know it's going to take us a while to get to get that plan but we're very excited about that we also wanted to increase the opportunities our students have to take the ASVAB on campus Mrs Harris reported earlier that we have two different testing opportunities we doubled that number of students that took it from the year before to last year we want to make sure that our students have the opportunity to meet with Recruiters on campus the high school

178keeps a very robust schedule a rotating schedule which all branches of the military National Guard are able to come in and meet with our students during lunches and set up a table and talk that happens throughout the school year and last but not least we are we are excited to continue our strong relationship with our Congressman Jake Elsie's office as he has been so gracious to help us to host for two years now a service Academy a symposium at whs and last year we had around 30 students and parents show up this year we doubled that to over 60. so we're really excited about that and we hope we hope hope that some of our students will want to enter a career in the military go to a service Academy be accepted to a service

179Academy get an appointment so that is that is our hope and we know that we'll get there because of the kind of great kids we have in wisd next month our priority two report miles scorecard report will specifically detail priority two honor and supporting our staff and we're here for any questions that you may have I have one yes sir is there some kind of incentive we can offer the kids at the high school to make them want to go get this ccmr without having to push them towards that so yes we we did put in place a year or so ago the requirement should have a ccmr point to get an off period you know students those seniors want that off period And so that is that is one thing that we have as

180a carrot is if you'll get that ccmr point you will be able to get an off period that's one thing there are other things we could we could do I mean we don't have necessarily I don't think we have cords on there but kids love cords that'd be an option anyone else okay thank you very much thank you sir and moving on to report e informational Bond 2023 construction update Mr Mott good evening board Dr Hollingsworth I'm here tonight to give you an update on the 2023 Bond Construction first of all I'm going to give you an update on we have updated the website for that we used to have for um for going forward when we were going and information for the bond now we're putting on what we are doing with since the

181bond has passed what we are doing so we have included now the bond oversight committee and the meeting notes that we'll have from those the construction updates I give here at the at the board meeting will be on there as well for people to look at we're slowly working to update prop C so everybody can see what's we will be doing at campuses what has been completed at campuses and what's in the process of camp on each individual campus and then lastly we have just started um the live feed for es10 wyomingstein will be coming on board here very shortly if you'd like to see I'm not going to be able to see a lot but if you'd like to see what es10 looks like right now we can show you if I'd like to

182see that here we go so you'll go onto the website it is on the website you'll be able to go onto the website once it comes up there's going to be an arrow in the top right you click that and it will become live so if you look at it during the day you will see people out there moving around Machinery moving around and all that right now you can of course there's nothing moving but you it would be a live stream showing you exactly what's going on if any of you are interested turn it on about two o'clock tonight and I'll see you all out there because we're pouring tonight at 2 A.M so there will be people moving around there tonight at 2 A.M it's going to take a little bit of time

183because this throws us out of the board presentation so Steve castanado is going to get us back to where we need to be okay so that is where we're up on the on the actual Bond website uh page so we'll continually update that throughout the year and as we do things you'll see updates on that you can see there at the bottom you do see the page has to do different things and the piece on the right is actually the construction site and have all those different things on there next we're going to talk about proposition a we're going to start with Elementary School 10. Elementary School 10 is still on time and on budget scheduled to hopefully be all utilities will be finished this week installed we are starting to pour fire Lanes tonight

184before we can go vertical the city has a rule a lot a rule that you cannot go vertical without all fire Lanes being in so tonight will be the first pour we're going to do start getting fire Lanes put in um and hopefully by the end of the week we'll have all of but one approach put in so we'll pour tonight we're pulling again Wednesday night on that um we will have it by the end of this week and or I guess the end of next week we'll have all grade beams for the whole building poured and all spot footings board so a lot of the concrete is going to be poured and then we're going to start seeing slab pores coming on very soon we will as of this morning when I was out

185there at the trailer talking to them our date to start going vertical which will be in the storm shelter we'll start putting it up is October 2nd we're gonna start seeing material delivered at the end of the month and then our start putting up October 2nd the plan to start going vertical in that area which is a storm shelter is better known as a gymnasium so here's a picture here of the site on 731 you see on the left on 8 31 you see there on the right those are the drones you can see we down there in the bottom right you see that little white truck that is actually a pump truck we had poured that morning a lot of grade beams and spot footings there and what we call area a which is

186the administration cafeteria in the gym area so tonight you can kind of see we're gonna be pouring some of these fire Lanes here as I pointed out there here's what some of them looked at laid out that is one of the utility issues when we dug into we discovered that the utility when the utility company put it in it was about six inches higher than where it needed to be so we had to dig back and fix it and those are the things you find out when you start digging in with two different people are laying you have a utility company in a MEP company doing it so we're going to go to Wyman Steam walm and steam at groundbreaking on August 31st had a very good showing for that right now we are finishing

187up the permit process for that here's a layout of wall and see if you'd like to see it in accordance to how it's laying out to the high school and those kind of things um so there's you'll have you'll do see there's three drives there for that that will be shared differently for when we do traffic control for that school building all that's being discussed right now at the city that's part of our early where we filed for early grading permit we're working on finishing up the city permitting and that's all part of that we have to go through to get through all those permitting we're also working with TxDOT for some permits we do have to go under the highway to get some bring some things across and we will also have a D

188cell XL Lane put in front of the school there along business 287. and Stephen one of the first things we'll see is that that three acre uh yes sir so on the far left of your picture there is we will start to as soon as we get early grading permit we will start digging a three to four acre Pond out there anywhere from I believe is about 14 15 feet deep what that's allowing us to do is instead of paying for fill dirt for all the dirt we have to bring in to level this site out we're getting it from in on site that is going to be somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred thousand dollar savings could be even more than that I'd rather just stay about that much right now and then

189hopefully we'll get more so with that savings right there it'll get us back into where we wanted to be on our construction budget will get us back to just about dead even on that and that actually was brought to us by our uh earthwork person that got our earthwork he said if you'll let me dig there I can save you money so it's very good savings Hancock building conversion we have given BTC drawings last Monday for 75 complete drawings so they can go out and kind of get some estimated pricing so we can kind of see how we're looking on that the end of the drawings will Begin by the end of the month they'll probably go out for bidding or soon after that we're looking at the end of October have the bidding done

190and hopefully in November board meeting you'll be approving that GMP we're currently working on Prop C things we're working on quite a few things you approved last board meeting um so we've all we're already working on the North side roof overlay that's going well we have 255 AC units on order currently and those will be throughout the district being replaced and that's on just about every campus we have except Simpson and um whs we also have playgrounds being installed and on order we have some door doors and door door hardware that have all been on order and here's some pictures of what's going on so there is Northside this morning in that top picture that is actually the 300 Hall 100 Hall the roof has been complete we're working on putting some fascia metal and

191some gutters on it starting probably the end of the week this is the 300 haul and then they're working on the gym as well at the current time the bottom two pitchers that is Clift Elementary's largest playground and they are putting in the subgrade uh Rock and then they'll come in and put some decomposed Granite some padding and it'll all be turfed we're getting so quite a few of our playgrounds we're going from the old wooden mulch to Turf underneath it it does help the maintenance side that's a big big relief because every year we have to start doing refilling those playgrounds and fluffing them and doing those things and there's only certain type of mulch you can use in the playgrounds for safety barriers and things like that so it is a big savings

192for us on that any questions thank you very much sir thank you okay our last item under reports about informational report on method of voting for the elections of Trustees Mr Robinson thank you Mr President board Dr hollandsworth four years ago 2019 the board for the first time Waxahachie isd's history adopted the method of Elections by places at that time we also adopted the model policy language that tasbi had at BBB local which set our method of voting at plurality what it says the the plain language there in BBB local is to be elected a candidate must receive more votes than any other candidate for the place what it means is that using this method if there's an election with three or more candidates Whoever has the most votes wins period there's no runoff and

193so you do it one time and a question's been asked well is that the way a school district has to do it no but it is the way that the overwhelming majority of districts do it and just walk through tonight and explain why and give you things to think about for if you want to make a change but within our region there are 81 school districts 74 of our school districts use plurality as their method of voting meaning that when those districts have an election it's over with that first Saturday in May whatever happens happens whatever as most votes that's it seven districts have majority as their method meaning that they will have a runoff if there are three or more candidates and no one received a majority within Ellis County up until last year

194all 10 districts were aligned and used plurality as their method before the May 23 election Red Oak ISD changed and so gives us now a sample District within the county now we have one that is using majority as its method and so let's walk through some of the positives some of the reasons why the overwhelming vast majority of school districts use plurality as their method expense avoidance is is number one the total fee here in Ellis County for the May election and then the June special runoff election was 28 850 imposed by the elections office to all the entities that had runoffs there were four entities in that runoff three were cities one was the school district Red Oak Red Oaks fee was nine thousand two hundred that was proportionate based on the number of

195Voters we're bigger than red oak and so that fee would have been larger for Waxahachie ISD had Waxahachie ISD been in that scenario because Waxahachie SD had plurality its election was over in May it didn't incur this fee in June so in addition to just the monetary fee imposed by the elections office you also have your use of facilities generally speaking this building the administration building is used for early voting well the early voting period lasts a full Work Week including the first Friday in June because the special election the runoff election is five weeks after the The General speaking this building's closed the Fridays in June and July so you'd be talking about using this building for for five business days you'd be talking about using this building electrifying this building in a on

196at least one Friday in June which you generally wouldn't use this building and then the election site itself on Saturday generally we utilize the Marvin biomedical Academy because we've never had a special runoff we've never had to Electrify that building on a day in June but with a runoff election you'd have to utilize that time those 74 districts in region 10 those nine districts Like Us in Ellis County that let the results in may speak for themselves most years your first Saturday in may you have a week in between the second Monday in May when you have your general meeting for the month of May that week in between gives you an opportunity canvas votes and come to that may meeting and allow you as you're required to do under bdaa legal and local to

197elect your president vice president and secretary if you have to wait for a runoff five weeks later into the middle of June generally speaking you're not going to be able to even have that lag to let your regular meeting in June cover your reorganization and your your candidate election you're going to have to have a special called meeting in June or wait till your meeting in July just to set your officers for the upcoming school year final positive for the plurality method is simply turnout this previous May election gives you a a pretty decent sample to go by we had 14.51 percent turnout nothing to brag about not not great turnout but 14.15 percent turnout in May you have a much lower turnout 5.83 percent turnout for the June special joint runoff folks just aren't

198motivated to come back to vote and so you've got a interestingly small sample size that comes back for that runoff here's another thing to contemplate I didn't say this was a positive or negative but as incumbents all seven of you I would absolutely understand if you would contemplate this as an additional positive for the plurality so you saw that you go from 15 turnout down to five percent turnout for that runoff Statewide it has just proven itself that generally speaking that vote for a Challenger translates to another vote for a Challenger in the runoff a vote against the incumbent now there's not enough school districts in the state to analyze so there's really not a sample size but textelex.com did an analysis from 1996 to 2022 gives you 26 years worth of election data for

199Statewide officer incumbents incumbents had a 30 percent successful re-election experience across the board in runoffs Statewide legislator incumbents facing runoffs only 20.5 one in five were successful four out of five times the Challenger defeated the the incumbent in the runoff and then Congressional incumbents there's just not a huge sample size there it's only happened a few times most of the times when you see a lot of people running for a congressional seat it's because it's an open seat but in those few times where you've had at least two Challengers to a congressional incumbent neither got a majority none of the incumbents have have won their re-election so you have all of that which has formed the basis for why school districts generally speaking have adopted the plurality method what is the the positive for the

200majority well it's it's in its name it's the certainty of the majority and it's truly up to you the board determine the balance of how you weigh just how important the certainty of majority is it's just plain math if you have two candidates and by the time you get to that runoff when you have two candidates you're you're certain then in that runoff election that somebody's got to have the will of the majority somebody's got to have 50.01 at least one vote more than the majority if you have three candidates it's possible that someone with just over a third can become the candidate can become the trustee four candidates just over a quarter five candidates it's possible mathematically possible just over 20 percent but as we said in the beginning 74 of the 81 districts

201in region 10 nine of the ten districts in in Ellis County have remained you use utilizing plurality as their method of voting any questions that when we changed to places that were in this forever you know type thing if we changed to majority versus plurality would we be stuck in this majority forever and because when we change places we we knew we were changing forever so there is statutory language that applied to the the change that was made that's not the same as it relates to the method of voting so Miss kriegel's question when the board decided to go to places that was a forever change you can't go back to the general plurality method where you have candidates running at large for two or three positions at a time we can't go back to

202that ever but the method of voting that statutory language isn't as prescriptive this was a part of what the board was able to do when it adopted the language in BBB it could have adopted a majority it could have adopted plurality we adopted plurality basically just using the model language from Tasman you would have the freedom if you did choose to go red oak has the freedom to to go back to plurality if they so choose now a lot of districts have been involved in the court system because of a challenge that hasn't happened it walks at GSD and I'm not asking or trying to invite that but there are some districts that then do have more prescriptive requirements because there's a court order or some action from the justice department but that's that's not

203applicable here yes ma'am any other questions thank you very much thank you okay we're moving into item nine was our consent agenda we have items a through K well correct I'd like to make a motion we approve the consent agenda items a through K motion by Mr starnader second by Mrs Timmerman any other discussion all in favor say aye oppose their name motion carry six zero okay moving on to our action item a would be consideration with possible action to adopt the mno maintenance and operation tax rate of 0.7575 and ins interest in Sinking tax rate of 0.4129 Mr column I think sir so aboard tonight we had our public hearing uh with regards to these tax rates the rate says president Autry just mentioned uh mno rate 0.7575 and the high Nursery 0.4129 total

204tax rate of a dollar 1704 . if there are any questions or any more discussion if not I'll entertain a motion to approve action item a as presented so moved Closer by Mrs Kruger second second by Mr McCutcheon any other discussion all in favor say ah all right post carry 6-0 thank you sir okay action item B would be consideration and possible action to approve the Design Services proposal from EMA engineering and Consulting Incorporated for electric switchgear Replacements and Proposition C projects I really thought I was going to get out of here without using the word switch gear with what without using the word switch gear so in Proposition C we have four campuses that have their switch gears to be updated some of them are very old and we should have done this their

205Federal Pacific and those have all been out quote unquote outlawed and we do have to replace those now and so we are looking at to all the switch gears have to we can't just go under and say hey just change these out they do have to be engineered so the engineers will come in and check them look at them see everything and then they'll draw draw us up so when we go to these electric companies they'll say this is exactly what we need so the campuses that are touched for Shackleford Dunaway Bentley and Turner I like I like to add something there just for the record the Federal Pacific Federal Pacific panels along with some stab lock panels and some others that are used in buildings I'm having a lot of those that as an

206insurance agent we can't even write them anymore and people that have them their insurances insurance is being canceled or non-renewed so it's it's not a joke it does have to be done as a requirement just FYI that's industry standard anyone else I entertain a motion to approve action item b as presented motion by Mr Schofield any other discussion all in favor say aye aye Jose well she carries 6-0 thank you very much for tomorrow action item c will be consideration of a possible action to approve a resolution addressing the requirement of House Bill 3 to provide armed security officers at all campuses that ratifies the combined School Marshals program and school resource officer program sorry program as a District's plan to satisfy section 37.010814 the Texas Education Code what's your problem John thank you Mr

207President and board in 2016 you approved a SRO program with the City of Waxahachie and Waxahachie Police Department in 2018 the approve your Marshall Plan and since that time we have had armed security at every one of our campuses throughout the district six years strong now thank you very much for that house bill strictly defines armed security solely as peace officers neither the district has the funding nor does Waxahachie Police Department have Personnel to give us 12 additional peace officers but we do have armed security at every one of our campuses and the former School Marshal and we have the extra benefit at our secondary campuses of having an additional school resource officer and so tonight we asked the board to approve the resolution that that ratifies that effort to satisfy the House Bill 3

208requirement to have armed security at all of our campuses okay I'll entertain a motion to approve action item c as presented saying get your school field second by Miss Krieger all in favor say aye coach carries 6-0 thank you very much okay action item D would be consideration with possible action to approve the next step Community Solutions purchase order for behavioral mental health and or substance abuse counseling at the amount of three hundred and twenty one thousand four hundred dollars good evening again board I have a problem with me tonight Mr McDonald to come and give you an overview of the next Community Solutions program and what's been happening in wisd for the last year so I'm going to invite him to come and speak to you tonight thank you board thank you Dr hollandsworth

209for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Jansen McDonald I'm the lead mental health counselor with nexet Community Solutions we provide Mental Health Services to school districts across the state of Texas and we have been servicing Waxahachie ISD since 2020. uh so uh this past year in 2022 2023 school year we serve 287 students uh across all campuses and wasd grades K-12 we offer individual and group counseling services to all campuses we also offer a suicide prevention program known as sources of strength it is a evidence-based Upstream suicide prevention program that's peer-led and staff supported that was something that we implemented at Coleman Junior High last year and it was very successful we had a lot of great feedback from that and we have future plans to unroll that at the other middle schools

210this upcoming school year and hopefully in the future the high school as well we also provide student and parent presentations on Mental Health topics these are open to the community to educate the Greater Community on Mental Health needs these range from suicide and self Farm to social media to anxiety and depression and we have one coming up next Monday at Waxahachie High School on suicide awareness so uh this is a breakdown of the students that we saw last year we served 112 Elementary age students 71 middle school students and 104 high school students of the students that we served 42 of the students seen were identified as at risk this is terminology that's used by the state to determine students that are potentially at risk of dropping out of high school before graduation another breakdown

211we have is the gender and race ethnicity of the students so 44 male 54 female and the race ethnicity pretty accurately matches your overall district with 60 percent being white 23 being black and 35 identifying as Hispanic and Latino so these are just uh some of the common reasons for referrals that are made to us the greatest need is mental health concerns uh this is students that may have something going on but School administration might not quite know what that is they just know that they need help so they would be referred to us for mental health concerns and we would get them the services that they need closely following that we see anxiety behavioral concerns grief and loss and suicide and self-harm those are just some of the reasons why our mental health professionals

212meet with the students in the district so with every student that we see we screen them for adverse childhood experiences these are potentially traumatic events that occur during childhood and research shows that the higher number of Ace scores that students have the more likely they are to experience things like stroke cancer attempted suicide or substance abuse later on in life so 91 of the students that refer were referred to our program had at least one ace score that was identified and 56 percent of the students that were referred to us had at least four so the higher that number goes the more uh potential risk there is for these kids uh this is my favorite piece of data although we focus on mental health and addressing mental health concerns we often see a ripple effect

213that we keep track of for students as well so from the students that were referred to us we saw a 55 increase or Improvement in attendance uh 78 Improvement in behavior and 60 Improvement in grades this data is taken from uh your your numbers from the district this is not our numbers this is School faculty and Personnel that is reporting back to us on what they're seeing specifically focusing on Mental Health we saw a 65 percent Improvement in anxiety symptoms for students that were were referred for anxiety and 67 Improvement in depression symptoms for students who were referred for depression we use clinical assessments like the Gad and the phq to assess for these risks of the 287 students that came through our program last year 37 were assessed for potential suicide risk of that

21437-22 were identified as high risk meaning that we were able to then get them to the next level of care and kind of do a soft handoff to get them where they needed to go beyond our services again our sources of strength program is a suicide prevention program but rather than focusing on shock and sadness we try to focus on Hope and strength we really capitalize on students strengths and try to equip them with the resources that they need to cope with the hard the the hard parts of life this is a peer-led program and it is supported by staff we had eight adult advisors 30 peer leaders and 845 students that participated in our first campaign at Coleman Junior High miss Monica Taylor the one of the guidance counselors at Coleman shared with us

215that the following day after implementing this program on their campus they had one of the peer leaders bring another student to her office that was having suicide ideation so we can quickly see how having programs like this has a great impact on the entire student body another service we provide is parent and student presentations this past year we had 20 parents attend our Suicide Prevention meeting we had 846 students attend our Suicide Prevention and awareness presentation uh that is all from my presentation tonight we are excited to continue working with the district in the future to meet kids needs uh I'm open to questions and we'll answer them the best that I can did have a question on that last slide yes ma'am uh flash steps numbers or those certainly group like the eighth grade

216or seventh grade or sixth grade that you're doing it the presentation too so this particular presentation was offered to eighth grade students yes ma'am what two eighth grade students yes okay then that's what made sense to me as I looked at it and that's something that we hope to continue uh providing in the future and maybe hit more grade levels on multiple campuses thank you any other questions I have one other question uh so this will be funded through Esser funds is that correct up to this point we have been funded through Esser funds um to my awareness I believe Esser funds come to an end at the end of this coming school year in 2024 right um so that is what the uh big question is right now is where the funding is going

217to come to potentially you know keep this program running in Waxahachie ISD right thank you okay this time I'll entertain a motion to approve the next step to me oh I'm sorry I'm sorry I don't have a question but I just want so needed so thank you very much thank you so much it it truly is an honor just I had a quick question too just can you go over like how how a student is identified as a counselor can peers yes do that so uh to be referred for counseling services through our program everything is funneled through the guidance counselors on every campus that can be brought to the attention of the guidance counselor by appear by another faculty member but it is the guidance counselors that make the referral to our program um

218and then once they are referred to our program we get consent from parents to meet with students and then we provide individual or group counseling there on their campus uh that way they don't have to leave school to receive mental health support we are right there accessible to them thank you at this time I entertain a motion to approve the next step Community Solutions purchase order from for behavioral mental health and or substance abuse counseling in the amount of 321 400 so I moved question by Mr kriegel second I'm a starter any other discussion all in favor say aye Jose name let's carry 6-0 and our last action item would be the purchase of high quality instructional material I'm sorry you gotta be confused here now it says possible for the purchase of amplifier reading

219for grades kindergarten through eighth grade and both print and digital versions in the amount not to exceed seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars thank you again board I'm going to phone a friend and invite two of my colleagues up here miss Wittenberg and Mrs Polk to come and give you some more information about implied Texas good evening Gordon Dr House oh sorry the teacher voice good evening board Dr Hollingsworth about a month ago a few were there yes a few administrators went to the effective schools framework training at Region 10. as a part of the self-assessment process need for high quality instructional materials specifically in the area of reading emerged and we began looking for materials that met this need amplify Texas emerged as a good fit for our current needs amplify was created during

220the pandemic to assist with learning loss since then many districts have implemented this curriculum and data is demonstrating positive student growth amplify Texas is a high quality instructional material that has research-based instructional strategies aligned with the science of reading Texas reading academies and it is 100 percent aligned to the teaks amplify supplies teachers with explicit and systematic instruction by using amplify all students in grades kindergarten through eighth grade will receive the high quality will receive the high quality grade level instruction our current adoption however does not include explicit writing instruction amplify Texas has writing lesson plans and teaches the writing process these are the four core research-based instructional strategies for reading or Arby's foundational skills in August we began using Benchmark phonics to provide instruction for foundational skills thank you for investing in our young

221readers text complexity refers to the level of text students have access to Amplified grade level text or cross-curricular meaning science and social studies and includes this academic vocabulary reading research supports that students need daily access to grade level text if they do not have daily access to these they will struggle to meet standards tax coherence builds knowledge and vocabulary through Reading in all content areas such as science and social studies the background knowledge developed through text coherence directly supports students as they engage in the next research-based instructional strategy of text-based responses now Tech space responses that this is simply writing about what you read and that increases your comprehension amplify provides specific opportunities for students to read write and speak grounded in evidence from the text this directly aligns to our district instructional framework I

222want to wrap up with a quote from an article in education week in this this year August of 2023 by Tiffany Young she's a professor of curriculum instruction in Nebraska she taught 10 years previously the more I taught the more I realized they can't move to higher levels if they aren't being taught at that level students can't learn something they're not exposed to wisd has excellent educators who work hard and care deeply for their students and families our teachers strive to provide rigorous high quality instruction that results in student growth our teachers are not being asked to abandon good teaching strategies quite the opposite we want to provide a resource that is based in research to get more students reading and writing on grade level amplify Texas is the resource to support both our teachers

223and students in accomplishing just that thank you good evening board and Dr Hollingsworth I was one of the administrators who attended the effective School framework training at Region 10 a couple of weeks ago there was a focus in the discussion on high quality instructional materials and they gave us amplify actually to look at to see if it matched the rubric and based on this reboot provided by tea I knew we did not have a high quality instructional material for Elementary reading and writing I have already seen the evidence and benefits of our recently purchased Benchmark in the classroom is easy of implementation with our teachers the students are engaged in its best practices for teaching phonics we need the same kind of resource for reading and writing and amplify is explicit reading and writing instruction

224with questions for student discourse and discussion already embedded and integrates relevant anger content anchor content Connections in both science and social studies which connects also to their extended construction response that they're going to be seeing on the star tests for teachers this will give them back time and planning by not having to pull from three or four resources just to build their lesson plans weekly for students it will ensure that we have a streamlined high quality resource in place for teaching reading and writing and will serve as the next steps to support our academic growth for all of our students I believe this last slide here is just a fifth grade level assignment there so you can see what that unit and the lesson looks like it's all for our presentation if you have any

225questions for us have any other questions for Dr glenneker can we put the agenda language back up on the screen please do okay questions comments board okay um I have a comment um I just really feel uh I think the program's probably great probably fine we need something for all of our kids I my my problem with it is that the quickness um I feel like that the principles you know have not had a lot of time to absorb it I believe they a week ago and uh and it's just a lot it's a lot for us to absorb uh I happen to be at a concert conference last week so I didn't really learn all the ins and outs of it until this morning or the or really until this afternoon I worry that

226it is going to take the teachers uh more time I'm very concerned about the teacher's time and I'm also concerned about them losing all autonomy uh Miss uh so it's Wittenberg I met with Miss Wittenberg this afternoon and she was wonderful and explained it to me and she assured me that the teachers would not lose all autonomy but I do have concerns anyone else School field my concerns run a little deeper I think it is probably a very effective tool and probably necessary I don't think we would be here talking about it if our test scores weren't where we wanted them to be I think it's reactionary I think but I do think it's necessary but I would like to see us organize what we're doing I would like to see us at a campus

227level make sure that we have people on task because I because I do feel like that's part of our problem I've looked at the test scores in depth and there's some patterns there that are disturbing I think this will help bring them on task and and I've been a part of a curriculum rollouts twice as a teacher when it wasn't all thought out before it was done and it was a mess Miss hilbrom was actually my boss believe it or not we came in the district at the same time many years ago both science teachers and there's here's a good example because we both taught very differently but her scores and mine were both very comparable and very good all the way through and she'll tell you right now that's the truth but we approached

228it from the I drive her crazy because I'm half Hazard to an extent and she drives me crazy because she is so meticulous but it worked um I think we need to look at things and make sure we're doing it right because the last time when she was my boss we went to a curriculum rollout I sat in a classroom and I didn't have the materials that I needed to do my job it wasn't her fault by the way had I not had eight years experience teaching I probably would have never pulled it off if it had been a new kid new kid on the Block they would have never been able to make it um I I really would like to see this back and I'd like to see it back fast but I

229would like to see us address some other things that are causing these scores as well because it's not the only issue but it is disturbing to me the reading is the last one we're implementing because it is the first one that's necessary to perform at every other subject area and I think we've really missed the ball on that so I I commend you I'm not in my opinion I wouldn't say stop I'd say foot on the gas but let's get it all organized first anyone else started I'm just thinking um that I concur with some of my fellow trustees here and maybe just to double check and but also we need to be sensitive to to our you know our staff is telling us that we are increasing the the type of teachers that we

230have now are less experienced too so I I definitely see where y'all are coming from on that and I want to be sensitive to that as well this is tough yeah I think as a board it's our job to give Administration the tools that they need to be successful to bring us the results that we're looking for and I don't hear anybody here saying we don't want to do that but what I'm hearing is we don't want to do that on a decision that we're making tonight on something we were presented with two or three days ago does that sound pretty fair okay Mr President I move to the next scheduled board meeting or if necessary as festival called meeting to allow us more time to discuss the Amplified reading program and I'll second that

231motion can we have a motion to table by Mrs Timmerman when you have a second by Mrs kriegel is there any other discussion okay all in favor say aye aye oh folks say nay mostly carry 6-0 okay moving on to our comment from Individual board members no particular order anyone wants to go first you're more than welcome well first I want to say uh Happy Birthday to Dr Hollingsworth uh I'm not I don't lead singing but you know if anybody wants to start it and um I want to change how y'all usually think about I want to say thank you to the principals uh I thank everybody every time and I want to say thank you when Dr biniker was presenting all the different things that were going to be rolled out and that they

232were going to be rolling out in the next two weeks and I know that also the principals will be rolling out all of the evaluations that are necessary for the Tia program and all the works at that I feel like we've doubled tripled quadrupled I'm not sure but I feel like that their level of their level of what they have to do to get their job done has greatly astronomically increased and I want to thank them and I want to thank them for their commitment to our kids and and to getting it done because that's what we have to do we have to get done what's best for the kids so I want to thank you principals I do have a few that I'm especially close to but but but no I do I want

233to thank all of you in the assistant principals who of course have to stand by their side okay thank you all right we'll start down there Mr schoolfield do you have anything you want to add concussion seriously a lot of them working all day and I appreciate that I just want to give our thoughts and prayers to the families that were involved in that ATV accident well I was on the same wavelength because as Kim that's exactly who I was going to think tonight too all of our principals because like Kim as I sat here and listened to especially amplifying every all that that that's going to have to happen principles so much is on you and you know I walked in your shoes so I know every time that something's added the stress level

234goes up so I really want to thank you for everything you do another I was just going to ask everybody to yes please keep those families we had one of our students involved in that accident and then three other kids in the community and so just keep them all in your prayers please and their families I will close with just a note to the administration we hear you we listen to your presentation we will uh we will get this wrapped up in a time frame to where you will not have to wait to roll out this program and we will uh we will get it to you guys as soon as uh as soon as we can get this all this put together yes sir okay at this time I'll entertain a motion to adjourn

235motion by Mr McCutchen by Mr starnader all in favor say aye they'll say nay post carry 6-0 thank you very much