001Good evening everyone both here and watching this virtually. I hereby call this meeting to order. It is 6:01 p.m. Next item on the agenda will be roll call. I'm going to ask if you're here to go ahead and state that you're here. Starting from my right. Carlos Marggo present. >> Anita Chavez present. Alisa Pñena present. >> Rosal Vernandez present. >> Senz Jr. present. >> Great. So we have everyone here except Miss OA uh who has informed us she may be running a little late and at that time I'll let everybody know that she did write. Uh we do have quorum. Next item on the agenda, if you're able to do so, I ask that you stand and please face the flag. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to
002the republic for it stands one nation indivisible and justice for all. >> Thank you. You may be seated. >> Hello. >> For the record, uh board member Jessico Cho has shown up and it's 6:02 p.m. >> Thank you for being here. >> You're welcome. All right, next item on the agenda is number four, which is public comment. I'm going to ask board member Pena if we've had anybody who signed up for public comment. If we do have someone who have signed up, remember the rules. You do have three minutes. After three minutes, we will inform you that your time is up. We ask that when you make your way to the podium that you identify yourself. Um, so do we have anyone that signed up for public comment? >> Yes, we do. If we can
003please have Miss Iris Modin make your way to the podium, please. Hello, my name is Iris Moren. Um, dear superintendent Dr. Sorenson and member of La Hoya ISD board. We come to you this evening on behalf of the parents of Leo James Leo Elementary to address the district's plan to close our campus and many other others to relocate your children either to the much smaller classrooms in Flores Elementary or to other campuses far from neighborhoods. Many of us volunteer in district programs such as TELPAS, have worked for the districts of family members employed here, or were once students ourselves. As a community, we have witnessed firsthand the devastation that school closures and staff layoffs have already caused. We understand the district is facing difficult decisions and must be managed resources responsibly. However, we urge you
004to fully consider the short and long-term impact this decisions will have on our student and our community. In the short term, our student and staff are experiencing constant demotization under curriculum focused more on performance metrics and punitive measures than on learning and engagement. Teachers are struggling to keep up with rapid changes while parents are left confused and concerned when their children suddenly begin to fall behind. The long-term impact are even more alarming. The closure of vital campuses such as STEM Early College has stripped students of resources, opportunities, and culture designed to enhance their education and improve their future. Instead of strengthening our community, these decisions have increased distrust, created low morale among teachers and contributed to the so decision have increased distrust created low morale among teachers and contributed to the so called exodus of
005educators, staff and students. Trust in district leaders have deeply been damaged and parents so now fear that compass closures are being used to meet quotas not to improve education resources or programs for our children but to appease TIA leaders. As leaders and members of this community you must do better. We ask you to fight for our children. Closing Leo James Leo will harm every student it serves. Closing Leo won't fix enrollment issues. As we spoke to many parents, they are planning to move their children out of the district if their compass is campus is closed. For the students that stay problems such as overcrowded classrooms in the much smaller spaces spaces such as those of Flores Elementary will be excused with waiverss. These changes across the district will be labeled as improvements. But taking the
006certainty some ch children had relying on resources will not be improve improvement. Removing essential staff, custodians, counselors and librarians, special ed teachers, coaches and teachers is not improvement. Packing more children into smaller classrooms is not improvement. Taking away resources that support every student in our community is not improvement. The TEA takeover has already devastated this community. As parents, we fear that by the time the superintendent leaves in 2030, there will be nothing left to fight for. >> Thank you, ma'am. We Your time has up and we appreciate your comments. Thank you so much, Miss Pena. Do we have anyone else who has signed up for public comment? >> Yes. Next, we have Miss uh Janelle Li. >> Good evening. My name is Jana Lai. I'm just going to finish up the letter. These changes across
007the district will be labeled as improvement. But taking certainly some children had relying on resources from that district will not be an improvement. Removing essential staff, custodians, counselors, librarians, the special ed teachers, coaches, and teachers is not an improvement. Packing more children into smaller classrooms is not an improvement. Taking away resources that support every student in our community leaders is not an improvement. The TA takeover has already devastated this community. As parents, we fear that by the time the superintendent leaves in 2030, there will be nothing left to fight for. This is not the first time TA takeover has harmed a district. Numerous peerreview studies show a consistent pattern of decisions made without transparency when justified with the same explanations we're hearing today. History shows what comes next. As campus closes, remaining schools struggle, teachers
008leave the district, and parents turn to homeschooling or move elsewhere. We are asking firmly today, respectfully, and urgently for you to reconsider. Protect our children, our resources, our teachers, and our community. Thank you. >> Thank you very much. Board member Pena, do we have anyone else who has signed up for public comment? >> We do not. >> Okay. Seeing that we have no others that have signed up for public public comment, we'll go ahead and move on to the next agenda item. Next agenda item is agenda item five, specifically item 5.1, financial audit update from Alvarez and Marshall presented by Meret Cresbow. Miss Cresbow. >> Good evening board, President Alvarez, Dr. Sorenson community tonight in under the superintendence update. Uh we are honored to present the financial audit update of what we have been under
009way um the last year and a half. With me is represent representatives from Alvarez and Morcal, Miss uh Brook Hopkins and Mr. Michael Potter. and they are going to walk us through um the updates that they have done in their review of our financials uh systems and processes through this semester. >> Thank you, Marcia. Great to see all of you again. We are in fact not Alvarez and Marcel, but this is Mike and I'm Brooke. And we're going to go ahead and walk through what we call phase two of this program. Yeah, thank you so much uh members of the board. We appreciate your time. Just a quick overview what we want to cover today. Going to do a quick refresher on the background of the original assessment project, the scope of work that we're
010um working against in this phase of the project. to talk about some of the key deliverables including our internal controls reinforcement work, financial analytics support and accountability and data transparency. And then we're going to focus on the path forward, talk about progress against our phase one recommendations and exit criteria, progress towards the culture of accountability and prioritiz prioritize recommendations uh moving forward. So for phase two, the internal controls reinforcement, it's a reinforcement of what was done in phase one that includes both from an improvement standpoint and to the extent gaps were identified. We addressed those in this phase. So you can see it was more targeted, more detailed reviews. And the key here with internal controls is the prevention of waste, fraud, and abuse. Internal controls are great for organization, for keeping clean financial hygiene,
011but key is that you want to prevent bad acts. So with that, we took a look further look at what we saw in phase one, including some overages on payments compared to purchase orders. We also looked back at some transactions that demonstrated control failures or which had gaps and then looked at some vendor related inquiries and investigations. This included the fishing investigation that occurred during our phase 2 review. With that, we also took a look at policies and procedures, several of which are in progress of being improved, and we took a look at what key controls were being called out in those policies and procedures. And this last bullet here is to work with the financial management team to take a look at the financial system and work with the vendor to understand what the
012school district is licensed for. So your strongest controls are automated those which are objective and can act fast. So looking at the system we see as being key to improvement. However, our attempts to get in contact with the vendor were not successful. So that remains outstanding. Thanks, Brooks. So in addition to the work that we did focused on internal controls reinforcement, we have two other tasks which were a little bit more forward- facing, thinking about the way the district plans and and executes its budget. And those tasks are financial analytics support and accountability and data transparency. So for financial analytics support, we um really work to support the leadership team and the finance team to increase um the ability to look into the future that comes from doing detailed analytical forecasting of revenues and expenditures.
013We supported the finance team to build a forecast template that they could then use looking forward to compare future scenarios as you all go through the budget process and understand the impact of changes that are being considered on the future deficit or surplus. We um worked with the finance team to refine that model to start with a base case that can be used as a jumping off point for the budget process this year which is based on um fairly standard assumptions um enrollment projections, state aid formula updates, changes that happen um either in the legislature or in TEA administration of the funding formula and then understanding about some building maintenance needs and other things related uh to the outcomes of the facility condition assessment. We supported the team to update the forecast extend that outlook
014through FY30. So at this at this point the team has the ability to look and say we make this decision about for example pay increases. We know how how much that costs us in each year and whether or not we can afford it or whether it puts us into a deficit and what it does to our our cash balances as well. and then uh provided guidance to what we want to do is kind of work on this together with the finance team so that we can produce the initial model together but then also hand it off to them and transition it to them so that they can own it going forward and um provide guidance on the way that the district thinks about staffing adjustments as you consider uh different scenarios going into the future.
015Accountability and data transparency was really about taking and strengthening the the tools that are used in monitoring and execution. So, a budget is uh meaningless unless you know for sure that you're following it. And so, um at the time that we started our assessment, the district didn't have tools to look backwards efficiently. They could produce ad hoc reports that could answer questions, specific lines of inquiry, but we couldn't look to each leader and say, "How are you doing against the budget you were projected? What are we overspending, under spending on?" So we developed a standard financial transparency framework to build monthly reporting capabilities and implemented the ability to use a rolling forecast into the future. And then um sort of in support of the internal controls reinforcement, we advised the financial leadership team and HR
016on developing uh and clarifying expectations around performance and accountability to make sure that the rules that are set forth through the improvement of internal controls are followed. and it's part of our job expectations that they are followed. So, I'm going to pass it to Brooke to get into the details on internal controls. So, a bit more detail here. You'll see at the top here um the deliverables that were turned over include a recommended implementation plan. What this does is take the work that we've done with the team and puts it into a road map. Exactly how can you implement recommendations and more specifically how did those recommendations tie to the exit criteria the district has. So we've lined that up in the implementation plan. We've also provided some workpapers specifically with the purchase order analysis.
017You can see exactly what data was pulled, how we analyze that data, and if we flagged any transactions for overages. Lastly, we took a look at the fishing investigation memo. We did an evaluation of that memo from the perspective of internal controls. We worked side by side with Merchett to understand what controls were in place and how certain controls were circumvented for that fishing case to happen. So key activities that we did which supported the overall deliverables were basically conducting targeted and detailed reviews. We looked at vulnerabilities from two different standpoints. one from phase one identification of potential gaps and vulnerabilities and secondly from best practices with internal controls. We looked at overspending on purchase orders in phase one. We took that to an additional detailed level. We took a look at if there was
018improvement, but we also broke down overages by departments as well. We looked at payments that had insufficient documentation. If you recall, we talked about the three-way match in phase one, which basically gives solid financial hygiene, matching up an invoice with receipt of goods with a purchase order. When you have those three items, you have confirmation that it lines up. You also have approvals on those. and then control failures that we talked about related to the fishing incident. So all of this internal control work ties to exit criteria GPM 2.1. Within that, we took a look at the 10 specific exit criteria under 2.1 and those that relate to internal controls reinforcement, about 40% are on track and 60% have not been started. Questions on that at all at this point? Okay, members of the board,
019do you have any questions? >> Yes, Miss Tobvis. >> Um, regarding the overspending, you said you were able to categorize it by department. Which department had the highest overspending amounts on purchase orders? >> So, what we've highlighted in the appendex are the top five you'll see, and I think the appendix was provided. I'm happy to flip to it now to show you the appendix. Thank you. Also um the 40% relates to the total 4year progress. So that 40% is over that entire time period. Okay. So the departments with the and this is just overages on POS. We take a look at payment request forms as well. But the top five are you can see here districtwide employee benefits, child nutrition, human resources, transportation. Districtwide includes a lot of different items including miscellaneous or other. So
020we don't have a ton of detail on exactly what those are. Um in addition support for items with overages didn't include detailed descriptions. So it was hard to know why the overages occurred. Was it bad budgeting or was it, you know, an incident that occurred? >> I guess when I look when you look at these numbers, that's what $14 million in overages in just one year, right? Is that correct? When if you look at the >> Yes, that's correct. >> 23 24. So when these overages happen, you're saying that a vendor gave a quote, right, to someone to us, right? And then we submitted for someone submitted for approval and then by the end of the project or service rendered, then they give the invoice which is higher then and then they seek payment from
021us >> and then we just pay it. >> Yes. >> Okay. Wanted to clarify. Thank you. And the second one similar but this is payment request form. So payment request form should be used kind of one off or in cases where you don't need a purchase order. So um think about like a employee going to a conference. If you have all the detail of the conference, you can see it on the website. Might just require an invoice. So, you do a payment request form. In phase one, we noticed that payment request forms were being used quite often, more than you would expect. So, we decided to go ahead and track those as well. So, you can see districtwide is all also on there again. But this undistributed organization unit came in top for payment request
022usage and then budget and finance energy management and summer school. >> Thank you. >> Sure. >> Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Cher. >> So from what I'm understanding from your summary, we're indicating that this administration has now established controls that previously were not present. And in this we are finding overages. >> Yes, >> I did I couldn't hear of the entire question. I apologize. Could you repeat? >> Sure. What I'm saying is or what I'm asking is in your summary you're indicating that this administration has established controls that previously were not established. >> Correct. Yes. >> And that is to prevent um what's known as fraud, waste, and numbers. >> Correct. Yes. There are controls that have been implemented. There's also controls that are in progress that are not fully functional at this point, but
023in progress, >> but there's a plan. >> Yeah. >> And can you define what fraud, waste, and abuse is for the community? >> Sure. So, fraud would be a case where um almost anything could happen. Let's use the example of uh an employee uh puts together a fake invoice and puts it through accounts payable for payment. You might think there's no way that can happen, but trust me, there are computer programs where you can get an invoice, you can download the district's header, you can put it up there. I'm not giving ideas here. I'm giving examples where that invoice goes through and the setup can be where that employee gets payment for that invoice and it's completely fraudulent. waste is if you don't have solid internal controls in place and you're not tracking things like
024PO overages, there could be waste. We we don't know. But if you had controls in place where you only paid up to the purchase order and if more was needed, a change order could be submitted for approval. That's much tighter control on what could end up as being wasteful. And abuse could be almost either of those things, but it also could be going in with the intention of abusing the district's vulnerabilities, knowing where gaps exist to take advantage of those, telling a third party to take advantage of those, or to do it internally. >> Appreciate it. Thank you. Members of the board, do we have any other questions at this point? >> You may proceed. >> So, you can see on this next slide that we this is kind of the overview higher level than
025departments of the overage amount by fiscal year. We did identify improvements. So you can see that 65% of the overage related to 2023 to 2024 and 35% was 2425. So there's still improvement to be made but to your point controls that have been implemented along with training to the staff have been effective to decrease that. I think it's I think it's also worth highlighting as we look at this that the efforts to identify and address these uh these challenges only begun halfway through the school year last year. So when we see this kind of reduction in inappropriate activities u based on half a year of progress we can see that the control changes are taking effect as well as the board and the administration's attention to these types of issues taking effect and the way
026that people feel accountable to processes. And so while this isn't perfect, we'd expect and hope that the progress and the trend will continue in that same direction. >> Mike, I just want to say thank you for pointing that out, not only to the board, but to the public because our audit ended when like when we actually did the audit >> in May. >> Exactly. And so you guys came in May >> and identified right the work that needed to be done. And so this is six months of work. And so um while there is still much work to be done and I am not underplaying any of the work that needs to be done because eventually we want to come back here and we want to say it's dramatically dramatically reduced um knowing that again
027um payment requests may always exist to a certain extent and I think I used an example and forgive me for using this example but it is real. Um you know one of our canines passed that is not something that you know we had a purchase order for. And so those emergencies happen that we have to pay for without there being a purchase order, right? A car breaks down, one of the trucks in CNS breaks down and we have to fix it right away. And so there there might always be some of that, but our our our goal is to continue to reduce this, but really do want not only the board to understand, but the public to understand that a none of these controls existed when we arrived, which is part of the reason that
028we are here because of waste, fraud, and abuse, and because these controls were not in place. Um, and two, this is six months of work. And three, the other part, I know I said that there are two parts, but three, there is an element of human training that still has to occur. Um, and this is not a criticism because the employees in Merett's department um division have been working incredibly hard. Um, but there are habits and ways of working not only in business, finance, and administrative services, but across the district, which is where you talked last year quite a bit about the culture of accountability. And so there have been ways of working across the district um that are also um changes in practice and changes in adult behavior um that may actually not be
029under waste, fraud or abuse, but just historic practices in how we do things um that we have to do a better job in actually implementing the processes and policies that we put in place um with these controls. So thank you for that >> and thank you Dr. And just one thing to add, the result of this effort over time is not going to be that you never see exceptions to your standard financial processes. It's that the paths by which those exceptions occur are narrow and extremely well documented. Right? So you should never be in a situation where you have a number of these items that that vary from the traditional process without documentation and ownership of the decision to vary from that process in a way that creates a trail of accountability should anything be
030discovered to have gone wrong. >> Thank you. Thank you >> members of the board. Any other questions? >> Rick, you may proceed. >> Thank you. So, and to kind of take off on the point on culture and accountability, that is something that takes years to fully instill. And what this team has done over six months has not just been technical, it has contributed to moving that culture forward. So I think it's a significant improvement not just because of the deliverables you're going to get but the fact that the team has been pretty much right next to us collaborating as to what is going to be the most effective way for implementation. So, as part of the takeaways, the purchase orders and invoices, a lack of sufficient detail is something we talked about in phase one.
031That is something that we want to address in the next phases that the district wants to address in the next phases because what that does is gives you the ability if something is flagged to understand is that an exception or is that an issue. Without that detail, you don't truly understand what is the purpose here, why did it happen. So we we also say that while there are approvals on things, it's hard to understand how things were approved without sufficient detail. So again, the training extends to approvers, managers as well to understand what level of detail should you be getting prior to approving that. And then taking a look at the three-way match process is the technical side, but truly understanding when that should occur and if automated controls are increased. There might be certain
032cases where you don't have to do that. We haven't addressed that with the district because we're taking baby steps, but that is something the district can get to. looking at cumulative invoice values, they were not consistently tracked. So, it is possible with some of the PO overages that we flagged that there in fact were in other invoices that could have added to those amounts. However, it wasn't cumulatively tracked consistently. And then we talked about the payment request forms. um the investigation from the fishing incident. What we worked with Mered and her team is to look at how you can identify what the control issues were when things like that happen because unfortunately one thing we can't give is a stamp or guarantee that fraud, waste, and abuse is never going to happen again. What you
033want to happen if and when it does is to be able to act succinctly with a plan and understand what needs to be done. So identifying those financial controls that were circumvented, understanding if it was a rogue employee or rogue vendor and how that impacts to make quick decisions. So impact one insufficiencies could hinder the overall budget effectively. Managing that budget could increase fraud, waste and abuse. But that is kind of um the counterpart of that is the increase of controls as well. And then looking at the culture of accountability, we don't want to have these insufficiencies grow. We want to nip them in the bud, get them now. So the culture becomes the understanding that the district is not going to tolerate it and that the staff is empowered to recognize it and address
034it too. pass to Mike. >> Thanks. So, next we're going to turn to the financial analytics support that we provided. Um, the objective of this task was to support the adoption of financial forecast template, provide targeted support for efficiency analysis. Um through the course of delivering this work, we de developed two deliverables or two work products that we handed over to the district which include a financial model which we talked about a little bit earlier um which provides the ability to look into the future and have an understanding the impact decisions will have on a 5-year basis and a staffing analysis that summarizes some of the trends of staffing and expenditures comparing campus and department trends over time. Um within this scope of work, we supported the finance team to update that model as we
035discussed earlier. Um updating enrollment projections, state aid formulas, and building maintenance um through about four weeks ago. So all of that information is as up to date as it as it could be. Um and also worked with the team to make sure that Miss Cresbow's team is familiar with and comfortable with updating that analysis as needed so it can inform future decisions and discussions. And then we also provided some uh some staffing analysis which we'll share the highlights of. This relates to the exit criteria 2.2A uh B, C, G and I. And um you know with A being enhancing and strengthening forecasting capability with multi-year outlook um the district has met that requirement conducting efficiency reviews to evaluate uh and evaluated building conditions. Efficiency review work has been done. There's facility condition work to be
036considered going forward. Uh uh conducting finance staff realignment and training. Uh many of the roles have been uh updated and changed. There's hiring to date and we've trained the team on some of these capabilities and then maintaining a focus on student facing investments. Really the intent of the tools that we'll talk about are helping the district see where spend is related to those things and make the right decisions around prioritizing investments that support students. And then monitoring reserves relative to industry standards is just really important as you think about how you spend into the future. Knowing that a decision you make today doesn't put you in a situation where you have insufficient fund balance in two years or three years. The worst way to make financial decisions that affect the district is when you're in
037a crisis and you're you have your back against the wall. And so monitoring those reserves using this forecasting model will help with that. our observations. Um, you know, just to highlight at a high level, the district's historical trends exhibit a really strong realignment of staff in the last several years focused or last two years really focused on student need. Schools with larger and higher needs populations had fewer students per teacher. Early college high schools tended to concentrate uh relatively lower need students and fewer students per teacher. Um, department spending has reduced 11%. So the spending that's like here in central office um which can sometimes grow unchecked has been um checked and you can see the department spending reducing and school spending being the focus which is a trend that we obviously like to see.
038Um there's been uh staff reduction of uh 24% of non-school staff. a really remarkable change to focus resources and and individuals that are serving students um out towards the students and overall staffing adjustments have moved the district toward towards um benchmark districts uh within the state of Texas with similar financial circumstances. So when we talked to you in May, we talked about how benchmarks benchmark staffing or La Hoya exceeded staffing levels, meaning more adults per kid for many key roles and the progress that we can see in this analysis over the last two years has shown improvements on that to move towards uh peer districts. >> Board President, can I make a comment? >> Yes, please. Um and so I I really want to lift this this up here because there is some belief system
039out there that um you know central office is exceeding staffing ratios and central office is um overstaffed and that central office is not looking at its own spending as we are making really difficult decisions and recommendations um decisions in the past and recommendations moving forward to the board. Um we are very conscious of the staffing that we we do here at central office and in non-school staff. We know that the priority is having every dollar that we can in schools on campuses for programming that is studentf facing. Now again um as a superintendent you also need a strong central office that is competent, capable and staffed to support campuses. Um but we have made a really concerted effort and so I thank you for um pointing this out that there have been reductions here at
040central office um both in our spending um and in staffing. So thank you for that analysis. >> Yes, thanks Dr. S. Just one one thing to point out in addition is that the departments that we see the cuts in um the adjustments or reductions concentrated in are more operational departments than academic facing support departments which is a a positive trend. It's hard to look at things like transportation, technology, custodial work, and make those decisions in those spaces. But doing that rather than simply adjusting the way that campuses or staff are reducing teacher uh counts relative to pupils is a, you know, best practice to serve out student outcomes. So, I'm just going to give a quick overview. I'm sure the text is much too small. Hopefully you guys all have this in your packets, but
041this is a quick overview of the financial model that we've co-developed with the finance team. Um, there's three sections to this and and you all have probably seen summaries that look a bit like this in board packets before, but we want to highlight is uh what this this forecast does that others haven't is it allows you to look out into future years. You can see here this extends through a projected 20 29 through 2030. The revenue section at the top uh forecasts state and local revenue sources along with federal sources and it's uh currently updated to reflect the latest changes in the Texas legislature that affect revenue and is linked to the revenue model provided by the state. So it can be used to uh forecast changes in variables that affect funding from a state
042level including both u enrollment and attendance levels uh and can be adjusted based on changes to that model in the future. So it's directly linked the expenditures section of the model forecast expenses by commitment item um as referenced by budget to actuals files. So effectively what we're doing is using trending analysis um where we where we have operational indicators that tell us something a little bit more precise than saying what the trends are. We would update those and include those. So for example this offers you the ability to change specific assumptions around growth of expenses. For example, if you knew that utility costs were going to grow um at a speed that was outpacing general inflation or outpacing the past, you can make adjustments to that specific to the circumstances and then see those carry
043through. Um and you can also make uh changes to scenarios related to headcount changes and um as you consider pay adjustments, pay packages, you can say, you know, what does 3% give us in five years? What does 3.8% give us in five years? And then all of those expenses carry out here and can be carried down into the fund balance section. So you have your revenues, your expenditures, and then your fund balance. And what you can see at the bottom here in this fund balance section is adjustments. Basically adjustments in the in the template above. Now what you see is the base case here. Adjustments in the template above carry through to show you how much fund balance you would have to use to continue operating. And so what you're seeing in front of you
044here is sort of what the base case is set at right now, which tells us that more work needs to be done in order to keep the budget in balance. And as you consider the things that you'd like to do to to attempt to balance that budget, this will tell you what it does to your use of fund balance uh at at what point are you entering a pl a future scenario where the fund balance is is stable or are there risks in fiscal 28 if you make a decision now. So all of that scenario modeling can help Miss Krespo and her team support the superintendent and the board in considering scenarios for major changes in in the way that the expenditures of the district are composed and will also represent the changes that are
045made through the budget process. If department budget requests change, they can be seen through this model to understand the impact that they have into the future. >> Mike, I have a board member, vice president, I mean Chis. >> Um, hi. Quick question. Um, a bit of a simple question. So, um, the local sources and state sources for the revenues, local would then be our the taxes for property taxes. >> Yes, that's right. >> Okay. And so then it's great to show for the public. to see that for local sources, you know, that's only I'm looking at column uh projected to 2025 um that it's 30 million about state is 215 million and then federal 27 million to show those big difference in how much is coming from taxes from you know the area of the
046community versus state versus federal and to see as we're being projected outwards that lots of those numbers are going down. Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. Just one thing to highlight here, what you see reflected there is the way that Texas funds education. So there's a combination of like an expected level of effort that's provided to support a student. So a district that that gets very property rich and ends up with a lot of local tax revenue can end up in a recapture situation where their where their revenue at the state level is reduced on account of their local revenue being higher. So some of the things you naturally think could be great, you know, if you have a big industrial development that adds a lot of property tax value can have more complicated
047implications for your uh for your funding scenario uh which is more based on your students and your student needs and adjusted based on that state model regardless of your local funding. So the share is important. It's important to see local economic activity seen in your balance sheet, but if that local economic activity passes a certain point, you're no longer able to yield the additional funding as it comes recaptured. And so that's an important intricacy to Texas's state funding model, which is a challenge for a lot of districts as they um as they change and grow. >> Right. Thank you. >> Yep. >> Yeah. And I think we've conveyed that message to those that have been attending the stakeholder meetings uh to the public that you know the economic impact that this community has has a
048bearing on how well we're going to do and we don't have the industries and we don't have what other communities have. So it's important for us to point that out. >> So >> Mike, can we also though um just go back to the previous slide board president if you don't mind? >> Yes, please. Um, I think one of the important parts that I'd like you to explain not only to the board but as our community is watching as you know as a superintendent that you know I've made some recommendations around school closures um with my team is that um what we notice is that 26 27 if nothing changes we're in the red. >> That's right. and and that will be the trend unless you make changes to your um expenditure. The the way that
049your expenditures are planned into the future, if nothing changes in a declining uh enrollment environment and in a relatively constrained state fiscal environment where the state's not giving you an extra 5% or 8% per year like they do in some states, um additional changes are needed in order to balance the budget on a recurring basis. So, while it can be challenging um to do that, the district's in a good place to be able to thoughtfully make those decisions by not waiting until the fund balance number is in the red before they start making these decisions. So, you want to use this tool to, you know, discern the right decisions to make going forward and understand that their impact over time so that you're not making these decisions when the fund balance is not there to
050support you. >> Thank you. I appreciate that. >> Any other questions for the board? I do have a question. Um, when we think about futurep proofing really all the improvements that you guys have recommended, um, in your experience, how often should we be revisiting to to implement best practices? Um, and I guess lesson learned from other districts, right? Um, outside of just the real Granny Valley, >> I I would say certainly annually um at at the least. um taking a look at the way that your year turned out as compared to how you planned it and having some lessons learned. I know, you know, finance teams present to the board, you know, around the time of the annual audit, which should be, you know, around this time of year typically to say, what do we
051learn from the budget versus what the actuals ended up being in our in our audited financials and taking lessons learned at that time is a good time to do it because this time of year is when you start ramping up your budget process, which will start in, you know, in the winter. And so, we'd recommend certainly doing that at least that often. but also if there are outside factors that change that change your financial outlook. So watch what's happening in the Texas legislature. I'm I'm sure Dr. Sorenson will update you when she sees something change in the Texas legislature. If it does, it should change the way that you think about these things. And you know, you can ask ask for a brief from the finance team using this type of tool to explain to
052you how that how that works. What does >> so at least annually? >> At least annually. Yes. >> Thank you. And I would say um board vendor member Pñena that also applies to um the workstream one that we talked about with Brooke. Um we're actually doing that analysis every six months um around internal controls. Um so it is more actually than once a year um in order to continue to strengthen those internal controls. We are looking at our processes deeply um every six months. But now when we go to the third work stream which I'm very excited to talk about um it gives us a real insight into our internal controls as to whether they are actually working in the way that they should. Um now with the data visibility and transparency. So >> thanks
053Dr. Schwarzen. That's right. A lot of those you want to look at every month internally. >> I was answering your your question as a board member but the team looks at these things much more often than that. So >> just just >> Mike I have a question before you proceed. Going back to slide um 15 when we talked about u state services or so uh sources and local um are you seeing this trend in other parts of rural communities in the state of Texas? >> Yes. >> Okay. >> Yeah. And and the enrollment trends are actually more extreme in in some other places than they are here. >> And uh and this is not just the state of Texas. It is uh nationwide. >> That's correct. >> And it's a demographic. it's a demographic change
054that relates not specifically to any district or their performance or or anything like that. The reality is is that um you know folks in my generation waited a lot longer to have kids than folks in the past generation. So generations are are spread out and there are fewer kids per household and that takes you know that impacts every community some communities more than others. >> I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. >> You may proceed. >> Yeah. So I I'll be quick here. Um as we recommended, we did a staffing analysis with the focus on both campuses and departments. Just want to highlight here that um you can see really significant changes in the total spend on many of the campuses which have brought the spend more in line with revenue which means that you're
055in a situation not to be burning fund balances quickly and to be operating a smaller deficit. Um the spending at campuses is effectively adjusted to enrollment losses and over the past four years spending decreased approximately 18%. Uh paired with a 15% headcount reduction and against the 2.1% enrollment decline. That sounds really extreme but the reason that had to happen is because there were years of not adjusting to the enrollment decline. And so this reflects maintaining uh relatively comparable staffing ratios um and making the right decisions about investing in supports rather than just keeping every position the same as it was for a long time which many districts do. Um we would just point out that the most significant decrease in um in campus spend is associated with headcount which drove down salaries and expend expenditures.
056um many elementary schools um that you can see um you know the key drivers that are kind of highlighted to the left there are those big the schools where we can see the largest changes um overall the changes are concentrated in schools that had larger populations and and lost those populations. So what you see is basically the um the changes in the way that the districts the financing and planning expenditures on the campuses is more closely following enrollment than it did prior. And then as we look at departments again, notably that 11% decrease um is driven by a 24% department headcount reduction against the 2.1% enrollment decline. That 11% uh decrease in that 24% headcount reduction is the result of an intentional effort to look at central office and make sure that um you know
057the positions that are there make sense based on the number of students we serve and putting expenditures out towards schools where possible. Um those are the most uh departments that you can see here. Um transportation, plant maintenance are two big ones. Transportation, plant maintenance, technology and summer school all all noted um noticeable changes over time. I will note that a lot of this has to do with the beginning of this time period being during the height of COVID pandemic and er spending. And so what we saw many districts do is ramp up spending. And some districts, I'd say most districts did not effectively close that spending out, scale that spending back, which have put them in tougher situations against their budget deficit. Um this is just kind of a highlight of where we're at from.
058You can see the 16% decrease um coming from departments and the 16.5% decrease coming from schools. uh salary spend decreased around 16% across uh overall staffing adjustments are moving the district towards benchmark ratios. So as we think about the total number of FTEEs um the compensation per FTEES um the total staffing levels were initially higher relative to peers but are moving in the direction of matching peers more closely. Um, any any other questions on that section before we talk about accountability and >> Yes, Miss Chaw. >> Um, I had a question. I'm not sure if it would go to you all or Dr. Sorenson, but on one of the slides, the ones where you're talking about the change of that one. There you go. Uh, K through 12 humanities, you see it said 154% increase,
059right? But I'm assuming, is that a different program you've implemented or what is that? Um, so this slide and these numbers and please correct me if I'm wrong also have to do with staffing. Correct. >> Yes. Yes. Driven by staffing. >> So as we ramped up our intentional efforts around literacy and this has everything to do with the addition of instructional coaches. This has to do with coordinators and focused on literacy. This is new curriculum. this is literacy um support programs that we've put in place and so you'll see that alignment with district initiatives in order to improve reading. >> Great. Awesome. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mike. >> So, moving on to accountability and data transparency. Just going to give you a quick overview. Um we developed uh two different deliverables or work products
060as part of this that are intended to sort of sit with the finance team and continue to serve the district long into the future. Um the first is a reporting suite which enables the district to obtain real-time visibility into district-wide spending. Um which really empowers every sort of budget owner whether it's a principal or department leader uh or the superintendent to see how spend is going compared to how we were planning on spend going and to have a shared source of information to to feel accountable to meeting the budget that the board laid out. So the goal of this is kind of twofold. One is to monitor and learn from things as they're going and provide visibility into things that could be maybe challenges. For example, if you see payroll uh lagging behind, it gives
061you visibility into vacancy challenges. That that sort of information is meaningful from a management perspective. But more important, all of the items that that Brooke has spoken about, for example, purchase order overages, all of those things, they bear themselves out in budget to actuals analysis because if spend is exceeding the plan, uh the person who owns that budget says, "Well, that doesn't look right." Right? So this visibility provides accountability to say how are we spending against what the board has authorized us to spend and provides the administration with tools to uh to monitor the fidelity of the departments and the schools against the budget that this body has passed. So we developed that reporting suite and an accountability and positions analysis that pertain to how job descriptions, performance programs, etc. reinforce accountability for financial controls.
062Um basically uh we're going to go into some of the details here but just want to talk about the exit criteria 2.2.a enhancing strengthening forecasting accuracy is also hit here. Um the forecast is uh useful as a budgeting tool only if we are monitoring that we're using the budget as planned. Uh monitoring reserves again similarly incorporates both using the budget actuals capabilities and that forecasting model we talked about in the last section. incorporating clear roles and responsibilities uh to allow for employee evaluations for all policies and procedures. Um it does not matter if your employee makes a mistake or does something wrong if you don't have a policy that states that there are consequences associated with that. So, it's just really critical the work continues to integrate financial accountability into people's job descriptions, into the
063way that they're evaluated, developing a framework of performance evaluations, which is uh 2.3D that emphasizes uh maintaining those policies and procedures, and then develop performance tracking and guidance for potential disciplinary measures is kind of the backbone of that, which is that you mostly want to focus on a carrot. you need to have a stick um if things go too wrong and if um people aren't aren't following these procedures. Our observations here just to touch on quickly, roles and responsibilities can continue to be strengthened by clear success metrics and priorities as well as clarity where some of the over the overlapping duties exist. So that primarily relates to the finance team functioning based on um you know being understaffed for some time and trying to get roles clarified and strengthened. In some cases, those positions could
064be better separated in the way that they're planned. And I know Miss Kresco is working towards those goals. Um, the district has continued to invest in a performance process. That investment, I'm sure you all have heard about um, in the past, uh, is a very long process both from a systems perspective and a people perspective. So, there are some observations we talked about that will need that system to be fully functioning to work very well, and they'll have to continue to work on that. Um, the last thing I'd highlight in this section is that the uh position control, which is really just how we make sure we don't hire people that we're not authorized to hire. It's the biggest thing that we have that controls the budgeted spend, right? Because people are most of your
065expenditures. Position control functions very well. It's a little bit labor intensive right now and it probably takes more time from the finance team and the HR team than it should in the future, but in the absence of those systems being modernized, it's functioning very well. So, just to provide a quick overview of what we've provided, um hopefully this will start to look familiar to some people in the room. What you can see here is a campus budget actuals tracker where you can see every school and how they're spending against their uh against their planned budget. Schools can then drill in, as you can see in the sort of bottom right, to see the actual things that they're buying, what they're head on, what they're behind on on spending and track, you know, things that might
066make them ask questions of their own staff. that provides the ability to look at um the details uh that any principal would need to see whether her or his budget is going to balance at the end of the year, whether there's going to be financial challenges at the end of the year. Also provides the ability for uh the superintendent and other academic leaders to discuss budgets with the with the leaders that are leading the schools. So we have >> Can I just board president? Do you mind? >> Yes, please. >> Um I really really really want to highlight and Merett knows this. This is these are like some of these are my favorite things. Um besides like obviously being in classrooms and with kids and stuff. Sorry Dr. Little, but um like I just looked
067at you and I just was in place when we got here. And so I I I do want to say just for a moment that I'm really proud that we are at this place as quickly as we are because um and you know I know board member OO we've had this conversation around you know what do campuses need. >> Yeah. >> And so this gives me really clear insight in real time. Um when I hear things about you know that teachers don't have supplies that they need. I can easily now um now go to a campus budget and I can see where they are now. It's almost January 1. Where are the campuses in terms of their expenditures in alignment with where they've put their funding? And if they've put funding in particular things and
068they haven't yet spent on those things that are now also a part of their campus improvement plan, you know, how are we using funding this year for this year's children, for this year's teachers, for this year's needs? And so it allows us to have real time conversations with our leaders um and our department leaders both. But um I really want to focus on the campus needs part of this because it really gives us as leaders, Dr. Little and you know the executive directors the ability to have conversation and we have this not only for you know 199 but I'm looking at Mr. Fleta sitting there with the grants that they've been given. So we also have this by fund by grant title one things that are designed to you know be for intervention or high
069needs or emergent bilingual students special education students and so that this insight um is something that didn't exist when I first arrived and so this is a great tool for superintendent and for the um business finance office. And I'll just uh add one thing. Um in addition to the typical things we would produce in a dashboard like this that offer that sort of management insight, the one thing to add is there's also visibility into purchase orders. >> Yeah. >> Which allows you to manage see and respond to purchase order overspend for example or a delay of purchase orders. It helps manage uh the timeline of the purchasing process well but it also helps manage any risk areas. So the idea is that you can use this as kind of your home for how you have
070finance conversations, but also it can be all of this data is is very well connected and I say thank you to the the technology team for their work and helping get this set up. There's a basically a dashboard that integrates live. So this is a workspace where you could create additional views. If you have other issues you have questions about in the future, this infrastructure lets you set up reports that do that the same way this was set up to do purchase orders. So, um, next I'll just kind of give you can kind of see an overview here, but this is the purchase order overview where you can see the PO number, the timeline, the amount, the authorized amount, all of those things. That level of detail is probably more interesting to finance than it
071is to everyone else, but um, you know, is available to anyone on the network. Um, and then real quick, um, I'm just going to hit the highlights of this. This is our evaluation of best practices related to performance management. Um these best practices are things we see work well in other systems around financial accountability. Um the first one is that the goals and performance systems are aligned with district goals. So staff should connect directly to student outcomes and district objectives. That we would say is um sort of a green light meaning that that's well done. The next one is datadriven evaluation framework that data analytics are going to drive performance monitoring and data is used to inform improvement, performance, and transparency. You don't only hear about your data when you're in trouble. Um, and so
072the district's made good progress there. More than half the finance team's goals clearly define measurable targets where data can be used to say, "How'd that go this year?" And um fewer than half of them are are more than half of them are um clearly measurable but more progress to be made in making sure they're more timebound which is to say you're going to accomplish this by this point. So continued work to strengthen their transparent framework and expectations um expectations for processes. As the the documentation of processes becomes more clear as systems get modernized those expectations need to be communicated to match that. So while the work is there and I know that Miss Cresbow holds her staff to a high standard when there is no specific standard detailed about how something runs through a workflow,
073it's harder to maintain compliance with that standard. So as the systems continue to advance, the ERP advances, the HR system advances, you want to work on continuing in this space. Um transparent framework and expectations, expectations and processes are clear and should be documented against progress and performance. Um, lots of work going on here, but still in progress. Employees sign their job descriptions acknowledging their duties and responsibilities. Provides a framework for accountability, an ongoing feedback. Um, the district has a progressive discipline framework that is, um, you know, intended to hold employees accountable for, you know, standard district policies and procedures. Um but the implementation of like comprehensive performance management through the HIS system um needs to continue for this to be fully completed and automated and done efficiently. And then again that that platform of centralized
074HR oversight performance management. It's important to everyone's accountability to any finance um responsibilities to say anybody that has budget responsibility has to follow policies and procedures that has to be rolled out to every district employee before this can be fully done because anyone who ever might use a you know a credit card that's by the district or make commitment or spend anything or authorize overtime all need to be kind of incorporated in that. So that's going to continue. um the district's been investing in a performance process, but the system has to catch up with it. So, in the meantime, it's a lot of work, a lot of people hours that are applied to this. So, all of this is in a position to work well. It's just not working as efficiently as it could. And
075the districts continue to invest in that. And so, in the future, you'll see the benefits of the HR system implementation. And really quickly on position control, this is um the um as we mentioned earlier, the sort of the key to controlling spend in a district. Everyone thinks about purchase orders and they think about procurements and they think about employee credit cards and travel and all these things. Those get all the press. The real money is in positions, right? So the most important thing in making sure that your budget is faithfully executed is is knowing that your position control system works well. And I'm not going to go through all of the details here. Um but the the thing to highlight across the position control system is that the system has been was nearly absent and
076has been implemented and and used with fidelity in within the last six to nine months. And basically now the only thing to do is to make it more time efficient so that it doesn't have to be so much of Miss Cresbow's time to manage and the rest of her team's time and the HR team's time. So basically where you want to go right now you have good controls where people have accountability. they sign off on positions being created. The big progress to be made still is to move that to an automated workflow where every position that requires, you know, Dr. Dr. Sorenson can log in on Monday morning and say, I wonder what positions I have to authorize. And that will have traced all the way through a system that has stamped accountability for each
077person who approved it from the finance side, from the HR side, and from the leadership side. So, we're not there yet, but the system that's working, the sort of more manual system is is working to make sure that we're not hiring people that we're not supposed to. So, when I turn next to the recommended path forward, I'm going to try to be relatively quick on this, but this just sort of charts the recommendations that we discussed with this board when we were here in May. um and sort of tracks progress against each of the recommendations against um the two, you know, really big areas, financial process controls and then budget and financial outlook. And what you can see um where you see blue, dark, the darker the blue, the better the story is, right? So
078the things that are seen in dark blue are things that have been totally completed. The things that are in that lighter blue are on track. Things that are gray are not yet started. And the few things that we think ought to be started that haven't been started yet or hadn't been at the time we finished our report are the ones that are highlighted in red. So um we would say overall a lot of good progress here across these areas. There are a few areas where um you know things need to you know need to continue to advance rapidly to stay on plan with the the sort of phase plan that we laid out for you all. Um those are formalizing and enforcing document retention policies, formalizing a procurement checklist to encourage the completion of cost
079and price analysis and then um limiting or discontinuing the use of payment request forms. All of those things are important need to start soon and then um sort of similarly requiring separate uh form to confirm receipt of goods as part of that three-way match. Incorporating templates um within the develop uh developed policies. So when you have a policy, don't just tell people what they have to do. Give them something that makes it impossible for them not to do it. And then developing and implementing pre-travel approval forms. Uh on the budget side of the house, um all of the recommended uh all of the recommended items are progressing alongside their timeline as expected. So things that need to be done based on the exit criteria, based on our recommendations have moved along just fine. So there's
080not too much to talk about there. Um, so just want to highlight where we're at in the process here. So the district has undertaken kind of this journey of getting from awareness of challenges to total accountability over outcomes and we're kind of in the middle of that process. So the assessment that we conducted um focused on understanding what the challenges were, strengthening that awareness and then the work that we've been doing together for the last uh six months has focused on those priority focus areas that have really focused on saying hey we know what the challenges are. We want to start fixing them as the district moves forward from improvement towards transformation. You want to move towards process accountability and then outcome accountability. So process accountability means I know what the rules are. I follow
081them right that's a good thing it's a good place to be a better place to be is I feel ownership over the outcome of this nothing wrong is going to happen on my watch and that's outcomes accountability so to to pursue that transformation the most important differentiator from here on is not going to be technology it's not going to be systems it's going to be setting a culture of high expectations and accountability so the process doesn't work without the culture and the culture doesn't work without the process you guys are well on your way on both of them But as you focus towards the future, most of the work is going to be on building a culture around things that serve financial accountability. >> Thank you. >> So um we talk just real quick about
082recommended path forward. >> I think this is the last slide I believe. Um so talking about recommendations to move forward on internal controls reinforcement. So incorporating new system automated controls to improve the accounts payable process and conduct targeted training sessions. That is not a recommendation to like wipe out the current system, bring in a whole brand new system. again looking at the current system to see if it can be updated or enhanced or I think we talked about this in phase one if there's possibly modules that have not been turned on but which are licensed which really would not be a cost impact it would be a training impact. So that's something we would like to the district to take a look at further and hopefully get in touch with vendors who are serving kind
083of as the super users to actually get information on what's turned on and what has not been automated. Conduct a working session with directors from departments. This would be across the board in finance and HR to begin delegating recommendations in the implementation plan deliverable. This is something that the implementation deliverable itself in the road map is something that should be tracked. There should be assigned accountability to it and the timing of it should be tracked. It'll serve as a great marker to see which of the exit criteria are getting progressed appropriately and which might be falling behind or moving further ahead. And then to review and disseminate fishing investigation memo appendix and correspond with the police department regarding formal write up of those procedures. And then lastly, looking at vendor onboarding and how that can
084be updated, impacted with better due diligence to ensure that the appropriate forms are in place. So if a fishing incident does occur that it's going to be flagged immediately recognize that this in fact is not the vendor and that it's again if something happens it can be addressed recognized and addressed immediately >> and financial analytics support as you move towards um that culture around accountability it's important that you continue to advance your processes and procedures um to get to a point where the budget uh really clearly reflects your priorities. So we recommend continuing the work that you've done and sort of getting your head around where what the future looks like and strengthening your ability to enact a budget that relates to the priorities that are most important to students by exploring and implementing a
085zerobased budgeting process which requires every investment to be reviewed based on how it impacts students and assumes nothing is fixed but rather challenges each thing to say how does it relate to the board's priorities and how does it support students uh as do in so doing or In doing so, we'd recommend integrating academic return on investment and continuing improvement into your resource allocation process. So, put really simply, if you're going to do something in the name of serving kids, you need to know how it's going to serve kids, how you're going to know it and when you're going to re-evaluate that as part of the process and then build that into your budget process. You asked us to do this, we invested in this, tell us how it worked and if it doesn't work, move
086on from it. You need the infrastructure around return on investment to make sure you can do that and uh establish a framework which links resource allocation to measurable outcomes. Regular review of the budget to make sure that it matches investments to outcomes and make adjustments where necessary. So using the tools that we've worked on and developed here, you want to get to a place where you're planning your budget u really thoroughly and then monitoring and changing ba changing things year-over-year based on what's actually working for kids. Um on accountability and data transparencies, we just recommend some continued improvements to um incorporate clear roles and responsibilities to allow for employee evaluation. Um again, completing that awareness campaign. Anytime you have a new policy, it's not enough just to have a new policy. It's important for all
087the owners of that policy and every who's responsible for it to be trained on it. And then strengthen accountability for accurate budget execution and reporting in departments and in the central office. So using the tools that we laid out here, um you need to know h you know what's happening with your budget and be accountable to um any variances there. And so we'd recommend just continuing to implement those tools. As you see here, um all of these really critically highlight technical work is really important. Culture and accountability is more important than the technical work being perfect. And so, you know, putting that forward in the way that you move forward to make sure that everyone feels ownership over these things is just going to be critical in executing. >> Members of the board, do you
088have any questions for Brooke or Mike? >> I know we were overwhelmed by all the information, so we would greatly appreciate it. >> I have one question. >> Go ahead, Mr. O. >> Um, so would you and your team re-evaluate within six months? Sorry, they are coming back. That's the question. >> Yes. Or would we be re audited and >> Yes, we that's the expectation. I want it's a now it's a challenge. I want them to see and show the community how my team and I are working super hard to get the district where it needs to be. >> Yes, I'm great to see the pleased to see the progress within the last six months. I know had asked for dashboards and definitely they're live and in the hands of the appropriate team members. So,
089thank you. >> Thank you. Just just to highlight our recommendation would be that any controls evaluation be done at the conclusion of this school year so that you can look at a full year of data after the process improvements to see where those where they've taken up, where they've um taken root, where there are challenges based on a full year comparing to the previous year. So you're not measuring kind of a half year like we were able to see this year. >> Mike, on slides 23 and 24, you talk about where we need to be and where we're at. Um what's the projected date or time where you're looking at so that we would be seeing the majority of this stuff completed the green? Well, I think the timeline of activities that we've outlined relates
090to work continuing um led by the finance department for the next 12 to 18 months. Um with most of the items being able to be closed by the end of fiscal 28 at the latest um but potentially sooner. Um the big challenge is just going to be anything that relies on a system like on HR system implementation and modernization. Um but the thinking is that most of the things that we've laid out in the phase plan that the district's going to continue to follow um can be closed out by the 2728 school year with a majority of them being closed out during the the rest of this year. >> Great. >> Yeah. board president. I also want to add though and never underscore um something that Mike and Brooke both said and you know that
091Merett lives is that that cycle of process versus accountability. Um and so we're also talking about changing behaviors and so um I am really grateful at your question around you know what is the protected timeline um to complete many of the tasks um as we know from other work streams that we're working on. Um change management is hard and so just like as we do change management around instruction or leadership or other areas where we are shifting practice Um this is a space also that while we may make um milestones in terms of technical um processes um we will still always um until we're until we're not um working on human behavior also. >> Yeah, I think Mike referenced it a couple of times. Couple of times using the word or the phrase culture. So
092nothing's going to change until we change culture. So appreciate that. Any members of the board have any additional questions for microbrook? >> I have a question for Miss Grespo. >> Yes, Dr. >> So, what has been the response or are we having um any difficulties with the vendors adjusting to this best practice that we're kind of uh bringing forward for financial? >> Um I have seen both. I have seen vendors that are coming back or saying that they are coming back to the district to do business because they feel um fair. Um and I have seen vendors that are no applying to our requests for proposals and no applying to our requests for quotes. Uh simple no participating anymore. So, I'm not going to say why, but I have a ch a change. Um, what
093I feel better is that I have we as a district have a better pool where to pick, choose what is more convenient for us and what is more beneficial for our students and choose what is more efficient and effective and know just doing what we have >> the culture that has been standing. Thank you for that. I'd like to add something. Yes, Mr. Cha. Um, just to clarify. So, with our vendors, we are indicating what the agreement is clearly in in the BAA, right? And so, is that perhaps the reason for the change? >> I cannot tell that. I'm everybody that makes their own business decisions but we have strengthened our procurement processes and we have strengthened our requirements and we also are trying to we are working on indicating what are all requirements for
094invoices so we are more clear and we can do the three-way match efficiently. It has to be a collaboration. So all those things are factors that are showing that we are more efficient and more doing best practices. So appreciate it. Thank you. >> I would just say some of that attrition of vendors is good because you want some of the vendors to decide if they're not ready to comply with the controls that have been put in place that they make the decision not to get involved. >> Any other members of the board? >> Thank you both. Even though we didn't have Alvarez and Marcel, thank you both, Brooke and Mike for being here and it was very informative and so thank you for that and we look forward to seeing you in six months. Thank
095you. Thank you, Michelle. >> Thank you. >> All right, next item on the agenda is SB 5.2 transportation audit findings. SP president Alvarez, Superintendent Sorson, uh fellow TR board members. I'm going to ask Mr. Alanise to join me at the podium as we make this presentation for you guys. >> Great. >> Good afternoon. uh as uh SP Pearson your chief operations officer here to uh talk to you about some operational efficiencies and uh ship exercise that we've gone through in the uh department of operations but more specifically in the department of transportation as you guys are acutely aware every decision everything that we do is driven by the mission and vision statement of the school district and so we always want to keep that in the forefront things that we also keep in the forefront
096of the board outcome goals and making sure that we're aligned with those goals as well in our decision- making processes. Back in October, we came to you guys with uh some issues that we're having in the transportation department and we were coming to let you guys know some of the exercises that we're about to take on in order to help us become a little bit more efficient and identify uh some financial stewardship uh errors or flaws that we may have in order to help us better align with the student academic outcome goals for the district. And so in some of those issues that we've identified for you guys, uh we called out some things particularly uh uh routing efficiencies, inefficiencies, I'm sorry. Uh the ideas that our students are getting to school late uh we
097recognize that to be a challenge and that's not aligned with our academic goals of of Northstar goals and wig goals of becoming a B school district and getting to a AB school district in the next uh three to five years. And so we want to make sure that we're supporting that. Another thing that we we called out was that over the last 20 years, it's been about 20 years since we've had any major routing overhauls. In the last 20 years, uh our routes have been kind of patchwork put together to support the district needs. And so, we identified that to be a huge inefficiency issue that have caused some constraints for us uh in our day-to-day operations as well as cause some financial constraints from uh for us. antiquated route routes, antiquated routing systems, uh,
098inefficient driver training. Those were all the things that we elevated to you guys back in October. And so the idea about the exercise we were going through was to uh go through an audit where we're going to audit the entire transportation department. And so the goal of that audit was to create a comprehensive baseline that guides us in making improvements not only in student safety but in operational performance, financial stewardship, and the long-term sustainability of the uh of the department. Uh how the audit was was conducted. Obviously, we brought in Transfinder, who's the leader in uh public ed transportation in the state of Texas, to come in and support us because obviously internally we don't have the capacity to do the type of audit that comprehensive audit that was needed to tell us some of
099the issues that were going through to give us the launch pad for correction. So, the scope of work of what they've done for us, they came in, they they spent a week with us. They talked to some drivers, our mechanics. Uh they went through our our oper sorry our transportation leadership. Uh they witnessed routes both AM and PM routes. They followed our drivers. They witnessed the practice of our trans our mechanics in the uh transportation fleet management side. They reviewed our software. They work with technology to make sure that our import and export uh technology uh software devices were working as supposed to. They compared our facilities into uh with a comparison to Texas education code, Texas education agency as well as department of transportation and best practice standards. And they gave us an an
100opinion on that that we'll share in just a second. Uh and then just overall performance, you know, that's that's what the goal was to come in and give us some overall efficiency performances and look at our finance and help us make sure that we're aligned with the district goals moving forward. So with that uh there was a findings that a report that was issued to us that was given on November the 6th and in that findings report it identified 46 areas uh of findings that needed to be improved. There was 64 recommendations associated with those 46 findings that were itemized out into seven different categories ranging from operational administration, training, routing and scheduling, fleet maintenance, fleet data, facilities, and just general safety overall. Some of the key takeaways from the audit report was basically in
101the uh overarching umbrella of long-term planning and service deliverables. Uh ideally, you know, our routing systems help us with service deliverables of our kids, making sure that our kids are getting to schools on time. Right now, we there there's not any present uh support that we're having from our routing software, our hardware that's present on the bus. And so, that was identified as a key takeaway. Uh the age of our fleet, the age of our fleet is a huge pressing issue that was identified in uh in in the report that came out. Obviously with the uh lack of skilled uh maintenance guys that we have in our department, we're having to outsource a lot of our buses. The age of our buses are reaching the life expectancy. And so that's a huge uh dilemma that
102we're dealing with in the department. Training the idea of institutional controls were ele elevated uh from a large standpoint. The they called out specifically that from a leadership perspective that we don't necessarily have the capacity to train our drivers on best practices that are taking place every day. and those practices that keep us free and clear from liability issues that could potentially come with exs. And then uh routing efficiencies and communication. Obviously, we're kind of behind the the the eightball as it relate to the communication devices that we have on buses. We're behind the eightball on on our softwares and hardwares that we're using to help us with routing efficiencies. They've identified that as an issue as well. Maintenance sta maintenance of our buses as well as staffing. Uh we talked about the idea that
103in our uh fleet maintenance department we don't have any current uh ASC certified diesel mechanics which forces us to send a lot of our our fleet out to be outsourced for for maintenance which gives us a huge downtime with our buses and so that that also causes some hardships for our uh department. um that along with the age of our fleet requires a huge maintenance effort and so that's another issue that was elevated with that fleet renewal as I've identified previous in the October uh presentation our fleet renewal is off schedule uh we have in the last five years we've purchased three buses and so you know for whatever reason that decision was made it's going to catch up with us in a very short time if we don't make some aggressive moves as it
104relate to that and then some safety things that were identified along with student loading and unloading. Those are basically human behavior issues that we have to fix with our drivers and training that's associated with that. Those were some of the key takeaways that came from the audit report. So, what does all this mean? All this means that that SB Pearson, your chief operations officer, Mr. Joe Alenise, your director of transportation. We have some work to do and we have some work to do in a hurry in order to number one make sure that we're taking care of our kids from a safety standpoint, that we're taking care of our fleet from a fiscal responsibility standpoint, that we're we're uh planning out and forecasting our budget to make sure that we're ahead of the curve as
105it relate to uh vehicle replacement schedules, uh preventative maintenance, training. We've got to stay ahead of the curve as it relate to training, not only for liability purposes, but for best practice purposes. Making sure that we have institutional controls in place like driver handbooks, uh, uh, driver manuals, uh, mechanic manuals to make sure that all those things are are recorded and an ongoing institutional process. And then the last thing that we have to make sure that we identify is that all of these things are documented. Right now there's no uh current evidence of a lot of our processes and systems being documented and that could come back to bite us in the long run. So what happens next? We've identified that our audit ended on November the 6. We've received that report on uh no
106shortly after November 6. I gave a directive to Mr. Joe Alanise and his team to begin immediately working on a corrective action plan and those things that are of human behavior that could directly affect safety to put an aggressive approach to correcting some of those things in very short order even before the corrective action plan has been approved and so Mr. Alanise and his team has been aggressively working on that. Um that plan has been reviewed by myself and we're in the process of sitting down and going back and correcting some of the timeline expectations for corrections. Once that is completed, I will submit that to HR for HR to review as well from a human uh capital management perspective to make sure that we're aligned. Then we'll present that to the cabinet and at
107that point the superintendent will give her opinion on that timeline for implementation. It is our expectation that those things that are directly related to human capital behavior, human behaviors are implemented and in effect as recent as January the 5th. Why is that important to call out is because Mr. Alanise and his team are actively and aggressively making some human behavior uh changes and this is uncomfortable. Uh our superintendent talked about in our previous audit report uh change management and so we're working through some of that right now. Obviously with the age of our fleet and the age of our staff who some of those guys were very fortunate to be have been with us for a very long time there's some good and bad that comes along with some of the habits that have been
108formed and we have to correct some of those habits. And so with that being the case obviously we're we're having to deal with some of the the push back that comes along with that and changing those behaviors. And so we're up for the task. We're dealing with it. Uh Mr. Alanise is manning those uh responsibilities and we're taking care of that. The next steps for us is in the uh spring. >> Board President, can I ask question please for clarification? >> So when you talk about um the corrective action plan um can you clarify? I mean I know the answer to this because we've had intense conversations about this issues related to safety. We've already begun to address some of those issues. Yes. I mean, I know Joe, we've had these conversations, SB, we've had
109these conversations. And so, for our parents who are listening, we want you to know that we've already begun to address safety issues. And we also want um people to understand that out of the audit findings. Um there is a difference between um have to meaning state compliance and also a recommendation aligned to best practice. >> Absolutely. And so we want to clarify um because we don't want folks walking away saying like, "Oh my goodness, like they're completely out of compliance and in you know and therefore liable and and things of that nature." And so we want to just be really clear that like we want to be the premier district when it comes to how we how we efficiently and effectively and safely transport our students. which means we want to be aligned with best
110practice and we are in alignment with compliance in state regulations and where we are not those areas are being addressed. Yes, >> absolutely. Superintendent, thank you so much for clarifying that. >> Thank you. >> As we talk about student safety, we're not necessarily talking about putting kids in harm's way. We're talking about more of a preventive measure to make sure that we're we're taking actions and being proactive in our approach and our processes to prevent things from happening in the future. So >> So can you give an example like if I'm a parent, how do you assure me right now that my kid is safe on the bus? I mean I look at board member OOA like her she has kids here and so how do you assure her that her children are safe on
111the bus? So for an example of that is the best practice of student loading and unloading both in a community stop as well as at a school. Uh obviously we want students to load and unload on the right side of the bus which is where the door is and obviously cross the bus when the uh flasher amber lights are out so that we can control the traffic to pro protect kids crossing those roads and making sure that we're letting kids off in appropriate locations. So that's what we mean by best practice. Those are not law violations, but those are local controls that we want to put in place to make sure that we're protecting our kids as well as our staff. >> Thank you, sir. >> Yes, M. Chis. >> Um, Dr. Hornson, that's great
112that you brought that up because I' I've heard that too about, you know, the the offloading of the students, right? And I think of just recently in the elementary space, you know, where we have um buses dropping off elementary children and how sometimes these buses aren't able to go into the street. that's own this kind of maybe about on the main road and they can't maybe for whatever reason >> it's a oneway. >> Yeah, it might be a oneway or they they can't maybe do a turnaround in the street so they have to drop the child off on the main road and then the child has to then and this is elementary child, right? Has to has to get off the bus and then cross traffic to go then to to their house. Um, I
113know that has brought some concern because these are elementary children and sometimes they're so excited to get home and they just kind of run across and some people I'm sure we've seen it don't sometimes stop for buses and sometimes they try and just beat the bus just you know to continue on their journey right but um in that case you know does this audit or any changes we're making maybe c might find some avenues to where our elementary children may not have to be crossing the street like that to get home. So absolutely and thank you so much for elevating that as well. And what you're talking about is a byproduct of the systematic uh lack of improvements throughout the years. And so the geocoding and mapping is what helps with identifying routes to help
114us with the we call these right and left turns. The superintendent calls it GPS mapping. And so what has happened over time is that our drivers are consistently they're used to driving these routes without any improvements to geocoding and mapping. And so they haven't been given any additional ways to to navigate these roads in order to prevent letting students off the wrong sides of the bus. And so just by habit, they've just done, you know, what was what they figured was the best thing to do, right? >> And so the way we're going to fix that is through geocoding and mapping and making sure that our routing optimization is going to support dropping students off at the appropriate size of the street, which will protect our our kids also. >> Great. And and I think
115sometimes a concern is that maybe sometimes a parent will tell the bus driver, "Oh, there's a turnaround in the street. You could do the, you know, the turnaround like the culde-sac, but then the bus driver is like, "Well, I'm already running late. I don't have time to go down the street, do that, drop the one child off, and then go back to the main road." So hopefully with the efficiency of these routes, maybe then we'll have the time to properly drop off our children. >> Absolutely. And and uh just because part of our audience is the parents, I do need to call out loud that it is not our habit or our practice to allow parents to tell us where to drive our buses. We like for that to be uh determined by our routing
116optimization systems and our director of transportation. But uh absolutely we're it's our intent that these uh routing optimization exercise that we're about to go through with the updated maps from geocoding uh and I do want to call this out as well as part of the 20-year problem that we have. Our district looks totally different today than it did 20 years ago. Oh yeah. >> There's rooftops that have sprung up all over our community. Uh there's areas that had homes and apartments that are no longer there. If we don't continue to update our routes about every two years, then this those type of things will happen. And so that's part of the reason why we have to make this a a standard practice and something that we do on a regular basis to make sure that
117we don't have those unintended consequences of things like this uh taking over our systems. >> Right. Very good points. Thank you. >> And if I may add >> Yes, Mr. Ch. So I think you acknowledged the concern that Miss Travis brought up and indicated that the child will not have to cross the street by correcting the routes and the student will have to exit on the right side. >> So I want to make sure that I'm clear. We we can't guarantee that there will never be a scenario where students don't have to cross the street. Our goal is to make sure that they're crossing the best practice with the safest models. And so obviously our buses are equipped with safety devices that allow for us to uh stop traffic and allow for kids to cross
118the street in an appropriate fashion. But ideally we like to design our routes to where kids don't have to cross the street. And so based on the mapping identification and obviously there's culde-sac situations, there's dead end situations that we have to you know identify. Part of the thing that will help with that is is as we look at our community stops and satellite stops that we are looking forward to presenting as a a correction a corrective action. It will eliminate a lot of that stuff. But right now some of the challenges that we have presented with the promise of door-to-door pickups and door-to-d dooror stops. That's these are the byproducts of those situations. >> And how can parents address their concerns or safe in terms of safety? >> How can they address their concerns? How
119can they um make it known? >> Uh I I think you're talking about are you talking about currently or you talking about where we're going? >> Currently currently. >> Currently they can always call the transportation department directly. Uh they can go visit their campus principal and have any concerns identify with their campus principles and my office is we're open 14 hours a day most times to be able to feel calls and take calls on transportation. So, uh, any avenue of reaching a district administrator to report that, uh, level of concern, they'll elevate it to the appropriate personnels and we'll address it. >> We've heard from parents concerns, um, where drivers aren't following traffic laws and just passing the bus in spite of the sign being present. Are there cameras on the bus that are noted,
120license plates that can then be uh, communicated to the local law enforcement? Thank you for asking that question as well. So, our buses are equipped with student safety cameras on the inside of our buses. There are no 360 cameras on the exterior of our buses. As we look at purchasing new buses and the new legislative requirements for safety, that is definitely something that we can take into consideration, but our current bus model do not we're not equipped with 360 cameras which catch the exterior of our bus. It's only inside. >> Thank you, >> SP. All of those are really good questions and I appreciate that. I do know that there is an opportunity for us to partner up with the local law enforcement. I think they have a ride a ride along. I think DPS
121puts them along. Look, I can see Mr. Alanise. I think he's either been stopped by DPS or he's aware of the program I'm talking about. But, um, that's certainly an effective program. Um, and those are good questions. These are very good, valid questions. I mean, I see that you're going to be put in this action plan by January. So, we look forward to it. So, >> yes, sir. >> Yeah. Thank you for that. and thank you for answering those questions because it is a concern to many of us and how we're dropping off our kids or picking them up. So, thank you. >> Just to clarify, board president, um Mr. Alanise and Chief Pearson will be coming back to the board in February with the corrective action plan and timeline for implementation. Just to clarify.
122>> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Yes. Thank you so much for clarifying that, Superintendent. We did have a few more points to get to and that was going to come up in those additional points. uh starting in January, it's our intent to begin our geocoding and mapping which will is the it's the launch pad for the routing optimization that we intend on taking place mid to late fe uh February to the early part of March. From that point, it is also our intent to uh present our plan to our principles through our principal operational uh meetings where we're going to talk to those guys and lay out the the expectation of the plan of what we're going to do and hear some of the challenges that may come up that we're not aware
123of. At that point, we're going to also ask the principles to allow us to be a part of their open house, their community engagement opportunities so that we can set up tables, set up shop to be able to answer questions and present these opportunities to our parents to be able to kind of put out some of the ease of what we're trying to do and to introduce in a forecasting exercise of letting the parents know in advance before we're at our start in August of what some of these routes are going to look like. From there, training is obviously a huge component. So, we're going to have to bring our drivers in in the summertime, introduce them to their new routes, have them drive their routes preemptively without any students on the bus before they
124actually drive the routes. They're going to be trained and all the hardware software components uh that that are required. They're also going to be retrained and some of the state mandates as well as our local newly implemented mandates for driver safety. For example, pre-trip, post-trip inspections. Those are not law violations, but those are best practice things that we actually fund and we expect that our drivers are doing that. Right now, we don't have any concrete evidence that that is happening. So, we want to make sure that we're implementing human behavior changes that will support that. The last part of that will be an aggressive communication plan that Mr. Nigella and Miss Wanka will help us with beginning late spring through the summer to introduce these routes in a new roll out to our parents that
125we fully expect with an aggressive approach to start uh fall early August. So that's our plan as it relate to the next steps. Uh the idea is basically an overhaul, a a total comprehensive overhaul of our transportation department from systems, processes to human capital accountability to safety, uh logistics, you name it. Financial stewardship, you name it. The ultimate goal for us is to be able to become very tight with our finances in the transportation department so that we can relieve some of the funds to go back toward the district's goal of student academic outcomes. We have in order for us to do that, we have to get systems and processes in place. We have to make sure that our routes are optimal and tight that we have the appropriate number of buses on the road
126to support the ridership time and the total ridership capacities that we want for our kids to get to school. And that in turn will turn over dollars that we can turn back to the finance department to put back into student academic outcomes. With that, we'll answer any qu additional questions you guys may have. Members of the board, do you have any other questions or remarks you'd like to make at this time? I >> have a question. In terms of uh bus replacements, do we have an immediate plan to or immediate need to turn over any specific buses? I know you mentioned several some of these slides. >> I think I barely heard. >> We purchased I believe you said 30 buses that need to be replaced. >> And what is our immediate intention to replace
127buses and how many? So your question is about our vehicle replacement schedule particularly for buses. Yes ma'am. So right now we have a vehicle replacement schedule schedule average of about 15 years. Uh our best practices anywhere from 10 to 12 years. Obviously we have uh safety regulations that change very you know very often which we're faced with one right now that's causing us to retrofit older buses. And so to answer your question directly, we have about uh 36 buses that are within 13 years, but in the next five years, 76 of our fleet will be beyond the 15-year life expectancy, which means that we have a huge financial investment that we need to start addressing very quickly. >> So, Mr. Pearson, I'm just going to ask the question bluntly. >> Why is that? >> Uh,
128there's several reasons, Superintendent Sorenson. Uh, number one, it's it's administrative decisions of the past. um maybe they decided to refocus dollars from the transportation department and move it to other areas. I could also say, you know, and I'm saying this uh you know, with respect of my director being here, that sometimes there could have just been downright decisions to not purchase buses uh for whatever reason, internal control uh situation. There could have also been some of the waste fraud and correction conversation that's a part of that. There's a lot of reasons that decisions could have been made to not purchase buses. I don't want to be irresponsible and giving exact of what those things are that predates me, but it's pretty apparent those things uh some of the answers to why buses were not purchased
129in a succinct order. >> And so, board president, if I may ask one more question just for clarity sake. >> Yes. >> Um so, when we purchased buses, and again, I know the answer to this, so I'm not asking questions for my own knowledge, but I think it's really important that our community understands this. We purchased many buses at one time. >> That's correct. >> And so, um, can you talk a little bit about if you purchase 50 buses at one time, which is what we did as a district? >> Yes, ma'am. >> Right. what what's that story that the community I really want the community to hear that when we made a choice to buy x number of buses x number of years ago what position that puts us in now um not only
130in terms of you know fleet management but financially in terms of then the expenditures that are ahead of us which going to keep reiterating board and community this is why we are going to continued to have to have conversations about when we make recommendations to the board about doing things differently. This is one of the reasons why um that we cannot continue to operate when we've lost 27% of our student population and have really dire needs um here in just one example in transportation. And so, Mr. Mr. Pearson, if you could give us even just a brief overview of of that history. >> So, the average cost of a bus is about 150,000. So, there was a period and I don't want to be exact or go on record exactly when that period was, but
131I can't tell you was about greater than 10 years about ago now where there was 50 bud buses purchased at one time. Anytime you make an investment like that, and I would assume that that 50 buses were purchased obviously through some sort of bond funds or a huge capital investment project. I I can't I don't have the backstory as to how that was purchased, but anytime you make an an investment of 50 buses at one time at about $110,000 during that time, what you're going to run into is the age of those fleets all aging out at the same time. And so what's happening is that's what we're up against right now. In the next three to five years, the majority of our fleet, about 80% of our fleet will all age out at the
132same time. If you compound that with the idea of improper fleet maintenance and mechanic work uh not being done appropriately, that reduces the life expectancy of your bus by about 30 years. So basically, we're limping. We're limping through as a department right now. So, if we don't have an aggressive vehicle replacement schedule that we stand, you know, pat with, then we put our finance uh team and you guys as a board into a very bad spot to have to make a choice between student academic programs and operational efficiency equipment like buses that are definitely needed for our kids to get to school. >> Thank you, M. Thank you, Chief Pearson. I appreciate the clarification >> president for allowing me that. >> Of course, and thanks for the clarification as referenced. Anybody else have any questions?
133Mr. Lenise, you have any questions? I mean, just standing there at all detention. >> He's such a nice guy. I mean, he's like such a nice guy. Go ahead, Mr. Lenise. >> If if it's okay, SP, >> it's okay. Uh um I think Mr. Pearson is is uh leading the way with this and I appreciate him and the support that we have from administration here and uh we're ready to tackle all this and make things better for for our students and our community. >> Thank you Mr. Elise. That means a lot to us. SP great presentation. Any members have any other further questions for SP or Mr. Ch. You have anything else? >> Well, I was going to ask about maintenance. you know, how much does it cost to maintenance a bus and how frequent
134um is maintenance required? >> So, that's a very good question and the the cost to maintenance the bus obviously depends on the repair that needs to be made. And so, what I can tell you is that uh with the level of our capacity of our technician, our mechanics that we have in our uh fleet shop right now, uh there's very very little things that they can do from a certification standpoint. And so with the age of our buses, most times when we send our buses out to be serviced, that cost is upwards of seven to $10,000 per trip. And if obviously if it's a motor or a transportation that needs to be completely overhauled, that cost goes up even more. But the average cost of outsource uh maintenance is anywhere from 7 to 10,000 per.
135Is that about right? >> That's right. >> Do we have several buses now that are out of service due to maintenance? >> Oh, absolutely. How many buses do we have down now? Right now we have about 9 to 10 buses that are down. >> And what percent of that is of our total >> I'm sorry. >> What what percent requiring maintenance now or that are out of service? What percent of that total bus? >> Uh I don't have an average of that right now, but I can definitely get that answer back to you. As far as saying what percentage requires maintenance, I can tell you that we do have an age fleet and our buses require some sort of attention from us at least monthly and so uh that's just based on age of our
136fleet and the lack of preventive maintenance that we have uh transparent in the department. >> It just poses significant challenges to our budget. So that's what I'm asking. >> Absolutely. It is absolutely a challenge. >> Thank you both. Great presentation. >> Thank you guys and happy holidays. Thank you for all you do for our kids. >> Miss Miller, I think you have the next agenda item, which is um what is it? Oh, yeah. It's a 5.3 policy update 126. Miss Miller, floor is yours. >> Good evening, President Alvarez, Dr. Sorenson, and members of the board. Tonight, we're asking that you adopt policy update 126. So, why do we have update 126? There were public concerns over school safety, transparency, and technology that prompted a legislative focus on educational oversight. During the 89th Texas legisl legislative
137session, there were sweeping education laws that aimed at accountability and modernization. So due to these education laws being passed, TASBY issued update 126 to incorporate the new legal requirements and to help districts get these legal requirements into their district policy manuals. So school districts across Texas, including La Hoya ISD, are acting to align local policies with statutory mandates. So what's in update 126? There are 24 policy areas that are being updated. These include governance and operations such as board meeting and public comment rules, cyber security and AI policies. There's personnel matters such as employee leave updates and employee conduct expectations. There's instruction and student services, so review of curriculum and material approval and sped monitoring compliance and community and communications. So, public comment process and then community engagement initiatives. So, the next steps for Loya
138ISD is that we're asking tonight that you adopt update 126. If you choose to do that, we will notify TASBY of our board action and we'll get these updates put in our policy online. We'll update related administrative procedures, our forms, and our documentation, and then of course communicate all of the adopted changes to our staff, campus leaders, and parents as needed. >> Thank you, Miss Miller. Does anyone have any questions? No. >> Great. Thank you. Thank you. Um, next item on the agenda will be item number six, Lonear Governance. Item 6.1, local assessment data, board goals 1, two, and three, uh, by Dr. Little. >> Good evening, everyone. I'm not going to be quite as quick as Chief Miller was, uh, but we will, uh, be able to go through this a bit quicker tonight.
139We are presenting updates, um, on our our GPMs and our progress really around unit assessments. One thing I just want to flag is, you know, we always emphasize that these updates are really rooted in our progress towards our vision, obviously towards our goals and GPMs as well as our Northstar goal. We have for like efficiency sake and for some Lonear governance expectations that we're now trying to meet as part of these presentations consolidated those. So you get a snapshot of these on on one slide rather than separate slides, but it is in no way diminishing the fact that these updates are really a progress um against achieving these ultimate outcomes for the district. So tonight, uh we're going to walk you through reading and math data. So we're going to look at goals one, two,
140and three and the GPMs underneath those. Uh we're going to share updates with you on how participation has gone uh because that was an issue as we discussed at the beginning of the school year and we've seen dramatic improvements there. Uh when we look at the reading data and the math data overall, we're generally going to see stronger performance at the elementary levels than at the secondary levels. Um however, when you see the status slide across these goals, you're going to generally see in all but two cases that we are on track. So we are moving in the right direction despite the fact that there are places that we are deeply focused uh with more attention around specifically in our secondary spaces. Part of what we're doing in response to the data that I'm going
141to share is similar to what we've been discussing. First big thing is again a thank you to the board for I think about six weeks ago at this point you approved additional investments almost two million in additional investments into uh direct instructional support and curricular support for teachers and for campus leaders that is phasing in at this point. So that additional uh support is on the ground in campuses in classrooms and that will continue throughout the rest of the school year and is certainly an investment in improving and accelerating these results even more. Uh the other thing that connects to an agenda item that's on the consent agenda a bit later uh is us expanding what we already have in place for a writing supplemental curriculum, but really emphasizing the use of that more directly
142and bringing it to additional classrooms in the district. That's think circa. Uh writing is a key part of our literacy journey. It's not just about reading. You've got to be able to do both really well. Uh and so just flagging that that's a real focus for us particularly as we enter the spring semester and is connected to an agenda item later. Uh the the other big thing I want to call out here is really this middle bullet and that's an emphasis on directtoteer communication from us. Uh most of the time we really work most closely uh from a central staff perspective at least uh with principles, assistant principles, campus coaches, you know, counselors uh that really leadership team at a campus and they in turn are primarily the direct supports to teachers outside of the
143specific areas where we have coaches supporting teachers directly. But one of the things that we've really listened to uh particularly this semester uh from our our educators in our teaching field is the desire to want to be more directly informed and in the loop about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and what those expectations are for them in the classroom. So, our communications team has worked with us to really put out a video series that's illuminating part of our lesson structure, showing really great examples of that in action right here in the district, clarifying what we're doing with spot checks. On and on that goes, that's going to continue uh into the spring semester. But really just making sure we are eliminating myths and rumors and speculation about what we're expecting and how we're
144expecting people to go about this work and improve and just providing total clarity or attempting to provide total clarity throughout the system. The other thing I will note is that's also an intensive effort with our partners. uh we work incredibly hard to make sure that we maintain alignment between what our partners are doing and saying on campuses and what we are saying because it is the worst position for a teacher to be in if they feel like they're getting confusing and conflicting information. Um so it's really important to us that we are keeping that calibrated and tightly aligned. We've talked about um our secondary spaces and our high schools along the way this fall. I I do want to mention that we are providing additional support specifically uh to our high school leaders as we
145look at the data and all that we have to do in that space. Uh we want to ensure that they are fully supported through that. So part of another agenda item that you have tonight is expanding coaching support specifically for our high school leaders and that's a direct investment in their ability to implement and execute on the things that they are expected to do. Uh so with that we will dive into reading first. Again this is goals one and three. Uh as I mentioned got a lot of green tonight. It is a moment of celebration for sure in terms of these updates. Last time we started to sprinkle in green. Tonight we have much more. Um very uh again optimistic about what this data is showing and where we are going. I will call out
146we have one slightly on track at the eighth grade level. Um, that one's really close honestly, but still want to be honest to our criteria and the way that we status. And so we do have an orange in that space. The other thing before we look at the data itself, I mentioned we would show you the dramatic improvement in participation and it is indeed dramatic. That doesn't come through happen stance though like we had to really reflect on what we needed to do differently uh as a district team. put systems in place for both transparent reporting, clear expectations, as well as monitoring and followth through. And so you see the results of that here. When I had to stand up here back in August and tell you that 14 campuses didn't meet participation in first
147grade, again, that is not at all beating our expectation to our students. Now, in the latest data, that's only one campus that didn't meet that ultimate participation expectation. And so we see that grade level by grade level, exam by exam. you'll see a similar trend in the math data as well. So, also appreciation to our campuses for taking this seriously and doing the work that they need to do to get this right. So, here's the overall summary across all of these grade levels. Uh I will go quickly through the following slides which are our traditional bar charts uh because this one really gives us a sense overall of a few things. First thing just to orient you to the slide uh we have grade levels for each row. So you see kinder all the way
148through English 2 at the high school level. Uh whatever our latest assessment is is the one far to the right. So Kinder at this point has actually had four assessments. That's why it has four data points. If you go down to the bottom with English 2, uh it's only had two unit assessments at this point. That is typical. Secondary um curriculum is generally a bit longer in terms of the time it takes to get through a whole unit or chapter or module uh depending upon what that content is. And so we do expect more frequent um touch points with our students in the elementary space. Green here is obviously good. We want to see that we are at or above those target thresholds depending upon that grade level. And that's true in eight out of
14910 of these grade levels. So again, very happy about where we are with this data and what it is it is trending. Uh and then five of these specifically got better from the prior assessment to the most recent one. So that's like from assessment three into uh assessment four for example. So just a quick run through of our grade level charts here. Uh we're pretty comfortable now with how these charts work. So again we're looking at every elementary campus in this case. Uh the gray shows the prior assessment which in this case is unit three for kinder. The pink is our most recent data point unit four. uh we're showing every campus based on excuse me based on their performance in that most recent um assessment. So uh one of the things we're looking for
150is obviously are we getting better each time. 13 of our campuses actually improved from unit 3 to unit 4. We also see that as a district we made a 20 percentage point jump from unit 3 to unit 4. That's huge and it's a reflection of how quickly students can develop foundational skills when we are directly teaching and supporting uh that learning. That can happen really quickly when the adults are doing what they need to do with the science of reading. The other thing I want to say particularly for the community who may see the five schools to the right of this slide and say, "Holy cow, I am concerned they're at zero." That is not saying that 0% of their students met expectation. What it's really indicating is that they no longer have classrooms that
151are pure monolingual classrooms. They only have dual language classrooms and so students still don't participate in every assessment depending upon the language of that assessment. So we wanted to acknowledge that um here in the data but also not like raise an alarm bell because that's not what it's indicating. So first grade is similar uh even a little stronger actually than kinder. So all but four of our campus are above that passing target of 70%. District overall is sitting in the mid 80 range and in this case 18 of our campuses got better from the prior assessment uh to the latest one. Uh second grade biggest jump here we have a 25 percentage point improvement. Uh in this case this is uh unit one to or unit 3 to unit 4. Apologies for the label on
152the slide. uh and we have 14 campuses that are above that target of 70 or more. The 70 remember is not what our GPM is specifically set around because that comes from MAP data. This is just looking at basic expectations for student meeting the passing standard on this assessment. So generally we want you know 70 or more percent of our students to have passed any given assessment that we are providing and that's really what these targets for the unit assessments are built around. Uh third grade a bit different here in two ways. One we actually can look at star equivalency here. So this goes back to the meets plus achievement level at star. In this case we're at 46%. This actually does directly match our goal which is 46% this year. That's why that's on
153track because we're currently at it. You see there wasn't a lot of change here though. So that's what we're focused on, you know, supporting and our curricular partners are focused on supporting is one not only maintaining that but growing it throughout the year and ensuring students are building the additional skills that they need to to improve that level of performance overall. And then last piece here on the reading is just a reminder of where we were when we first talked about this, which is ultimately the instructional power of these unit assessments and why we do them. It's not just to be able to give you and the community an update on how we're doing, though that is super important. It is really rooted in the teacher knowing where every individual student needs additional support and
154instruction at the standard level. Texas, you know, defines here are things, here are skills that students need to be able to master by the end of each grade level. And so the unit assessments give us data on whether students are learning those skills and making that progress. On this slide, we've just shown you an example of a kinder, a first, and a second grade skill. You see the kinder one in yellow there. That means we got some more work to do. And that's specifically around, you know, phonetic knowledge. So that's a foundational skill. the teacher knows how they need to work on that in small group and in future lessons. So this is the real instructional benefit uh of these data points. And then to jump ahead into our middle school space to go three,
155uh this is looking at sixth grade, a sixth, seventh, and eighth grade all look fairly similar where you do see some decline from the first unit assessment to the to the second one. A reminder I made earlier when I shared that first data point is the first round is a lot about what happened in the year prior coming into the school year like making sure I still remember things I had learned before. Now we're getting into new content, new skills, new expectations, uh more rigorous expectations overall. So we did see some some slippage here and we still see that we are above our overall target for the year. These again are star equivalent targets based on those GPMs and goals. Uh seventh grade is a bit stronger than sixth grade. Again, that's not too surprising.
156Us and other districts generally see some dip in the sixth grade space as students are making that transition from potentially Spanish language instruction and and assessments into all English uh in the middle school space. But still a lot of a lot of cushion here and a lot of um improvement over our ultimate target uh for end of year in the seventh grade space. And in eighth grade right at where we need to be. Uh we are again starting into the school year. A lot to do in the middle school space. We are spending a lot of time in our middle school supporting their instruction directly. As that additional partner support is coming in, it's also tailored and targeted. Yes, every school is getting additional support, but the schools that need it even more are getting
157more visits, more modeling, more coaching uh specifically to help respond to uh areas that need additional attention. I will call that out. For example, here you see signs. Um it doesn't look great from unit one to unit two here and is the lowest performing middle school. So, they are getting extra support and we're seeing lots of signs that the school is improving. and we have a new principle in place there now for about six weeks. There's a lot of indicators of rapid growth and change and so we're looking to see that uh really change in future updates because uh that principal has really taken this on full steam ahead and is leading that campus forward uh in a very different way. So that's our our quick reading overview uh math a bit shorter here. We
158have one goal goal two uh two of our areas are on track. The first one around kinder is slightly off track. The unit assessment data itself looks really strong, but we have a very high target here uh for our kinder achievement based on the Texas Ka at the end of the year. And so we are reporting that as slightly off track uh at this point. Same thing on the reading side. Dramatic improvement here in participation overall. Uh really eliminating or nearly eliminating those participation issues with our campuses. Uh so overall picture here now goal two is just about kinder to to third grade but we are always transparent about how all grades are doing. So you see that full gamut here through algebra one. Six of these grade levels are are in the green. We
159saw improvement in four from the prior unit to the last one. The thing I want to particularly note here and we do have a slide on algebra 1. Uh we had incredible declines last year in our algebra one space. Um somewhat shocking in terms of how big those declines were. That is coming in much stronger already this year. We've got to shore that up, strengthen it, make it strong, particularly in our high school space. Our middle school algebra one students typically do quite well, but we got to make that strong across the board. Um, but this is an early indicator of real progress and impact that we could see at our high schools and their ultimate accountability outcomes if we can keep this data as strong as it is right now. To go back to
160the elementary space though, um, kinder overall, we see a little slippage from that uh, prior unit to this one. We're sitting at 79% of those students though uh, passing. that overall is very strong, but again it's slightly off track because our final target for the year is in the 80s. For first grade, it was on track. We're sitting at 77. Uh we got, you know, really strong improvement here or strong performance here with 15 campuses above that passing target. Uh I I will note that this only has one data point. In future updates, we will have other unit assessments as part of it. So we will have that comparison. And then second grade actually jumped here 13 points. Uh, two things I'll call out. You just saw me say it was on track. That's because
161this current status is above where we expect it to be for the end of the year. Even though it is below that passing standard of 70%, we have a long way to go from our prior data in second grade. Um, but want to sort of address that transparently that right now it is above where we expected to be at the end of the year. It's also growing a lot. It improved 13 points. We got to cons continue to see that happen. And this is a potential early sign of how our new math curriculum compounds over time. These students got this exposure and experience in first grade. Again, it's a slightly different way of thinking conceptually uh about the math and really building those approaches, but now they're getting uh another round at it this year.
162They're at a young age. Again, you see development happen really quickly and learning accelerate. And so this is a really good indicator of how that will pay off long term as well. Uh third grade again ultimately our goal here looking really strong at improve 14 points. Uh we are well above our end of year target at this point. So that's our our commitment to maintaining that as we go along. And then just like on the reading side uh our teachers can look at those specific skills understand where students need additional support and intervention. Seventh grade example here, you know, shows in the pink. Teachers can see, hey, our students are struggling with how to calculate sales tax. That's also an indicator to the teacher that that may be challenges with percentages or multiplication issues or
163fractional concepts. Uh so that's really what they can dig in and build that foundation around as well. And then I mentioned I would show you algebra 1. Uh again, really strong results thus far in the school year based on this unit assessment data. uh eager to see how our MAP data comes back at the middle of year uh in February. That'll be our first time to really compare how unit assessments and map data are moving together or not. Um but you'll get that update uh in late January, early February. So with that, that is our our latest governance update and again happy to share that all but two of those were on track. >> Members of the board, do you have any questions for Dr. Little? >> Go ahead, M. Jonath. >> Um thank you,
164Dr. a little for that presentation. I had a question regarding when you were mentioning how sixth grade um reading dips normally since we have students coming in and they're doing English only now tests, right? Um what can we do to help u mitigate that a bit? Maybe earlier exposure in fifth grade like what did that have we what does that look like? >> There are things that we are already doing uh to help in that way. Some of it is in the fifth grade space. Some of it starts as early as as prek and kinder. Uh I'll get I'll answer the sort of later grades part of the question first. One of the things that our team started to do last spring this summer and certainly is continuing this school year is really making sure
165one that we're providing much clearer guidance to schools on the language of assessment for students. Uh just because a student is in a dual language classroom does not mean they should be testing in Spanish. that is not an automatic or a given. Uh we are providing more clear guidance to campuses on how to make those decisions. Part of that guidance is looking at uh progress throughout the year. If we see that students are showing that proficiency in English and are comfortable and and confident and able to do that based on other assessment data points, we can transition them much sooner. And so that's something that we're intentionally doing at third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade from a STAR perspective, so they don't just show up for the first time uh in the sixth grade space.
166The other, which is a much longer term play, is what we're doing with two-way dual language, like really building that ultimately 50/50 model of Spanish and English and giving multiple students, both native Spanish speakers and native English speaker speakers, that by literacy context. research is super clear that benefits both and it improves outcomes in the English language for both students as well. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions? Members, >> if um I'm glad to hear that we have directed teacher communication. Um what channels are we communicating this information directly to the teacher? >> Yeah, several. So, I mentioned the video series as an example because that's something also that the public can see, but uh we're sending both short and long snippets. I just did one last week that's rather long, but that is
167a more deep intentional uh walkthrough of our our spot check that teachers will be getting. Uh so, we have obviously through like social media channels, not just publicly, but internally. Uh we send information directly to teachers both through email and through our content teams. our content teams all have ways that they can communicate uh with science teachers for example or reading teachers and so they push information out that way and through our professional learning sessions that's us directly with teachers in the space we have some coming up this Saturday uh in fact and so all of those are ways that we are sharing information directly with teachers in addition to uh the the meetings that the superintendent really hosts with advisory councils in those committees as well. So like teacher ambassadors and teacher representatives are
168getting uh direct information from us. >> Thank you for that. On slide 71 we see the assessment take it there. So assessment one is at 66% for example for first grade and then it we have a huge increase at 90%. What is the drop on these? Um, it's kind of going up and down for first grade. >> Yes. And board member AchoA, I am going to apologize because I thought we had that clearly footnoted, but I'm not seeing it now that you're asking the question. Those are alternating languages in some cases. So the way we're doing uh our biiteracy work, our dual language work with the new curriculum is if it is a dual language classroom, one unit is taught in Spanish, the next unit is taught in English and then that rotates by unit
169throughout the year. That's really helpful to the teacher so they're not having to make a change sort of day to day or week to week. It's by the unit. Um but these assessments do reflect some of those language changes. >> I see. Okay. And then these that are in gray, have those assessments just not occurred? >> That's right. So I'll take English to just at the bottom of the the slide as an example. They haven't at the point we put this data together taken their third assessment. When I come back in the spring and give another update on this, we will see that all are at a different place uh in the number of assessments that we've had thus far. And then on slide 74, um let's see 74 maybe 75 because it's 1.2 GP
170of 1.2. >> This one I think it's 73. >> Yes. >> Yeah. >> So Ford Rice is at 100%. Fantastic. Benvitas is at 63. What is the reason between the huge gap and how can we close that? >> Yeah, there's there's several answers to to the reason between the differences. Um, one thing that's always helpful to note is all of these schools have different number of classrooms as well. Venovas is obviously one of our smallest uh campuses. So, that's fewer numbers of students than at some of our larger schools like Kamadena or other places. Fort Ice and Benvidas are fairly similar. Uh this is actually part of what we are emphasizing in our school action recommendation is that's an opportunity to one address two really small campuses from an enrollment perspective and put them together
171at Fordise while improving the academic setting for those students. And so that literally helps move all the way from the right on this data point to all the way to the left because what's happening in those classrooms is generally of higher quality of more consistency and what they're doing instructionally. Now our obligation to the second part of of your question that I'm hearing is to make sure that we're providing that support that coaching that modeling uh those resources to all teachers as they need it. Remember that we do tier our our campuses. We have them in quartortiles. Benvitz is a quartile for school. So they are getting more touch points, more frequent visits, more direct support from us and our partners because of that. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Any other questions, Miss Chavez?
172>> Any other questions from the board? >> Okay, seeing we have none. Thank you, Dr. Little. Great presentation. Great news, too. So, >> yes, >> good news. Very good news. All right. Next item on the agenda, 6.2, two lonear governance time use tracker report. Joseph. >> Yes. Thank you, Mr. Board President, members of the board, superintendent Sorenson. Um, happy to bring you the Lonear Governance time use tracker report for our November 19th meeting. Um, as always like to start the presentation, ground us in our Lonear governance work. uh where we as a district are working the board and superintendent uh and administration is working hand in hand to choose to focus intentionally and unapologetically on improving student outcomes. Um so our time use tracker report if you recall last meeting um it we had a
173number of presentations um which included Miss Crespo had given us a board um sorry a uh a budget development update um of course we had our school actions recommendations presentation um and we had a presentation on c uh campus improvement plans and our district improve improvement plan um and then of course we had our uh board evaluation as Well, um so all of the all of those presentations counted towards our behavior minutes. So if you read the um the green column on the left hand side of the tracker, uh you can see that those um equate to 112 minutes of our total 125 minute meeting. Um which resulted in 89.6% of our time was spent on uh adult behavior minutes for last meeting. With that, I'm happy to take any questions. >> Members of the
174board, any questions? >> No. >> Thank you, Joseph. >> Thank you, sir. >> Thank you. Uh, before I proceed, I'd just like the record to note that Dr. Carlos Marggo had to leave the meeting at 6:56 p.m. So, let the record state that. Note that. Next item on the agenda is agenda item number seven. Uh, we now move on to the again, as I referenced, the consent agenda item. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda. >> Do I have a second? >> Second. The motion. >> All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> All opposed. Motion carries. >> All right. Item number eight. This will be our closed meeting. Will be held for the purposes authorized by the Texas Open Meetings Act. Texas Government Code section is 551.001, 551.071,
175551.072, 551.074, 551.076, 076 551.129 and 551.0821 concerning any all purposes permitted by the act. We are now going into close session. It is 8:25 p.m. back. We are back from close session. It is 9:28 p.m. Next item on the agenda is 10.1, approval of donation of $5,000 to La Hoya is to La Hoya High School football program. Do I have a motion? >> I move to approve item 10.1. >> Do I have a second? >> I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is 10.2. Approval of Sports Officials Payment Processing Service CSP number 2026-30. Do I have a motion? >> I move to approve item 10.2. >> Do I have a second? >> I second. >> All in favor signify by saying I. >>
176All oppose. Motion carries. 10.3 Determination of La Hoya Independent School District's votes for the board of directors of the Ydalago County Appraisal District. Resolution number 2025-13. Do I have a motion? >> I move to approve the resolution allocating the district's votes as follows. 31 votes for George Martinez and 31 votes for Joe D. Olivis. >> Do I have a second? >> I second the motion. >> All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> All oppose. Motion carries. 10.4 4 approval of policy update 126. Do I have a motion? >> I move to approve item 10.4 as recommended by the administration. >> Do I have a second? >> I second the motion. >> All in favor signify by saying I. >> I. >> All oppose. Motion carries. 10.5 approval to adopt program changes resolution number
1772025-14. Do I have a motion? >> I move to approve um 10.5. >> Do I have a second? >> A second. >> All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> All oppose. Motion carries. >> 10.6. Considering take possible action to propose a termination of chapter 21 term contract employees and authorize the superintendent to send notice of proposed termination to employees. Do I have a motion? >> I move to approve item 10.6. >> Do I have a second? >> I second the motion. >> All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> All oppose. Motion carries. Item 10.7 which is considering take possible action to terminate chapter 21 term contract employee. We will not be taking action on this particular agenda item. Agenda item number 11 is our calendar. December 9th through the 15th computer
178science education week. December 22nd, 2025 to January 2nd, 2026 is our Christmas break. Central administration will be closed and there will be no classes for students. January 5th, 2026, professional learning day, designated staff, no classes for students. January 6, preparation day, no classes for students. January 7th, 2026, classes will resume for students. January 7th, 2026, regular board meeting. That will be our next board meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, before or board members, before we adjourn, do we have any comments or anything you'd like to add? >> Um, I do want to say something. I just wanted to say um thank you to all of the community, the family, the staff that came out for our tree lighting ceremony. Um it was a wonderful event and we had snow. Um it is wonderful to see all of
179the families come out and enjoy what we have to offer and it was just a great event. So thank you guys so much. >> Any other members like to say anything? >> Yeah, >> Miss Chavvis. Um, in the same note also, thank you for all the parents and community who are attending the engagement community um, sessions um, for the schools that will be having potential school action taken on them. I really appreciate it. It's great for us to hear um, how y'all are feeling about this and your concerns and we as board members have been uh, going and we plan to continue to go to the future um, events and we hope to see the community there also. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Anyone else? >> Yeah, definitely. The tree lighting ceremony was amazing and
180a heartwarming event for our community to share together. And again, yes, our engagement meetings are for us to come together as a community and hear the voices um directly from you. So again, yes, please continue to join those. All of those are presented on our school actions on our website. States dates are present there. And I wish everyone a merry Christmas. >> Anyone else? Mr. Sel. >> Yes. I just want to say um good luck and safe travels to the La Hoya High School robotic state that are right now traveling at the moment. Uh so wanted to say that real quick and also uh merry Christmas and uh happy new year. >> Mr. Hernandez, Dr. >> Yes. on this our uh last meeting of the year. I want to say to everybody um coming from
181a person that lives here in the community, um I've noticed the difference with how parents are getting involved and we see it um evidenced in the Thanksgiving and uh Halloween and Christmas things that we're doing. But um the efforts that our parents are doing into our students towards our students um the efforts the teachers are doing with all the extra coaching um and we know that everything is being done for our students but ultimately the effort that the students are doing themselves um we're seeing a lot of improvements especially in what um Dr. Little presented to us tonight. Um, so to everybody, uh, merry Christmas and a happy new year. >> Well said, Dr. Hernandez. Dr. Sorenson, do you have anything you'd like to add? >> Um, I would just like to echo the sentiments
182of the board members. And first of all, yes, absolutely. Please continue to engage with us through our community engagement sessions. and we want to hear the voices of our community and our parents as we um continue to make recommendations to the board um that we as an administration feel are in the best interest of the district as a whole and we want to hear your voice um as we continue to proceed forward um through the month of January. And secondly, again, the tree lighting was just incredible. It just again always demonstrates who we are as a district. Um, I I think I told Blanca that, you know, I think the weather was in our favor because it actually really felt like it was snowing because of how the wind was blowing. Um, and so the
183fireworks and the snow and the tree lighting and and the just the the feeling of our community and and the warmth and the kindness and and how everyone just really came together always to just definitely show up who who we are as a community. So, thank you. And thank you so much, Blanca, and the operations team and and everyone in comms. It's just and all of central office coming together to really make it happen. Um, thank you. Um, but lastly, and I think most importantly, is um to all of our community, whether you're staff, students, employees, parents, um, or just community members, have a wonderful break. Enjoy the holiday season. Um please be kind to each other. Um remember all that you have to be grateful for and also give to others and because not
184everybody may have what you have and so gratitude is is you know should be abound um during this time and take care of yourself. Um we've asked a lot of our community over the past couple of months. Um it is all in the best interest. Thank you Dr. Hernandez for really bringing that home. It is in the best interest of our students and and what is um in the best interest of the district and it is hard and so we just really want everyone to take care of themselves over this holiday season. Have a merry Christmas. Um have a happy new year and any other holidays that you may celebrate during this time of year. Please enjoy. um and just restore because second semester it's gonna be great. Thank you board president. >> Yes, Dr.
185Sorenson, I'll make this really quick. So again, I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you. I saw the uh the highlights of the event, the Christmas thing, uh the parade or what do we have the festival? And I I did make it a point today to share with Blanca that I've just never seen so much involvement from the community, whether it's, you know, when we talk about cancer or we're talking about anything else that we do and the, you know, stuff for the Christmas, you you and your team have done an amazing job. And I also want to thank uh Chief, you know, for protecting our students. I mean, I'm so grateful that we live in such a protected area. and to you SB. I mean, there's been times when I am
186in different parts of like I've mentioned before of the valley and I see our buses and I always wave at our bus drivers. They probably think, "Oh, strange gentleman for doing it." But they're so friendly and our buses are so clean. I mean, we represent our district so well. To Marcy's staff, I'm so grateful for everything you guys do. And so, I'm very grateful. Thank you for continuing to support our superintendent and making her making her look good. And to all of you, thank you for all you do. I know there's a lot of preparation involved for these meetings. Uh we know the hard work that you put in. Um we probably don't put as much as you guys do and we're very grateful for everything that you all have done. Marcy, as I've mentioned
187in the past, has assembled a fantastic team. I mean, you guys are the best of the best and I'm very proud to represent this district. Um, and then to to my board members, like you guys are some of the brightest and smartest people. And so I'm very fortunate to be working with each and every one of you. So, thank you for that. And thank you for allowing me to work with you and to um to be a part of this team. And Marcy, thank you for the work. I know that it hasn't been easy. We're almost two years old and it hasn't been easy. You know, every day we experience something. And so I'm very grateful that you are taking the lead and that you're very transparent not only with the board but with the
188community. So I'm very grateful for that. So with that said, I want you to all enjoy time away from from the school district. Uh enjoy time with your families. Please travel safely and just remember that we look forward to seeing you in January. Keep up the great work and merry Christmas and happy new year to all of you. Good night. >> Thank you. And with that said, I am asking for a motion. Is there a motion to adjurnn? >> I move to adjourn this meeting at 9:38 p.m. >> Do I have a second? >> I second the motion. >> All in favor signify by saying I. I. >> All oppose. Motion carries. We are now >> ajourned.