LJISD Board Meeting 4-23-25

001[Music] Good evening everyone. It's 6:01 p.m. Let me go ahead and call this meeting to order. First item on the uh agenda is to see if we have quorum. If I could ask you to identify yourself starting from my right. Jessica present. Carlos Margo present. Anita Chavez present. Alisa Pña present. Rosal Hernandez present. Senz Jr. present. We have everyone here. We have quorum. Next item on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance. If you're able to do so, please stand and face the flag. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible. You may be seated. All right, we will now move on to agenda item four, staff recognition. I'm going to please ask Miss Jessica Our board member

002and Mr. Selso Gomez, both board members, they could stand in the front uh for our recognitions. Item 4.1, recognition of Edstar Teacher of the Year. I'd like to ask Miss Myra Ramos, executive director Early Learning, to approach the podium for her presentation. But that does not look like Miss Myra Ramos. It does not. Miss Dr. Little, if you could do the honors. Thank you. Miss Ramos is doing very important learning about early literacy uh this week. So I am going to gladly fill in for her for this uh announcement and recognition. We are so excited tonight to celebrate Mr. Jose Reyes, pre-K teacher at Wine Sigin Elementary. Uh, for the first time, Head Start of Hadalgo County. Are we good with sounds? Something's wrong with the audio a little bit. Okay. Uh, for the first

003time, Head Start of Halgo County um recognized a teacher of the year for their Head Start program. So, over 44 teachers across the county were recognized with one being designated as the countywide Head Start teacher of the year. and we're so excited that that's our very own uh Mr. Jose Reyes. If you ever get the chance to meet with him or speak with him or see his classroom, you will certainly notice the passion that he's bringing uh to young children every day, making his classroom a place that is really warm, really inviting, really inspiring to young children. Uh and that's certainly going to pay off for their life for a very long time. I am also very happy to announce and celebrate that Mr. Jose Reyes is continuing with us as an ACE teacher. uh

004next year as well. So already having been recognized at one of our best teachers in the district and we're so excited uh to continue to have him as part of ACE. He is right over there now. Um so thank you so much. Congratulations and we really appreciate what you're doing with us. Wow. Yay. [Applause] Congratulations to you, sir. Welld deserved. Thank you, Dr. Little, and thank you for acknowledging the great work that Head Start does. Uh, next item on the agenda is 5.1, and that is the La Hoy ISTD Centennial Committee historial presentation. I've been looking forward to this one. So, if those individuals that are here could make their way to the podium. If I'm not mistaken, it's Mr. Mr. Ivan Silva and Mr. Chapa recognize the hat. Thank you again for making your

005um your way to today's meeting. We're looking forward to this portion of your presentation. All right. Thank you for having us again today. We're very excited to come back and add one more chapter to the history of our amazing district. So today we're going to focus on the time period from 1986 to 2005 as we get closer to where we are today. Uh so we'll start with just a little bit of background. In the mid 1980s um our school district was having a continued actually it's rapid population growth that it was experiencing. And as the population in the school district increase, so did the need for continued investment in infrastructure, staffing, and really creating a more robust educational programming. So this era set the foundation for future expansion, which we uh continued seeing throughout the

006following 20 years. So in the 1980s, uh we had our superintendent of schools, Miguel de los Santos. So Dr. Los Santos um was served between 1979 to 1987. Shortly after he left, he took a position in Houston ISD as deputy superintendent. At that time, that opened the door for a basis in familiar to our meetings here and also to our school board is Dr. Samura uh who led the district between 1987 to 1992. Then again served between 1997 and 2003. Uh Dr. Samura began his career with La Hoya ISD in 1980 as a high school principal and would serve as superintendent at the aforementioned time until his retirement. During his time away though, he served as an executive assistant to the commissioner of education and then as an executive director for the region one education

007service center. During his time as superintendent, the uh Texas Education Agency named La Hoya ISD as a recognized school district composed of 13 13 exemplary campuses and recognized schools. The district was also home to the only blue ribbon school in region one at the time. Uh which is again a testament to the continued legacy of excellent that we've developed in our school district since its inception. Um, additionally, um, at this time period, we also had, uh, Superintendent Doyle. This served the district between 1992 to 1997. Uh, and at that time, the school district experienced five years of exponential growth with numerous schools being built and opening during his tenure. Then we also moved into the tenure of uh, Miss Filamea Leo who served the district between 2003 to 2006. Uh, Dr. Leo began her career

008as a teacher in the La Hoya Independent School District. Over time, she advanced to roles as counselor and principal, ultimately becoming superintendent after earning her doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Texas Pan-American. And as superintendent, Dr. Leo focused on unifying this district and fostering a collaborative environment. After retiring from the school district in 2006, she continued her service in education by taking on the interimm superintendent roles in several nearby districts. um also continuing that expansion of really teaching our community and engaging in that leadership that has been built uh in our district continuously. Um go ahead sir. I'd like to add that um I was on the school board with all of those four superintendent and one of the things that I think we should be proud of especially Dr. Los Santos, Dr.

009Samura, Miss Leo, they they have among some of our other superintendents uh have had the opportunity to teach now at the University of Texas RTV and are teaching future superintendents and administrators advance their their education and um Dr. Leo uh is I think one of the persons that's in very uh big demand when uh surrounding school districts are in need of an interimm superintendent. So I think that's something that we should be proud of. Correct. And then as we moved into the 90s, we saw continued growth and expansion not only in our population but just the demographic of the district also changed uh prompting new school construction once again and reszoning needs. During this period, the La Hoya ISD worked to maintain quality while adapting to the growth. New campuses were established to meet the

010needs of diverse communities. And throughout the early 1990s and the 2000s, schools were opened once again, which helped relieve overcrowding and brought educational access closer to students throughout the district. And as we'll see on the slide presented here, we grew from a population of about 9,000 students to 23,000 students plus. Uh, and that's a huge boom during that that time period, which made it a challenge to meet the demands of the buildings and also our staff and the services we're providing to our students. At that time we were 99% Hispanic, 90% plus economically disadvantaged and we also had the onset and emergence of the colonial surrounding the major cities or the main cities of our district. Uh and so that population boom was pretty fantastic. One figure that uh Dr. President Los Santos gave us

011back in uh November of 1985. Uh that's kind of where the boom started was that um from November 26, 1985, we had had an increase of 1,100 students from the prior year. And as Ivan has pointed out with the emerging colonas, that's what made uh land, cheap land attractive. And so we had we not only had people from the surrounding areas moving in to our district, but we had people from uh down valley and up valley that were coming to our district because land was so affordable. And so all of these changes and the responses from the school district. So you'll see in some of these images uh we had a grant uh to actually bring computers into the schools uh that was awarded to the district. We started bringing different types of programming into

012the school including you have a picture there with Spider-Man uh visiting uh one of our schools as we continue to offer a lot of this community engagement, community support, and community teaching to ensure that we're meeting those needs of our diverse population uh as it continue to grow. Uh on this next slide we'll look at some of the new schools and expansion that occurred. Um so roughly well in the years of 1987, 1992, 1998, 2000 and 2002 several bonds were passed. Um and the need here was to fund new facilities and upgrades. Uh and the district successfully passed these bond initiatives um throughout that time period. These were instrumental in building the modern infrastructure and modern campuses and the upgrading of some of the buildings and transportation and that we needed at the time. Uh

013also improving access to technology and investing directly in things that impacted classroom education. Uh so these bonds actually were in above of $219 million from the state IFA and EDA funding. Some of the projects that we used we used the money towards is the new La Hoya High School, Palm View High School and various elementaryaries that opened at the time including a new transportation center uh a libraries and a science lab. So just continuing to provide support and access to our students across the district in 1997. Um, I think it's one of the buildings that still brings a lot of pride in and I think will continue to be a a shining point in the history of this district was the construction of the performing arts center. The bon the uh we hired the architects

014in 1987 and the building was completed in the year 2000. It was, we think at the time, uh, for the area, uh, south of San Antonio, it was probably one of the the shining examples of a freestanding high school or district serving performing arts center. We had many school districts come and visit it. Uh and this came at a time when a lot of the school districts including ourselves we had cafiums. So most of our plays or one act plays and choir performances and band concerts were usually done in the cafeteria. We had tried a a captorium at at the then existing high school. You might notice in La Hoya there's it kind of scales down. Uh we got that idea from Edinburgh, but it didn't work out and the states didn't work out. So

015the question was asked by the school board. Uh we found out that there was some state federal money available for school districts like ours. It's we fit all the criteria. We got a humongous grant and and plus we passed a bond issue. I think at that time it was a $43 million bond issue and um we got the essentially the performing arts center paid for totally uh through that grant. So, it didn't cost the taxpayers anything. And and like I say, it had the state it it continues to be a state-of-the-art building. And I know it's it has some problems now, but uh with rain and stuff like that, but it's something that has I think really paid off for our students and our our community and and something that uh other districts envied us

016for. So at that time we also introduced several standout programs from bilingual and early childhood programs to expanded career and technical education pathways. The district made strategic decisions to support uh both college and career readiness uh at that time period. So as a district grew so did the need for transportation and other infrastructure. And on the next slide you'll see uh just a timeline of some of the schools that were open during this time period. So we have from 1986 to 2006 you have Kika Gara Ibira Elementary, Eloia Chapa Elementary, Jose Escandon, Cesar Chavez Middle School, Diaz Variel Elementary, Narciso Kavasos Elementary, Tabasco Elementary, Patricio Perez Elementary, Anne Richards Middle School, um Henry B. Gonzalez Elementary, Sam Ford Elementary, Lorenzo Esavala Middle School, Irene Garcia Middle School, Emiliano Sapata U Elementary School, Juan Seagin Elementary

017School, and then Rea Marina Elementary School. So as we responded to the growth of the district, uh a lot these buildings were added and the infrastructure was expanded. Um, by 1989 though, La Hoya continued this expansion and we maintained over 100 school buses and was setting the bar for bus safety with drivers having won first at regionals for four consecutive years at the school bus safety rodeo which is a legacy that continues today. And I think that's a really important highlight uh for our community because our children see these bus drivers every morning and every afternoon on the way home. And every year we celebrate their their accomplishments at the uh rodeo, but we have been doing this as a district for a very long time. Uh excelling not only in the competition, but in

018being providing the services safely to our students as we deliver them to and from their homes. Uh then during the 1980s and early 90s, La Hoya drew the recognition from leaders across the state of Texas, including state treasurer Anne Richards, who visited the district to commend its graduates and leadership. And while Governor Elect Richards at the time invited the district award-winning Mariachi Loskayotees to perform at a televised gala alongside music legends including Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson. Um, additionally, San Antonio Mayor uh, Henry Cistos praised the district's quality of education and legacy of producing community leaders. Uh, and so you'll see some of these highlights also, not only in the fine arts, but also academically. Uh, we expanded to universal prek, the Head Start expansion, bilingual programs. Uh we also continued to enhance our uh

019curriculum to make sure that we were aligning to our text including from toss uh to tax transition and all those new middle schools that were added. Um I don't know if you have anything to add about the only thing I would add is is when u these uh prominent elected officials came to our district they they always mentioned that they had heard about us. They wanted to come down and see the work that that we were doing. and and it was again another point of pride for our students, our faculty, our administration. Uh at the time that Mayor Chisto came, he came actually to give the keynote address for the graduating class. Uh I think it was of 88. And so we had been very proud that uh not only our fine arts students but

020had been invited. They they've been to the White House. They've been to the Capitol in Austin. They've participated in inaugural parades and events. And and that also gives our kids from what we still consider kind of a rural school district exposure, you know, to a world that that a lot of kids don't get a chance to be exposed to. So, we're very proud of that. So, just going to go back and just emphasize some of these photos from the uh uh not our first time at the rodeo, just some of the celebrations we had along the way. And then just catch up on this one. Some this is uh Governor Elect and Richards and Henry Catos visiting the school district. Uh and just to echo what Amano just shared with us during this time period,

021cultural pride and community service were cornerstones of student life within our school district. Events like the ham and cinco deayo celebrations showcase for chlorico dancers, student musicians, and the district's renowned mariachi program um loyotees. At the same time, students and many organizations like the National Honor Society led efforts to support local families in need, reinforcing a strong culture of compassion and civic responsibility as we continue to instill that in our students because we want them to give back to the community and continue being involved uh in what we are creating. In 1989, we had a news story appear in the local paper of the La Hoya High School National Art Society, and they were highlighted for distributing gifts and essentials to over 56 families, a tradition that still lives on today as the helping hands

022of hope drive that is accomplished through our high schools uh programs. Uh and so you'll see that in the images up here, some of the uh donation drives, uh the folklorico and the mariachi performances. Uh then from around 1986 to 2005, the La Hoya High School athletics experienced also tremendous growth, building a legacy of success, community pride, and student achievement. The football program at the time, emerged as a powerhouse, beginning with a playoff breakthrough in 1993. A major milestone came in 1998 when the Coyotas went 100-0 in district playoff play and were crowned the 35A champions. A perfect season that energized the entire community. In 2004, La Hoya reached the 5A regional finals under coach Oscar uh marking one of the school's deepest playoff runs followed by another district title in 2005. Uh, additionally, our

023track and cross country teams and program continued developing and regularly qualified athletes for regionals and sent multiple competitors to the UIL state meet. District titles uh were won 1990, 1992, and in 2005, highlighting their competitive edge. Soccer also came out as a standout sport in our district with the boys team winning district championships in 1997 and 1999 and making the div playoff runs as well. The girls team at the time captured their first district title and playoff birth in 2004. Then volleyball was also celebrated as a district title in 1989 and reached the original quarterfinals in 2003 while building strong participation throughout the early 2000s. And so during this time period, we actually had a really huge community coming together to support our athletic program as it was growing and expanding. Uh and this is

024one of those things that if you catch anyone from the district in the last 20, 30 years, they talk about these years as being a major highlight and a major celebration. Uh, which is why as a district we continue to support our athletic programs because not only do they inspire and give hope, but they also give our community a reason to come together and cheer our schools on. I might add that around the time period we're talking about the uh the stadium that we currently have uh was constructed on the heels of the construction of the fine arts, the performing arts center. uh the uh some of our board members that were really Gunho athletics uh pushed for that and we're very proud of that stadium and and I think at the time that it

025was constructed it was second uh only to the Macallen stadium in terms of size and capacity and and again it it's been something that that other districts uh have emulated and and uh look to La Hoya as as providing an a good example for them. And that support gave way to other sports flourishing as Safaya celebrated state qualifiers in tennis, powerlifting, golf, and swimming. Uh, which also boost was boosted later on by opening the new aquatic center. In baseball, Hoya secured multiple district titles in regional playoff appearances, producing standout all state talent. Softball launched in the early 90s as well and became competitive, earning a district title in 1998 and making consistent playoff runs into the 2000s. Um, this era also uh again brought back many uh improvements to our facility, continuing upgrades and reinvestment

026of money uh back to our school system. This included opening this stadium that sat 12,500 individuals as Mr. Chapa mentioned which transformed the region um and the ability to service uh not only our sports but other widescale sports um becoming also the largest employer in western county. The district also um improved u the area with infrastructure which helped drive local economic growth and it laid the foundations for early college programs that we offer throughout the district today. Uh, a lot happened during these 20 years as we expanded our school district and you can see where a lot of what we continue doing today, which we'll talk about at the uh, next installment. These are the foundations that have continued that pathway of excellence that we are continuing to push for and strive for as we

027continue evolving and changing the district to satisfy the needs of our students. Uh, and that's it for us. Thank you. Thank you. Wonderful. Thank you. Great job. Members of the board, do we have anything we'd like to add? Uh or any comments you'd like to or questions you'd like to ask Mr. Silva or Mr. Chapa? Okay, great. Again, it was a pleasure to hear your presentation. And for an outsider, it's always uh a great opportunity to learn a little bit more of the history of La Hoya. The one thing that stands out to me is you were talking about the auditorium. That was a huge huge thing and especially living in Harington. But as a football official, I think one of the biggest, one of the highlights of my career as a high school football

028official was when we did the games in La Hoya. That was a big treat if you got to do a high school game in La Hoya, one of the best stadiums in the valley. So, thank you for that. Thank you, gentlemen. We look forward to your next section of the presentation. Next item on the agenda is a public comment. Again, if someone has signed up, you do have three minutes. I will ask uh our secretary uh to read out those who have signed up uh and then of course our vice president um Miss Chavez will inform you that your time is up. Do we have anyone who signed up for public comment tonight? We do not have any public uh comments tonight. Okay, seeing that we don't have any, we'll go ahead and move on

029to agenda item number seven. This one's the superintendence updates announcement of school leadership ACE campuses and this is to be presented by Dr. Good evening again. We are so excited to be back to continue to share our build out of the administrative team at our AC schools at Garza and Sigin. And tonight we're announcing the first two assistant principles. Uh remember as part of our ACE investment, there will be two assistant principles at each school. Um so we have half of that group uh here with us tonight. Uh I will start first with uh Miss Elizabeth Garza who will be serving at Garza uh Elementary. With 19 years of dedicated experience in education, 16 of those proudly serving within La Hoya ISD, Miss Elizabeth Garza brings a wealth of knowledge, proven leadership, and a genuine

030passion for student success. Her experience across all grade levels from preK through 8th grade makes her an invaluable asset to the students and families of La Hoya ISD. Miss Garza began her educational journey as a kindergarten teacher at Leo J. Leo Elementary. Since then, she has taken on numerous leadership roles, including over a decade as a grade level team leader, a region one technology conference trainer, and most recently as an assistant principal. Over the years, she has nurtured student growth and built meaningful relationships, 10 of those at Sigin, Garza, and Zapata elementary schools. Widely recognized for her passion in teaching and ability to inspire others, Miss Garza is committed to supporting both students and staff in reaching their highest potential. In her first year as assistant principal, she has already built strong connections with students,

031staff, and families. A tireless advocate for student growth, Miss Garza believes every child has the potential to succeed. She is dedicated to creating a safe, empowering, and encouraging learning environment. One that fosters leadership, achievement, and growth. For Miss Garza, students will always come first. So, congratulations. [Music] Good evening, Dr. Sorenson, esteemed board members, and La Hoya community. My name is Elizabeth Garza, and excuse my voice. It's a little horse from all this screaming I did yesterday. But um like I said, my name is Elizabeth Garz and I'm deeply honored and humbled to have been given the opportunity to lead alongside Miss Gonzalez as the new assistant principal at Ivalina Garca Elementary. I'm deeply excited to be working with a strong leadership team. Not only the not to mention the teachers and the staff, but most

032importantly excited to be able to, I guess you could say, revisit and go back home to Valelina Garca Elementary with the students and the community itself. I know with uh the support system that we have this next school year, u the students at Ivalina Gara will be unstoppable. Um, we're going to continue to use our base our decisions based off of our students needs and what's best for them at heart because I know that the students at La Hoya ISD will now and will forever come first. Thank you. Wow, how exciting. Sounds like a challenge, Miss Brown. Sounds like a challenge. You're on. All right. We are also very excited that Miss Vanessa Brown will be moving over to Sigin Elementary as an assistant principal. Vanessa Rodriguez Brown will serve as the new assistant principal

033at Juan Sigin Elementary. With over 21 years of experience in education, Miss Brown has served in a variety of instructional and leadership roles within La Hoya ISD, including elementary assistant principal, high school assistant principal, science teacher, dual enrollment instructure instructor, and district UIL coordinator. She has a proven track record of supporting teacher development and student success, including contributing to increased academic achievement and instructional growth at the secondary level. Miss Brown is passionate about building strong relationships, fostering inclusive learning environments, and driving positive change to support every student's potential. So, [Applause] congratulations. I wrote something. I don't like to come up here unprepared. Uh 21 years ago around this time, I drove down from Kingsville to sign a contract to be a teacher at a brand new elementary at La Hoya ISD, Juan and Sigin Elementary,

034which was my very first campus where I taught second grade in 2004. And today I am returning to Sigin Elementary with the same energy and excitement. And in the past 21 years, I have fallen in love with teaching, with education, with helping the students in our community. And so, I'm coming in with that same excitement and that same energy, a little bit older, few more gray hairs, um, but with the same passion that I had then. And so, I am so honored to be able to, like Miss Garza said, go home and serve the community where I began my career as an educator at La Hoya. and I'm so honored and so privileged and I'm so looking forward to working with Miss Lopez um and learning so much from the new system that we're going

035to be bringing into these campuses. Um and so thank you so much for the opportunity to do this for our students. Thank you. So board, we are continuing to evaluate other candidates and we'll be back with our our final pair to round out our administrative team soon. But just like when we celebrated the principles, we're so fortunate to have these incredible leaders uh be part of this journey and support students at these two schools. Dr. Little, you've done an amazing job and your staff involved in the selection of not only the principles but the assistant principles that we have before us. So, thank you. I have no doubt that we'll continue to look for the top talent and u congratulations to both of you. Thank you. Congratulations and go Havalas. Nice. I went to that

036same school, but it was more than 21 years ago. Uh members of the board, do you have anything to say? I mean, this is an exciting and a memorable day for us because of these campuses that we've implemented and I've heard nothing but great things about what we're about to roll out. So, does anyone have anything to say? Can I say Yes, of course, Dr. Sornson. Um and so just like last time um with uh the selection of the principles, I really do want to let our community know that the process again was quite rigorous. Three steps um first with a panel um of educators um where there were performance tasks um and a quite rigorous interview process. Then a second round with the principles of those campuses and Dr. Little. And then a third

037round with me. And the third round with me always seems a bit odd because I'm not a traditional interviewer. I think they both can probably tell you that. Um, it's more a conversation. It's not a traditional interview questions. It's more of a dialogue because for me it's about who you are and who you choose to show up as. Um I did ask some very technical questions such as how do you teach children how to read because we have to know how to teach children how to read in these campuses and we have to be able to support our educators to make sure that they know how to do that. And both of these ladies standing here could answer that question flawlessly. And also how to build culture, right? Because building culture is going to be

038essential on these campuses. How do we involve parents? Because that is going to be a cornerstone. How do we engage a community? And so these are questions, but these questions weren't question answer question answer. They were an opportunity for both of these leaders, fierce but compassionate female leaders to show not only their skill but who they were as people. And both of them just exemplified their desire to go home. And so I congratulate you. I'm excited for you, but most of all I'm excited for the communities that you're about to serve. So thank you so much for stepping up and being willing to lean in. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Sorenson. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Yes. Uh, next agenda item is budget and staffing update presented by Miss Crespo. Nice to see

039you again, Miss Cresbow. Nice to see you, sir. Good evening, Mr. President, members of the board, Dr. Sorenson, community. So it's that time of the month again and we are doing an update for budget and staffing. Today we are presenting and this is where we are. Um it's a reminder we are starting these conversations really last fall with our strategic conversation with Dr. sins on leading the strategic conversations in the community but also on understanding that our budget is has to be based on what our needs are and what our community need what community asks for. At this point we are April May uh finalizing uh draft uh the budget reviews um re revising all preliminary compensation getting ready for final budgets and public hearings. So centering again ourself in what are our budget priorities

040for next year. Invest in a student achievement balanced budget pay raise and high quality instructional materials. These are aligning with what our community is saying. This is what our staff is asking for and this is centering centering everything we are budgeting. However, we have to remember where we are and I'm going to bring back to the community what is legislative legislative session at this point. We had to there are potential budget changes that are pending and things are being discussing in discussed in Austin that we have to reflect on and be aware of. Some of those potential uh basic allotment increases um uh some of those potential um changes are part of the potential uh the basic allotment increase. I'm sorry. Um first of all the changes are going from 6160 that that's what the

041amount that we have working with since 2019 to $6555. So $395 increase for that 60% is unrestricted funding for school district 40% designated for employee compensation. From that 40% 75% classroom teacher salary 25% other employee pay. As you can see, these are no amounts that are going to be considerable raising or income. And we have to keep thinking where are we going with the budget and what are going to be changing in order for us to have enough to cover all the needs and wants from this from the district. There is an additional $18 increase per student average daily attendance for school safety and that also a fine arts allotment that is only for secondary campus for secondary students and it will give to La Hoya ISD roughly $81,000. to see this in a visual.

042This is the distribution of the $395 increase where the majority of the um there is uh 237 for unrestricted. This is all we are getting for maintenance and operation for our dayto-day. The other 40% that is 118 is dedicated the 30% for teacher pay increase and 10% for other staff. important. Um, also is president if I can if I could interject. Yes, please. So what I really if Mir if you could go back what I think is really important here to underscore and really point out for um not only for the board but for the community is that for all of the conversation around legislation and for all of the conversation around what the legislature did or didn't do um for school districts across Texas. Um, I want our community to fully understand that this

043increase is $395 per student. $395 per child. And out of that $395, 40% of that goes to teacher increases. And so you see what that 30% really comes out to be is $118. And you see other staff, which is a large category of employees here and every district across Texas, not just La Hoya, is $40. Our staff has said to us through strategic planning, we want a pay increase. I'm looking at Brenda Selenus and she told me she wants a pay increase for her her members. The other part of that money, $237 go has to go to pay for everything else. Everything else. There was no increase in maintenance and operations. Meanwhile, we know that postcoid inflation has increased across the United States, not just Texas. But we also know that inflation hit hard in

044Texas for everything. Gas, every single commodity that we purchase has increased in price. And yet there was no increase from the legislature leaving politics out of it. This has nothing to do with politics. I'm just talking about the legislative legislative action and no increase on maintenance and operations. So, I just want the community to understand that this is what the action was that came out of the legislative session and how we then will choose to respond in our proposed budget that we're going to bring forth to the board to meet the needs and demands of the district and meet the needs and demands of our staff and give our staff and our community not only what they're asking us, for, but what we can afford to give them what they're working for every single day

045within our budget, knowing that what we're being given in legislative relief is not enough. This is not enough from our legislature. So, I just really wanted to unpack that for the community in dollars and cents in order to really cover all that it is that we have to cover um for our district operations and our salaries for our employees. Thank you, Dr. Sorenson. It's important for us to remember that we have to be smarter on what we are using the funds and being sure that what we plan it really aligns to what we need to do. Um, thank you for that. uh special education. There is more um other things that I wanted to bring to the board. What like the special education and dyslexia a lotments that are also a small increases for special

046education center on the evaluation of our students and um bonus for uh having a special education identify students doing college and career readiness. Also um we are going to be benefited on services supporting services for students uh that receive dyslexia related accommodation even if they are not identified or diagnosed with dyslexia. One that is really exciting um just because it really it benefits our teachers directly is our teacher incentive a lotment which is increasing designations for our teachers such as the acknowledge designation and the board certifications designation that is going to increase the amounts that all teachers receive and it also in have developed the enhanced district teacher incentive allotment system designation will increase the allotment by 10% % which means that we are going to be able to support our teachers that are high

047performers in a better way. This enhanced system includes compensation for principles and assistant principles which La HoyaD already is considering and we are working on the plan on how that is going to be deployed evaluated and have the baseline so we can start working with our principles and rem reward our principles based on performance. And so again board president if you'll allow me to expand a bit here. Yes. Um we have been working um for the past couple of months really thinking about what this could look like across our system if we considered what PIA principal incentive aotment could look like. If we thought about applying this type of compensation system for principles who are truly performing at the highest levels and really looking at so what what would that look like to make sure

048that we are not only retaining the highest performing principles but compensating compensating them according to student outcomes to how they are retaining staff to how they are implementing district initiatives, right? And so we've begun thinking about so what would those indicators be? And we want to engage our principles in helping us think through what these indicators would be. We want their voice in the same way we would want educator voice if we were creating an internal um process. And so we're going to begin engaging principles in this process to think about so what would those competencies be? What would those metrics be? Because we know that we want to compensate people for doing great work in the same way teachers want the ability to earn this additional income or earn a salary based upon their

049performance. Um, we also know though that right now we have an imbalanced system where we have some principles who are earning incredibly high salaries not producing the highest incomes. I not producing the highest outcomes. High salaries, low outcomes. But we also have principles in our system who are producing incredible outcomes, lowest salaries. And that's not what we want. We want the people who are producing the best for our kids earning the most. And so we are really considering the system. We are going to start engaging our principles. And before we bring anything back to the board, but in the spirit of transparency, we wanted to let our community know, we wanted to let the board know um that we are going to um engage in this conversation not only with our principles but the community

050as a whole. Thank you. Dr. And well this is what the sum is for HB2. The other law that is right now on the U for approval is impacting um the is the voucher program and here you see a small summary of what is the expected impact. We will not see it on 2526 but the law as is right now is uh asking for implementation 2627. However, um the concern here is at at the end of the day, but is that is an estimated loss of $12,000 for us as a district in average daily attendance for each student that choose to or for each family that choose to um take their student out of the school district due to the voucher use. Um remember this voucher is for private schools. So we also on top

051of that are responsible to pro provide support to our special education students that are in choose to go to private schools and they still can't request services from us. So we are concerned because this is impacting where the funding is and how it's going to be distributed later on this next benium. So how this looks for us is a lot of mandates. There is a lot of legislation. There is things that are coming up that we still don't know how they are going to pan out. However, we are seeing that the any increases that we are reading really don't f fully fund the requirement dates. So aligning this to our priorities how this in fact or invest in a student achievement where there is limited resources to increase our responsibility to a streamline strategies that

052give us the best result for our students. Again back to we had to be smarter on how we budget because we are committed to increase the student achievement. So we have to do what we can do with the limited resources we are getting. We are not going to be able to do more. The state is not going to give us more. We have to be savvy and smart on how we res invest or resources. Second point the balanced budget. Well, not having an increase in allocation in maintenance and operation made the district responsible to allocate funds to sustain the day-to-day operation without sacrificing a student performance. Um, the next one, pay raise. We are responsible to respond to our employees needs. They are the ones out there working with our kids. They are the ones

053our teachers or principals or staff is the is here and they recognize that they are here because our kids come to school. So we have to respond to the needs regardless of the legislative allocation. So we are very clear that mandates will not have enough funding to address all the needed amounts but we are committed to respond to it. Finally, high quality instructional materials. I think this is the one where I can smile. Um there is available resources from the state. There is a lot of support that we are receiving for high quality instructional materials. However, the training is still to be seeing and we are not necessarily fully funded to implement across all content areas. So we have also to take a responsibility to be sure that we are doing integral implementation and not

054use what we get support for. Um and again, Miss Crespbow, I want to just clarify for the community here that um when we do bring forward the purchases for high-quality instructional materials that we will indicate where we are using grant funding versus where we are using district funding because I know there has been some questions in the past in terms of what vendors we are using and what funding sources we are using. Um and just want to clarify for the community that we are using state approved vendors. um as we are required to by the state, but all high quality instructional materials as we just went through in our in our last um board meeting um are actually aligned with the TEICSS approved by TEA um and we just move forward with Blue Bonnet. So,

055thank you. Thank you, ma'am. So, as I say before, we have really Dr. Sonson and the team has been really working very hard from the beginning this year to listen to voices. So use examples for the community to see that we are really listening and really paying attention. Um I have a couple of slides here with the cloud the word clouds that I love in all the interactions with the community. This is a staff uh word cloud that where some of the priorities were centered about feeling as a community um having ex uh better communication having a hope to be a in a better district and having compensation fair compensation. So this is just for me to show you how we are aligning what we are thinking and how we are our priorities is still

056responding to what we are seeing out there. This one is how uh our parents are looking for better also hope uh better programs um kids in the center of the cloud with good models uh support and uh performance improvement also part of our reality I'm going to keep bringing this until the last day of the school year we are losing students well we have we are expected to lose 10,000 students by next by next year will in reality require us to budget as we are right now again smarter we have to be able to make every dollar work for us for the needs of the district that priorities has to be followed and we are working very hard every conversation is center around that so how this looks in numbers because that's my job yes

057bringing your numbers so this is some of oh I don't know why This didn't come up right my friend you cannot see the numbers right in here we will correct that for the public later but um when I work for the these numbers the first column is your actual law this slide show actual law and with actual law we will losing around $8 million and we have a break yeah we were ready for this big reveal Oh, the second one works. So, we are going to move to the next one. Do a different slide. Thank you, Mom. Okay. And with the actual expected HB2 impact even when with the small well not small but with the loss on tax collections expected with the home state um protection that we are getting with the law and

058we are expecting to have a $10 million revenue. However, I want to remind the board and the community that that number $10.5 million sounds pretty close to our deficit last year. So really the revenue that is bringing if we don't do anything different in the expenses is not helping us to cover or def it's just barely help helping us to cover our deficit and we had to respond to other things. So we have to start thinking differently again. So here is how it looks. You have seen this table simpler than the other ones easier to manage. These are my losses. $10.4 million budget deficit. We are expecting $6 million based on the enrollment loss. We are expect but remember we are not necessarily able to receive uh we are not able to receive the disaster

059pennies next year on um and these are all costing savings that we had done during through the year with efficiencies reviews and based on HB2 at $10.5 million. So we are pretty much balanced. That means if we don't change our investments and we don't reflect on what we are doing and we don't really centralize our budget with our priorities, it's going to be very hard for us to do and accomplish what we want to accomplish. I want to do a a small review here on what is the required compensation increases. This is an explanation about what the law is very just for you to see how complicated it can be how we have to work to distribute 40% of the what we are getting but here is an easier way to see it and if

060we do this my the what the law says is I have to provide that 40% to the 75% of that 40% to teachers librarian counselors and n nurses you see the positions and number of employees in there. That's roughly half of our employees. So we have to distribute to half of employees 4.2 appro approximately million dollars and only 1.4 to the rest of the other half of the employees. So that is the difference and that's why we are not going to use this um literally as is for increases. We are going to do our pay raise regardless of what the legislation is going to provide. Verette, can you say that sentence one more time so that everybody can hear you say it again? This first this is tentative is very complicated and it's going to

061take us time. So that's not the sentence I would like you to repeat. Ma'am, we are not doing the pay raise based or contingent to legislation. we are doing and we are committed to do a pay raise to our employees regardless of what legislation awards to the district. Thank you ma'am. Great news. So we will must align our budgeting philosophy to address our priorities is not working. What we have done through years is no longer sustainable. We are not having the revenue to sustain the expenses. So we really must emphasize on efficiency, prioritization and innovation. We have to rethink how we do things. We have to work on our ARI on academic return of investment. What works for which students and at what cost. And I love this expression from Mahaban. The actions expresses priorities.

062We are not just talking. We really want to be acting on what is needed in order to respond to our students needs. So all financial decisions are going to be aligned with academic return of investment are going to be aligned to our priorities and this is not just talk. This is no fancy words that we are using like academic return of investment or strategic staffing is really uh centering us to be sure that what we do generates impact to our students and is smart and is fiscally responsible. So in order to show you how we are doing things, I'm going to transition now to the to Miss Miller. So she talks about staffing. Michelle, before you leave, I have a question. Yes, sir. Sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. It's okay. So I mean,

063when I when when you do presentations, you and Dr. Little, I I have I feel like I'm talking to economists sometimes because you guys are really good with the data. Why do you think students are are moving out? Are are students just going to other schools or are they moving out with their families? Are families moving out of the district? Is it a combination of I don't know maybe you know that is a question no sir but that is a question we have presented ourself and I know as every year we are going to start using our quality seed analysis that is our research of what is happening to this district to the district and how we can improve our conditions. Next question for the quality seat analysis for next year is precisely that how

064we are why we're losing students and how we can what we can do to recover those students. And sir I can also um I just actually text the entire cabinet an article that I read this weekend. Um it is not a La Hoya ISD issue. It is not it is not a Texas issue. It is a national issue. I actually just sent them um an article that came out this weekend um that it is a ticking time bomb um that all districts all over the country are really having to deal with birth rates are declining um especially postco and so not only to Miss Cresco's point are we going to study ourselves to really understand is it is it birth rates here are people moving out of the area here like we really want to

065understand the complex lexities here um because if it is related to customer service if it is related to things that we can control we want to work on those things so I don't want to put those things aside u because we want to have the concrete answers to your question but I do want everyone to understand that La Hoya ISD is not the only ISD nor is Texas the only space in the country going through these dramatic enrollment declines um in Texas or in in the nation. Yeah, I would agree with that. Thank you. Thank you for that, Miss Miller. Good evening. It as we celebrate our centennial, it has been amazing to listen to the presentations to learn the history of La Hoya and how the district has evolved in order to meet the

066needs of our students. And as we move forward, we know that we have to continue evolving in order to have amazing student outcomes and provide what our students need. As we're looking at involving evolving, we've had the opportunity to be with Dr. Swornson when she has met with stakeholders and had many many opportunities for community members, staff members, parents and students to come in and you know talk about what they want for the future of La Hoya ISD. Now I do have to tell you the students were so much fun and naps were a part of their chart. It's not going to make the cut, but it was amazing to work with them and see what they want for the future of the school district. So some themes do come out through through with our

067stakeholders. Those are they want what student needs. If a student needs a service, we need to provide that. They want excellent programs within the district and new programs that are going to help our students to be leaders when they go to college and then go into the workforce. They want our uh facilities to be maintained and they want technology that the students need. We need to meet our family and community expectations. They want resource alignment. So alignment to programs, alignment to schools, and they want operational efficiency. They want us to use our funds wisely and as they need to be used. So as we're evolving, we do know that some positions are going to be need to be re-imagined in order to serve the students within La Hoya. And I'm going to turn it over

068to Dr. Little who is going to speak about some reimagined positions that we're going to present to you. Thank you, Chief Miller. Um board, we're going to walk through some things that we are thinking about differently intentionally so in support of all of what you've heard, our investment in student achievement in the district. Uh we've grouped these so there are some themes that you will notice as we talk about some of this reimagining uh for La Hoya ISD. I want to start with this first group really thinking about how we build and develop better teacher capacity. How do we grow and strengthen what our teachers know and are able to do in classrooms with students every day. So starting here with the first one, it's focused on literacy. So we have had reading specialists at

069our elementary and middle schools for uh a decade plus in the district. I have sat at this podium uh throughout this school year and shared a lot of reading data uh with you and the community and we know that we are not where we need to be as a district. Uh our reading specialists have certainly done everything they can to support student growth but at a system level we haven't seen the return on that investment in a way that we need and that our students deserve. uh we are moving forward to a place where we can better measure and capture for everything that I share with you over the next several slides what those metrics of success for each position will be how we will know if that investment is paying off in terms of

070student outcomes uh and then can be informed about what we need to do with that work and with those investments moving forward with the reading specialist uh we have two parts to this transition the first is we are going to continue to have reading specialist in the district. They will be focused on our cortile four schools which are our seven sort of lowest performing schools as part of our quality schools analysis that we've done this year. There are five elementaryaries and two middle schools as part of that group. Uh so they are definitely going to continue to have reading specialist support. The key thing to note here is just as as Miss Lozano and I have shared with you that we made intentional changes to how reading specialists go about their work back in January,

071that will continue. So, they will have a a very dedicated focus uh case load of students that they are working with on foundational literacy, making sure that we're using science of reading practices to help those students learn how to read. Uh the other part of this is that focus more broadly on teacher capacity. So we are introducing early literacy instructional coaches in the district. We shared with ACE that we would have instructional coaches at those two schools. Uh upon reflection though, we want to provide that type of support in more places in the district. So we will have five of these coaches also having a case load of teachers that they are working with on a regular basis that they have coaching goals that they're working towards and they're providing that consistent support. Also, our

072teachers are better positioned then to support students on their literacy journey. The final note on this one is when we released funding to schools uh about a month ago to plan for next year's budget, they also had a menu that they could purchase positions from. And so campuses could choose to use their title funds uh if they thought that would be the best investment for their campus on a reading specialist position if they're not one of those quartile four schools. So that continued to be an open option for elementary and middle schools. schools across the district. I'm going to pause after each one of these to see if the suit wants to add anything before I move on. Members of the board, do you have anything? No, I think that um you know, I just

073want to continue to point out though that this aligns with our commitment to academic return of investment. This wasn't a decision that we made lightly. Um we really looked at so what are the historical outcomes tied to this position? I want to distinguish between the people. That's right. This is not a condemnation of the people doing the job. This is us looking at are we getting the outcomes that we need for this input right? Is this intervention? Is this strategy working? And you can see from our outcomes only 26% of La Hoya ISD third graders meet grade level standards districtwide. just 47% meet reading standards. And so this current strategy that has been in the place in place for over 10 years in the district is not yielding the results of ensuring that our students

074are reading at grade level. And so we have to make a decision around what strategy will best work to improve student outcomes. Going back to Lonear governance, student outcomes don't change until adult behaviors change. And that requires us to reallocate funding in a different way, which again we want to signal here that we believe very strongly in coaching and really supporting our educators in the classroom with tier one instruction that first teach for kids to improve literacy instruction. Thank you, Dr. Sornson. I would certainly emphasize that point about this is not about individuals. This is about our collective investment and strategic needs in the district. The other thing I should say is we're not sharing anything with you or the community tonight that these impacted people don't already know. So, we have had the positions

075in this case with reading specialists along with every other role type that I I discussed this evening. Um, so they're aware of these changes and we've been able to talk through that with them and support them through what comes next. Keeping with our theme of building teacher capacity and focusing on instructional coaching, we are making a similar adjustment with our Title 3 facilitators. Title 3 is a federal funding source that is specifically designed to support English learners in Texas. We call those students emergent bilingual. Uh, and we've had Title 3 facilitators here for more than 5 years. There are nine currently across the district supporting design designated campuses. uh the next presentation that I give is going to really be this entire story about what we've seen in terms of English language acquisition and proficiency

076when we look at our Telpas data. But similar to our overall reading results, uh we have not consistently seen improvement that has been sustained with our emergent bilingual students. Uh we know that we have real gaps across our grade levels in terms of reading performance. you have seen Spanish versus English data um that we've shared in STAR and and with MAP and we continue to lag behind where we need to be in terms of students being on grade level and again we'll take a deeper dive in this in particular in the next uh presentation. So the shift here is to make sure that we've got consistent alignment uh with instructional coaching across the board. uh these dual language ESL instructional coaches are designated that way because they will specifically be supporting teachers in dual language

077classrooms or teachers at the high school level that are supporting students who are also learning English. So that's the ESL part of this again focused case load of teachers using a very specific sort of coaching approach to build capacity and monitor that over time. Uh so we should see with this role and the previous one not only improvement in teacher results whether that be through evaluations, walkthroughs or or other um factors in the classroom, we should also see this start to show up more specifically in our student outcomes that we're looking at with Lonear governance as well. And again, what I would add um you know, no different here because it's applicable to the previous position is that we are going to streamline our campus supports and so really being clear about what these facilitators

078or what these coaches are doing and how they are providing support because um our responsibility will be to track, monitor and ensure that the appropriate supports and again I want to really lift up supports, right, are in place for our educators and for our principles as we seek to develop capacity across campuses so that it really trickles down to our students. And so we are going to be measuring whether this works over time, right? Because we're just as accountable to see is is this strategy working, right? Is this input working? And so we're going to be measuring this in terms of what is this input having. So we're going to be really clear on the job descriptions of these positions of what these with these facilitators and because new folks have to apply for these

079positions because there's a new job description. Um and people are going to have to apply um go through a rigorous interview process and be selected for these positions based upon their knowledge, skills, and abilities. dispositions, belief systems, all the things that are in the job description, and we're going to hold them accountable to the things that are in that job description. Dr. Little, I have a question. On the last two that you recognize, the reading specialists and title three facilitators underneath it says the other one, I don't remember how many plus years it had, but I I think it was 10 years in the district. Um, are we are we going to prioritize our current workforce staff for these positions? So when it says years in the district, is it district in La Hoya or

080just district in general experience? That's how long that position has existed in La Hoya ISD. That may not be how long any individual has been in that role, but that's how long the district has had that type of position. Thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. All right, our last one in this sort of theme related to coaching is at the high school level. So we have had graduation specialists for over a decade in the district at each of our comprehensive high schools as well as college transition advisors. A little bit less time but still more than five years for the college transition advisors. We have certainly and I have shared and Miss Flores has shared that our graduation rate overall is pretty strong, but we've also shared a lot of data that shows when

081we dig underneath that at really the outcomes that our students need and deserve, whether that's ACT or SAT uh passing rates, whether that's students passing AP exams, whether that's students earning their associate degrees or getting those dual credit hours, we have a long way to go. And so the the shift here is to really focus on our students progressing through their high school time uh in a way that they need to achieve those outcomes whether that is college career or military readiness outcomes. Not just that foundational level that the state sets for accountability. Remember that's a super low bar and our Lonear governance goals. We've set a much higher bar for our students. And so these positions really exist um for for a couple of big things. So one, uh they will sort of act

082as case managers for students as needed to make sure that they are on track. And if they're not on track for those outcomes, that they're pulling in the support across the campus, working with teachers, working with counselors, working with social workers, working with families or outside partners, whatever is needed to make sure that student is getting the support and resources they need. The other thing that this is building off of, remember we started a freshman success initiative this year really looking at our freshman on track. That's one of our goal progress measures as well. And we have dedicated freshman success coaches working with those nth grade teams. Um that is showing really strong early success in terms of what that role is impacting. And so the CCMR coaches sort of pick it up from there

083and carry through from the 10th to the 11th to the 12th grade years as well. Right. Dr. Little, I I have a question and I'm I'm sure Dr. Marggo would agree with me. Um, you know, all these positions that you're referencing are very important to the district. By all means, I mean, they're all important. The one that I find a little that I'm really excited about is this graduation specialist, especially when you see a decline of 3% points over six years in dual credit programs. When we have such a vibrant college just down the street from us, you know, it's alarming to to see that. So, I'm glad to see that it will be focusing on that graduation specialist. I think Dr. Carlos Marggo would agree with me on that. Well, they're uh going to

084be coming uh the CCMR coaches, right? So, um correct. Currently, their graduation specialists will be coming um CCMR specialist uh coaches. But I I do I I will say uh Mr. President, that it's really important a lot of these students, current students will be first generation college students. they don't have that uh day-to-day parental support that other college students or second gener third generation college students have. So, it's important that they have the district be that parental support, that family support. And I I see that embedded here. I just really want to emphasize that that's extremely important. Just speaking on behalf of higher education, a lot of these students have never heard or uh or don't consistently hear that message at home until they get to the school to the school. So, um, so yes,

085congratulations on on the on this vision and for the future and having these coaches in place. I think it's critical for these students, but I just, uh, want to really emphasize the importance of this. So, thanks for the opportunity. And Dr. Marggo, I want to add that, um, one of the reasons that there is five is because one of them starts in middle school. And so there is a CCMR coach that is specifically dedicated to really start building that collegegoing culture, that careergoing culture, that focus on like what is postsecary in our middle schools and really starting the conversations earlier across our middle schools because right now we don't have anyone in the district really focused on what is that conversation look like earlier and I mean we even need to start earlier than middle

086schools but right now we're that that fifth one is dedicated to creating that postsecary culture in middle school, working with our families, working with our community, working with our middle schools to develop that that culture, that mindset that you're talking about in our middle schools. And also, Dr. Sorenson, you know, there's so many different options for students to prepare for for higher education and careers. I think it's really also important to make sure that they understand the different options while they're still in middle and and high school. I mean it's still even confusing for me to be honest uh to keep up with so many different opportunities uh whether it's uh it's dual credit uh early college you're looking at other whole litany of different options and opportunities. I just want to make sure that

087they every single student has that opportunity to know what is best for him or her and that they have the opportunity to engage as early as possible in their high school or middle school uh careers because that's it. one bad decision is gonna or could potentially impact their entire lives. So, I just kind of want to make sure that I I continuously support and that we as a district continuously support and continuously improve that aspect of what you all do. But, uh it looks like you're off to a great start and I appreciate what y'all are doing. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Yeah, and I agree with those comments. I mean, one of the things that I find that we lack sometimes regardless of the school district is just a basic understanding of how important

088it is to fill out a FASA application. I mean, that's just it seems like that's common sense, right? I just don't know how encouraging schools are. I'm certainly certainly aware that we're doing a really good job about doing that, encouraging our students to do that. But I agree, there's times when just little things like that make a big difference. So, I compliment you on all these these new these new roles that we're going to transition or we're going to lay out, but certainly this was one that I was really excited to hear about. So, thank you. Yeah, thank you both. Uh before we move on to sort of the next theme here, just one thing to clarify that impacts um all of these positions that I've shared, including the other ones. So the positions under

089the current role, just to be super clear, like those are being dissolved. The positions under the future role are what is being created. And to underscore what the superintendent said earlier, um applicants will go through that process similar to what we did as ACE. You're deciding if that's something you want to do. you're going through a rigorous selection process and then we will uh have those sort of fully staffed and prepared for next school year. All right. So, moving a little away from the core academic space more into the behavior and mental health space. Uh we currently have behavior specialists in the district. They are housed centrally and they are then deployed uh to support students in schools across the district. They've existed for more than five years. Um, one of the things that we've

090heard loud and clear this year through a variety of engagements, including the strategic plan sessions, uh, with students, parents as well, is how much more support folks are asking for in the behavioral and mental health space. Like really making sure that we are caring and concerned about the whole child, including the academic part of that child, that we have the resources and support available to support them on their journey. uh and that we improve discipline outcomes and absenteeism outcomes which certainly are related uh to this conversation. So this futurefacing role will be a behavior and mental health specialist. So again expanding sort of the concept here and the thing I want to call out about this role in addition to another one I'll talk about in just a little bit is really making sure that

091we are focused on preventive systems in the work not just responsive systems in the work. So, we don't want to let a student get to the place where they've got to have a behavior specialist because there's been a series of bad choices or decisions or issues at the school and now we're coming in in like a crisis mode trying to respond to that. We will still do that service, but how do we get students and schools to a place where that's happening less often because we've created a different environment, culture, and set of supports and resources uh that really help students get through that executive function and those processes uh in a stronger way. So that'll be a huge focus of what the behavior and mental health specialists will be doing. Also note here that

092this is actually an increase in the number of positions. So we're going from three to five, expanding uh this service and support across the district. Dr. I have a question in regards to the roles. Are we planning on putting them in middle schools, high schools, or would the specialist travel between campuses? They will support districtwide, so elementary, middle, and high schools. uh in most cases they they likely again thinking about the other coaching positions too including the CCMR coach where we have a middle and high school uh we'll designate sort of what their focus area is. So like I will know I'm primarily supporting middle schools but these positions are district-wide positions that can support any grade level and any student ideally um and forgive me um we will have one per network for elementary.

093So there will be one that does network one elementary, one that does network two elementary, one that does network three elementary. So they will have a subset of elementary schools that they then know the kids, know the principal, know the students of that particular community. So elementary network one, elementary network 2, elementary network 3. Then there will be one that is dedicated to middle schools. So they will know that they are a middle school behavior uh and mental health specialist. So they will be prepared to be working with middle school young people and those middle schools. And then we will have one that services our high schools. That is the original design um that we you know sat down and constructed. Um I'm excited to do interviews. Um I'm excited to see what the candidate

094pool produces for us. Um to Dr. Little's point, not to go against him here publicly, but if we yield a candidate pool that has a wide variety of talents, skills, and abilities, we're open to shifting for it to be district-wide depending on the skills and abilities. One of the reasons that we're looking at that network support though is to your point, we want them to really know the schools that they're serving or the the level of schools that they're serving so that they become experts in either their community, their schools or their grade level um so that they're really targeting the kind of supports that they're providing. I really appreciate this holistic approach the district is taking. So, thank you. Yeah. Thank you. All right, the next one is our real focus on working with

095and and for our families and communities. So, we have had parent educators uh in the district assigned to every elementary school uh for quite some time. And what we're doing here is again like expanding impact and really aligning and clarifying what expectations are in this role and what we want to see happening with our families and communities again through lots of engaging opportunities this year. strategic plan, ACE town halls, early college town halls. We have consistently heard from our families that they want and need more engagement from the district. They want and need more communication from the district. They certainly expect us uh to deliver on outcomes for students and to be their partner in that work. So the parent, family, and community liaison, that's the new role and new title moving forward, uh will

096really do a few key things. The first is like they have to be a huge advocate, champion, and communicator for what we're doing in the district as a way to inform and educate families about what's happening in their school, what's happening in La Hoya ISD. That requires on the ground in the neighborhood, in the home's presence in some cases, not just creating spaces where we're asking families to come to us uh to get information, but we are like organically present in the community uh and with our families. Yes, we will continue to have uh workshops and training sessions for families. We'll be responsive to what those need to be, including do doing more around academics like we will have launched four new curriculum by the time we get to next school year. Uh our families

097need to be deeply invested and engaged in that work. And so the parent educators provide a really good bridge between what's happening in the classroom and what can happen uh at home. So really excited about the potential here to really grow visibility, presence, and uh outcomes for how we're engaging and supporting our parents and community. And again, I just want to add that this is a position that I am most excited about. Um, I I cannot say enough and I have learned so much in the past seven months of doing strategic planning and town halls and community engagement, how important parents are as an ally. Um, and how um important it is to have parents be my shoulder-to-shoulder partners in this work. Um, and not just for academics, right? We know we need parents to

098help us with attendance and academics and and all the things that we know happen in school. But in terms of creating a future vision for the district and then carrying out that vision every single day, I'm not in the schools every single day. But if I have a army of parents who know and understand and believe in the work that we're doing and they can actually be boots on the ground in the community helping our parents truly understand, say for example, why dual language is a good thing, why the shift shift in the reading curriculum is important to your point right now like why FAFSA right is important um why we're making the budgetary decisions that we're making right it it it goes beyond just putting up the bulletin boards that is so important please

099don't misunderstand great bulletin boards are so important but so is really getting our parents to truly be those shoulder-to-shoulder partners on on all things that are happening in the district as so much is changing, right? We need the word to get to all spaces in our community. And who better to do that but a group of parents who we build shared knowledge with where they then also bring back information to us to say, "No, no, no, don't do this. This is not a good idea. Here are some better ideas." Right? to this partnership. I'm so excited. I actually though got the idea for a revisioned job description from many of our parent volunteers. Um the parent volunteers very often said to me, you know, the the vision for this role should be X, Y, and

100Z. And I got a lot of feedback from our parent volunteers about what I need as a superintendent um in in terms of this role. And so I'm very lucky to have incredible parent volunteers who have been some of my greatest allies in this work. So I am super excited for what is to come with this role. Um and I am um so optimistic about the future of what can happen in this space. Dr. Little, I have a question. So these programs that that you're explaining to us tonight, parent educators and these other these other um these other u professionals are going to be working with us. Are we currently looking at hiring these individuals so that on day one, as Dr. Sorenson said, boots on the ground, we're ready to operate. We're ready to

101these people have been trained. We're going to be doing it during the summer. I I'm just trying to I'm just trying to understand how how this is going to be rolled out. really quickly. We are committed to making sure that we are bringing on the best team members uh for this work and to ensure that we are ready for the summer before school starts as well as the fall. Uh some of the timing depends on a vote you will take later this evening related to uh some other uh staff and and human uh resource related items with program change and and reduction in force. So, those positions would get posted shortly after tonight or, you know, shortly later this week, uh, pending your vote. Uh, some others in the district we've already begun to recruit

102and select for. Great. And can you tell me what kind of person you're looking for? I I've visited while we were while they were acknowledging board appreciation week or month, I think it was. We had an opportunity to go to various schools, whether it was an elementary, junior high, or middle school. And I was super impressed with the volunteers that we had there. I mean I there were like Dr. Sorenson said it was more than just you know serving punch. I mean I could tell that these people were invested in in the school. Share with me your vision on what you're looking for for someone. I mean we're not looking for someone here with a master's degree, right? We're looking for someone. Share that. So answer the question. I can take that cuz there were

103some rumors running around that we were requiring college hours and college degrees and and things of that nature. that is not factual. Um we are we are looking for hardworking individuals um from the community, our parents who are homegrown, who really want and can demonstrate a commitment to the vision of our administration who want to help us through their honest feedback. a vision for La Hoya future forward. And when I say partner, that means that you tell us no, that's not going to work. Here's what will work better. We want people who are willing to knock on doors, people who are willing to show up to community events, people who are willing to host community events in the community where our parents and community members are, not just expect community members and parents to come

104to the school, right? And we have to meet folks where they are. And that means we have to also be willing to show up where folks are as well. And so a job description is um coming out soon, but I really want to dispel the myth that like you have to have a degree and all of these college hours because that is not factual. Um and so we look forward to having our community members um apply for these positions. We will have a pool then of these community members um and parents and then principles um will be selecting those um from this pool of already vetted um parent um and family community liaison. Members of the board do you have any questions for Dr. Little? These are parent lison um both parent and family lison.

105It might be outside the scope of this vision but what I would like to see Dr. Sorenson has perhaps uh some um initiatives here that would encourage a lot of these parents to engage in education themselves. I know there's a lot of opportunities, right? Mr. Allet, Texas Workforce Commission has a lot of funding. That's great. For uh adult training that the district could serve as a facilitator. I know that wouldn't be your role necessarily, but at least to advocate for them engaging or enrolling in these types of uh most of which are paid um adult training activities. I think that just fosters the whole cycle of education for the for the entire family. Miss Miller, can you make note of that? That's Miss Miller's department actually because she's talent development. I'm sorry. That would be

106Miss Miller's department because she's talent development. So Miss Miller, if you could make note of that, that would be great. Did you have anything board member? It just reminded me of there's a role in the county called community health records uh workers and it's what they do is go out and educate on specific illnesses like diabetes, hypertension and if that somehow we can get some funds to educate our educators because essentially they do the same thing. That'd be great. Great recommendation. Thank you for that. Thank you. That's great. Anyone else have any questions for Dr. L before he proceeds? This is really informative stuff. So, we appreciate what you all have done. And again, I think this is all as a result of those meetings that you've had with stakeholders. And so, I appreciate the

107fact that we've been out in the community. You know, if it's one thing that I do share, and I've told you this at every meeting is that I appreciate the fact that, you know, our leadership, the team that I have here to my left and to my right, and of course with Dr. Saon taking the lead, that we're in we're we're there in the community and we're listening to them. And I appreciate that because many of these great ideas have come from listening to those individuals. So thank you for that. Dr. Lur may proceed. Thank you. Our our last one in this sort of middle section is related to attendance and chronic absenteeism in particular. So we have had truency facilitators at each of our comprehensive high schools. Uh and as we look at attendance

108and chronic absenteeism overall, we know this is something that has been an important focus for us because we need more students in school more often. uh our attendance rate typically has been hovering in the 95 96% range. Uh we want to improve that but for our high schools it's remarkably less uh on any given day than that number. Our chronic absenteeism rates you saw us present earlier at some of our high schools um last year and into the fall was as high as 40%. Uh which again is meaning students are missing 20 or more days a year and that's 40% of the population. Uh so this adjustment is moving from the end of the line part of attendance where a student is already deemed truent uh to really again thinking about the whole ecosystem here

109when it comes to attendance and absenteeism. So we are creating attendance student support specialist and attendance improvement specialists. Um the attendance student support specialists will exist again at every comprehensive high school. uh they are thinking about what structures do we need in place to partner with our students and families to get them to show up on the front end. How are we monitoring and responding when students are not uh present on a regular basis? working with our teachers and with other staff at the school who all have a role to play uh in attendance and yes still doing some of the bureaucratic responsibilities that comes along with truency uh but really thinking much more broadly and holistically about this responsibility. The middle schools heard about this and also said hey we need some more help

110uh with attendance and chronic absenteeism. So, as I mentioned, there was a menu of positions that campuses could purchase with their own funds. Uh, so middle schools have partnered together in many cases to like share uh one of these specialists. So, we will have the support at middle and high schools uh for next year as well. And then we also added the attendance improvement specialists. There are three of those. Um, so this is an ad to the budget um that we are investing in. And those those three um attendance improvement specialists are going to work with network one, network two, and network three um to then support those campuses with chronic absenteeism, with attendance, to make sure that those campuses have the support that they need. um to make sure that our elementary schools and

111the middle schools that maybe did not um purchase a a a improvement specialist have the supports that they need to not only implement um the strategies that we give them, but that they are following through on all of the things that they need to do to improve attendance. So those will be district supports part of the menu of campus supports that we are going to roll out for next year. Um so they will work closely with the um executive directors of school leadership to make sure that principles are doing the work that they need to do to improve student attendance on campuses. We have two more to share. Everything that we've talked about thus far is again support directly to campuses with folks spending uh most if not all of their time on campuses. The

112next two are important district-wide roles um that will be supporting all schools and campuses in the district. The first we'll talk about is related to family and community engagement. So we have had a family and community engagement coordinator uh for some time in the district just as we shared earlier in terms of feedback that we've been hearing and what our families want and need uh when it comes to engagement is again more responsiveness making sure that we have strong partnerships with the community uh including community organizations like higher ed business nonprofits uh etc. and that there's a real focus to what we're doing with families. So, it's not always just, hey, we're going to offer a program here. We're going to do an event there. But there's clear connection to attendance, to behavior and mental

113health support, two ways that families can engage, and certainly to academics. So, this is an expansion and an elevation of this work with the creation of a director of family and community outreach who really becomes a key part and a bridge to what we're doing in the district and what's happening more broadly in all of the communities that we serve in La Hoy. I think this address uh board member AOA what you were talking about earlier about that relationship between our us and nonprofits and I think this person would probably be that person we would identify as being that link right that's right they're connecting with and pulling resources into the district as well as sharing communication back out they're also deeply supporting those parent family and community liaison that we talked about earlier as

114well and really I I see Miss Cresbow standing up already but really want to highlight the use of data. Really making sure that we are using attendance data, academic performance data, and family feedback, right? So that we know where to push in, we know where to support, and we know what the needs are based upon data and what our families and communities want and need from us. So again, board member, like you're saying, if we see that health is an area that we need to provide additional support, then we need to partner say with the county and our county will pro help provide those supports, right? Because we know that the county has those supports and so things like that, right? But this this division, this department makes those connections for our district and the

115stakeholders of this district. All right. Our last one is also an elevation and further investment into uh district-wide leadership and impact. And in this space, we're talking about athletics. Uh so moving from a director of athletics to an executive director of athletics certainly establishes more presence uh in the district and in the community in terms of focus here. Um I won't steal the superintendent's thunder about what she's heard in the strategic plan session because you'll hear that soon. Uh but this is certainly connected to that feedback and what the community has shared here. Uh we are in the midst of in this position will continue to help build athletic pipelines in the district as well. Thinking through opportunities have in terms of exposure and getting ready uh for particular high school athletics but what that

116looks like in elementary and middle school and also really focusing on the student athlete. So balancing the student part of the student athlete and really reinforcing and supporting our students on an academic basis. uh working closely with our academic teams and schools to make sure that students are making progress and that they have options when it comes to the end of their La Hoya career. Maybe that is an athletic pursuit, maybe it's not, but we certainly want our students prepared for whatever comes next. And so that's really bridging together uh the academic and the athletic side uh and being a big part in certainly presence in the community and building more connections. Going back to the centennial presentation that we had earlier, uh this is a point of pride and can be an even more

117point of pride for the community and for our students and this role will be key uh in developing and nurturing that work. Dr. Sornson. Um and again um and I'll look at board member Py on this one. Um I have um partnered quite closely with the athletic community um over the past year um to say the least and this is an area that in many respects has become a mandate of this community in terms of change and um attention for many reasons. And again, I want to say this very clearly. This has absolutely nothing to do with um any one person um at all. It has to do with vision for what is possible for the future. And there is such hope for the future of athletics because it is rooted in exactly what we

118heard tonight in such pride and history of what athletics has meant to the La Hoya ISD community um since its inception. And so um the community has required of me um in many respects to have a really strong vision um and put money where where they want um to support athletics and fine arts. I do want to say you guys will see in my presentation that fine arts is is a very strong demand as well um in terms of our parents and families really wanting this to be a space um where we where we invest and so um we are excited about the future of this space. Um and so we we put forth a new job description and with that new job description are a lot more roles and responsibilities. Um a lot more

119asks and demand of the leader of this space. And so with that comes an elevated role. Um and so the executive director of athletics was was posted. And so we look forward to an open application process. Um, and we look forward to whoever decides to apply um, and then lead this department to the future vision for our district. Members of the board, do you have any questions regarding this specific topic? I'm seeing um, you know, I'm kind of thinking how can we collaborate between all of these departments or new roles where, you know, like this can help behavior. We're working with CCMR, with SAT, ACT, TSI, um, parent outreach, all that stuff. How are we working on a collaboration between all these new roles compared to the current roles? Yeah, that's a fantastic observation and

120we certainly know and we've heard um you know families tell us and some of our staff tell us like students come to school for different reasons and sometimes it's because I'm on the team, sometimes it's because I'm in the the arts related event like some there's a lot of reasons for that and so it matters for that coordination. So we've already as a team uh taken attendance for example as a as a shared commitment and responsibility and are thinking through ways that every role every sort of department centrally here uh can better support schools with that work as we continue to focus on our Lonear governance goals and progress measures. That's also a unifying way to bring teams and and parts of the organization together because it's super clear what we're trying to achieve. And

121to your point, how does an executive director of athletics contribute to that as part of the conversation that we're having and part of the expectations coming in uh for each of these roles is to directly contribute to those student outcomes. The other thing that I would add um board member Hernandez is we also and again I'll cover this when I um talk about strategic planning, we also heard a lot about leadership. Um we heard a lot um whether it be from students, from parents, from my advisories around campus leadership and around district leadership. but heard a lot actually about campus leadership um and how center to all of this is how um leaders make all of this coherent and how we explain how all of this comes together to create coherent systems and how leaders

122then implement these systems on a campus so that it actually all does come together. how behavior impacts attendance and how attendance impacts academics and how our teachers then get this information in a clear, honest and transparent way so that they actually understand what's going on in the district from their leaders, right? So that people truly understand what is happening and what is changing and why. And so when when we have these conversations out in the fe field, people go, "Oh, that makes perfect sense. We understand." We wish we would have actually heard that from our campus leader. So one of the strategic priorities that you will hear me talk about is actually our continued commitment to leadership excellence. One year of us focusing on leadership excellence isn't enough. Um so it will be something that

123we remain committed to um continuing to not only hold ourselves to the highest standard of communication and transparency and integrity but how do we continue to develop that in all spaces across the district especially um the nexus of where our community lives and breathes which is on the campus. Thank you Dr. Little. I was uh I I think you clarified this the last time we spoke and so executive director of athletics. He would be the umbrella to athletic coordinators, right? That's right. Um supported by assistant director of athletics here centrally. And then yes, there are athletic coordinators for our comprehensive high schools that are supporting all uh athletic work at the school level. Yeah. And I want to add I'm sorry that there are um athletic coordinators in our middle schools. Um there are two

124um in our middle schools and there are also two at our high schools. Um not just one. I want to just give a shout out to our our female coordinators. Yes. Thank you for that. You know what I envision when I see this this this this position executive director. I envision a kind of like um you know the new University of Texas UTPA now has this football program and and when I've seen the coach out there not only the coach but he also focuses on academics and I appreciate the fact that we have focused and there's emphasis on the academic on the academia part of what this gentleman's role or female's role is wherever we hire but what I do like is the fact that this person will have ties with the schools you know

125I want that person to be engaged with conversations with the principal with Dr. Sorenson, you know, not just sitting in a in a office all day, you know, scheduling or, you know, pro what because what I've seen in the past is athletic directors would not here, but I'm just saying what I've seen is where they just are scheduling games where I'd like to see this person more involved in the community, Rotary groups, meeting with uh other schools uh athletic directors and and so I foresee that this is an opportunity for us to to to implement something that maybe nobody else has. So, I appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. All right, Miss Cresbow is going to wrap us up with the summary and next steps for this conversation. Miss Cresbow. Well, as you see, we do

126act on our priorities and that's part of what I wanted to emphasize with this and my and the team emphasized with the presentation is that we are acting on what we say that we want to emphasize. So, what are our next steps? We have to keep following the leg legislative updates so we know what is the final approval and learn the impact. We are going to keep working on the staff alignment with recommendations. Master schedule constraint outpost being sure that we refine and finalize it by budget season. Right size staffing based upon enrollment. We keep working on that. Realign needs of district central office to best support our campuses and you saw an example of those. Adopt the or strategies were applicable on year one of budget process. You saw some of that example today

127with the staffing. Align or budget to a strategic plan. Recommend the budget adoption in June. And implement efficiencies analysis based on financial audi. I don't want to forget that one. And the final schedule for this budgeting is in September when we do the tax rate adoption. So, do you have any questions? Members of the board, any questions? I don't have a question, but I do have a comment. I think um um I might share this the sentiment with with other people on the board um and even just our community members that I've heard multiple times. Oh, I remember when the Hoya used to be the district that everybody wanted to be, right? And so when I see um this concept of reimagining roles um I think that that aligns with where we are at and

128where we want to be, right? So this has given us the opportunity to to think through like how do we become that district again, right? And and there's a lot of great stuff happening now, but also how do we improve it and make it better because that's what our kids deserve. So, um, kudos to to the team, right, for for thinking all of these through because it's a lot of the little changes that will get us to where we want to be. Um, and this is all part of that work. So, thank you guys. Thank you. Any other comments from the board before we proceed? Okay. Thank you. Great presentation. Uh, moving on, uh, Dr. Dr. Little will continue with 7.3 the Texas uh English language proficiency assessment system and dual language update presented by

129Dr. Little. Dr. Little, you may proceed. Yeah, thank you board president. Um happy to share information related to uh how our emerging bilingual students have been doing in the district over time and to explain a little bit more about how we assess and measure that progress. Um, Miss Uniga is with Miss Ramos, also learning about uh some literacy things at a conference this week. So, I'm happy to represent her and and what that team really helps lead uh this evening. Um, board president, you just spelled it out. It's one reason why we have way too many acronyms in education is because some of these things are really long. Uh, but Telpass is an acronym uh that does stand for Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System. And it's really looking at how students are doing in

130their ability to listen, speak, read, and write in English. So, this is for non-native English speakers, uh, regardless of what their first language is. It's not always Spanish. Uh, in our case, it it most often is, but really looking at how they're developing English proficiency over time. Uh, so this is an assessment that the state provides to districts. We do this in addition to STAR. That's important to note. So these students are still going through the STAR exam depending upon their grade levels. If they're in three, four or fifth, third, fourth or fifth grade, they may be taking the STAR reading in Spanish. But TELS pass is specifically looking at that English progression. We do get proficiency levels out of this. So we'll know if a student is beginning, intermediate, advanced, or advanced high uh

131across these four tested domains. This is super important as we think about uh how our teachers support students because they need to know where to push in and provide additional support to a student. Is it in listening comprehension and receptive language or is it in written language and more expressive uh communication. So Telpass does assess in all four of these areas. You see our cute little graphics here. Most of them have headphones on. That's because that is a big part of this computerized assessment. So, in the listening part, I'm having to listen to somebody um speak or read a passage in English and then be able to respond to that and answer questions. The microphone in the speaking piece is super important because I'm having to then produce uh language in English and make sure

132that I can communicate in that way. And then we have more traditional reading and writing uh aspects to this as well. The way this shows up in terms of accountability also matters. Uh Mr. Duk gave a really thorough explanation of the accountability system back in the fall. Uh and one of those parts is related to how students are doing on Telpas. Currently on the left hand side of this slide uh as we look at those four domains of listening speaking reading and writing if students are showing progress and meeting their growth in two of those we're getting the accountability points for that. Uh but that is going to change in the state. So on the right we are describing what will exist in the future and that means students have to make at least one

133jump in their level. So, if I was a beginning student, I have to show enough progress to get into intermediate. Or if I was intermediate, I'm going to have to show enough progress to move to the advanced level uh to be able to count for accountability points moving forward. So, this is going to be a more rigorous measure of how we are supporting students in their English language journey. On the next few slides, we do want to share some data with you. Um, this is all will look backwards. So, I will say that our students um sat for Telpass earlier this spring. So, this is an assessment that typically takes place in in the February time frame. We don't have all of that data back. So, we'll come back to you later and share how

134we did this year in comparison to what I'm about to discuss, but we are able to look at how we've been doing over the past couple of years. The blue and red bar graphs at the top left here just help us rem remember sort of the context of our population in La Hoya ISD. So we are just over half of our student body being designated as an emergent bilingual student and that means that they are typically a non-native English speaker and their home language what they speak at home is non-English. So, there's a survey process that we go through with families uh where we're asking those questions and then there's also an initial language proficiency exam um that students are taking to see whether or not they will be determined designated as an emergent bilingual

135student or not. The chart on the right here is another reminder to conversations that we've had as it relates to accountability and our other Lonear governance goals. Remember when we set many of those goals, we looked at the long-term targets that the state was expecting us to reach in terms of achievement. We also have similar closing the gaps targets uh for Telpa. So you see those interim numbers by level as well as those long-term targets uh by level. The bar charts at the bottom, we're about to blow these up on the next two slides so it'll be easier to see uh the history, but that's again a look at every campus. This is a two-year comparison where red is two school years ago, blue is last school year. Uh, and then those black and yellow

136lines are those interim and long-term targets. We can see that compared to the targets, we're generally doing pretty well. Um, but we still have areas where we need to make market improvement here in terms of overall outcomes. Again, our long-term targets are still looking to only have about half of our students uh, being proficiency. We proficient, we certainly need to and must do better than that. The other thing we can notice here, and we'll see this on the next two slides a bit more clearly, is most of our campuses, more than half of our campuses actually have shown regression uh in in the last two years. We'll look at a four-year history in just a second. So, this goes directly back to our conversation with the Title 3 facilitators and the dual language ESL coaches

137about really building out more support directly for our teachers. All of what we're doing on the literacy side of the work with new curriculum, more science and reading focus and researchbased strategies will also uh pay off here. Uh a little bit deeper look at our elementary schools. This is a four-year view in this case. So each school has four colored bars. The one furthest to the right in each set, the blue one, is our most recent data from last year. And we're showing in this green and red check box just two different stories, like two realities that we've seen within the district. Um the school in the green looks perfect in terms of growth over time. Like every year we're consistently improving and that is stairstepping up for our students. That's what we want and

138need across the whole district. Um the school shown here in the red has a lot more jaggedness to its trajectory and we can see a drop off from two years ago to last year. As you look across the whole slide, you can see um that there are other schools in a similar place. We have a similar sort of story at the middle and high school level. Uh green box school all the way to the right again like perfect graph stairstepping up improving uh year-over-year. school on the left is sort of bouncing up and down and again we saw declines there in the most recent data. So again this is something that we are as with all of our data paying a lot of attention to to make sure we can really better support teachers and

139campus leaders to know how to use this and respond with what they're doing in the classroom. Uh just like when I talk to you about map data or we talk about star data, what matters most is that I as the teacher know where every one of my students are on their journey and I know specifically what I have to do to support them to get better in this case to get better at reading, speaking, listening and writing English. Um so our dual language teachers all go through uh annual training specific to the dual language program. Uh those teachers will also be going through all of the literacybased training that we're doing this spring, summer, and into next school year with the curriculum. And this will be a big part of what our coaches that we

140just talked about are supporting teachers with in terms of improvement and knowing how to use this as part of their whole suite of helping students get better uh academically. The last thing we'll say here is that our commitment to biiteracy and dual language remains incredibly strong. Uh the superintendent mentioned as we're talking about parent educators, talking to parents about the importance of dual language and we have our two-way program that we launched this year in prek that's going to expand into kindergarten next year. Um so this is something that is super important to the community. You heard in the centennial program that dual language became a focus in that last 20-year period. uh and it's certainly something that we continue to to be really proud of and to want to improve on so that students

141can come through La Hoya ISD and truly be biliterate uh in in our case in English and in Spanish in every way. So, this data, like what we've been sharing uh in the fall and earlier in the spring, is a push to us uh to continue to improve our supports and services to students and particularly for my team to improve the supports that we're providing uh to teachers and campus leaders to see better results over time. With that, we'll take questions. Members of the board, do you have any questions for Dr. Little? No. Seeing that we have none, thank you, Dr. the little great presentations that you had with us today. Next item on the agenda is 7.4 strategic planning updates by uh Dr. Senson. That's me. I am so excited for this presentation. Oops.

142Hold on. So, I am very excited to share with the board and the community 7 months Oh, yeah. worth of work. Blanca, right? Hasn't it been? It's been a journey. Um, and we are coming up um to our culminating activity. Um, which will be community design day on May 3rd, which I'm going to say May 3rd about a hundred times during this presentation because we want the entire community to come out. May 3rd to What is Lincoln? May 3rd, what is Lincoln for Community Design Day. Um, but we are very excited um to share with you what we've learned so far because we've learned a lot and it has been my honor. I'm going to get emotional. Um, it's been my honor, my pleasure, like a year's worth of work, but so rewarding to just

143engage, truly engage and listen to what this district, what this community, my district, my community wants from us. The hopes, the dreams, the belief is real. The pride, the joy, but the demand that we do better is real. And so I am so excited to be up for the charge to deliver on the promise to the community, to the parents, to the families, to the employees, to the employees, but to the students because you deserve every single thing that the community is asking for. So here we go. I'm going to share with you all that I've learned because it has been a lot. So always starting with so what is a strategic plan? It is a roadmap that defines the district's priorities, goals and action steps for the next several years. We've been operating for

144the past year and a half with district priorities. And I've said every time that I present this that we just can't operate from year to year. Everybody has to know at some point and we heard this actually in strategic planning. People want stability. They want to know where we're going. Um, this operating from year to year is is causing anxiety for folks and they want to know Dr. Dr. Sorenson, where are we going and and when will it stabilize and so the strategic plan will bring a sense of stability to the community because folks will know what our priorities are, what are our goals and what are our action steps and what we seek to accomplish. And then we will create benchmarks and outcomes and we will report out on those and we will create

145systems that track our progress and we will be transparent with all of that. Um and so that's what the strategic plan will provide for the community and for the board. I will be accountable for that. My team will be accountable for that and we will bring that to the community and to the board um as we create milestones um for each of our strategic priorities. So want to review for everybody um community engagements and what the timelines looked like. So, community engagements um October through April um and through May and what that looked like. We did some district data review, community survey um and what we did that um February and March. Um executive leadership team is now working on you know planning and drafting based upon all the data that we had. I still

146have one more town hall to do um with fine arts folks in athletics. Um and so and then we have community design day May May 3rd at what I think. Um and so that's kind of where we're gonna really hunk hunker down and really decide what those priorities should be in um this strategic plan. But this is really what you know the past couple months have looked like. And so wanted to really just put some data behind the work. Superintendent advisory councils. Um, my student advisory council, I have 21 students. There have been five meetings so far. Um, parent advisory council, I have 10 parents. I've had five meetings with them so far. Once a month, I meet with them. Educator advisory council, I have 23 educators. You notice they have 10 meetings because they

147demanded that I meet with them every other week. Um, and they are a hardworking group of educators who are fully committed to the process. and principal advisory council. 13 principles, four meetings thus far and I have one coming up next week with them. So they will also have five. Um and then I have one more with them in May um end of May. Community town hall meetings. So far there were um 1,69 total participants across 22 town halls. Um those are the focus groups um in the town halls um that I met with and community survey um over 4,000 participants and then the breakdown of the groups of the participants of the surveys. So, um quite a bit of input and time, energy, but again, all well spent um and um a lot of um

148opinions and input and thought um from a wide variety of stakeholders across the district and across the community. At any point, board members, please feel free to stop me and ask a question if you have it. Otherwise, I'll just keep going. Could you remind us what day in May? May 3rd. What does Lincoln 8 to 12 come out please? Um so I'm going to break down each aspect um that we've gone through and and really walk through what we've learned. So first I'll start with the survey and what the survey really told us. So again breaking down um the survey participation we had over 1,900 students take the survey. um over a thousand staff, um almost a thousand family members, 100 community members, so on and so forth for over 4,000 total responses. Um the

149five most important skills to develop. Um and again, I won't read everything on the slide to you, but you see academically successful is the most important skill. proficient in reading, writing, and math, strong communication, problem solving, and teamwork. Um, you see, we had some that were statistically tied for second and third. What I found really interesting though, um, is some comments, and so we pulled out some comments for us to really see and digest and understand, um, as we prepare our students holistically. Um, we need students who have been taught integrity, customer service skills, honesty, teamwork, completing projects they're given, being respectful, compassionate, able to articulate verbally, not become frustrated when they encounter challenges, rights. And down at the bottom, students are being taught initial concepts of basic school subjects, but in the real world,

150as adults, they need to be prepared to navigate it without problems. teach our kids about being parents, the importance of college, be able to survive in this economy um going up each and every day. And so again, I want to say for our community, nowhere in here does it say star prep. And so um and yet we are a district that focuses quite a bit on star prep. This is what our community higher education partner, business partner, but this also comes through very clearly in our parents as well. And so really it is about how are we developing children who are academically successful. Yes. But who also are strong communicators and problem solvers and who work in teams. These very tangible soft skills that do show up as kids navigate college and career readiness, the

151workforce and ultimately the world. And they want us to develop kids who are able to do that and do that well. So then we move on. Tell us about your experience in La Hoya ISD. Um over 55% was positive. Um 3% almost negative and 41.9% neutral. Um you note that there's a little bit difference. Not all survey participants responded to this question and accounting for the low lower total number of responses. Um so wanted to give an example of some like positive responses and some neutral responses and because people say well what is a neutral response? Um and so positive responses right and I'll just point out one here say for example um from a student La Hoya ISD has given me many opportunities to succeed as a student. I feel prepared for the future

152because of the resources available. Um and then neutral schools should provide assistance to all students equally. It feels like only certain groups get support while others are left behind. So that is neutral because again as we looked at some responses some were clearly negative. So this fell in the category of neutral. So just want to give some examples. Um so there we go. So then from the survey we broke down by category of folks who took the survey. Um so these are the students top priorities. Students clearly said number one top priority was improved food and facilities. Um very specifically and I think Dr. Gary heard this repeatedly is they facilities very specifically restrooms. Our students feel very passionately about improved restrooms. Um but they got very specific in other spaces about the type of

153facility improvements that they want to see. Um two is safety and support in in schools. And by safety um a lot of times they unpacked that to talk about behavioral and mental health supports. Um a lot about response to bullying um and administrative um administrative response to behavior and discipline in school. Not that they necessarily felt unsafe like in terms of what we think of safety, but how campuses were responding to behavior and discipline on campuses. Um and then three um they were very clear about more engaging and relevant instruction. Um they want more programs that and the quote is here, we need more programs that actually help us prepare for life after school. family member top priorities, student success and academic support, student well-being, and increased parental involvement and communication. And one of the

154things that really came out in the survey, especially around bullet point three, is that um there was a clear um pattern that parental involvement in communication was higher in the elementary schools and it decreased as students stayed in the district. Uh middle schools it decreased. High schools it it felt for many of our secondary parents almost none. Um but yet many of our secondary parents were like but we need to know the most. Dr. Marggo, in some respects, to your point, when do we learn about college and career? How do we learn about all of the opportunities that students have for potential pathways? How do we start learning about things in middle school, about the opportunities that kids could have in high school? And there was a lot of feedback that we got around counseling

155and opportunities and CTE and pathways and programs and those things kind of uptick in secondary and we need to hear about those. And so um there was a decrease in parental involvement and communication and yet we have a lot more programs that parents need to know about and hear about. So um we need to really work on that. Staff member top priorities. Number one, improve salary and benefits. That was the number one for our staff. Two, staff support. Um, and so we see a comment here. We are losing too many good educators because they feel unsupported and overworked. Um, and three, student well-being. The mental health of both students and staff need to be a bigger priority. Too much stress and not enough resources. So, and we just pulled those out. Um, and then you

156see from the first one, we need competitive salaries, better health benefits to attract and retain quality staff. And so this stayed consistent throughout the survey. And then stakeholders and top priorities is retention and support for educators, student and staff well-being, safety and school climate. And again, I want to reiterate that safety didn't necessarily mean safety in the traditional way. People necessarily didn't say that like they felt like, you know, someone was going to like break in the school. It was more about that mental health, behavioral health and response to discipline on the campus, right? It was how discipline was being handled on the campus. um academic excellence and then continued with communication and transparency. So that was from stakeholders. Um and then family priority ranking rank the following programs from most important to least important.

157And you will see here the most important program to our families for us to improve was athletics. Um, second was fine arts. Third was co-curricular and that means like UIL. Um, and all of the other programs, career technology pathways and college prep. There were other programs that they could choose from here, but these were the top five. And then we added a quote here um from a parent. So improve improvements needed stakeholders overall. Um, and so here were the top five. What improvements would you like to see in the La Hoya ISD Independent School District? Number one is better communication and transparency from central office, which we are committed to continue to improve in this way. Um but I think um board member Hernandez, this is going to require us to continue to have um

158stronger um partnership with campus leaders who are going to communicate with their staff on campuses um and communicate clearly um and coherently about changes that are happening at central office in a way that communication doesn't just and only need to come from central office. Um and so that is something we are committed to working on not only from ourselves but also in terms of campus communication because we heard that also a lot um in feedback improved academic rigor and curricul curricular and extracurricular resources more competitive salary and teacher retention. improved campus spaces particularly in special education and improved school safety and security. So that was from the survey. I will pause there for questions or comments or feedback. Members of the board, do you have any questions? Marcy's report, Dr. Sorenson. Okay. So then I

159will go to advisory committees um and the feedback from my advisory committees. And um the way that my my advisories worked is we spent the first couple of meetings kind of coming to yes on what were their biggest priorities, right? We s did some ideation exercises. I facilitated um some group think and each one of these advisory groups kind of came up with each of these buckets and then in subsequent meetings then for each of these buckets they did some work with me on so then say for example if mental health and bullying was a bucket that we worked on what are some very specific things then under mental health and bullying that you want me to work on? Um, and so what I have for you here, um, is just their top five because

160again, we could be here all night going into each one of these, but just wanted, and again, you're smiling because you know how how this could go. Um but each one of these um really took a lot of really thoughtful meaningful work with people, students who were so dedicated to this work. The genuine nature in which parents and students and educators and principles showed up um to really engage with me um and with cabinet because cabinet was in these meetings um was just incredible. And so I can't thank them enough. Um my student advisory is my favorite little time. Um I get to, you know, hang out with them and and just, you know, almost feel like a a little principal again. Um but they're really honest and they're really sincere and they they just

161want to see great things happen in the district. So um this is their voice. Um student advisory group number one is mental health and bullying. Number two is they want more support from their teachers. Um and and we've then talked about what support looks like. They want more transparency. Um because what they hear a lot on campus and they hear a lot of adult problems. They want to know why. Um and so we talk a lot because they're very honest about why they hear adult problems. Um but so it would probably be helpful if they heard that from us I guess or their principles or or things like that. Um they want stronger academic programs and you know make sure that they're getting the best curriculum and that they're getting the instruction that they need.

162But again food and facilities were right there. Um so specific that they want mirrors in the bathroom at at Science Middle School and Dr. Gur is working on that right now. Um for the parent advisory group, um they talked quite a bit about campus um and district leadership because they really felt the parent advisory group that if you have strong campus leadership and strong district leadership, everything else falls in place. Um everything else then to your point kind of board member Hernandez like everything else then happens and happens well. So leadership was very important to our parent advisors uh advisory committee. Uh they want stronger academic programs and more post-secondary opportunities and they want to know about the post-secary opportunities. They want to know about college and career. They want advisement um and they're very

163um clear that they're not getting that advisement and that knowledge right now not from the district and not from their campuses. Um, they want predictable I'm sorry. They want student safety, mental behavioral health. They were very clear with me that there is not currently an ecosystem of behavioral mental health supports in the district that they can explain or even point to or who to call. Um, and that we heard that repeatedly. Um, they don't know if a student's in trouble, who do I call? Um, they want predictable transportation. They want to know, um, if my child's on a bus, when are they coming home? They want to know if my students on the way, how do how do I know they're on the way? So, they want us to work on transportation. And again, it

164came up again, excellent counseling services. Um, they want to know the academic advisement, they want to know the post-secary advisement, and they want better mental health supports for their children. Um, and so you can see again from our previous presentation, we are beginning to align not only our budget but our positions to what our district is asking for. Educator advisory group, again, it starts with quality school leadership. Our educator advisory group again felt like the district was making strides towards transparency towards um integrity towards fiscal responsibility but that it wasn't yet quite making its way to the campus. And so educator advisory group felt very strongly that where we need to spend time as a district is on school leadership and campus leadership. Um and we unpacked what that looked like for them. Um they

165talked about um stronger teacher support systems and how teachers need to feel more supported whether that be in their new curriculum endeavors that they were taking on or in behavioral supports. And coupled with that is how are we supporting students whether that be academically or behaviorally or with mental health or with attendance. It shouldn't all just be on the teacher. what is that ecosystem of supports for students? Um they again are just pushing us on making sure we have the best curriculum and instruction and professional development to support them as they grow. Um and also making sure that CTE electives and vocational programs are strong, that they are thriving, that they themselves are getting the individualized professional development that they need and deserve. Um right now um they are not getting content specific professional development

166in each of these areas. They're kind of just go to this general CTE professional development or art or music or they want content specific professional learning in their area. They want opportunities to grow in their areas. So that was very clear for them. And then lastly, principal advisory group. Um they just said, "Give us three, we're good." Um student achievement is number one. Um bless you. Um really focusing on student academic support, curriculum enhancements. They were like, "Stay with that, but support us and really focus on special education." And so they were really happy that we were doing the audit and that there were going to be some shifts and changes here. But again, it was about support, support, support. If you're going to if you're going to change things, we need support, right? We

167know we need to change because student achievement is not where it needs to be, but we as principles need support in order to implement what it is you're asking us to implement. Two, recruitment and retention. Um, highquality teachers, student enrollment, um, and again they talked about salaries in this bucket as well, knowing that salaries were a part of that recruitment and retention um, bucket. And then lastly, principles were again about the stability piece. Um, and they talked about strategic resource allocation. Um, in order for them to grow their campuses and kind of stabilize them, they said, "Look, you know, we're ready to do a facilities master plan. We're ready to know where we are as a district." And so let's do the facilities plan so that the budget becomes stable so that we can stabilize

168campuses and that the district then becomes stable so that staff can then be stable. So that is from my advisory groups. Um any questions there members? No, you may proceed. Okay. Um so then what have we heard from the community? So, these are from strengths and opportunities that we've heard in town hall meetings. Um, and again, you saw I had 22 town hall meetings. Um, strengths are here. I won't read them all to you just in the interest of time. Um, but everything from like we have so many opportunities in the district to optimism about the direction of the district to the great pride. We know that we love La Hoya. Um, we are so proud of who we are and and who we've been. And I think again, board member PA, you said it,

169people have hope for what we can be. Um, and so people were also very grateful to have the space to talk about who we can become. They're very proud of themselves in terms of their their teachers and their coaches and their colleagues and how hard they they work. And so recognizing our strengths and our assets was always very present in every meeting that we had. And right it's not a but it's always an and. Right. Um there are opportunities for growth. Um and that starts with everything around um differences in funding and resources in terms of programs. Some programs people felt like were really funded and some weren't. Same thing in terms of campuses. They felt like some campuses got more funding than others. Inconsistency in terms of quality and service and care, right? We

170did note that although we care in La Hoya, how does it show up, right? Desire for increased parental and community involvement, concerns over bullying, student stress. We did talk quite a bit about a decreased emphasis on testing and an emphasis on holistic learning. I do want to point out though, and we do not take this lightly, staff concerns about job security and compensation and staff report high levels of stress and a need for stability. We take that seriously and we hear you. We desire that too. I desire that too and we are going to put the strategic plan in place and we seek reducing stress levels and we seek stability. So want to just again orient everybody into how we do town halls. Blanca is my road dog in these town hall meetings along with

171thank you Heisum and your team for being here for us in each one of these town halls. It's thank you. The technology support has just been outstanding. Thank you. Um we ask people to work on a platform called thought exchange where we ask them these four questions every single time. Um, and these four questions are, "How do you feel about the X program?" So, let's say for example, I'm with special education parents. I say, "How do you feel about special education in the district? How do you feel about your experience with special education in the district or your child's experience with special education in the district?" So, again, the program is about the resources, right? the service um the amount of funding where the experience is like how did you feel about it um how

172did you walk away being treated right the quality um I always talked about question two is like this and if you're an employee like the Sunday night question did you want to get up and come to work right um question three is where do you hope to see X program in the next couple of years. It's the hopes and dreams question. And then question four, how do you know when we get there? Like how do you know that it's improved? So no matter which group I was talking to, these four questions stayed the same and we got a lot of data in this platform thought exchange. Um, and people would either respond to these four questions on their phone or um on an iPad and it was all anonymous. And so just wanted to show

173you an example of like one of the ways that we collect the data is called a word cloud. Um, and it extracts from their responses the most often used words. So this is an example from a town hall where one of you know some of the most often words um in their responses were changes, communication, right? Education staff achieving innovative right? You see transparency on the top. So this is an example of you know you see a little awesome on the side right but this is an example um another example is then we get also their very specific feedback I feel the district has undergone tremendous change in the past year that has had a large impact in various ways the district has many changes in the last year many fast changes I feel good

174about where we're heading Right? So we get their specific responses as well. But then as these thoughts populate, everybody in the room can star them, meaning they agree with the thoughts that are coming in. Some of you participated in some of the town halls and so you were familiar with how they work, but just wanted everybody in the community to see this is how we were gathering data and that it's all transparent but yet anonymous. So everybody in the community had an opportunity to give input and it was anonymous. But we have all of this data um for which then we did analysis and we're arriving at what our priorities need to be based upon this input. Any questions? I'll pause there again. Members, do we have any questions for Dr. Senson? Okay. So, what

175are our next steps and how are we compiling this data? So, district leadership is using this community input. We've already begun to drafting drafting and envision student experience. So based upon all of that data, we've begun to work on so based upon all this data, what do we want our students to experience? What are our priority areas? Um what are priority statements? May 3rd, we have community design day. Then on May 9th, we'll review community design day feedback. May 16th, we'll draft aligned initiatives. We'll keep working on success metrics and then we will continue working over the summer for the unveiling for next year. Right now, as of today, we are thinking that our buckets, right, the priority areas will continue to be leadership excellence. That includes ourselves, empowered graduates, well-rounded student experience, unified community

176culture, and infrastructure, systems, and fiscal responsibility. So, what is the purpose of community design day? In small groups, community members will review and provide feedback. Um, we will also ask groups to brainstorm where they will tell us specific projects and initiatives to help us achieve the priorities, milestones, metrics. And so we have some examples here. So an example of what this will look like is so we'll give a strategic priority and then they'll give us aligned initiatives. So just wanted to give examples and then also success metrics. We want this to be a communitydesigned plan. This is not again I said it I think at every town hall this shouldn't be a Sorenson design plan. I don't want it to be a Sorenson design plan. Didn't I say this at everyone I think? And so

177really please come out. This is again your voice, our district. And so again, we will gather it very simply with sticky notes. And we put a a little example here of what it'll look like. How important is this priority? People will either agree or not agree. Scale of one to five. And we'll gather the community input. Community members will get a chance to put stickies, agree, disagree, right? And then we'll analyze the feedback and further refine to build the strategic plan. And additional highlights of the day, free child care. We're providing child care on site, breakfast and lunch, and student performances. So, we're super excited for what's ahead. Here is the flyer. Thank you, Blanca. Always. Um, but please, again, if I haven't said it enough, community design day, Saturday, May 3rd, 8 to 12

178at Wades Lincoln. Thank you, Principal Pñena, for hosting for us. We are very grateful. Um, and that concludes my presentation on um the past couple of months work. Members of the board, do you have anything that you'd like to add or any comments regarding Dr. Sorenson's report? Thank you. I think is needs to be said thank you because I know there's been a lot of work going into this and I think in seeing this it is a testament to us continuing to provide that transparency right and I mean I don't I can't say that besides the the student advisory talking about transparency that um everything that I'm seeing here is stuff that we're that people are talking about right and and that we're hearing. So, um, this just kind of validates where we have work

179to do, um, and and what we need to continue to improve. So, thank you for that. Thank you. I agree with you, Secretary Pñena. I thought it was interesting how the transparency component or section was under the student remarks. I thought that was uh interesting. But we did see a common denominator in many of the responses we got and that was in in um mental health and of course the bullying and what's taking place at our school. So, it's good to see that there's there are a few people that have or at least a couple of of those pockets that have have that uh common interest and that is probably really important for us. Dr. Sornson, before we move on and have Joseph do his report, um I too um it's hard to believe that

180we've been here since February 1st of what, 2024. Mhm. And so it it certainly had been a pleasure and um I was looking forward to this report tonight that you were going to lay out in front of us and there has been so much that we've done as a as a group. Not just like you said, it's not just Dr. Sorenson's plan, but it's the district's planned. And so, you know, I want to acknowledge that everyone had um a part uh in the success of where we're heading and and what we've done up to now. And we appreciate um the confidence that the people that are not just here, but those that are listening in have with our staff, our our teachers, our educators, our support staff, and of course with the board. And um

181I'm very grateful to you um what you've been able to lay out. And I know there's been a lot of u this was like you started off a very emotional because it has been it's been a very emotional journey for all of us, but especially for you and and your team. So thank you for that. Thank you, sir. I appreciate it. With that said, uh, unless you have anything else, we I will just say though again because, you know, I live and breathe this. I really do want folks to note that even in Miss Crespbow's presentation with Dr. Little and um, Chief Miller, we are starting to make those shifts because we can't start the strategic plan after the budget is designed. So the reflection in the investment in attendance, the investment in behavior specialists,

182the investment in behavioral mental health, right, is going to be reflected in our new budget because the year one of the strategic plan starts next year. And so you will see shifts in our budget and in our priorities around salary. And I keep pointing at Brenda who's sitting there because she is holding me accountable for that. But you will see a reflection to salaries um and the things that we're working on because next year is year one of the strategic plan. And so as we bring forth a budget to you um in the next, you know, coming months, you will see a shift. Now again, it I want to keep saying this and I say it at every strategic planning meeting and every town hall. It cannot be done in one year. It cannot. That

183is not realistic and it can't and and I think everybody knows that and they're good with it. Um but you will start to see the alignment of our budget with the strategic priorities and the strategic plan as our community has told us what is important and what is valuable. Thank you Dr. Sornson. Uh seeing that we have no more remarks or questions uh to for Dr. Sorenson Joseph, we're going to move over to agenda item number eight specifically 8.1 which is the Lonear governance time use tracker report March 26 through April 9th 2025. Yes sir. Thank you Mr. Board President members of the board. Dr. Sorenson uh my pleasure to bring you uh this meeting's u lonear governance time use tracker report. Um, so with Lonear Governance, um, we're all about improving student outcomes, right?

184It's all about good board governance, um, and improving student outcomes. Um, we live by the mantra, heard it several times, peppered into this meeting and throughout the day, probably another dozen times, student outcomes don't change until adult behaviors change. Um, so we have two reports we're going to share this evening. the March 26th report and then the April the April 9th report. Um the N March 26th report of course that was a special board called specially called board meeting um primarily for uh student recognitions. Uh but we also had a public hearing around our taper report. Um so reflected in the minutes um it it's pretty standard and to be to be expected um were zero student outcome minutes. Um, and then we logged 74 minutes as a result of our public hearing, public comments,

185and time in closed session. The April 9th meeting um represents, I think, um, a a point for um, calibration. Um, so what you'll notice on the in in the uh in the blue left column there where under student outcomes it says zero minutes. If you're anything anyone like me, you were scratching your head and you might be scratching your head right now saying, "Well, wait a minute. Dr. Little presented prek data. Wait a minute. Dr. Little presented HQIMP uh HQM literacy um um presentation at last meeting. Why don't those minutes count towards student outcomes? Well, the reason is is because the prek data um reported was not explicitly covered in our in our goals and GPMs, right? So we have board goal one, board goal two and the GPMs um are are measured are measured

186in primarily in our map growth um or our text KIA um but nowhere in it was prek data explicitly stated. So the prek data presented at last meeting gets placed under systems and processes rather than progress and accountability. We also know that without question the prek data in the HQM pre presentation right undeniably um are directly about impacting student outcomes. So as we move forward uh we will we will um excuse me we will closely align our presentations and all our work that we're doing each day to maximize count toward discussions the discussion of student outcomes counting on the tracker. With that I'm happy to take any questions. Members of the board do you have any questions for Joseph? Joseph I I have a question. So I mean this is this is certainly informative like

187I would have thought the opposite like you said you know that you what Dr. Little covers with us we would get I I always like to say credit right like we get credit for it we got to get credit Diana please I mean Diana's next so I'm kind of dreading that not your presentation Diana but just the report is there anything that we can do prior to a meeting so that we don't have the zeros I mean is there something that you can share with us and say so I think Dr. chair, there are certainly some structural things we can do within the agenda um and the way that we package our presentations um that that will allow us to tally those you know and I really enjoy your presentations because as I watch other

188board presentations around the state it's really good for us to that was one of the things that we went through during our training was of student outcomes right and so that was obviously a priority so it's it's good to be reminded especially at the meetings how much time we're actually spending on that so I appre appreciate that and I'm glad now we're going to be able to hear what we can do to prevent the zeros right and so that we can have more more time or or given credit I should say minutes um in the results of of student outcomes so thank you Joseph that very informative thank you so I guess is that completes his presentation Diana so you have agenda item number nine Texas education conservatives report specifically the tea conservatives report delivered

189by you. Um, and I think you're going to go ahead and share with us how many we may be able to improve. Yes. Before I do, I just wanted to comment. Great job, uh, Joseph, on that report. And him sharing this with you helps you to understand what this is all about. Why are we doing this? What's the point? The point is we need to be uh very strategic about how we plan our agendas and how we uh plan our reports. So those things that that were discussed last time, they weren't connected to any of the goals. So next time you're going to hear you're going to see some readjustment and realignment of the of the agenda so that we can align everything that we're talking about with instruction. it's going to be connected to

190one of the goals. And again, with LSG, we ask you to focus on one to five goals because if you remember in your training, any more than five, you decrease the chances of actually meeting those goals. So, we want to be laser focused on those five goals. Um, and I think having him share with you is a great part in this process. Um, and helping you understand where we are and where we're going. I have no doubt we're going to get there. Uh this is just part of the process, right? Trust the process kind of a thing. So, um thank you again, Joseph, for that. So, the report that I have for you today, I know we are, um am I going the right way? Um in the interest of time, I'm just going to

191give you a quick overview. Um the monthly progress report that I'll be submitting that I have been submitting um consists of goals, goal progress measures, activities for each of those goal progress measures. There's going to be a timeline, an implementation timeline. When do we expect to meet this goal? There's always a person responsible for all the activities. There's going to be somebody's name there or the position is going to be there. um phases of implementation. With every report, I've got to identify where are we in this implementation? The status, has this been completed? Is it still in progress? Are we in the sustainability mode? Um and then next steps. If we haven't reached or met that activity or goal, then I write next steps. So, what what are we looking for next for this? Um

192I also have to write uh a portion of board interactions meaning we look at the uh attendance of the board how many what's the percentage of of trustees that that are present um and significant board actions that the board takes that that evening that are connected to governance um business and finance and academics. And then also we put that number there of how long the mi the meeting was. what are the actual minutes? We're not there. We will get there. Um so those are things that that we uh address at all of the in every report. So the first GPM is going to be now all these GPMs and activities I'm going to share with you. These are part of the governance exit criteria. I don't want to read the whole thing to you, but

193basically we want to increase your quarterly progress tracker, your board evaluation from uh 20 points to 75. We have our next board evaluation next month. It's going to be a lot better than it was the last time and it's a lot better than this 20 from where we started. So that's going to be the very first GPM. So in order for us to meet those that GPM, we have to meet these activities. So these are all aligned with LSG, right? Um so in our training, we talked about board work and superintendent work. That's a big one. That's a really difficult one for any and all boards to accomplish, but basically we need to make sure that each and every one of you know the difference and that you don't cross that line, right? Um, and

194so we want to make sure this is consistent. And if you'll notice, I would start everything with by May 31st, 2029. That's when we expect to exit the district. Um, the appointed board of managers and or elected trustees. So these activities, these are um they're for you right now. And then once we start to transition the board onto the elected board members, we're going to expect the same thing from them. So we could mark one off of our list that we completed, but we may get new members on and if we take a step back, we have to report that out um on our report. The next one is basically um developing and implementing board operating procedures. We have not done this yet. We are going to do this. Dr. Sorenson and I have talked

195about having a summer summit with you guys to um recalibrate and this is where we would probably start this process. So that's in the works. Then the third one is ensuring that no individual or group of individuals is a barrier to the progress of achieving district goals, constraints and priorities. If you recall in your training, we had lots of questions around that. So, we wanted you to think about whether you individually or as a board have been a barrier to the progress of the district, whether it's meeting the board goals, whether it's, you know, progress in a meeting, whatever that looks like. And so, this is one of the activities that we're going going to uh expect for the board to accomplish. The second one is around fulfi fulfilling statutory duties of the trustees right

196upholding the laws the rules and all ethical procedures and policies. So in this one a lot of these are in reference to the prior board but again we have to write this this is the plan for the la Hoya board of managers as you all sit right now and then board of trustees. So this first one is around how board members communicate with the public, with other trustees, and with staff. We want to make sure that it doesn't violate the board member ethics policy rules or or uh rules of order for board meetings. And this means board members really do not have any business talking to staff members about employment, right? About specific things. you hired your superintendent to do that and she has a team of chiefs and they have folks that work under

197them. If anyone has any questions for you about employment or about their pay or something like that, that is not anything that any board member should ever discuss with anyone. So, this is something that that we know we have to work on from the previous board. Right. The next one is about um this one is a big one. This one is directly from BBFB legal of your policy. We're saying that this board should consistently demonstrate an understanding of this policy by never intentionally or knowingly commit bribery, engage in official oppression, misuse any official information, nepotism, or accept illegal gifts. We don't have to rehash everything else, but we know this was a big problem uh for the prior board. Again, this is here because we want to make sure that um moving forward, the La

198Hoya ISD board, whoever is up here is clear about that that these things cannot happen, right? The last one here is consistently demonstrate ability to uphold and abide ethics policy and rules of order for board meetings. So all of these activities I can say with confidence you guys are you've done this. You don't have any issues with any of these activities. So for the purposes of my report and you'll see it next month I'm going to mark these as completed. Now should any issues come up I can change that and we can go back to work in progress. Right. Um, so I just wanted to mention that and and people might say, well, why bother putting it up here if this is not happening right now? This happened. That's why I'm here because this did

199happen. And so we have to address it in that manner. Um, and then the third one is about consistently engaging in effective systems and processes, right? And this is about that 50% of board time and meetings spent on student outcomes. Um that is that is self-explanatory, right? We need to meet that number and we will that's just on there and we're going to be a work in progress until we get there. But as you've heard tonight with the superintendent's report, a lot of work has been done up to now. A lot of work that I'm proud of. as I heard it, I just felt I my face was uh smiling the whole time because a lot of work has been done in just one year. So, I'm excited to see where we end up in

2002029. Um, and that sounds like a long way from now, but it it really isn't. Um, moving forward, here's the process and here's a timeline. Every month, I fill out that report. I send it to the agency by the 5th of the month. Once it's approved, they send it to the superintendent, the board president, and the chief financial chief financial officer. She gets a copy of it also because it has an expense report attached to that, and that's how I get paid. Um, then I will share the report at the board meeting. It's going to be the second board meeting of the month. Um, and that would be the approved report. Then it's going to be posted at the uh on the website for public viewing. Um a word of uh information. We can always

201add more if there's any issues or if there's something that we think about or or see that was a problem that we really need to address here, then we can always add. Um and so that's that's the beauty of this. This is a living working document and this is to help keep us on track. to uh improve all the systems at La Hoya so that by the time we all leave in 2029, La Hoya ISD is in a lot better place than when we got here. Any questions? Members of the board, do you have any questions for Diana? I have a couple of questions. I'll make these quick. Come on, Diana. Um, so you keep referencing the year 2029. I mean, that's not in stone. Am I correct? That's not in stone. Am I correct?

202That's not that's not in stone. I mean, that's not a that's not telling us that because what I want the general public to understand is that that's not the day that we're going to be leaving and No. And so the people I'm you know there's going to be a process. That's an average. Thank you for for lifting that up. Uh, board president. It's typically for an intervention of this size, it's about five years. So that that's why I use that data and we want to put a date on there because we would like it to end at that at that point. If the work is not done, then we're not leaving and it could be earlier. It could be earlier. Absolutely. Okay. I just want to stress that it definitely could be earlier. Okay, good.

203We leave. We all leave when this work is done. when everything on this report is marked complete. Mhm. Right. Right now, there's not going to be a lot of things that are marked complete, but as we progress, you're going to see that happening and it's the work being done. Well, thank you. And I just I wanted those that were viewing or those that are present to understand like they're don't want people to start planning for 2029 and you know, but but it is a it it's probably a reality. I mean, it helps us to plan, right? It helps us to see that we're not worrying. I'm not worried that that we're not at 50% right now because we have Look at the time that we have. We're going to get there. I agree. We're going

204to get there. Page 103, you had the bullet points. The first There were three on that page. Uhhuh. Uh the first two, Diana, I want to thank you. 103. Next one right there. That one. Uhhuh. Uh I want to thank you for reminding us what our role is. I mean that's really important and and how sensitive these positions that we have are. You know we we have to remember to be very careful on how we act or what we do because 24/7 we may not think this but we represent this this great district of ours. And so whether we're here or out on the community, what we say and what we do is a reflection of this fine institution, right? And so I just want to remind everybody that this is really important for us

205to follow. And I I appreciate you reminding us of this every time we see you. It's kind of like going to church, right? They tell you, you know, do not steal. Do not steal. We understand we shouldn't steal, but it's important to be reminded of these important values. So thank you for that. Any other questions? Members of the board, do you have any questions for Diana? No question. Thank you, Diana. We appreciate it and thank you for coming down here and and uh for participating in today's uh Right. Thank you. Okay. Next agenda item is number 10. Um do I have a motion? It's a consent agenda item. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying

206I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda, ladies and gentlemen, is close session. Um, let me see. We will be going into close session. Um, according to Texas Government Code, 551.001, 551.0071, 551.072, 551.074, 551.076, 551.082, 551.129, and 551.0 I mean, yeah. 021 concerning any and all purposes permitted by the act including but not limited to the sections and purposes listed below. We are now going into close session and it is approximately 9:02 or it's exactly 9:02 p.m. Ladies and gentlemen, we're back from close session. It's 11:22 p.m. Our first uh action and discussion item is 13.1. Consider request for additional days school year waiver for MIS instructional time due to inclement weather. Do I have a motion? I move to approve item 13.1. Do I have a second? I second the motion.

207All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is 13.2. Approval of Lincoln High School Culinary Lab Renovations CSP number 2025-33. Do I have a motion? I move to approve item 13.2. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is 13.3. Approval of Texas teacher evaluation and support system. Do I have a motion? I move to approve item 13.3. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is 13.4. consider and take possible action to non-renewal term chapter 21 contracts of administrators and teachers at Thelma R. Selena STEM Early College High School, Jimmy Carter Early Early College High School,

208Academy of Health and Science Professional Professions and STEM and La Hoya Early College High School in accordance with the early college program change reduction in forced. Do I have a motion? I move to appro approve the proposed non-renewal of term chapter 21 contracts of ad administrators and teachers at Therma R Selena STEM Early College High School, Jimmy Carter Early College High School, Academy of Health and Science Professions and STEM and La Hoya Early College High School in accordance with the early college program change reduction in force affecting the campuses and to authorize the superintendent or her designate to provide notice to the affected employees of this action. I further move to authorize the superintendent or her designate to retain one or more licensed attorneys to serve as a board design on any hearing requested on

209the proposed non-renewal authorized under this motion. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is 13.5 considering take possible action regarding level three DGBA grievance filed by Rosa Morales. Do I have a motion? I move that the board upholds the level two decision of the administration and denies the grievance. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is 13.6. consider and take possible action to propose non-renewal chapter 21 term contracts of Leo Elementary School administrators Carrie Vedo and Adriana Sephuentes and Deputy Chief of Human Capital and Talent Development Angela Gonzalez. Do I have a motion? I move to approve the

210proposed nonrenewal of the chapter 21 term contracts of Leo Elementary School administrators Kari Variel and Adriana Cuentes and deputy chief of human capital and talent development Angela Gonzalez and to authorize the superintendent or her designate to provide the employees with notification of the same. I further move to authorize the superintendent or her designate to retain one or more licensed attorneys to serve as a board design on any hearings requested on the proposed non-renewals authorized under this motion. Thank you. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is 13.7. Considering recommendation of hearing examiner and take possible action to adopt findings of fact and conclusions of law in the matter of La Hoya Independent School District versus Karen

211Bedial Voness Leoness docket number 077- LH-12-2024 before the honorable Javier Gonzalez independent hearing examiner consider and take possible action to terminate term contract of Karen Vial Leon. Do I have a motion? I move to adopt the finding the fact and conclusion of law issued by the independent hearing examiner with modifications as recommended by the administration in the matter of La Hoya Independent School District versus Karen Valanos TEA docket number 077-LH-12-2024 and determine the term contract of Karen Vialanos effective immediately. Do I have a second? I second. All in favor signify by saying I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is our calendar. Um, April 23rd, 2025, National Administrative Professional Day. April 30th, 2025, Dia Leos Nino. May 20 May 2025, Mental Health Awareness Month. May 1st, 2025, National Principal Day. May 1st,

2122025, school lunch hero day. May 1st, 2025, La Hoyd Centennial Tree Planting Ceremony. May 3rd, 2025, La Hoy ISD community day. May 3rd. I want to make sure. May 3rd. May 3rd. May 7th, 2025, regular called board meeting. Uh board members, do I have any remarks uh from any of you before we adjourn or Superintendent Sorenson? I do. Um I I want to acknowledge that today, April 23rd, is National Administrative Professionals Day. And I happen personally to have two of the absolute best administrative professionals sitting right across from me, Elda and Motti. So I want to thank you publicly for just helping me exist. And so thank you so much, but not just to you, to all of the administrative assistants across our district who really do support all of the leadership across the district

213and really make our campuses run, help our offices run. Um, I know personally how valuable you are um, every single day. And I'm positive that all of our leaders across the district feel the exact same way about the people who support them. So, thank you for all that you do, not only to support me, to support Mr. Nella, but um to all of our administrative professionals across the district. Thank you so much. Um you are so valuable. So, thank you. Thank you for acknowledging that, Elma. Thank you. You and Ma, you guys do a superb job. I heard she was going to buy dinner. I mean, I could be mistaken. Any other remarks before we adjourn? I do have a letter that I would like to read for the record for those present and of

214course those that are viewing tonight. This comes from TEA and it was addressed to myself and to Dr. Sorenson. The purpose of this letter is to notify you that on February 26, 2025, the Texas Agency, Texas Educational Agency, TEA, conducted a quarterly review of all the conservators and management teams appointed to oversee district operations throughout the state of Texas. The March 20th, 2025, I reviewed and approved the AY's final recommendation. This review was conducted in accordance with the requirements of the Texas Education Code 39A- correction 39A.003B. In addition to the review of the conservators and management teams, TE TEA conducted a review of all TEA monitors and board of managers placements. At this time, it is my decision to continue the appointment of the conservator and board of managers for the La Hoya Independent School

215District. Any questions that you may have should be addressed to Garrett Garrett Black in the Division of Governance Interventions. Uh, and then of course, his email address is attached. And again, this email come or this letter comes to us from TEA Steve Lechaloop, Deputy Commissioner of Grievance. So, thank you. I just thought I would read that out. board president, if I could just um draw everyone's attention to what is probably on the screen at this point. Thank you, Blanca, for putting it up. Um but as we celebrate our centennial year, um next Thursday, we invite the community to come out and celebrate with us a tree planting ceremony. Um, as we commemorate 100 years past, but also 100 years forward, um, we want to be able to have a memory. I mean, we I won't

216be here 100 years from now. Um, no matter how long I'm staying 100 years from now, I don't know how we won't be here. But, um, for generations to come, we want to leave something lasting. And so, um, many of the people before us planted trees, um, for really significant people, um, in the history of our district. And so, we want to do the same. And so, we invite community members to come out and join us for our centennial celebration for this month, for our tree planting ceremony here at central office at 11:00 a.m. So, wanted to bring everyone's attention to that. Thank you, Blanca, for putting this up and helping me put it together. I'm really grateful. Um and our campuses just so everyone knows um planted trees at every single campus um across

217the district this week um to commemorate our centennial as well. So thank you. Thank you Dr. Sorenson. Uh with your permission, would it be okay if we extended the invitation to Mr. Sila and Mr. Chapa who have been doing the presentations for the centennial. It' be kind of nice to have them here because I'd like to hear from them in 100 years from today. I'm just kidding. Absolutely. Uh, if there is no further business, do I have a motion to adjurnn? I move to adjourn this meeting at 11:32 p.m. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. All opposed. The meeting is adjourned. [Music]