Lamar CISD Board Meeting - September 21, 2021

there you go the board of trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district is called to order at 6 30 p.m this is the regular monthly board meeting being held on september 21st 2021 we have a quorum with all prep members present with the exception of mr hubenak please join me in a moment of silence as you feel appropriate okay please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance and the pledge to the texas flag i pledge allegiance which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice all right dr nivens are there any rewards or recognitions yes ma'am out of president we have uh recognition am i gonna do it okay i have uh miss lubwig come up and talk about the recognition that the finance department just recently received good evening the the district has received an award for our comprehensive annual financial report for last year that's a report that we submit to asbo asbo is a national organization of business professionals in school business and they when we submit our financial report to them they judge it against financial reporting standards and if we meet or exceed those standards then we're awarded the award of merit and um so that's basically what what the award stands for and it shows that um we take pride in a high level of reporting of our finances i'd also like to bring up michelle reynolds michelle actually does the heavy lifting on this report so i'd like for her to she doesn't want to come come take a bow a lot of people do um participate in accumulating the information and preparing this report but michelle stamp of approval goes on all of it so we're very proud of it well thank you all so much [Applause] are there any introductions yes ma'am madam president we have five introductions we'll have miss music come up good evening members of the board dr nivens so first of all we've got tamala allen and with tamala or her parents tamara allen tamil allen is an august 2003 graduate of the university of houston with a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary studies she received a master's degree in 2020 in educational leadership from the university of houston victoria and miss allen has 18 years of experience in his new assistant principal at hubenak elementary [Applause] thank you so much congratulations thank you congrats myself thank you [Laughter] you'll get it you're new you're new okay next up we've got pedro choppa pedro i know pedro's here okay maybe address it here uh qantas floyd okay richard guzman savannah reed savannah's here okay and savannah savannah's here today with her husband and her three children savannah reed is a 2007 graduate of texas a m university commerce with a bachelor's degree in special education in 2019 she earned a master's degree in educational administration from stephen f austin state university ms reed has 13 years of experience in education including three years of experience as a special education instructional facilitator and two years as a special education compliance coordinator savannah is the new director of special education and related services with her special ed department congratulations [Applause] okay i know he was here okay so that is who we had in attendance tonight thank you thank you uh miss vosik is there any public comment yes madam president if you wish to address the board you must fill out a card and submit submit it before the presiding officer calls the meeting to order while speakers generally have five minutes to address the board the presiding officer may establish an overall time limit for public comment and adjust the time allotted to each speaker when necessary to accommodate a large number of speakers however no speaker shall be given less than one minute all of this is in compliance with house bill 2840 each speaker tonight will have five minutes while the board values hearing from members of the public trustees may not respond to comments as they are prohibited by law from discussing or deciding any subject that is not on the board's publicly noticed agenda speakers having complaints against individual district employees or trustees may only address the board after filing a complaint form in the manner provided for in board policy dgba for employee complaints fng for student and parent complaints gf for public complaints the presiding officer or designee shall determine whether a speaker has filed a complaint according to policy any speakers who complain of individual district employees or trustees during public comment will be directed by the presiding officer to stop addressing the board and will refer the speaker to the appropriate complaint policy as you come forward please state your name rocio marin make him up do i start now okay so i wanted to talk tonight about lcisd bullying um texas education code section 37.0832 bullying is a single significant act or pattern by one or more students directed at another student and exploits an imbalance of power also involves engaging in written verbal electronic or physical means including cyber bullying that occurs off school property on august 19th my daughter and i were bullied and i informed the perpetrator to stop and in return she threatened us with physical violence and assaulted me by spitting at me i informed the principal and he failed and refused to take corrective action his words to me were i cannot tell her not to come to school on friday i showed up here and never heard anything back so i withdrew my daughter from randall high school myself still today i have no answer about her safety transfer i wasn't assured that my daughter would be safe at school i took matters in my own hands furthermore i am sure that if i had spit at any of you or a police officer i would have been arrested without question accountability without question your administrators who are not responsible to follow laws and policies about bullying are not being held accountable failure to hold people accountable is a message that you send saying that bullying is acceptable and tolerated because the people in charge will not be held accountable to make things worse those that are being bullied who must defend themselves will also be punished without proper reasoning i've had employees across the district here that work for lcisd contact me and let me know that they're being bullied at work and they are afraid to come forward bullying disrupts one pursuit of education it's almost as if our district encourages the wrong behavior in kids rather than fostering a safe environmental setting not every kid goes to school dreaming of becoming of usc competitor and the last thing i want to talk about is my daughter's best friend last year 10 months ago jayla alvarez which her mother is here with me today her name is asalia your failure to take corrective action and allowing jayla to be continuously bullied drove her to take her life at age of 14. her family was cyber bullied and as of today they are still bullying after her death those students are still at the school continuing to bully other kids and they laugh and make jokes saying that they've never gotten caught most despicable not one member of the board or administrator reached out to the family to offer their condolences and that is unexcusable thank you thank you our next speaker is good evening i am coming to you today speaking for myself while i am not presenting myself as a spokesman for educators of voice for teachers staff and administrators i have been assured by that my presence today is instead of hundreds of lcisd employees who have stood with the students and families of this district through one of the most difficult challenges any of us have faced in our lifetimes so i will take the liberty of utilizing we we have stood proud side by side colleagues peers and administrators and in front of our students those who even unwillingly unwittingly excuse me look to us for guidance and leadership we've been bolstered by the support the virtual parades the contactless electronic gift cards and even a simple thank you card we have been wounded by accusations of laziness selfishness and the ever popular indoctrination we often talk about the choices people make when it comes to careers what the requirements are to become a cpa the exact best route to take to become a veterinary assistant what paperwork and time commitment is necessary for getting your welding certification and many teachers know the answer to these questions because we spend part of our time working with students to discover that information and i guess that may lead to the one single piece of arrogant knowledge that most teachers carry with them even if they are the only ones to receive solace from it teachers are the pathway to all other professions many teachers however would tell you that their choice of profession had little to do with selection and more to do with calling and even though many of us could most of us would never consider leaving because regardless of the partisan bickering the character judgments and the exhausting juggling of procedures and protocols meetings and minutia we show up every day for the kids we have proven repeatedly over the past two years that we will do what is necessary to give those students every ounce of energy time and grace we can to make sure they are successful and when it seems that the world is against them what we have asked in return is to be kept safe we understand that this is a trying time to ask for mandates of any kind we've seen boards and citizens across the country shamed threatened and even stalked mass mandates bring anger and though vaccines have been a requirement for public private and post-secondary education for most of our lives to do so now would invite an ire unlike any that we have already witnessed in this very room so we go to work with a pandemic still roiling with few distancing protocols in place place and none mandated we show up every day with students some masked some not seeming to take turns on who is homesick we watch our colleagues stay home either sick with the virus or caring for children or family members who have become ill we wait as in some cases we are not sure when a fellow educator will return to our campus or indeed even leave the hospital there is only so much mitigation anyone is capable of of so many issues are out of our hands but as always we look to you to safeguard in every possible way fort bend isd katy spring branch isd pearland isd scifir isd and even hisd all of these districts have in place 10 days of covered leave should an employee come down with covit here in lcisd we are offered the opportunity to volunteer two of our own sick days to enter into a bank with the promise of six days should we get covet frankly a lottery to determine which outcome will be less painful because to put plainly we only lose in this scenario just prior to the pandemic a study came out that 40 percent of all americans are one paycheck away from property then we had 2020 and then the first three quarters of 2021. how many days did educators use to take care of family how many days have they left before this year began so we continue to show up every day in what is obviously one of the most dangerous unmitigated environments possible with what seems a hearty good luck we haven't to my knowledge ask for any of the bonuses surrounding districts have received we aren't demanding mandates have our backs we face enough on a daily basis without constantly having to worry about what we will do if we or a family member gets coveted and can't work and how many employees will make the choice to continue working because they can't afford to lose pay we simply ask that as we continue looking out for what is best for the students of lcisd you continue looking out for what is best for the staff of lcisd thank you for your time our next speaker is jason kalunga so a few months ago i asked the board to wait on determining the zoning for the new randall school and a professional said that we had one more month left but a request had to be made that request went on death year we went ahead and the board went ahead and accepted a map in the same board meeting it was said that the ses score would not affect the way we educate and it's now affecting the way we educate recently we've been in the news for our brand new school with students being afraid to go to school you just heard from a nice young lady talking about what happened to her friend's child this board approved a map that nobody had looked at and no professional had given advice on it was not on the agenda to approve that map it was not part of any meeting notes and a map that seemed to be pushed through because one community wanted to be pushed through with that being said we can't change the past what i'm asking you is to find a way to change the future i need each of y'all to reflect on the decision and understand how that decision affected those kids that are getting picked on and those kids that now had to change their education because i assumed that they got suspended but now i wonder because kids are getting picked on and the bullies are going free we need to ensure we're doing more research before we're voting on something that's going to change so many kids lives in the same board meeting i spoke and said the passion of that neighborhood we need that passion at randall they wanted to go to george ranch we needed that passion at randall the reason i talk about their passion is we needed their votes as well lcisd lost the opportunity to get a pool due to proposition proposition b not being approved if we would have waited one month for voting on that map that same group of people would have voted to get that proposition be because they would have been concerned that their kids would have been going to randall causing them to be at a disadvantage with no pool terry and randall have the least amount of caucasian kids and yet they're the ones that got to got hurt by proposition b and do not have a pool how are we going to be a diverse district in an equal opportunity district when we are not providing a safe and equal opportunity school for our students i understand that this meeting is not about zoning but i need to let everyone know that i don't want to see lcisd or randall in the news anymore and i'm sure you don't either unless it's for good things please understand your votes have consequences and when it comes to randall those vote those consequences are already showing in a negative way how are you going to help our community fix this situation thank you thank you our next speaker is curtis pickering i'd like to comment tonight about the recent hurricane on midday monday of last week school was preemptively canceled for tuesday due to the approaching storm i'd like to state my disappointment with this decision it has been clearly demonstrated during this past year that in-person learning is the top priority for our children's education therefore i was saddened to see the cancelling of in-person learning because of a mere threat of bad weather as residents of the houston area we are well accustomed to tropical storms and know very well how to deal with them based on what i read on the internet tropical storm nicholas presented very little threat to the health and safety of our community and particularly to our children i have not heard about anyone young or old dying from nicholas so cancelling school was a major overreaction even in larger storms children are rarely hurt or killed in our area and children who are hurt or killed usually have pre-existing conditions like asthma obesity or an inability to swim secondly if someone should be making decisions about the health and safety of their children it should be their parents and not school leadership if parents do not feel it's safe to send their kids to school in a storm they should have the option to keep them home but other parents should be allowed to take the risks that they deem appropriate to provide in-person learning for their kids next if the justification for canceling school was that power outages could lead to dark schools it would be an unsafe environment then i would again defer to parents parents have the option to provide their children with flashlights for their safety but that should be a parent's decision and finally i hope you realize that my comments about the storm were satire that cancelling school when an approaching storm was a proper decision to make whoever made that decision took the advice of outside experts like meteorologists and community leaders and decided that the health and safety was more important than in-person learning based on our location we will always be vulnerable to hurricanes but we continue to improve our infrastructure so the next storm is not as damaging as the last storm we improve drainage we build our houses higher we fix river banks like on the brazos and we raise the top level of levees we learn from past storms and make our communities safer for the next storm the culvert pandemic is like a storm that arrived in march 2020. it was the appropriate time to cancel in person learning for the health and safety of our community we are once again in the middle of a storm of coven this third wave but it is no longer necessary to cancel in-person education we've now had 18 months to learn about this disease and build back with safer schools however it pains me to see that lamar cisd has not learned from the first waves and our children are not safe in school experts like the centers for disease control and prevention and the american academy of pediatrics have written extensively about what is necessary for a safe school during covet this information is readily available and esser funds were allocated explicitly for this purpose but this district did not take the steps necessary to make our school safe for example improving ventilation or the mandates that were just mentioned i plead with you to listen to the experts and take the steps that will make our school safer right now every day feels like sending children off to school during a hurricane and hoping they make it home safely thank you thank you our next speaker is cindy harden good evening everyone my name is cindy harden tonight i'm here to say just a few things first i want to thank you guys for allowing us um to have maths optional this year um i know a lot of you have received a lot of grief for that but it is truly appreciated by us as parents i also want to share the things that i've heard from my kids and their friends this year their little lives feel a little bit more like normal childhood first of all i heard mom we get to play real tag where we can touch each other um my teacher has a big smile and that makes me really happy it's fun to eat lunch together i don't get headaches at recess this year we get equipment at pe we can actually bounce a real ball together we can play with other classes on playground and i just want to say thank you for allowing this normalcy to begin to seep back into our schools but i also just want to mention to you guys um as a pto member we would love to be able to get back into the school it's really important to the kids and the teachers they do need our help it's something that i've heard from several teachers that they're just really ready to be able to have that parent involvement again right now we're only able to be on campus after school hours and i just know that a lot of those teachers really need that extra support i've had i think four teachers email me about that just requesting to be able to do something they're sending home um projects for us to do for them outside of school hours but they really and the kids the kids like to see us up there as well so i just want to say thank you guys because i'm not sure y'all hear that enough i know it's a hard job and i just appreciate it that's all thank you our next speaker is rebecca clark hello um i'm rebecca clark i've told y'all before but i have four kiddos all of which well one was a grad of uh uh full sure high school oh i'm too short okay you can pull the little got it is that better don't you pull so um and i also want to just i understand that y'all's job is not easy that when dealing with people you're you're not going to please everybody and and i do recognize that it's uh let's just say i don't envy your position necessarily so i i also too echo uh thank you for um allowing some normalcy com come back into our kid's life i think that was absolute right decision and i hear nothing but accolades for you guys about that so what i want to address tonight um were some disturbing things i and many others i have several groups that i'm part of and many of them were here at that last meeting um and i just want to talk about them because i'd like to not see them happen again so um after an already long meeting you guys know there's a lot of people here speaking and we spent a lot of time listening y'all did and we all did and i know that y'all were probably way more tired than we were and didn't have the option to leave until everything was done but after that then we had at the 11th hour a four-page document entered into the board to discuss to read in a short period of time digest process and then adjudicate on okay i i really didn't even have words for that but that's what happened and after flipping back and forth through pages everybody up here flipping back and forth obvious confusion not quite understanding everything that was in the document and understandably so i mean when you okay i'll keep going um somebody expressed concern about this uh that they felt rushed and you don't make good decisions when you're rushed and so the the the desire was to table it or postpone it call special session whatever you need to do okay i don't know that was ignored or just everything continued and we watched um uh the expressed concerns of other board members about i mean explicit concerns were expressed okay and then after that was done um it just seemed like even though somebody would make a stance that was obviously there was did not feel comfortable with certain things there would be a pause and we'd sit and wait and then i felt like and others felt like manipulation was going on i mean it was um well what can we do to i mean is there anything we can do to make you feel better about it i mean that's that was just i don't know how that is productive um i also felt like it was a collaborative effort between a couple of people um so i don't we didn't um elect people to come up here and play games or um use coercive tactics or be rushed into making decisions i mean these decisions are concerning they're expressing our wishes as every parent and i know everybody has different ones but to represent our kids and to protect our kids and i don't feel like anybody should be rushed into decisions because they're never they're never wise when you're rushed okay um and i don't like seeing when people have made expressed concerns and then end up capitulating i don't know if just felt if you felt pressure or wanted to go home i mean i understand that but i i just didn't i didn't understand it and as did many others felt the same way so i was just shocked many others were shocked and as a a a concerned citizen a taxpayer a registered voter a parent of four children i would appreciate if there would be better procedural protocols on that type of a thing in the future if there's a document or something that people need to look over they need to have enough time to do it and at that time at the meeting during that short amount of time and after a long and arduous process already it was not the time and so i just want to bring it to the attention i don't know if you guys were aware of what was happening or if you just were ready to go home like i say and like i said i would understand that but i wanted to bring it to the attention because it was very noticeable and to me um it was not excusable so that's what i want to say thank you very much thank you that's all madam president right are there any board member reports mr welcome i'll tell about catholic charities held an event their headquarters is across the street from pink elementary it's a great organization that does a lot of good in the community they held a fundraiser recently which honored dr randall uh the former superintendent so i was invited and i went there and it was it was just a good evening of honoring him and and fundraising for that charity that was since our last meeting is your microphone we got a new we have a new microphone system i'm sorry i did i i was there too it was very nice and not only was it great for dr randall but it really highlighted the mimi george center that's right across from pink and what they do for our community which is good to see too and several of us were at the chamber of commerce central chamber of commerce breakfast on the bend where dr niven's headed out of the park again he comes in and he speaks and everyone enjoys listening to him so um we thank him again for being a shining star for our district and he was there last night at another meeting i just have him all over town for delta kappa gamma and the teachers there were very pleased to listen to you speak yes uh myself and a couple other board members went to the dedication for dr thomas randall high school and um to see the community come out and support dr randall from previous students to his classmates from back then to see the building it's a beautiful campus and there's some beautiful things going on at that campus um but to see that that torch kind of be that that torch has lit for so long be passed ceremonially passed over to dr nivids but um the event was great so yeah any other board member reports dr nevins and i got to tour a few of the elementaries that was very sweet they um they bring a lot of joy just getting to be around the little ones and lots of good things going on in our district so i enjoyed that time all right well there's one one more thing okay it's not really necessary report uh just something that um school board members we hear a lot of the negative talk and it's and a lot of this stuff is um stuff that's sometimes out of our our hands and not necessarily following the right chain of command um we get a lot of things that um and when we talk to these these people these citizens these concerned parents all that stuff and ask like well have you talked to the school yet have you gone to the principal have you talked to the teacher a lot of it's no we have not um a lot of people i'm seeing are going on a facebook page and just not going there first without going to the source and so as a school board trustee representing district 1 i would like to encourage our our residents our teachers our students our parents of students our constituents our taxpayers if we see something that needs to be addressed let's go to the source and then when we go to that source let's also come with a solution or an option to help out or something that we can support and say you know what hey i'll volunteer here i'll i'll i'll help do this and all that instead of getting the y'all are doing this wrong let's get well hey i would like to come come alongside that so i think i think this is our community this is everyone's this is everyone's school system so um i think i think we can all come to the table with solutions um and all that so that's it thank you i have one thing real quick real fast the fort bend county fair starts on friday so we have a lot of kids in our ffa programs that have worked really hard and will be showing their animals and um just kind of if you're interested go out there and check them out are you going to be in the parade no okay that's right that's right all right you can wave at the all right dr nivens yes ma'am uh i do have a report actually it is uh an honor to serve lamar cisd and as mr lambert said a ceremonial torch was passed from one of the greats uh to me and so i appreciate dr brown and all his leadership we uh again i've been on campuses and i make sure that i'm visible on campuses one is to make sure that our staff are getting the needs that they're getting their needs met so our principals are getting their needs met but also that our students have been taken care of and uh i just want to say how marveled i am at the resiliency of our young people and uh you know a lot of us haven't taken the time to really talk to the kids about the pandemic and how it's impacting them and when i see them in school every day and they're just doing what they do it is uh it reminds me that we can still learn a lot from our young people because they are happy to be there and they are just in school trying to learn the best they can and you know i often talk about you know it's the adults that uh have to make sure that we leave a world to our students that's worth taking and that's worth um moving forward and so as i've been talking uh to all of our community groups i've been issuing a challenge and the challenge is is that you know we're all tired of the pandemic and we're all tired of saying one more day one more month we're all tired of that we're tired of keep even though we're tired of pushing through and as we get tired of pushing through what we do is we lash out and uh you know we may have someone who uh is about to get evicted uh lost the paycheck lost the job uh maybe lost a loved one and then the bus route the morning bus route is late because we're 50 drivers short so the morning bus route is late and that person has all that anger built up and when the bus driver comes up that person lashes out at our bus drivers and it's not the bus driver's fault uh they don't mean to do that to the bus driver but that's just the last thing that happened and boom here we go and so i'm issuing a challenge to all the adults that as we uh are pushing through this and as we are tired uh let's be mindful of how we respond to one another let's be mindful of how we disagree because we can still disagree and be kind and gentle uh we can disagree and still be friends and still go to lunch and still have chocolate cake like i like to have we don't have to disagree and be hateful and because our students are watching us and i i would keep saying that because i want to make sure that they don't take that forward and assume that that is the appropriate way to respond when you disagree uh and again i know we're tired but we're gonna y'all we will drop we will thrive through this and so i appreciate the concerns i appreciate the praises and just know that we're we're gonna do the very best you can we can for your children because they're our children too i would like to pull um and be gold planning uh number ten correct no i i misspoke i mine is in the action not consent i i want to have a discussion i guess i have to pull it to do it um 10 a1 i'm sorry that's that's that's action that's information zach stop dude you got me all confused man right right right thank you action and info and info in action come on now second page okay zach so agenda i'm sorry do we need to pull queue because there's we don't no if we don't have enough no so if you don't have a nomination you don't have to make a nomination okay so we would just include it in the consent agenda just without a without a name okay so moving on to action that there's no consent agenda okay so on the action items i would like to pull uh in goal planning b uh number ten so that that will be discussed automatically uh where mr welch is wanting to discuss and are we discussing b9 board operating procedures thank you um okay so we will pull any other action items to be pulled okay so then i will read let's see so the current consent agenda will be 8 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q and action items a nine a b one two three four five six seven and eight uh do i have a motion to approve the con current consent agenda and action items with the sorry new verbiage with the exception of b9 and 10 on the action items that's right okay mr welch makes a motion a second missed answer seconds any discussion okay hearing none i call for the vote all in favor raise your hand and say hi okay and unopposed motion carries okay so we will now read the rel the resolutions beginning on page 33 whereas national character counts week is celebrated across the u.s on october 17th through 23rd 2021 whereas the well-being of the community the state and the nation requires that our young people become involved caring citizens with good character and whereas the public good is advanced when young people are taught the importance of good character and the positive effects that good character can have in personal relationships in school and in the workplace and whereas lamar cisd recognizes the need and has taken steps to integrate the values of trustworthiness respect responsibility fairness caring and citizenship into teaching activities therefore be it resolved that the trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district declare october 17th through 23rd 2021 as character counts week in the lamar consolidated independent school district the next is on page 34. whereas national custodial worker recognition day is celebrated throughout the united states on october 2nd 2021 and whereas this day recognizes the importance of a clean well-kept learning environment and whereas custodial staff members are valuable members of the educational team on our campuses and whereas the assistance of custodial staff members is particularly important and the daily activities and operations of a school district and whereas they serve our educational community by providing their talent and efforts in supporting students and staff therefore be it resolved that the trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district declares september 22nd through october 1st 2021 as custodial worker recognition week and the lamar consolidated independent school district the next one is whereas the human resources department is instrumental in recruiting selecting resourcing and retaining quality staff in support of providing an excellent education for all students and whereas hr plays a key role in fostering satisfaction and loyalty among employees by allowing for professional growth and development and whereas hr monitors and manages current and future workforce trends organizational culture legal and legislative trends and ethical and social responsibilities and whereas hr is an important part of district leadership and is vital to the overall productivity and efficiency of the district's workforce and whereas it is a a valued and respected department that sustains the district's most important asset its people therefore be it resolved at the trustees lamar cisd school district declared october the 13th 2001 as human resources day in lcisd whereas the abuse of drugs tobacco and alcohol has reached epidemic stages in our nation and whereas visible unified efforts at prevention education are the best ways to reduce demand for illegal drugs and whereas october 23rd through the 31st 2021 has been declared nationwide as red ribbon week and whereas our community will join with others throughout the nation to demonstrate its commitment to a healthy drug-free lifestyle by wearing and displaying red ribbons and participating in drug-free awareness activities during this week-long observance and whereas the lamar consolidated independent school district is committed to a drug-free community and has committed its efforts and resources to drug abuse prevention education therefore the board of trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district declares october 23rd through the 31st 2021 as red ribbon week in the lamar consolidated independent school district and encourages the district staff students parents businesses and community members to support and participate in drug prevention activities all right the next one whereas texas safe schools week is held in conjunction with america's safe schools week on october 17-23 2021 and whereas schools make substantial contributions to the future of america and to the development of our nation's young people as knowledgeable responsible and productive citizens and whereas excellence in education is dependent on safe secure and peaceful school settings and whereas it is the responsibility of all citizens to enhance the learning experiences of young people by helping to ensure fair and effective discipline promote good citizenship and generally make schools safe and secure and whereas all leaders especially those in education law enforcement government and business should eagerly collaborate with each other to focus public attention on school safety and identify develop and promote innovative answers to these critical issues and whereas the observance of safe schools week will substantially promote efforts to provide lamar cic schools with positive and safe learning climates therefore be it resolved the trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district declare october 17 through 23rd 23rd 2021 as safe schools week in lamar consolidated independent school district whereas school bus safety week is celebrated throughout the united states during the week of october 18th through 22nd 2021 and whereas school bus safety week recognizes the importance of transporting students safely to and from school and school activities and whereas transportation staff members are valuable members of the educational team and whereas the expert assistance of transportation staff members is especially important in the activities and operations of a school district and whereas those staff members are diligent in safely transporting our students and staff therefore be it resolved that the trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district declare october 18th through 22nd 2021 as school bus safety week in the lamar consolidated independence school district whereas school lunch week is celebrated throughout the united states during the week of october 11 through october 15 2021 whereas the national school lunch program has served our nation admirably for more than 60 years through advanced practices and nutrition education and whereas school lunch week recognizes the importance of a nutritious school lunch program and whereas child nutrition staff members are a valuable part of our school's educational teams and whereas the assistance of child nutrition staff members is vital in the daily activities and operations of a school district and whereas they serve our educational community by providing nourishment for students and staff therefore be it resolved that the trustees of the lamar consolidated independent school district declare october 11th through 15 2021 as school lunch week in the lamar consolidated independent school district all right lots of resolutions thank okay so we will begin with the pooled action items first one is 9b 9 which is the discussion of board operating procedures actually we'll go ahead and in order to allow all of the trustees to be present and participate in this item i move that we table this item until for for the board operating procedures until further notice i have a second miss bronzelle seconds any discussion all right all in favor say aye raise your hand all right thank you none oppose motion to this table or adam's table okay the next one is 9b10 mr lambert um i wanted a table oh sorry yeah pull this just for the opportunity to have a cliff note summary of this explained to the community so that um our everyone watching in here can understand fully the what this is and what this is about because bonds are just a good educational piece for everyone i don't think to discuss it yeah so uh we've been able to or we have a very good opportunity right now to save some money on our outstanding bonds by refinancing them so i have uh terrell palmer here to give the cliff note version and tell you all how much we can save happy to do that um as you know we've had numerous bond issues over time and you have a 2012 a 2013 and a 2016 that were issued obviously several years ago when interest rates were much higher than they are right now the the average rate on those bonds is uh 4.57 and so relatively you know that is a much higher rate than what we can do right now as a matter of fact we have estimated that the new rate on the bonds would be 2.25 and so that's uh almost cutting the interest rate in half on on all of these bonds the difference in that the the difference between those two rates translates into debt service savings and we're expecting to save as much as 45 million dollars with this refinancing so it's a it's an excellent opportunity one of the one of the calculations that we do on these refundings is divide the amount of savings by the amount of bonds that we're issuing and uh five percent is considered to be a significant amount of savings with this transaction we're hoping to save 25 so five times our minimum amount of savings so i think it's an excellent opportunity and we're certainly very happy to bring it to you yeah thank you i just that hearing that out loud in a meeting is that's a that's a pretty pretty pretty great thing right there yes that really is great yes it is you know we you know i've been you know and jonathan i are both have been in this business for um you know a long time let's say over 30 years and i i do believe that this refunding will be the most successful refunding that i've ever had in my 30 years to get almost 25 savings will be remarkable to really the district and its taxpayers unfortunately it doesn't really turn into immediately into dollars that you can go and build a new elementary school or build a new uh you know facility but it does create capacity for that next bond election to be able to have that capacity where you're almost having a you know free bonds that can be issued within the current tax rate so again i think it's an excellent opportunity we should be able to uh to lock these uh interest rates in in in uh just in in october and to be able to close in november thank you guys that's excellent thank you that's being good good stewards of our tax dollars right there so thank you okay so i think that is it um so i'm going to make a motion yes do i have a motion to consider i need to read that do i consider approval of an order authorizing the issuance of lamar consolidated independent school district unlimited tax refunding bonds which may be issued in one or more series approving the preparation of an official statement and enacting other provisions provisions relating there to do i have a motion i'll make that motion mr lambert makes a motion mr hunt seconds is there any discussion all in favor raise your hand say aye aye aye aye none opposed motion carries okay so we are now on to the information items um we have some presentations on our information items yes ma'am we do we do first we have an update on our virtual instruction by dr mussage good evening madam president members of the board dr nivins i'm going to present with to you this evening an update on virtual instruction uh that we launched on september 13th originally if you look at let me find my clicker here it began on monday september 13th and originally we had 805 students that were identified in the k through 6 grade programming program programming for the uh k through 5 ends on january 18 or excuse me january 18th which is the end of the second nine week period as well as sixth grade programming ends on december 17th which is the end of the first semester as you begin to look at the program we have a combination of synchronous and asynchronous learning that is happening at this point and it is led by lcisd teachers it is also following our lcisd scope and sequence and if you remember the last time we talked about virtual instruction because we were starting it so light we laid we were going to compact the curriculum to ensure that we were covering anything that children would have missed and we have done so as we begin to look at a parent orientation also was launched on sept thursday september 9th and we had close to 400 parents in attendance via zoom for virtual instruction the weekly routine of what this looks like is it is a monday through thursday program it is synchronous with the teacher with and classmates on zoom and so that's whole group that would be small group with student conferencing and tutorials there's also asynchronous activities that are occurring throughout the week friday is an assigned asynchronous day for all of our kids so that our teachers can plan be provided professional development reach out to parents and provide any possible needed tutorials as well as we move through this programming the teachers are also teamed one teacher who is teaching ela and social studies and one teacher who is teaching math and science one of the lessons that we have learned from covid is that it takes a lot to provide virtual instruction and we felt it was beneficial for our teachers to be able to focus on a couple of subjects at one time and so they're team teaching so you look at the schedule and you have an am session and then you have a pm session so that you have a group a with elar and social studies and math and science group b you can see how that session first session runs from 7 30 to 10 45 then there's lunch teachers conference period happens directly after that and then the afternoon session occurs at that point as well in the afternoon many of you have heard about senate bill 15. so we wanted to provide you some information about really and try to articulate what that guideline is there's still a lot of information being provided there's a lot of disconnect in the guidelines as well and qualifications to get the funding and so currently right now we are committed to esser funding uh in funding our virtual instruction we're continuing to look obviously at all of the specific details so when you look at it was passed by the state legislature and then on september 16th it was signed by the governor the law states that leas may receive full funding for local remote learning delivered via synchronous instruction asynchronous instruction and or both also says that the number of students in remote instruction cannot be more than 10 of the entire district's enrollment what does it allow for when you look for it allows for the establishment of additional criteria remember we did not cite anything as far as additional criteria in regard to passing performance we did say that uil activities would not be offered in this program and or school and clubs but when you look here it says that we are able to establish at that point when the law passed we could establish additional criteria says that we can also remote remove a student from remote learning if we are providing a process to ensure that each student and parent has sufficient notice and opportunity to provide input before the removal and so remember we talked about what were those points and so looking at the progress report time continuing to communicate with the parent trying to support the child continuing to talk to the parent and at some point the next grading period might be a point where we have a conversation we need to pull the kid from the from the programming as we look at the requirement for ada funding and so the overall campus or district has to have a c or higher to even be eligible for the funding you have to have at least one of the star tested areas that would be involved in programming which we do families must have an on-campus option within the school district and we do that as well we have to administer the assessments to students enrolled in local remote learning in the same manner as we would with on-campus students and that would be our map testing and our universal screeners or our benchmarks or assessments we still need to do that with our virtual students as well as we look at it says that we provide student opportunities to participate in any extracurricular activities sponsored by the lea or i uil and in this case it's really down to uil academics because that is what is offered at the elementary and sixth grade does not have sports in the uil competition area meet needs of and comply with all federal and state laws and policy with respect to students with disabilities and english language learners or emergent learn english learners eligibility for funding if a student received remote instruction for the majority of time last year so it was about 88 days so when you look at that these are those students that you're not able to receive funding for and so those include they must have achieved satisfactory achievement or higher on each star assessment administered so if they did not receive a satisfactory achievement you could not pick up funding for that had a number of unexcused absences that is 10 percent of fewer out of all instructional days so 10 of those total days they could not have missed and earned a c or higher in the foundation curriculum so if they failed classes and they were in majority instructional virtual instruction last year you would not be able to pick up that funding if a student did not receive a majority of the student's instructional time in the school year so if this doesn't qualify for them then this criteria would not apply so when we look at before i move into that so again this would not apply for those kids that did not spend a majority of the time when you look at where we were with 805 students at this point and i want to tell you that we have launched at first we accepted 975 kids by the time we launched the program on september 13th it was 805 parent 805 students that wanted to participate in the program parents wanted their children a lot of parents wanted their children at school and were pulling them from the program and saying that they were having a productive time and felt safe in the in on campus learning then as we continue to launch after the orientation and then kids began to participate in virtual learning we also saw a dip of kids pulling from the program and staying and remaining on campus learning and our current number currently right now is 702 and we feel pretty uh we feel that that's not going to shift much and that they will be committed until that second nine week period or the first semester so you have an idea of what that would have looked like with senate bill 15. currently right now with that 805 we're at about 27 of those kids that would not qualify for 805. when you look at 702 it's approximately 29 so the other numbers didn't hit and didn't adjust drastically but it was a two percent jump when you look at a total across the board so there was 203 out of the 702 that would not qualify for funding when we look at 702. eligibility for the current year so if you didn't meet the criteria of being in virtual instruction then the only way you could enroll would be you'd be enrolled in the district have access to in-person services at the district and have fewer than 10 unexcused absences while enrolled in remote instruction over a six-month period and tea is also going to help us to ensure that our data is correct which we believe our data is correct we always believe our data is correct but we are going to double check to make sure so not all of these kids would receive funding from sb 115. some of the frequently asked questions that we're hearing can we enroll our student in virtual learning and we put a hard and fast at this point a stop on that and a lot of that is due to staffing and the adjustment and disruption to the on-campus environment if we were to add any additional kids at this point it would disrupt the on-campus environment because that's where the teachers are coming from right now which is where our majority of our kids are the other aspect can my child participate in school clubs uil and school events originally we restricted this but sb415 allows for participation and so different clubs um they would be able to participate and or uil academics if it's offered during this programming time so do you have any questions for 3 000 kids right and so we only had 975 that applied and so we were able to honor a lot of those acceptances and so when you began to look at it then as they were on campuses a lot of parents started dropping out of the program and then 5 passed and then they put in some restrictions on accessing the funds and at this point we're still trying to ascertain what the law is actually stating but currently right now we're projecting we're under that a thousand mark for that first part of programming and so it would not be that 10.5 million uh cost that we were anticipating and i'm going to go to my colleague jill to reiterate that three and a half million that's what i was going to ask of the of the original 10 million we were discussing how much of that do you just ballpark estimate that we're going to be using of esser funds on this program three million okay so that leaves a lot more money for the district to use towards for programming absolutely over the next two or three years three years over the next three years that's her uh one esther esser three one s or three two and s or two part one no no it's not so i'm going to sorry i had i have a few questions you know me it's going to try and be a visual learner on this okay so um how many students approximately or is a teacher responsible for is it just vary from grade to grade um i would say that when you begin to look at we're at that one to 30 kind of ratio in both afternoons some are smaller than that some are higher but it ranges from 20 to 30 kids that they are responsible for are you finding more the lower elementary to higher elementary or more sixth graders or is it just across the board that you see in there the last time i saw the numbers i would say it's pretty consistent across the other board i would say a lot of the sixth graders have uh requested to go back to campuses um the teachers are they being housed in their home schools or are you pushing putting them somewhere where they can collaborate together um because you're saying they're team teaching they are starting they're all at their home campuses they're assigned campuses and that's where they're teaching because the tools that are available on that campus and teaching materials and such on fridays they are going to randall high school in a shell space where they're gathering together and my colleague here dr jones back here is the acting administrator for the virtual instruction program and he and his team of digital learning are providing professional development planning opportunities for the teachers to collaborate with one another so that they're ready for the next week and how many teachers approximately are doing the virtual teaching i believe we have 14 15. correct chad 16. okay 16 teachers one of those is uh special ed support good thank you i appreciate it yes ma'am they are working very hard and uh we're very proud of the work that they are doing thank you very much thank you all right next we'll have our delinquent tax collections report uh about a month or so ago the board asked uh did we just have an annual report and so i'll turn over to our cfo ms dudwig thank you tonight we have we have with us mr chip sutton uh of the linebarger firm he will provide the report that's provide that's uh prepared by he and his staff and that report will include information on delinquent tax collections for the last year litigation bank bank excuse me bankruptcy cases tax deferrals and payment agreements as well as an update on our property property value study appeals and they've saved us a lot of money or provided additional state funds for us through that process so chip if you want to introduce your staff this is cynthia reed she's one of the attorneys that works with me here for lamar uh she does houzz out of our richmond office here in larsey isd uh and i asked her to be here tonight so you could meet her i i tend to come back i tend to come by myself but i thought well it might be good for you to see some of the other people that work with work with me good evening board dr nivens it's a pleasure and honor to be here tonight this is a report as y'all many of y'all know that we do on an annual basis we did our last report in 2020 and so i'm gonna go through i need to put my glasses on so i apologize i'm gonna go through this report and it covers a lot of different items some of which joe mentioned it's just a cover page that some of y'all have seen in the past this is this first part um let me start over the pandemic has been very difficult for collections as you might expect and so uh i'm going to do something different than i have done in previous reports and i'm going to compare the last this this reports uh june 1 2020 june yeah july 1 2020 through june 30 2021. and uh and so i'm going to compare that with the previous report so you all can see the effect that the pandemic has had first is lunigation you'll see the suits filed 81 435 thousand dollars 13 judgments taken 37 000 total accounts put for sale three uh three accounts for about thirty nine hundred dollars that's significantly less than our litigation program in previous years and i mean significantly less uh there's several reasons for that uh the courts being closed for a while tax sales not being held for a while um restrictions on what what we could file suit on and what we you know what we could pro you know go forward on uh but i will i'm glad to tell the board that that that has changed uh we we are back to as i talked to my staff and preparing this report we're back to 95 percent of what we were before the pandemic so i think when we do this report in another year or in six months if you would like me to i'm i'm and you know the the time period for the reporting is up to y'all not to me you're going to see these numbers be substantially substantially more uh but i think you'll be pleased when i get to the uh the collections in a minute even though the the litigation is depressed the bankruptcy cases are kind of an interesting uh you have currently 40 cases for 122 000 that's 1.8 of your tax rule just to compare uh prior to the pandemic that's 11 more cases than in 2020 and 44 000 more in bankruptcy that's substantial the deferrals are even more drastic you'll see deferrals we have 226 deferrals that's 51 more deferrals and uh 370 000 more in deferral now some of you all may not know i'm sure most of y'all do a deferral is where over 65 individual or a disabled individual who has owns his their home as a homestead can go to the appraisal district and file an application with the appraisal district to prevent all collection activities going forward until they either pass away or they sell the property and they no longer own it as their homestead so obviously that that shuts us down and the important thing of that not only the dollar amount 1.6 million uh but you can see it's 24 percent of your total lingua tax rule so 24 percent of your delinquent tax roll we can't touch i will say even though that number is high i have some entities in fort bend county they're at 61 so i i think y'all are still still doing good even though that's a pretty high number uh payment agreements uh are a little bit this is kind of concerning to me but you know we don't have a lot of control over it uh there's 211 payment agreements about 270 000 uh which make up about 5.4 percent of your lingua tax roll that's down from pre pandemic one would think that that would be up but that there was ten more uh pre-pandemic and uh but it is up in dollar amount for about about 3 600 so it's kind of a mixed bag yes can you describe what a payment agreement is sure sure uh there's two types uh we we want to work with the tax office your tax tax collector and we want to work with the taxpayer we do not want to file suit and if we file suit we don't want to have to prosecute that suit it doesn't benefit anyone it doesn't benefit y'all it doesn't benefit us it doesn't benefit the taxpayer and so if a taxpayer approaches us and say says i want to make an agreement to pay my taxes out over time then we will work with that taxpayer and and see if we can reach an agreement for them to pay a portion of the limit tax they have due each month uh the statutory period that we are i mean that we can go out is 36 months i will tell you that we generally don't go out 36 months except in hardship cases because a 36 month payment agreement that's covering three years and you can have additional taxes turn up turned over and it can turn into a really mess but we do we do consider you know hardship issues the tax office handles homestead payment agreements and we handle all other payment agreements and the reason the tax office handles homestead payment agreements is that pursuant to the legislature and state law homestead payment agreements are mandatory and so uh it it would be it'd probably be unfair to the taxpayer for a taxpayer to come to our office and say i want to do a payment agreement on on my property and we say always well what can you pay on a monthly basis and we may not agree to that but we always do ask them that because it's not for us because we don't know their finances and so let's say they say 500 a month and we say okay great and we signed a payment for 500 a month they still have to go to rosenberg because we don't represent rosenberg and and so if we do that then it's denying them their right to get a payment agreement which violates state law so that's how that that but but we work with them any way we can and uh and it kind of depresses me and concerns me that during the pandemic which i think that would be up that they're down slightly so that because we do push it okay the mailings we like i said with anything on the pandemic we kind of scaled back on a lot of the mailings we generally do nine mailings a year but we we did not do mailings where we were threatening foreclosure and threatening harsh remedies we just did not think that was proper during that time period threatened to take somebody's home away from them and all that and so that's the reason for the three mailings so far since this tax year began july 1 2021 we've already had three mailings july august and september we're scheduled to have the remaining mailings in october december january february march april and june so we will go we're back on schedule to have nine mainlands a year the mailings begin out begin in july with kind of informational educational mailings most people don't know if they haven't been linked before that that y'all have a tax lien on their property i mean there is a tax lien on the property that can be foreclosed so it's like do you know you have a tax lien then then basically another one is saying you know if you want to make arrangements to pay your taxes please come see us and then they move on from there to get a little bit more i mean we always are courteous but we do threaten suit and we do notify them that their property can be sold and so that's that's why the mailings this past 12 months is a little less one thing i added this time uh that i didn't last time because i thought you'll find it interesting um a number of legislative sessions ago uh the the legislature passed a 3311 of the tax code and that allowed for the early turnover or business personal property business personal property is the most difficult type of property to collect because it's assessed well it gets it not assessed it the it as well it's assessed as of january 1 of the tax year so 2021 was january 20 2021 well as we know most businesses a lot of businesses there are new businesses by the time we get that tax that business is out of business and we're never going to collect that tax unless we can file suit against the owner so the legislature let it be turned over to us on april april of the year instead of july and so that gives us from april to june to collect on that new tax year and so this last april through june we collected 182 businesses for just enter just over 148 thousand dollars due to y'all and since that since that 3311 has been instituted by the legislature and we've been enacted uh by the different entities we've seen the current delinquencies of bpp really taken care of i mean you're always going to have situations where you know business goes out of business or they're in bankruptcy or whatever may be the case but really the delinquencies on bpp for that three-month turnover three-month turnover uh has really significantly decreased the outstanding delinquencies each year and so i think that's been a really good change by the legislature i'm going to go to the next slide i'm going to go back to this one okay this is kind of the brass tax um so this is the collections uh for the well it goes back i think 10 years uh but you'll see the top line is uh the collections which is what y'all see and saw in y'all's bank account the 2.8 million dollars the collection percentage and then the line the the column to the right is the adjusted collections that's what we actually brought in um and so i've started adding that that column 3.9 almost because a lot of some of the collections with that between 3.9 and 2.8 those collect the collection the difference are paid out in refunds uh and and that type of thing and so y'all never see it but i wanted i want my entities and especially y'all to see you know we brought in 2.3.9 you just didn't see 3.9 so now you'll see it's down uh from from uh the year before and the percentages are down uh but i will say if you add the the business person property that i just mentioned to that 3.9 you come out to be four point four point million four million so i'm so we're basically in you know in line with previous years yes sir can you explain what you mean by right refunds and the discrepancy between the two numbers yeah the refunds basically if uh when when uh they're a taxpayer files a a protest with the appraisal district and either the president's church decides or arb decides that the protest is valid uh and uh and they and the taxpayers have paid the taxes then then the taxes that they have paid has to be refunded to the tax taxpayer and that has to be done out of current collections and they're the only so after july 1 there are no current collections between july 1 and november because all the collections that are coming into the tax office are collections we brought in and so that's pretty much the the difference there um in in the uh we've seen huge refunds for y'all and for other entities in fort bend county for the last numerous years and it's just because of the growth be honest with you one other question when you collect on delinquent accounts do you also typically recoup legal fees your costs it's uh our well let me start off with one thing it's a good question uh i we're at no cost to y'all y'all don't pay us a penny the cost or anything we're our costs are set by the legislature so what happens is when july 1 comes about or april 1 depending on business version of property our we have a 20 percentage that's added to the debt of the taxpayer so if if we go and collect this account then you all get y'alls interest with one percent per per month we all get your levy balance interest at one percent per month and your 12 penalty then we get the 20 fee so so only if we collect do we get that fee so so we don't add anything on and and if we let's say we uh follow suit uh on an account or whatever it may be and we incur 250 in title costs or whatever other costs we incur out of pocket if we don't collect on that account we don't look to you off to pay that i mean we it's either a bad debt or we just keep on looking for the tax period to pay it so so that that's the thing it's truly added so it's just add-on i'm just curious when you've got say somebody who's ten thousand dollars and uh they paid five of it how is that money allocated is it twenty percent goes to y'all and then how does it work it's just prorated just on five thousand y'all get exactly what y'all would get if it was ten thousand you don't get the whole ten thousand obviously but sure they look at the five thousand you all get y'all's five that levy balance for the five thousand y'all get y'all's 12 penalty the interest whatever is accrued and we get our 20 on that 5000 okay yeah and it i mean and it's just a partial payment basically and that happens quite a bit it really does quite a bit um so i'll go back unless there's any other questions on this um i do expect this percentage to jump back up uh to where it was before uh it's just been it's just been an interesting time i'm really pleased and with with you all that that our collection stayed as good as they did because i was really i thought we were going off a cliff to be quite honest with you so i thought that was pretty good and this is just a graph for five years because we want to make it larger because it was so small the other day um just showing you what that that that uh that previous slide the the blue is y'all's delinquent balance the yellow is y'all's collections the actual thing you saw in the bank account and then the green is the adjusted so it's just those two columns and the alls delinquencies y'all will see you will see that your delinquencies have increased uh which would be expected uh in a pandemic just like everything else uh 6.8 i believe 6.9 i do expect that to go down and i do expect y'all's collections uh the what you when i report to you next time your collections to be much higher because there's so much more to collect so okay one more thing and then definitely questions uh one of the other services we provide to the district is property value studies and uh and basically uh this is basically as you all know property property values are used in state funding formula and uh excuse me and our property value studies try to lower the share of education born by the district and a large amount is borne by the state and we do this um each year this is the 20 2020 property value study appeal we reduced when my team reduced y'all's value by 150 million uh from the comp comptroller's preliminary preliminary value estimate that means that y'all get approximately 1.136 million dollars more in state aid for that 20 20 21 funding year uh since the past 20 years to show you how i was impressed that 1.136 to show you how large that is compared to previous years from 20 to 2020 we reduced joe's value 727 million and increased by a 6.645 million so 1.136 million this year this past year in 6.645 over 20 years so i thought that was really impressive uh one thing i want to point out is that this really helps the taxpayer because uh because what what you're looking at is that the the state has to pay y'all more money and that takes a burden off the taxpayer and you know and uh and so i think that's an important thing to look at and that's one of the things you know one of the reasons that that this is such a good tool especially here because we do this every year and and we've had great great results for you all and the other thing i want to point out is that uh that we do this for free this is a we consider this a value-added service and we've done this for free for y'all for as long as i've been here i've been here 14 years and uh and my understanding what the fee would be on this if a fee was charged is about eight percent to 10 percent of the added you know state aid so basically 100 113 114 thousand dollars in attorney's fees so so that's one of our value that is value-added services and we will continue to do this i have a team our value property value study department and that's all they do i mean i i don't have anything to do with this but that's all they do and they do it without me asking they look at the comptroller's reports and they and they go forward and and do this work so any questions all right well thank you so very much thank you all very much thank you nice to meet you good evening thank you all right so next we have uh mr junty with our bond update all right good evening board and dr nivens uh bond updates first i wanted to define one term that we use as we use our construction speak and that's pay applications we talk about that wanted to put that into context it's really an invoice so when we have work that's done in the district by general contractor that pay application goes to the architects the architects of record on that project they review it and make sure that the work has been completed that then goes to our facilities and planning department they review it as well make sure it's been completed and completed well and then they sign off on it and send it to accounting for payment in the month of august we had 70 pay applications that were approved for a total of 12 million eight hundred and forty five thousand seven hundred and twenty two dollars and forty four cents i wanted to show you a couple projects the one that's winding down and that is our transportation fuel tank replacement uh what we did is we added this new fuel station here uh it's a much taller uh fuel island for our vehicles and also these are new above ground tanks we removed the ones that were below the ground and replace them with above-ground tanks obviously that's better for the environment next uh one of our elementaries that we have broken ground on phelan elementary school this is with the structural slab down we're actually starting to erect steel at that project and it is on schedule any questions on our bond updates thank you very much all right all right board next we have uh house bill 547 homeschooling ul activities and so as mr bates come to the market all right thank you dr newton's good evening board of trustees tonight's presentation is an information item that provides an overview of texas house bill 547 that was passed this past summer in the texas uh 87th legislative session this past summer so house bill 547 provides an opportunity for all home school students in the state of texas to be able to participate in ul act uil activities in their residing zoning districts and they can participate in the areas of academics athletics and as well as music the bill required all participating schools to be able to make a decision in the state of texas for all participating schools however in a multi-high school district like lamar consolidated isd that decision had to be a comprehensive one-size-fits-all decision so it could not been a could not have been made by a campus by campus basis decision all school districts had to also notify their district executive committee which is known as the dec for the document here those terms used interchangeably as well as the uil throughout the uil portal and that decision had to be made on august 1st of 2021 this school year the ui status the uil legislative council also emitted some ur uil rules to make sure that there was basically rules put in place for students that are going to participate for home schools uh students if a district chose to allow them to participate in uil and they tried to marry those with some of the rules that are already participating for current public school students who participate in uio so some of those some of those decisions as you can see on the left on the screen are it allowed for students to it requires students to be able to once again first live reside in their uh home zone area so a student could not go from one side of the school district and then participate in another school district they'd have to participate in the school that's that they're going to go to uh in the various sections of the ui constitution they must also of course cover things such as being able to transfer for athletic purposes it requires recruiting so it does it does prohibit of course coaches from being able to recruit from across the entire district and things like that it also still has the age limit requirement in as well which of course is age of 19. it also required if any student was going to actually move within the district within the 12 months that requirement had to go through the district executive committee as well also as you can see known as the dec it also established academic eligibility which means that students must also have make a proficiency or meet proficiency on a nationally recognized assessment test so things such as the itbs or stanford nine it does not automatically require students to be but have to be able to take the start test however so students in a home school setting still must also be able to meet professionally on whatever standardized test that that program requires them to take and it also must provide it provides documentation for each student to it provides an opportunity for eastern they must uh show that they are they're great eligible so i think no pass no play uh they must still also show that they are actually meeting the standard and uh basically passing their courses as well now there are two things that the district had to consider uh in order for um two major decisions that they had to kind of consider in making the decision on what they were going to allow homeschool students to be able to participate and one of those was how can district ensure that students receive only 60 minutes of activity which is equivalent to our 60 minutes that's required by ul uh within a school day they can of course participate outside of school but inside a school hour they can only receive 60 minutes of activity and the other one was actually the kind of a little uh unclear uh guidelines that are set by you and as far as how it impact redistricting redistricting and alignment which of course this is the redistricting alignment year for uh all the schools in the state of texas this year so for a little bit so for the fact of the things that uh uil and of course some of these was a little unclear and how would current impact currently and future uh ramifications for the school district of course lcisd this school year chose not to allow home students to participate in uil now that doesn't mean that they still do not have an opportunity to participate in uil but what it does now it it kind of now allows them to be able to choose any charter schools that's within with that's within our zone as far as being able to participate in ual so um i have a chart uh that's up here on the left that i think that makes kind of puts numbers makes the story stand out a little bit more so out of the 1027 school districts that are in the state of texas only 21 school districts in the state elected for students for schools for homeschool students to be able to participate in uil uh many of our school districts all of many of our schools all of them are 5a with exceptional george ranch which is a sixth state school district so out of the 5 and 6a school districts as you see on this chart right here um no as you can see none of them are actually in our area so none of the schools within our immediate area have elected for any of our home school students to be able to participate in uil activities starting any questions thank you oh well mr roach oh okay that you're thinking sorry all right i do i do have a question do you know why there are so few schools that have opted into this well once again i think a lot of it has to do with a little bit of ambiguity ambiguity of the rules that have how it will impact school districts kind of more so in the future so even though we made the decision for it to be no this year there will still be opportunities more than likely for a school to steal once the rules a little bit more defined for us to make a clear decision on whether we want to participate there or not so i'll give you a perfect example uh and it's one that is there's always kind of loopholes but one ramification for any school district could be such as if you have students to transfer now to a home school program there's an also a possibility that the school district could lose funding for that because the student is no longer enrolled as a student in sports school as far as uil so home school students are not considered still enrolled in a school district when they come when they if they're allowed to participate so it's kind of a going back and forth model if we now if it wants it being a benefit for students to now unenroll from the school district but they can still participate with a school district at uil that's some of the things that many of the districts are also looking as well do you know when the deadline will be for next year then i do not know they have not released that information just yet all right thank you great question um last year when we were doing virtual there were students that were being virtually taught and they did participate in uil correct was it a headache was it hard to manage as far as students being able to participate in athletics and well yeah do go back and forth because they would not be on campus then have to come on campus then leave campus is that what they did because like football that football's fourth period and then they'd have to come back for the afternoon yes ma'am it definitely presented some challenges based on the class period of that athletic period as well as if they were going to be out of school for the day for a tournament or leaving early to get to a contest and for our coaches to keep an eye on those students when it came to academic eligibility and conduct it just took away a little bit from the team atmosphere of having those students from first period through the rest of the day some of the things that we were traditionally used to being able to do we had to change our way of thinking a little bit but it definitely presented some challenges and the students would have to provide their own transportation correct yes ma'am okay i can see why some school districts might not want to do it the first year i want to see how everything plays out okay thank you for your report i have a question um and so you said in october we're supposed to get some more clarification on what this looks like and okay on what the rules will be and how they apply to home school students that are going to participate in public schools yes ma'am okay so we'll have more information going forward so that'll be helpful yes ma'am yeah okay all right thank you so much thank you all right boys so next we have parent involvement update and so as we've been discussing about our protocol as we've been hearing and so this is going to be a report by dr monsig about how our parents can be involved on the campuses this is an updated information item in regard to an action future action item for a resolution for a parent involvement week for lamar cisd so in october uh we are in the october meeting we are asking for a resolution for national our for parent involvement week for november 15 through the 19th we wanted to cite communicate with you guys that in 2021 22 our coveted protocols protocols do allow for visitors before and after school as well as visiting your student at campus you also are able to help in the library and some are the other areas where your students are not where students are not present but we're not going to keep a parent from their child we have opportunities where our parents at the elementary level are actually going to lunch now there are schedules for that so that we can control the number of people but we are allowing parents into schools so with that spirit in mind we are asking for the board of trustees to consider approval of a resolution in october proclaiming november 15th through the 19th is parent involvement week in lamar cisd thus supporting our parent engagement proclaiming this week as parent involvement week supports lamar cisd's belief that parent involvement is valued and does have a positive impact on student achievement as you begin to look at the special events that are occurring we encourage these to happen at the campuses during this week and these can include the following in person and or some virtually they can host a parent night involving students and their families in a learning event such as a reading night or math night or steam night there are book fairs that usually have a theme and teachers and staff dress up and students dress up in an identified theme and then a lot of title one campuses are having parent meetings that review student performance and review the parent compact and so that you could see some pictures of some of the things that we have done in the past you have right over here a parent that is working some activities with her uh his child and then a kind of a maker space kind of piece at the beginning in the middle what was happening at a parent night as well as you can see the theme on the right-hand side so some ways that our schools have shown [Music] events during this week and then in the month of december we can provide a report on some of the activities that were presented that were done in that month of november do you have any questions yeah there was a boy scout group that contacted me and they they said basically the same thing that the uh parents said tonight that the pto and there are some restrictions and on the activities okay is that is that accurate is that how are the boy scout i don't know i don't know exactly what they might be doing in the school i think they might be visiting classes to find kids that are interested is that is that kind of thing allowed that would not be allowed because we're not allowing visitors to come in when it's not their child okay so that that that's where i wanted to set up and i wanted to confirm that was that part of the policy we passed because i remember reading that policy a lot and i don't remember there being restrictions on visitors in our schools except for when the county coveted color meter was read we would screen for covet in the front office that's the only restriction so if i'm wrong on that refresh my memory according to what i have seen and what i understand in the coveted protocols is that we allow visitors before school and after school because we're not compelling our children to be there before school or after school and then if we're allowing kids or parents to come in that are going to be around other kids the kids are having to be there com it's compulsory attendance and so for those particular children and their safety we're not allowing the parents to be near anybody else but their own child now before school after school and pto functions at night and such where things are not compelled our parents are not necessarily compelled to be there we are allowing those events to where boy scouts and other programs can promote um their activities and encourage kids to join in those activities i'm trying to get to the point of they're not allowed because the covet policy we passed said that the board can change that and not the administration it has to have board approval so i'm trying to understand the policy that we passed august the 5th and then we revisited on august the 19th is that restricting visitors in our schools am i not no i got it okay so the the original policy and the and the uh the practice that we passed on the 19th so we never restricted visitors what we did say was if we were at a certain level then visitors would be screened but in that vein we said that parents could only have access to their own child and visitors would come in so everyone be able to come in before after school during the school day we that we were not allowing others to have access to other people's children and so if they wanted to come in and work in the work room work in the library where there were no other kids if the pta wanted to come in and want to do those things then they could do that as long as there were no other students around but we did not want to grant access to individuals to children that were not their own i understand that i'm i'm this is a fine point that has this affecting volunteerism in our school so that's why i'm i'm trying to truly understand what did the administration change that because i don't remember it being in our policy i remember the screening at the front office if it's on red i don't remember anything else in there so i'm trying to i'm my memory is failing we didn't change it that was the rule from the beginning okay and we've had discussions on it and that they could be because we wanted them to be in there and assist the teachers and so that was going to be my question as she mentioned tonight too like you said the pto it was my understanding that you just couldn't go hang out with other people's kids but you could go in the work room and make copies and laminate and all these things so it's still supporting the teachers but also respecting the other parents and not being around their children and like the same thing when we had the lunch tables we said you know they we would have this designated area and like at the elementary schools we visited they're staggering when parents can come in like this grade level so that you have don't have everybody in there at once so so and that's when we're on red from the county perspective all the time all the time the red is just screening them versus because the initial if i remember correctly the initial was at the three different color codes and we changed it just to red they would get screened so yeah okay thanks because i believe that before it was yellow orange or red and we changed it just for red but i read from the beginning that it was before and after school and lunch with your own child and then you can support the teachers in those areas right and if a parent needed to come in during a teacher's break time or conference time and be in her room as long as no other children are in there that's the possibility too but we're just trying to restrict parents being around other children is that correct yes ma'am that's correct is that does that answer your point though i know you're saying is it okay any other questions all right thank you all right so um now we go to our future action items yes turn it over to you all right because our future action adams and so uh we will be as brief as possible with these next ones and so we will have dr monstas come back and she will discuss our district and campus improvement plans it is that time again future action item of october uh 2021 will be considering approval of the 2021-2023 our district improvement plan will be a two-year plan in our 2021-22 campus improvement plans the district improvement plan and campus improvement plan as you guys know are developed reviewed and revised annually for the purpose of improving student performance the dip in the sip will target and address student needs and will contain a comprehensive needs assessment that will identify priority areas and needs of improvement it will align to the lcisd five-year strategic plan and will respond to the collective district and campus performance data i.e math performance that you saw in the district was quite low there will be articulated action steps that we will take to improve in that you also saw that our junior high campuses had struggled both in math and reading you would see identified areas in which we would be addressing that as well these plans are living documents and will receive the necessary revisions throughout the year to address continually evolving campus and student needs especially as they continue to access the data from map testing and progress reports and report cards in the tenants etc i wanted to show you an example of what the district are the campus improvement plans will look like last year we piloted the plan for learning and so all of our campuses will be using plan for learning as well as our district improvement plan we'll also be using the plan for learning and so you will see the goal identified the performance objective is the smart objective and then you will see the action steps which are called strategies and then you see the identification of the different formative assessments that will occur throughout the year with the campuses on where they are at with those particular actions when you look at our last year's previous district improvement plan it was more of a word document where you had certain objectives in the superintendent's smart goals and then we had a number of strategies what you are going to see this year as we transition to plan for learning is going for the district improvement plan being a two-year plan and then the goals are the strategic priorities with the different objectives are outlined and you will see smart goals from the departments with different activities that are going to support those different objectives of the super of this strategic plan one of the things we wanted to ensure is that you had plenty of time to be able to review the information we received that feedback from you guys last year and so you guys will receive the sips for beginning to review on 10-1 and then on 10 6 you will receive the district improvement plan for review and then you will it will come up for considering of approval on october 19th where that will be an action item thank you do you have any questions will these be sent to us are you going to have a place online that we can review them we actually have a place online i think is going to be a choice um that we have a place that you can just review all of them so that you don't have to go into a flash drive which would be probably easy access but of course if you want the paper coffee copy uh we would be glad to oblige if if that was needed so we'll be notified when these are available for us to start reviewing yes ma'am but the dates will stay the same whether it's digital or whether it's paper copy okay any other questions thank you very much all right board next we have a discussion of purchase of charter bus services so next month we will be asking you to approve the purchase of charter bus services this process establishes an annual contract for charter bus transportation services that would be for things such as field trips abandoned orchestra trips athletics and other lamar cisd approved activities as requested this award is designed as an annual contract with with the opportunity for four renewals that's if the vendor and the district agree with to all the terms right now we're under a contract with eight awarded vendors our rfp number 152021rl actually requested vendors to submit proposals that include the trip pricing safety proto produ profiles fleet availability bus tracking capabilities insurance cleaning and covered safety protocols the athletics performing and visual arts and transportation departments are working with purchasing on bid specifications and award recommendations the purchasing department notified 16 vendors of this opportunity as well as advertised according to the state of texas regulations we we notified 16 vendors starting with eight current vendors also some under a google search and then vendors that registered up at the lamar cisd website the evaluation criteria will include such things as pricing services offered the company safety records experience with similar services as we're requesting and other standard qualifications and capabilities the proposals are due by september the 28th we expect a few fewer proposals this year due to the pandemic related issues and limited travel over the last year i'd be happy to entertain any questions you might have when we use charter buses is that because of the length or mileage of a trip or when we use that or the lcisd bus is that uh many times it is the length of the trip uh robert would you anything to add no no typically that's that's all it is so that just depends upon where they're going and what they're doing how long they're going to be gone right okay my question was regard is it due to the shortage or is it due to this but that all right next board we'll turn over to mr junti for a discussion of amendment of rfp for our hva hvac full maintenance agreement okay thank you the district has an hvac maintenance contract with texas air systems when we add additional campuses we come back to the board to get approval to add those to our contract to amend the contract so we would like to add thomas and randall high school harry wright jr high and then the development center the network operations center that's not a new area there were two hvac units there that were under a separate contract that technology was managing and we'd like to take that over as district-wide so that's why that's added as well and that is at a cost of an additional cost of 24 300 per year added to the contract yes ma'am we need it working well any questions thank you very much all right so these next items i think mr junte has the next few items i'm hit next is the discussion of architr architect contract for elementary school 33 this would be to approve vlk architects on a repeat design for elementary school 33 and this campus location will be intended to provide relief for hubenak and adolphus elementary schools i want to say i've been contacted a lot and i know mr hunt has too that human act those folks have they really need some relief over there and these parents are going to be thrilled to hear that so i've said my staff will actually see me do a happy dance they have and it will it probably won't be pretty but it'll be joyful when we do that uh so yes sir we're working hard on that any other questions those were some of the elementary schools that you know in person you can really feel the need yes they have a great attitude about it but i know they're ready they do absolutely well unfortunately for hubenak i know they've had adolph was supposed to help and then bentley was supposed to help they just keep growing over here they're making do but they're i know but it's 33 i'm trying to remember 32 and 31. oh well i do i just like to take the time you know whenever i can i always celebrate our staff so i want to celebrate our principal mr b at hubenak because they are about 1300 students and they have a lot of portables out there and they name them the husky huts i believe and so what they've done is they've really taken the situation and they've made the they take they've taken the lemons they made lemonade and so uh as we walked the campus we saw a lot of positive attitudes from staff and students even though i think that campus is holding twice the number that it should but it's all about the attitude and it's all about the leadership so i just want to tell the principal really really appreciate his leadership and uh in that mindset on that campus absolutely yes next is an rfp uh for construction manager at risk for both terry high school and george junior high school renovations and additions phases one and phases two we have here is a list that encompasses both phases for each of the schools for terry high school this will encompass replacing the roof repairing leaks in the auditorium new water lines and water fountains re-keying the interior upgrading the hvac system additional lighting in the library and upgrade the electrical distribution in the campus for george junior high school we have a wall to remove in the ag shop for better visibility renovate the choir classroom replace campus wide flooring replace case work in the classrooms replace exterior door in the athletic area upgrade to led lighting replace the sanitary lines in the kitchen and the boys locker room replace the roof and replace the serving line doors so pretty substantial list for both of those campuses any questions on that rfq yes all of these were identified as level one priorities priority ones uh in the evaluation that went before the bond committee for 2020. checking these off the list checking them off the list all right thank you so they are all bond uh projects yes ma'am this is completely bond 2020 funded all right next is a sanitary sewer line investigation for campbell elementary what we're doing we'll have a third party come in and investigate those sanitary sewer lines it's a first step in addressing some leveling issues we're seeing some things with the campus that leads us to believe that may be an issue so we go with the third party that will then provide us with the report and some recommendations that then we can then look at making necessary repairs to the campus and so boy we bring that forward because when we start talking about investigating sewer lines they can become pretty expensive especially when you start putting cameras and smoke tests and all these things that you have to do and lift stations becomes very expensive and so we just want to give you a heads up because as we start going through uh you know it just depends on what what we find what we find what we find and that's why we give the board right we'll get the report and then we'll start generating we need to find out what what if anything is there we're not there any questions next is a discussion of the texas accessibility standards review and expense inspection for bernard clifton terrell junior elementary school this is a report that we run on every single construction project that we need to make sure that anything we do when we build a campus or renovate that it meets current ada standards and this law by law this has to be conducted for all of our projects it's really a two-part project they do an extensive plan review as we're doing our design development uh and and construction documents they review those and then once the campus or or area is renovated they come back through and do a site visit to make sure that we're in compliance with all those areas and if we're not then you have some time to comply so it's a two-part process any questions thank you next is a discussion of schematic design for the lamar cisd police station so what have we been doing we're working facilities and planning is working with our lamar cisd police leadership we've had some meetings and discussions we have also taken our first field trip to a couple other isd police departments in the area to take a look at that what they have that that may work for us get some ideas some best practices and they've been very productive we've had a lot of good exchange with those we currently we visited the one in scifire and we visited the one in katy so far we're going to take a look at a couple more and this gives you an idea of where it's going to be located we currently own this 16 acres of land and you can see this is the trailer stadium for orientation and some of our buildings here along avenue i this shows you this is just an uh a rough draft showing you an approximate 15 000 square foot police station on that piece of property and the way that it's been oriented that it could be enlarged at that time again this parking is just here kind of for orientation that would not be part of this project mr gente on on that last slide uh it says future expansion would that just be like a shell space that would then be utilized for additional space for the police station what we would do is we would orient the there's a way to orient the building so that your hallways and other access and egress it's easy to add on to the building by having those hallways run in the right direction and have different entry points and also the way that you construct your roof and other structures is that you can more easily add onto a building what we see is police departments over over time as the district gets larger they add more officers they need more space and they go through expansion scifire is on their third expansion so it does take place the main thing when i've had conversations with these chiefs is build it big build it big from the start so 15 000 square feet is a pretty good sized building to begin with uh so again we're looking at how best to utilize that space and then one other question where it says future parking that wouldn't all be necessary for the police station would that also be for like trailer stadium and again the future parking is just there for reference it's it's not anything to do with the police department project that's just a possibility of later on that that area could be used for parking that would be advantageous for other events at the stadium but that's again the parking is a that's just for reference sake it's not a part of the police department project yeah got it thank you i apologize no no no thank you any other questions all right thank you chief all right moving on we have some technology items we have a district-wide ipad refresh that will be coming to you we have about 8 100 ipads that currently can no longer receive ios updates once that occurs and they can't be updated they then become a security risk to the district and we pull them out of use so they'll be was we say refreshed or replaced also we'll have to purchase additional cases because in the new ones they're changing the configuration of the model just slightly so the old case won't work so uh so the approximate cost of each of those new ipads is 395 dollars and the new case is about thirty dollars any questions yes uh we talk about how there's companies that can buy back these all the ipads from us yeah we have an idea of what each ipad will we do we do we do have a a company that we provide those for that they take them off our hands and that the average is about 75 to 90 dollars per ipad that we sell back to them okay and that money is brought back into technology to to uh just into like a general operating order it doesn't go into reimbursing this fee it just goes back into the tech it goes back in technology we use it for install of other items yeah it stays in the technology area another another uh project that i've asked the team to investigate is looking at our policy and laws to see how can we support families that don't have access to devices or internet and so if we are going to sell these back or you know sell them back to a company and get 75 or 90 would it be more feasible for us to give those to families that are in need and so we're investigating that now to see if that will be a possibility and if families need it and uh they can use it then we want to be able to provide those services to our families and so we're investigating that possibility i absolutely love that right there i suppose but if they can't be secure right they wouldn't be secure but they wouldn't be on our network right yeah so it's solely for families that don't have access um to a device at that price and so if it's something they can use and uh they can be able to use it at home for some kind of instructional purposes we always talk about instruction and academic success so we want to be able to do that for our families if we can thank you for looking into that absolutely we're exploring it and and again to your point the level of security needed at someone's home is not when we have uh student information that we need to guard and those types of of things uh it the the level of security in our network is different than a home network perfect thank you any other questions all right a discussion of our network fiber connections uh what we're looking to do as we continue to create a stronger network uh is a second connection a redundant connection i call it between rosenberg and fosher data centers will be installed increasing reliability part of the project we have six campuses that will use the brazos river for orientation they're on the wrong side of the river so we're going to move that those campus connections once we do this to our full shirt knock and that will also up crease their their reliability we have some issues with the fiber that feeds those campuses they get cut during construction projects sometimes they get damaged by animals chewing through them those types of things that if we have them pointed in the other direction that will help us so everything we're looking for is a more reliable network of more uptime and that the campuses that will be moved to the filter uh knockout are there any questions thank you all right uh discussion of wireless heat map surveys we have recording devices on all of our buses and when there's an issue and the campus or facility requests video from a bus due to some incident that may have occurred right now the transportation group has to go out and physically pull that and download that information off of that bus what this will do is it will put wireless access points in our uh yes oh i'm sorry i'm on the wrong i'm ahead of myself heat map surveys thank you sir uh heat map surveys uh we are looking to move from wireless access points that have they roughly serve about 25 devices and these will service 60 so they'll increase our our capabilities greatly uh and as we move to online testing in 2023 we need to be able to have connectivity where we're not overloading our access points so what this allows us to do is do a heat map so that when we move to those access points we have a better idea where to place them so that we have good overlap and that points aren't overloaded questions sorry about that i got ahead of myself let's talk about transportation now so as i said we we when we have an issue that we need to pull information off of the the bus cameras right now they have to go out and get it right now what what our plan is is to install these wireless access points that as the buses pull back into either the fulcher or the rosenberg transportation center that information will be wirelessly downloaded to servers there so then when there is an issue where they need to pull it it's already sitting on the server and it will be at both our transportation centers any questions on that one any questions thank you very much you're done for the future consent or do i okay no my turn so um are there any future consent so we're on page 3 number 12 any future consent agenda items that you would like to have pulled from the future consent agenda list nope oh okay everybody good all right so it is 8 40. we're adjourning to closed session pursuant to texas government code section five one point zero seven one five five one point zero seven two five five one point zero seven four and five five one point zero eight two the open meetings act to discuss personnel land acquisition or consultation with our attorney we are now back in open session it is thank you 10 15 pm we have a quorum with the exception of mr hubenak are there any motions to be made none are there any future agenda items that you would like to add i don't know if this is agenda or information information but isn't it time that we started naming some of the schools from the 2020 bond what is that process i don't know how to start that process i have not done that yet yeah we can bring that to the october meeting okay because if we're already talking about 33 and 34 it'd be a lot easier if we had a name on it right right so yeah we'll have uh well chris's team bring that the process and everything to the october meeting okay all right all right thank you any other future agenda items okay are there any upcoming meetings and or events i know of one that several of you are going to flying to dallas going to the tosytasby conference in dallas that'll be nice um okay well the meeting is adjourned it is 10 16 pm

Channel: Lamar CISD

Views: 675

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Lamar CISD, LCISD

Id: cRutEG_zOAw

Length: 131min 48sec (7908 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 21 2021