Lamar consolidated independent school district is called to order at 6:31 p.m. This is the
regular monthly board meeting being held on october 21st, 2025. We have a quorum with
seven members present. Please join me in a moment of silence to observe as you feel
appropriate.
please stand and join me for the pledge of allegiance and the pledge to
the texas flag led by sreshta alla shete, a sixth grader at billstein middle school. I
pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which
it stands one nation under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the
texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the texas one state under god, one and indivisible. Great
job. Okay, the next item on the agenda is recognitions and awards. Good evening. Board
president, trustees, doctor nivens, the lamar community and those who have joined us in
person or virtually tonight. This evening we're celebrating several talented students for both regional and statewide honors. We're also recognizing one of our campuses that was
recently honored as part of a newly launched statewide program carrying on the tradition of the national blue ribbon schools program. And we have a special announcement
that's bittersweet for our district, but also quite exciting. So first up, we have
a young scholar from adolphus elementary, third grader everleigh fitch, who was recently selected as a national math star, a prestigious award honored for only 57 exceptional
students across texas each year. Come on in, everleigh. Everleigh, please stand right
here and let me tell them all about you. Okay, so the national math stars organization supports high performing math students, beginning in elementary school
and as a national math star, everleigh will receive more than $100,000 in educational
support over the next ten years, including ongoing mentorship, advanced coursework
opportunities, stem summer camps, and other resources. Launched in 2023, national math
stars identifies mathematically extraordinary students in second and third grade and
provides long term, individualized support to help them make the most of their talents. Applicants complete a multi-stage evaluation process, and we're excited to have a
brand new national math scholar right here in lamar isd. And on behalf of the district, will
extend a big congratulations to everleigh, her family, and the staff of adolphus who have
nurtured her gifts.
congratulations, everleigh. Ladies and gentlemen. Next up, it is with great pride and
excitement that we recognize some outstanding young leaders in agriculture from across our district. Please join us in celebrating the incredible achievements of students from
george ranch, ffa, lamar consolidated high school, ffa, terry ffa, ffa, and foster ffa
chapters who proudly represented their schools and communities by earning championship titles for their livestock projects at this year's fort bend county fair
from lamar consolidated high school. Hayden zeitz junior ffa champion junior senior
showmanship. From terry high school callie steinfeld, ffa overall reserve champion, steer.
from george ranch high school emerson greening, junior ffa grand champion roberts. And
avery lopez, ffa grand champion replacement heifer. From foster high school carly heyen, ffa
reserve champion, senior showmanship. And mckenna live, ffa reserve grand champion
roasters and champion senior showmanship. From randall high school. Mia peterson, ffa
reserve champion, british breed scramble heifer. And mia gutierrez, ffa champion,
british breed scramble heifer. Congratulations to all our champions. Your hard work,
perseverance and passion have made us incredibly proud. We're going to get together one big
group photo.
congratulations, students! Next up, this evening we turn to a special
recognition in honor of meyer elementary school, which was just one of 28 texas schools
recently named part of the inaugural class of the lone star ribbon schools by the
state of texas. This designation comes in recognition of each school's outstanding academic performance and progress in closing achievement gaps. The
lone star ribbon schools program represents a continuation of the national blue ribbon schools program, which transitioned this year from the us department of
education to the administration of individual states. National blue ribbon school nominations
have traditionally been made by individual state departments of education and the newly
launched lone ribbon. Lone star ribbon schools program is intended to carry on the same
high standards of excellence and achievement as a previous national award. Since 1982, the
us department of ed has recognized only about 7000 schools across the country
under this program, which is an indicator of the award's rigorous standards. The new
lone star ribbon program carries on this tradition, while being designed to even more strongly reflect the priorities and values of local schools and the communities
they serve. The texas commission of education, mr. Mike morath personally nominated lamar isd's meyer elementary school for this prestigious honor. Come on in,
principal rochelle horton, congratulations to meyer elementary. And congratulations
to your entire campus on this tremendous honor.
thank you, miss horton. And finally, tonight we celebrate news that
is both happy and sad for lamar cisd. Sad because we're about to lose one of our dedicated
district leaders and a true champion for students and educators. But happy because earlier this month, the garland isd board of trustees named our very own deputy superintendent
alfonzo bates as the lone finalist to join garland isd as the district's new
superintendent of schools. Come on up. Mr. Bates has served with incredible passion and
heart here in lamar cisd since 2021, overseeing the human resource department during an
extraordinary time of growth that brought not just new students and families to our
district, but along with them, the need for a growing workforce of certified teachers, paraprofessionals, experienced administrators, and support staff of all kinds. His
leadership, goodwill, and quiet sense of humor will be missed here in lamar cisd. And at the
same time, we join together in celebrating this new chapter in his career and wish him every
success in his new role in garland isd. Thank.
we don't want to take care of him. Right? Congratulations, mr. Bates.
doctor nivens, that concludes the recognitions and awards at this time. Good evening, doctor
nivens, board of trustees. Madam president, we are proud to introduce our new members of
our police department to you this evening, each bringing a unique experience, their unique experience and dedication to public service to the lamar community. First, we have
officer major johnson, officer major johnson is a 1992 graduate of the houston police
academy and a veteran of the united states army. Officer johnson joins us from the city
of houston police department, bringing 28 years of police experience to lamar cisd
officer johnson. Next, we have officer keegan logan. Officer logan holds a bachelor of
business management from the grand canyon university. He is a united states army veteran and has served the citizens of rosenberg, texas for the past two years. As a member of the
rosenberg police department, he served on patrol. Officer logan joins us with two years of experience and is happy to be with us here at lamar cisd. The next officer, bear with me is
officer christos stavropoulos. He joins the lamar cisd police department, bringing five years
of law enforcement experience. He previously served at the university of houston campus
police and comes to us. And he's happy to be here to serve the lamar community. And last
and certainly not least, is officer paul zelaya. Paul zelaya has served the united
states for 14 years, including six years in the united states marine corps and eight years as
an active duty member in the united states army. He brings nine years of law enforcement experience to us, most recently serving with the harris county sheriff's office, assigned to
the patrol division board of trustees. Madam president, officer zelaya. Okay, for a
photo. You're hiding.
and this concludes our introductions for lamar cisd police department.
okay. We will now have board member reports and shout outs. Trustees, please keep your
comments to 1 to 2 minutes. So anyone who would like to go first. I'll go first. Okay.
thing I want to mention is today we had a school dedication. First of all, I
want to say, mr. Bates, I'm going to miss you. I really am going to miss you. So
congratulations to you. But anyway, we had a school dedication today, haygood elementary. And afterwards, I was able to stop by the pumpkin patch for only about 20 minutes.
but I just want to give a shout out to our special education department and all the staff
around the district that helped out with this, because it looked like there was some lots
of joy happening and a lot of good memories happening with the parents and with the students. And I saw different employees from all across the district helping out, and
everybody just seemed to be having a really good time. So congratulations to tiffany mathis. Police chief garcia was there and so many others. So a great job, everybody. I know we
have about 6000 staff and all of them go above and beyond, but I want to give a shout out
to I don't even know their names, but I was driving down richmond parkway and I was
passing passing hutchinson elementary, and I saw a busy crosswalk, and it was a little
bit further down from the school. And I saw our staff. I don't know if they were
teachers or whoever they were, but they were outside making sure these students were getting home safely. So I just thought it was it was to see that it was after school, after
hours, and we had staff at a crosswalk not near the school. These teachers were making sure
that these babies were getting to where they needed to be safe. So to the staff at hutchinson,
and I know all of our staff schools have teachers that are helping out in other ways, those other duties as assigned. So but specifically for people I saw at hutchinson that I
couldn't stop and get their names, school zone, all that kind of stuff. I'll go. A few
weeks ago, some of us went to powell point in kendleton, and I just want to recognize the
staff there because their dedication showed the second we walked through the door and the
population that they deal with, and they've made it a community and a family, and the work that
they're doing does not go unnoticed. So just thank you to everyone at powell point and
for welcoming us into their building so warmly. Okay. Well, I have to start the shout outs
tonight with the foster high school marching band and guard because you all the foster band
is winning. They've had an incredible season advancing to finals in not one but two bands
of america competitions, taking first place in class three a earning outstanding general
effect and bringing home sweepstakes at u.I.l region 13. They'll be competing this
weekend at the area competition with a chance to advance to state, and we are cheering them
on. Their show on the flip side is packed with heart, energy and incredible talent. These
students have worked so hard and it truly shows every time they take the field. A huge
congratulations to our amazing students, directors and parents and we are so proud of all of
you! If you'd like to support them, they have three upcoming spirit nights where a portion
of the sales go right back to the program. October 22nd at las mananitas. November 12th at
crumble. November 18th at pete terry's. Continuing on foster. Our foster athletes have also
been doing amazing things this season. The falcon football team brought home the brawl on
the brazos win with a great team effort. The tennis team remains undefeated and are back
to back district champions, also earning the bi district title. The lady falcons golf
team opened their season by breaking their own school record in their very first tournament, and the cross country continues to make us proud. The girls earned the
seventh straight district championship and the boys finished second, with both
teams advancing to regionals. And a very special shout out to our foster water polo teams,
both district and area champions, who will be competing at the state
semifinals this friday. We are all cheering you on and wishing you the very best of luck as
you continue your incredible season. I also want to recognize chris mcguire with
mcguire sports photography. His incredible work captures our the pride of our students and
it is second to none. He continues to bring our athletes stories to life through his
photos. So thank you chris for showcasing our students passion and pride so beautifully.
another shout out to the fulshear charger theater. Thank you so much for the kind
invitation. It was a lovely gesture. My daughter and I attended your production of
sweet surrender and we absolutely loved it. The cast was incredible. Their timing,
humor and stage presence kept the audience engaged from start to finish and it is such a fun,
talented group of students. So congratulations on an outstanding performance. And
finally, I want to give a special shout out to doctor nivens and our lamar cisd
community relations team for all of their hard work getting out in the community and
helping share information about the bond, they've truly been everywhere at events, campuses
and community gatherings, working tirelessly to answer questions and connect with
families. And that being said, just a quick reminder. Early voting began monday and runs
through friday, with election day on tuesday, november 4th. Thank you to everyone who's
helping keep our community informed and engaged. It's a great time to be a part of
lamar cisd. Thank you. All right, well, since you're mentioning all the foster
winning teams, I just want to mention that randall lions continue their winning ways.
barely won their last football game. But but oh my gosh one of the. What I'm particularly
impressed about not not not just with the football team but but especially the team since
is that coach randall is producing winners on and off the field. They're impressive,
even if it was a losing season. So long as our athletes perform well and are good citizens, I
think that's that's then their winning team that makes them winners. So I just want to
shout out to coach randall because he works real hard on that. And and he sets a real
good example. And so I like it. Anytime our athletes are winners both on and off the
field. So I also want to echo trustee master's remarks with respect to the good job and the
hard work that superintendent nivens and your team, the entire team have worked so hard
on. I remember that as we were walking, trustee henderson and I were walking along with
doctor nivens, and during the parade, I overheard someone, one of the spectators say, I've
never heard of. I've never seen a superintendent walk the entire distance during the parade. So thank you for that. And and so, so and with all due respect to doctor, to your
predecessor. So one last thing. I always get particularly excited anytime I can talk
about tax relief. And so I just want to reiterate that that early voting is taking place
right now. I think it's very important that we all understand and get the
information. With respect to all the propositions. I really want to emphasize proposition
number 11, which provides tax relief to anyone, any homeowner age 65 and above, okay. It
provides us the opportunity to increase our exemption from 140,000 to $200,000. Okay.
that's tax relief on your school district taxes. If you need more information, I'm sure
that the tax appraisal district would be happy to provide additional information. Most importantly, please get out and exercise your right to vote. Proposition 13 does the same
thing. Anyone younger than age 65 who's a homeowner and has filed a tax exemption has the
opportunity to vote for an increase an exemption from 100,000 to 140,000. Okay, so
that's a lot of tax relief on your school district taxes. So I encourage everybody once
again get out and vote early. Voting has already commenced. And of course there's still
it's not too late to get information regarding our school bond. There's some great
information that's that's on the website. In my capacity as trustee, I just encourage you
to get the facts. And that's the extent of what I want to state now at this moment. But
most importantly, please exercise your right to vote. Thank you. Okay. And then I
have a quick one. I just wanted to give a shout out to mr. Green, miss kanga and miss
medina. We received an update last week where we have a student who is blind and they
were able to help. The student plays an instrument but is not able to do the marching band
for obvious reasons. So they were able to help him learn how to operate the led screen props
on the field, and they he competed with the band in the competition. So I just thought
the teamwork was it was really great that they were able to help him reach his goal. So.
okay, well, first I have to shout out my daughter and the reading charms dance team. This
is the second night that I've missed for in the last two weeks for a board thing. So I
promised I would shout her out and I hope that they had a great performance, but I really
also just had more of a thank you and an acknowledgment to doctor nivens and the bond
office and the communications team, who I mean, I think you all have been to every inch of
every 385mi■!s of this district the last two months, getting the word out about the bond.
like miss master said, y'all have worked tirelessly. And not only that, but this week we are
opening or dedicating five new schools. And they are. They have a massive job to do with
that. So just great job y'all. Please go vote. And with that, are there any committee reports?
yes. You okay? The school health advisory council met on october the 8th. Shack provided
a presentation over new legislative laws that went into place this year and how they
are implemented along with board policies. Shack also presented the bond propositions
and answered questions related to each proposition to provide information on what was
included in each. They also celebrated the following items. Huggins elementary was awarded
a national award as america's healthiest school, and heb and outdoors tomorrow awarded
huggins elementary, lindsay elementary, and long elementary $1,000 heb outdoor education
grants. So congratulations to both of them. Thank you. And this year we started a we've
started a number of new committees, but this year we started a sped committee. So it
makes up of myself of president hansell and trustee henderson here. So we like she mentioned
we don't have powerpoint just so we can get eyes on the work that's taking place out there.
so that was our first official sped committee. And secretary box went with us as well. So
I'm like positions. So but it was our first our first official meeting was going and
seeing the work that all of our staff are doing out at powerpoint. Doctor nivens is
there a superintendent's report? Yes, ma'am. Madam president, I want to start out by saying
that this bond does not come with a tax rate increase. It does not. There is no tax rate
increase. So I will get that out of the way. I will say that, you know, lamar is a is is one
of the highest performing school districts in the state of texas. And you don't become
you don't become that way without phenomenal people working in a phenomenal team.
and so I always want to, you know, sit here and appreciate the team because they're the
ones doing the real work. But I want to take a special time to give a shout out to, to to mr.
bates. And I'm going to miss you severely, sir. Y'all. Mr. Bates challenges this this
entire district, and he has made us become better. And so I just want to say
congratulations to you. I know we'll talk a lot, but congratulations to you. And marlon deserves you. And the students deserve you. And so very happy for you, sir. Okay.
miss johnson, are there any public comments? Okay. At this time, we will take action on
the consent agenda. Are there any items that the board would like to pull? Okay. Hearing
none. None. May I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? I'll make a motion. Mr. Lambert
makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll second. Okay. Mr. Welch seconds. Any discussion?
okay. I will now call for the vote. All in favor of approving. Approving the consent agenda,
say I, I okay, the motion carries seven zero. We will now have presentations on the
future action items. Our trustees, we have miss hamilton coming to the podium. Okay.
good evening, madam president. Trustees and doctor nivens. All right. The board operating
procedures outline the agreed upon protocols and practices that guide the governance and
operations of the lamar csd board of trustees, including communication norms, meeting
procedures, agenda preparation, and roles and responsibilities. This document complements but
does not replace board policy or state law. And so, as part of the board's commitment to
effective governance and continuous improvement, you all have updated your board operating procedures to reflect your current practices, alignment with policy and legal
requirements, as well as recommendations from recent board discussions. So the goal
is to support consistency, transparency and a collaborative working relationship that helps you serve your students and community effectively. So we're
going to go over the updates. And please note that all updates are going to be shown
in red for transparency and easy reference. This year's this year's updates include
both procedural updates and annual maintenance edits, such as updating your photos, your
bios. Doctor nivens bio was refreshed. We updated the campus tracking listings. It
also includes typographical corrections, spacing, punctuation, and capitalization. You've made the updates and revisions, and tonight we're going to review the latest
version of your board operating procedures with your recommended edits. So on page eight, you updated your board goals. Just very procedural edit lower down on page eight
under developing the board agenda, just a small edit at the bottom. The board president
or presiding officer shall not have the authority to remove from the agenda a subject requested by the meaning by two board members without the without their specific
authorization. On page ten, under conducting board meetings, under persons addressing the
board, you updated number seven for readability and to include the potential for interruption.
so it now reads. The board will not respond to negative comments about individual employees, students or board members during public session and may interrupt speakers to
redirect them if they violate board rules or procedures. Also, on page ten, you clarified when
the board president or presiding officer may ask the superintendent to clarify an item, you reinforce the expectations regarding non allowable comments and you
clarified the role of board president or presiding officer during hearings. And those
edits are noted in red. On page 11, we added a new paragraph in red. And the new governance
protocol promoting collaboration and respect among trustees is to read it in order
to maintain respect, transparency and effective governance. Board members shall not initiate actions or make changes within another board member's district without first
providing notice to and collaborating with that member. This practice ensures that each trustee is able to represent their district effectively, while supporting the board's
collective responsibility to the district as a whole. On page 12, we just had some minor
updates to further to further clarify or reflect current practices. And then finally on
at the bottom of page 12, we just updated the month at the end to reflect your current
practice. So trustees, this is a future action item. So no action is needed at this time.
but you may discuss and I'll make notes of any edits you would like to see. I have a
question on page 11. I'm not sure who requested of the six of you, the seven of us who
requested that paragraph. I don't really understand what initiate actions or make
changes within another members district. What could somebody give an example of what that
might mean? I have no clue of what I could do as an individual board member in monica's area. That would need me to bring monica in on it. I mean, I can't even think of an
example. Could could somebody speak to that? Yeah, we've had a couple situations arise where
people from the community come to us, but they're not necessarily our district. You
know, they don't like I've had a situation at george ranch. They're not. That's not for me.
you know, that's not my representative. So keeping the other board member in the loop,
like, hey, this is the situation that's going on before action is taken place.
like, if somebody from your district came to me, then I would tell you so because I've
had a lot over the years, like folks from fulshear reach out to me. And I could really care
less. If you live in lamar and you're a parent and you reach out to me, I'm going to try to
help the person find an answer or get information. So you're so with this would say is I
would need to. A lot of the examples I'm thinking of from the fulshear area where like
during the covid time about masks and all that kind of thing. So I would have needed
to bring in the board rep on my emails, copying that kind of thing or what, like making a
change, making a formal change. So the way I guess I kind of read it and I'm trying to
understand it is just basically that you wouldn't initiate an action or a change, like
something, something major. So if you I mean, I don't even know what. I guess that's where
I'm having a problem, a good example, I can't really think of anything that I could do. I can see how it can happen. And it I guess the goal is just to ensure that. You are in the
loop of, of what is happening with your constituents. Because sometimes, I mean, if something
happens at frost or adolphus or one of you know, her elementary schools, but it was initiated
by somebody else and she just has no idea then. I mean, they can't really that's that's
about how I understand it. But no, I don't think email is the is the purpose, but it's also
just it's being presented. So if we don't like it or we want to strike it, that is what we
can do. I'll tell you this, if this stays in for next month, I will not vote against it for it.
but I still am clueless as to what that could possibly mean. And so. I think because we also
we also we represent everyone in the district. So, so that's kind of the only thing I see
that's I mean, although we are elected in our single member district, we represent the
entire district as a whole. Right. But okay, well, I don't want to spend a ton of time on
it. So do we want to strike it or edit or. Do you have something? Yeah. Is that a edit
to a paragraph or is that a brand new paragraph. That's just a brand new paragraph. I
think it's just kind of keeping people in the loop. Hey, this is going on at frost, just fyi,
or I don't know, I think it errs on the side of the mutual respect that we've established
as a team as well. So if we were to edit it down to say, you know, if something were to
come up in my area, then they come to you to say, hey, heads up. This is I mean, I think
that's the idea of the mutual respect, but, I mean, I don't if we need to see that in there.
okay. Well, we can also we're not voting on it, so we can we have time to figure it out in
the next month before and propose something new. Okay. Any other parts that we have
issues with? Want to add clarify? Okay, okay. I think that is it then. Yes, yes okay.
all right. Trustees, we have miss tiffany foster at the podium and we're going to talk
about our campus and district improvement plans along our instructional update as a part
of this presentation as well. Okay. Good evening, madam president. Board of trustees,
each year, district and campus leaders and teachers reviewed data sources including but not
limited to academics, attendance, discipline and graduation rates to determine
areas of needed improvement. All of these data sources are reviewed to create a
comprehensive needs assessment. Each campus team utilized their campus based decision making
teams based on board policy. Bccb local to review data and ultimately create their
improvement plan. These teams consist of administrators, teachers, parents, community
members, and business representatives. Each chief worked with their teams to
create objectives and strategies to work towards the attainment of each goal. The
district had a district improvement plan committee made up of administrators, teachers,
counselors, staff members, and parents. Review the data and then the goals and objectives
of the district improvement plan and to provide feedback and insight. The 2526 district
improvement plan was developed using the five priorities outlined in the district's
strategic plan, approved by the board of trustees in may 2025. Principals and campus
leadership teams then used the district goals and focus areas to align their campus
improvement plans. This intentional alignment ensures that every campus is working
toward the same district wide priorities, promoting consistency, sharing
accountability, and a unified vision for student success across all schools. There will
be additional check ins on the dip during the spring semester, mid-year review in february,
and end of year review in april. After the april review, we will start the process of creating
the dip for the 2627 school year. Campus leadership teams and site based decision making
committees will follow a similar schedule for the campus improvement plans. When
creating the campus improvement plans, our campus teams completed their comprehensive
needs assessment and then identified areas of improvement. Campus goals were aligned to
the district goals, specific performance objectives and strategies were created to
guide the work of each campus. The district improvement plan and campus improvement plans
have five goals. This is what the goals look like in the plan for learning platform. From the
goals, the teams developed performance objectives as means of achieving each goal. Under
each performance objective. The team then creates the action steps or strategies they will
employ towards meeting the goal. Plan for learning is the web based software system program
that lamar cisd uses to create, monitor and evaluate the district improvement plan and
the campus improvement plans. Inside the platform, the teams upload the progress of
documentation that shows the work that they are doing to complete each strategy. This is
one way that the dip and sips are monitored throughout the year. We will share updates of
the progress of goal attainment with the board. Tonight we are giving an overview of the dip
and sip process. All board members will receive access to plan for learning to review the
dip and sips on tomorrow, wednesday, october 22nd. We will bring the sip and dip
goals and performance objectives to the board in november for consideration of
approval. The district improvement plan and campus improvement plans are a future
action item and do not require approval from the board at this time. Any questions? If not, I
will now turn it over to mrs. Martina for the instructional update. Actually, miss foster,
I do have one. Oh I'm sorry. Yes. Okay, so the board is getting access tomorrow to plan
for learning. That's new. Correct. We've never have. We you guys. We do it every year.
yes. Okay. What are we looking for specifically? So when you go into the plan for learning
platform, you will be able to see the district improvement plan as well as all of the
campus improvement plans. And so you will see the goals. And this year is very new for us.
we have the same five goals in the district improvement plans as in all of the campus improvement plans. So all of the goals are aligned. What will be different are the
performance objectives that each campus will use to meet the goal that was created by
the district from the strategic plan. Okay, so this is really just for us to review, but
we're not looking for data points or anything. It's just for you guys to review. Yes.
thank you, thank you I'm sorry. It is. Miss cotton came up next. Good evening board. Good
evening, doctor nivens. All right. So I'm going to go through the instructional
update or the first part of the instructional update. So part of the comprehensive needs
assessment that miss foster described includes a review of the prior year's district
improvement plan to understand successes and areas for growth. From this analysis, we develop
goals, performance objectives, and strategies that directly respond to the data and align
to the strategic plan. This approach keeps the plan focused, responsive, and aligned with
our long term vision for student success. So last year we had two goals related to
academics from the 2425 district improvement plan. The first academic goal in the 2425
district improvement plan was goal four, focused on growth in reading and math for students
in pre-k through second grade. It's important to note that progress for students in these grade levels is assessed using different assessments. Growth for pre-k and kindergarten
students is measured using the cli. Assessments and growth for students in grades one and two
are measured using map growth and map reading fluency assessments. The data on the
slides reflects a combined percentage of students in grades pre-k through two, who met the yearly growth target for the assessment they were given in math and then in
reading. As you can see, while the reading did increase, it only increased by 4% and the
math percentage declined by two. In response. This year, students in grades one and two
are being given unit assessments at the end of each unit to progress monitor throughout the year. This allows us to intervene immediately based on student
needs, instead of waiting until the middle or end of year results. Also, these are
assessments tied to the teacher incentive allotment for pre-k through second grade teachers.
with goldfarb, the focus shifts from growth of students in k through two to students in
grades three through high school. Grade five was focused on growth in the meets category,
not the approaches category. On star and eoc assessments, we saw growth in reading, language
arts, math and science but did not meet the 5% increase that was outlined in the goal, and
we saw a slight decline in social studies as we continue to get stronger at planning,
being data driven and meeting the level of rigor on staar, these areas will continue to
increase. This data, along with the other data gathered throughout the comprehensive
needs assessments, was used to create the goals for the 2526 district improvement plan. So
now I'm going to turn it over to miss martina to talk about the 2526 goals. All right. The
2025 2026 district improvement plan has five goals that align with the priorities outlined in
the strategic plan. These goals represent the overarching outcomes we want to achieve for
student success and district growth. For tonight's instructional update, doctor lazaro, miss baines and I will be taking a deep dive into goal one. Lamar isd students achieve
academic excellence and skills for life through innovative instruction and student
centered experiences. Each district improvement plan goal is supported by performance
objectives, which break the goal into specific, measurable targets. These objectives.
objectives. Explain the approach we will take to reach the goal. The first performance
objective aligned with goal one is the district will consistently earn an a
accountability rating through comprehensive instructional supports, innovative practices
and data informed interventions and enrichments. Under each performance objective, there
are a series of action steps or strategies. These are the concrete actions our teams will
implement, such as instructional practices, professional development, or progress monitoring to ensure we meet the objectives and ultimately achieve the goal.
throughout the year, adjustments are made to the strategies included in the district improvement plan. As new data becomes available. The strategies included in the
district improvement plan to address goal one performance objective one includes
strengthening our professional learning communities by utilizing strong teacher teams
or by building excuse me by building strong teacher teams that regularly collaborate to share best practices, analyze student work, and plan instruction together.
monitoring that curriculum is tightly aligned with state standards, ensuring that what
is written in lesson plans, what is taught in the classroom, and what is assessed on tests
all match state expectations for student learning. Analyzing student performance data to
create targeted, small group lessons that address specific learning needs. Enhancing
vertical alignment by coordinating instruction across grade levels so skills and
concepts build from one grade level to the next, and continuing to provide targeted
professional development and coaching to help teachers strengthen instructional
practice and meet student needs. Goal one performance. Objective two targets attendance and
family engagement for our earliest learners, specifically, early childhood education staff
will implement a comprehensive family engagement plan that will educate parents on the value of early education, prekindergarten and and kindergarten programs, and the
necessity of consistent student attendance in order to facilitate student success at
the higher grade levels. The strategies included in the district improvement plan to
address goal one performance. Objective two include the launch of a district wide
campaign emphasizing that every day matters in early learning, and sharing monthly
communication through parent square and on district and campus social media feeds to
highlight the connection between early education, attendance and long term
academic success. Continuing on goal one, performance, objective three is tied to the
continuation and refinement of the lamar cisd innovative school day. All campuses in
lamar cisd will implement innovative days with fidelity in order to expand student
connections to real world experiences, and to afford teachers extra time to align
and plan instruction to best meet student needs. The strategies included in the
district improvement plan to address goal one performance. Objective three include the
creation of a district wide rubric that defines what innovation days look like in
practice, to support each students as they develop or support each campus as they
develop and implement an innovative school day plan that is tailored to the students and
resources at that campus, and targeted training and ongoing support for instructional
paraprofessionals to strengthen their ability to to effectively assist students during the
innovative school day rotations. Goal one performance objective four is focused on special
education programing. The district will expand support for special education programs
that require intense staff support to ensure student success. The strategies
included in the district improvement plan to address goal one performance objective four include expanding specialized support for students with autism by
increasing the number of compliance academic programs or cap classes across elementary
campuses, and enhancing support for students in elementary cesc programs. By integrating a
dedicated behavior technician into each program to continue the work, I'm going to turn it
over to doctor lazaro to dig into the cmr portion of goal one. Thank you. Good evening.
college career and military readiness is not just a state requirement. It's a reflection
of our commitment to prepare every student for success after graduation, whether that's
college, a career, or the military in the texas accountability system, college
career, military readiness, or cmr, plays a pivotal role in determining both high school
and district accountability ratings. As you can see on the screen, students have multiple
avenues to demonstrate their readiness for life after graduation, whether that's through college, career or military pathways. However, for accountability purposes, each
student can only earn one cmr point regardless of how many criteria they meet. In addition
to its impact on accountability ratings, the state of texas also provides financial
incentives to districts through cmr, specifically in the form of outcomes bonuses. These
bonuses reward districts for exceeding certain thresholds for different subpopulations
and cmr, allowing us to reinvest in programs and resources that further support
student achievement. What you see on the screen now outlines the criteria students must meet
in college, career, or military for outcomes. Bonuses displayed on the screen is certified data
from the texas education agency. This illustrates the percentage of annual graduates who have
met college, career and military readiness standards over the past three accountability years. It's important to note that cmr data is lagging, meaning that the
data reflects the graduating class from the year prior to the accountability year. For
example, accountability year 2025 corresponds to cmr outcomes for the class of 2024.
by breaking down this cmr data as well as data from 2425 and applying the criteria for cmr
outcomes bonuses, we were able to strategically guide the development of our 2025 2026
cmr plan in the cmr plan that will outline for you today. Each performance objective is
intentionally aligned with this year's district improvement plan. These objectives not only
set clear benchmarks, but also aim to keep us accountable for student success throughout the
year. Our first target will be to ensure that 97% of our graduating seniors are cmr
ready, as measured by ti's cmr indicators. This ambitious goal reflects our ongoing commitment
to student success. The performance objectives that follow in our plan outline the
specific strategies and actions that we will take to achieve this target, providing a clear
roadmap for how we intend to reach and sustain this level of readiness across our district.
our first performance objective for this target is to have 80% of our special education
seniors considered cmr ready. As you see on the screen, we have made consistent progress
in increasing the number of special education seniors who are college, career or military
ready. However, this remains an area for continued improvement if we are to reach our overall
goal of 97% cmr readiness for all graduating seniors. By focusing on this objective, we
ensure that every student, regardless of background or need, is supported on their
path to post-secondary success. We will use the following strategies to support this
objective. We will train our facilitators on graduation coding required for students to
meet cmr. We're going to monitor special education graduation codes from graduation. Ards establish special education student transcript checkpoints both
mid-year and again at the end of the year, to verify students endorsements and course
completion, and we will facilitate six weeks campus cmr checkpoints with campus cmr
leadership teams. Another area for improvement is the number of students meeting cmr through
the career and technical education criteria. As you can see on the screen, we have
continued to make progress in this area even as the criteria for this indicator has changed
from year to year. It's important to note that to earn the indicator this year, students must both pass a dea approved industry based certification and also be
considered a completer, which is a student that has completed three or more cte courses for
four or more credits, including an advanced course within an approved state program of study.
for this reason, we have set our target percentage at 30%. Maintaining focus here will
help us continue our upward trend and support our overall cmr readiness. We will
implement the following strategies this year. In order to achieve this objective, we're going to train staff on techniques to assist in increasing ivc student
readiness. We're going to meet with campus administrators frequently to provide support and follow up with teachers regarding industry based certifications. We'll continue
training of campus counselors and administrators regarding program, program of study, sequence of courses, as well as student year planning and cte completer status. And we plan
to host cte outreach events to educate parents, students, and the community about the
district's cte programs and state requirements for achieving cte completer status. I will now hand it over to miss baines, who will talk to you about dual credit. Thank you.
between the classes of 2022 and 2024, we increased the percentage of seniors meeting
cmr through dual credit by nine points for the 2025 2026 school year. Our cmr target one
performance objective three is that by may of 2026, 40% of the class of 2026 will meet cmr.
excuse me, meet cmr by earning dual credit. To achieve this target for dual credit, some of
the strategies we will employ are to collaborate with our campus dual credit teams to
promote and market course offering options available to students for dual. For earning
dual credit, we'll train our high school counselors to understand the importance of the tstc dual credit course sequence, and we will also continue to expand our dual
credit course offerings by collaborating with institutions of higher education to increase
additional course options for earning dual credit. For the classes of 2022 and 2023, 38%
of our graduates met cmr outcomes. Bonus criteria if you recall that cmr data lags one
year from graduation and the outcomes bonus final counts data lags an additional year
using the most recent outcomes bonus data from the classes of 2022 and 2023. Our cmr target
number two, is that 50% of the class of 2026 will meet cmr outcomes. Bonus criteria.
recall again that cmr and outcomes bonus criteria differs from cmr in state
accountability. We have expanded our cmr work to include a focus on outcomes
bonuses. The following performance objective will provide insight into how we will achieve this ambitious cmr outcomes. Bonus target. To meet this target for outcomes
bonuses, we are focusing on performance on the tsia or the texas success initiative
assessment as it is the sole complementary requirement for outcomes bonus funding on both
the college and career readiness sides between the classes of 2022 and 2024. The
percentage of students meeting cmr through tsia increased by three points, with the class of
2024 achieving a 40% rate for cmr target number two. Performance objective one is
that by may 2026, 50% of the class of 2026 will meet tsia passing criteria. To meet our
target for tsia. Some of the strategies we are using are to again facilitate those six
weeks campus cmr checkpoints with campus cmr leadership teams to design and facilitate
tsia preparation and tutoring experiences in math and ela, using resources as part of our
partnerships with the princeton review, progress learning and shmoop, we will utilize relevant data to determine student readiness for the tsia, and we are also working to
design to design professional learning experiences with our associate principals to
intensify the rigor in our tier one instruction. The performance objectives in the
cmr plan are a future action item. They do not require approval from the board at this
time, and at this time, we will take any questions or discussion that you have. I
have a small question. I believe it was miss cottingham. I forget now who it was. Or
maybe it wasn't. I'm sorry, but whoever it was when you talked about. Meeting the sat or the
psat, the whatever those are for the readiness is that based on scores that students earn, I
think that's clarify about the different forms of readiness. So it says that there's one
about the psat or the sat or the act. Is that like a score based thing? Like what students
score certain points and then you're speaking in reference to the ways in which a student can
earn cmr. Yes, the top one. So those so meeting standard on sat and act. Yes. It's a score
based requirement okay. Is there like a base score or it's just depends. Yes. So for sat
it is a 480 in ela and it's a 530 in math. And then for act it's a 40 on the combined ela
and writing portions. And it's a 22 on the math okay. Thanks. Can we go to the part of the
presentation where we showed our growth from 2020 last year to this year? No, not cmr
before I think miss cunningham. Yes ma'am. It showed like the math science reading was
increased and history was decreased. I think it's doctor jones is going there for us. I
think he's like slide. Well it would be early on I'm sorry. Yeah. Here it is. That's it
right there. So looking at it the. What grades this is overall this is all overall. So
overall the subjects that require discovery that require hands on manipulatives thinking
processing learning as they're doing it are increased. And the ones that require retaining is
decreasing. So how do we get that vertical alignment from those active learning to that
retaining learning and that social studies. How do we do the vertical alignment from
those three to that one to bring that one back up? Because today's society attention spans
are gone and they can't remember I can't remember my kid's phone number, you know,
because it's all right there. It's finding ways to make it relevant, finding ways to
increase the thinking skills, finding ways to bring in active learning to social studies. I
mean, you know, there there are ways to do that. So we're having to like go in there,
look at the pedagogy and the science of teaching. That is, we have to do it differently
now. Yes, sir. Okay. Sorry. These are just thoughts popping in of like we're talking about
doing education differently, but we're actually now this is proof that we have to do
education differently. So mostly just for the community listening. Is that the reason
we're talking about this now in this session is because we want the community to know that
we're actively thinking about how are we going to be doing school differently. And that's
proof that our kids can think and process and learn on the go, and they can manipulate items
to get different numbers and all that. But when it comes time to retaining it and social
studies is to me not the most riveting because I'm squirrel, but I mean, that's proof that,
okay. Thank you. No problem. Yeah. I'll just like add in there the reason why social
studies is always the outlier is it's only tested in eighth and then us. So when you look
at rla and math they start testing that in third grade. And so the very first time you
get social studies data is eighth grade, which means accountability for teaching
that content isn't really there, especially in elementary. It's one of those things you teach
it when you can because so many other teachers are pressing. And so the very first time you
ever get relevant data is eighth grade. And so it's it's always an outlier because
there's not a lot of state attention on social studies. When can the public access the
district improvement plan in the campus improvement plans? When will that be available for
the public's consumption after they're approved by the board, then they'll be posted on the
website. Yes, sir. Thank you. Anybody else have questions I okay, I have a couple. Can we
go back to the slide that says goal one performance objective three. And it talked about it
was just a couple bullet points. Yes okay. Go back or might have been several slides. It maybe
was the first one. Okay. Well I yeah. Goal one performance objective three was the slide.
oh there we go. That one okay. So as we think of innovative school day and how are we
measuring the impact of not just on student learning and teacher planning time, but also
just on retention. And like overall student learning. Well, last year or at the end of the
year, I got data from hr on just teacher retention for the campuses that participated in
innovative day last year and the previous year for that same group of campuses, teacher
retention was was 11, I believe point 6%. And so for those that same group of campuses that
participated in innovative day for last year, that had been reduced to, I think I believe
it was 6.5%. So we almost cut that in half. And so that's one way we're measuring it. But
then also we get lots of feedback. We just had the superintendent advisory
councils the last couple of weeks, and we got lots of feedback from teachers about how much they appreciated. And they have the work life balance that they've been looking for.
and they're so appreciative of that time, you know, so there's a couple of different ways that we've been able to measure that so far. Okay. Awesome I mean that's awesome 11.8 11.5 to 6.5.
that's crazy. That's awesome. And then I think my next question is probably for miss
baines. I love cmr so much and I love dual credit. My daughter graduated with her entire first
year of college paid for. And you know, so she's a sophomore in college at 18. But what I
learned is having so many friends with graduating kids is that dual credits don't always
transfer out of state private schools. There's a concern there. So while, you know, if
we can identify that the kid wants to go to an in-state college, then dual credit is
obviously super high value. But are we? Are we making sure that we're telling kids who are
thinking about other colleges, you know, maybe don't do that? Absolutely. So on each of our
campuses is outfitted with a dual credit counselor. And part of that growing role and
responsibility is making certain that we provide that counseling and advising piece.
as you stated, even, you know, success on an ap exam is great. Success in dual credit is
wonderful, but it's the due diligence is truly researching your plan, researching your
post-secondary plan, and making certain that all the great work that you have done in high
school will actually transfer over to whether it be in-state or out of state. So yes, ma'am.
that is, that's a, that's that's a growing part of the dual credit counselors role. Okay. Okay. Awesome. Okay. And I've also spoken with doctor waitz. You know, as we as we
continue to have students in dual credit courses and earning, you know, associate's degrees,
another part of the counseling services will be making sure students are mature enough to
handle that. Because when you have a child that is 18 or whatever, and they go to
college and they become a sophomore or junior, there's a certain level of maturity that comes with that because now you are in your major courses, right? You no longer get the
opportunity to be a freshman because you had that in high school. And so another part of
that conversation is going to make sure that parents understand that students have to be mentally mature enough to handle that kind of responsibility once they leave
high school and go to college, because it's a vast difference in the environment of high
school and college. Has there been another aspect that we'll deal with? I don't know if
we're doing this, but could we is there any way to track what colleges? You know, those
students who have a lot of dual credit courses end up going to in state and out of state just
so we can say like, hey, this school, they accept nearly all the dual credits and stuff like
that. Yes, we with our research assessment and accountability team, we do track where our
students land post-secondary as well as our internal advanced academics. Through our school
links portal. We track where kiddos land and we can map out where our kids who are earning
all these wonderful dual credits where they're actually landing, and ensuring that those credits, in fact, do transfer. Okay, awesome. That's all the questions. Thank you
all. That was a lot of awesome information. What is next? Okay. Now we will take action on the
action items. All right trustees we have miss cole-hamilton coming back to
the podium. All right trustees, we are revisiting this item as an action item. So the logo
refresh came as a request to the board of trustees, especially after completing our strategic planning process to align with our new strategic plan and our bold vision for
the future, and to reflect the evolving identity and spirit of our district, and to respond to
trustee interest and modernizing our brand. And so our design objectives, as we embarked on this project were to ensure visual alignment with our new strategic plan,
preserve elements of legacy while signaling forward thinking, creating a versatile logo that could be used across digital, print, signage and apparel, and to make
consistency across all district communications and campuses. The inspiration came from the
convocation logo, and we modified and expanded it a bit, but just the basis of the
convocation logo involved the texas shape grounding us in who we are and where we serve the l
in the cattle brand style, honoring our agricultural heritage, heritage and legacy.
the curved line represents the brazos river, a defining landmark of our community, and
the two parallel lines represent the railroad, which played a key role in the growth
and progress of our region. And we started with a lot of variations, and these are some
initial variations of the design options. As part of the process, our graphic artists
developed a variety and we got feedback. We whittled it down to this is the design for
consideration. It has the features of the convocation logo, but it maintains the
elements of the current district style logo. While updating the tagline at the
bottom. We envision this being the primary logo, but we did create an additional logo with
our color bar, that one right there, taking some feedback from trustee arroyos, giving
people an option to use either or. And so if you want to add another touch, we use the color
bar which represents our color tracks. And as we add color tracks we will expand this bar.
so to notate when we would use different options. Oh and one more. We have a secondary
option for merchandise and apparel. That's the one in the bottom right corner. That's
removing some of the smaller font that wouldn't be easily visible on, say, a hat or graphic. But to differentiate, this would be the primary logo that would be featured on
anything like permanent. The outside of a building. If we were doing rugs in a building
or decals inside a building that's more permanent, the color bar logo would be used
for anything that's like a consumable or notepads, any digital anything that we can
update frequently because as I shared, we would be updating that color bar with the additional color once we add more color tracks. So trustees, this is an action item. So
we're asking you to consider and approve the design of the district logo. Comments.
questions I want to ask a question when when this idea was first brought up to
redesign the logo, I expressed an interest of not necessarily tearing down current signage
across the district. That's especially new signage with the with the logo that we currently
have. Just because we've created a new one. My my thinking was we use it to the
end of the life into the the sign fades or we do a major redesign of the building. And
we have a lot of new schools lately and we put lamar see isd up there. So on the outside of
the building, I'm talking about where the public just drives by and sees it. Are are we talking
about putting the texas logo with changing the l and everything? No, sir. And that's
precisely why we kept the a bar, c isd, the ama isd. It is the same font and style as what we
currently have, so that it does match and complement what's on the external side of buildings. That doesn't have to come down. Those that signage on the external does not have the
tagline underneath it, so it's timeless. Anybody else? Okay. No, I'd like to say I do like
the style it's going in. I heard I'm involved in another organization and it was we were
talking about the bond, and one of the someone said that we are the boots side of the river,
not the suits side of the river. And so I was like, okay, that made sense. And that hit home
of like, you know, that's overall represents our community, that we're the boot side of the river. And so I think I thought that was. Yeah. Well I like it. So may I have a
motion for the board of trustees to approve the presented option as the new
district logo. I'll do it. Trustee welch makes the motion. Do I have a second? Okay, miss.
miss henderson seconds. Any discussion? Okay, I will now call for the vote. All in favor,
say I. I none opposed. The motion carries seven zero. Thank you. Trustee. Thank you.
all right. Trustees, we have mr. Creighton jester to the podium. Good evening. Good
evening, madam president. Doctor nivens and board of trustees. Tonight we will
review revisions to ifbb local in regards to making it in alignment with senate bill 13.
so the rationale behind the revisions, effective september 1st, 2025, senate bill 13
introduced new requirements for school districts regarding regarding library and
instructional materials, directing direct impact impacting, excuse me efb
policies. The implications behind these changes. It will increase board responsibility
for instructional resource approval. It enhances parental engagement and transparency,
and the need for policy updates and potential creation of advisory structures. Some key
changes to the policy that changed under the tab of goals. Goal number ten. There was a
revision, as seen in blue, that no real and elementary school libraries shall include visual
depictions or illustrations of gratuitous or explicit frontal nudity under the tab of
recommendations and procurement materials, librarians and other professional staff shall assist
in developing the list of library material recommendations to the superintendent to be presented to the board. The superintendent shall ensure
that the administrative procedures regarding the development of the recommendations of library materials. Consider at least two of the following factors.
recommendations from students, parents or guardians, teachers and or district residents.
consultations with district teachers and library staff. Consultations with library
staff from other districts. Extensive review of library material. Context of library
material, including overall fit with the existing collection and to support district
curriculum reviews. The library material from sources such as professional library journals
in library science. Recognized professional education and content journals with book
reviews. National and state award award recognition list, library science field experts,
and highly acclaimed author and literacy expert recommendations. And finally, the coverage of
topics, author, series, or genres that fill gaps in the school library collection. The
the board shall consider the recommended list of library materials that have been
donated or proposed for procurement. Each board member may propose changes before the
board takes action of the list of donated or proposed library materials, and the board shall
either approve or reject the library materials that have been donated or proposed for
procurement at least 30 days prior to the board's vote to accept the donated library
materials or approve procurement of library materials, the superintendent
shall make accessible to the public the list of library materials in accordance with law via the district website for review and feedback. Under the tab of parental involvement
in accordance with state law and administrative procedures, parents or guardians may submit
to the principal or a staff member designated by the principal a list of library
materials that the parents or guardians child shall not be allowed to check out or access
for use outside of the school library. The superintendent shall develop procedures that
permit a parent or guardian to submit the request in at least one of the methods permitted by
law. Under the tab of protection from inappropriate material. Library materials
shall not include any library material containing indecent or profane content. Any library
material that refers a person to a website, including by use of link or qr code containing
content legally prohibited under law. Under the guiding principles tab for challenges,
the following principles shall guide the review of a challenge of library materials. An
individual may challenge a library material used in the district's library program,
despite the fact that the professional staff and the board followed the proper procedures and adhered to the objectives and criteria for recommending and procuring
library material, sets out set out in this policy, access to the challenge materials shall
be restricted during challenge process. Under formal challenges, the district shall
make the texas education agency form to challenge library material available on the
district website. If a district employee, a parent or guardian of a district student or a
district resident wishes to challenge the library material, they shall follow the
procedures to complete and submit the request for challenge form. Under the
challenge committee section, the board shall take action on written challenge submitted under education code 33.02 7a1. At the first open meeting of the board, held after the 90th
day. After the date on which the district receives the challenge and the last key
change fell under frequency of review after a library material has been challenged in, the
board determines not to remove the library material from a school library catalog. It may
not be challenged again before the second anniversary of the board's final decision not to
remove the material board. This is an action item, so we are asking you to consider and
approve the additions and modifications to our current policy in order to align the
newly adopted senate bill 13 requirements related to school library materials. Are there
any questions or discussion? The. Okay, I'm sorry, because this is the first year I
haven't sat on the policy committee. So all of these that are aligning ifbb local with sb
13 or sb 13, are these changes that that we made or were they is this existing policy and
we're just showing how it aligns? There is some changes. The 30 day review process is a
change to our policy, which allows parents to review the procurement list online, and
they're allowed to provide feedback online for us to review. Okay. The other thing
the other key changes was just that you have to the board must review the procurement lists,
and you must approve those before they can be purchased at that point in time. And is that
something that sb 13, is that a power that correct? Okay. Correct. I don't I don't know
if I even like that. That sounds like a lot of work. Are there titles in our digital
library that we don't have in print and vice versa? Yeah. The digital ebooks that we have are
in our lightbox, and we might have some titles in lightbox that are not in print, okay.
but they still fall under all the same. Yes. Policy. And then for the for the challenge
reconsideration process does can that go both ways. Can if we don't have a title in our
library, can a parent bring it and say they would like it in our library? Or so that was
okay. There. I think you just I think I passed it there. No, it's a bigger paragraph. I know
it's a bigger paragraph. It's a bullet list. The one number one go back one, I believe. Go back
right there. You can't. That's for us to to review. But it is in okay. Their parents or
guardians may submit. Oh that's to remove a book. But yes, parents can submit a list for
us to review as well. Okay. To procure. Okay, I have a question. Sure. Does senate
bill 13 allow parents to determine which student which books they don't want their
their children? It does. And so within our our system, parents will be allowed to log into the
system, select the key books that they do not want their students to have access to. It
will flag that in the system and will prevent them from checking those books out in the
library. All right. Thank you. Can we also go back to the the small edit we're making to
elementary? Yes. Okay. So we are changing it from it just said frontal nudity to
gratuitous or explicit frontal nudity. So my my fear in that is that it's still it can be
still pretty subjective. So okay, in in the instance where we have a book pulled off the
shelf that is, you know, has one little picture that it's, you know, it doesn't need to be
pulled off the shelf because that's not the intention of our policy. If a, if a librarian
maybe doesn't know what to do is this or isn't this, who do they go to, or do they just
make a decision so that they would go to sarah falcon first, okay. For council. And then
sarah would then seek counsel for me to make sure that we are in alignment with the policy.
okay. When I look at gratuitous and explicit frontal nudity, it gives a little more clarity to
the to the policy, which allows us to make a little more better decisions as to what should and
should not stay in the library. Okay, so in the instance of the books that we have already
pulled because we were following our policy, very strictly frontal nudity. So
pinkalicious and I think there were like 11 or so more if we changed the policy to this, can
those books then be placed back into our libraries? If you approve this, the change in
this policy, then yes, those books would be reviewed to come back into the library. Okay. I
think we are all in agreement that that's something we would like to see. So are there any
other questions? More of a comment? I have a just a comment rather than a question,
but you know, let me start by emphasizing that I'm a proponent of library
utilization and students. Reading the books in the library. But but incidentally,
I teach a dual credit class at a neighboring school district, which, incidentally, is an a
rated school district. And so the students at that high school that are in my dual
credit class are the best and the brightest in that school district. And recently, I was
teaching them the importance of doing research. And so I took an informal poll, and I asked
my students how many of them actually go to the library and by show of hands, how many
actually read books from the library. And not one of those great students that I have
raise their hand and they they just they just kind of giggled at me because it's almost like
I don't get it. That utilization really is nonexistent. And I hate to say
that because I'm I'm a proponent of the library. I'm the chairman of the fort bend
county library system advisory board to the commissioners court. And so I utilize the
library extensively for both undergraduate and graduate school. So I took my own
informal poll of a high school senior who's on the honor roll at randall high school. And she
told me the same thing. She says, I yeah, I go to library all the time. Do you check out
books? No. And so I'm just hoping that on a go forward basis that that all the passion
that we exert on libraries and contents and you know, curriculum improvement plans
puts some more of an emphasis in reading and utilization because the the sad reality,
unfortunately, is that students just aren't they're not checking out books. They're not reading like we think they are. I think they should. And really, I think it's important that I
think trustee lambert made a really good point earlier about doing education different. I think it's important that we learn to become netflix and not blockbuster. You know, that we
understand that times are changing and and we've got to meet our students where they
are. And libraries are very important part of that. But it's important that we also we
as as adults, we as trustees, as as stewards of the system and parents that we become
passionate about the right things. That's all I have. Thank you. That kind of spurred
another question for me. So I've taken a look at our circulation rates, especially
for spring 2025. And in elementary school, obviously they're they're pretty good
middle school and high school. They start to become like pretty pathetic. Like nobody is
checking out books. So I loved reading as a student. I mean, I loved it, but what what are we
doing to increase circulation rates because we're buying all these books? But why, if nobody
apparently is checking them out? That is one of our goals from library services with the the
secondary staff, we've currently had 37,235 circulations in secondary
campuses from august to to october. Now. Awesome. Which is up from what it was last year.
right. And so we also have asked our we've got a great leadership team that's been
meeting our high school librarians are meeting as a team as well, to discuss ways
to get students back into the library. And so they are increasing their circulation
rates. Randall high school had 22,731 circulations happen within these first two months.
and so we are seeing a change in what's happening because we've put an emphasis on it in
our libraries. Okay. Awesome. So before we vote oh john, I'm sorry though you you talked
about the increase of circulation. Are are the kids being I hate to use the word
manipulated because it's a strong word, but I can't think of another one at the moment to
check out a book like, okay guys, you're not leaving the library. Then go back to class until you check out a book. So go get one off the shelf. Is there anything like that? Or
are these organic numbers that kids are like, hey, I really want to read this book. No.
they're organic. I think what you what we see a shift in is our librarians are creating
programs within their library that are allowing students to want to read books now. And so they're finding topics and things that they are relevant to them and programing it so
that they do come in when they're coming in with classes or whatnot, and they're picking
up more books. I also think maybe some of the reason is that they cannot be on their
cell phones, so they need something a good one too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I mean, I
have noticed my, my junior high, I don't think she checked out a single book all of sixth grade
and now she is she's checking them out. So. Okay. So anybody else. No. Yeah. Yeah I will
just say that, you know, our district has over well over half a million books. 600 and I
think 15,000 books, something similar to that. And so, you know, people are upset about
the titles that have been removed. It's 251 books, titles I believe have been removed.
and so that's if I did the math. I think it's like 0.04% of the books, and they were removed
because they didn't follow policy and they didn't follow hb 900. And so we have
administration that is going through and reviewing the books that are that we have, which
was required by law. We had like a whole year to do it, I believe, and that's what
they've been doing. So. Anybody else before we take the vote? I believe we have public
participation. Miss johnson, is there any public participation? It is the desire of the lamar
cisd board of trustees to appropriately and effectively fulfill its governance role in
accordance to best practices for quality organizations and to the applicable provisions of
the texas education code. Trustees also desire to afford an opportunity for input from
the public, members of the community who wish to address the board must have completed a
public participation public comment card and submitted it before the presiding officer
called the meeting to order. Public participation allows individuals to address the
board regarding posted agenda items. Public comment allows individuals to address the
board regarding non-agenda items. Trustees may not respond to public comments as they are
prohibited by law from discussing or deciding any subject that is not on the
board's publicly noticed agenda. All patrons desiring to speak and who have completed the
public participation public comment form will be heard during the public comment or
participation portion of the meeting before final board action is taken on an agenda
topic. While speakers generally have five minutes to discuss the board, the presiding
officer may establish an overall time limit for public participation and public
comment, and adjust the time allotted to each speaker when necessary. To accommodate a
large number of speakers. However, no speakers shall be given less than one minute. All
of this is in compliance with hb 2840. Each speaker tonight will have five minutes. Each
speaker must address the board from the provided podium, unless special accommodations
have been requested and approved. Speakers are to present their remarks to the
board and not to the audience. Speakers having complaints against individual district
employees may only address the board after filing a complaint form and in the manner provided
for in board policy. Igba employee complaints f and g student and parent complaints
and 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 during the public participation public comment portion may be
directed by the presiding officer to refrain from naming the employee, and will refer
the speaker to the appropriate complaint policy. School board meetings or meetings held in
public but are not public meetings. While the board values hearing from members of
the public, trustees will not answer questions or respond to comments from patrons, speakers
will not engage in dialog with the trustees. Please state your name when you come forward. Our
first speaker tonight is brenda thompson. Good evening. My name is brenda thompson, and I've
been a resident in lamar consolidated isd for 32 years, and my kids attended lcisd
schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. As a supporter of public schools in
general and an active member of pto board and band and athletic booster clubs during their time
in school, I have been an involved parent who looks out for the benefit of all students. As a lifelong avid reader myself, I am concerned about the recent banning of 700 books
from lcisd, and I'm asking the district to stop removing books and restore transparency and
fairness in district decisions by including students, parents and guardians, educators,
librarians and community members in review of materials, and not just arbitrary
checklists and rubrics often provided by out of district sources that do not do not
reflect the local community. Books need to be thoughtfully evaluated as a whole and in
context, and it seems as though the process that led to the banning of 700 books does not
necessarily allow for those nuances. It is also the district's duty to inform
parents of the existing tools available to allow them to restrict what books their student may or may not check out from school libraries. In our case, my children read
above grade level starting in elementary school, but we could set limitations as to what we
felt was appropriate content for their age and experiences. But it was our decision. Our
schools should serve all families in the diverse population of our district, while protecting every student's right to learn. I realize that some of this was
addressed in the presentation, so I didn't know that. But thank you for your time and
consideration of this matter. Our next speaker is leslie gracia. Good evening, board of
trustees and doctor evans. My name is leslie gracia and I am a lcisd parent and community
member. And I'm here tonight to express my concern about the recent revelation that came to
light through an open records request showing that over 700 book titles were removed from
lcisd libraries, and this is one of the largest book bans in texas. I think one district
kind of beat us, and I know that there are some board members who don't like the book
ban word, but those titles aren't on our shelves right now, so nobody can read them. So the
reason why I'm here is to to voice my concern about that. The fact that this information
had to be uncovered through an open records request, it shows a lack of transparency. And now
I understand there will be decisions, I'm sorry, discussions about house bill 900 and removing explicit material using highly partizan and biased sources like book
looks and rated books to identify these titles does not reflect a fair or transparent
process. It was my understanding that community input would be part of
reviewing challenge books. I am actually on one of the local my son's elementary school review,
and no books have been challenged, and I believe in the open records request. It
hasn't been challenged since january 2024. So those those haven't been under review.
these 700 titles haven't been under review. And these committees that are, you know,
volunteering their time and taking the time to, you know, step up to do that. And these
titles that we're seeing, I know we talked about pinkalicious, but there's also,
I believe, the paperback princess, the paperbag princess books that I read in school,
the house on mango street and glass menagerie, and I know why the caged bird sings. They're
all literary classics being pulled from our shelves, so we've always trusted our
librarians to ensure materials are age appropriate. So what's changed? Removing 700 book
titles under the assertion that h bill 900 requires it is an overreach. In my opinion. If a
book truly contains explicit material, then show the community that otherwise this
looks like censorship and quite frankly, discrimination. I'm here tonight to speak up for a
broader community, as there is a petition going on right now, and we already have over 700
signatures asking the district to please restore transparency, revisit the policy to include
genuine community input, and restore our books to our shelves and rebuild the
community trust. So I still have two minutes, and I just kind of wanted to touch on some
stuff I didn't have in my prepared speech, and one being that the kids are not using the
library. So if that is the case, why are we spending so much time and effort talking about
this? Why are we treating books like contraband if it's a non-issue? And that's that's
all I wanted to say about that. So I wanted to thank you very much for your time. Thank you.
our next speaker is katrina williams. Good evening. Board. If it's not painfully obvious,
I am a teacher. My name is katrina williams and I have proudly taught in this district
for 17 years, nearly half my life. This is my home. I have raised my daughter here, I have
devoted my career here, and I have always been proud to call this community mine. A few years ago, I served on the committee that helped shaped our efb local library policies.
I joined because censorship is an issue close to my heart. Even then, it became clear that
words like vulgarity or as I saw today, indecent are highly subjective. One parent even
told me on the committee, well, surely will all agree on what is vulgar, but we don't. What
one family finds inappropriate, another family finds life changing. That is the danger of
censorship. What starts with good intentions becomes a slippery slope that removes books no one ever imagined removing. I don't think any of you in this room ever imagined
banning pinkalicious. Our district has now removed or restricted so many books,
making us one of the most censored districts in texas. That is not a distinction I am
proud of as a teacher, a mother or a citizen. And while our policy was written to provide a
careful, thoughtful review process, what's happening, it seems in practice looks very
different. Instead of following the steps laid out, it seems that many books are being
pulled from shelves immediately placed in limbo simply because someone questioned them. That
means these titles are unavailable to students for months, sometimes years,
without ever going through a true review. So even if a book is never formally banned, it's
effectively gone for our students. And when hundreds of titles are pulled just in case
we are not protecting children, we are depriving them. We are allowing fear not policy to
dictate what sits on our shelves. And that is censorship in another form. I also want to
address two common arguments. First, this is not book banning because the books are still
available elsewhere. But if a child cannot access a book at their school, the place where
they spend most of their day, then that book is effectively banned for them. Many families
in our district do not have the time, transportation, money, or even the library cards to track
down those books elsewhere. Availability somewhere else is not an option if it is not in
the classroom. Second, students can just choose another book that is a statement of
privilege. It is true only for families who have shelves full of books at home, who bring
money for the book fair, who can afford weekly bookstore trips, who have the technology
and time to seek out what they want. I'm not here to speak for the privileged. I'm here to
speak for my children who depend on my classroom libraries and classroom
libraries of those around me. When we remove books, when we create enough red tape that
teachers feel safer not having a classroom library at all, it's happening. Talk to your
schools. Teachers are worried that a book they might have missed in one of our emails or
word of mouth is on their shelf, so they're keeping their boxes in their cabinets and not
putting their classroom libraries out. So when you see low checkout at the school
library, oftentimes that's because the heart of the library at a school is in your
teacher's classroom that they spent their actual their own money on. I do it myself.
hundreds and hundreds of dollars at katie budget books. I am not here to talk about
pinkalicious or to talk about the paperbag princess. Those titles are often used as the
outcry or the distraction by those who opposed to book access. I am here for the books
that truly matter to a child's heart and to their future. I am here for ghost boy's, a book
that teaches empathy, justice, and the weight of history. I am here for the works of maya
angelou, whose words have inspired generations to rise above pain and claim their dignity. These are the voices being silenced. This is what brings up the word
discrimination. When I saw eyebrows furrowed when that was brought up. This is why books
are not luxuries. They are necessities. They are. As doctor rudine sims says,
mirrors, windows and sliding glass doors to many of the books on the banned list are
not filled with vulgarity or indecency. They are filled with difference. Stories about
students who are immigrants, about black or brown families, about kids who don't fit the
mold. When we label these stories as inappropriate, we are sending a painful message
that my children's lives, their identities, their families do not belong in our schools or my
classroom. And make no mistake, this policy has been removing books from kids. Thank you.
okay. Thank you. Okay, so it's my understanding we can continue discussion if if
anybody wants to if that spurred any other questions for anyone? No. Okie dokes. Well
then we will. So for clarification, madam president, we are simply aligning to
senate bill, senate bill 13 with, as I understand it okay. All right. Thank you. Okay. So
may I have a motion for the board of trustees to approve the revisions to the efb local
policy as presented. Trustee box makes the motion. Do I have a second? I'll make the second.
trustee. Lambert makes the second. Any discussion? Okay, I'll now call for the vote. All
in favor, say aye. Aye. Motion carries seven zero. We will now have reports and presentations
on the information items. I trustees, we have mr. Oh, no. Miss baines, come to the podium.
good evening, board of trustees and doctor nivens. This evening we will be providing updates on
the progress of the bring your own laptop biol pilot initiative and cell phone
tracker programs. As a reminder, the biol pilot initiative was put in place to support
individual instructional needs of students in lamar cisd, allowing for students with a
personal laptop to bring their own laptop for instructional use in advanced placement and
dual credit dual enrollment courses. Again, this is a pilot initiative that meets the
requirements of house bill 1481 by requiring students to join the district filtered internet
having guidelines that do not allow the device to be used as a personal communication device
and a specific set of consequences should the student not follow expectations with
their personal laptop. Personal laptops may only be used for instructional purposes during
ap and dual credit dual enrollment courses. Students eligible for the biol pilot
initiative must meet all of the following requirements. They must be enrolled in ap dual
credit dual enrollment courses. They must be in grades nine through 12, and they must have
a 90% attendance rate. All students participating in the biol pilot program are required
to review and sign the biol. Acceptable use guidelines before before being allowed to
use their personal laptop, the biol pilot extends to students in advanced placement and dual
credit dual enrollment courses, which includes 3849 students in advanced placement courses and
around 2623 students in dual credit and dual enrollment courses. Students participating
in the biol pilot include 93 students at lamar, 57 at terry, 361 at foster, 400 at george
ranch, 440 at fort fulcher, 188 at randall, and 65 at thomas, for a total of 1604 students
district wide. To date, three students participating in the biol pilot have attendance
rates that have fallen below 90% and are no longer eligible for the bio for biol
participation. These students have access to a district device as needed and their ap
dual credit and dual enrollment courses. We collected feedback from teachers of advanced
placement, dual credit and honors courses from all seven of our high schools and of the
30 teachers responding, most report that the bring your own laptop pilot initiative is
going extremely well. With improved access to technology and fewer disruptions to
instruction due to device shortages, some teachers have shared concerns related to
having enough reliable district devices, but personal laptops help address shortages and
reliability issues. The lamar cisd technology team continues to work with teachers to
resolve issues, as they are reported. Before I pass along to mr. Nava for the biol
student infractions and cell phone tracker update, are there any questions or discussion?
can we go to the slide that has the numbers of usage numbers of. Yeah, this one correct? Yes
ma'am. I just want to see that again. And so that's increased numbers are just because there
are more students at those schools. I just want to make a note of that. The higher
population, less computers, the schools that have the lower are potentially well, some of them
are title one schools. And so they have title one funds to use for those okay. I have a
question as well just so that I understand. So. I presume these these computers they're
personal computers are are set up so that they cannot be used as a communication device.
correct. Okay. And how how would they be used as a communication device? I'm going
to defer to doctor chad jones, our executive director of technology. So all of these
devices have to be on our to to qualify for this program. They have to join our biol network.
and that network is filtered the same as our other district devices network. And so that is
as best we very well can, we are filtering out any inappropriate content and
ensuring that they can't use any sort of messaging, like any sort of texting tools or any
apps that they download. And so we're every day we are getting updates from our filtering tool
of, okay, here's how we can continue to support that and make sure that we're filtering
everything that we can that we need to make sure we're filtering so our kids can focus
on instruction. So that means no, no texting, no chat and no social media. Correct? Okay. So
you can actually turn off imessage. You can go in there and make it where those can't.
we can do our very best to to be hitting that as best we can. Yes. There's there's always the
world is always coming up with a new server that's online of, oh, this is a backup to a
backup. And so we go through and try and grab that one to make sure we're blocking that.
but that is our active daily work. There's also. This also comes with an honor code for
our young people because as we know as doctor jones said, there's always a workaround.
there's always something out there that's that's more advanced, more, more ahead. That just was just released. Right. And it gives students access to go around the system.
and so one thing that we're also talking to students about and teaching is the honor code,
is to make sure that if you say you're going to do something, that you follow your word and
you do that, and so if you sign a document that says, you know, I will not use my laptop as a
personal communication device, then we expect that and we hold them accountable for that. And so another thing we want to make sure is we don't drop another thing on our teachers
to do. And so as our teachers are monitoring the class, if they see that, then of course
we have consequences that have been dealt with that are being given out by our administrators.
but also, you know, as our parents and our students are watching this, as our parents are watching this, and they'll tell their students, I don't know of any students watching
the board meeting tonight, but there's an honor code. And so, you know, the family structure is the foundation of our society. And so we have to make sure that our parents
understand that when we do this, we need them to enforce the honor code with our students at
home. So when they come to school that they're able to use their devices and be able to
get the lessons that they need to be able to get, but that's a conversation we're also having
with our young people. I have a quick question about the attendance. So if a child were
to have an excused attendance reason, like say they are severely ill or say they were
hospitalized in a car accident, are we giving? Are we looking at those? Exactly. So
everything is truly on a case by case basis. There are extenuating circumstances that
are beyond the control of a student. Examples that you've just alluded to. So yes, our
campuses do work on a case by case basis, but anything below 90% that's egregious or
something that is not an acceptable or unexcused absence or those things that would
qualify or disqualify or discredit a student from participation. Okay. Thank you.
all right. Good evening. Board of trustees. Doctor lamar, student code of conduct
outlines expectations for responsible use of personal communication devices during
the school day. Tonight, I will be providing you with an overview of student violations
of personal communication device policy as defined by the student code of conduct,
highlighting frequency trends and campus compliance. The data in this report reflects
reported infractions into the communication device tracker and includes data across all
grade levels and campuses. This first slide reflects the total number of violations as of
october 14th, 2025. The total number of violations are at 1576, with high school having
the most violations at 1315, followed by the junior high at 203, middle elementary at 40,
and then middle school at 18. Given our enrollment, this averages out to about 3.2% of
our student population. This next slide takes the previous information and provides you a
look based on the percentage of violations at each level. And again, high school is at the
has the most at 83%, followed by junior high at 13%, elementary at 3%, and middle
school at 1% of the violations. Here you have the information broken down by grade level.
11th graders have the most violations at 408, followed by 10th graders at 337 and then
12th graders at 327. When categorizing the data by levels, secondary equates to about 97%
of all violations, and elementary about 2.4% of violations. This next slide
provides you with the violation data based on the type of infection that has occurred.
cell phone violations are the most common type of violations at 1354, followed by headphones
and earbuds at 129, smart devices at 49, and by at eight when reviewed by percentage.
cell phone violations account for 86% of all violations, earbuds 8%, and smart devices
at 3%. All others are at 1% or less. This slide provides you with the location of the
violation. You can tell most violations occur within the classroom, with 1067 violations,
followed by those in the hallway at 309, cafeteria at 97, restrooms 54, and library at 16.
again, when looking at percentages, 6,868% of all violations have occurred within
the classroom, 20% in the hallway, and 6% in the cafeteria with 3% in the
bathroom. The data here reflects the violations by colored track. Purple track has
380 violations. Gold track 309. Silver at 286. Blue track 224. The red track 176. The green
track 123 and the maroon track at 76. On the right you will see the same information based
off of the percentage. Okay. Next slide. Here you will see the information based on the
level of offense. We have had 1884 first time offenses, followed by 159 169 second time
offenses, 20 one third time offenses, and two fourth fourth under fourth offense. Again,
you will see that information by percentage. So 87% of all students have violated the
violation on their first time. And are there any questions. Mr. Norman, did you say that
this is from the beginning of the school year, this year, from the beginning of the school year till the 14th of october? Gotcha. Thank you. So I to me, your illustration begs
the question, what's the maroon track doing to have that kind of success? Because I need to
try that in my classroom. Any idea? Well, the maroon track for the longest time has had no
cell phone policy. Even when there was a cell phone policy. Okay, so about poly and red and
junior high always had no cell phone policy stardom. Young stardom young I mean, you you
groom them living clean. Clean living. Yeah. Clean living. You might have said this. What was.
what's blanks? What is blanks? It just means that within the tracker, they did not put the
location of where the incident occurred. Okay, so can I ask a question? Are we having any
issues with students who are not supposed to be bringing laptops, like bringing them and using them, like in an academic classroom setting? Or, you know, like I have not heard of that
occurring from any, any administrator yet. So but based on the data, I think it's
pretty clear that the first infraction is enough for most kids to not to not do it again.
right. Have we had any kids go to alc over cell phones? Yeah, we've had two individuals with
the four violations already. Okay. So based off our student code of conduct, those are
placements at the dap. Okay. But I mean, otherwise it's going pretty well I would
imagine. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Good evening. Board of trustees. Doctor
nivens. Tonight we are joined with from demographics. We have mr. Bob templeton who will be
going over our demographic report from the second quarter of 2025, as well as giving some
projections. So I'm going to turn it over to mr. Templeton and we'll be here for any
questions afterwards. Well, thank you, doctor maxwell. Good evening, madam president. Members of the board. Doctor nivens, it is great to be here with you tonight. Tonight I'm
joined by my colleague, doctor stuart keough. We have gone to a two advisor approach, so
we've assigned support advisors. And stuart is the supporting advisor that will be assisting
me. He has brand new to our company. We hired him back in may. He's got a history of
working with school districts, consulting, doing strategic planning. He actually wrote his
dissertation on school finance in texas. So we're pleased to have him join our team and he
will be assisting with our projects going forward. So I'll start by touching on the
economic conditions, looking at the unemployment rate. We'd like to use the unemployment
rate because it gives us a gauge for how the employment is working across the houston msa,
and we're still at about 4%. So we are at full employment. We are still seeing job growth
across the region. And when we compare the fort bend county unemployment rate to compared
to a year ago, it is still down slightly, so it's at about 4.1% as of june. This summer in the
fort bend county unemployment rate. When we look at the housing market, in fact,
houston is still producing the second most number of new houses in the country. The
annualized start rate for new homes in houston is at 38,544, and lamar consolidated makes up
about 12% of that so far, and away still building the most new homes in the houston
metroplex is taking place right here in the lamar consolidated school district. When we look
at the annualized start rate, which is the blue line and the annualized closing rate, which
is the turquoise line, you can see that we've kind of settled into a nice annual pace, just
under 40,000 new homes. So despite some of the challenges in the economy across the
country, we're seeing very steady, significant new home construction holding just below
40,000, which is well above what it was prior to the pandemic. So all in all, you
take out the big rise from the pandemic, the fall, because of the rising interest rates,
we've settled into a norm at about 38,000. We did see a quarter of a basis point drop
in the interest rate just a couple of weeks ago. It is thought we could see another
drop in the near term, so the interest rates could settle down a little bit, which would
help the housing market. Again. Lamar consolidated building far and away more homes than any
school district in the houston region. In fact, I'm sure you're the number one school
district in the state of texas for new home construction. The annual closing rate is at 5129.
the inventory, which represents homes under construction and some finished vacant new homes,
is at 2395. Vdl stands for vacant developed lots. Those are lots that are ready for
builders to build on. We have 5705 vacant developed lots, and we have over 58,400 futures.
futures are concept plans. Their future phases of existing developments. But they're also
brand new developments that are starting through the planning permitting process. And that's
not even the full amount of vacant land. When I really want to put this in context, you are
going to be the fastest growing school district in the houston metroplex for at least the next
ten years, and I say that based on that future lot supply, that future lot supply at 58,000
would well exceed ten years of housing growth. Plus you still have vacant land that hasn't
even started that process yet. Now we track the starts and closings by each quarter. You
can see through the first two quarters of 2025, we were at about 2407 starts. That's
comparable to what we were seeing in 2024. So I do think the annual start rate and the
annual closing rate for 2025 are going to be just under 5000 new home starts and closings
through the rest of the year. When we separated out by year elementary attendance zones.
you can see the haygood zone is far and away building the most new homes. They've got 1283 new
home starts that have taken place in the last 12 months. The second most active zone is
the morgan zone, with 540 starts. Beazley 448. I say this each time. This is really
incredible because you have so many elementary zones that are seeing really strong housing
growth. Most fast growth districts are lucky to have 5 to 6 zones building this kind
of housing, but you've got it happening in more than 12 zones across the district. Here's
another way to look at this data. This is a map showing your elementary attendance zone
outlines. So that kind of dark blue line represents the elementary attendance zones.
the green shaded areas are active subdivisions that are building new single family
homes. The yellow shaded areas are the future subdivisions that are in the planning stages.
you have 93 actively building subdivisions. You have 44 future subdivisions that are in
the planning stages. The developers have not slowed down. We have ground work underway on
2480 lots in 15 different subdivisions that will likely be delivered within the next 6
to 12 months. Those areas that have a red outline, those are the areas that are seeing the
new lot development activity. We delivered about 1279 lots were delivered during the
second quarter. Now here's your top five most active subdivisions. One to give you
just a brief, quick way to look to see where the highest activity is taking place. Tamaron is far and away the most active master planned community with over 900
closings. You've got amberly with 249, sorrento, 241, candela 239 and stone creek
estates 227. Annual closings in those five neighborhoods, I'm going to touch on some of the
highlights of the big futures that are in the works. Brookwater recently delivered.
they have 2400 total lots. They have 84 homes under construction. Really just
getting started with 87 occupied homes. Those price points are in the upper 200,000
to the mid 50 range for homes in brookwater. Holly ridge is a future development that's in
the planning stages. It's over a thousand total lots. This is a d.r. Horton community and
they the groundwork is underway, so they'll likely be working to deliver the infrastructure in
the streets. Should see homes starting in the spring of 26 in holly ridge. And it's in the
beasley elementary attendance zone. Next we're looking at brentwood farms. It's about
1098 future lots. Sections one through three have 166 lots. They have been approved and the
groundwork is underway on the the future phases one through three in brentwood farms again
likely see homes starting in this neighborhood in the spring of 26. Summer 26 is when we'll
see this area really starting to take off. Next is ryan hill. It's a mixed use development
that does have some del webb active adult lots. There are 770 del webb lots that would
have no impact of students to the school district, but they're still going to be close
to 1000 lots that are in the pulte area that would likely have homes with kids. So
groundwork is underway on ryan hill as well. Those are just some of the highlights of the
futures. We do have the full report of the housing activity that is available on the
multifamily picture. The this slide is illustrating the multifamily picture for the
houston area. The blue bar represents the occupancy rates. You can see how the last couple
of months, we've seen a pretty significant improvement in occupancy rates. You know, just
back in the first part of the year, they were in that 86 range, 80%, 86% occupied. Now
they're up to about 88% occupied. So we have seen an improvement there. And the
reason is we're absorbing more of those units. We built about 16,700 units in the last year,
and we absorbed about 20,700 units. And so we are seeing an increase in that occupancy rate.
when we look specifically at the multifamily picture for lamar, those purple circles are
the apartment complexes that are under construction. The turquoise circles are the
apartment complexes that are in the planning stages. We have 1700 multifamily units that are
in the construction stage. 260 of those are single family rental homes, and we've got
nearly 6600 multifamily units that are in the planning stages across the district, and we've
got 660 of those that are single family rental units. We do geocode your students every
fall, and we look at those yields of students per home and students per multifamily
project. And so this single family rental is a growing trend that we are seeing more
and more across our clients. And they have a little bit higher yield than a traditional
multifamily, but not as high of a yield as a traditional single family neighborhood. So a
single family neighborhood tends to yield between 0.4 to 0.6. Multifamily tends to yield
around 0.1 to 0.15, whereas this single family rental yields closer to the 0.2. Now
here's a look at the projections by grade level. This is the enrollment number
from september from a couple of weeks ago. And you are growing every day. So I know your
numbers likely a little higher than this. We're very fortunate. Your enrollment came in very
close to what we forecasted. So the enrollment for september was 48,568, which was growth of
about 1800 students. I'm holding that growth rate at about 3% for the next, you know,
several years. I do believe in five years, your enrollment could be at about 57,114
students. And in ten years, your enrollment will get to about 65,211 at the campus
level. This is the elementary projections. You'll notice the yellow is when the enrollment
exceeds the capacity. And I know you're opening multiple schools that will help with
those campuses that are in the yellow. But you can see you're roughly growing an elementaries
worth of students every year. So and this is going to be the case for the foreseeable future
just because of the size of the district, the amount of vacant developed lots, the amount of
future lots. So even with any hiccups, when I say hiccups with these higher interest
rates, this is kind of a hiccup season because housing is strained because of the cost.
but even with the hiccups, we're still producing over 5000 closings. So this number I
think is a good number to plan around is about 27,000 elementary students in five
years, and more than 31,000 elementary students in ten years. At the secondary level,
you're roughly growing about a intermediate or a middle school's worth of growth about
every 2 to 3 years. So not quite the same, because these are larger campuses is the main
reason why you're not seeing an element in intermediate or junior high need every year. But at least every 2 to 3 years, you're going to need an intermediate and a junior high.
so you can see you've got roberts at capacity. And that's where a new capacity, a new
building is going to come online to help with roberts. Same for lehman. You've got new
campuses coming that will help with those areas that are slightly overcapacity. Same at
the high school level. Fulshear high school. When the next high school opens, we'll see some
relief when that next high school opens. So I'll do key takeaways and be ready to
answer any questions. The second quarter 25 start rate is holding at about 1263, putting
the annual rate near 4800 new homes. We have 93 actively building subdivisions, 5700
lots available for builders to build on. We have a very high pipeline of futures. We have 44
future subdivisions in the planning stages that represent about 58,500 lots. We continue
to see groundwork underway of 2500 lots in 15 different subdivisions. The enrollment
patterns are shifting across the state, but here in lamar, you're going to continue to see
very strong enrollment because of the size and the sheer volume of houses, the expansion
of education options across the state are leading to some declining patterns. But I will
say that for lamar consolidated, those those pictures of enrollment change are many,
many years out. If I look at fort bend as an example, fort bend has only about 6000 future
lots left, so they're near the end of their building pipeline or building window. They
entered into declining enrollment two years ago, just two years ago. And so you're a
long way from that picture. And I just want to make that really clear, because it's the size of
the district. It's the amount of futures, and it's the strong activity that's happening right
now across the region and specifically here in lamar school district. I'd be happy
to answer any questions. So I'll start out. My understanding is that your your
prediction is a 3% growth rate, 3% okay. Does that represent approximately 2000 students?
yes 1800 to 1900 students. Okay. 18 to 1900. Does that account for dropouts, graduations? It
does. So it's net net. Yes. And so so you're predicting that in five years would be
approximately 57,114 students. In five years, your enrollment could be at about 57,106
students. Okay. And in ten years, 65,211 65,192. Okay. Thank you. Okay. I do have some
questions. Can we go back to. The apartment complex, the maps? Yes. Multifamily. Okay. So I
see a dot near dickinson. Is that an apartment complex? Down in the lower right? Yes. I
believe that is an apartment complex. It's in the planning stages. So it hasn't broken
ground yet. Okay. It's just started through. They're getting their permits. Okay. Do
we know exactly where that's located? I do have that location. Exactly. It's hard on
multifamily to put on a map because they represent such a small. So we use the circle to
kind of get us close. But we do have the exact addresses on all of these circles. Okay. And
then going back to there was a lot of fast growth. It looked like near carter elementary. I
think it might have been a few slides before that. Okay. So I can't tell by just by this map,
but when we rezoned kids from carter to pull them to campbell is this green area. In that
same zone where those kids, if they're starting to go to school, or are they going to
get kicked to campbell or be zoned to carter? So basically we have moved students around
as the leveling process to look at those populations. And then we have these future students
coming in, and if they're inside the carter zone, they'll stay at carter zone. What we'll do, though, is as we're evaluating the zones as we do every day, every year, we have
to come and make some decisions and have some discussions. Okay. And then my last question was,
I think near jackson, there's a little neighborhood and I'm not sure if that's where exactly
what school that zone to, because when you showed the projections for jackson, I
don't think they were going in the yellow at all. But I didn't look at pink or any of the
surrounding. Do you see what I'm saying behind kind of on top of jackson on the map. The
green I do, yeah. Is that going to be are those zoned to jackson? There are that
neighborhood is zoned to jackson okay. Is that north of is that north of 359? I cannot
recall if it's north of 359. Is that the second? I can provide some details. When I can look
at my software and get the specifics on that neighborhood, and I'll share that with doctor
maxwell. Okay. I was just curious because when it when you showed the numbers of the
elementary schools, I mean, it looks like it's obviously a large area, but jackson's
enrollment doesn't look to be in danger. So I'll look to see the details of that subdivision.
how many lots are left, what that future count is and how it is impacting the district, the
campus. Thank you. I do have a question. Go ahead. Mr. Templeton. One of the things
that really concerns me is like, let's just pick a date in the future. The year 2050. My one
of my concerns is that when these neighborhoods age out, we're going to have so many
elementary schools built so close to each other, geographically close, and we're going to be in a situation as a district where we're going to have to be closing schools. So
I don't see any other way to handle students coming here with the state, the way the
state has mandated us to educate whoever shows up at our doors. But you're you're saying,
if I'm hearing you right, that we're not anywhere close to that at this time? Correct, correct, correct. We can keep on building and we can keep on doing what we're doing, because
that's the only way forward. Correct. And I would say again, crystal ball a little bit here
where I would encourage the district to start thinking strategically, would be in about 12 to 15 years. And then at that point, some of these buildings are going to be so
old that it will be time to do what I think is a good planning exercise is the consolidations
and rebuilds. When some of these buildings get to be 50 years old, and then it's time
to okay, the school building is going to look dramatically different in 15 years. So then
there's some opportunities there to do the rebuilds and not put a bunch of money into
schools and extend the life out. And you don't want to put 5 million into a school. And then
two years later, close it down. So you definitely want to avoid that. But I think those
strategic planning windows are in about 12 to 15 years. Your enrollment easily could get to
75 to 9000. You're going to be pushing to be one of the biggest school districts in texas. Whenever we get farther down the road, that 50,000 58,000 future lots represents
about 27,000 kids, that it's going to take a long time for that to get built. But that's
the volume of houses that you have and the amount of future land that you have to, where
we're still a long way from that. All right. Thank you. Doctor, did you have something?
yes. Two things. One is, you know, there's a lot of work being done behind the scenes.
and, you know, you know, people know I'm an old offensive lineman and offensive lineman
don't get noticed until they get caught holding right. They get a penalty. And so I always,
you know, I want to recognize mr. Buchanan and our bond office because we have such
massive development coming and to be able to open, as I said this morning, you know, six
facilities in one year without a hiccup, without a hiccup. I mean, that is a that's
phenomenal teamwork. And so I always want to to say I appreciate that team. Mr.
buchanan and mr. Mckeever and, and their leadership and their guidance, because we're going
to continue to do this. Right. And so, mr. Templeton, if you would go back to the slide
where it showed our the excel sheet and showed the capacity at the elementary levels, the
spreadsheet and all had all the yellow on there. One more back that what I need everybody to
do now is take out your phone, take a picture of that seriously, take out your phone,
take a picture of that, and I need you to post that and share that, because that shows
everyone that as we ask the community for projects, that here's the evidence that
supports that. And so if you're watching online, I want you to pause this video, screenshot it
and save it and share it and show everyone that the people are here and the people are
coming. And so it is up to us to make sure our students get the best experience they could
possibly have in our classrooms, and our staff has the best possible facilities that they can give the experiences to our young people in the classrooms. If that goes into what you just
said, one of my requests, can the district go and clip this portion of the presentation to
have on hand? For we know that the people that care are watching and tuning in, but a
lot of the critics right now are creating monikers online that are incorrect. Can we clip
this portion so it's at hand so that we can share this as trustees and then share this or
the presentation from mr. Templeton itself that shows that the growth is happening
and happened. And it's here. Just so you guys are aware that after every time mr. Templeton
presents, we post this presentation to our website under demographics on our
website. So this will be there tomorrow. And all the previous ones are already posted there
as well. The presentation itself. But the discussion and telling the story about it.
because if I see numbers on the screen, I'm going to like but that saying what is actually
happening in the conversation around it? Yes, sir. I'm sure mr. Hamilton has already
thought about that. It's probably already done that. Thank you for being here. Thank
you. You're welcome. Oh, okay. I think that was it for the presentations. Are there any
items on the consent agenda that trustees would like to pull for discussion at the
november board meeting? No. Okay. It is 8:54 p.m. We are adjourning to closed session
pursuant to texas government code sections 55 1071551072551074 and 551.082.
the open meetings act to discuss personnel land acquisitio