The Littlefield Independent School District’s Board of Trustees met in regular session on Thursday evening in the Board room of the Jerry Blakely Administration Building.
Board President Lance Broadhurst called the meeting to order at 7:01 p.m. and gave the invocation.
There was nobody present for public forum and the minutes from the previous meeting were approved as read.
There were no administrative reports due to being on summer break.
The Board discussed the District of Innovation that was put in place during the 2016-17 school year.
“I believe back in 2016-17 then Superintendent Robert Dillard came out with the District of Innovation, which allows certain exemptions for schools,” Superintendent Mike Read said. “The District of Innovation reads: We will have the flexibility to hire external or internal applicants that do not have traditional state certifications. The only two that have to have state certifications are special ed and bilingual education teachers.”
He added, “Our teachers that we are getting right now out of college, if they don’t have the certification, they have a Bachelor of Science degree, but they don’t have a certification, we can put them in an alternative certification program, such as I Teach Texas, and they can get that certification within a year. This is one of the exemptions, the other is probationary contracts. We can keep a new hire on a probationary contract for up to three years. What that means is that any time during the probationary contract, should something come up and the person was let go, there is no recourse with the probationary contract.”
Another thing the District of Innovation includes is a uniform start date that states that we will not start school prior to the second Monday of August, among a few other things.
“We had a meeting about a week and a half ago with our admin team and teachers and we’re going to renew this for another five years from the 2022-23 school year to the 2026-27 school year,” Supt. Read stated.
The Board discussed school safety and the measures they’re taking to better secure our campus and central office within LISD.
“In the wake of the Uvalde ISD tragedy, I feel it is imperative to have a discussion regarding our school safety measures that we have in place for LISD,” Supt. Read said. “At the present time all of our doors are locked and we have also started locking the doors at the Central Office. People can buzz for us to let them in.”
Supt. Read stated that we 30 entrances at high school, 18 at the junior high, eight at the elementary and six at the Primary campus.
“We have been discussing ways that we can reduce the number of external entries,” he said. “We will be implementing the Guardian Program this school year and there will be 22 staff members that will be armed and we will have a sign outside of each campus that will state, ‘Please be aware that our staff is armed and may use whatever force necessary to protect our students and staff.’ Tim [Gau] is going to talk about some surveillance camera options for central office and our campuses.
Bryan Gregory gave a presentation on how they plan to cut down on the number of exterior entries/exits at the high school.
“As Supt. Read mentioned we have 30 entrances at the high school, Gregory said. A significant safety and security issue occurs during each passing period, because we have kids leaving the main building and going to the VO building, the old gym, the new gym, the Ag Barn and this is a constant all-day deal, where we have kids out in the open.”
He added, “We have come up with three options, which include putting an 8’ metal privacy fence to help enclose the high school campus eliminating 19 entrances. Options are also being discussed on how to better secure the elementary and junior high campuses as well.”
After further discussion the Board decided to go back to the drawing board to see how they can better improve the safety of the campuses in LISD.
Technology Director Tim Gau also gave the Board a list of things they have checked into to better secure the campuses in our district as well.
“There are multiple areas that we are addressing tonight; security cameras, we look at them lasting about eight years, ours have been needing to be replaced for a while,” Gau said. “We’re looking at putting in higher definition cameras and also right now our cameras are only good for one direction; we’re looking at putting cameras with 380 degree range. In the hallways, we will have one camera getting all three directions instead of three cameras crossing views. That cost is $285,831.91 for the entire district.”
He added, “We’ve talked about adding phones to every single room to help improve the security in the classrooms. That will cost us $93,895.10, to do that across the district. Access control is another thing we want to do. Right now, we have access control at the main entrances and Primary has access control at all of their doors and Elementary has it on the doors of their main building. This would go on all exterior doors across the district and will cost $84, 136.03. Visitor management system is another thing we have looked into, where a visitor will have to give their ID to the front desk and they will scan it and it will tell us if they’re a sex offender, or have a warrant out, or have any kind of red flags. If they are OK it will print out a visitor pass, if not if will flag them and they will not be given entrance to the rest of the building. The cost for that is $8,744 and then there is a yearly expense of $3,000 for the district.”
Gau went over a few more smaller items such as strobe lights that would be placed outside of each classroom to alert first responders where issues are and external speakers, among other things to go with the intercom paging solution. Gau stated that this system would cost $391,000 for the district.
Supt. Read stated that there will be two new courses added to the high school for the 2022-23 school year, which will be Kinesiology taught by Nathan McKinnon and Video Game Programming taught by Logan Mitchell.
“The Video Game Programming class will teach kids how to design and create video games, while the Kinesiology class will fall in line with our current sports medicine program,” Supt. Read said.
The motion to approve two Innovative courses for the High School for the 2022-2023 school year was made by Adrian Solis and seconded by Gary Birkelbach. The motion carried.
Supt. Read and Gregory talked about where they are at with the new softball field, saying, “We had a survey done on the location of where are new softball field will be for the Spring of 2023 and also had a discussion with County Judge Mike DeLoach and Sheriff Gary Maddox regarding the purchase of the land of the new field. Judge DeLoach will be taking his recommendation to the Commissioners Court on Monday, June 13 th . The one thing Sheriff Maddox asked was that if we could take the fence all the way down to Waylon Jennings and then there is an area on the east side where they do not want anybody parking at.”
He added, “We will be adding a separate concession stand for the softball field, but it is not included in the initial quote we got from Paragon Sports. The project is scheduled to be done before the girls start practicing in January.”
Gregory talked about the HVAC project, saying, “Everything is looking good and keep in mind this is all going to be paid for with ESSER money. They are going to start at the Primary on June 28 and be finished with that on July 8, from there they will go to the New Gym and work on that from July 11 th through the 15 th and then they will finish it up July 18 th through the 22 nd , tying everything together with integration and controls, so we should be up and running on July 22 nd .”
He added, “Two years ago we went in and chip-sealed the main parking lot at the high school and turns out it was a big mistake. We can’t keep lines on it, rocks are getting kicked up, so we’ve got two quotes to remove all of the current surface and replace it with two inches of asphalt and re-stripe it. The best quote we’ve got is $109,500.”
The motion to approve the Facilities Maintenance and Priorities Plan was made by Hervey Valdz Jr. and seconded by Solis. The motion carried.
“We’re currently paying $600 for each employee’s healthcare insurance continuing with TRS Active Car of Blue Cross Blue Shield,” Supt. Read stated. The rates for the HMO went up to $689.60 employee only, from $596.54. I’m recommending that we keep our employee contribution at $600 per employee. This is a great benefit for the 197 employees out of the 208 that we have who are insured through the school district.”
The motion to approve the LISD Employee Insurance Contribution for the 2022-2023 school year was made by Birkelbach and seconded by Solis. The motion carried.
There was no action necessary for Trust Property Disposition or for Budget Amdendment.
Bev Boldes presented the Financial and Investment Review and Report and the motion to approve the Reports was made by Birkelbach and seconded by Pat Demel. The motion carried.
The Board went into executive session at 8:33 p.m. to discuss personnel matters. They reconvened at 9:34 p.m. in regular session.
Certified Personnel: the motion was made by Valdez and seconded by Solis to approve contracts for Probationary Contract Certified Staff members Jarrod Thomas, Kaylyn Green, Madison Ingle, Twana Vickers, Shelby Garrett, Tyler Classen, Zulema Enriquez, Crystal Saenz and Madison Davis. The motion carried.
At-Will Personnel: Janie Salazar was hired as a Special Education Aide; Monica Potts was hired as the Junior High Cafeteria Manager and Victoria Villaneuva was hired as the High School Cafeteria Manager.
Resignation letters were presented on Ariel Bryant, Audra Blevins, Kaegan Edwards, Debbie Espinoza, Tyler Rekeita and Cody Spies.
Supt. Read discussed Board Training opportunities and the meeting was adjourned at 9:36 p.m.