The Littlefield Independent School District’s Board of Trustees met in regular session on Thursday evening to discuss a 14-item agenda.
Board President Gary Birkelbach called the meeting to order at 7 p.m. and gave the invocation.
There was nobody present to speak during public forum, but they had to hold a hearing for the Anual Academic Performance presented by Assistant Superintendent Amber Hays.
“This report talks about why we’re doing this, it talks about that we have to have a hearing for public discussion within 90 days of receiving this report from TEA,” she explained. It must be deciminated within two weeks after the hearing, we have to publish it and we also have to send it to all the campuses. A lot of that has already been done. I went ahead and already sent it to all the parents, it’s already published and I’ve already deciminated it for you all.”
She added, “Most of this I’ve already told you all in previous meetings. They’re not going to release our A-F rating because a lawsuit over AI grading on the test. That is still in court and will not be released. I did take all of our different demographics and graphed it, so you can see how each group is testing for Math, Reading, Science and Social Studies.”
Primary Principal Staci Sumners began theAdministrators Report with an update on the Primary campus. She stated that their total enrollment is sitting at 329 students, which is up two students from the last meeting. They have 104 Pre-K students, 69 kindergarten students, 62 first graders, 71 second graders and 23 self contained students.
“We only had 18 students out today [Thursday], which is huge. We went from 65 out last week to only 18 today, so that was huge. I want to thank you for Germ Blast coming out last night; they still had some things around the building helping purify the air. Heath is amazing, he reached out to me today [Thursday] to help guide us and our custodial staff with some additional things that they can do on campus to continue to help eliminate some of our little germs that we have running around. Tomorrow [Friday] we have a big first-grade pizza program, and they’re so excited. We had a dress rehearsal for our first-grade program today [Thursdsay], the campus went to go over and watch the first graders perform. We also have our Valentine’s Day parties on Friday.”
She added, “We’re still showing lots of steady growth on our IStation testing. When I went back and looked at our data from Sept. when we first took it to now. In Sept. 30% of our kids were below grade level in reading and now we’re only sitting at 21% of our kids below grade level. In Math we started the year with 25% of our kids below grade level and now we are down to 18% below grade level. These numbers include the entire campus. We also have a family learning night coming up, it will incorporate reading, math, science and the theme isAll Things Fairy tale. That will be on March 3rd from 5 p.m.-7 p.m. Our first graders will benchmark for the first time on the 25th; our second grade teachers have been working with our first grade teachers to teach them all the things on how to do benchmarks and open-ended responses. Head Start will be out on Feb. 25th to inspect us and make sure we’re in compliance.”
Elementary Principal Jerry Russell followed it up with an update on his campus, saying, they have a total enrollment of 244 students.
“Attendance percentage is at 94%, 94.4% in the last six weeks, which is due to the sickness that rolled through. Today we only had 10 kids out, which is about normal for us. We were in the same boat with 40-50 kids outs at a time, so that hurt our attendance this six weeks. We had kids go to Rotary Club and got their reader, writer, reasoner awards and we appreciate everything they do for all of our kids.”
He added, “I wanted to go over some numbers with you guys. This year’s third graders and last years third graders are not the same children. Where we ended last year on the English LanguageArts STAAR Test, we were at 28% meets and less than 5% masters. The interim testing shows with that group of kids we’re going to be at 46% meets and almost 30% masters, which is fantastic. Fourth graders, last year’s third graders, you’ll see an increase for meets of about 5%, as well as a 5% increase for masters. Our fifth graders this year, compared to last years fifth graders, went to almost 60% meets and 42% masters. If you average those out the reading test is projecting through the interim to be at 44% masters, which is fantastic. that’s almost half of our students performing at an 80% or better on the Reading STAAR Test.” He continued, “In Math, we held steady on the meets, but our masters percentage rose quite a bit. Fourth and fifth grade math went down in meets, but rose some in masters. We’ve covered three of the seven modules that they teach in math, so when we took this, we hadn’t even covered half of the material. We’re going to give this again at the end of March, so I will have better reports for you when the time comes. We will also have covered a lot more material.Also keep in mind, we started that material about eight weeks into school, but the teachers have really invested in it. This is positive news to me considering we’ve only covered half of the material. In Science, meets were over 35% with masters at 18% and we outperformed the Region by a lot.”
Junior High Principal Monica Acevedo stated that their enrollment is sitting at 282 students, which is down three students from the last meeting. She stated they have 86 sixth graders, 107 seventh graders and 89 eighth graders.
“Maroon honors and Maroon band will be performing on March 5th in Sundown for Pre-UIL and sight reading contest. They will go back on the 13th and perform for the UIL part of it. On Feb. 19th at 9 a.m. we have NJHS inductions and we will be starting out second round of interim tests for reading and math with reading taking place on Feb. 26th and Math taking place on March 27th. Science will be March 6th and Social Studies will be March 25th. We also have TELPASS testing will start right before Spring Break on March 11th and 12th.”
She added, “Parent Night will be on March 27th for our eighth graders, where they will go over to high school and start getting ready for registration. We will have our first track meet on Feb. 27th in Denver City.
High School Principal Brent Green explained that their enrollment is sitting at 380, which is up one student from the last report; we have 113 freshmen, 85 sophomores, 94 juniors and 88 seniors.
“We had several students participate in the All-Region Band at the Lubbock Civic Center. 10 members made the All-Region Band including Jimmy Ramos, Caleb Caudillo, Matthew Rios, Emma Romero, Zamya Darnell, Mia Rodriguez, Sophie Garcia, Brianna Aleman and Bailee Griffin. Those kids continue to go a great job in that program. The Forensic Science and Criminal Justice Class had law enforcement come in and do a demonstration on impaired driving and did some different exercises with them.”
He added, “We’ve also had a lot of students participating in stock shows. Ryan Muller participated in the calf scramble at the Ft. Worth Stockshow and was the first to cross the line and won a sponsorship for a heifer to show during the 2025-2026 show season. Six of our Ag Mech students took projects to the SanAngelo Stockshow and Rodeo. Red ribbons were won by Vince Villanueva and Erik Trejo. Uriel Ibarra, Brayan Sanchez, Gabe Mata and Teagan Miller all won blue ribbons, with Miller winning an additional prize for winning her division. Reggie Dabbs was on our campus last week with a good 30 minute presentation. He is a motivational speaker, who travels all over the world. He’s been on our campus three times in the last five years. Matthew Rios is still in San Antonio at the All-State Band Competition. He was announced as the third chair with his baritone. We took seniors to SPC last week and they got to visit with different departments and tour the campus and we ate lunch over there. Theater students went to Shallowater for a One-Act Play clinic and our PCT kids cranked back up their clinicals for this semester. Comfort Masters is coming next week to talk to kids abut a career in HVAC and Lincoln Tech, which is a good CTE environment wants to come talk to our kids also. Band has Solo Ensemble coming up and there are multiple stock shows coming up as well.”
Athletic Director Bo Bryant gave an update on athletics, saying, “Girl’s basketball came to an end on Tuesday, they lost a heart-breaker to Dalhart in Canyon in the Bi-district round. They ended with a record of 20-13, finishing third in district. I’m proud of them, they had a great season and she has a lot of kids coming back, so the future looks bright. Boy’s basketball ended their regular season on Tuesday, also finishing third in district with a record of 21-8. We’ll be the two seed in the big school bracket. They play Bushland at Dimmitt at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. Tennis is going, they’ve got about 30-35 kids out right now. Their first match will be a dual here against Idalou on Feb. 27th.”
He added, “Golf is also going, Coach Davis has six boys and seven girls out this year. They go to Tulia next Monday and Tuesday for a meet. High School track will take the runners to Tulia and then Junior High and High School go to Denver City the following week, which will be our first full meet. Softball has had a few scrimmages and then they had their first game the other night when it was about 25 degrees and icing, but they got the win over Brownfield and JV picked up a win as well. They LCHS tomorrow [Friday] and they play Hale Center here on Tuesday with the JV at 12 p.m.and varsity at 2 p.m. Baseball has also had a few scrimmages and their first game will be Monday at Trinity with varsity at 12 p.m. and JV at 2:30 p.m.”
Brette Southard gave an update on the special education department, stating that they have 388 kids in special education within the Co-op, including 221 in Littlefield ISD, 79 in Sudan ISD, 50 in Springlake-Earth ISD, 22 at Cotton Center ISD and 16 atAmherst ISD.
Item five was to deliberate and take possible action to approve the Annual Student Performance Report, presented earlier in the meeting by Asst. Supt. Hays.
The motion to approve the Report was made by Reese Rogers and seconded by Sal Acevedo. The motion carried.
Next the Board discussed two option for the 2025-2026 School Calendar, which were presented by Rachel Moreno.
“Rachel reached out to all the principals to get some information on how they felt about this year’s calendar and then we sat here as an administrative staff at central and made two drafts,” Superintendent Mitch McNeese said.
“We got feedback from every campus and teachers responded very honestly, so we tried to take their feedback into consideration when making these calendars,” Moreno said. “Calendar draft one was 161 instructional days with teachers having to do some kind of staff development in the summer, while draft two has 156 instructional days. Teachers are required by law to work 187 days. We try to get those days within the school year, but sometimes we can’t so the teachers have to do some staff development in the summer. Draft two allows them to do everything within the school year, but they would have to come in June and then would have the rest of the summer off.”
She added, “We’re presenting these to the principals next week and then we’re going to have the staff vote on them. We tried to keep the same holidays that we had last year, except for Veteran’s Day because if falls on a Tuesday this upcoming year.”
No action was taken. Item seven on the agenda was to deliberate and take possible action to approve the Gifted and Talented District Plan.
“The Board already had an approved plan, the reason we’re presenting a new one is because there were state law changes, so we had to update the plan to reflect that,” Asst. Supt. Hays said. “Those were just released officially last month. We have added an advisory committee, which will meet twice a year. We’re updating our website to make it more parent friendly so they can see more what is available and it’s easy to get a referral form.”
She added, “We had to move our referral windows, so winter will be for secondary, junior high and high school and then in Jan. and Feb. we will be referring Primary and Elementary because kindergartners have to be identified and start to be certified by March. We will have to have a short GT training, which is a one-time training. The other thing the law changed is that it states that we have to have an evaluation.”
The motion to approve the Gifted and Talented District Plan was made by Graham Henley and seconded by Hervey Valdez. The motion carried.
The next order of business was to discuss the Gifted and Talented Program Evaluation.
“The only things I needed to address were that we can no train our Alt cert people to be GT certified, so our people have been going through that. Also, there was a discrepancy in our population certified vs our district population, so we have added in a screener-type benchmark. Depending on their score, their primary scoring and their STAAR test, we will test anybody who hits those levels and they don’t have to have a teacher or parent referral.”
She added, “The number of GT students referred was 14 last year and this year we’ve had 31 referrals. We’re only funded for 5%, but you can identify more than that. Our district really does a good job of taking care of our kids first, we don’t stop a 5%.”
No action was necessary. There were no Trust Property Dispositions to approve this month.
Bryan Gregory gave an update on the Facilities and Maintenance Priorities Plan.
“We had our meeting this morning with Teinert and Parkhill, we’re still trying to finish up the high school. They’ve got a thick list of stuff they have to get through, they’re making some progress, they may not be where we want them to be on, but they’re aware and are making progress. The junior high process has begun. The walk way between the main building and the VO building is going to come down in the next week or so. They’ve began some asbestos abatement, we’ve been fully aware of and tracking since it was identified.”
He added, “That process will start on the 18th, but they will have an outside company come in and do what they have to do to get that stuff abated and out of there in the proper way. They’re reinforcing the joints inside the building for the rooftop units that will be going on. They plan to pour the new slab in the courtyard area on the 22nd. They would do it sooner, but they’re waiting for some proper weather. The new lights that we ordered for the football field are scheduled to arrive at 9 a.m. on the 20th. Their crew will show up on the 17th and start taking the old stuff down. We wanted to make sure we got that done prior to our track meets in mid March.
No action was necessary. Destiny Chavarria gave the Financial and Investment Review and Report.
The motion to approve the Financial and Investment Review and Report was made by Rogers and seconded by Valdez. The motion carried.
Pursuant to Texas Government Code, Chapter 551, Subchapter D and E, the Board went into executive session at 7:56 to discuss personnel matters. The Board returned to open session at 8:59 p.m.
The motion was made by Valdez and seconded by Acevedo to extend the contracts of Asst. Supt Amber Hays, Chief Operations Officer Bryan Gregory, Chief Financial Officer and Director of Finance Destiny Chavarria, Teams specialist Rachel Moreno, Principals, Staci Sumbers, Jerry Russell and Brent Green, Asst. Principals Mitsy Jennings and Veronica Savala, LCSSADirector Brette Southard,Athletic Director Bo Bryant and Technology Director Matt Mills, as recommended by Supt. McNeese.
Resignation letter and retirement was presented on Mark Warsing, Maintenance and Transportation director, which is effective at the end of this school year.
At-Will personnel Hilda Miranda, Peggy Robinson and Alice Hernandez.
Supt. McNeese presented Board training information to the Board and the meeting was adjourned by Board President Birkelbach at 9:01 p.m.