The Littlefield Independent Scholl District’s Board of Trustees met in regular session on Thursday, Sept. 23rd, during lunch in the board room of the Jerry Blakely Administration Building.
The Meeting was called to order at 12 p.m. by Board President Lance Broadhurst and the Invocation was given by Adrian Solis.
During Public Forum, Sal Acevedo addressed the board about Homecoming changes.
The minutes of the previous meeting were approved by general consent.
Primary Principal Staci Sumners opened the administrative reports with a report on her Primary Campus.
“Total enrollment is 296, which is six kids more than we had at the last board meeting,” she stated. “In Pre-K we have 57 kids, nine of which are our three-year old’s. We’re still about five kids short in getting the Head Start funding. We have 66 kindergartners, 89 first graders and 84 second graders.”
She added, “We started with our community picnic. We got rained out twice before we finally got to have it and it was a huge success. We went through about 800 hot dogs and had a DJ, games, kites; it was just a great family night. This first six weeks we have worked really hard teaching the ‘Wildcat Way’. We’re teaching them to be responsible, be respectful and be safe. Lastly, we have our Family Reading Night coming up on Thursday; we’re calling it Camp Read A Lot. We’re going to do lots of hands on activities and how to get our parents involved with reading at home.”
Elementary Principal Tom Whistler followed, stating their total enrollment is 267; third grade has 75 students, fourth grade has 86 students and fifth grade has 106 students.
“We had our Constitution Day music program two weeks ago at the carpet gym,” he said. “Our reading interventionist Mrs. DeLoach had her reading intervention groups going and she is progress monitoring at this time to see who she needs or who she can take out. Our House Bill 4545 extra tutoring hours; we covered most of that in summer school, but we still have a little bit to catch up on and we have that going in fourth and fifth grade.”
He added, “UIL is coming up in about six weeks, Nov. 2nd. Kids and coaches are all working hard. We’ve done three of four safety drills already this year and we’ve got more to go throughout the year.
Junior High Principal Adam Solis gave his report stating that their students and staff have all been working hard and getting in the groove of things throughout this first six weeks.
“What excites me about all the green that Mrs. Sumners sees on her progress charts, because she’s putting together a great reading program at the Primary,” he said. I know that Mrs. Trugillo is our reading interventionist at the junior high, but we don’t need just one Mrs. Trugillo, we need four or five right now. But, with Staci working as hard as she is, maybe we won’t need so many reading interventionists in the future.”
He added, “UIL sign-ups and practices have begun and our first meet will be Nov. 30th. Volleyball is in full swing and our football guys did great against Brownfield on Thursday. Our first dance is Sept. 30th.”
The junior high had 295 kids at this time last year; this year they have 277. Their attendance percentage last Tuesday was 96.74, Wed. was 96.01 and Thursday it was 98.91.
High School Principal Amber Hays gave her report on the High School stating that their enrollment is 368 total students, including 102 freshman, 93 sophomores, 92 juniors and 79 seniors.
“Homecoming went really well; the kids had a good time and loved the night before with the fireworks and everything,” she said. “Attendance is something that we battle daily, but our first six weeks last year the attendance percentage was 93.6 and this year it was 94.95. I’m really proud of Coach Green and what he does and if you saw everything he does, you would be impressed too.”
SPED Director Brette Southard stated that they have 150 students with disabilities at the end of August.
“The CMR committee met on Tuesday night and interviewed three firms for the construction manager bid and the ranking are as follows: Teinert at number one, Lee Lewis at number two and Sandilla at number three. Assistant Superintendent Mitch McNeese asked the board for a motion to approve these rankings.”
The motion was made by Solis and seconded by Hervey Valdez Jr. to approve the Evaluation Committee Ranking of Construction Manager Firms as presented. The motion carried.
Item six on the agenda was deliberation and possible action to authorize Superintendent to negotiate a contract for Construction Manager at Risk services for 2022 Bond Improvement Projects using approve ranking of firms: “By authorizing Mr. Read with the ability to negotiate a contract with CMR Teinert, David Baccus our school’s attorney will draft a contract between LISD and Teinert and I recommend it’s approval,” Asst. Supt. McNeese said.
The motion was made by Solis and seconded by Johnny Castillo to authorize the Superintendent to negotiate a contract for Construction Manager at Risk services for 2022 Bond Improvement Projects using approved ranking firms as presented. The motion carried.
Item seven was Deliberation and possible action to consider Schematic Design Plan approval for the New High School and Career and Technical Education Building: “We’re building the new campus for approximately 390 students,” Ryan Bradley said. “The purpose of today is to get your approval on the schematic layout that we have, the floor plan and confirm the overall scope, space layouts and the adjacency of those spaces.”
He gave a presentation showing the board where everything would be as of now and what each space on both the first and second floor would be used for.
The motion was made by Solis and seconded by Castillo to approve the Schematic Design Plan approval for the New High School and Career and Technical Education Building as presented. The motion carried.
Item eight was a discussion regarding Conterra Pole at the High School.
“The Conterra Pole is that huge pole that stands outside the Band Hall,” Asst. Supt. McNeese said. “It was put in about 10 or 15 years ago, and with the advances in technology we do not use it anymore. Mr. Gregory, Tim Gau and a lot of people have looked at it and with all of the construction that is going on around there, we have elected to remove it.”
No action was necessary. Item nine was Deliberation and possible action to approve Suburban Bid. “We followed procurement rules and ran the necessary stuff in the newspaper for two consecutive issues,” Gregory said. “Currently the district has three suburbans; one is driven by the Athletic Director and two are used to transport students. We are short vehicles today, we struggle on a weekly basis getting kids moved where we need to get them to. Those suburbans are a great alternative.”
He added, “All three of our current suburbans are in excellent condition. We got one sealed bid from Littlefield Chevrolet; those folks are great to work with and the bid they gave us was $52,690 and it is a pretty standard suburban, all electric on the inside with cloth seats. Unfortunately, all of these dealerships are on an allocation basis, but they don’t know when they will get this vehicle in. They did say that if we find something somewhere else before theirs comes in, they will let us out of the agreement that we have.”
The motion was made by Valdez and seconded by Castillo to approve the Suburban Bid as presented. The motion carried.
Item 10 was Deliberation and possible action to approve Campus Improvement Plans and District Improvement Plan for 20222023 School Year: “We put this together in the summer and each campus comes up with their own five goals for the year,” Asst. Supt. McNeese said. “Then I take those goals and look at the familiarity or the commonality of those goals and I make it into a District Improvement Plan. Throughout the years these goals have been set to where they were pretty much academic, well now it has changed.”
He added, “You still have to have five goals, but they have to fall into these categories: Academic Achievement, Staff Quality, School Climate and Safety, College and Military Readiness and CTE and the last one is Parent and Community Engagement.”
Asst. Supt. McNeese said, “The following is this years District Improvement Plan: Academic Achievement, we want to see a 57% growth in reading and ELA. We look at our two lowest scores and the subjects arr math and reading and it’s been that way for a very long time and it’s like that across the state. We plan to achieve this by using small group instruction, we’re still using the 4545 plan where we’re getting those 30 extra hours of intervention for the students who failed the state exam. Staci mentioned IStation and we’re also using a program called ‘Really Great Reading’ and we also have remedial classes set up at junior high and high school to help our students.
“Staff Quality: We would like to see 100% of our core academic classes be taught by a certified teacher. We’re going to retain and recruit those kind of teachers,” he said. “If you look across the state, I talked to the coaches when they went to coaching school in the summer and on the coaching board alone, there were between 8001,000 jobs open in the coaching field alone.”
“Under the School Climate and Safety goal, we had a program that came in here this past week that talked about child trafficking and social media,” he said. “We’re trying to help our kids in any way and give them the knowledge they need to stay out of these issues.”
“Under the CMR and CTE goal, we want to maintain 100% graduation rate, we’re really proud of that,” he said. “We want to increase the number of industry based certifications such as welding. Also coming up with the new high school, we will have additional programs for kids to earn certifications in.”
“Under the Parent and Community Engagement goal, Kaiyla has done a great job with our website,” he said. “Tim Gau has us on the notify app that allows us to text, email and make phone calls to parents to notify them about events we have coming up. We also have E-note, which allows teachers to send notes to parents and students about assignments. Staci is doing a great job of doing these community events at the Primary.”
The motion was made by Gary Birkelbach and seconded by Valdez to approve the Campus Improvement Plans along with the District Improvement Plan as presented by Asst. Supt. McNeese. The motion carried.
There were no Trust Properties to go over.
Item 12 was Deliberation and possible action to approve AgriLife Adjunct Faculty for 20222023 School Year: “County AgriLife Extention Agent Courtney Lowe has requested that the Board take action to recognize 4-H as an official extracurricular activity and recognize Courtney Lowe and Brandon Albus as the Adjunct Faculty members for the 2022-23 school year. This will be a yearly action by the board and I recommend it’s approval,” Asst. Supt. McNeese said.
The motion was made by Birkelbach and seconded by Valdez, to recognize 4-H as an official extracurricular activity and Extension Agents, Courtney Lowe and Brandon Albus as Adjunct Faculty Members, for the 20222023 School Year as recommended by Asst. Supt. McNeese. The motion carried.
Item 13 was Deliberation and possible action to approve Facilities Maintenance Priorities Plan: “Paragon is doing an outstanding job making progress with our girl’s softball field,” he said. “The drainage ditches have been dug and the field has been leveled off.”
Gregory added, “We have a telephone pole sitting out in right-center field. Where we are right now is us getting that pole moved is not an issue, but our desire and our commitment to the county is that we would move that power line underground. The delivery on the equipment necessary to put that line in the ground is a six to eight month delivery, which is not going to work.”
He added, “I talked to a gentlemen named Jonathan Cantu, who works for Excel and he came up with a plan that wouldn’t require all the equipment that all of the Excel engineers said we needed. He got me in contact with another young man, Chance Logan, who also works for Excel. He is working on trying to find the parts necessary to move that line underground without the original components the other Excel engineer said they needed. Long story short, if they can find those components, there is a potential that we can get that line moved underground by somewhere around Dec. 5th. The reason that date is important is because that is when Paragon plans to start laying turf. Best case scenario is that this plan works, worse case scenario is that we move the power line overhead by Dec. 5th and then we come back at some point and move it underground, but that will cost us an extra $70,000.”
The motion was made by Castillo and seconded by Valdez to approve the Facilities Maintenance Plan as presented by Asst. Supt. McNeese. The motion carried.
Asst. Supt. McNeese and Bev Boldes gave the Financial and Investment Review & Report. The motion was made by Solis and seconded by Birkelbach to approve the Financial and Investment Review & Report as presented. The motion carried.
The Board went into Executive session 1:28 p.m.; Pursuant to Texas Government Code Section 551.071 the Board went into executive session to discuss personnel. They returned to the regular meeting at 2:01 p.m.
At-Will Personnel: Pam Foshee was approved as a Pre-Kindergarten Aide and a resignation was presented on Dora Ramon.
Asst. Supt. McNeese provided the board with upcoming training information and with there being no further business to discuss, President Broadhurst declared the meeting adjourned at 2:02 p.m.