The Littlefield Independent School District’s Board of Trustees met in regular session on Monday night to discuss a 12-item agenda.
The meeting was called to order at 6:46 p.m. beginning with the Administrative Report.
Elementary Principal Mitzi Jennings started things off with an update on her campus.
“Third grade has 65 students, fourth has 67 students, fifth grade has 84 students and there are five in special education for a total of 221 students,” Jennings said. “We just finished our benchmarks, so we’re going to starting working through those and figure out where our gaps are. We’re starting UIL signups and I’m excited about our music program. We just recently got our recorders in and the kids are learning their first note.”
Junior High Principal Jena Montgomery gave an update on her campus, stating that the new Junior High building is amazing and they’ve had a great start to the year.
“Our current enrollment is at 244 with 81 sixth graders, 78 seventh graders and 85 eighth graders, which is up six from where we ended the year last year.
We’re in the middle of football, volleyball and cross country seasons and the kids are competing hard.
We’ve already got instruments in the hands of sixth graders and they’re playing already, and they’re excited about it. We gave our sixth graders the option of band and art and the majority of them chose band, which I think is a testament to Mr.
Lester and Mr. Timmerman is really great too.”
She added, “This year every one of our core subjects have a PLC, so they have weekly meetings with me to go over data. Starting this week we will begin having our targeted tutorials on Thursday and Friday mornings and Friday afternoons.
We’re working on a pinning ceremony and an awards ceremony for our students for the growth that they had last year.”
High School Principal Dr.
Jerry Russell updated the Board on what is ongoing and coming up at his campus, saying, “We have PLC periods similar to junior high. We’ve been pushing for kids to show up for events and I think it has worked out really well so far. We had 75% of our student body at the first football game in some capacity, whether it was in the student section, band, on the field, cheer. We’ve had a lot of kids at volleyball games. When District begins, we will be running spirit busses for both boys and girls sports.”
Rotary has asked for all of our kids show up, so far we’ve had our Ag students, NHS, StuCo, Band is going this week. Every week we have a group going to Rotary. Ag stuff is getting rolling. Jostens is coming back for ring sizes for all of our juniors and next month on Oct. 8th they will be here to do caps and gowns for seniors. We’re hoping to have those in the seniors hands before spring break this year. Band starts their marching festival on Sept. 29th and we will be doing FAFSA for seniors on the
Brette Southard gave an update on the special education department, saying, “In Littlefield we have 222 kids with IEP’s. Because we’re a co-op we serve 19 kids in Amherst and Anton, Springlake-Earth had 41 kids, Sudan had 70 kids and Cotton Center has 19 kids for a total of 371 students that we serve in Lamb County and Cotton Center.” Athletic Director Bo Bryant was on hand to give an update on Junior Fligh and Fligh School athletics.
“Our varsity girls are 616. They’ve had quite a bit of adversity they’ve faced already this season, but they’re coming together.
They split their dual last week and they’re getting better, and staring to come together. JV1 is 8-8 and JV2 is 3-11. Our junior high girls had a tournament in Plains this past weekend and got a lot of games in Maroon is 3-3, White is 3-2 and Gray is 0-5. Coach Thomas and Coach Davis have some good numbers in cross country this year; they have 15 high school girls, 11 high school boys, 17 junior high girls and eight junior high boys. The high school kids have been in three meets, junior high has been in two meets.”
He added, “Our seventh grade team has 31 guys and scrimmaged Abernathy last week. Our eighth graders have 35 guys and they lost to Abernathy in their first game of the season. Our freshmen are 1-1 on the year, our JV is 0-3 and our varsity is 3-0. Next week is Homecoming against Levelland, 1 think it will be a good and competitive game. During our district opener against Muleshoe, they’re going to honor Coach Boomer and his family. He was here for 30 years from 1971-2000; he was a part of 247 wins at Littlefield, 127 as an assistant with Coach Blakely, and 120 as the Head Coach. Also at halftime of that game they’re going to honor the 2006 State Finalist team that went 13-2 and lost to Tatum in the State Championship. We’re also one win away from 700 total victories for Littlefield High School.”
Garry Ozbirn gave the invocation and the minutes from the previous meeting were approved by general consent. There was nobody present to speak during public forum.
Item five on the agenda was to deliberate and take possible action to adopt a resolution designating the district’s non-business days for the 2027 calendar year for purposes of the Texas Public Information Act.
“Back in 2023 a House Bill came out that allowed us to name 10 days not considered a holiday as nonbusiness days,” Superintendent Mitch McNeese said.
“What you’ll find on the calendar is these days surround holidays. The 4th and 5th of January, 18th and 19th of March are around Spring Break, around July 4th and then Thanksgiving and Christmas. It just gives us an extra day or so during those breaks and we’ve been doing this since 2023.” The motion to approve the resolution designating the district’s nonbusiness days for the 2027 calendar year for purposes of the Texas Public Information Act was made by Cody West and seconded by Eric Vargas.
The motion carried.
The next order of business was to deliberate and take possible action to approve Certification Requirements for TEC 39.008.
“The Federal and State Governments push these and the Board has to approve these,” Supt.
McNeese said. “We have the letter ready to go and send off as soon as the Board approves this.”
The motion to approve Certification Requirements for TEC 39.008 was made by Will Williams and seconded by Ben Diaz. The motion carried.
Bryan Gregory gave an update on the Facilities and Maintenance Priorities Plan, stating, “The High School and Junior High projects are practically done. There are still some minor things that need to be taken care of by Teinert.
The claim for the roof at the high school is still in the making. It’s in the stage where the manufacturer, the roofer and Teinert have to figure out who is going to pay for it. We had a lightning strike back in July at the football field that took out the elevator, that cost $32,000 in damage. It fried the controls and along with that we have to update everything they make you do when you update an elevator. We will file a claim with TASBY, so we’ll get some of that back. The sound system was also fried, and it was practically brand new.
Moyer has got us up and running and they’re going to do their best to try and get most of that covered under warranty since it was practically brand new.”
He added, “One of our Suburbans blew its transmission, and we’ve elected to let our Auto Tech kids replace that, it will be a great learning experience for them. However, we are going to be recommending the purchase of a new Suburban, with an estimated cost between $60$65,000.”
No action was necessary.
Item eight on the agenda was to deliberate and take possible action on approval of CD continuation.
“When we approved the CD last year, the maturity date was Sept. 12th, so that matured on Saturday, Sept.
12, 2026,” Destiny Chavarria said. “The Board at the time elected to put $5 Million into our CD. The rate that Wellington State Bank provided to us is the three month T-bill rate plus an additional .10-percent.
So, with last year’s rate we made an additional $211,332.41. We came up on top.”
She added, “The T-Bill at the time was 4.049 plus the 10-percent, so we would be at 4.149-percent. We have the option as a school district to elect a 60-day, 90day, six month or 12 month CD. At that point if we decide to elect again, it would be based on the threemonth T-bill at that point.”
The motion was made by Ozbirn and seconded by Diaz to continue the CD.
The motion carried.
Chavarria gave the Financial and Investment Review and Report.
The motion to approve the Financial Investment Review and Report was made by Williams and seconded by Ozbirn. The motion carried.
Under Texas Education Code 551.074 the Board went into executive session at 7:39 p.m. to discuss personnel matters. The Board returned to the open meeting at 8:31 p.m.
There were no personnel matters to discuss and there was no Board Training information at this time.
With no further business to discuss the meeting was adjourned at 8:32 p.m.