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hey, hey, hey. Good evening. I'm calling this meeting to order. The time is 5:33 p.m. in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas Government Code Chapter 551. This meeting is officially open with the quorum present. At this time, we will hear public
comment addressing items on the agenda. Let me remind you that because of restrictions by the Texas Open Meetings Act, board members may not engage in a verbal exchange about a subject that has not been posted. We will listen and take notes, but the board is prohibited from responding to any inquiries made during a board meeting on any topic not posted
on the agenda. However, the board may reply with one, a statement of specific factual information given in response to the inquiry, two, recitation of existing policy in response to the inquiry, or three, direct the person to visit with staff about the issue. No presentation may exceed three minutes unless the
speaker has prior approval for additional time because of the use of a translator. Speakers who require the assistance of a translator are permitted double the allotted time of speakers who do not require the assistance of a translator. Speakers, when your name is called, approach the podium by going down to the back of the room, down the
stairs, and coming up the sidewall on your right. As soon as the speaker begins speaking, the time clock will begin. Our first speaker today is Amanda Ana, followed by our final speaker, Scott Blanco Davis. Good evening, Dr. Molinar, President Martinez, and board. Um, if you can't
tell, we had a great first day at Bristol Elementary today. We had superhero day, so that's why I'm here, dressed like this. Um, but I wanted to talk to you tonight about the implementation of Lonear governance and why I think it's important.
As you know, um, we had some very tough news, uh, coming out. First of all, the possible TEA takeover and then also, um, how poorly our district has been performing. And while I'm very excited about the growth that we've seen in
reading, we know we have a long way to go. And I think it's super important that as a board that you are able to focus on student outcomes and the beautiful thing about Lonear governance is it helps you do just that. So just
like in teaching when we have to go to training to make sure our craft is honed in and the best for students, I think it's very important that you as a board do the same because it allows a level of accountability between you and between
Dr. Molina and she can't do it alone and I know she's working very hard. Her and I talk often and I'm very thankful for that. But I also think that your role is equally important. And so with that I also want to say that Lonear governance
allows a dialogue between the community and board and that's also equally important and sometimes I think you can tell by the comments that's lacking. So, it's very important that we both uh have focus on student outcomes and that we
also equally have a dialogue between the board and the community. So, I want to commend you um for taking that step in the right direction. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is Scott Blink Davis. Good afternoon, Superintendent Molinar.
Good afternoon, board. Sorry, I've been on vacations. Good to see y'all again. First off, I want to thank y'all for the uh for the visit this morning. It really touched our kids in a lot of ways and and made them really proud of what they have. And I also want to thank you for
the dirt and the gravel I saw. So, I'm going to see a parking lot and getting our kids out of the neighborhood, which I think will be a real safety build. Um, let's go with the Lonear governance and
how our groups are working together. I was pretty sure that when I came back in, I was going to look at the curriculum and it's new curriculum across the board and and I always expect there to be a little bit of give and take and move,
but I can tell you I'm not sure the message you wanted to send. I was hoping the message that our groups were going to get was the state's coming. Teachers, we want you to pull it out. We want to give you autonomy. We want to see the
the best you can teach. I had friends that were like, man, maybe I can go back to thematic units. And that really worked and it was powerful and and I got back in and it looked like a micromanagement nightmare. I can't tell you what I said or what I
threw, but I got the impression of the district didn't trust us to do our job and that I'm going to have to shut my door and hide what I do. uh you can't pick our demonstrations of learning and tell us what day to do
them. Children don't work that way and it causes frustration and it causes anger and it causes teachers to shut down. And when teachers don't feel good, they leave. Ask Houston. I believe they
just lost 2300 teachers in June. They just couldn't be successful, so they left. You can't pick when a child is going to understand something. And if you're trying to push people to program
children, it will not work. They understand it when they understand it. You can't pick my demonstrations. You can't pick my days. You can't pick the things that I'm going to do because it changes every day with what those kids learn in that moment, what those
students get. my best year of teaching where I pulled a 90% out of a 30%. I planned every day and changed the centers every day. And at the end of that, I walked out with a sense of
accomplishment. But what I see now is you have timelined demonstrations of learning the projects. You're telling us what projects to do, how to do it. I'm not sure that's the message you want. I'm afraid you're
going to lose that backing from the teachers. So, I don't know what it was, but that's the message I got. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your thoughts this evening. Next, we are going to move into item 4, a executive
session. Agenda item 3A will be addressed after executive session this evening. The time is now 5:41 p.m. The date is Tuesday, August 12th, 2025. We will now recess and reconvene for executive session as authorized by chapter 551 of the Texas government code
under sections 551.071 We going to take your take your take your going you all. You take me higher. You take me higher. You take me higher.
You take me higher. You take me higher. Higher. You take me higher. You take me higher. You take me higher. Higher. Heat. Heat. The best is yet to come. The rest is yet to come.
The best is yet to come. The best is yet to be. The best is yet to come. The best is yet to fall. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. I love you.
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Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. It's all you. It's your last home. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat.
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hey, hey, Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Oh, and it feels so good. And it feels so good.
And it feels so good. And it feels so good. Heat. Heat. N. Oh, and it feels so good. I feel so good. And it feels so good.
I feel so good. I feel so good. Everything so good. Everything so good. Everything so good. And it feels so good.
And it feels so good. It feels so good. And it feels so good. Feel so good. Yeah. Feel so good.
Feel so good. Feel so good. Going to lift you up. Let me hear you say, "Yeah, we're living on love." Yeah, we're living. Yeah, we're living on love. Yeah, we're living on love. Yeah,
we're living. Yeah, we're living on love. Oh, oh, we're going to take you higher. Oh, oh, we going to lift you up. We're going to take you higher.
We going to lift you up. When you hit the ground, don't lose your way. Got to get back up. Let me hear you say, "Yeah, we're living on." Yeah, we're living. Yeah, we're living on
Yeah, we're living on. Yeah, we're living. Yeah, we're living on. We going to take you higher. Oh, we going to lift you up. Oh, we going to take you higher. Oh, oh,
we going to lift you up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're going to take you higher. We're going to lift you up. We're going to take you higher. We're going to lift you up.
We're going to take you. We're going to lift you up. We're going to take you out. Take your We going to let you You take me higher. Higher. You take me higher. You take me higher.
You take me higher. Higher. Heat. Heat. You take me higher. You take me higher. Take me higher. You take me higher. Heat. Heat. The best is yet to come.
The best is yet to come. The rest is yet to come. The rest is yet to come. Oh, the best is yet to come. The best is yet to come.
The best is yet to come. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. Thank you. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. N. I'm feeling
Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. Heat. Heat. N. feel. Hey Heat. Heat. N. Hey, hey, hey. down. Hey, hey, hey. It's good. In accordance with the open meetings
law, the board opened the meeting at 5:33 p.m. with the quorum present, recessed open session, convened executive session, adjourned executive session, and now reconvenes open session at 7:25 p.m. with the quorum present. Next on the agenda is the Lonear governance implementation plan and I
will turn it over to Dr. Moliner. Thank you. Sorry. Thank you, President Martinez. We'd like to introduce our Lonear governance coach um Mr. Ben Mackey. And we're going to turn it over to you and I will click over to I believe the slide
that you'll be sharing this evening. So, thank you for being here this evening. We're very excited about the work we're getting ready to start and continue with you this year. Perfect. Uh good evening, President Martinez, Dr. Molinar, and board of trustees. It's an honor to be with you
today um or tonight. Uh my name is Ben Mackey. I've been doing Lonear Governance Coaching for a number of years now. I live right down the street over in the west side of Dallas, and it's an honor to have the opportunity to work with you all as you all embark on this journey that I know is not foreign to you either. Um, first of all, I want
to say it was great to get to connect with each one of you individually. I'm looking forward to a lot more of that. I will say I've worked with a lot of boards across all kinds of places. Y'all have gotten back to me faster than any other board that I've ever worked with. Like within a week, everyone was reaching out and we found some time. So,
thank you for dedicating that time and giving me the opportunity to connect with you. Um, I had a great time getting to hear each of y'all's different perspectives and what you're bringing to this board. And I'm excited to kind of share with you all some of the summary of what I heard from my brief conversations with you. Again, this is
just a starting point. And what I did from the conversations and kind of reviewing where Fort Worth ISD is at is put together a road map for what the next year could look like based on your conversations with me. This is not my plan. This is yours. This is just what I heard. So the purpose of today is I will
kind of overview it um what I heard and the kind of next steps that we would go through if this board chooses to and then I'm going to open it up for questions, discussion, feedback if something looks out of place like now is the time to think about what do we want to prioritize doing first later etc. And
then eventually the board will consider this plan for adoption to say yes we commit to doing this as we move forward over the next year. So, first um just want to highlight some things. You know, even though I had all these individual conversations with each of you, like y'all had a lot of things in common. The
first was every single person without fail when I asked about what what are you hoping to accomplish was we need to see academic achievement for our students go up and specifically in literacy. And I heard that over and over and over. So, that that is amazing that you all are so thoughtful about where you want to go for the students of Fort
Worth ISD. You also I heard a lot of trends around prioritization. We've got a lot of great things to focus on. There's a lot of important work to do, but it would be helpful for us to start to prioritize what truly are the most important ones that we're going to spend our time on. It's not to say everything else isn't important, but we need to
prioritize what are the most important ones right now. What I also heard was a a lot of mention of adaptability. How are we not just setting it and forgetting it, but how are we checking in? Um I think someone mentioned specifically how are we looking at regular checkpoints and making adaption
and adoption as those times. So we know everything we try might not work the first time but we how do we learn that in the process and then make some adjustments and keep on going. Um and so I heard that come up is how do we do this in an adaptable way? Um another big
thing that came up with was staff and student culture. How are we creating culture for the staff that work here, but also for the students and the families that are part of it? And how are we transferring that transparently to our community so they understand what we're doing here? And that kind of bled into the next one, which was how do we continue to build community trust and
empowerment as we move forward. So, we know we're doing some really good work. I think I saw in the newspaper today a lot of really positive press articles about the growth that y'all made last year. So, kudos to y'all. It's the question that came up a lot is how do we continue to share that and tell that story as we drive forward? And then I
also heard around we should look back at once we kind of get our priorities set, how do we think about how we as a collective team here operate. So fasttracking, how do we look at our operating procedures? How is everyone getting information the same way in the same manner? How are we making sure
we're on the same page and speaking in that language? And then finally, I heard a lot of people at this table really express appreciation for the other leaders around this table. That is to you, Dr. Molinar, but also the other trustees. So there there's a huge um it
seems to be sentiment around we've got the right team in place and now we just need to do the work. And so those are some of the trends that I heard over the course of this. Um, and so I laid out this essentially large summary on the left hand side or right hand side if
you're looking at it about what based on that is kind of hearing all of those and moving them up. Um, what we would hope to accomplish in each of the four quarters of this year. I will note before I kind of walk through there, this is a lot. There is a lot in a year
here. And so this is a very aggressive timeline. It can also be a living timeline as we know inevitably things will come up and so we might shift things back a quarter or up a quarter or into next year. But I went through and kind of put what it could look like in a full quarter. And so as I walk through
some of the large elements here um I think the biggest question that I'm going to have for this board is do these things sound right and are they sounding like they're in the right order or should we move things up and prioritize? Should we move things back etc? That'll be the big question after this. And then
you received a much longer list of all the little things that go into this. We're not going to go through that right now, but that's basically each of these things broken up by month and what it could look like. Again, a living document. Um I really um believe the
quote that says, you know, a plan means nothing. Things change, but planning is everything. And so how do we really think about this and then we adapt with it? So at a high level, this first quarter would be focused around really codifying the priorities. Um so it would
be saying this plan is what we want to do and then very quickly moving into a discussion with this board and this comm you all did a lot of community listening over the course of the last few months trying to get to your strategic plan. Now how do we think about that and really identify what are the priorities that this board will choose to focus on
over the next year or two or three years? Um, and then how do we draft those into the goal and guardrail fashion, the things that are super clear for us at this table, but also that can be shared widely in the community and we can regularly show progress towards those and what we're adapting and give
Dr. Molinar and the team some very clear direction on this is what we're prioritizing to really accomplish over the course of this year. Um and then also to start the process of looking at the board operating procedures, making sure that how this board operates is in alignment with trying to accomplish the
priorities that you set forth. So that would be what we would try to accomplish the rest of this quarter and then moving into the winter um quarter 4 of 2025. This really is finishing those things up. So adopting goals, guardrails, monitoring calendar, and the operating procedures and then starting to actually
monitor that. So this second quarter, which would be quarter 4, 2025, would be how are we now starting to monitor? If we said third grade literacy or elementary literacy is what we're really prioritizing, how are we starting to actually spend our time looking at literacy and are we making moving the
needle or not? And then as we move into the new the new calendar year or the spring semester, um really starting to align these other systems. So once we've got our priorities, once we're starting to monitor those priorities, how are we aligning our procedures? That looks that
means looking at our policies to see which policies might we might need to keep or phase out or add to align with this. How do we think about setting up how we do superintendent evaluations to make sure they're aligned to our priorities? Um, and then how do we think
about how we engage our community in this work? And I think I heard that with one of your speakers earlier today around there is a way to continue to have this ongoing dialogue with the community so they know what we're doing and what we're accomplishing in Fort Worth ISD and we're able to engage them in supporting that work. And then the
final quarter of the academic year really aligning the budget, making sure that where you're going into the next year is aligned with those priorities. Um and then how do we think about down the line every at some point in time every trustee here will phase out and there'll be a new trustee in your place. How do we make sure we have a way to
onboard new trustees in a way that shows this is the direction and the work we do in Fort Worth ISD and how we prioritize our work. So that's a highlevel overview of kind of the big items in each of those buckets. But with that again this is not I took this and I took a first
stab at a draft but ultimately this has got to be your plan. And so I would just love to answer any questions you have about this or just generally about the process and then receive any feedback that you might have on this document. And as we work it what will happen next is I will take those notes. I will make
those adjustments and then I will turn around a edited version that actually shows the adjustments and the changes for this board to consider at adoption at your uh regular night meeting in August. So with that I will turn it back over to you board president to field questions and have discussions.
Trustees, do you have any comments or questions? Trusty Dar. Thank you, President Martinez, and thank you, Mr. Mackey. I'm excited. You expressed appreciation for your conversation with us, and I would like to say I truly enjoyed my conversation with you as well. So, thank you for your
time. I'm I'm very excited about this work that we will do together, that we will do together, and we will do with you. Um the how two two questions. First one is what is a complete policy diet?
Can you explain what a yes policy diet is? High level. I like to think about policy um and guilty is charged in my own personal life and working on school boards. Board policy often in my eyes is a coral reef. We add policies over time for a lot of different real reasons.
There are something comes up, we add a policy to address it. then something else comes up, we adjust the policy to address it. But very infrequently, um, do I see boards actually go and look at all of their policies on a regular basis and make a determination on is this still necessary? Is it helping us
achieve our goals? Do we need to make any adjustments to it? And so really what a policy diet looks like is looking at all of our policies, creating a calendar on which how often we review each of our local policies and make a determination whether we should keep,
modify or delete it or add something if we need to. So it's really just how do I intentionally look at all those policies and make sure I have the ones that most align. And often times what we find in that process is hm there's a policy that's not quite relevant anymore and it's actually causing a lot more work on the administration to just do this
policy that we actually don't have need for. And so that's why it implies diet. Okay. Thank you. Uh my second question is that um all of us on this dis have been through the lonear governance training before. Yep. um some of us more
than once and um I I believe they have done made some revisions to the lone store governance model. Is that correct? And this is kind of a part two or a version two. It's an evolving framework over time and it continues to evolve. They're about to
introduce some new changes shortly. So for instance, you don't see the word constraints which was something that had been in Lonear Governments for a long time. That has moved away. It's now kind of guard rails. So yes, it's an evolving framework and it changes over time. So um what would you consider to be some
significant changes um that that we have to look forward to as we go through this training again in October? So I think there's a lot more I think one of the biggest one is there was a lot of a lot of time comes to at the heart of it you know when you strip away all the
terminology whether you call it lonear governance or some other framework at the heart of this framework is set your priorities monitor your priorities and align your work to accomplishing your priorities and in the past one of the largest concerns that I heard about lonear governance was there was a requirement
on tracking time and making sure time is spent to priorities and there was a very narrow definition for what a priority is and how it fits in that framework. Um, don't get me wrong, that is still a focus. We would assume if you've said literacy is your top priority that this board is spending half your time on
literacy outcomes. Um, but there is more opportunity. So, for instance, community engagement in a thoughtful process now would count in that framework a little bit differently because that is such a necessary part of it. It's not just we look at the outcomes. We need to also be communicating that with our community in
a regular way. So there are elements like that to the time tracking that give a more holistic vision of what a board is accomplishing that might not have been in the past. Right. Thank you. I thought of one more question. I tend to do that. I'm sorry. Um are will you be
training us in October or are you participating and guiding us through the training with other trainers? I will be training you. Excellent. Okay. Okay. And it will be a state workshop, so it will be open to other boards that choose to take a part of it, but I will be the trainer. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. I look
forward to it. Yes. Any other questions or comments? U Trusty Lynch. Uh yes, thanks Mr. Mackey. um as we're kind of looking at this kind of draft initially, priority setting workshop, you know, one of the things that um can
be somewhat challenging is, you know, you want to as a board member say do this, do that. Um and sometimes it can have a small microscopic uh impact in a local place, but it's a broader thing. And so, do you have any um thoughts or uh advice to us as we're starting to
think about priorities that the best way to think about those? Yeah. And so, that's a great question. I think I'll leave you with a couple big picture thoughts that this this body is responsible for all the students in Fort Worth ISD. There's a reason you're not
called representatives, you're called trustees because you're entrusted with the benefits for all students. And so it's very easy and I fall into the trap in my own board life of like hearing so often from my community that I live in that I have to really set myself outside of that and think about what makes sense
for the system in terms of priority setting. Your strategic plan has a lot of priorities and some of them are very specific but there's a lot of them. And so the first one that I would give you is you know there is prioritization. It's hard. It's always easier to add an add a paragraph to an essay than it is
to take one away. Um and that's because we're so many good things. So the value of prioritization is really thinking about your time. If this board sets one goal on literacy, say because that was the thing I heard the most that sends a very clear message to Dr. Molinar and
the team that literacy is where we are putting our focus. As soon as this board chooses to add a second goal, you would assume that the time that Dr. Molinar and the team will spend on literacy will be cut in half. Now in reality that's not exactly what will happen but functionally that's kind of
how it happens. So the first thing would be to think about the prioritization not in terms of how many things do I want to add that are important but how many things do I want to really focus on and think about adding a goal as taking away focus from others. So that's number
one. The second thing is the more specific you are the more movement you'll be able to expect. And so this is to your point around the small vers narrow versus broad. If you're broad and say, "I want to increase academic outcomes across the board for all of our students because that's what we need to do." You can probably make a goal off of
that, but you're not going to learn much about what's working, what's not working, where are we seeing growth, where are we not seeing growth, because there's so much in there. So, I would encourage boards to really think about how do I narrow it to the highest need right now? That goals and priorities are
not supposed to be everything that's important. They're supposed to be the highest needs right now. that if we can move those things, we'll get to the next step and now we can look at the next goals. And so really thinking about this this idea of depth versus breadth. I see boards often times try to add a lot of things in there and that then inevitably
you don't get as much good information as opposed to saying literacy is important but not just literacy. Where is our highest need? Is our highest need in third and fourth grade or is it in sixth and seventh grade? And let's zoom in there and know if we can get it right in there our literacy is going to go up
across the district. So I would think about that like I would think about your number of goals being a taking away focus the more goals you add and then how do you focus in not to what's important because there's a lot of things important and you'll have a lot of important things that you don't
set a goal on but really thinking about like how do I think about the most important elements of that right now in this moment. Was that responsive to your question? No, I think that was very helpful. Um, the other thing that I'd just kind of ask, um, you know, we we got a board,
um, you know, come from a lot of different backgrounds, some educators, some not. Um, do you have any specific resources as we're looking to things that have been most impactful other places to kind of look over as we're trying to come up with our priorities?
So, I would I can think about what res I don't have any off the top of my head that says this because I actually don't believe you need to be an educator to help set priorities. You've heard from your community. You're elected. You you hear from folks every single day and you have a really good document in your strategic plan. If you go to the page
that is priorities, you've got 34 or so things that are listed out as key. I would start by looking at those. And what I'll ask you all to do when we get into this, and this will be a public workshop, but what I'll ask you all to do in advance of this workshop is to look at those things and circle what are your five most important ones that you
personally based on your experiences and your community think are most important. This board is not going to have to figure out exactly which metric and how much and by when. That's why you've got Dr. Molina and the team. It's going to be your goal to say what is most important. Is it literacy? Is it
elementary literacy? Is it staff or student culture? However, we think about those and our priorities and then be able to hear from Dr. Molinar and the team why the metrics that we've used were we're suggesting we use are meaningful and to tease that out, not to come up with them yourself. So, I think
so often people feel uh the pressure, especially as non-educators, to try to know everything about every different type of test and measure. That's not going to be the way we will do this. It will really be around what does this board want to accomplish? And when you go to your community next year, we've grown in literacy or math or science or
college readiness or whatever it happens to be. So, I would say start with that page of priorities and start thinking about which of those are the most important in your mind based on your own experiences. Okay. No, I think that's helpful. And just kind of a final question, your experience, what are, you know, maybe
the three most impactful things you've seen, you know, maybe in your own district or other districts that have really moved the needle for kids because um I'm I'm speaking for the team, but I think we absolutely have an interest in that, but just trying to be curious to get your feedback. Yeah, I think the first one is
consistency. I think it's not a surprise. We always talk about this in the context of teachers or principles and how often principles and superintendents turn over. Um, but consistency is important from the board and so whatever the board says, if the board says literacy is important and it's they're going to be third grade literacy to consistently focus on that
over time makes all the difference. I've served as an assistant superintendent before. I was supposed to put all together all the literacy reports for our principles. But that week was a board meeting and there were board members talking and really wanting to know about a procurement process. And
yes, we had issues in our procurement process, but you can guarantee what I spent my time on that week was procurement because the board attention had shifted and I wanted to be responsive to the board and the principles didn't get the packets that they needed to to move reading. So consistency from this board once you set your priorities to find ways to spend
time on those priorities and really understand it and communicate it that sends the most powerful message that this board can um to everybody throughout the system. I've seen that the most effective schools regardless of what they choose to prioritize or how
they choose to get there when the boards are like no literacy was what's important. How are we doing on literacy? How are we doing on literacy? That single-handedly starts to change the entire system to say oh that's important. We're going to focus on that. Um the second one and you know this is often said and it's often a cliche is
really getting clear on the lanes. You've hired Dr. from Molinar and the team and even me on a school board as an educator in my real life and day life. Like there is a lot of things that my superintendent chooses to do that I would not do and I have to be okay with that because that is not my job. If I
want that job, I need to be a superintendent and like really stepping outside of that because as soon as I start getting involved in the lanes even from the best of positions, I can no longer hold the superintendent or the system accountable. So, how do I stay in my role? I want to care about the outcomes and make sure that we're
attacking those outcomes. I must stay in my lane. Otherwise, as soon as I start getting involved in all the other stuff, it's not it's now my choice and my responsibility, not the superintendent. So, really keeping clear in those lanes, it's the hardest thing to do for sure. Um, but it's one of the most necessary
and really making uh those powerful movements. And the third one is aligning processes. So, I think the biggest ones that this board has is superintendent evaluation, policy, and budget. How do I make sure each of those things align to our priorities?
Trusty Bridges, as everyone else has said, it's a pleasure talking with you and thank you for coming out and um presenting with us. Mine's a very very quick question. Could you talk a little bit more about guardrails and what do you see some of the best practice when when you're
putting together those guardrails? Yeah. So, um, guard rails and one of the biggest things that a lot of the Lonear governance framework really focuses on student outcomes, which you hear over and over and over again. Um, and it's important that at the end of the day,
the reason we're here is to try to move student outcomes, whether it's literacy, math, college readiness, however you want to define it. Um, but then we also hear is you can't do that without these other important things. You can't do that without great teachers. You can't do that without principles. You can't do that without community engagement. And
so the purpose of guardrails is to say what are those other important things? They're not the reason we exist. We schools don't exist to just hire teachers even if they're great teachers. We hire those teachers with a purpose so they can move outcomes. So guard rails are really seen as all of the other
things that are important. Superintendent, we want you to make sure students can read. That's the goal, but not at the expense of these things. Staff culture, student culture, community engage, whatever they happen to be. And I think the best practice on setting those and what we'll do is if
you look in your strategic um plan and you look at all of those different priorities, a lot of them are student outcomes. A lot of them are not student outcomes. They're around staff culture. Again, equitely important, but the first thing is we
separate those out and kind of look at them. There's no judgment on them. Some are student outcomes. They'll be the goals. The other ones are guard rails. and really thinking through that in that manner. Um, I think the second best practice that I see around guardrails is remembering that that's not the purpose.
They're necessary but not sufficient. Safety is an incredible it's a guardrail that comes up a lot nowadays. It's definitely necessary but the purpose of schools is not safety. Otherwise, we would design schools very differently, but it's necessary. So, how do we think about these things in that way? Keeping
in mind that the goal is not the guardrail. The goal is the goal and we have to keep these things alive and doing well as well. Thank you. Any others? All right. Well, thank you. Um I too am
excited to dive deep into this work and we're looking forward to working with you. Thank you all so much. I'm super excited about the work. Um and looking forward to working with you over the next year. Thank you. Um, at this time I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Molinar.
Uh, yes. Uh, thank you, President Martinez. Just a couple quick slides. It's not a presentation, but just some more uh reminders. Um, we are completing our first official day, the 2025 2026 school year. I'm very excited and I'll
share just a a couple celebrations for that. However, for our staff, um, for our Fort Worth ISD family, we are having our first payroll on Friday, August the 15th with our new ERP system, Front Line. And we have been sharing
information and really sharing this out for um, months and months. It's been over close to a two-year process actually um that we are now at the finish line. However, we want to make sure that our staff is they're taken
care of. our first payroll with our new system. And just a reminder, the last board presentation we talked about when you have a new ERP system, it really is um like a heart transplant. We're taking the heart of our system and we're
building a we're putting a new heart in. So, we want to make sure our uh employees all have a moment to check your check before Friday. and we are running multiple scenarios and practice runs with everyone's payroll. However,
we want to make sure our employees have access and check their check before Friday, August the 15th. So, what does that look like? You can find this on our website as well. However, I want to share it this evening. Um, you would be able to doublech checkck your leave
balances, and this will be after the August 15th check. you'll be able to have that ability. Your absence reporting and your pay information and payroll. If you find any payroll information that just not does not look
um like it's right, like your benefits look different, being deducted, or something in your payroll just does not look the same as a prior check, we're asking that you submit to a benefits inquiry form and we have the link that's
right there. Um, you have to remember we are a very large district and we're proud of that. But we're serving um over 11,000 employees each day. So when you're looking at your check, it's to be specific like compare it maybe to your last paycheck and say it doesn't look
right because my benefits um look different than the deductions. Like be specific of what you think may be off about your paycheck. um we want you to submit that form so we can have time starting from Wednesday to Friday to see
if we can look at any of those um corrections or concerns. Um and then if something happens on Friday when you get your paycheck and your um of course your direct deposit um we want you to still utilize that link and make sure that you
also share your concerns. Um that's very important. We understand that we have multiple ways to express our concerns. Um, however, the way that we can correct your concerns and give you the answers or possibly correct any errors is of
course by contacting us within the district through this process. And if you have any questions about the rate of pay, any stipen amounts or board approved raises, submit your questions to the compensation department and you can make any updates to your tax
withholding and direct um deposits and any any other payroll issues, you submit that form to the payroll inquiry form. So, we really want to just outline the different types of support we're going to put in place for you. Um we are
anticipating you know just a great Friday. Um we'll be completing our first week of the 2526 school year but we know of course that payroll is a very important um date in our district for all of our employees. So we want to make sure you have this information. So
starting tomorrow afternoon um we're asking you to give us a little time tomorrow late afternoon you'll be able to access your pay. you'll see there on the right hand of the screen um where you'll be able to locate that information. We have FAQs. We have a
page dedicated to the new um front line to really help our employees along. But please just um submit any inquiries, give our team definitely a chance to be able to respond and but this is the process we will use for any of the
concerns as well. We want to thank our teams. Um it's really is a when we talk about a crossf functional department um venture this has been from budget and finance to payroll to grants to
technology um to business intelligence um really to make our ERP system conversion successful. So, please um take the time, check your check and that will be starting um tomorrow afternoon on
Wednesday. You'll be able to locate that, but remember you have to locate that in our new system and we have sent that information out, but you can also find it under your employee page as well. And then I just want to just brag. I'm going to do comments first. Hope that's
okay. Um, we have officially ended our first day of the 2526 school year and cannot express what a great way to start the school year. Was able to visit nine
campuses um today, one in each trustee district. Just the work all the way from our bus drivers this morning um leaving the lot and really just being the first phase for our students. We had more than
enough bus drivers. Um, very successful transportation run today. Of course, as we work through any quirks that there will be, um, Mr. Graph, the executive director of transportation, has been working with us, our bus attendants, our mechanics who were on site as the buses
rolled out of the lot and back into the lot. this evening. Um I had a chance to talk to some of our nutrition service workers at some campuses while we visit lunchtime and just just excited to see them back. Our students eating just a
healthy meal and I saw our kids engaging and eating in our school lunches as well. Um we talked about cell phones multiple times. Very proud of all of our students and our campuses. Every campus
that I visited today, cell phones were put away. And I am sure that we will have our moments and you know we will have our students um test our expectations but today was a wonderful day with the new state law and the
implementation of our own policy. Thank you parents. I know many of you helped us to make sure the students understood the expectations and our campuses also reiterated those camp um expectations today. Um we had 98%
I'm sorry 96% fully certified staff today. 96% staffed across our district with certified teachers. But we had 100%
coverage. Every classroom had coverage to today. And then we even had some surplus substitutes um that we were able to deploy out to our high high need campuses as well just for extra help. We have fewer vacancies this year than
we've ever had in the past couple years. So once we settle with numbers and enrollment numbers, we'll be sharing those out. but so proud of the hard work on our campuses. Every single building I walked into today was just clean,
stunning, ready to receive our students. We know we have some air conditions issues. We're working on that. That's going to happen no matter what. We live in Texas. We can walk into our own homes and we leave the home and we walk back in that evening and it does not feel as cool as when we left. That has happened
in my household before. So, we are working through those. We hear you. We have a process with the work orders. We're asking our staff, notify your office. Let's get the work order in. And that team, the maintenance team, worked all weekend. They worked, you know,
through last night. I know working on some issues. And we know we have some issues we're working on as I'm speaking right now, but we are addressing those issues. But overall, thank you to everyone who supported us today, who
brought their students back to us as well. And we're just excited about the 2526 school year. Thank you, Dr. Boliner. Trustes, any final comments or announcements? One comment,
trusty loss. I would like to thank um all the teachers and everybody who's been getting ready to this moment. Uh maintenance over the last two weekends I have seen uh truck maintenance down the street working on our building. So thank you to all the maintenance department
for making sure that our classrooms are um our schools are to the best that we can uh to welcome back students. Trusty Bridges, I just want to comment again on how impressed I was. I think I went through
four schools today with the those who were adapted for the change with the cell phones and how they they came in really understanding that this is the law now that we have to we
have to go by that. But the energy that I saw that in each one of the schools I was in was so impressive. And I had the opportunity I was standing in the hall and it was the young man came up to me asking me how to get to a class. I said,
"Well, we can get lost together and walking." And what was so unique about that? He was an eighth grader just moving into ninth grade and he's sharing his anxiety about going into high school and it gave us an opportunity to talk even though we got lost. But it was
really really really great and I saw that across the board the staff who were really really just excited to see our students. So great day. Thank you. And I also just want to u reiterate again thank you to each and every forth team team member for helping
make today a successful forthd first day of school. Thank you for making forth home. And for all the parents, thank you for entrusting forth ISD with your students. Um, Dr. Muller, you Yeah, I'm sorry. I apologize. Just one more quick announcement. We'll be
rolling out some information. Uh, we will be starting uh Friday night lights, but in Fort Worth ICD, that's Thursday night lights, Friday night lights, and some Saturday lights, but not always need lights. It's during the day. But we'll be rolling out some updated information around uh tailgate and
procedures that will be following processes um going into the 2526 school year. So those will be shared and published. Um but I will let you know we will um there was some information sent out a little prematurely. We will be
allowing tailgate. However, of course, we'll follow our guidelines um for safety and of course um no um alcoholic beverages. We'll follow everything we're supposed to by law. But in addition to that, we'll be adding on that all
tailgates will end as soon as the game begins. Um because we are there to celebrate our students on the field, our cheerleaders, our band. We are there to support them. Um, so we will be definitely allowing tailgates this year. However, we'll be putting in some new
procedures that everyone will be asked to u make their way into the game as soon as the kickoff begins. And we'll be celebrating um our students who are participating in all the great activities um in our stadiums and at our sites.
All right. Thank you. The time is now 8:03 p.m. and the meeting is adjourned.