The Brownfield ISD School Board began their new time of having meetings on Monday morning March 20, 2023, which began at 7:00 am. In the February 2023 meeting, the Board voted to move their meetings to 7:00 am the third Monday of each month from 6:30 pm on the third Monday of each month. The purpose behind this move was to ensure a quorum would be met at each meeting. After the invocation and pledges the Board took on the agenda beginning with the Superintendent’s report section.
BISD Superintendent Chris Smith began with recognitions throughout the district. The Student of the Month is Katherine Richards of Brownfield High School. Employees of the Month is -Deborah Garoui who is the One Act Play Director and helped lead the BHS OAP to advance to the bi-district round. The Brownfield Middle School Employee of the Month is Amanda Gonzales who works in Technology. The Oak Grove Employee of the Month is Kade Kelcy and the Colonial Heights Employee of the Month is Priscilla Rodriguez. Also recognized at the meeting was the BISD Spelling Bee Champion Juan Lira. Juan is a fifth grader from Oak Grove and will be competing in the regional round spelling bee contest on March 25.
Next, Smith talked about the AD report telling the board what athletic events will be taking place in the next few weeks. Smith also told the Board that there will be a property sale at the old middle school on March 31, 2023, before it is completely demolished.
Next Smith gave the enrollment figures to the Board which shows BISD is up 20 students 1668 from last year this time with 1648. There are 430 students in high school, 50 students in BEC, 360 students in middle school, 680 students at Oak Grove, and 148 students in Pre-K at Colonial Heights.
Smith switched gears and moved the meeting over to the BISD CFO Paul Coronado to talk about the finances. According to Coronado, the total collection of revenue is at 73% with local revenue already finished with 105% that has come in, and 59% of state and federal revenue has come in. Also according to Coronado, 52% of the budget has been expended. Coronado said, “We’ve asked that the campuses really start looking at expenditures and campus budgets to see what they need for the rest of the year.” Smith went on to tell the Board, “We provide them (campuses) with just about everything they need… so they are not going without at all. We usually close that spending cycle in April so that’s not anything unusual.” The Superintendent’s portion was approved.
Next, the Board approved the consent agenda portion of the meeting which was to approve the minutes from the previous meeting. It was approved.
Smith then turned the meeting over to Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Melissa Oliva. This section of the meeting was to approve the Strong Foundations Literacy Grant Framework. According to Oliva, the Strong Foundations Literacy Grant was created to support Local Educations Agencies (LEAs) in building the “why” behind instructional decisions and creating a research-based, Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) aligned instructional vision and framework to align decisions moving forward.TEKS are the standards adopted by the Texas State Board of Education, after extensive input from educators and other stakeholders.
Oliva said, “This was an opportunity for Brownfield ISD to put in writing… what we do as far as literacy across the district. So we had a team of admin and instructional coaches at Oak Grove and Middle School on a leadership team and then we had a team of about 30 teachers from kindergarten to high school that teaches reading language arts or English and they all attended training and its researched based instructional support and just on “why” we do literacy the way we do.” Oliva also told the Board that this will help for many years to come. She also announced that BISD was approved for the math portion of the grant.
The Board moved on to order the cancellation of the upcoming BISD School Board Election since Geoff Cooper and Tim Swaringen ran unopposed and again District 1 had nobody file. The Board approved the cancellation and then certified Cooper and Swaringen to be on the Board.
The Board went on to approve all administrator’s contracts since at the time of the meeting there were no administrators who resigned or hired.
Finally, the Board would approve the new Technology Director who will be Edgar Rivera. Some may know Rivera from being the Technology Director at Brownfield Regional Medical Center and he also sat on the BISD Board of Trustees after Will Hawkins left to go work as a superintendent in New Mexico. Rivera would run for the BISD seat he was holding, however, eventually lost to current Board of Trustee Matt Valdonado. Rivera will begin his tenure with BISD on June 1, 2023.
All six Trustees were present and the next meeting is scheduled for Monday, April 17, 2023, at 7:00 am in the Board Room at the BISD Admin Building.
