Apr 04, 2023 City Council on 2023-04-04 11:30 AM (Joint Special Called Meeting with Denton ISD Board of Directors)

All right. So we'll get started here. We do it after determined forms here. We'll convene today's joint meeting with the City Council and the ISD School Board. It is Tuesday April 4th at 1138 and again we do have one so I'll call the City Council side of the meeting order and turn it over to the Board President. And I call the Gettin ISD Board of Trustees to order and announce it to have a quorum. Okay the first item for our work session today is ID 234825. Receive report, hold discussion, give staff direction regarding an update from the United Way Get Encountered. Mayor, Council, thank you so much. The last time I believe United Way had the opportunity to present to this group was our 2012 Community Needs Assessment. Makes me really worried. It took about a decade and a half to get back so I hope it goes better today. In the back of the room I want to recognize some of our United Way staff. Kristen Jones, please stand, Director of Resource Development. Leah Jordan, Director of Community Investments. Shannon Spencer, she's our Director of Health and Mental Health Initiatives. They are the fact checking crew. So if at any point you look at me and you say I don't believe this, just turn around and see if they nod in the right direction. All right we have a lot to cover, a little bit of time to get there. This is United Way at Gettin County's broad overview of the county-wide assessment of our community needs and a lot of it affects your two bodies and the work you do, the funds you deploy. I think what's cool about this is we want to look comprehensively. We don't dive down biopically into one critical area. We look across the board and for our board of directors it really helps them as they select our 18 partner agencies that provide a mosaic of direct service community and investment and safety net services. It helps us make sure we're partnering with the right non-profits and it also helps us understand where unmet gaps across the Gettin County non-profit sector might be boiling to a point of becoming a problem. So to start and when we share this data we like to talk about the growth we've all experienced because every slide is going to tie back to the fast growth county we've been for so many years. I like pizza in 2000. Gettin County was one pizza. In 2021, 21 years later, we are two pizzas and a slice left over. If that doesn't work for you 117.5 percent growth, let's look at the nation, Texas and Gettin County over the 2010 to 2021 time frame. United States grew 7.3 percent in that time frame. Texas grew 17 percent in that time frame. Gettin County grew 41.4 percent and our Gettin County non-profit sectors across the different domains from housing insecurity, food insecurity, our domestic violence, our victim survivor non-profits, you're going to see in the next few slides how they have struggled under the weight of that growth. To look more from a data demographics perspective, Gettin County's 41.4 percent growth in the blue bar. Some of our noteworthy communities across the county, you look at a North Lake, 72 percent growth, the pressure that must create for that municipality, their public services. Even though the growth was only about 5,000 rooftops, 72 percent is quite large. But in perspective, city of Denton, 21 percent is incredible growth when it comes from 117,000 persons and it goes to 148,000. And then you see for Denton ISD school board members, that 380 corridor that we constantly talk about, Aubrey, Little Elm, 59.5 percent growth in Aubrey, Little Elm 48.7 percent growth. And our Gettin County non-profit peers have shown very little growth in terms of establishing programs and services in that 380 corridor area. Little data about our children. For 13 consecutive years, while the county was growing, the number of students who enter our 10 public schools who fall into the category of economically disadvantaged, that's children receiving free and reduced lunch, kiddos where breakfast is the best meal at school, lunch is the most nutritious meal at school, non-profit partners like communities and schools working to bring food into those households over the weekend. We've seen for 13 years the number of those children in our 10 ISDs increase. That's a 34.6 percent overall Gettin County student population that's receiving free and reduced lunch. And we're going to look at some other data that kind of talks about the households they come from, but that's 45,000 economically disadvantaged kiddos. And then lower left-hand corner from the school districts that are bearing that weight, Louisville ISD one in three students, Gettin ISD 47.8 percent. You get out in that little amount quarter of 48 percent. You see where that growth of economically disadvantaged students is going to follow the 35 corridor and then across the 380 corridor. And then 50 percent of all Gettin County economically disadvantaged students fall into the two largest school districts, Gettin ISD and Louisville ISD. And this data helps us when we think about deploying scarce resources. That can be counterintuitive though when we look at the corridor. The numbers may not be as large, but the deserts that exist, food insecurity, etc. are quite profound. School district folks, we're only going to look at one star data point. And it's not to poke at you all, it's to help us as a community understand how can we be good partners to the school district by bringing in volunteers, community resources, programs, and its third grade reading scores. So we're looking at our kiddos leading up to the third grade who are learning to read and then from third grade on they're reading to learn. And what we care about is the overall trend and during COVID you can see where the relatively consistent low 80 percentile started to drop into the high 70, mid 70 percentile. From a state perspective we still perform better as a region than the state is performing as a whole. But that data point on the right when we look only at our economically disadvantaged kiddos, 46 percent of those kiddos in Gettin County, this is not an only Gettin ISD data point, in Gettin County, 46 percent of economically disadvantaged kiddos are exiting third grade but not reading on grade level. So I think that's a call to action for all of our community-based organizations that find ways to plug into our school districts to help with mentoring and tutoring, etc. Now we're going to turn to the victim survivor domain for just a second. Texas Department of Family and Protective Services data. Lower left-hand corner kiddos in Gettin County, this is Gettin County only data, without placement jumped in 2017 from 436 to 1,033 in 2020. 41 percent growth in the county meant these data points rose with that county growth. Looking at abuse and neglect investigations from DPS here in Gettin County, in 2016 there were 806 confirmed cases, in 2020 that numbers jumped to 1,568 cases. And then lower left-hand corner on this slide to kind of carry that forward, in Gettin County nearly seven out of ten foster care children are placed outside of Gettin County due to a lack of foster care placement. So anything we can do to motivate our community groups, our faith-based organizations, our community partners to help stimulate the number of foster home placement seats. And in county we help our nonprofits like Friends of the Family and CASA keep the kiddos and the family more geographically closely connected while the investigation and the legal process unfolds. Back up to the left-hand side, this is going to have a bit of a workforce slant to it. During COVID we experienced a loss of child care businesses, for-profit and non-profit. 24.5 percent of our Dettin County child care businesses closed and were not able to reopen during COVID. Or to say in terms of child care deserts, for the first time we have five communities that are official child care deserts across Dettin County. Denton, Shady Shores, Pilot Point, Aubrey and Louisville. So we catch that 35 corridor again and we catch the 380 corridor between Denton and Little Elm again. And then back to foster care, there were 326 children in foster care in Gettin County in 2021 and only 15 adoptive homes for that placement. From a school district perspective that means while those activities are happening you're having a disruption in the classroom for sure, but you're also having a geographic impact to the situation that's occurring in the family because the kiddos are now geographically further away from their home school. Alice households, so I'll break this down. Asset limited, these households have very little if any savings whatsoever. Asset limited, income constrained, they're working the employed but how they're earning is falling below a survival wage. So on this slide we're going to unpack a couple of different data points for you. In the circle pie chart, Dettin County as a whole, 68 percent of Dettin County households fall into the Alice category. And that meaning that that household, whether it's one wage earner or two wage earners, is making less than their monthly cost to live in Dettin County. We're not talking about wage, we're not talking about minimum wage, we're not, we're talking about what their real cost in Dettin County are versus their real earning capabilities. And it could be their lack of workforce skilling to earn at a higher level but they find themselves every month falling below that survival threshold. That's our food insecure households going to our food pantries. That's our housing insecure households needing utility assistance from VME. That's our housing insecure households that are needing rental assistance in order to catch up rent or maintain housing, avoid eviction. So 68 percent Alice, above Alice I should say, 24 percent below the survival wage, Alice households, seven percent in properties. That 24 percent and that seven percent represent that one in three of Dettin County households or across the county 94,000. Why would United Way share county-wide data with the city of Dettin and Dettin ISD school board and staff? Well we know the mobility of families who are in financial crisis so to tell you only what's happening currently in your service area or in your geographic municipality is going to kind of give you a little bit of a a blinder so to speak as to what's moving in and moving out of your district and moving in and out of your city. So as a whole one in three Dettin County households or 94,000 every month make less than it costs to live here. Some of that has been increased in housing costs throughout the pandemic. Some of it is certainly the increased in consumer goods, historic inflation growth and some of that is the cost of child care. That 24, 25 percent child care that was lost kind of created a supply and demand marketing dynamic that increased the cost if you could find the child care. Now the chart in the upper right hand corner, the red line is poverty and since the federal tables haven't been updated in quite some time it's not surprising to see that poverty in Ditton County is relatively flat but it's a false indication until you look at the Alice households, those households earning less than it takes to survive, you see what's happened between 2016 and 2018. Later this month United Ways of Texas will publish pandemic era Alice household data. We'll update this slide and get it out to both bodies and we'll have a more current as to what through and after the pandemic our Alice situation looks like. We know it's greater than 94,000. We know it's going to be more severe than one in three. Now let's look at Alice from a couple of different perspectives. First lens we're going to put on Alice is by family type. We want to see more of the dark blue. So for married households 84.8 percent are above Alice. So 84 percent of Ditton County households that are categorized from a tax return perspective as married, violent, jointly. 84 rounded up 85 percent are above that survival threshold. When you drop the single head of household you see first on the right hand side when we have a male leading single head of household we drop from 84 to 62 percent above the Alice threshold but when our households are single female that we see a greater drop only 43 or less than half of our households across Ditton County are above the Alice threshold. That's incredibly important for a non-profit board for municipalities funding community service grants as we're dialing into the most fragile of our population across the county we're starting to see from a household perspective single female head of household bubbling towards the top but they're joined by an interesting group and that's seniors over the age of 65. We've seen through the pandemic a growing number of seniors on fixed income who as the housing costs have increased these last three four years their fixed income no longer is adequate to cover their housing costs. City of Louisville for the first time appropriated housing assistance rental assistance program this year specifically targeted only for seniors because they've seen a few retirement communities in their city where they have seniors using credit cards to help cover part of their housing costs. So single female head of households in this one in three ninety four thousand single female head of households make up fifty percent of that ninety four thousand and seniors over 65 make up the other 42 percent or 98 percent of our Alice households are single female head of households and seniors. Now we've got a really sharp view of our most vulnerable populations and from the school district's perspective that will that will be your same kiddos where you have second generation guardian bringing those kiddos into your school district not just those single moms. Let's put a lens of racial equity on top of this alice data and see what it says to us. Fourth bar down it says for our white households across Denton County 73 percent earn above the survival rate. When we pivot to Hispanic black households that drops to 49 and 50 percent. Asian households are comparable to white households at 72 percent and multi-race households are slightly better than black and Hispanic households in terms of earning above the survival wage. So again single female head of household black Hispanic two or more races is now dialing in an even more finite number smaller number for us to focus on as a community and in a perfect world we would see predominantly dark blue across that chart that's really what we're looking to see. Continuing with single female head of household that that gold bar that is the outlier from a USA perspective it's single female that's the predominant population in poverty rates. Texas gold bar single female. Denton County gold bar single female. City of Denton gold bar single female head of household predominant data point in poverty. Little Elm is an anomaly normally community in Denton County where there seems to be more of a balance of the makeup of poverty households but across the rest of the county especially the 35 corridor and the 380 corridor our focus is single female head of household. From a homelessness perspective there's a couple of interesting caveats about this data. First and foremost and give Danny Shaw City of Denton credit for this our our housing crisis response system our coordinated entry system our data dashboard our homelessness data dashboard has a mathematical glass ceiling and that is the staffing at the nonprofits performing coordinated entry interacting with individuals who have entered into homelessness in our county and assessing them entering them into our homelessness management information system the number of individuals appearing on that dashboard has a glass ceiling that correlates to the number of staff funded at the nonprofits to do that work so it's a data point but it's a less than perfect data point if we're looking for a measurement of true total homelessness across the county our second data point also a little bit imperfect is the HUD required annual point in time count that's performed every January but those two data points and the reason I say that's less than perfect is none of you at the city or at the school district would take from your your leaders one data point a year and then make really important business decisions on that one data point um but we do in the homelessness domain only the star test some relevant points related to homelessness from a school district perspective denton data point October 22 uh October 2022 you reported 347 students February 2023 you reported 587 you know this school board you talk about this yes girl and as of the other day is 710 right so right and we're alice households increased housing cost living below a survival wage we can see upstream what has happened and happening before we see the ultimate outcome in the homelessness data all right i want to pivot for just a second this is part of the assessment but this is bonus for you uh city of denton you get first credit 2020 you were the first to fund rent utility assistance uh dollars to your denton county nonprofit partners knowing that the pandemic would create a higher risk of eviction a higher risk of falling behind in rent because of income disruption thank you you led the way uh good community citizens like peter bilts parent company pack are added funds in and then ultimately as we all know din county commissioner's court leveraged their u.s treasury department cares act funds emergency rental assistance one funds and now emergency rental assistance two funds to try to do two things and this was always the strategy and it's playing out number one during the pandemic at all costs prevent evictions whenever and wherever possible because when someone loses their home school district that's a kiddo in crisis hard to teach when a kiddo doesn't have a home right from city perspective we know that when someone loses their home the family the individual starts to spiral downward very quickly so maintaining a roof over ahead and housing is absolutely important so where are we at march 31st well the emergency rental assistance two programs which opened october 1 and had a much lower barrier to entrance the added phrase that made this program work for our community was financial impact due to covet or through the covered pandemic through the covered pandemic allowed us to rope in inflation impact housing and pre-housing cost increase impact as well as individuals who lost employment income directly due to covet the illness itself that program opened on october 1st applications for that program closed last friday treasury department allows us to operate this program through december 31st 2023 but we will be out of funds by the july time frame so what have we done 750 applications have been processed approved and payments sent to landlords utilities or when the landlord refused to participate era 2 gave us the ability to work directly with the tenant and send the funds directly to them with no irs tax consequence it was not taxable income those 750 applications represent 4.1 million dollars four million one oh five oh seventy four point seventy seven to be exact in rent and utility payments that's through last friday and if you look at the chart on the bottom october and the budget was a pro forma budget for this program to last through december our teams united way giving grace interfaith metro press services our teams had a mark of 400 000 a month and that's just metering that money out if we hit 400 000 a month we would not be at risk of sending any money back to the feds we would serve our community and you can see as the program ramped up we went from 411 665 november december holiday months where we don't have a full month of processing come back in january we break the million dollar mark danny would know we know across denny county as a whole homeless intervention homeless prevention funding in in total for all of our non-profits across county in a given year isn't much more than a million dollars so we had across denny county a year's worth of need processed in just the month of january me we did not need all that need that's how much we were able to push out the door with the staffing available february 663 and march just a hair short of 600 000 with the funds that are left 1.972 million in rent utility assistance we factor that we probably have enough funds for another 360 applications but there are 1720 county-wide applications submitted before the cutoff friday for rent utility assistance so what will happen with the remaining 1400 it's going to be it's the time that our non-profit community has been preparing for and continues to prepare for our denny county homelessness leadership team has a work work group that has been working on diversion strategies looking at best practice diversion strategies across the community across the state across the country and promoting those strategies to our leadership team for approval later this month to be taking out taken out to the directors and the leadership teams of denny county non-profits to implement into their case management programs as best practice strategies because the tool we've used most often in our toolbox since 2020 is pay rent and pay utilities but that tool is not available to us so these households we're going to need to divert to scenarios where they have a higher probability of self-sufficiency and that's a whole separate presentation that we would love after our homelessness leadership team ratifies those strategies to share with you we want to keep those households in the community as best as we can because that's our workforce if we connect them to workforce upscaling opportunities enough at north central texas workforce solution nctc our community college other adult training training programs but at at the moment they lack the skills to be employed at a level that meets their monthly expenses and how do we prioritize with 1700 applications and a capacity to process about 57 applications at any one point in time we followed our own data we prioritized applications that had an eviction notice with a notice to vacate day so they are at imminent risk of losing their housing we focused on area median income at 30 percent or blood or below even though treasury department criteria started at 80 we wanted to prioritize the most financially fragile and then we wanted to be focused on applications that possess children in the household seniors in the household or persons receiving disability benefits trying to provide knowing we can't serve everybody trying to provide for the most fragile in our community we're going to shift to mental health we're running out of time i'll work with your teams and thank you for your support this legislative session our work with your teams has been focused on carrying the message around mental health that denton county has outgrown its number of mental health service providers in a top 10 performing county and this data comes from the denton county public health website the ratio of population the mental health service providers is closer to one to 250 we sit in denton county at one to 750 texas has and still ranks as one of the lowest funded states in the country for mental health services our local mental health authority in denton county continues to be one of the lowest funded mental health authorities in the state but high income low income insured uninsured medicaid private provider wealthy enough to pay out of your pocket we're all facing the same challenge an adequate number of mental health service providers and a waiting list at any turn kudos to denton county commissioner's court they funded last week a pilot for mental health navigators this has been work that shannon's denton county behavioral health leadership team has been working on for quite some time under the family and children and families work group and that's going to give as managed through matt richardson's team at the denton county public health department data data data for the first time as individuals and families reach out to those navigators they're not providing direct services but they're breaking down the complexities of finding the right mental health services when a teacher or a counselor or a principal has won over the parent the family member to go out and find those services for your student your resident their child the next challenge becomes finding a provider so the navigators will help break down that complexity but they'll also be providing a wealth of data to all of us including commissioner's court as to where we would start first if you were strategically wooing providers into our community and then lower left hand corner medicaid so this affects our kiddos those one in three 45,000 across the county kiddos were economically disadvantaged in 2019 we reported 51,000 unduplicated medicaid clients in denton county the data is going to be bigger than that when you look at the 94,000 households or the 45,000 children who are economically disadvantaged in 2012 there were 320 and this data point is skewing horribly in the wrong direction in 2012 we had 320 county-wide medicaid providers not enough they dropped to 183 service providers in 2019 yes sir just just real quick gary so medicaid providers you know we both of these governing bodies have had discussions with non-profits about pediatric care and clinics and things in schools yeah and you know some of the information that comes out is that you know there's there's care out there parents are just willing to go find it and look for it right but what this data is telling us is that we've reduced almost 50 percent in 10 years of medicaid providing health care we'll address that just a little bit because i think everything you talked about goes right down to this whole piece yeah i mean dr wilson gets on a critical point we only have two non-profits of size that are providing medicaid level health care to our children that's going to be health services of north texas here in the denton community it's going to be a pd place traditionally south of the lake in louisville although when you look at pd place and both are partner agencies of united way of denton county we're proud to call them partners when you look at both of their data health services of north texas and pd place you're going to find they're serving children from all over the county especially denton isd kiddos i'm going to put my communities and schools head on just for a second for communities and schools to do what they need to do a dropout prevention program for denton isd we want to increase the number of days that kiddos are in school they were born into households that placed them behind at kindergarten and they're in catch-up throughout their career they are the number of kiddos we're looking at at third grade actually not on grade level they tend to use my experience at communities and schools they tend to use your school nurses as their primary care physician so when they are sick when the kiddos are sick mom dad grandma grandpa they come into your school building with a sick child looking for advice a decade ago plus 15 years ago communities and schools pd place how in the world can we shrink the geographic distance between a pd place clinic and the nurse's office at a title one school so that kiddo is going to have one or two days out this week instead of four or five days because that kiddo cannot afford four or five days they get caught up by more days in school so pd place most full isd it can happen in denton isd opened a pd place clinic inside a title one school walled off i mean there was definitely this is the clinic this is the school this is kippa compliant this is furpa compliant but it meant that when mom grandma dad grandparent aunt uncle brought kiddo to the nurse's office they went out the front door around the building and into the pediatric clinic front door and was served immediately it's strategies like that city and school district that's that's how we break down the obstacles the barriers that are preventing our kiddos from repeating the cycle of poverty they were born into dr wilson does that answer your question no it's it's spot on we just had lots of conversation in the past i don't know three three to five months on this topic yeah um and there's lots of misinformation out about the function of school-based health clinics and what they do and what they don't because those parents have they have a challenge often for transportation between your school and the services you're just breaking down as many obstacles as possible we could pivot and talk food insecurity and have a similar conversation right but this one's pretty serious because the data point says our community as a whole is providing less of the service across the county all right very close last data point veterans to the extent school district we can identify kiddos who are military connected to our veteran parents i think we we open up some really strategic doors for us veterans in denton county have access to some really good benefits program services but the general population often does not but the data point i mean after the fact that we have 41 000 veterans living in denton county which is counter-intuitive given that we don't have a military installation that easily explain when you see how effective unt and twu are as veteran friendly institutions that 41 000 right below that we want to drill down into one specific data point and that's military sexual trauma for our gentlemen one in 50 will have left the military and come into our community having experienced military sexual trauma before our women that data point is tremendously different it's one in three of our females so our veterans who tend to come into our community having served the country with pts ptsd related needs for us to meet the women are going to come also with that and an additional challenge 160 page full community needs assessment on the united way website i don't understand why we weren't able to cover all 160 pages maybe that's why you come back i don't know questions thank you um so i'll leave add question just looking at your numbers on the slide i was thinking about the growth obviously we're all forced with that challenge i understand there will be forces from it comes out today that dallas is leading on costs right which didn't push pressure to carol can farmers branch etc but i always understood like lake louisville bridge to kind of be a divider louisville before the bridge denton's too far away but i look at your numbers and it shows that denton is growing at a faster pace than louisville can you help me that will just help me understand as we're talking about growth and projecting growth what you're seeing uh that that's causing that because i always thought the lake to be a natural barrier like louisville would absorb it first then it would push north but it seems like it's leapfrogging based on your dad yeah mayor i think the 35 expansion really made the movement between louisville the central part of the county the northern part of the county more doable i really do i think you also see families moving to where they can find affordable or close to affordable housing and then thirdly it's it's this multi decade long murdoch state demographer prediction of the filling in of den county starting from the south moving up through the county and to the north i mean i talked to my counterpart in cook county and tell her here's what's coming it's going to take you about a decade but we know exactly what's coming your way okay and then thank you for that and one other thing is when you talk about placing people what is the biggest thing we can do or the word to get out to help increase housing stock available for placement what what can we do to to help advocate for that mayor our data shows through cares act era one era two it was the 30 area median income and below they got hit the hardest there's a lot of reasons why that just makes a lot of sense so the first answer to your question would be their their housing cost means aren't going to be at the 80 percent ami or 50 or 40 they're going to be at that 30 percent ami so as you're considering tax credit developments really holding feet to the fire to make sure that on the back end the units that become available do you need that target to me is that that very much is the name you know i think the other the harder answer is with the senior population because we can work with the non-senior alice population that that half that 58 percent that's working families and we can do a better job with workforce upskilling i mean to come to nctc's defense which i always do they don't receive a denton county tax to fund the community college so when we think we have a community college in denton county we really don't our residents who do consume nctc programs are paying non-resident tuition rates so for the isd kiddos especially in denton isd who take advantage atc of those vocational training programs before they exit high school now they they haven't made there are some rich across the county but very much in denton isd some rich rich votech programs career programs but for their parents 30 40 50 whatever age those programs don't exist and i do believe that north central texas workforce solution is um a player that needs to be connected more in our county they certainly have adequate and they have a large supply 30 million dollars annually in child care scholarship subsidy funding for our alice households and they are the keeper of the largest texas workforce commission job training dollars so to be able to approach and train and equip our case management programs that are non-profits across the county to work more effectively with our texas workforce commission funded work skills work up skill programs is definitely something we have to do a better job at so mayor it's really whatever you can do to enforce those lower ami rental rates but we we've got to work on the top line revenue right it's expense and revenue and for those households they're working at the jobs that they can get with the skills they have and those are fair paying jobs by their employer's determination so to get them out of this making less than they earn we have an opportunity to upskill them not with seniors on fixed income but with our alice households and this generally not a funded skill set or outcome that we fund into our non-profits and ask other non-profits we generally i'm speaking to united way as much as i am the city of denton and other municipalities we tend to fund crisis response but to fund the upskilling piece a it takes longer you you can't simply enroll someone into a class and three months later they're now employable at 20 greater income it's a longer game but it's an important game for us thank you very much thank you any other questions uh mayor thank you mr mayor uh so one of the things i was struck by was the the great trends and charts that that you know you're showing there uh and we know that we're coming out of the pandemic um and and that's dramatically turned the way future projections are are going so i sort of am curious have you had the opportunity to look at um if we compare 17 to 40 growth in our various communities how much of how much of the increase in issues and barriers and challenges are commensurate with 25 average growth and how much are excess uh indicating there's a problem yeah i think the trend lines are very consistent it's been one in three children who are economically disadvantaged in our denton county school districts for 10 years it's when the county as a whole when those 10 school districts enroll that growth that raw number goes up so so my answer to your question is i don't think we're seeing anything as an outlier beyond its natural growth as a part of the whole yeah but our non-profits are looking generally at the same baseline level of funding early and during that growth so it's a really interesting opportunity to build infrastructure case in point food insecurity we have two food banks that serve denton county tear an area food bank serves west of 35 north texas food bank serves east of 35 and those two food banks together have warehouses in dallas and fort worth respectively we have food pantry 501 c3 scattered throughout the county but it's just probably for those volunteers largely to go to dallas and fort worth on a weekly basis to bring the feeding america food bank food into denton county so from an infrastructure perspective a regional food bank distribution hub in the county would make logical sense so when we speak of infrastructure to serve a grown and growing denton county that's a that's a really good example okay any other questions you know yeah okay thank you i just wanted to comment how fortunate we are as governing bodies of the school district and the city to have the united way of denton to help provide us with this wonderful source of information it's pretty scary information something that should really get our attention but data is a very valuable asset when you're in the business of making policy and i was very impressed the first time i saw this how important it is for all of our community to know and understand the implications of the data so i really want to express appreciation to united way of denton for providing this service not only this service but a lot of other services that are good for our community but this certainly gives us a compelling reason why we all need to come together and approach these problems as a community and not as independent thinkers working separately we really got to come together to have any hope of dealing with these issues so thank you very very much for bringing this to our attention dr alexander thank you we want our non-profit partners across the county to have a shot have the resources to be able to succeed and right now many of those non-profits just don't have those resources nothing makes us less happy than knowing we didn't serve all the need knowing we didn't meet all the need these two bodies we just covet our partnership with you all and the fact that you come together like this both to work collaboratively but also to listen to us as we try to advocate not for non-profits their means to an end advocate for members of our community who are and will be falling through different forms of cracks without all of our work together so thank you dr alexander okay thank you very much appreciate it and uh we'll get mac if i have an application to be with dancing with the stars uh next year we'll get our city attorney so that takes us to item b which is id 23486 receive report hold discussion give staff direction regarding an update on the proposed 2023 benton independent school district bomb program we will hand it over to dr jenny thank you miss prize there's a board members of the council um as you well know we've been working on this uh this bomb bomb proposal study group for better part of a year in some internal miss war to to kick it off and go from there and i'll do color commentary so should we play don't play it on the color thank you for having me today thank you for having this joint meeting so we can share some important information uh mayor husband mayor pro tem council members uh feel free to jump in and ask any questions i think the school board folks are pretty well aware of this presentation um so if you have any questions along the way please feel free to jump in and ask me uh pretty much anything we've done uh probably 35 presentations in four weeks and we have about four and a half more weeks to go we're uh do on a clip to do about 120 before election day on may 6th so thank you for having us today um it's always awesome to follow gary hinderson there were so many transitional points he made that i could totally start with on our presentation addressing growth addressing access for students building neighborhood schools so we can provide services in our neighborhoods and it was great for him to give us a glimpse of what our families look like in the households that we serve all across denton county i would be remiss if i did not point out that part of our team right now is at ws ryan elementary school we are honoring tyler perry who has recently named the mvp of the nit basketball tournament for those of you who might not be aware tyler has been volunteering at ws ryan every week coming out and working with some of our students at ws ryan and so today he showed up to bring them the mvp trophy because he's there to speak to our students i think that just illustrates a perfect point that all of the partnerships and all of the collaborations that we experience all across did my isd is what really makes us great that's something that we are very blessed to have in this community and honestly i think that's why thousands of families are moving here as fast as they can yes it is the affordable housing yes it is the great economic development but it is also the relationships that we enjoy and are blessed with our families that make us different than other school systems even in denton county so there's my plan i'm going to play for you a little video it's a brief five-minute overview of everything that is in the package that again we're putting before voters on may 6th and after that we'll go into a little quick powerpoint presentation where i would enjoy any and all questions so let me get that one. So so so so so oh uh uh so so so so it's a lot of information in less than five and a half minutes i know so let's just run through real quickly if anyone has any questions just stop me when we get to things um as we've already covered and gary so eloquently alluded to the fact that we serve all of these communities we're 183 square miles and so a lot of our families look to denton isd for support for services and for the education of their students we're a fast-growing school district in the state of texas we're in denton county the sixth fastest growing county in america and as he said a person moves here every three minutes we believe that's because of our strong partnerships and because of our strong public school system we also believe it's because of our track record in 2002 our graduates earned more than 40 million dollars in scholarships and that happens every single class that we graduate setting our students on a trajectory for success the last bond election we had was in 2018 and currently of the 35 total projects more than 28 as of today this is about a month old more than 28 projects are completed as you know we replaced it in high school we replaced strickland middle school we replaced schultz elementary and we added a wing on the brasswell high school to address the growth cheek middle school which is our first school that we're opening in august and prosper if you didn't know we also serve students in prosper that will open from the next school year and sam brock range elementary which just opened for this school year is almost reaching capacity if you've not traveled the 380 corridor recently you understand that we have a lot of folks moving to that area it's very becoming very densely populated and so this proposal we're printing before taxpayers will be adding three more additional elementary schools too in that brasswell zone to help continue to address the growth and again key point all of these projects will be funded within the current tax rate just like they were in 2018 that's very important to remember again quick facts i also think it's interesting to point out that we have 64 actively building subdivisions all across the county and 34 already in the planning stages as you know we work with multiple municipalities so that's our cumulative number groundwork on almost 4 000 lots within 21 subdivisions currently on the ground that was not crazy since this current graduating class was in kindergarten as gary alluded to our population our student population has ballooned by 40 so we have folks moving in all the time and our our classes continue to expand we had a hundred folks come together through a very transparent process of those hundred folks 15 were active high school students we had a student at all of the tables where all of the adults were seated this the patrons represented a nice cross cross section of our community represented folks from all areas of our school district all backgrounds lots of service clubs lots of elected officials who were in the room who all studied over a six month period our fiscal history our building age their lifespan the safety conditions we have in all of 43 schools the way we deliver technologies to our students and the programmatic needs they met again for five months and studied all of these things very intently so here's some highlights that i want you to take away the brasswell zone again is on track to receive two additional elementary schools one of those elementary schools is going to be right here in the heart of denton i believe it is on the righty road property which is across from the new denton high school so you'll see that benefit right here in the city of denton we're also going to drop in that fifth high school because our high schools are growing at such a rapid rate brasswell high school is currently our largest six-day high school a lot of folks don't understand that they have surpassed geier high school as our largest high school and still growing we're also going to drop in a new advanced technology complex on that same property it's going to be a shared development with high school number five and an advanced technology building on the same piece of property out in the brasswell zone on the crossroads property again when you look at our participation in the certifications that gary alluded to we already have consistently a three to five hundred member waiting list for students who cannot physically get into those programs because we have simply run out of space so not only are we adding classrooms to lagrone in its existing form right here in denton we need to replicate some of those programs and expand them out in that corridor on 380 area to serve students as well just to give everybody a landmark as to where that is when you think brasswell zone you think really far east this fifth high school and career center it's in the town of crossroads so right at prairie house so we're not we're not too far out of the city of dent it's just in fact see they didn't own some property right next door where the landfill is right there on that on that east side of the lake so it's it's really accessible to our to the eastern part of the of the city too it's important um when we're out talking to parents a lot of these uh upgrades are top of mind for several of them um some of them might not be as flashy as some of the others but if you go to a school that needs a new hba system or a roof or an upgrade to a cafeteria or a fine arts upgrade to their stage that is top of mind for many of our parents at some of our older facilities especially those are right in the 20 year age they need a little upgrade uh security vestibules again top of my safety security 33 security vestibules will be dropped in our campuses again placing another set of locked doors and upgrading camera systems placing panic buttons throughout schools so that folks can alert that an adult needs to come to a certain area of a school we're going to drop a system in on 33 campuses like that um and also for top of mind and folks in denton they want to know about bohrmann and jennings bohrmann and jennings elementary are loved and have served their time of all of the denton ist students but it is time for those folks in those communities to receive the same educational experience as some of our folks who attend newer campuses and so this proposal is going to replace bohrmann elementary and jennings elementary and i don't know that the plan has all been detailed out but i don't believe there will be much change to the attendance zone i believe the idea is to do a similar plan that we did with schultz elementary former wilson elementary to serve those neighborhoods where the schools currently reside so i don't have anything to add on that question i know that gets a lot of i was just sad that we we spent a lot of time talking to the parks department also about partnerships with our gymnasiums and middle schools and tracks and surfaces and so we get it's the intention is for those things to be used a lot more often than they can even be used now great segue to the eight middle schools right uh they're going to get all weather tracks and all weather turf for practices so that'll allow our teams and our community members to come and walk tracks during the day when they're not in use maybe on weekends uh use that all weather turf so it's uh in good shape all throughout the year and it also saves on water conservation providing that it's a big piece of replacing those large ball fields and putting in all weather so cost savings on multiple products safety and security i know this is something that gets a lot of questions at some of the presentations that we've done um upgraded security cameras dr wilson how many cameras were in geier high school when we opened it so when we opened gar in 2005 we had 65 cameras and how many cameras are in dent high over 300 350 if they didn't hide so what we would like to do is eliminate as many blind spots as possible across all of our schools most specifically at secondary schools so middle schools and high schools will all receive security and camera upgrades so that we can eliminate any blind spots both interior and exterior and it's also important to point out currently we're transitioning to a system where all of those cameras are monitored 24 hours a day 365 days a year so it's a lot of uh security for all of our neighborhoods in all of the areas of our district smart sensors when i have a high school student in the room they love to ask me a question about the smart sensor first of all anytime you talk about harmful vapors in a restroom the high school kids think that's really funny yes they think that's funny but as many of you know for privacy reasons we cannot drop cameras into a restroom we have cameras outside of restrooms to track who is entering and exiting the restroom but we cannot have a camera inside the restroom so this is a compromise of a smart sensor not only does it detect harmful vapors and we all know what that would be about right smoking or vaping or something that young folks shouldn't be doing especially at school but it is also going to alert adults if large or loud noises happen does anyone remember a little few months ago when we had the tick-tock challenge where folks were loving to film themselves ripping sinks off the wall or a dispenser of some sort and post that on social media well if large noises happen in a restroom like that it's going to alert an adult that someone in the restroom needs assistance immediately we're not going to wait for the camera to catch it it's going to have a sensor that goes off and alerts the leaders on that campus that they need to address something happening in that restroom immediately and that's really what we're talking about with the smart sensors all right custom e-sports learning spaces anybody heard about the latest trend in college scholarships you can get a lot of money for your student if you are a member of an e-sports team currently geier high school is the state champion in e-sports if you didn't know that so we would like to replicate that not just that guy or because they're just using a regular classroom and making it work right so we would like to replicate that at all five high schools again engaging students in activities they're already engaging in and putting them on a productive track to change their trajectory opportunities for students the ch collins renovation that is a separate item which i'll get into in a minute that is to replace that elevator if you've ever been in ch collins elevator you might have gotten stuck like many of us or you might have had a great odor of a spunk because apparently scones love to live in that ch collins elevator shaft it was like yes i'm gonna we're also going to upgrade the lights out there for more energy efficient led lights and we're going to renovate uh the press box a little bit and also the officials at ch collins if you've ever been officiated a game there they physically change in the same locker room with both teams now i don't know if there have been some crazy calls made during the game or not but probably not a good idea to send the officials into the locker room with the same students they've just officially the game with might be problematic it's just very small and it's they're all sharing the same space so we're going to separate the adults out so that they can have a little more privacy and a little more safety we're appreciating games at ch collins i would be remiss if i didn't brag on our school board um they have won the first award for 20 years consecutively that is physically the highest financial rating you can receive as a school district in the state of texas we have decreased that tax rate since our last election in 2018 by almost 20 cents so when people tell you their tax rate is going up or their taxes are going up it's not because we're raising the rate in fact we have decreased it if you know anyone in your household or your neighborhood who's 65 or older and they have filed that exemption that paperwork their taxes are frozen so this would have no impact on their taxes as well and again what i need you to remember from this is our growth is going to pay for this growth there will be no tax rate increase under this proposal all right so for the first time since our last election the state has changed the rules i don't know if that happens to you all but it happens to us a lot oh no it never happens i know um so on the ballot you will see three propositions and this is the first time we've ever had this happening so under the new state law proposition a will be for the majority of the the ballot we're putting before you a is going to address growth student opportunity safety and security and the majority of what we're asking for taxpayers to approve or disapprove so proposition b is going to be all the technology all of the infrastructure that's the laptops that's the cyber security upgrades that's the physical infrastructure that drives all of the requests of proposition a correct so think of b driving a that's the the guts of of our network and all of those upgrades and then proposition c is simply standalone with ch collins athletic complex because if you have an existing athletic facility and you're proposing upgrades state law is requiring us to break that out as a separate proposition that's the only reason that five million dollar upgrade is separate on the ballot so with that again we'll take any questions great thank you very much i i have a couple one to ask this is not directly in your control but just it affects things want to carry the message forward so looking at 380 east highway 424 so you have your east transportation station kind of down that road and it's right beyond um rodriguez middle school have y'all heard from textile are they going to make enhancements to that intersection just because you you talked about the future schools going there and everything so i'm just curious if they've given you an indication what they're going to do there i'm talking about 720 is that 720 yeah 720 mccormick martop right there at old point yes there's going to be some improvements there there was also some things in the county bond um that have improvements to nader and some other access in egress south of 380 that connects nader to 720 okay so there's something that goes from potter shop road which i think is right at the eastern boundary of the city of netton and goes all the way across the 720 that's about a quarter mile south of 380 so that's going to be some improvements that go in there but this whenever we started working on this um on these projects knowing that where the growth was was going to be we worked with the county and their and their bond programming for their roads and infrastructure too in that section of the district because old point cross roads you know it's just they're just different because they're so much smaller and so it's a they're a lot more time dependent crossroads with regard to that and so that's but that's where the school sites are but there is there is some substantial things about 720 there's been some improvements to 720 already um and there will be improvements to um martop which is the road north of rodriguez um also um from the the housing developer that that has a property south of rodriguez it used to be ours so that will be a part of improving that that access in egress on okay thank you and then i just said the question i had was on the internet i think that's great will that extend to broadcast beyond i know we've talked about a partnership there so will those upgrades kind of give come out beyond the school walls quote unquote or are they kind of be self-contained what does that look like no part of them will all be there'll be a part of that that's always available to the public because we can use e-rate funding to put all that stuff in to help us offset the expenses so even right now anybody could go close to the school parking lot you can get out you can get an access right so we're not all the way community all the way webbed around the community yet um but we have our own fiber and ability to pull through all that so it does provide that access excellent thank you good questions okay any other questions let me just show you one thing really quickly sure that qr code that's at the top of your handout and at the top of all of our flyers will direct you straight to this website and here is my ask we need you to share information what we're looking for is participation it would be totally crazy if we did all of this and no one showed up to tell us whether they approve or disapprove this proposal so we what we need is for you to share with your friends and neighbors where they can find information so they can be an informed voter and right here is the video that i showed if you'd like to share that out all of the things that are listed on the ballot here is an interactive map that shows you where you can vote either early voting or on that election day feel free to share that as well right here under what's the plan we have designed every specific campus every individual campus what they are receiving and need under this proposal correct so if you have a student who attends oh let's just say meyers middle school here is all of the things under this proposal that are planned under this proposal for meyers middle school again we have that for every elementary school every middle school every high school and every campus and windle gonzalez davis we want to be completely transparent with our community all of this is readily accessible readily available and so if you would like to share any of this information just with that qr code as i said when we went through that process with our community committee here are all the meetings here are all the ancillary materials they used to study before they put this proposal before our board here's everyone's name who is on that committee we want everyone to know everything they everything we can think of that they might ask is right here so we would just ask that you leave this meeting and share with your friends and neighbors so that everyone is informed moving forward got it thank you and we are a little behind but i do want to open up the floor for y'all to speak to exactly that i i think it was dr wilson i saw interviewed on that it's just kind of the community looked at it and said hey here's what we need we've tried to condense it as best we can but i don't know if you want to speak to that because if you if you don't understand if you're not informed you're like oh man this is you know this is just the school district but it's not it's you know however many people inputting saying hey here's what we need to do to keep up with uh kind of in level of playing field could you show the process tab just real quick to like the left farm right up there who's involved who's involved so like even to this day you can go back through in every meeting we've had with with citizens their agendas are there everything we provided to them were there the dates that we did that all last fall and so every single thing that we talked about and went through with every single one of the community members on our on our group that represented all the district i mean from all different areas they had a big three ring binder just full of information that they came through and the way that this worked is each individual person built a bond themselves they built it with their table and then their table made recommendations to the fourth committee and that's how this thing came about i was there were certain things that were important to them that they added in and worked through and i mean it's their bond package it's the community's bond package so for example meeting five was financials so we went through all our financials right here and if you would like to go back and see what the financials are and the tax rate and how we compare to other school systems in our area the growth the interest rates for our paper all of it yeah great okay well thank you very much uh any other questions great oh councilman davis sure i'm kind of bringing both items together with this question um because we're talking about growth we're talking about funding the growth and i'm curious if y'all if the isd has looked at something some other districts around the state notably in travis county have looked at and that's teacher housing um affordable housing marketed towards teachers with units set aside for teachers because with every single one of these classrooms that we're building a teacher or more than one teacher comes a pair of professionals sometimes comes administrative staff and so we look at y'all are looking at from building classrooms perspective we're looking at from a housing people perspectives in our affordable housing toolkit um and if it's not right for public discussion then maybe it's just something we get an email about or something but i'm curious if y'all have looked at that if you consider that and if it's something that might be on your radar so it's a great question and yes we do look at it a couple of things many of the districts in the austin area um are experiencing growth but they're kind of tailing they're kind of tailing down and they're kind of building out they're kind of building out so they have the ability to provide some revenue generation to build something different housing for teachers for example or some other pieces um up until the last model 18 the only thing we were doing were classrooms because classrooms were coming and coming now we're getting enough growth that we can go back in and replace some older campuses provide some some different renovations and additions um and and begin to look at that the um we we have looked at it we looked at it this last time um what we are currently doing is working with current housing providers in the city of denton and where we and our other municipalities to provide incentives for our employees to be there because number one they know they're going to get a paycheck number two they know they're going to get a good tenant most of the time they'll give them a good tenant and lastly is it gives them a place to go and work through it so we haven't we haven't got all the way into the teach niche part yet um flukeville did it just to see kind of how they thought it might work and it and it it went with flying colors now they're now they're working through what does that look like um but every time there's a multi-family or any kind of um apartment complexes or any houses for rendering those things that come on um we have an engagement person in our hr office that reaches out to them to um try to create some incentives for our employees because we look at it as a recruitment tool awesome right um and it's kind of a public-private partnership piece right it's like um if things were approved at the city level if a portion of that was was uh was allowable to be for this purpose at affordable rates just like what you do with everything else i'm sure that's something we could consider and talk about but as you will know the property in our community is not getting any less expensive and um multi-family seems to be the the flavor of the month in our area right with the way that property is being used so we have to be very mindful of the impact all that has on our community i think it's just as important that our educators that come to work at Denton ISD see this partnership with our governmental entities and say you know what when you when you go work at Denton ISD and live in the city of Denton it works well for you right because that salary we paid that teacher is going to go right back into sales tax generation and commerce and everything else right here in the city and you know if you think about our our budget our 300 million dollar budget give or take 280 million that's in salaries that goes into gas and restaurants and cars and everything else right here and so the more we can keep all that local the better it is not to belabor the point but to tell on what dr wilson is saying um i often have to remind myself that a bond election and building schools is a great economic driver that a school system can uh can share with the community um and just recently dr michael carroll who is economist at the university of north texas was studying us and he determined that from our 2018 bond election the past one five years ago we uh created over 6 000 jobs straight into the local economy and that's not educators that is people related who moved here and put got jobs and tried you know got into our local economy just because we expanded all of those schools built in new areas new businesses saw that they built their businesses they attracted uh executives and workers from other areas of the company and they moved here because of where we were placing our school 6 000 jobs so we feel that's important okay thank you very much if i could just add a comment you ask a question about the transportation and the highway structure out to the east uh just as we worked with the city of denton to facilitate our bonding and our street construction and trying to make it all as efficient as possible the same thing has been true with what dr wilson has done in interacting with our county and with the regional transportation authority with more simple texas cog and the amount of cooperation and planning that's going together in locating these facilities particularly out to the east it's been pretty complex but i think it'll pay off in the long term with the increased efficiency for all of the highway structure in the in the north texas area we find that our schools when we build one has a pretty significant impact on traffic so we really have to think about that and it's important that we're working regionally to help make that as efficient as possible and i've been very proud of the work we've been done in that area yes thank you what's that okay thank you very much that takes us to item c which is id 23487 receive report home discussion give staff direction regarding an update on the city of denton downtown master planning process and that was two fabulous presentations thank you i'm scott mcdonnell the director of development services here at the city mayor to your request i'll see if i can pick up some time even though i'm told to kind of stretch mine out a bit i've got one slide so we're a little early in the process just wanted to provide you an update on our downtown master plan and the exercise that we're going through we put out an rfq we received eight responses we have really narrowed that down to who it is that we would like to select we haven't actually awarded that yet so we're going to kind of stay out of that stuff and just kind of give you the overview of where we're at we we started we started the process earlier this year council we were thankful we have several area plans one in the northeast one in the southeast and downtown which is you know really that core and where we're trying to build from we expect to kick this off in may and take it through march of 2024 the real purpose in this is really to evaluate our downtown to evaluate our vision for the downtown core and the surrounding area not only for today but as we go into the future we've got any number of infrastructure needs in our downtown area and this process is going to help us to identify that to look at what we need to do as an economic vehicle as well as what what we need to put in to make sure it's just viable into the future we've got a lot of aging infrastructure and those types of things the policy direction that we've been given and have provided to those respondents is is really how it is that we preserve our downtown character we have a very unique downtown we want to capitalize on that we want to make sure that you know people recognize what downtown is we keep that character and then we interweave it and balance it with the surrounding neighborhoods that we have as i mentioned the economic growth is an important component to this we we recognize that a vibrant downtown draws people so it draws people it draws it benefits our economy and really what makes denton a great community which much of what the school i think is facing is is people wanting to be in denton in denton county what we have to do is we have to enhance our pedestrian experience we've got some wonderful assets in denton we have two major universities we have a downtown college campus and we have dcta our challenges are really how it is that we have that mobility we don't control necessarily all of the roadway network so we have some textile roadways we have some sidewalks that were built for an old community people get around differently so we want to capitalize on what assets we have and how we improve mobility in downtown out of downtown to connect the campuses to downtown and just that overall mobility experience part of that is is to evaluate our boundary so you'll notice that we just have this when i was told was a yellow blob this yellow highlighting is really representative of our downtown area the original downtown plan from 2002 is about 441 acres it goes up to university down to eagle from carol to bell later on we brought in a downtown implementation plan and that refined that area to really the core of the city of about 144 acres refining that this this plan is designed to really evaluate all of that how we balance our core with those neighboring areas and as we look at how that will benefit there's also some green shading on this map which is a very important part of the process as we rolled out these three area plans almost simultaneously we looked at southeast denton and recognized that that we needed to do this area plan but we wanted to start it first so we wanted to get a good understanding and a flavor for that neighborhood that area and how that needs to develop so we intentionally put that rfp out first we've selected consultant we're starting the process and then we'll roll into the downtown plant so the two of those can really have some some syncing up of of where those lines are where those boundaries are as we as we grow and evolve through this there's some natural boundaries they're not necessarily represented in the current plan so again whether we're scaling some of that area back whether we're expanding any of those boundaries or what looks best as far as what we need to do another important piece to this getting back to some of our assets that we have we have some wonderful parkland we have parkland in southeast denton we have parkland in the downtown area we have some north of downtown really tying those together using some of the natural assets and trying to create that better connectivity between those areas and how it is that we can create this environment where we have all of this parkland open space connected and usable and functional that ties the downtown and the downtown area seeking any of those opportunities for additional open space anywhere that we can find those benefits we've got a small pocket park we've got some developments downtown that as we talk through that and we want to focus on on having open space places for people to gather and any of those opportunities to do that we're trying as i mentioned we have some vacant land we have some development that's being discussed is really looking at the housing types so trying to trying to focus on having dense housing in the core of downtown we've got we've got mass transit available making it better to walk and connect bike so again if we can if we can create some denser housing create an environment where people are able to walk live work play without having to have an automobile without having to go very far or utilize again some of the assets that we have is some of those focus so just trying to broaden what we have for those housing choices the mobility for that and then ultimately balancing what we have for our existing neighborhoods so we have some beautiful character in in each direction with downtown now how do we complement each of those how is it that we focus upon what our downtown should be and how that coexists and how we manage the historical relevance in downtown as well as within the neighborhoods that have their own downtown items so our historic resources are our critical component for this as we as we work through it and i think going through the process getting input from everybody in the community it's it's a very unique area for the mere fact that it's not only the property owners or those that that live there or operate a business we have to think in terms of all of the visitors that we have those people that live in the rest of the city of denton that live in denton county that come to experience what downtown is is trying to get all of that feedback so there are so many users for our downtown and we want all of that feedback to better understand what we need to do and how we need to plan today tomorrow and well into the future so that's the goal of what this is early in the stages certainly we'll be looking for feedback from everyone to include the district we try to include the district in most all of the work that we do so our regular meetings just to kind of talk about what development is what it looks like and as we talk about infrastructure and our needs and just hope to continue to get that and i'll stand for any questions okay thank you questions i would i guess primarily from those on the isd members of the isd we can grab scott independent if we need to and that's the same time but any questions yay thank you appreciate it uh that takes us to our last work session item that's id 23488 receive report hold discussion and give staff direction regarding partnership between the city of denton and didn't independent school districts and it has a few bullets there okay and uh council member davis is is going to recuse and he'll join us at the council work session thank you everyone my name is ryan adams i'm the chief staff of the city of denton and if you'll allow me i always want worry that i'm just going to wander around aimlessly so i'm going to sit down for this one if that's all right um and i'm just i'm kind of an amalgam of all the various departments who participate and work with uh then infinite school district for a number of programs and we could not possibly go through them all today but i'm going to do my best to highlight a couple i think are important impressions particularly as we come uh up on the summer but also uh delve into and give you kind of a highlight of each one and show how we are really working together to make an impact on these students lives mayor if i start to wonder too long we get back to kind of the end time and you need to cut me off you just give me the signal yeah so we are focusing in this presentation some of our summer programs you know i want to start off with one that we provide through our police department and that's the police summer youth program and what this is this is really a mentorship and guidance program for students to try to give them a continuity some positive presence in their lives throughout the summer uh this impacts 70 to 80 kids and it's really divided up between uh the level so high school and gender we have a group of high school boys high school girls middle school boys middle school girls and this is really to give them a chance to interact with folks who might have a positive influence on their lives so it's eight weeks total two weeks with each group and what we do is we take them and we do some fun things with them you know ropes courses canoeing but also we work on building them up a little bit it's a development program too that might involve uh career planning so we might go out to peterville and show them hey if you would like a job in manufacturing here's what that might look like and we partner with the local businesses uh to show them how they might spend the rest of their lives and and what they might do to impact their community as far as a career and we also try to get them out volunteering as well so we do community service projects to show them the value of volunteering for their community and it wouldn't really be really a summer program if we didn't involve some camping as well so we're we're also taking them out on two separate camping trips this summer we're going to arkansas and broken bone and should these students end up with a maybe a burgeoning interest in a career in law enforcement well we've got a program for that too there it goes i didn't know we'd do that this internship program is for 11 students and what we do and this is a partnership with lebron what we do is we take them for one semester they spend with the denton county sheriff's department and for another semester they spend with denton police and we kind of give them a really close look at what it means to work in the law enforcement industry particularly in these two organizations so we take them uh once over the course of i think 12 weeks or the whole semester so once a week and we teach them everything from report writing to what 911 operators do they definitely do a ride along you know what you're seeing here is defensive tactics and our goal is if they have an interest in law enforcement we want to show them what a career in that is like and show them how that is uh really a selfless career that directly impacts your community you know some students may not have the the best uh the best view or have had positive impacts or influences from uh police departments in their lifetime so this shows them that at a career in law enforcement these are these are good folks just trying to help our community and it's a direct way to interact with actual police officers as they go through their work not to be outdone fire gets in on the game and we do have a fire summer camp as well the fire one is very similar to the police one this one's actually a five-day summer camp for fifth graders and students are chosen by campus staff so our campus staff help really kind of identify what students might benefit from this program we had the program about 17 participants in 2019 we had to take a break for covid came back in 2022 increased our participation and our goal is that we expand this program into middle school so that's a feeder program for our fire academy which i'll get into in just a second activities here it's everything from cpr training we teach them how to it's called donning and doffing i think but put on the fire gear and take it off using a charged fire hose an agility course we even do some repelling and you go through simulated fire scenarios so nothing that a fifth grader probably couldn't handle but this is really to expose them to what firefighting is but also show them how firefighters can impact them possibly impact the community possibly and again if that's something they feel like is a career interest for them we have our high school fire academy this is a two-year program and this is definitely in the realm of career prep because it is possible to graduate with your certified structural firefighter designation and that's through the texas commission on fire protection but also your emt basic so you could run on an ambulance with a paramedic this is the fourth year the program that we are going to go into so far we've had 49 students graduate the program and of those 49 12 are currently employed in the field of fire service so as we're still talking about summer the one thing we do want to make sure that we share is we have a lot of job opportunities this summer so you know a lot of students will be wondering what they're going to do in the summer maybe they're not doing sports maybe they're old enough to work but really haven't found something out in the private sector that piques their interest well we've got two programs the first one is our summer youth jobs program this is fantastic as you guys know the city has a lot of different operations and we have numerous departments participate in this this year we have 20 spots available for our local high school students those applications are available online through April 14th and they will go and for eight weeks they will work directly with the department this could be engineering it's going to be animal services this could be finance human resources anything that they may be interested in they can work directly with that department learn a ton and decide if that's a career that they want to explore going forward and we also have our seasonal jobs for parks and rec and we do have our parks director here if we have any specific questions but this is something that we we promote heavily around this time every year there are a number of jobs i think over 350 part-time positions are available this summer and we need students to fill those positions these are the folks who are lifeguards at our pools they are camp counselors everything from a cashier at one of our facilities to a birthday party host and much much more we get very busy in the summer and we need students to help us provide these services to the community we've actually got several different application and interview one-stop shops one of them has already gone the next one's april 12th and i believe and gary correct me if i'm wrong you can apply interview and start the onboarding process all at this one place you're getting the thumbs up back there two thumbs up so i think i'm correct all at this one location all at this one time and so we really want to see a lot of our dentin students a lot of our d s d i s d students take a look at this it's a great opportunity to one you know if you need a job because you want money to go do things that kids do it's a great opportunity for that but you really get to learn how to work with people how to work in the service industry how to work in the local government industry and maybe light that fire what students want to do after they graduate so i wanted to mention just a couple of our additional programs again nothing that we can dive too deep into today because we just don't have the time there are a number of ways we partner with the isd everything from our aquatics partnership sharing an auditorium to coming out and teaching about sustainability within sustainable schools so even exploring future partnerships with with lebron you know we are in constant communication with them to see how we can utilize the skills and the talents that the students have to impact the community we're looking into for instance students who are doing welding see if they can do external signage and arches for our parks or artwork on our utility boxes which i believe you might see coming soon and one of the things i think is is just a huge boost for the community is our ability to partner for the facility use of joint use facility for our summer program so we are looking at expanding our summer programs and we've been working with the isd staff over the last couple weeks i believe and it's exciting because we're able to now expand our partnership to provide over 200 more summer camp spots through working with the isd so we're going to go from a capacity of 250 kids to about 440 450 kids in our summer programs which is enormous and that's what the isd help and provide those transportation services as well so it's just a continual process of coordinating and finding what a great use or a great opportunity is and working with the isd staff the city staff to make sure that we can fill the need that's going to impact our community impact our students i wish i could go deep into all these unfortunately i can't but we wanted to give this body these two bodies of flavor of the things that we do and really promote just those summer programs particularly the jobs so i'm happy to stand for any questions you may have we've got some other staff here if i can't answer but thank you for your time all right questions uh okay council member hello everyone um my question goes to the lagrone internship program i see that you said you have 12 topics covered and you're reporting one two three four of them does this course also include the understanding and learning of the social emotional part of our society we're talking about the mental health crisis that we have are the students introduced to that segment while going through this program here as a law enforcement i know that that's something that we're having to connect to now i don't know if that is part of the program i can get that answer to you i do you know frank so part of the program is not doing that in that they're still too young in that age to be introduced to that there's a lot of um new requirements and sharing some of that information so we want to make sure we're being careful with them as we're giving them kind of an introductory look if you will into law enforcement the discussions are had they're just not going in yet into everything just asking because i know that the city has brought in the mental health professionals you know to agree and you don't just thought it would be connected at this by this time and the only other thing is i have a comment on the artwork on the utility boxes and i've seen those in other cities and it's the neatest thing to see uh personal i think the students are doing the artwork right and to be able to put those on those utility boxes it just changes the whole scope of how a town would feel like ours it brings that hometown feeling well it will deter hopefully vandalism and you know it's very popular in some of the other cities where and it highlights some of our young artists that are so talented so our students are putting that in their portfolios for college applications and they were selected it becomes part of their process okay any other questions great yeah well thank you very much i appreciate it um then that concludes our work session um any other questions or anything else that we didn't touch on that noteworthy i just was confused uh we said receive direction um are we giving direction as a as a joint body on anything i think it's captured like that in case a body wanted to give direction but it's not no it's not it wasn't planned or intended for thank you so i'll let you adjourn you're in then i'll turn okay i'm having conducted all items on the agenda we are now okay likewise the city council of 123 is adjourned as well thank you all very much well we love hosting and thank you