Moulton ISD discuss legislative updates

The Moulton ISD board of trustees approved some legislative updates at the Wednesday, Dec. 13 meeting.

“These are local and legal policies that TASB (Texas Association of School Boards) is recommending to every district,” Superintendent Renee Fairchild said. “Some of the highlights include safety. There’s a lot of things telling the schools what they have to do to comply with both federal and state on the safety level.”

“One of these (updates) includes cyber security. The state is very careful to watch anything that comes across as cyber threats and cyber security.”

Another update includes staff development.

There are things that our staff is required to have training in such as mental health and substance abuse recognition,” Fairchild said. “We will be doing that staff development. We will have professional development added into our calendars in the future. There’s also things that our kids have to know about such as fentanyl abuse prevention and AED usage in grades seven through 12.”

There’s also a lot of special ed updates for their protection and things to help them in their academic achievements. Teacher retention is included in this as well.

Attendance was also a major issue.

After COVID, schools have had a lot of attendance issues,” Fairchild said. “The local and legal policies are addressing what schools can do as far as getting kids back in school. Finally, one of the updates included discipline and student conduct. This includes how we handle discipline, who has access to discipline, and how we can talk about discipline. This can even include how fans at athletic contests are supposed to behave.”

Fairchild expects there to be even more updates in legislation that will come out in the future.

In other news, Moulton ISD has approved a onetime employee retention stipend. Full-time staff received an additional $500 and part-time staff $250. The total expenditure was $32,031.80 and the money was pulled from the ESSER funds.

In other business:

• Board members Justin Anderle and Chuck Greive were previously appointed to a committee focusing on fencing versus ballistic film implementation on campus. They opted to install ballistic film on campus and decided to not have new fencing. They are still waiting on quotes for this, but the funds for this will be pulled from the safety and security money. There is currently over $100,000 in those funds. The ballistic film expenditure was tabled for further discussion at the next board meeting in January.

• Discussion was had in the decision to purchase several new vehicles. One of the vehicles included a pick-up truck for the CTE program. Part of the funds for that vehicle will come from the new vehicle for the school resource officer