(0:01 - 1:08)
All right, it is 6.01 and we will call this meeting to order. We do have a quorum and we will begin with the invocation and pledge to the United States flag and pledge to the Texas flag led by Regent Pam Horford. Thank you Lord for the grace and mercy that you bestow on us each and every day. 

Thank you for the opportunity to make a difference in students lives as we work and serve at Lee College. Help us to give us wisdom and guidance Lord in the paths we choose and the decisions made here tonight. Help us to ever be ever mindful of the impact that we have on the future of this college. 

Lord we love you and we thank you for loving us. In your name we pray, amen. In the United States flag, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

(1:08 - 41:23)
The Texas flag? On the Texas flag, I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. First up we have student spotlight. Mr. Chairman, I'm delighted to announce that Coach Wade is going to introduce our wonderful student speaker. 

After giving us a heart attack last night I might add, but other than that. Well good evening everybody. I wanted to introduce you to Natalie Galvan. 

She is one of our volleyball players. She's the epitome of what we want in our student-athletes as we go forward and I know she's put together a little presentation so I'm really excited for you guys to see it. Hi I'm Natalie and then I put together a little presentation for y'all. 

My name is Natalie. I'm currently 19 and I actually currently work as a medical assistant at an urgent care across the hospital. I've been working there for about a year and a half now and I'm also on my fourth semester here in Lee College and in May of 2024 I should graduate and receive my Associates of Arts and recently in the fall of 2023 I had the opportunity to play volleyball here at Lee College so I'm just gonna really talk about my experience and how I managed work, school and also an athlete. 

So prior to beginning my fall semester I didn't really plan on playing volleyball but I had heard from past teammates that the Lee College coach was actually looking for players so I reached out to Coach Erica and I actually scheduled kind of like a camp tryout for her to be able to see my skills and she actually reached out and called me and offered me a spot and I obviously accepted and I told her yes and throughout my volleyball career in school and work my family and my personal relationships are really the reason I didn't give up and they made each day easy for me to you know stay motivated and encouraged and without these people I really don't think I probably would have finished out the season. Truly it was my mom, my dad, Jaden, they really made this experience really easy by bringing me lunch when I was here at school on game days or when I was at work, picking me up from games, coming to all of my games and another really support system was my faith in Jesus. I go to church every Sunday and I would pray each day for God to give me strength and encouragement and motivation to keep going and not give up, quit volleyball, keep going to work, keep doing school and a verse I really like is Isaiah 43 to when you go through deep waters I will be with you because I know that as long as I have my faith in him he has faith in me and I can get through anything and then my experience. 

So my first month of volleyball I actually joined late July so we started volleyball right in August so since I joined kind of late I already had my work schedule for August out and I'm a full-time employee so I work 40 hours a week and practice was Monday through Friday 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. so since I had my schedule out I was kind of really stressed out at the time so but luckily I spoke with my manager and I explained to her situation that you know I got a chance to play volleyball and she was actually very very understanding and she was very flexible with my schedule so each week for the first month of August I was making switches with my co-workers asking that they would cover me and if I could cover them make switches come in late and they agreed so it worked out and my schedule was kind of Monday through Friday 6 a.m. 4 p.m. practice workout and then 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. work weekends I'd work 845 to 7 and then I would I did that for the first three weeks of August and then afterwards school started and practices changed from just from 6 to 8 in the morning so I'd 6 to 8 practice school 930 to 12 then go to work 12 to 9 and I weekend same thing 845 7 so on my off days when I didn't have games I'd be at work after practice I'd go to work so I didn't really get a break it was stressful but I made it and as we started regular season it was just Monday for practice 6 to 8 6 to 8 except for game days so it made it easier and sometimes this is really overwhelming and people would always ask me like why don't you just quit your job just quit your job you know get a job here at Lee college but you know no one really knew why I pay for my own college I paid my own bills up house I helped try to help my family out so you know I that's why I didn't really quit and I really do like my job so and I was raised to not quit even when something's strong and like I said I believe in God and I had faith and I knew he would never put me through anything he knew I can't handle so he knew I could handle it so I didn't quit and so yeah I ended up finding a balance between work and school and it kind of adjusted itself eventually as season went on I found the balance where I could do homework school volleyball work and not be so stressed out and then what I want to be is I actually want to be a DNP which is a doctor of nursing practice I want to be a DNP because I've been working in the medical field for about two years now and I've come encounter with some providers here and there who don't really necessarily will give the patients the answers they're looking for when they come in sometimes we just discharge them with antibiotics or medication or with answers they weren't even looking for they don't they leave with doubts and they don't really know what's actually wrong with them I want to be the provider they come to and actually with answers and not just leave at antibiotics just because you know oh we think it's this so here take this I want them to actually leave knowing that okay I kind of have an idea of what's going on and I want them to come to me because they have trust in me and also because growing up I wasn't really the kid or the person that you know people assumed to be the smartest or the brightest people wouldn't really come to me for that even to this day I don't think people believe or have any confidence that I'll actually be a nurse practitioner but I know I can I will not show them wrong but yeah I have faith in God and I know that he called this plan upon me so I'm gonna be a nursing practitioner and working as a medical assistant has really helped me kind of grow more towards becoming a doctor of nurse practice just because as I've been working there I get compliments all the time that wow you make me feel really comfortable or just you know you were super sweet or I didn't even feel that injection like you know just compliments like that is really what kind of keeps me going there also and yeah and then these are just kind of memories and pictures from volleyball season of this year all right thank you very much next up we have disposition of the minutes board and audit board audit and investment committee meeting December 7th and board meeting December 14th do we have a motion on this item second second we have a motion by Regent Jarrell's and a second by Regent more font no is there any discussion on the minutes hearing none all in favor of approving the minutes as submitted say any opposed okay report of the chairman I've got a couple of things tonight the first is I want to thank Ji-Hang Lee president of the Association of Community College trustees for spending his afternoon with us we got to showcase our School of Nursing and our state-of-the-art student resource and advocacy center and then we got to conclude with a wonderful board dinner and so you know he's here for several days he's got a busy schedule and we are grateful that you chose to spend some of your time with us thank you very much next I want to say how about those navigator men last night our number 9 ranked navigators defeated the number 5 ranked Trinity Valley team so maybe we'll be moving up in the rankings we should and then finally the last thing I want to say is I want to wish congratulations to dr. Marone on her new job we're going to miss you but best of luck in in all the future holds for you so thank you for your service now building committee report yes mr. chairman yesterday we have quick review of ongoing projects we talked a little bit more about the path forward on requests for quotes or qualifications for a for support for a strategic facilities plan and we just had a good visit on policy committee audit and investment we will be meeting next Wednesday okay very good report of the president thank you mr. chairman again I'd like to echo our thanks to ji hang Lee for being with us we share a little bit of a interesting history together given our backgrounds both being Korean and I think you told me now there are only two Korean presidents in the entire country so that's kind of neat and so we've been able to talk about it we share it we share that but he also said some things about male Korean presidents and we can just leave that I really want to thank two amazing teams at the college our amazing facilities team do we have anyone here under and that's not here but our facilities team under the direction of mr. John Ditto working with mr. Philip Hanley and Mark Jaime and all of their staff as well as our safety management team under the direction of Amanda Summers and Woody Crawford who does so much for us they worked tirelessly over the freeze that we had and were very timely in communications and sure the college was up running and we lost power lots before the storm but that was mostly due to wind and we ended up just having no issues whatsoever when the storm actually hit us so I'm just so grateful to all of them I was gonna also toot the horn of the navigators and also thank them for a real nail-biter but I do expect that our ranking will go up and hopefully we'll see that and that but by the way I would also like to mention this is the highest that the college has ever been ranked in the history so of the college so this is just wonderful news this morning we had a wonderful spring morning welcome at the Student Resource and Advocacy Center Kelly you're just not smiling enough because you're doing such an amazing job what yeah well I hear you but it was so absolutely heartwarming to welcome new students in to the Student Resource and Advocacy Center and by the way did I mention it is our food pantry is the largest in the state of Texas if not the nation I might have mentioned that a couple times and so is Kelly and so it is so wonderful to see students who are being welcomed without any stigmatization and to have conversations with each of them and ask them like hey what's your name what are you studying and if you know and to hear like what do you what are you most afraid of you know and then to say you know like hey I understand it's okay that you're afraid of this but guess what we're all here to support you and if you need anything don't hesitate to reach out because all of us are only here because of you so the opportunity to tell them that we are there to serve them was just very gratifying and I just want to thank Kelly Ford Spears and Dr. Marone still here a little bit longer for their leadership of this amazing resource to our students and we know it will go on and do many many more wonderful things in the lives of our students and and so thank you both for your leadership next I want to thank all of our Lee college employees to getting off to a relatively smooth start we had to cancel classes as we have done several times during a previous Arctic front and then during hurricanes because that sometimes happens to us but we welcomed our students back on Wednesday and it was just as always so great to see their smiling faces and some of them a little fearful but they were they were in we saw some of those nursing students on their second day of clinicals and second day of class and and they did have kind of that wide-eyed look right but I think that they were very reassured and knowing that they they are truly following their sacred vocation and that they are on that path so and once again it's kind of hard to believe that four years ago we were dealing with shutting the college down you know and and that great shutdown and and we we are now four years away from that so it just feels like a normal semester and I'm always thankful for any normal semester that we might have so let me move on and talk a little bit about spring enrollment we officially began our spring semester as I mentioned and we were pleased to welcome over 8,000 students back to campus and last month you heard me discuss though that the recovery of enrollments is occurring but nationally we're still down almost a million students across the nation but with that context in mind let me share where we are so the cold front affected us because we had to cancel one of our one-stop registration events and and that was that's like the biggest one that we have right before the semester starts and so that was that was a big blow to us but under the leadership of Dr. Marissa Moreno and Scott Bennett and many others we were able to extend payment deadlines and extend registration some and enrollment looks promising so we don't have an apples to apples comparison to give you because of the storm and because of where we're at but one notable increase that I'm confident in sharing is that last year I reported that Huntsville was up 41% from the previous year we are now up an additional 5% beyond that so that's just tremendous that's just absolutely tremendous and we were celebrating our college's highest enrollment in 89 year history it's not like we're gonna hit that same mark we're not looking like that but we are expecting one of our highest enrollments in the spring so but we just have to wait to see and and that is just again reason to celebrate and again I want to thank Scott Bennett and Dr. Marissa Moreno for and Dr. Carl her husband as well and all of our student services employees who have really worked tirelessly around the clock to serve our students so thank you so very much for that I've already shared with the board but I wanted to make sure everyone heard that earlier this week we learned that our proposal for a lee college branch campus supported by a maintenance tax was on the agenda for the coordinating board at their upcoming quarterly meeting next week in Austin and both dr. Poole and I as well as dr. 

Walters and our CFO and at Ferguson and I believe his CFO as well will be in attendance and we will be hopefully expecting to fingers crossed receive approval from the coordinating board to authorize Barbara's Hill Independent School District to have the authority to hold a maintenance tax election so I'll continue to keep the board updated obviously on the 25th we're scheduled right after lunch that agenda item is coming up and so I'll already be in Austin for a tack quarterly meeting the day before and we'll be just very excited to again fingers crossed announce that we have the authority to hold that that election at Barbara's Hill ISD and I also wanted to thank Exxon Mobil because we learned earlier this week from Aaron Strick that they are awarding us a hundred and twenty five thousand dollars and I don't know if you recall but those amounts had really waned over the years during the pandemic and they're not only making up for it but so they are they are increasing the amount that they're giving us and so we just want to thank them because we're always so grateful for their partnership and and the work that they do to support the college and then finally I just want to remind everyone that February is Black History Month as always we're going to have a number of events that we'd like to showcase they should all be in your calendar as of right now David can you confirm that well you will have them in your calendar very soon they receive them electronically so they have a hard copy tonight but I follow up with an whatever we have I'll put in the electronic just want to make sure that everyone on the board and everyone in the audience at the college knows that everyone is welcome to attend all of the many wonderful offerings and we are in the middle of planning of what's going to be a very wonderful performance at the Performing Arts Center and I'll be telling you guys more about that but it's just it's just a wonderful time to be in a college so thank you next item on the agenda report of Lee college resignations and or retirements well I'd like to refuse to do this if at all possible but is Charlene in the audience was she okay so Charlene Piggott who joined us from Goose Creek it's it's okay she's she's retiring but she has promised that she will work with us part-time in whatever capacity that we need her and there's a lot of stuff coming up and so especially if we move forward with the branch campus we're gonna need someone with that kind of expertise and so we may be making avail of those services and she said she would be here for us dr. Marone you know I don't know how many times I can say there's just no stopping your star and from rising above and beyond and we are so honored and grateful for your service to this college and this community we are going to miss you but I look forward to working with you in any way that I can to support you as does everyone else around you and we love you and we'll miss you greatly but we we're just so happy for you and then finally I didn't realize that Rick Vaughn our institutional researcher I mean our numbers guy besides dr. Walters is retiring and of course we wish him well but you know that's a lot of data that we're we're missing and and just he's a good person too so we want to congratulate him as well these are all great people that we're going to miss and I'm not accepting any more retirements or resignations okay next up Julie Lee is going to give her internal audit report and can I just say that we are also very grateful to Julie for doing she's been working many hours going above and beyond to provide these reports because Annette couldn't be here due to a death in her family and so I just wanted to recognize Julie for being here she's gonna do an outstanding job and I'll let you take it away so in your packet you do have a couple of internal audit packets that I included with your information tonight it's just some internal audits that we've done over the last few months I'm gonna give you just a summary of those reports that you have the details so we looked at the materials office so that's our bookstore so over the last prior to fiscal year 23 we had outsourced that function to to a third party so we brought that back in-house in fiscal year 23 so due to that we had to take we had to take a look at it because we had to record inventory and and look at all the functions that they had so in the materials office about 75% of the materials are electronic and we source those through Biblio you 25% of the materials are physical materials that we have to house and we source those to various vendors so all physical inventory is housed at 700 West Texas Avenue across the street so like I said due to our ownership of that inventory we had to we had to make an entry on the year in financials and the process is manual that because we don't have a good software that can track that inventory so it's a very manual process so in order for us to rely on that data we had to do an inventory count for year end and I conducted that count on August 22nd the scope of the audit was to determine the accuracy of the manual inventory process in the materials office so to do that I randomly selected at least 15% from each category of the materials on their inventory list that they provided me the manual count and then I manually counted the items that were selected and compared that to the inventory list that they provided me and then I ensured that the inventory list was reliable so on there the first category was the physical books that they have on the shelves over there so they have a total of 157 different books on the shelves so of that we selected randomly selected 24 books which is 15 percent of the books on the shelves so I verified the number of books that were on the shelves I counted them manually and and also had to look at the books that were checked out so we looked at the books that were out with students the books that were on the shelves and made sure that that coincided with what was on their report I did discover two minor variances that were highlighted in yellow they were very minor then the second category I looked at was a supply closet the supply closet is made up of individual items that they used to create kits various courses required the students to have kits of supplies to use for the classes so the supply closet is the individual items that they use to make those kits so in there there's a total of 68 different items that they use for that I selected 11 items randomly which is 16% of the total I also discovered two minor variances there they were very minor and not material then the third area that I looked at was the actual kits there's 12 different types of kits that they do keep for the students the kits like I said were made up of the individual items in the supply closet except for cosmetology those kits are purchased intact so of those 12 kits I chose four which is 33% of the total and there was no variances in those so my conclusion from that was that the materials office is very organized and they're very accurate in the recording of their inventory the differences that I found were minor and immaterial to the overall value of the inventory so I did determine that we could rely on that count the total physical inventory for the year-end was five hundred and fourteen thousand dollars so my recommendations from this was that I did recommend that they find a software package that can streamline the process of checking out books and also the perpetual inventory so that it doesn't have to be a manual process anymore and that will help eliminate errors as well okay then in addition to that we had to develop a process in order to reconcile the invoice for the electronic materials so we developed this process to do that because like I said earlier 75% of the materials are sourced electronically so the scope of that was just to reconcile the data we have in PeopleSoft to the data that we are sent from BWU for their invoice to ensure that we have the accurate billing so we collect all the data this this is a very technical process is a very high level overview of it because it's very technical I don't want to bore you with those details but so I just collect the data from the PeopleSoft and that data is also provided to BWU we manipulate that data in order to get a reliable comparison data that we can actually compare to their invoice we reconcile that data and then I forward that to the materials office and the materials office goes through and explains every day you have to do research and explain every difference between what we have and what they have and then they work with BWU to make those adjustments so there are there's many reasons why there's differences in that data these are some of the major reasons that that there's differences in the conclusion was that you know the process is very tedious it's very technical I don't really know of any way to make it better at this point it generally takes four to six weeks to complete that reconciliation process we do pay BWU 60% of that invoice after the date of record and then once the reconciliation process is complete we pay the remainder of the invoice and that concludes my internal audit report unless y'all have any questions yes I did it's seven it's at the 700 West Texas it's a the new building that we purchased over by the dorms it's the old car dealership yeah I think so yes I'm not sure what was there prior but I think the dorms are the dorms are yes yes we originally bought it I think there was somebody was using it as a training center yeah that's all taken care of and this I believe so I don't believe there was any mm-hmm yes yes I believe so yes it's very nice really nice over there y'all should go over there and take a look it's impressive insecure any other questions okay so tonight we are reviewing our financial report through the end of December that represents our fourth month of our fiscal year and it's 33% of operating expenses our cash and investments remain strong through the through December we have a total of over 48 million dollars in cash and investments at this time for revenue tuition and fees looks really strong right now we have collected a 82.8 percent of our budget for revenue for tuition and fees that represents all of all in the majority of spring we started spring registration at the end of October so we we've been collecting spring October November December so we'll finish that up in this month but those numbers look very good our state appropriations are right on track at 50% we will receive our next installment in February a 25% payment and then the remainder will be later this year our district taxes we did begin collecting taxes this month we you can see we received almost 9.9 million in December we will receive the bulk of that in January and then we will receive the remaining in February but by the end of February we should have the majority of that almost a hundred percent of that by the end of February our other revenue looks really good for interest income we're at 33% of our budget which is right on track or other revenue we're a little bit over our budget mainly due to the TDCJ reimbursements we we don't budget for that we never know how much we're gonna get or if we're gonna get that money so we don't budget for that so that's why we're over there you see on the bottom of this spreadsheet details out the other revenue what makes up that other revenue for restricted funds our federal grants are reimbursement grants we have to spend that money first and request our drawdown to get our money back right now we have about three hundred thousand dollars of funds to draw down and we will draw those down as soon as they are available on the bottom of this you can see which grants we still have the majority of it is our Perkins grant that we need to draw down our budget versus year to date for our projected actuals this is just for revenue so it looks like for tuition and fees we're gonna be we will collect about a hundred and two percent of our budget so we will go over budget which is a good thing for tuition and fees strict state appropriations will be right on track district taxes will looks to be right on track and our other revenue will we we will be over budget by about seven and a little bit a little over seven percent our total projected net revenue this will be our surplus so right now we're projecting our surplus at the end of the year would be 2.9 million dollars the majority of that is from the revenue side as you can see for tuition and fees that's 1.6 million of that is from tuition and fees that we're gonna receive over budget then also interest and our other revenue and then you can see on the left side on the bottom those are the expenses that we that's what we're projecting to be under budget right now on the expense side so the total of all that's 2.9 million okay for expenses of inward 33% of the year as far as our budget our percentages of expenses is right on track to our actuals this is just for the month of December our operating costs are a little bit under budget and also the salary and benefits that's just for December and then for year to date again our operating costs are just slightly under what we budgeted and our salary and benefits are a little under what was budgeted as well so our budget versus our projected actual for this is on the expense side we are projecting we're gonna be a little under about ninety eight point eight five percent for salary and benefits about ninety nine percent for operating costs and then right on the money for our debt service okay and that's it for the financials unless you have any questions. 

Dr. Victoria Marone has signed up to speak. I feel like I should have printed this on larger font so good evening Board of Regents and President Villanueva I wanted to just take an opportunity to thank you all for your support your dedication and volunteerism to help support this amazing college that I have called home since I was a student here in 1997 I have so many memories here from that era of my life to this doing my best to navigate motherhood at 18 years old being a wife and figuring out what I wanted to be when I grew up being a first-gen student from a low-income single-parent home I had a poverty mindset I was incredibly lost and at that time I was not feeling like I belonged here the resources we offer students now was not available then this is why it has always been my mission to make sure all students have the resources that they need not all students need child care assistants or tutor but for those that do I made it my mission to make sure they had what they needed regardless of any bill or other barriers all students deserve an opportunity to not just access to earning a certificate or degree but they deserve to have the supports and a sense of belonging here higher education has become my career home because I'm a living testament to the generational impact education can have on a family not just the student and I say that with my own daughter here in the room with me I have had the privilege of working with so many of the most amazing colleagues many I consider dear friends they have worked tirelessly to support the mission of this college and truly care more for students than sometimes themselves I think them tonight as well for without them so many of our amazing awards and grants and programs and services would never have been possible I thank God every day for them the opportunity to become a vice president of student services was something I was highly recommended to apply for and by the grace of God was selected this has not been an easy decision at all for me or for my family I hope this resignation is not a forever goodbye but a farewell until next time I wish you all the best as you continue to serve and do amazing things for our community Baytown is where I was raised and Baytown will always be my home until next time have a good evening and thank you again and may God bless you all consideration of new hires the administration recommends that the board the new hires as presented below do we have a motion on this item second okay I have a motion by Regent Guillory and a second by Regent more font no is there any discussion on this item the shared college coordinator Crosby is that an existing position and then the second person shared dual credit advisors that with the high schools or the second person miss Jade the shared dual credit advisor that is a position that's shared between us and all of our partners with all of the shared positions they contribute okay there's no more discussion all in favor say aye aye any opposed into new business first time consideration of the first time free at Lee program for the fall of 2024 that will provide tuition fees and textbooks to students attending Lee college for the first time since leaving high school the administration recommends that the board authorized funding for tuition fees and textbooks for qualifying students for the fall of 2024 do we have a motion on this item okay I have a motion by Regent more font no I have a second by Regent Warford discussion on this I know it's been great yes it's been part of our success for enrollment management and in an area where we knew that first time students were not coming to Lee college and one where we wanted to focus on how we could improve those numbers right Judy I remember those conversations off the board over the years so this is really exciting to have a promise program and we're making a difference in students lives happy to support this my comment on this would be G hanging if you hear of any of our constituent colleges out there complaining about low enrollment tell them to put skin in the game and copy first time free at Lee any other discussion on this item all right all in favor say aye aye any opposed all right consideration of resolution to compensate college employees during the closure of the college due to winter storm on January 16 2024 the administration recommends that the board approve a resolution authorizing compensation for employees for Tuesday January 16 2024 when the college was closed due to a winter storm you have a motion on this item thank you okay I've got a second I mean a motion by Regent Santana and I had a second over here by Regent Guillory and any discussion on this item all in favor say aye any opposed so matters of concern for future agendas okay well we finished in 42 minutes so I would say gee hang what are you doing next month because okay all right very good so we are in adjournment