At a special meeting, the Leander ISD Board of Trustees began a districtwide professional learning community (PLC) training and spent the evening revising how the board sets goals and runs meetings.

Brenda Cruz, the session facilitator introduced the work with a classroom story to stress goal‑setting and walked trustees through three PLC pillars: a focus on student learning, a collaborative culture and attention to results. "That is the power of goal setting," Cruz said as she asked trustees to draft personal board goals to guide their work.

The meeting opened with one public commenter who criticized past district decisions and alleged cuts to student services and excessive spending on consultants. "You voted to reduce services for kids that are not yours," the commenter said, urging the board to admit past mistakes. The board president (Speaker 2) acknowledged the remarks but shifted the meeting to the PLC agenda, noting the board would not deliberate on those accusations during public comment.

Cruz assigned trustees short reading and a text‑navigator activity, dividing them into summarizers, questioners and connectors. Summarizers said district office modeling of PLC practices would help create a guaranteed and viable curriculum across campuses. Connectors linked the reading to the district’s core beliefs and graduate profile and flagged gaps between guiding documents and on‑the‑ground practice. Questioners pressed for clarity about what concrete actions the board must take to set goals conducive to PLCs and what obstacles might slow rollout.

Trustees moved into a norms exercise using sticky notes to list behaviors that help or hinder the board’s work. Several members urged clearer meeting structure: aligning agenda items to short‑ and long‑term board goals, providing prompts to trustees before presentations so questions stay on point, timeboxing contentious items and using a simple check at meeting end such as a "fist to five" to rate adherence to norms. One trustee suggested pre‑circulated prompts for presentations so trustees are “in their lane” for discussion; another proposed a go‑around structure so all voices are heard without fragmenting conversation.

Board leadership asked Cruz and staff to wordsmith proposed norm changes and return a prioritized, shorter set for the board to review. Cruz and district staff said the weekend training would inform that revision. The board announced Orin Moore of the Texas Association of School Boards will lead a team‑of‑eight session the following day to develop board goals and next steps.

No formal actions or votes were taken during the meeting. The board adjourned at 7:50 p.m. and will continue the PLC training and norm revision the next day.