1. The Magnolia ISD board of trustees appointed Sonja Ebel, a Magnolia resident since 2010, to fill the vacancy of Trustee, Position 2, left by Deborah Rose Miller's resignation in October. Ebel has four children who go to school  in the district. She worked for ExxonMobil for 17 years and graduated from the University of Minnesota. Board members noted that Ebel has been active in the district since her family's arrival in Magnolia, including serving with the Nichols Sawmill Elementary School Parent Teacher Organization. "She's not been a stranger in this district," Superintendent Todd Stephens said. 2. The Texas Department of Agriculture awarded MISD with a certificate of achievement for its commitment to serving fresh, locally grown and healthy food in the cafeteria. Food service representatives have added a salad bar, featuring locally grown, fresh produce, at each campus. The district plans to add salad bars at each high school as well. The salad bar, which is included in the price of any meal for both teachers and students, offers produce, such as sliced cucumbers, watermelon, strawberries, lettuce, grapes and carrots. The Department of Agriculture encourages school districts to serve farm-fresh produce on Fridays, but Jose Dives, executive director of support operations, said MISD went above and beyond, offering a salad bar daily. "[The students are] really eating a lot of this fresh produce that we put out there," Dives said. "By providing this fresh produce on a daily basis, we are empowering the students with the knowledge and the motivation to choose a healthier lifestyle." 3. The Texas Education Agency is changing how it gives accountability ratings to districts and campuses, Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Anita Hebert said. The new ratings, which follow an A-F letter rating system, will be applied to each school district as a sort of trial run and released to the public Jan. 1, Hebert said. However, the first official ratings will not be released until August 2018. The TEA will release more specific information about the set of indicators used to rate each district on Dec. 1, Hebert said. "It is a lot of smoke and mirrors for us right now," Hebert said. 4. By requiring students with parking permits and those in extra curricular activities to submit to random drug testing, the pool has increased by about 200 students to 2,246 students for the 2016-17 academic year. MISD modified its drug testing policy in September. "This didn't increase the pool as much as we thought it would," said Jason Bullock, assistant superintendent of administration said. However, MISD increased the number of monthly tests conducted from 15 per gender to 20 tests per gender, resulting in 25 percent of high school students being randomly tested for drug use. "There's a good chance during [a student's] high school career that [the student is] going to get tested," Bullock said. The district also implemented an anonymous reporting system on Nov. 4 at its secondary schools through which students can anonymously report instances of bullying, self harm, and drug and alcohol use. "We think it will be worth chasing down every lead," Bullock said.