001[snorts] >> We're going to open our Tuesday workshop October 21st, 2025 a little after 5:00. Call to order declaration of quorum. All seven members here. Thank y'all for being here. Bring side and see hearing of citizens. We have none for the workshop. Bring side and D D1 bilingual and ESL program annual evaluation report. Come on up. Um Okay. This evening I'll be presenting the bilingual education and ESL programs report. Our presentation targets will be an overview of the bilingual ESL program, student demographic information, academic and English language proficiency progress, budget considerations, staffing and professional development, and there'll be time for questions at the end. Um it's very likely you've seen this data through the school improvement presentation or accountability, so tonight will be a quick summary. As we move through the presentation, I'll just call
002out what um stands out the most. As we focus the presentation, um the program is going to involve our emergent bilingual students who are served through our bilingual programs pre-K through six or ESL program pre-K through 12. The languages that are represented our top language is English, but the second most the most represented language continues to be Spanish. In terms of students being served in our programs, the notable thing um that is actually happened this year, the number of students in our bilingual program are closely approaching the number of students in our ESL program. So can you go back to that one that we Do you have those actual numbers? That one seems like a big jump. I can't really see the total increases. Like how many total increased students are is that? From last
003year? I'm sorry. I didn't You know, okay. Yeah, it's hard to see on there. Okay. Sorry. >> The one on the bottom for the ESL and bilingual looks real or I guess the bilingual looks really steep, but Looks like 400 more kids. Okay. Right? Is it 400 more kids? Is that Is that Is that Yeah, where that >> Pass the sniff test? Yeah, where that dot is it looks like it's 5 525 give or take 896 and then uh ESL students look to be probably closer to 700 to 933. Yeah. Huge. Okay. And when we think about the academic progress of our students, emergent bilingual students um on grade star three through eight, what's most notable is our reclassified students um are um more than half of our students in grades three through eight have
004satisfactory progress in three out of the four content areas. And moving on to the students on star EOC, our reclassified students are consistently meeting standard on those exams with English one and English two continuing to be an area of growth. The linguistic progress of our students for TELPAS in grades K through six, which represents our bilingual and ESL program, many students across programs and grade levels are performing at the composite level of intermediate. And when we look at student TELPAS progress in grade seven through 12, um more than half of our students are performing at the composite levels of advanced or advanced high. The only new data points I have to share with you this evening are our Lost Links Spanish progress monitoring, which is a requirement as we monitor the proficiency in the partner
005language of our dual language program, which is Spanish. Our kindergarteners and first graders were measured um in their proficiencies in listening and speaking. And many of them are progressing um well on that. And when we look at the composite level listening, speaking, reading, and writing across four content areas, um this is the data you would accept to expect to see when students are acquiring a second language. The goal for our emergent bilingual students is to meet that reclassification criteria, which is scoring advanced high on TELPAS, um meeting standard on a reading assessment, as well as a positive teacher subjective evaluation. And I'm very proud to report that this year we had 145 students meet reclassification criteria across all schools and all grade levels. Um budget considerations, we have our state bilingual education allotment, our local
006budget, and we were fortunate enough to get our federal funds this year. Um all of that is used to um serve our students. The most notable thing in our program is out of the 46 dual language teachers that we need to serve our students, 38 of them are fully certified. As far as our ESL program, we have increased the number of teachers that serve elementary students from 283 to 337, as well as increasing the number of secondary teachers from 51 to 76. Um all that being said, we have a lot of students with a lot of needs, and part of that is having a fully certified bilingual or ESL teacher. If they do not, we are required to file an exception or a waiver. This year we will be having to file an exception and
007a waiver, but what I'm most proud of is that our teachers who are not certified are participating in our grow your own strive program. Um and this is preliminary data snapshot, and this is due before November 1st, so there's a there's time for teachers to turn in you know, get that certification completed. Um in order to support our program and our educators, we have professional development through collaborative team meetings, provide compliance training. Our focus this year will be that teacher certification training, as well as planning for the implementation of the new English language proficiency standards for the fall. And our next steps are to evaluate the effectiveness of the resources we've invested in, um expanding our summer language academy, and the development of our emergent bilingual family advisory committee. So if you have any questions,
008I might be able to answer them. That was a lot and it was fast. Um I guess [clears throat] in general I I know there was a lot of data there, but there was only one slide that kind of compared previous years to this year's snapshot. How do you feel from year to year the program has been doing as far as meeting the needs of the of you know, the emergent bilingual students coming into the program? I'm a It's always a challenge. >> Yeah, how's the popu- Or is the population changed or have things changed? Kids are kids. And when we hold them to high expectations with professional development and just keeping the focus on their education, I I think we're meeting the the needs the best way that we can. If If you want
009to ask me truly like why we're meeting their needs, it's because we have the gold star program in College Station ISD, which is the two-way dual language program. It's an equitable program for our English speakers as well as our Spanish speakers, and the fact that we have so much support for our English learners across the board, academic English learners. And as you go You're probably going to say similar thing. I I'm a dual language parent and I do think it was enough. My microphone. It's a wonderful program. Um I just want our community to know that. I mean, my my children are both completely fluent in Spanish, and it's amazing, and scored well on tests. Um I'm curious though, and and I hate that I don't know this. What is the summer language academy? I
010don't Just out of curiosity, I don't remember hearing about that. But I We've been out for a little bit. No, that's fine. Um the summer language academy is um what we call our our summer programs. Um it's been rebranded. It's not summer school. It's not necessarily a remediation. Um we are the only program we're required to offer for our emergent bilingual students is um our pre-K and kinder program. We use our additional funds um to support our newcomers that are in grades um any well, we focus We've done a high school new high school academy, as well as an elementary academy. Um many of these students aren't able to um attend the acceleration academy because of their their linguistic um needs, so we partner right along those programs and provide intensive English support in the
011areas of listening, speaking, reading, and writing academic English based on their TELPAS scores, their Lost Links scores, and um sometimes MAP scores if that's applicable. You're welcome. Thank you. Yeah, I also Go ahead, dear. Just back on the dual language cuz we both were both dual language parents and both fans of the program. So and looking at those numbers um of growth, so how much of our How many are we been adding new classrooms? Are we kind of just a general update on the How is the dual language program doing at our three elementary Right, still three elementary campuses and one intermediate, and Have we been adding new classrooms? Those kind of things. And also I'd say as it looks like more English language learners are coming in, are we also being able to match
012the number of um native English speakers that are in the program? Kind of just a general update on it. I'll try to remember all of that. Our emergent bilingual programs are designed to meet the needs of our emergent bilingual learners. So, there has been a shift in the revision of Chapter 89 moving from a 50/50 language allocation as well as a 50/50 demographic composition of the classroom because of the high needs um to support the bilingual programs, um can districts wanting the gold star program of a two-way program rather than having a 50/50 split for student participation, it is now a 2/3 1/3 participation because um as we know it it's quite costly to add another unit. We add additional units as we as we can. Um currently our fourth grade cohort has eight classrooms
013that will be hitting Oakwood next year. So. Did I answer all of the questions? Is there anything else? One intermediate Oakwood. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Yes. Mr. Payne. I was just curious about uh for our younger students to get enrolled, what's the education like what gets them enrolled? Are they learning about it when they get there and then what why do you see kids signing up when they're younger? I'm just just curious, anecdotal. Anecdotal. Because they're sponges. Yeah. And um being bilingual just truly opens up a lot of different avenues for you. And living in Texas it's beneficial to to speak Spanish, um even Vietnamese in some areas. That is the next language in the state of Texas that is um being represented across board. So. You bet. And I think go I remember going through
014the presentation of why anybody would want to be in the program. Obviously we it's a state or a federal requirement program for emergent bilingual students, but for some of the other folks who joined the program, I remember the discussion of how um not only is it that picking up that other language, but it's the fact that it's these young kids are working a different part of their brain. It is a challenging learning environment if for if there's if the students are up for it, right? I think that's that's another academic benefit that they they're offered. At least that's what y'all told us. I think so, too. It still is. Yes. Okay. Thank you for your time. That'll bring us to item D2 review board policy FDA local. Yeah, you've got a copy of current FDA
015local in front of you. You've got some red line and then some blue lines of what that would look like if we tweak this policy. This is our um inter-district transfer policy, which you also call out of district transfer policy. The district's policy uh over the course of many years have have been pretty rigid. Uh only uh employees uh who live without side the district could bring their child into College Station ISD to attend school. Anyone else outside of that window or someone who lived here and then moved away at the end of that school year, they would have to transfer to another school district. Uh we've had conversations 101 uh with each of you as well as some discussion in a board meeting of ways uh to generate additional income as a district. Uh
016our demographers report has been high every year. We're not close to the numbers that they're telling us we're going to be at enrollment this year. We are uh about 300 kids less than what we budgeted for, which is a little over $2 million, uh uh and so it's problematic. You know, funding in the state of Texas has been a concern for public educators for the last 100 years. Um it'll [clears throat] be a concern for the next 100 years. If you look at what just happened in the last legislative session, uh I think there's cause to be even bigger concern. Heather's at a a conference right now. She sent me some data today in a text message. Depending on what data you look at, we fund students in the state of Texas ranked either 38th
017or 48th depending on which one you're looking at. And the new number that just came out today that I find really interesting, our voucher program will rank number one in the United States with how much money we give for voucher programs. So, I think when you look at those two metrics, uh we can do one or two things. We can sit back and not do anything and pray every 2 years that the state's going to finally do something to help us, or we can get more proactive and try to do what we can to make sure we're taking care of of our kids. We've established we do have space at at multiple campuses in our school district um that we could take additional students. I was part of a district several years ago when I
018took that job as superintendent, they had been taking out of district transfers for 2 years. So, I ran that program for about 6 years. The district started growing heavily and so we backed off. Everybody that was on a transfer could be grandfathered in, but we didn't take any new transfers. We kind of capped that piece off. I do not see anything in our demographic study that would lead me to think the numbers are accurate of where we're going to be in the next 7 or 8 years. Generally they're very accurate for 3 to 5. Once you get 6 7 8 9 10, it it's a guess to me and a lot of things can change in between now and then. That's why we'll keep an eye on things and and see what we need to
019do. Um but my recommendation and what kind of what I want to talk about today is uh your opinion. We're not taking a vote on this. It's feedback from each one of you on taking out of district transfers. Just to kind of give you an idea, it's not an open district. So, there you get open enrollment is thrown around a lot and that's not what this would be. Open enrollment would be you could transfer in and we're going to accept you. We would have thresholds and criteria that kids would have to meet in order to qualify to be accepted. Like grades. All grades would have to be I'm just throwing out these raw numbers, 80 or above. Discipline, zero to two referrals. Attendance, 95% or higher. STAR scores, pass STAR STAR exams. Uh those are
020things that they would have to submit documentation to us in an application. We'd have a team that would go through the applicants and create two piles. These qualify, these do not qualify. Uh we would set a tracking pattern of where the students would go. So, parents knew you don't get to pick a school. You know, we would set that track and if we advertise out of district transfers, they would be advertised that you know the track your child's going to be on. We talked just my team and every What do we do? K6, K4, K8? My concern with K8 is maybe too much too quickly. Uh in my opinion, I don't think we should go higher than sixth grade to give us a couple of years to run the program, decide the pathway for students
021going into high school, and we've kind of settled on if we get to that point, kids in high school would be a straight lottery draw. That way we don't have kids uh picking a particular high school cuz I want to play football here, I want to play baseball, I want to be in this band. It would be a straight lottery draw what high school that would we that they would go to. That would be the most equitable way uh in order to do it. And also our way of policing uh >> [snorts] >> someone not choosing a campus for UIO purposes. So, that's basically kind of what we want to talk about this policy and we'll come back and have another discussion. We there's also a part of our district of innovation plan that we
022could revise that we could add a clause that if a student was not meeting our expectations during a school year, they could be removed and have to go back to wherever their home campus was outside of our school district. So, it gives a little teeth. If we had a child that whatever, got into a bunch of discipline issues, that they would be removed. In my uh six or seven years running that program in the previous district, I think I revoked only two transfers. If we we had zero issues with kids that were coming in. When parents are willing to drive their kids in, they hit the four metrics to qualify for applying, generally on paper, you you have a student that's motivated and and is going to be an addition to our uh school community
023and a and a good addition to our campuses. So, that's basically just the gist of FDA local. Just to give you if if this is something the board has an appetite for, we would change the policy in November. We would run a marketing campaign in December and January with the application window. By the middle to end of February, parents would get a letter from us, your kid qualified for an applicant, they'll be going to X school, or they did not qualify, and then we would have uh a chance before we go out for uh teacher contracts and things of how we need to staff uh campuses to make sure we're prepared in early spring and have all that set long before May uh end of May gets here. So, just kind of open it up
024if you've got some things so we can take some notes and uh see where you guys are. I think the benefit is um you know, there's often criticisms of what we can and can't do, but you have we have to try to innovate. And there's a lot of limitations with that. Um and I think this is a way for us to be innovative. So, I think that sounds great. Uh we have to find new avenues uh to bring in more students and and that's going to generate revenue cuz we're not getting support from the state. I'm curious, you mentioned the lottery program, makes sense. But what about um you know, if they're specific where they want to come in and swim? So, they Consal is the only place they're going to go with that. How
025would we factor those kind of things? >> Yeah, we would. I'm going to I want to do some more research with some larger districts that have had that. I think if there's a particular program outside of If there's a program that each school doesn't offer, I think letting them have that choice, I'm not necessarily opposed to that at all. But, I think like you're saying, the the swim for Consal, if a child is a swimmer and wants to swim and their draw is College Station High School, I think probably need to let them stay here at Consal. We're just trying to eliminate if we have duplicate programs that they can't pick and choose. And then it becomes, you know, one high school this this one year is the hot school everybody wants to go to
026and and then we're creating some inequities that really wouldn't be fair. So, it would give us a couple years to work with some other districts to figure out how they kind of police that to make sure we're making an an informed decision and something that would be equitable for everybody. And I think that one of the things I was thinking about is we don't we don't allow students who live in our district to choose where they go to school except for these situations where we have a swimmer who goes to Consal or we have other programs in CTE that maybe are at one or the other. And then we do make those exceptions for transfers, but um I would certainly like to see us not allow our out of district transfers to do something that
027we don't allow our own students to do. Do we Do we put limits on like What if we get 100 people applying for kindergarten? Like how do we handle the different grade levels? If we go K through 6, do we try to even it out? And then I'm assuming also at kinder we don't have any of that data we're wanting. Is it kind of just a gamble on They would reapply every year. And so, every year they would turn in the documentation that we need uh in order to keep track. So, every year they would have to cuz there there may be a year everything's in order and then the next year, you know, something happens attendance-wise or discipline gets bad. Uh and so, they would reapply every year and they're not guaranteed that they
028would they would be a part then. Now, they do recommend on the uh FDA local that in order for us to to remove a child, that it needs to be based on discipline and attendance, not grades. And and I was always good with that. We never removed a child who didn't pass a STAR test. If they came to me and they're in our school district and they didn't pass STAR, we're that's on us. And so, it was just grades and discipline are the the two criteria for any sort of removal. We've seen the special education growth. So, what does that look like with special education? >> Yeah, we There is zero discrimination. It's kind of like anybody can apply and and and being in a special education program would not keep them from being a
029part of our school district. And then on page two where it says unless required by law, would that be like a special education need? Uh no. Required by law would I believe the re- the requirement to travel by law with special education transportation is only in district. Uh some of the transportation required by law would be possibly for McKinney-Vento with potential homeless children. This really wouldn't fit in this context. Would we expect given our reputation with sped and the growth that we've seen there, would we expect to and I'm realize you don't probably don't know. We think we'd get a lot more? In my previous district, that was one of the largest increases we had was in special education. Yes, it was. I'm going to play devil's advocate. Yeah. >> special education teachers in this
030district that might just hear this and go, "Oh, no." So, you mentioned earlier the staffing piece. We also understand that special education is very difficult to staff for. So, now it's it's a double-edged sword for us as a district. So, I guess that's where the a the application piece comes into play where hey, sorry, we just we can't staff it to fit the amount of applications that Correct. That would be part of it. Because we're going to protect what we have. I mean, that's just where we're at. >> Absolutely. We could look historically too on how many new special education teachers we've hired, let's say over the last 5 years in each year and trying to anticipate what that number would look like, but that would absolutely be a determining factor. Cuz what we would
031do is look at our current programs and see what space we've had. And if kids qualify particular space, could we take additional children there or not? And if staffing is an issue, then that would be the disqualification would be staffing. And all of that would be outlined in our application process. You know, you apply, you could check every box and you may not get there. You know, we may be at a standpoint where we're thinking 300 kids give or take and let's say we have 500 applications. Well, we may not be able to take 500 that first year. I was really curious on how many you think is kind of the right amount to start with at a maximum to be since this is new to our district and um you know, a lot of
032unknowns with other things. I mean, we still have I would say 3 to 400 depending on the grade levels, you know, where we're going to get. If we went K through 6, the feeder pattern we would probably establish would be Creekview and South Grove. Uh but we've also got some additional campuses that could take on additional kids as well. And so, kind of like create a board on our last demographic study of where we've got some movement and some flexibility. Uh Rock Prairie is getting in additional classroom spaces here this next year. They've got space there that's available. We'd probably try to keep it as a true two campuses the first year, but I could see that particularly branching out to some other campuses cuz we do have some space that we could do that.
033And can you address cuz some of the questions I had from folks was that what that the idea would necessarily be increasing class sizes, right? How would we manage that so it wouldn't be increasing existing >> we've got raw numbers that we're running for grade levels. So, Mike, right now at Creekview, we know his seat count for K4. And so, if I've got 40 first graders coming in, I've got 50 third graders, then we do the math on how many new teaching positions he would need. So, it depend on applications too then, right? Cuz we don't know. Right. We don't know how many we're going to get. And then we look at what Where do we have room and where do we not? >> Correct. We don't have a magic number. Now, once you've done
034it for a year and you get applications to come back and you see how many new and then at that point you've got thresholds that you know how many you could take. Yeah, the first year would be more pretty much more wide open. And I just think the concern still is yeah, we don't know how many would come, but um if we're just plugging in a few additional to you know, already some crowded classrooms, you know, but I'm not saying consal We don't know how many would actually apply. 100% agree. I was saying but what's a maximum that we think we could um handle or our capacity? >> Don't really know because >> 400 is what we didn't have. Yeah, we would hire we would hire new teachers. So, yeah, it would be there. Yeah,
035and I don't you know, we have one classroom over 22 to one in K4. So, we're not we're not over capacity in K4 classrooms. You don't add 300 300 to 400 kids without adding new teachers, right? Exactly. I just want to clarify that's what I'm that's what I'm saying. Um I do think long One one thing uh another question I had is that if a kid is comes in and you know, yes, we want to reapply the and make sure they're meeting the ongoing criteria, right? Um Do we Are we going to allow them to stay at that same campus that they are um you know, they come in into kindergarten or and I don't What's the plan? Would they stay at that same elementary school for all five of their years? Correct. That would
036be the Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, we have that flexibility with new kids coming in, but then there's a then They're not part of rezoning cuz they don't live here. Yeah. Yeah. So, they would be they would have a set pipeline that they would go to. But so, just to be So, folks coming in We also wouldn't be moving them around from 1 year to a year 2 year. They would >> unless there was some sort of program change potentially. If a child was in special education and a program that was at this campus moved somewhere, then that would be an extenuating circumstance. I don't expect you to have exact numbers, but what what How common is this in in Texas so far? It's pretty common uh and it's gotten very common over the last 5
037years as uh what used to be high growth areas have experienced uh a drop in enrollment. Frisco for one. Frisco was building about two high schools a year for I don't know how many years and they opened out of district transfers last year to take new kids because they had a huge deficit budget because their enrollment was dropping cuz people were moving out. And so, you're seeing more and more of that of quite honestly school districts having to pivot and having to take care of themselves and they need students and they feel like they've got a great product to sell and so, they market. You know, our our state has made it very adamant that they want parents to have choice. So, great. We can give them another option. Yeah, that that's I don't have
038a number, Josh. I could probably get online and do some searching and see. I I just I just wanted to get the idea across that we're not reinventing the wheel here. No, it's not at all. No, it's it's not at all. Austin paid attention last fall. We had multiple conversations thinking ahead about this being a possibility and and he clipped and saved a lot of the marketing materials that multiple school districts used. Um And we can reach out to them as well of of things that worked. Yeah. And we in CSISD, obviously not level of Frisco, but we're kind of in the same boat where we were a high-growth district for years and years and years. And now it's So, it's it's we're in a similar situation. So, >> Yeah, it's leveled off, but our
039tax base, and that's where the funding piece comes in, hasn't. It continues to grow. And so, that formula right now is working against us and it's costing us money. And if we don't do something, then we're going to be considered property rich as our enrollment continues to drop. And right now, we don't have to pay money to the state, but if things didn't change, we would start writing money to the state that we don't have to give. And the reason I bring up innovation is cuz there are other school districts, Katie, for example, starting an online school. It accepts everywhere, anywhere in the state. Um and I there's probably some pros that may come out of that, and there's also some pitfalls that come out of it. Universities did that when they went to online
040learning, and they thought everybody was going to come to their schools. And what you find out is really people stayed regionally. Um and it was rather advantageous. A&M being in their traditional ways didn't do a lot of that. Ended up working out well for them because they wanted in-class learning. And the online learning wasn't the windfall that a lot of places thought. So, I think we we have to try to innovate, and this is seems like a a way to do that. >> That is another area where we are exploring and plan on taking a trip to the Metroplex to go to a a district that's been doing it for about 3 years. And that would be something that we would explore opening in 27-28. Only not not a K-12 model, more than likely a
0419-12 model. I mean, we're not going to be out there twisting any arms to make anybody come to our district, right? This is This is just an opportunity that we're opening, and we have to believe We have to believe that we are We have a product um that people want. We have to believe that we're doing a good job with student success um and supporting our students and helping them learn, and that there may be some others out there that want that. So, I think it's We don't There's a lot of unknown. I mean, we're jumping into something that we haven't done before, but um it it We're giving it an opportunity for other students that that they may want to take. I think it's a great opportunity, too, to make some money. I do
042want want us to take it cautiously and maybe with some kind of slower pace to make sure That's what I'd like to see. Make sure we work out the kinks in it, and it is um not causing any unforeseen issues that we hadn't expected. I think the one other question on the funding, cuz obviously the funding follows the student. That's the whole reason we're doing this. And the funding full funding formula for their weighted funding, whatever their classes they're in, would follow them, right? >> Everything follows. The only difference is they're not a taxpayer. Or like the bonds and and >> A taxpayer or voter in College Station ISD, correct. Right. I I just the only thing that then in the back of my head, cuz I've mentioned it a few times lately, there are
043still some pieces of that funding formula that we know don't meet the full needs of what we offer, right? We are We are providing above and beyond in some cases for for some services more than what the state in the fund in the funding formula provides, right? Like special education, like you mentioned, is is one. So, that would be one concern maybe in the back of my mind, and I don't know if other districts how they've dealt with that or seen that that you know, that it doesn't cause >> [snorts] >> an undue burden financially in in some specific cases. I I just like to say, kind of to follow up with Dr. Payne said, is is um I I appreciate the administration looking outside the box when it comes to this. So, you know,
044we quite often, especially when you have a school district like College Station, where we've had a certain level of success over a number of years, you get I don't want to say complacent, but you you are less likely to try innovative things. And um if you don't do that, then you you stay at that certain level. Um and so, doing this, again, it it is not a lifetime commitment. And so, to follow up on some of the concerns is try it for a year or two, and if it if it works, that's that's awesome. And if it doesn't, then you know, you can always change your mind. So, um you know, looking at thinking outside the box and and looking at those types of options, I think it's good. All right. There's nothing else I'll
045bring aside of me. Adjourn.