001[Music] Welcome everybody. This is our workshop Tuesday, May 20th, 2025 about 5:00. Thank you'all for being here. Call to order. Declaration of a quorum. I was hoping to say seven. I'm saying six still, but the one that was supposed to be here is not. And the one that's w we're welcoming back is here. So, welcome back, Dr. Payne. So, uh, thank you'all for being here. First item is item C, hearing of citizens. We don't have any for the workshop. Item D, D1, consideration discussion of board policy beed local. Mr. Dunson, Mr. Horak members of the board. I'm going to provide y'all with a quick overview of this policy update beed local that there he is. Give him a second run here early. I'm just giving you a quick overview of um an update to board
002policy beed local which provides us with information related to public comment and citizen participation. So you'll if you'll recall last May we updated our policy or I'm sorry our our board operating procedures to allow citizens to sign up um prior to the board meetings online through our district website. We've been doing that for the past year or so and um that change was ultimately decided by you guys in order to provide a more streamlined process. Gives folks a little bit more time to sign up. Those signups have been going well and has been um a welcome change to to providing us with a little bit better of a streamlined process to do that. Um the update really has to do with updating the policy language to reflect that board operating procedure change. Um but we've
003also consulted with our policy consultants to make sure that our legal language is up to date as well. Um continuing to protect the rights of our citizens to sign up and address you during open meetings. And so what's being updated? The policy language to align with the board operating procedures. So, I've called a few of those items out that you have printed there on your desk. Um, this was also provided uh several weeks ago in transmitt um had a time to review it at that time as well. But here's an example of how um the the policy is being updated to reflect the board operating procedure language. Um and then here is here is how it's called out in the board operating procedure and reflected there in our policy. Another update is that we're we'll
004be removing information that's more administrative in nature or in our operating procedures that does not need to be in policy. Now, these are recommendations provided to us from our policy consultants. And so you can see there on page two, there are some strikeouts there in red um that have been identified as relating more toward the administrative tasks like how we conduct this portion of our meetings and the things that the board president reads prior to calling citizens up to speak there in that slide. And then third, these edits will also align with standard policy text and provide clarification for our specific local policy. So I'll call out on the bottom of page two there on your printout. Um, and here for the viewing public in our presentation, we have those updates, the strikeouts, and the
005additional language there. And then lastly, it is also recommended that we add the standard policy text to include in this policy related to concerns, complaints, and disruption during board meetings. Are there any questions about this policy update? No questions. So, we're not taking action on this this evening. This would be for consideration, discussion, and potential action next month. Yeah, I would just be sure to point out, you've already said it, but to be clear, we're not making any changes in what we are doing. Correct. We're just updating our policy to reflect what we are doing. Correct. And I think we learned it the I don't know who all was in the TASBY section at the conference in September. Is that when we went? Um I went to the one in regards to board operating procedures
006and things like that. Um many boards in the state of Texas were already operating in this facet. So um it's nothing new statewide. Um, I talked to a lot of board members at that time and and they said it just made um public comment a little bit more streamlined and um and moving the meeting and and keeping it organized and all that. So, uh, and then it's it's less pressure on the community members to have to get here and sign up and turn in a card and all that and not know the procedure and all that. So, at least it's outlined. So, there's no other questions. All right. If y'all have anything else uh down the road, just email Austin, I guess, and we'll go from there. Uh item D2, receive a construction update from
007Mr. Simac. Good evening, Mr. Horac, Dr. Harkider, members of the board. Um if you've been around town, you know that we've got a few things going on uh with our construction projects from the 23 bond and the 24 bond. I'll give you a brief overview of what we have going uh with all of those projects this evening. So, um our middle school fields, Animal High School, everything affiliated and associated with that project, uh College Station High School, Rock Perry Elementary, CTE phase 2, um and the things that we have going with, uh stadium improvements, which you will be voting on a GMP guaranteed maximum price this evening. Um so, without further ado, Middle School Athletic Fields, you may recall this is a local contractor with Jacody. They are contract manager at risk. We started this
008project late October uh right into November. And so the first substantial completion was to take care of all of the tracks and the turf fields. Um and we hit that deadline. We missed it by about two or three days. Uh with Wilbur Middle School because of weather, we couldn't get out and paint the stripes on the track because it was so cold. Uh but those tracks were available to our student athletes during track season and we got all three turf fields done. Currently, we are working now to complete bleachers and to complete the restroom concession stand facilities. And I'll show you that here in just a moment. And so, um, in the fall, this is what it looked like at each of our campuses. AMCMS there on your left, CSMS in the middle, Welurn on
009your right. Uh, you will see now, uh, this was just, uh, recently. Uh, we've got our turf filled in. The track situations have been taken care of. Um, and we are rocking and rolling a lot along right now with our concession and restroom facilities. And so, Welber Middle School is what everything is being modeled after. that was built whenever Wel Middle School was open. Because we have expanded the bleacher capacity between 650 and 700, we had to add additional restrooms um to be in compliance with state code. And so um the restroom facilities and concession facilities at AMCMS and CSMS are modeled after what we have there at Welurn. Uh we will start bricking at AMCMS and CSMS tomorrow. They are currently working on the roof um at Welurn Middle School as we speak. Uh
010you may notice in this picture AMCMS um is a little bit longer and that's because of the the uh area in which we had to build. So it's a little bit longer and more narrow whereas CSMS is a little bit shorter and a little bit wider and it's just us building to the area in which we had available to us. But um the square footage and everything else within this restroom facilities is identical. Uh bleacher expansion we are done at AMCMS. We are done at Welurn. Uh this was yesterday afternoon late at CSMS. Uh they should be done there with that bleacher expansion um come Monday or Tuesday of next week. Consolidated high school uh you saw this as you drove in. Durotch is our um contract manager at risk for this project. We got
011this project started uh not too long after spring break. U we are pushing hard to be done summer of 2026. Uh you guys may recall it is a twotory addition there on the um what what used to be the bus loop on the west end of the building. um a total of almost 60,000 square feet, 16 science labs, four special services uh rooms, a weight room, a film room. Um and then you've got phase four also that is currently going to be ongoing this summer um with a lot of work and a lot of facelift items uh within the building to help clean up that um just to clean up the overall appearance of the building and all the areas that haven't been touched yet. And so, um, that picture on the left is an
012aerial shot of the gyms and that west parking lot. And then you'll see what it used to look like in the bus loop. Here's where we are currently. You'll notice, uh, we've been working on the gym. So, that's a mod bit that is going in on top of that roof system there. Uh, we'll come back later and add more to that. Um, right now, tomorrow morning is an exciting day. We will start drilling peers. There are 96 peers to be drilled at analy high school and that is for part of the foundation. And so, that is a big day. Uh because once you get your peers started, then you can start moving towards getting ready to pour a slab. And um that is a that is a monumental occasion on any job site at this
013time. Uh we have been working really hard to get the roof done. The roof is slated to be an 18-month project. Again, I remind you that we've known since 2017 that AM Consolidated High School needed a new roof. Uh so we're pushing really hard to get it done. Um, we want to make sure that if we're going to continue to remodel and put work into the building that we don't have to come back behind it and redo the work because it was damaged by water. And one of the reasons why we started with the gym spaces is because our gym floors have been have been damaged um repeatedly because of the water that has been coming through the roof and and causing leaks within the gyms. And we just had those gym floors in the
014main gym repainted and redone last year. So we uh what you're seeing here now is the multisport fieldhouse. We had to move to it last week. They've been doing AP testing in the building. So to not cause any distractions on AP testing, we flipped over and moved to the multisport fieldhouse. Um so our roofing contractor on this has been great to work with. The uh superintendent on this job has been excellent and he has uh he has he has delivered. They have worked every single day with the exception of Easter Sunday. Um so very pleased with their efforts so far. Baseball and softball, we're rocking and rolling. Dirt work is well underway. Uh we will be getting ready to lime those fields and treat the dirt next week. Uh we are cutting to grade as
015we speak. We've run into some issues. Um these are existing fields. Uh 1989 for baseball. One of the first day 30 minutes into the project, we're digging out the fence post on the outfield fence and we can't get them out of the ground. And so we go get a heavier piece of equipment and we find as we're pulling them out of the ground, we're also pulling out in some cases the old poles that have just been bent over and laid down underneath the ground. And then also some in some cases just the concrete that was left from behind from the previous fence. I don't know when that happened or when it didn't happen. Uh but it led it was it was a lot of concrete. And so we're we're we're catching some things here and
016there. Uh but we're we're making great progress and very pleased so far. Uh Symmetry is the is the team that is going to be installing the turf on our fields. And Jacody is our uh contract manager at risk with these and that is again a local contractor. They're here every day uh and they're working six days a week. uh Dzones and scoreboards. So the DZone work will begin next week. Had a meeting this morning. Uh we've been working really hard to accommodate our our coaching staffs and everything else that they have going on with the fields. And so now that next week get past Memorial Day, uh we'll start rocking and rolling with cutting out that DZone and installing the turf there. Uh the digital scoreboards permit pending and we're working with the city on
017that. We're very close to having that in hand with the stamp plan. um our Dzone uh our digital scoreboards will begin getting installed next month and so very early June with that. I'm very excited to announce that digital scoreboards is our company that we um selected for our uh new digital screens and they are very close to announcing a pretty major sponsorship partnership in the state of Texas that'll be very significant for them moving forward. There'll be hands-on training provided to our coaching staffs and everyone else that'll be using the boards this summer. It's certainly going to be a learning curve. However, these are iPadbased and one of the reasons why we went with this version of the digital scoreboard is because of its ease of access and use and so we're very much looking
018forward to that. They also provide you with software packages that are geared towards advertisements. Mr. Dunson was a big part of this process and selecting these digital boards because of his experience at the Berry Center in Scyer ISD um and understanding where it is that we we need to go moving forward. Um College Station High School, we're rocking and rolling there as well. Jamala is our contract manager at risk. We started that project just a little bit after we did. Um they're at consolidated estimated completion is December of 2026. I'm going to tell you now we are pushing as hard as we can to be done in August. Um obviously weather plays a big factor in that. And here recently we've had a lot of weather. Uh the middle school projects would be much further
019along had we not had so much weather. And so it really is situation right now where I'm praying for a drought. I hope the next six months it doesn't rain a drop. I'm probably the only person in the room that feels that way. Uh but I'd like to get vertical and get dried in before it starts raining again. Don't know if that'll happen, but that is my my wish. It is definitely going to rain now. So, u but nonetheless, adding a little bit over 100,000 square feet, CT classrooms, labs, art classrooms, science classrooms, and a third gym. Uh there's some miscellaneous things in there as well with AP improvements, roof repairs, and a locker room uh locker room efficiencies. Currently, College Station High School, since that school has been built, the varsity sports that participate
020in the gyms at College Station High School have not been located on the same level as the gym because those locker rooms were built too small. Uh, currently, boys basketball, Miss Eggy can attest to this. They are working uh they are lockered in a closet and do not even have a restroom facility in their current locker room situation. So, we are looking to fix that as well. So, you can see pre-construction. Um although you know we don't have a lot of grass growing there. We are certainly working on that as well. Uh but here we are. We have already started drilling peers. So at Cassaul we have 96 peers to drill. At College Station High School because of the school being built on a hill and we're expanding off of all four wings of the
021building. We're dig digging 148 peers at College Station High School. Some of these um are different sizes. Uh you can see uh we go 60t deep, some are 60 in wide, some are 48 in wide. Uh but it is a significant process. We've already completed it in one area and we've moved to the next area of the building. So, we're making great progress there uh with our peers at College Station High School. Baseball and softball, we have started there with the lights. Uh it is quite interesting. So, we started yesterday and with the retrofit of lights going to LED. Currently, you have roughly 24 of the old lenses on a pole. And now, we're going to be able to provide more light and brighter light and more efficient light with just six lenses on a
022pole. And so, uh, it's going to be a really nice situation when we get that done. We were slow just a tiny bit yesterday because there was, excuse me, because there was a bee swarm at College Station High School, and it was pretty significant. Uh, it's the most bees that I've ever seen in one place. Fortunately, it has moved on today. Uh, but I do have Jimmy the beekeeper with George, our pest control specialist, there this evening, double-checking and making sure that everything is good to go. I don't know his real name, but he's in my phone as Jimmy the Beekeeper. Um this is very similar to what we have at at Consolidated the same company uh we are making it'll be identical for both fields and the really cool thing about these boards is
023everything you see there with the exception of Cougarfield for the trust up top. Everything there is digital and so uh we're really excited for what that's going to bring. It also brings new sound systems for the for the stadiums which will be a great improvement. If you've been to College Station High School lately the visitor side the sound system has not worked on the visitor side for a number of years. It's it's been blown and shorted out and so this will be a great improvement for both stadiums. Rockbury Elementary, we're underway there as well. Jamala is also our contract manager at risk for the construction project at Rock Elementary School. Uh we are pushing, it'll be a two summer project. We'll also be doing some work throughout the year. We'll be starting on the addition,
024which will be a new front office area and security festival uh next week. Currently, what we've been working on is the new car rider line and the new parking lot. We have been staying on that side of the building to stay away from the front of the building, not to create any havoc for our young people that are going to school there every day. So, we are very much looking forward to all of these projects. I know the kids are really looking forward to 1:30, but I can assure you that us and the contractors and the subs that we're working with daily cannot wait to see our kids right away on the bus the last day of school and so we can try to take advantage of all the time we have with a little
025bit less crowds around it. So, um, with this, like I said, new office space, uh, we'll take care of those atriums that are there, the car ride align, security fencing, and campus drainage. If you don't know, at Rock Prairie, they currently have Lake Rock Prairie that it forms in the back of the school. Uh, it took us, it wasn't in the original scope of the documents, but after uh, observing the campus and reviewing some things, it was very much something that we determined needed to be taken care of. And so, this is the uh, detention pond. I call it a detention pond with, you know, fingers because in all of my years, I've been here since 2001, I've seen water in it twice. One of those was most recently when we got five inches of
026rain in an hour. That was a lot of fun. And then Hurricane Katrina. And so, we are reworking that detention pond because as you'll see here, uh, and this cursor, it is working. So, your new car ride enters will come in. It'll wrap around. This will be the 35 space parking lot that will give much needed much needed relief to what the parking situation is currently at Harbor Prairie. And very similar to what we've done at Greenspray, it'll wrap around and it'll come through and then come across. Uh we'll be able to be in the front of the building and then people will be able to move on about their day. Um so that's going to help us tremendously. They'll be able to double stack in there. Um CT phase 2 we got started yesterday.
027So with that, that's PO Construction project started yesterday. And when I say started yesterday, we started putting in our uh swip fencing uh yesterday. That'll be a total of about uh almost 58,500 ft. That's a mechanics, animal science, auto tech, construction, cosmetology, and a multi multi-purpose arena, vetteche, and a lot so on and so forth. You may recall that initially cosmetology was going to be placed at college at College View High School. That was going to be a situation where one, we didn't have the amount of space that was required. Number two, it wasn't going to be a full program. So, we could put people in cosmetology, but we were only going to be offering them two levels of cosmetology when you need three levels of col cosmetology. So, we were physically going to set
028kids up to be non-competers, uh, which is not good, um, for anybody across the board. And so, we're very excited that this has worked out and that we moved it out. On top of that, the transportation piece of that was going to be an absolute nightmare. We were going to be busing kids to the CTE center out um, south of town and then we were going to be going to the north side of town. It was going to make things very challenging and trying to accommodate all that. So, we're very excited that cosmetology has been rolled into CTE phase 2. some additional scope that we're picking up, some things that were not completed um from phase one with the a barn. We'll have a new gate. We'll be able to concrete the driveway and we're
029adding some shade awnings that have been determined to be needed for the livestock that are there at CTE phase 2. So, this is your current gate at CTE there on the left. This will be your new gate there on the right. Um it'll have a camera and everything else. We'll be able to document anybody and everybody that comes through. I cannot tell you the number of phone calls that I have received from the sheriff's office about people reporting that the gate's been left open or that the gates's been unlocked or that there's a suspicious vehicle there. I have made a number of trips um to that facility to identify what's going on um to just try to help lock the gate and things of that nature. Uh it's a little bit burdensome, so I'm really
030excited for that new new thing. However, my dog does absolutely love going to CTE phase 2. Um and then this is where we have started. So this is what we're working towards. And this is your current field. And so we put our our fencing in here. And we've got it here going around. And so we put this out. We're working on protecting these post oak trees that we have here. They're very beautiful trees that have been there for a really long time. But your new building will be in this general area. In fact, this will be concreted and this will become our fire lane for this facility. So we're very excited for what that brings and we're looking forward to getting that rocking and rolling. Uh the job trailer for Poke should be uh coming
031out next week and it'll just be uh blowing and going from there and moving as quickly as we can to get that project done. Stadium improvements. We'll talk about this tonight in the board meeting or you'll be reviewing this tonight in the board meeting for a guaranteed maximum price. Um I want to want to point some things out to you. And so what you see there in the middle of the screen is what was initially outlined um as the scope for this project. And so if you recall, the bond steering committee and everyone else uh the previous team outlined what the bond scope was going to be. And so as we inherited these bond scopes and we start to attack these projects, you you go and you look and you observe and I've been in
032the district for a really long time and there's some things that I've witnessed observed. I'm at facilities all the time. I'm at events all the time. And so there was some things that needed to be taken care of that weren't necessarily within the scope. And so I'm very excited to tell you that not only we providing additional scope within this project to remedy some things that need to be done that should have been addressed uh previously. We're under budget and so you'll be able to see that tonight roughly a $30 million budget and we're going to come in about $3.5 million under budget with a guaranteed maximum price. Now granted things could go terribly arry as we go throughout these projects which is why you build in contingencies and things of that nature. Uh but
033to add the amount of scope that you see there on the bottom a complete bleacher replacement and I'll show you on the next slide. But I'll talk more about that on the next slide. CSHS press box improvements. Initially, you'll notice it was just a roof replacement envelope repairs. That press box has leaked from day one. Um, and we have a number of issues that have been created by the water in that press box. But at the same time, that is not while it looks really pretty from the outside. It is a very unuser friendly press box. Um, our coaching staffs, you have a defensive staff, they're on the window. Whenever it's not their time on the window and it's the offense, then they have to trade places because there's no lines of sight. There's bars
034in the way. um is is a really cumbersome uh press box. So, we're going to be able to do some things there that weren't in the initial scope. Electrical services that can solve. We're going to have a brand new transformer for the fieldhouse. We're going to have an additional transformer added back behind left field. Um right now, our current transformer is maxed out. We can't possibly get anything more out of it. And so, we're able to increase those. We're uh we're improving the HVAC controls that are currently consolidated that giving us trouble for a number of years. And we're going to go ahead and replace the roof. We've had a number of issues with the roof. We've had several uh leaks throughout the building on a on a number of occasions. And so with the
035additional savings that we've had, uh, we've been able to go ahead and replace we'll be able to replace the roof as well, assuming this GMP gets approved this evening. And then we've doing some tidying and maintenance issues at the tennis courts, uh, with a new sidewalk that will provide access to the restroom facilities that will be built. And it also just keeps people from having to walk through the mud uh, whenever they're at our tennis events. So why are we replacing the entire bleachers? So the bleachers that are currently there are from 1989. That makes them 35 years old. Typically speaking, aluminum bleachers in Texas can last up to 30 years if they've been cared for properly. Uh on top of that, because of these being built in 1989, the additional bleachers that were going
036to be built were not going to be connected. So, it wasn't going to be a fluid situation. It was going to look like piece mil together. So, you were going to have the addition the the current bleachers and then we were just going to butt up right beside them some of some bleachers that didn't match them because they don't do bleachers that way anymore and we couldn't build them that way. And so it wasn't going to be cohesive. And so we really started looking at it. And you can see here, this is multiple steps, multiple places throughout where our planks are light. If you've ever walked and seen any of these places, these are patch welds that have gone bad. Uh because the bleachers are wearing out. And so if you step on these spots,
037they're soft. They give. And this is throughout the entire bleachers. Um and so we're very excited that with the aggressiveness of the timeline and everything else that we've been able to do with this project that we're going to do a full new set of bleachers on both the home and visitor side and at College Station High School and Animal High School they will have identical number of seats for both and we will be able to have it'll it'll you won't know the difference between Console and College Station High School with the exception of the school colors. So deferred maintenance um complete new roof at Console, we've already touched on that. you know, we're well started. Rockville Elementary School uh has needed a roof and so we were able to roll that into this project. And
038so, one of the reasons why we are starting more and focusing more on the outside of the building and do we are doing some remodeling in the building, but we don't want to remodel without doing the roof. And so, we're taking a little bit different approach. We're going to push hard. That roof gets started. Uh they're going to start moving materials in. They've already started moving materials in. We'll be doing a lot more, but that roof will get started next week. It just for us the idea of doing a remodel and then doing the roof is just kind of backwards to our approach. And so um last summer we remodeled Cypress Grove Elementary School or excuse me intermediate school and now we will be starting the roof replacement there the day after Memorial Day. And
039so um it's beautiful what's been done at Cypress Grove. I think Miss Cameron and her team are very appreciative and really like what's there. It's just uh we've already had some of it get damaged by water because we have roof leaks and so we're going to get that roof done as well. Spring Creek Elementary School has leaked since day one. And part of that is because of the way they had the mechanical operations with the HVAC system, the rooftop systems on top, the way the uh they were penetrating it. It allowed for water to get in and get underneath the membrane and then it could run the course of the building. And so we've had to do mechanical repairs on that. That that contract group has been working great. We've been in touch with Miss
040Chopa. We've checked on the job site a number of times. They should wrap up in the next couple of weeks. They've been working after hours, in the evenings, and on the weekends to get that taken care of. central office. We have done some work here already. We uh went on the roof and explored and found some warranty issues that we were able to get taken care of, which has helped us some. We've worked with an engineer. Our biggest issue here at central office is these columns that you find in the breezeway are also the drainage systems that run through them. If you ever hear it raining really loud, you'll hear the water rushing through those columns. Well, some of those columns are backed up. We can't unplug them. Some of those columns can't handle the
041volume of water that comes off the roof in the front of the building. And so, we've worked with an engineer and we have that out right now. and we will be uh moving on that project very soon. I anticipate to bring something back to you next month. Not part of deferred maintenance, but a roof update for you. We had the major hail stom right there around spring break that was pretty significant. Obviously, it hit hard, real hard north of town. Uh but it also there was some hail stom on the this end of town. We have physically been on every single roof in this district. Uh we didn't we didn't take anything for chance. We didn't take anything for granted. We know for a fact that we have to have a full roof replacement at
042College Hills. We are currently working uh we had an engineer out that I was with a couple of weeks ago. Uh we'll be getting core samples uh next week. So we know that there's repairs that need to be done at Oakwood AMCMS College and the Barbara Bush Parent Center. The extent of those repairs is to be determined. I've also spent time here recently. There was a lighter hell storm um on the south end of town. Greens Prairie, Pan Trail, U and Welburn all were buildings that we have been on multiple times trying to determine is this something that is going to be hell damage that that comes back to haunt us later. And so we'll be taking core samples on those roofs as well to make sure that we make the most informed decision for
043that because the last thing that we want to do is get three years down the road and have a situation where they tell us how you had hell damage and you didn't do your due diligence. And so we've we've kind of had to deal with some of that related to a hell stom from a few years ago. And so we're just trying to avoid that now. Um, unfortunately with the the roof situation, it is 2% of the building value for the deductible. Um, and so that'll be a pretty hefty number. Um, when we get back at it and we have to go through it, uh, we may do some pre um, we may do some things this summer, but I I don't think that we'll be able I think the earliest we'll be able to
044get started. College Hills will be priority number one. I think the earliest we'll be able to get started there is potentially August or September. And that's pushing as hard as we can uh, working through all of this. And so, um, that's just a handful of things that we've got going on. We get the GMP approved tonight, they'll start mobilization and getting contracts signed for the stadium improvement projects. Uh we've got track repairs going on right now and and a few other things. And so Dzones gets started next week. Baseball, softball's ongoing and um just a handful of things going on. Questions? Absolutely. Kind of a good problem to have question. And we may I think this has already been decided, but as far as the advertising on the scoreboards, is that going to be by
045the district or the booster clubs? That'll be by the district. That'll be Mr. Dunson's office in communications. Okay, good deal. And then on a just a much lighter note, I uh heard a rumor that we may eventually have a dedicated cross country course out at the CTE Center. You know, the uh I have a meeting scheduled for them on Thursday. Um they uh they have met with um Coach Simak, the assistant athletic director, Mr. Mson, Coach Branch, and a few others have met out there. Uh they're giving me a lot of heartburn right now and unfortunately it doesn't do anything for my hairline. Um they are they want to host a district cross country meet next year, which is awesome because it's a great course and it's really cool. You come over the hill and
046you see Kyle Field, the place of misery sometimes, but you see Kyle Field and and you get to run down to the finish line, which is amazing. The problem is is they're inviting people to an active construction site. Yeah. And then and it's also a situation where like parking and everything else. So we're meeting again on Thursday. That is the ultimate goal is to be able to provide them with that cross country course because I think it's amazing place for it. It's just that we've got to make sure that we can accommodate the number of cars that'll be there, the number of buses and and portaotties and everything else that go with it. So, Mr. Ben, I heard a name in that meeting. I'll bet it gets done. What's that? I heard a name in
047that meeting he had. Uhhuh. I'll bet it gets done. Okay. The biggest issue is all the parking will be uh out in the pasture. So if there's any sort of rain, uh we may have 25 buses stuck and 150 cars stuck. So somebody a lot of money, but probably not a lot of happy parents. That's just an opportunity for the Amech kids. There you go. We saw that problem like that. I guarantee you. No, that I heard it was kind of shooting for after the CT center was done. Well, they uh next year might be a little aggressive. They surprised me with a text message last week saying, "Hey, we're all go for the uh cross country meet next uh next semester." And I was like, "Excuse me?" So, we're going to have a little
048bit of a follow-up so they can kind of walk me through everything because, you know, it's an active construction site and if you've been here around any of our active construction site, we have a lot going on and there's a lot of moving parts and um I don't really want to invite people to see that, but at the same time, I want to support our programs as best I can. It's true cross country all day long. All day long. And honestly, joking aside, that is kind of my um question. I mean obviously you got you are managing so much and a couple of the big I mean the main school uh projects right at the two high schools and at Rock Prairie just we talked a little bit about some of it before but just
049all you might just touch on all the things you do have to manage especially how during the school year with those three projects going on and I mean how much new how much will have be happening during the school year as opposed to trying to get you know, things done in the summer because well, with our two comprehensive high schools, those are going to be projects that go year round. Obviously, we're going to push as hard as we can. Uh we've been coordinating daily. I'm on these job sites daily. I'm I'm in touch with our superintendents daily. Um right now, currently what we have is it's myself and Mr. Buckner, uh Paul Buckner, our executive director of facilities. You may recall that previously there was an assistant director in that department and we opted not
050to backfill that position. And so that is why you see Mr. Buckner and myself so much. It was once upon a time John Hall and Renee Rimenez. Now it's myself and Mr. Buckner. And Mr. Buckner is unable to be with us this evening. His wife won an incredible trip to all expense paid to Portugal. And I wasn't the guy to say no to something like that. So, uh, very excited and very happy for him and I hope that he's listening right now so I can give him a hard time when he returns. Um, he he actually texted right beforehand and said, "Good luck." So, uh, but no, so obviously coordination of some of the bigger pieces like here at annual solidated, we have to do a sidewalk and there's some things that we have to
051bust out and so we try to set those things up to where we can attack them whenever there's not as much traffic within the building and there's not as much traffic around the building and so um, occupied campuses make it really really hard um, and ensuring that we have everybody protected and safe as much as possible and try to control the chaos as much as we can. Um, but with with each of those sites uh, it really is there there's a large undertaking. Um, and so you try to be mindful of traffic. You try to be mindful of what the student flow is. And safety is the number one priority for all of those. Any of our contractors that are working with us on a daily basis, we have an application that they complete. Um,
052and so we only have a handful of people. Previously, uh, the M it was the the operating procedure was to provide everybody with a badge. Um, only a handful of people are getting a badge now. And so they they go through a process where they're background and finger fingerprinted by their own company. They're then background and fingerprinted by us on top of another background screener with the application that they fill out. And so, um, one of the reasons why we chose the contract managers at risk that we did is because of their experience working with occupied campuses. And so, with that, they have extreme safety protocols in place for workers and where the workers can be and where they can utilize restrooms and things of that nature, no contact with students, etc., etc. And so,
053uh, with each of these, it's checking in daily. Obviously, there's lead times on objects and things of that nature, but the biggest coordination piece right now is trying to do the biggest, heaviest lifting during the summer. And so, for the two comprehensive high schools, we want to get vertical as quickly as possible. That means we've got to get the slab poured as quickly as possible. That's why it's so important. I know it was really inconvenient for a lot of people that we started these projects, but time is money. And if you ever look at the inflationary cost of what was projected out with each of these high schools, it's $3 million a year for every year that we wait to get these projects done. That's $3 million that could have been utilized on something else
054within Saudi High School or something else within College Station High School. And so I'm not willing to leave that money sitting on the table. And so, uh, it's myself and Mr. Buckner and then there's a gentleman named Brian Bill. Um, we did have someone retire recently and so we will be looking to backfill that position as a construction coordinator. Uh, but right now it's pretty much six days a week. Um, and so there is no stopping that phone call. Typically speaking, the the contractors get to the job site early. So the first phone call or text message usually is hitting about 6:15 every morning right now and go ahead. Yeah, it is and I really do appreciate that and you've said it before all the effort and all the projects going on because of the
055money that's being you know saved in the district. So I appreciate that comment as well. I guess I was actually not um I was also also thinking about the things that will happen inside the building. Most of the big is additions outside but particularly consult with the phase 4. Will that will most of that happen though the next summer then or spring the summer still some of will we are attacking phase 4 this summer as well so it's going to be a part of over the next two summers but for example will be both summers right but because of the aggressive nature that we took and with the new contractors that we have and with a lot of new subs and just more competitive process in this our you know you may recall we we
056adopted a guaranteed maximum price consolidated that was under budget under what was projected through the bond steering committee and through the scope and so uh been working with Miss Elder very closely um If you recall last summer, we put the beautiful gray slate on the entryway when you walk into an S cons high school. And then we left the the 1970s tile and random places around the building. We're pulling all that out of the building. Mrs. Elder, one of the first things she ever told me when I walked building was she's like, I want these lockers out of my building. They keep telling me no, can you get the lockers out of the building? Those are going to start getting ripped out on Friday. Um, and so we are doing things this summer. We're going
057to be in the fine arts orchestra wing. We're doing the gyms. The gyms weren't initially on the scope of things to be done. So, we're going to repaint the gyms. We're going into the basketball locker room area. We're replacing ceiling tile in phase four, which is going to be your orchestra um area and your choir and your those ensemble rooms and everything else. And so, I was actually there with Mr. Eekes this morning just touching base on things. And so, yes, a lot is happening this summer. Paint, ceiling grid, floors, removal of um removal of lockers, and then getting that gray slate tile throughout the entire building. So, it's a fluid process throughout the building. And it's not a situation where it's like it's here and it's not here. Um it's it's going to be
058more more I appreciate all that. So I will summarize that. It sounds like I mean obviously the external stuff will be going on a lot over the whole um 15 18 months. The internal will as much as possible be done in the summer which they they understand that August the 1st is the day that the students or that the teachers return to the building. Um obviously our push is to be done with as much as we can by August the 1st. We may be working around the clock. We may be working on the weekends. We're going to do whatever we got to do to make sure that we don't impact the learning environment that's on that campus any more than we have to. LED lights is another thing. I mean, there's just so many pieces
059going on. Uh, and LED lights is one of those things that's got a long lead time right now. And so, that might be a situation where we're doing LED lights on a weekend uh because we can't get them in right now. And so, we get mixed reports. Um, and I should have something on that tomorrow when we're going to be able to get those in. On that note, I wanted to thank you. I've heard from a lot of people in the community. I know it's a headache for you, but they're excited to see all the projects at all the different schools, people working on the weekends. Um, so I appreciate your team and everyone just really um trying to make use the best use of our dollars. I'm also very excited to see different contractors,
060especially when I hear you talk about, you know, something leaking from the beginning. I'm glad that we've been able to go out and get competitive bids from other um I'm glad our district's attractive now to these people to come bid on projects and I really appreciate that. I think the competition has helped us and you'll see it tonight with the guaranteed maximum price for the stadiums. Uh obviously that's a local contractor, but Jacody had for a number of years wanted to do business with College Station IC. Never could get a foot in the door and they have been absolutely fantastic to work with on our middle school projects. I'm extremely excited that they're going to be with us for baseball, softball, and for the stadiums. Um I have learned very quickly. Last summer I walked
061in and inherited a lot of projects. I have learned very quickly probably, you know, obviously our Melissa Fleming and her architect team with VLK are amazing. Um, but I've learned very quickly that the superintendent you have on the job is critical. And we have some amazing superintendents with all of our jobs. And Robert K, Robert Krupa with Jakakota Construction is 70 years old and runs circles around me with the amount of energy he has. And I just hope that I still have that much energy at 70 because I'm probably still going to be working at age 70. Thank you. Thank you. Uh D3 presentation and discussion on the 2526 general fund budget. Miss Wilson. Good evening, Dr. Hark Rider, Mr. Horic, Board of Trustees. Uh it's my pleasure to talk to you about the budget
062workshop a little bit about our next 2526 budget year. So what we're going to kind of spend a little bit of time on is legislative update, some budget considerations, and then kind of what the next steps look like. So, as you know, right now it's been kind of crazy with the legislative session, but it's nearly over. So, the last day for the House to vote out of Senate bill and the last day for the Senate to consider all bills is May 28th. Sendai, of course, is June 2nd. So, we're wrapping that up and the governor has to approve all bills by or vote veto bills passed by June 22nd. Um, so a few things that have happened just in the last couple weeks that have really kind of um kind of structured how we're doing
063a few things is uh committee substitute house bill 2. We talked about that the last time, but when it went to the Senate, there was a lot of changes. And so there's a lot of consolidated key bills that were consolidated into committee substitute house bill 2. And so that's some of the ones that you see on the screen there. Uh is Senate Bill uh 26, teacher retention aotment. Senate bill 2253, teacher prep and certification. Senate bill 27, teacher bill of rights. Senate bill 2252 and house bill 123, that's the early literacy and numeracy. Uh they rolled in school safety aotment, uh which we're excited about that. It doesn't cover our a lotment. I'll go over that in a little bit, but we're excited to see some increase in funding there. uh Senate Bill 568, special
064education aotment. That's something they looked at the last legislative session, even did a study, and then of course we walked away with nothing out of that legislative session. They've rolled some of those pieces into uh House Bill 2, and it's really exciting to see what they've done with special education there. We've needed increases in funding for a long time. If there's anything that's very meaningful other than teacher raises that's come out of this, it would be some of the a lotments they've given for special ed. I'll go over some more detail about that later as well. House Bill 120 was the last one that they wrote in there, the CTE changes. Okay. So, what is Senate uh committee substitute House Bill 2? They have given $8 billion. Uh a majority of it is designated on
065teacher races. I'm going to explain a little bit kind of what the positive and the negative is to that, but it's not meaningful races for anyone else other than the ones that are classroom teachers. Okay. uh and it doesn't do a lot of an increase in a basic aotment and we'll kind of go through some of that. Uh there is an increase in the basic aotment from 55. If you remember from what came out of house bill to originally we were slated to get 395 and now we're down to 55. Not only we down to 55 they they're using they're reallocating 800 million that's in that tier 2 funding to tier one. So back to the basic aotment and I'll explain that a little bit later to make that a little bit clearer. So we
066will see an increase in basic aotment but then you see a decrease in the tier 2 funding. Uh the total increase right now to the basic aotment is is $55. It brings it to 6,215. If you remember last time we met I kind of talked to you through anytime we see a basic aotment increase 40% of that basic aotment has to be sent for spent for compensation. They repealed that teacher retention aotment provides the teacher retention aotment they set aside provides 2500 per teacher that's from three to four years experience and if you have five plus years of experience it sets aside $5,500. I will go in a little bit which ones qualify and which ones don't. Uh there is also an a teacher incentive aotment. It's going to add a new acknowledgement designation and
067increases the a lotment for recognized and exemplary designations. Uh there's also liability insurance. You're going to see a lot of things in this bill that says classroom teachers. So this is liability insurance for classroom teachers, pre kindergarten kids. Right now it says adds children of classroom teachers to the list of eligible students for state funded prek. Um certification exam fees, they're going to wave those. That will be beneficial. We pay for special education and bilingual certification exam fees. They're talking about waving that. The transportation aotment for sped is moved to a $11.13. So that's a per mile cost, but it it's about $18,000 increase for our school district. I'll go through that in a sec. Special education aotment. Uh like I said earlier, this is very it it transitions to intensity based formula. Those transicity
068based formulas are going to be set for our commissioner. We won't see huge increases the first bienium. That's going to start really the second bienium. So, you're going to see some even further increases in sped there. Uh, they provide $1,000 per student for special education evaluations, which will be helpful to our school district. Uh, in addition, I've read some laws that same rules that say first-time evaluation, and then some leave that word out. And so, we'll kind of have to watch that. Uh, dyslexia aotment, it expands the number of students who can generate those funds. Of course, I think it generates $10,000 for our school district. uh career and technology aotment. It expands the course to generate the um aotment funding for JOTC. Okay. So, what are the impacts that this has for our school
069district? Um I just want to put this up there. I know you've seen this before, but our when we get our state funding a little wonky in times. You know, we have tier one funding. That's when we talk basic allotment. We have tier 2 funding. That's when we talk enrichment pennies. And I know you were all familiar with enrichment pennies because you went out for your additional golden pennies and when you did you realized that the state matches on those golden pennies up to a guaranteed price and so that's really your tier 2 funding which is kind of separate. Okay. So when we talk to tier twos here's kind of tier one just to explain it. And then you've got tier two. So tier one, when your basic aotment goes up, it's with the $55,
070you're going to see a little bit of money increases to all of those other allocations because it's a formula based system where you've got a formula and it runs off your basic aotment. Okay? So it might be 0.005% of a basic allotment. It is increased for a certain one of these programs. Transportation is a little bit different. It's a per mile funding, but it is a part of the tier one funding. uh our basic aotment brings additional $630,000 right now. $981 is what's in the law that from the $55 increase in basic a lotment. So that's what our school district is slated to receive at this time. However, with the tier 2 money, um it's going to decrease $210,000. Okay? And that's really basically taking us back to that $129.52. And so when you look
071at how we've received any additional funding over the last several years since 2019, it's the little bit of money we get from tier 2 funding because when that guaranteed price goes up and we have all of our eight pennies, we get a little bit more money because our pennies are worth more. Okay? So that's how you're generating a little bit more money and that's what they're capping right there. So does that make sense? Okay. And remind me, have they said they're going to freeze that for ever or right now it's frozen? Yes. Yeah, they would freeze it at the 12900. Yes, ma'am. 32, I believe. But yes, um I showed you this screen. It would take a change in law to reverse it back. Yes. Really? Chances are once they change it this way, you're
072hardressed to change it back. Yeah. Again, little thing that people think, oh, we're getting even the $55 um dollar basic a lotment increase would we would not be getting at all. Yeah. Okay. Um I I've showed you the percentage rates over the last I think the last time I showed you the percentage rates like what were we talking about from 2019? A 392% increase in general insurance. I wanted to show you the number. Okay. So since 2019, our insurance has increased 2,196,000. Our utilities have c increased 622,000. Fuel cost 215,000. We have taken a effort to give as much raise as we possibly can and that's increased $16 million since 2019. Okay, so those are big numbers, but we haven't received any increase in the basic a lotment since 2019. And this one shows $55.
073Okay. In addition to the $55, they set aside those monies for 2500 for teachers. And believe me, I am so very excited that teachers are going to get a raise. Uh that's three to four years of experience. 5,500 for five plus the funding they set aside basically because I took all of our teachers in those ranges and I calculated what that would be is $4,182,375. Okay. What they didn't add to the formula is statmen. Okay? And so what that is is anytime we go past our table set by the state saying this is how much you are required to pay a teacher. If you pay above this, you have to pay the statutory minimum which is TRS. Okay? So we'll have to pay TRS on this. That is not included in the amount right now.
074So the cost of this race that will come out of that basic aotment that I just showed you is $489,000. That just covers the benefits. If you look at the second column there, let's talk about the teachers that are not included on that that are on the same exact scale as the teachers that are going to receive it. That's our nurses, our ESL teachers, our instructional coaches, our librarians. None of those qualify for the race. To add those teachers to qualify for the race, it's another $655,000. Now, a lot of school districts, including College Station ISD, has moved certain teacher qualified positions to an administrative pay scale. That might be your art facilitators, that might be your counselors, and then when your APS and your principles move to that administrative pay scale, they're not on
075the teacher scale anymore. They don't qualify. So, that's additional cost to the school district to make it right with no additional funding. Okay. Can we move them back? No, no. And in fact, some schools have even talked, can we give a stipen? You know, like something that separates it. So, because if you think about my pay scale now, I'm going to have to do two pay scales because I'm going to have to have one if we don't give the raise that has the 5500 for this group of state teachers and then one that doesn't. Okay. So, here are some another thing. It also does not include the zero to two years. So, a teacher with zero, one or two years, uh, they're not included in the race at all. That'd be up to us to
076figure out what to do with that. Thank you. I forgot to mention that. Um, so here are some of the a lotment adjustments. So, special education, I've got a lot of words up there, so I'll kind of kind of go through what I'm talking about. Special education, when you run through the formulas, our new proposed aotment is 18,46,255. Our current, because I always kind of want to have something that we can kind of go back to. In fact, if you look at my previous screens, if you look in the bottom right hand corner, you'll know where I gathered my data so that we know where to go back and get the numbers. Um 2025 budget 18,719. So even the new allotment doesn't cover what our budget was for the previous year. It is a step
077in the right direction because our current allotment is the 17 million to11. Okay. When I say required spend, so when you do your I I'm gonna try not to get in too many of the weeds, but the the state requires you to spend 55% of your aotment. So what they're trying to take into consideration is you've got principles that are in AR meetings. You've got nurses that work on one-on-one. You've got other things that work with these students that can't be included in that allocation. Okay? So 55 has to be a true onetoone allocation. the remaining of that can help offset some of the other costs associated with the program. So our required spend is 9.4 million and then of course we're spending closer to the 18.7. The number out to the side of there
078that's 608. That's how much they're going to estimate that will be in those initial valuations. Okay. So if you add those two numbers together it's a step in the right direction. So I tell you when we go through this and look at sped I think that's the one thing. Oh I shouldn't said that. I think that is one in the step in the right direction. Okay. Transportation. The new proposed aotment is the million79. The budget is 5.4 million. Our current aotment is 1,ion61. And so you can see there's not a lot of increases there. Safety and security. Great. They doubled it. They went from $10 to um they went to 10 to 20 per student. And then they went from 14,000 or Yeah. They went to 37 37,000. Yeah. Uh so it's 432. It went
079from 432 current a lotment to 945. Of course, our district does amazing on security in our district and we are spending 2.2 million, but we're making sure that we have an officer or we have a security person at every campus. And so um those are the numbers we're spending. That's actually the law that was put in the last legislative session, but it costs more than what the a lotment is. Uh, bilingual education, the new proposed aotment is the 1.2 million. Our budget 1.49. Our current aotment is 1,107. Of course, that required spend, that's almost everything is the 609. Early education is a little bit different. We are going to get an increase of 228,000. And we're lucky because some school districts are going to end upside end up upside down on this aotment. So, what's
080going on is they're they're now adding a few more kids to how much money you get, but I don't know if you remember, maybe two legislative sessions ago, they said, "We want you to go full day prek." Now, you could opt out of the program of full day prek if you said you didn't have the capacity. Okay? So, what they're saying, if you do full preK, what we're going to do is take your I what money you generate for early ed for those kids. We're going to give it back to the state and then they're going to stick it into the funding um allocations to take us to full day prek. So, in a sense, we're losing this money. It's going back to the state and hopes that then they're they're going to give me
081ADA on those prek kids, okay? For a full day. I only currently get half day funding on prek kids. So, that's kind of what's going on with that. We do get 228, but guess what? Now, we have a requirement back to that math um and reading. Thank you. So, yes. So, that 228 will kind of go to that program. All right. So, this looks confusing and I've had a lot of questions on what does this mean? So, I'm going to kind of walk through what I've done here. 2024, that's our current adopted budget that you see there. current law. That's me taking current formulas and running it through the system and saying how much money would we generate. If you look at the revenue from one year to the other, yes, we decreased in revenue.
082But remember, we're losing students. And when you lose students, you have to decrease your expenditures. That's when you have to make sure your classrooms are not still staying at the same level when you're losing students. Okay. So, with that in mind, and then you can see expenditures. And so you see this big decrease 2,294. That has that is what we have done here at College Station. We have decreased our budget 2,294,000 as of right now. Okay. Um but that doesn't show much when you look at deficit 4.9 to deficit 3.3 because of the fact we're losing revenue. But our deficit if we were current law and the legislative session was not going on, our deficit would be 3.3. Okay. Now if you look at the next bill and the only raises in this bill are
083the ones that are required to go for the teacher compensation. The revenue we would receive is the 154 and then of course the expenditures are 156. So our deficit would be 1.9 million and the only people getting a raise is our classroom teachers and they have to be in the they have to be in the classroom and we report those a certain way for pe and so they'll have that information. So this is kind of what it looks like. I know this is again a lot of information. We would love your feedback. But what I did is did a one and a half% raise and man we were hoping that we would get a increase in basic aotment and we would have been able to take that and give meaningful raises to all of our
084staff. Not that teachers don't deserve it the same as anyone else, but there's a lot of people that deserve raises as well. But if you do a 1.5% for everyone except for that House Bill 2 class, so just classroom teachers do their regular and then a 1.5 for everyone, then it would take that 1.9 million to a deficit of 2.783. Does that make sense to everyone? If you look at the 2%, that's a 2% raise for all the pay families and then paying classroom teachers the raise, that'll bring our deficit to 3,39,000. Now, if you give all teachers that are on the pay scale, not those that I've talked about that are on the administrative pay scale, but on our teacher pay scale, uh, and did a 1 and a.5% raise to all staff and
085then paid all of those teachers the same, then you're going to see a $3.3 million deficit. And then, of course, if you did the same thing and then did a 2% to all paid families, then you would see a $3.5 million deficit. Mhm. I think the thing that confuses me is that so um all the teachers that would be getting the committee substitute from House Bill 2 money are where are they in here? Are they they're in that top they're included in that top row? Okay, the top row if you look at the two first oneshu that's just the people that are in the bill that are just in the bill and then everyone else gets a one and a half percent. So it's about $1,000. everybody else that they they would get theirs which
086is more than one and a half% the the teachers in the bill from the bill would get whatever that calculates to be right. Yes. And then um this would be and that's included in there and then everybody else gets one or two. Okay. Yes ma'am. The other two columns are just taking that and saying everybody in that pay scale because we typically move those teachers the exact same way. And it's the first year we would just move the beginning pay scale $500 which brings us a little over 52,000 for a a zeroyear teacher year experience and then move the other two up50 and then 2500 then 5,500 and then that those are the numbers you're looking at there. Does anybody have any questions? I'm not sure I get the last two qu two columns. I'm
087not sure I get the first two column one and a half% CSH 2% CSH that includes the house bill that was in the Senate right now as performing three to four and then five years plus teachers getting their raise and then increasing one and a half% or 2% to all the folks on the left side, but the zero to two year are left out. No, they're in there. They're just getting instead of the one and a half or two. Yes, sir. The flip up. It picks up our ESL teachers are all they'll get a one and a half% and then but everybody else gets based on the law. Mhm. And then your other two columns, everyone in that pay family only would get the 2500, 5,000 or 1250 if you're going to one or two
088year. Yes, sir. Um roughly almost a $5 million deficit this year. So this is going and that this is currently how it sits. So right now uh the Senate last night called a formal meeting which is kind of a little trick of the trade meaning they could have a formal meeting called with less hours in order to call the meeting. No public testimony. Voted this out of committee because they've been catching a lot of backlash over it. A lot of folks aren't happy. A lot of educators are calling in. So now it goes to the Senate floor. The Senate will vote it out. Then it goes back to the House. My understanding is the House is not pleased about it at all. Uh if the House votes against it, it goes to a conference committee.
089So basically, you have five senators, five House members. They sit in a room for how long it takes. Uh and I promise you, they'll be done before June the 2nd because I know they don't want to have a special session and make a decision of what that's going to look like. And then basically once that committee confirms it, both houses will approve and the governor will sign it. So, that's the race of why they're up against the clock. The other point, uh, House Bill four, which dealt with accountability, which the House passed that would eliminate the STAR test. The Senate, from my understanding, is basically holding it hostage right now. So, it's kind of like you take this bill, we'll approve this bill, and we'll all be friends. And if the House digs in on
090that, they're not going to pass House Bill 4. Star test will continue as is for the next two years with A throughF ratings. So that's kind of what's taking place behind the scenes. I think the biggest issue that what we're trying to show you is the inequities that it in it creates with yes it is more money given the largest teacher raise in in the history of the state of Texas which is fabulous but all of that money is earmarked to one group of people and then we have another 1100 employees that there's literally no money extra to give raises or more money to operate our school district and and that's the rub. The other part of it is with those raises, which are tremendous, it puts all of our uh salaries out of whack.
091So, basically, as a 20-year teacher, I think we looked at the number roughly, they're making $371 a day. That's more than any assistant principal I have. It's more dang near more than any directors we have. So, the potential incentive for a teacher to move into admin work potentially or advance their career financially, there's nothing good about them doing it because yeah, you could take it. You're going to make the same daily rate, but you're going to work 20, 30, however many more days that you're going to work. So, and we don't have the funds. If it had been House Bill 395, we could have we could have increased those min, mid, and max charts to equalize that. So it it it puts everything out of whack. That's a it's a problem long term of of
092how do we address it when we're constantly chasing money. So what can we do? I mean I know a lot of us have been reaching out to Dyson and Wharton, their freshman rep representatives like at this point. What it sounds like so much is already in motion and going to happen no matter what we do, but what would you suggest we do and what we tell people that have been reaching out to us? I say continue to reach out to both of those guys. They've been very responsive to all of our teams that have reached out. I think Senator Schwartner, uh, he is actually, if I'm not mistaken, part of the conference committee, if that's if that's going to go to conference committee, and and just let your voice be heard of of how we
093feel about it. What I'm hearing behind the scenes is the Senate does not have an appetite to do any changes to where they are. They feel like this is the best. And so, they're kind of holding the House hostage right now of how bad do you want to get rid of Star? Do you want to get rid of it bad enough to give in this? And I think the the House's thought process is we have to you're putting all the money in, which is great, but it's going into pots. And the pots are problematic for the longevity of public ed as as we currently know it. And I think that's that's the rub, which is why we're not even looking at the House bill option because you we don't think that's going to which would
094be more give us more leeway with how we would spend our I think the only hope we have and some of Heather's people talk this weekend from what I'm hearing our best shot at a basic a lotment increase may get to $100 maybe and that would be you know it's it's better than nothing. Beggars can't be choosers, but it it still does not uh we survive for two years and then the next session we hope and pray, can we get funding to survive another two years and that's not healthy uh for us as a school district or any other school district in the state of Texas. You're we're surviving versus trying to to flourish and uh do the best that we can do with our kids every day. So best we can hope for is
095$100. That's like Warren Buffett giving me 100 bucks, right, of of the budget that we're talking about and what kind of money we're working with. So my question is, which you probably don't know, but if we're at 395 increase and we're down to 55, where the blank did that go, why did we go from 395 to $55? Because rough math now, I get you're talking laws and where it has to go. That' be a $4.5 million increase for the district and we're not in red numbers anymore. And we're getting 630,000. So where where did it go? How do we go from 395 to 55? I know there was a lot of behind the scenes deals trying to come to a compromise. And I'm not going to mention names. What was publicly put out was not
096was is not what was agreed to behind the scenes. So what the governor did was go and buy a bunch of people to put in office to pass school vouchers and promise we were going to get equal money. And now we're getting peanuts because however much vouchers are going to cost, which rural Texas doesn't have private schools, private schools. So you're taking public dollars and putting them in private organizations that don't have any accountability or reporting. Yes, sir. It doesn't make sense to me at an even billion dollars and there's been no explanation. Like part of the some of the testimony is like where did you get to a billion? Like where did the billion dollars come from? and nobody's provided any answer because it's just a big fat round number and your point is
097well taken Dr. pain. But part of that money, like you said, is earmarked in all these specific things. But it is actually, I have to also remember that this bill at 8 billion is 1.1 billion less than the House bill. Almost exactly the same amount of of money. It's a billion dollars less than the bill that the House bill approved. The problem here is, in my opinion, is the governor does not care about K through2 public education and does not want to fund it. And my email is public if he wants to find me on a lighter note. That's an understatement. Sorry. Go ahead. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, you go ahead. Is it negative? Because I got a real light note. Well, considering that nobody cares about what happens at the local level in
098Austin, it's probably light. But yeah, this this whole we're going to create these buckets have to be used for specific specific purposes is just another example of these folks who meet for a few months, a couple months really, uh, every two years in Austin, uh, think they know how to spend our tax dollars better than the people who are at the local level in College Station, Brian, so forth, and deal with this on a daily level. It's just it's it it's if it wasn't if the consequences weren't so high, uh it would be laughable. Uh so my my email is public, too. And Josh, I think it goes back to one of our legislative priorities that you guys came up with, local control, and this is just another example of how that has consistently been
099stripped back over the last 10 years. we probably don't recognize enough, but Hark Rider and his team have been keeping us all very updated nightly, hourly almost it feels like um when I'm asleep even on just everything that's going on um with all of these things at the House and Senate and all just everything. So, thank you for that. I ran the numbers because when you you look at some of these and you look at the pay families and stuff like Dr. Herder was talking about what would it take to make this right. It's 570 for basic a lotment just in addition to the 55 just to fix what just happened right here. 620. So in the the what can we do category for whatever it might be worth is Senator Schwartner. Everybody has got
100to contact him in his office. Dr. Dr. P. One other thing I'd like to add. You know, in in previous years, we've wanted more money. We as a state didn't have the funds to give. Uh but these last two legislative sessions, we've had the largest surplus in the history of the state of Texas, and we've done nothing with it in my opinion. And we're holding teach they've been holding teachers pay hostage the entire time to get what they want to pass right money to send again public tax dollars to private institutions. You could go back to and make an argument of the largest teacher pay raise in the history of the state actually is the money that should have been given 1921 23 25 except it's six years late and it's just getting us caught
101up maybe close not even 100% and that's how they're spending it. I heard an interview with Shortner and he was patting himself on the back saying that same thing. We're giving the largest teacher pay raise ever and he's trying to justify it that the money's all there. It's just in different buckets. I mean that was I think an exact quote from him. So, I do think if people reach out to him in email that you aren't buying what he's selling. So, I watched the hearing on Thursday, I think is when it was. And um it just shows how uneducated and I'm just going to call it because it is. It's uneducated these folks are when it comes to school finance. I mean, it's one of the hardest things. I hope everybody here and everybody watching,
102Miss Wilson, you gave a phenomenal and I know you're not done, but you you've given a phenomenal kindergarten level understanding of school finance right here, which is one of the hardest things as a school board member to come in and understand. So, I appreciate that. But but what I recognized watching the hearing and and listening the testimonies and all that was that these legislature legislative folks have had four or five months to hear from the constituents and I know that everybody's been very vocal. I know I have. I've talked to Dyson. I've talked to Wharton. Um we've all talked to them and they still don't get it. They still don't understand it. The Frisco CFO testified and one of them said, "Hey, can you put that like in writing and send it to me? I'd
103like to read it." And I'm like, "What the hell? Why? This should have been done like four months ago." So, um, that's the frustrating part, but we deal with unfunded mandates all the time. That's all this is. It's an unfunded mandate. Hey, we want to we're going to dangle this out here. Like Dr. Harker said, we're going to put this out here, but hey, by the way, if you want this star testing to go away, you got to jump on board. So, um, you know, Mr. Ben mentioned it if if we could get down to the local control part of it. I mean, I know there's some folks that think we don't know what we're doing and the administrative doesn't know what they're doing, but I promise you, I've sat on this board long enough.
104I don't think we've ever gone a year since we've been on we haven't given a raise and we've sucked up some deficits and it's it's frustrating but by God I'm not going to let folks sit out there and do their job and and not get rewarded for it in some facet even if it's small. I hate to say that but but we've got to be able to keep the lights on. We got to be able to keep the kids in the class. We got to be able to keep operating the district. So we can we can complain about what's going on in Austin because it's a horrible city. It really is and I said it. But we we can I'm just telling you we can only voice our concerns so much and in the end
105we've got to deal with the cards were dealt and you've done a fantastic job to kind of put the pieces of what we do know up until May 20th today. And you know we're we're going to work through it and and go from there. I'm not trying to close this out because I know you still got to roll on with stuff, but that's just where I'm at and I'm breaking pins up here. So, I'm going to turn it over to you. Okay. Um I just I want to end I want to go back to those numbers because I I mean all that is so important just to say because that's got us into the situation we're in. But but you're right, we got to deal with these guards and and um this is where we
106are at this present moment. Hopefully it gets may get better. But um so to kind of summarize like this the previous page and this one you've said um we're looking at take you you all have looked at taking $2.3 million out of the budget. That's on the previous slide, right? Yes, ma'am. Out of out of our expenditures. And we're not done. We can talk about and you're and we can talk about what those are. We we should talk about what those those are. And um and if we just jump up over to we're dealing with the bill, right? Oh, sorry. Nope. Nope. I wanted to I can't read this. The red on there. I'm so sorry. The 1.9 is our deficit then with the bill. So starting at that point, then we have the addition
107of possible pay raises for the other other folks that are not included in the House bill and which is approximately,00 staff members. Yeah. About half, right? Yeah. About half of our staff. Um so what we have to look at is you know that 1.9 would go potentially to 2.7 3.3 and 3.5. Are we going to talk more? So so that's part of what we would have to decide on as a team. Right. Correct. That would be a final decision for that would be at the June meeting and I'd like to have a June workshop the week of June the 8th that we just only thing on it is going to be the uh budget as long as it takes. Hopefully by that point everything's in stone. We've got hard numbers of we know the revenue
108that we're going to have and then you guys have all of that information prior to coming to the June 17th I believe that meeting. I think I think a workshop on the more details of that would be fantastic. sooner rather than well I mean I know that we're dealing with all the unknowns of the legislature but there obvious a lot of things have been going on behind the scenes with the team to so we need to continue to get those just be discussing those options too because the other are we going to get more on the 2.3 million why don't we let her finish and then we can well I didn't see it specifically in here but we're going to we're going to go through talk about it ma'am perfect good okay so um on
109the budget process these are some of the things we've done. So, we've trained our staffed. We have looked at campus funding allocated by student and we kind of talked about that last month. We've looked at compared district peers. So, we've kind of looked to find our outliers and so where do we spend a lot more per student than others so that we know that we're looking at those items. We've built zerobased budgets for all of the departments and they've been brutal. Um, and we've looked at every single line on those zerobased budgets. We've looked in the detail on every single line of this budget. Uh we have audited campus and department staff. And so I spent a lot of time just looking at what other everyone has on their campus and how it relates to
110each other. And we've reviewed funding sources. And so if there's if if we've got funds that are federal or something like that, those are things that if someone's requesting something that fits there and there's money, it's a conversation. Um, we've reallocated funds to campuses. So, there were some funds up here at our district level. That's one of the cuts that you're seeing in those dollars where we might have had some funds being spent out of central office and some out of the campus. So, what we've tried to do is collect some of those funds and move it to the campus level. And so, that's something that we've done. So when you've looked at the cuts on your campus level, unless there was a lot of decrease in students, they did not get cut in their
111supply budget. Okay, those all stayed the same in group. Um, of course, some of that is from moving some of these items over there. Um, between maybe science materials, maybe some other things, GT materials, sped materials where we would buy the wipes and then mail them to the campus. We're just going to have them buy the wipes on their campus. Um, so there's been a lot of things like that where we've looked to try to make sure that we're not duplicating things. Um, we've done allocations. I've compared those allocations to other school districts, not just to the one I came from, but to other ones in the state of Texas, and that goes down to Departmental of athletics. It goes to band fine arts. It goes to CTE and everything. So, we've looked compared those
112numbers and then we've worked with those leaders to see if we can come down a little bit, not to where where we were comparing them, not what we were finding at other districts, but at least get that conversation started. And I'm not going to lie, the people in this district have been absolutely amazing. They have worked hard to look at their budgets and see if there's ways that they can cut, and that's been across the board. I haven't received a lot of complaints from our our principles of things that were going on or the department directors. Everybody's been willing to try to come to the table and talk. Um worked with departments to reduce expenditures and then we've reviewed the preliminary tax information. So what we're going to continue to do is monitor the legislative
113session, continue auditing position budget and continue review budget for savings. So when you talk about probably some of the larger items that are coming out of the budget are your staffing allocations. And even if you look at your first rating and you look at staffing allocations, when you decrease students, you have to decrease staff. And so we kept the class constant at the elementary 22 to1. Just when we were over and we could pull a teacher and still keep that at 22 to1, we pulled that teacher. We didn't no one lost their job. It was just from just reducing the staff member. uh we had class constants at intermediate schools of 25 and we kept them completely solid. There wasn't a teacher to take at those campuses. And then the high schools we kept the
114class constant at 25 and we reduced a few teachers there and it wasn't like I said it was just basically looking at inefficiencies. Um, and I shouldn't say that because we would love to keep those teachers there, but when you're faced with a budget, you've got to got to look at anywhere you possibly can. And if there's anything that we can reduce that, we have to look at those numbers when they're least impactful to kids. And I think we've looked at that every time. We try to find the most least impacted. I don't know if that's probably a double, but I can't really say that. We try to find what's least impacted impactful for children and made the cuts there. We looked at instructional aid. So, we built a staffing model and um or we
115revisited the staffing model and made sure that we were equivalent across campuses. And so, when you see we we decreased some instructional aids, we actually increased a couple instructional aids as well because they didn't have enough compared to the other campuses. Some campuses had two more than their 150 to1 and some were less than that. And so, we kind of moved that staff around to make sure that they were equivalent. We looked at office staff and um there are a few office staff that we might decrease if they were to resign, but we're not going to move any at this point. But if they resign, there are a few things like a receptionist at a campus that has less than 550 when there's someone there that can maybe help it when we're in times like
116this. And so, um those are really what we're looking at. We took hard looks at other things, but at this point, we didn't feel like we could could cut other things. And so for the most part, that's the positions we're looking at at this time. Um, but as you know, and you look at these numbers, we're going to have to, excuse me, continue to to to review and look at things. But, um, other things that we looked at that our district has done an amazing job at is the overtime we had budgeted from year to year. That number could be decreased. We've looked at substitutes that have been budgeted from year to year. that could be decreased because most of the time when that has been they've kind of increased that number, it's because we
117had a sub for an A position and it was budgeted there and it was budgeted in subs. And so those were easy grabs where we can kind of look at those subs and decrease those amounts. And so that's really kind of what we've looked at. We've looked at every single line. I kind of know where there's a little bit more we can go and get. Um but we really kind of wanted to hold off to see what the legislative was going to finalize. So, did I kind of cover that's where that number is coming from? Uh, for example, I can tell you there 750 to 800,000 of that is just in non-payroll items and I'll have more detail. Um, we are still reviewing budgets in a sense and like I said, we've gone lineto line
118to line. Um, and we have imported and I say we and I mean Chris behind me has input imported uh input all of those items into our software system. We just had a few budgets that came in yesterday that we don't have in the system yet. And so until we get that in, we won't know like exactly how much supplies we decrease exactly how much. But I'll have those at the next workshop. This particular slide, um, where are we at as far as, um, are we back in good standing with the controller and the appraisal district and undervaluations and so forth? Okay. Yeah, we're we're working on that. um we've got it turned in to get our homestead exemption corrected and then once we have that that's $2 million to our district that's currently not
119on the current summary finance that we will see in the near future and so we've got that in the works and we have our numbers and so that we can actually get a good calculation um there was several judgments 179 in the past and I think another 60 to 70 were approved in May all of that revenue is going to be out of our current tax revenue and then we're going to have to go and do comproller reports back in to receive that money back. So, we're going to lose our value for property taxes and we're going to have to go back to the comproller and hope that they'll give us our state funding because you remember if you look at at the cup when our taxes go down, state revenue should go up. What's
120happening is you have to go back and look at several cups back. Well, we just lost our local revenue that's coming out of this year's budget. So, we need the state to make that cup full. And so that's why we do property value studies to go back and try to get that money when it's past time. So some of these judgments go back to 2018. We're only supposed to go to 2021, I believe. And so unless there's large judgments, we can try to go and get previous money and we will try to do that. Okay. Peris poor per our poor board policy. I'm sorry I'm getting tongue tied trying to talk as fast as Josh and I'm not holding up my deal. Okay, so we have to have near three months operating expenditures. Right now
121we're sitting at 4 million and we will be putting more fund balance in this year because of the fact that we changed our fiscal year from a 12-month to 10 month. This is our 10-month fiscal year. Okay. What questions do you have for me that I haven't already answered? Back to that fund balance. How much are we going to be putting back in there? I'm estimating about 6 million. So we we should have extra to help with the raises to help with the raises and help with having another year of a deficit budget if we have to. Yes, ma'am. That's huge. Couple of follow-up questions. Um I know one of the buckets the legislaturator is apparently creating is the teacher sentiment a lotment. Are are we rocking and rolling on that? We are. Okay. Bridget
122works really hard and then she's got an additional staff member that helps her with that. Okay. We are very much involved in the teacher incentive aotment. That's what you're asking, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yeah. I mean I I know uh to that point I would say we need more transparency though so that teachers understand how they can get it and when and where we've done really good I think on the lower end uh you know K through six and stuff. I think it's been much more challenging on the high school end where people aren't sure where they stand. And I I just think we can be more clear so teachers can understand how they get it, when they get it, and all that stuff is money's out there. We need to advocate for them to
123go get it for for us to get it. And I think we need to help our teachers do that. And I think we can do a better job at the high school level. I know as of a couple years ago there were still like for lack of better said classifications of teachers who we didn't have the system in place for them to get those. Is that still and I think Bridget might want to answer this but I can tell you and Dr. dark rider fine arts was one of the buckets that I think we're trying we've worked into the mix and that was probably so each spring we have the opportunity to expand and modify our TIA application and so we started out with a very small group and eighth grade math reading science early
124childhood and we now um have expanded into all levels secondary intermediate middle school CTE and arts are both included and um as we are able we will continue to expand major areas that we're looking at right now is our um our languages other than English but in order to expand we have to have um a valid student growth measure and so for some areas if there is not a valid growth measure we have to look at what we can do to um have a growth measure in place whether that be something that we create here at the district or we find the third party vendor and have better resource and all those things. So we continue to expand and we have more eligible assignments than not. Okay. Yeah, that was going to be kind of
125my follow-up question was is you use you use the term as we're able and just just from a a board standpoint or budget, however you want to put it, if there's anything that we could do to kind of help with that, increase the the ability to to have more and more teachers eligible. So, and I think it's a very important question and a great point that you made, Dr. AIGN that we still have a lot of teachers that are that are either not knowledgeable enough about it, but a number that especially at the high school level that are not eligible now. I mean, I think it's worth bringing it having it as a discussion for us in maybe a couple months with an update on on TIA. I would I think so to make everybody
126more aware and have us know where we where we are. And one more question. So, um the um pre kindergarten classroom teachers, their kids being eligible. Um, is is that something that we're going to be able to offer as far as space or I know because that's a that's you know we there's been a a request at different times to have a you know prek daycare whatever for teachers and you know that has its own set of issues but if if a teacher in CSISD wants to take advantage of that particular bucket the legislature teachers given us. Are they going to be able to or too early to tell? I think it would depend on the capacity and how the law is written or if it's something that do we have to increase a teacher
127if we have capacity. Sometimes I know that in other districts they've offered it to their teachers if there's capacity, meaning there's seats available. So, I'm not for sure at this point how the raw laws written, but I'll pay attention and let you know if I find anything out. Yeah, who knows? It could change again. So, I have two two questions. Well, one is on your staffing model models because I know I understand that that's the the reality is that not only is it our biggest bucket of um money is our staff, right? But also that the reality if we have fewer students and opportunities to um um you know to meet all the needs of our students with fewer with fewer teachers, that's where we're going to have to have to make some cuts. Um,
128do we take into account those staffing models that you know like title one schools are not you know may have different populations than you know I don't know just are those in those models? Absolutely. That's a great point. So the reason why you should do a staffing model is for u well even title one purposes on supplemental not supplant rules because you've got to establish your base level and that's what that staffing model does. It establishes the base level and make sure that we're funding campuses equitable. So when they get that title one funds, every bit of that is above the base level. So it's above the staffing model. Are we making sure our campuses are using their title one funds? Like is there education component there? Yes, we're we're working on that. Um I
129think Patty does an amazing job of working with the U and I keep calling people by first name so I apologize for that. Uh, I think she does an amazing job and I think we have some initiatives for next year that we're going to get involved in it. Chris and I and Lindsay are going to go out and work with them every quarter and I think Miss Leafur is going to do as well just to kind of stay on top of it to make sure that they're spending those numbers and so we have a plan moving forward. I appreciate everything you've done. I know there's districts um that are shutting down schools and laying off teachers and I think y'all have done a great job so far of trying to find money without impacting learning
130for our kids. Um, and I really appreciate that. Thank you. I couldn't agree more, Heather, because I think what we're talking about here is protecting jobs, the teachers in the front of the room and kids. Um, because the alternative is much worse. And I'm not saying I want to hear a sound bite. Not saying this is what's next, but the alternative is to close campuses. We opened a lot quickly. And so, yeah, our class sizes may go up a body or two or three. And if two teachers retire, excuse me, if two teachers retire and we only fill it with one, okay, that that's what we had to do because the alternative is much worse where we close an elementary school in a neighborhood or three loes that or we close two. I mean, you're
131you're talking drastic. This is this is nightmare budget stuff. Again, the difference is nightmarish. And I don't think people understand that. And again, you want to attack and then and then look at the laws that restrict the spending. You can't just say, "Oh, we're paying for this software program. let's cut that and we can hire two more teachers. No, we can't because that's not what you can do with the funding. So, um the challenges are unbelievable. Um and they're unbelievable because our legislators put us in this situation. Yeah, thank you for what you guys are doing. So true. And you provided so much information that helps us understand how these bills and legislators impacting us directly. I will still I do want to add one thing though. Um I feel um at this point in
132the part that I feel personally that I w wish we had a little bit more information on is um just more on that say that 2.3 of exactly where that money is um going to be coming from and then also usually at this point we're looking at um I mean is there going to be any what are the additional expenses on the other side? We didn't talk I mean usually there's something else in there that you know it be that's driving an additional uh expense as well. Obviously the we're going to have the revenue down for the number of students but you know usually we're having to expand this type of teacher or maybe we need to add we added another counselor at one point you those kind of things right. So, so kind of
133that comparison where are we going to have to add a little bit because we're kind of being forced to but then also then a little more specifics on where those where we're finding uh these these reductions that we have to do as you said we Sure. And the mainly the ads right now we're having are in the special education department and so there are ads there that we're looking at those numbers still and we can bring that to you but yes there will be some additions as well. Anything else? And and in all honesty, one one number I'd probably be bringing to you right now would be insurance. And guess what? It's down. It's part of that 2.2. So there you go. You're welcome. Thank you. All right. If nothing else, we're going to journ.