001All right. Good evening. It's March 2nd, 2026. Time is 5:00 p.m. This is a special meeting of the [snorts] Argyle ISD Board of Trustees. At this time, we will determine if a quorum is present. Liana McDade present. Rich McDade present. Liana Arthur present. Matt Slein present. Craig Hawksworth present. I Sam Slayton present. We do have a quorum established. This time we'll have our pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. All right. Mr. Hawksworth, if you'll lead us in our opening prayer. Yes, I will. Thank you for that. Dear Lord, um please
002be with us today and help guide our decisions in the best interest of the district and the students of this district. We appreciate all you do and we love you, Lord. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Mr. Hawksworth. [snorts] You're welcome. All right. Uh we did not have anyone sign up for public forum. Okay. Uh so we can move on into the workshop. Yeah, we're just going to stay up here since we had some other items, so yeah. Mr. Ed, if you'll Good evening. How are we all? Good. Okay, [snorts] so I just want to start by saying we'll go through this. Please ask any questions at the time. Um a couple of these slides may be some repeats just from the planning. We'll go through them a little quicker. Some of them we'll spend more time
003on than others, but um we'll just uh stop for any questions along the way. So just kind of a look at what we're going to talk about today. Of course, the budget and planning calendar. Uh we're going to look at the recap of last legislative session. Just some some items that are still remaining and how they've impacted us. A little bit on school finance 101, just um a reminder of how we're funded and some things that we work on through the budget process. Uh [clears throat] the district strategic plan, the uh strategic collaborative visioning. Um enrollment and attendance, uh the taxable assessed property values, um a little bit on our tax rates, and then some budget priorities. We'll finish off with those. So y'all saw saw these at the last um meeting. We We'll still
004put these in there just so you remember of how the the flow of the workshops go, but basically the budget development is ongoing all months, you know, throughout the year and and into the next year. We start in February with just some preliminary information for you. Then we start on our workshops. We're also starting um to develop our campus and department budget planning where they get a little more involved. We have our regular meetings um some more workshops throughout. Um in April, we do get at the end of April we get preliminary values from DCAD. Um we'll have another workshop and then one uh there I think I left the date off of. We do have a workshop in June as well on the compensation plan, a special meeting. Um on the 25th of July,
005we get our certified values and we'll have to publish rather quickly in the paper to make the deadline for the August 17th meeting. Um and we can talk that through in some later um discussions. The timeline on that, I think we only have about 2 days to make the the uh deadlines for the paper. So if if we can't get everything together and calculate it by the end then we may have to push for a special meeting rather than the August regular meeting, but we'll work as hard as we can to make that deadline. Um and then hopefully make that for the 17th and have a hearing to adopt the the budget and the tax rate at that night. Okay, some um legislative information. So House Bill 2 was the major um finance bill out
006of this last legislative session. We had a small increase to the basic allotment, but what that in reality did was move money around. It took it from the guaranteed yield um increment adjustment each year and just moved into the basic allotment. So it's uh affects each district a little differently, but it's the same funding. It's not true not really an increase. Uh it does tie that future bienniums have auto increases [snorts] to the BA tied to state property value growth instead of the guaranteed yield adjustment. So that um automatic adjustment is still there. It's just by it's moving where it where it falls in the plan. There was an increases to the early allotment based on the ADA and gate grades K through three. We're still looking at how that affects us this year. Same
007thing, there were adjustments in the funding approach to full-day pre-K from four-year-olds for the early education allotment and how all that plays together. There's some changes in sped funding from weights to tiers of intensity. We'll talk about that a little bit more in a couple of minutes. The school safety allotment it roughly doubled. It was a little bit more than double $21.10 per ADA and $33,540 per eligible campus. They also added an allotment for basic costs of $106 per enrolled student. And they created teacher retention allotment and support staff retention allotment. If y'all remember the teacher retention allotment was in a school of our size 5,000 for U5 and above, 2,500 for three and four, and then it was a local district decision below three years of experience. So, those those continue on each year.
008It's not a new amount each year, but it does continue that. They are required to fund that from the original And it was the definition of a teacher by the state's definition of That's correct. The state's definition of I believe they have to be in front of students 50% of the time providing instruction. Okay, sped funding changes. So, as I mentioned, sped funding changes from weights to tiers of intensity. The implementation is for 26-27. >> [snorts] >> TEA is still developing what those tiers of intensities will look like and how they're defined. We are supposed to get some more information later this spring on that. The bill directed TEA to spend 250 million more, which is roughly 4% of current law in sped funding. Individual districts, however, are not guaranteed an increase. So, until we
009know what those tiers of intensity look like and how our students fit into those tiers of intensity, we won't necessarily know how the funding affects our individual districts. So, some districts will increase, some may decrease, and some may stay about the same. But, timeline on this, TEA cannot price the current law until settle up. So, the weights that are set for these intensities of funding will not be determined until September of '27, which is after the fiscal year closes. So, we are recommending that we're going to budget for sped based on current law. We may in the end actually receive more funding, we may receive less, but we'll have to watch that and we're going to work through the process as we go, but we will be budgeting based on current law. Couple of other
010bills that passed were Senate Bill 4 and Senate Bill 23, the frozen hold harmless. If you remember, um this increase in it before took our homestead exemption from 100 to 140,000. Senate Bill 23 went back and grabbed the um over 65 and disabled homestead exemptions when they were written out of the law prior. It actually went back and included them in some of the other um homestead exemptions that were before. So, the expectation from these bills were that we as a district and every district would expect to see a significant drop in frozen levy, but we would be held harmless from the state. That was what was written in in legislation. And we'd be held harmless through this category called additional state aid for adjustment of limitation on tax increases on homestead of elderly or
011disabled. We like to just shorten that to frozen hold harmless, it's much easier [snorts] to say and remember. So, what's the reality of what's happening right now? Frozen hold harmless was started in '23 back when the homesteaded um exemptions were increased. So, in the '23 tax year, which was a '23-'24 fiscal year, Argyle ISD saw a little over 600,000 in frozen hold harmless. In the '24 tax year, and again, the tax year's a little bit different when we talk about fiscal year, we use the ending year tax year use to be year. But, so the 24 tax year our frozen hold harmless was a little over a million dollars. For 25, we found out at the end of January that our frozen hold harmless was moved to zero. Which is the exact opposite of what
012was expected for this budget. So every district expected to increase because this we were told we would be held harmless. So what's happening here is in January I mean sorry in January when that the PBS studies were published we found out that there was a change in methodology on how the the calculation of the frozen levies happened. And this change in methodology is by the comptroller's office. It's got statewide impacts. Every district is impacted differently. Some districts actually saw their funding increase like expected, some saw no change, some said it lost long and some of us lost it completely. Argyle ISD has lost it completely. That affects not only this year but every year moving forward. So just so you know that that is something we are working through right now. We're working with some
013statewide agencies, we're working with some other school districts and local school districts that this is impacting as well and trying to right now you know the ask is that the either comptroller reviews their methodology and changes it or that TEA actually holds us harmless regardless of what the comptroller's methodology is. So again just so you know we are working through that for this current year's budget and for future but right now we can't count on that hold harmless for future budgets when we aren't even expected to get it for this year. So that does impact our planning for next year. All right. Just to kind of give you a timeline of the PBS property value study timeline. When we talk about certified values, districts receive those from their CAD. You have to receive them by
014July 25th. So in April you receive the preliminary and that's what you use to budget on, right? You get your certifieds in July. In the fall, the CADs are required to report their value to the comptroller. So, all their all their values and all the different information. January 31st is when the comptroller actually publishes the preliminary study, and there's a protest window that opens. So, midway through the fiscal year is when we see the actual what we call T values. There's when from 17 to I think there's over 20 of them now that we use in our in our funding calculations. If you do any type of protest, those are not finalized until August and published in August by the comptroller. TEA then rolls those in and and uses those for a near final settle
015settle up in September. And y'all may remember that I mentioned this last year at one point that we actually did have to submit a protest uh because our frozen hold harmless data was wrong. Um we got that corrected. Uh the CAD was able actually correct that for us, send it in in August was when that was actually finalized. So, we went all year last year kind of with the do we get those funding, do we not? In August it was certified and we we saw that come into our budget. I know it seems like a long time, but it's actually sometimes at fiscal year end close before you actually know the data and know what's there. So, just a little bit of history there. So, what are we looking at um budget planning wise? So,
016we're looking on and I'm just realizing that that shows the wrong year. Sorry, that should say 2026-2027. We'll get that one corrected. Um budget planning based again on current current law, we're going to continue to review any legislative changes, right? Those that are impacting us now and those that should impact us in 2026-2027. Um during the spring we're going to go to campus tours. There will be a state of the district given by Dr. Carpenter, and I am going to come along and give a little bit of budget information at those as well to each campus. Um we do have some data from our superintendent mid-year uh survey that we're utilizing in this um budget planning. We also have information from the superintendent teacher advisory council. That is where teachers are able to give direct
017feedback to us. And of course we're going to continue to review any efficiencies that we can that we can. We are planning on recommending a compensation plan for staff in June. >> [cough and clears throat] >> We're going to continue looking at our legislative legislative advocacy plan because even though we're not in a legislative this year, we know that session comes up very early the next year and we need to know you know what how things are impacting us and how our LASD would like to see things change. And then of course we have our budget workshops that we're going to work through this spring. So just some basic Have you sent us whole whole dates for all those? The budget workshops? Yes, they should be on your calendar. Yes, I will. You know I'm
018not counting Oh yes, and then they were in Yes, and then then in in board minutes. They were in board minutes last week. Just kidding. Okay, I got it. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, just some basics on school finance and again I know this is a repeat for most of y'all been involved in this for a long time. And but we are funding based on a basic allotment per student, right? We we have attendance not enrollment funding for almost everything. There's weighted allotment funding funding based on programs. There's M&O tax rate compression that's required by the state. That's that's determined based on our taxable values that will come out this summer compared to the state's. The I&S tax rate is based on your voter approved bonds. And then just a reminder that as that local
019share increases as we provide more of that then the state share decreases because we are provided we are funded on that basic allotment per student. So just if our property values grow here within the district and we bring in more tax dollars that does not mean we retain more funding overall. It means the state would give us less. And then our budget priorities center around the district strategic vision. Who's I'm sorry. Is there a formula they use like if you know, say we get another 500 students and our TAV goes up. Do they have like a specific formula or do do we at least I know we come out ahead cuz our budget's always bigger every year, but they don't have a like a specific formula or anything they use you get X number of
020you know, an increase in your TAV, but we're going to hold back this kind of money. There there are some very specific formulas in there um that there's a uh it's called a summary of finance that is calculated that brings in all the formulas that TEA is required to use by legislation to determine funding for us. Um there's some tools that we have locally that we're able to try and use those to estimate estimate the funding. Um but there's not one specific formula. There's you know, quite a few in there that that do determine that. So, if the controller changed the the um what did you say? methodology the methodology I wrote it down first. The methodology on this frozen stuff the hold harmless um is does that go along with what the legislature originally
021intended? Um not in my opinion. So, in my opinion the legislature the legislation was written that districts would be held harmless on their funding which is not how the new methodology is working out for each district. So, that is something again that we we are working with as many people as we can to try and get that back to what we feel like the original intent of the legislation was. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, so um estimating revenues of course we always use our demographers information. Y'all know what this looks like. This is just a snippet from the latest report that shows that we are expected to overall grow 7% over this year our 459 students. So, just looking at the um snapshot of our history, just a reminder of how we've grown in our
022enrollment over the years. We're still expected to grow moving forward. I'm going to look at what was projected and when we look at the demographer's projections, it's August snapshot to August I'm sorry, October snapshot to October snapshot. So, the last Friday in in October and we compare the same point every year. So, you can see overall by the time we hit February, we had met projections. But, if you look individually by campus, not every campus met projections. And so, some are over, some are some are under um and a little more different based on each campus. Some are actually pretty close. Like Hilltop, for example, couple students off at this point. Um middle school, one student off by the time we hit February. So, again, some are on the mark, but some are are off
023one way or the other. Just a reminder that taxable assessed property values go into that estimation as well. And this doesn't necessarily determine the funding in our district, but it's always a question we receive. You know, how what's the breakdown of the value in the district? And so, we always like to provide a chart that reminds everybody we are um 90% residential. Um and where where that plays a role is when you're talking about bonds and and future bond planning, you know, where does that funding come from? It's it's our residents. It's not necessarily the commercial cuz we aren't we are only uh 6. just under 7% commercial. The history of our tax rates, um you can see those lines going down. Um so, year over year, we've had some form of compression. But, if
024you look at from the 2021 school year to the 25-26 school year, you're almost um you're over 20 cents that we've decreased the the tax rate throughout the district. And the the there always seems to be some confusion in that, right? When you get your individual tax bill, right, how did that occur? When this is just a time we like to remind people that the only part that the district can play in that is setting the tax rate um based on the the two components in that tax rate, the M&O requirements go along with what the state has for us. So, again, depending on how much the value is raised, depends on how much compression we have there. The honest side is based on the bonds that the the um taxpayers here have passed. And
025then those two components together is the tax rate, but your individual home value is what is valued by the appraisal district, and then that sometimes when you see your value rising, even with a tax rate that has been decreased, you might see more in taxes that you're paying, or you might not full them see the full decrease in what you thought. So, just a reminder, the district is responsible for the tax rate, not the appraisal of your value. We start looking at expenditures. So, we look at start looking at campus and department budgets. So, we always try to align everything with the collaborative vision plan, because that is the guidelines for the district and how we're moving forward, and we want to make sure that any dollars we're spending are aligned with that. Campus budgets
026are based on resource allocation, and we'll look at that slide in just a minute. Um we have campus leadership teams input into the budgets. We do offer an opportunity for special funding requests. So, say a campus or department couldn't fit something into their budget, but they think it's really a good need or a good uh use of resources, they can, you know, submit that. It can be reviewed at the administrative level and determine whether it wants to be brought forward as part of the budget or not. Department budgets, we moved to zero-based budgeting. Um I think this is our third year to do that. Um and then larger departments have 5-year plans that they present to uh cabinet in review of their budget. Looking at the campuses, um I do want [clears throat] to make
027one note on here. Um I did not go make and capture this on there. When this talks about enrollment current year, that current year is the current year planning enrollment. So, not the enrollment they have today, it's what we planned their budget with last year. So, when you look at that um you'll see a little different in the numbers if you actually looked at the the total enrollment today. So, each campus, again, we use the demographer's numbers. Um we look at you know, the change. How did that reflect on last year's planning amount? And if you'll notice up here in planning, of course, Argo Middle School and Sixth Grade Center both show a significant decrease for next year, and that's because Gibson Middle School we're opening, and several of those students will be moving over.
028Then we look at the change in their budget, right? The planning budget from the current to the next. We also started a few months a few years ago withholding a 10% contingency with markers in the fall of how district how campuses can actually um have access to that contingency and then a total total budget for the campuses. And so, we work through that based on a per student amount. And those contingencies, the one that the campuses that got received those have already That's all done taking care of, right? Okay. >> ma'am. I believe we released those funds in either December or January. I'd have to go back and ask. Thank you. So. And I think we had three campuses this year meet that marker, so. Okay, so in developing some priorities uh for this year's
029budget um and how we're how we're putting this um budget together, there was a superintendent mid-year survey as we mentioned a minute ago. There's also the superintendent teacher advisory council um that was able to give input. These are some of the same resources that were used last year. And so, if you look at that uh mid-year survey data, there was there was quite a bit of data there, but there's one that we wanted to focus on when it talked about budget priorities. So, if you'll see here um >> [clears throat] >> smaller class sizes, uh there was about 28 you know, when we asked you what was the one most important um component of this, [cough] about 28% said smaller class sizes. Uh just under 13%, you know, improve support from specialist positions on my
030campus. Um under 3% was a balanced budget and the most important component of everything that uh they were able to give input on was that increased compensation was the the largest um importance in their in their budget considerations. Right? At 56%. So, we wanted to take that into consideration when we're planning and we all know that compensation is a a huge factor in planning the budget. Every budget for us over 81% of our budget is in it's staffing. In some form or fashion, whether it's directly in the classroom, a support position, or an operations position. 81% is in in um staffing. So, anything that has to do with increasing staffing, increasing compensation, you're talking about your largest percent of your budget in a school district. That should always be your largest and it should be
031um in in your instruction budget when you even break down that staffing even further. So, based on that, we looked at our budget priorities and those may look a little familiar to you. Those were our same priorities last year. Right? Increased staff compensation, maintaining the current class size ratios with enrollment projections because as we know, just because it's projected does not know necessarily turn into what students showed up in which class. Um and then we this year we're taking into building capacities, right? At the elementary level, we know our next elementary won't open for another year after that. So, we've got to make those determinations based on how many classrooms we can actually fit in those buildings um versus uh the class sizes. Campus support considerations. Um and then we're talking about considering a balanced
032budget. And with all that in mind, is that is that a something that we can consider for next year? Um or is that something that we would potentially maybe have a deficit budget. I can tell you we are not looking at a surplus budget like we started this year. But um if that's a consideration that we can look at balanced or or moving forward with some some of the different priorities. And I know that uh there's some other things on the agenda tonight that they're looking at some of making uh first round of of potential approvals on some of those staffing. So, just upcoming topics, I know um we've got some different things coming up in um our workshops. We'll get into more detail as each workshop goes on. We'll pick an area that we'll
033get in detail on. There are um just so that you know, there's quite a few new requirements on the tax rate adoption. Just in the process of how you do it, um the process uh a lot of requirements stem around your INS tax rate component. And so, we are ourselves learning those requirements now and we'll be able to present [clears throat] those to you um at the next uh workshop. We will also keep you updated on the PBS frozen levy issue because that is very important to us as a district as it it is to many districts throughout the state. Um and we'll keep you updated on how that's going and if there's any change on that. Um and those are the the two biggest upcoming topics, but again, we'll get into more detail on
034dollar amounts moving forward in each workshop. Do you have questions over anything? Want to go into more detail on any of the slides or where we're at at this point? Can you tell me where are we on fund balance right now? In terms of what we're required, 3 months, right? Where are we? I believe we are just over 25 or 26%. So, in term and we will bring a slide for that for you on um next workshop. Um so, our board policy says, I believe, 2 months. It may actually give a specific week, but you know, summarizing that's 2 months. In practice, we've always done three. Um I will tell you if if we go down to to you know, if you want to say, "Hey, we want to just go with the the policy
035at 2 months." There are some some things that we are rated on that we would potentially fail. What does state say 3 months? The state has some ratings that require 3 months or closer to if you're going to pass those. So, again, policy says one thing, practice is we we we aim for 25%. >> [clears throat] >> And I'll I'll have a actual chart on that for you that shows the exact percent where we're projected to go and where also where we've been. Is that your statement about a potential or right now sitting at a deficit um is that mainly driven by the frozen levy issue? And that's a million bucks, aren't there? That would help significantly in that conversation. Um I can also tell you when we're you know, we like to plan conservatively,
036right? And so the revenue estimates that we have right now are are very conservative. They don't include any frozen levy at this point because we feel like we need to make some more progress before we actually were to include anything there. Um we also are when we talk about the the expenditure side, we're still in development on our campus and department budgets. So, until those get a little bit further developed, right we've got some large dollar amounts held in those areas until we have more input from everybody and can actually finalize those. So, we hope as we finalize those, the expenditure estimates actually shrink a little bit and then we hope to expand our revenue estimates. So, we hope to get it a lot closer, but at this point in time if you said you
037had to have the budget ready today, I'd tell you we you know, we'd be looking around around the deficit budget. Mr. C local does say at least two months. Thank you. >> Approximately 17%. Um But you that's the I was just going to say that's That's a topic for discussion is, you know, um deficit budgets. Is that some you know, something that if we if the administrative stration were to recommend to you said, "Hey, we feel like everything that we need we for this one year it would be a deficit budget." We've done that in the past. We've always been able to come out of that in the end, um but that is a topic of conversation for tonight is is kind of ideas about that and feelings about that. So, so I go ahead.
038When you look at the frozen levy issue, I mean it was um I have it here. It was over a little over a million dollars for last year. Correct. Sorry. The cough thing. Um and this year was zero. So, is it almost kind of akin to sort of a funding cliff like we had a couple of years back cuz you kind of It It could have been if we'd known it. >> planned it, yeah. But we didn't know this was happening. We didn't know there was a change of methodology. Um every district in the state was anticipating a a higher frozen hold harmless than than um what they had in the past because of the legislative changes. So, yes, I would say it was similar to that had we known and been able to plan
039for it. Right. I understand. Okay. So. Any other questions or discussions or or information that you want to look at at the next workshop? Okay. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. Can I ask one more thing? I know you're you don't have to go back over there. Just we at the last meeting was your regular meeting. She's got to talk to Dr. Daniels further. Sorry. It's your rules of order. It's recorded. The last meeting at the last minute we I asked about uh administration administrator campus administrator compensation. Are you you're pulling that? I think you said you all were or Chris said you all were. Dr. Daniels is pulling that information. Yes, I'm sorry. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And if there's other things before we have the
040next workshop that you want included or make sure that we had she has included, just let me know and we'll if it's not already in there, then we'll make sure we include it. Okay. All right. So, I think we We a couple of information only items. So, you're going to >> [clears throat] >> hear Dr. Daniel a couple times this evening. He's going to present phase two. This is not for action tonight. Phase one will be later, but this is kind of the second round of positions that um we're trying to consider bringing forward as we work through this process. As I mentioned last month, we are bringing positions to you in phases. Like Dr. Carpenter mentioned, so tonight is phase two information. And then action on phase one later today. Or later tonight. Um
041we've continued to meet. We meet at least weekly looking at staffing and support for our campuses and all of our buildings, all of our departments. And these are the positions that we are bringing to you. Okay, sorry. I thought I was looking at the wrong one. There were so many different versions of these things. This is the right one. >> Okay. >> Phase two. Phase two. So, these are some of the positions that we are bringing to you as information only. And I'll go through I'm not going to go through every single one of them, but some of the ones that um are so new, I am going to mention. Um I'll start with line [cough] 11. The Dean of student support. That is a position for three of our elementary schools. You may remember
042that Hilltop has this position currently. Um because we had an extra billet admin billet, so we were able to get it started there. We started that in January, correct? January? I believe it was we started in January. Okay. And it's been I'm sorry, yeah. And at that campus, it's been Yeah, but it's but the position >> a position since January. But it's been [clears throat] a big cuz it was mid-year, so okay. It's made a big impact at Hilltop um having that position. So, we are wanting to add those at our other three elementary campuses. At the high school, you see a or sorry, line 12, testing specialist. We currently have one person who is serving as the testing specialist along with 504 and it is too much. It's too much for one person, and
043so we [clears throat] are hoping to split that position and have just a testing specialist pulled from this other person. Or maybe they are the testing specialist. I don't know how that's all going to play out, but And then campus support aid, kind of a generic term. We keep trying to decide what to call this. These are aids on the elementary campuses who are available to fill positions when a sub doesn't show up. If the nurse needs a nurse aid, if they need an extra person up at the front as a receptionist. Um, and so we're wanting to add those at the elementary. Line 16, fine arts administrative assistant. We've had an athletics administrative assistant for many years and we're to the point now where it's we they need some support with um, planning and
044POs and travel. >> [clears throat] >> And then after reevaluating band with Mr. Byrd and band band numbers, our band population is it's it's increasing. It's going up. >> are very very high for the GMS feeder, so So we would like to add another band position at at um, GMS. And then I'll jump down to the bottom. Um, the other positions are mostly special programs positions. OT is an occupational therapist. Um, can you go a little bit further down? To these central office ones. Okay. Accountant. We This is a position we're we're wanting to bring back. It is not necessarily new. We had this position. That office has been empty for 2 years. >> a few years now. Um, so we would like to bring that position back. Help. That's just one. I know there's
045others in that department that we need. Um, but that's um, top priority right now. And then the other is director of staff, student and learner services. That is a director role who would serve as the first line of communication between parents, staff, with and principals and directors with um, a plethora of things that Dr. Jordan and myself are currently doing. Um, residencies, uh, verifications, the grievance process, which that has its seasons. You know, we had a big season. When was that? A bunch at once. And when you have a bunch at once, it the tracking of those and the timelines, it's it's a lot. Um, also student teacher placements, uh, Was residency we were including student residency? Okay, that's what I thought. Teacher residency program. >> Transfers. Transfers. Transfers. >> [clears throat] >> So. Questions
046about any of those positions? >> [snorts] >> I'll be back on March 23rd with hopefully this exact same thing unless something tweaks along the way. And um, we're still planning. So, you may see a phase three at some point as well, like I mentioned at the last board meeting. So, Dr. Daniel, I just want to make sure we're putting on record that you're seeing that our fine arts program is robust and growing. It is. Thank you. Mhm. I just want to make sure that our member who's not here can go back and hear some >> Maybe he's listening live. 5:36 p.m. at the board meeting. >> Maybe he's listening live. Okay. Uh the other information only um this is just kind of a high-level uh conversation to just to kind of bring it back to
047the forefront cuz it's about time for the board to consider um how we want to open Legacy High School. I know we've talked about this as an administrative team quite some time and we talked with parents um back in the fall when we did the parent meeting. But now it's time for the board to really consider how we want to open. [clears throat] Um so I'm going to kind of go through a few things here, kind of tell you where we've been, where we are, and uh we've been talking to other districts as a district and campus leadership teams. We've been gathering information for quite some time and really started back in the fall of '23 not long after I got here meeting with different school districts and their administrations that had opened a second
048high school or multiple high schools. And then in this past October we had our East Zone parent meeting and so we introduced kind of some variations of opening configurations for the '27-'28 school year. Um from November to February we've been that same group, we've kind of continued gathering information. I know um we've even added other layers from athletics, fine arts standpoints, continued adding layers there. And then February uh we created a timeline and just kind of parameters for moving forward and preparing to bring recommendations to the board. Um when you when you think of this in terms of a high school, it does expedite the process because we start the staffing of that we are we'll be looking at that starting October, November next fall. I mean it just it backs up quite a bit.
049So this is actually a duplicate of the meeting slide the slide we had in the meeting with parents in October. This was just a an example of a couple of configurations. We talked about the short-term strengths and the short-term challenges of how we could potentially open. Um the easiest and cleanest for everybody as far as a school district would be ninth and 10th graders that are zoned to Legacy High School just when that year opens. If you're zoned, you go. Um even if you've started out as a freshman over here at Argyle High School, obviously, it has some strengths. Most of those strengths are related to um just the the how easy it would be from planning standpoint for administration, you know your numbers exactly, staffing ratios, that kind of thing. Um short-term challenges there
050is that as a freshman you come over here to the high school and then as a sophomore you go back over. So we we know that those are all complicated. And sometimes what's easiest on us is not easiest on families or best for students. And so that's why we wanted to put a lot of thought into this process and make sure we gave it its due diligence of research and time to consider. The other configuration would be um the ninth graders obviously that are zoned would go to Legacy High School and then the 10th and 11th graders who are zoned could have an option to go um because we've heard a little bit about some of the juniors that are going to be juniors that year are wanting to be able to go to Legacy
051High School and be the first graduating class. So we've we've spent a lot of time looking at this. Um you know the biggest chat that is great for kids because it gives parents and families a little bit more choice, especially if you started out over here. The challenge for us will be having to have really a minimum number of sophomores and juniors make a commitment just from a staffing standpoint and making that feasible. And so um you know we would work through all of those of course if that's the decision the board would want to take. We would That's why knowing this sooner than later is going to be helpful for everyone. So, um really that's kind of how we work through that so that we'll we'll bring that back to you and give you
052time to discuss that. And so, the main theme that we've gathered from everything is there's no right or wrong answer. Um we've talked to school districts that have opened 9 and 10 and nobody gets a choice. We've talked to school districts that have opened with 9th grade only and then matriculated everybody up. We've talked to districts that opened with 9th only and 10th and 11th had the options and some that had 12 12 12th graders with options. So, it's all over the place as far as what districts have done and really that just goes to show you that you're doing what's best for your community. Um so, our goal really is just what's best going to serve our students zoned in those grades [clears throat] 9 through 11 that are they're in the middle of
053that transition and what's in the best interest interest of those students that are impacted. So, we're kind of in the phase two setup now where you are hearing an update from where we are with research and what we're what we're bringing kind of thinking about bringing to you. Um after spring break, we are going to re-communicate those different uh opening configurations to the families, those current 8th and 9th graders cuz they're the ones impacted. If they're currently in 8th grade or 9th grader, they will be the sophomores and juniors um that are within the zone and we will probably we're going to poll them and kind of give them some the configurations and say, "If you are not If you're a 10th grader or 11th grader that year and you would have the option, would
054you consider going to Legacy or would you stay at Argyle High School?" So, we can kind of get a an idea for what we're looking at. Um we also have the current FDB local policy which talks about siblings. And I think it's important to know the way the policy's written right now is that if you have a if you're a sibling and you've got a sibling that's able to stay over here because of policy, you can do a one-year transfer. Um the way it's written is it's a one-year transfer and it's tied to the sibling that's under a different transfer. So, we need to think through that because if you're a a say you're a junior that's going to take that's going to stay over here and you've got a freshman sibling that wants to
055come with you, well, the next year if you're a senior or you run out of they run out of what they're tied to. So, we need to think through that because we may need to make some alterations to that policy. Um otherwise, those students technically would go back to the legacy campus and so we need to think through that. Now, the other thing is um it's not for the whole family, obviously, but if that if you have a freshman, do we want to let them finish out? That doesn't mean everybody else coming behind them gets to do the same. So, kind of thinking through all those little caveats. Um then the April 20th meeting, hopefully, we'll have some good data to bring to you and we'll come back and share that data with you and
056then we would like for you to consider taking action on the opening configuration at the May 6th special meeting, which will be another board workshop night like tonight. Um that would give us time then to communicate that with the families and then begin uh getting all of that out this summer, preparing a timeline for the commitment forms, and then we'll have to have families making if there's choice, we'll have to make those commitments in September and October uh because we have to start we have to start staffing and it's going to take that much time um to do that. So, we'll have to have commitments. And then under that consideration if that's the path that we're leaning towards, [clears throat] then if those numbers don't make that make it feasible, then you go back to
057the first option. >> Possibly, yes. Whatever's going to um put us in the best position to open um with the staffing with our staffing plan. Mhm. So, along those same lines, you mentioned there's no right or wrong answer as you were considering the various configurations and who you spoke with. Were there any similarities in the size of our district and our split with those particular schools and even if the cross the board there was no right or wrong, no perfect answer, um >> [clears throat] >> based on size similarities, was there anything along those lines that indicated that if you got two potential campuses of this size A and B, that this particular configuration worked a little bit better, although it didn't work as seamlessly for slightly different size? So, the the two the three
058that have been provided the best information to us, one has three 4A schools, one has a 5A and a 4A, very very similar to what we are, and the other one was a 6A that split and it became a five and a four. And so, they all three did it differently. And all three of them when we asked about what would you have done differently, they gave the other version other other schools version. So, I don't you know what I'm saying? I think they were like, well, we would have liked to have given some choice. The other one said, well, the choice was a little difficult to staff. We probably would have gone back and, you know, just said no all ninth and 10th are coming. So, that's that's the best I can answer that
059question. >> [laughter] >> If they would have done anything different, they were they were choosing the other person's the other district's version. Grass is always greener. Mhm. As it stands today, two graduating classes will be 2030 unless we change it. Yes, the brought well, yes, if you open as 9 10 only, then that 10th grade class, which is the class of Now you're going to test me. I've seen so many numbers. The the 10th. >> and 11th. Yeah. Yes. Yes, would be the first graduating class. Yes. Yes. If you And then if we do juniors, you would have some 29s. You would have a 29. And is there a certain number in that year? >> 28. 28 29, yeah. So, you'd have 28 29 28 would I'd have to go I would I have to
060look at the configuration. It'd be 2029. It'd be the '28 '29 school year. So, it'd be class of '29. Yes, the class of '29 would be the junior class. >> And is there a number that it has to hit to make that So, we've talked about that and we feel I think the best way and I know I've even talked to the high school principal and Ms. Johnston as well. They've been in those meetings. We talked about about half the class, about half. So, if there's 225 slated to go over there, if we had about 100, that would be feasible. Give or take a little bit on either side. >> Wait, wait, 225 based on zoning? Yes, based on zoning. I thought you meant half the class total. No, half the half of the class
061zoned. We feel like we can make it work with about a half of the class, give or take a little bit on either side. But we intend to bring you all the more information then. Thank you. Mhm. It'd be nice to go down to lower class sizes. I mean, 200 or something >> [clears throat] >> versus 400. All right, Dr. Daniel, back to staffing. Okay. This is phase one staffing that you saw. Seems like it was just a few weeks ago. Um and these are positions that we deemed that were the most important and highly needed to fill to fill as quickly as we could. There were a few adjustments that were made. Um numbers are all the same. We reduced the high school to four and added that position at JRE. Um what we're
062trying to do at um our elementary schools is staff our PE departments consistently with I've said this so many times, I'm not sure if you've already heard me say this. Um with a PE teacher and a PE aid. And in order to it right now we have PE teachers that are also high school coaches. There's some coaches at Ms. Knowles that she I don't think she even knows who some of them are. She sees them very and so we're trying to move those people when it fits with um their certifications to the high school. And it makes it a lot easier at the elementary schools when you don't have somebody that's not there the entire day. They have to leave early or um or get there late because of other commitments and the travel. So,
063that's why there's that swap there with the four and the one. And you can go down a little bit please. The only other change really was that that that was clarified to me that that special ed position I believe it may have said inclusion teacher. It it's actually a self-contained teacher. And we also at the top uh Mr. Herring the two elementary teachers Uh right. It changed it. >> It it just says elementary school because we're just to keep that flexible with a couple things we're looking at right now. But we know we're we know we need to Do you have any questions? I mean Liz I mean talking about everything we talked about earlier, I mean there's a lot of money here, there's a lot of money in plan two, too. So, where where
064are we uh feeling comfortable with this? So, phase one is well within the budget. Okay. Yeah. Um and we'll have you details of dollar amounts before you see a final for phase two. >> Okay. Okay. Good. Thanks. And so just just clarifying between phase one, phase two, potentially phase three. Um there's nothing on phase one that It's free all over here if you want to comment. Remember you have to come over here. Um but there's nothing on phase one that you potentially be like, "Man, I'm glad we got it, but I really would have preferred something on phase two instead of what we are approving here in phase one?" Like I just It's kind of like the we just filled in question. Like final answer. Like Except there's no money attached. There's no life line.
065Yeah, I don't think so cuz this one pretty primarily is everything to get Gibson open. >> And the is whatever growth positions we had classrooms for. >> [laughter] >> Okay. So, I think this one is the second phase you'll start seeing some things like that that they but they they they are aware and they've been in conversations with Dr. Daniel and Dr. Jordan as well um with what their desired needs are over what we might think they need. But y'all agree? Is that Okay. Okay. That's good. Good to know. They've been in conversation through every step of what's going on. So, Okay. Any other questions for Dr. Daniel? I'll entertain a motion to approve action of 9A as presented. So moved. Give that to Mrs. Arthur. Motion to approve. Have a second? >> Ooh. Second.
066Mrs. Matt Slaton second. What? Okay, any further discussion? Remember to raise your hand. All in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? All right, thank you. Thank you. Okay, now y'all are going to get busy. I know y'all are cuz with the starting to post things. Okay, this is your topic, I think. >> We could go watch something right now online and go post, right? >> That's right. Okay, you Do you want me to read it or do you want me to read it or do you want me to Is there anything Do we have to read the order? >> you have to read the order, yes, sir. Mr. Matt Slaton. I need your order. 1:30. All right. You want me to read it in Spanish, too? I can do that. No hablo español. >>
067[laughter] >> All right. Order of cancellation. Argyle ISD Board of Trustees hereby cancels the election scheduled to be held on May 2nd, 2026 in accordance with Section 2.0539A of the Texas Election Code. The following candidates have been certified as unopposed and are hereby elected as follows. Uh Justin Ford, Trustee Place One. Lianne Artho, Trustee Place Number Two. And Mr. Frank Dickson, Trustee Place Number Three. Copy of this order will be posted on election day at each polling place that would have been used in the election. El Argyle ISD Board of Trustees por la mañana. Thank you, Mr. Slaton. Uh all right. Do you want to have any questions, comments, concerns? Otherwise, I'll entertain a motion to approve action item 9B as presented. So moved. Mr. Matt Slaton motion approved, I have a second. Second. Mr.
068Rich McDowell with the second. All in favor, raise your hand and say I. I. I. Any opposed? Okay. All right, Mr. Oxworth. And I'll just share that the May 18th board meeting will be when we will swear in our new new board members. So, May 18th. Awesome. All right. >> You have that much time to change your mind. The The time is 5:53 p.m. and we are going to adjourn to executive session. Thank you all. No action No action when we come back. Thank you.