001All right. Good afternoon. Time is 4:07 p.m. It is June 5th, 2025. This is a special meeting workshop for the Argal SD board of trustees. At this time, we will determine if a quorum is present. Leona McDade, present. Rich McDow, present. Lean Artho, present. I Sam Slayton, present. Do have a quorum established. At this time, we will 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 thee, Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. Love it. And we have two. All right. Mr. Hawksworth's here. We'll wait for him for opening prayer and then we'll go ahead and get started with
002our workshop. And Mr. Mat. Hello. Hello. Hi. Hi. Hi. Thank you, Mr. Huxbury. Thank you. You ready? Yeah. Dear Lord, thank you for letting that train finally come to an end. Um, please be with us today and make decisions in the best interest of the students of this district. We love you, Lord. Amen. Amen. Thank you. All right. Uh, we're going to move out uh towards the group room for our workshop. All right. So, we are here today uh to do our next round of budget workshop. The last one we did, we brought to you the staffing plan that we brought in April for uh the board to approve. So, thank you again for that. I know our principles have been um diligently hiring. The applicant pool has been uh great. We've had a lot
003of good options as they're filling spots on campuses for for our teacher our new ads to the to the budget. So, at this point, we are ready to talk. Um compensation plan for staff. Uh House Bill 2 was signed by Governor Abbott yesterday. So, things are progressing. Um still a lot of definitions to be defined and we'll kind of talk through that, but I will turn it over to Miss Stewart and Dr. Daniel. Thank you. Okay. Uh we're going to start um today we're going to go over just kind of a quick review of the April board meeting or board workshop of what we talked about in our last budget board workshop. Um we're going to look at uh what is actually included in House Bill 2, main school funding bill. Uh the impact that
004it will have on us individually. Um Dr. Jinger's going to talk about the compensation plan. um we'll look at just the overall budget outlook from here and then what our next steps are. So if y'all recall from April, we brought a staffing plan during that workshop that included the different budget priorities from um the staff survey input and it really was maintaining our class size ratios and focusing on the learning environment so that we put the support back into the classrooms that was needed. Um, and there's a link here if you want to go back out and look at that staffing plan that I know we've been over that in the workshop and then we had y'all approve it and um, as Dr. Copper mentioned, grateful that for that moving forward with hiring and um,
005getting staff focused for next year. Um, the big picture that we talked about from April, uh, that we did cap campus allocations like what we've done in the past. Um just a reminder that our departments um did the zero based budgeting again this year um which we started for last year. Uh again you had the staffing plan approved. We talked about reserving compensation plan of 2 million uh tenatively when we were talking through some things. This is before we had legislation. Um and at that point in time by making that reservation it looked like we were going to have a budget deficit of about 1.4 million. So that's kind of where we ended it in April. Um and approved the staffing plan from there. Uh but again, we're in a legislative year, right? They it's
00689th legislative. They went January through June, finished June 2nd, and they approved um probably the largest school funding bill um infusing $8.5 billion um into public schools. Most of it was very directed into how it can be used. Um but we will walk through a few of those. And just I can tell you we're grateful for a school funding bill. Um it may not have been the most ideal side that the House had. Um it lean more towards what the Senate had, but it still will be a benefit for Argaliz and it's going to help our budget out drastically. So I will tell you though, the interpretation is changing, right? You get a a bill that'sund and something pages long, it takes a while to interpret that. And so each day we get a little
007bit of new information about, okay, well there was this in there and there was that in there. So that's kind of we're we're in the wait and see portion of that right now. come um wait till we get all the interpretation and all of um all of the information of what actually was contained in there and how does that um apply to us as a school district. Um this is just a summary. This was provided by um a group here in North Texas housed out of Frisco ISD. Um and it just kind of go the highlights of the school um funding here. Uh of course compensation was the leading thing in there. Um they created also a new aotment uh called the ABC. Um it was for um an aotment for basic costs. That was
008kind of the compromise between the house and the senate. Uh there was additional school safety uh funding. There was quite a bit of infused into special education. And then there was um a $55 increase to the basic aotment, but that was really money moved from another spot into the basic aotment. It really wasn't a true increase there. Um, so again, $55, but they froze the guaranteed yield. And so they took the money that was to increase by because by law, every year the guaranteed yield had to increase. And so that money is what's transitioned now into the $55 per ODA. Uh, the teacher retention aotment, they specifically here defined, well, they haven't defined yet. They specifically said classroom teacher. So we're all waiting on a definition of classroom teacher. um because how that is defined
009determines who the state will pay for um as far as the teachers that we have in the staff on that. So three to four year classroom teacher 2500 five plus is 5,000. You'll notice they left out zero one and twoear teachers on that. Um they did a a support staff retention aotment of $45 for adjusted ADA that um they have said was intended to um produce some funds that could cover the 01 and two years or support staff other than administrators but administrators were written out of that um allotment. Again the ABC allotment it was the allotment for basic cost at 106 per ADA. The sped aotment is going to transition to an intensity based services. So it will be a year before we know what that looks like and how that applies to us
010because um they will have to go back define it first and then see how it applies to every student uh that is in special ed after that before they uh can tell us how much it would affect the funding. The school safety aotment that the amount per ADA doubled and then the amount per campus went up a little over double. There's also quite a bit in teacher incentive aotment. We are not part of that program right now. So we don't have an implication on that. we are moving towards that but we are it doesn't affect us for next year and then there are quite a few changes in early education a lotment um what we can say is there's additional support for prek out of that um and then they also included again they use
011the term classroom teacher um a classroom teacher's child is allowed to go for free they qualify now under under the state's plan for pay is there any way to get retropay on that unfortunately no okay I was just checking yeah sorry that does that does start September 1st for really for the school year on the teacher incentive aotment. Um I've read the plan that was in place before. Do we have to follow that or can we create our own for that money? It's it's the way it's they define it. It's the way it's defined. We can't claim uh district innovation. And they're actually there's some they're actually changing some of the district innovation allowances as well. There's going to be some things that we probably have in ours currently that we'll have to undo there.
012There's we're talking House Bill 2 tonight, but there are a lot of bills that were passed and there's a lot of different bills that affect public schools and so there's going to be months of of things that we're going to have to interpret and figure out how it affects to your point. I I mean I read two I've read one where it said school safety law per 88 was 28. So I've seen it both I've seen it in two different places, two different numbers. So, which one is it? Those are things that we're going to find out in the next next days, weeks, and a couple months. So, how does House Bill 2 affect Argo ISD? So, any numbers that we're showing you tonight were numbers that were provided for us from one of the
013agencies that we talked to and helped interpret some of the legislation for us. Um, this is not we don't have a tool yet to see to run the numbers ourselves and see how it will affect us. So everything we're using um this will change once we get that tool and can use our own numbers but this is pretty standard through numbers that anybody has done for us um and it looks pretty pretty similar. So the basic a lotment increase uh will look like about 315,000 for us. We will lose um the guaranteed yield of about 180,000. So that is that offset there. Um the classroom teacher aotment um everybody's assuming how that's being defined right now based on that. it would be um just under 1.6 million. Support staff aotment um just over 250,000. The
014aotment for basic cost is right at 700,000. Early education 120, school safety aotment 175. The sped aotment still to be determined and the teacher incentive aotment in the future when we are part of that program um is still to be determined. So total big picture and this isn't everything in the bill. These were just some of the highlighted points, but total big picture um m revenues are expected to go up just under 3.3 million and the mandated expenditures that we can define right now go up about 1.2 million. So we know there's going to be some additional expenditures that come out of that those just what we've defined so far. And I'm going to repeat again all of these numbers will change as we get tools to run these with our most recent data. And
015this is annualized based on current Yes. What they had is our uh ADA for next year, which is probably lower than what we are estimating. Okay. So, you'll hear the word unknown a lot. So, here are some of the big unknowns that um deal with compensation. One is what is the definition of the classroom teacher for pay purposes? When you think classroom teacher, that seems pretty simple. Um, but we have instructional um specialists that are on campuses that are paid on the teacher pay scale as a teacher according to PES, which we'll get into that later. And so, are are they included or are they not included? That's just one example. Um, also the $2,500 and $5,000 pay increases, is that a stipen or is that part of the pay scale? just when it becomes
016part of the pay scale, it affects the rest of the pay scale, especially the zero to two teachers, your teachers who the way that the bill was written, it didn't include them to this degree. Um, and then will there be two different pay scales depending upon the definition of classroom teacher? We're leaning towards one right now. Um, but that's still one of the unknowns. And as far as how we have to report, um, I mentioned this just a little bit ago, like an instructional specialist. I mean, they're defined a little bit differently in beams. And so, this is all going to most likely be based on how people are coded on in PES. And so, we really need to take a close look at that and make sure everybody is we know our teachers are
017coded correctly. It's just some of the other positions. Um, and then if a staff member is on the administrative pay scale and they actually teach classes, does that fall into the classroom teacher definition? And these are questions not just for us. This is these are questions that everybody does. And talking to our Denton County group, there's these are kind of the standing questions everybody's waiting on. And then as far as the compensation plan, the way that um House Bill 2 was written, House Bill Two will cover what you see up here, classroom teachers with three to four years of experience, the $2,500, which is about 4%. Five plus years about 8% which is the $5,000. And then non-administrative staff, everybody but administrators, that's where the $45 per adjusted ADA. Um, that money goes towards that.
018Are are these numbers the 25 and the five? Is this that's defined each year in the bianium and no guarantees after that? I mean, where's it? Depends on how they define exactly if it's going to be base or if it's going to be stipen. Right. Okay. And then what's not currently covered are teachers with zero to two years of experience and then all all the others that weren't in that that first category administrative staff. And so what I'll mention here is that what's not covered by House Bill Two, what we are looking at in our compensation plan is an increase of 3.5% for teachers with 0 to2 years of experience, which equates to um about $2,100 and then all others would be at 3.5% as well. Does that make sense so far? Is there an
019ETA on when this will be defined? Because is the calendar year August one through we've been given in the next days, weeks and couple of months. That's what we've been told. But August 1st is like day one in the calendar, right? Or September 1st. Sep well September I mean our budget will be approved at some some districts are July one. So they're adopting budgets right now with and having to put some language which we will do the same. We will put some language in the compensation plan if the board chooses to approve it at the June 16th meeting that's all dependent upon definitions and and all of that of House Bill 2. So that's what districts are doing at this point that are going ahead and adopting and the amount will be an approximate amount
020I think. And then this is just a breakdown of kind of the way that our staff the numbers that fall into each of those categories. So you'll see in the first column the number of teachers who have three to four years of experience um more than five years and then the other non-administrative roles and those are the black and white I mean that's that's what House Bill 2 covers on the left and then in red on the right are those that are um not covered under House Bill Two And these are on this past year's, you know, some of the so some of those 37 will roll into the next one and some of the 18 will roll in, you know, just because they're rolling up. But that's what we just were able to pull
021from this past year. And again, our compensation plan, of course, that we're going to bring to you is going to going to include what we talked about here. It's not going to include just what House Bill 2 covers. is going to be what well it will be what house bill two covers the additional money that we get from house bill two but it's not as defined it's only defined for those those users so you're going to give us what you what you think here is what the state's going to help cover plus what the district would cover on the stuff on the right for you right hand side of the page we're going to give you the whole package the whole thing okay so that brings us to what our tenative budget outlook is at
022this point and again I want to remind you it's tentative. I don't have a tool to run this u myself so we're relying on um other resources at this point in time. Um so we do have of course what our revenue expenditures were prior to the bill estimated at um then we've got an estimate um and the one that we chose for this uh was Mo Casey's revenue estimate of what uh the change from House Bill 2 is to get us the total revenue. Uh we've got our base budget that we've been working on and discussing. Um we had some changes from the department and campus budgets. Uh we had some staffing plan that was approved already. And then we've got an updated comp plan. So we think it will take us two and a
023half million to cover everything that was outlined tonight. That's all of the um everything defined by House Bill 2 and everything that'll be presented that's not defined by House Bill 2. Um, and then that you see there, it's a nice blue number, not red, would leave us a surplus, a little over 1.6 million. So, it's a much different outlook today than it was a year ago. Much different outlook than it was a few months ago. Um, so that's where I come to say that was House Bill 2 everything we wanted? No. But is it helping us? It absolutely is. Is it providing funds for teacher raises? Yes, it is. So, there's quite a bit of good out of that $8 half billion dollar bill that we can pull into Argal ISD that's going to help
024us quite a bit and it's going to help all of our staff members. Um, but we we're going to point out these numbers are going to change as we get more interpretation as we find out more. We're going to fine-tune these numbers. Uh, you know, we can run our own tool. There's also other bills out there that have affect finances. There is um a homestead bill. There's a bill another homestead bill for the over 65. Um, so some of that it should be a wash, right? The state should give us any money that we lose in there. Um, but we don't have those tools yet. And as I've mentioned in the um briefly when we've talked about the values and how they progress through the state and go through the property value, remember we talked
025about the fact that our our numbers that were sent in from DAD this past year were wrong and that number we won't get a new number until August for this past year. The estimate that we have changes that over a million dollars in revenue for it for this year that we've already finished. So any of those homestead exemptions require more data from the appraisal district to go in and that creates another way that we have to really watch and see is that data accurate. You know, are we getting that funding that we're losing from the the tax side? And so that's going to be a continuing battle that we've got to fight and make sure that RISD is receiving the funds that it should. Um and it could be throughout the year as you figure
026that out or at year end when you figure that out. So, so whatever whatever this blue number ends up being after all this shakes out, does that go to fund balance institution? It would. Yes, it would. And this is we do know we have some other things. I know Dr. Daniel has identified a few more positions and working with the principles based on numbers that are already enrolled that will be needed for next year. And so that will be coming to you. Um so we know some of that will change, but it's not going to change by 1.6 million. um unless there's something major in that bill that not any of us have found yet. So, um again, it's a much different outlook. So, it's something that we can be happy about and we can
027look here and say that, you know, we're providing a a we're doing this, we're putting uh teachers back in the classroom, putting the support staff back in, and it's enabling us to be able to bring a good comp plan to the district. So, um you we'd be happy to take any questions on this part of it at this point. your um revenue estimate is that based on your percentage with the um the people that are protesting you it's it's the lowest number you've got basically. Yes. I've dropped out based on what we feel like it'll drop down to by July. Okay. So we started out property values were up over 20% when they first gave us our values in April 30th I believe. and we look at what historically that comes down. And so we're
028using I think just over 13% in our estimates. Okay. I got one comment. Yes, sir. Welcome. Hi. I like this this 1.6 million surplus. I I think we're building back up the fund balance. It's important. I'm going to reiterate I think things I've said in the past which are I don't know that we've quite quite gotten to the point where we've replaced all the cuts that we made in terms of support staff. And I I don't think that we're going to achieve the class size ratios particularly at the elementary school levels that um I would just like to see because we don't have space. And that's going to be the case for the next two years. And therefore, I would see this 1.6 six million or some portion of that being well invested in those
029elementary school hallways, replacing those support positions and supporting those classrooms that may have larger class sizes than we desire for those next two years. That would be just one good source of that revenue that I think would be. So, is it your goal to get back where we were um before we had to make all those cuts? Um, not necessarily, but it it I do think that we were having to we had to increase class sizes a little bit last year and then we're probably going to have to hold that for the next two years because we just don't have the space. And I think one way you get if you can't pay teachers um what they may deserve, one way you can um overcome that is support them in a way that they're not
030supported in other districts. Couldn't agree more. But the problem the only problem I foresee with that is that when you do have the space you either I guess you move that support staff into permanent teaching position because that's your recruiting space. I you know those are only reason I asked the original question was because I think it was a good we didn't want to go through the drill you guys had to go through on cutting finding places to save money for the reasons we had to do it. But it is it is a good drill to go through to see where you're fat. so to speak, right? So, that's the only reason I say that is I don't know that going back to that number is somewhere close to that number is probably accurate, but
031just not I don't want to go back to that just cuz that's where we were and we we added back pretty close to everything except we did one specialist at each campus versus two right now. Mhm. So, and we've got more kids. Mhm. And we have the lower classes, right? In our low in the lower pl we're, you know, we're looking right now at about 19 and 20, but then that by the time we get to the summer, we've already found two. We're going to have to go and add that we didn't know we think we were in March based on what's already enrolled in Q. So, we'll keep monitoring that all summer and you utilizing every classroom we have. We I think we've officially filled up every classroom at JRE and and at Hilltop.
032We're making one structural change at at South to free up classrooms. Oh, sorry. Jerry Jerry and yes. All right. Did you have any questions about the amounts or had you looked you go back one more one more? That one? No, that one. That one. Did you Did you have any questions on kind of the amounts were Okay. If there's anything that you wanted to ask there. Okay. Well, so teachers years one through three or did one through two are not going to get raises which you know I mean I can understand first year teachers maybe but they will we have them in here we have them in here right they just weren't called out by so if you go will you go to that next chart. So what we did is we broke them down
033into what House Bill two what we interpret being covered and what we interpret not being covered. But it's all still included in the compensation package. It's just not coming from the earmarked aotment for teachers. Okay. Yeah. All right. So kind of our next steps again it's a much easier conversation right now than than what we have been going through. Um, we're going to continue to uh look at the school finance language um and really any bill that affects school districts, whether it's finance or not, interpret the interpretation of it and the steps to implement it for Ardist. Um, on the 16th at your regular board meeting, uh, you'll be asked to consider the staff compensation plan. Um, we'll also have some preliminary legislative impacts on some of the bills. We'll also update that in July
034because again, that's going to be a continued process as we find out more information. And then in August, we plan on adopting our budget and tax rate um at the August meeting. Um if something happens with interpretation of it and and we're still working on the tax rate, then that can go to the September meeting, but our intent would be August for both and to have that done. Okay, any questions? No, looks great. Hopefully position to be sitting in, right? Yeah. Much better. Yeah. I mean, we're still seeing a lot of districts that are still in deficits, you know, even with all of this. So, um, and y'all may have said this before I got here, but I I do think I hope y'all said this before I got here that, you know, Dr. Carpenter
035and Liz, y'all deserve a lot of credit for, you know, I mean, staying really active in terms of getting legislation passed and and communicating with the state representatives. I think y'all were in direct dialogue with them like in real time as these bills were uh coming together and and you've you've done a great job of, you know, having those relationships that they they contact you and and get your feedback and Liz, you're always available and it's hard to interpret those things in real time and and so I I just, you know, even though the bill is not exactly how we would like it and we would like more liberty than the bill gives us, I I just want to commend y'all all for the effort you put into it, the the community, how you activated
036the community and the staff and and mobilized them and utilized them. I think that, you know, we're seeing the benefits of that. So, I'm sure they said that before I got here. Well, waiting for us. You just didn't know me. Yeah, we and you know, everyone knows we've engaged some of our staff this spring or in winter took them down there and Mattie Fairchild and Steven Orlowski and uh Katie Hayden and even yesterday afternoon I was in a a Zoom with them with Raise Your Hand Texas and they're already focused on we have 18 months until the next one starts and so they're already thinking what they're going to do from from galvanizing, you know, and taking that momentum and moving forward. and they've got some ideas that they're going to engage continue to engage
037more staff and families and our legislators. Um, and you're right, they did they would call 10:00 at night, you know, just got off the floor. This is what we know. How does this impact? So, we appreciate that relationship with them and and they trust us enough to call and ask us that we're going to give them real information. So, and and I I can't reiterate. I mean, we have real skeptics of public ed in our representatives. I mean they're not I mean they are skeptical of public education and whether those are good investments sometimes but I think you've done a good job of establishing credibility with them and confidence with them that you know we are a good school district. We are a conservative responsible school district and they want your feedback on it. So
038um you know that's a a valuable resource that that we have. And I was also going to say publicly that I know you, Liz, Chris, the three people sitting over there for sure. Um I know you all had a hand with your team and Dr. Jordan and everybody in the the effort that you made to keep the both the public and the staff continually informed. You know, come help us. This is what we know. This is what we need. This is what we're thinking. here that here are the places for you to connect and communicate and I think it was really really important. And then the email that you put out to the staff and I guess the public as well recently that kind of highlighted some things. I think it's great because many times
039sometimes a staff member, a teacher, an aid or somebody bus driver, whoever are like the last people to just really know and understand. Um and it allows them a place to be able to ask questions and you know be informed. So, you know, I appreciate that you guys as a team that you all did that and people think it doesn't matter, right? But House Bill Two was about a $9.1 billion bill. They sent it to the Senate. The Senate really butchered it and they were about to pass that out of committee. You activated the community. I don't know if their school district did more, but a lot of school districts did. You know, we were I know Sam and Craig and everybody, all y'all were communicating and another half half a billion dollars got put
040back in that bill that the Senate I mean, so it did matter. You know, they cut it about a billion dollars out of it and they put a half a billion back in it and it mattered. We were told we had about 900 emails from this community within about a 72-hour time period. Wow. To the senator's office. So, It is interesting to to think when you're making these calls to to aids and and leaving messages at offices and talking directly to senators and representatives like does this really matter? Like are they really going to do anything? So getting that validation just speaks should be shared with the community like exactly what Mr. Wester just said like you know your efforts help contribute to half a billion dollars getting added back to we have welcome in
041time. Can you put her slides up? Are you ready for yours now? You're late. Are you in the train? We skipped here five minutes ago. We we we skipped the six slides that we had. Yeah, we'll go back to that. Anyone else have anything? All right, we'll adjourn this workshop at 4:41 p.m.