2026-05-21 Arlington ISD Special Meeting Workshop

001At this time, I would like to convene the Arlington Independent School District Board of Trustees workshop meeting on May 21st, 2026 at 5:33 p.m. Given that at this Given that this is a workshop for our trustees and there are no items on the agenda for action, we will not have public comments this evening. Um before we begin, I wanted to go ahead and point out we do have a few a couple of trustees missing. Um tonight Trustee McMorrow is attending her son's sixth grade graduation and hopes to join us at some point this evening. And then Trustee Choppa is also at end-of-year activities um for his uh student and so he will also be joining us. Um for tonight's agenda, the first workshop item this evening is our >> [clears throat] >> Gus Reyes Tuway,

002Population and Survey Analyst Demographer report. Trustees, >> [clears throat] >> thank you for being here two nights in a row. I appreciate uh good meeting last night and then tonight a really great meeting with some guests here. Uh in the first portion of the meeting, we'll be going over our demographic study with uh PASA. Uh Chris Pool and Caroline Crouch are here tonight to walk us through their study of Arlington ISD. We are doing it in here to make sure that we have um a really good recording. We know this is super important information for not only you all, but for our community moving forward. And we wanted to make sure we got a good recording and also had the ability to have clear microphone access for everyone. When we use the other room, sometimes

003we don't. Um we are going to be in here for this, but we encourage you all to treat this as a workshop. We want this to be as much dialogue as possible. This is a great time to hear these experts and what they found for Arlington ISD on our uh demographic study and to ask them as many questions as you can. That doesn't mean that they won't come back. I know that they'll come back if we need them to come back and answer more questions in the future, but please um make sure that we uh ask questions along the way. We will um I think Frank and them will help us out in a minute. We're going to make sure that everybody's microphone is on so that um you have just um access to interject

004and ask questions along the way. And with that, I'll turn it over to Chris and Caroline. Thank you all for being here tonight. >> Thank you very much. Got to be sure that mine's on. Sounds like it. So uh good evening uh board members and Dr. Smith. We appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight. Uh we hope to walk through a little bit about that 400-page binder. I think everybody's got a copy of the binder there in front of you. I want you to read it all tonight before you go to bed. Um we have actually shrunk the size of our binders and printed them both front and back and everything and we were so proud about how it seemed much more user-friendly until we got to Arlington and then it weighs 12 lb or

005something. So Anyway, so we're going to walk through the presentation tonight. I do have Caroline Couch here. She is the demographer that worked on um some of the housing projections for the study. And so we are going to try to take some time with it because there's a lot of detail to it. We could really get into a lot of detail. It's always a difficulty of, you know, uh brevity and detail when you're walking through. So I hope that you all like what we've picked out for tonight and uh let's go ahead and get started. So the first slide here just shows the tiniest bit and we wanted to show everybody its faces to you guys. Uh you see the two of us, but there are about a dozen of us and pretty well everybody

006touches the project along the way. And so the staff members of the admin have gotten emails from probably eight or 10 of the people here, but there are additional faces behind that 400 pages. It's It's not just the two of us here. And then the study itself our process takes normally about 4 months. It's a very lengthy process. Starts with that person number one and ends up with kind of person number 12 there at the end. Uh we start with collecting state and district data. Well, a lot of background data and we collect that even when we come back to a district that we have worked for before. Um there's data out there that we can get our hands on that gives us an understanding of what's going on here down in the weeds for

007Arlington ISD. But then another really, really important thing that we do is we build a very robust GIS map. And I have heavy uh copies of them here that are about 3 ft by 3 ft. We've got about a dozen copies of them. Um it starts with parcel data and uh you know, flood plain data and um land use data, all of the schools and we we draw on a lot of detail and that's very important to us so that everybody is on the same page and understands what we're talking about. And so we do have copies of that. There are copies on smaller uh pages there in chapter three of of the report. They're actually in the appendix. Um another thing very important that we do is geocode your student population. I believe we

008geocoded three data sets for you guys. It's important not only to understand where your kids are now but also where they were a couple of years ago. Uh that way we can do things like look at a particular subdivision and look how many K to fourth graders uh became first through fifth graders the next year. So we can understand what's going on inside those existing subdivisions. You guys at this point are very different than you were earlier in your life cycle as a school district. You're very different than some of the the um uh districts that are in sort of the growth ring that we'll talk about here in just a second in that most of the kiddos you have are in older subdivisions, in existing subdivisions and there are different things that go on

009there. Another thing that we do with those geocoded students is we determine a ratio of students per home for the areas where you do have additional places to build out. We need to know how many kiddos we think are going to be in there and it's not just kids, it's students in Arlington ISD. And so we literally count homes and count students and create a ratio there and then we can use those ratios elsewhere. The middle one here is analyzing alternative educational opportunities. So we we call them AEOs. We used to call them charter schools and but there's so much else that goes into that now we call them AEOs. And um so, you will you will hear us talk about that quite a bit. I highly encourage you guys to look in appendix two.

010There is about a 40 or 50-page uh cluster of paperwork where we have downloaded data, collected data, there's state data, there's region data, there are and then there's tons and tons of data. We even altered some of it after we talked to the administration about a week or so ago uh to try to make it a little more specific to Arlington ISD. So, I really encourage you guys to take a look at that because it is very very important and I think that the data there you will find very very interesting. Of course, we do have to look at housing and economic trends. There is still a little bit of infill going on here. Then we did we generate district-wide enrollment projections and then we look at what that means for you guys moving forward

011and comparing it to the capacities of your schools. So, you guys have uh passed the high-growth phase of of enrollment growth for the district. You guys are sort of where we would talk about stabilization and some decline. And so, we'll look here in just a minute uh at how that is occurring in in the region, but this is sort of a normal growth cycle, a demographic life cycle for school districts as housing is built, new housing is built, uh lots of kiddos come in the door, and then at some point people end up staying. I have two kids, we're still in the same house, and so my kids are not in the school district anymore, they're in college, and that's that's sort of what happens. So, we'll start a little bit here first with um

012some demographic trends and just a little bit of discussion about what all is going on in the region and in the state. And so, this these maps here look at the enrollment from 2019 to 2025. Normally, we would do a a 5-year enrollment but change but that would put us at 2020 with COVID and then the data looks like a mess. And so, we did 2019 to 2025 for your region. And you might imagine region 10 flipped over to its side there for for Dallas, it's sort of a mirror image. And if we had the two together, what we would see is blue in the middle and a red on the outside. And what that is means is blue for the decline that is going on in the Dallas and the Fort Worth and the

013Arlington and all of your neighbors. And all of that growth is being pushed out to this red sort of growth ring. And so on the left-hand side we've got numeric enrollment change, on the right-hand side we've got percent enrollment change. The numeric, of course, you're probably much more familiar with. You can see Northwest ISD, for example, um is the in the dark maroon there, sort of north and west of you guys, with the the largest gain over that 6-year time frame at 7,700 kids. Uh on the right-hand side is the percent change, and it's so much easier for the smaller districts to get a higher percent change because it doesn't take as many students moving in. And so you can see that the red shifts a little bit to where you have the smaller districts,

014the Argyle's and Aubrey's and Garner's, that sort of thing. But in both situations, of course, Arlington ISD and its neighbors are uh losing students in in in there in the blue. For region 11 as a whole, for a 1-year enrollment change in this past year, the region lost 8,223 students. And that's a lot. I think that's a a big number uh to hear and to understand. 34 school districts gained students and gained a total of 3,300 kids. And 41 of the the districts in the region lost a total of 11,547 kids. And so that's that's really the story. We've given now two talks at TASA Tasby and TASA mid winter about where all the kids have gone. And so that's a a big story that everybody is talking about in this year. When we drill

015down and look at the data a little bit for Arlington ISD in particular, you can see the left-hand side is the enrollment itself as it's been sort of marching downward. Uh the district um in 2015 was showing about 63,000 students and of course that's about 12,000 students off uh for where we are now. 10-year change about 12,000, 5-year change 5,700. So really it's been fairly evenly split if we're looking at, you know, how it sort of marched downward. On the right hand side by year, you can see the change and of course that giant bar in the middle is COVID. That the state lost 2.1% of the student population uh that year. There were only a handful of districts in the state that continued to actually gain any kids that year. We expected them to

016largely come back and a whole lot of them did not. And so really and truly what we have wanted to to needed to do now is we almost need to look at data that's only sort of post-COVID because there have been so many changes that happened in uh 2020 there. So after you guys saw that rebound though, the the rebound that you saw, it showed itself in less loss in '21 and in '22. Um also it also in '22 they did not come back the next year. They came back also some that that second year. So for the last 3 years there, you can see that for '23 and for '24 the decline here was about 1,400 students in both of those years. But for this year it was about 2,200 kids and so there

017was about a seven or 800 student swing. And so this next couple of slides um I think is is largely going to explain some of that. So the state as a whole, we've got state data on the left hand side, we've got uh Arlington ISD on the right hand side. And something interesting happened with the um students by ethnicity for this past year in particular. The state as a whole declined 76,613 kids this year. And that was certainly the largest decline that we could find anywhere. Um ISDs themselves, the traditional ISDs, declined about 88,000 students while your charter schools in the district in in the state uh gained 11,100. Really almost 11,200. And so the state overall lost that 76,000 kids and the Hispanic student population declined by 61,700 students. So almost all of that

018decline can be explained by this um decline in Hispanic student population that occurred here in in this one-year time frame. And so you guys saw very similar things here. These are the state and and uh Arlington ISD uh totals over time. You can see how things have either trended up or or trended down, but I think that perhaps the more interesting slide is here where you can see the sort of up and down by bar graph and by group. The state of Texas at the top, Arlington ISD on the bottom, and you can see on the left-hand side for Arlington, there has been a continued sort of a gain or I'm sorry, a continued loss for Asian student population. On the far right-hand side, a continued loss for the white student population. Um for the

019black or African-American student population, the last 3 years have have shown some decline, but for that Hispanic student population, really besides COVID, this was the first year that we saw a big big change there and it was about 700 students, which is almost that differential between your 1,400 that you were down and the 2,200 that you're down this year. Most of that seemed to be in the Hispanic student population. So that is um you know, certainly we we would assume it would have to do with immigration changes and everything that was going on uh this year in the country. Another thing that's very important for us to all understand and you've probably seen news articles and heard all about this is um the births and the kindergarten enrollment. And you've I'm sure you've heard and

020read articles about declining birth rates. And so here we've got we we can't knock on doors and say, "How many kindergarteners, how many 2-year-olds have you got inside?" We know how many kindergarteners, how many 2 and 3-year-olds are inside your house, of course, but what we can do is we can get at the birth rate, the number of births by zip code of the birth mother from the state. And the zip codes, if you're familiar with them, don't quite exactly line up with the state, but we we massage that data using some population points to try to get a good fit. We take the births and we move them forward 5 years and line them up with your kindergarten enrollment so we can say, how is it trending and then what might it do over

021the next couple of three or four years. And so that's what you've got at the top here. Where we are right now is where that dash line is and so you can see that the birth rate we would is the data there is shown for about three or four years and you can see just a general downward trend in both the kindergarten enrollment and the birth rate. They have trended closely together and so we would expect that to be a pretty good indicator moving forward. Now your kindergarten enrollment is lower than your birth rate and that happens for tons of districts that are largely built out that are in those later phases of that sort of demographic life cycle. In a district that is growing very rapidly with new housing, we will see the reverse.

022Your kindergarten enrollment will be on top because of new homes and you'll have somebody that moves in with a three-year-old that wasn't born in that zip code. But over time they slowly get together and then that kindergarten enrollment drops, especially now, drops below the birth rate because there's so many other AEOs where everybody or or other where parents are choosing to send their kids. So you can see the data that's broken down by the region. There are little oddities that you'll see and if they you ever see anything that looks weird, it's normally between 2020 and COVID. But you got region 11 and then of course the state of Texas with general downward trends over time. So we'll hit a little bit on past and current students. I mentioned that we had geocoded about three

023of your data sets and so these are two laid on top of each other, 23-24 and 25-26. And so there's nothing as remarkable here in some areas where you know, there's an area that's growing very very rapidly, a giant master plan community. You can see all of these red dots that show up all of the sudden in addresses that were not there two years ago. For you guys, it's some a little bit sporadic numbers there, but sometimes people don't stop and think about all of the density and all of the students when they show up like little dots there on your map, but that's what your kiddos look like. And then this slide is very colorful, and I always find it very normally find it very interesting for district and and for you guys I

024I do think it is very interesting. What we've done here is for each year we have color coded the size of the cohort from K through 8 and from 10 through 12. We leave out 9th grade cuz there's all sorts of oddities in 9th grade. And we've color coded them by size such that your smallest ones are in the dark navy and your largest ones are in that dark maroon. Other people say red, but I'm from College Station, so it's my Aggie maroon. And so what that shows for like 25-26 is that your two smallest cohorts are kindergarten first grade, and your largest is presently 10th grade with 11th grade and 12th grade right behind it. And so what you can see as you work backwards to 2016 is that you've got a cluster of

025kiddos in the high school level that have been those largest cohorts all the way back. And so they are working their way through the system, and so over the next several years they will exit. And so if absolutely nothing else happened except you had a small kindergarten class come in and those large high school classes leave, you would experience loss just from that if nothing else occurred. And so what you'll see later on in the projections is that the high school decline is much more significant than one that we're projecting is much more significant than say the elementary decline because you've got this cohort of kids. You've got this really heavy dense cluster of students that are in high school grades right now. Then the other thing that is important to look at here that

026I always start to check is that differential between 12th grade and kindergarten. And so if you look at say the fall of 20 if you look at 2018-2019, go all the way down to the bottom, your smallest class was your 12th grade class at 3,800 kids, almost 3,900. The next year in 2019, you had 3,956 kindergarteners come in. So, by that graduating and that coming in, just by aging those kids forward by when you actually picked up some kids, right? But in in in several years, you were either picking up or you were pretty even. But if you look here more recently, say 23-24, you had 3,600 12th graders leave, and you had fewer than 3,400 kindergarteners come in. So, you had that differential of a couple hundred students. The same sort of thing between

02724 and 25, by doing absolutely nothing else than just letting your kids graduate and and age and matriculate through the system, you lost about 500 students. Just just with that alone. And so, that also is factoring in to all of the numbers that you guys are seeing. The kindergarten classes are so small. And right now, you are have a particularly heavy bunch of high school kids. And so, that that is affecting all of your overall enrollment numbers. So, I mentioned the ratios of students per home that we do that we do [clears throat] generate. Now, it will be an appendix one, I guess it is, where we actually detail every single subdivision and every single apartment complex and tell you what the ratios of students per home are for all of those. But district-wide, it's

028for single-family homes, it's a 0.39, and for the multi-family homes, it's a 0.27. Now, I I've worked like for Frisco ISD since 1999, you know, that sort of a thing. And so, for some of our traditional suburban in the growth ring sort of areas, those ratios for single-family might be in the 0.6s, something like that. And at the same time, a lot of times that multi-family may be at what a 0.17 or 0.19, because new brand new multi-family units have a really low ratio because they're pricey. They've got three swimming pools, and they've got two gyms, and they've got granite and on the countertops, and you know, whatever. And so, that's not where parents with kids can afford to live. And so these are the ratios that are here in the district right now and

029so we use specific ratios. We don't just use the 0.39 and the 0.27. We use specific ones when we're going forward and projecting for the students that will be in any of the new homes. At the top part there on the right hand side, we've broken it down to existing subdivisions and developing subdivisions. And you got so many of the existing subdivisions that that number is also a 0.39. But for your developing subdivisions anything that's building new which is a ton of town homes and things like that for example that Carolina will talk about later that ratio is a 0.26. And so it's not that you're getting a 0.6 or a 0.7 in most of these new homes. It's a lower ratio actually in these developing subdivisions that we're seeing come in. And then on

030the left hand side, we've also analyzed it by age and really you have to get to the homes that are sort of in the 1970s era before you see that ratio really hop up a little bit and not be that 0.39. And so you can see that with some age there those ratios do go ahead and go up. We also broke them down just by median value and a lot of times we actually do see sort of an inverse bell. We considered taking it down to one more set of one more bar of million dollar and plus homes. A lot of times actually the number the ratio of students per home in the most expensive homes actually will go up a little bit because they're not as concerned about paying for college for four kids.

031You know, for those larger homes and so they can have more more kiddos there and so you get more kids in the really high-end homes and then also in the the cheapest value homes there. So I keep talking about teasing alternative educational opportunities and it's such an important part. I remember the very first time I heard of a charter school. I thought well this will be kind of annoying to deal with and and now we have about a person and a half that do nothing other than charter schools and private schools and all of these alternative educational opportunities. So, we have mapped, you can see Arlington ISD there in the middle, and we have mapped the charter schools and the private schools that we know of that have Arlington ISD students in them. The data

032that we can get for the charter schools is from TEA and it's pretty good. Now, they mask numbers here, you know, how many ninth grade graders you have, maybe mask and how many second graders, but by and large the data we think coming from TEA is pretty good. We have to do a lot to it, but we think we have a good process there to try to understand where your students are going into which charter schools. The private schools it's harder to get at, but we do have some some data here from Data Insights IQ that's going to be on on the next slide. I know you guys are working with them. Um the map here is very busy. You know, you guys I know you guys know that you are are very heavily affected

033by charter schools and private schools here. The good news is that we do not know of any additional charter schools that are coming in and we are constantly monitoring all of the news reports, but also definitely the amendments that are released by TEA all of the time. The difficulty there is a lot of times they're very broad. You know, we're going to allow a charter school at somewhere in the northwestern portion of the, you know, and proximity is very important for this because normally there's no transportation provided. So, we do know of three, really four schools that are coming in. One actually does sit in the district, but it's like a it's a small one that is normally tied with like a treatment center, a treatment group, and so we're talking little tiny numbers of

034kids. The other three that we know of are outside, well outside the the confines of the district itself, and so we wouldn't expect more than one or two students for any of those to go there. So, right now IAL Texas where is seeming to take about 1,800 students from Arlington ISD, Uplift Education about 1,400 students, and Um, you know, these are our big numbers that we'll be talking about here. Uh, private school, we are estimating about 3,100 students to attend private schools, and that also is a BAP number that that Dayton IQ came up with. And so, I I know you guys have are working with them, and and that is doing some geofencing of cell phones and trying to track down where those kids are are going and where they're coming from. And so,

035the data that we have here that we have mapped is their private school information. And so, we can see on the left-hand side that where they're showing the private schools, a lot of these are ones and twos. And so, it's probably there's a private school near where mom or dad work, and they take the child, and even though it may be 35 minutes away or something like that, that's um, they take them with them. Uh, in the middle, we have taken that Dayton's data and um, uh, gotten it down to the planning unit level. Planning unit level, Carolina mentioned this in a minute, um, is the planning units are little puzzle pieces. They're just sort of how we organize all of our data. And so, you can see in the darker maroon there, um, where

036you have the heaviest concentration, we think, of students that are leaving to go to private schools. And then on the right-hand side there, we can see where the private schools are. And uh, they're the uh, circles themselves are color-coded or sized based on how many students we think are leaving from Arlington ISD to those private schools. And so, you can see that if you laid the map in the middle and the map on the right-hand side on top of each other, that for the most part those kids are are going to private schools that are pretty close by to where they live. We're always asked about homeschooling. And unfortunately enough, the state doesn't maintain much data on that. And so, the way homeschoolers show up to us is in a lower ratio of students per

037home. So, if you um, had a home that would have normally had two kids in it, but now all of a sudden they're homeschooling, now that home counts as zero students when we're trying to develop that ratio of students per home. And so, I have seen throughout all of the work I have done this fall in particular for every I guess it's not I guess we're in May the entire years worth of of work that I have done for clients. All of the ratios of students per home have gone down. Because we have a lot of clients we do this for every single year and we measure those ratios every year and they have on average they have gone down .02 students per single family home this one year in one year's time. And so

038that's how the homeschoolers show up charter schools show up that same way private schools virtual schools all of those things but homeschooling we don't have a particular number for it's just sort of mixed in there in those lower ratios. But what we can get at is the the for sure is the data from TEA. And so what we got here is what TEA is showing us as out from Arlington ISD into charters that's in the navy and so you can see that over time. To other ISDs in the maroon and then the green is the virtuals and the percent increase in virtuals of course has really really come on. And the difficulty there for a school district is virtual program in Georgia can you know enroll one of your kids whereas we're talking proximity for

039private schools and for charter schools of virtual schools all bets are off. And so that that is really coming online and and we're really interested to watch the growth in that occur. That sort of sneaky line at the bottom that is the students that are transferring in to Arlington ISD from elsewhere and so that is sort of offset by that maroon where of where you're losing students to other ISDs. The district does net students in. In that little swap there and so when we get to sort of a summary then what we're looking at is resident students charter virtual private other ISDs and then attending and residing in the district. We think that that you're sort of capturing that you're actually enrolling about 78.4% of the students that reside in Arlington ISD. And so that

040number varies at always ask so what is that what does everybody else got? And it varies wildly depending on what sort of district and where they're situated that I'm that I'm working for analyzing. And so we did Dallas ISD in 21-22 and the number for them was about 71%. I highly suspect it's gone down a little bit since then because everybody's number has gone down a little bit since then. When we're working out in a rural area where there aren't very many charters or there aren't many privates, then of course then they're the school district is gaining capturing maybe 95% or so of student population. So with that I'm going to let Carolyn talk about economy and housing and then we'll talk about projections. All right. Thank you Chris. Thank you board members. As we

041jump into the housing section here, we like to just kind of take a look at the broader market conditions that shape the residential development across your region. So according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center, the Arlington housing market has continued to cool a little bit over the past year. Year-over-year home sales declined about 15.6% and median home prices softened slightly to around 322,000 down from about 330,000 the previous year. At the same time your mortgage rates have remained elevated despite some Federal Reserve actions continuing to impact affordability and slowing buyer activity a little bit. Actually as of the Fed's April 2026 meeting benchmark rates were held steady at the 3.5 to 3.75 range and this is marking their third consecutive pause. So we're continuing to keep an eye on that as the year goes

042on. Now inventory remains relatively constrained at about 2.8 months which suggests that the market is slowing but it's not over supplied. Now these conditions point to a more measured housing environment moving forward though additional rate reductions in the future could help re-accelerate buyer demand and some residential development activity. Now the planning units, as Chris mentioned, we have this framework that we do for every district that we work for. We use small geographic areas and organize and analyze localized growth patterns across your district. Now, each unit may contain one or more housing developments or undeveloped land parcels. These boundaries are created using a combination of major roadways, attendant zones, parcel ownership patterns, and other physical features in your district, and it allows us to more accurately track where residential growth is occurring and how it may

043impact different parts of the district over time. So, single-family development is expected to play a relatively limited role in AISD's future housing outlook, which is consistent with an urban district that is nearing full build-out and with very little undeveloped land remaining. Overall, only about 22% of all the projected new housing occupancies over the new next decade are expected to come from single-family developments. So, rather than large master-planned communities, most of the future growth in the district is anticipated to occur through smaller infill projects that are scattered throughout the district. A handful of developments, including the Jefferson Kirby Buck Townhomes, the Rolling Hills development, Greenbrier Preserve, and the River Central project up in the north, these represent the most impactful remaining single-family projects, though even these are pretty modest in scale compared to some of the

044more fast-growth suburban districts in that maroon growth ring that Chris mentioned. Now, outside of these sites, most of the active and planned projects are expected to contribute less than 50 units, reinforcing that Arlington's future housing growth will be driven by this smaller incremental redevelopment and infill development opportunities, rather than major subdivisions. Now, this slide just kind of highlights those largest remaining single-family projects, like I just mentioned. Most of the highlighted projects are scattered along Arlington's outer edges and uh redevelopment corridors. You've got the River Central Townhomes and the Jefferson Kirby Brook Townhomes located on the eastern and northern sides of the district, Rolling Hills in North Arlington, and California Meadows in Green Oak Preserve located further west. So, these heat maps just reinforce the same pattern that I just mentioned that Arlington single-family growth remains

045modest, scattered, and tied primarily to that infill and redevelopment uh activity. So, in the near term in the map on the left-hand side, this is the first 5 years of the projection period, most of the activity is concentrated in a handful of projects led primarily by those Jefferson Kirby Brook Townhomes, the Rolling Hills redevelopment in North Arlington, um and then over some time as we move into the uh right-hand side map where you show the full 10 years, some of the planned projects shift into these later years of the forecast due to some timing uncertainties and infrastructure constraints. Uh particularly around River Central where flood plain considerations may affect uh some development pacing um and phasing. Uh but the single-family outlook remains characterized by this site-specific projects um just spread across your community, which is

046again typical for a mature uh urban district. So, while single-family growth in AISD is relatively limited, multi-family continues to be the primary driver of new housing activity in the district. Um as a largely built-out urban district, Arlington's growth is increasingly coming through denser, more vertical residential development rather than a traditional subdivision. Currently, um or at least at the time of the study, the district had one property leasing, four actively developing multi-family communities, and a substantial pipeline of planned and also potential projects concentrated along major corridors in some of these redevelopment areas. Uh projects like Innova Highlands, Arlington Villas, the Jefferson Southwest Parkway, and Preston multi-family projects are expected to contribute significant near-term occupancy growth. Uh multi-family housing is projected to account for nearly 75% of all new housing occupancies over the new next decade. Um

047really focusing in on how Arlington's transition towards apartments, townhomes, and mixed-use residential growth it will be within its existing urban footprint. Now, this slide is something a little bit new. We don't typically do this for all of our districts, but we thought this was going to be really important to highlight for Arlington ISD and specifically for this region. This slide highlights the potential long-term impact of Texas Senate Bill 840, which was passed just recently during the 89th Texas legislative session and became effective in September 2025. This legislation represents a significant shift in how redevelopment may occur in large Texas cities by expanding opportunities for by-right multi-family and mixed-use redevelopment uh on qualifying office, commercial, light industrial, and retail properties. So, a key component of the law is that qualifying projects may move forward without traditional

048rezoning hearings or city council approvals provided that they meet established development standards. In practical terms, this lowers the barriers for redevelopment and creates more opportunities for underutilized commercial corridors and aging employment areas to transition into residential or mixed-use environments over time. Now, for Arlington ISD, this is particularly important because the district is already largely built out. So, unlike those fast-growth suburban districts that can continue expanding outward with large new subdivisions, Arlington's housing growth is expected to be like I mentioned that redevelopment, that infill, and those more scattered projects. Uh so while the full impacts of SB 840 are still uncertain, especially since the law is still pretty new, and the multifamily market has experienced a little bit of cooling in this last year, uh the legislation still could become important long-term catalysts for housing activity

049within the district. So to better understand where this type of redevelopment is most likely to occur, we analyzed qualifying zoning patterns pulled from Arling the city of Arlington's zoning map as well as Grand Prairie's zoning maps. Um and kind of analyzed them over the entire district. So the north sector, primarily everything north of I-30, uh contains the highest concentration of eligible land with about 26% of this sector meeting qualifying zoning criteria. The central sector, everything between I-30 and I-20, um has a lot of redevelopment corridors along areas like Collins Street, Abrams Street, Division Street, and portions of the entertainment district, where about 14% of the sector could potentially be affected. Smaller but still notable opportunities also exist in the south sector, which is everything south of I-20, um and this will occur close to I-20

050and around Green Oaks Boulevard. Now overall, while SB 840 is unlikely to create any immediate large-scale changes overnight, it does introduce a new long-term redevelopment pathway that Arlington ISD will need to monitor closely as it could gradually reshape where future housing and ultimately future students are located throughout the district. So as we wrap up the housing section, this here is just going to summarize everything of the housing outlook. A lot of nice numbers and graphs for you. Uh the district is projected to add just over 9,000 new housing occupancies within uh the decade uh with multifamily development overwhelmingly driving this future growth. Um it's going to be about 75% of all new housing units reflecting Arlington's uh mature development pattern and increasing reliance on that redevelopment, that infill, and those higher density housing options. Single-family

051development is expected to make up only about 21% of future occupancies with growth occurring primarily through um some scattered infill projects rather than large subdivisions. We also expect annual housing occupancies to peak in the earlier years of the projection period around years 3 and 4 before gradually moderating over time as remaining uh development opportunities become a lot more limited. So, when we put all of this together, a few clear themes emerge from AIC's housing outlook. First, the district is largely in that stabilization phase with Arlington already approximately 94 to 97% built out. That means future growth will be much more limited and driven primarily through redevelopment and infill than those large subdivisions. Second, multi-family will continue to be the primary source of new residential growth, particularly near employment centers, retail corridors, and entertainment areas with

052single-family activity remaining limited to stuff more like townhomes, um condos, things like that, build-to-rent projects. Uh and finally, development patterns will continue to be shaped by land constraints, floodplains, and existing industrial uses. But at the same time, emerging opportunities like SB 840 could actually expand redevelopment potential and create new long-term housing opportunities within the district. And then with that, I'm going to hand it back to Chris to talk about your student numbers. Okay, thanks, Caroline. So, this last section here, of course, will uh concentrate on student projections because that's really at the end of the day why we are all here. So, the student projection factors, all of this stuff, all of these words and all of those 400 pages goes into the student projections factor in into the creation of student projections model. I've

053been doing this work since the late 90s and it used to be kids plus homes times ratios in these areas that we're building new homes and now we have what eight factors here that are on the page. It's become so much more complex here in the last handful of years. We'll start at the top here. Of course we we can't leave out the new housing construction. It's going to yield 100 to 250 students a year for you guys. But as we talked a little while ago, graduating your 12th graders and bringing in your kindergarteners can more than take care of that. Your birth rate we showed a little earlier continue we would expect it to continue to to decline certainly for the few years that we've got data for and likely after that given just

054a a lot of things that are occurring in the state. Kindergarten class size that's not always the same as a birth rate of course and so they have diverged and how much more might that kindergarten class size drop below your birth rate? If you look real carefully at the birth rate in the kindergarten classes there in the last couple years it's perhaps that they are diverging just a tiny bit more and so that's one thing that we have to take into consideration. The aging in the student population like I mentioned those 12th graders and those kindergarteners but then we also have to see how first graders become second graders. There's always a change there as as they matriculate on through. In and out migration you have like kids coming in and a lot of kids

055going out just sharing students back and forth to other ISDs. Those are programmatic changes. If somebody goes and makes a big change in an adjacent district that is attractive all of the sudden to people to residents in Arlington ISD or vice versa then this will impact the projections here and so that's just something that we can't know what what all all of the school districts are planning to do all around you guys in the next decade. Regeneration of established neighborhoods, we are constantly checking for that, but given the 6% interest rates and everybody had a 3% mortgage a little while back, I can't think of a client that I worked for in ages where those established neighborhoods, the ones that we call built out, no more building, have gained kids. And so when I mentioned

056we had three data sets, and so between the first one and the second one, you guys had lost in those neighborhoods 1,284 kids. Between the second one and the third one, meaning to to get to this year, that loss was 1,451. And so there there is no turning over of those established neighborhoods, and even when they do turn over, the ratios never kind of get back to where they were when they were new. The alternative educational opportunities, I've mentioned that quite a bit. You do have 250 fewer students out to charter schools this year than you did last year. And we think that that is probably just in general the lower birth rates, fewer kids are around in the area, dampening the enrollments there. Um but as a result, we are not assuming a giant

057increase continuing on in those charter schools, but of course, we also do have the the TEFA funds and the the vouchers to deal with here. And then economic drivers, of course, changes in interest rates, those can really impact um everything that we're talking about if something changes dramatically. So we we do develop a primary scenario of growth and then a low and a high. And um so what you've got is that primary enrollment forecast there that is um in the dash line, and then we've got the accelerated in the in the reduced there. What you'll notice is that the reduced, that delta between the primary and the reduced is larger than that delta between the um primary and the accelerated. And so that that what that means is that we see the possibility for additional

058downside more than we see the possibility for upside there. We do go ahead and project for 10 years, but of course, especially with all of the things that are going on right now. We're going to be concentrating on the first couple of years, but we know that if you're making a lot of big changes, then you need a lot of times you need 6 or 8 or 10 years worth of data there. The in order for that accelerated thing to occur, we would have to have things like a lower interest rates. The kindergarten and the birth rates would have to sort of flatten out. The additional that house bill or Senate bill that Carolyn talked about might yield some additional development in places that might have taken a little longer to come on. So those

059are the sorts of things that would play into that versus on the bottom we would continue to see flatter and flatter birth rates. We would continue to see in another 18 months time more TIF funds, more money from the state to vouchers in in some way. And so you can see how those those differences might occur. So we've mentioned the planning units that we use and so the way that we gather the data and project the data we have for each one of those planning units, we have the projected students by grade group for each year of the 10 years of the projection period. So we can take all of those planning units, we put them together into your attendance zones and we can break them apart and do different things with the facilities if

060if we need to. And so this is just a look at how many we are showing in each one of the planning units just in in 2025, you know, you can see some density like in the same Houston area for example. But then we can also look at some projected change over time with blue being loss and red being gain. Carolyn mentioned it and you can see if you'll stop and think back to the heat map that she had about some of the town homes and things the River Central in the north and there's several of a couple of them in in one of your elementary attendance zones. So those are showing up there in red. Now one thing that is important for everybody to understand and remember as you're thumbing through the the chapter

061four there in the report is there's a difference between resident students and enrolled students. And we start with a projecting of where the students reside. That doesn't always mean that's where they go to school. And so that's where we've geocoded the kids and we start by analyzing them that way because if you are going to make changes, you need to understand proximity. How many kids live in the zone? Even if you have a big program that's changing that in some way. So most of the maps that you will see are resident students. Where do they live? Whereas most of the tables, we have gone ahead and tried to look at transfers and how those programs and other things are impacting them so that that's a a closer estimation for enrollment over time. So this map

062here shows the projected resident students by elementary attendance zone and it shows just 2 years worth of data and I know you could spend hours pouring over this stuff. We talk about it forever. But the idea here is that they are color coded on who's going to grow and who's going to decline. And so based on some of the housing that we talked about there sort of in the north and then also about the class sizes that you've got right now like for example, it has 89 kids residing in its zone in kindergarten. But a lot of the other class sizes are in the 50s. And so as you matriculate those kiddos on out, if you replace them with 70s, 80s, 90s, then you get an automatic gain there just based on on the homes

063that you've got. So there's two parts that go into this. How many new kids might you put in? But based on new homes, but then also sort of what's going on right now with those two and three and four-year-olds as they work through. So some of both of those factors are impacting Ellis and Larson and Is it Sherrod or Sherrod? I haven't heard anybody Sherrod in in the northern portion of the district there. And when we're talking about utilization levels here, this is your geocoded or resident students compared to your capacity. So it does not account for all of the transfers. But in general, when we're talking about sizes of schools and where the kids live, you can see that all of the blue is the lower utilization levels and by and large it's the

064eastern side of the district that is seeing the the lower levels of utilization with a little bit more density there toward the western side of the district. And so then these tables here show and I know it's hard to read and again, [clears throat] you know, where brevity and time and detail and all of that all comes into play. But what we have done is we've taken those geocoded students. We have applied we have looked at your current transfers and included those and then we have color coded them based on the level of utilization. So the transfers that we have used are largely the transfers that are occurring today. But I know with the closure of Blanton you had kids that would have gone to Swift but instead now are going to Crow so we

065moved those 60 kids and then we also did take we did adjust a couple of your programs at the that are your more magnetized programs and so we've grown those a little bit and pulled the students out of the the zones that are the largest feeders for that area. But for the the bulk of the numbers we are relying on the transfers that you have occurring presently today. Any child that lives in a zone but attends a school elsewhere can be a teacher's child, you know, it can be for any reason at all or it can be for programmatic reasons. And so when we're looking at the the schools that are over it's only a couple it's Cooken of course but I think that that is accounted for based on your morning and your afternoon

066program there. So when we look at the capacity it looks bright red oh my gosh but I don't think that that's what's going actually going on. Ditto, Goodman, and South Davis have a little bit of pressure but it's not very much and of course and there's plenty of other ways to deal with that. So you can see an awful lot of blue there and these are just alphabetized all three of these next slides for all of your schools there. The navy is the lowest at less than 60% and in the fall of 2030 we have 16 of those schools were projecting to be once we account for transfers. We know the transfers change. But in 2030, we're looking at about 16 of the schools that we would expect to be there and toward the end

067of the projection period, more like 19 of the elementary schools that would be uh below 60% of um utilization. And then also another thing that's important is as you're looking through all of these um if you're trying to total up the things on the bottom, for example, you've got kiddos that are leaving here to go to Gunn. And so there are transfers that occur across the elementaries, the junior highs, and the high schools if you're looking at all of those numbers. But largely the elementary student uh projections are we're projecting the the student population to decline by about 3,000 students over the 10 years. So the story is very very similar for the junior high schools and the high schools. Uh we are seeing uh some expected growth. It's less than 200 students in Nichols.

068That happens to capture all of the that area that I touched on just a little bit earlier at the elementary level. It feeds, of course, into Nichols. Um but we can see decline mainly in the southern areas. They're Young and Boles and Escondido Workman. Uh when we look at utilization, everything is blue to some extent. Uh and then, of course, the highest one that we're actually seeing is Rodriguez, uh about 87%, but then going ahead and dropping off toward 84%. Your your numbers of um students transferring in is is or transferring around is a lot lower. The 27% at Gunn, that does not include these sixth graders that are transferring into Gunn because this is geocoded students, so don't don't uh be panicked by by that sort of a thing. So again here, um we

069are looking at the lower levels of utilization. They're everybody being basically uh when once we look at those transfers and include those transfers, where everybody is sitting basically at 80% and below and with a a general trend downward over time. And then at the high school level, it's again very similar. We are showing decline across all of the high schools, and the decline is much larger because if we're looking at where the kids are today and when we're looking at at the comparison between 2035 and those giant high school classes that you have now, that is playing into that decline there, of course. And so utilization levels, there's space for all of them, of course. We've got everybody sitting here based on the resident students at about 80%, and then when we get later on

070or when we get on to discussing what the actual enrollment may look like when we're looking at transfers. We did adjust a few of your Arlington College and Career, those sorts of things. Those have maintained. We looked back in time, and they've been very very popular programs, but we have dropped those numbers just a touch just because of the general decline in those large cohort sizes as as they're working through. So we've we've adjusted [clears throat] those just a little bit. So to wrap up here, there are a lot of a lot of things to consider. I think you probably know a lot of these things inherently, but it's good to have sort of a conversation about it sometimes. The aging of the student population is a big deal for you guys. The difference between

071your kindergartens and your 10th and 11th is is a big thing that will impact you guys over the next couple of 3 years. Students from new housing, it's still occurring. We have accounted for it, but it's really small numbers compared to everything else. The birth rates, of course, as they continue to decline, it's not just an Arlington ISD thing. It is occurring really throughout the country and a lot of the developed world. Kindergarten enrollment, we will have to continue to watch and see how that follows. It has trended quite closely, and if it stays, then we think we can understand where that may continue to go with those birth rates. And then there's alternative educational opportunities, the impacts of those and how those are going to change over time. So with that, I will I've

072an awful lot of words tonight. So, it's your turn. So, trustees, um I think we um will have a couple of challenges with microphones, if I'm not mistaken in understanding. Oh, no, we got a extra microphones. We're going to be good. Um uh we want to make sure you open up and just go ahead and ask your questions along the way. Uh thank you both for giving us this detailed report. And I can tell by some of the notes and the looks, we've got a lot of questions that are coming your way. So, we're excited. Thank you. Yeah. I've got a few questions. I'll ask a couple and then let my colleagues go, but um I'm going to The ones that you were just on, um slide 47 and 48. >> Mhm. So, if you

073go to 47, you've got say Sam Houston at 79% in 35-36. And Bowie at 57. But if I go to slide 48, I see 50% for Bowie and Sam Houston at 53%. >> That's because we've included those transfers for the tables as they're coming in. So, um that's how many students are leaving one school and attending another. There there's a net Uh there's a table that shows it. >> the slide 47 has the transfers. 47 is residents. All the maps are mainly residents. >> And then The tables >> Then the tables include >> generally include the transfers. Okay. All right. Yeah, and that's what's leaving those two schools and going into Arlington Collegiate or Arlington. Okay, got it. Okay. We've got a big table tables in the back. It it's messy and looks like this

074that is ins and outs for all of the where they're leaving, where they live, and where they're leaving to go to school. So, going back to the beginning, let me see what slide that is. long presentation A lot of slides in this one. So, slide eight. Let's start at slide eight. So, in the house public ed uh committee hearing last week, our commissioner was dumbfounded at the precipitous drop in the state enrollment and had no explanation for it. Um but I think your report does an admirable job of pointing out exactly why we're seeing that decline greater than expected and they expected even greater next year. Um you know, we lost 2,200, the state lost, as you pointed out, 76,000, and then I think if you go to slide 10, and you break it out

075by ethnicity, both I love this slide because it's both the state and and Arlington ISD. We lost more Hispanic students this last year than we did during COVID, and that's the only demographic group that is true. Um and I think there's one obvious reason for that. For for COVID, what we're showing actually is about 1,100 is a drop, and then 700 this year. That big that big red No, I I was talking about at the state level. Oh, okay. Okay. >> At the state level. yep, yep. And at the state level, the uh the state had been gaining Hispanic student populations at our student population at a good clip. So, not only did we lose, we didn't gain. And so, it's it's it's more than just a loss. Yeah, so obviously our immigration policies that

076we've seen this year have had tremendous impact not only across the state, even greater amount across the state, but here in Arlington ISD. What had In doing the projection going forward, did that factor into your projections going forward? >> And I I don't know of a soul that would have expected this to happen this year. We did we were no discussion about it, you know. And a lot of the projections, of course, that we were doing in the fall for this current year were even prior to the election or prior to any of that. So, how that impacts us in doing the projections is not a specific we are going to continue to pull out another 312 kids for that same purpose. It it impacts us based on attrition retention number and how we account

077how we how we sum the attrition retention that occurred this year versus how it happened the last couple of years. And so, that's, you know, lots of words and data nerd talk about second graders going to third grade. But your second graders went to third grade in a really different way this year. And so, we are allowing that to occur some, but we are we normally would have heavily weight those attrition and retention levels for the current year more so than the last couple of years. Um because it's more current to what is going on, but we flipped it more or less. And so, we have allowed some of that to continue to occur, but it's not a ton. And so, for really next year and a little the next year, we have assumed a

078little bit more of that may occur, but certainly not another, you know, 700 students. And it's factors like that that make your job really >> Really difficult. Yes, we work on between COVID and Hurricane Harvey and in the Houston area and this it's it's been a real adventure. Yeah, and it you know, you pointed out that ESAs it's way too early to tell. And we have a lot of private schools as you pointed out. I was I thought it was flipped that we had more in charters than private. You do. You have 3,100 in private school, I think, and 7,700 in charters, maybe. Oh, in terms of number of ISD's. And um and are you guys assuming, I think I read that in your report, that um because the amount of private schools here in

079the area and the ESAs are $10,000 and don't cover the tuition and it's been very limited, I think you said what, 2,700 uh families in the in our attendance zone applied. They did and we have now, I mean, like hot off the presses, how many were in public school who have been awarded was the number that we came up with that had prior public school enrollment. That had been awarded a tier one or tier two. So, most of them were in private school. Yes. Yes. So, 1,067 the numbers that we had have gotten from the state are, I mean, like in the last week, are 1,067 tier one and tier two from Arlington ISD that were awarded out of the 2,723 that applied and that 459 had prior public school enrollment. Great data. Um I've

080got a lot 10 more questions, but I'm going to share them and I can let my colleagues have a turn. So, Yeah, everybody can go ahead and speak freely if you need to. So, uh if you would, can can you talk to us a little bit about the uh the um I keep forgetting the name of it now, AEOs. The the majority of the private school ones that you found, I believe are at the uh elementary ages. Is isn't that correct that not all of them are K-12 systems? We found a lot that are pre-K, kinder only in the private school format. >> And I don't have that broken. I don't know that off the top of my head as a breakdown. That's normally the case, you know, that especially there there will be a

081daycare that will also go ahead and have a kindergarten, or it will be at a church school that will also go ahead and have go ahead and have a kindergarten. Um the numbers of them that are K-12 are smaller, but then you also pick up a schools that are only high schools. Yeah. Yeah. I think the one thing for us to keep our eye on out of those um entities that qualified for the voucher subsidy program from the state, the thing that it really stood out, the majority of them in our area are at the pre-K and kinder level. And so, I think it's going to be super important for us to really monitor enrollment from at the pre-K and kinder level the these next couple of years to see how this looks playing out

082in our system uh just because the those number of private schools that they noted are are typically at that level for us. Um speaking on that, you had a slide that showed the the color coded by um grade level cohort. Mhm. Um that was one of my favorite slides, and I can't find it. >> find it either. Where is it? Demographic trends. Keep going the other way. There it is, right there. All right, here we go. Uh the one thing I thought was interesting it is um W- Justin will know the answer to this. When did we switch to universal pre-K? 2022 or something? 2022. Um Yeah, and when you look at this, our numbers um are for 2025 for pre-K 4 are lower than the COVID year. And so, is that because there those

083are the ones that are most seeking out those alternative um alternatives to public school that are here or or is just the population declining? >> And or the population is just declining. And so, there were some some real oddities in looking at your data there, especially at the time we broke it out pre-K 3 and pre-K 4. So, for our purposes, we had to concentrate on just the last couple of years to try to get trends that way. Um as opposed to going back as far as, you know, 2020 or 2021 because the numbers were bigger. And then and really did drop off like that. Yeah, I I I was shocked to see just how big a difference that was and figured it was the declining birth rates and also our increased competition for that

084age group of kiddos. Um having to uh tremendous impact where we wanted to That was a focus area of ours in terms of getting kids in early and getting them prepped. We have heard some anecdotal evidence or anecdotal stories of charter schools partnering with some daycares and going in and and doing that sort of pre-K sort of thing. Very much along the same lines. As we're talking. Um one thing to note on that um as well is that typically right now, I believe is where we're having the hardest time understanding homeschooling numbers is these early elementary ages and stuff because uh some kids have just disappeared or never enrolled in our system and we're assuming that they're actually still here potentially doing home school co-ops, maybe doing the virtual academies that could be across the

085nation. Things like that. So, I think that's the other piece of the puzzle here is how many families are actually choosing to have a home schooling option at the pre-K K kinder first grade level. >> certainly going on in my neighborhood. I know three families that are doing that currently. And we have seen some evidence of that sort of thing about the home school being a much bigger deal home school plus the other areas at the earliest of the grades because we have your chart is so you can't you can't help but understand that maroon stripe as it's moving through. But for other districts that don't have quite such a density they're moving through. We have seen for the last couple of three or four years kind of some muddiness in the secondary grades some

086years you know, in 2022 it may be the largest cohort is in sixth grade and in 2024 it may be that it's in ninth grade. And so we are suspecting but always always the the smallest ones are the kindergarten first grade second grade. And so we are suspecting that there's quite a bit more of the home schooling stuff because it's a whole lot easier to teach basic you know, math in the kitchen table and reading than it is to start with physics or algebra. And then you know, you may see those kiddos coming back in the secondary levels. >> Well, while I brought that up, could you go to that slide that you show our projection when it was 43 but you show the the band underneath and you said it's a wider band underneath.

087One of the things that they've talked about is the opportunities and options and how this projection could fluctuate based on what other districts around us do what other things in the state happen but also what we in Arlington ISD do as well. I think it's it's going to be incumbent upon us to actually think very differently about options in Arlington ISD as we're moving forward and this report is a foundation for us to do that. We have to think about how we compete in the virtual market now. We have to think about how we compete in the home schooling market now. We have to think about how we're competing with the charter schools etc. So the models of education that we've had, you show up, you go to kinder, you exit in sixth grade, you

088go to the same school for all those years. The families have far different options now that they're seeking in other ways and I think it's going to be really important for us to start shifting our models to think about how can we be service providers for those families that are choosing other options. If a family is considering home school for the first three years of life, when we want to be some kind of service provider for them so they might come back, meaning we create a micro school so they have some STEM interactions in our schools, um so that we have some connection with them at least and not just no connection at all with them. So this is this graph right here is the one that is heavily on my mind because right now

089at that 51,139 enrollment point, we have some major decisions to make in the next year about what schooling in Arlington ISD needs to look like for the future because some of the decisions we make right now could either put us on that upward trajectory or on that lower trajectory because other districts around us are having the same discussion. I concur Dr. Smith and um we're at an inflection point and we can either do nothing, play defense, play offense, or do both. And I think we need a comprehensive plan to do both, play offense and defense given the data that we see. And um I like I'm I'm your suggestions are spot on. Um, you know, I keep saying I'm an old product manager and we got to build a better product the market's demanding. And

090we've got to be even more attuned to that than we have been in the past. Um, I do have one more question and I'll turn it back over to my colleagues. Um, speaking of the House Public Ed Committee, um, and you mentioned the 76,000 what, 260 something students that um, the state lost. Uh, Bob Templeton with Strive said they were projecting that's going to be 124,000 or around 125,000 next year. So, that's a even bigger precipitous drop at the state state level, but um, and I know we're one entity in a much bigger picture that make up that number. Um, but I was a little surprised to see that, uh, and I don't think you have it in one of your slides, but in your report you break out the enrollment projection by year. And

091you only have us dropping, I mean, you go 51,139, which we are today, to next year uh, 49,564, so a drop of um, and it's just a small percentage drop, not the big drop that we're you know, others are projecting for the state. Um, is there a reason why you think we're not going to see as big a drop? Well, for one thing, um, you all dropped in charter school kids this year, right? By 250. Mhm. The state as [clears throat] a whole gained in charter school students by 70 What number did I say? 7700, 7800. Um, that took student more students away from the traditional ISD's. So, I think that's part of it is that we're not projecting in continued massive charter loss. Right. And then I I don't I can't speak to what

092their projections are and what they're they're based on what sorts of assumptions that they were using. Um we have expected the impact of the immigration to have been largest this year. And [clears throat] if they are continuing that on in a heavier rate, then that could be the differential. And at this point, unfortunately, I'm not sure how we're going to know until they walk in the door. Yep. Yep. That's what makes your job really hard, right? >> with this, right. So. Yeah, we got our started getting our first data back in the fall and I went, "What is going on?" because nothing was making sense. Yeah. Yeah. >> [snorts] >> Are there other questions, comments? Well, I wanted Dr. Smith, you talked about a minute ago that we have to meet parents where they are

093and looking at some of this. I know that this last week you sent out an email talking about online learning for upper pathways and [snorts] different avenues. Can you explain that a little bit more? That thought process based on what we're seeing here? Yeah, and I'll I'll go from theory first to to practicality. One of the things that we've been working on as a leadership team is becoming more ambidextrous organization instead of just planning to maintain what we currently do. How do we create an organization that does what we do well, but also innovate to create new space for products that people are actually wanting in the [snorts] marketplace right now. We have to think of ourselves more of a business model now and being able to say there are there's increased competition in the

094state of Texas regarding public schooling and private schooling. what is the model that we need to look at? One of the first things that came up last year because of the previous legislative session was the expansion of virtual school opportunities. And so we pushed really hard this year to just strike try and get the ball rolling to provide some options and get input from our parents at this point about what the interest is at the when the virtual school options. Ultimately for me, if we have 51,000 students in Arlington ISD and let's say 200 of them are interested in some form of virtual, I would rather provide that virtual than have a virtual school in Georgia provide that virtual option. So we're trying to get a sense of how many people are actually interested in

095that in our school district and to what product can we put together that still maintains a high level of quality for our students that we're serving in Arlington ISD, but also meets them in the delivery mode or method that they're asking for as families. And that's the reason we put that out right now is we have some options for our families to consider for this next year, but we're wanting to try and engage and have them say, "Hey, I'm kind of interested in that." And then get that information from them so we can help build product that actually meets the demand of the people in our district. When you talk about online learning, I think a lot of us as parents, we go back to COVID days. And what it reminds us of is the

096hybrid learning where a teacher's teaching a class in front of them and then they have kids on the iPad and they're trying to do both. Is that the type of learning that you're talking about now? >> I think there are various modes and Kyle can probably help me out if he wants to come talk a little bit more about this. I think there are various modes of that that we can we actually have the option to talk about. I think sometimes that is absolutely it. I think other times it is a self-paced curriculum where they're working through your curricular options as a school district and maybe coming in just for science labs or PE activities, um and we've given them the curricular pieces through an online platform that they can complete. In others, um I

097think that there's very direct instruction that happens just for a cohort of students, but it doesn't ne- it's more like a college model. It doesn't necessarily look like what you all remember from those COVID times. Kyle, is there anything else to add there? >> No, absolutely. Definitely a mix of opportunities there that we can have just a, you know, self-paced online with a teacher interaction. Just the whole hybrid mix can can really fit in is what we're kind of be looking at. So, there's there's several different directions we can go to fit the different needs. Is there a reason that we started at the upper grades and the upper classmen grades with this process? Yeah, I think um I don't know from um it's a really Steven and the curriculum side are really were evaluating

098where our best impact would be to get started where some of the areas of content creation and stuff might be. So, looking with some of our partners to kind of find where that best might happen. One of the things we've heard a lot in the high school, having a high schooler myself, is that they are having to go to online Texas Tech University and different places to take this one course they need and they can knock it out online in 3 weeks, but they're also paying $3 to $500 to take that course that they could take with Arlington. And providing that online lets us meet that need for parents, but also it is economically feasible as well. And that's a service that we can do to our community. Absolutely. When do you I know there's

099a survey that was sent out. When will that survey close for parents? Uh I don't remember off the top of my head. I apologize. Tied up and I know she's coming up. The survey right now is slated to close May 30th. Perfect. Okay, cuz I know parents often say, "I wish there was a survey." Well, there is one, but if we can get word out that it is out there, please take it. And when the data is due. That will provide more community feedback. Absolutely. That way it kind of gives us an idea which direction we can start going with that pulse is, you know, several districts started trying to build up and then several started backing out. And so it's kind of this weird flux right now because I think a lot of people

100um underestimated the difficulty of starting up a program. So everybody's going to have some sort of flavor and that's why when we get a a consensus or some sort of survey results, we can figure out which is our best path. But I agree though on what you're saying, the courses cuz like health and all these other ones that we do in the summertime for acceleration are really low-hanging fruit that's easy for us to bring in and do ourselves. Absolutely. Also, does that bring funds in for us for students that maybe need to take some of those courses through >> It absolutely can for acceleration. You can't do it for you can't charge for like um non-acceleration. Does that make sense? Okay. On page 21 when we looked at the pie graph there, Thank you, Kat.

101Yeah. Seeing that we have those virtual academies that are 1.2% that is not going to get us back the numbers that we need to keep growing. Right. I'm hearing a a lot of um my clients say, "We're starting a virtual program hoping to bring students in." But their neighbor is starting a virtual program and their neighbor's neighbor is starting a virtual program. So I I fear it's going to be a whole lot of trading kids back and forth. Okay. Thank you. I do see value in the virtual school for our own students though in that using the high school example, we might be dropping German at a particular high school and it's still offered another high school that now gives those students opportunity or um if we can't make BC calculus, then we have someone

102at Sam that really want needs to take BC calculus for um their dream of going to medical school, then that's a way we can have continuity of opportunities for our students that might be challenging giving the enrollment drops that we're seeing. I wonder if it's an opportunity too for teachers who during COVID enjoyed teaching virtually or enjoyed that type of classroom experience doing it online versus others who have said I never want to do virtual ever again, but meeting needs of teachers who would like to teach a different style and maybe found out that's where their talent really lied was in that type of virtual classroom. One of the one of the things that I think we're also interested in exploring right now and this is exploration phase with these things is the ability to

103to retain students too. So, if you have a family that in second grade says, I want to actually homeschool my my child right now, what is happening around the state is they will go to a homeschool convention and buy curriculum and homeschool and they'll be able to do that and in their home. And then at some point, often what you see with the homeschooling families is a re-emergence into public school, charter school, or private school because we have the options that they don't have in their home like fine arts options, athletic options, and CTE options. And so the the other part that we're really trying to take a look at is that population that we know is growing, but we can't track them very well, the homeschooling population. Is there a way for us to

104stay connected so they stay, quote, Arlington ISD and when they come back, they're going to definitely come back to our school district versus some of the other options that they may have. So, that's another reason we're talking a little bit about exploring at those lower levels lower grade levels, too, because some of this is a retention issue. You see this chart in front of us right here and over a number of years, like this is this this didn't happen overnight. This has been going on for a number of years. And we we have to ask ourselves the question, what would it take to retain people or their connection to Arlington ISD, and would that benefit us for enrollment for the future? I did say something to you in the fall when we all met, and

105I I have to reiterate it again just cuz I can't help myself. We can't market ourselves out of this. We have declining birth rates. We have a different educational landscape. And it's not just marketing that we have to think about. We have to approach this totally differently for the future. I Thank you for reiterating that, Dr. Smith. And that gets in to kind of my next line of questioning. Ms. Poole, uh if you could turn to slide 40, you know, these charts were pretty sobering. We've got a lot of facility planning to do. I I don't think there's anyone in this room that would argue that a school that's at less than 50's around 50% capacity is the kind of student experience we want for our students. And we've got a lot of tough choices

106to make, and I think so what's next in term of planning facility planning for this reality? >> [clears throat] >> So this is a major piece of the puzzle. That's why we wanted to have this as a separate workshop for you all and to be able to dive in. Obviously, they've done a deep dive, and we need our board to know this material inside and out. The next major item for our board to consider is a decision on what you want to do with sixth grade moving forward. Why? You can see by this chart right here, we have under enrolled or underutilized, excuse me, elementary schools right now. And if you end up moving sixth grade up to junior high, that number is going to go even lower. And we have to have that decision

107as we plan for the future on how we utilize these facilities and you can see similar numbers in some of our junior highs as well. What I would expect now is since you have this report and you know that you're going to have to have a discussion on sixth grade moving forward. After that decision is made, we will need to kick off a facility planning committee that is actually looking at all of this data and where Arlington ISD wants to go moving forward. At the same time, our leadership team and others have to be exploring innovation in our system like we've never explored it before to talk about program offerings. And by January of next year, we we should have or we need to have some planning in front of you all to consider what

108a reimagining Arlington ISD's use of facilities needs to look like through program [clears throat] options and also through potential combination of schools, consolidation of schools, closing of schools, etc. That's a discussion that has to happen in the next eight eight months so that we can get things underway because it doesn't all happen overnight from that point. It's going to be a multi-year process based on the data that Paas has laid out here in front of us. Uh Ms. Poole, I'm curious, you know, that is a big decision that we have in front of us. Um of all the districts that you've worked with that have uh been in been in the same situation as us, maybe they had sixth grade middle school and to consolidate their considered moving it down or they're in our situation

109where we're considering moving it up. What what have you seen and what were Do you have any insight on the decisions other districts have made regarding that? Almost all of our clients operate with either an EE5 or a K5 and a 6-8 model. Um so I haven't seen that well I haven't seen a a situation where we are seeing decline and we're moving the sixth grade up at the same time. Most of the time when I'm dealing with moving the sixth grade to join with the seventh grade, it's because of a facilities reason for growth. And so they have needed to, you know, they can build one middle school and then takes the relief it relieves elementaries and it relieves the middle school also by taking seventh and eighth graders and pulling your sixth grade

110out of your elementary school. So um That makes sense. You know, that that is the majority of what I see and and by the time you get to this sort of stabilization decline sorts of phase, that's normally the grade group that's already in place. Mhm. Um [clears throat] but it is always a bit of a question mark, you know, we have we do have some clients that do five-six and a seven-eight. Yeah, I We have very few that do a K-6. Yeah, it it we are unique although not completely unique. There are a lot of school districts or at least districts that have a split of sixth grade and and elementary versus um middle school or junior high. Um I I would just want to look at the numbers and see what's most efficient in

111terms of consolidating because seems to me it's a lot easier to consolidate a couple of junior highs than it is um elementary schools. So. But have you Sorry, I'm just going to jump in. So have you been the environment where we're seeing widespread decline in the enrollment is relatively new, right? It is relatively new. Um I Like I said, I've worked for Arlington for [snorts] Frisco ISD since 1999 and so those red map those those decline region 11 maps that I showed Well, you weren't here the very very beginning. Um shows that the the central portions of the district, the urban areas are declining. They're in blue. Fort Worth and Dallas and you guys Dallas had one year here recently where they gained a little bit. In the last 20 years, those maps have changed

112markedly. It used to be when I began working for Frisco ISD that there was still growth going on in those areas. And then a little blue started to occur in the in the more central portions of the state central city portions and it has grown outward for sure. Yeah, but it's pretty much the pattern that we've seen nationwide there where you have larger urban areas and suburban areas that develop fast in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. You're seeing that all across the country and we're not I mean we're very much within that pattern, right? You are within that pattern certainly for the state. We we will concentrate on the on the state, but we do work heavily in the Houston area. We work heavily in the Austin, San Antonio sort of a corridor. And yes,

113that that is what we're seeing everywhere. I mean do you think it's possible on to the to the point Mr. Wubbenhorst just made that perhaps we haven't seen districts using grade reconfigurations as a declining mitigation strategy because it's relatively new? The grade configuration, I'm not sure if I if I you know, I I don't know if I think that that one way or the other is is going to to stop. Not necessarily to stop it, but to to address underutilization of the existing facilities. I I do think I I don't I don't know. This is you know, a little bit out of out of my realm. Yes, it is a situation where we have this this bit of decline and certainly a statewide sort of a decline is very very new. That part of it

114is very new. And they the decline in the central cities is newer. And I think people are trying to figure out how to handle it. And they have the first time I heard the word marketing from a school district was maybe 10 years ago in the Houston area. Yeah. And I thought oh, marketing. You know, for a school district and it was the first time and now I I hear it four times every single board meeting because it's it's something that's got to go on. Well, cuz it just what what jogged my thought there was something that you said about you've seen districts maybe move a sixth grade up or do something different in a growth scenario, but um you know, there's a long history here where we used to have So, our junior highs

115are used to be 7 8 9, and then in 1997 we moved ninth grade up to high school, and so they've been 7 8 for a long time. But, the idea of moving um sixth grade up actually did come up in a in a phase when we were still somewhat in a growth scenario about I can't remember if it was 12 13 14 years ago. The district did look at it, and at the time we had significantly more students, and so we were not going to be able to to make that move without expanding a significant number of the junior highs. It was kind of shelved. Um and so, my thought is is if we've seen that in the growth scenario that moving a grade might be used as a strategy to address in that

116instance overutilization, is it just too soon to say that moving grades can be used as a strategy to mitigate underutilization going forward? >> It's possible, but in this situation we're showing underutilization at all three levels. >> Right. Right. I I did a very related question. So, we have somewhat recently, about a month ago, had a report from our our other demographer, Zonda, uh your competitor, um I assume, and uh they had on their charts a distinction between um design capacity and functional capacity, and and and we also looked at utilization numbers, but when you're using capacity and utilization here, is that based on design capacity or functional? That is the functional capacity, if I'm remembering, because we had we were given a couple of different um numbers, and I I believe that these are the

117functional capacities that came from the facility study, Okay. as opposed to ones that had been being used in the past. >> not just absolute capacity. Right. Right. Right. Functional. Okay. Okay, good. Okay, thank you. That's what I have right now. What do you see as as leaving [clears throat] pre-K through six? Then do a 7-8-9 and then 10-11-12. Does that shift anything or are you seeing anything with that? Well, the the underutilization, like I said, is occurring at all three grade levels. And so, from my sort of a standpoint, I would look more at which of these facilities are you wanting to and needing to keep. Um I know the 7-8-9 I went to a junior high that was 8-8-9, you know, and and so I understand that and and we used to do quite

118a bit of study and I'm talking a way back here, something well before Caroline's time. We used to do study of the exactly that sort of a thing. And so, most of from my understanding, and this is not my area of expertise, because I'm not an educator, um but from my understanding, the the grade levels were put in place with the 9-10-11-12 because ninth graders, if they're not part of the 10-11-12, you know, they are they are those are high school credits that they've got to have to get into college and do they realize that yet? Uh about how important that is. And is there anything that's anchoring them to stay and be interested in all of that some of these things that you might get if you were at the high school as opposed

119to with an eighth grader or seventh grader that's in a different spot. Similar sort of thing with the sixth grade and that was always the question. Where are we going to put the sixth graders? It's rarely the fifth graders, it's rarely the seventh graders, it's the sixth graders because there's, you know, some of your sixth graders are 3 and 1/2 ft tall and some are 6'4. And so, um those were always educational sorts of of things. Do we want those kids to go on and be able to play the football and whatever's in the middle school? Um probably more so than from a facility standpoint. Cuz I did I don't know that ninth graders in high school even realize about the credits. Right, right. >> They they still don't get it, you know? And I

120know um a district that I had worked in many, many years ago, they had a ninth grade center. Right. >> And it was just ninth graders. And I think that worked well. It gave them time to grow up. They didn't feel the pressures of high school, but they weren't down with the junior high kids, either. But that was an interesting model, and I thought it worked well. >> told that, too, that it was very successful in in some situations, especially if it was attached to nearby, adjacent, across the street from. But if you had to get on a bus to go to track practice, then it was far less successful. Right. Thank you. Does anyone else have any feedback, comments? Uh just to say this was an awesome report. I really appreciated it. Thank you.

121>> Very in-depth. Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate you compiling the binders for us, cuz I know that this is going to be um foundational for us, and that we will go back and refer back to this multiple times throughout the next >> Take them out, certain. Take them out, too. We have maps, too. >> [laughter] >> You have these maps. We have 10 10 or 12 of them. >> I'm going to clear off a wall in my office and put them Do it. Absolutely. That's why they're here. That's incredible. Thank you, guys, for being here. We appreciate it. >> Um if there are no other questions, um we're going to go ahead and recess at 7:05 p.m. and return for the second portion of our workshop in room 401 as we discuss the compass compensation

122plan development. So, the time is 7:18 p.m., and we are now back from recess. Um our last topic for the workshop tonight is compensation plan development report. So, I want to introduce Y'all know Holly, um and Holly has a guest here tonight. We're uh We are doing this as a workshop this evening because it's a really critical time. We need your input as board. As you know, we're getting to budget development finalization here in the next month where you have to adopt the budget, but one of the key things is the compensation plan in the development of that budget. So, with Holly, with Scott, with our guest Keith from TASB here tonight, with Roberto, we have some presentation pieces for you, but also some discussion pieces that we're going to be going through to gather

123your input so that we can give you a a a thoughtful and pointed recommendation as we come back to you in here in the beginning of June with our compensation plan. Holly? Hi. Good evening, trustees, Dr. Smith. Thank you for having us. Keith McLemore, he'll introduce himself in a minute, but as Dr. Smith shared with you tonight, we're here to review our compensation, some health care considerations for the 2026-2027 school year that's approaching us to maximize our talent and resources. And I'm going to hand it over to Keith. He's going to do the first portion of the presentation, and then I'll do the second portion. All right, Keith. Thank you. Superintendent Smith, it's good to be here. I've been here before in a larger format, so I'm sitting here in a smaller setting. Excuse me,

124my glasses. I'm I've been at TASB 10 years. I'm a compensation and HR consultant, and I've had the pleasure of working with the district for 3 years now, and I've had primarily the compensation reviews and market research and other things. But, we're going to just show you the results of the work we did this year. First off, just want to show you the market districts. We try to keep these very similar from year to year just so we're not, you know, chasing one goal one year, and then, you know, the bar moves if you've added to the other districts. But, as you can see uh one district, Fort Worth, did not do its our survey where we get the the lion's share of the data for these projects. And uh we did bring in the

125teacher hiring schedule so we can have that to compare with uh the other districts for teacher comparisons. And we do bring in private sector data, especially in this area, another urban districts like uh in the Houston area. San Antonio, etc. You have people getting paid a custodian here or they can go do the same in the private sector, a diesel mechanic, accountant, speech language pathologist, etc. So, we bring in uh we we we either sometimes we average data with these private sector data sources, copy analyst and pay factors by pay scale, or if we uh don't have in our survey uh a locksmith is another one that comes to mind. We don't survey for that, but we want to get that data, so we'll use these. Uh and then that comes from the local Fort

126Worth metro area. We'll start off talking about teachers just briefly with the the history of the experience um data that you can see here is snapshot in time data. This is does change a little from year to year, but uh the main takeaways for me is that the blue pie pie slice shows where 12% of your total teacher population had zero years of prior teaching experience. And the other notable thing is uh the first thing worth pointing out is the green pie slice which represents teachers with 6 to 10 years of experience. >> [music] >> And uh not always in urban districts, it's this is a little bit more common that it's past the 6:00 if you imagine it like a clock, but you know, typically we see that uh in about the 6:00 range.

127It's a little on the less experienced side, but that's a much more common trend uh the last few years, and newly hired tea- newly hired teachers, there were 411 included in the data set, and you can see again that blue pie slice, uh uh 39% or 159 had 0 years of prior experience, but the rest of the pie chart is, uh you know, a good distribution of experience. Um so you all are doing a good job of hiring at multiple levels of experience. So this graphic here is is really helpful. It's we're we're looking at the 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 benchmark uh year benchmark years uh uh your that peer district list of their hiring schedules versus Arlington ISD's. Orange is where your hiring schedule is at. Blue is the the local market

128median, and after our House Bill 2 and teacher with the teacher retention allotment, uh because all of y'all all those peers are over 5,000, you know, you you did see a big spike at year five uh because districts that are smaller than 5,000 got $8,000 per teacher with that much experience or more, and districts with more than 5,000 it was 5,000, but um so pretty much you maintained your your very good market position here, which is great across all levels of survey levels of experience. This is the data that drives that graphic, and um here are your key points anymore. The old days. But these are the dollar differences from market, which I think are pretty telling versus the market comparisons, cuz I can be a little nebulous unless you work with the data a

129good long time. You can see anywhere, you know, from uh year zero, uh you're dollar about $2,800 above market all the way up to year 20, uh about four just under $4,200 above market there. The other data point is average salary comparison. You're about You're over $3,600 above what the the peer group is on paying on average. So, you're looking strong across all of those areas. For benchmarks, you're This isn't looking at all the assignments. It's just the ones that are more common for teacher add-ons and to differentiate pay for uh areas like bilingual, special education, etc. But, the Arlington's data points represented here, and market is here, and the number of districts reporting are here. And the district is leading The district is leading the market in all of these except for special education

130high needs. High needs being where uh you know, it could be a self-contained environment, dietary might be going on, other other high needs type situations. And so, that is one area that it is surprising that y'all are still in the $3,500 range for the market cuz other other places in the state I've seen four or five thousand dollars. I don't know when only that can imagine you catch up here at some point, but you are behind market $500 there. So, you That might be a consideration to uh maybe get that up to market. You're at market or above market for all the other uh assignments showing you. Looking at the non-teacher pay groups, this is uh on the far left you can see the pay group uh titles central administration, uh from business side of

131of the district, central administration for uh instruction or education. Then you have campus administration, which are the principals, assistant principals, professional um then the you know, professionals that are exempt jobs doing business type things, uh functions, professionals doing instruction uh functions that are exempt jobs, and then technology is down there as well. You can see the employee pay compared to market um as a percentage and if you know these are all great comparisons either approaching market for technology to 12% above which is really rare air for your principals and and assistant principals as well to with that TRA money being injected and average teacher salary going up 7 and 1/2% statewide. Many districts are struggling to maintain competitive pay for these teacher career pathway type positions especially counselors and principals and kudos to y'all for

132being able to maintain your your market position there. Technology is notoriously difficult for public sector to keep up with private sector so actually being 1% off is really good in my opinion. And you can see the pay grade midpoints that how they compare to market because of the raises are calculated off of those midpoints. It's it's important that these are market competitive so you can see that the district's pay structures for these job families are in good shape there as well. Benchmarks are are the number of jobs that were included for each group that we that we found a bench benchmark for. For the the non-exempt hourly type jobs families we have the educational aids, administrative support, that's my clerical, payroll, purchasing, those those sorts of positions. And then administrative assistants and auxiliary and then

133the bus driver, custodian, custodial, child nutrition, etc. And employee pay compared to market you can see aids are are you know have a nice lean on the market there and that's really good considering how many other opportunities there are for those people those same qualifications to go make money uh earn a living somewhere else, so that's a really good uh data point. You can see your 101% of market for the other two families. The pay grade midpoints are also all that above market. And the pay grade minimums, which are really key not only for teachers but for these jobs, because that's what you're, you know, when you're looking for a job, that's what I see as that starting bus driver rate, typically, right? And so, it's uh you're already in good shape there for those

134minimums. And it's really good when I have so many positives that everything's in the positive here. So, this is really it's a good deal. It's a good deal. Uh considerations um that we're putting out um are are pretty similar from year to year, but number one would be there are three options we we put out there, three models to consider. Uh one is a 2% increase model for all job groups. And that's that's When I say 2%, it's not the budget impact, it's what the, you know, like if you get a it's a 2% pay increase, or 3% for model two, or 4%. Um and that that that's exclusive exclusive of the recommended adjustments. And for teacher and support staff structures, um GPI and support staff here being um jobs that are teacher adjacent that

135are exempt. I'm not talking about like uh those administrative support or instructional aid type job. Uh but the general pay increase for GPI is calculated as a percentage of the market median teacher salary. And this is a market-based pay system, so that's why it's done that way for for teacher and teacher aligned jobs. And we can get cut off. I apologize for that bullet drifting down. But the other one says for for the non-teacher groups, basically, uh the the general pay increase is calculated as a percentage of their each employee's pay grade midpoint. And um I don't know what the rest of that says, so. Other Our considerations uh the uh providing adjustments to address market differences and maintain equity. And one of those is on the teacher hiring schedule in order to comply with

136uh >> [music] >> the regulations that are the I guess it's the law that teacher retention allotment stipulations about making 2,500 a year three and four teacher has to make at least 2,500 more than they would have or did in this district 2 years ago for 24-25. And for year five they have to make five thousand at least five thousand more uh than they would have or did in 24-25. So, there are some additional uh adjustments for to comply with that on your hiring schedule. And we don't just want to get any anyone who is uh below the the minimum the pay grade minimum up to that minimum, we want to get them slightly above that. That's why this is the one percent above minimum. Um there are some adjustments needed for that. Strategic adjustments

137basically look at individuals who are low in their pay grade uh even after any other increases or adjustments. And because they're really low in their pay grade, that is a low to market. So, there's a one percent of uh additional one percent of midpoint additional adjustment that is is calculated for people who meet that criterion. And the cost models model one is um going to be uh 10 10.9 million and it's a 2.1% budget impact. And if you follow these these are these adjustments I was speaking to uh more adjustments to minimum um and teacher adjustments across all pay [snorts] groups. And you can see the general pay increase is is a little below, even though we're calling this a 2% model because the district has competitive pay and you're calculating them off of the

138market and the midpoints. The general pay increase is a 1.9% budget impact. I get asked about that, so I just got that out of the way sometimes. The general ranking market that we're looking at be like 2.2% budget impact, so that's the good thing about staying market competitive. One of the good things in model two is a 3% which would be 15 15.6 million dollars is 3% budget impact. And you might notice that these adjustment costs go down as the general pay increase gets stronger. And model three, the 4%, we're looking at or the district is looking at 20.8 million dollars over 4% budget impact. Thank you. All right, so to continue the presentation, I show this to you every time. This is our UEA Teachers Association salary comparison. Arlington ISD continuously year over year

139is on you know it's on the on top which is you know thanks to the >> [music] >> school board increases over the past few years. We appreciate it. And you can see it's it's it's paying off for our employees. And then this is some information that I've gathered to date. I'm still monitoring what's being shared in the DFW, but these are the districts that are in our local market. Those are those districts that Keith was talking about earlier. And so I wanted just to share the raises that they've announced so far. So we've got Dallas ISD who's announced a 5% teacher raise with a teacher starting salary of 16,000 and then a 2% raise 2% midpoint raise for all their other staff. Fort Worth has also announced a 5% raise. They have not highlighted

140their teacher starting salary outside of their new elevate campus is what I'm I believe they're calling it, but just looking at what that raise is I'm estimating that we've got 67,725. And then the elevate campus is starting salary that's that new model that they're doing is $88,000. Garland ISD has um announced a 4% teacher raise, uh which puts their their teacher starting salary to 63,000 and a 4% midpoint raise for all of their staff. Lewisville ISD varies and I made notes over here to the side because it's a little complex what they're doing, um but they're doing different raises for different years of experience for their teachers. With a starting salary of 64,250 and then a 3% midpoint raise for the remainder. Plano is 2% for both teacher and for their staff. The starting salary

141is 64 and then same for Richardson ISD except they're doing a 3% raise for their paras and their auxiliary. We do have eight market districts um to date that have not announced raises, but I've I'm continuing to monitor that. Um just so you're aware as of right now, our teacher starting salary for the 25-26 school year is 66,100. We've been talking about health care over the past several months. Some of these things I've shared with you, but just to highlight them again, um we you know uh trustees you approved a $33 per employee per month increase to our health care contribution. Um when you did that, we did see an increase in our employees uh enroll, about 300 additional employees enrolled this year. So, I I do believe that it does have something to do

142with that increase, so we appreciate that. Um UEA has us um ranked number 19 out of 40. If you were to pull the UEA comparison for health care, we actually look lower, but they made a note that they don't include our wellness, so I like to include our wellness as a contribution because we offer it to all of our employees. And so, that would rank us number 19 out of 40 um in that medical UEA contribution list. I did share with you on the April 9th meeting that we don't quite compare with private sector in our health care contribution. Um, and so if we wanted to increase our health care contribution to align with that, it would need to be about $125 per employee per month, which is $7.2 million a year. That's a lot

143of money, but I wanted to make sure I shared that with you. Uh, TRS sent out some information recently, and they did an analysis and they said for every $10 that an employer contributes, they see an additional 1% in participants, which I found very interesting because we did the $33 and we added about 300 employees. Um, so there's also we shared with you that we were TRS was considering adding us to a pilot, and I'm excited to say that that's happening. We are the only district in Region 11 that is part of that pilot. We had several districts call us or how did you get into the pilot? Want to get into the pilot. We're, you know, they said they were really excited for us and they want to participate. It's us and Region 4.

144The whole Region 4 is in the pilot. And so what the pilot is for us is a 2% difference just for the primary. It's not a 2% for these, and so that's why you see an 8% adjustment and 11%, but it's 2%. However, even though we we're seeing a 2% reduction in those premiums, we're still seeing an increase of 8%. So our employees are going to see uh, employee only are going to see a $46 increase per month. I will share that the TRS ActiveCare Primary is our most utilized plan. We we we see employees that continuously leave HD and go into the primary, but it is our most utilized plan, so we will have some cost savings there. On your table, I did leave you what that looks like. There is a tiered approach

145that our employees not only can save some money with the difference between the 2% but but the model is basically trying to incentivize our employees to use health care providers that are more cost-effective, which will which is a claims reduction strategy that DRS is trying to do to see if it works and they'll look at implementing it around the state if it works. So, there's going to be some co-pay plans for our employees to select which health care provider they want to go to. So, not only will they be paying a little bit less than our other districts in Region 11, but they'll also have the option of paying a little bit less when they visit the doctor. Um, and those options those tiered options are not available for the other districts in Region 11.

146So. Um, and then I listed our health care contributions down here for our paraprofessionals and our auxiliary we currently contribute 365 with wellness and 350 per month with wellness for our professionals. Um, we talked about the clinic at the last meeting and I brought a different clinic to you last time than I'm bringing to you this time just to kind of highlight we have some options. This is a clinic called Next Level. I do want to preface that they're not here in the DFW today. They did say that was something that we were interested in they could realistically be here around January 2027. They would look at purchasing some existing clinics and then opening here. I asked them what would that look like said that they would get a list of all the visit codes

147to see exactly where our employees are positioned and look [clears throat] for some clinics that are kind of dispersed around and they would they would consider about two or three and then kind of grow from there if need be. Um, but as part of that clinic there is urgent care, primary care, and preventative care. There's also things like coaching for emotional wellness and there's also telemedicine and virtual visits which are really nice because maybe you have the sniffles and you're at work you can actually set up a telehealth visit right there, get your medication. They also do on-site labs, which is nice because it's not fun to go to your doctor and then like, "Oh, now you need to go over here and do labs." They'll do them right there, which is time time effective,

148as well as immunizations, the flu shots or COVID COVID-19 vaccines, whatever they need. They also offer weight loss solutions and they have a really nice convenient app. One of the things on their app is I haven't tested it myself, but you can actually put your face up to the app and it'll actually read like your blood pressure and so it's kind of neat. Um another really good thing about this That's [laughter] scary. That's not neat. I'm like, I'd like to try it, but Is it because your eye's twitching? I don't know. So, I just was like, "Wow, that's really neat." So, you know, I guess if you're feeling anxious that day, you can put your face up to your camera and kind of see what you're up to. But, um one really cool thing about

149this is it would be no cost to our employees when they visit the doctor. So, they can show up and they told me you could do it every day for the whole month. I don't know why an employee would do that, but they could. Every day they could show up and they would not have to pay a penny. And as part of that, they also don't have to run our our health insurance cards. None of these goes towards any of our claims and if you remember we've talked repetitively over the years about our claims data. Um we were at 122%. We did some claims data reporting recently and we're now at 115%, so we've seen some improvements. But, uh this could be a strategy to offset some improvement. This was shared with me. This is

150from another district. This is from a smaller district, but I just kind of wanted to highlight um the total employee employer service value. Um they went and they utilized $4.5 million at the clinic. The district was paying $1.4 million for their employees to use the clinic and then because of that, they offset $3 million in claims that instead of going to the plan into the insurance claim, they were able to offset for this model here for this district. I don't know which district it is, just to be transparent. Um their their uh per month pricing is 3425 for the employee only cost, and then there's options to add the spouse or dependents or the plus all dependents um for that. And then at the table, I left the references. I linked them into the presentation,

151but they're also at the table if you wish to read them. These are references from some of the other districts that use them around uh the Houston area, San Antonio area, area, and they're also expanding to Corpus Christi. And they also work with other with other uh like you know, other organizations outside school districts. So, they're not just school districts only. But this is just um another option that we could consider. Um last, so our total compensation and benefits considerations, Keith talked about how we're $500 below market for our special ed teachers. I know how important it is to have our special ed teachers in our classrooms, so I wanted to provide an option here if we wanted to become market competitive, to get back to that market value, that $500 would be $170,000 annually.

152If we wanted to [clears throat] be even more competitive, $1,000 would be $335,000 annually. And that's for our special ed specialized programs like C's, Abel, ISPE, um And so, that's just some options to consider. We also have uh the cost estimates Keith talked about earlier, but I wanted to highlight what those starting salaries would be cuz we like to know what our starting salaries would be. You remember I just shared with you that right now today we're at 66,100. A 2% increase of our teachers would be 67,000, a 3% increase would be 67,700, and then our 4% increase would be 68 5. That's for teachers. Now, the numbers are would be all across the board raises, but the starting salary there is unique for the teachers. And then earlier I shared with you the private

153sector where we lag in the private sector is $125. So there's a couple of considerations. We could consider increasing what we could advertise it as increasing the health care contribution, but putting that towards the clinic. And that would be 34 25 per month, and that would be about $2 million for our medically enrolled employees. We want to incentivize our medically enrolled employees, but we can certainly provide an option for the rest of our employees to also pay the 34 25 and buy for their their spouse and dependents if they choose to do so. And then if we wanted to target 50% private sector, which is 62 50, if we did half of that of the 125, we also could consider adding another 28 25. The two combined is 62 50, and that would be another

1541.6 million. So before I hand it off to Norberto, are there any questions that you have for Keith or for myself? And I'll be sticking around for additional questions. I just wanted to do something compact for Keith. Do you know what the districts that have opted into the clinic model, do you know how they how range [snorts] it between folks who are already on the health care plan versus folks who are not? Do they typically only offer it to the ones who are on their plan or do they offer it to everybody? It depends. Like for example, Denton ISD has an like an on-site clinic that they manage themselves. They they hire their own physician. They they do their own thing, and they allow that for all the employees. Any all of their employees and

155the employees' dependents can come. I don't know what their what they pay, but I do know that they use their insurance card as part of that. Um I know Mesquite ISD, they use that model that I shared last time, and it's on staff. Um and I do believe that they allow all employees that whether they're paying for their medical enrolled, I don't know. But I have talked to some other uh the districts that I talked to that are on these um references, they're doing the the model that I was uh you know, sharing with you to consider about using it for our medical enrolled because the goal is to be a claim reduction strategy, and if we're if we're providing the option to all of our employees you know, in paying for all, then we're

156not incentivizing our employees to jump into our plan. Because we actually have a lot of in theory, there's a lot of healthy employees that are like, "I don't need health care, so I'm not going to get onto our plan." If we can incentivize them by saying, "Hey, we have this clinic model." They might be willing to come onto the plan, and then that's also kind of a co-partner at reduction strategy at the same time. Great question. [snorts] All right, so I'm going to hand it off to Norberto, and if you have any more questions, I'll be available as well. Good evening. Thanks. Good evening, everyone. So, this next part is the fun balance part of this. In front of you on your devices, you have an Excel spreadsheet. It is locked. So, you can only

157access what is in blue. So, I'm going to just kind of do a quick summary of how the data runs. Column A is just kind of a description, and it's laid out in the format of your statement of revenues and expenditures and changes in fund balance. So, you'll see revenues, then you see expenditures, and you see the net between both. Then you see a section below it other financing sources, and then below you have net changes in fund balance. The very bottom in the separate little table, this is what I had shared in the previous presentation and it shows the days of expenditure in terms of fund balance. So, it's kind of a way to read the data from the top to the bottom. Column B is last year's actuals. Column C is this year's

158amended. Column E is an example if nothing changes, if the revenue is the same, if all costs are the same, it is a static it is a static comparison. So, that shows you at the very bottom what the impact of the deficit would do to the fund balance. The very bottom under column C, highlighted in yellow, we have about 137 days of fund balance based on amended data. If nothing is If nothing changes, column E, that result decreases to about 101 days with no changes. Column G now shows the target KPM. These are the reductions to achieve the KPM. Um this is reflected Let me jump over to the last column in in column Q. So, if you go to column Q, you see total expenditures there. They are lower now. They're at 657 million

159instead of the 681 million found on column E. That is the impact of the KPM. So, because of that, if you go down to the very bottom, highlighted in yellow, you see 118 days, right? So, instead of going from 137 days in the column C to 101 days if nothing if no changes had been made, we're actually at 118 with changes. Now, the columns in between, columns H, I, K, N, and O, these are the ones that have the blue cells. Um so, these are the columns that [snorts] can be edited. To the right hand side of this, you'll see a table which shows the figures that we just presented in my time and so it shows the 2% consideration, the 3% consideration, and the 4% consideration by employee group. And then it shows the

160fiber change, the benefit change in terms of the increased contribution, and the clinical. So everything data showed here is on your calculator. So the the next section of this you all can do in in groups in your tables, you can kind of go in and change different figures on the calculator. So you you hover over a blue cell and you click on it, a little drop down should appear, and you'll have four options. You'll have the zero the zero and then three different numbers which correspond to 2%, 3%, or 4% pay rates. So once you go in and you try different models, you'll see at the very bottom under column Q, you'll see that the final balance will change based on the inputs that you decide Is there any questions on this before So what

161we would ask you to do is we have the opportunity to play with this a little bit so you can see impacts. As you're considering some of these options, you can see impacts and over in column Q, it tells you impact on budget, right? So we just went through a reorganization that led to $23 million in savings for next year. Anything that we add is going to add on top of what we've saved right now, so eliminate some of the savings. But we have to make a decision coming up about what you're interested in for the next round of compensation plan. So this gives us the ability to say based on this calculation and I need your input tonight, we have a presentation that we can give to you Thursday the 4th. Jennifer Scott and

162I all have just a few questions for you in table groups after that, after you play with some things, so that we can gather some input from you and we'll summarize at the end and then we'll be able to present to you based on this input June or on June the 4th. On June the 4th, not January 4th, June 4th. Put your put your thinking and what we propose for these these races, okay? Calculators trick us. Trying to use local rates. Berto, will you talk real quickly if what would it what would a group do if say they wanted to talk about 1%? So, if the group wanted 1%, we don't have that one called out within the drop-downs, we would just estimate that it would be about half of the 2%. We didn't call

163it out on here because it wasn't on the previous. And we could just type it in manually. Yeah, I would have to log in for you. You don't have to log in for me. >> [laughter] >> The password is NR equals funniest. There's a joke going around who's the funniest in the central office and he thinks he is. >> [laughter] >> I heard you. He decides the word fun and fun balance is out. Yes. >> [laughter] >> Now you're picking up on Berto. There we go. So, trustees, what we'd ask is ask the Berto questions, Scott questions, Holly's here to ask ask questions, play with the tools some. In a few minutes, Jennifer, Scott, and I will get us in some table groups and try and get some input from you and go from there.

164Can I ask one more question before we get started? So, the KPM that's reflected on here is is is 23.3 in revenue [snorts] expenditure reductions that was effectuated by the reorganization that just happened, right? Correct. And that gives you in what? And my zero-based budgeting, the 2.7 million is a zero-based budget. Okay. So, if it totaled 23.3, and that KPM is a 3-year KPM to reduce the structural deficit. That was the idea we had 23 million 3 years in a row to get to the 7. We would not So, essentially that to to kind of go along with that metaphor, anything that we add like makes the future KPM if we're going to eliminate the deficit have to go up, right? Like we can't continue 23.3 each year for 3 years, add stuff onto, and

165achieve the KPM. Sorry. Okay, just making sure. Unfortunately, the answer is you are correct. And because you look at columns B and C, there's a a row transferred in 43 million and 57. That is the amount that the city had in the global capital budget that was built up when surpluses were being used. Savings. So, because of that, the next column, column E, is zero. So, at this point, we would be exactly where we We would be adding to the total of the So, whatever we add makes it harder to achieve the KPM in the future. Yes. It's as of right now, we know that we have the 23 and 23 that we still have to cut, but we don't know how and where it's coming from. Correct. Correct. Well, I mean, we're planning. Is

166it an administrative team that that the finalization of that is in progress. I hate to say it like this, but I'm going to say it like this. >> [clears throat] >> The number of people versus pay is where we are. That's that's a fact. So, you all know the graph that we referred to and shared with you on how we're staffed across the metropolitan area according to comparison districts. We have higher pay and we have more staff. And you can't do that and live within our budget. It's going to be up to the board on how we address these things moving forward. What are we getting into table which we're going to talk about? Cuz I know you've got Is there a way [snorts] to look at 5-year, 30-year or are we still going to

167consider 0 to 30? We are We are absolutely open to anything the board wants to do regarding compensation. So, yeah, if you if the board says, "Hey, we need a different option on this." This is the time we need that. That's what we're We're trying to avoid coming to you on January 4th and you saying, "This doesn't meet our target at all. We need something different." Cuz that messes up the budget process. So, tonight's the night to nail those things down and what you need and our job is to then present you with a final comp plan on June 4th. How much did you say in January? So, to put it simply, any increase means a loss of people. If you want us to have reduce a budget deficit, absolutely. And we have no choice

168but to reduce a budget deficit. So, I I um Is [clears throat] that putting it too bluntly? No. >> Or too simply? No, I think that we we have to address a budget deficit. I mean, there's only so much money that is there and you don't want to be one of the districts that's in the hammock right now, I don't think. Um and I I think that I speak So, we've had a good number of years where we've invested in salaries and benefits and at the same time we had very low staffing as we were declining enrollment and now it's for months to address that budget deficit and then we decisions made on that. That raises the people cut positions. Correct. Okay. Scott is sharing. Yeah. Just get times. Do do we play for now?

169Play. Okay. You got your summary here? With the cutting of positions do you get across them? Larry does. Larry does. Actually, I think Scott's sharing. Yeah, Scott. Okay. So, the way we prioritize this was uh teachers increase, all others increase, bed stipend and then clinic, but all four of those didn't make the list. Um and 2% was the recommendation for teachers and 1% was the recommendation for all others including the bed stipend at the market rate which is the 170 that's in there. Uh raising it from 3,000 to 3,500 on the stipend. Uh and then the clinic funding as suggested that actually is a total cost of 10.5 million and it leaves your fund balance at 110 days. You want to go next? Yes. Sure. So, we prioritize the clinic model as number one. Raises

170is number two. The stipend for the staff is number three and then the benefits is number four, but we specifically wanted to have the benefits added to wellness instead of just added to the general. Um for raises we had some conversations about differentiating raises not based on roles, but for teachers specifically based on numbers and years and experience, and so do you do something different for a zero year teacher than you would for maybe a fourth year uh teacher? We talked about minimal for our zero teachers and our one to three year maybe minimal for our one to three year teachers, and then a little bit more for teachers who have been teaching for four years. Talked about one or one and a half percent for admin, and then two percent for everybody else. And

171other questions, is there anything you'd like to mention beyond table with the policy goals? So, you are the outlier. Our rank order was stipends, clinic, and benefits. And the 335,000 in stipends, the full two million in the clinic model, and then the remaining 1.6 for benefits. And no raises. That's the conclusion of our report. No raises? Just the conclusion of our report. >> Yeah, what what we keep coming back to is the phasing out of positions will only escalate, and that is really difficult to swallow knowing that we had the teacher retention allotment last year that equated to maybe 8% That's not I mean, that None of that is what our staff actually deserves, but they also don't deserve to keep like right now we're we're just now phasing out more positions than we even

172planned to do because we're giving maybe a 2% raise. That's really difficult. It's just the circumstances. We put stipends first because we absolutely believe we need to put the >> [music] >> best teachers in front of our students and this is all students, but our self-contained special education classrooms, we have a lot of openings there that we're not filling, and we need to have qualified educators in those classrooms. And we did talk about the optics of doing away with positions and losing people and then giving raises. You know? You start I just talked. Yeah, it's a different It's It's It's going to be a comfort level and different approaches too because I mean a lot several of the districts that were shown up here and we've seen in the news that have been giving raises

173have also been more aggressive than letting staff go than than we have. What we have in the list in Oregon is they have been aggressively doing it but also giving raises at the same time. So I can I think we got to talk through like what does it look like for us to just say these things are happening but also we are not going to do any raises in a market where people are renewing the employees whose numbers are also doing the same thing and they're in our also giving raises. I don't know where I can all that cuz I don't know like I don't know if to my knowledge no other district has done it. Even the ones who have been aggressively retaining staff. And the hard part for us was they're also not

174market leading, right? Just the fact that you you invested over a number of years than they did and I I keep going back to Garland. Garland's invested 4% now. They're still after 4% investment $3,000 plus less than our starting teacher salary. So I mean that you all did the the work on that prior. So I think that's the that's the part that we're struggling with too is that where you invested in the past they weren't investing in the same thing. And I think we would have to emphasize that. We may not have these other districts and So then the goal was to be able to share these out. Obviously, we're not all on the same page, but we can't agree on what we either. What we need is to get some input. So do you

175as trustees, and this is where we need your voice. Do you have anything What things do you need as we present a proposal to you on the 4th of January regarding compensation? >> [laughter] >> Happy New Year. Here it is. It is a mental block tonight. I apologize. Everybody's a doctor in an hour. Okay, now we're skipping 6 months ahead. Yep. What are the things that you need and this was part of our point of doing this tonight. We We know we can't make everybody happy. We can't get everybody in this room exactly on the same page right now, but our job is actually to present to you something to vote on on June the 4th. So what recommendations do you have for us as we're putting this proposal together? It sounds like we're at

176a zero, one, or two on the raises or some combination of one and two for teachers versus others or My question is is with the teacher retention alignment and [music] where we are in the market you know you know, for [snorts] the teachers we have and employees in general, we still have to face market realities. But we're not in a position where I mean, I'm not comfortable. I I was depressed too doing this model with everything I tried, we ended up below 115 days. It's just kind of mine. are for the fund balance and there's just There's way to do it. So then it's like you know, what's it's a tough call to be sensitive to market realities and still have teachers that feel valued and employees that feel valued and be fiscally responsible at

177the same time. So it's it's a very Those [snorts] are two very difficult competing constraints. And so how can we be creative to be fiscally not end up in the news like the districts that that in the news today. Um and [music] and still have the kind of district that we're proud of. So I I would like to see all options from zero to two and combinations thereof and coaching arguments for why we want to do teachers differently from other staff possible. But we might not make those as administrators. So what I'm laying out for you right now is that I think this is a decision the board's ultimately going to have to make. We're in this tough spot. You you have a key progress figure for me to do balance our budget. And anything

178that we do is going to take away from that. Um and so we're we're going to present to you some options, but the board's going to ultimately have to come to a decision on those options. Uh and I'll I'll give my recommendations blindly that night, but I don't know that that I don't know. We're a team and I don't know where that really falls in the grand scheme of things. So whatever we decide, we got to do it together and we got to work over the next year. Is there going to be a a recommendation for one of the options with just the K and the O columns. The the staff then We can absolutely put one together. Like we we can put a a number of options for you all together. Um and ultimately

179it's going to >> [music] >> come down to how the board coalesces around one of those that you in the plan that we put together. That's Frankly, that's what our group landed on was the the kind of the K and the O. Well, one back to teachers, thinking about the zero or one or two percent raises, whether we did all staff or teachers, if we're phasing out more positions as a result of any compensation raise, that is going to impact the the employee satisfaction because more will be put on our teachers' shoulders on the day-to-day. The more employees that we have to pay phase out positions more typically. Most of our employees are teachers. And if we Even if we do other strategies that are not on the spreadsheet, like increase class sizes, all of

180these things can be cost-saving, but typically a teacher is going to also consider their job satisfaction and how valued they feel and what the what the demand is on the day-to-day on an already high-stress job, high-stakes job, instead of just did I get three percent instead of two. And I just think that's really important to keep in mind. The whole picture, not just was it two percent or three percent this year and I wish we could do it all. Um but again, if we did a four percent raise this time, that completely erases the phasing out positions we just did. For the sorry, for the organization. But the the that's not even in addition to all the other things that we want to do and we put as our first and second priority. So, that's

181really tough. So, what I'm hearing so far is that you would still like to see multiple options and what that is. I'm hearing a zero percent a zero percent in columns K, M, and O and a one percent and a two percent. You want to leave one and leave one and leave one and leave one and leave one and leave one and leave one and leave one and leave one also splitting the two and one between between different job groups. Other job groups you would put together, so I would keep teachers and administrators together. I would keep them together or whatever. If we're going to differentiate Well, can we talk to Can I ask a quick question that I wanted to talk about before? You guys we talked about the years of the years of

182teachers zero through five and all that. Is there any way to look at staff as a whole? You have those bus drivers in here zero through five or 20 plus. Is there a way to look at staff as a whole in tenure? I have the the 10 year or tenure. tenure At least. Just people that have been here for a number of years. Let's just focus on that. So, the way that couple things the way that the compensation models work today is for years and we've made a progress. As you've been here longer you make more money. So, and you saw even on the teacher graph up there that the five year increments were very consistent on the line on the right The typical breakout when there has been a breakout between we want to

183give one group one thing and one group another is it's typically been as straightforward as teachers and non-teachers. And not differentiating for The the What TASB showed us tonight and they help us with every year is they make sure that we're market competitive and it may have gone too quickly, but he was talking about targeted adjustments. Targeted adjustments mean TASB looks at this and they do it every year and says, "Hey, these are all off and I need to fix these and these are all off and I need to fix these." So, that's built in or baked into the process. If we If the modifications happen at any time increment or we decide we're going to do this group and not that group, what will happen to that line up to the right is it

184will start to look more like a roller coaster and it'll be embedded for perpetuity. And the first year it won't feel too bad, but the second and third years will be helping when we're doing that. Um And that's We we have had to deal with that in the past. I just wondered because we have looked at we say teachers who are 16 plus get X amount. Well, what about bus drivers who have been here 16 and do we value them the same way we value them? That was my I was just a thought I had. I was just curious. The other thing about teachers that's unique is teachers get credit for any year in the state of Texas teaching where I don't know if when we look at bus drivers if I've driven a bus

185in any other district and came here. I don't know how that works with TRS or any of those kinds of things, but um but this isn't just years of experience in Harmony. It's years of experience to talk to you. And I certainly don't mean to be diminishing the suggestion. I'm just trying to share context with you. >> No, I I just wanted to ask. I appreciate it. Going back to Jennifer's question on groupings of employees in in our charts and stuff we had teachers, support staff, administrative professionals, technology administrative support, educational aids, and auxiliary. Are there any groups that you would say okay if you're putting this together and we want to say you want to do 2% for teachers and 1% for everybody else or 3% Are there any groupings of those job groups

186that you want us to specifically look at? I don't have any suggestions. Teachers and then everybody else. On this chart I would I would also bring out admin. Teachers and admin? And then everybody else is together now. Okay. Holly and Scott and number two. Are there any questions that you all have for our trustees as we're getting ready to prepare for June 4th? This was very helpful. I know there's hard decisions but there's no having insights and thoughts and figures and numbers we're trying to put together and and try to put a regulation through all this. All right. Do you have any Sorry. Did you say anything? No, I didn't. Great. Trustees anything else for us as an administrative team? I I just want to say thank you. This was a really useful tool and

187it put things in all these different scenarios and gave us the bottom line perspective with each scenario and I was surprised what the numbers did in a lot of cases and if we didn't have this side by side and it you know it updated what the budget implications would be. I just don't see how we would have had that same perspective. So thank you so much. This was a lot of work in this. Yes, I love that we got the information up front and then we got to play and see what the budget implications were. This is a very very useful format for a workshop, especially when we're dealing with uh something with such gravity. And and then we as trustees would never take money. So this was a way for us to really dig

188in and and really give it the attention it deserves. So thank you. Uh I got something for you afterwards. Larry's trying to jump in. Uh I'll just wait. Will the Will the recommendations show the impact of the deficit and then the fund balance within these? Is it possible or Yes. Oh, you print it. Yeah, for for June 4th. Okay. Can we show that? Yeah, we And how far is your district in the future? So we'll have this document maybe it's a couple of different times with the different options. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then with that I think it'll be There was a chart somewhere that I saw that had how our peer group districts have meeting and how much they vary. Totally. So I think we only keep in perspective um that perspective

189when we look at this number cuz in my mind 190 days and 180 days and 130 days like it's just days, but seeing what the other districts are doing I think it's awesome. I think that that's important too cuz David said something earlier. You know, just to be clear, our our local policy says what for fund balance? 25 days, 25% which is 90 days. >> Okay. Um the threshold for TA's hovers around 75 days. Okay. ISDs start getting in trouble when they're under 50 and they definitely need payroll loans when they're at one month. But to stay just to be clear, to stay above our local policy we need more than 90 days. >> More [music] than 90 Like it's better to have more. But also when we compare to some of those other districts,

190we have to keep in mind what TEA's recommendation is and what our local policy But then also knowing that it's going to take us 2 more years to correct this deficit. And so we're going oh well we're let's let's manage down to 90. Well, that's right. No, the 90's going to shrink worse than that. It accelerates once you go under 90. So One question of our two. You said like this is if everything stays the same with these formulas are we going to you know how when we go like 90 or more days without filling a vacant position, we've been more timely about phasing those unfilled positions out. Are the is that cadence taken into account with these numbers? Or are we going to be more aggressive about that moving forward and that would be

191cost saving if we're not seeing that here. The representative total in the static example there's no change. No change at all. Right. The representative next year the TEA is going to keep that keep those positions, keep that practice that we have in place with the departments. We started doing that earlier this last year. Okay. So all of those strategies, remember no matter what you add, we have to still employ those strategies that we employed this last year and more to get the next phase. And if you want to throw in this slide, right? So the demographer as part of the budget parameters that were adopted, you know that with the low projection that that they didn't include anything with vouchers, right? Because that didn't even really get to the surface. So that's the number that

192HR used is staffing and the teachers as well, right? So, the idea is that we try to have, as you're losing enrollment, [music] you're losing classroom teachers, naturally. But, those you want to try to keep together. [music] If one drops faster than the other one, then administratively we have to follow that up. So, this that number is a growing target. >> [snorts] >> Any other questions from the trustees? Was that those numbers any different from the folks tonight? >> [music] >> They were about the 10-year I'd have to look at the annual projections. The 10-year projection, excuse me, 10-year projection was about the same. The thing that with possible tonight, they showed you how it could dip a lot lower. That was the thing that I don't think you was really pointed out in the

193zone. Good. Very good. Do we need [clears throat and snorts] Do we need the fun guy to tell a joke before we Oh, yes. Cuz it's pressure. Let's go, fun guy. If Don't do it to me. I put YOU ON THE SPOT. >> [laughter] >> We We We'd have to We We would have to earn his respect back with all of you probably with that joke. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. So, you're good? So, just read it out when I'm Yeah, we're good. >> [laughter] >> Okay, so seeing no more discussion or jokes, we're going to go ahead and adjourn this workshop at 8:55 p.m. Oh, yeah.