001Good evening everyone. We're going to call to order this workshop of the College Station ISD Board of Trustees declaration of a quorum. We have seven members present. At this time, we're going to open our public hearing um over the 2026 and 2027 budget, and we're going to hear a presentation by Miss Wilson. Good evening, Miss Eggy, Dr. Hark Rider, board of trustees, I appreciate your time this evening as we present next year's budget for the 2627 school year. So, we kind of started this process a long time ago, and this is actually the sixth time we've talked about the budget. Uh, it's been a long process, but we started here. We started with the board budget priorities, and this is how we laid out how the plan was for going into this school year. And
002so, these are some of the ones that you guys adopted earlier in the year. We stepped it a little bit further and we built a budget advisory committee where we brought in the community. When we did that, they kind of gave us their points that they wanted us to look at as we move forward. Even if we don't look at them right now, we're setting oursel up for the future so that these are things that we can be an ongoing look at our budget. I was talking to Dr. Hark Rider early and when you look at our budget, it's really not just a stamp in time. Yes, we're going to adopt a budget tonight, but our budget is an ongoing process. It's something that we're going to continually be looking at, looking at ways we
003can save and making sure that we're being most efficient as possible. When those things happen, we'll bring those back to the board. Uh that's really kind of happened this year as you can see with the budget amendment. So when I compare the budget this year, I'm going to compare it to the amended budget so you can see where we made the adjustments to a point and then we'll compare this year's budget against the amended budget. uh the budget is has to be adopted legally for the general fund, the debt service and the food service budget. Those are all requirements. So when you look at our general fund of budget, some of the assumptions would be your budget pressures would be the enrollment declined. When you look at the budget tonight, um there's two different things
004because now we get some funding based on enrollment and then some funding based on ADA. Right now when they're looking at enrollment, they're looking at snapshot data and then ADA is a total year in time. So you're going to see two different numbers. And so the enrollment decrease that I'm estimating is 330, but then about 211 decrease is our ADA decrease uh going in. And that's looking at the end of this fiscal year, planning on what it's going to look like at the end of next fiscal year. Okay. Um some other pressures that we'll have is just the increase in security requirements from the state. Um we've got that budgeted in the budget. Uh there was a loss in the Adams family grant. They were helping us fund some of those security officers on campuses
005and so we had to increase that budget and cover 100% of that with the general fund this year. Uh rising contracted cost, utility cost, roof repairs, that's another big number that you'll see tonight. It's $2 million, but it's really we set that money aside and committed that money last year or the 2526 year to cover the cost of the roof repairs. So, we're really, even though that's going to be in the budget, I want you to understand that that was already committed. It's not in our assigned, it's not in our unassigned number. It's just to complete that project and it just spans over two fiscal years. Uh, additional facility square footage, that's just from additional space at our new high at the high schools as well as the CTE facility and, uh, Rock Prairie Elementary.
006Some investments that we have put into this year's budget, it's the 3% comp compensation increase. Um, in this budget, you'll see an additional million dollars that I have increased in the teacher incentive aotment. I feel like that program is growing and we need to make sure we have the cost set aside to cover that. Even though that is a that is an expenditure increase, it's a revenue increase as well. So, they kind of offset each other. And then choir and athletic trainer support. That's something that we discussed several times and some of the needs of the budget. So, we try to do it in the most efficient way and that's included in the budget as well. So when you look at the budget, you're going to see a deficit budget of $8.3 million. And so
007what is that made up of? It's made of a decrease in $2 million in our state funding due to the decrease in enrollment. Um that is kind of the overall number that takes account into us increasing that teacher incentive aotment a million dollars. Another thing that we're going to be able to get this year is something called a new facility aotment. There's 300,000 estimated in this number of an increase in funding just for opening the CTE. We got that approved by TEA and so those are in those numbers as well. Even though we're going to decrease in student enrollment, we also are opening a CTE facility and so those weights on those children that attend those classes are a little bit higher and so those numbers are estimated in the funding growth I mean the
008funding decline as well. Uh when you look at our total compensation expenditure growth, it's going to grow 4.6 million. So we go a little bit like 83.4 to closer to 83.7% of our total budget is now in compensation. That is due to the 3% compens uh compensation increase. Uh the substitute pay increase that we did. There was also just we were a little shy of making budget and substitutes this year and so I increased that budget a little bit. uh the te the teacher incentive aotment increase, the choir uh extra stipens just to cover those needs of the choir program, the CTE staffing additions. That all makes up that $4.6 million increase. Okay, the 2 million is the roof project that I touched on earlier and then it really kind of nets down to the
0098.3. We did have some savings in some categories that those are just the big numbers. And so this is the overall budget comparison that you're looking at. There are a little bit of different adjustments. So, I'm comparing the per um proposed budget to the amended budget. The amended budget is a budget I'm bringing to you guys tonight to amend. There was a big adjustment in the amended budget and that was because we moved and correctly coded the instructional coaches that were in function 11 and moved them to function 13. So, that's reflected in these numbers above as well. Another thing that we've done with our new software when we're building the positions, we're looking at each coding of each employee and making sure they're in the correct function. You're going to see some a little
010bit adjustments through these numbers and some of that makes up those costs. For example, if you look at function 41, administrative general administration, you can see we decreased overall from one year to the other. And we did. We had a software conversion that has a little bit of startup that's gone a majority of that's gone away which is a decrease but we also moved a key employee from that general administration up to function 21. So you see where function 21 might have got gone up a little higher than you anticipated. That's just a move within a function. Does that make sense to everyone? Okay. Another thing that we keep bringing to the forefront is just where we are within the fund balance. And so what our policy says is at least three months of non-spendable
011assigned fund balance and unassigned fund balance. So these are our numbers moving forward. Uh what I did is just laid out the current budget. I'm sorry that something got a little off when we moved it in. But the current budget we would have unassigned in assigned fund balance of 41.5. And then if you run the numbers three months operating would be 40, uh 318,000. Okay. Um, one thing that we have to keep in mind is 2 million of our deficit is already committed. I will move that out of committed into unassigned fund balance. So, I'm just moving the buckets, but the buckets that you're trying to maintain or you're unassigned in your and assigned fund balance. Okay? So, I will uncommit that at one of our next budget meetings to move that money. So, we're
012looking good right now. Please keep in mind that we do plan to roll money into fund balance this year that will cover this for one more year. So, we should be okay until the end of this next school year. Uh, I feel like we have a plan in place. We know what we're looking for. We're looking at capacities of the building. We're going to spend a lot of time this year just making sure that we can get enrollment up, making sure we have good attendance numbers, and spending time on how to get kids back into College Station ISD. Um, I just want to bring this up just because when we go into debt service and look at the debt service budget, there are different ways that we can get tax pennies in a sense. Okay?
013So, your general fund tax pennies is your M tax revenue. And no matter what your value is, it doesn't matter. Okay? So, your no matter what your cup says, your state's going to make up the difference. So, our values go up. It's not that our tax dollar tax pennies get to go down. they stay flat based on our um our value. It's a little bit different when it comes into debt service fund. So your general operating fund basically you have TEA that sets your tax rate plus your golden pennies. When you look at the debt service tax rate, it's based on your debt and it's based on the value that you can bring. So if we have higher value, then we have more money to pay off our debt or we can decrease those pennies.
014Does that make sense? So our value determines what our pennies are set for debt service. So when you look at our value for this year, right now our preliminary value growth is 7%. We have 40%. At the beginning of the process in April, we had 60% of our total net taxable value was in an ARB review. 60% of our total was in ARB review. We are down to 40% of our total in ARB. We have already lost $588 million in value. So what I'm saying there is I really think the number that we've estimated the 3.9% is a good number going forward just for planning purposes. So uh even though our preliminary values are 7% we're estimating about 3.9 is what it's going to be when we get through all the ARB reviews. Uh we
015are also looking at refinancing and selling that remaining 2023 bond authorization. We will bring something to the board in July to look at refinancing and then possible selling the authorization the final authorization. Now it's going to be t dependent on the market. Uh the refinancing we want to do because that's our only way to defease debt right now. Because remember, if we don't have actual bond payments, we can't defease the debt unless we have it on our schedule. If that makes sense. The only way we can do that is take our collable, put them into ref finance our collable, move them up, and pay that debt down. Okay. So that is really kind of a um one way we're going to be able to do it in the in the early right now till the
016legislation closes that loopho. So that's what we're kind of looking at now. So when you look at these numbers um it the this always doesn't make a lot of sense in the fact that we are collecting tax revenue for a February and August payment. A February of 2027 and an August of 2027 payment. However, our budget is based on an August of 26 and a February of 27 payment. Because we changed our fiscal year, it doesn't line up. it's one payment off. And so that's what you kind of see right here. So we're estimating the 50 million in debt. Once we know more about how that turns out in the month of July and August, we will be able to come with good numbers to the board when we set our tax rate. But this
017is just basically to adopt our budget for now until we know how the refinancing goes and then we get closer and we have real numbers to to budget that tax rate. However, with all that being said, our tax rate will not go up in debt service. Okay, I can promise you that. This is just a historical look of our tax rate. Right now, I'm just estimating it declining just a tad bit from 9753 to 9668. Of course, that will be based on the final numbers that come into that are certified in July. Once those numbers are certified, we have to submit them into tea. TEA will tell me what my maximum compressed tax rate is and then I add my eight golden pennies for that. The other number in this that makes up this total
018number is that debt service tax rate that's at 279 right now. Okay. So when you look at the food service budget, we are looking at a loss of the supply chain grant funding. That's something that we have been blessed to receive since COVID. It is a it's been it has allowed us to keep our costs down. Uh as you can think inflation in the groceries have gone up and we have not raised our our um meal cost for lunches since 2019. Okay. So we haven't raised the cost. We know inflation's been go has been going up. We had multiple years there that the federal government was going and supplementing us and paying 100% of our meals for our students. Then we went back to our normal way. But then we were still receiving these grants
019allowing us to keep our meal cost down. All of that has gone away. And so what we're suggesting tonight on the board meeting is to increase the lunch price by 25 cents. I do want to just take a time just to show you what the historical look of our meal cost increases. You can kind of see the small increases there are 10 cents, but you can also see from 2019 to 201920 all the way to this year, we haven't had a single increase in meal cost and this is the food service budget and it's a balanced budget. Okay, so some of the key takeaways here, we are bringing a general fund deficit of $ 8.3 million budget to the board tonight. 2 million of that, of course, is the roof project that we've already committed
020that will uncommit. In the budget, there is a 3% compensation increase. It includes all of the new staffing for the career and technology, includes the requirements for security. Um, it includes the decrease in enrollment for students. uh it maintains fund balance within the board target levels and then it the tax rate is expected to remain stable or decrease depending on final values. Do I have any questions? Maybe just one thing back on the compare comparison where we are for our 2026 and you said you're comparing that to our amended budget. >> Yes, ma'am. Um and I maybe there's some I can see pros and cons in my mind to comparing it to the amended budget which is where we ended up but also to where we um but also to kind of the original budget
021uh where we started in the year. So, um, you maybe just touching on why you compare it to the amended and as opposed to where we start at the beginning of the year and then >> absolutely I think this year we have spent a lot of time and trying to take any fluff that we possibly can out of the budget. So we have watched our health insurance, we've watched our subs, we've watched our extra duty, we have built position control where we have one to one, we've monitored it back to the finance budget and we have literally taken the fluff out of the budget. The way the reason why I felt that was something that we needed to do going forward because we do have to make hard decisions right now. Um, we don't know
022if we will get additional funding going into the next legislative session, but I feel like if you're making hard decisions, you had to you need to have the most solid numbers as you can possibly have. And so, even as we've gone through the year, I have released contingency as I felt comfortable and tried to get a good comparison number that you have a good number feeling like and then you have reasons to explain why you're seeing a difference. And so anytime I saw a difference in the comparison, I would go back and research shunt, why am I seeing this difference? What it what triggered it, what's making, you know what I'm saying? So it just gave me a good number to kind of base the budget off so that we could feel comfortable moving forward.
023And then I feel like it's a living document. I feel like uh because we do have it so tight, it's a living document that we'll kind of monitor through the year. Uh the big number is going to be at the beginning of next school year when we find out where our enrollment numbers are. We know that over 200 kids right now have been approved for uh the voucher program. That does not mean we don't know if those were our kids before. Now they're homeschooled. So we're just monitoring every piece of the puzzle so that we can get a good reading on what we can anticipate our revenue to be. And and obviously I do think that's fair, right? because it's where we have you have worked the budget down to where we are today. Um
024I I when I look at it, the one number that does stand out that has changed a lot is the instruction number, right? And that is one that we started last we started our budget at 93 um million, right? So and then we ended up with 88 million and then so now we're going to be somewhere in between there just for perspective which is >> so some of that was just going into this year when we built the budget. We did go in with a high contingency in function 11 in salary and as we felt more comfortable with being able to back that number down. So when we took the two numbers and compared we there was a big gap but we wanted to make sure we felt comfortable before we took that out of
025the budget. So we kind of left it and as a contingency till we felt more comfortable then we removed it. Another is just the reallocation of the copier lease. And so what happens with a copy release and a some of our software subscriptions. So if you look at the technology budget on the data services, you see a half a million dollar jump where it says, "Oh, okay. The uh budget went up a half a million dollars." That's not really the case. It's because I went ahead and made that adjustment going into the final amended budget to move those numbers for the sabidas and the leases to the debt service. But when you think about when you build your budget, we want those part of the departmental budgets. And so we leave them as part of
026the departmental budgets and reclass them at the end of the year to that debt service. And so it just keeps with their department for budgeting until the end of the year and then we make that reclass. Sometimes you could go ahead and build debt service in everybody's budgets, but it just kind of muddies the water and it's hard for them to understand that we're reversing it out of here, putting it here and things like that. So, some of that is the debt service that was adjusted to the million, but some of that was in function 11. It was about half and half. >> Any other questions? I I do and I apologize because I'm not processing something correctly. So last month when we discussed compensation and I looked back at the presentation just to so
027to make sure my memories serve me correctly. I'm looking at an estimated deficit budget of 25 before we discuss compensation and compensation package that we approved cost the district additional 31. That was the number we discussed >> 31 or 32. >> Okay. So 5657. Mhm. >> And and so tell me tell me where things moved between then and now. >> Okay. So between then and now there were a few things that happened. So we we pulled in there was some additional um um extra duty stipens giving given to the teaching and learning department that weren't in the original budget. it was uh about a h 100,000 and those are just those just uh extra duty stopins given to the high school for the lead some of that was in that number um and some other
028things that they have brought to to us to fund so that's a little bit there another was there are some one-time what we thought was one-time curriculum uh for sped that ended up being software and so with the software it's a it's a continual cost and it was about $160 60,000. So that's some of it. The other number was 44,000 was uh was just the athletic trainers that weren't in the other numbers, but we had to add them to this number as well as the choir. We had to do a little bit extra for choir uh stipens just to cover their need because we didn't add those additional staff. So we had to cover the needs. Um I do feel like this number will kind of go down. Um, but then also when when I'm
029analyzing just the extra duty stockins as we get through June as well as the substitutes as we get through June, then that's a portion of that too because we didn't make our substitute budget this year and then we increase subs. So even though the compensation the compensation didn't include that number that we were given did not include an increase to the substitutes of the $15 per day. So that's the rest of it. So in theory 57 it's 63 not 83 because the roof is in there. Correct. So we have to carry it as an expenditure but we were accounting for >> that out of the fund balance to begin with. Is that a >> correct? The numbers that we were using to do all the planning I went ahead and moved that to committed so
030that we didn't have we didn't take that in consideration. >> Okay. So >> just to be fair I didn't want to >> Right. Right. So, okay. So, 63 has less sticker shock than 83 in in my opinion, but I understand it's how we have to work the books to to to to make it >> work, but we were accounting for that 2 million out of fund balance for the roof repairs >> to begin with. >> Yes, sir. So to the to the uh less accounting mind such as myself, it almost it it it'd look a lot nicer if we increase revenue by two from the fund balance, but that's not how it works. So Okay. >> Right. Um but on a positive note, um when you have to build a budget in June and take
031it to the board in June, you have the current employees in the budget. So I've accounted for all the positions with the current budget with a salary increase. That makes sense. However, we have retirements of higher paid positions and then we fill those sometimes with lower paid positions. That is not in these numbers. My higher numbers are in these numbers. But I don't want to come back. I would rather come back to you guys in August and then decrease the deficit. And I feel like we will do that. But I can't, you know, until we have all of the information in. That's not something I can do at this point. >> Yeah, I think it's just important that we as a group understand we were discussing around the 57 mark and it's more 63 which
032I get and the 83 is the additional 2 million really has to do with some movement around the fund balance for the roof repairs we were already accounting for. Mhm. >> So that 57 is really a 63 understanding the roof situation. So I'm I was just trying I need to hear myself say it. >> No. And that's why I kind of pointed it out several times and then when we got that additional funding from the roof, I knew that it was going to be expensed in this year. So I committed it so that when we were making decisions going into this year with compensation, you were looking at unassigned and assigned fund balance that did not include the 2 million in those numbers. And so now we're going to uncommit that, roll that into assigned,
033unassigned. So now instead of the the number that I showed, you actually have 2 million more in unassigned, unassigned, which takes care of the roof that actually the revenue we receive in 2526. We just don't expense it until 2627. So I tried to do it at the cleanest way possible and then keep the numbers as >> can on the committed. So I understand it'll go from 16 to 14 or whatever. What what are can can you give me just a couple of things the the 14 they're what are they committed to or designated to >> one of the largest thing I have committed in fund balance and that's just so that we can stay on top of what happened last year. So when we changed our fiscal year from August or September 1 till July
0341st, we got that one-time infusion of revenue, but it's not really cash. It's not really revenue. It looks good on the books, but it's really something that we have to keep in mind as we make decisions. That's a large portion of that commitment. >> Got it. >> Is two less months of expenditures. Yes, sir. Basically. Okay. >> Yes, sir. There's that and then any projects like if we have we know we we don't have all of our roofs under warranty right now and so you might I have some set aside for those projects and other little things as well. >> Okay. >> But the big portion is just the change in the fiscal year and just to hold that back as a commitment so that people understand when they're making decisions that's not cash on
035hand. >> Thank you. >> Other questions? Okay. Okay, we really appreciate um all of your work on this and um just the explanations and we'll move forward the best we can. Um and but thank you for the work that you've done. Thank you guys. I really appreciate your support. >> Okay, I believe we do not have any public comment. So, I'm going to close um this hearing for the 2627 budget. Moving on, we have uh no hearing of citizens and we're going to go to our community advisory committee report. Mr. Dunen, Miss Ward, >> thank you, President Eigy, members of the board. It's always uh a privilege and an honor to to be able to to bring to you the the work that we're doing in the communications department and specifically here with our community
036advisory committee in its first year. If you recall back in August, you all approved this advisory committee to form. So, this is the first year that we've had this committee, and we had a great time getting to know committee members, talking through the topics that they wanted to discuss, and ultimately coming to uh a couple recommendations that came out of the discussions and the work that we had with the committee. So tonight, we're going to walk you through what the committee looked like, the mission of the committee, the topic that the committee identified that they wanted to discuss this school year, some themes around those conversations, the recommendations that came out of our work, and what the committee is going to look like next year. Uh, this committee was facilitated by myself and Melanie Ward.
037We had starting out about 60 committee members. I think at our last meeting in May, we ended up with a little over half of that original um committee membership, which is great. Um uh parents, staff members, community members, retired educators from across the district representing different schools. And so um I'm going to turn it over to Miss Ward to kind of walk you through what that committee looked like this year and we'll answer any questions um after the presentation. >> Awesome. Thank you, Austin. Um well before I dive in I want to give you uh take a moment to talk a little bit about what made this committee different because it was a little bit different than a traditional committee. Um because I think it matters for understanding the work that came from it. So
038from the beginning um Austin and I were very intentional about building something genuinely collaborative. The goal was not to brief people and send them home. Uh it was to create a space where committee uh community members, staff, uh families where we could all sit together, we could build real relationships and we could have o um open and honest conversations and that foundation that we set really shaped the work that the committee did all year. Go to the next one. Uh so one of the first ways we did that was we actually um had the committee create a social contract. So before we got into any content, members spent time talking about um how they wanted to work with each other, how they would listen to each other, how they would handle different opinions um and
039really the environment that they wanted to create together. And that investment really set the tone for everything that we did. We were also thoughtful about who was at the table. Uh members represented different parts of CSISD. They included uh families, staff, and community members. And they all had um different connections to our schools. And then most importantly, we prioritized building relationships uh before diving into the work. And let me tell you that time was not wasted. Um it really helped to create the trust needed to have open and productive conversations. So the committee's mission is to strengthen collaboration between CSISD and the broader community to serve as a representative voice to promote transparency and to help the district celebrate what's working and then build on that. Um they showed up prepared, the committee members showed
040up prepared. They showed up asking thoughtful questions. um they really approached every conversation with a genuine care for students, staff and just our the broader community um and they really really took that mission seriously which was which was really nice. So this year the committee chose to focus on teacher support and that focus came from committee members itself um through feedback opportunities through early conversations where members really kept us returning to the same question um how are we supporting teachers and what could we all do more? The committee wanted to explore those questions honestly and constructively. They really wanted to um understand what's already happening and then where are their opportunities to grow. So the committee approached teacher support through four guiding questions that kept coming up. First one was who supports teachers? What does
041teacher support look like in CSISTD? Why do why do teachers choose to work here? And then what factors um impact teacher support? So to ground those questions in real information, the committee reviewed a wide range of material. Uh we reviewed teacher salaries, retention data, staff survey themes, district organizational structures, professional learning opportunities, community support efforts, teacher recognition initiatives, and uh just the broader state level landscape of public education at the moment. In addition to reviewing data um and district uh information, the committee also heard directly from the teacher members, which was a really special part of it. Um getting to hear firsthand uh perspectives from them really helped connect the information that's on paper to the day-to-day realities of the classroom was really great to hear from those teachers. So across all of those conversations,
042three themes kept coming up consistently. The first was that CSISD has meaningful strengths to build upon and uh the committee recognized that our district just really uniquely has uh a few really great strengths. Number one, we have strong community support in CSISD that is really unique to us. We also have a lot of positive relationships between staff, students, and families. And then we also have a really amazing reputation for our district that continues to attract highquality educators. Teachers chose CSISD real for real reasons um to work here and the committee really wanted to celebrate and also protect those strengths. So the second theme that came up um a lot was workload and the pressures facing teachers. They recognize that teachers are navigating significant demands, time, compliance, growing student needs. Um, and that those pressures are
043felt across public education, not just here. Um, but the conversation was really around uh it was really grounded in respect and really just a desire to understand. And then the third theme that kept coming up was community collaboration. members talked about how teacher support extends well beyond salary which we all know it that feeling respected appreciated and understood it matters deeply. Um and they also recognize that community members also have a role to play alongside the work that the district is already doing and will continue to improve. So, now that you've got all the background information and all the how this committee was a little bit different, um Austin is going to walk you through the committee's official recommendations and then the next steps for this committee. >> Thank you, Melanie. So, our our committee
044recommendations, we spent um a good portion of our last meeting talking through what they primarily wanted to communicate to the district and then also being that this was a community advisory committee um to provide just some encouragement and really like a recommendation to the community on behalf of this committee about how we can support teachers as a as a community at large. And so this first slide is really uh targeted at specifically what what can CSISD continue to do or what can we do as a school district to explore understand and help mitigate some of the workload and burnout and to continue to support teachers. So, in particular, um, that first bullet point, listening to to staff about workload burnout through surveys and campus level conversations, um, we were kind of timed at a at
045a good point in the year to be able to talk to the committee about what that end ofear survey was going to look like and what questions we wanted to ask and what topics that we really wanted to focus on getting feedback from staff about. And so primarily that that feedback uh opportunity for staff was really to try to understand what's working um what are some of the stressors and the burdens that you carry as an educator and how can you help us understand what that day-to-day really looks like for you. Um the committee also encouraged the district to continue to strengthen teacher support systems. So, you've already heard from our teaching and learning department about the feedback opportunities and the engagement that they've had with educators throughout this school year and how that's shaped
046our professional learning opportunities going into the summer and into the early fall and how we're really specifically targeting how can we make sure that those opportunities are practical, meaningful, and give teachers a lot of value for their classroom instruction. Uh, another part of this because um, Melanie and I are in the communications department, we had the opportunity to really hear and try to understand how our communication efforts are impacting our community educators. And really, they wanted us to focus specifically on telling more specific teacher success stories so that we can build um, more public understanding and trust of educators. Um, if you've been around long enough, you've seen the es and flows of how um, education is talked about just in our society and culture. And they really wanted to focus on how can we
047continue to to do that as a district and and encourage teachers through our district communication. We also um talked a little bit about this with our teacher advisory council um, and just talking about how can we provide opportunities to parents, community members, educators to empower them to tell their stories as well. And another piece of this was to match the community support with campus and teacher needs in practical ways. Um, this is something that we've been evaluating throughout this school year. It was something we talked to the committee about and just trying to get feedback on what should we focus on. And really their main focus was we need to understand what are the practical needs our teachers need in their classrooms and how can we communicate that to our community so that we can
048match needs from from donors, from adoptive school partners, from local businesses and churches. So, we had a a good long conversation and a good comprehensive recommendation from the committee about the work that the district does. The second part of the recommendation was really how can the community be a part of that work? How can we continue to help? How can we continue to strengthen the community support around our educators? Uh the first bullet point communicating positively and respectfully with teachers and schools. Uh this was something that came um not surprisingly directly from a lot of our educators in the room. um they really wanted to encourage our community, our parents um to to understand that, you know, they are there teaching because they love kids and because they want to serve families. And so um
049you know, just continuing to encourage our community and our families to communicate positively and respectfully with our teachers and schools. Again, celebrating and encouraging educators for the important work that they do. Uh this is something that our department is working on kind of strategically putting together. How can we design ways for our community to tell their own stories, educators to tell their own stories? I don't know if you know this, but you've got twothirds of the communications department sitting here right now and the the third is in the back running the live stream. So, we're a tiny but mighty team. So, we've got to come up with some creative ways that our community can come alongside us and cover stories happening across all 19 campuses. And then the last piece, learning about and sharing the
050realities of today's classrooms. um kind of preaching to the choir here, but um you guys know what the realities are of educators today. There's a lot of things outside of our control and there's a lot of things that we can control. And so we want to understand what those realities are, communicate that with our community, and give them resources to help them support teachers. So that kind of brings us into what the fall is going to look like. because of that conversation and how that was shaped, um we really want to focus with this committee to um help shape our legislative priorities for the upcoming session that starts in January of 27. Uh really focusing on helping our community understand how state policy, what happens in Austin, how those decisions trickle down all the way
051down to the classroom, how they impact students, how they impact teachers, and then have them help us uh craft some of those legislative priorities for the upcoming session. And then the spring semester, we'll circle back and do more of the topical discussions with district leaders in areas identified by the committee. And then ongoing, we've already put out a survey to committee members. One of the the the topics that came up at the top of that survey was they wanted to meet more and we love that. Um we would love to be able to spend more time with the committee. um get more feedback from them, be able to present more information, bring bring other diverse stakeholders into the room internally and externally to help them understand the the landscape that we're operating in public education,
052how we can shape our district to be even better than it already is. And so with that, any questions, comments about our work this year? >> The emphasis on legislative priorities, where did that come out of the group discussions that like how did that come about? I think that was really just we were having discussions with the committee just about the landscape of public education and uh I think there's always there's always an opportunity for us to communicate better about what the impacts are from the state state level and then this committee because we had so much interest in being on this committee like I said we start out with about 60 members but like this was a good wide ranging opportunity for us to use this committee to help us have kind of a
053sounding board in our community um to understand legislative priorities ities for the future. >> I think that's great because the more we can get citizens behind, you know, gaining support for public education, reaching out to their legislators, the better. Um, I feel like some of the organizations, TASBY and whoever else maybe didn't listen the last couple years and the fights that we've had with with our state legislators and what we're dealing with in public education. So, the more that we can get citizens and voters out to do those things, the better. That would be fantastic. So, that's great to hear. Uh on slide 10 when you guys talked about the survey and campus level conversations did did I hear you say that there was a survey sent out already? >> Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry if
054I didn't clarify that. Yes, there was a end ofear survey was about 10 open-ended questions um specifically about um you know what are the things that make you want to keep working here? What are the things that you feel like you carry around as an educator? What are burdensome things? All open-ended. And so we're processing that information and and kind of wrapping some of that stuff up. >> Is that closed or is it still going? >> It's still open. Yeah. >> Okay. >> Has have the responses been the amount of responses been what you hoped? Like >> it's about what we got in the fall. So we're looking I'd have to go back and look at the exact number, but a little over 300 completions. Um but we set up the survey specifically so they
055didn't have to answer every single question. So it wasn't a long survey. they could answer the questions they wanted to and then move on to other questions if they wanted. >> And then when will that close and when do you expect to have like something that we can see from the results? >> Yeah, we'll close it at the end of this month as you know we've still got some folks on contract. Um and then um when they go off contract, we'll close it and start processing all that information. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Great. Thank you. >> Mhm. >> I just wanted to thank you guys for all your hard work um being on this committee. It was really really great to see retired teachers and current teachers collaborating. That was probably one of the coolest
056things to see and bounce ideas and kind of um work together and um it was it was a great committee. So, thank y'all. >> Thank you. >> I want to ask um first of all, I'm glad and not surprised that the committee came up with the focus on the teachers. Very glad glad to see that. And I and I like the committee recommendations. Some of them are spe specific like the survey right and that's happening. Some are a little more broad. I mean you you talked in some strokes on yes your team wants to work on some things and maybe some things would fall outside of your teams. I what is the plan moving forward? Are you planning to implement something in every one of these areas or is that something you know that's still
057under discussion with the admin team? I guess a little maybe more spec specific on implementing some of these these things. >> Sure. Yeah. I mean, as you saw, teacher support encompasses more than, you know, just our communications department. Um, and so, yeah, it takes time to kind of process all of the committee feedback, get survey results back from from staff, understand what the impacts of the work they're doing. Um, yeah, there's lots of factors that go into it and yeah, we're continuing to kind of chew on on the feedback and understand um, you know, what's going to be the best forward. We can make decisions up here at central office every single day, but we know that it impacts 2,000 staff members at the end of the day. So, we need to be thoughtful and
058take time to make sure that we're doing that in a way that's meaningful and valuable um, to all of our educators. So I'm kind of hearing that as far as some of the specifics they will be driven maybe more out of the survey and feed and discussions that follow. I mean, I can give you one specific that I mean that our department's specifically working on. Um, one of the things that came back through survey feedback um, in the fall and in the spring was uh, communication and that's something that we have some control over, but it's also something that we want to work with all of our departments, all of our campuses on improving, frontloading information. Those are just those are uh, systemwide things that we've got to kind of process and chew on. So
059like one of the action items that we have is developing a more consistent uh communication cycle with our staff through a through a district newsletter coming from the district about employee information. So those are the kinds of things that we're working on um because it it because it's it's important for us to be able to communicate ahead of time and that so educators know um what's going on with their job and what's impacting them as as teachers. >> 100% agree. Thanks. >> Yep. Thank you. >> Yes. First, thank y'all. I think any opportunity we have to engage our stakeholders for feedback is is only a positive. So, thank you very much for the information. And this is just a thought. It kind of runs parallel to what uh Dr. Payne had mentioned. It may be
060a worthy strategy to engage a handful of the folks from this um group next year to take a visit to uh Austin when our folks reconvene in the spring uh to meet with some of our elected officials to advocate on behalf of of public schools. So, uh I thought of that as we as you mentioned legislative priorities. uh this might be a very uh could be a very impactful group as far as carrying the message on behalf of our school district uh next spring. So just just a thought and consideration. So thank you again. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> Well, that's what I really um enjoyed seeing as also one of the board members that was able to sit in those committee meetings. Um having a community committee um it just shows that it takes all
061of us together to reach the goals that we want both like legislative advocacy but also supporting our teachers and so can appreciate that there are things that we do here in this room that we need to do to support teachers things that are done every day on our schools to support teachers but there's also that community aspect of um supporting and caring for our teachers that I appreciate was drawn out and so um I think that's the value of this kind of committee and appreciate you guys for just starting maybe not even knowing what it was going to look like at first. Um but hope to see um just the efforts on that committee continue to grow. Anybody else? All right. Well, thank you both. Um appreciate that presentation. >> All right. Our last workshop
062session is going to be a policy update u policy update 127. Miss Hester. I got the microphone. So, I'm going to make a comment on that committee, too, because I was on that committee and I've been on a lot of committees in 46 years, and that was one of the most productive um opportunities, the way the two of them worked together and laid out intentionally how to get us to talk freely and safely. So, maybe just one of the most real committees I've ever been on and how they led it from session to session. They were incredible. They make an incredible team. and we're lucky to have them. Hate following them. My my topic is not quite as fun. So, um update 127 is really um kind of a catchup still on the last legislative
063session before we get into the next one. Most of it is legal and most of it was based on the updates from the 89th legislative session with just a few local topics. Most of those have um already been discussed internally and and we're moving forward with those. If there are any questions, we will vote on it at the next board meeting. All right. Thank you. >> That was easy. Great job. >> Thank you, Miss Hester. All right. I think that's going to bring us to unless there is any descent, we will adjourn.