Waco ISD School Board Meeting from June 18, 2025

001This regular meeting of the Wake Cosby School Board independent school board is hereby called to order. All items which may be discussed or voted upon this evening have been posted as required by state law. I extend a warm welcome to those present and to our television viewers. The board's purpose is to set goals, listen to reports of the superintendent, approve budgets, contracts, and personnel appointments, and make policy for the district. We are not here to make management decisions or solve problems of individuals. Management is the responsibility of the superintendent and her staff. I ask that you turn your cell phones to silent if you have not already done so. We appreciate the time you have taken to join us and for your interest in the Waco Independent School District. Uh did we have do we

002have anybody that signed up for public comment? No. Thank you. Please pause with me as we take time for prayer, contemplation, reflection or meditation. If the board will please join me in front of the dis to honor our special recognitions. Oh well with a moment of silence and pledge of allegiance comes before that. I pledge alce to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Now, if the board would join me in front of the DAS to honor our special recognitions. [Music] in the future and has been celebrated by her teacher for her integrity. [Applause] Arlo Davis is a fourth grader whose favorite subject is math. He enjoys playing soccer, football, and drawing, and has been

003described by his teacher as a leader who excels in both reading and math. When he grows up, Arlo wants to be an engineer. Thank you to Adlin and Arlo's parents for cheering them with us tonight, and for our principal, Jessica Weekes, for joining us. [Applause] Next up tonight, we have the Texas Police Chiefs Association accreditation. The Waco IC Police Department has been awarded this prestigious designation of accredited law enforcement agency by the Texas Police Chiefs Association Law Enforcement Accreditation Program. This voluntary accreditation process required the department to conduct a thorough self-review of the agency's policies, procedures, facilities, and operations. The department is now more now one of only 215 accredited law enforcement agencies out of more than 2,800 agencies in Texas. And special to note, they are one of only eight school districts with agencies

004um that are represented in this group. We want to thank administrative assistant Elizabeth Manriquez, Sergeant Larry Martinez, Officer Roman Proctor, Officer Greg Lewis, Detective Hawky, Detective Jackson Thomas, Chief Craig Goodman for joining us this evening and accepting this on behalf of the entire department. and chief in in true form wanted me to also say a special thanks to the entire district especially maintenance and facilities and IT staff for their hard work and dedication to helping them achieve this special accreditation. Congratulations [Applause] [Music] [Applause] Good job. Our next group of honores are um being recognized as a part of TASBY's media honor role. Waco ISD and TASBY joined together to honor local media reporters for their fair and balanced continuous reporting during the 2024 2025 school year of Waco ISD and of public education in our

005state. We really appreciate these extra efforts. Um we have a great group that have shown up tonight. Some couldn't be with us. Um but first and foremost, we want to recognize the one and only Carl Hoover. We told Carl part of his special recognition was also being here with us last night till 10:30. So, thank you Carl. We gave him a Kit Kat for that. Next from Casey Ian, we have Mr. Micah Wilson. [Applause] If you weren't a part of the Tennyson opening day festivities with Micah, you really missed out. I know you can go still see him on his social media pages and see what joy he brings to reporting. Next from KXXV, we have Dominique Lelay. [Applause] And all of the great reporting that Dominique has done with us. She has really um

006emphasized bilingual reporting and we really appreciate her helping us reach those audiences and highlighting those programs. Next, we have the one and only Heather Healey with KXXV. Heather's done so many things, it's hard to figure out what to highlight, but I do know that she's um gotten up early and done a lot of early morning broadcasts with us, which we really appreciate highlighting our special programs. Next we have Bella Papaduk and she is with don't have her listed here. She's also with KXXV. [Applause] Bella worked with us as a part of our attendance boundaries coverage and the process and and followed us throughout and we really appreciated her telling that complicated story to our families. Next we have Zoria Goodley with Fox 44. [Applause] And then also with Fox 44, we have Elizabeth and Zena.

007[Applause] And it's hard to list all the places you've seen the one and only Bradley Vaughn because he'll come out and help us with just about telling any story. We really appreciate you, Bradley. Congratulations on your recognition. the many hours and the a lot of time and effort that goes into telling the stories in public education. This is just a small um way we can say thank you for what you do. And now we're going to take a group picture if y'all will all come back. Yep. [Laughter] And then we'll let Miss Margarita jump in. The official one. Yep. Lots of big fans of y'alls. I'm on the other side of the camera. Yeah. Yeah. It's nice. It's nice. All right, guys. Congratulations. Thank y'all so much. Thanks, Brad. Appreciate you so much. This list

008of reporters also appears on TASBY's website and they put out publications thanking them as well. Last recognition of tonight is our community partner award. This organization and pastor need very little introduction to this group of board members, but tonight we're happy to honor Family of Faith Worship Center with the TASBY Stand Up for Public Education Award as our June Waco ISD community partner. Under the leadership of Pastor Andradi, Family of Faith Worship Center has organized the distribution of Thanksgiving dinners to families, ensuring they have a warm meal during the holidays. Additionally, they provide hygiene products to our students, addressing essential needs that often go unnoticed. And every Tuesday, University High School students have the opportunity to volunteer. Pastor Andradi and the Family of Faith Worships Worship Center's commitment to students, teachers, and parents exemplifies the

009spirit of community partnership. And if I wouldn't tell you if we're sitting in a meeting and need something to connect to a family, I often hear his name and this organization's name come up from our staff at both high schools. And we really appreciate all that you do. Thank you. One more group picture. Yep. Yep. [Applause] Yep. And that concludes tonight's recognitions. Thank y'all. We are now moving on to the superintendence report. Yes, sir. Mr. President, the end of the school year celebrations continue this month as our adopted school partners are recognized with special awards given out annually to partners who have gone above and beyond in their support of our students and our staff. Family of Faith Worship Center, Bush's Chicken, Peter Piper Pizza, Renew Church, Fish City Grill, Mighty Wash, Mole Breakers Church,

010Billings Family Find Way Foundation, and volunteers and staff with First Baptist Church and Stars Book Club were all recognized. As part of these special recognitions, the district's principal of the year and the teacher of the year for elementary and secondary partners partner, excuse me, schools are presented with checks from some of the district's strongest partners, Richard Carr Motors and our very own Sturdy Steel. Thank you, Trusty Bledo. Waco is so blessed to have such committed and generous partners. Waco Bridge. Speaking of our partnerships, Waco SD is excited to welcome a new media and community engagement partner to our city, telling the unique stories of our district and this community we love. The Waco Bridge is a new community news organization that has described their goal as connecting Wacoins with essential stories about education, economic growth,

011and other issues that matter most. In addition to written online content, the Waco bridge will host events and community conversations. I am honored to be a part of their first news-based event, Texas Decisions Waco Impact, taking place next week on Wednesday, June 25th at 11:30 at MCC. I'll be joining M McClinton County Judge Scott Felton and Mayor Jim Holmes in a panel discussion about the impact of new legislation about taxation, school funding, education savings accounts, water projects, and other issues. Lastly, but not least, this evening, I have the pleasure of introducing Miss Janice Whiting as the new principal of Dean Highland Elementary School. [Applause] I'm going to read a little bit about her and then I'm going to give her time to just address the board. As a passing educator with over a decade of

012experience, Whiting brings a strong background in instructional leadership and student centered learning. Whiting previously served students and families in Waco as a teacher at Dean Highland University, Crestview Elementary, and Cedar and Oh, I cannot speak tonight. Y'all want to rewind? Caesar Chavez Middle School. Thank you. Her earlier work in the district included teaching third and fifth graders as well as middle school students. Her familiarity with Waco ISD communities and her dedication to students and academic achievement have been so consistent through her career. Most recently recently, she served as assistant principal in Midway ISD where she helped lead campus transformation efforts focused on building strong systems of support for both students and staff. She's also held leadership roles as an instructional coach, always with a focus on collaboration, culture, and continuous improvement. Mrs. Whiting's return to

013Waco OSD is an exciting moment for us and our Dean Highland Dragon community. She understands the power of building strong relationships with families and staff and she has a clear vision for student success. At this time, please help me welcome Miss Whiting. [Applause] Thank you very much and board. Thank you so much for the invite and the warm welcome. I really appreciate it. My understanding is I have a kiddo at Dean Highland from a board member. They're looking forward to knowing getting to know him a bit more. And um again, thank you for the warm welcome, community members and staff members, those who are here. But I did want to say a little quick story. Um before I do, I want to introduce my husband. So Luke, he's at the camera. And then my prior

014principal who gave me the shot at AP, Kim Hawkins is there also. That's good. Um yes. So yes, thank you. My amazing children are doing all the summer things. So work and camp and so they are rooting me on from those positions. But my very quick story which is uh sweet and um meaningful to me is Dean Highland Elementary was my very first teaching post ever. Uh taught third grade 2002 there for 5 years under Yolanda Williams and it was wonderful. Um ended up coming back around a couple of um years later after my kids grew up a little bit. Came back into the uh that campus again. Funny enough, same classroom as before, although at that time it was so my first position was brand new wing. Had three days to move in before

015I actually took my first class in uh that second time around it was kind of the older wing as the new building had been built at that time. So kind of neat and now coming back full circle as the lead of this campus is it's really sweet and especially meaningful. So thank you so much for the opportunity. I'm excited to um get it going. Yeah. So thank you. [Applause] We love a good group. There we go. Congratulations. [Applause] Next on the agenda is a public hearing to evaluate the effectiveness of accelerated instruction interventions. I will open I will open to public hearing at 620. I will not I will now turn it over to Miss Courtney Pernell who will provide an overview of the Wake Casd accelerated instruction plan and effectiveness of our intervention during

016202425 school year. Good evening board of trustees and Dr. Spicer and public. I am thrilled and excited to come to present and evaluate the effectiveness of accelerated instruction in Waco ICD. So, just to give you a background um on what response to intervention is, which is associated with accelerated instruction, but as we've talked before, response to intervention is basically it's a proactive approach to providing students supplemental instruction by identifying those students who are at risk by using a universal screener and other data points. So the data determines what type of intervention or tier the student receives and the assist that the teacher will be determining which skills to target or retach. So accelerated instruction is closely tied to response to intervention. But what it does is strategically prepare students for success in grade level content.

017And the focus of that is by reteing those needed skills, those past concepts and what we call just in time instruction. So we correlate it to the current learning. Just to review kind of how Waco ISD runs our intervention system, we have tier one. And we'll talk more about tier one in a minute, but basically that's core instruction. And when you look at the typical percentage when you look nationally, 80% of our students should be on tier one. And that instruction, those needs are met through that classroom teacher. they differentiate their structure instruction, provide those additional support or accommodations. Then you have tier 2 and those are students that um are targeted or using a targeted approach. That's typically about 15% of the student population. And then typically tier three is about 5% of your

018student population and that's your targeted um intensive instruction. And then in Waco we add a little S and that's our specially designed instruction. That's for our special ed students. and now our dyslexic students who are s um served through the IP program. And again, it's not that we don't provide those additional supports to the students that are on the tier below, they should get that plus in addition. So, just to review for the new board members, um a tier one student, the way we look at it is they're typically performing above the 26th percentile on our screener. We do that three times a year. And so, when we look at that, they're above um that 26th percentile. These are students who have passed their star. They're passing their TCAs and again that's that core instruction

019provided by that classroom teacher. Then we have our tier 2 students and those are typically the students who are following between the 25th to 10th percentile on that screener that national um normed test. They have typically failed STAR at least one year. They're working a year to 1.5 sometimes two years below grade level. And again, that intervention is provided by that classroom teacher in small groups during guided reading, during guided math, during our win time. And that's flexible grouping based on what the student needs. And then we have our tier three. And again, those are students that are below the 10th percentile. These students have typically or have failed STAR at least two years. Most of our tier three students in in middle school have never passed STAR in high school. Um they're multiple years

020behind grade level. And again, they're provided that intensive intervention in that small group setting with the supplemental teacher. So currently based on the end ofear data that we did the tiering, this is how Waco ISD compares. So right now we have about 52% that's tier one based on our multiple sources of data and I'll review that in a minute. We have about 32% in tier 2 and we have 13% in tier three. So again, you compare that to what it should be and what we are. That's in reading. In math, we're about 54% in tier 1. Tier 2, we're prov 29 29% of our students meet that criteria. And tier three is 16%. This is the tiering broken down by campus. So you can see the green represents tier one, tier two is represented by

021the yellow and then the red is the tier three. And you see it fluctuates among the campuses. So this is the tier breakdown by campus. And this is based on the June 2025 tiering high schools. Please note that that's somewhat skewed because at high school we're focusing on EOCC's. So, it's for those students that are freshman and then those retesters. This is the math again. Tier one is that green, tier two is the yellow, tier three is the red. And what we do is at the end of the year, my team looks at this. We use a plat platform called branching minds that breaks it out by campus. It breaks it out by grade level. It even breaks it out by different um ecois populations. So if you ever want a more in-depth look into

022each of the campuses, I'm happy to show you branching minds and show you that platform and what it looks like. So, when we look at accelerated instruction and when I present it to y'all in years past, I've always given you the data and the growth and then I've talked about what we want to work on. So, this year I'm going to change it up a little bit for y'all. I want to talk about what we did this year because I think it's super important you see the work that we're doing as far as intervention tier 2, tier three um in the work with the campuses. Um, so these are the action steps that I took based on last year's data. Again, I want you to know and I want to assure you that when I

023look at the data, it's not where we need to be. I know that. I own that. My department owns that. So every year when we get that data, we're digging into it just like your campus principles. What worked? What didn't work? What do we need to do better? So this is based on last year, what we knew didn't work and what we need to improve on. So, we knew we needed to really focus on just in time instruction for tier two and tier three. We knew we know that our students need grade level content, but they also need those prerequisite scaffold skills, but we have to do it in a context that is relatable to that tier one instruction, but focuses on those most important skills. So, we really talked about just in time instruction

024with our C campus principles. We want to bridge those gaps, but we also want to help them stay on track and give them the skills they need to to grow to understand core. We worked with I Ready because this was the first year we've implemented Ire districtwide as our screener. If you remember, this is the first year we've used the teacher toolbox districtwide. So, at the beginning of the year, I Ready came to every campus after we did our BOI screener and they sat in the PLC's with the teachers to review the data. They also did that midyear. So after the midyear screening, I ready came in, sat in the um PLC's with the teachers and helped them look um review their data. Late fall, we really started digging in with just in time instruction,

025really working with the principles, the instructional specialist, and what we call an I Ready continuum. So we knew that we had I Ready based on just some observations and walkthroughs. The campuses really own that pathways. they really owned getting the students on the platform, which is that computer platform we have to get on the certain minutes that's required to close those gaps. What we knew we needed to work on was that direct teach instruction and so that started about November and fall and I'll talk more about that. So, any questions about what we did for AI this year? May I ask one? Yes, sir. Short question. Uh when you're talking about the um when you offered that we could come see more detailed data as a demographic breakdown is that information being provided to our

026campus. So all the campuses have access to breaking minds. All the teachers have access they so their classrooms roster to them. So because it's synced with teams. So I'm Courtney Parnell. I see all the students in my classroom. I see what tier they're on. And it also pulls in the I Ready data, the STAR data. It breaks down if they're special populations. So yes, they all have access to that. Super. Yes, sir. So just to review again, what is tier 2 instruction? So I've already talked about the criteria and it's very important that Waco as a whole, we use the criteria. We understand what a tier three student is. We understand what a tier 2 student is. We have to be equitable upon the definitions of these interventions so we can ensure our kids are

027getting the same instruction or intervention across the campuses. So again, tier two, what does it look like? So it's targeted. We know it's targeted and we know it's small group. We know that it should happen with the cork teacher two to three times a week and we hope it lasts 30 to 45 minutes. So what did elementary what did we focus on on tier 2? And again this is based on last spring data. So we wanted to ensure that we were getting those I ready minutes that we talked about. That's the pathway that when the students do the diagnostic after they do that screener that we do three times a year, there's a pathway and that pathway is individualized based on what the student needs. And based on I Ready research, if a student gets

028so many minutes per week, it will help them meet their growth measure, the typical growth. And so what we really focused on is that we wanted all of our students to get that 30 to 45 minutes. And I'm so proud of the campuses because they rocked it. they did it when we did those wa rock walk rocks the kids were on the computers they were on the pathway learning so that was our big push this year and the c campuses did a great job of having someone monitor that so they would pick up um someone on their instructional leadership team they would chart the data a lot of them had the data in the hallways celebrating the campuses the classes the students that met their growth then we started doing the tier 2 walks and

029that's when it became apparent that we were doing a great job on the pathways, but that me as the director of this program maybe have have not provided enough guidance direction on direct teach for tier 2. And so that's when we realized that we needed to provide more support for that. So we scraped the surface of that this year and I'll talk more about next year what we're going to do. And so again, we it was working with the I Ready lessons. So what I Ready does is after it does the diagnostic it provides a teacher toolbox and within that toolbox it provides grade level standards lessons and then of course it gives you the prerequisite lesson. So if I know I'm missing a certain grade level teak you can look at that TE and

030then it gives you the prerequisite lesson to retach those skills. So again that's how we're providing resources to our teachers to provide that just in time instruction. So, we don't want our teachers to have to prepare additional lessons, right? They have enough on their plate. We want to provide them the time to dig into the data so they can use that resource to provide that and close the gap. Um, so we also offered strategic reading professional development started that last summer. So, if you remember, we had our two um reading recovery lead teachers that we used funds and so we had a lot invested into those two ladies. So, they're now our district elementary reading coaches. And what we did last summer is we paid teachers to come in the summer and learn the strategic

031reading um skills. And so we differentiated it between novice and skilled and worked with the principles to see which level they thought their teachers were on. So the teachers came to this got paid extra duty to learn to how to improve their small group reading skills. Um, we also, and you can see that bottom picture, if a novice teacher attended, then they got one-to-one coaching from the strategic reading coach. So, Elaine and Deborah are now our coaches. And so, they went and went in into those classrooms and provided additional support for that. Any questions so far? What I do want to note is there's a difference. We just need need to make sure we understand the difference between strategic reading and the intervention that I'm talking about. So when we look at tier 2 intervention,

032that's the targeted that's skill-based. But when we look at strategic reading, it's putting all the skills of reading together in an authentic way with that book in front of the student. So it's really two different things. And our students need both, right? They need those skills, but they also need opportunity to put it together. It's kind of the analogy of football is what I use with campuses this year. like you've got to do those skills. You've got to do when you're in practice, break out into your groups and do that skill targeted, but you also got to give them an opportunity to play in the game to put all those skills together. So that's why it's important we offer both. Then we have secondary intervention. So we had win time that y'all are all familiar

033with. When stands for what I need when I need it and so it's based on what the student need needs. So we continued win, but what we learned again based on previous years experience and data and walkthrough is that putting students on a computer at the secondary, specifically the high school wasn't giving us the results we needed. Shocker, right? High school students didn't want to work on a computer program. They wanted to be on YouTube or on their phones. So we removed that. So when specifically for the high schools is all direct teach. So, we paid teachers from the high schools to come in, use resources that we purchased called Lmen and another one using um some of the district curriculum that they've used in the in the past, look at their data and write

034their win curriculum. So, win was direct teach. So, when we went in and did our high school win calibration walks, the expectation was is we saw direct teaching occurring and that happened. So, I was proud of that. The high schools did a great job of that. And we also this year provided win courses based on students needs. So besides 1416, we offered freshman tees. Those were for the students who passed the star, but they may have approached the start, right? And we know approaches isn't grade level. We also provided TSI and math and ELR. And so that's helping us to make sure we're CCMR ready. We provide AP test prep, SAT test prep, and UIL. So that's all offered during win time. It's based on what the student needs. We also started a senior seminar

035for students who didn't need end of course prep who were CCMAR um ready and it was basically what do you need after high school and then we have our IGC groups middle school win did use I ready. Could you tell me what IGC is? I don't I don't know what that That's for students who haven't met the star um requirement and so it's a offered they can you do some type of projects to help them graduate basically. Any questions for that? Middle school we did continue with I Ready because that's the program based on the pathways but I'll talk in a minute about how we're going to add some additional support. Okay. So tier three what do we do in tier three this year? So again just to review tier three is intensive. It's pull

036out. It should be 30 to 45 minutes. It should be four four to four to five times a week and in theory it should be no bigger than five to six students in theory. Some people say two to three. So this is who we currently served this year the number of students. So in elementary you see in reading we served 884 students. Middle school we served 224. And I do want to note that's lower. And I do want to note that we had three sit vacancies at our middle school this year. Carver had two vacancies and Chavez had one vacancy that couldn't be filled. So then those students were then put into tier 2 with during our win time. High school we had 260. So total WSD students served in tier three at one point

037was um 1368 in reading. Any questions on that? in math. We I have a question. Yes, sir. And so you said um we have improved in those areas. You have those numbers as far as I'm about to get to that. Yes, sir. Oh, next. There we go. Um as far as the growth, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I didn't mean it. As far as the um you said at Carver that it was two teachers that were missing. How did those students who needed tier three intervention, how did they receive it? So, everybody gets win time. So within that win time, those students were provided that additional support during win with the core teacher. Okay, these this is the number of students we served in math. Again, elementary was 701, middle school was 538, high school was

038176. And to note, we had two vacant math positions um s positions. We had one vacant at university that was filled with a long-term sub in January and then at Waco High. So again, those teachers, those students were filtered in to win and provided that additional support. Just to review, this year we have about 42 sit math, I mean 42 reading and 30 sit. And again, these positions are funded through state comp funding. So what was our focus this year? Again, when I got our end ofear data last year, I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't happy. I mean, I'm I cannot tell you how proud I am of our sit teachers. go back to that picture of them. That's our beginning of the year. Um, these this staff works with students who are multiple years

039behind. They work with students who don't like to do something and their job is to teach the skill but also to make them feel successful. So, they are amazing at what they do and I cannot praise them enough along with my team that's in there. So, our focus for tier three. So, again, when we got our end of the year data last year, our math was not where it needed to be. So we needed to revisit what we were doing for tier three. We had used a program called do the math and that works on foundational skills which is great. Our students need foundational skills but we also know we need to do that just in time instruction. We have to fill those gaps into core. We have to fill in those most important skills

040because we can't retach everything. So what are those most important targeted skills? So we started using the I Ready teacher toolbox and we started using what's called um a standardbased mastery embedded within I Ready that teaches the skill but it assesses them in the format of STAR 2.0. So that is my theory in all this is that most of our students have the skill but they have to transfer it to a test that's 2.0. So it's kind of my analogy. You can play football and you can have all the skills but if you're playing football in a snowstorm you may not play as well as you typically do. So not only do we have to teach the student the skill, we have to teach the student in such a complex way that they can transfer

041that or generalize it to a more complex scenario. So yes, we needed to work on that. So we built an I Ready and we also worked on numerical operations strategies. We learned that we can't teach some students multiplication facts. We have to teach them what to do when they come to something in a a word problem that involves multiplication or division. So we worked with our set teachers on that. We looked at our reading and we knew our reading had some gaps. So what we did this year is we built in UFly which is a University of Florida literacy institute. It works on phonics funological awareness. So our reading teachers embedded that twice a week in addition um to the LLI. We also integrated I Ready teacher toolbox lessons twice a week especially for our

042third, fourth and fifth to help those students transfer and generalize those skills. secondary intervention. We continued the implementation of I Ready using those standardbased mastery assessments. Um and again they have just like our elementary have weekly walkthroughs. Our secondary have a sit teacher or instructional specialist that walks the classroom does coaching with them and ensures that they're implementing that with fidelity. What I'm even more excited about is y'all know about camp read a lot, right? Those are the books we send home every summer with every elementary student first through fifth and we want them to read 20 minutes a day. But I also got the approval to do camp read which has been my dream since I've come back to Waco. Basically it's a six-w week intervention program for students. Um we targeted a first

043through third but we had some kinder come and some fourth and it's a six week intervention reading camp. It's three days a week and we're focusing and it's for tier three students. It's for tier three students who met the growth measure midyear that we needed them to maintain those skills to when they came back because what our data also shows is we make lots of growth and they go home over the summer and then we regress and sometimes our students don't come back with those skills till mid year. So those are the things we have done. So now you want to look okay what's the data you you tell me what you did how did you grow. So this is the reading growth. So from tier 2, so this year if you look, tier 2

044had 398 students go from tier 2 to tier three, but we had 511 students go from tier 2 to tier 1. So you think again, basically they're now on grade level. And again, that's classroom teachers doing that in addition to the other things that they're charged to do. Tier three, we had 509 students move down from tier three to tier two. We had 140 students go from tier three to tier one, which is grade level performance. That's in reading. In math, for tier 2, we had 359 go from tier 2 to tier three. And then we had 451 go from tier 2 to tier one. So that's your classroom teachers doing that. in addition to their core instruction. Tier 3 math, we had 414 students go from tier three to tier 2 and we had

045235 students go from tier three to tier one. Hey Courtney, looking at this and this in this pyramid, we want to see them go down the pyramid rather than up. Uh especially going from tier three to tier one. Um that's a big jump in one year. Um, is your department figuring out how that happened or or what maybe what teachers were were the most successful with that or what they were using that made that incredible jump? So, yes, sir. You identified that. So, what they're using is we have to make sure we're all using the same thing, right? Because we can't measure fidelity if you're not using it. So, we require them all to use the same thing. But what we do is we analyze each of the sit teachers data. So I already have

046a chart from 24 to 25. What sit teachers their percentage of how many students were approached or better? How many students met the growth measure? How many students met the growth measure on stretch and typical growth or I ready. We then color code our sit teachers and then some of our sit teachers may be colorcoded something similar to our pyramid and they get additional coaching or support by our sit intervention. my my team goes in um our sit team is required to do so many walkthroughs on every teacher but we have certain teachers who may need more coaching than others. So you you think that the the jump down from tier three to tier one both in the reading and math is that SP I don't know how to articulate I'm trying to ask you

047you guys know who who's hitting the home runs with that right and so we know our sit teachers who are at 70% or above okay in growth and star that's that's what we do is we do lots of collaboration so when we have what we call our sit PD conference at the beginning of the year. Those are the teachers who are leading our PD. Um those are the teachers who we have next year who want to do table talks based on our input from our sit teachers as what they want to do. Um those are the teachers that we take some of our yellow and red teachers to look at some of our green teachers. So we do do that. I do want to note and I was going to touch on this in a

048minute but let me go ahead and touch on it. I know there's some question about how does a student how do we have some students grow and some students not grow or how do we have some campuses who have more tier one growth than other tier one. There are so many variables that I can't even touch upon but it's some I can um for example it may depend on how many times a student comes to school. It may depend on how big the tier three group is. We have some schools that had 16 kids in one tier three group. Now, we've corrected that because the way we did the funding, we provided those targeted campuses additional funds. So, I we have hoped to alleviate that. Again, that's based on our data and knowing that we

049needed to change things up, right? Um it could also be is their classroom teacher certified teacher who's providing them the core instruction. So, there's so many variables that it's hard to pinpoint why certain things are working and not. Um but I can tell you we do look for patterns. And then again, if the student's not progressing, they may have a learning disability. They may have a cognitive deficiency. So that's what intervention is about. It's not about the growth, but it's also about why are they not growing? And then taking it to that committee. Do they need to go to tier three? Do they need a referral for special education? You know, some of our students are homeless. Do we need to bring the homeless coordinator in? So there's so many variables. Behavior, do we need

050to work with our behavior team? So that's kind of the reasons about some of as you might interpret fluctuation of growth where there's variables that impact that. Okay. So this is super exciting. Let me just tell you let me explain first. This is based on the I Ready data. So this is the screener we do three times a year. And note this is a nationally normed test. So this is national norms. This isn't Texas y'all. This is star. This is nationally normmed. how Waco ISD is comparing to students nationally. Mr. Giller, are you laughing at me? So, if you look based on about is not Texas, y'all. See, there you go. Exactly. Um, if you look at where Waco is. So you look at fall, this is reading this beginning of year. 41% of our

051students, it's colorcoded or it's the dark red, were three or more gray levels below. 20% were two or more. 27 was one and then you have the green. So you see the tearing color coordination. End of year. And this is the first year since I've come back in 2020. God, y'all, we need to move this. um we've ever ever been below 55% end of year. We're now sitting at I even added it together 43%. So we showed an 18% growth in students moving out of that more than three years below. That's a celebration. Look at tier one. That 18% we went from 12% to 30% of our students based on this one measure. This is one measure nationally norm comparing our kids to other kids in the nation. 18% growth. Is this high school and

052elementary? This is all. So this is the elementary, middle, and then at high school we assess our ninth and tth graders and some of those in like geometry. So this is something to be so proud of. If you look in the middle, look at our yellow. So that's our tier 2 kids, right? That's where we're kind of stagnant. So that's where I know I need to be better. that we need to focus on and that I'll talk about that and action steps that we're going to work on for next year. This is the breakout by grade level. So you can see K the beginning of the year we had 87% of our students start in kindergarten a year behind. We went to 35%. You can see first grade again. Yes, as we grow in grades,

053we have more students who are behind, right? Because we have to continue to close and work on those gaps, which is better than it's ever been, but as a student continues to get further behind, it can snowball on you. Any questions on that? And this is our ninth, 10th, and 11th grade, and 12th grade. I do want to note that this is a little um skewed because only tier three students last year used I ready. So when you look at beginning of the year to end of the year, the fall to spring, I'm sorry, this is fall to spring. So these are the all students, I'm sorry. So these are the students who tested in fall and who tested in spring. So we have some students who choose not to do the assessment at high

054school. So we worked hard to make sure that. So again, yes, you're looking at 92 to 62%. That's a little bit of alarming, but you also got to remember it's not your entire population of your secondary campuses, right? And that's the slide that was duplicated. I apologize for that. This is your breakdown by campus. So I'm not going to go over campus, but I do want to explain. So for example, Alta Vista, their end of the year is the top bar. their beginning of the year is the bottom bar. So you can see Alta Vista went from 2% on grade level to 20% on grade level. They went from 18% three or more below grade levels to 9%. And the breakdown by campuses and again this is on a nationally norm test comparing our students

055to those um of the same grade level. Any questions on each campus? would you just take us back through Alta visit? Uh because the the categories aren't listed for me. Yes. I I apologize. No, no, no. It's just I if you just take me step by step through that. You don't have to go through the rest of schools, but I want to be able to look at that data and understand it. Okay. So, you look at Alta Vista. The bottom says BOI and the first color, which is there's not is the dark green with the stripes that correlates to that very first column to the right. So, there was 2% of students. Thank you. That if you flip back to your previous chart that I should have put on here to this one right here,

056it gives you the color breakdowns. So, that says they're mid or above grade level. Then you look at the green. Those are students that are early or on grade level. The yellow is the one year behind. And then the kind of pinkish is two years behind. And then the pinkish red with the stripes is three or more. So when you look at the columns to the right, each of those columns are in order and they correlate to the color. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. So again, the the top is what they did end of year. The beginning is the BOI. It's what they did at the beginning of the year. I have a question. Um, can you go to South Waco? Yes, sir. U so I guess if I'm looking at the first column there between

057beginning of year and end of year have we identified why there was not more growth there have we I'm sorry can you say that again if I'm if I'm looking at the first column of of numbers for South Waco um you're talking yeah I'm talking green. I'm sorry. It seems like everyone else had pretty substantial growth from beginning of the year to the end of the year. And I think South Waco and maybe Caesar Chavez had not as much. I mean, I think it goes back to those variables, right? How many core classroom teachers did they'd have vacancies in that the students weren't getting that core instruction? How many experienced teachers do they have? How many students were absent that took it? How many students are homeless behavior? So it's all those variables play into

058this that play into tier three. So um I mean yes it goes back to core but what is impacting core that's preventing those students from growth. You also need to look at where they started right how many red they had. So what I would focus on is the red to the red and the yellow to the yellow because they had 21% that were three or more grade levels and then went to 13%. And again, I'm going to remind you this is a campus that had probably 14 to 16 students and a tier three intervention group. This is a campus that had tier 2 students. Got it. So they that's one of those variables that you have to consider. And so when we the principles and the teachers start identifying that as soon as we get

059this data. Say it again. I'm sorry. We start identifying what those variables potential issues are as soon as we as soon as we get that data. Correct. I know I do and I'm sure the principles do. I was on principal meeting about funding today and every one of us were talking about I ready data. My gosh, we didn't see the growth we wanted. What's going on? What do we need to do next year? So, absolutely. And again, we have PLC's where I comes in and shows the leadership team, hey, look at your data. Pull these reports. Um, that's the part of the data they're supposed to be looking at when they tier. Okay, what happened to second grade? Our second grade didn't grow as much as fourth grade. What's going on with our second grade

060teachers? Did I have vacancies? Well, fourth grade grew more, so what do I need to do? So, those are all those questions those principles look at when they're looking at the data. and and as head of the department, you have everything you need. Um, discussions we've had is is, you know, basically the the way to treat everybody the same is everybody needs different things and and you have what you need if you need to pull resources from say one campus to to help at another. Is that available to you? Is that an option? I have great support from Dr. Cornblain, from Dr. Spicer. Um, I have great resources. I will tell you the one area I'm most concerned about and it's no one's fault is the lack of teachers we have and at our secondary

061campuses specifically we don't have the tenure teachers we would need because of the lack of the unavailable leave teachers right I mean we have to focus on core we have to make sure students get that core instruction so we want to put great teachers or good teachers in core but we also need to put great teachers in those supplemental classrooms but if I don't have core teachers how can I do supplemental so the principles are doing the best they and but you know what do you do? So that would be probably the one thing that impacts us and then the vacancies but again that's a challenge we're all facing. Right. Right. No sir I feel like I have the resources. Thank you for asking though. This next part um basically deals with the uh comparison

062to national norms. Now you look in this this is a longitudinal cohort analysis. So when you look at the current first grade, this is where they tested they were in kinder last year in spring at 20 23 24 the percentage or the median they were at 32% fall winter 26 spring 28. So these are first graders. So when you look at what we call a bell-shaped curve, right? 50% average. All of our kids would be if we were performing where all of our students needed to be, those numbers would have be above the 50th percentile if we were performing to our peers. But please go back and remember, we're growing, right? We have we're growing. We're getting closer to our nationally norm peers, but we know we still have work to do. So, you may

063say, why does Kinder go lower? Well, K I mean, first grade, why did it dip? Okay, first grade's a tough. That's the grade you're learning to read, right? So, even though we went down a little bit, we were still at the 28th percentile, but we were higher than these kids were in kindergarten. So, we did show growth when you compare spring to spring. The same kids, the same cohort. Second grade, when they were in first grade, we were at the 18th percentile. So, our second graders were performing in the 18th percentile. When you compare us to nationally norm students, okay, this year, those same kids, we went up to 24th percentile. We had a six-point gain nationally. Y'all, that's hard when you think nationally norms, how much we're growing. Third grade, fourth grade. So, again,

064just to compare, that's the same kids because we're only comparing kid to kid and it shows how they're growing when we compare them to peers. And this is the average for that grade. Does that make sense? Let me add one more thing too before you go to the next part. One of the questions you asked about was resources and support. Um, one of the things that we did do this spring. Um, when I came here, we talked about tier. We met with Miss Parnell and we looked at the fact that I'm making this up. So, all the elementaryaries say they got I don't know 50 now, $50,000 each. We looked and said, "Hey, this is a more need at this campus versus this versus this." So if you don't have that, I'll say academic need

065here, you might have got 20,000 versus 50,000 here. So we did stagger the funding for the coming year. So you will see opportunities for more support at the higher need campuses and those resources will be allocated there. But again, um even as we're going into funding, I was talking to a principal yesterday. Um we're going to have to staff our tier one classrooms first, right? And so we have a shortage of teachers. We know that. So, we're working on opportunities, ideas, suggestions. We're doing all the things, but we have the money, we have the funds because that's statecom bed funds. Um, but we are going to make sure that tier one is staff first because we have two things going on. Tier one instructions going on, but also closing the gap is going on. So,

066we're doing two things at one time, but we need the bodies and we're working on that. But, we did change our staffing model for next year, but the principles already know that information. So, just something to kind of help you. And South Waker is a great example. Again, I talked to them. They had two and a half sit teachers and they had 14 to 16 kids. So now they have five. Dean Highland's the same way. Carver went from two math, they now have three math, three reading. So that's how we kind of allocated the funding based on their ecois, which we have to rank them by ecodis for title one, but also we did the percentage based on their um if they were identified and also stay calm. Um this is again you see fifth

067and sixth, seventh and eighth. Again, I want to note in seventh and eighth, this is where I was confused earlier. This is this is comparing tier three students only because in seventh and eighth grade, the middle schools did not use the I Ready diagnostic because if y'all remember last year, we had I Ready and Renaissance and we gave the elementaryaries the option to choose if they wanted to do both and the elementary did. So, that's why you have that longitudal data for elementary. For middle school, you just have tier three. So, I want to say kudos because if you look at my tier three kids, we were up to 44th percentile. Okay. Then we get into math. I'm not going to go into such a deep dive, but I do want to go over this.

068So, again, at the beginning of the year of math, we were sitting at 57% of our students were two or um excuse me, two or grade level two or more grade levels below. And again, shout out because at the end of the year, we went to 36%. So, we had a 21% difference in tier one, 25th% gain. So, again, we're making gains, right? When you compare us nationally to other schools, we're making gains when we measure this. So, I'm so proud of our district for that. If you break it down by grade level, again, you see kinder, um, we had 94% of our kinders come to us a year behind. sixth, seventh, eighth grade. And that's our high school. And again, that's tier three only. Yes, sir. Because we know that's when the the the

069the much more complex mathematical expressions and uh come into play. Um so we are seeing the growth that looking more closely at it. Um have we looked at this correlation of I Ready to STAR. So Miss Ste's doing that. I Ready has what we call a projected proficiency test. It's based on midyear. So a lot of our campuses use that and it looked good. Um, we're not seeing the correlation in STAR, but like I explained to our principal today, you're measuring two different things. This is a nationally norm criterion reference test, and it doesn't assess it the way STAR does. So, you're yes, you may know the skill, but are you transferring it to that more complex again, playing football in the snow? That's what STAR does. So, yes, we're seeing growth, but are we

070transferring it to that higher level that's being measured by a state assessment, right? Does that make sense? That's math high school. So, that's by campus. Again, I'm not going to go into each campus. Do y'all have any questions about any of the campuses? And then that is again the longitudal study for math for each of the grades. And each of them were going up some of them by one or two points, but again that's nationally comparing us to students within the nation. So want to get into tier three. What's the growth on tier three? So when we look just at tier three, this is your high school students who have grown two years or more. So, when we look at Let me flip to this. I think it's missing some slides. Let me Yeah, appears

071we're missing some slides. Y'all have the um this that shows the tier three the handout. Okay, that's not in here. So, I'm going to go by my handout. So, what y'all have is this. I have this 24. Yes. So on 24, if you look at the tier three students, so that is the tier three students in the district and it's broken down by campus because y'all asked for data by campus. So if you look at Alta Vista, it shows your tier three students only and the number in navy blue is the number of students who met typical growth. So typical growth is typically a year. We want our students to grow a year. So the navy shows how many grew a year for reading. Then you go above it, that light blue is stretch growth.

072So that's the percentage out of those who met their typical growth who got stretch growth. So what our goal in tier three and we're really going to focus on next year is we need stretch growth, right? We have to close more than one year of gap. So that's the breakdown by campus. So looking at also Vista Courtney uh 43% re reach typical growth and of that 43% 28% of the 43 so the light blue is the percent of the dark blue. Yes sir. Okay that's how I ready presents it. Um can you I forget my what is stretch growth? So stretch growth is based on I Ready. It's that they've shown more than one year's growth. So basically they've shown two years growth. We're stretching them. It's based on I Ready matrix. So I really

073can't explain how they measure it. There's different levels for different grade levels, but it shows that they've met more than one year's growth. And we have to and I have more research or more study for Waco. In Waco, we've got to work on stretch growth, right? We can't just do typical growth. We know that. We have to focus on stretch. So again, you're going to see like Kendrick for example, 70% of their tier three students in reading met typical growth. and out of that 70 57% mid-stretch growth. So again, those are by Kendrick Rockstar teachers. So that's what we look at too when we're looking at our sit teacher data. So that breaks it down. Again, you look at South Waco, they had 29% meet typical growth and of that 29 31 met stretch. But

074again, that's the campus that was having the 14 to1 ratio. So I anticipated that. So that's again why we've changed how many teachers they get. And this is all only tier three students. This is just tier three students. Yes, sir. The bottom's the math. So again, if you look at Carver, shout out to Carver, 68% of their tier three students met typical growth. Out of that 63, 61% met stretch growth and that was two sit teachers of math at Carver. So I'm so proud of Carver. So any questions on that? And I apologize it's not in the slides for the public, but I'm happy to provide that. Um, this is our tier three growth. So high school it doesn't do the growth measure. So we have to look at year's growth. So if you look

075at our high schools the first one is reading. So in reading we had 54% of our students show more than two years growth. In math at university we had 65% of our students show more than two years growth. Waco High in reading we had 71% of our tier three students show more than two years growth and in math we had 62%. You also have demographics for for the high school for the tier three students. Yes sir. So is um like ESL emerging is is that also tied into the data that you can access? So yeah, and the way we do tier three at the high schools is because we have the number of students who are EOCC that have to have EOCC. All of our students who fell STAR, whether you failed STAR one year

076or every year, we have to put them in a sit lab or we provide them the opportunity to be in a sit lab to help them pass that standard or pass EOC. So yes, that includes DSL, it cleansed. So I I have the breakdown of that demographic that I can pull if you need it. I'm so sad. My next slide's not in there either, but you have this. So you have the tier three students to approached or better. So if you look at just for this year, um it's a comparison between 24 and 25. So in elementary reading, I am proud to say that last year we were at 24% who approached and this year we went to 60% of our elementary tier three students who were approached better. Um math middle school, we stayed

077the same 32% and again these are students who are approached are better. Um we saw that with the um some of our students who were a bit more challenging and frustrated because they were in a sit lab. Some of those behaviors were demonstrated in our sit labs and so some of that behavior impacted our instruction and we really felt that this year. And then at high school um for reading we went from 19 to 21%. And I'll talk about high school because we've got to get our literacy rate up. The next page says our tier three for um math. So I'm proud to say our elementary math last year we were at 10% approached or better at tier three. This year we went to 44% of our tier three students who are multiple years approached

078better at star and that was reading. I'm sorry reading let me go back to reading middle school again. You see reading middle school stagnant because we had the vacancies. I can attribute that to that. So we had some labs that had 20 students in it. We had some tier three students who were with tier 2 students not getting that intensive instruction. Then you look at math again. Elementary went from 10% to 44%. Middle school went to 18 to 25%. And high school reading, I'm sorry, high school math. Last year we had 60% approach or better. This year we had 64% of our tier three students passed the algebra 1 EOCC. This is our windfall data that I wanted to be sure to point out. So um again we offer win and that's the opportunity for

079our students to get additional um intervention or accelerated instruction in that win block. So I wanted to note or compare 22 23 and 24 and this is December testing. So again the 22 is the blue, the 23 is the red, the 24 is the yellow. But then I want to compare it to the green and so the green has the chronic absences taken out. So, these are students who missed five or more win periods. As you can imagine, some of our high school students don't want to go to win class, right? They're being taught something that they have maybe failed multiple times. Why do you want to go do something you're not good at? So, absentee was an issue at high school. Now, we've already fixed the problem, and I will talk about that in

080a minute. But I do want to show you when our kids go to win and they get that supplemental instruction in that EOC, most of our percentages double as far as the passing rate. And remember, these are tier three students, they're below the 10th percentile. Special ed students, students who have have never passed STAR, we're doubling that passing rate. That's university and this is Wake Ohio High. So, I'm super proud of our high schools for that. So next year, okay, I gave you data, right? What do we need to focus on? What do we need to get better? Again, owning that we're not where we need to be. So our next focus for next year for elementary is to continue to focus on and implement that just in time instruction. Really emphasing emphasizing the importance

081of pre-teaching those skills in small group direct instruction four times a week. We've got to do that tier 2 intervention. Um, we're going to provide additional training for the elementary campuses on the I Ready TICSS grouping report. Um, and help them really learn how to or use that data to pull that small group based on what that student needs more flexible grouping. Um, for tier 2, we're going to implement tier 2 elementary walks like we do at the high school where we walk twice a week and we calibrate and look and then work with that campus principal. What can we do to provide additional support? We're going to establish some tier 2 progress based monitoring. Again, I've been very careful about implementing more testing, right? We test a lot in this district, but I do

082feel we do need to focus on tier 2 because if we don't see if they're growing, then how do we know if it's working? So, we need to um collaborate with our principles and see what we can do better on that. Um again, we're working on the elementary strategic reading um groups. That's a part of that ELR framework. It's an addition to that additional intervention time, but we're offering um the students more opportunities to engage in that grade level. But what we're doing is we're providing more PD and we're aligning that strategic reading to the HM. So students who get strategic reading for novice teachers who may not have the experience to use our additional resources, we're aligning that training this summer to using HMH. So the coaches are working with Donna Trig on that

083secondary focus again we're going to ensure our students attend win class right that's important so thanks to Mr. Mcadoo and Dr. Corn Bloom and the other instructional leadership. Um we first have taken when away from lunch. So a lot of our students would rather hang out in the cafeteria than go to win. Imagine that. So what we have done is we have it now between seventh and eighth period. So you can't hang out in the cafeteria because the cafeteria is empty. We've also made when 45 minutes. That was a ask from our middle school principles because this year it was 30 minutes. So you can imagine by the time the students get to the classroom and sit down, they maybe have 15 to 20 minutes of and direct instruction time. So in order for them

084to direct teach, pull those small groups, they needed additional time. So um I appreciate Mr. Mcad working on that. We also would implement Guam, Guaca, and PEK win. In years past, we wanted to provide our students the opportunity, but it also impacted their opportunity to get accelerated instruction. So you have some students who were at those campuses who were not getting intervention or accelerated instruction before they took the test. So we have corrected that. Um again the expectation will be at all middle schools and elementary that you are doing direct teach with tier 2. You're using those lessons and that they're aligned right and they're based on that just in time instruction those most important skills that are needed to close that gap. And I'm going to do a better job at supporting those campuses.

085um secondary campuses. What we're doing is we're paying them to come in the summer and elementary's also been offered, but secondary um they had to um come in the summer and map out what standards they're going to teach during when. So we know time is of essence, right? We know teachers don't have time to plan. So in secondary, they're we're having someone come in from the campus. They're saying, "Okay, sixth grade during win time, your direct teach will be this lesson. seventh grade will be this lesson. So this year it's going to be mapped out. Those teachers will have the I Ready lesson. So when those kids come to them in win time, they're going to have what they need to do that direct teach. And then Dr. Cornblue and I have already talked that

086we're working with the secondary ELAR coordinator. We've got to do something about reading, right? We have win time and we're working hard to do English one, but we still have our literacy gaps. We've got to do something in middle school and high school to help close those gaps. and 45 minutes of win time twice a week isn't going to close it. So, what else can we do to build into that framework to provide more of that scaffold instruction and we're going to collaborate on that tier three focus. So, again, we've got to focus on stretch growth. We know that all of our tier three teachers will be be required to have a beginning of the year conference, work with their students to see where they're at and talk about stretch growth. We're offering training on

087resources for more hands-on approach with the teacher toolbox. We purchased um manipulatives again to help them go from um abstract to concrete. Again, we're going to look at what else we can do for the ELR curriculum, continue the walkthrough and the coachings on teachers that were below the district average on their growth and then implement the fish philosophy. So, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but um basically it's a philosophy on be there, play, make their day, and choose their attitude. So, what we have found is that again tier three is very direct teach. It's very, you know, this is what you're going to do. It's very scripted. Sometimes it's dry, not as fun. Imagine that. So, we are encouraging our sit teachers to have fun with the kids, right? We want to

088close the gaps, but we want to have fun with them. We want to build those relationships. We're also going to do some service acts with our tier three students because we know when you service others, you feel better about yourself. And some of our tier three students have never been successful a day in their life. So, we want to show them when you serve others, you feel better about yourself. That is it y'all. What else can I ask? What questions? I I want to say thank you uh for such a thorough presentation. Um, this data is is pretty pretty easy to read and I love that you were telling us what didn't work and telling us your plans on what you're going to do. Kudos to you and your department. Kudos to your sit people

089who are taking definitely struggling learners and working to make them successful. And that comes from, you know, from from you on down. I've known you for years and I was just telling Angela, I mean, just the your work ethic. Uh, I I'm I'm so pleased that you're part of our district and thank you for the leadership that you're giving and thank you for this. Thank you for the opportunity. Can I can I hand Can I hand you something real quick? Yes, sir. Maybe. I have one for Carl, too. So, um, a couple years ago, I can specifically remember having a lunch with Cananan and she was talking about potential budget cuts and and things like that and I remember her saying you cannot cut from libraries and you cannot cut from reading and math intervention

090because it is so important. So, oh, sorry guys. I got some I may have to share. So I went back to the 20 23 February board packet and pulled your presentation from then. And so that's what you see on the left hand side there. And what what made me think of this was yesterday uh Taylor asked a question. How can Waco measure success without looking at star scores? And if you look at the decrease in students in elementary, middle school, and high school in tier three from the 2022 2023 school year to now it's significant. I mean, it is they're they're big numbers. It's not 1 or 2%. It's 34% across the district in in in reading and 20 in math. I mean, that's absolutely incredible. Um, so I think this is a program we

091can look at, it definitely is working. So whatever we need to do to improve it in any way or expand it any way, uh, I know it's not just you, all the teachers, a great team. Yes. Um, Greyber, Rose Johnson, Deborah, and Elaine. My only suggestion would be to all 10 of our television viewers is that we need substitute teachers because, uh, I I know sometimes those those intervention teachers get pulled out if we don't have anyone in the classroom. Um, so yeah, and looking for retired teachers. I will tell you that's what we did at Hines because they had vacancies. We were hired four retired teachers to come back and we're splitting positions. So, we're super excited about that. So, I've talked to Dr. Spicer about that and Dr. Cornbloom. So, again, we have

092and we did um to and to the principles that are here. Um, yes, we did. I talked to one of the principles on Monday at our campus and I said, "Listen, find your retired friends. 50-50 split. They can come on A days, one can come on B days, and we can do it. We don't have to pay benefits, too. We're 49%. So, yeah, find your friends, bring them here, and we can have them for all of our tier three instruction. That's the plan. Make it work. We got this. Yeah, this is excellent. When I saw it like this, my my brain has to think very simply, and this was incredible. Well, thank you'all again for your support. Thank you. Good job. All right. Thank you Miss Pernell for the presentation and for the information shared.

093I will now close the public hearing of on accelerated instruction at 7:20. We will now move on to item number seven information items and reports. Trusty Bzo, are there any questions? No. Trusty Davis, are there any questions? No. Trusty Gillery, are there any questions? No. Trusty Patton, are there any questions? No, sir. Trusty Oo, are there any questions? I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda except for item 800, math curriculum recommendation. I move. Oh, this we got to pass this. Pass that first. Yeah. I entertain a motion to Jim. Do I have a second? Second. Second. All in favor? I I pass to the unency. All right. Now we'll now like to Now we'll go to the consent agenda. Mr. Bleto, is there anything you like pulled? We were going to

094pull Math curriculum. Correct. 80. 80. Um, I make a motion that we pull item 800 from the consent agenda. We have a second. Second. Okay. And then we vote. We got a vote. So, now I'd like to entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda except for item 800, math curriculum recommendation. So moved. Second. Second. Second by Mr. Bledo. All All in favor, please say I. I. Any oppose? Well, with this one, Mr. Gillery recused himself from AD, right? 8D. So, yeah. at this time, I'd like to entertain a motion to approve item 8, math curriculum recommendation. So moved. Second. Second. I call for a roll call vote, please. Yes. Yes. Yes. Passes unanimously. Mr. President, I just wanted to say we wanted to make sure that all the teachers and staff members who worked

095hard on putting this together know that we do support you and we see you and we hear you. Wanted to make sure that was clear. Amen. [Applause] I would also like to thank Dr. Spicer, uh, Dr. Cornbloom for meeting with all the trustees and explaining everything more clearly. So, thank y'all. Yes, sir. And providing us the data that makes makes the vote so much clearer. So, thank you. Now we are going to rearrange the agenda items by moving to item 14 oath of office that Mr. Abdusi will come to the front of the podium to be sworn in. All right. As a notary public, I'm honored to administer the oath of office. Please raise your right hand. In the name and by the authority of the state of Texas, please repeat after me. I state

096your name. Do solemnly swear. I shall that I will faithfully execute the duties I will faithfully execute of the office of trustees of the office of the Waco Independent School District Waco Independent School District of the state of Texas the state of Texas and will to the best of my ability will to the best of my ability preserve protect and defend the Constitution preserve protect and protect the Constitution and laws of the United States and laws of the United States and of this state So help me God. So help me God. Thank you and very much and congratulations. Is there a moment that I say something here? Because I I was just wondering what is my role here to what what how how I address that? say a few words. A few words uh to

097to make my uh stress go down. It's a it's a what a crowd. What a moment for me. Uh I always like to reference some I'm a music guy and I just uh I just thought about it when I was sitting there. Uh the reference that comes to mind is uh one of my favorite songs by the band Deep Purple. Uh if you're familiar, some of us may, some of us may not. The song is called The Soldier of Fortune. And uh I I uh listened to that song when I was on the plane 25 years ago. I was in Amsterdam going all the way across the world. Sat there by myself as a very um intimidated I don't want to say young man because I wasn't young enough maybe to say that but I

098that song became part of my uh anthem for uh someone that feels the the love and luck and uh the blessing of the community. For 25 years, Waco has been home and uh I don't see myself anywhere else but Waco ISD. Uh you've been good to me. Waco Waco has been good to me and Waco IC's family. Now I just want to say I'm thankful for uh the opportunity. I I just uh pray for me to do the right thing uh with wisdom, clarity, and for the for the love of our wonderful students of Wakey that I adore and love. And I am again I'm that soldier of fortune. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you. I love it how we learn from moments. Uh and this journey would have not been possible. I

099should have maybe I I have my precious little girl. She's mini me, but uh she's looks like mom, but she acts like that. And she's uh my little Anna, the performer, the I I love her dearly. And um it's a moment so special for all of us going entering sixth grade that Atlas within us uh next year. Proud to have her here. And then my wonderful Ania that again my rock my my my my teammate my my my everything after 20 years uh we've been with each other for 20 years now and then uh we have our little I was trying my best not quite actually I just rounded it up as mathematicians we do that a lot we just round up or down right but uh have her next to me side by side

100it's it's it's been a journey for us and uh thank you for Waco family for having us for all these years apprei Appreciate it. Thank you. [Applause] That's okay. Jose, can I make a quick comment? Um, I just want to say publicly thank you not just to Rashton's family, but also to Dr. Sarah Walden and Mr. Corey Duncan. Uh all of them saw that Waco ID was in need of a trustee knowing full well that uh this job is not an easy one and they were all willing to um put in an application and come in and interview. So we want to thank all of them too. We will now move on to item number nine. review, discuss, and take appropriate action on regarding the district's mission, vision, beliefs, statements, and priorities presented by Dr.

101Speer. Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. President. Um, at this time, I just want to walk you through the process of how we came to our mission, our vision, belief statements, and our strategic plan. Um, as you know, um, one of the things that I was asked to consider and make sure we got done was to work on a strategic plan for Waco Independent School District. And so in that work um we um did outsource to Mo Casey and they came in and took us on a journey. Um we had about six meetings and the way it worked is we started with the board of trustees to get their heart, their vision, their goals and their plan and we went down to leadership to get feedback as well and we did a SWAT analysis, strength, weaknesses,

102opportunities and threats. And then we also went to the community and then after that we kind of took that information and all the learning and then we went back to the community and we shared the feedback with them. and then we went back to leadership and then we came back to the board of trustees. So it took a few months but we did get some um I'll say words on papers and some things that we agreed upon that were I'll say essential as we plan the next five years. So our new miss mission um from our board of trustees is the mission of WSD is to cultivate wisdom, inspire growth and pursue excellence in every student. And so that's what we're going to stand upon um as we move forward in this new journey as

103we want to celebrate and honor our students and the work we get to do for them and with them and also our staff. And then our vision simply says Waco is rooted in wisdom and committed to excellence. And so we're excited about the words and what they mean to us as we go forward. We also have the opportunity to create belief statements. So if you think about any organization, you have all kinds of stakeholders. You have students in our case, you have staff members, you have campus administrators, you also have the superintendent and central office, but you also have the board of trustees. And so again, I'm not going to read these to you, but this is what the challenge is for us to pursue um as we go forward. So this is what we

104believe about each of those stakeholder groups and as we do the work that we do from the board of trustees all the way down. This is what we believe and this is how we will guide the work that we're doing for our district. And then after that we went through identified I'll say our strategic plan and priorities. And so there's four categories right now. You see the one for our students and the second one for our staff. In here we're going to talk about these three priorities for each of these stakeholder groups. Um after the board um approves our mission, our vision, our goals, and these priorities. Our job as a leadership team and as our district leaders, we have retreat coming up in July. We're going to kind of talk through what this looks

105like to make it come to life. So, we're going to put a plan in place that's going to take us for the next five years and then we're going to come back every month and we're going to present to the board of trustees to make sure that we can talk through these things. So, the next one is our community and our financial and operational efficiencies. And so, again, this is the work that we're going to focus on. Too many times we have a lot going on. We all know that. If you're a principal, you know that. If you're a director, you know that. If you're any part of our organization, there's always so much. But we can't be the um jack of all trades and the master of none. This is our way to focus

106the work, focus our efforts, and then make sure we come back and present this to the board, but also to our community. So, these things will be posted publicly. This is our accountability for ourselves, but it's also our accountability to our community. This is what they've asked us to do. We're going to share. We're going to be very authentic and transparent with it, and we're going to get the work done, and we're going to come back and say, "Yes, we met the goal, or no, we were short. We didn't meet it, but this is a plan to make sure we get it next time. So, wisdom truly does work wonders. This is what we're asking to approve tonight. I make a motion to approve. I have a question, Mr. Did we ever get a definition

107of accelerated? We talked about that. When we do our work, we're going to put that in there. So, yes, good deal. But we were not going to commit to two two years exact numbers. remember that conversation. We got you. Well, I would Okay. Yeah. I will entertain a motion to accept the district's mission, vision, belief, and statement. Already moved. Moved by Mr. Davis. Second. Second. Second by Mr. Bleo. Mr. Bledo, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Abui, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Giller, Mr. Davis, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Gillery, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Mr. Pack, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Oo, is there any discussion? Nope. All in favor say yay. I. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. We will now move on to item number 10. Review and discuss premiller

108spring 2025 star test results presented by Jessica Steel. Good evening, Mr. President, board of trustees, Dr. Spicer. So, if you haven't seen enough data, we're going to look at some more data. Um, and I guess it's me with the clicker, right? So, we're going to look at preliminary scores for spring 2025 STAR test results. So, just as a quick reminder, we changed to the STAR 2.0 O model in uh spring of 23 and that brought in multiple types of questions um so questions that were formatted not just multiple choice or fill in the blank anymore um increased writing in all subject areas so we really saw um you know our science and social studies now the students have to write in those subjects as well and then it's all pretty much administered online so a

109big transition in 23 so this is the third year of this model of testing. Um so when we started looking at comparisons really only from 23 on can we compare you know the apples to apples idea. So we can't compare anything earlier. Um in December of 24 they started um having our extended constructed responses primarily graded by an automated um scoring engine or you know we like to think of it as like more like AI. Um and so that's how a lot of that writing is scored. Now about 25% goes to a human grader. Um scale cuts and levels for STAR 2.0 were set in 2023. The scale cut scores haven't changed over the last few years, but I do want to note that something that does change depending on the subject and the grade

110level is the number of points a student must earn to reach that scale score. So that's can be impactful. Um that often deals with the rigor of the questions that are on that test. Not every question is the same. Um there's two ways to look at the data. Tonight we're going to look at raw data. Um later on when we talk, you know, really about our accountability numbers and taper, we start looking at our snapshot, which only includes students that were enrolled October 25th um on that snapshot day. Those are our kids that count for that snapshot data. But this is raw data, so it's any student that tested with us um would would count here um whether they fit in the snapshot or not. And of course, we know that the rigor continues to

111change um on that STAR test each year. So, it's not always looking identical from year to year um in essence equitable but not um so our goal to analyze our star data review trends, make adjustments, and provide the support. So, um, without reading line by line, um, we want to make sure that we're looking at how the questions are being asked, what's being assessed for our students, how do we need to adjust our curriculum and our professional development to make sure that we're supporting our staff and our students to be successful, and then of course start looking at what might those accountability ratings look like before they come out. Um so we start working through those pieces. Um just as a reference looking at who our students are comparing them to the state. Um so

112we have 89% of our students are um identified as economically disadvantaged 72% are at risk. And then looking at some of our predominant um race and ethnicities, Hispanic is 62%, African-American 28%, our um white race and ethnicity is 8% and then we have emergent bilingual students about 24%. So just to give you an idea of who our students are, but the story we're going to tell tonight is really about Waco ISD um and how we're performing um compared to ourselves. So, we're going to first look at um reading language arts questions. So, and and their scores. So, knowing that about 75% or 75% of the test is multiple choice, the other 25% of the test is made up of a variety of question types, um text entry, so just typing in an answer, um matching

113grid tables or multi-part questions. So, our tests are no longer each question is one point. Some of our parts are worth more points. Our our ECRs, our constructed response, those extended ones are worth 10 points and they're being written at every grade level. So students are having to, you know, be proficient at typing skills as well as their writing skills um to be able to do this. So here is our elementary raw data for 2025 spring assessments compared to 24. So you can see our third grade reading has really um made some good increases at approaches meets and masters level across the board. Um we saw a small dip in fourth grade but some gains at meets and masters um for fourth grade and then as well as in fifth grade. So elementary across the

114board has pretty significant gains coming um in most areas. Um any questions on Are we going to go through it all and then ask? Looking at our middle school raw data, um we do start seeing a little bit more variance. Sixth grade, we see a 5% at approaches dip from 24 to 25. Three in meets and an increase of 2% at masters. Seventh grade we do see that increase in um approaches but a small decrease in both meets and masters there. And then eighth grade has a little a one plus or one minus um approaches meets and masters. So we see little increases in and um variance there. And then looking at our English one and English two EOCC's at our high schools. Um, I do want to make sure that this includes not only

115our firsttime testers, but our retesters, too. So, it's any student that took that test in spring. Um, and so we see a drop in across the board in English one by a small margin and then, um, in English two, 6% at both approaches and meets and then an increase um, at that mast's. So some notes on that. We did see 57% growth using the TA TEA um transition table. So students that move from one level to the next and they're broken down into six. We have low did not meets, high did not meets, low approaches, high approaches, meets and masters. So the goal is to move your student from one category to the next category up to earn a point. Um, so they do account for if your student is at masters, they need to

116stay at masters. If your student's at meets, they need to stay at meets or go to masters um to be able to maintain those points. But every other category allows for wants that to see that increase. So if I had a student at low did not meets, even if they didn't make it to low approaches, they got to the high approaches, they would still get a point for growth because they're they're growing. They're moving towards that direction. So um we see that um 50% of our students and of course 606 of our reading students across the board went from failing having a did not meet either low or high to at least a low approaches in um in 25. One of our biggest notable gains was in third grade. We saw an increase there across

117the board, but meets is our grade level standard, right? We want our students at meets or or better. And so 30% of our students in third grade made me meets going up from 24 last year. Our third grade students, they're our first prek group that made it to us postcoid, right? So they haven't had those same interruptions that maybe some of our older kids have had over the years. And so we really see that improved student performance is a reflection of those students entering third grade with stronger skills. So the work that we're doing in those early grades, not just in third grade, but preK, kinder, first, second, is starting to see an impact here in in these third grade students. So, next steps for reading language arts, we've streamlined our curriculum with H.M.H. um

118and are turning to that lesson plan internalization process. I think that's been talked about quite a bit. Um instead of the traditional lesson plan writing, we're looking at what is that lesson plan um involve and and understanding what we're getting ready to teach through through that lesson. Um reviewing that growth data for our students, making sure our students are in the appropriate interventions. you heard from Miss Parnell earlier about what our interventions are looking like. So, reviewing this data to make sure our kids are getting the support that they need. Um, providing professional development and support for our teachers and leaders to make sure that the curriculum is implemented um with fidelity and and well in our classes. be able to review questions and and types of questions so that we can build um that

119planning and then of course continue an emphasis on um writing instruction through those grade levels through all grade levels. Okay. Dang it. There we go. Get the microphone on. I'm sorry. Uh I I I just need to ask this question. When you talking about the writing and Cornbloom, this may be for you. um English one, English two, EOAC scores. Are there writing components into that? EOC, English one, English two. Correct. Yes. Correct. Okay. They have that extended constructed response and and all the other question types that are available in all grade levels are also in English one and English two. I knew that it was in the lower levels. I just didn't know if if it was included in English one, English two. Yes, sir. Call it like an essay. Yeah. Yeah. but it's addressing

120like a prompt to a question like a passage and they'll they'll read something and then they'll address and answer the prompt based on that. Thank you. Thank you. So in math we see again 75% of that test is still made up of multiple choice but we get a variety of different um options for those other 25% whether it's um like actually having to type in an equation which once upon a time wasn't wasn't a thing. So our kids have to know you know what are these symbols and how do they look to be able to type them in. text entry graphing. Um they'll have them, you know, make a graph with their, you know, cursor and drag it and if it's an inequality, is it a dash line, a solid line, like they have to

121be able to know how to create all of those things online. So, it's quite a a little bit more um intensive and again worth multiple points often. So, here is our math data. So we see in third grade um still pretty strong in that meets and masters moving in the right direction. Um down a percent in third grade um at approaches. Uh we see a increase across fourth grade, 3% at the meets and masters for both of them. Um and then we see a bit of a dip in our fifth grade. um down three at approaches, five at meets, but holding on to those master students without a a fluctuation there. Um in sixth grade, we see um a dip. We know sixth grade transition going to middle school is its own issue, but then

122the curriculum on top of that. So, we see them going down 6%, 7% and 3% across the board. Um seventh grade, we also see some declines. I do want to note that um there's a little asterk there because the seventh graders, not all seventh graders are taking the seventh grade math test. Our advanced seventh graders are taking the eighth grade, they're doing a compacted curriculum and they're taking eighth grade math in seventh grade to help prepare them to take algebra the following year in eighth grade um as an accelerated tester. And so, um, you you do remove a good chunk of our students from seventh grade math that would have been included in sixth grade. Um, that also impacts your eighth grade score as well, right? Say that again. That will also impact the following

123eighth grade scores because those kids are taking algebra EOC as eighth graders. Well, so our eighth grade score right there, what you see there include some seventh graders, right? So um the eighth graders are not just all traditional eighth grade students. It's some seventh grade students as well. So all those advanced students took that eighth grade test and are included in those numbers. Um we do see a a pretty big dip in our approaches and um less in our our meets and and masters at um 8th grade. And then when we talk about algebra 1 because we do have our middle schoolers are eighth graders. So, we've gone ahead and separated. So, you could look at how did our eighth graders do at algebra 1, how did our high schoolers do, and then of course

124a combined total district score here. Um, so we do see um some decreases in our 8th grade algebra 1 EOCC scores. Um, and then a small decrease in approaches at the high school, but an increase um in meets and masters. And then if we combine them all together, we do see a small decrease as a as a district there. Um we had about 50% um individual growth using the transition model through TEA for math and 568 of our students that failed STAR in 2024 um made approaches or better um in STAR 2025. And then in algebra 1, um we had 160 students that did not pass their eighth grade star make approaches or better on their algebra 1 EOC. Um most notably um Waco High School receiving 90 of those 160 students um passing that

125test on their first administration. So, we want to be able to help support that algebra instruction to be able to help prepare our students for those post-secondary tests, their SAT, TSI2, and and other thing measures like that that um help support them to have opportunities beyond um Waco ISD. So, the things that we're doing, streamlining curriculum and updating our resources, thank you um board. Um um so and then being able to move to that lesson plan internalization process as well for math. Um we're going to continue to review data and make sure that our instruction is aligned um and supporting our tier one and intervention um professional development in our PLC's helping teachers review data and make sure the planning and the instruction is effective and then continuing to implement the math framework. This is

126year three for elementary schools and we're going to move into our second year for sixth grade through algebra. Um science again very similarly to um our reading multiple choice some varied options with those different parts. Um and then they also will have a constructed response. They won't have the extended constructed response, but they will have like short answer type um writing pieces that they'll they'll need to be able to produce in science content. And so we only test in fifth grade, 8th grade, and our high schools test biology. Um and so we see a small um marginal increase in our fifth grade science scores and in eighth grade approaches. Then our meats and masters um have a little dip and then a a small increase in our biology scores at the high school level in

127our approaches and meets um and holding on to our masters. Um similarly to our other subjects, we're going to review and adjust our curriculum documents to help support our teachers and um improve tier one instruction and include the emphasis on the lesson plan internalization. They're going to continue training. New science resources were just adopted this past school year with the change of the new TEACS. So, we're only year one into new TEACIS. So, this 25 spring 25 scores are the first time we're going to see what the we see what the results with those new standards are. um provide professional development again through PLC's and support for our teachers to continue to review data and support them including writing because it's going to be really important as we move on to to help support that

128writing in all subject areas and then work with campus principles to ensure science instruction is implemented with integrity daily. So ensuring that we're providing that instruction at all levels, not just tested. and social studies. Again, we're going to have 75% multiple choice, varied responses, and we're going to continue to write in in social studies about social studies. Um, we test in eighth grade and US history at the high schools. Um, and so we saw our approaches in eighth grade stayed about the same. We do see an increase at meets and masters. And then US history, a 1% um decline there from 24 to 25 in our approaches, three in meets and then an increase 1% in masters there. Um the a little bit different for social studies. Um well, let me let me not misspeak.

129Do they have the lesson plan internalization? I can't. Sorry. I apologize. The lesson plan. That's what I thought. I didn't want to misspeak, but I was pretty sure they didn't have the opportunity to do that lesson plan internalization. So, they're going to continue to work with them to improve the documents that they have for tier one and emphasize vocabulary. Appreciate that. The reasoning for that, just so that you kind of understand, is that the social studies resource um is a little bit older of a resource. So, it doesn't come with all of those pre-made lesson plans and unit plans and maps. So, our curriculum coordinator worked on making unit maps for those um so that they'll have that pacing to follow. And we're looking at not new curriculum, but just a new resource to buy

130to give them some additional things to be able to use where that's concerned. But the internalization isn't there because the math curriculum, the HMH, the way it's been revised and the science have opportunities to use those lesson plans um in an internalization process. So the teachers aren't having to plan from scratch. So that's why we'll continue working to incorporate writing in all subject areas to make sure that they're successful in those constructed response and have the capacity for that again professional development through PLC's and then working on incorporating reading strategies um and being able to analyze primary and secondary um sources in social studies. So we know that in 23 we had pending litigation. Those scores were just released earlier this year and 24 ratings have not been released for accountability. Um still pending litigation

131as we approach the expectation for 25 um scores this August. So we just want to make sure that you know we know we're we're missing some pieces to our we know that we have the data. we're not missing any pieces of the data, but it's not necessarily out. Um, but some big things are understanding like the growth for our students at the elementary level can count for 85% of our our accountability scores. So, those are important pieces of of how we're working with students and ensuring that they're growing and being successful. um our high schools. Not only is our star scores here really important, but our CCMR is really important and us working to help ensure that our students are prepared for postsecary. So preparing them for college career and and how that impacts um

132our our scores and what we're doing. So so just raw um stoes are not just the only story that comes into the data. So, are there any questions? And before you have questions, um I just gave you a resource from um Miss Steel and on that resource it has our scores compared to state because I know that's one of the questions that I know I would ask as a trustee. So, we wanted to make sure you had the two years but also some state data to kind of compare to going back to and going back to RLA. Um Dr. Spicer did answer it as far as um you said moving to HMH. How long have we been using the that um that the reading curriculum there? Hm. She's coming. Defer to Dr. Cornbloom. Okay. Cuz

133I'm going back to the the math. We said we had the math curriculum and we had it for about 11 years and it wasn't working. So, how long have we had this reading curriculum? reading um the HMH reading curriculum was um adopted I think in 2020. Okay. But they've with that so with um is it HP6005 SB6 which something be one of those um they brought in that was the whole lesson planning thing and lesson internalization and um teachers the amount of time they're spending on planning and so a lot of the resources have made some updates to where different things are provided. So the parts that weren't there for us before um they didn't have the opportunity to have lesson plans for teachers um and a lesson like internalization. Well, I'm let me explain

134that because for guys who aren't in education, you might be like what does that even mean? So rather than sitting down and planning from scratch. So you all seen the curriculum that the district wrote. When I and when I say curriculum, I'm talking about the documents that um we looked at that night in the board workshop on the computer that shows the scope and sequence how you follow it. Then we tie our resources to it. So when teachers are planning, they follow that and they make the a lesson plan. Well, when you're working from an internalization model, that means the resource that you have provides those things for you. And so the teacher is not spending the time writing the lesson plan. Now they can spend the time during their pee time practicing the delivery

135of that clarifying what does this standard mean? Well, my kids know, you know, this they're already here. So, it's going to be important for me to really extend this part. Well, my students, you know, this is an area maybe I have um um a bilingual classroom and maybe I'm going to have to spend more time on vocabulary, so it's going to be important for me to spend a little bit more time here. So they really have extra time to talk through how that lesson is going to be delivered versus on the back end of it and planning it. Our lesson planning process protocol always had getting to the part of where you are rehearsing and planning what you're teaching. The thing is just time, right? Once you spend the time planning, how much time do

136you have left to internalize? And so now with being able to move to this in HMH, um the idea is that they'll have more time to talk about their teaching versus just planning their teaching. Okay. Is that that's something that's something you can move forward with um and with fidelity like you always say and and and lean in on it and get it with integrity. Okay. And then um my other question was about the writing piece. Um, are they still grading I'm talking about the star. Are they still grading it with um AI and and the human element as well or did they just go with the human element this this time? So most questions are routed to the automated scoring engine is what they like to call it. Um so if we want to

137go with AI but it's going that about 25% is routed to human graders. Um, so there can be certain conditions that would force a um constructed response to go to a human or at random. So um there's different conditional um reasons that when it goes through the automated scoring engine, it'll flag it and it'll automatically send it or it could just be an at random so that 25% of it is seen by a human um grader. And they're scored twice. So there's actually two separate scoring engines that score independently. Um and so or one automated and one human could make up those scores because the scores out of 10 points but each component comes five points from each. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any other question here? Go ahead. I um I'm sorry, Dr. Cornblum,

138that you can just wave at me. Um are we expressly teaching writing and elementary? I mean, are we I know that through ELA, you know, it's it's holistic and and integrated, but are we are our teachers using something specific to teach writing skills? We are. So if well there's two things. If you were to look at what we've been doing up until now within our curriculum, there's a whole section within our curriculum called writer's workshop. So it's addressed um some of that would be HMH um resources. Some of it was Lucy Cawkins units of writing um following strict HMH now just HMH. It'll be taught through that resource. But just like with English one and English two, the writing they're doing now is different than it was. remember when we used to write the narrative

139or expository, right? Now we're writing in response to our reading. Um we're having also short constructive responses. So it's it's different. Um the thing about that is though in the reading section of our curriculum under like the reading workshop part, we have and have had response to reading. So that's where um in your reader's notebook, you're writing letters and responding about your opinion. Correct. Reflections. So with the state moving to that, that that's not that's not something far off from what we already believed. It's just now it's being tested differently that you know than before. But yes, it is built into the curriculum. And um also we're in the math where they have to as you had said, you have to make your own graph. you have to pull down. Is are we are we

140expressly teaching those skills starting hopefully like in first or second grade because they have to do computer skills. They have to do that by third grade. Yes. And then we also have some resources um that we now have provided. It's a resource called TFAR. It's actually through the state. And so when you take any assessment items through there, it reacts and you have the same types of um opportunities to engage with those things the same way that you do OnStar. And we're moving to this coming year. So for those who don't know, this is telling you all right now to a normal a release test ver away from the interim. So it'll be a full version of STAR like like we used to do, right? Like a benchmark. Yeah. But um it will it has

141all the functionality of star as well. So they'll do all the things that they do on star on there. But prior to I mean what we switched in 23 prior to that then um knowing what was coming there was emphasis put on practicing for the test because there were things that tea put out that you could use to practice with. But you know it it I mean really though it's not something that the kids do every day though, right? You're not on a computer every day dragging and dragging and dropping and doing all of those things. So it is a test specific skill. And you may have heard I say this, it's you probably people who know me have probably heard me say this, but testing is a genre all and of itself. Mhm. Whether

142it's understanding how to read the questions, you know, understand what's being asked or just take the test or just for tea to know how to stink and write a decent assessment. Um, sorry, that was an editorial on my part. Um, you but you know, so it's not it's like reading non-fiction, right? You have to know what subheadings are, you have to know what captions are, you have to know all those things to be able to engage with that. Well, when you're dealing with a test online or otherwise, you have to know all of those things as well. And now that it's all on computer, that just adds to the complexity of that genre. When do our students get onetoone technology? And Jerry or what grade? I just want everyone on the back d just to

143come forward. Carl, coach, y'all are next. Coach, you guys all don't come on up. Sorry. At 9th grade, they all get uh one to one, but they are one to one, but in a cart solution in all the other grades. So, so in elementary, we have that elementary they have enough for one in a cart solution for every single classroom. Same thing with the middle schools. Starting with what grade in elementary? Uh prek. Okay. So they they do have the the technology access to start learning the pull down and and all that crap that they're having to do for the math part. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. It's I I just didn't know about that. Um the Dina, you were also saying the uh don't start walk. I'm giving you exercise. So, you said the

144writing with with the HMH is it's all incorporated the the writer's workshop. Is that what you said? We're still going to do that? Yes. And that's tied into ELA ELA time or is that a time-sp specific part of the day? The way our day flows is the same, but your ELA block, you have your reader workshop, writer's workshop, language word study. Language word study includes your phonics, explicit phonics, all of those things. And then your tiered instruction, is that in your block as well? That's in your small group time in that block. Yeah. Okay. So, the ELA block, you know, there's always that. Well, if you're departmentalized, put it that way. There's always those blocks in the day, that class, that grade that gets chopped, right? I mean, I remember I was a principal. It's

145the one that lunch specials, everything under the sun gets pulled out of. So, you still have time, but it's just disjointed. But the ask is that um you have between 130 to 150 um in terms of minutes for the ELA block if you're departmentalized but every now and then there's a crazy block in the middle to where they might be sitting at 120 which is not my preference but it we did um some work during principal meeting Miss Logan did with um principles on master scheduling this year and so looking at what's needed and it you get into though all the things right GT pull out all all of that so um but yeah but that's the ask so if you're departmentalized that that block of time is what's there and then 90 minutes for

146math where are we having our breakdown with the writing portion is that happening in sixth grade or is that happening in elementary looking at how it's impacting both all of it I think it's I I mean you have to start okay think about writing much like science, right? One of the struggles with science and I'm not saying we're doing this, but I've seen it as a principal. I you know, when I was a principal with my own teachers, it's we're we're very concerned, right, about reading and math. Well, now we have to be concerned about writing because of the way we are testing writing. But, you know, fourth grade when it was just fourth grade writing, fourth grade writing was a thing. And it's like nobody wrote until fourth grade and it was in the

147curriculum. that you've had to just really ensure that that was happening. And so it's just like with science, right? If we want to have strong test scores in fifth grade science, we have to ensure that we're implementing science every day in our science curriculum like the curricul or in our science classrooms like the curriculum says. It's the same with writing. We can't if we're running short on time or we overeach in reading or our lesson goes a little long, we can't just say, "Oh, well, I won't do, you know, we have to." And I'm not saying I I just know the propensity. We're so we're so concerned our kids have to leave elementary school reading, right? It's natural. Um, so we I say that because you asked the question, is it elementary or middle? I

148think it's all of it. It just has to be a priority. writing has to be a priority every day beginning in kinder all the way up and so it's a it's not a elementary or middle it's just a collective I think issue can we add something to that too Dr. Chrome. One of the things too that I think we need to focus on just as a system, we need to focus on writing across the curriculum. Yeah. That um that's the bottom line. Math, science, English, social studies, PE, art, you name it, every elective, every class, because our kiddos sometimes we equate writing with English. No, you have to write for an application for your driver's license when you apply for a job, whatever. Right? And so that's something that we as a system have to

149get in our minds that I can teach you how to write and read in math, right? write out the answer to your problem. Tell me how you got that that response, right? So, that's something that we're working on as a system, but we know as leaders on our campuses that we have to do that and build that in to make it natural. Well, they have to write on the other tests, too. I mean, you have short constructive responses on other tests as well. I appreciate the hard work you guys are putting in. So, from our viewpoint, do you guys have the resources that you need to execute, which you're speaking of? I think that we do. The only thing that that we need extra that you can't provide is time. Got I just want to

150point I think Mr. Davis you took part of my the central part of my question that I was going to address. My question has a couple of layers maybe more than one. We I want to go back to internalization of the lessons. What is a what type of process do we have in place? I know that's something we uh r a trig is the best. I know she has I'm sure she has something to say about that. And then when it comes to the the what type of frameworks do we have uh for this process? Uh how often does it happen? Uh how long is the internalization process? How much in advance does it happen prior to delivery of the instruction? I'm I'm sorry I'm bombarding you, but I can stop right now for this

151part. You're good. So the is there a process for internalization? How often how what is the framework for that? And how often does it happen? Yes sir. So um okay so there's a couple of things. So as well you may not know but with the math curriculum let me talk about that that comes with its own internalization process that they are using or will use for that right as a part of the main lesson. But we have monthly they're about monthly planning meetings that um the board approved when they approved our instructional calendar to where they're they're those planning days. They're usually on um Fridays. Um that on those days that's where the expectation would be that we're going through and breaking down the unit right ahead of the daily lessons and so or the

152weekly lessons. So then once we break the unit down then each week during PLC time they will be going through the internalization process for the lessons that are coming up for the next week. Um now there's some of that they're still working through in terms of be the internalization process that comes with math is really more than you can do like in in one. So looking at those and what's essential right for our kids and which parts do we have to do every single time because there's some parts that are you should do every time some are could do and so which of those things do we we must do always and which are things dependent upon maybe your class that would be good for you to do at certain times but maybe not all

153the time but we'll define those and those are things that will be lock step for the ELA HM has a process this, but we've we've Wacoi it would be the way to put it. Um brought it down a little bit. Um Donna was really good about um reaching out to HMH who connected us with Katie ISD who has already worked on a whole process using the HMH curriculum. Um and they built a Katie internalization process. And so from that, we kind of looked at that but streamlined it even more because there were there were a lot of words on that page and I thought, you know, I don't have when I look at this, I'm I'm not really going to read this. So I know as a teacher, I wouldn't want to look at this.

154So Donna has streamlined that so that there's a process for that as well. we met as a coordinator team and said, you know, we don't want so if I'm a self-contained teacher and I'm teaching more than one thing in elementary, I don't want to have a separate process for everything I do. So to try to standardize some of that um now math is it's that math comes with a certain thing that we really want people to follow because we've put a lot into getting this curriculum um put in place. but for the others to kind of work on standardizing I said we wakei it to standardize some of that to so that no matter what curriculum or not not content area we're following that there's some of the same processes in everyone. Um so yeah

155and that's that those things are both monthly with your unit as well as weekly as you're looking at lessons. And then one oh there you go I think it's it's working. One final question is that what what is the plan? And I know some of our schools, we were talking about him last night, is the fact that uh they don't have enough certified teachers. And that's something that we've deal we're dealing with currently is it's a reality. Beside not having the time, that's something I don't think we can buy, but I'm sure with your smart admin, they will find something for I mean that's our hope being able to provide those those precious moments for the teachers. But what about the what is the plan for uncertified teachers or the one that are not quite

156to be able to internalize a lesson and be able to support the students? So a couple of things. Number one, moving to the internalization process in general is a support because being able to hand a teacher a plan is different from them sitting down and planning. And I don't and I say this because I don't want people to think that I've stood up here for five years just saying things like lesson planning that and following the curriculum that is you know that's good and understanding your stand. We still need to understand our standards like I I cannot hand you this piece of paper with words on it and you just stand up and teach. We will fail if we do that. We will if we don't go through the lesson that we're given. still think

157about our standards, still think about what they mean, think about the kids in my classroom. What do the kids in my classroom mean? And how do I need to adjust this? We still won't get to where we need to go, right? That has to happen. Okay? So, there's that. But it does provide a framework and a guide for a teacher who because y'all I mean, honestly, sometimes we have teachers in our classrooms who don't know what a standard is. I mean, they're they're I laugh, I joke. I'm gonna pick on Mr. McAdoo, but when he was a principal, you probably notice what I'm going to say. He he found a teacher that struck up a conversation in Home Depot and ended up getting him he had a degree, but getting him in a program and

158turning him into a teacher. But, I mean, he I don't know if that person's still with us, but I mean, he's up there flexing. Way to go, Alon. So, but I mean that's I'm just saying that's the creative things that our administrators are trying to do as they're trying to find people to fill their classrooms. And so when we're looking at they are beating down trees and you know shaking the trees to try to get you have to take you know the teachers where they are whether in a program certified or even sometimes y'all teaching's changed. I could even be a veteran teacher and be challenged right now with some of the things we're being asked to do. So that plan will provide no matter which you know curriculum it is it will provide a

159guide for them. We have instructional specialists on each campus that are also in um the the model um is that those instructional specialists are in PLC's and they're helping our teachers internalize the process. We have um training kicking off. Um it was pending approval of the math curriculum tonight, but training kicking off on Monday for our secondary leaders. Sorry for the short notice, but it was pending this tonight. So, um but to tell them what's going to be in the math curriculum so they understand how they can support a strong implementation. Then there's training for IS's and so forth, you know, so that we can can support that. But I think making these moves, um, having the right personnel in terms of support personnel on campuses, ensuring that our leaders also know what to look

160for, um, is what we have to do to support these guys. But the I think the second part to that though is providing the proper support so they stay. That's true. Yeah, that does sometimes plays that thing. Thank you so much again. I will end it by saying what repeating reiterating what Mr. Davis said. Do you feel like you have the the resources and to support it? Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Cornblon. I'm just trying to help you get your steps in. Dina, I have one more question. That was good. I'm gonna have a hard time not hearing the Home Depot theme song whenever Mcadoo comes into the boardroom from now on. Thank you so much, Miss Steel. Thank you so much. [Music] We will now move on to item 11,

161review and discuss budget presented by Cheryl Davis. Okay. Tonight we are really going to talk mostly about what happened in the legislative session um and the impact on Waco ISD because um I'm sure most of you realize by now we did not get eight and a half billion dollars. Um, so we're going to look at House Bill Two primarily because that's where most of our finance is coming from. And we'll look a little bit at the property tax legislation. And then we had one kind of good news for my department on the competitive procurement threshold increase. And then we'll look at briefly at salary and other increases and uh then finalize with the budget calendar. So, House Bill Two, this was uh the eight half billion dollars in new state spending that is composed of

1624.2 billion that went into teacher compensation and then about two billion into special education, early education. There was no increase there. It was a realignment of funds. School safety, they put $430 mil million dollars in. And then um a new allotment, the allotment for basic costs. And I said, you know, this is the allotment for basic cost, not to be confused with the basic aotment that we already had. So this is separate $1.2 billion there. And then they did increase the basic allotment by $55. There is also no funding impact on the state for that either. Um, Waco ISD did help pay for that to some extent because it came out of our golden pennies. So, this is what the teacher compensation looks like. This is the teacher retention allotment. There's an allotment for each

163classroom teacher who's employed in the district and it's as defined under TEC 48.151 and that refers to um Texas Education Code 5.001. So, what it says is the it it applies to classroom teachers that are teaching four or more hours during the day. So, if they're not teaching at least four hours and they have to be a classroom teacher. So, that's the only people that we're going to get this money for. The salary increases have to be applied above the salary amounts they're making in the current year or if they were in the district what they would have made in the current year. It does not include benefits. All this money has to go strictly to salary increases. So as a district with five or more years of experience I can't see my thing. With

164a district with um five more than 5,000 students enrolled, we would have to give 2500 to teachers with three to four years of experience. And if they have more, five or more years of experience, we get 5,000 and that's what we would give those teachers. They did not give any money to teachers with zero, one or two years of experience. So if we want to give an increase at those levels that will have to come out of our fund balance basically and the the benefits weren't covered right and is that roughly 12% of salary something like that because it doesn't include group health because that's flat so all the other benefits mostly TRS um yes it's about 12%. And so that's something we will have to absorb. Yes. With our bucks. Partially what your aotment

165for basic costs is to cover that. Okay. So Wake ISD's estimated a lotment at this point is about 3.3 million. I did actually manually I used our um budget proposal of staff and I went in and put what I thought the 5,000 or the 2500 and I put in about we're looking at maybe 1,500 for the year two and one and two teachers and a,000 to the beginning schedule. Um it actually costs about $300,000 more than that. One of the things we're going to have to do as a district is look very carefully at how they're going to use PE's data to give us this aotment and they're going to use teachers that are coded to an '087 and so we're going to have to look very carefully at how we have people coded in

166this next um for the fall PES because we want to make sure that we get every dime that we're entitled to and we're going to be cleaning that up and and maybe reclassifying some people and there may be people that will have to be moved off of the teacher schedule. Um, you know, we have some 49% teachers that will not be eligible for this money. And so, um, will not get that increase. Um, and then if they are 50% or more, if they're 51%, they get $5,000. They don't just get a prrated amount of the 5,000. They will get the $5,000. if they work an extended contract like band directors or uh some of our coaches, they will also just get $5,000. So, it's not on a daily rate for this purpose. It's just strictly

167that flat amount on the support staff retention aotment. Um we are getting not very much money at all. You can see we're getting $430,000 to cover salary increases for almost all the rest of our employees. Although it does not include administrators. So this would include auxiliary staff, pair professional staff, other professional staff that are not in the classroom necessarily. Uh librarians, nurses, um diagnosticians, those type of positions would be in that category. So we the salary increases again must be on top of their base pay. They must be eligible for TRS. There was some um talk early on with the teacher a lotment about doing that as a stipen rather than rolling it into the salary itself because there was some fear I think that that money might be taken away at some point. But

168we have had direction now that it must be included in the salary and on the salary schedule. So the allotment is equal to $45 per student in adjusted average daily attendance. So for us that means we'll generate about $430,000. Um they also have increased the teacher incentive aotment. I think we kind of knew that this was coming because this has always been something that Mike Morath was looking at was um doing something similar to the Dallas model of their their pay plan and evaluation system. And so um he is they have added another level of acknowledged to the uh current levels that we have had for TIA. um it increases is going to increase. We don't know what these amounts yet are just yet, but it will increase the allotments for each category of designation.

169And of course, those are kind of hard to know because it also depends on your wealth level of your district or of your campus actually of where you're teaching because uh the poorer the campus is as far as the the comped tiers, the more money a teacher will get for being uh master or exemplary. Um so they did make a change on the nationally board certified teachers. Before those teachers were I think in the um recognized category automatically they are now only going they're going to be in the acknowledged category and then it does create a new program that we would be eligible to participate in. um they they're creating this enhanced teacher incentive allotment. In order to participate in that, you have to have all of your teachers under your teacher incentive aotment, which

170we do. I mean, we have all of our teacher are eligible to participate. So, um we could do that. It would require if you get into the enhanced teacher incentive aotment, you will have to go to a Dallas type of uh pay structure evaluation plan all to do that. Um it does provide funding for the classroom teachers for assistance in understanding their rights, duties and benefits. And it does um offer a liability insurance for protection against uh certain liability in conducting their duties. For special education, a lot of the special education money will come in the second year of the bienium in 2627 because they're going to completely revamp the way the special education program is done. So, it's eliminating the weights and it's establishing um eight tiers of intensity of service personnel. Although, when

171I when I look at this list on what how the tiers are going to be um determined, I really think this is how the weights were determined in the first place. But, you know, that's just me. Um so the type, frequency and nature of the services provided required certifications you know pro uh smaller class sizes perhaps would raise it and there was actually a factor in the old system that that did measure that as well then equipment that they might need or and they will adjust the weights as necessary to ensure compliance with the the law. Beginning this coming year though, there is going to be an allocation of $1,000 for each child for whom a district conducts a full individual or initial val evaluation. So for us um oh and there is a a

172small increase in transportation from a dollar to $1.13 um per mile for our special ed transportation. I think we get $7,000 for that. Anyway, so our total um funding impact with special ed will be $622,000. Cheryl, um the thousand bucks to do a full individual initial evaluation, is that for our students or does that include anyone who's living in our district, charter, private school? Yeah, it will be for any evaluation that we do. Initially they were going it was a higher amount if it was for uh out of district or or non-attending student but it's now just going to be part of that. Okay. The $1,000 what what is our cost to do an evaluation? Do you know? Does anybody know the range? It's like4 to $5,000. Yes. Sometimes it's 3 to five, sometimes it's

1735 to7,000. So it depends on the disability. So if I start studying you and then I figure that there's more there's going to be more tests which means more money. So but that's the range. Now this money we're really already spending because we are already doing evaluations. So um I imagine this money will just go to help support our special ed program which is already over the the revenues that it generates. So this will just help supplement our existing program. So early education um there's a we will actually pick up some money in this one. There's a distribution of the early education aotment for full day prek. So they're going to take money from districts that are not give are not doing full day prek and those of us that are will get some additional

174um funding under this. So, our additional funding impact for this will be about $591,000. That again is to help support something we're already doing because we are already doing full day prek. So, we'll get some additional money there and we have been spending more money than what we're getting on prek teachers and aids. So, and that'll be specifically earmarked for prek or will that go to district general budget? Well, as I just said, we have been spending more money on teachers and aids than we were getting in early childhood aotment. I have since gone in and coded all of those people that were not coded to the aotment before. They have now been coded to the allotment. So, yes, it will now go into our uh general fund. So, and then it creates uh funding

175for early literacy intervention aotment which is going to be about $100,000. Uh they have expanded prek eligibility. So, it'll be free for um ch a child of a person that's employed as a classroom teacher, not just as an employee of the district, but they have to be employed as a classroom teacher in the district. And then there there's some incentives for additional instructional days and some planning grants that we can apply for school safety. Um this is there's increase in the school safety aotment. So the allotment is for students and average daily attendance is was increased from 10 to $20 and then the allotment per campus increased from 15,000 to 33,540. So, our estimated increase for 2526 will be $499,000. Um, one thing to note on this, this is what and this is the case

176with most of the new aotments. They are not there. There's various um tiers in in tier one there's various subchapters. There's um A and B or B and C and then D. So the safety aotment used to be in subchapter C which means it also created weighted average daily attendance for us which h is how our guaranteed yield our golden pennies and copper pennies are based on water is now been moved out of subchapter C to subchapter D. So we will no longer generate golden pennies for the safety aotment and that holds true. We'll talk about that a little bit. That holds true for most of the new aotments. So the allotment for basic cost is a new is the new aotment to help cover. There's a lot of complaints about the benefits issue on

177those salary increases. So this is one of the things that they this is what they did to help with that. So the allotment is $106. It's based on enrollment, not ADA. So this is kind of a first step, I think, to maybe go towards enrollment. There's been talk about that. And the a lotment can be used for very specific things. Transportation fees related to rehiring retired teachers because we have to pay premium TRS on a retire rehire. um insurance, payroll taxes and employee benefits for the things we were just talking about, utilities and contributions and other costs for TRS. We're we are estimated to get about $1.4 million here. So, this is just me being mean. Okay, remember this remember this slide that we showed? This is exactly what they're giving us money for. vehicle

178fuel, utilities, benefits, health benefits, property insurance, safety screen. This is, you know, sometimes I think is maybe next time I'm going to put a lot more boxes out there with different things of increases that we can send and maybe we'll get some more money. I did screenshot this and send it to Pat Curry. I showed it to him, gave it to him by hand, and this is what they gave you. No, Cheryl. Sorry, back on the screen. Previous that was $106 additional per student enrolled. Yes. Not attendance. Enrolled. Okay. Enrolled. That's a good question. And enrolled is snapshot last Friday of October. Correct. um they are now you know they have changed the ps system and they're taking they're doing information on a daily basis now we actually feed student data every single day I

179think maybe multiple times a day I'm not even sure but um so I'm don't know exactly if they're going to do this all these numbers are based on snapshot and they may still be but they may also do some kind of average enrollment over the year too. So that's not really, you know, we don't really have guidance on that at this point in time. Okay. So our basic a lotment increased by $55 from 6,160 to 6215. And so it was paid for by reallocating tier 2 funding increase that was supposed to happen under the current law which we would have generated money. Um the guaranteed the golden penny um allotment was supposed to go from 129.52 to 13240. Um they froze that at the 12952. The impact on us for the raise in the basic

180allotment is around a million dollars but we lost 263,000 in golden pennies because they froze that amount. So that you know again the districts that have um went out for a TR and have golden pennies um the property poor districts that get guaranteed yield in the first place were the ones that helped pay for this increase in the basic aotment for everybody else. So approximately 48% of the gain in the increase in the basic aotment is going to go to special programs special ed career and technology bilingual education comped. So the gen unrestricted funds will get about 52% of this um increase in money. What's a normal um percent before this this legislature? What was our normal percent of unrestricted? Uh that's probably about the about the same. About 52%. Yeah. Okay. Uh the guaranteed

181yield was unrestricted, which is why I think it's kind of it was probably a little bit higher because guaranteed yield, which is why I kind of like it to come out if you get an increase in the basic aotment when they don't take away your gold and pennies. um the guaranteed yield the I mean it was established in the first place through the Robin Hood in the early 90s which okay I was around um I was too uh you know to for districts that were property poor because they just didn't have the funding. I was at the Isleta school district and we didn't know until August 5th what our revenue was going to be and we were we didn't know what we were going to do and we got we were going to wipe out

182our fund balance and we're probably not going to be able to fund classroom teachers even so it was meant for property poor districts and so it's unfortunate that I think that's you know where and the the frozen yield on the golden penny is that just for this coming school year uh the actually increasing again with the with the basic a lotment after that. So it's just frozen for this one year. Yes. Okay. Thank you. So there is an inflation factor I think still built in. Okay. So a couple of other things. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. a couple things in language in the law. Um that uh bilingual education I think is a bit of a fix. Um when when Robin Hood went into place and we got the allotments for bilingual ed and comped and

183all of these the initial um direction was they were supposed to be supplemental program. They weren't supposed to supplant the regular program. Somewhere along the way, the bilingual language was reinterpreted and instead of it being supplemental staff, it got changed to salary supplements for teachers only and you couldn't fund the salary. And that was not the intent. I mean, I actually had a conversation with a bilingual guru from TEA back when it was um adopted because I didn't agree with that. We kind of haven't done that in Wakeist, incidentally. Um but so they did change this language and now it says instead of saying salary supplements for teachers, it says teacher salaries. I still don't agree with that because I think it still needs to say supplemental salaries. So if you have interventionists, if you

184have other testing people that they should be included in part of this aotment and that's sort of the way we do it here on compensatory education. This one I'm not real comfortable with. Um like all of our like most of our special a lotments, it was there was a 55% direct program requirement in the law. And so a lot of people are very happy because this 55% cap was eliminated. But it's not a 55% cap. It's a 55% floor. There's a big difference between a floor and a cap. So we had to at least spend 55%. And they had a whole list of different things that we could spend it on that had been added in the law. All that language has been stripped out. the 55% direct program has been stripped out of the

185law. So, I'm not sure what that means. Everybody thinks now we can spend COPED money on whatever. And we just spend 55% of it on comped because we use the other 45 or actually I usually put about 60% out there, but the rest of it helps fund our basic program. And so I'm a little concerned at how this gets interpreted at TEA because if you just read what it says now without that 55% it says that we have to spend this on compet programs. So that's something that um we will have some interpretation on for this coming year. I'm not planning on doing anything much different. I'm planning on still continuing with the 55 60% level that we have. Um, but I am a little bit worried about what how that gets interpreted. Okay. Property

186tax legislation. So, Senate Bill 4 provided for an increase in the homestead exemption from 100,000 to 140,000. Senate Bill 23 provided for an increase in the over 65 and disabled exemption from 10,000 to 60,000. And then House Bill 9 provided for an for an increase. Well, actually, I think this is just a new personal property exemption of $125,000. Um the although the increase in the exemptions are must be voter approved in November just like they have been for the other increases. Um our the law and tea um have told us that we need to go ahead and uh proceed as we adopt our tax rates and set set our tax rates and adopt them that proceed on the basis that it will be approved by the voters in November. And so the lower valor values

187will result in a decrease in the M taxes for Waco ISD of about $3.9 million. And then they will also result in um a little bit we will still probably be able to lower our INS rate. We'll talk about that a little bit, but um I think it's not as much as what I we had thought it might be before. Cheryl, do do we do we have any data that shows and it may not be out there, but I was I read an article recently. It was talking about this over 65 exemption increasing and how you you're seeing towns that are getting older and it's starting to affect schools and especially with interest rates, people aren't people aren't moving, so there's no turnover in houses. There's not younger people moving into school districts. Um, is

188there any data that we could look at that would project, hey, if people just didn't move, we could see over the next 5 to 10 years what those exemptions I imagine that the you know, I don't know that the tax office maintains any data on anybody under 65. You know, they've got the data for anybody who's had filed for the 65 and over exemp or disabled exemption. I'm not sure that they do. what you usually see or it's been my experience is like this 20-year cycle as an as a neighborhood sort of ages out and then um old older people start selling their bigger homes and and younger families start moving in but it seems to have sort of a a 20-year cycle maybe shorter now with the mobility that we have but it's about

189a 20-year cycle um I don't know where we would I mean our demographer Mike could look at that I don't know if they have the ages. Um, it might be available through census data too that would show kind of neighborhoods and what the age groups are in the neighborhoods. And I think that's pretty readily readily available. Our appraisal district have that data. Well, they'll have who's over 65, but I don't know that they know under 65 how what the age of the homeowner is. Okay. So, I don't think they collect that. Okay. So, um, so this is the property tax. This is what it looks like right now for our con compressed tax rate. Um, House Bill 8 requiring additional tax rate compression was not passed. So, we won't compress our tax rate more with

190this. Um and depending on what our final certified property dodge, which we'll get um July 25th around there, it's expected that the district's maximum compressed tax rate will be 6226, which is a slight decrease from the current year. And uh that would look like um our voter approved tax rate. Well, our M tax rate would end up at 7609. You can see our golden pennies coming in there. And on top of the golden and copper pennies, we get 8 cents in golden pennies and 5.8 cents in our copper pennies. And then I had at this point 23.66 cents because I think our values that I'm getting from the tax office are still high. And so I think this will be more like 25 or 26 cents from what I was looking at some values today.

191So, I think that will come up some. Um, but we'll be, you know, maybe just over a dollar compared to what that $145 we were about 20 years ago. Anyway, so I think that's kind of where we are. Um, those he's sending me some reports on our property values about every two weeks now. And so, I'm kind of monitoring that to see where that looks like we're going to be. Um the pro uh competitive procurement threshold went from 50,000 to a 100,000. So we'll be able to issue a few less bids at that. But I think 100,000 is still pretty low for a district like Waco or some of the bigger districts. It's probably nothing for, you know, Austin ISD or some like that. Um okay. So this is kind of what the whole impact.

192There's a lot of detail here, but uh you can see where the in now. Okay, I let me preface this. This is new law to current law. We will have some other losses from what you're seeing here because our ADA will probably be lower in next year, but this is just how the law impacted us for now. So, we basically are losing or we're gaining about a million three in our regular ed. Um you see the safety aotment goes out of chapter B and C. It's going you'll see it come in down below. We are picking up about a hundred thou or well 100,000 in the early literacy intervention aotment. And then um so in total in the tier one chapters B and C we're going to pick up about $938,000. Then in the chapter

193subchapter D you see these new allotments and how many of them come in here that will not impact guaranteed yield. The teacher and support staff aotment the school safety allotment that aotment for basic costs all those new ones will come in and those special ed evaluations. So we won't get any guaranteed yield on those um allotments. In total, the cost of tier one will be um 7 and a about $7.6 million that we're getting. Uh the local fund assignment, and this is, you know, represented by property tax collections for this is about $3 million. We pick up in tier 2, we're going to pick up about 763,000. Oh, I'm sorry. It's increasing about 2 or decreasing about 2.9 million. Our local share is about 50 was about 55 million. It's going down to about 53

194million. So it it's decreasing. So it shows as an ad in that column. Um then our other programs are tier 2 is se we're going to increase about 763,000 lose about 74,000 in other that's in hold harmless. We're going to lose about 74,000 in our hold harmless. So in total, state aid will go up 11.1 million, but we lose all that money from our property tax collections because of the increase in the homestead exemption. So our net increase in revenue due to the law will be about $7.2 million. Um that's a for per ADA that's about $616. Our state share goes up 5%. our local shares coming down 5% due to those lower tax collections. This is what the 7.2 million will have to be spent. 3.7 of that is going to be that compensation

195increase. And then the benefits on that compensation increase will be $437,000. So we'll generate about $3 million above those salary increases that a lot of that will have to go into special programs. We already know the biggest increases in special ed. We have a big increase in special ed in the current year. We already know we're probably going to add about 700,000 in positions for next year to accommodate that increase in program. And so, um, a lot of this money is probably already spent. So looking at what a salary and benefit increase um this is our base amount of our salaries in the district. This is the count of employees. And again we're going to be looking at how some of this team's um coding is on administrators and other professionals particularly to make sure

196that we have that split out correctly. Um, but as you can see, I'm not going to read all the amounts to you, but this is what our what the amounts are. I put out what those zero through two-year teachers are out of that 59 million that we have in teacher salaries. About 14.6 of that is in those zero through two years. Um, which are not included in the salary increase. So, the total staff cost is 62 uh.6 million. That's excluding the teachers that would get the aotment and the administrator supervisory staff. Then the support staff retention a lotment. We get that 430,000. That's a 69% increase for this eligible staff. It's not even 1%. This is what salary increases would look like if we gave a one, two, and 3% increase. Taking that down, adding

197benefits in a 1% would total would cost about 4 and a.5 million through about 6.1 for a 3% we get the 3.7 million from the state for the teacher and staff aotment. So the net impact of salary increases at 1% would hit would be 764,000 million6 for 2% and 2.4 million for a 3% salary increase. That would be that would be teachers and staff. This would include everyone. Yeah, this includes everyone. Now this I think on this I just did a 2% for uh all the other employee or one or two or 3% for all the other employees. If we do something like we've kind of um I know that Daniel was looking at on schedules that if we just raised the is it's not on that basis if we raised the beginning teacher salary

198$1,000 and they did 1,500 say at year one and year two. So this was just I think calculating it at 2%. And I think what he was looking at would have been more like 2.8 perhaps. So it might be a little bit more to do it that way. So this is some of the preliminary. We've kind of talked about some of this before. I think utilities I'll look at did that I because we have this new bid for telephone systems and we're saving money there. I think that's going to cover our utility um increases. We're still we've got sent all our information to TASBY to get a new quote on our um property and all workers comp those insuranceances. They say it's going to be a modest increase. Last year was a really high increase.

199So, I'm hoping it'll be modest this year because we're not getting any of that money that the state is giving districts that have high insurance costs because we're not in one of those counties along the coastline that's getting the money even though our insurance went up too. Uh anyway, so then uh it looks like you know as I we talked about gasoline diesel prices are not supposed to go up very much um with what we already have budgeted. I don't think we have to increase the budgets. The health fund we did look at that yesterday. Um they're going to sharpen their pencils. We'll be looking at that again and seeing what we can do because it's talk we're talking 10 to 15% TRS is doing active care has already put out their rates for region

20012. It's a 14% increase in health benefits. Um that if it's 10% for us that could cost us a million3. So uh we're looking to see what we can do there. How long are we locked in on electricity? We are locked in through 2033. So that will be consistent. Okay. I mean they there are search charges that they will pass through as well but for the rates we're locked in till 2033. Thank you. An increase in state funding for special education as I talked about a while ago. Um I know we have added some positions already for this year. Um we'll to maintain effort we'll need to add about 1.2 million. Again I've added some of it already and I think there's another 600 700,000 that um has already been approved for next year. looking

201at the calendar, we we'll have a budget update where we'll pull all this stuff together in July and then on the we just have that on the 24th, the next day the chief appraiser maybe we'll get them early so we'll kind of have an idea of what those final values look like. Um we'll have the propos present the proposed budget and tax rate on the 14th, post on the 15th, and then the board meeting the hearing and the board meeting. We always have those the same night and uh that will be on the 28th. So, as I told Dr. Spicer earlier this week, you can't change these board meetings, okay? You got to you got to do the 10day notice, you have to do all these things that are required by law and when you

202get down to the 28th. And I told her, I said, "Okay, if something happens and they don't want to approve that budget on the 28th, recess, don't adjourn because you can't do another 10day notice." So, Just so you know, these are August are important timelines. Okay. Any questions I can help you with? I just have a recommendation. I mean, I'm assuming at some point we're going to send out an email to all our staff who are going to be affected by these payraises. Um, it might be beneficial to explain to a teacher expecting an $8,000 pay raise that that may only look like 150 to $100 in their paycheck. Probably less depending on we don't get, right? I I just explanation. Yeah. My mind goes back to those TIHX and and those weren't 100% accurate.

203We did not put dollar amounts on the TIHX this year. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you, Cheryl. You're You always do such a detailed job and appreciate it. One last question for you, Lee. Where are we? She's right. I'm helping you get your steps into. You were walking away way too quick. Um what are we looking at a deficit today? Okay. So, round round number. I'm glad you did ask that because uh last projection was about 7 point. We adopted a budget with a $8 million deficit. The last projection and we did put some we had some additional funds that we put into the budget early in the year particularly for some maintenance projects. We had some security costs, some of those things. And uh last I looked it was going to be maybe around $7 million

204deficit with that. I did get word last week we had appealed our 2021 property values. I think I'm going to pick up about $634,000 with that because we just keep appealing. I think that's the second time we actually have appealed the 2021 values, but we'll pick up about $634,000 there. So, I'm hoping it might be around $6 million deficit in this year. Um, but to put this into perspective for you guys, because I know you guys kept asking if these people have enough resources, and every time you asked that question, I just cringed. But put it in perspective. We can cut all of function 36, all of athletics, all of extracurricular fine arts, we can cut all of library programs, and we can't make $7 million. Just just saying. Thank you. I'll leave you on

205that. All right. We will now move on to item 12. Review and discuss the South Waco Elementary construction project and occupy plan presented by Gloria Barrera. Good evening, President Vidana. First time to say that. Dr. Spicer and members of the board. We're making good progress on the South Waco Elementary School renovation. And this evening, we have an update for you. We have our key team members here. Um, Andrew Fa with Okonnell Robertson, John Kazanos with Masonic Construction, and last but certainly not least, Principal Atnip, who she she has been the most patient and willing and uh understanding person to work with and we really appreciate her. So, I'm going to let um Andrew take it away and then if you would wait just a minute, Jerry, before starting the Oh, I guess we can control

206this here. Okay. All right. Well, take it away, Andrew. Good evening, President Vidana, um members of the board, and Dr. Spicer. Great to be here. As uh Gloria introduced, I'm Andrew Fa. I'm with Okonnell Robertson. Um for those of you I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet, welcome. Congratulations. Um, so I I work for Okonnell Robertson and we've kind of overseen the bond project from an architectural standpoint. We've, you know, helped work with the students and the staff and the admin on, you know, all all the current BR bond projects at Waco High, Harvard, Tennyson, Kendrick, and South Waco of the the school of the hour that we get to present to you today. Um, so let me go ahead. Um, first off, we're going to start with an animation that Masonic Construction has

207um presented here, a video of the construction progress. So, take a look. [Music] [Laughter] [Music] As you can see, things are moving very quickly over at South Waco. Go. So, uh, next I did want to just kind of touch base here on this phasing schedule to give a reminder and maybe an introduction to what we're doing over at South Waco. Uh, if you'll start off with areas D and E in the gym, that was all a part of phase one. So, this is a phase construction. We started by building the addition of the the new classrooms and admin space with a maker space and library as well as that gymnasium that did complete at the end of last year. uh and so the the staff had the pleasure of utilizing that all uh all this

208past year which has been great so far. Uh they then at the beginning of this year took over areas B and A uh and they have been working on that since the beginning of the year and just a summertime they took over area C and and have been catching up that area you know to the same level they're at in uh B and C. So they're pushing hard here till the end and you know still planning on delivering at the beginning of August so they can start with a brand new whole finished building uh this next this next school year. Uh we'll just take you through some imagery here to show you the school. Uh this is part of that phase one exterior. You can see the front entrance there on the left. Uh the

209right is a trike the right is a trike track. One of my favorite parts. I know my son would love to get on his trike and run around that thing. Next up, we have the library and maker space. Uh, so you can see the library desk, the stack space, the presentation areas, and all the finishes, how they've really come together there in the nice South Waco green. Uh, here we're just showing you some of the classrooms as as as you can see, they've all been living them in here for the last few months. Um, great great stuff here. Uh, this is our courtyard. This is between the new addition which is going to be that white limestone and the existing building in the brick. Uh we have kind of two interior courtyards that are one

210of is adjacent to the library and the other is adjacent to some classrooms. Uh just some outdoor classroom space, a space for the kids to run around and to do outdoor learning and and some outdoor projects. Now we're getting into the phase two renovation that has been going on uh since the beginning of the year. Uh this you can see is the cafeteria and the stage kind of cafetum. Uh this you know this was a combination since we're um combining schools into this one school. We're increasing the capacity and as part of that we had to increase the size of the cafeteria and the stage. You can see the the fun kind of tree canopy is the kind of theme the storybook theme for this space. And and also as part of this, there was

211an alternate to renovate the kitchen. Um that kitchen was in pretty rough shape. If any of you had seen it prior to getting their hands on it, so it was a total refresh. Gutted the whole thing. New floors, new um a lot of new appliances, new finishes. You can see they just finished the tiling here a week or so ago and ready for um equipment here soon. Um phase two classrooms. You can kind of see some uh before and after photos here of of where um the classroom started to look like that. We were removing and moving some walls. So, you can see the wall demolition going on there and then how it's kind of starting to look now with with all those wall finishes even going up the plastic laminate which is a very

212durable u wall covering to uh you know for all those little fingers that will be touching it here soon. Uh we have art and music. Um those spaces are are as well underway with kind of before and after shots there. You can see the mill work being installed, ceiling grid starting to go in, lights and all that. We were also able to replace all the lighting fixtures as part of this project too. Some some of those were pretty old and dingy and so it'll it'll give it a really nice clean and crisp look. Um on day one, uh phase two corridor. Again, you're all these you're going to see kind of a before and after. um you had kind of a a mess above the ceiling there, but now we're starting to get that all

213organized, get the grid in, lights in, and again seeing that PSI paneling on the wall. Those mountain shapes also are reflected in the addition. So, you're kind of creating that cohesive experience between uh the renovation portion and the addition portion. Um you know, wanting to have this holistic campus that is, you know, a perfect place for the kiddos to learn. Um here's the phase two courtyard. So that left image, you can kind of see what it looked like um beforehand. It was a natural grass courtyard. Um and so we were end up taking up all that grass and some of the plantings that were in there and a little overgrown and Masonic put down um some you know artificial turf instead and some drainage as well as that canopy in the little the in the

214middle there. This and this courtyard is an existing courtyard that is completely surrounded by the existing building, not part of the new uh phase three classrooms. Again, those are phase three is what we just really took over here at the beginning of the summer. So, this is kind of the uh least far along at this point. Uh but they've been pushing hard uh to meet their uh contra contractual obligation of turning this over. Uh the restrooms as well. Uh there was two large group restrooms in the addition and we get new tiles, new um you know, new fixtures, new new everything. It'll get a total refresh in there. And with that, I'm going to pass it off to John to kind of take you through schedule. Good evening. My name is John Kazanis. For those

215that haven't met, I'm the project manager at Masonic Construction handling the South Waco Elementary School project. Um, I hope you enjoyed the video, some of the pictures. Uh, we've had a lot of progress since then, so it's kind of cool to see where we were just two weeks ago. So this is kind of a simplified schedule of phase two and phase three. As Andrew mentioned, we've moved on past phase one. We got in there starting in January uh during the Christmas break of the school. So beginning in January for phase two, sections B and sections A, the old classroom wing, the old cafeteria, old kitchen. We got in there, we started demolition. Um, moved our way through some existing CMU modifications, you know, uh, concrete block. Uh, that entire building is built out of a

216concrete. It's actually very, very interesting structure. Um, we had a little bit of structural steel to install as well, so is less of a renovation, more of an adaptive reuse of the space. So, got through that. Um, if you remember our last board meeting, we or last board meeting I was here, we talked about some mechanical changes, some HVAC changes. I'm happy to say that that's all been complete. All that at aoscope work has been installed and passed by the city of Waco for phase 2 and actually for phase three. So, very proud of our contractor for that. So, got through that. Uh, moving into some fire sprinkler installation because we did add a full fire suppression system to the building that was not an existing condition. We did add that. Um, so happy with

217that with that. Uh, currently we're moving in through our final ceiling tile install, which is kind of a big milestone for us. Means we closed the ceilings up for all of our MEP trades. Uh, that means we've passed our MEP overhead from the city and uh, we're really in the final stages of the finishing. So, we're looking to the next two weeks putting flooring down in the phase 2 area, namely the classrooms in phase two. Um, moving into what we what we call kind of the old admin space, the front entry that used to be finally into the the cafeteria. Um, you saw a couple pictures of the cafeteria. Really proud of that stage. Actually, this week we put down the finished flooring on the cafet on on that stage. It looks great. It's a

218hardwood maple. It's stained. So, it's going to look really good. Um, we did receive shipment of a couple pieces of kitchen equipment for the new kitchen. Um, and that is getting tidied up as we speak. So, that's phase two. Uh, we, you know, school let out in May. I believe it was May 23rd, if I remember right. That afternoon we got in there. Uh, WD did a great job getting out of our way to put it politely. Uh, we asked for every second that we could have. Uh, I believe our total days for phase 3 is like 62 days that we have to completely gut, renovate, and turn back over. Uh, I believe it's like 7 8,000 ft² worth of building. So, it's it's uh it's it's no easy feat. But, um, anyway, got in

219there, did our demolition. Uh, currently, as we sit now, uh, we have all of our mechanical in the air that's been passed by the city. Uh we have all of our electrical uh overhead done. That's getting very close. Um all of our plumbing is I'd say 80% complete minus a little bit of inall plumbing we're working on inside some restrooms. Uh big push there is getting our ceilings installed which is going to start on Monday. Um which I'm very very happy about. Um as we move further into the summer uh you'll see phase two and phase three kind of get to the same place. so to speak. Phase two is going to finish first. Obviously, it'll be a finished space as we finish out phase three. Uh but you'll see all that kind of tie

220together, the finishes in the hallways and the floors. Um and we'll be working with the city of Waco to uh get everything put back together for us on our inspections. Get a TCO, get a CO, get kids in the building. Right, Prince But all right. So, very proud of it. It's looking great. We're looking forward to August. Any schedule questions or I got one more. Oh, I forgot. I got one more slide. So, I already kind of touched on it. Uh, so substantial completion, that's kind of what we're we're obviously all looking towards. Our substantial completion date for phase two and three is August 1st. Um, we're confident in that date. Obviously phase two um is it's going to hit a little bit sooner than that but um phase three is what we're really checker

221flag finishing to August 1st. Uh we are starting the closeout process now with a lot of our trade partners getting the documentation in order and asbuilt started uh with with another one of our partners that we use for asbuilts. Um a lot of the technology and maintenance salvaging that's all being complete and some of the new equipment is already being installed namely for classroom audiovisisual systems such as like projectors and uh projecting screen marker boards. Um we are looking forward to a phase two furniture delivery. Um we're working with the construction department at WSD to get that all scheduled in a timely fashion for phase two and into phase three. Um, and I already mentioned it, but the uh kitchen equipment has been uh starting to trickle in. So, uh we're looking forward to the

222kitchen being finished as well. You know, obviously you can't have a school without a way of feeding the kids. So, uh we're shooting for the July 31st date for completion. Um and by that meaning, you know, health inspection, everything everything's done. So, and I'm going to hand it back to Gloria. Thank you, John. Um I want to remind you that this this project on this project we had we were creative with um child nutrition services funds and they actually provided the kitchen equipment separately. So we have a separate vendor doing that with Masonic construction coordinating with them into the construction project. So that allowed us to use about half a million I think a little maybe a little more of child nutrition services funds that we didn't have to use bond funds to cover that

223kitchen. So that was really really helpful to the project. Um we are as John mentioned we've got to have a temporary CFO for stocking so we can start bringing furniture in and getting that starting it you know to get it where teachers can start to move in and get ready and rena crates. We've been seeing lots of orange crates and orange rolling things and and slowly but surely we're starting to see a decrease of rena crates and as people get unpacked but at south they're still you know stored in the gym. So, in the new gym, so um they will have a shorter time to move into their new school and unfortunately that's always been the way it was going to have to be, but due to that um um district leadership is working with

224campus staff with principal ATN and her team to adjust their professional development requirements this year so they have more time to spend on campus as because we have such a short amount of time before school starts. um meet the teacher is going to be August 7th and I know Principal Atnip has some wonderful things planned for the community and uh we're under a warranty process on the rest of the building already. So it's helpful having that with the contractor still on site. So yes sir, you're talking about u moving in for for teachers moving can what date? It's not going to be like Carver when they're moving in the weekend that school started on Monday, right? It's not going to be quite that bad, but it it's going to be close. So phase two, they'll

225be able to come in a little bit earlier. We're thinking um the 31st or the 1st on phase two, but on phase three really they won't be able to start till August 4th. Okay. That's still not like 3 days before school starts. It's still, you know, Okay. Within three days. Good deal. Thank you. I just want to say it looks beautiful. Uh I I I have moved a piano before, so I did appreciate that shot of that piano sitting by itself in the middle of that classroom. Uh but no, it looks great. I I appreciate all the work all everyone's done. And congratulations, John. I don't know if I told you. Yeah. I just want to excited. I don't know if anybody's been to South Walo and seeing the stage they had. Seeing the stage

226that they're getting is I think we need to put a before and after picture of that. And also the gym the gym is great. I mean they did I mean I don't know if they called it a gym back then but it was more of a classroom. To have a real gym at Southwick Elementary is is great. So but the the stage in the gym I'm very excited about. So is the coach. Thank y'all. All right. We will now move on to item 13. Consider, discuss, and take appropriate action regarding the approval of change order number five for additional security features and other items for the new Waco High School presented by Gloria Barrera. Thank you, President Vadana. Um, as described in this memo here, um, Waco High School has been under construction now for

227a little over three years. And over this period of time, there are many changes in safety and security standards throughout our our nation, frankly. Um, and then addition to that, as we begin to really get into the planning of how we're going to inhabit and work in this new building, we've realized some things that we needed to address to make it work better for for the occupants, the users in the campus. Also, we've we on both of our previous schools, Carver and Tennyson, we did end up going back and adding additional surveillance cameras after they'd been in the school for a while because then we discover, oh, well, this is how the student flow really is. And so, we need to have more cameras in this area and that sort of thing. So with Waco

228High School being so big, this new school, we um we were proactive on that with having uh Chief Goodman and his team along with our our internal technology department and the operations folks to walk through the building and look at the existing camp because we w we did this in a mean April when everything was pretty much there already. So, we could already tell and they could look at the cameras. They could look at the places and look at the corners and look around and see we need a camera here. We need another camera here. What are we going to capture with this one? Maybe we change this one to a 360. This one is only a 90 or 180. And so, we did a lot of that tweaking. That's part of the change you're

229seeing in here. So, um that's one of the changes we have this evening. Um the other changes are just are um well, they're pretty much self-explanatory. the the uh projectors was something that went honestly just overlooked in the hustle and bustle of $140 million project along with you know another 150 million under construction. Um and and then the the other two changes have to do also with safety and security. Um when Chief Goodman and his team went and saw their their uh locations at the school, they asked for some uh oneway um oneway film, one way glass if you will, so that they can look out, but they can't necessarily people can't necessarily see in from the guard booth where that which is where the students come in. And then we also added some intruder

230resistant film along the outside perimeter where there's a there's not a door there, but it's a full glass pane that goes all the way to the ground. So, while the law says you have to do it if there's a door, it looks like a door. So, we decided we were just going to air on the side of caution and go ahead and film that one, too. Um, can I ask a question really quick before? So, I want to make sure I understand. So, see in the academic wings where we have Florida ceiling glass, we're going to now put in intruder resistant film on the exterior wall outside of the secure perimeter which is just along new road because now we believe that what we currently had was not safe enough. So, we need to add

231a security measure. Just wanted to be clear. Not we don't it's not that it's not safe enough. It just we don't feel like it really meets the intent of the requirement for the intruder resistant film which is to add anything outside right outside the perimeter which we're doing that to increase safety. Yes sir. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I understood um that we're saying Florida glass se uh Florida ceiling glass walls and now we're putting protective film over. I just wanted to make sure I It's very a very It's only two openings and they're about the size of a door and that's why we decided that we should do it. It's two openings along the whole wall. Any any questions? I understand a motion to approve the So moved. Second. Keith can have

232it. Second by Keith. Mr. Bledo, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Abnusi, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Davis, is there any discussion? I'm just glad we're taking all the precautions that we need to to ensure safety for our students. Glad we're here. Mr. Gillery, is there any discussion? No. Mr. Patton, is there any discussion? No, sir. Mr. Elo, is there any discussion? Nope. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? passes you analogously. We will move on to item 15, announces by Chief Cox. Thank you. Good evening again, President Vida. Trustees, I'm going to start um tonight's theme mean seems to be like pointing out the folks on the back row. So, I'm going to start tonight by thanking Coach Rodney Smith, our assistant athletic director, for representing athletics with us tonight. I know

233Coach Smith and many of us will be tuning in to see his former athlete and our very amazing Waco ISD alum, Mr. Kenrich Williams in game six. Correct me if I'm not an NBA fan. Game six is Thursday night at 700 p.m. and we're going to get the win, right? Um, and it's going to be that's the done deal, right? We'll have a Waco ISD alum who is a MBA champion, right? and uh Coach Smith was a and was actually Kendrick's coach as a basketball player at UHS. So, thank you for being with us tonight, Coach Smith. Also, I want to introduce to you there's another new face back there. Sorry, Raquel, I'm putting you on the spot, but I wanted to make sure that our trustees knew that we um now have Raquel Villro

234with the Waco Bridge who is joining us as the education reporter. and we I told her she was getting in the hot seat right next to Carl and Coach Smith and and uh they'll help her keep her in line and help answer any questions that she has. We'll get either side. So, thank you for being with us, Raquel. We look forward to working with you. Um other important things to let you know, online registration is open for the 2025 2026 school year. I'm sure you see a lot of our campuses posting and pushing out information letting parents know how important it is to take the time to start and try to complete that step that helps us plan um within our schools and in our district departments for the new school year. Campus assisted in-person

235registration, the big push, the annual push that we have in July um will begin the week of July 21. Um, we want everyone in Waco ISD to enjoy the quintessential summer celebration of July 4th and the district will be closed for the entire week, June 30th through July 4th. I think uh people from facilities and maintenance will still be up and going. We've got a lot of big projects going on and I I know Cheryl and her team have said there will still be some necessary items going, but for for uh our amazing Dr. Spicer really wants everyone to rest and recharge that week. um of July 4th. Spend time with your families as you can and then come back ready to work um in July and get ready for that new school year. Um

236the board's next regular meeting is Thursday, July 24th. And then next Tuesday night, we will have a brief special meeting here in the boardroom. Um one other quick thing to note that you'll be hearing more about and seeing more about is this week we opened registration for the first ever superintendent superhero run. It's actually a run walk. I've seen a lot of people sharing walk, it's a run. There's a 5K and a 1K. Um big big shout out, thanks and kudos to Courtney Parnell um for letting us add this new addition to the um family fest day of fun. And then this wouldn't be possible without Rian and Settles. Um so big thanks to Rian and Settles for even you know Dr. Spicer has the vision of of what it means to be a run

237or a runner in a run and Rian is delivering on how we actually host and and and um have a run here in Waco ISD. So, a training plan has been sent out to staff along with the challenge to join us. Um we are ready and we're we're getting started. The first um actual uh training night for the administration building meeting here was last night. Um so I know some of us weren't able to attend that, but it starts again next Monday. um trustees, I'd love to see a challenge amongst this competitive group on times and things like that. So, we'll come back in in July ready to talk about it. Okay, and that's it for tonight. Jim Zen, we do not talk to Jim Patton about running or welcome back. We also didn't say

238what time it starts. I do uh want to point out too, um I I hope everyone in Waco ISD enjoys the federal holiday. That's Junth tomorrow and they take time off to celebrate. is uh of of very utmost importance uh and historical significance to our community. So I hope everyone enjoys that day and and celebrate. Happy Junth. Thank you, Trusty Davis. Yes, sir. Okay. The WD board of trustes will now go into close session at 9:32. Yes. Yeah. This time pursuant of the Texas Open Meeting Act, Texas Code Government, Chapter 551, sections 071.02.074 076.089. We are reconvene in open session at 11:24. Ajourn.