001I'm very pleased that you took the time to join us this evening in compliance with the state government code 551 for open meetings act. Tonight's agenda has been appropriately posted. This is a meeting in a public entity, not a meeting of the public. As our guest, you are welcome to observe and listen. These proceedings are being video and audio recorded and will become part of Edgewood ISD's permanent record. To ensure the recording accurately accurately reflects these proceedings, please silence your mobile devices and refrain from talking while others are speaking. Thank you. Since it is legally mandated that these proceedings are recorded accurately, I may have to ask for for order periodically should I notice that disruptions are interfering with our reporting capabilities. Okay. Thank you. Once once again I extend to each of you a
002sincere welcome from the entire Edgewood pool board. And now a roll call. Miss Martha Castillia >> here. >> Mr. Frank Espinosa >> present. >> Mr. Luis Gomez >> present. >> Mr. Rudy Lopez >> present. >> Mr. Michael Valdez >> present. >> Mr. Sergio Degado >> present. >> And myself Dr. James Hernandez is present. Let the record show that the form of the Edgewood Independent School District School Board is present, that this meeting has been duly called, and that notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act. Our next agenda item is communication from citizens. Mr. Espinosa, communication from citizens. Our next item on the agenda is communications from citizens. This is a time for community staff and students to provide their comments on to the school board. You have
003your comments heard tonight. Your name and specific agenda item must have been submitted in person or signed up online with the board operations manager. Each speaker will have three minutes or less depending on the number of people that have signed up to speak. Non-English speakers who have require a translator may receive up to six minutes to speak. As a presiding officer of the meeting, I may modify or wave these time limits as appropriate. In accordance with Edgewood ISD board policy BD local, the board shall not tolerate disruption of the meeting by members of the audience. Speakers or others who engage in disruptive behavior may be ruled out of order by the presiding officer. Disruptive behavior and action include but not limited to racial slurs, insulting, profane, threatening, derogatory, or abusive language, making violent or threatening
004gestures. Public comment is not intended for the speakers to make allegations of employee or student misconduct, requests for employee or student discipline, personal attacks on individuals, or disclosing information about district employees or student. If an individual makes a complaint, I as a presiding officer will interrupt you, ask you to stop and direct you to seek resolution of your complaint through the district's appropriate formal grievance policy. BGBA for employee complaints, FNG for student or parent complaints, and GF for public complaint. >> All righty. Thank you, sir. Uh and our first and only speaker today for our public hearing is Miss Melody Hera. And you have three minutes and you are speaking on topic 3A. The school board will hear a presentation regarding the 2024 2025 Superior Achievement Rating based on the school finance integrity rating systems
005of Texas or first report for Edgewood Independent School District. And you have three minutes. Good evening members of the board, superintendent and community. My name is Melody Atta and I'd like to share a few thoughts regarding the 2024 2022 25 superior achievement ratings based on the school's finan integrity rating system of Texas or the first report. While I recognize the district's efforts to maintain financial accountability, I have serious concerns about the transparency in this process. The public hearing is meant to give the community an opportunity to comment on the first report. Yet, the report itself was not made available prior to this meeting. I had to go find it myself on the TEA website. Without the ability to view the report, families and taxpayers are unable to provide informed feedback or ask meaningful questions. Transparency
006is not just about compliance. It's about trust. When critical financial documents are shared with the public in advance, we are better able to understand the district's financial health, celebrate successes, and identify opportunities for improvement. I urge the district to ensure that in the future, reports like this are posted well before the required hearing so that the community can engage authentically and responsibly. Additionally, I want to raise a question about the auditing process itself. The district has used the same auditing firm Theo Brown and Hill LLP for the past six years. While consistency can provide stability, it can also limit the fresh perspective that an independent audit is meant to bring. In evaluating the district's financial integrity, I hope we also consider whe whether the audit process is being authentically reviewed and whether long-term use of
007the same auditor still serves the best interest of transparency, accountability, and public confidence. Being more mindful and proactive in these areas will strengthen trust and make community engagement more meaningful. Transparency and authentic oversight are not just administrative tasks, not just so that we can give our superintendent a $5,000 bonus, which I see in his contract that he does get because we got an A rating. So, congratulations, Dr. Hernandez. There are they are a foundation of integrity in public education. Thank you for your time and consideration on how practices can better reflect the values of openness, accountability, and partnership with the Edgewood community. The report that I found on the website also let me know that the ADA for for the district was 6,000 in the 6,000 range. That is really concerning and I also hope
008that they went over that with y'all and that y'all questioned why is our ADA at 6,000 something. Thank you. >> Hey, thank you ma'am. >> Uh Mr. Board President, I would like to add for the official meetings of the meeting with regards to the comments that were just made by uh our current public speaker. There's a few items that I have repeatedly shared with our community and with our board with regards to ADA. that information can be found on multiple presentations that this superintendent has made both on this dasis and in multiple school uh multiple meetings at school. So I do want to enter that for the record. The second thing that I also want to enter into the record is that the superintendent's contract has always been on the website. That is not something
009that's new. It can be easily looked up. You can look it back. You can look it up as far back as 2019. So that has always been there as well. The other thing that I would also like to enter into the record is that the auditing procedures that we have are audited not just by the particular firm that was mentioned. They're also audited by the Texas Education Agency as well as uh independent group that this group of people that we're about to highlight as well as our CFO have repeated have received repeated acknowledgement for the work that they've done in their accountability systems. So I thank uh our public speaker for uh exercising your right to speak democratically. But I do also want to make sure that we enter into the public record those things
010uh because they are important as well. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you, sir. >> Uh next we have our presentation, Miss Mirna Martinez, >> Assistant Superintendent of Business Operation. >> Good evening, Dr. board president and members um of the board. Thank you to the community for being here tonight. I want to talk about the first report that is based on the 2023 2024 audited data. So this is intended learning outcomes. We're going to talk a little bit about board and superintendent responsibility. We do that a lot during our meetings. The purpose of the first rating and we're going to go over the process and the data that is reviewed by the state when they um give us the ratings at school districts. So the board's major responsibilities is to adopt the district budget, hire
011the superintendent, and to set policy. Part of the superintendent's responsibilities include the educational programs of the district, the operational management of the district, stakeholder engagement and advoc advocacy and problem solving at the state and national level. Together those form the goal six of the district which is to develop an effective organizational framework. As part of that, the superintendent presents the board with a budget plan that m maintains strong financial reserves and demonstrates sound fiscal practices. Um, as part of that, in 2526 budget was adopted at the June 12th, 2025 regular board meeting. Part of the other goal is that the superintendent will present the board with a budget development process and timeline. You will see that we have a budget calendar that will be adopted tonight. It is item 6C uh for the board and
012public that is not something that is required to be adopted by the board but we do bring that to the board so that you know where we're at every step of the process. This goal also addresses the priorities three, four and five which are focus on operational excellence, focus on employees and organizational improvement and a focus on financial stewardship. The financial integrity rating of uh system of Texas was developed in 1999. The primary purpose is to measure the quality performance in the management of school district financial resources. So the districts are rated on 21 indicators this year and the information is obtained from various sources including the financial audits teams reports and other governmental entities. Each year the commissioner of education assigns each school district an accredited status under the Texas education code. So I
013want to reiterate that this is based on 23 data. So what do they input that go in for this particular rating? We have the team snapshot data that was collected in October 2023. They also included and rated our 2023 2024 audited financial statements, the Texas Education Agency reviews. And as you know, we also have the GFOA that reviews our and that's a government finance officers association that reviews our financial statement. And then we get our prelim preliminary notice. It's a lagging indicator. We're a year behind. In August, we got our preliminary notice. August through September, we have the ability to um ask TEA to re-evaluate our rating and then we get our final notice this month in October. As per law, we had October the 6th, we had the newspaper notice for the public hearing
014and we are here tonight, October 21st, presenting as required by law to the board of trustees and the community. So over the last few years we've been rated um on an A throughF system much like our campuses are for 2425 the system has remained the same. So we are again getting rated on an A through F system. I'm proud to report that the district received a district score of 94 out of a possible um 100 point. I'm not going to read all of these indicators. These will be posted on the website and it'll have numerous links. What I want to go to very specifically is indicator number 13 because this is where we lost two points. We went from six points to four points and I want to address the why. So this is as
015was mentioned earlier the expenses that we have in the district are divided by the um average daily attendance instead of enrollment. Right? So our average daily attendance has decreased. We've had multiple conversations about that. So that causes this indicator to negatively be affected. So the two points that we lost are directly attributed pretty much for the to the ADA that we've lost um over the last few years. We received credit at 100% for the rest of the indicators. The indicators include financial solveny. They include how we manage the funds of the district and they include whether we have sufficient reserves to make debt payments for the district. Before I go into the foundation or the rest of the the report, I want to make sure that I introduce the team that is behind this work.
016I'm going to call up the finance team that is was able to be here with us tonight, Miss Tanya Wright. We have Bertha Rodriguez, Bridget Perez, Audrey Gonzalez, Maria Ramos, Jason Martinez, Mr. David Abundes, our senior director, and Rachel Gomez, executive director of business and finance. I have I see I missed a couple of people. Miss Rose Modina and Michelle Hansler. So the people that you see before you put in countless hours. Um they just wrapped up the financial audit for 2425. Um the amount of time that they put in is unbelievable. So I want everyone to be able to put a name to a face and this is the thing that makes it happen. So all of you thank you for the work that you do. This is credit to and a testament to
017the work that you put into the district. But thank you for that. You don't mind up All right. Thank you for that team. So, we also have some other required disclosures. Um, we have the superintendent's contract that can be found on the district's website. You have the link right there. Um, have um as part when you click on appendices when this is posted you will also have a direct link to the first rating that is posted on the Texas education ay's website and I want to go over the expenses for the trainings that are received by the superintendent and the board members for the fiscal year 2324 these are required trainings um and those are the expenses we are required to post them this again will be on the website these are the expenses are
018incurred for lodging meals transport transportation, water, fuel and other expenses as appropriate. This is the schedule of the required trainings. Um they the board is required to have trainings uh regarding the open meetings act, the Texas education code, the public information act and the state board of education. It is a legislative year. So this year the board will likely be required to have a lot more trainings. Um and these are expenses that the district has to incur on behalf of the board members. Okay, with that I conclude our presentation. Um again the intended learning outcomes board and superintendent responsibility the purpose of the first rating and the first rating process and data review. >> Thank you ma'am. >> All right looking forward to more training. >> Thank you to you and your team. Thank you
019for the trainings, too. >> Yes. Um well, and and we'll keep going. Uh does anyone have any questions from the board? >> Go ahead. >> Hi. Um so last the year before the our score was a 96 and then now it's a 94. >> Correct. >> Um but do you know what the difference is of our AD from last year and the year prior? We've gone in June and I'll have to look up the exact ADA from the prior year, but we've gone from receiving 8 to 10 points on full score precoid to now reducing by about two points. To give you an example, Mr. Valdez, um, if our ADA were to be at just the least pre-COVID level at 93.7%. we'd be at about 7,526 for that same year instead of 6,46. That's how
020much of an impact we're getting with the decline in our attendance. >> Any other questions? >> U Miss Martinez, can you very briefly define what ADA is for everyone who's not living in education world? >> Yes, I apologize. Yes. So the district gets funded on average daily attendance instead of enrollment. What that means just conceptually if we have a 100 students the state does not fund us on 100 students. They fund us on the average number of days that the student comes comes to um school. So if the student is absent 10 days we only get 90% of the funding for that individual. So that that's what the average. So thank you. >> Thank you ma'am. Any other questions? >> Uh yes. Um more specifically, can you talk more of the on that portion of
021the score? It says a school district's administrative cost ratio equal to or less. What the administrative cost ratio means if it also means a status other than ADA? >> Yes. So what impacts administrative cost ratio are the admin costs. So campus administration, district administration, that's non-classroom um expenses that we have at the district. Those are then divided by in this case the average day attendance instead of the enrollment. And that produces a an average or per pupil cost. TEA then converts that to a weight system. In this case, we got a 0.17. that weight system falls into an indicator and that's how we get assigned either two points, four points, six points, eight points or 10 points. There's nothing in between. So it goes by two points up to 10. But those are the items
022that are included are there the admin cost versus the average day attendance. >> Awesome. Any other questions? And my my last question uh you did mention that we're going to post it on the website but you did mention like a click but is there a way like because I did see where we put the rest they were in powerpoints under the required posting but maybe like if under the powerpoint uh to take you directly to the the first rating the the link of the one that the state post >> and we can post the first rating directly onto our Any other questions for the board? >> Yes. I would like to share also for the record for the um for the community. Um part of uh how we reach these particular meeting requirements which are
023typically around the same time every year is that we go through a process with our board that starts as early as the month of January. Um we make a recommendation to the board every June uh of every year. So, for example, next year it will be June 2026 when the board adopts the budget that will guide us for the 2026 2027 school year. What I would ask our community to do is there are multiple opportunities for you to come to workshops uh which happened two weeks prior to this meeting. When I present later, I'll I have a link there to all the questions the board asked as well as the video of the actual meeting. But we have multiple meetings with the board to explain the items that are coming up to them on a
024budget which ultimately will have a direct effect on the first rating. So I think that it's important that we share that. Um the second thing also is when I continuously ask our parents to support us by bringing children uh to school every day. That has a direct effect on what we're able to do for children in the classroom. So I would I would ask everybody in the community, please talk to your neighbors, your family, your friends. Let's make sure the kids are coming to school because I think that's also very important. Um and then the last item that I would also ask is I want to thank the board and and make the connection. I think at the beginning of the presentation this month and the last two months you most of you heard of
025all the legislative mandates that we've received from the state. This year I'd say threefold that what we normally receive most years. Please understand that a lot of these mandates are coming down with no support in terms of the personnel who are required to execute these mandates. So somebody still has to do that work. And so I would again invite you come to the workshops. It's a really good opportunity to get to know why we have to have folks in certain places to complete the work that we're doing. My comments tonight are to honor the work that the men and women you saw up here who we all clap for just a few minutes ago that we don't forget that when the claps are over, they're doing a lot of work to make sure that the
026district is keeping its financial integrity, which is one of the priorities of our school district. So again, please come to the meeting so that we're acting on informed information when we are having a conversation about these things. Thank you. >> I have one more question. >> Go ahead. >> Uh so for the first rating, uh when did the district actually receive the the score? >> No. >> Scores are posted August 2025 is when we initially got the letter. We have two months to appeal. If we don't agree um the appeal process ends in October then we can have a hearing like tonight >> and then uh just for like the superintendent this question is for or comments for the superintendent the board president uh if we can also like also maybe see the report next
027year like before the board meeting just so we know what what we're looking at. Thank you. >> So I'll add that um that report that we receive in August is a preliminary rating. it is not the final rating. Um when that rating when we bring it to you, we do like to report what's actually been uh confirmed and so until we have that information that yes, we will share that with you. Yeah, no problem. All righty. Thank you. I just want to add a few things. Um that's why this the the attendance is something we're really I've been very vocal about this year because I see it both here, right, on the board, but also in the classroom, right, because I'm also a teacher. And so, uh, every student, if one student misses a class,
028the teacher still has to be there. We still have to pay them. And so, it's very important that, you know, that you you bring your student, you know, your your child to to school every day or at most um, you know, if they do need to be out, at least provide them with a reason or excuse, doctors, note, things like that because that really does affect, you know, how much we can do um with them. Uh, and the second thing was also, I'm going to keep saying this, the reading. We're really pushing the reading, right? at least read uh to your to your um child or student at least 10 minutes a day. And that's something I'm going to keep repeating because those are those are two big things that that I want to focus
029on uh this next this next year. Thank you very much. Um okay, if if we don't have any more questions, uh I need a motion to close the public hearing regarding the 2425 superior achievement rating based on the school finance integrity rating system of Texas or first report for Edgewood for the Edgewood Independent School District. Do I have a motion? I move to close the public hearing for the first reading report. >> Thank you, sir. Mr. Valdez motions. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Mr. Delgado seconds. I remembered. Uh, all those in favor, raise your hand and say I. >> I. >> All those opposed, raise your hand and say nay. All those abstaining, raise your hand and say abstain. >> Okay. Motion carries. The time is now 5:57. I need another motion. Do
030I have a motion to adjourn this public hearing of the Edgewood Independent School District? Is there a motion? >> Motion. >> Say, yeah, say it, please. >> I motion to close the public meeting. >> Thank you, sir. Mr. Delgado motions. Is there a second? I second. >> Okay. Miss Garcia seconds. Is there any discussion? Okay. All those in favor raise your hand and say I. >> I. >> All those opposed raise your hand and say nay. >> All those abstaining raise your hand and say abstain. A motion carries. This meeting is adjourned. We will reconvene at six o'clock. 3 minutes. Thank you.