AHISD School Board Meeting Audio - January 17, 2019

001I'm Lisa Kramer and I'm an imposter I'm not the president I'm the vice president but I'm acting as the president tonight because markets out of town so it is January 24th and at six o'clock so we want to this is a duly filed invested regular meeting of the AMA Heights Board of Trustees thank you everyone for being here if anybody is a citizen to be heard tonight anybody wants to speak at the meeting there's some forms in the back but if you see anybody come in they're looking around they're yellow and should just fill that out and we'll have a section for that on later on the agenda and I guess we turn over today to them yes and I'm gonna go ahead and turn over we've got some really exciting delegations and recognitions this

002evening so I'm excited to turn that over to you guys and I'm excited to take the message thank you all so much for being here one thing that I'll say at the beginning is we do have lots of recognition so if you're here to support somebody thank you so much for being here I also want to ask you to stay through the duration of the recognitions and at the end I promise I'll let you know Greg Commission's is done our meeting will continue and you have a chance to speak out at that point and so without any further ado I want to start where we should all start with the students so the Alamo Heights High School rocketry program systems go national banner award where's come on down [Applause] so they're showing it to the

003trustees I'll show it to you guys we're gonna find out who's here tonight but first let me just briefly tell you why they're here these folks and a lot of people that have graduated and gone on in the team we recognize with the national banner because their launch last summer hit 20,000 feet and they broke the sound barrier twice first time in the history of the program so that's a big deal now a rush week program these folks are here to tell us who they are what grade they're in and what do you want to recognize any family who are here so point that I will start with you will go this way and we're going to end with the young man here I'm also seeing I'm in well thanks for being here Colin Lang

004of course is our teacher and sponsor the whole Robert Cheeke program Colin tell us about this group and what this award means well we have attempted as juniors they have to make sure we understand is they did this is a junior class last year breaking the sound barrier which we have never done before it's it's not easy to do because they have to do with that velocity but keep it under 13,000 feet so it's like you got to do it really quick and then put on the brakes so because we kept they will only give us approval up to 13,000 feet and we can't go above that the senior class last year who couldn't be here we there was a beautiful rocket but we only got the 20,000 feet and this group right now that

005you see is in the process of they finish their design and they're now fabricating their Goddard rocket for this summer and is without a doubt the most advanced rocket we've ever built is is beautiful Oh what they're building it's all bolted together screwed together none of it's hardly welded anymore and the nozzle that's going on the aft end of the rocket that will funnel the hot expanding gas to get us our thrust is being 3d printed by a company in Austin metal 3d printed this is like cutting edge technology that they're doing and the price tag of that if we were actually paying for it would be $20,000 and they're donating it for free man these are the same kind of medals that they use for NASA and SpaceX and that sort of thing so

006our recovery team they got to really step up their game and get it back yes it's a it's a big deal that's then so I feel really confident about this group they've done a terrific job they've been with me for four years before here and stuck with the program and and it's it's amazing what they're doing this year we're so far ahead of schedule I mean we're so far has good was amazing well congratulations are you calling into all these guys let's give them around yes to the recovery team yes 30 second answer how do you recover a rocket did you shoot 20,000 feet near well that it happened what's what your goal Oh was it go up well it's 100,000 feet Dinitz to recover the rocket within well how much radius that we have

007and that's whatever is dictated by White Sands which is a very large area do you watch it or is it we can't actually see the rocket so we only get like a reading on like a monitor is from from one of my guesses before we've seen from previous years but once it does reach Apogee basically the nose cone gets blasted off why how does that happen well it's busted up I was essentially is a mortar or cannon that just shoots the parachute yeah very cool so who donated the nozzle it's company in Austin you guys remember the main weird assist something I mean it's a cool name yeah we're gonna have their logo on the side of the rocket just like NASA all right and they found y'all a lot of them what happened was

008mr. gates are our machinist like we work with Gary gates he was in a trade show in Chicago and ran across these folks and actually noticed that they had a nozzle sitting there okay and start talking with the guy told him about us and pull those cameras show to the film stars most pictures have the guy was like high school students are doing that so like that's really amazing it's like well he kind of like talked them up a little bit more acidity would you be willing to maybe and we went up there to see the process it's fun I mean it is it's crazy what they're doing now it's not like 3d printing like you think right it's not like that at all that's cool so you said there are some sealing that they

009can't what happens if you go through it like what if you overshoot we go up to White Sands they give us you know from the entire range they've shut down and they give us to infinity they say so that just they open up the airspace all the way up they shut down Holloman Air Force Base next door while we're there launching our rockets it's it's crazy they did best about the estimate is about $150,000 a table we're on on range and how many high schools are out there each summer not six six yeah across the across the country that's it and what was interesting is last year this the seniors in college were across the mountain range at spaceport america and they were having their competition their national competition so these are all seniors in

010aerospace engineering there was competing there and some of our parents went across to check out what they were doing and they walked around and there asked him about their rockets and none of them were doing hybrid engines like we do they're all using solid rocket fuel which is really pretty easy to do and they asked why aren't you guys doing hybrid engines they go our professors won't let us do it it's too hard and our high school students are doing it in one year yeah that's great yeah it's well what a word that we recognize is all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to support students and teachers like these and so every month we recognize an employee that works very hard behind the scenes and so we have the spotlight on

011Excellence Awards often somebody who works behind the scenes we have to work hard to shine the spotlight so everybody knows the hard work they do and this month we like to honor Mary Hamlin Hillis come on down behind the scenes so Mary works in our connects programs user connects coordinator what that means is she works with students with special needs the ages of 18 to 22 now she does a whole lot of different things I'm gonna list those but we're also going to talk to something about what that looks like so this is what we're striving for is it students with special needs 18 to 22 to build independence so that when they leave us they are able to function in the world on their own so she does a lot of scaffolding whether it's

012via trances adult social opportunities in the community YMCA things and then she starts so that's at the back end she also does counseling with parents with students who are three-year-old to start that planning long term going forward because you really do have to plan that all the way through she does that now I actually had the pleasure two years ago uh spending a day with her when I was learning this program and I where that fun I was we drove around come back anytime and I got to go with her to see all the different sites throughout the city where the students were working in her coordination with all the adults that are out there who students it was just mind-boggling now in addition to that she also serves a greater community and so she

013sits on the planning and network Advisory Committee for a cog and she's also on the board of directors for the advisory board for reaching maximum independence group and in addition to that she's housed over at the Robbins Academy mainly and so she has taken over the fire drills and emergency she really does and so we appreciate you so much Mary do you have anything you want to say I just appreciate working with the Chris holiday our special it director and I work with wonderful teaching assistants and great kids and great parents and I just feel very blessed so like it says that's what I'd like to say I feel very blessed yeah well we're blessed also I know Austin tomorrow is somewhere Austin present less than actually nominate her Austin do you have anything to

014say Mary is the most compassionate person that we have in the school district and she works tirelessly to make sure that our kids succeed I have to say that you know when I met my wife it was just meant to be you know 37 years ago in Houston we were both walked out of a meeting for new teachers and she had a Wisconsin plate on a car and I said I'm gonna marry something for my low state so I can travel you never met someone who cared more about children or any person with special needs as you have my wife she's taught everyone from from pre-k young children trios all the way to the 20 old and she cares about adults also and she's just the most giving was one of a person passionate passionate

015passionate about any person with special needs so you're very fortunate to have her in your district and she was even she works with the District Attorney's Office and she's also often asking about individuals with special needs and how that can impact their cases so it doesn't matter thank you our next award is the Lifetime Achievement Award from USA Swimming dawn Walker come on down don't leave this guy he does now dawn is of course our swimming coach and he's coached for a club swimming for over 38 years and he is qualified swimmers to the USA Olympic Trials and Nationals Junior Nationals he's coached numerous UIL champions both in district regional and state he's been coached at Lee here numerous times throughout his career and he's respected and beloved in the profession now the organization USA

016Swimming governs swimming at the Olympic level and so this is not a small award this is a big deal I mean in addition to just all of his excellence as a coach he's also serves the organizations we spend general chair Vice Chair treasurer of subjects of swimming national chair for diversity and outreach for USA Swimming so not only does he serve us but he also serves the greater community of swimming and we really appreciate that wow thanks yeah do you have anything you want to say um a couple things I just very grateful to get the award humbled honored by it and instantly we had a great day today we won the district championship for the girls and boys or are regionally next week at Houston so we're hoping for good things to happen there

017as well yeah well done I know you can't do this work alone you have anybody here supporting game oh my wife is in theaters in July and remarkable woman and she's been there every step of the way yes I could have done it better yes congratulations thank you everyone say those thank you what's happening there maybe that cued up all right Heights happening is a feature that we started doing in our monthly delegations in recognition to showcase some kind of timely video feature quite often it'll be something carried on the news or it might be something that Patti Rosalinda put together themselves just to highlight what we're doing in our district further the profile of the educator today we have a highlight video from David Chancellor with news for San Antonio so let's take a

018look at it and then I'll talk a little bit more about that [Music] everyone has a story to tell so every single Monday Dave Chancellor is going to do just that and go public with d'emic and as you're about to see in Alva Heights most of the story is told in Spanish first grade can be a bit overwhelming new school new friends new beginnings [Applause] and for some students in the Alpha Heights ISD it's also about a new language I still remember the first day of first grade down this hall that's Catherine bury a third grade teacher look your telemetry who has come full circle for the district's Spanish immersion program 20 years ago she was in the same school in the same program facing the same challenges we walked in and she did not

019speak any English she spoke Spanish we called kind of looked at each other but then it starts giving your normal you become immersed and you start in this case a select number of first graders begin the year learning in Spanish and I mean learning everything reading social studies the entire day every day is in a foreign language that over time becomes less and less foreign to the kids versus an adjustment but then the big it used to it you can see there speaking the language to their friends and they're using it outside of the class our system will set loose my binos they start with just words and phrases what so some kids will catch on quicker than others but usually I'll see that by spring break when they come back from Spring Break that's

020usually when I seen most of those that are using the language Angeles in DES was one of the program's first teachers in the school district she's learned two lessons over the years then help ease any parents fear number one relationships and trust make this work and number two most kids can handle just about anything it's much easier for a child to learn a second language thing than adults for them it's just another first grade class the district requires students to stay in Spanish immersion through the 5th grade the kids become bilingual the benefit goes beyond language and beyond elementary school and today's day and age bilingual is essential for if you want to set your site apart if you want to be unique and going astray or being set aside on a job interview or

021in college applications it's normal now to be filing I have to tell you my two kids are enrolled in that program at Cambridge Elementary like most parents my wife and I have our reservations those have all gone away I've seen my kids over here conversation in Spanish and I've watched their faces light up with confidence when they realize not only do they understand another language but they can communicate as well boy so that exemplifies the profile of a learner in so many different ways and I haven't a hang I'm holding it right here at least the very least this whole back page communicate collaborate employs skills for life engage socially globally our program is highlighted there you guys all know how great it is and in fact this year we celebrate our 20th year of

022the immersion program so that's a really big deal so that's what happens happening in tykes I love it speaking of the 20th anniversary of Spanish immersion we have a very special or next recognition is the legacy Leadership Award awarded to Mary Ziegler Mary isn't lesson in this dish and we could give her award just for being herself however we're recognizing her well with regard to all of the leadership and inspiration that she's given to specifically to the Spanish immersion program over the years to have a nationally recognized program like this is no easy task to make remain calm in the face of all no behind the scenes is not an easy task and as we sit back and reflect on the success of this program for 20 years we could not do that without recognizing

023Mary and her leadership now I have a very special relationship with Mary because she was a mentor to of mine coming up through the ranks and I'm getting teary eyed anything and I think there's a lot of us in this room who looked to Mary as a mentor and it means very much for us to honor her today a lot of it is very true but when Mary left they replaced her the district is set apart by the immersion program and then what transpired into our dual language program now and it was all because of the pioneer that Mary was the Trailblazer that she said in the risk-taking the tone that you set for us back then 20 years ago Mary that was a long time and there was a lot of work before that

02420 years first classroom and so we're very grateful thank you very much Larry what would you like to say I'd like to say just a couple of things first thank you for honoring me in this way it was a real pleasure to work in our Heights and to have all these fine people as my associate teachers included the Dan Mullen who was an assistant principal at Cambridge was the brainchild behind Spanish Immersion and dr. Charles Slater was the superintendent at that time and then and I approached him not sure what was going to happen but he gave us permission to explore and provided the funds for that so he those are two other people who are worthy of death but most of the credit for this program goes to our wonderful teachers because without them

025we would not have been the stellar program that we are today and so I thank you for this opportunity and am very honored that you chose him we also would like to recognize your asthma Bob Bob thanks for being here Wow okay so I gotta get myself composed and Mary said it right about teachers and how important it is so I am excited to turn to our next recognition our campus Teachers of the year let's clap while they stand up so those of you inside the district will know that we're doing this a little bit different this year those are the outside who won't even know that this is a different thing however this year we decided to have each campus know their campus peers have selected these people to represent their campus in our

026district Teacher of the Year competition and tonight so we're gonna recognize all these wonderful people tonight we will recognize me the one district of Teacher of the Year who will go on to compete in all of our various competitions so I've actually asked the principal's to talk about their folks today because they work so closely with them so then we start with Howard Susan's right there Susan Johnson Bob your campus Teacher of the Year it's just our judgment yeah she missed rehearsal although is gesture third year of teaching you would never know it want me at your classroom and I think she has impressed her peers we all teachers show commitment and persistence but Sarah is one of our supporting classroom teachers and last year we only needed two and that means they have some

027children with some challenges on top of 14 other typically developing peers and she said no I'm this is my passion please I want to keep doing this so that's music to any principals ears when you have a challenging position and someone is that committee and wants to stay there and please don't make me she's amazing in shaping children's behavior and has high expectations not only academically but socially and emotionally and she supports those kids to meet those expectations breath applause from Cambridge elementary Kelly masters Kelly masters she is a rock star as well and I have Kelly how many years have you been working this is my second round in new heights I was here when Mary was here so a long time long time but Kelly is a true rock star so I think

028one of the best parts of this is that we threw this out to the staff and asked for nominations and then they voted and and they are right on with their decision Kelly gifts to everyone on the campus our teachers leaned on her for her expertise she serves as our other ace teacher like a behavior specialist basically and works with all of our students on the campus our teachers really lean on her she helps with our students who are I would say who need her the most in our families lean on her - she builds relationships with families like no other and they are very grateful for her I've had more than one time at the front door in the morning and parents come up and talk to me about how much the difference that

029Kelly has made in their home life so she doesn't only affect our campus but also you know in the homes of ours they have our students as well so next from Wood Ridge Elementary we have Jenny and our whole Jenny is a fourth grade teacher at Woodridge just I say a rock star you walk into Jenny's room and you want to be a part of that class and specifically in math and science really putting in the time and energy to figure out what the kids want and need and creating those engaging experiences and she's a part of our campus design team and is a real integral part of not only helping to facilitate and create engaging experiences for kids but also for the adults on campus just her peers chose her just a real positive

030leader on campus and also serves at the district level and has a lot of expertise from that area I can't say enough good things about Jenny just the wealth of knowledge that she brings to each of our classroom and into our campus and she is a football fan San Diego Chargers the students families are always writing me requesting in the spring they want their kid in a Chinese class so the next element Yunior school teacher of the year Christy Zorn co-principal what a great opportunity to be able to honor such an amazing teacher Christy's awareness our dyslexia specialists and one of the biggest things about gifts that we have as she really brings to the table relationships with kids it is incredible not only just envisioned being her in her classroom but during off periods

031Lunch Bunch like you go in that classroom and it's busy all the time kids but even her they trust her it's incredible our peers as teachers also are see her as a leader she's a part of our leadership team and I always tap in to her and to her her mind her brain because she'd always bring four and yes she makes me a better principal every day Christy were so lucky to have you in the Junior School so glad you're with us hey Ronnie our fifth campus the high school teacher of the year Erica Cordell Jones and I'd like to say Erica is also rock star like Mary Ziegler said really the success of this district is all about these teachers and the teachers and the things that they do on every campus and Erica

032just like the others does an outstanding job she's part of our special education department teachers look up to her as a leader on our campus she's there early she stays late she makes great connections with our parents and students and probably her biggest claim to fame is she's really helped to create a culture of inclusivity on our campus she was really part of a driving force to create the Unified Club and the work that they've done she coordinated an event last year they brought us first high school in Texas recognition as a model high school for what the programs that we do she coordinated the entire event which was just spectacular and then worked really hard to get us national recognition as well and by doing so has been able to really uplift a lot

033of our kids in they have special needs and just provide them wonderful opportunities and just show all the talents that they have that sometimes we don't recognize enough and so tremendous leader on our campus and while they're doing that family members of these teachers can you know what you guys are all getting a plaque and a wonderful set of flowers because it's a big deal this is a very video you guys are a big deal so I hope you know how much we appreciate you campus teachers up here sorry about ready all right so now we're gonna go we're gonna livestream and I'm actually going somewhere and I don't know where that is okay hi this is from my assistant superintendent and I'm live at the school board meeting ready to announce our district Teacher

034of the Year but first I want to do one more recognition there each campus Teacher of the Year from Howard make sure I don't miss your name is Sarah Judson this flapper from Cambridge Kelly master from the high school Arizona metal from whether it's Jenny aderhold your district Teacher of the Year from the high school and just thank you so much I'm really honored for the opportunities to be able to work with the students and for so much advice thank you all thank you dr. Billings for always being available data there you go I see that [Music] we have one more regulation yeah that was exhausting January is is a national school board recognition month and I can't think of a more fitting month than MLK the month that we have the MLK Day because

035being a board member a trustee is a public service and it's a public service it's driven by what's best for all kids not just your kid or your family's kid but all kids and we saw that time with all the teachers and so it's with great joy that we recognize our board of trustees for all that they do and I'm I could look at everyone around the table we spend a lot of time with these folks and they spend a lot of time with us and I can honestly say that we have all seen their honest heart for kids their integrity they ask the tough questions I mean they really do but they always do it with a heart for what's best for all kids in the district and this is an unpaid job those

036either didn't know that this is only voluntary wait a minute what yeah and they are such a professional group of folks smart kind they always have the best interests I've said again it for the kids in line and so I am endlessly humbled to work with you all I kid with Dana that I always say what we got asked what the board thinks because there's they there's just like there another part of our important work and so I value their judgment that much and I know Dana thinks the same way so we gave them a small token of our appreciation it's never enough to pay back and I know you guys in the audience probably value how can we give these folks a round of applause they exemplify media democracy right we are we live

037in a democracy is a great country the smallest unit of democracy is a school district it's where people raise their kids they grow together and they vote for people who will be trust these they are entrusting their kids to these folks and that's what they do data yeah so I have to chime in here just a little bit and I know this is uncomfortable if everyone on the table this is the only time we need to do this and so I shifted into a new role I've worked with the school board for many many years but I'm going on an eighth month of this different perspective of being the superintendent and so wouldn't you compare notes about what we're gonna say that's that the first thing that I feel like we need to highlight is

038the fact that that these seven people have such a servant heart for leadership and they approach every conversation every deliberation every meeting with this perspective of how can I help and that's a really unique perspective for a trustee to always approach situations that they also are so giving of their time incredibly giving of their time people don't realize how much time we spend together and it's not just here on Thursday night there are learning walks on campuses our teachers now they see them but they're there with that attitude of helpfulness Louis first and that really sets our board apart from others but the time that they give in preparing and studying they're a learning School Board they spend time prepping stuff that we send them to learn they're committed to that and just the time

039they give really exemplifies their servant leadership heart they are relentlessly committed to high standards of excellence and so when Frank talks about them asking tough questions they validate that our team our cabinet team works our but they ask us to give more always and that's invigorating for a leader and I would also tell you that it's invigorating to be a parent in this district to know that I work for for a trustee a team of trustees a team of eight that expects that of a leadership team and so I'm very thankful for that the the standard is set high oh it's in you ask tough questions you have courageous conversations with us and it set you apart from other course and then the third thing that I think I'd look that probably went to highlight

040is that you can hit on it is that you are first and foremost you are all champions for children and sometimes that causes you to be in difficult situations out in the community but again that it's just really affirming you make decisions always about kids and again where that had about being a parent in the district consuming that is just so affirming it's always about kids so I can't speak highly enough about working with you on this side of things and I also think it's important Margaret was not able to be with us tonight she has just done an incredible job serving as worth president I think it's really important to acknowledge her during word recognition month because she has served all of us in our team really well in that role and I think

041it's really important to affirm her leadership and the expectations that she's said for all of us in our team and so thank you from the bottom of my heart and from our team's our teachers just the recognitions in the culture that we have in this district would not exist if it wasn't committed so thanks so we don't feel circle started with students and now we're back with students or at last recognize delegation is the high school student council I'm standing in here tonight but I'm Lucy Williamson I'm the district state liaison and we have a very busy like two or three weeks coming up starting with our pep rally tomorrow which we're kind of starting a new kind of program and we got a got to hire some students to work in the pep rally

042and we organized some games and then on the 31st we start our annual blood drive which is really exciting and then we have a leadership workshop in Eagle Pass on February 2nd till 3rd so it's over and then finally we have our Valentine's Day kind of match mathematics kind of grams and it's a really fun way just to get everybody involved and so the students will be getting forms and they'll fill out their interests their age their preferences I guess and then this company who matches everybody's together based on their answers and it's also really good way to raise some money what a night I told you I will tell you when recognitions is over it's over so thank you all first and you're welcome to stay for the rest of the business section but

043this is a good time to leave thanks for being here [Applause] [Music] okay presentation and consideration of the 2017-2018 financial audit by mr. no so this is Margaret just trying to mess me up let me redress ok so now we're going to have mr. David see the Senate October see I have concert accelerating presents will change all right good evening thank you board members for letting me just give you an update on the rule change that's coming again it says February 10th is the proposed date TBA that a new rule the tea ideas enacting that should become a final bill still keeping an eye on that this rule is a change for students that are going to UIL concert inside reading contents band orchestra and choir and they will the rule makes it so where

044every kid is eligible regardless of their academic eligibility so no pass no play students who previously if they were in if they had failed a class at certain times they were ineligible to go to that just like they are for sports or when I play or other UIL events this one this rule change exempts them from that the rationale behind that is that band will just require co-curricular concert band concert choir not marching in their co-curricular and this evaluation this color contest but it's an evaluation that truly an extension of our classroom the judges that evaluate all of their rubrics that they're evaluating on are tied directly to teks so that's why they say this is still a co-curricular event there is not a even though we call it a contest there's not a competitive

045aspect to it so they're not competing against other groups they can't advance and it's the only UI event that's like that every other you all event there's there's some sort of competition or advancement that can happen so that was one of the other reasons it happens one time of year so students don't get a chance to regain eligibility and that all goes into it maybe for sports there might be a season that they are our out for part of it can regain this is a one-time deal and we our programs spend a considerable amount of time preparing for this so if a student is ineligible for that that you know that maybe three to six weeks that they can't fully participate in the class so the just an update right now as soon as it

046becomes official there any questions I know you presented a committee meeting before so I appreciate some of the more detail but Dan I just wanted to double check on this so guys want to make sure I mean we've pretty much aligned with UIL rules we don't look for exceptions so when they hand down the rules we just team player thank you all right our next presentation is an update of the district wellness program okay I think kind of good to go so I am cat with her I'm the wellness coordinator for the district this is my second year here and this job was made for me mm-hmm so I'm gonna talk a little bit about the past that led me here first I was born and raised in Illinois small town it was a university

047town coming to Northern Illinois University my parents both worked in education at the University my dad was a professor my mom was the assistant to the Dean of the School of Law Cedar Falls burgers no that's Iowa no no I went there so for me school was not the greatest time of my life school was hard for me academically and probably needed a me and what my role is when I was in school so my original plan for my career was I was to be a teacher that was money my goal until I discovered I would have to audition to get into the School of Music and then I would have to do a senior recital all by myself at the end of my college career so I decided I know I'm gonna do something

048different because I actually have a tremendous amount of performance anxiety which with this job I'm working my way through that I graduated college in 1995 I started working and then went back to get my masters which I achieved in 2001 and then after that I started my family and then decided no what I'm gonna get my license clinical social work certification too so it did that in 2007 my career path started with foster care caseworker I was then a juvenile probation officer for a few years and then once I started back getting my master's degree internship was in substance abuse treatment I worked in a facility there working with adults and then once I completed my master's degree I worked as a school social worker so I did that for 12 years all of which

049was in the state of Illinois so so eventually I landed here in Texas which is where I was supposed to be all along apparently because my parents were both from Texas so once I got here in 2012 I became a child adolescent therapists at clarity Child Guidance Center and so I was finally able to use that clinical certification that I achieved in 2007 so an interesting fact and this is a true story my first month working at clarity I attended a presentation by Miss Michelle e memo who was the district wellness coordinator for Elm Heights and as she got up there and I heard her talking and I said I'm gonna have her job one day and I literally wrote it on my sheet that she had handed out and then when I moved into

050my office here I came across that she said do I get this job so I am finally here I did I feel like every thing that I have done in my career really led me to do this job the the wide range of experiences that I've had really worked well with the varying hats that I wear so the history of the position real quick is it is a unique position to our district it started with a grassroots movement in 2008 passionate parents were really moved to do something because our community had lost for students to drugs and alcohol and they really spearheaded that raised enough money to fund the position for one year and then after that the school Foundation stepped in and raised a lot more money and I'm lucky because I am able

051to do what I do because of that so here I am this is my office this is where I spend my days I just thought it would be nice for you to see what it looks like for the kids when they come in I actually have a pretty large office which is pretty exciting for me so yes so the right is my desk where I don't spend a lot of time there we said over at the desk but normally I'm sitting in that teal chair right there so the job of a walnut coordinator is pretty wide-ranging so I'm not gonna go through all of the details that there's just a list of I coordinate the breaking the silence presentations and I have one exam a couple examples up there of those shameless plug we have

052a really great breaking the silence presentation scheduled for next Wednesday evening at Samia the Junior School at 6:30 so she's going to be talking about tech technology limiting children's technology and in doing so how you can create character established character in your children you know by saying where I'm going to teach you patience because you're not going to be able to use your tablet today you know that kind of thing she's really great I saw her and very excited to have her Wednesday evening so January 30th at 6:30 at the Alamo Heights Junior School Auditorium so I also worked on coordinating the parent symposium that's something that's been happening for three years now and unfortunately hasn't historically been well attended as we've been thinking through that's one of things that came out of the heart

053of heights like we're still dedicated to getting that word out and we might have to reach the way that goes mhmmm one of my favorite parts of my job is doing table talks so going into community members homes and talking about whatever topics are of interest that truly is one of my favorite things to do so recently when I did the presentation on the conversation on the suicide I was able to go do a table talk with some folks that weren't able to attend the presentation said that was nice so that brings me to presentations to address immediate concerns in the school community so the easiest example is very recently we had some things that came up and we wanted to pretty quickly put together a presentation to talk about suicide and I was really

054happy to be able to do that for the community and additionally I do presentations within the community just outside of the school so last year I did one in secada I'm gonna be doing one that's with the Jewish Family Service and rice recovery as well so again totally addressing my fear of public speaking through this job additionally one of my other favorite parts is the students that is my absolute passion and joy in my career and in my life so I meet with kids at the high school but I also go over to Robin's Academy once a week I meet with students there as needed and also meet with the students that are placed at the alternative educational placement DEP over there so I meet with them weekly I'll either do groups or meet the

055students individually really depending on what's appropriate you know sometimes there's a junior school kiddo that's placed at DEP which probably wouldn't be a good mix with high school students that are there if I wanted to do group so I'll meet with them individually in those instances so one of the focuses I have kind of two focuses social-emotional and substance use support for students and I just wanted to talk really quickly about why substance use support is important people are most likely to begin abusing drugs during adolescence and young adulthood and that's that's a fact so that's in a nutshell why it's important that we do the work that we're doing here in our lives directly and aggressively confronting it we do that I do that through individual student support meeting with those kids at the

056high school and the Jewish school that we know are using drugs now like I will meet with them individually i coordinate weekly groups with Ryan's recovery they come in on Thursdays they're here day so I coordinate that make that happen and then working on prevention as well luminescent questions so the individual student supports in these cities are kids that we know that are struggling with something so I mean is this like a you gotta go talk to the wellness coordinator or is this something where their luck I really want to go talk to them that make sense yes it does both so I'll get referrals from a variety places I'll have parents call and say this is what's happening you would write my worried can you talk with them I will get referrals from teachers

057saying you know I've noticed a huge change in this students behavior and their attitude can you check them you know I've kind of wondered what's going on with them I'll have friends report I think that I'm worried about my friends and then if I'm being honest once they're in they'll come back you know for a variety of reasons you know they'll come back and fairly easy to talk to but so once once they come in they do tend to come back on their own and if they don't we're gonna work on establishing a really good relationship so that we can continue working through the things that are causing you issues in life this is me still learning about your room so then what are what are the I guess requirements like it if you're engaging

058with students and you learn about behavior that adults don't know about that's harmful to the child harmful to another child etc maybe even to the level of you know police whatever I mean how do you how do you like how do you Shepherd that while at the same time helping the kids I don't feel like if I open my mouth you're gonna throw me in jail franklin's absolutely and I'm myself and the Wellness counselors that we have in the district we all approach it the same way you know we have rules of confidentiality when talking to students so we will tell them right off the bat you know you can feel free to talk about what you need to talk about in here if you're in danger hurting yourself if you're in danger being hurt

059if you are playing planning to hurt another person those are non-negotiable so we have to report those things and so they they know right up front that's that's the line if you know they're talking about things that we are concerned about I will stop and say don't forget you know I am a mandated reporter I have to report things and then also what's called parents also kids I prefer if I have to report something about a student that is uncomfortable to the parent I prefer that the student is in the room with me so that they can hear what I'm saying because I don't want to violate that trust you know so that you you heard by the same and then it was I was very clear and I didn't overstep any boundaries or say

060anything you didn't want me to say right within the balance of confidentiality and safety for the student to absolutely have a question also so when when it goes to individual student supports and a teacher or a parent refers a student to you what is the students don't know if the word is obligation but what is I mean can a student refuse time with you or how does that work they can they don't usually know um and I don't really have an answer so why I mean all mayor's are working with kids they don't usually probably has to do with the structure of the school studying is we respect the authority so you know I'm an adult in the building but if you're saying I'd like to talk to you so I mean it may have

061something to do with that but when but when they keep coming back then you know we've we've established that really positive relationship already so does someone say you have to go talk to cat Witter or some rubbish no it's usually that they will the the staff member will contact me in somebody and say hey can you check in with the student and so I will send to the student and they come in look you saw my this is a great place to be and then I'm talk--i round things eventually you say okay here's why you're here and a lot of times on all of the Wellness counselors we are very vague about where we get the information you know just to kind of maintain that positive relationship between the student and the teacher for instance

062if they're the ones who said can you check in I don't want to say well dr. al burrow told me I really need to talk to you well now that students gonna be super mad at dr. ho and we don't want to do that so we're very careful about just saying it's really big somebody thought I should check in with you I will say though that we knew at times required a sort of a discipline placement yeah no that's coming right right so the kids event DEP they know that they are going to see me and talk to me every week they expect me and because they're at DEP they're looking forward to knows they actually get to talk right it's a little don't make me go back in there oh so yes that is

063that is a requirement and that is something they're very well aware of but on an average day how many kids come to seniors cottages so I actually have some data oh wow what happens in our neck of the woods that's hard to say because it's not just me over there but I'll get to the data maybe we can revisit your question if that's that sure all right so the student social-emotional supports really is something beginning with last school year the wellness coordinator position really expanded to include more of the social emotional needs being addressed and some of that has to do with what I bring from the position and of my mental health background but additionally and more importantly our district recognizes the common relationship between substance use and mental and behavioral health issues so

064it's really we'd be remiss if we only did substance use because there's such a correlation to the other so we really expanded it last year and we're going to continue to do that so why do we focus on that because one in every four to five youth in the United States meets criteria for a mental health disorder then that's ya couldn't say it better than that so here is my data this is from last school year I saw I had 541 student visits that is could be repeat students so it you know I could see Johnny ten times but and that all of those are included so that it was 541 visits were made with students and it was almost exactly down the middle that I was seeing kids for substance use or for social

065emotional moment so good be almost 50/50 I wanted to while I had your ear also talk about wellness throughout the district because one of the components of my position is that I spent time at the high school I also at the junior school and I'm working very closely with the Wellness counselors we're bouncing ideas each other were kind of trying to coordinate services as well so I thought you might be interested to see across the district what is happening at least at the Junior School in the high school you say wellness Council - how many what's the staff so at the high school we have a job chair so there's essentially one wellness counselor and it's filled back to two people so that's it that's in addition to you yes okay and then at the

066Junior School there's one wellness counselor and we have counselors at the elementary school as well and at Howard so the Junior School Lisa yes is the one--this counselor there and she was keeping data she she was keeping it in different in a different way than we do at the high school so on average she was she sees last year she's not about a hundred and ninety students per month which is a tremendous amount so that's not just you know that is what I said for myself is it could be repeat students but on average it's about 190 visits per month 19 CPS referrals were made last year so that kind of goes to your question earlier mr. Hornberger about you know safety if their safety concern Sheets making CPS referrals just like the rest of

067us she conducts three groups a week I think she said it's about Ted of up to ten between ten and fourteen kids are in each group and it's a variety of students about they'll address social skills and along with each other and girl drama so 142 individual student visits per month okay so and then she had 16 hospitalizations last year so what that means is she had kids coming into her office talking about suicidal ideation having thoughts of harming themselves and ultimately from her office they ended up in the hospital do you have an idea of this what six seven eighth grade on that number no not currently but what I will tell you is through the the work that we all are doing collectively she's now starting to use the tool that we use

068at the high school which is a lot more detailed to kind of pull apart right and that's I'm guessing we've like 950 kids of junior school I don't know but that's probably close to 2% if that's accurate is that on national norms above below or do even though I don't know the answer to that I can tell you because I did do school social work which is essentially a way miss Lucas says yeah I did that in other districts in Illinois I can tell you that's more than I saw normalising going to other there's a mitigating factors involved which is great I mean the more disengaging your service absolutely because like I said at the beginning of my presentation school wasn't like the best time for me and so if it was more normalized notice

069if we even had a wellness counselor when I was in high school million years ago and I know you didn't come here asking for homework but look at them what the but just let me think about like if the board level would be so great if in numbers like that CPS referrals and hospitalizations which to me are significant events if if we can understand like the primary reason for the 16 was you mom and dad were fighting or I didn't know where I was gonna get my food the next day or I was bullied at school st. I you were the sixteen hospitalizations those were all kids that were suicidal yeah but I want to know I guess I don't want to manage that - what was what was driving right so um because there's

070something we need to do as a district to change our behavior I want to see if I can pull that out of there so I'm I'll move on because I may be a couple of sides later might might be what you're looking for so in addition to seeing students she also is responsible for the weekly advisory lessons she organizes the applications the lists and the gift-giving for 45 plus families for the Angel Tree in the holiday season which is a huge task and then she's the junior school ambassador the staff member in charge of that fifth grade tours in sixth grade meal camp so at the high school as I was alluding to we have a very detailed sheet that we use when we see kids and we've worked on what they come in for

071so last year this is our data for the high school so this includes me as well so I showed you I had 541 visit those are included in these numbers but we break it down by grade levels so you can see our freshmen are the ones we we see the most are those 770 unique freshman or similar so many visits that are spread across correct so then second to the the freshmen are the junior class and so what we we tend to pull from that is our poor ninth graders struggle with the transition and Junior Junior's are freaking out about a better word we marked down when we see the students what they're coming in for and dr. Alfaro and I were talking about you know so a kid come in and their focus is

072they want to talk about their family but if during our conversation it shifts to I've been engaging in self harm mm-hmm I we will shift and we will only mark down this is a self-harm because that kind of took priority so we are not marking down multiple issues we just stick to one the primary one for that visit so the number one thing that kids will come in to CS for is social and relationship issues 440 of our visits last year were that and then seconds that is other and the substance use falls under the other boyfriend/girlfriend I which I know that was one of my hats but I'm pretty good at it they keep coming back um so yes it'll be that it'll be really just conflicts not knowing how to cope with conflict

073which is an increasing problem just that's a sidebar that's my professional opinion that I feel like that is a really huge issue with our students with our our teens in this generation they don't know how to cope No thank you not yes that's exactly right over station so called Mia this and then because of that they're not they don't know how to cope with their feelings so that does our number one and second is the other and like I said the substance use falls under the other category unless we change our form to have me have my own little box and then social work and I just wanted to clarify what that means so that would mean if students or their family are struggling financially you know giving gift cards or helping them get into

074housing you know things like that that's the social work piece so this is this is exactly what Miss Lucas is now using at the junior school starting this semester so she's she moving forward we'll have it as much detailed information like this she's breaking it down to what the issues are and which grade levels are coming in at the high school last year we had 30 30 kids with suicidal ideation we have eight of those that were hospitalized we have 25 kids that were sent home and what that means is they are not functioning well like there's no way they can finish the day you know it's not that they need to be hospitalized it's just you know they can't they just can't function so we call home and we kind of problem-solve a parent

075I've got Billy here and he's just got off my couch and what do you think you want to do and don't say well let's just come get him and then we had five kids that we saw for suicide attempts and what I want to say about that is they did not attempt suicide at school it was that they came in and talked to us about a suicide attempt that had previously happened and then there are those five in the eighth then do those two usually end up with the hospitalization I think they could and you know it could be that nobody new you know that this happened at home and so we kind of go through different avenues what we're gonna call home and say this happened two weeks ago and they just came in

076and told that some but I also wanted to say because we have started we use the Columbia rating scale for a risk assessment so if we have a student that comes in talking about one wanting to hurt themselves this is a tool that we use has a series of questions six or seven questions and at the end it will give a score of severity so a one or two is a low score for this the student is probably not in danger of harming themselves despite what they're reporting and then a six or is we need to really so we are starting to track that as well how many of those that we are administering and I did want to say that the high school this year up to up to today we've had eleven hospitalizations

077and we've had twenty-seven and interactions with kids that were talking about suicide so we show you all ready have more this year than all of last yes which was gonna be one of my questions on trends that you're seeing in issues mm-hmm and obviously this invites gross generalization but something like that I mean that's got to scare you what's going on it does and I think what makes us nervous is you know when I look at the data from the Junior School Lisa Lukas is one person you know and that's that's a lot of visits and then a lot of other things that need to be done within her role that you know what if she's off students you know something with the tours and somebody comes in you know she's she's one person so

078it I would put on the table you know this doesn't happen oh how are we starting to slow them right there we brought information right you know they can come in I'm gonna email after hours right back to go on a couple times the jitter so one of our administrators counselors has to act on that right after school so that's why you know talking this just what the effect of this whole trend is current stuff right them and what that looks like on weekends when it happens after hours so it's not just on the current staffing during the current school that work but in extended hours because quite a bit ease responsive you never to this obviously and take it very seriously question about that we're using the word trend is it trending up or

079do we have information but you have Michelle ease information and stuff like that like where are we seeing these numbers is it did they spike a droppers it are we seeing a trend well I haven't looked that far back so I I compiled the data for last year and didn't compare it to years previous but I can do that so look at trends I think you know that's why I really wanted the board to know what's happening not just with my position because I you know I have a unique position but I am interacting with these other folks in the district that are doing incredible things and I'm supporting them and we're talking things through and I'm working as a team so yeah the trends we can absolutely look at I would be curious too

080but I will say with the number of kids we see during the day I'll have to do that after school you know to compile a day we're really swamped with kids but in talking with the other coordinators art do you have a sense of why we're already at 11 hospitalizations and we have only eight all su and it's you know some of it that were normalizing back to using that manner but kids coming and talking to you whereas they might not so some of it could be how we're keeping the data you know that we're being more detailed about it now and we were more detail last year than the year before it so some of it could be that you know that maybe there isn't that one much of a change that we're just

081tracking it differently but some of it could be yeah the word is out and the kids do know that we're there and they they seek out there anymore do we have a curriculum but yes I prevention curriculum right yeah right so we will be doing the high school suicide prevention curriculum in the spring and when we did it last year we did have a lot of kids come in that week you know they they paid attention they we had kids coming in saying I'm worried about my friend you know it was it was really amazing to see that because that's exactly the purpose of doing that prevention they were utilizing it so yes that that's a really good point that we had that in place and then you know we have kids that are bringing

082their friends to us too that's a trend that I see a lot is they're feeling the benefit of talking to me or one of the other wellness counselors and then they're like hmm I think my friend needs some help too and I'll just bring him in and say you need to talk to her and then they so I have a thought on that and this kind of sparked by what she said just you know the fact that you are now available in one thing I'm my first thing was like oh my gosh 27 but now as I said back and think about it's like oh no 27 that's good because we have 27 kids that have come to you that we've been able to step in that that's a positive thing and I don't I

083don't want I don't want to be alarmist about it and it may just be that kids are now feeling more comfortable and kids were going untreated unhealth and now they're not and that's where I'd like to get back to the correlation between underlying situation with suicidal thoughts so because that is something we can dig into and figure out and if every kid says my mom knows mom my dad knows my physics grade before I get home and beats me over the head with it well that's something is a board that we can change to help the benefit our children there are some things that we can't change and so that's why I'm really interested in this correlation between 8:30 visits okay what okay that you just didn't feel loved by your girlfriend or boyfriend okay

084the board is not going to fix it right look social situation zero and I it's a great question I feel like we're too in the weeds to even answer it because you know they're so busy I know we're good but here's what I do feel good about the process is that they're putting in place with our screeners with their you know standard protocols on how to deal with certain kids and assess primitive risk we've done a lot to get that in place and I feel like we're doing that well kids keep coming hurt and I don't know like speaking for me in just our conversations I don't know that we've done to look back to get em on trends we feel confident in the systems we have to respond with hits I'm not sure we

085really step back and done the study yet yeah well probably think we're heading that too right yeah yeah we're you know which is why I wanted to share the data because we you know in my mind that is for I'm heading up you you know that prevention piece of okay here's what's happening and eventually I will get to a place where I can look at it in more detail and you know this I don't want to minimize what we see with the kids either but one of the things that I do see quite often is because of the our students struggling to cope with things sometimes they'll come in and they'll be talking about wanting to hurt themselves and as we pick it apart is they are super overwhelmed and they almost can't identify all

086the varying feelings that they have um you know so say why are you frustrated yeah maybe you know anyway we have to pick apart that okay we have about six different emotions happening right now and when all of that happens at once for an adolescent with where their their brain development is at where their emotions are at where you know college readiness and all that is that they just kind of move they shut down and then to your point they know where to look for the help and so I do really see that as a positive because they know they can come in and deescalate maybe reframe some things sob hysterically have some water right or we then pick it apart and realize well we're really in danger here and we need to get this

087student some help and which is a great thing because they are in our office and we can do that and because our district has you know when I moved here from Illinois every school in Illinois has a social worker and it just isn't like that here at Texas and so coming to Alamo Heights and the supports that are there is so exciting because we're doing the things that our kids meet the most and it's already in place and it's not like that in other districts social workers and supports are at title one schools but all kids need to support know and following up on David's question because I was surprised an earlier slide it showed depression being higher than anxiety as a reason for visits and that's kind of counter to the school board conference

088in August they're talking anxiety is the new driver of a suicide ideation far above depression now they can often be intertwined but and so that I was curious on trends and that's something and I love the fact that you're building this database and I think Frank's point is very good you're gonna be able to start seeing trends going forward because you have a consistent tracking bro right and that's that's great because that's gonna help kids in the future but just anecdotally in your field since you're seeing so many kids do you see anxiety as the driver of a lot of the mental health issues or is it depression or is that a question that you just want answer I think in my professional opinion I thought anxiety would be higher as well I think I

089was a life with you that you know our kids are freaking out a lot you know varying issues so I think I was surprised to just be able to have actual data that we keep very consistently somebody come from my office I write it down right away I was surprised that it was so much lower than social relationships could academic and anxiety you type together yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah but I think you know it's hard just helping is this so different for each individual what is really pushing them to a point where they feel like they want to hurt themselves and when you when you're dealing with legitimate mental health diagnosis there really is no there is no reason it just is I'm depressed and everything in my life it could be everything

090in my life lines up perfectly great family everything is going well my grades are good but I feel like garbage every day and your that's the definition of clinical depression so it really does vary and I wish I could give you more about no concrete answer that was that was a happy end slide but I don't know what happened to it so before we rush you off tonight and I appreciate you gave us a ton of information but I think having in several of us attended your conversation on suicide you gave short shrift to it it was outstanding it hadn't gone to these conferences and seeing other renovations I was really impressed with the information and I love the fact that you bring it to the three people who might be listening out there in

091the cyber live shows your house yes I want people take you up you're being hosted to do this in small groups because I think it's such a great conversation and your presentation was so smart and both in formative but also very feeling you know just lots of resources yeah and yeah and please spread the word because I think that's the best way for me to drum up table talk business it's to tell people I will come and talk about whatever whatever you want to and it's informal which is my favorite form of communication so I really appreciate your time today thank you so much thank you thank you thank you very much know if you know will you sing for us you have to do in addition to all the work you need to do

092so yeah I love what I do and I is translated all right of the Nuggets I think I got a little bit trouble reading paper to the mic told me to bring but inside this inside you're sucked in the back is the liner that goes with the other reporter which has all the required mutations about whether you have any disagreements or issues with working with your staff and we've done our due diligence we've issued a clean opinion on these financial statements those who significant efficiencies or material weaknesses I mean that letters just a couple things I want to point out on top of page two and if you want to even make not use a separate letter okay clumpy shooters just two bullet points there a couple things that are new the first one if

093you remember a few years ago they said there's a TRS pension out there they want you to book a share of theirs unfunded liability yeah that came on the books this last year they wanted you to also do a share of the retiree insurance unclenox for that that's even bigger so that's on your books now so I think you're gonna have to turn around and pay but it isn't ugly number and then the second one is the a new capitalization policy for the district and traditionally it's been anything over 5,000 individually has been shown as an asset let's make statements for the district so if you bought something a very nice computer that we're making on there but any other thing of tablets or laptops we've just been expensed so traditionally you've done that through

094some debt funding with some large purchases and it's been expensed which kind of gets you a lit up side down so to make it a little bit more reasonable to match with what you're what you're doing the kind of additional policy was changed still trying to keep it at 5,000 so you're not trying to find every little nook and cranny that you bought during the year but if you bought a lot of it then it gets picked up as an asset just so we can offset that with the essay exactly so if you spend a million dollars an Apple iPad it doesn't make sense really to just it's ransomware this devilry right and so that changes made this year I'll be honest it did not mean comment those schools stick with the 5,000 but most

095schools aren't funding their operational do what you guys do so it makes a lot more sense to have a little bit of leeway there to try to pick up those really large that comes from the lines but not all the little kiddies I mean I know you all talked about this nota committee but can you get back to the the TRS and the healthcare stuff that's bigger than those so number one why is it happening I think it's because whoever had it on the books originally doesn't want their folks anymore but but then number two how does that impact our credit rating or you know cost of financing that kind of thing sure well the first one is I know there's some grumblings here about maybe DEA trying to push something on you but it

096really is a governmental Accounting Standards Board issue okay they went two years ago they went attention the big buzzword was there's unfunded pension light but I don't nobody have on their books they want to get on the books but what really changed of you guys is that it's not really your pension liabilities TRS is but they somebody out there says you get a share of it like you are still on the hook for some of this that's where that came on yeah and then the other benefits like the insurance was kind of another afterthought like let's focus on my pension a few years ago yeah and then we'll tackle the other stuff later and this is now the later so they're what they want is all of these unfunded liabilities to be on somebody's financial

097statements they start looking at it so we can care about it somewhere okay thinking start saying okay there's this you promised this out there everybody knows it's out there it's not a small number so hopefully you'll start playing important thinking about it so most likely you'll see some legislative effort to try to increase contributions either on the state side or dailyrx side Marjolaine yeah so but I think it's concerning yeah so what I'm assuming folks that give us our credit ratings understand that with TRS Alamo Heights is not ultimately responsible for the shortfall right and so we won't get dinged from a credit perspective because we have this unfunded liability I agree with you because I mean you kind of had the poor phrasing but the Golden Goose of your property tax rate where you

098can get whatever you need to pay your bonds and that's what they want they want to know can you let me attack sufficient pay your debts and you don't have any problem doing that with your IRS tax rate and my views have more conversations that I had with your financial advisor ISM listen isn't the same thing that they they don't care but do you want to chime in well particularly if it's PSF back they're not gonna care but if it's not right but even they understand that or they look at what feels said they look at what our taxable values are and what we can tax and that's what they're looking at okay primarily they know terrorists unfunded mandates really isn't on our books it's affecting our financial yeah that's something to piggyback on that

099on the financial statements anybody can go to this on my paper page 12 this is this is the overall district malechie has everything on all your long-term assets liabilities this is not something that you guys use to make your management decisions off of or you do any of your budgeting around right but this is how TVA grades you in the way that they try to determine whether or not you're financially stable and towards the bottom and that you'll scroll down just a little bit on the liabilities you'll see the net pension liabilities and I have a half million and the one right below that the net hope to have liability is actually the retiree insurance that's 16 and a half million for mommy yeah Oh cub is the easily retiree insurance okay so you see

100it's on well it's not quite double but it's significantly more than the pension and then saw them on the bottom section you'll see a total in that position your negative overall 24 million so your assets are sort of your liabilities and some of that's strategic that first line of the net position the net investment capital assets is negative and that's the results of taking that long-term debt with maybe shorter term assets or something that wasn't an asset long ago and so you get a little bit upside down in that and that doesn't hurt you from a rating perspective TJ's rating perspective but that bottom line that would unrestricted is the one that they want to be a it's a critical indicator that has to be positive now it's negative but they will allow you to

101add back the net pension liability net ability which are 27 million or 20 2016 so it gives you to a positive 6.6 once you add those back in so what what falls in that under unrestricted line item it's the net of all your assets liability so anything that's your your capital assets of your land your buildings your equipment okay less the debt related to that goes into that top line number the 8.3 million and then everything else which is kind of considered more of your operational ability to pay just meeting potatoes next year that's the unrestricted so really it's the pigeon liability and Obed that Turris negative on that one right okay cuz that's all coming right out of the operational side okay and that's why they let you add him back also because charter

102schools don't book those it's not this is a governmental requirement not it has to be requirement so that's why they let you add it back okay but that gives you the 6.6 million and we'll see that number just again it's kind of like the cushion that you're working with the new capitalization policy will help that too so when you when you continue to spend any kind of long-term debt light on significant technology purchases it'll prevent you from dipping into the under fictive line you'll be dipping into the net investment catalyzers which doesn't pursue for the first three so on then and that just slips at page 53 these your your budget comparison for the general fund which is what you guys do make decisions on in 2017 you've had a good year because you were

103able to collect on some insurance proceeds that helped when we the performance this year wasn't as good you'll see that third line from the bottom the actual column you dipped into the general fund 2.3 I'm not this is not news I know you guys are familiar with this the top of the revenues you were just little bit short of what your projections were but you were up 1.6 million over the year before mostly in taxes and then on the expenditure side you had 80 point five million now the 37 two lines above it is the recapture when you take that out you you're spending 17 to 18 increased 0.1% so it's almost completely flat that's good you don't take seriously the recapture really quick Mike you've explained this before but I feel like the where

104our projection missed on the revenue had to do with the property values didn't new love you thought they would especially for them this is a lot of appeals on property values for the current for five years yep where they refund back okay taxes to look at see appeals then okay which would probably be a large development or something yeah it was close to million dollars oh wow delinquent taxes that were refunded back that past year okay that's why we're okay and so bottom line for the general fund in the actual column you'll see your sixteen point eight and fine balance now the way that most people like to try to evaluate is that a good number not is to try to convert it into months of your operational expenditures and when you take out the

105recapture and some of the other non-cash items that are in there you're right at four point nine months at sixteen point eight million three to six months is the general rule of thumb six is considered clearly healthy three is kind of a don't go below line that I recommend there's some of them people up it might say two months but even that's a little bit scary mmm-hmm but you're at four point nine months you might ask what's the difference between four point nine in three months it's right at six point six million so ten point two million is three months of drop very small expenditures that's kind of the line of everything you wouldn't go below which gives you six point six in cushion which is the same number that's on the government wide statements

106that you're over being negative it's about six point six million so I know you're gonna be dipping into the fund balance again for nineteen and I think the number was somewhere in the million dollar range maybe so that you're you're probably not on the danger zone next year but obviously if you guys know this continues you might get into situations where you would fail the first rating and the first rating we kind of shared a brief calculation with the Audit Committee but you're probably not going to get this superior that you had in the past it doesn't really mean anything you spend bragging rights you're still gonna pass the standard but it's probably gonna be hard for you to get back she's superior based on the way that your financial statements are shaking out unless

107I kind of want to be clear about one thing - so you indicated that our expenditures if you back out check chapter 41 stuff parks finishes were essentially flat year-over-year yes right and so I think that's important to point out that we are managing our expenditures as tight as we possibly can and we're still losing ground on our financial standing because of how much money the state is taking for us right okay very fair statements and then the last page I was gonna touch on all of us there were any questions was on page 18 and that has their results were any other funds [Applause] and they'll see the second column shows the the debt service and you'll see the very bottom that's 2.2 million in it in a perfect world it was zero itself

108out you would be exactly what you need through debt would go right out the door for your debt but you have a little bit of cushion there so you have some opportunity and Mike and I discussed maybe looking at maybe cash refunding some of your lines and really trying to use some of that up and he's got some ideas on that and then right next to that's a couple projects fund that we 88 million left from the last bond issue and then the other non major of 19 as just under two million dollars which that number really hasn't changed much over the last ten years it's made up of your food service which is 265 thousand Campus Activities which is around 75 thousand and then you have some donation funds they kind of get front

109loaded at the beginning of the year and they have a little over fifty thousand now what are the restrictions on the debt service fund the balance that's in there I mean we can't just go buy school buses with that like what's the right it's left over is property taxes yeah and so you whenever you have a voter approved ed issue you can issue whatever you need - taxes to pay today yeah but that's all you can do with it okay so it has to be a this is an attorney question and I go back and work on us but it has to be on a voter approved debt if you pay off all your debt then you can use it on some other debts but I I've seen some people structure on capital leases and

110try to like buy buses to recommend release but I've had some attorneys say that's not your push it so I I don't know the exact role map but I would I would push your attorney on it but yeah that's the general rule is only for debt okay it's only four already existing dead or can we use it to take as that let's use a disservice well in order to get the new debt you have to figure out what method you can use it I know municipalities have specific obligation to think on issue without having to go to voters I don't I've heard districts are a little bit more hamstrung on that not sure but if you wait to get a voter a group bond you could tell them if you if you wanted to say

111get two million dollars bonds you could say prove this bond we have the debt service Charlie just paid me to pay for it you're not gonna raise taxes we have it that's an option okay or you can just refund and save say this one some cost exactly uh-huh where you wouldn't necessarily want to do this from a citizen stamp but you could skip a year on your is not a year of money part of a year obviously use that to pay the debt to but then that gives you the peaks and valleys like the tax rate people don't usually like yeah cool thank you anything about any other questions Thank You Phil thank you emotions are pretty good financial audit so mr. president or secretary did you discover yeah I think if we got to

112set it all right so next thank you we're gonna hear from Jimmy Walker I need to budget all right so relax enjoy some taper time that's what we're going to talk about required presentation talking about our taper data and so taper is te ankles together a wide range of data and sends it out in a PDF every year and it will be posted on our website we are going to have a conversation about the data rather than talk through it line by line because you do have access to it was in the workbook and it will present it posted online as well that's quick so once change for this year and I appreciate this change as there's still the paper taper which we will post but there is also an online database that we can

113pull front-end the answer are exact or get towards answering our research questions so one thing I do just want to point out about what we're going to talk about is so I approached it it said discussion so I preached it as a discussion so I'm not gonna talk about everything that's in there I'm pulling out the things that were the most enlightening like what we learned from them and pulling out things that left wonderings and things that pointed to work this yet to be done and taper gives us just raw data sometimes there might be a comparison here or a comparison group but it's fairly narrow in focus so several points along the way I'm going to talk about when I had a lingering question and I needed to go get other data the te8

114did not provide so it's to explain some the numbers so we'll talk through that so we're gonna start just by talking about overall district data then we'll talk about faculty then we're gonna spend a little bit of time talking about just high school data and then finally overall kids so here's our district enrollment over time you can see in 2015 we took a little bit of a drop of when we had some apartment buildings close but since then it's been adjusted a stair-step looking at our attendance rate so going out through all of this Alamo Heights will always be Duluth so just a heads up there um you'll notice that our attendance rate is higher than both our local comparison group in region 20 for the state and just a couple of things here just

115to brag on Susan Perry and her staff at Howard Chris and I do this equity report that we have to do every year in one piece of this federal report is looking at attendance rates and Howard's one's a little bit lower than the other schools so Susan took that on and put some things in place one being just instead of focusing on you need to school she approached it as like let's wash our hands let's stay healthy so we can't come to school which is a great approach approach secondary they always have folks who you can drop your kids off they were standing outside ten minutes after the bell she moved them in the bell rings they go in so now instead of having that little buffer where you could be late you're gonna be

116late park your car and walk your child in so that little change really into it was to find out that it really was just a handful of families that were really struggling with attendance so she reached out she learned their stories and is either emailing or calling them every week and is also beginning to say you know what I know it's not easy to get up and get going and get everyone here thank you for your work if you get your kids here all month we're gonna give you a little getting card to hed so you can get some on to go breakfast bars just to help out on those mornings so really approaching it through a partnership because we can have the best buildings and the best kids but if we don't have the

117students here it's all for naught so I really shout out to Howard and the good work they're doing to building some healthy habits but district demographics here we're looking at teachers compared to students in terms of different demographics there's quite a bit of research that says when a student does want to go find an adult to talk to they're most likely to look for someone that they think will understand their background and where they're coming from and be able to empathize with their situation so we do want demographics between teachers and students to be similar and for the most part they are we just have more Hispanic students than we do teachers but overall it's fairly aligned our elementary class size is the blue line the yellow is region 20 this is my grade level

118you can see that for the most part we're right in line with Texas the only difference really we're lower in candor in first and second grade and it's by one student in class size secondary class size is about where it's been for several years and there is a little bit of a difference there but it's our class sizes then study over several years so we're going to talk about teacher data now and when we look at this it tells us what we see from conversations in the grocery stores from notes that parents right it's just that we have highly experienced highly degree teachers and this is just a comment there from the big back in February just kind of putting it you can see compared to the region in Texas powers our teachers are their

119stellar they're rock stars okay numbers you'll probably have this I'm noticing that from our 11 to 20 years experience we've got 35 percent is that a number that has you saw that you saw that number started 1 to 5 and go to 6 to 10 and carrying this thing Oh caring teacher sir or is there a reason 11 to 20 is fairly stable like we've had teachers who've been with us for a while like I don't think that has gone up or gone down it's been fairly stable but this is I think what you're asking about is the turnover rate this we're getting so here you can see our part average salaries are higher than the region but this it's right there front and center is our turnover rate is lower than a region lower

120than our state and to me this is like you heard it from the teachers like they're invested in this community and we in turn invest in them through fair salaries and also leadership and learning opportunities so that's a really nice I do want to point something out coming you know I'm on the more business side of things to see that a teacher begins with 52 and basically ends with 66 $14,000 raise over a lifetime career to have kind of the culture that we have it on whites despite that is phenomenal I mean it really is just let me just speak to that for a second I was having a conversation at Frank to have a year where we froze salaries and we heard nothing yeah about that speaks to this culture like I was just

121premiered for questions the why behind it and there was have you gotten ahead of that is that why well they they understand and we do know expect the push value that goes with a salary salary West we have we have a high the highest base salary in there but again that's that's a base salary and it doesn't matter what you're making when you don't get in here right yeah Brady's tension that creates a bit of frustration or do you know so but yeah we are the highest a seller is Dylan okay well what's interesting is David's point about the over an entire career look at the state of Texas 47 up to 61 and then the legislature throws out of planning goes we'll just do a $5,000 across-the-board I mean that that's an incredible percentage

122fair dude there for rear yeah then when you look at it yes exactly so someone pulled that one out of a what do you think I'm shocked don't worry okay we're right there yes now we go so we've talked about overall district we talked about faculty now we're just in spending a bit of time talking about only high school data so we'll start by looking at our graduation rates and types and this is for your graduation number students who complete matriculate after four years we're hired and in our region higher than our state which is impressive but when you also look at the type of graduation that students are achieving we have eighty well over eighty point five percent of our graduates with distinguished achievement which means they taken the minimum done the additional science

123the additional math the two extra electives and an endorsement so an across the state of Texas only seventy-four percent of graduates in the state of Texas are graduating with that distinguished achievement and that's a state defined tag attractive what's an endorsement there's these different pathways like there's one that stem there's one that two manatees there's London's Fine Arts it's a continuing cluster that's all the same subject that's where the things came out of hospital five yeah session cetera so this is our PSAT score so this is 11th grader so that was last year's group 2017 ball for this year's seniors and you can see that this horse took a little bit of a dip from the 2017 cohort to the 2018 cohort SAT again we have two years of data partly because the SAT scoring

124changed we'd have our own data for multiple years but when the SAT changes that I'm having three areas to two we can't compare us fortune five years ago to this year because it's not an apples to apples comparison do you get percentiles or anything like that they can kind of well I've got it the u.s. comparison in just a second but that we do see a dip and this is one of those things we want to keep an eye on this but we know that data sometimes it can go up and down it's just it's a mean score you have a group of kids that are little bit lower can pull down your mean so we do want to watch this over time but this is what taper gives us is this piece but in

125order to see the bigger context like we have to go out and get more information so this is just pulled straight from college board and when you put this in context so 10% of our graduates scored at that top echelon of a 1,400 or higher on the SAT and if you put in that second tier of 1,200 that's if you couldn't do that's 41 percent of our students or of those taught to measure line like that's that's a strong performance when you also look at male and female comparison they're fairly equitable again that trend of looking at but that top tail of 14% that probably is about five kids so like we're seeing the males look a little higher but it isn't they're coming to watch when we look at the subgroup of our white

126students compared to Hispanic the students and the white subgroup tend to skew a little bit higher overall than the students in the Hispanic group which is again another thing to keep watching over time that's just to me to the conversations we have the kids that come back from school yep so we only had two years of SAT scores to compare to but when we look at a CT we can go back further and this is going to select each graduating class they're all achieving at a high level but some graduating classes maybe just a little stronger than others so you see the trend it's gone up and turned down but in 2012 our average a CT was at 23.9 and in 2018 it was also in 23.9 and the state has also stayed fairly stable

127but again we're significantly above the state average so there are a CT and our SAT scores are fairly comparable to some to our peers it's when we looked at our star scores that we may see some difference in it just a peer group but do we have schools we SAT and the thing is like you don't want to put all of your you don't want to only look at one number like you want to see this in a holistic look at everything together so we have SAT a CT this is looking at AP scores so this is the percentage of students who scored a three or higher so not the percentage of exams a percentage of students and again over time it's 70 to 80 to 79 80 so 80% of our kids that took

128an AP exam got a three or higher on at least one exam so last year we had 510 students taking AP the year prior 5 111 again it's impressive that it's above state and even global which is the green but I do want to point out like this is an opportunity because of 80% of our kids earned AP credit 20 percent did not and that equates to 102 students they need a 102 students motivated stayed in the class and didn't earn the credit so that's an opportunity of what if this wasn't a good match for them is there something else we could provide that would give students that bridge so when they step out of high school they're stepping on to buy a college credit I have to do it reddit I have something else

129is that I can't recall but I feel like in my experience that some schools would only accept AP credit it was 4 or higher some universities not Texas in my observation experience there's kids that take that AP test and don't even prepare for it and they're just looking for the experience of having had a college level class they don't put a lot of personal freshmen themselves so and I don't I guess what I would say is I wouldn't want to discourage those kind of students from taking the test and from continuing the course I absolutely key but I 102 is a law there's some kiddos in there that worked really hard in dinner yeah yeah yeah so so can we support them more I love that money because what we do and this is just

130the percentage of kids that have earned 9 or plus credits in any subject or 3 in language arts and math so we're below the region in Texas and the amount of dual credit our students are walking so we are actively pursuing additional partnerships and courses to see if we can't increase that because some kids like that group of 102 there's kids in there who will do the work but when their whole credit in jizan one test one day yeah this might be another match do you have data for this too or a again a camera how it works but if we have dual credit classes then we're gonna have a percent of our classes that are dual credit or a number how does that number how do those opportunities live to reason 20 and also

131to Texas right so if they're getting completely like if region 20 in Texas are providing so many more opportunities for students to get a dual credit is that a reason for the discrepancy i I think we have spent a lot of time with AP and put a lot of focus on AP and I feel like at least a while back where the credit was coming from was not credit that my other kids that all universities would take so it was kind of like don't you don't need to do dual credit because you're gonna probably not go to a university I would accept that so we're pursuing partnerships with the University of Texas at all from class yeah that says application we're here University cool yeah the other thing that I think just is a back

132to last few years you've heard us talk about Early College High School's that's what they're doing yeah so just the fact that there were more Early College High School's mathematically more opportunities to do operating in those settings yeah and we don't want to work do not get me say we want to replace a team like that is a great option and kids who smoke I can't even get to credits like they ain't given 1301 and 1302 on something unfortunately that's right that's right another area where we so a coherent core sequence is three courses in a lock in alignment in a specific area with the idea that if you've taken three culinary arts classes you're well to get a job in that industry so this is something that we want we want to grow and

133when we look at industry certifications that's another area looking for things that we can easily embed into our curriculum or grow into that will again help our students when they walk out they already have the door partly opening because they're walking in with some credentials or some of the like the computer classes that cutting classes is that align them together thank you you go here I'm curious about a mindful that when Kat was presenting a lot of information to us she was basically like I have to do my job and then try to figure out all this information that you're asking of me and so I'm wondering if you go back to like the side you were just on where it's like we want to improve these things so then I'm kind of feeling it's

134a team of Jimmy that's expanded we're needed but like whose job is it to figure out this is where our classes line up with industry certifications or these are the things that we can provide so I have more squarely we had we brought over a consultant for region 20 who's a Career and Technical Specialist and she looked at our current course offerings and this was with Venus Davis who's the Dean and Carter who's a longtime CTE teacher and it was like putting a puzzle together their probe we've got this we've got this if we add here and so we mapped out a five-year plan like this year we had an incubator I'm sure and now we've added a new business English also but accelerator that gives us a coherent sequence so in some places it's

135just a minor little tweak in other places we really need to build it out so but it'll take us some time involves getting sure what you start lining it you mean like the rocketry program that first year they learn welding they learn machining right and machining is a skill that did you choose not to go to college I mean that's a great living for a job you can have ordering yeah security certification yeah there certainly are in the tech there are certain specific certifications that our kids could walk out with that well yeah what does kids good winning thought off to the national Patriot high school ladies look at star data look at it overall and then drill down into a couple specific content areas so overall we can see that's so I do want

136to point out that star sports are divided into approaches which is kind of your eating up to expectations but you're not quite there meats is you've met grade-level expectations and masters is you seat it so when it says at approaches for above I mean the masters masters no excuse me I'm good muscle add approaches includes meet semester thank you fully good so you can see that we went out from last year this year and again compared to the region of Texas it's in solid when we did Drake you guys play we dig into science we see the trend is a little bit different so we see that our scores did go down and that's that space in between our local comparison group in Texas isn't quite as high mm-hmm so what taper does not tell

137us is what do we do with this information how do we tell teachers who are already working incredibly hard do more just just do better so we can drill into the scores from a curriculum point of view to find out a little bit what becomes very simple so in this my first thought was maybe we have a Content area like there's one content area that's really trippin kids up and if there wasn't there's not one singular piece to point to but science has with content it's often dual coded with a process skill which means what are kids doing with this content so if you look at our lowest scoring process skills in fifth grade analyze and interpret information to extrapolate explanations eighth grade lowest scoring analyze data to formulate reasonable explanations and predict trends and

138in biology high school analyze evaluate make inferences and predict trends and the science questions on star had that process over fifty percent of the time so that's content what we need to focus on isn't so much teaching more content it's what we're asking students to do noticing with that content exact right using an inquiry method as opposed to here's some notes learn this or some like that's that's the direction we need to continue to push our teachers and this is actionable beyond science right like this is actionable across every class well those are the skills they'll carry their whole lives you know the data will change over time but if they learn how to analyze them interpret and don't be surprised because to me that's kind of the essence of critical thinking yes so what

139I would say is you're making assumptions about what that looks like on a test mmm I would love for us to put some of the best test questions in front of you yeah for you - my parents are gonna know tonight yeah but there was also are you gonna get to math so to me that's also probably because it's numbers and reflective of the same thing you know even if it's not numbers it's the processes and the analyzing requires thinking about things that way now I know it can be excessive Mexico I am losing my spot I mean that what I thought we were well that may be not the content regurgitation which may be other school suppression I mean that's just my personally that's what I was not that may be archives of scoring

140lower because we're just not fish am just show me content that it will address in this think critically so I thought that would the process standards across the board in science get every school across the state yeah we were school that word that means we've moved to process standards yeah we've seen that across the board because it never has been it's not always been a better process then we're lower than or we are either at or below the state level in several of the especially in the higher performing students is where I saw it at that masters yeah and I was like wow that's concerning to me yeah so I don't I mean so we are doing where something's going wrong right that's different in this state absolutely it's being addressed the blueprint absolutely can

141we do more yes so I think that we've come far there's still work to do that's not we're not there yet like it's that aha moment if we're not there yet we're doing good work but we're just not I think what I want to make sure we're thinking about and I do really appreciate that you're able to drill down into the nitty-gritty to say the the whys and where's this business specifically is are we doing something with the way we're shifting that is leading to this result you know is something that we're doing because I because this is not the way we were that we weren't we are we're always ahead of the state much higher than the state now know the star test has changed but still yeah everybody's taking it we're still comparing

142ourselves to the state so I think I'm surprised as well I would agree with that and that was where my thinking when I thought I make sure we're thinking it through that way are we doing something that our that our kids are not thinking is critically and is deeply about these kinds of days and question those are all great things keep those because that curiosity or that no surprised by that take that into our grading conversation and we'll start talking about this grading stuff because one of the things we were talking about we had a grading thing on Friday the 14th was so when we're talking about grading being accurate that means I gave you some assess I taught you something and I assessed you and what I'm giving you feedback on is how well

143did you do that so that my great if you got a name you're gonna be it's relative to mastering that skill right and so as we start talking more about grades we're gonna be talking more about standards we talked about stain what do we want ninety four so keep all of that as we go into this learning conversation right is we could have just stayed right here on this nice little yellow slide have been like congratulations to us yeah we did you know better than the state and our little comparison group but that's not who we are like we are looking for the pieces where we don't shine so that we can't polish them up and get better yeah like so absolutely that's to me a good thank you when we look at math and

144then this is again when we look at our local group it's it's strong when we look at some peer comparable groups we do begin to see some areas of needed focus so for this one instead of looking at process oh my gosh I don't have your middle read this but what I did is I took the individual teks and I looked for our lowest wearing teats over the last three years so not just a standard that we didn't do well one year but something that year after year group after group has been a low scoring standard and then by looking at those and looking at this vertical alignment one of the things I'm I really like about the way Dana realize and the curriculum offices before in my position I would have stopped at fourth

145grade but now it's looking at where are we seeing these gaps in a vertical way because when we look at some of these limits and this is just one example of a pattern so in fourth grade the standard was represent multi-step problems involving four operations but it says in an equation with a letter for an unknown quantity that was a low scoring objective for three years kids who did not Matthew that in sixth grade model and solve one-step equations and inequalities representing problems like you can see how having a hole in the bucket and fourth grade could lend itself to now you're struggling in sixth grade we take it to a low scoring standard in algebra solve linear equations in one variable think now you're adding the distributive property onto it so being able to

146see how these can play out over time is helpful the other thing is doing something about it so in fifth grades they're piloting this year a new math screener and what's nice about this enough and that is that it is adaptive you get it right it goes higher you get it wrong it goes down and it's all tied to the teks so at the end a teacher who before would have been like wow this child struggling in sixth grade I'm just gonna keep giving them more sixth grade work like I'm just gonna keep stay here this report now shows there was a gap here there was a gap here in this fourth grade snow there was a gap in this second grade scale and telling you exactly what the standard is so that you can

147go appe instead of just more of this I need to go here I need to scaffold and this is showing you where to scaffold and that's it's an incredibly robust tool that'll be helpful for teachers so through that that was taker time non again this is again another shameless plug but also for our community based accountability because if we had just lived this paper presentation with what the state gives us again it's at most one year and it's not a very large comparison group so we're excited that we get to expand it and our own community base is kind of like to include things that we're carrying stuff wellness can I have a question on the campus to improve their plans that were in there and I was so impressed with some of them like

148they've got a laundry list of goals that you know some of the campuses are tackling I know those go up to the district design team and they're talked about there I mean how do we how do we use these to the DES if it's district improvement plan you think campus design campus improvement plans for this campus site piece okay so that's who's kind of saying check we're doing this or hey we got off track or you're not doing it cuz that's just some of those looked pretty daunting to me okay yeah that's one of the really administrators working it and then they get together well some campuses are tighter than others I'll say probably the high school tightest that includes them yeah but you know that's that's where that sits Kennedy you see it's like

149the districts that needs to let's run it over one of the meetings that we go through needs assessment piece and kind of monitoring at that point those meetings okay so the time line is such that we ask the principal's to have conversations with the site based teams at the end of the school year like made you and then to say okay this is how be your win this is the needs assessment these are the things that we think we should be tackling to put in that plan and then when we meet in our summer administrative summit which is August in the summer time we all get together we break we kind of do like little design reviews of each campus and then when they come out of that based on our feedback finalize it for

150usually as we haven't done by September 15 sometimes 30th so they have one more chance to check in with your site based business cycle just you know 20-something on 28s cold taper questions real quick so like they have at the demographic kind of summer and this might be a plug for Chris but it's also interesting a notice right that our students with autism and students with behavioral disabilities are percentages are significantly above the state yeah in those categories and I'm thinking it's because we have a good program and so people want to be here but from a staffing perspective which you guys are where we got to figure that sucker out the question I had was on at-risk what what is it because we have economically disadvantaged at 21% which I think a lot of

151people outside this commute would be shocked to know that but then at-risk students at 30% what does that mean so there's a list of 13 right 13 different criteria and it's some of us they failed a star test in a prior year in kindergarten it could be they did not do well on an early reading screener but it also includes things like homelessness it includes pregnancy it includes what else is on there so what are they at risk of at risk of not not graduating brogre minutes saying these are if they were just at risk founders if they were retained almost every category for that for the economic disadvantaged went up I mean this year if that's the cases in terrestrial note that we have a 30% at-risk population but we still graduate in 96

152or 98% of our kids on a four-year basis so that's I mean yeah I don't know if it's captured anywhere but that's that's a great thing yeah so David I had an aha when she's tracking the data of the kids that come into counseling and so many of those counseling visits were for Social Work and did you have that updated that number I was so like this state numbers for those categories are sobering you know very similar economically disadvantaged and all that it's like half the population in it have students in the state yeah now my Cletus is ma'am I think it was fifties 58% no I mean it that's how we that's what that's like it looks like a tipping point where you're like where when are we not gonna be able to handle

153this population a almost 60 percent economically just what I think the big thing is if we're not is it as a as a state we're not educating them well it's okay for them to be economically disadvantaged the question is are we empowering them to get out of that right are we are we taking the care to say we're gonna equip you and empower you and make you encourage you to do something you've never done before well as a state I think that's where then if you go to those demographic presentations that come that's yeah that's what they'll tell you all right look there's it's it's kind of been hearing kind of stuff yep I think that it's that high at a time when our state overall has done so well Devine is rolling out of

154state level just like we're seeing nationally and I think it's worth pointing out to that and all the grades that are reported our class sizes are bigger than the state average yes they're significantly yeah yeah what and again these remind you that was a purposeful decision yeah budget Advisory Committee yes we maintain that the quality of our teachers that they can handle it and still Rio takes the class when they have ten more kids in there that's too much well the fact that the decision as opposed to we're just victims of circumstances yeah I like that and you just watch the trend in very much next we will have the presentation of the Heights Independent School District 2019 legislated prairies by Dana Bashir okay and I would just say that committee and Frank has had

155some evidence was to see all chime in if I go but when I share this the groups it's nice to have a metaphor about school finance I've not shared this table to you raging in Texas that's together some of you have been in presentations where anything to share this so this is a two minute little clip that it helps provide a little so mmm play it [Music] there's been a lot of talk about how the Texas public school finance system wants to be based but what's wrong with the current system let's take a look this system supports more than 5.3 million students 57 tons of campuses and 1,200 school districts and charters it's complex but understanding the basics and why it isn't working is relatively simple think of funding schools in Texas as filling up

156a glass the size of the glass represents the amount of money system uses to educate all of our students Texas gives the state legislature the responsibility to decide how big the glass is and how it gets built funding education is a shared commitment between local property tax payers and the state when the mine in Texas school funding system was created in 1993 state and local contributions were roughly even this shared responsibility felt a breaks hands pair as property values in Texas began pricing after the 2008 financial crisis however the state's years started to decline in 2019 the state share is protected to pay only 38% and it will continue to decline to historic lows without significant change this decline has saved the state billions of dollars in retirement savings that could back into our public

157service so how does this affect Texas taxpayers it means the state is relying more on local taxes to find a public schools it also means when your property increases in value and your Texas rise your public schools don't see the additional benefit wait that is a same rate doesn't shouldn't money intended for schools stay in our schools if the state saves billions from increased of local property taxes shouldn't that cities go to improve and expand student programs and even teachers know instead that savings is going to other things in the state budget while spending on Texas students remains flat despite higher expectations and rising costs that also doesn't sleep great does it so what's the solution money intended for our schools should stay in our schools the state should invest in working on programs teachers

158and students their future our state's future is worth every penny Foundation and they tweeted now and I've used it a couple PTO meeting so it's important for us to talk about for capture right in your province and so when you think about the cup we raise enough in property taxes that we fill up the cup and have money that's a liquid that's not going over right and so that's just the visual that's the metaphor that we need that I think is a huge and so as we're talking through legislative priorities I think it's easiest to start with that second priority that's identified logistical working to ensure funding meets student needs and so if we use that metaphor of the cup we heard from the video that that in 1993 that there was an equal share

159of state funding and local property that name at that time in there was about 36% but just that over time the state funding is diminished and word about 38% of state funding at the and so the fill of the cup happens through recapture from chapter 41 of districts right and so but this so there's two issues in that Brown lines it's the power up is they fill the percentage of what we're contributing to that basic allotment to all of their school districts but it's also the essential size of the cup right it's it's that the adequacy piece for all schools in Texas and so that's what we're trying to get across with this priority it's just something has to happen for the size of the cup that percentage of what the contribution of the state

160is and so you know we alluded to this today just talking about big numbers they're being thrown around right now in Austin we hear about $5,000 pay raises for teachers and that sounds appealing you know but that's not money that goes to meeting the basic needs of students that's not money that goes to this basic allotment and so it's really important for our community to understand the size of the cup and the fact that that cup needs to be increased before we're talking about they say pay increases to teachers that makes sense not that anyone around this table does not think that teacher pay increase needs to change but we just need local discretion about how we do that well and what they would probably do is the format they would adjust how the levels

161to that that $5,000 is looks like they gave of it gave it but we actually did that pain yeah yeah they would still coin they Tim one recapture defined their obligation yes so we yeah you know that I got nurse thing to talk about that and then that that helps us transition to the top right it is listed on our page and that's reducing the harmful effects of robin hood recapture on local property tax fear in schools to the situation that we're in right now a second year of deficit budget situation causing us to freeze salaries because the recapture rate has just grown exponentially over the years right we're at a 58% recapture rate right now we know that back in 2003 when Robin Hood came fact there were there are evil forceful districts that

162were property wealthy over time that is again just grown that was not the intent of that let's see I've got I want to make sure that I'm quoting the right numbers favorite right now there do we hit her in 71 property wealthy school districts that are helping with that overflow of pickup injecting back into the fill of other property of other school districts basic allotment and so right now this year those property wealthy school districts are contributing two point six billion dollars in to the funding for other school districts and we just know that that is personally for our high screen incredible hardship for us this recapture more than double in the last five years and we know that it is predicted that by 2020 21 there will be thirty eight million dollars if something

163is not done and recapture that will be contributed to by their school districts with recapture and so how what can be done to change the percentage of recapture right it's the change of the basic allotment and so it's changing the size of the cap right and so it goes back to that priority line and so then if we move down the sheet to number four eight and governance and clarity for age is D taxpayers it's important that local governance related to our taxes remain with our local school board there's a lot of time right now about property tax reform and that's get a lot of momentum and a lot of attention but we know that our community has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive of our decisions as a trustee and local board when we have

164levy taxes our last tax ratification election was passed by eighty percent approval rate and we think it's important that it's just decisions are made at a local accountability place we also mentioned on this priority the importance of tax parentsí but our local tax payers texting mix so that they understand or they amount of money that's coming to the school district and the amount of money that's being sent to the state there's actually been a bill that's been filed that doesn't mean no word yeah when they drop their testing yeah and so again there's a there's a house representative that is filed a bill and we're waiting to see if there's someone in the Senate that picks that up so the fourth priority is about taxpayer funds and for public education staying within school district and

165that simply stated that we lose money for every student that leaves the school district and goes to a charter school we know that there is not the accountability at the local level like we have where the board of trustees and charter schools are here to stay you know we know that it's important to stop the expansion of charter schools until there's some kind of accountability that's put in place and to try to limit what's being in the money that leaves our school district and then the next one is about local accountability and what I would say is that in Iowa high sweet embrace accountability I would say accountability is the catalyst for action the results that we want to see in the classroom for our kids but to us it's not all about star scores

166it's about a PBS course it's about ap enrollment it's about SAT scores and a CT scores it's about common curriculum based assessments that our teachers put together and it's about local performance assessments and we're looked at across the state because of the work we're doing with our learner profile and the way that we're measuring there's 21st century skills through panorama data that's what's important our community and we think that it's important that that ADA F system be repealed so that we can develop our own community based accountability system that really upholds the values of our community and measures the high standards for student performance it's interesting to me to know without without like picking which ideology is correct that there are so many people who identify with a conservative or libertarian ideology but when they

167get to Austin they want to tell everybody what to do I mean it's so interesting it's like what change between you moving the Austin or don't you trust us to run our own lives No so yeah it's fascinating you see there's about that distance thing yeah that we talked some more blur or power away how are those two people maybe how that's really interesting because I feel like if if you were to say why don't we let Washington DC run Texas like Texas runs the school districts everybody wants me to freak out they would say no way in the world well then why are you doing that to school districts yeah like it's just anyway I just think that's interesting about and so the last one is about support for our teachers we know that

168none of important work that we do in our classrooms can be done without that high quality faculty and staff and we know the hardship of increased premiums and healthcare and you know the worry that they carry around because of the their pensions in retirement at the state level and we think that it's important that there's increased state funding dedicated both to TRS active here but also to tears retirement in the TRS care plan and so we thought that it was important to put that explicitly in writing as a priority as well and so I'll just tell you there's a lot of momentum we're already sensing the the new Speaker of the House already identified the committee's and we were excited Steve Allison it's been placed on the public education committee and I like to know

169that since I had a conversation with him today he's excited about that and that's that was a speaker appointment and so that's good for us i sense because of that we actually will be tapped as a board to have lots of conversation and presence there possibly so I also sent to you all yesterday and the research report the survey record about the Texas public education perception hall that raise your hand Texas and so this this to really creates some context for the pressure that the legislators are feeling right now to be responsive about public education and doing something about school finance Pam I want to give him one anecdote about the recapture that I thought of one we were getting her audit report and Mike you might have to correct me if I get my

170numbers wrong but since I have been on the school board I don't remember how many years ago it was now when recapture went our recapture numbers start rolled over higher than the amount we pay teachers it was never about that until what four years ago or five maybe so since I've been on school board and now I believe the audit report said our teacher salaried line item was 26 so it's divorce it and the recapture my name is 37 yeah I mean that's huge and that's just an old-school thinking about a lot I went to this thing was down at the coral and I was about public education and there was there was a bunch of superintendents on a stage and they're talking and they were they were hitting the stage for this rightfully so

171and then a business person pretty big business kind of community yes so what we're talking about here is the allotments not high enough so what is the right size and the superintendent's didn't answer it and it did go he got back it's just you know they've morphed an answer and just we're just not getting enough money and it it it kind of - he feels no one is not going to be able to support something that's more fade and so yeah I know I talked to you about this but I just feel like we would always public school advocates being of some favors we help guide the business community here's the allotment yeah here's what we think it should be so here's the gap and because I really saw this very successful businessperson and just

172kind of out yeah like now that guy was working before but in a budget meeting we just have awaited okay but he can't have big meeting so that was definitely bang and I know I know that's hard to do because I'm just always wondering it a way to get a business community support is play that right so it's part of the answer that we would like to see the state share in 50 percent the funding of a school it's an easy answer to go back to the 50-50 yeah I'm sure but if they keep up small this coalition I mean some networks and I share this with John look at the cost of inflation since 2010 and take it back from there and see where we are right now and try to give us a

173number of what that looks like it's an extraordinary number right it's like yeah you know she was saying like that's not actually reasonable to even ask for well couple thousand dollars but but what about the part in a picture that has been Baloo at the talk with there's straw was sucking it out that she would that that would make a huge difference to I mean that's the money that people are kind of willingly giving with their taxes but that's line being used for schools so can we get that back I mean if we could just get that back that would make a huge difference right there know that big chunk they don't I can get to this point about no and yeah so the number that they came up with just sue did you say

174that it doesn't again sink to the like break this number down for me and that's what you're trying to get at is there's a straight billion dollars over the biennium I guess the thing that's always bugging me about this is it and it's its rightful complaining but there's not a I'd say here's what we're trying to get you good that that is a business person we have a subsidiary in there so you're only giving us X million knowledge we need Y knowing at least now we know what I'm dealing with you know it's a definite and I was worried that the politicians like what we would give a little bit they're gonna just keep coming back all right because we don't know whether you know it's a big part of the answer is governments because

175I want to be able to say the school district should have as much money as the local citizens vote right like it's some level looks like if the how much community decides we want to be taxed at seventy million dollars for a school district then we all agree with right so why there's a tension but after your point because it's rigor mortis like we don't any more money yeah one of the things jump that I noticed it was you guys follow the desk so when when Abbott created the Commission and it was a Halloween Commission they did all this work with had we actually learned a lot and it was a it was a constructive position one of the things that some folks wanted to do on the Commission but they chose not what they

176said the number right now right because when you think about it we are we are all bunch of different districts and it's like he said we might have one number somebody else might have another member but the constitutional right to an educated into an education is a state thing and so some of these legislatures the committee said well then we should set a number like we should study the cost of education and we should set it up and so that question that the business side is asking is in general what some folks have said what the legislatures need to do first and so we can give them input but ultimately the answer to the question is a legislative answer because that's what's guaranteeing that public education I'm sorry because nobody wants to do it because

177it's politically fraught once you set one number we're using numbers now from that you know not just like to did but it can be together back in 2005 huh economist from the Fed they had put together parties the cost of education they gave them the number in the state said we can't blow that yeah yeah I guess to me is a nicely after that like it just be from the business community which i think is such a cute part of it it's to get David I awarded there wasn't worth it here's how much is needed here it is it's not put the pressure on the legislation she's like this is not what it takes well can we have D if we could find that report and it was done enough I've we could use you

178know the yeah living inflation whatever in here it was it was a high number I was per student you know there was amazing I saw a very successful smart businessperson trying to climb this mountain of understanding and they just swept down all right but we're gonna I'm gonna back that up just in a in a weird way like you mentioned the business community if you remember the tension about the bathroom bill the only reason that failed us because AT&T and everybody else said if you pass this bill gone right and so like galvanizing the business community is almost the only way to get these folks in Austin and make a freaking decision because they're all intimidated by all the big corporations here they're gonna say hey no problem moving to Oklahoma we'll move to Georgia

179they have great loss for corporations we'll just move there and I think Alana's got a great Airport and so I think it's a good a good point if the business community says we need this and then we'll start advocating yeah give him something that program I told you hold out that I went to where the technical the this you could the last two years of your high school you could get trained for these technical careers you know remember I can about that like that was driven by the business community needing people that are employable and that's what I us taking and so they want as an educated population that you'd be thinking of that to do their stature so what does it cost us to educate the student realistically that's the hard part right plus

180a lot less than you know what is charter school we send $7,500 to them per student because that would be the late legislative a lot of number is that were required to send it's like a 34 I mean the last time we checked it who say it's almost a million dollar sir so I didn't want to give up track it just below that Eric Doty was slated through that you know Jonathan get out the way to make the work we just just feel like there's a the other thing I think the businesses need to understand and I think it's still an issue is that charter schools don't have a tax base and so if they go belly-up we're all as a state gonna end up fixing that problem when and if that happens am i

181right I think they're not going belly-up because they're in the pocket of the legislature if a school fails and they've taken out loans for something they're not backed by a tax base the way we are yeah so do nothing and I mean I think it's a big issue since it's a growing since that system is growing yeah I'd be a lot more careful they're less governor there yeah I thinking on a lot of dead and when it does collapse S&L crisis or let them go like that and they and the last thing we and who it's a reporter alright but I do think I get challenged I think that we're not at the point he's right I think we ought to come up with numbers I would calculate them every way y'all have suggested and

182even if your approach is just if we had followed inflation this is what the number would be there's no way we can actually do that but it is what people ought to know that yeah other industries and I'm for his numbers I think does give folks something to shoot there's more so these are considered routine history used and discussed so I'd like to ask the board to review the items and see if there are any I know I pull from the consent agenda to put on regular engine agenda any items so do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda any motion carries next we have our board committee reports so Ryan is going to report on that school foundation I have got a lot to talk about none of you want to hear

183it oh actually we met last week everything was rosy and happy Frank did a heck of a job Dana I would not let him in your seat again pretty frightening but they're doing great I mean greater height tonight they're still in the glow of that they're now shifting to the teacher fund so they'll start that but they're already at 80 percent of their annual goal of a million I mean they are they are filling it so yeah there wasn't anything else so we've met a couple times before Christmas to talk about the Athletic Complex following that meeting over the holidays early January we've redesigned it to bring the scope down just a little bit to bring the cost in line with what we were allocating to spin on it so we're in a better shape

184there did a lot of value-added engineering swap things out so hang on out to video yet but we're looking in good shape on the design they're starting to consider design for the natatorium and I think we've had preliminary conversations with our contractors that show that it's gonna come in about in line with what we're budgeting and that's a very recent development but sorry feeling generally ok with that too I've also asked Mike to report to Dana and she asked Mike to report to us on interest that we make off any more funds because that is money in the bank that's not projected anything where you're like we might get this buy back we might not and so that's helping us budget a little bit to make sure that we are using taxpayer money appropriately in

185to its fullest extent so that's basically what I got it zoning committee would like to supplement that trustee election so do I have a motion to approve the call to the Board of Trustees election on May 4th 2019 I think that should be John's actually further discussion I will let y'all know that I've served one term I intend to serve a second but so I've followed but we'll see what happens yeah the motion carries next we have a consideration of the approval of the County elections contract districts school districts are required to have joint elections with cities but all the cities contract with the county so this is a agreement with the county to cover the elections Thomas doesn't cost us again when green beans in the odd-numbered years it's less because the county also

186has elections then even number years the county doesn't have is there any change in the last year's okay all right okay so I also scheduled a Cambridge Fine Arts Building walk through just for us to lose it and I scheduled it on on lunchtime thinking that might be a good time for you all to just come by for a quick walk okay if for some reason that doesn't work for you you can reach up another time the first just doing it I'm flicking out brown check does it seem like well who do you pick up a hammer he said what I will say is if it is raining that day oh yeah so okay you know a little rage so we get speakers from the drive to get into the building else can flip you

187out of the rest your community I could think I think I can be anything is that a posted meaning that we have to do we're in this okay and then Mike I'd love to do it before the bullying committee I just can't do it on Friday the first so when you get a chance key just submit your calendars either before the first earth or Monday or Tuesday the following the active Thursday or Wednesday or Thursday yeah before that yeah David I'm assuming you've already looked at the pathetic date for building a minute yes okay all right in the other gun thing it means you shouldn't go cats go that's it second all right nothing else there okay so next up is our superintendent communications about the greetings of interesting yes so you all had problems

188learning to presentation on this someone spent much time before the two viewers I let everybody know that we had a community learning symposium attended by and it was a great day where we really looked at the outcomes in our learner profile and have a discussion about whether or not our current grading practices support the outcomes that we want that was the big overarching goal and it was a great day for us and our takeaway is that we really need to replicate that experience so that's kind of where we're gonna go poor Jimmy is chomping at the bit to take over my superintendent community how much better than I've seen so let me get through my talking points and then I'll let you clean up okay our goal coming out of this is to make sure

189that we have clearly articulated grading procedures for all of our students and for all of our our parents get parents really it's important and then also that our grades accurately reflect a measurement of student progress of growth and so those are big goals and and we will do that that day I spent the beginning kind of opening up the conversation and just explains the participants that the day was about collaboration because we know that when we attend a big learning pieces like that it's really important to attend at the different perspectives we had parents we had students with us we had administrators and we had teachers from all the different campuses and it was important to anchor our work in the growth mindset and understand that none of us had all the answers but it

190was also a day that was about process and it was one small step in a big process similar to the work that we did with the strategic planning and similar to work we had done with the learner profile and so we're gonna have a lot of steps in a big process to get to the results that we wanted we're gonna go slow to go fast with this together and we worked with a consultant his name is Tom swimmer swimmer swimmer and Katie just was outstanding he was really able to push them as participants and and put all of the and I when I talk about grading I say that it's a sacred place you're gonna enter into a sacred place because everybody has really strong feelings about grades we have our own experience you know

191being graded most of us in that room were craters at one time and so it's a sacred place of feelings and we needed to attend to that but the outcome at the end of the day we were asked to really identify in small groups three action items that we felt were really important to attend to by the end of this year two action items looking down into gear one as we would roll this out and then one big wish as a as a district and so that was powerful and what I'll tell you is what we're committing to is again opening this up for more community members teachers administrators and parents students in April we're gonna replicate that experience because we have heard some feedback that more people wanted me involved in those conversations but

192we are going to anchor ourselves in what he calls a TrueNorth kind of philosophy about grading that will help us align our practices and we're making the commitment to saying that that will be on the table for the start of the school year for next year and I'm really commending Jimmy for sting in this job after we're saying never gonna commit I think it's really important it was something I talked to her early on about when I realized cabinet and she said yeah I'm up to this so appreciate you go ahead and clean up Jimmy I would also dates are April 15th you'll remember that it's tax day so April 15th and the 16th it's the same program every day so you don't have to come either day but please it really was them just

193like what you guys were there at the safety presentation like you need to know the information but it's also being there side by side with our teachers and our students but the powerful experience you could read book but you won't get the experience the evident thing of my brag about is so mr. shimmer of Hong Kong shimmer shimmer and she was so impressed with the experience of having the parents the students that teachers the administrators and but he was he didn't tell me at the time he's like I was really nervous um but it went so well that they're now looking at developing a whole training based on that model well so like that it worked yeah it worked and that's really like where we know that at the end we want to be doing

194this side-by-side with parents with students so that's the way we're beginning and so community would reject aureum so we have a little more space where exactly look at what times so early to do it our students for these other I'm sorry thing demos juices yeah okay and what I would tell you all is if you cannot can you commit to the whole day that's okay wait insert yourself yes as you are able 1 2 3 if you can be Gilligan but if you can come a French knock of the morning it's just any part of it I hadn't believed a couple times to be on conference calls for things I don't know it's just really powerful anything oh yes if you come what you met him 8 how it is it was it eight to

195three thirty yeah it was eight to four and actually we didn't walk out of there thirty but the one you're scheduling is erupted at 3:30 got it okay okay even the fifteenth or the six link okay the morning is like the heavy-duty learning the afternoon is kind of reflection planning and as data was saying the three wants wishes okay would you check next I guess now we're gonna go into a second so if there's no objections take a short break before entering into things that the obsession that protects us government code section five bucks Sears air so why inverters