Arlington ISD Board of Trustees Meeting - May 21, 2026

001Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Heat. Good enough. down. Hey, hey. Yeah. Hey. Hey, hey. Heat. Hey, Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. up. Bring it up. Heat. Heat. Hey, Heat. Heat. Hallelujah. There you go. >> Do I need this? >> Yep. >> Love that. At this time, I would like to convene the Arlington Independent School District Board of Trustees Workshop meeting on May 21st, 2026 at 5:33 p.m. Given that at this given that this is a workshop for our trustees and there are no items on the agenda for action, we will not have public comments this evening. Um, before we begin, I wanted to go ahead and point out we do have a few a couple trustees missing. Um tonight Trusty McMurro is attending her son's sixth grade graduation and

002hopes to join us at some point this evening. And then Trustee Chapa is also at end of year activities um for his uh student and so he will also be joining us. Um for tonight's agenda, the first workshop item this evening is our Joshua population and survey analyst demographer report. >> Trustees, thank you for being here two nights in a row. appreciate a good meeting last night and then tonight a really great meeting with some guests here. Uh in the first portion of the meeting we'll be going over our demographic study with uh PASA uh Chris Pool and Caroline Crouch are here tonight to walk us through their study of Arlington ISD. We are doing it in here to make sure that we have um a really good recording. We know this is super important

003information for not only you all but for our community moving forward and we wanted to make sure we got a good recording and also had the ability to have clear microphone access for everyone when we use the other rooms. Sometimes we don't. Um we are going to be in here for this but we encourage you all to treat this as a workshop. We want this to be as much dialogue as possible. This is a great time to hear these experts and what they found for Arlington ISD on our uh demographic study and to ask them as many questions as you can. That doesn't mean that they won't come back. I know that they'll come back if we need them to come back and answer more questions in the future, but please um make sure that

004we uh ask questions along the way. We will um I think Frank and then will help us out in a minute. We're going to make sure that everybody's microphone is on so that um you have just um access to interject and ask questions along the way. And with that, I'll turn it over to Chris and Caroline. Thank you all for being here tonight. >> Thank you very much. Got to make sure that mine's on. Sounds like it. So, uh good evening, uh board members and Dr. Smith. We appreciate the opportunity to be here tonight. Uh we hope to walk through a little bit about that 400page binder. I think everybody's got a copy of the binder there in front of you. don't want you to read it all tonight before you go to bed. Um,

005we have actually shrunk the size of our binders and printed them both front and back and everything and we were so proud about how it seemed much more user friendly until we got to Arlington and then it weighs 12 pounds or something. So anyway, so we're going to walk through the presentation tonight. I do have Caroline Couch here. She is the demographer that worked on um some of the housing projections for the study. And so we are going to try to take some time with it because there's a lot of detail to it. We could really get into a lot of detail. It's always a difficulty of, you know, of brevity and detail when you're walking through. So, I hope that you all like what we've picked out for tonight and uh let's go ahead

006and get started. So, the first slide here just shows the tiniest bit. We wanted to show everybody's faces to you guys. Uh you see the two of us, but there are about a dozen of us and pretty well everybody touches the project along the way. And so the staff members, the admin have gotten emails from probably eight or 10 of the people here, but there are additional faces behind that 400 pages. It's it's not just the two of us here. And then the study itself, our process takes normally about four months. It's a very lengthy process. Starts with that person number one and ends up with kind of person number 12 there at the end. Uh we start with collecting state and district data with a lot of background data and we collect that even

007when we come back to a district that we have worked for before. Um there's data out there that we can get our hands on that gives us an understanding of what's going on here down in the weeds for Arlington ISD. But then another really really important thing that we do is we build a very robust GIS map. And I have heavy uh copies of them here that are about 3 feet by 3 feet. We've got about a dozen copies of them. Um it starts with parcel data and you know flood plane data and um land use data all of the schools and we we draw in a lot of detail and that's very important to us so that everybody's on the same page and understands what we're talking about and so we do have copies

008of that. There are copies on smaller uh pages there in chapter three of of the report they're actually in the appendix. Um another thing very important that we do is geocode your student population. I believe we geocoded three data sets for you guys. It's important not only to understand where your kids are now, but also where they were a couple of years ago. Uh that way we can do things like look at a particular subdivision and look how many K to fourth graders uh became first through fifth graders the next year so we can understand what's going on inside those existing subdivisions. You guys at this point are very different than you were earlier in your life cycle as a school district or very different than some of the the um uh districts that are

009in sort of the growth ring that we'll talk about here in just a second in that most of the kiddos you have are in older subdivisions in existing subdivisions and there are different things that go on there. Another thing that we do with those geocoded students is we determine a ratio of students per home for the areas where you do have additional places to build out. We need to know how many kiddos we think are going to be in there. And it's not just kids, it's students in Arlington ISD. And so we literally count homes and count students and create a ratio there. And then we can use those ratios elsewhere. The middle one here is analyzing alternative educational opportunities that we we call them AEOs. We used to call them charter schools and but

010there's so much else that goes into that now. We call them AEOs. And um so you will you will hear us talk about that quite a bit. I highly encourage you guys to look in appendix two. There is about a 40 or 50 page uh cluster of paperwork where we have downloaded data, collected data, there's state data, there's region data there and then there's tons and tons of data. We even altered some of it after we talked to the administration about a week or so ago uh to try to make it a little more specific to Arlington ISD. So I really encourage you guys to take a look at that because it is very very important and I think that the data there you will find very very interesting. Of course, we do have to

011look at housing and economic trends. There is still a little bit of infill going on here. Then we we generate district-wide enrollment projections and then we look at what that means for you guys moving forward and comparing it to the capacities of your schools. So, you guys have uh passed the high growth phase of of our enroll enrollment growth for the district. You guys are sort of where we would talk about stabilization and some decline. And so we'll look here in just a minute uh at how that is occurring in in the region. But this is sort of a normal growth cycle, a demographic life cycle for school districts as housing is built, new housing is built. Uh lots of kiddos come in the door and then at some point people end up staying. I

012have two kids. We're still in the same house and so my kids are not in the school district anymore. They're in college and that's that's sort of what happens. So, we'll start a little bit here first with um some demographic trends and just a little bit of discussion about what all is going on in the region and in the state. And so, this these maps here look at the enrollment from 2019 to 2025. Normally, we would do a five-year enrollment but change, but that would put us at 2020 with COVID and then the data looks like a mess. And so, we did 2019 to 2025 for your region. And you might imagine region 10 flipped over to its side there for for Dallas. It's sort of a mirror image. And if we had the two

013together, what we would see is blue in the middle and red on the outside. And what that is is it means is blue for the decline that is going on in the Dallas and the Fort Worth and the Arlington and all of your neighbors. And all of that growth is being pushed out to this red sort of growth ring. And so on the lefth hand side we've got numeric enrollment change. On the right hand side we've got percent enrollment change. The numeric of course you're probably much more familiar with. You can see Northwest ISD, for example, um is the in the dark maroon there, sort of north and west of you guys with the the largest gain over that six-year time frame at 7,700 kids. Uh on the right hand side is the percent change.

014And it's so much easier for the smaller districts to get a higher percent change because it doesn't take as many students moving in. And so you can see that the red shifts a little bit to where you have the smaller districts, the Argyals and Aubreies and Garners, that sort of a thing. But in both situations, of course, Arlington ISD and its neighbors are uh losing students and and in there in the blue. For region 11 as a whole, for a one-year enrollment change in this past year, the region lost 8,223 students. And that's a lot. I think that's a big number uh to hear and to understand. 34 school districts gained students at and gained a total of 3,300 kids. and 41 of the the districts in the region lost a total of 11,547 kids.

015And so that's that's really the story. We've given now two talks at TASA Tasby and Tessa Midwinter about where all the kids have gone. And so that's a a big story that everybody is talking about this year. When we drill down and look at the data a little bit for Arlington ISD in particular, you can see the lefth hand side is the enrollment itself as it's been sort of marching downward. Uh the district um in 2015 was showing about 63,000 students and of course that's about 12,000 students off uh for where we are now. 10-year change about 12,000 uh 5-year change 5,700. So really it's been fairly evenly split if we're looking at you know how it's sort of marched downward. On the right hand side by year you can see the change and of

016course that giant bar in the middle is COVID that the state lost 2.1% of the student population uh that year. There were only a handful of districts in the state that continued to actually gain any kids that year. We expected them to largely come back and a whole lot of them did not. And so really and truly what we have wanted to to needed to do now is we almost need to look at data that's only sort of postcoid because there have been so many changes that happened in uh 2020 there. So after you guys saw that rebound though, the the rebound that you saw it showed itself in less loss in 21 and in 22 um also also in 22. They didn't all come back the next year. They came back also some that

017that second year. So for the last three years there you can see that for 23 and for 24 the decline here was about 1400 students in both of those years. But for this year it was about 2,200 kids. And so there was about a seven or 800 student swing. And so this next couple of slides um I think is is largely going to explain some of that. So the state as a whole, we've got state data on the lefth hand side and we've got Arlington ISD on the right hand side. And something interesting happened with the um students by ethnicity for this past year in particular. The state as a whole declined 76,613 kids this year and that was certainly the largest decline that we could find anywhere. um ISDs themselves, the traditional ISDs declined

018about 88,000 students while your charter schools in the district in in the state uh gained 11,100 really almost 11,200. And so the state overall lost that 76,000 kids and the Hispanic student population declined by 61,700 students. So almost all of that decline can be explained by this um decline in Hispanic student population that occurred here in in this one-year time frame. And so you guys saw very similar things here. These are the state and and uh Arlington ISD uh totals over time. You can see how things have either trended up or or trended down. But I think perhaps the more interesting slide is here where you can see the sort of up and down by bar graph and by group. the state of Texas at the top, Arlington ISD on the bottom, and you can

019see on the lefth hand side for Arlington, there has been a continued sort of a gain, I'm sorry, a continued loss for Asian student population. On the far right hand side, a continued loss for the white student population. Um, for the black or African-American student population, the last three years have have shown some decline. But for that Hispanic student population, really, besides COVID, this was the first year that we saw a big big change there. and it was about 700 students which is almost that differential between your 1400 that you were down and the 2200 that you were down this year. Most of that seemed to be in the Hispanic student population. So that is um you know certainly we we would assume it would have to do with immigration changes and everything that was

020going on uh this year in the country. Another thing that's very important for us to all understand, and you've probably seen news articles and heard all about this, is um the births and the kindergarten enrollment. And you've I'm sure you've heard and read articles about declining birth rates. And so here we've got we we can't knock on doors and say how many kindergarters, how many two-year-olds have you got inside. We know how many kindergarters, how many two and three year olds are inside your house, of course. But what we can do is we can get it the birth rate, the number of births by zip code of the birth mother from the state. And the zip codes, if you're familiar with them, don't quite exactly line up with the state, but we we massage that

021data using some population points to try to get a good fit. And we take the births and we move them forward five years and line them up with your kindergarten enrollment so we can say how is it trending and then what might it do over the next couple of three or four years. And so that's what you've got at the top here. where we are right now is where that dash line is. And so you can see that the birth rate uh we would is the data there is shown for about three or four years and you can see just a general downward trend uh in both the kindergarten enrollment and the birth rate. They have trended closely together and so we would expect that to be a pretty good indicator moving forward. Now, your

022kindergarten enrollment is lower than your birth rate. And that happens for tons of districts that are largely built out that are in those later phases of that sort of demographic life cycle. U in a district that is growing very rapidly with new housing, we will see the reverse. Your kindergarten enrollment will be on top because you'll have new homes and you'll have somebody that moves in with a three-year-old that wasn't born in that zip code. But over time they slowly get together and then the kindergarten enrollment drops especially now uh drops below the birth rate because there's so many other AEOs where everybody or or other where parents are choosing to send their kids. So you can see the data that's broken down by the region. Uh there are little oddities that you'll see and

023if you ever see anything that looks weird, it's normally 2020 and co um but you've got region 11 and then of course the state of Texas with general downward trends over time. So, we'll hit a little bit on past and current students. I mentioned that we had geocoded about three of your data sets. And so, these are two laid on top of each other, 23, 24, and 25 26. And so, there's nothing as remarkable here in some areas where, you know, there's an area that's growing very, very rapidly, a giant master plan community. You can see all of these red dots that show up all of the sudden in addresses that were not there two years ago. for you guys. It's some a little bit of sporadic numbers there, but sometimes people don't stop and

024think about all of the density and all of the students when they show up like little dots there on your map, but that's what your kiddos look like. And then this slide uh is very colorful and I always find it very in normally find it very interesting um for a district and and for you guys I I do think it is very interesting. What we've done here is for each year we have colorcoded the size of the cohort from K through 8 and from 10 through 12. We'll leave out nth grade because there's all sorts of oddities in nth grade. And we've colorcoded them by size such that your smallest ones are in the dark navy and your largest ones are in that dark maroon. Other people say red, but I'm from College Station, so

025it's my Aggie Maroon. And so what that shows for like 25 26 is that your two smallest cohorts are kindergarten and first grade. and your largest is presently 10th grade with 11th grade and 12th grade right behind it. And so what you can see as you work backwards to 2016 is that you've got a cluster of kiddos in the high school level that have been those largest cohorts all the way back. And so they are working their way through the system. And so over the next several years, they will exit. And so if absolutely nothing else happened except you had a small kindergarten class come in and those large um high school classes leave, you would experience loss just from that if nothing else occurred. Um and so what you'll see later on in the

026projections is that the high school decline is much more significant. The one that we're projecting is much more significant than say the elementary decline because you've got this cohort of kids. You've got this really heavy dense cluster of students that are in high school grades right now. Then the other thing that is important to look at here that I always start to check is that differential between 12th grade and kindergarten. And so if you look at say um the fall of uh 20 if you look at 2018 2019 go all the way down to the bottom your smallest class was your 12th grade class at 3,800 kids almost 3,900. The next year in 2019 you had 3956 kindergarteners come in. So by that graduating and that coming in just by aging those kids forward by

027when you actually picked up some kids, right? But in in in several years, you were either picking up or you were pretty even. But if you look here more recently, say 23 24, you had 3600 12th graders leave and you had uh fewer than 3,400 kindergarteners come in. So you had that differential of a couple hundred students. same sort of thing between 24 and 25. By doing absolutely nothing else uh than just letting your kids graduate and and age and metriculate through the system, you lost about 500 students just just with that alone. And so that also is factoring into all of the numbers that you guys are seeing. The kindergarten classes are so small and right now um you are have a particularly heavy bunch of high school kids. And so that that is

028affecting all of your overall enrollment numbers. So I mentioned the ratios of students per home that we do um that we do generate. Now it will be in appendix um one I guess it is where we actually detail every single subdivision and every single apartment complex and tell you what the ratios of students per home are for all of those but districtwide uh it's for single family homes it's a 39 and for the multif family homes it's a 027. Now, I I've worked like for Frisco ISD since 1999, you know, that sort of a thing. And so for some of our traditional suburban in the growth ring sort of areas, those ratios for single family might be in the sixes, something like that. And at the same time, a lot of times that multif family

029may be at a 0.17 or 0.19 because new brand new multif family units have a really low ratio because they're pricey. they've got three swimming pools and they've got two gyms and they've got granite and the countertops and you know whatever. And so um that's not where parents with kids can afford to live. And so these are the ratios that are here in the district right now. And so we use specific ratios. We don't just use the 0.39 and the 027. We use specific ones when we're going forward and um uh projecting for the students that will be in any of the new homes. at the top part there on the right hand side, we've broken it down to existing subdivisions and developing subdivisions. And you got so many of the existing subdivisions that that

030number is also a 39. But for your developing subdivisions, anything that's building new, which is a ton of town homes and things like that, for example, that Caroline will talk about later, that ratio is a 26. And so it's not that you're getting a 6 or a seven in most of these new homes. It's a lower ratio actually in these developing subdivisions that we're seeing come in. And then on the left hand side, we've also analyzed it by age. And really, you have to get to the homes that are sort of in the 1970s era before you see that ratio really hop up a little bit and not be that 39. And so you can see that with some age there, those ratios do go ahead and go up. We also broke them down just

031by um median value. And a lot of times we actually do see sort of an an inverse bell. We considered taking it down to one more set of one more bar of million-dollar and plus homes. Uh a lot of times actually the number the ratio of students per home in the most expensive homes actually will go up a little bit because they're not as concerned about paying for college for four kids, you know, for those larger homes. And so they can have more more kiddos there. And so you get more kids in the really high-end homes and then also in the the cheapest value homes there. So I keep talking about and teasing alternative educational opportunities and it's such an important part. I remember uh the very first time I heard of a charter school

032I thought well this will be kind of annoying to deal with and and now we have about a person and a half that do nothing other than charter schools and private schools and all of these alternative educational opportunities. So, we have mapped, you can see Arlington ISD there in the middle. And we have mapped the um charter schools and the private schools that we know of that have Arlington ISD students in them. The data that we can get for the charter schools is from TEA and it's pretty good. Now, they mask numbers here. You know, how many ninth graders you have maybe mask and how many second graders, but by and large the data um we think coming from TEA is pretty good. we have to do a lot to it, but we think we

033have a good process there to try to understand where your students are going into which charter schools. The private schools, it's harder to get at, but we do have some some data here from Dian IQ that's going to be on on the next slide. I know you guys are are working with them. Um the map here is very busy. You know, you guys I know you guys know that you are very heavily affected by charter schools and private schools here. The good news is that we do not know of any additional charter schools that are coming in and we are constantly monitoring all of news reports but also definitely the uh amendments that are released by TEA all of the time. The difficulty there is a lot of times they're very broad you know we're

034going to allow a charter school at somewhere in the northwestern portion of the you know and proximity is very important for this because normally there's no um transportation provided. So, we do know of three really four schools that are coming in. One actually does sit in the district, but it's like a it's a small one that is um normally tied with like a a treatment center, a treatment group. And so, we're talking little tiny numbers of kids. The other three that we know of are outside well outside the the confines of the district itself. And so, we wouldn't expect more than one or two students for any of those um to go there. So right now I Texas we is seeming to take about 1,800 students from Arlington ISD uplift education about 1,400 students and

035um so you know these are our big numbers that we'll be talking about here. uh private school. We are estimating about 3,100 students to attend private schools and that also is about the number that that Dian IQ came up with. And so I I know you guys have are working with them and and that is doing some geo fencing of cell phones and trying to track down where those kids are are going and where they're coming from. And so the data that we have here that we have mapped is their private school information. And so we can see on the left hand side that where they're showing the private schools. A lot of these are ones and twos. And so it's probably there's a private school near where mom or dad work and they take

036the child and even though it may be 35 minutes away or something like that, that's um they take them with them. Uh in the middle we have taken that datience data and um uh gotten it down to the planning unit level. Planning unit level, Caroline will mention this in a minute. Um is the planning units are little puzzle pieces. They're just sort of how we organize all of our data. And so you can see in the darker maroon there um where you have the heaviest concentration we think of students that are leaving to go to private schools. And then on the right hand side there we can see where the private schools are. And there the uh circles themselves are colorcoded or sized based on how many students we think are leaving from Arlington ISD

037to those private schools. And so you can see that if you lay the map in the middle and the map on the right hand side on top of each other that for the most part those kids are are going to private schools that are pretty close by to where they live. We're always asked about homeschooling and unfortunately enough the state doesn't maintain much data on that. And so the way homeschoolers show up to us is in a lower ratio of students per home. So, if you um had a home that would have normally had two kids in it, but now all of a sudden they're homeschooling, now that home counts as zero students when we're trying to develop that ratio of students for home. And so, I have seen throughout all of the work I

038have done this fall in particular for every I guess it's not I guess we're in May. the entire year's worth of of work that I have done for clients, all of the ratios of students per home have gone down because we have a lot of clients we do this for every single year and we measure those ratios every year and they have on average they have gone down 0.02 02 students per single family home uh this one year in one year's time. And so that's how the homeschoolers show up. Um charter schools show up that same way. Private schools, virtual schools, all of those things. But p homeschooling, we don't have a particular number for it. It's just sort of mixed in there in those lower ratios. But what we can get at is the

039the for sure is the data from TEA. And so what we've got here is what TEA is showing us as out from Arlington ISD into charters. that's in the Navy and so you can see that over time uh to other ISDs in the maroon and then the green is the virtuals and the percent increase in virtuals of course has really really come on and the difficulty there for a school district is a a virtual program in Georgia can you know enroll one of your kids whereas we're talking proximity for private schools and for charter schools the virtual schools all bets are off and so that that is really coming online and and we're really interested to watch the growth in that occur that sort of snaky line at the bottom. That is the students that

040are transferring in to Arlington ISD from elsewhere. And so that is sort of offset by that maroon where of where you're losing students to other ISDs. Uh the district does net students in um in that little swap there. And so when we get to sort of a summary, then what we're looking at is resident students, charter, virtual, private, other ISTDs, and then attending and residing in the district. We think that that you're sort of capturing that you're actually enrolling about 78.4% of the students that reside in Arlington ISD. And so that number varies. I'm always ask so what is that? What does everybody else got? And it varies wildly depending on what sort of district and where they're situated that I'm that I'm working for or analyzing. And so we did Dallas ISD uh in

0412122 and the number for them was about 71%. I highly suspect it's gone down a little bit since then because everybody's number has gone down a little bit since then. Um, when we're working out in a rural area where there aren't very many charters or there aren't many privates and of course then there the school district is gaining capturing maybe 95% or so of the student population. So with that, I'm going to let Caroline talk about economy and housing and then we'll talk about projections. All right. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, board members. Um, as we jump into the housing section here, um, we like to just kind of take a look at the broader, uh, market conditions that shape the residential development across your region. So, according to the Texas Real Estate Research Center,

042the Arlington Housing Market has continued to cool a little bit over uh, the past year. Uh, year-over-year, home sales declined about 15.6% 6% uh and medium home prices softened slightly to around 322,000 down from about 330,000 the previous year. At the same time, your mortgage rates have remained elevated despite some Federal Reserve actions continuing to impact affordability and slowing buyer activity a little bit. Actually, as of the Fed's April 2026 meeting, uh benchmark rates were held steady at the 3.5 to 3.75 range, and this is marking their third consecutive pause. So, we're continuing to keep an eye on that as the year goes on. Uh, now inventory remains relatively constrained at about 2.8 months, which which suggests that the market is slowing, but it's not overs supplied. Now, these conditions point to a more measured

043housing environment moving forward, though additional rate reductions in the future could help reacelerate buyer demand and some re uh residential development activity. Now, the planning units, as Chris mentioned, um we have this framework that we do for every district that we work for. We use small geographic areas and organize and analyze localized growth patterns across your district. Now, each unit may contain one or more housing developments or undeveloped land parcels. These boundaries are created using a combination of major roadways, attendant zones, uh parcel ownership patterns, and other physical features in your district. and it allows us to more accurately track where residential growth is occurring and how it may impact different parts of the district over time. So single family development is expected to play a relatively limited role in AISD's future housing outlook which

044is consistent within urban district that is nearing full buildout and with very little undeveloped land remaining. Overall, only about 22% of all the projected new housing occupancies over the new uh next decade are expected to come from single family developments. So rather than large master plan communities, most of the future growth in the district is anticipated to occur through smaller infill projects that are scattered throughout the district. Uh a handful of developments including the Jefferson Kirby town homes, the rolling hills development, uh green oaks preserve, and the river central project up in the north. These represent the most impactful remaining single family projects, though even these are pretty modest in scale compared to some of the more fast growth suburban districts um in that maroon growth ring that Chris mentioned. Now, outside of these sites,

045most of the active and planned projects are expected to contribute less than 50 units, reinforcing that Arlington's future housing growth will be driven by this smaller incremental um redevelopment and infield development opportunities rather than major subdivisions. Now, this slide just kind of highlights those largest remaining single family projects. Like I just mentioned, uh most of the highlighted project are scattered along Arlington's outer edges and uh redevelopment corridors. You've got the River Central Town Homes and the Jefferson Kirby Brook Town Homes located on the eastern and northern sides of the district. Rolling Hills in North Arlington and California Meadows and Green Oak Preserve located further west. So these heat maps just reinforce the same pattern that I just mentioned that Arlington single family growth remains modest, scattered, and tied primarily to that infill and redevelopment uh

046activity. So in the near term in the map on the left hand side, this is the first five years of the projection period. Most of the activity is concentrated in a handful of projects led primarily by those Jefferson Kirby Brook town homes, the rolling hills redevelopment in North Arlington. Um and then over some time as we move into the uh right hand side map where you show the full 10 years, some of the planned projects shift into these later years of the forecast due to some timing uncertainties and infrastructure constraints. uh particularly around River Central where flood plane considerations may affect uh some development pacing um and phasing. Uh but the single family outlook remains characterized by this sightsp specific projects um just spread across your community which is again typical for a mature uh

047urban district. So while single family growth in AISD is relatively limited, multif family continues to be the primary driver of new housing activity in the district. Um, as a largely builtout urban district, Arlington's growth is increasingly coming through denser, more vertical residential development rather than a traditional subdivision. Currently, um, or at least at the time of this study, the district had one property leasing, four actively developing multif family communities, and a substantial pipeline of planned and also potential projects concentrated along major corridors in some of these redevelopment areas. Uh projects like Inova Highlands, uh Arlington Villas, the Jefferson Southwest Parkway, and Preston multif family projects are expected to contribute significant near-term occupancy growth. A multif family housing is projected to account for nearly 75% of all new housing occupancies over the new next decade. um

048really focusing in on how Arlington's transition towards uh apartments, town homes, and mixed use uh residential growth will be within its existing uh urban footprint. Now, this slide is something a little bit new. We don't typically do this for um all of our districts, but we thought this was going to be really important to highlight for Arlington ISD and specifically for this region. This slide highlights the potential long-term impact of Texas Senate Bill 840, which was passed just recently during the 89th Texas Legislative Session and became effective in September 2025. The this legislation represents a significant shift in how redevelopment may occur in large Texas cities by expanding opportunities for buy multif family and mixeduse redevelopment uh on qualifying office, commercial, light industrial and retail properties. So, a key component of the law is that

049qualifying projects may move forward without traditional resoning hearings or city council approvals, provided that they meet uh established development standards. In practical terms, this lowers the barriers for redevelopment and creates more opportunities for underutilized commercial corridors and aging employment areas to transition into residential or mixeduse uh environments over time. Now, for Arlington ISD, this is particularly important because the district is already largely built out. So, unlike those fast growth suburban districts that can continue expanding outward with large new subdivisions, Arlington's housing growth is expected to be, like I mentioned, that redevelopment, that infill, and those more scattered projects. Uh so while the full impacts of SB840 are still uncertain, especially since the law is still pretty new and the multif family market has experienced a little bit of cooling in this last year, uh the

050legislation still could become important long-term catalysts for housing activity within the district. So to better understand where this type of redevelopment is most likely to occur, we analyzed qualifying zoning patterns pulled from Arlington the city of Arlington zoning map as well as Grand Prairie zoning maps. um and kind of analyze them over the entire district. So, the north sector, primarily everything north of I30, uh contains the highest concentration of eligible land with about 26% of this sector meeting qualifying zoning criteria. The central sector, everything between I30 and I20, um, has a lot of redevelopment corridors along areas like Collins Street, Abram Street, Division Street, and portions of the entertainment district, where about 14% of the sector could potentially be affected. Smaller but still notable opportunities also exist in the south sector, which is everything south

051of I20. Um, and this will occur close to I20 and around Green Oaks Boulevard. Now, overall, while SB840 is unlikely to create any immediate large-scale changes overnight, it does in introduce a new long-term redevelopment pathway that Arlington ISD will need to monitor closely as it could gradually reshape where future housing and ultimately future students are located throughout the district. So, as we wrap up the housing section, this here is just going to summarize everything of the housing outlook. A lot of nice numbers and graphs for you. Uh the district is projected to add just over 9,000 new housing occupancies within uh the decade. Uh with multif family development overwhelmingly driving this future growth. Um it's going to be about 75% of all new housing units reflecting Arlington's uh mature development pattern and increasing reliance on

052that redevelopment, that infill, and those higher density housing options. Single family development is expected to make up only about 21% of future occupancies with growth occurring primarily through um some scattered infill projects rather than large subdivisions. We also expect annual housing occupancies to peak in the earlier years of the projection period around years three and four before gradually moderating over time as remaining re uh development opportunities become a lot more limited. So when we put all of this together, a few clear themes emerge from AISD's housing outlook. First, the district is largely in that stabilization phase with Arlington already approximately 94 to 97% built out. That means future growth will be much more limited and driven primarily through redevelopment and infill than those large subdivisions. Second, multif family will continue to be the primary source

053of new residential growth, particularly near employment centers, retail corridors, and entertainment areas with single family activity remaining limited to stuff more like town homes, um condos, things like that, built to rent projects. Uh and finally, development patterns will continue to be shaped by land constraints, flood planes, and existing industrial uses. But at the same time, emerging opportunities like SB840 could gradually expand redevelopment potential and create new long-term housing opportunities within the district. And then with that, I'm going to hand it back to Chris to talk about your student numbers. >> Okay. Thanks, Caroline. So, this last section here, of course, will uh concentrate on student projections because that's really at the end of the day why we are all here. So the student projection factors, all of this stuff, all of these words and all

054of those 400 pages goes into the student projections fact in into the creation of student projections model. Um, I've been doing this work since the late 90s and it used to be kids plus homes times ratios in these areas that were building new homes and now we have what eight factors here that are on the page. It's become so much more complex here in the last handful of years. Uh we'll start at the top here. Of course, we we can't leave out the new housing construction. It's going to yield 100 to 250 students a year for you guys, but as we talked a little while ago, graduating your 12th graders and bringing in your kindergarters can more than take care of that. Your birth rate, we showed a little earlier um we would expect it

055to continue to to decline certainly for the few years that we've got data for and likely after that given um just a lot of things that are occurring in the state. uh kindergarten class size that's not always the same as the birth rate of course and so they have diverged and how much more might that kindergarten class size drop below your birth rate. If you look real carefully at the birth rate in the kindergarten classes there in the last couple years, it's perhaps that they are diverging just a tiny bit more. And so that's one thing that we have to take into consideration. The aging of the student population, like I mentioned, those 12th graders and those kindergarters, but then we also have to see how first graders become second graders. There's always a change

056there as as they metriculate on through in-n-out migration. You got a lot of kids coming in and a lot of kids going out just sharing uh students back and forth to other ISTDs. Those are programmatic changes. If somebody goes and makes a big change in an adjacent district that is attractive all of the sudden to people to residents in Arlington ISD or vice versa, then this will uh impact the projections here. And so that's just something that we can't know what what all all of the school districts are planning to do all around you guys um in the next decade. regeneration of established neighborhoods. We are constantly checking for that. But given the 6% interest rates and everybody had a 3% mortgage a little while back, I can't think of a a client that I

057worked for in ages where those established neighborhoods, the ones that we call built out no more building have gained kids. And so when I mentioned we had three data sets and so between the first one and the second one, you guys had lost in those neighborhoods, 1284 kids. between the second one and the third one, meaning to to get to this year, uh that loss was 1451. And so that there is no turning over uh of those established neighborhoods. And even when they do turn over, the ratios never kind of get back to where they were when they were new. The alternative educational opportunities, I've mentioned that quite a bit. Uh you do have 250 fewer students out to charter schools this year than you did last year. And we think that that is probably

058just in general the lower birth rates, fewer kids around in the area dampening the enrollments there. Um, but as a result, we are not assuming a giant increase continuing on in those charter schools. But of course, we also do have the the TIFA funds and the the vouchers to deal with here. And then economic drivers, of course, changes in interest rates. Those can really impact um everything that we're talking about if something changes dramatically. So we we do develop a primary scenario of growth and then a low and a high and um so what you've got is that primary enrollment forecast there that is um in the dash line and then we've got the accelerated and the and the reduced there. What you'll notice is that the reduced that delta between the primary and the

059reduced is larger than that delta between the um primary and the accelerated. And so that that what that means is that we see the possibility for additional downside more than we see the possibility for upside there. We do go ahead and project for 10 years, but of course, especially with all of the things that are going on right now, we're going to be concentrating on the first couple of years, but we know that if you're making a lot of big changes, then um you need a lot of times you need six or eight or 10 years worth of data there. The in order for that accelerated um thing to occur, we would have to have things like a lower interest rates. uh the kindergarten and the birth rates would have to sort of flatten out

060the um additional that house bill or senate bill that Caroline talked about might yield some additional development in places that might have taken a little longer to come on. So those are the sorts of things that would play into that versus on the bottom we would continue to see flatter and flatter um birth rates. We would cons continue to see in another 18 months time more TIFA funds more money from the state to uh vouchers in in some way. And so you can see how those those differences might occur. So we've mentioned the uh uh planning units that we use. And so the way that we gather the data and project the data, we have for each one of those planning units, we have the projected students by grade group for each year of the

06110 years of the projection period. So we can take all of those planning units, we put them together into your attendance zones, and we can break them apart and do different things with the facilities if if we need to. And so this is just a look at how many we are showing in each one of the planning units just in in 2025. You know, you can see some density like in the same Houston area, for example. But then we can also look at some projected change over time with blue being loss and red being gain. Um Caroline mentioned and you can see if you'll stop and think back to the heat map that she had about some of the town homes and things the river central in the north and uh there's several of a

062couple of them in in one of your elementary attendance. And so those are are showing up there in red. Now, one thing that it's important for everybody to understand and remember as you're thumbming through the the chapter 4 there in the report is there's a difference between resident students and enrolled students. And we start with a projecting of where the students reside. That doesn't always mean that's where they go to school. And so that's where we've geocoded the kids and we start by analyzing them that way because if you are going to make changes, you need to understand proximity, how many kids live in the zone, even if you have a big program that's changing that in some way. So most of the maps that you will see are resident students. Where do they live?

063Whereas most of the tables, we have gone ahead and tried to look at transfers and how those programs and other things are impacting them. So that that's a closer estimation for enrollment over time. So this map here shows the projected resident students by elementary attendance zone and it shows just two years worth of data. And I know you could spend hours pouring over this stuff. we talk about it forever, but the idea here is that they are color-coded on who's going to grow and who's going to decline. And so based on some of the um housing that we talked about, they're sort of in the north. And then also about the class sizes that you've got right now, like Ellis for example, it has 89 kids residing in its zone in kindergarten. But a lot

064of the other class sizes are in the 50s. And so as you metriculate those kiddos on out if you replace them with 70s, 80s, 90s, then you get an automatic um gain there just based on on the homes that you've got. So there's two parts that go into this. How many new kids might you put in, but based on new homes? But then also sort of what's going on right now with those two and three and four year olds as they work through. So some of um both of those factors are impacting uh Ellis and Larson and and is it Shered or Sherrod? I haven't heard anybody. shared in in the northern portion of the district there. And when we're talking about utilization levels here, this is your geocoded or resident students compared to your

065capacity. So it does not account for all of the transfers, but in general, when we're talking about sizes of schools and where the kids live, you can see that all of the blue is the lower utilization levels. And by and large, it's the eastern side of um the district that is seeing the the lower levels of utilization with a little bit um more density there toward the western side of the district. And so then these tables here show and I know it's hard to read and again you know brevity and time and detail and all of that all comes into play but what we have done is we've taken those geocoded students we have applied um we have looked at your current transfers and included those and then we have colorcoded them based on the

066level of utilization. So the transfers that we have used are largely the transfers that are occurring today, but I know with the closure of Bllandon, you had kids that would would have gone to Swift, but instead now are going to Crow. So we've moved those 60 kids. And then we also did take um we did adjust a couple of your uh programs at the um that are your your more magnetized programs. And so we've grown those a little bit and pulled the students out of the the zones that are the largest feeders for that area. But for the the bulk of the numbers, we are relying on the transfers that you have occurring presently today. Any child that lives in a zone but attends a a a school elsewhere. It can be a teacher's child,

067you know, it can be for any reason at all or it can be for programmatic reasons. And so when we're looking at the the schools that are over, it's only a couple. It's cucken of course, but I think that that is accounted for based on your morning and your afternoon program there. So when we look at the capacity, it looks bright red. Oh my gosh. But I I don't think that that's what's going actually going on. Ditto, Goodman, and South Davis have a little bit bit of pressure, but it's not very much. And of course, and there's plenty of other ways to deal uh with that. So, you can see an awful lot of blue there, and these are just alphabetized, all three of these next slides for all of your schools there. Uh the

068Navy is the lowest at less than 60%. And in the fall of 2030, we have 16 of those schools that we're projecting to be once we account for transfers. We know the transfers change, but in 2030, we're looking about 16 of the schools that we would expect to be there. And toward the end of the projection period, more like 19 of the elementary schools that would be uh below 60% of um utilization. And then also another thing that's important is as you're looking through all of these um if you're trying to total up the things on the bottom for example you've got kiddos that are leaving here to go to gun and so there are transfers that occur across the elementaryaries the junior highs and the high schools if you're looking at all of those

069numbers but largely the elementary student u projections are we're projecting the the student population to decline by about 3,000 students over the 10 years. So the stories are very very similar for the junior high schools and the high schools. Uh we are seeing uh some expected growth. It's less than 200 students in Nickels. That happens to capture all of the that area that I touched on just a little bit earlier at the elementary level. It feeds of course into Nickels. Um but we can see decline mainly in the southern areas there young and bowls and also uh when we look at utilization everything is blue to some extent. Uh and then of course the highest one that we're actually seeing is Rodriguez about 87% but then going ahead and dropping off toward 84%. Your your

070numbers of um students transferring in is is or transferring around is a lot lower. the 27% at gun that does not include the sixth graders that are transferring into gun because this is geocoded students. So don't don't be panicked by by that sort of a thing. So again here um we are looking at the lower levels of utilization there everybody being basically uh when once we look at those transfers and include those transfers where everybody is sitting basically at 80% and below and with a a general trend downward over time. And then at the high school level, it's again very similar. Um we are showing uh decline across all of the high schools and the decline is much larger because if we're looking at where the kids are today when we're looking at at the

071comparison between 2035 and those giant high school classes that you have now that is playing into that decline there, of course. And so at utilization levels, there's space uh for all of them. Of course, we've got everybody sitting here based on the resident students at about 80%. And then um when we get later on or when we get on to discussing what the actual enrollment may look like when we're looking at uh transfers, we did adjust a few of your Arlington College and career. Uh those sorts of things, those have maintained. We looked back in time and they've been very very popular um programs, but we have dropped those numbers just a touch just because of the general decline in those large cohort sizes as as they're working through. So, we've um we've adjusted those

072just a little bit. So, to wrap up here, there are a lot of a lot of things to consider. I think you probably know a lot of these things inherently, but it's good to have sort of a conversation about it sometimes. The aging of the student population is a big deal for you guys. the difference between your kindergartens and your 10th and 11th is is a big thing that will impact you guys over the next couple of three years. Uh students from new housing, it's still occurring. We have accounted for it, but it's really small numbers compared to everything else. The birth rates, of course, as they continue to decline, it's not just an Arlington ISD thing. It is occurring really throughout the country and a lot of the developed world. Uh kindergarten enrollment, um

073we will have to continue to watch and see how that follows. it has trended quite closely and if it stays then we think we can understand where that may continue to go with those birth rates and then those alternative educational opportunities the impacts of those and how those are going to change over time. So with that now I've said an awful lot of words tonight so it's your turn. So, trustees, um I think we um will have a couple of challenges with microphones if I'm not mistaken and understanding. Oh, no, we got extra microphones. We're going to be good. Um uh I we wanted to make sure you open up and just go ahead and ask your questions along the way. Uh thank you both for giving us this detailed report and I can tell

074by some of the notes and the looks, we've got a lot of questions that are coming your way. So, we're excited. Thank you. Okay. >> Yeah. >> I've got a few questions. I'll ask a couple and then let my colleagues go. But um the ones that you were just on slide 47 and 48. Mhm. >> So if you go to 47, you've got say Sam Houston at 79% and 3536 and Buoie at 57. But if I go to slide 48, I see 50% for Buoie and Sam Houston at 53%. >> That's because we've included those transfers for the tables as they're coming in. So um that's how many students are leaving one school and attending another. There there's a net >> the slide 47 has the transfers. >> 47 is residents. All the maps are

075made with residents >> and then >> the tables >> and the tables include >> generally include the transfers. >> Okay. All right. Yeah. And that's what's leaving those two schools and going into Arlington Collegiate, right? >> Or Arlington, >> right? >> Okay. Got it. Okay. >> We've got a big table tables in the back. it it's messy and looks like this that is ins and outs for all of the where they're leaving where they live and where they're leaving to go to school. So going back to the beginning, let me see what slide that is >> long presentation slides in this one. >> So slide eight. Let's start at slide eight. So, in the House public ed uh committee hearing last week, our commissioner was dumbfounded at the precipitous drop in the state enrollment and

076had no explanation for it. Um, but I think your report does an admirable job of pointing out exactly why we're seeing that decline greater than expected and expected even greater next year. um you know we lost 2200 the state lost as you pointed out 76,000 and then I think if you go to slide 10 and you break it out by ethnicity both I love this slide because it's both the state and >> and Arlington ISD >> we lost more Hispanic students this last year than we did during co and that's the only demographic group. That is true. Um, and I think there's one obvious reason for that. >> Well, for CO, what we're showing actually is about,00 is a drop and then 700 this year. That big that big red. >> No, I was talking

077about at the state level. >> Oh, okay. Okay. At state level. Yep. Yep. And at the state level, the u the state had been gaining Hispanic student populations at student population at a good clip. >> So, not only did we lose, we didn't gain. And so it's it's it's more than just a loss. >> Yeah. So obviously our immigration policies that we've seen this year have had a tremendous impact >> not only across the state, even greater amount across the state, but here in Arlington ISD. What >> had in doing the projection going forward? Did that factor into your projections going forward? >> It did. And I I don't know of a soul that would have uh expected this to happen this year. We did. we had no discussion about it you know and a

078lot of the projections of course that we were doing in the fall for this current year were even prior to the election or prior to any of that. So how that impacts us in doing the projections is not a specific we are going to continue to pull out another 312 kids for that per same purpose. it it impacts us based on a nutrition retention uh number and how we account how we how we sum the attrition retention that occurred this year versus how it happened the last couple of years. >> And so that's you know lots of words and data nerd talk about um second graders going to third grade but your second graders went to third grade in a really different way this year. And so we are allowing that to occur some, but

079we we normally would heavily weight those attrition and retention levels for the current year more so than the last couple of years um because it's more current to what is going on, but we flipped it more or less. And so we have allowed some of that to continue to occur, but it's not a ton. And so for really next year and a little the next year, we have assumed a little bit more of that may occur, but certainly not another, you know, 700 students. And it's factors like that that make your job really >> really difficult. Yes. We work on between COVID and Hurricane Harvey and in the Houston area and um this it's it's been a real adventure. >> Yeah. And um it you know you pointed out that ESA's it's way too early

080to tell >> and we have a lot of private schools as you pointed out. I was I thought it was flipped. I thought we had more charters than private. >> You do. 3,100 in private school I think and 7700 in charters maybe. Oh, in terms of number of incidents. >> Mhm. >> And um and are you guys assuming I think I read that in your report that um because the amount of private schools here in the area and the ESAs are $10,000 and don't cover the tuition and >> it's been very limited. I think you said what 2,700 uh families in the in our attendance zone uh applied. >> They did and we have now I mean like hot off the presses how many were in public school who have been awarded. >> You were

081one step ahead of me. >> 459 was the number that we came up with that had prior public school enrollment that had been awarded a tier one or tier two. >> So most of them were in private school. >> Yes. Yes. So 1,67 the numbers that we had have gotten from the state are I mean like in the last week are,67 tier one and tier 2 from Arlington ISD that were awarded out of the 2723 that applied and that 459 had prior public school enrollment. >> Great data. Um I've got a ton more questions but I'm going to share the mic and let my colleagues have a turn. Okay. So >> yeah, everybody can go ahead and speak freely if you need to. So um if you would can can you talk to us a

082little bit about the uh the um I keep forgetting the name of it now. AEOS the the majority of the private school ones that you found I believe are at the uh elementary ages. Is isn't that correct that not all of them are K12 systems? We found a lot that are prek kinder only in the private school format. >> And I don't have that broken I don't know that off the top of my head as a breakdown. That's normally the case. >> You know, especially there there will be a daycare that will also go ahead and have a kindergarten or it will be at a church school that will also go ahead and have a kindergarten. Um the numbers of them that are K12 are smaller, but then you also pick up with schools that

083are only high schools. >> Yeah. Yeah, >> I think the one thing for us to keep our eye on out of those um entities that qualified for the voucher subsidy program from the state, the thing that really stood out, the majority of them in our area are at the prek and kinder level. And so I think it's going to be super important for us to really monitor enrollment from at the prek and kinder level the these next couple of years to see how this looks playing out in our system. uh just because th those number of private schools that they noted are are typically at that level for us. >> Um speaking on that, you had a slide that showed the the colorcoded by um grade level cohort. >> Um that was one of my

084favorite slides and I can't find it. >> I can't find it either. Where is it? Demographic trends. No, keep going the other way. There it is. Right there. >> Okay, here we go. U, the one thing I thought was interesting is um Justin will know the answer to this. When did we switch to universal prek? >> 2022. Um >> yeah. And when you look at this, our numbers um are for 2025 for preK4 are lower than the COVID year. >> And so is that because there those are the ones that are most seeking out those alternative um alternatives to public school. They're here or or is just the population >> and or the population is just declining. And so there were some some real oddities in looking at your data there, especially by the time

085we broke it out, preK3 and PreK4. So for our purposes, we had to concentrate on just the last couple of years to try to get trends that way um as opposed to going back as far as, you know, 2020 or 2021 because the numbers were bigger and and really did drop off like that. Yeah, I I I was shocked to see >> just how big a difference that was and figured it was the declining birth rates and also >> our increased competition for that age group of >> kiddos >> um having a tremendous impact where we wanted to that was a focus area of ours in terms of getting kids in early and getting them prepped. We have heard some anecdotal evidence or anecdotal stories of charter schools partnering with some daycarees >> and going

086in and and doing that sort of prek sort of thing. Very much along the same lines as you're talking. Um, one thing to note on that, um, as well is that typically right now I believe is where we're having the hardest time understanding homeschooling numbers is these early elementary ages and stuff because uh, some kids have just disappeared or never enrolled in our system and we're assuming that they're actually still here potentially doing homeschool co-ops, >> maybe doing the virtualmies that could be across the nation, right? >> Uh, things like that. So I think that's the other piece of the puzzle here is how many families are actually choosing to have a homeschooling option at the prek kinder first grade level >> and that's certainly going on in my neighborhood. I know three families that

087are doing that currently >> and we have seen some evidence of that sort of thing about the homeschool being a much bigger deal home school plus the other AEOs um at the earliest of the grades because we have um your chart is so you can't you can't help but understand that maroon stripe as it's moving through but for other districts that don't have quite such a density there moving through we have seen for the last couple of three or four years kind of some muddiness iness in the secondary grades. Some year, you know, in 22 it may be the largest cohort is in sixth grade and in 24 it may be that it's in ninth grade. And so we are suspecting, but always always the the smallest ones are the uh kindergarten, first grade, second

088grade. And so we are suspecting that there's quite a bit more of the homeschooling stuff because it's a whole lot easier to teach basic, you know, math in the kitchen table and reading than it is to start with physics or algebra. and that you know you may see those kiddos coming back in the secondary levels. >> Well, why I brought that up, could you go to that slide that you show our projection when it was 43, but you show the the band underneath and you said it's a a wider band underneath. Um, one of the things that they've talked about is the opportunities and options and how this projection could fluctuate based on what other districts around us do, what other things in the state happen, but also what we in Arlington ISD do as

089well. I think it's it's going to be uh incumbent upon us to actually think very differently about options in Arlington ISD as we're moving forward. And this report is a foundation for us to do that. We have to think about how we compete in the virtual market now. We have to think about how we compete in the homeschooling market now. We have to think about how we're competing with the charter schools, etc. So the models of education that we've had, you show up, you go to kinder, you exit in sixth grade, you go to the same school for all those years, the families have far different options now that they're seeking in other ways. And I think it's going to be really important for us to start shifting our models to think about how can

090we be service providers for those families that are choosing other options. If a family is considering homeschool for the first three years of life when we want to be some kind of service provider for them so they might come back meaning we create a micro school so they have some STEM interactions in our schools um so that we have some connection with them at least and not just no connection at all with them. So, this is this graph right here is the one that is heavily on my mind because right now at that 51,139 enrollment point, we have some major decisions to make in the next year about what schooling in Arlington ISD needs to look like for the future because some of the decisions we make right now could either put us on that

091upward trajectory or on that lower trajectory because other districts around us are having the same discussion. >> I concur, Dr. Smith and um we're at an inflection point and we can either do nothing, play defense, play offense, or do both. And I think we need a comprehensive plan to do both, play offense and defense given the data that we see. And um I like your suggestions were spot on. Um, you know, I keep saying I'm an old product manager and we got to build a better product that the market's demanding and we've got to be even more attuned to that than we have been in the past. Um, I do have one more question. I'll turn it back over to my colleagues. Um, speaking of the House Public Ed Committee, um, and you mentioned the

09276,000, what, 260 something students that, um, the state lost. Uh, Bob Templeton with Strive said they were projecting that's going to be 124,000 or around 125,000 next year. So that's a even bigger precipitous drop at the state level, but um and I know we're one entity in a much bigger picture that make up that number. Um, but I was a little surprised to see that uh, and I don't think you have it in one of your slides, but in your report, you break out the enrollment projection by year >> and you only have us dropping I mean you go 51,139, which we are today to next year uh, 49,564. So, a drop of um and just a small percentage drop, not the >> big drop that we're, you know, others are projecting for the state.

093Um is there a reason why you think we're not going to see as big a drop? >> Well, for one thing, um you all dropped in charter school kids this year, right, by 250. the state as a whole gained in charter school students by 70 what number did I say 7700 7,800 um that took stu more students away from the traditional ISDs so I think that's part of it is that we're not projecting a a continued massive charter loss >> and then I I don't I can't speak to what their projections are and what they're they're based on what sorts of assumptions that they were using um We have expected the impact of the immigration to have been largest this year and if they are continuing that on in a heavier rate then that could

094be the differential and at this point unfortunately I'm not sure how we're going to know until they walk in the door. >> Yep. No, that's what makes your job really >> really hard with this. Right. >> So >> yeah, we got started getting our first data back in the fall and I went what is going on because nothing was making sense. Yeah. >> Yeah. questions. >> Well, I wanted Dr. Smith, you talked about a minute ago that we have to meet parents where they are and looking at some of this. I know that this last week you sent out an email talking about online learning for upper pathways and different avenues. Can you explain that a little bit more that thought process based on what we're seeing here? >> Yeah, and I'll I'll go from

095theory first to to practicality. One of the things that we've been working on is a leadership team is becoming more ambidextrous organization instead of just planning to maintain what we currently do. How do we create an organization that does what we do well but also innovates to create new space for products that people are actually wanting in the marketplace right now. We have to think of ourselves more of a business model now in being able to say there are there's increased competition in the state of Texas regarding public schooling and private schooling. What is the model that we need to look at? One of the first things that came up last year because of the previous legislative session was the expansion of ch of virtual school opportunities. And so we pushed really hard this year

096to just try try and get the ball rolling to provide some options and get input from our parents at this point about what the interest is at the in the virtual school options. Ultimately for me, if we have uh 51,000 students in Arlington ISD and let's say 200 of them are interested in some form of virtual, I would rather provide that virtual than have a virtual school in Georgia provide that virtual option. So, we're trying to get a sense of how many people are actually interested in that in our school district and two, what product can we put together that still maintains a high level of quality for our students that we're serving in Arlington ISD, but also meets them in the delivery mode or method that they're asking for as families. And that's the

097reason we put that out right now is we have some options for our families to consider for this next year, but we're wanting to try and engage and have them say, "Hey, I'm kind of interested in that." and then get that information from them so we can help build product that actually meets the demand of the people in our district. >> When you talk about online learning, I think a lot of us as parents, we go back to COVID days and what it reminds us of is the hybrid learning where a teacher is teaching a class in front of them, then they have kids on the iPad and they're trying to do both. Is that the type of learning that you're talking about? Now, >> I think there are various modes and Kyle can probably

098help me out if he wants to come uh talk a little bit more about this. I think there are various modes of that that we can we actually um have the option to talk about. I think sometimes that is absolutely it. I think other times it is a self-paced curriculum where they're working through your curricular options as a school district and maybe coming in just for science labs or PE activities. Um and we've given them the curricular pieces through an online platform that they can complete. and others. Um, I think that there's very direct instruction that happens just for a cohort of students, but it doesn't ne it's more like a college model. It doesn't necessarily look like what you all remember from those COVID times. Kyle, is there anything else to add there? >>

099No, absolutely. Definitely a mix of opportunities there that we can have just a, you know, self-paced online with a teacher interaction, just a whole hybrid mix can can really fit in is what we're going to be looking at. So there's there's several different directions we can go to fit the different needs. >> Is there a reason that we started at the upper grades and the upper classman grades with this process? >> Yeah, I think um I don't know from um it's a really Stephen in the curriculum side really were evaluating where our best impact would be to get started where some of the areas of content creation and stuff might be. So looking with some of our partners to kind of find where that best fit might happen. One of the things we've heard a

100lot in the high school, having a high schooler myself, is that they are having to go to online Texas Tech University and different places to take this one course they need and they can knock it out online in three weeks, but they're also paying $300 to $500 to take that course that they could take with Arlington. And providing that online lets us meet that need for parents, but also it is economically feasible as well. And that's a service that we can do to our community. >> Absolutely. When do you I know there's a survey that was sent out. When will that survey close for parents? >> Uh I don't remember off the top of my head. I apologize. >> T no she's coming up. >> The survey right now is slated to close May 30th.

101>> Perfect. Okay. Because I know parents often say, "I wish there was a survey." Well, there is one, but if we can get word out that it is out there, please take it when the date is due, that will provide more community feedback. >> Absolutely. That way, it kind of gives us an idea which direction we can start going, what that pulse is. You know, several districts started trying to build up and then several started backing out and so it's kind of this weird flux right now because I think a lot of people um underestimated the difficulty of starting up a program. So, everybody's going to have some sort of flavor and that's why when we get a a consensus or some sort of survey results, we can figure out which is our best path.

102I agree on what you're saying. The courses like health and all those other ones that we do in the summertime for acceleration are really low hanging fruit. That's easy for us to bring in and do ourselves. >> Absolutely. Also, does that bring funds in for us for students that maybe need to take some of those courses? >> It absolutely can for acceleration. You can't do it for you can't charge for like um non acceleration. Does that make sense? >> Okay. On page 21 when we looked at the pigraph there, I >> think you can. Yeah. Seeing that we have those virtualmies that are 1.2%. That is not going to get us back the numbers that we need to keep growing. >> Right. I'm hearing a a lot of um my clients say we're starting a

103virtual program hoping to bring students in, but their neighbor is starting a virtual program and their neighbors and neighbor is starting a virtual program. So I I fear it's going to be a whole lot of trading kids back and forth. >> Okay. Thank you. I do see value in the virtual school for our own students though in that using the high school example we might be dropping German at a particular high school and it's still offered another high school that now gives those students opportunity or um if we can't make BC calculus and we have someone at SAM that really want needs to take BC calculus for um their dream of going to medical school then That's a way we can have continuity of opportunities for our students that might be challenging giving the uh

104enrollment drops that we're seeing. >> Wonder if it's an opportunity too for teachers who during COVID enjoyed teaching virtually or enjoyed that type of classroom experience doing it online versus others who have said, "I never want to do virtual ever again." but meeting needs of teachers who would like to teach a different style and maybe found out that's where their talent really lied was in that type of virtual classroom. >> One of the one of the things that I think we're also interested in exploring right now and this is exploration phase with these things is the ability to to retain students too. >> So if if you have a family that in second grade says I want to actually homeschool my my child right now. What is happening around the state is they will go

105to a homeschool convention and buy curriculum in homeschool and they'll uh be able to do that and in their home and then at some point often what you see with the homeschooling families is a reemergence into public school, charter school or private school because we have the options that they don't have in their home like fine arts options, athletic options and CTE options. And so the the other part that we're really trying to take a look at is that population that we know is growing, but we can't track them very well, the homeschooling population. Is there a way for us to stay connected so they stay quote Arlington ISD, and when they come back, they're going to definitely come back to our school district versus some of the other options that they may have. So

106that's another reason we're talking a little bit about exploring at those lower levels uh lower grade levels too because um some of this is a retention issue. You see this chart in front of us right here and over a number of years like this is this this didn't happen overnight. This has been going on for a number of years and we we have to ask ourselves the question, what would it take to retain people or their connection to Arlington ISD and would that benefit us for enrollment for the future? I did say something to you in the fall when we all met and I um I I have to reiterate it again just because I can't help myself. We can't market ourselves out of this. We have declining birth rates. we have a different educational

107landscape and it's not just marketing that we have to think about. We have to approach this totally differently for the future. >> Thank you for reiterating that Dr. Smith. Uh and that gets in to kind of my next line of questioning Miss P. >> Uh if you could turn to slide 40 and you know these charts were pretty sobering. We've got a lot of facility planning to do. I I don't think there's anyone in this room that would argue that a school that's at less than 50 around 50% capacity is the kind of student experience we want for our students and we've got a lot of tough choices to make and I think so what's next in term of planning facility planning for this reality >> so this is a major piece of the puzzle

108that's why we wanted to have this as a separate workshop for you and to be able to dive in. Obviously, they've done a deep dive and we need our board to know this material inside and out. The next major item for our board to consider is a decision on what you want to do with sixth grade moving forward. Why? You can see by this chart right here, we have underenrolled or underutilized, excuse me, elementary schools right now. And if you end up moving sixth grade up to junior high, that number is going to go even lower. and we have to have that decision as we plan for the future on how we utilize these facilities and you can see similar numbers in some of our junior highs as well. What I would expect now is

109since you have this report and you know that you're going to have to have a discussion on sixth grade moving forward after that decision is made, we will need to kick off a facility planning committee that is actually looking at all of this data and where Arlington ISD wants to go moving forward. At the same time, our leadership team and others have to be uh exploring innovation in our system like we've never explored it before to talk about program offerings. And by January of next year, we we should have or we need to have some planning in front of you all to consider what a reimagining Arlington ISD's use of facilities needs to look like through program options and also through potential combination of schools, consolidation of schools, closing of schools, etc. That's a discussion

110that has to happen in the next eight eight months so that we can get things underway because it doesn't all happen overnight from that point. It's going to be a multi-year process based on the data that POS has laid out here in front of us. >> Uh Miss P, I'm curious. You know, that is a big decision that we have in front of us. Um of all the districts that you've worked with that have rough been in the same situation of us. Maybe they had sixth grade middle school and to consolidate they're considered moving it down or they're in our situation where we're considering moving it up. What what have you seen and what were do you have any insight on the decisions other districts have made regarding that? >> Almost all of our clients

111operate with either an EE5 or a K5 and a 68 model. Um so I haven't seen that well I haven't seen a a situation where we are seeing decline and we're moving the sixth grade up at the same time. Most of the time when I'm dealing with moving the sixth grade to join with the seventh grade, it's because of a facility's reason from growth. And so they have needed to, you know, can build one middle school and that takes the relief. It relieves elementaryaries and it relieves the middle school also by taking seventh and eighth graders and pulling your sixth grade out of your elementary school. >> So um >> that makes sense. you know, that that is the majority of what I see and and by the time you get to this sort of

112stabilization, decline sorts of phase. That's normally the grade group that's already in place. >> Um, but it is always a bit of a question mark. You know, we have we do have some clients that do a 56 and a 78. >> Yeah, we have very few that do a K6. >> Yeah, it we are unique, although not completely unique. There are a lot of school districts or at least districts that have a split of sixth grade in in elementary versus uh middle school or junior high. Um I would just want to look at the numbers and see what's most efficient in terms of consolidating because seems to me it's a lot easier to consolidate a couple of junior highs than it is um elementary schools. So, >> but have you sorry I'm just going to

113jump in. So, have you but the environment where we're seeing widespread decline in enrollment is relatively new, right? >> It is relatively new. Um I like I say I've worked for Arlington for um Frisco ISD since 1999. And so those red map those those decline region 11 maps that I show while you weren't here the very very beginning um shows that the the central portions of the district the urban areas are declining. They're in blue. Fort Worth and Dallas and you guys Dallas had one year here recently where they gained a little bit. Um in the last 20 years those maps have changed marketkedly. It used to be when I began working for Frisco ISD that there were still growth going on in those areas and then a little blue started to occur in the

114in the more central portions of of the state, central, you know, city portions and it has grown outward for sure. >> Yeah, it's pretty much a pattern that we've seen nationwide though where you have larger urban areas and suburban areas that developed fast in the 60s, 70s and 80s. You're seeing that all across the country and we're not I mean we're very much within that pattern, right? >> You are within that pattern certainly for the state. We we really concentrate on the on the state, but we do work heavily in the Houston area. We work heavily in the Austin San Antonio sort of a corridor and yes, that that is what we're seeing everywhere. >> I mean, do you think it's possible on to to the point Mr. Wix just made that perhaps we haven't

115seen districts using grade reconfigurations as a declining mitigation strategy because it's relatively new. the grade configuration. I'm not sure if I if I you know I don't know if I think that that one way or the other is is going to to stop >> not necessarily to stop it but to to address underly utilization of the existing facilities. >> I I do think I I don't know this is you know a little bit out of out of my realm. Um yes it is a situation where we have this this bit of decline and certainly a statewide sort of a decline is very very new that part is very new and they the decline in the central cities is newer. Um, and I think people are trying to figure out how to handle it and they

116have the first time I heard the word marketing from a school district was maybe 10 years ago in the Houston area. Yeah. >> And I thought, oh, marketing, you know, for school district and it was the first time and now I hear it four times every single board meeting, >> right? >> Because it's it's something that's got to go on. Well, because it just what what joged my thought there was something that you said about you've seen districts maybe move a sixth grade up or do something different in a growth scenario, but um you know there's a long history here where we used to have so our junior highs are used to be 789 and then in 1997 we moved 9th grade up to high school and so they've been 78 for a long time

117but the idea of moving um sixth grade up actually did come up in a in a phase when we were still somewhat in a growth scenario about I can't remember if it was 12 13 14 years ago. the district did look at it and at the time we had significantly more students and so we were not going to be able to to make that move without expanding a significant number. The junior highs was kind of shelved. Um and so my thought is is if we've seen that in the growth scenario that moving a grade might be used as a strategy to address in that instance overutilization. Is it just too soon to say that moving grades can be used as a strategy to mitigate underutilization going forward? It's possible, but in this situation, we're showing

118underutilization at all three levels. >> Right. >> I I did a very related question. So we have somewhat recently about a month ago had a report from our our other demographer Zonda uh your competitor um I assume and uh they had on their charts a distinction between um design capacity and functional capacity and and and we also looked at utilization numbers but when you're using capacity and utilization here is that based on design capacity or functional >> that is the functional capacity if I am remembering because we had we were given a couple of different um numbers And I I believe that these are the functional capacities that came from the facility study >> as opposed to ones that have been being used in the past. >> So it's not just absolute capacity. >> Right.

119Right. Right. Functional capacity. >> Okay. Good. Okay. Thank you. That's what I have right now. >> What do you see as far as leaving prek through six then do a 7 8 9 and then 10 11 12? Does that shift anything? Are you seeing anything with that? >> Well, the the underutilization, like I said, is occurring at all three grade levels. And so, from my sort of a standpoint, I would look more at which of these facilities are you wanting to and needing to keep. Um, I know the 789 I went to a junior high that was 89, you know, and and so I understand that. And we used to do quite a bit of study, and I'm talking way back here, something well before Caroline's time. We used to do study of exactly that

120sort of a thing. >> And so most of from my understanding and this is not my area of expertise because I'm not an educator. Um but from my understanding the the grade levels were put in place with the 9 10 112 because 9th graders if they're not part of the 10 112 you know they are they are those are high school credits that they've got to have to get into college. And do they realize that yet >> about how important that is? And is there anything that's anchoring them to stay and be interested in all of that? Some of these things that you might get if you were at the high school as opposed to with an eighth grader or a seventh grader that's in a different spot. Similar sort of thing with the sixth

121grade. And that was always the question. Where are we going to put the sixth graders? It's rarely the fifth graders. It's rarely the seventh graders. it's the sixth graders because there's, you know, some of your sixth graders are three and a half feet tall and some are 6'4. And so, um, those were always educational sorts of of things. Do we want those kids to go on and be able to play the football and whatever's in middle school? Um, probably more so than from a facility standpoint. Of >> course, I I don't know that ninth graders in high school even realize about the credits, >> right? >> They they still don't get it, you know. And I know um a district that I had worked in many many years ago, they had a ninth grade center

122and it was just ninth graders. >> And I think that worked well. It gave them time to grow up. They didn't feel the pressures of high school, but they weren't down with the junior high kids either. >> But that was an interesting model and I thought it worked well. >> I've been told that too that it was very successful in in some situations, especially if it was attached to nearby adjacent across the street from. But if you had to get on a bus to go to track practice, then it was far less successful. >> Right. Thank you. >> Does anyone else have any feedback, comments? >> I just to say this was an awesome report. I really appreciated it. >> Thank you. >> Very in-depth. >> Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate you compiling the binders

123for us because I know that this is going to be um foundational for us and that we will go back and refer back to this multiple times throughout the next >> certain maps. You have big maps if we have 10 10 or 12 of them. >> I'm going to clear a wall in my office. >> Do it. Absolutely. That's why they're here. >> That's incredible. Thank you guys for being here. We appreciate it. >> Absolutely. Um, if there are no other questions, um, we are going to go ahead and recess at 7:05 p.m. and return for the second portion of our workshop in room 401 as we discuss the compos compensation plan development. >> Do you want these to come up with us? Yes. >> Are you okay if I can I leave my binder?

124Everybody up. D. Get out. We got everybody down. down. Fire again. D D. Hey, hey, hey. Down. Heat. Hey. Hey. Hey. I don't even want Heat. big. device. >> Okay. >> No, that's my mint. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Do you want to go? >> I mean, >> all right, y'all. We're getting real. >> When we were downstairs, she was like 12 minutes away and So she should be >> okay. >> So the time is 7:18 p.m. and we are now back from recess. Um our last topic for the workshop tonight is compensation plan development report. >> So I want to introduce you all know Holly um and Holly has a guest here tonight. We're uh we are doing this as a workshop this evening because it's a really critical time. We need your input as

125a board. Um, as you know, we're getting to budget development finalization here in the next month where you have to adopt a budget, but one of the key things is the compensation plan and the development of that budget. So, with Holly, with uh Scott, with our guest Keith, uh from TASBY here tonight, with Alberto, we have uh some presentation pieces for you, but also some discussion pieces that we're going to be going through to gather your input so that we can give you a a thoughtful and pointed recommendation as we come back to you here in beginning of June with our compensation plan. >> Holly, good evening, trustees. Dr. Thank you for having us. I have Keith McLemore. He'll introduce himself in a minute. But as Dr. Smith shared with you tonight, we're here to

126review um compensation, some healthcare considerations for the 267 20 26 27 school year that's approaching us um to maximize our talent and resources. And I'm going to hand it over to Keith. He's going to do the first portion of the presentation and then I'll do the second portion. Keith, >> thank you. this trust to be here. I've been here before, but the larger format, so I'm going to be here in a smaller setting, so I don't need my glasses. I'm a I've been a TABY 10 years. I'm a compensation and HR consultant, and I've had the pleasure of working with your district, I think, three years now. And I primarily do compensation reviews and market research and other things. But we're going to just show you the results of the work we did this year.

127First off, just want to show you the market districts. We try to keep these very similar from year to year just so we're not, you know, chasing one goal one year and then, you know, the bar moves if we added too many other districts. But as you can see uh one district for Worth did not do it's our survey where we get the the line share of the data for these projects and uh but we did bring in the teacher hiring schedule so we can have that to compare with the other districts for teacher comparisons and we do bring in private sector data especially in this area and other urban districts like uh the Houston area, San Antonio etc. you know people can we could be a custodian here they can go do the same

128in the private sector a diesel mechanic an accountant speech language pathologist etc. So we bring in uh we we either sometimes we average data with these private sector data sources comp analyst and pay factors by pay scale or if we uh don't have our survey um the locksmith is not one that comes to mind we don't survey for that but we want to get that data so we can use uh that comes from the uh local Fort Worth metro area. We'll start off talking about teachers just briefly with the the history, the experience um data that you can see here, snapshot in time data. This is does change a little from year to year. But the main takeaways for me is that the blue pie slide shows where 12% of your total teacher population had

129zero years of prior teaching experience. And the other notable thing is or thing worth pointing out is the green pie slice. represents teachers with 6 to 10 years of experience. Uh not always in urban districts. It's this is a little bit more common that it's past the 6:00 if you imagine it like a clock, but you know, typically we see that about the 6:00 r. It's a little on the the less experienced side, but that's a much more common trend the last few years. New hired newly hired teachers, there were 411 included in the data set. And you can see again that blue pie slice about 39% or 159 had zero years of prior experience but the rest of the pie chart is uh you know a good distribution of experience. Um so you are

130doing a good job hiring multiple levels of experience. So this graphic here is is really helpful. We're we're looking at the 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 benchmark your year benchmark years of uh your that peer district list of their hiring schedules versus Arlington ISDs. Orange is where your hiring schedule is at. Blue is the the local market median. And after uh House Bill two and teacher with the teacher retention aotment u because all of y'all all those peers are over 5,000 you know you did see a big spike at year five because districts that are smaller than 5,000 got $8,000 for a teacher with that much experience or more and districts with more than 5,000 it was 5,000 but um so pretty much you've maintained your your very good market position here which are

131great across all levels survey levels experience. This is the data that drives that graphic and um can't really do pointers anymore like did but that these are the dollar differences from market which I think are pretty telling versus the market comparisons because that can be a little nebulous unless you work at the data like I do all the time. You can see anywhere, you know, from euro zero, you go about $2,800 above market all the way up to year 20 about just under $4,200 above market there. The other data point is average salary comparison. You're about 30 over $3,600 above what the the peer group is um paying on average. So looking strong across all of those areas. for benchmarks. You're uh this isn't looking at all the stipens, just the ones that are more

132common for teacher add-ons and to differentiate pay for areas like bilingual, special education, etc. But the Arlington data points represented here. The market is here and the number of districts reported are here. And the district is leading your district is leading the market in all of these except for special education high needs. high needs being where um you know it could be a self-contained environment diaper might be going on other other high needs type situations and so that is one area that it is surprising that y'all are still in the $3500 range for the market because other places in the state I've seen four or $5,000 only I can imagine it would catch up here at some point but you are high market $500 there so that might be a consideration to uh maybe get

133that up to market your at market or above market follow the other sections shown here. Looking at the non-teer pay groups this is uh on the far left you can see the pay group u title central administration uh for business side of of the district central administration for uh instruction or education. Then you have campus administration which are principles, assistant principles, professional um doing you know professionals that are exempt jobs doing business type things functions, professionals doing instruction functions or exempt jobs and their technology is down there as well. You can see the employee pay compared to market um as a percentage and if uh you know these are all great comparisons either approaching market for technology uh up to 12% above which is really rare air for your principles and and assistant principles. House

134Bill two with that TRA money being injected and an average teacher salary 7 and a half% statewide many districts are struggling to maintain competitive pay uh for these teacher career pathway type positions especially counselors and those principles. So kudos to y'all for being able to maintain your your um market position there. Technology is notoriously difficult for public sector to keep up with private sector. So actually being % off is really good in my opinion. Um, and you can see the pay grade midpoints that uh how they compare market because the raises are calculated off of those midpoints. Uh, it's it's important that these are market competitive to see that that the district's pay structures for these uh job families are in good shape there as well. Benchmarks are the number of jobs that were included

135for each group that were that we found a bench benchmark for are the the the non-exempt hourly type jobs of families. We have the educational aids, administrative support, it's like clerical, payroll, um purchasing those those sorts of positions. Um and then administrative assistance and auxiliary going to be bus driver custodial custodial child nutrition etc. And employee paying compared to market you can see aids are are you know have a nice lead on the market there and that's really good considering how many other opportunities there are for those people those same qualifications to go make money or go earn a living somewhere else. So that's a really good uh data point. So you can see you're 101% of market for the other two families. The pay grade midpoints are also all at above market and the

136pay grade minimums which are really key not only for teachers but for these jobs because that's what you're you know looking for a job. That's what I see is that starting bus driver rate typically right and so it's uh you are in good shape there for those minimums and it's rare that I have so many posit everything's in the positive. This is really this is good news. This is good news. Uh considerations um that we're putting out um are are pretty similar from year to year, but number one would be there are three options we put out there, three models to consider. One is a 2% increase model for all job groups. And that's that's when I say 2% it's not the budget impact. It's what the, you know, like if you get a 2%

137pay increase or 3% for model 2 or 4%. Um, and that that's exclusives exclusive of the recommended adjustments. And for teacher and support staff structures, uh, GPI and support staff here being um, jobs that are teacher adjacent that are exempt. I'm not talking about like u those administrative support or instructional aid type jobs, but the general pay increase or GPI is calculated as a percentage of the market median teacher salary. And this is a marketbased pay system. So that's why it's done that way for for teacher and teacher aligned jobs and it got cut off. I apologize for that bullet drifting down. The other one says for for the non-teer groups basically uh the general pay increase is calculated as a percentage of their each employees pay grade midpoint and go with the rest of

138that. So other considerations the uh providing adjustments to address market differences and maintaining equity and one of those is on the teacher hiring schedule in order to comply with u the regulations or the I guess it's the law the teacher retention a lotment stipulations about making 2500 a year three and four teacher has to make at least 2500 more than they would have or did inh this district two years years ago or 2425 and for year five they have to make 5 thou at least 5,000 more uh than they would have or did in 2425. So there are some additional adjustments for to comply with that on your hiring schedule and we don't just want to get any anyone who is below the the minimum the pay grade minimum up to that minimum. We want

139to get them slightly above that. That's why this is the 1% above minimum. uh there are some adjustments needed for that. Strategic adjustments basically look at individuals who are low in their pay grade uh even after any other increases or adjustments and because they're really low in their pay grade that is they're low to market. So there's a 1% of additional 1% of midpoint additional adjustment is is calculated for people who meet that criterion. And the cost models, model one is um going to be uh 10 10.9 million and it's a 2.1% budget impact. And if you follow these, these are these adjustments I was speaking to uh for adjustments to minimum um and strategic adjustments across those pay groups. And you can see the general pay increase is is a little below even though

140we're calling this a 2% level because the district has competitive pay and you're calculating them off of the market the midpoints. The general pay increase is a 1.9% budget impact. I get asked about that. So just get out in front of it sometimes. If you're a banking market that would probably be like 2.2% budget impact. So that's a good thing about staying market competitive. One of the good things and model 2 is a 3% which would be 15 it's about 15.6 million dollar is 3% budget impact and you might notice that these adjustment costs go down as the general pay increase gets stronger and model 3 the 4% we're looking at or the district looking at 20.8 million of our 4%. >> Thank you. All right. So to continue the presentation, um I show this

141to you every time. This is our UEA um teachers association salary comparison. Arlington ISD continuously year-over-year is on, you know, it's on on top, which um was, you know, thanks to the school board um increases over the past few years. We appreciate it. Um and you can see it's it's it's paying off um our employees. And then um this is some information that I've gathered to date. I'm still monitoring what's being shared um in the DFW, but these are the districts that are in our local market. Those are those districts that Keith was talking about earlier. Um and so I wanted just to share the raises that they've announced so far. So we've got Dallas ISD who's announced a 5% teacher raise with a teacher starting salary of 68,000 and then a 2% raise, 2%

142midpoint raise for all their other staff. Fort Worth has also announced a 5% raise. They have not highlighted their teacher starting salary outside of their new uh elevate campus is what I'm I believe they're calling it. But um just looking at what that raises, I'm estimating it to be about 67,725. Um and then the Elevate campuses starting salary, that's that new model that they're doing is $88,000. Garland has um announced a 4% teacher raise uh which puts their their teacher starting salary to 63,000 and 4% midpoint raise for all of their staff. Lewisville ISTD varies and I made notes over here to the side because it's a little complex what they're doing. Um but they're doing different raises for different years of experience for their teachers with a starting salary of 64250 and then a

1433% midpoint raise for the remainder. is 2% for both teacher and for their staff. The starting salary of 64 and then same for Richardson ISD except they are doing a 3% raise for the paras and their auxiliary. We do have eight market districts um to date that have not announced raises but I'm continuing to monitor that. Um, just so you're aware, as of right now, our teacher starting salary for the 2526 school year is 66,100. We've been talking about healthcare over the past several months. Some of these things I've shared with you, but just to highlight them again, um, we, you know, uh, trustees, you approved a $33 per employee per month increase to our healthcare contribution. Um, when you did that, we see an increase in our employees uh enroll about 300 additional employees

144enrolled this year. So I I do believe that it does have something to do with that increase. We appreciate that. Um UEA has us um ranked number 19 out of 40. If you were to pull the UEA comparison for healthcare, we actually look lower, but they made a note that they don't include our wellness. So I like to include our wellness as a contribution because we offer it to all of our employees. And so that would rank us number 19 out of 40 um in that medical UEA contribution list. I did share with you on the April 9th meeting that uh we don't quite compare with private sector in our healthcare contribution. Um and so if we wanted to increase our healthcare contribution um to align with that it would need to be about $125

145per employee per month which is $7.2 million a year. That's a lot of money, but I wanted to make sure I shared that with you. Uh TRS sent out some information recently and they did an analysis and they said for every $10 that an employer contributes, they see an additional 1% in um participants, which I found very interesting because we did the $33 and we added about 300 employees. Um so there's also um we we shared with you that we were cons was considering adding us to a pilot and I'm excited to say that that's happening. Um we are the only district in region 11 that is part of that pilot. We had several districts call us. They're like, "How did you get into the pilot? We want to get into the pilot. We're, you

146know, so they were really um excited for us and they want to participate." It's us and region 4. The whole region 4 is in the pilot. And so what the pilot is for us is a 2% difference just for the primary. It's not a 2% for these. And so that's why you see an 8% adjustment and 11% but it's 2%. Um, however, even though we s we're seeing a 2% um reduction in those premiums, we're still seeing an increase of 8%. So, our employees are going to see uh employee only are going to see a $46 increase per month. I will share that the Tiascare primary is our most utilized plan. Um, we we we see employees that continuously leave HD and go into the primary. Um, but it is our most utilized plan. So

147we will have some cost savings there on your table. I did leave you what that looks like. There is a tiered approach that our employees not only can save some money with the difference between the 2% but um the the model is basically trying to incentivize our employees to use healthcare providers that are more cost effective which will which is a claims reduction strategy that TRS is trying to do to see if it would work. Then they'll look at implementing it around the state if it works. So there's going to be some co-ay plans for our employees to select uh which healthcare provider they want to go to. So not only will they be paying a little bit less than our other districts in region 11, but they'll also have the option of paying a

148little bit less when they visit the doctor. Um and those options, those tiered options are not available for the other districts in region 11. So um and then uh I've listed our healthcare contributions down here. Um for our pair professionals on auxiliary, we currently to 365 with wellness and 350 per month with wellness for our professionals. Um, we've talked about the clinic uh at the last meeting and I brought a different clinic to you last time than I'm bringing to you this time just to kind of highlight we have some options. This is a clinic called Next Level. I do want to preface that they're not here in the DFW today. They did say if that was something that we were interested in, they could realistically be here around January 2027. they would look at

149purchasing some ex existing clinics and then opening here. I asked them what would that look like and they said that they would get a list of all the zip codes to see exactly where our employees are positioned and look for some clinics that are kind of dispersed around. Um and they would they would consider about two or three and then kind of grow from there if need be. Um but as part of that clinic there is urgent care, primary care and preventative care. There's also things like coaching um for emotional wellness and there's also tele medicine and virtual visits which are really nice because maybe you have the snipples and you're at work you can actually set up a tele health visit right there get your medication. They also do on-site labs, which is nice

150because it's not fun to like go to your doctor and they're like, "Oh, now you need to go over here and do labs." They'll do them right there, which is time time effective, as well as immunizations, the flu shots or um co 19 vaccines, whatever they need. They also offer weight loss solutions and they have a really nice convenient app. One of the things on their app is I haven't tested it myself, but you can actually put your face up to the app and it'll actually read like your blood pressure. Um, and so it's kind of neat. Um, another really good thing about this. >> That's scary. That's not neat. >> I like I'd like to try it. Is it because your eyes twitching? >> No. So, I just was like, "Wow, that's really neat."

151So, you know, I guess if you're feeling anxious that day, you can put your face up to your camera and kind of see where you're at. But, um, one really cool thing about this is it would be no cost to our employees when they visit the doctor. So they can show up and they told me it could be every day for the whole month. I don't know why employee would do that, but they could. Every day they could show up and they would not have to pay a penny. And as part of that, they also don't have to run our our um health insurance cards. So none of these goes towards any of our claims. And if you remember, we've talked repetitively over the years about our claims data. Um we were at 122%. We

152did some claims data reporting recently and we're now at 115. have seen some improvement, but uh this could be a strategy to offset some improvement. This was shared with me. This is from another district. This is from a smaller district, but I just kind of wanted to highlight um the total employee employer service value. Um that they went and they utilized $4.5 million at the clinic. The district was paying $1.4 4 million for their employees to use the clinic and then because of that they offseted $3 million in claims that instead of going to the plan to the insurance plan they were able to offset for this model here for this district. I don't know which district it is just to be transparent. Um their their uh per month pricing is 34.25 for the employee

153only cost and then there's options to add the spouse or dependence or the plus all dependence. um for that. And then at the table, I left the references. I've linked them into the presentation, but they're also at the table if you wish to read them. These are references from some of the other districts that use them around uh the Houston area, San Antonio area, and they're also expanding to Corpus Christi. And they also work with other with other uh you know, other organizations outside of school districts. So, they're not just school districts only. But this is just um another option that we could consider. Um last For our total compensation and benefits considerations, Keith talked about how we're $500 below market for our special ed teachers. I know how important it is to have our

154special ed teachers in our classroom. So, I wanted to provide an option here. If we wanted to become market competitive, get back to that market value. At $500 would be $170,000 annually. If we wanted to be even more competitive, $1,000 would be $335,000 annually. And that's for our special ed specialized programs like C's, ALE, ISB. Um, and so that's just some options to consider. We also have uh the cost estimates Keith talked about earlier, but I wanted to highlight what those starting salaries would be because we like to know what our starting salaries would be. And remember, I just shared with you that right now today we're at 66,100. A 2% increase of our teachers would be 67,000. a 3% increase would be 677 and then our 4% increase would be 685 and that's for

155teachers. Now the numbers are would be all across the board raises but the starting salary there is unique for the teachers and then earlier I shared with you the um private sector where we lag in the private sector is $125. So there's a couple of considerations. Um we could consider increasing what we could advertise it as increasing the healthcare contribution but putting that towards the clinic and that would be $34.25 per month and that would be about $2 million for our medically enrolled employees. We want to incentivize our medically enrolled employees but we can certainly provide an option for the rest of our employees to also pay the 3425 and buy up for their their spouse independence if they choose to do so. And then if we wanted to target the 50% private sector, which

156is 6250, if we did half of that of the 125, we also could consider adding another 28.25. The two combined is 6250 and that would be another 1.6 million. So before I hand it off to Nberto, is there any questions that you have for Keith or for myself? I'll be sticking around for additional questions. I just wanted to if there's anything you have for Keith. >> Do you know the districts that have opted into the clinic model? Do you know how they arrange it between folks who are already on the healthcare plan versus folks who are not? Do they typically only offer it? Do the ones who are on the plan or do they offer everybody? >> It depends. Like for example, Denton ISD has an like on-site clinic that they manage themselves. They they

157hire their own physician. They they do their own thing and they allow that for all the employees any all their employees and the employees dependents can come. Um I don't know what their what they pay but I do know that they use their insurance card as part of that. Um I know Mackenzie um Moske ISD they use that model that I shared last time and it's on staff. Um, and I do believe that they allow for all employees, but whether they're paying for their medically enrolled, I don't know. But I have talked to some other uh the districts that I talked to that are on these um references, they're doing the model that I was um you know, sharing with you to consider about using it for our medically enrolled because the goal is to

158do a claims reduction strategy. And if we're if we're providing the option to all of our employees in in paying for all then we're not incentivizing our employees to jump into our plan because we actually have a lot of in theory there's a lot of healthy employees are like I don't need healthcare so I'm not going to get onto our plan. If we can incentivize them by saying hey we have this clinic model they might be willing to come onto the plan and then that's also kind of a co-artner at reduction strategy at the same time. >> Great question. All right. So, I'm going to hand it off to Nberto and if you have any more questions, I'll be available as well. >> Thank you. >> Good evening, everybody. So, this next part is the

159fundamental in front of you on your devices. You have an Excel spreadsheet. It is locked. So, you can only access what is in blue. So, I'm going to just kind of do a quick summary of how the data runs. Column A is kind of a description and it's laid out in the format of your statement of revenues and expenditures and changes in fund buttons. So you'll see revenues and then you see expenditures and you see the net between both and then you see a section below other financing sources and then below you have net changes in funds. The very bottom is a separate little table. This is what I've shown in the previous presentation and it shows the days of expenditure in terms of fund balance. So that's kind of the way to read the

160data from the top to the bottom. Column B is last year's actuals. Column C is this year's amended. Column E is an example. If nothing changes, if enrollment is the same, if all costs are the same, it is a static it is a static comparison. So that shows you at the very bottom what the impact of the deficit would do to fund balance. At the very bottom under column C highlighted in yellow we have about 137 days of fund balance based on amended data. If nothing is if nothing changes column E that result decreases to about 101 days with no changes. Column G now shows the target KPM. These were the reductions to achieve the KPM. This is reflected. I'm going to jump over to the last column in in column Q. So if you

161go to column Q, you see total expenditures there. They are lower now. They're at 657 million instead of the 681 million found on column E. That is the impact of the KPM. So because of that, if you go down to the very bottom, highlighted in yellow, you see 118 days, right? So instead of going from 137 days under column C to 101 days, if nothing if no changes had been made, we're actually at 118 with changes. Now the columns in between, columns H, I, K, N, and O, these are the ones that have the blue cells. So these are the columns that can be edited. To the right hand side of this, you'll see a table which shows the figures that we just presented by Tazby and by so it shows the 2% consideration, the

1623% consideration and the 4% consideration by employe and then it shows the change the benefit change in terms of the increased contribution and the clinical level. So everything they just shared here is on your calculator. So the the next section of this what you all can do in in groups in your tables you can kind of go and change different figures on the calculator. So if you hover over a blue cell and you click on it a little dropown should appear and you'll have four options. you'll have a zero and then three different numbers which correspond to 2% 3% or 4%. Pay rates. So once you go in and you try different models, you'll see at the very bottom on your column Q, you'll see that fund balance number change based on the inputs that

163you decide. Is there any questions on this before? So what we would ask you to do is we have the opportunity to play with this a little bit so you can see impacts as you're considering some of these options. You can see impacts and over in column Q it tells you impact on budget. Right? So we just went through a reorganization that led to $23 million in savings for next year. Anything that we add is going to add on top of what we've saved right now. So eliminate some of the savings. But we have to make a decision coming up about what you're interested in for the next uh round of of compensation plan. So this gives us the ability to say based on uh this calculation tonight and your input tonight, we have a

164presentation that we can give to you on Thursday the 4th. Jennifer, Scott, and I all have just a few questions for you uh in table groups after that, after you play with some things so that we can gather some input from you and we'll summarize at the end. Uh and then we'll be able to present to you based on this input on Janu or on January 4th, on June the 4th, not January 4th, June 4th, um what your what your thinking and what we would propose for these these races. Okay. calculator trying to use. >> Alberto, will you talk real quickly if what would what would a group do if say they wanted to talk about 1%. >> So if the group wanted 1%, we don't have that one called out within the drop downs.

165We would just estimate that it would be about half of the we didn't call it out on here because it wasn't on >> and we could just type it in manually. I would have to mark it for you. >> The password is NR equals funniest. >> There's a joke going around who's the funniest in the central office and he thinks he is. >> I heard you emphasize the word fun and fun balance. >> Thank you. >> Now you're picking up on deberto. There we go. So, so trustees, what we'd ask is ask Nberto questions, Scott questions. Holly's here too. Ask ask questions. Play with the tools some. In a few minutes, Jennifer, Scott, and I will get us in some table groups and try and get some input from you and go from there. >>

166Can I ask one more question before we get started? So, the KPM that's reflected on here is is the 23.3 in expenditure reductions that was effectuated by the organiz reorganization that just happened. Right. Correct. >> And that >> in what? >> And my zero based budget 2.7 million is a zero based budget. >> Okay. So in total 23.3 and that KPM is a three-year KPM to reduce the structural deficit. >> That was 23 million three years in a row to get to the same >> we would not. So essentially to to kind of go on my M way though, anything that we've add like makes the future KPM if we're going to eliminate the deficit have to go up, right? We can't continue to do 23.3 each year for three years add stuff on to

167and achieve the KPM. >> Just make sure >> unfortunately the answer is you are correct. And because if you look at columns B and C, there's a row transfers in 43 million 57. That is the amount that is sitting in dollar that was built out when surpluses would be savings. So because of that the next column colony is is zero. So at this point it wouldn't exactly be she told us >> whatever we have makes it harder to achieve the KP in the future. >> Yes. >> And as of right now we know that we have the 23 and 23 that we still have to cut but we don't know how and where it's coming from. >> Correct. Well, I mean, we're planning as an administrative team, but the the finalization of that is I

168hate to say it like this, but I'm going to say it like this. The number of people versus pay is where we are. That's a fact. So you all know the graph that Roberto has shared with you on how we're staffed across the metro clin and according to comparison districts. We have higher pay and we have more staff and you can't do that and live within a budget. So it's going to be up to the board on how we start to address these things moving forward. >> When we get into table groups are we going to talk about because I know you got Is there a way to look at five year to 30 year or are we still going to consider zero to 30? >> We are we are absolutely open to anything the

169board wants to do regarding compensation on this. So yeah, if you if the board says hey we need a different option on this, this is the time we need that. That's what we're we're trying to avoid coming to you on January 4th and you saying this doesn't meet our target at all. We need something different because that messes up the budget process. So tonight's the night to nail those things down and what you need and our job is to then present you a a final comp plan on January. >> I almost keep saying January. I don't know why. >> So to put it simply, any increase means a loss of >> if you want us to have uh reduce a budget deficit. Absolutely. >> And we have no choice but to reduce a budget deficit.

170So I I u >> Is that putting it too bluntly? >> No. >> Or too simply? >> No. I think that we we have to address a budget deficit. I mean there's only so much money that is there and you don't want to be one of the districts that's in the headlines right now. I don't think um in Arlington ISD. So we've had a good number of years where we've invested in salaries and benefits and uh at the same time we had very level staffing as we were declining enrollment and now the board wants us to address that budget deficit. There's decisions made >> that raises me positions >> would cutting up positions be across the board from administration all the way down >> it's going to look very different I You can only cut

171so many principles. >> I mean, that's the way it goes. We have far more positions in the district to cut than we do others. So, when you say across the board, everything has to be looked at just as it just >> away. How can I help? pictures. Everything was good. >> Everything was really sir. Okay, I see. >> Then I It's cold in here. Is that the way that works? >> You're good. >> And then the health That is our tradition. That's why we're doing it this way is we need direction from y'all before. We want you to see we want to be able to get the target number allow you to put in 1% number >> or we can just divide the number two >> but you still You still can't even put it

172in the >> Can I have your clicker real quick? Thank you, sir. >> What I can't present and you all Wait, actually One person options no change at all. What rank order do you want? Like what are the things that you want? And then we're gonna ask you if you focus at all. And then if there's anything that we should say absolutely not that we're not interested >> starting Yeah. >> And that's not going away. No matter what we do. So with that scenario without I'm trying to see what I have. >> I've got one. >> We unlock I'll let you be the one. >> It's not going to mess the whole thing. >> Okay, let's go. >> What are you doing? Yeah, I think I think They are 11%. We want more healthy people.

173What's that? The When Melanie asked that earlier, it's hard because Majority of our people Teachers change our ranking. Do you want to see >> three? She did >> shorten% It actually is not You know what's your >> right Yes. So this is where we're still $20. just looks really either number of people invest So I say benefits clinic. $22. 250,000 What is that clinicion? What is it? This is on their Holly, you come talk to us a little bit about the bottle. >> Sorry behind you. employees already spous. I heard you say >> that $34 million. 3425 a month addition members on 20ucks just to add children. Let me grab my calculator. >> Another million. question. We had an option. I did not have our medical incentive to get into our health. >> That's correct.

174adds either we'll come back to what you want to clinic. Here we go. last for Oh, I know. based on your consideration. educational. >> Okay. The work is very different. >> Get something. without teachers and like traditionally It just looked like it was based on >> I know that come with the really hard And this shows us that >> I'm like it's not the kind of comfort Now we need to skip that and go to the next And then there should Okay. So, let me put this in here. How much? >> No, not at all. >> That's what our staff No. >> Is that okay to use? >> Well, I want to >> I need you to walk in. I knew where I know where you grew up. >> Oh, I'm sorry. We're calibrating. Okay.

175Roberto 335,000,000 Nick, what do we say to the clinic? Okay, in your small groups, let's get to your rank order, please, and try and uh enter into the calculator what you would have for budget implications. I could tell this group over they were consolidating schools. So >> I've heard You made me so uncomfortable. >> You said twobody else. I thought I would So, how would you feel? >> I love >> just the brightness. >> This is a calculator. 115 days >> and then they go like this >> 15 again. Something's not right. small amount but it's not changing. >> So basically it's less than a day. >> Okay, Sarah, >> I want to make sure we're on the same page before we share that. Here's what I put in here. Are you still >> shopping?

176So this is the decision. >> Do you want to go to number three? >> Compbody that's already enrolled in our medical plan. Holly, what is the proposed increase in the benefits? >> I got back that you had that under >> I don't understand that. >> No, there's two pieces. So, it's 342 and then consider 2825 employ. >> So, they're not both. That's correct. >> So, this would be an additional 28 bucks a month per employee and that is $1.6 million. So that would be for >> just Yeah. I don't know if there's >> also Oh, is that good? I still need to hear. >> No, no, no. >> Hey, you know, we actually need a like a reasonable thing to present to you, too. >> I'm worried about this this grouping right now because We're

177depressed over here. >> Thank you, Larry. >> Save the district. >> Who wants to share first? >> Larry does. Actually, I think Scott sharing. >> Yeah, Scott. >> Okay. So, the way we prioritized this was uh teachers increase, all others increase, bed stipen, and then clinic, but all four of those didn't make the list. Um, and 2% was the recommendation for teachers, 1% was the recommendation for all others, including the spent stipen at the market rate, which is the 170 that's in there, raising $3,3500 and the clinic funding as suggested that actually is a total cost of 10.5 million and it leaves your fund balance at 110 days. >> Sure. So prioritize the clinic model as number one raises as number two and number three and then the benefits to number four but we specifically

178wanted to have the benefits added to wellness instead of just added to the general um for raises. We had some conversations about differentiating raises, not based on roles, but for teachers specifically based on numbers of years experience. And so, do you do something different for a zero year teacher than pay for more tenure um teacher? We talked about minimal for our zero teachers and our one to three year maybe minimum for our one to three year teachers and then a little bit more for teachers that's been teaching for more years. Talked about one and a half% for admin and then 2% for everybody else. And question is there anything that shouldn't be on the table? >> We are the outlier. Um our rank order was stipens, clinic, and benefits. Um and 335,000 in stipens, the

179full 2 million in the clinic model, and then debating on the 1.6 for benefits. That concludes our report. >> No reason. >> Just that concludes this report. >> What what we keep coming back to is the phasing out of positions will only escalate and that is really difficult to swallow knowing that we had the teacher retention aotment last year that equated to maybe about 8%. Um, that's not I mean that none of that is what our staff actually deserves, but they also don't deserve to keep like we're now we're we're just now phasing out more positions than we even plan to do because we're giving maybe a 2% raise. That's really just the circumstances. Um, we put stipens first because we absolutely think that we need to put the best teachers um in front of

180our students and all students, but our self-contained special education classrooms. We have a lot of openings there that we're not failing and we need to put qualified educators in those classrooms. And we did talk about the optics of doing away with positions and losing people but then giving raises you know tough >> it's a different and it seems to be a comfort level difference approaches too because I mean several of the districts that were shown up there and that that we've seen in the news that have been giving raises have also been more aggressively Well, we haven't just done the report and they've been aggressively doing it, but also doing races at the same time. So, I can I think we got to talk through like what does it look like for us to just

181say these things are happening, but also we're not going to do any raises in the market where people are doing the employee moves that we're doing are still doing the same. There are also I don't know where I can on that because no one I don't to my knowledge no other district has done it even the ones who've been aggressively staff >> and the hard part for us was they're also not market leading >> just the fact you you invested over a number of years when they didn't and I I keep going back to Garland Garland's investing 4% now but they're still after a 4% investment $3,000 plus less than our start date teachers. >> So I think that you all did the the work on that prior. So I think that's the that's the

182part that we're struggling with too is that where you invested in the past they weren't invested in that same thing. >> I think we would have to emphasize that >> we've been above these other districts. >> So the the goal was to be able to share these out. Obviously, we're not all on the same page, but we kind of knew we would be either way is to get some input. So, do you as trustees and this is where we need your voice. Do you have any think what things do you need uh as we present a proposal to you on the 4th of January regarding >> Happy New Year. >> It really is. It is a mental block tonight. I apologize. Everybody's a doctor. Now we're >> kidding. >> Now we're skipping six months ahead.

183>> Yep. >> One of the things that you need, and this was part of our point of doing this tonight, we we know we can't make everybody happy. We can't get everybody in this room exactly on the same page right now, but our job is actually to present to you something to vote on on June the 4th. So, what recommendations do you have for us as we're putting this proposal together? >> I mean, Sounds like we're at zero, one or two% on the raises or some combination of one and two for teachers versus others. Or my question is is with the teacher retention a lotment and and where we are in the market, you know, you know, for the teachers we have and employees in general, we still have to face market realities, but we're

184not in a position where I mean, I'm not comfortable. I I was depressed too doing this model, but everything I tried, we ended up below 115 days, which is kind of my bar for the fun balance, and there's just no way to do it. Um, so then it's like, you know, what's it's a tough call to be sensitive to market realities and still have teachers that feel valued and employees that feel valued and be physical responsible at the same time. And so it's it's a very those are two very difficult competing constraints. >> And so how can we be creative to be physical not end up in the news like the districts that end up in the news today? Um and and still have the kind of district that we're proud of. So I I

185would like to see all options from zero to two and combinations thereof and cogent arguments for why we want to do teachers differently from other staff possibly >> but we might not make those as administrators. That's what I'm laying out for you right now is that I think this is a decision board's ultimately going to have to make. We're in this tough spot. You you have a key progress measure for me to do balance our budget and anything that we do is going to take away from that. Um and so we're we're going to present to you some options, but the board's going to ultimately have to come to a decision on those options. Uh and I'll I'll give my recommendations lively that night, but I don't know that that >> I don't know. We're

186a team and I don't know where that really falls. or we decide we got to do it together and have the work over the next year. >> Is there going to be a a recommendation or one of the options with just the K and O columns the the type in >> we can absolutely put one together like we can put a number of options for you all together. Um and ultimately it's going to come down to how the board coaleses around one of those any and be glad to put that together. That's frankly that's what our group planned on was the kind of the KMO. Well, and back to teachers, thinking about the zero or one or 2% raise, whether we did all staff or teachers. If we're phasing out more positions as a result

187of any compensation raise, that is going to impact the the employee satisfaction because more will be put on our teacher shoulders on the dayto-day. the more employees that we have to pay phase out positions for. Typically, most of our employees are teachers and if we even if we do other strategies that are not on the spreadsheet like increase class sizes, all of these things can be cost-saving. But typically a teacher is going to also consider their job satisfaction and how valued they feel and what the what the demand is on the dayto-day on in a very already high stress job, high stakes job instead of just did I get 3% instead of 2%. And I just think that's really important to keep in mind just like the whole picture, not just was it 2% or

1883% this year. And I wish we could do it all. Um, but again, if we did a 4% raise this time, that completely erases the phasing out of the positions we just did. Sorry, the new organization. But the that's not even in addition to all the other things that we want to do and we put as our first priority. So that's really tough. So, what I'm hearing so far is that you would still like to see multiple options. And what that is, I'm hearing a zero% a 0% with columns K, M, and O and a 1% and a 2%. What you want to be able to look at on the fourth, >> but also explain the two in one >> between different job. Okay. other job groups you would put together. So I would keep

189teachers and administrators together or I would keep going to different >> Can I ask a question about is we talked about the years of the years of teachers zero through five and all that. Is there any way to look as a whole. If the bus driver's in here 0 through five or 20 plus, is there a way to look at staff as a whole with tenure? >> I'd have to >> 10 year or 10 year >> tenure >> specifically just people that have been here for a number of years. Let's just focus on. >> So the way that a couple things the way that the compensation u models work today is for years and we've made good progress as you've been here longer you make more money. So and you saw even on the teacher

190graph up there that the five-year increments were very consistent on the line up to the right. The typical breakout when there has been a breakout between we want to give one group one thing and one group another has typically been as straightforward as teachers and non-teers and not differentiating further. The the what um TASB showed us tonight and they help us with every year is they make sure that we're market competitive and it may have gone um too quickly but he was talking about targeted adjustments. Targeted adjustments Casby looks at this, they do it every year, and says, "Hey, these are a little off, and I need to fix these, and these are a little off, and I need to fix these." So, that's built in or baked into the process. If we if the

191modifications happen in any five-year increment or we decide we're going to do this group and not that group, what will happen to that line up to the right is it'll start to look more like a roller coaster and it'll be embedded for perpetuity. Um, and the first year it won't feel too bad, but the second, third years, How come we're doing that? Um, and that's we have had to deal with that in the past. >> I just wonder because we have looked at you say teachers who are 16 plus get XML. Well, what about bus drivers who have been here 16 and do we value them the same way we value? >> That was my just a thought I had. The other thing about teachers that's unique is teachers get credit for any year in

192the state of Texas teaching where I don't know when we look at bus drivers if I had driven a bus in another district and came here I don't know how that works with TRS or any of those kinds of things but um like this isn't just years of experience to >> and I certainly don't need to be diminishing the suggestion I'm just trying to share the context >> I just wanted to ask I appreciate Going back to Jennifer's question on groupings of employees in in our charts and stuff, we had teachers, support staff, administrative professionals, technology, administrative support, educational aids, and auxiliary. Are there any groups that you would say, okay, if you're putting this together and we want to say you want to do 2% for teachers and 1% for everybody else or 3%

193for Are there any groupings of those job groups that you want us to specifically look at? >> I'm okay with just teachers and then everybody else >> on this chart. teachers and administrations, but it's been helpful to have the insights and thoughts to consider as we put together some alternative recommendations for you all to >> sorry trustees. Anything else for us as an administrative team? >> I I just want to say thank you. This was a really useful tool and it put things in all these different scenarios and gave us the on the spot perspective with each scenario and I was surprised what the numbers did in a lot of cases and if we didn't have this side by side um and it you know it updated what the budget implications would be um I

194just don't see how we would have had that same >> so thank you so much this was put a lot of work in this. >> Yes. I love that we got the information up front and then we got to play and see what the budget implications. >> This is a very very useful format for a workshop especially when we're dealing with something with such gravity >> and and that we should never take lightning. So this was a way for us to really dig in and really give it the attention it deserves. So thank you I got something for you afterwards. >> Larry's trying to jump in. >> I'll just wait. >> Will the recommendations show the impact of the deficit and then the fund balance within days? >> Is that possible? >> Yes. >> Oh,

195>> yeah. For June 4th. >> Okay. >> Can we show that? >> Yeah. We'll work together. So we'll have this document I guess a couple different times with the different options. >> Okay. >> And with that I think there was a chart somewhere that I saw that had how our peer group districts how many days come out they vary. So I think we hold the human perspective that in perspective when we look at this number in my mind 109 days it's just days but seeing what others are doing is also >> I think that that's important to Davidson earlier just to be clear our local policy says what for fund balance >> 25 days 25% which is 90 days >> okay >> the first rate for TA is hungers are around 75 days. >> ISD

196start getting in trouble when they're under 50 and they definitely need paper loans when they're at one month. >> But to stay, just to be clear, to stay above our local policy, we need more than 90 days. >> David mentioned 115. like it's better to have more, but also when we compare to some of those other districts, we have to keep in mind what DEA's recommendation is and what our local policies, >> but then also knowing that it's going to take us two more years to >> correct this deficit. And so we're going, oh, well, we're let's let's manage down to 90. Well, that's not going to >> No, that 90 is going to shrink really fast. It accelerates once you go under 90. So >> one question, you said like this is if everything

197stays the same with these formulas. >> Are we going to you know how when we go um like 90 or more days without filling a vacant position, we've been um more timely about phasing those unfilled positions out. Are the is that cadence taken into account with these numbers or are we going to be more aggressive about that moving forward and that would be cost saving and we're not seeing that >> for the purpose of the toll the static example there's just no change >> no change at all >> right for the purpose of next year the idea is to kind of keep that >> keep those positions keep that practice that we have in place for the partners we started doing that earlier in the semester >> okay >> so all of those strategies Remember,

198no matter what you add, we have to still employ those strategies that we employed this last year and more to get the next phase. >> And I do want to throw in disclaimer, right? So the demographer part of the budget parameters that were adopted, we went with the low projection that number that they didn't include anything with vouchers, right? Because that date is early surface. That's the number that HR uses for staffing for teachers as well. Right? So the idea is that we try to have as you lose enrollment, you're losing classroom teachers naturally. Those you want to try to keep together. If one drops faster than the other one, then we have to find that. >> So it is that number is a growing target. Any other questions from trustes numbers different from folks

199tonight? They were about the 10 year I'd have to look at the annual projections. The 10-year projection, excuse me, 10 year projection was about the same. Um the thing that with pasta tonight, they showed you how it could dip a lot lower. That was the thing that I don't think it was really pointed out to us on that. >> Everybody good? Do we need do we need the fun guy to tell a joke before we >> Let's go onion. >> Don't do it to me. >> We we we'd have to um we we would have to earn his respect back with all of you probably that >> put me on. >> So you can >> So just read it out. We're not >> Yeah, we're good. >> Okay. Okay. So, seeing no more discussion or

200jokes, we're going to go ahead and adjourn this workshop at 8:55 p.m. >> Oh, yeah. >> Thank you all. >> This is good stuff.