Arlington ISD Board of Trustees Meeting - April 20, 2023

001foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh foreign [Music] oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign thank you foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign guys foreign [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] all right [Music] foreign [Music] foreign thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign at this time I will convene into Open Session this meeting of the Arlington Independent School District Board of Trustees for April 20th 2023 beginning at 701. members of

002the public May access the meeting via AISD website at www.aisd.net one or more trustee May participate in this meeting via video conference call a quorum of the Board of Trustees will be physically present at the administration building thank you all for joining us this evening our board meetings are open to the public and we welcome everyone and thank you for participating in public education while our meetings are open to the public this is a meeting and we have business to conduct disruptions will not be permitted anyone who disrupts the meeting or speaks when others are speaking may be asked to leave or be escorted out by the security we welcome civil in Civic input but we insist that we remain respectful and civil thank you for your cooperation we will start our meeting with the

003opening ceremony to join Mr will banks in leading us in our pledges I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America that means to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God and indivisible with liberty and justice for all August Texas flag I pledge allegiance to the Texas thank you you may be seated please silence all cell phones and electronic devices to avoid disruptions to those around you and now if you would join me for a moment of silence thank you the first item on our agenda is open foreign for agenda items as stated on the posted agenda members of the public who desire to address the board regarding an item on the agenda are required to register at www.aisd.net board meeting speaker request no later than 3 pm the

004day of the board meeting Miss Benjamin do we have any requesters registered to address the board regarding agenda items no ma'am not regarding agenda items thank you Miss Benjamin next we will consider administrative appointments and ratifications Dr Cavazos thank you president Fowler and I'd like to recommend that the board ratify the appointments of individual discussed in closed session for assistant principal for Jones Academy of Fine Arts and dual language Banks and a second by Mr hips any discussion please vote motion passes in the affirmative thank you president Fowler and this thank yes uh thank you president father I'd like to introduce the assistant principal for uh Jones Emilia Alonso amiria attended and you'll see her bio there University of Texas in El Paso for Bachelor of Arts uh UNT Denton for master of Ed in

005Ed leadership most recently an assistant principal at Peach Elementary has taught fifth grade math and science sixth seventh and 8th math um and in different districts so Emilia congratulations and um best of luck [Applause] next on our agenda are the action items Dr Cavazos action item A is for you I don't want to do this consent action item a consider superintendent retirement agreement and recognition do I have a motion thank you president Fowler the boards received the voluntary retirement agreement and reviewed it and at this time I would move to accept the voluntary retirement agreement as proposed and to recognize Dr cavazos's service to the AISD at his retirement celebration as discussed in the closed meeting second we have a motion by Mr Chapa and a second by Miss Mays we have to vote please

006vote it passes affirmative action item B is to consider changes in the board handbook you president Fowler and this went through our governance committee so I'll pass it to Mr Chapa thank you Dr Cavazos and I will in turn pass it to you for presentation I will say that uh just as back by way of background the governance committee annually reviews the the board handbook and continually refines it and um would like to thank the members of the governance committee for the hard work this year but also miss McMurray took the laboring or on this year's Edition and so I will let her do the presentation thank you president Fowler Mr Choppa um I would like to motion to approve the board handbook as presented by second I have a motion for Miss McMorrow and

007a second for Mr will Banks any discussion please vote motion passes in the affirmative we now move on to our first discussion item Dr Cavazos thank you president Fowler and tonight we bring a discussion item for our financial 2223 Financial update as well as 2324 preliminary and that's a key word it's a it's a view forward for our budget update for the 2324 school year still a lot of variables there but it that it would be important uh to review that with the board tonight uh so I will ask Miss Moss to start us off our interest in trustees again typically every board meeting we bring you a brief update of the current New Year's finances and I'll do that tonight and then we have Miss Martin here who will talk about our next year's

008budget development so this is a familiar screen for you shows the finance department items that are in the consent agenda the budget amendment amendment is as of April 2023 the financial report and the monthly investment report or as of February 2023. this slide shows in the highlights of our amendments by the board up to tonight when we're asking you to amend it through April the changes are a positive amount of 19 million dollars for the year to date that includes the attendance rate we've seen a slight increase in the attendance rate from budget we've talked to you about the taxable value increase that we've had we've adjusted the budget for that we've also adjusted it if you recall for sr2 funding the 14 million dollars that we supplanted and tonight's budget amendment includes a payroll

009savings we've talked about that on several occasions we have decided to go ahead and amend it through January of 2023 based on our estimate of what our vacant positions are saving us so far we will continue to monitor that and our open positions and we'll bring another amendment probably the final budget amendment we will include that amount and so typically we break this down for you our general operating budget and our capital projects budgets both have cross-functional changes there's no change or we're not asking you to amend The Debt Service budget or the Child Nutrition budget for the general operating budget Revenue increases we have done a small adjustment to the investment income we've amended that prior to this amendment but we're doing another adjustment prior year state revenue we're amending that by about 1.6

010million that's a result of the property value audit that was completed and S or indirect costs we're adjusting those uh that Revenue slightly we're decreasing state revenue and on the expenditure side we're increasing recapture a little bit we continue to monitor that and we are also decreasing the expenditure Side based on those vacant positions in the payroll savings on the capital projects uh budget we are increasing revenue and our investment income and again we've talked about how our interest rates have increased it's significant in the capital projects fund so we're increasing that Revenue based on our estimates and the cvpa building enhancement that is in the consent agenda items as well I think that's roughly 800 000. the net change to capital projects is 13.5 and the net change to General operating is 8.9 this

011is just an overview of our general operating budget shows you where the adopted budget was and the revised budget that deficit is now decreased to 16.9 again I mentioned the payroll savings we hope to and I'll share I'll share with you on a a future slide where that 19 that 19 million dollar deficit or the 16.9 million dollar deficit will actually in our estimation turn into a surplus this is a more detailed view of the budget amendment if you'll look in column one that's our original budget column two is the amendment as we're proposing to you tonight which uh is will change that bottom line to 16.9 our projected year-end forecast which is very preliminary is where we you see we added under reclassified salaries to Esser we add an additional 10 million dollars for

012our Erp system that we're looking at and also we included what our estimate is for the other payroll savings that's the line that shows the 31 million dollar decrease to expenses and salaries for a estimate of 12.8 million of course that is subject to change and as always I like to share with you that information and how it looks without Esser included so that last column shows you that if we didn't have the Esser Federal funding we'd have a deficit budget of 24.2 million this again is another familiar Slide the only adjustment here we adjusted the indirect cost in a small amount and we also added um on that third bullet there the 17.6 we added the Erp system the 10 million dollars that we're estimating for that this is a overview of our debt

013service fund you'll see that we're looking at a surplus of 6.5 million dollars and if you you'll recall back in October the board amended the budget for a 4.6 million dollar Redemption of Series 2014 bonds you can see in column B that 4.6 is Illustrated and the net savings and interest by doing this Redemption is 1.6 million dollars to the debt Services budget and we are looking at that cash Redemption working with our financial analyst and that should be completed May 15th and again this is an overview of our capital projects I mentioned the interest that we were receiving and we've uh amended the budget as far as that our Child Nutrition fund we are not we have not brought forth any amendments we are anticipating a surplus by the end of the year in

014that fund as well our Esser update again this is a familiar slide we share with you um as of February 2028 sr3 has an amount remaining of 83 million dollars sr2 has 4.6 we believe that as of after April April or May we should have spent down that sr2 funds I think that went in September 30th of 2023 so our intent is to spend that funding prior to the year end we also included uh just a picture of our positions in Esser right now we have 274 filled and vacancies of 45. and again we share with you our bond 2014 update we have amount remaining of 353 thousand dollars projects in process of 6.3 if you'll recall we're spending the rest of that 2014 um on the Arlington High School project for the 2019 fund

015and this shows a picture of our 2019 Bond we have 392 million dollars remaining uh based on bonds that we have sold projects in process are 43 million dollars that is what resulted in the uh increase to revenue in the capital projects funding the interest as a result of those dollars and so next we're going to move into next year's budget and Miss Martin will share with you some of the work that she and her team have done and some of the things that we've done as far as priorities and and developing the 2024 right good evening Miss Fowler members of the board Dr Cavazos so we have started our preliminary fiscal year 2024 budget and I do want to point out this is very preliminary um but we had to get started right so

016we will be going over some District Trends and then high level what the timeline looks like share with you the priorities that we have and some some budget development information to date so for district Trends I wanted to share with you just our student enrollment history as you can see we are forecasting or projecting uh one percent decline in enrollment for next year so that will be 55 593 will be the student enrollment that we will be budgeting for but um no even though total enrollment is declining we are seeing an increase in some special demographics so for example that teal bar is our economically disadvantaged student population as you can tell that has grown throughout the years the dark blue bar is the our emergent bilinguals population and that has also grown along with

017our the light the gray bar of special education students now the slide just shows historical data in our student enrollment and how that is compared to our total staff and this is in um just in isolation with just a general operating fund by itself now as Miss Miss Moss shared with you as of the fifth six weeks we are at 92.72 in attendance and we know Administration is working with our office of school leadership and campuses on addressing that attendance and you have seen that bump from the previous year when um our our attendance did decline now this slide is just to show you how our property values are trending the bars are showing the taxable values and those are the values we rely on for the levy that is what we collect our revenue

018on this is to show how we propose a budget based on that deal bar which is the values that we receive in April however the actual revenue is not final until that blue bar at the end which is in October the line is then just showing the relief how those are the values determined for State funding and that is as you can see is not final until August after the fiscal year we are expecting our estimates for April tomorrow so we will so we are expecting an update for you all in our in our May meeting so this is a trend of our of our tax rate as you can see it was pretty stable especially on mno side for a dollar four um we there was because of tax rate compression from house bill

0193. you see that change in 1920 we did ax uh HUD in v-a-t-r-e in 2021 and that accessed the maximum additional 13 pennies but as you can see because of compression this trend of decreasing tax rate will continue especially as values continue to rise now this slide shows how we have closed out the general operating Fund in relationship to revenues and expenditures and where revenue is your blue your teal line and revenue and expenditures is your red bar now the background in the back is a royal blue background is just fun balance and how that has moved throughout the years and just want to point out how it has increased from the past few years but that is mostly due to the federal stimulus funding that we've been receiving so showing with your budget timeline

020as I mentioned we've um we've all campuses and departments have submitted their proposed budgets and Staffing conferences have occurred we are waiting for the certified estimates from tarent Appraisal District that we'll receive we should receive tomorrow after that we will compile the budget and keep and and work on this along with the legislative that's in session but we will be proposing bringing a proposed budget to you all on June on the June 13 meeting for that budget to be adopted on the June 29th meeting we will receive our certified taxable values in July which will determine our tax rate by tea in August so we will and so we will be taking the tax rate for you to adopt in September now superintendent and staff have identified the 2324 budget priorities as shown here on

021this slide along with creating the budget that we are most of our campuses are on a per student allocation as shown here we did want to point out that there are special programs at some campuses that get an additional allocation on top of their per student allocation okay so a quick legislative update that we have House Bill 100 has been voted favorably from the committee but a key provision included in this bill is that the basic allotment will be Inc is increase of ninety dollars for this coming fiscal year fiscal year of 2324 and then a 50 increase for the 24-25 year in addition currently has laws written right now whenever the basic allotment increases there is a salary there is a requirement that 30 of that gain must be used for increases to teachers

022counselors nurses and Librarians this bill that is currently income that was voted favorably increased that gain from a 30 requirement to a 15 requirement there are also a lot of other formula changes included in this bill but it's in various areas where data may or may not exist at this time so for purposes of this Workshop we are only looking at the 90 increase in the basic allotment as we were developing um the preliminary budgets these are the assumptions that we have taken into consideration as you can see for um average daily attendance we are looking at a one per and a half percent decrease in Ada but a 15 increase in taxable values due to that 15 percent increase in taxable values because of compression we in our current scenario that we will be

023presenting you it is based on a nine Cent nine Penny reduction in the in the tax rate in addition to that um just showing you you know our staff count and our number of vacant positions that we currently have Staffing is ongoing as employees are in onboarding and off-boarding for this year and for next year as you can see under scenario one which is what we're calling just a current law the only um we we are it is as written in law right now there is a little bit of a yield in the golden Penny and you see that here it's a 27 increase so that is our scenario one current law as it is right now um but we do have a scenario too and as I mentioned we're labeling it as HB 100

024but the only difference would be that 90 increase in the basic allotment along with that there is a slight Penny uh Copper Penny compression so as you can see in the tax rate it is slightly less by zero zero one Thirteen Cents less not a full Penny but they're a portion of a penny in um in that Copper Penny compression but before we get into this I do don't just want to remind you all that you know once the formulas determine how much we generate locally through property taxes before this state makes up the difference with State funds so with the assumptions that I've shared with you we are having an ADA that's the the client that's decreasing and local property values that are increasing isn't as you can tell in those two visuals at

025the end of that slide both of those have a relationship to Ada I mean to state aid that will decrease so as of right now um in that First Column that is the same slide same set of numbers as presented by Miss Moss that we're projecting for the end of 22-23 the second column is our scenario one once again that is just current law as it is and the only difference would be the increa um we we're seeing an increase in avalorum taxes because of the value increase but with a slight Penny um state tax rate compression and the golden Penny yield increase now in the scenario too the estimate is based only on two additional assumptions which is a ninety dollar increase to the basic alignment with the Copper Penny compression I do want

026to point out on on that salaries and benefits row of expenditures of 452 000 that is our projected end-of-year budget which means we reduce we've reduced it already by the Esser 24 million dollars and then recognizing those vacancies so it is if you add that 50 million back that's where you're kind of seeing that 504 under scenario one and two in addition to that based on the calculation of a ninety dollar basic allotment increase the only other the only change in scenario two is that includes a required salary increase whatever that which is a required amount where we calculated for you all we oh and as you can see um in the previous slide as well as here we are seeing recapture is going to Trend up that will continue to follow it will continue

027to follow that Trend if we continue that if Ada declines and property value increases in this estimate for 24.25 well we've only added that extra fifty dollar basic allotment increase but an ADA decline of one and a half percent and a property value increase of five percent okay so I'll wrap up the last two slides um we we just want to talk about balancing the budget and so how are the ways that you do balance the budget again I will repeat that the the numbers Mrs Martin Sherrod are very preliminary numbers we've got to start somewhere and we see you know basically the worst case scenario what is the work that we need to do to try to get that number where we need it to be in order to balance the budget and absent

028of school funding from the state or additional funding from the state you know you have the option of doing the Batre and we've already done that you have the option of going into your fund balance which is not something that we recommend we've got a big Bond program that we're working on we need to keep that fund balance where it is we need to have a strong fund balance or you make budget reductions so right now that's part of our work uh what we're looking at you can make budget reductions and then you can also look at your Revenue so a couple of things that I will point out or share with you that we've been doing or Mrs Martin her team has been working on one is we're looking at a credit card program

029a credit card program for us could generate almost a million dollars a year so we're looking at implementing that and getting some more Revenue in we're also the other thing that I will point out that we've done differently is our taxable value audit studies we were paying for those uh now we have our delinquent tax attorneys are doing that work for us and for this year alone we saw a savings of 137 thousand dollars those are just two you know really quick examples but there's a lot of work that we're doing we're working with Dr Wertz and his team on looking at the budget we've got all the budget requests and right now we're in the process of doing that work and trying to get that number down and so some of the challenges again

030we've talked many times about enrollment and our enrollment decline you saw that in the historical document that she showed our attendance we are working on initiatives to get that attendance increase that's just Revenue to the district we're working on the historical swing we've talked about that over the last couple of years since I've been here and where it's been there we're working to eliminate That Swing when we talk to you about payroll savings and when we talk to you about the position vacancies we're working on eliminating That Swing so that you know exactly what the budget is and we're working on trying to balance the budget for you to to make those decisions of course the legislative session and undate un uh funded mandates is a challenge for all school districts it's not just Arlington

031um but we have a cost management initiative in place we're looking at our FTE management we're looking at academic Roi in partnership with Dr Wertz and his team property values and recapture that's a big challenge for us but we're monitoring it we're trying to stay ahead of it to see how it's going to impact US based on our average daily attendance and our taxable values that are increasing as well we're looking at campus carryover we're looking at Staffing of of new positions and vacant positions we're trying to leave no stone unturned to see how we can reduce the deficit budget because we have a you know again on one of our priorities is is compensation and competitive compensation so we know we still have to fit all that into the puzzle that we're working on

032and that's all we have to share tonight I'll be glad to answer any questions you may have are there any trustees with questions Mr Wilbanks thank you president Fowler and Miss moss and Miss Martin thank you for this presentation um on the good side it's glad to see that we're trending to a nice Surplus and adding fund balance this year um but we've got some challenges ahead so um you know looking at where we are now if you can go back to the last slide you know this you know that one small box on in the middle right Staffing that's 88 of our budget correct yes so that's really the biggest box in my eye on here and so I think it's you know as we have been diligent in Staffing appropriately and look at

033those um Staffing ratios that's going to be critical going forward once Esser goes away um and I you know I'm looking at the number of I guess essers allowed us to keep vacant or excess positions over enrollment and apply those to help on their recovery loss but coming up with that funding Esser funding exit strategy is going to be critical as well but the other thing that scares me on this is recapture and there's a lot of uncertainty with that I think a good question for one of our later presenters Mr Anderson is what is going on with exactly alleviating the burden on districts Like Us ending up in recapture which was supposed to be just for the wealthiest of the wealthiest school districts but now more and more districts are falling under recapture and

034we're certainly one of them and given you know enrollment kind of going like this and property values skyrocketing that's only going to get worse and worse now correct me if I'm wrong but in the last legislative session they did something about recapture and then they tied the tier 2 yield of the golden pennies they allowed for an increase student inflation correct that is correct and um I believe that was uh 20 was that 2019 was it with hb3 yeah yes that was with hb3 and you did see some you know some differences there um at the time both Ms Mrs Martin and I myself were in a a recapture District that was paying uh 50 million dollars in recapture after House Bill 3 even that went up to 150 million so it just depends on

035where your district is and what what's your values in your district is doing and if they start to Skyrocket your recapture it just follows right the the I guess the basic flaw is going from what what are we going from this year 96 to 127. you had it on your slides are you talking about recapture no the yield the gold I'm gonna yield so from 98.5 to 126 so a net gain of 27 but that's just not keeping up with the rate of growth of the property values correct and that's something that needs to be addressed so hopefully I we can get an update later on What legislation is likely to help alleviate that Force because that's a big issue and that's something we need to continue to Advocate on with our local delegation um

036recaptures and that ugly thing so um that being said I think that's I had one more question but I'm happy to turn the floor over oh yes the under um sb1 or HP won the budget bill there's a 90 or H also an HP 100 there's a 90 dollar increase in the basic allotment and 50 of that is as you said mandated for staff raises yeah so in a district like us did you have the dollar amount that um 45 dollars um if it was 90 what if that's where the bill ends up being passed and we do again very preliminary numbers um for our district it increase of a 6 million dollars but based on just the way the the law is written we have to base that increase on our total increase so

037to speak and Miss Martin may be able to dive into that a little bit more but we're looking at 13 million dollar increase so we've got to base our teacher salaries on the 13 million dollar increase not just the increase that we see based on the um the additional allotment or the additional basically the ninety dollars right so I think I think just real quickly the scenario two there's a lot of numbers there but basically if we get more money from the state as is so far being discussed it'll actually cost us more we'll be further in the deficit it's a it's a very tricky dichotomy where they are providing more funding but we're required to spend more and so that that was part of hb3 and it's now part of this 100 so you

038see we go from a 52 deficit to a 59. with more money from the state so that was very similar with hb3 where most districts saw a neck gain we were one of the losers and that it appears that that will be the case again this year yeah so this time around and let me just add that we're just looking at the basic allotment there is a lot more to to that bill than we've included in our scenario so they're looking at Transportation allotment increases they're looking at some of the other demographics increasing those fdes as well that's not included here so I want to make sure to calculate right you'd have to use that amount to then calculate half of yes yes so it just accelerates the expenditures yeah so yeah my final comment

039is on the slide with the SR Physicians or the the previous to this one um or I guess actually was on your Esser recap there you had a number of positions that are paid for out of us or now that are I assume unique positions that we would essentially have to go away after next year's budget when Sr ends yes they would which would then reduce our future deficits they're not they're not part of the deficit let's just be to be clear right there they're being covered by Esther so it's not being represented as a deficit as part of the deficit I think if you if we keep them yes it will increase significantly the deficit but I will say that as as Sir ends next year uh we will have very likely I think

040this is a safe assumption we'll have a significant amount of money unspent now that's not a critique of Arlington it's it's true of most districts because of when you got the money and all that it does allow us to supplant so you could supplant um and we will be supplanting because there's no way that's going to be spent and you could set aside some of that money to cover these positions or part of these positions for a little longer if if that's the where we end up I do think we're going to end up with a pretty large surplus of I won't call it Surplus unspent Esser that we're going to have to supplant that could free up some dollars local dollars for some of these positions to extend um a little longer I think

041a big picture of this is is it's it always seems to be the perfect storm the recapture is is kind of that hidden that is accelerating really quickly and it's mostly the values and it is accelerating you saw that slide it was small when we used to talk about recapture just even when we had to do our Tre was really small it was hundreds of thousands which seems like a lot but it just goes shoots up to Millions very quickly so to your point that needs to be addressed because we're all if if Arlington is in a recapture situation there's a lot of districts that are falling into that situation but back to Esther um yes those positions will add significantly to a deficit in future years but also you can supplant and Stave that

042off for a little bit fair enough fair enough right now we're estimating about at the current moment again these are very preliminary numbers we may have about 20 million dollars left in Esser when it's all said and done after year three and again we've supplanted this year along alone 24 million dollars of Esser so it only goes so far the dollars only go so far our work right now is to try to right size the general operating budget to get us where we need to be and not dependent on Esser so that's what Ms Martin and her team are currently doing in partnership with Dr Wertz and some other senior staff members well we appreciate the work that's been put into this and we'll continue to be put in to this over the coming couple

043of months so thank you um Miss moss and Miss Martin thank you Mr will Banks Miss Mays whoops thank you president Fowler thank you Mrs Moss once again I know I've made a couple of these comments in the past and I want to make them again because I think they're very important thank you once again for presenting the budget preliminary budget ex showing the transparency of Esser funding and what it will look like when we don't have it so there's not a potential sticker shock to the public and to the board really really appreciate the efforts that you've made in continuing to do that also with The Debt Service fund thank you also for bringing to the board to be able to approve taking advantage of efficiencies and doing these redemptions to give us cost

044savings and interest and I I know that the community appreciates that as well as they did approve these Bond fundings um so you know inverse relationships that's a term I remember from my school days I see a lot of that in here and unfortunately it's not at this point things that we can control um but um talking about the the Esser funds and then looking at our student demographics graph thank you very much for providing this information [Music] noticing Trends in the three areas that you represented here special education our emergent bilinguist and economically disadvantaged population I am my strong desire although I will not be on the board when these decisions are made but my very strong desire is that the district is looking at some of the Esser funding and how they were

045spent and in some of those areas where they produced amazing games particularly in the areas of these three areas that you presented here tonight that there's a a good deep dive look at are there any things that were being planted used with Esser funding that we really want to look at continuing because it really would be the best thing for the students here in our district to succeed so I really hope that that's part of the conversation once again as we're looking at the trends and academic graphics and knowing that this will continue to be an area to make sure that they're getting resources and Staffing that that they need to continue to be able to be successful so that's just a very strong desire of mine for the future um and then I talked

046about these inverse relationships a lot men are recapture all in the same sentence just feels weird um but once again I think the biggest thing for me and hopefully for those that are watching this presentation is that you know minus anything magical I have full trust in your department and your team in what you are doing as you have proven even leading up to this point the value of being transparent the value of looking ahead I mean everybody knew when Esser funds were coming in that they would also go away so really appreciate that that exit strategy has already started I really appreciate that you've talked about what the challenges will be in balancing a budget and once again not just to AISD but to isd's all across the state and potentially farther so for

047that I just want to say thank you thank you to the team for looking ahead thank you for keeping us abreast and involved as you continue to work out this budget thank you Miss Mays and Ms Mays thank you for always being the voice for all students thank you for that to chop up thank you president Fowler um Miss Moss I if it might be easier just to go back to the third slide and then that way I can see on the screen some of the points I'm going to call out okay um at the very beginning the one that has the 19 million net budget reduction the date this one okay so I just wanted to I I don't I have a few questions but I just want to call some things out like

048Miss Mays did that I think it's important to understand because this is incredibly complex stuff and you know a lot of people look at budgets and deficits and surpluses and they immediately think if they see you know a deficit it's automatically just you know we got to freak out it's a red flag and if you look at what we've done this year we were projected to start the year um with about a 36 million dollar deficit already through this course of the year we found 19 million in reductions and in fact if if if we can if you could skip up two slides or three um one more so you see where we started where we're at and we're proposing we're projecting that we'll end up with a a surplus of almost 13 million dollars

049and in fact my time on the board um been on the board almost six years I was on financial futures for about six years before that this board uses or this District uses very conservative projections and so it always it almost always seems to be the case that we are looking in going into the year and maybe adopting the budget with a a deficit and we continue to course correct our extremely conservative projections turn out to be too conservative and we usually in every almost every year bar a few as one other later chart shows we ended up Rising a decent Surplus and that's how the fund balance has been growing so I just want to make the point that that this district has been very financially sound and continually looking for ways to make

050our budget work within the very complicated State parameters that we have this is not a situation where we're running deficits because you know we're just out there spending wildly in a lot of cases as Miss May said it's because if changes beyond our control or as Dr Cavazos pointed out we got a good thing that required us to spend more than we maybe would have wanted to in the normal situation um and so that that is you know stuff that we have learned to deal with if you can go over to the um the student demographic uh so that makes this one point on on your comments there about the historical swing swings Martin and I'm challenging her team to do is to try to balance that budget and to we've had a big swing

051and we want to be able to say here's what our budget is and that's why we're we're sharing it out with you without Esser so that you know how it looks yes right we want to say here's how many vacancies we have in the budget and the vacancies total x million dollars and there's a possibility of course at the end of the um you know at the end of the year when we close that we'll have a surplus yes but we want to give you that information so that when you make a decision you're aware of that prior to us you know getting the audit and seeing the big swing and keep you informed through you know through the process through budget amendments and and routine updates to let you know exactly where the district

052is our goal is to balance the budget we know that we can use vacancies we can use Esser and we can use other funding sources to do that but the goal is to balance the budget so I just want to caution that we're not looking or depending on the big swing because our work right now is to eliminate that and to share with you what that swing is what makes it up and that's a great point and I'm gonna I'm actually going to point something out I think that reflects that really well in a minute and I just want to reiterate what Miss May said about how how you do this on the Fly and I think a lot of these charts not not on the fly in a bad sense but if you look

053at some of our Trends up until right around hb3 right around the time covet hit things were pretty stable from year to year I mean we were losing enrollment it wasn't dramatic tax rate was steady property values were steady and then covet hits and we have wild changes in frankly in our student demographics in some sense in our attendance rate hb3 changes a whole lot of the financing formulas and so a lot of the ability to predict what's going to happen from year to year has become that much more difficult and yet y'all still been able to do that it's not you know not saying that it was easy 10 years ago but I think relative to the way what we have now I think it probably is um so on student demographic um first

054bar chart under student demographic I had it I just had a question on this we're not it's is it correct that we're not necessarily seeing an increase in the number of students who fit these profiles but the relative percentage of those students is increasing as our enrollment has gone down and I'm gonna let Miss good thing and a good thing to show but I'm going to let her come and speak to how she calculated that yes there's been it's actually increasing in count slightly but then in in the percentage is here we can provide you the count information if you would like okay I was just curious because it it there has been enrollment loss and what this suggests to me is and maybe you know tell me if I'm wrong is we are losing

055students who don't meet these profiles by and large yes or we're yes even though in total we are losing we are certain special populations that may need additional resources is increasing okay right I would I would yeah but I would I would just it's complicated it seems like an easy slide but it's not this is the net effect right and when you get to a net effect um it's not as clear as they come in one day and then they all change the next day and it's so this is throughout the this is Snapshot yes right yeah team snapshot one a point in time which is the last Friday so October we just it yes but it's really I would look at it more like the net effect that includes a lot of Mobility yeah

056you can't just point to one but this is the net effect that's Undisputed right right and so just to point out it seems like to me I don't want to use the term flight because that has connotations but we are seeing the enrollment decrease we're seeing seems to be disproportionately among students who were not economically disadvantaged and were not immersion bilinguals that's correct okay and then I I then I wanted to jump two slides forward yeah I I think I think you could see the inverse to the population that's coming it's not no it could be some of both I'm just saying that's what it it seems disproportionate to the increase in the actual the net effect is disproportionate yes thank you okay so the next slide after this so I wanted to point out

057so I think this goes to the work that you're doing Miss Martin and Miss Moss is it I think I think you um I think the chart sort of sort of shorts you on how well this has been going on is how we have been losing enrollment but we have been very good about making sure that our staff numbers are commensurate or at least in proper not proportion but are trending down in correlation to those numbers and so if you look at I think a good example here is for if you look at 2016-17 that those were sort of the highest staff numbers we had almost 8 000 staff members and then for 22 23 we have them we have almost a thousand fewer and so I think I think if the chart had been

058Bend differently that that would have been more pronounced um but I just want to point out that that is another thing that y'all are doing in terms of cost control is being very careful with Staffing in relation to our enrollment Decline and and I I do appreciate that because that is that's proactive no one wants to on this board wants to be in a situation where we're having to riff folks or let folks go or let needed positions that really need to be filled still stay open because we can't make our budget and I appreciate you all doing that on the next slide for attendance rate I did have a question about about this so this is another thing that used to be pretty steady and then you saw some some real big changes during

059because of covid um is there a reason for next year we're projecting a lower attendance rate than what we realized this year um so we're actually looking at it as a Ada which it's about the same attendance rate as this year it's just that our population is decreasing so Ada will decrease um we have some increases in like Pre-K for example but Pre-K only counts half of ADA okay so that's where that difference is because in overall enrollment is declining okay thanks for that that clarification on the tax rate history slide I just wanted to point out where we're at how we've been pretty steady hb3v atre and we've continued to drop after vatre and then the projection is that we're going to go down to basically 0.91 because a concussion last year which which

060my shaking math tells me is about a nine percent decrease yes so tax rate yes because there's it's actually um there's a range so it still depends overall Statewide compression that determines what that range is currently the range that we're using is the forecast that they have right now which is not what it's going to be and um there is even talk of spreading that band because right now it's just a 10 band okay so yes but as as projected it would be in terms of property tax rate relief it would be relatively sizable because of the compression for taxpayers yes okay okay and then on the legislative update slide about House Bill 100 I just wanted to take a moment to to get on my soapbox and point out that a 90 increase in

061the basic allotment is not even 1.5 percent given the amount of inflation that we have seen across the board for the last at least two years and you know the legend only meets every other year so I this is based on the discussions we had I think when we went down early on about how the state has their big rainy day fund which is is it over Mr Wilbanks over 30 billion close to 30 billion that's the Surplus that's the Surplus you know to get a 1.5 percent increase in the basic allotment is is uh is not what we were hoping for and oh thank you I've been informed it's closer to 40 billion dollars um so those are just some things I wanted to point out I I do appreciate all the work you

062do I hope all my pestering questions that that comes through but there's a you know it's campaign season and you know I I we all follow the campaigns and the discussions online and everything and every year around this time the talk comes up about oh you know there's so much fat at AISD and I something I really enjoyed when I came on to financial futures um 12 years ago now is we I kind of came on with that mentality in in a several other people did too and as back then it was Miss Powell who was the CFO walked us through the complications of all this and we looked at the budget and you know there's always room to do some improvement but the care and the Nuance used to come to how this District

063does the budget has not changed and I think this district has run extremely efficiently and the proof is in proof is in the details here we we continually evaluate our finances and I don't expect that approach to change thank you his face yeah just real quick this was just to time on maybe also in the graph of student enrollment and total staff and correct to your point I agree with with the Fidelity that we make sure of having staff funded and there but also could this graph also maybe show that there is more of a cross-sectional of a decrease in enrollment throughout the district throughout different grade levels that may equalize a little bit more said a different way because I think we've covered that as well is that they don't we don't lose enrollment

064in packages of 22 and so you lose them across the district and you can't just that the staff doesn't decrease at the same proportion because it's across the district that's a different way we we say it but yes that's the case thank you Miss mice thank you president Fowler um I want to tell you that I heard you say something that I appreciate that I haven't heard and it and it's talking about transparency uh absolutely I I agree with my colleagues up here that talks about that uh the district has been responsible with this funding it has been uh it works very closely it tries to find ways to reduce about the budget whenever possible but what I heard you say is that we're going to do a better job of it we're not going

065to have those big swings it is I love the fact that we're going to finish out with 12 million dollars I love that but I don't like the fact that we voted on a budget where we were saying that we're going to have a deficit of 36 million that's not a responsible thing to do we need to make sure that we have that tightening and you in what you've said is absolutely I said amen when you told me or when you mentioned that a second ago that's what we we should be about our community here's numbers that the district is running this projected budget of this amount and it doesn't have action plans to how to recover it that puts concern in them you know and a lot of times we come around to the

066spring and say hey everything's good but you made a comment and I thank you for it for realizing that Esther funds are going to go away and tough choices are going to have to be made when you have losing number right enrollment you can't staff at at these full Staffing levels for fewer and fewer students you have to make you have to look at your program and you have to look and see what changes need to be made and what I'm hearing you say is so welcomed I appreciate both both of you in in the putting this together because you know we do have Esther funding through the next year and that's when the Esther fund threes are and at so at that point you know there's another opportunity and if you can supplant some

067of those dollars maybe you can get it out a year or maybe even two years but as you said we used a good portion of that you know in excess of 20 million dollars just this year um the vacancies savings that we have on that uh slide three that you that you showed a little while ago um early in the presentation it shows both the vacancy and then it also talks about uh Esser funds that were used we had 17 million dollars in vacancies that we that we were able to recapture for those savings through January of 2023 should we and I'm asking this as a question should we go and still try to budget at a hundred percent um when we know that we're having these vacancies because very early on there was a

068decision not to fill because there just wasn't applicants to fill their spots and I say yes that is something that we're taking taking into consideration the superintendent staff senior staff is working on that they're probably a little tired of hearing me talk about it but that is one of our challenges they know that that's one of our challenges and no it's hard for a board to make a decision on what an increase is going to be for staff if we have all all those vacancies in there so that's why we're kind of really analyzing that to see what positions can be closed how long have they been vacant what are critical positions to the district to see where our what our actually our standard Staffing should be and I will say that Arlington when I

069got here they've done an exceptional job as far as Surplus and teachers and when the student enrollment goes down on the elementary level saying we need to reduce teachers or move teachers over here they do an outstanding yeah leveling they do an outstanding job on that and so we're just looking at other Staffing to make sure that we're doing our due diligence when we bring forward a budget again I recall the FFC Committee in their report to the board last June said we'd like to see the budget balance we can balance the budget there are just different ways that we have to do it we've got another year or two we've got some Esser fundings that we can do that will help us and allow us to balance the budget but I want us to

070see how it looks without Esser so that we know that you know we've got a right size and we still have some work to do after Esther is gone miss my said is that is the absolute appropriate way of going about it and what you showed in your projections for next year we need to see that raw data we need to say okay this is a big number it's a big chunk of change and you know what in the in the your final slide you talked about okay let's look at some of the areas and you you showed three primary areas maximize the mno tax rate uh you know do you make the decision to spend out of fund balance or do you make you know necessary budget reductions you let into a point that

071I was going to ask a second question on for this next year so you know there isn't this big fluctuation is there some of once you go and with full transparency say okay this is uh what We Believe will be the budget without Esser put in there is there a way to go ahead when the board votes to say this is what We Believe will be going in or recommended the amounts that will go into this so when the board votes it get you closer to that balanced budget as opposed to this vote with this board voting on something that it may have another huge swing you know yes and and we're looking at that we have to look at the historical data right so if we look for the last five years and we

072say uh based on the vacancies if we can identify what the payroll savings were eight years ago seven years ago six years ago and see what the trend is we absolutely can make some decisions to say if for the last seven years we know that we've had 15 million or 20 million dollars in payroll savings that we haven't utilized in the budget it's you know helped with the deficit that we've been adopting every year that's what that's some of the work that I talk about that I'm challenging Mrs Martin and her team to do we have you know it is challenging with our our current Erp system but there are ways of getting that data and we're working with technology and HR to try to get that information you know you and Miss Martin are

073the experts here this board relies upon your expertise and knowledge when I Miss Mays and I are going to be gone uh unfortunately we're going to be moving and moving on uh and you're going to have two new board members that will come in and their eyes are just going to be wide open like deers and in headlights with knowing that next year you will have Esser coming to an end maybe some sir plant amount out there but those will go away it would be my suggestion from administrator the finance department to uh to meet with the board maybe in a retreat format Saturday format where the board sits with you and you really talk about that exit plan that focuses to saying okay right now we're enjoying it this year but we have to

074be prepared for the next five years and I think that your leadership in that will help this board greatly to be able to continue to be educated and Adept to make those votes when it comes to the budgetary times and please don't ever cut yourself short and knowing that your knowledge helps us board really determine where it should go so with that I'm going to I'm going to end but I just want to tell you I find this particular presentation one of the best they've ever heard in my 10 years of ever serving on this board so I appreciate that in context to what you said even though we haven't looked deep or delve deep deep into the budget itself so thank you Mr hips Mr Wilbanks thank you president Fowler just a quick note

075I I do want to jump on the bandwagon on thanking you guys for the transfer I think thank you guys in general but the the transparency that you guys are striving for is definitely much needed I think Mr Hibbs on his comment and I'm always in favor of a workshop to talk numbers because I'm a numbers guy so um I think um I would second your call for a workshop sometime in the summer um or in that next coming year to look at how we gracefully exit from the Esser funds and right size our budget accordingly um one other thing and this is small init picky but I think it helps drive home Mr choppa's point that he was making even stronger if you could pull up the student enrollment and total staff slide you

076know he made a comment that we've done a good job things have been stable and we've done a good job of tying enrollment to our budget the only thing is this slide a little distorted when on one scale you you have a like the actual drop in enrollment on this slide is closer to 12 but it looks like a 50 drop in enrollment because you start the scale on the left at 50 and not zero and the scale on the right you're comparing it to you do start at zero so it's really a much smaller drop in enrollment that we're talking about that we've experienced and so it just goes to uh Mr choppa's point of how we have actually tied that drop better with total staff the two are really more in line than

077what it shows here on this graph right the I guess the student to staff right we've lost 10 000 almost 10 000 students and our staff it kind of shows you where that is so yeah I think for percentage-wise it looks off yeah just because of that scaling issue on the left side yes so but anyway I appreciate this Slide the other thing I [Music] think so what we're working on is showing you what total enrollment our Total Staffing is um including those vacancies once we can get to that number and and uh in future years we'll use that number yeah thank you Mr Wilbanks Miss Moss would it be fair to say you know when looking at the the drop in enrollment Arlington's pretty land locked and a lot of our neighborhoods are older

078families have grown up here gone through our system moved off and I think that's part of what we see here and it you know when you look at these numbers and you talk about enrollment dropping the first thing I think people are thinking is oh my gosh everybody's leaving Arlington AISD but I don't I don't think that we can really say that would you agree that there's a lot of of enrollment was high but now those people have kind of gone through our system and moved on and we're still left with our boundaries what what could you say about no I agree and if you'll recall the demographer when he came and reported to the board he talked about the birth rates right the birth rates are declining so we're not going to have those

079students there are so many variables when you look at their their charter schools and you can say well I think I reported last year how there's about 11 000 students and Charter students schools that could be in Arlington ISD but then you have to consider how many students from from other school districts are in Arlington too so you can't it's just not cut and dry um but yes you have a valid point and the demographer report kind of shows you that birth rates are going down again we're landlocked not a lot of people moving in taxable values are going out going up people are going to have to make a decision as to are am I going to stay in Arlington can I afford it um you know so it's a lot that goes into

080it's not just cut and dry thank you so much Miss Moss you're welcome and Miss Martin thank you and your team thank you for always being transparent thank you for all the work that you put into this and I I really appreciate your Forward Thinking always looking to where we're going to be not just where we are now and helping us to get where we need to be and I really appreciate that thank you both so much thank you we will now address the consent agenda items which consist of routine items grouped together for approval as one item unless removed from the consent agenda these items will be acted on at one time with no discussion trustees are there any requests for items to be withdrawn from the consent agenda for further discussion approve the

081consent agenda as presented thank you Mr Hibbs I have a motion for Mr Hibbs do I have a second I have a second for Miss McMorrow please vote motion passes thank you we now move on to other discussion items Dr Cavazos thank you president Fowler and this evening we bring a brief presentation regarding our uh safety and Intruder detection audits that are taking place you've you've uh is going to sound very familiar because you've heard this before but just as a reminder these are occurring at our schools and so Dr Hill will take us through how that works good evening president Fowler members of the board and Dr fastos thank you for that introduction to the process again this is the school safety audit that's required by tea in region 11. I I always like

082to try to put this in context to let our community know that it's more than just these audits that are a part of our safety measures and so you can see we have it all the way from weather drills to the end and uh the detection audit and all the things that we do on a daily basis to uh continue to focus on Safety and Security at our campuses but tonight we're going to talk about the Intruder detection audit it was issued on June 1st of 2022 and it mandated in-person unannounced random Intruder detection audits of all schools uh in the State uh the Texas School Safety Center contracted with region 11 and we have been in partnership with them for this process the audits happened started back in September and it will go through

083the end of May of this year the inspectors are trained by the Texas School Safety Center and they do these unannounced audits at all of our campuses they then give those results to this Texas school safety center and then those results are then given to the superintendent and then back down through the organization to make sure that we are compliant and doing what we're supposed to be doing the audits come in three phases uh phase one is a solo with the auditor doing a random exterior door checks and the process for campus visits in the office phase two is an escorted uh phase where the exterior doors all doors are checked and then there's this check of this weekly log that the campuses are supposed to that the campuses do keep to show that the

084door audits have been done and then phase three is then escorted where we're doing uh select classroom doors where we checked uh with the auditor to make sure that they are meeting the district protocol for classroom door standard uh the audit results and the findings uh we received them again from the Texas School Safety Center within five days of the audit uh they include the detailed information about the site visit they include a corrective action plan and deadlines uh where appropriate and that again is shared with the campuses and the appropriate departments and our security departments to ensure that we are compliant there that's so where we are on that and we'll take any questions if you have any but we just kind of want to bring this around occasionally to keep you all up

085to date are there any trustees with questions Dr Hill could I ask a question yes um you mentioned about the logs where are those logs kept so the logs are kept in in the different places in the school but everyone it has access to them to provide them to the auditor the summer kept online some are kept in binders in the front office but they are being they have to be accessible to the auditor when they come so thank you and one other question how often are these logs checked to make sure that the the protocols were followed in people initialed off and all that kind of thing how often do do schools check their logs that's something that we have to look into with our security department at the secondary campuses and our administrators

086at the other campuses but they are it's a part of of what my bi-weekly reminders are to all of our staff so thank you so much Dr Hill any other questions all right thank you sir discussion item C progress report for Board of Trustees continuing education credit I am happy to announce that all trustees have exceeded the required training hours trustees have been provided literature covering the framework for school board development adopted by the Texas state board of education and all of our hours are current and accounted for so thank you all so much for keeping up with your hours and doing your due diligence to learn as much as you can and and be up on all current issues in public education thank you for that discussion item D we're ready for a legislative

087update Dr Cavazos thank you president Fowler and this evening we will hear from David Anderson our legislative consultant who should join us here on the video soon there he is and if David can hear us this is a much anticipated legislative update um and much anticipated review by the expert David Anderson so uh David we're going to turn it over to you to lead us off on this discussion of what's happening in Austin that could help or hurt uh our district well I I'll let you draw your own course conclusions you're about to help and heard Dr Cavazos thank you and president Balor of Trustees I appreciate the opportunity to brief you I could sum this up in two sentences and we could let you go home and those two sentences would be 101 days

088have passed 39 days are left nothing has been decided good night but we won't we won't do that obviously I want to talk with you about where things are but as we get into that please know that we're entering the final five weeks of the session and this is when the disagreements between the two Chambers uh the tension that exists between the legislative branch and the gubernatorial Governors Branch the executive branch tensions between the parties will be resolved if we could go to the next slide you're going to recognize this because it's one that we've looked at before I've talked about this with you that there are some critical issues in every legislative session but what we do know is that every session will start and end with school Finance so when you look at

089this and I've heard the conversation tonight I'm going to make a few comments about some things that were said School Finance is the critical issue this time however we thought before the session started six months before it started that the other issues of human capital the learning lag parental rights and school safety would be critical of course all of these have implications for finance because they cost money uh I will tell you that while you're here tonight I have enjoyed your dialogue very much it's I will tell you it's much better dialogue than what I was listening to earlier and what's still going on over in the Capitol with the house public Ed committee your conversations with the staff and with one another a representative of the way you really get to good policy by

090by questioning by by conversing with with one another hearing about hearing from things about the people who really know as you have from Darla Moss tonight it is interesting to me that as I listen to the house before I switched over to you the best dialogue in the house was coming from those members of the House of public Ed committee who has served on local Boards of Trustees your conversations tonight parallel dozens and dozens of trusty conversations across Texas because we are at a point right now in which there is there is so much so much uncertainty about things I appreciated Mr choppa's comment earlier when he he asked about tax relief I think Mr Trump your comment you use the phrase sizeable tax relief for our taxpayers and that is correct and when we

091look at school Finance there is a huge Surplus that's also been referenced tonight remember though that there's a difference between the the amount of surplus there's a Delta between that Surplus total number and what the legislature can spend without busting the Constitutional spending Gap and when you look at it that constitutional spending cap means that there really is probably 20 billion dollars that the legislature is able to access without having to take a vote on spending because on busting the Constitutional spending cap and a lot of that is is designated uh to tax relief and remember the approach to actually is very different in the two Chambers that is that's the source of tension right now that if if that's not resolved that's really why I'll be back here marching up and down Congress Avenue

092in the heat of June or July um the other thing that I'd say in general before we go on to the next slide is Mr Hibbs you commented to miss Moss earlier you made a comment about about predictability with the finances and I would Echo many of the things that you said about the presentation tonight and about the information that Arlington ISD trustees and the community have from the administration and how it is transparent it's well thought out you're comment about predictability though I think is something that's important for us as we look at the legislative session because that's really what we want from our legislators we want some sense of consistency and predictability with policy but even more importantly with school Finance because without that it makes the job that Darla moss and her

093colleagues around the state do practically impossible remember where we are that for almost half a decade certainly for three legislative sessions predictability and consistency really has been missing and some of this is because of factors Way Beyond the control of the governor of Texas or the leaders of the uh of the two Chambers it really has to do with with the pandemic it has to do with the very tragic circumstances in which students and teachers have been killed that have moved that school safety issue up to the top and when you look at the the issues that we have here with human capital learning lag criminal rights school safety I would argue that the the pandemic the direct cause of learning lag from that we have a very direct line to some of the human

094capital issues that we have not all of them because there there are a number of people just demographically who are moving toward retirement right now larger percentages than we've seen before but there has been a significant exit of Educators from the system due to circumstances around the pandemic I would argue also that parental rights the attention to that certainly National issues but there was so much attention to what students were were not doing during the pandemic that that has raised the profile of of the parental rights and then of course school safety uh a direct line back to what has happened in several circumstances around the state it's led to this session which is a very unpredictable session so we'll go to the next slide I just wanted to bring this up because if you'll

095look and I think we can pull all all five of the points up before the session started well before the session started you identified school safety and explained this very well of course these are your your big points you've got much better information available on the website indigen on each of these but school safety School Finance the human capital issue this unfinished learning and and parental rights these are the topics that the hillcoat team Todd Webster Kate coolman D Carney and I have focused on in our conversations with returning members and with candidates right up to November and then after the election with them since then and I would say again I think that you were right on target with your legislative issues now if we could just get the legislature to be on target

096with their responses let's go to the next one what you see here and I think many of you remember certainly Dr Cavazos Dr Gill Ms moss and others know that we took a little different approach with our bill tracking this session to make this more topical and more pertinent four staff in the district and hopefully for the trustees as well and we went to a topical track so that you're able to look very specifically at bills that touch any one of these significant issues of significance the education tracks all public education related bills almost 1400. some of these are exclusive to public ads some touch on certain aspects of public yet contrast and I put this up in the other Blue Bar on the right higher education track these are all the hiring related bills

097330. so you see that this is 45 times larger the number of bills that deal with K-12 pre-k through 12 as opposed to higher ed and then if you look at the topical issues you'll see that we have we have bills just looking at numbers to the extent that correspondence tells us something I think that we see that there are a couple areas that uh that we were on target with in terms of Interest Human Resources 211 bills uh the the mental health 114 Bill school safety in this from 228 when we put those together you're looking at 350 bills that touch on those two related topics there were some that that we missed on a little bit uh 426 bills related to governance District administration and uh in operations often the business functions and

098so I know Miss Moss was very excited to know that there were 426 areas that she probably touches in one way shape or form that need attention I'm not sure so sure they do but someone certainly did it just is a visual to show you this is our bill tracking list this is about not quite two inches of single space bills with generally eight bills per page this is what we distribute every Friday to you and this is what we're looking at on a daily basis to guide what we do in the remaining eight seven six and now five weeks of the session so let's jump on to the next slide and we can go ahead and just pull all of those up what we know is that there's really only one bill that the

099legislature has to pass every session and that's the Appropriations Bill and in this session it's numbered House Bill one we alternate last session it was Senate bill one this section it's House Bill one I did want to take a few minutes just to bring you up here you can certainly see what's happened with the bill where we are right now with this is the conference committees as I I said when I did this yesterday will be formally named within the next few days there were formerly named today so we know who the conqueries are the the work in conference on the budget has really been going on informally but this picks up right now in a very serious way we're not going to see a whole lot of those five countries from the house side

100and the five from the Senate side over the remaining over the next four weeks certainly because they're going to be very very engaged with working out the budget couple things to point out numbers wise and doubts and I know that we do have several people on the trustees on the board who are a number guys Mr wilbank certainly you and I have talked about this before but what we're looking at with regard to tax compression uh is contingent upon the passage of several bills Senate Bill free Senate Bill 4 the uh the joint resolution it goes with this uh anywhere from 11 to possibly 15 billion dollars with tax compression the difference between the two Chambers is is significant on one hand you have the house is talking about appraisal caps as a way to

101provide relief for taxpayers on the other side you have the Senate which is really looking at uh raising the homestead exemption in both places in both Chambers compressing the school taxes with that those funds that are compressed filled in by State dollars the education budget for the next two years in both bills is fairly similar what we're looking at for fiscal year 24 big numbers uh 38.7 billion dollars in the bill that the Senate sent back to the house today in a fiscal year 25 38.9 billion we're talking about a budget of almost 80 billion dollars for the next two years for public head very significant the devil is in the details though and what will happen with legislation that is in the works right now will determine how much money Arlington gets obviously but

102it also speaks to some of the bigger issues such as recapture which was mentioned earlier this evening and what will happen with recapture when you get the various moving Parts with compression uh an additional money going into the system either through the basic allotment or even through the basic allotment with some recognition or some inflation Factor built in there so if you go on to the next slide for me we really are in the final weeks of the session as I've mentioned uh there's so much going on with these bills that what I'd really like to do is stop right now and and turn this back to you trustees and see what topics we may be able to talk about what I could could speak to very specifically uh hear the remaining minutes we have

103tonight yeah thank you Mr Anderson Mr Chapa thank you president Fowler David thanks for being here tonight and I appreciate your Insight as always and I had a couple questions I know there's so many bills out there but some ones that you know we talked about when we were in Austin uh yes to follow up on what is your sense I know that one of the voucherville bills or maybe a few came out of the Senate and entered the house what is your sense of how things are going to go for voucher bills in the house and also something that we were very concerned about is how the bills that we were at least we're under consideration when we last spoke had no mechanisms for taxpayer bunny even though it's taxpayer money and going to

104private institutions there would be no accountability on the academic side or the the spending side to verify that those things are being spent appropriately or that they're actually getting any results for the money any movement on that too well you you've hit the critical issue uh yes the the voucher bills are in play and as we had predicted all of you predicted in conversations with me about this uh vouchers would move through the Senate more easily than they will in the house the voucher bills on the Senate side have not been resolved yet though Mr chop and it's it's fundamentally the difference between the approaches those different Bills take and a lack of agreement particularly among the majority party members in the Senate now if I could get my crystal ball to be a little

105less cloudy I would tell you that I think we will see about your bill come out of this out of the Senate uh within the next week or so and get sent over to the house has heard the various voucher bills the major pieces and one of the the dorm resolutions that go with it and when you put those if you put all the characteristics of those different bills together you basically have a profile of every aspect of vouchers from educational savings accounts right on down there is a stark contrast between the accountability that the seven of you and Dr Cavazos and the staff have the taxpayers in Arlington for school Finance for student accountability student performance for school safety and what would happen with voucher bills and I think it's the accountability aspect is

106probably going to be one of the critical factors in determining what sort of Bill comes out of the Senate and what might get any sort of attention in the house we have everything from from some members who say you know what this money is going to be used to pay for these esa's or vouchers however we want to craft or have we wanted to call them that's really the parents might be so it's not up to the state to tell them what to do with those funds you know that's one extreme View you have some other people who are saying well you know there really do need to be some safeguards on this and that that's the rub right now that's where the friction is and that's why we really haven't seen uh seen some

107of these bills move when the budget was voted on by the house there was a lot of attention paid to the the Herrero Amendment representative Mabel Herrera was offered an amendment to the Appropriations bill in every session for the past decade Plus it basically is worded in such a way that that it would prohibit the use of any of the monies Incorporated in that act for being used on a voucher or voucher like program that amendment was added to the bill with 86 votes and that was without any help at all from the leadership the speaker really was neutral on this but you had the chairman of house public yet and you had the chairman of the Appropriations committed two key leaders basically urging members to vote that Amendment down and it with with their

108appropriate argument that you don't make policy in the Appropriations Bill and by by limiting an education savings account in the appropriation field you're inappropriately make the policy in spite of leadership pushing to have that Amendment die he'd received 86 votes additionally there were you know 14 or 15 white lights people who were present not voted I think when we looked at that list we determined that easily half of them are likely to be anti-voucher voters based on votes in previous sessions so we're the situation right now in which I think we could argue over 90 house members have indicated they do not want a voucher vote they don't want to vouch your bill or piece of legislation and certainly they probably don't want to vote on it again it's a very contentious issue and we

109know that the voucher supporters are certainly doing all they can to uh to generate evidence that a voucher bill is really desired by a majority of Texas particularly by majority people who voted in the Republican primary so that's where we are right now on that there's still a lot to get done before anything happens to vouchers and I'm optimistic that we're going to be able to uh to explain the rationale as to why they do not make sense financially why it creates a tremendous burden two years four years and six years down the road for Texas and why without any accountability is absolutely bad policy consistent with what you and others who have served on this board have said certainly for the entire time that hilco has been working with the Arlington's ISD Board of

110Trustees yeah thanks and I know that we have just been perplexed at the idea that they have you know the state has constructed a increasingly complex accountability system for public schools over the last 35 years and then to give folks essentially taxpayer money and the reason I say it's taxpayer money is it's not just the parents money and in the very for the vast majority of people they're going to receive an amount of money that far exceeds what they pay into the education system in the form of property taxes and so it is taxpayer money and I just don't think that would ever fly for us it doesn't fly for us and and I I find that baffling but one of the things I I really appreciate you saying is that that that is something

111that's maybe going to come up in the house and and in some substance there one other thing I wanted to ask you about is the enrollment versus attendance uh funding is there any traction on that this session with finally moving us from attendance-based funding over to enrollment um and you know the reason for that as we've discussed before is I think covet really showed default lines on this we we don't want to create incentives for people to send their kids to school sick and then and then judge us and fund US based on whether or not it was a particularly bad flu season or there was a global pandemic so is it has there been any movement on that there are several bills that it include some modifications to the finance System including some that

112add new allotments and many of those are now structured in a way that they would be based on average daily enrollment not average daily attendance however core mechanism is still average daily attendance I think this is one of those areas in which patience really is required I think if we can see some changes in some of those allotments shift us from average daily attendance average daily enrollment the probability of getting to average daily enrollment funding in 25 or 27 is very good I know that's a long time four years from now kids who are enforced first grader and fifth grade kids who are in ninth grade are graduating but I think that we we are making progress on this what you said about we don't want to encourage people to send their kids to school

113sick because of the commitment is one of the critically important arguments the other one is that the pandemic has certainly changed parent attitudes about being in school and we have a lot of evidence that indicates parents don't feel tied to the annual school calendar with regard to vacations that if there's an opportunity to do something have a have a great experience parents are much more willing to take kids out of school for an extra two or three days or four days during the school year now than they were before 2017-2018 in a significant way so I think we'll see some progress on that and I'll call out our representative Ken King former trustee who serves in the house serves on the education committee from Canadian Texas in West Texas is one who is really pushing

114that issue forward with several of the different uh different funding mechanisms that we're working on this session all right well thanks for that insight and I don't want to monopolize the questions here but thank you for your time David thank you Mr Chapa Miss McMorrow good to see you Mr Anderson thanks for joining us thank you um I want to go back to the topic of voucherville specifically Senate Bill 8. I've been following this bill and um as soon as we got back from Austin as a board um you know the bill was filed and um shortly after that we had trustees go down to Austin again and our board president waited 12 hours to testify um in opposition of vouchers um we really continue as a board to be aligned in our opposition um

115of of school vouchers specifically Senate Bill eight and I just want to ask you at this moment in time what else can we do or let me reframe that what it what is necessary for us to do as a board so that we can say at the end of this session that we did everything we possibly could have to take a stand against vouchers the trustees the current trustees and trustees who preceded you have been very strong very public very vocal about this and certainly you you've done that I had no doubt that every one of the four Senators who represent Arlington ISD as well as the four house members who have significant parts of honors and ISD know exactly where the board formally stands as well as almost all of them know where each

116of the seven of you stand on this because you've been so so consistent and so unified on I think it's it's going to be very important for us over the remaining five weeks and my hats off to Bill who is always available and quick to respond to any call or text as well as Dr Cavazos and others but but Dr Hill in particular I think it's going to be very important for us to keep that communication going unless they us I mean primarily Kate Coleman and me but buddy Jones and Todd Webster and D Carney uh as well on the hillcoat team that supports Arlington that we're at the point now next week that it's not a matter of saying every week well here's where we are it's a matter of being able to get

117on the phone uh with with him as our conduit to you on relatively short notice by this I mean we need Bill to get in touch with him within 30 to 45 minutes of something happening so that he's able to notify you and we're able to say now is the time to make these calls the other thing I think is important is to stay in touch with your other trust with trustees in neighboring school districts and even more importantly with your community leaders I think we've seen an example of this just this week with the Ireland Chamber of Commerce and had executive director there recognizes some of the important issues for Arlington having business and Community leaders engage and support the position you've taken becomes becomes very very important I feel that the house is

118solid on this there are a lot of doubts in the senate about how this exactly will work I think that regardless of how votes have been taken in the past by Senator Hancock Senator King Central Birdwell Senator West or or against voucher bills that's where we've got to stay in touch with uh with your with your Senate delegation about this thank you I'm cautiously stick but um thank you for being in touch with us on the spot like that and we we do continue um or we do look forward to continuing those those um on the spot updates I did have one more question um you mentioned that there are 114 bills regarding mental health right now 228 bills that were filed on school safety and discipline I would hope that our legislators see that

119the two are related and I was curious to ask or I was curious to see your perspective which bills are picking up the most traction there and which ones do you spot that align most with our legislative priorities well there is overlap and I should have said this when we first started uh Miss McMorrow that seller the bills appear on multiple lists as you look at them and we see for instance House Bill 1605 the instructional bill also relates to parental rights it also relates to the school Finance because there are triggers in that field that touch all of those there is a lot of overlap between mental health and school safety I will tell you that I'm disappointed right now that we're looking at the amount of money for school safety it seems to

120be the Focus right now compared to where I thought we would be based on conversation when the when the legislature started for example House Bill 3 which has no companion bill in the Senate by the way House Bill 3 is on the house calendar for Monday and I think that bill no doubt will get some amendments but we'll probably get approved that's the bill and certainly in in probably every neighborhood in Arlington there are some strong feelings about this this calls for men Cherry mandatory armed security officers on every campus in Texas um I I have concerns about the mandates that every dish every campus has to do everything the same way because all of our campuses are different it could be certainly right there in Arlington you know firsthand some District some campuses need

121something that the others don't but House Bill 3 is the bill I think that we watch right now on the house side that's included it also includes the safety allotment and in this case they've listened to a lot of people including us on your behalf by saying that the safety allotment has to be more than just an amount per pupil that it really needs to have some amount guaranteed for every campus and then you go beyond that to recognize that more needs to be done for larger campuses and it does have a minimum 15 000 per campus ten dollars per student there's some weights to that uh and when I last looked at it as I recall and back to the point that Mr Joplin made I believe this is on in on enrollment not

122on average daily attendance it does include a significant audit section with regard to safety Audits and it places tea in charge of the safety audits if you'll bear with me just a sec I'll tell you one of the one of the points in which there's been some tension this session is who really which agency really should be the responsible Agency for overseeing school safety in Texas on one hand we have the Texas Education Agency which is fundamentally the regulatory Agency for schools but tea has not really had any expertise for school safety there until just recently and on the other hand you've got the school safety center which was created when I was at tea 25 years ago and that's located in Texas State University in San Marcos once regulatory agency the other basically is

123a research institution both of them have some practical experience I think there's a question here that the legislature has to answer and that is do you really shift tea into multiple roles with school safety not only the regulatory agency with regard to the audience but also the agency that provides expertise because we've all seen in the last six years the agency under commissioner morath has taken on more technical assistance responsibilities than than the agency has prior to that on the other hand and you really want School Safety Center which has been a great resource for schools if you want it to become the agency that is also carrying the stick that says you're not doing this well so they've really got to determine what's the appropriate role for those two agencies and what's the appropriate

124role for our 20 service centers to support Dr Cavazos and the staff on some of the day-to-day sort of things related to school safety uh safety will get attention has gotten attention there will be a major bill passed there will be funding for school safety but quite frankly I'm not sure that what we're going to see on the 27th of May when the insurance signing die is what we predicted we would see leading into the session and when the session began back on January 10th thank you when I say I don't think we'll see it I think the Delta between what we expected to see and what we're going to see could be disappointing for us thank you that's that's really good information and we did ask our legislators and I'm sure you continue to

125communicate that our hope is that school safety does get the funding it needs from the state and districts need that autonomy to be able to delegate those funds to what makes our district safe there are some rural school districts that don't have the hardened facilities like we do with with the passage of our last two bonds but we certainly could still use the funding but districts are apples and oranges so thank you for the information that helps a lot thanks so much so thank you Miss McMorrow Mr will Banks thank you president Fowler and David it's good to hear from you again uh staying on school safety and the comment my colleague Miss McMurray just made local discretion is critical with especially any allotments we get on school safety because not only her point about

126the needs in rural districts are very different than the needs of our district but when you go from campus to campus within our district and we've got some facilities that were built in the 1950s and 60s and Webb Elementary that was built and just opened recently with hardened secure features built in just amazing the level of levels of security that are provided in that facility versus one of our older facilities so local discretion is is key I think and what have you been hearing in terms of the the bills like hb3 and the others in terms of allowing districts the flexibility they need to to as Miss McMurray said allocate those resources where it's most needed uh and avoid the one size uh fits-all approach I think there will be some discretion I do think

127that there will be some characteristics of the final bill that will that will include directions or mandates that every school district will have to follow I'm pleased with the conversations that are taking place with regard to the the quote hardening approach of the facilities I think that the members the 150 house members and 31 Senators recognized it just as you said districts that were built at different times districts that serve different ages Elementary Middle High School and districts or or buildings rather campuses in smaller communities versus large Urban mid-urban uh communities such as you have do need different considerations the uh there are several people several key leaders who seem to be very very tied to the notion of mandatory armed security officers uh at every campus I'm hopeful that we're going to get some

128consideration there about if that is required how districts may do that they're by Contracting with local police many districts now have their own uh like the better term please uh departments that serve the school district in some cases uh it's a very different approach in some of our smaller rural communities I'm hopeful that there's the final bill will include recognition that there has to be some discretion about how we address anything whether it's the armed security officers on every campus or the the pardoning of the perimeter one thing that I'm pleased with is I believe you're going to see some flexibility about some of the funds that come along with school safety in terms of what you're able to do with mental health as well as what you're able to do with the actual hardening

129of campuses the seven of you have said this to me individually and collectively it's got to be both it can't be one or the other it really has to be both to make our our schools and our community safer thanks for that update and um my colleague Mr Choppa ask about a lot of my concerns especially the as he pointed out earlier tonight the proposals for increasing the allotment at ninety dollars is such a small fraction of what we get and given just the cost of inflation in the demands from competing districts in terms of races that we'll have to provide for our staff just to attract and continue to attract enough teachers to fill the slots we have open is great and as you heard earlier my concern is with the increase in recapture

130that we're facing at many districts are facing we're not going to see the relief we need so my questions are twofold sounds like what you said earlier is that we're probably not going to see the basic allotment increase much at all but we're going to see incremental increases through additional allotments like transportation um and then what bills would you bet on that will have mechanisms that do alleviate the problem that we're all facing with recapture I don't expect to see much relief on recapture beyond what happens with tax compression because the tax compression does does help for a while but as we saw with representative huberty's house feel free about four years ago in 2019 I think almost every one of us who looked at that certainly our friends at taspo that Miss Moss worked

131with very closely they were saying at the time they weren't saying it quite as simply as this uh short-term fix long-term problem it wasn't quite that simple I think most of us thought that what happened in 2019 was would provide relief for taxpayers and for school districts more more predictability more stability and budgeting for probably six to eight years lasted less than four and that's that's the one concern that I have being able to sort of look back over at things over a long period of time yeah this if the tax compression is important we we are providing relief for our taxpayers our property taxpayers because we we rely on our property tax to such a significant degree that's important but the growth in Texas something that you cannot control Dr Cavazos can't control the

132growth in Texas is driving property value and growth and unless we see a significant enrollment increase in in public schools in general in individual school districts specifically that property value increase is going to push more districts into into recapture to and those who are already in it where I live in Austin ISD to a greater extent than we ever predicted and we've said this before we're at a point right now where where recapture payments excess Revenue that school districts collect above the formulas has become a piggy bank for the State Legislature and that's what's being used to offset General Revenue funds that we go into education otherwise now we've heard one school district just in the last week trustees in a very responsible and recognized School District makes statements that indicate that they're ready for

133um they're ready to take this on legally to recapture circumstance on legally by basically not making their recapture pay well obviously the statutes have Provisions that speak to what happens to District if they do don't do that but I think as I referenced earlier about your conversations paralleling dozens and dozens of conversations in other districts across the state that's a conversation that is not just limited to that one school district we've had several districts say the same thing recently about recaptures reached a point where it's breaking us and we need something we need something significant to get significant to get everyone's attention that this has to change in recapture has been in place since 1993. short-term solution in 1993 to a court case and the people who were behind recapture Bill Ratliff I think I

134can can say that if he won tonight he would say recapture was intended to be a short-term solution and then in the regular session in 95 it was a special session in 94 not 93 but by 95 or 97 we would have a permanent solution to recapture to Robin Hood and here we are now almost 30 years later and we don't and we have districts that are paying almost a billion dollars in recapture back to the state and that's not really going to support property poor districts the way it did originally I appreciate those comments and well that was the last of my questions I appreciate you and again I appreciate your comments and suggestions on involving the community because things are going to start heating up here so you're imagining you're going to be

135quite busy over these next reasons I think Dr Hill and Dr Cavazos are gonna they're gonna want to block my number here over the next few weeks but but they won't thank you Mr will Banks Mr Anderson I think we can no longer idly sit by and hope that our legislators do right by us and do what's in the best interest of our students I think we have to Now voice and voice loudly what we know we need and I and I wonder when is the last time that a legislator actually came into a school and observed what's being done right and all the good things that we're doing but also to notice we need money to keep improving but I wonder when the last time was any of our legislators actually sat down in

136a school and met with the principal or or talked with students or parents and I think that that's probably something they should consider lots of times I think people in Austin think they have all the answers and um they haven't really done their homework they haven't sought out questions and answers from people that are in the know and it just bothers me that people think they have all the answers for us without taking what we know is best into consideration well I will tell you I live here in Austin and I think I represent what you just said I think I have all the answers but I don't have a vote and I can't get people to pay attention all the time I want them to so I I do want to take issue with

137one thing you said and that is we need to start doing this honestly you and your fellow trustees are are an example of for other school districts and they're easily 12 to 15 other districts I could point to where on any given week there are trustees and District leadership in the capital as you and your fellow trustees have been several times and yes the relationship started home you maintain those relationships at home throughout the interim during the session but but being here is important and I believe me I appreciate the time that that you and your colleagues have spent down here in the time that Dr bossos and Dr Hill and Miss moss and others have given to Kate and me when we call say help us understand this um to your point about getting

138members in schools I will say that Chris Turner David Cook Tony tinderholt son of Johnny on the house side those members and their staff their doors have have been completely open to us this entire session and on different issues each one of those four have been helpful and I could say the same thing about Kelly Hancock and Brian Birdwell at voice Western particularly Phil King who has such a significant part of Arlington right now I think you you've absolutely uh you've hit this on the we hit the nail on the head here and I would encourage you to once these members have a little bit of time to get home and get their breath and catch their breath in June and July I would encourage you to invite them to school against invite them to

139come in and flip a coin it uh at the Seguin High football game or to do other things that get them into the community where the community sees their engagement with schools and more importantly they get to engage with the parents the students the teachers the administrators and the trustees to make Arlington ISD work Subway thank you Mr Anderson I think that's a great idea and maybe we can look for that in the fall and and get some things started like that with with getting them more involved in the community thank you for always having your pulse on Austin and alerting us to things that we need to be aware of I appreciate the the times that you have set up meetings for us you've set up phone calls just last night Michael Jacobson and

140I had a nice conversation with Kelly Hancock's office and so I appreciate all that you do for us and always looking out for the best interest of AISD and I know it's a lot of work regard for all of you I hope you know that and we're we're proud to represent Arlington the only complaint I have right now with the seven trustees is that you accepted that letter of retirement from Dr Colossus reluctantly very reluctantly thank you Mr Anderson please know that you're I'll be talking to all of you in the next few days thank you for taking time tonight and letting me do this remotely so that I can get back up to the public Ed committee here in a few minutes we appreciate it sir thank you thank you foreign forum for non-agenda

141items Miss Benjamin do we have any requesters registered to address the board regarding non-agenda items yes ma'am we have three registered speakers thank you Miss Benjamin we will call on Chris Kittle hi Miss kittel let me um welcome Miss kittel this second open Forum segment of the meeting provides citizens with an opportunity to address the trustees on any subject except personnel this is not intended to be a discussion or a debate and trustees will not reply to the speakers derogatory comments aimed at an individual will not be tolerated you will have two minutes to speak Ms Benjamin will notify you when your time is up and then please end your presentation thank you thank you I am Dr Chris Kittle and there's a handout coming around that is from me I am the education lead

142of the Tarrant County chapter of citizens defending Freedom a number of progressive organizations are attempting to pressure School administrators to broaden the language of Title IX to include sexual orientation and gendered identity this undermines federal law and the legislative authority of the United States Congress these organizations are leaning on the misleading guidance of the Department of education's 2021 notice of interpretation in conjunction with President Biden's executive order on the Supreme Court ruling in Bostic versus Clayton County it must be noted that the court clearly stated that Bostic was a Title VII issue and did not apply to Title IX or any other law the Supreme Court in Bostick emphasized that sex-based Implement discrimination consistent with Title VII was unconstitutional however they explicitly refrained from applying their ruling to Title IX therefore the department of education's

143notice of interpretation and the executive order are null because it expressly contradicts Supreme Court precedent there have been a handful of cases further demonstrating the Bostic ruling does not apply to Title IX issues the recent Federal District Court's ruling prevents the vital Biden administration's notice of interpretation and executive order from taking effect in 20 States including in Texas additionally a federal district court here in Texas affirmed that sexual orientation and gender identity are not protected categories because Title IX must be read in the original context in which it was drafted in 1972 where sex was understood to be biological and binary in the Bostic case the Supreme Court stated that the people's representatives are the ones who must amend Title IX and therefore only Congress can amend Title IX I ask you to consider this

144information before applying before acting on the course of tactics of organizations intentionally misapplying Title IX to push a political agenda that would eradicate Title IX sex specific protections female students have the right to privacy in bathrooms and lock and locker rooms they have the right to participate in sporting activities that are only against other female athletes thank you thank you Miss kittel David Jarvis welcome Mr Jarvis good evening happy again uh this board proudly claims on your website that you see yourselves as Guardians of the public trust however to guard the public trust you must also show that you trust the public with transparent policies at two recent grievance hearings in March AISD senior officials prohibited the attendance of observers at my grievance hearings when objected to this practice and pointed out that current grievance

145policy does not address the issue of Observers and that these officials had no Express authority to ban observers they ignored my questions excuse me my objections in order that the Observer be removed rather than asking this board to formally amend your grievance policy to include the Banning of observers these officials bypass this board and band observers in a stunning abuse of authority if officials can bypass this board and unilaterally assume Authority outside current policy there's really no limit to this Lawless practice if this board truly wants to be a guardian of the public trust you must reign in your senior officials who have unilaterally banned observers from attending public grievance hearings Banning observers also sends a troubling message to parents and taxpayers that this district is not comfortable with taxpayers observing grievance hearings Banning observers

146does not promote public trust it undermines it such Lawless actions also erase serious questions with the public about the integrity and transparency of the entire grievance process this board must intervene now and stop these Lawless actions if you truly seek to be Guardians of the public trust thank you so much thank you Mr Jarvis Diedrich Foster welcome Mr Foster hello good evening board members first I'd like to thank you all for having me here today uh my name is DJ Foster I'm a senior at James Bowie High School and as the Board of Education I really want to as the Board of Education I want to push you dang let me restart as the Board of Education I want to push you to uh I want you to push every educator to teach from perspective

147of every act from from every race every religion from elementary school all the way through High School as students we should be learning the history of all people I had to by not knowing my ancestors history that left me full of questions and that left me uninformed and full of questions that I had to go out for my own and final answers to not every person will go as far as asking their family members about their history and going onto the internet and actually taking the time to research and learn about their people's history instead they will live their entire life only knowing a small percentage of history that will put America Africa that will put America on a pedestal and to pick it as a hero that saves the day and then showcase the

148Caucasian man as a Pioneer more powerful than everyone else if we teach kids from the beginning the whole story this will erase some of the societal ignorance that exists today towards specific people and religions racism is taught not learned and there's an opportunity for you all as a group to have a huge contribution on the fight to minimize racism as much as possible imagine this headline Arlington ISD Board of Education puts forth a huge contribution in the fight to minimize racism I will leave you all with this question how would you feel if y'all knew little to nothing about your history about the ancestors of your people and you receive hate every day for what you believed in for your ethnicity you all should stand up to y'all you are you all should stand up

149for change advocate for us fight for your students fight for your educators we deserve to know our history our open discussion at a later time thank you Mr Foster it is now time for our superintendent trip yes Miss Mays thank you president Fowler Diedrich can you stay after do not leave please all right thank you Miss mace Dr Cavazos thank you president father and just a couple of items since our last board meeting that we want to highlight and you'll see it on the screen here but I want to thank first our outstanding Librarians for all their work as we celebrate School library month and look at all those Librarians we know how important the role of libraries play in transforming learning for our students but our Librarians are the key to make those Transformations

150happen every single day they're responsible for digital citizenship encouraging students to think critically how they use information how they discern information our Librarians are outstanding and I want to recognize them and thank them for all their tireless work I also want to commend Jones Academy nurse Sandra Juarez and first grade teacher Carlos Matos Martinez for their quick thinking recently a student had a medical issue during a field day and Matos Martinez noticed it and reported it to miss Juarez who administered an EpiPen and that quick thinking helped the student and got the attention of Arlington fire department the department showed up and the duel were honored for their actions they honored them with certificates of commendation congratulations to this dynamic duo for quick thinking and quick action I appreciate it very very much more congratulations

151are in order for this time for Martin student Camille C Amil created a district-wide monologue competition to feature African-American playwrights Camille did so because she felt like there was a lack of African-American representation in theater she was looking for an issue she cared about as part of her Girl Scout desire to earn a gold award which is the highest honor for a Girl Scout Camille achieved that recognition along with two other Arlington ISD individuals Martin's Madison Scruggs and Lamar's Colleen gladbach congratulations to all these three outstanding achievement recognitions and finally last night I had the honor of attending our Career Technical education impact awards at our Center for Visual and Performing Arts how's that for a month our career in technical education department does an outstanding job of providing opportunities so when we talk about

152opportunities for students that these are the people individuals every day these are representative of the people every day who provide those individuals with Pathways when they graduate whether it's college or going straight into the workforce we're able to honor outstanding teachers and members of the CTE Department recognize Community Partners that we've worked with throughout our school year and their support is critical as well and you might recognize some of those individuals because they are the same individuals who over and over shine in careertech so we were able to recognize them as their annual awards that now they'll begin this was the first time so I want to thank Susan Patterson for doing that as well what a great group of individuals the entire careertech Education team does an outstanding job and we depend on them

153very very much so that concludes my report thank you Dr Cavazos do I have any school board members with reports again the chop up thank you president Fowler I just wanted to uh let everyone know about tomorrow's education celebration event at Six Flags this is an annual event that the Education Foundation puts on it's their primary fundraiser to raise money for grants that go to teachers they gave out over two hundred thousand dollars in teacher grants this year to ai's AISD teachers you can find information at arlingtonef.org on how to buy tickets and it is a private event just for people who buy tickets to support AISD so you can expect the lines to be long and the last weather forecast I checked the weather is going to be nice tomorrow night once the rain

154stops so hope to see everyone there if you don't go to AISD night at the Rangers game tomorrow night there they are close together Six Flags and and the stadium so if you'd like to do both I think that's possible too so big night for AISD and supporting our teachers thank you Mr Chapa Miss McMorrow thank you president Fowler over the weekend we were able to attend one of the um four performances that young junior high students performed bye-bye birdie and um our our socks were knocked off it was such a great production and the quality of acting and we also were able to see the band and Orchestra involved and although our Junior High cafeterias don't have a pit it was as if there was a pit Orchestra it just contributed to the whole

155performance and we were really Blown Away by the students Talent so I don't want to leave anyone out so I do want to thank the entire Young Junior High family particularly the Fine Arts team for allowing our students to really showcase their talents and you know some of our students might go on to pursue a career in music one day but for those that don't they're really instilling a love of music and and um and art and just being able to create those memories for our students so I was really blessed to be part of it in the audience and um want to thank Young Junior High for that thank you Miss McMurray was an incredible performance maze thank you president Fowler um just a couple of things this is National volunteerism month so to

156all of y'all that are out there volunteering y'all I'm so Texas now um that are out there volunteering for our schools for our students for our teachers thank you very much for those of you that are involved in non-profits thank you very much for what you do and for those of you looking to get involved please go out to aisd.net website there's all kinds of ways that you can be involved in volunteer also we had an amazing time last night at teacher of the year it is so awesome to see teachers being recognized for the work that they're doing but also being recognized by their peers I think that raises it to a different level so amazing um amazing event last night honoring them and then finally I just want to say how honestly impressed

157I am when students come up to the mic to talk to the board and I'm sure it is very nerve-wracking but I know last time Muhammad Rahman from Lamar came and spoke to us and tonight Deidre Foster from Bowie High School came and spoke to us and I just want to say that that I and I believe the rest of our board really appreciates hearing from our students because at the end of the day the things that they say and feel are very important to us as overseeing a district so I just want to thank them and the students in the past and hopefully the students that are continuing to come forward and learning at this age how to advocate for yourself before they go out to the real world and we talk about advocating

158to our legislators advocating for our teachers what a great example and a good way to start in a safe environment for those who are teaching how to advocate so I just want to say thank you very much for that and I also just wanted to and also response of what Muhammad Rahman had mentioned that the district and the board will not forget Lamar jashon James from Lamar just just Sean James Poirier I wanted to say his name correctly the same way as all those these incidences weren't on campus but around the school for Tony Strather from Bowie High School 2019 same with Carl Wilson from Martin High School in 2015. we do not forget and anytime that a student or staff member feels like we need a reminder I think we're all we're all here

159for that because at the end of the day we're all family no matter what campus anything happens on we're all a family so they were all a part of our family so I just wanted to say that as well so thank you thank you Miss Mays I appreciate those comments Mr secretary do we have any items to consider not at this time thank you thank you Ms secretary it is now 9 28. we are adjourned we are going into closed and we will not be back [Music] thank you [Music] foreign