4/9/25 BCISD School Board Workshop and Special Called Meeting

001May I call this meeting? It is Wednesday, April 9th. We're located in the HJ administration boardroom for a special call meeting and a board workshop. Do we have any audience with pat? We have no audience with patrons. So, we're going to move on to the third item of business, which is the second reading of board policy update 124. A CCA local, B CB CBA local, C Y local, DH local, EHB local, FB local, G FG local, and HG K local. Is there a motion to be [Music] made? All right, there's a motion on the table. Is there a second to the motion? First and a second. Any questions, comments? Hearing none. All in favor? Opposed? Motion passes six to zero. All right. Number four. Consider and take possible action regarding superintendent evaluation. Is there a

002motion to be made? Yes. Motion evaluations discussed session. There's a motion on the table. Is there a second to the motion? All right. All is there any question, comments, any further discussion? All in favor? Oh, sorry. Okay. Yes, ma'am. in close session. We're not going back today. No, ma'am. Yeah, there's no close session today. Sure. Um, so we have a first on the table, a motion on the table with a first and a second. Uh, any further comments or questions? All in favor? I opposed. Motion passes 5 to one. All right. Number five, consider and take possible action to authorize the board president to retain legal services from Thompson and Horton LLP. Is there a motion to be made? I move to authorize the board president to obtain legal services from Thompson important hill key

003on behalf of board trustees deemed necessary appropriate discretion. All right. Is there a second to the motion? I second. All right. Um just a quick I place this item on the agenda to ask you all to approve me to retain legal services from Thompson Important LLP. Thompson Important is a prominent school law firm with its principal office in Houston. I'm requesting to work with this firm specifically because of the board's previous attorney, Morgan B, now works at this firm. I would like to involve Morgan in a sensitive personnel matter of which you're all aware from our discussions in close session at previous meetings. In order to prevent our current law firm from any actual or perceived conflict of interest in advising the board on the issue, I cannot discuss this matter in open session. Of

004course, if you authorize me to take action, I will ask Morgan to be at our next meeting to allow us discuss to discuss this issue in detail. There any questions sir? Yes ma'am. So you want to go to because there has been a couple questions about conflict of interest from our current law firm and the person personnel issues okay. Any other questions or comments? All right, hearing none. All in favor? Opposed? All right. Motion passes 51. All right. Moving into our budget workshop. Dr. M. Yes. Um I will be sharing if I haven't already some supplementary notes with the information that was in the board book. Uh but again, I've got my team here uh to answer questions on uh those items. Hopefully a quick share of I advise that you if you're willing to

005open it now. Uh at the same time, there's a lot of information that we'll cover as we go. I think I've heard of college high school and uh that information is substantial. It's not of course it's not an action item, but it is substantial. So, we wanted the opportunity for the team to go through it and so I'll I'll share that with you is supplementary notes. Um, so, uh, first item is a legislative update. Uh, as we prepare for the budget season, what I would caution everyone on is, and I know Vince and I talked about this this morning, uh, there's a lot up in the air with regard to budget and formulas. Uh to give you an idea, one of the biggest uh defeasement M loan defeasement ideas that we had was the Baker.

006That's a voter approved tax rate election as an option, not as anything we're exploring at this time, but we're trying to find every single option. The reason I say it's it's time to watch with uh caution, is that there isn't a lot of information that the Senate and the House have agreed on. Obviously, there's a lot of things to be settled. However, both sides under current law, both sides have language that may prevent evad. And so, although there's no commitment to any strategies uh mentioned tonight, zero, uh there is law in that legislation, there's language in that legislation that may be prohibited. And so, there's a lot of strategies with budget. For instance, uh on the House side, what we're seeing is we're seeing a lot of formula changes. formulas to the allotment. So there's

007language on the basic a lotment and for those that are that are listening online the basic aotment uh that is the most discretionary way to fund the district that is giving you a lump sum and saying you have the best needs of the district at your heart and so you have a lot of autonomy. We're seeing a shift in the legislation. We're not seeing any laws passed but there's a definite shift. It's all based on uh much of it is based on blockments and formula. For example, you know that the school security uh safety audit uh that we went through recently was pretty much funded through the school safety allotment. The school safety aotment uh for the past few years has been about $32,000 and we have spent into the millions on requirements by the

008state unfunded mandates by the state such as our new strategic badge panic button. That was one of the last initiatives to come in. So all the expenses far outweigh the allotment. So 32,000 doesn't pay for one salary. There has been an increase proposed but nothing is there. So to be strategic in that regard once we know that formula change for the security audit there uh there may be a mention of CTE tonight to uh principal moer you've watched that very closely I've seen a number of things with CTE tonight we'll talk about prek partnerships which is probably the most innovative thing that I've ever heard of much less been a part of in my 30-year career and that window is open. wide. Not only is it open, all the legislative uh leans are towards expanding

009and increasing funding. And so that's definitely something I'm very excited. It's still on the table, very innovative, uh very out of the box, but we look forward to sharing that tonight as well. And so, uh, in just a second, Vince was going to weigh in a little bit before we get into the next session section on, uh, on the RFP. Uh but uh Vince, could you share I mean you shared with me just a little bit about the uncertainty of the information that's coming out such as the very global comments that we typically get in a legislative session. The one that's most interesting to me is the number that was thrown out there for the allimportant teacher races. Yeah. So right now what's being proposed is you're seeing based on the proposals of 3.2 2

010billion different aotment increases into billions but then overall what's being I guess set aside for teacher races across the state the total is 750 million you take that provided by the number of teachers across the state across districts it's really not going to amount much um so a lot of that relief is going to potentially come from potentially a lot the aotment some of those pieces but um I was part of caswell meeting on Friday there's a legislative update that we had and a lot of that was just there's a lot of uncertainty talking to my peers in the region. Uh I believe the number we did a peer survey before we went out there on Friday night and uh I think there's 14 districts within the region when it comes to compensation plans just

011because the uncertainty of it all are waiting each other at the end of the legislative session to see what's going to happen. Um something just to comment on something I know we've talked about previous workshops even back in the fall and even last budget cycle. One of those was okay we can start looking at you know compensation plans but at the same time if you decide to give a 3% midpoint increase right now and then the state turns around and says D give the 3% increase to teachers well then at that point the 3% increase that we gave in the spring or we potentially adopt in spring won't count towards what the states give or mandating that we do um some funding that they'll funnel through or potentially hopefully funnel through. So, at that point,

012you're paying, you know, you're paying for a 3% mandated increase, but then you're also adopting an additional 3% on top of that uh that the state's not covering. Um there's a lot of uncertainty just uh in terms of like Dr. Max said uh in 2019 uh when they did increase the basic a lotment there was language that kind of it was kind of dis not kind of it just was disadvant disadvantageous to districts because it goes back in time and says okay you have to adopt a plan as of January 1st. So now that's made a lot of people especially here in our region very concerned saying what if you know a lot of us are looking at the fact that we may have to go out for a and if you're having to go

013out for a vineyard and they end up increasing the basic law and then they put restrictive language in there it kind of puts us in a bad spot and it puts us in a way in a position where we might not be able to go out for something that gives us room. Um, so there's a lot of constraints there. Uh, looking at, uh, potential legislative language that's out there saying going from a simple majority of more than 50% to now a super majority of 60%. Uh, not 60% of your voter base, but 60% of the voters that turn out. Um, and and so that's where it makes it very difficult. They're trying to make it more restrictive for bonds. Um, and we've talked about the FEMA claims. We talked about that with Joey and with

014Lewis uh, in the fall. um just kind of looking at okay we maintain our INS rate at whatever we have it at let's just say it's 70 cents just using round paper right now so we maintain that going into next tax season and we maintain that INS rate here that would create let's say $18 million worth of capacity for us on the INS side for us to sit there and say okay let's go go out for an $18 million bond well now the state's proposing the bill so they're taking away a lot of the tools that that we have to try to bring relief to ourselves locally. Of course, there's a lot of different things out there even on the M side. I'm talking about just removing Mor taxes. I don't see that happening because

015that's just a major move. But essentially, the message we got was okay, you're um you know, the powers that be um won't make names, but are basically saying they want to get more local control, but everything that's being proposed is taking control. So, um, just kind of wanted to give you a brief synopsis of some of the things I heard. And I think a part of that, Vince, and you kind of jog my memory on a piece of this when we when we say a voter approved tax rate election. First of all, to even qualify for that option to really bring in some some solid money for the district, you have to have capacity with your current collections. Uh I would encourage everyone and and perhaps in a uh future board meeting we can show

016just how much we compressed the tax rate here locally. So there is capacity. Uh how much capacity is there if it's untouched and everything worked perfectly? Approximately $4 million not a one-time $4 million a reoccurring $4 million. All that is contingent upon the legislature. So part of what we do tonight is to ease anxiety and ease concerns and to share all of the options that are still on the table. Until they're off the table, we're we're going to keep working and we're going to keep and so uh that potential is still there. Uh and until they close the door, uh that's just an opportunity. But again, because we have the capacity, because the tax rate is is at a a lower rate, and again, those are published and we'll be sharing out as we move

017forward how much the tax rate has gone down over the last few years. Uh we know that property values are going up and we do not control that. We do not control property values in any way, shape or form. Uh so those that's just a little bit more on Badger. Uh and so we have the extra collections potential. we have the capacity. No one is suggesting it. Uh in a perfect world, that could bring approximately $4 million value uh to the budget above what we currently have. And so again, a lot of I I understand a lot of maintenance tonight, but it's good to have options. Uh we'll move on to the next piece here. Were there any questions about legislation? Can I add one more piece to that? as far as taxes go and

018just a potential legislation. Uh once again, one one thing that kind of mudded the waters, it's been probably will pass again because we saw an increase in homestead exemption tax code jump from 40 to 100,000. And so that, you know, definitely money in the water is not only for us trying to project it and, you know, project a budget based off of that. Of course, we're going to project like basically budget like it would pass. um that we're seeing we thought it was going to be a very minimal increase. What we're seeing in legislation and some of the bills that are being proposed is a jump from 100 to 140. So once again they're saying that'll hold us harmless for that but uh based on what we saw last time it's it's not necessarily guaranteed

019that we're really truly held held harmless in some of those situations. Like Dr. M mentioned on top of that property taxes to the rise. That's something that we talked about when we met financial advisor. like it's a matter of okay. Um and myself as well as the other districts in the county we met with Barker, the tax collector had us, you know, all come in and meet with them. Uh and what we are actually what's known as a poor district based on compression. So we're basically compressed to the max here in the state. So we're the four as far as compression go. Thank you for that. Um, moving on before we get into uh the RFP, uh, we are always looking for opportunities uh, for savings, for efficiency, uh, and and in many cases just

020outright benefits to staff. And so this evening uh we're going to be presenting on a request for proposals that uh we approved in a previous meeting uh potentially no commitment uh custodial services. And I'm I'm going to turn it over at this time uh to Mr. BJ uh to introduce our guests and to we're going to give a little general overview of where we are on this uh who uh uh came on top of the process. is a very legal procurement process. This process, some information cannot be shared due to legal reasons. Uh the timeline of the RFT is somewhat rigid because it's our guarantee to the folks who've applied for our RFP. So, we're going to adhere that to that specific timeline. But, uh tonight we wanted to talk about some bottom line issues

021and some some kind of surprises for the board to consider. the board's not committed, but for the board to consider, uh I I'll tell you right now some of the uh myths that uh I was lucky enough to uh receive that were out there visiting with some of our custodial staff was concerns about what about me, what about vacation, what about and so in this uh process that was probably the biggest uh eye openener to me. As a matter of fact, I just talked to our custodian for the that serves us here in this room and shared a little bit about it just as far as because obviously that was one of the people I talked to that had that concern and so uh Brent at this time I'll turn it over to you and

022I know Brent uh uh Brent and uh and uh Carly Carla Carly couldn't be here tonight but Vince is is here and Vince thank you for entrusting Carly on this I'm telling you it has been one of the most cleanest wellorganized fees I've ever seen and I've seen quite a few from a former district. Very clean, very organized, very structured and so great process and we'll adhere to that process uh tonight. But but anything you have to open up this time? Uh yeah, just kind of hit on Dr. Max's point about the legal parameters of the whole RFP. It's a real legal process for procurement. Uh tonight we have uh Mr. Luke Bruns and Paulos from AHI to present some information to you uh about their company. Uh we're just kind of in our timeline

023phase. This is where we're at. Our next process would try to uh get to get us onto the board agenda for next week to take possible action whether it's approval, denial, or table and then try to have a decision in April. That way we can enter some negotiation pieces and have time to make that transition if the board decides to make that transition. And so a point of clarification there uh having it on the April 15th does not action no action table. What it means is given the times if if let's say the board receives information and says hey this is good for staff or this is good for the district how we want to shake that out in order to meet the timeline that's printed in the RFP you must at least consider it

024at the April 15. Does that I hope that brings comfort. It's just meeting as I said before the legal parameters of the RFP and being honest to our folks who apply. So and for clarification the RFP process has been completed and this is who we would like. Yes sir. Yes sir. This is this is the recommendation. So at that time I'd like to turn it over to Mr. Luke and Mr. Paul and open it up for questions from the board and they have they just passed out a packet that they'd like to go over with the board. Dr. Mac, do you have anything? Sure. Just just part of that as as we go along like to provide the background to this. Of course, the RFP as uh as as was shared just a second ago

025was substantial and so the substantial proposal has been shared with the board. Obviously, the committee went through it uh with you and and part of the part of the final process was an interview with them as well. So there was a the confidential criteria within the RFP and then you had the option of doing interviews at the end of it. We chose to do the option. You all were kind enough with the few others that were uh selected to interview and yes you came out as far as as we given you notice as uh the top performer or consideration. So please take it away. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for allowing us to be here this evening. U this is uh RFP was outstanding, by the way. Very detailed. We I do this for

026a living. This is what I've done for 20 years with this company and uh you'll be surprised at some of the the RFPs we get where we're having to ask a lot of different questions and pull things together and this was very well put together. So, that was a good thing. Um I'm my name is Luke Bruns. I'm the VP of business development for AHI and this is my VP of operations, Paul Rios, that I have with me here. He makes it happen in the operations side of things. But AHI, a little history about us, been in business for 57 years. Uh we're a womanowned business based here in Texas. A corporate headquarters in Dallas, Texas, but we have accounts throughout the entire state. Uh we have a large Houston branch as well as we

027also service uh University of Houston Victoria on the other side of you guys. So we we have you surrounded here. Love to uh continue the process of working with you. Um specialization what we do our schools. I mean, we we we do a handful of headquarter campuses as well, but we're about 70% uh higher ed and school districts. So, that's that's our specialty. That's what we focus on uh as a company. Uh you'll see uh the board will see a number of the different clients that we service. So, Baylor University is our largest customer in Texas as far as schools go. Uh but we have many different school districts. Uh Marshall ISD, Paris ISD, Witchaw Falls ISD, Margyle ISD, and we included all of those different references for you guys in our proposal to reach

028out to them. But uh we've been through the entire process of going through uh in-house operation to outsourced. We did that with Community ISD a couple of years ago and we're sensitive to that as we go through it with those customers. Uh so it's something that we we have a lot of experience with. But uh another key thing that really separates us, we've got a a small amount of competitors that have this as well, but we are what you call a SIMS certified company with honors. Now SIMS is similar to like a ISO 9000 uh certification, and it's something we have to go through every two years in order to remain SIM certified. So we achieved this first in 2010 and we go through it every two years where we will actually have auditors that

029will come in look at our systems and our processes at the corporate level from accounting to payroll. They will also go in and hand select a number of our different accounts where they'll go through and make sure that we're doing what we say and uh we say we're doing those accounts. Uh and that's that's something that really sets us apart. We feel the SIMS is based on five key components. That's quality systems, service delivery, human resources, health, safety, and environmental stewardship and management commitment. And so that's something that we go through. And a little side note, we do have some competitors that get SIM certified in a specific account that requires that, but their entire organization may not require that. So they they they may not be we are SIM certified companywide. So every account

030that we service, we have to adhere to these different standards. and criteria to maintain that. And uh I included just our latest certification which is uh in there as well in the packet. But I'll hit on a few other things that differentiate us a little bit from our competitors. We don't subcontracted any of our accounts uh 100%. So every employee is a W2 employee uh that's gone through I9 verification, background checks, and drug screening uh as they're hired on. And our people are the that's the most important part of our company is our people and taking care of our people is a big deal in our industry. Uh we see a lot of competitors multi-billion dollar competitors in our industry that treat the employees like a number and janitorial is something that's done behind the

031scenes and it's it's unappreciated a lot of times. And so we we try to go the extra mile to show that appreciation with our employees. We have many different employees started out as frontline general cleaners that are actually now project managers of campuses in excess of two million square feet. So we can't always offer large raises with our tight budgets uh with districts and whatnot, but we can offer that process of promoting from within. And that's something that's been a big deal within our company. I've been there 20 years and and I've I've experienced it firsthand. Uh we also provide employee rewards programs for performance attendance, gift cards. Uh we create a team environment with monthly team building cookouts and meetings and we provide servant leadership for management. Our our managers mentor all of these

032employees and work with them. Uh we also try to get involved in the communities that we are working in uh through community outreach uh volunteering. one of the accounts that we service, we've uh had a number of the different managers and employees that work in a local food pantry through volunteers. So, we want to invest in the community and be involved as a corporation. Um, our training and education, so all of our frontline employees will go through monthly in-depth safety and service training. And then our operations management will go through annual thirdparty training for uh CEUs or continuing education units. And that's with the International Sanitary Supply Association. uh association of physical plant administrators, international facility management association and many other organizations. So uh culture of putting our people first uh has helped with our

033recruiting and retention. So just like I go after businesses with uh references of showing what we've done and how the different facilities managers and teams will talk about how good work we've done. It's important for us to have that reputation amongst cleaners too. And so that's helped us remain. We're 95% staff in every K12 account that we service throughout Texas, Oklahoma. And we we stayed that way through CO where we had a lot of competitors that were down on their numbers. So I think taking care of our people is a huge deal. Uh the difference, you know, we when we toured this side, the different campuses there somehow we tour them and we don't see a whole lot of o we saw a lot of opportunity to make a big impact here and that's a

034that's a huge deal for us. If we don't see an opportunity to make a big impact, we're not as excited about it. We're excited about working with this district because we feel there's opportunity to come in and make a big impact uh on the cleaning level. Uh we utilize innovative technology. All of our uh vacuum cleaners, our dual filtration, uh we use the lithium ion battery packs with the backpack vacuums. uh utilizing good equipment can really make a big impact and it can reduce the workload on the labor and so that's something we focus a lot on. We utilize color-coded microfiber rags and flat mop systems that prevents crosscontamination uh keeps everything healthy and clean. Uh Spartan and Eolab are the two different chemical lines that we utilize. So either one of those if the

035district has a preference we're open to that. Uh, another thing that really sets us apart, we feel, is our employee work distributions. We see a lot of our competitors and in in-house operations where they basically give them a mop and a broom and they they have the cleaners go clean. And that's that's not the right way to go about it. From our perspective, we try to put together an employee work distribution that outlines everywhere that employee is throughout that building. Breaks down or shift into 10, 15 minute increments and puts together a plan of action of how they're going to clean the building to be most effective. Within the first 30 to 60 days of that contract, Paul and his team are refining that so that we can increase those efficiencies so that we can

036create a good job flow for each employee. Uh that's for uh the day employees as well as uh the night employees that we do that. Uh we also put together periodic charts uh that basically takes everything out of a oneweek periodic if we've got high dusting in lobby areas or carpet care maintenance or different items in the scope of work that fall out of a weekly basis. We put that into a calendar in a 52- week year and we'd have that defined. Okay, this is going to be done on this week. And sometimes things changes need to be made due to uh an imperfect world, but that's that's a good outline and a plan for our team to follow. The supervisors can just look at that and say, "Okay, we've got to accomplish this, this,

037and this this week to stay on task." Uh we utilize a lot of different metrics from our quality control inspections to adjust those operations as needed to continue providing superior cleaning results for your district here. And then a big a big thing that's really made a huge difference with a lot of our clients that we started as we got into the uh the SIM certification process is doing trimester business reviews within the schools at a lot of our corporate campuses. We would do quarterly business reviews. Uh for schools, we'll do the trimester reviews where ba basically we sit down and have a round table with all of your key stakeholders and we talk about the previous semester's successes, failures and whatnot with custodial and how we can continue to change and grow as a district

038to provide you guys consistent better quality service. Getting into a few more of the details that I feel, you know, makes us the right choice for you guys. our QC program uh tracking all the different KPIs and metrics. The accountability so our dayters supervisors uh will be staffed with uh data folks. Uh having a paper trail is important and accountability throughout the company is a big deal for us. Uh providing transparency with our timekeeping reports. Every employee that will be on district will clock in and out with facial recognition software that we have set up for our different timekeeping uh stations. Uh the employee work distributions and periodic charts and then having multiple managers eyes on the account ensuring the success. So in addition to the project manager that we would have, we would have

039a quality control visiting on a monthly basis, environmental health and safety that will do their inspections and then uh Paul as the VP of operations would be checking in as well. Uh so I'm trying to think of some other the employees that we put on this. We would have full-time employees. Uh we do have a higher level of benefits than many of our competitors with paid time off, vacation time uh that we offer as well for those full-time employees. We do keep all the employees on throughout the entire summer break. We have a lot of competitors that will downsize in the summer and then they're behind the eightball as they try to ramp up whenever school starts. We put those employees on project work to make sure that they're uh getting the buildings nice and

040detailed doing all the floor work and things of that nature. Uh lastly, the innovation in technology uh utilizing the advanced technology allows for increased productivity and cleaning effectiveness and then AHI's reputation within the industry. Don't take my word for it. We gave you guys I think about 10 or 12 references. We'd love you guys to reach out to them. Uh we're happy to tour you through any of those and uh open up our entire book of business for you guys to hand select any account you'd like to take a look at. That's pretty much all I got. I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have. One comment real quick before we jump in. Just real quick, you reminded me of a couple things. Uh the one thing that I wanted the board for

041to be aware of as far as just if the only criteria was bottom line dollar uh for us and just our numbers it's it's almost equal. So the question for us became we would want the board to consider uh quality of service as in dedication, training, mentoring. Uh I visited with an area superintendent who has a similar service. They said the intentionality and the support for the employee who may be trying to get a hold of the supervisor. They have that intentional training. That was something else when we talked about the training that we do and the training that you all do and I think things heaven forbid uh things like COVID and things of that nature. uh also the equipment upgrades that you guys would be in charge of uh running and and also

042telling us how you were going to potentially uh bring that equipment in and the timeline. Uh I'll just say a little bit about timeline before I completely turn it over. Uh but timeline, you know, we talked about that and how quick we could stand it up given the board's final decision which isn't committed. But uh I just wanted to say that about the bottom line and then mention a couple things about uh the uh training, the mentorship support and of course the the paid time off and uh as it says here, one week of paid vacation. I say that again because some of my custodians I told them we're we're going to have a recording if we're if you want to hear this stuff. So they're very excited. We will have some folks just listening

043and that's all we get. I'm sorry. Congratulations. Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. Um, thank you for coming. Thank you for having us. Um, I am uh we have a tag here. I am so basic and u I like it. I love my little community. I love the school district. I love everything that we bring. But I love you coming here tonight and sharing what you do. So, let me start here. You said not in my words, but I mean yours, but in mine. I need to ask you, you mentioned some of it. You were going to do some intentional training. Uh you better make the impact on services, the equipment that you're bringing in, the updates and the training, all of that from our school district. My concern is looking at this and what you

044just submitted or told us I think we are doing. So my next question before you answer that our custodians are very dedicated. They are dedicated here because they love also and most of them are from here. Can you commit or can you tell me how many of those employees that we have that you're ready to rehire? Yeah, we we want to give every employee that you have the opportunity to come on board. We've, you know, the RF was very well put together. We did see wage rates and they it were lower than what we start out. So there's opportunity there for raises and we also want to interview and give any employee that is on site the opportunity to come to work for us and we've done that at uh one of our recent in-house

045to outsource transitions being community ISTD and there's a there's a large portion of those employees that that are still with us on there but it it takes a can do attitude. We want to give everybody the right opportunity uh within this. We are going to restructure most likely the way that the buildings are cleaned. We did take your your employee headcount and look at that and that's very important and we wanted to match that because we don't want to assume that we know everything. But I I feel like there are plenty of opportunities for us to increase efficiencies, but we want to give every employee the opportunity to come for work for us. that makes, you know, they they make our lives easier. They they know the buildings, they know the teachers, and we want

046to help them the same way they help us. And personally, not that most of our custodians are mentors during testing time especially, they're there helping with the test. If you are in a service which is only there to do that service a personal thing I just don't can't imagine the kind of attention you are willing to give versus what we already and I've heard from both teachers I've heard from parents I've heard they love that connection that the students have with the custodian They love that the custodians are treating those kids just like they would want their treat. I don't think I don't think Let me use that comment. I don't think a service like yours can be that person. Now he said uh there will be a morning crew and a night crew. So

047and then you also mentioned that I think I lost in there. You talked about a project manager. So then it's project manager like our head custodians. Yes, ma'am. So then what are you offering that we don't already have? Can I ask a clarifying question just for my you said that our custodians are helping with testing. What do you mean? They they mentor those kids. They kept them prepared just like you and I would go into school and volunteer to help with the testing because some are doing it. Okay. Because some are doing it. I was just making sure for state assessment. That's why I was like, wait, let's get some clarification real quick. And we do comply with all of those, by the way. We do. And I just assumed that you wouldn't think that

048I was talking about you going in the classroom taking a taking taking a test. I just assumed that. But thank you for the clarification. I appreciate that. I'm still trying to understand what you were bringing. You said updated equipment. Okay. We do employees banquet banquetss each year. They have days during the school year whether our stories are recognized that these things are already happening. So I see the twist here that would make me think that our current uh customs can't do what you are maybe maybe the technology you're talking about maybe u and I'm quite sure that you're providing training. Yes. Yes ma'am. So I'd like to speak on that. So they're specialized in custodial services. Obviously the district we employ our custodians. We try our best to give them the best quality equipment, quality

049training, but they specialize in it. They are certified to do this. They this is all they do. Here at the district, we have we're multifaceted that it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of effort to get all these things processed and get done. We are trying our best to get those done. We are exploring every avenue to make sure that happens. But if they take this over and they really run with this program, I think you would see a real change in the quality of the buildings, the appearance of the buildings, the cleanliness of the buildings because they are specialized in custodial services. They specialize in that training and make sure those employees are trained doing it properly and they hold them accountable for that and a savings to the district and

050and and a savings to the district. I was going to ask Dr. Mack, you said it's almost equal bottom line cost. are we on which side or is it a is it a true equal tradeoff? And so one of the things that is important is uh and and uh Carly actually has the number and I don't know if it's uh we will definitely get that it's incredibly close but the eye opener even in this situation is if you look at a bottom line total expense to the district however you hear that starting wages are higher that means more money in the pockets. We have we have custodians and I'm passionate about this. We have custodians that come come to work and they work for insurance and just I all all that I say is you

051just uh we want to provide all the answers to every question every um uh devil's advocate question. We want to get those out of the way because we do have time and this isn't not tonight but to clarify. So that was an eye openener to me. It was I will tell you without quoting the number it was very close but a slight and when I say slight I mean slight it's almost identical uh towards uh custodial services of our current of our current staff right now. So if we get the full staff we have to be spending more. Yep. We we're actually seven or nine custodians short currently. Okay. So, when I read through the paperwork and workbook, the things that I saw were the wages are y'all are paying more than we are offering

052at this point. Um, the benefits, all of the same things, the time off like you said, but I think the biggest thing for me was number one, the pay was more, but number two, the training. reading through the documents that were provided to us, the training that y'all do, I don't know what our training program looks like. And so I know you said that you're trying you do a lot of different things and have your hands going a lot of different ways. And so I think that's a big thing as well for this for our students. Yes. As well as for the custodial team in general, just to be able to have that training and to ensure that we are cleaning thoroughly. So that that's been part of my four months here is examining that

053part portion of that aspect of that group and seeing what are we doing, how are we hold them accountable, what can we improve, and I've I've noted a lot of room for improvement. I'm working with certain people that uh currently supply us supplies that offer free training and things like that and working on getting that set up for our custodians depending on how we uh make our decision here. it it it's all going to fall into place whichever way we decide to go. But there there are certain things where we can improve as a district on the training side of things, but like you mentioned, their starting pay is higher than ours. Their benefits are are a little bit better than ours. Their their take time off. They specialize in these things. So, it it'll

054all fall into place wherever it needs to. uh whichever whichever way we decide to go, but there are a lot of moving parts to this and we just want to make sure that we get the best quality of service to our staff and our students so that way they can succeed. Okay. Can I ask you this? I'm sorry. Then what would your job be? What is my job? Um if we bring in the service, who supervises those service people? Is it you or do they bring somebody in to help with the situation? So, they would have a project manager on site that supervises their employees directly. I would oversee the cleanliness, the the quality of the contract, making sure the contract is being adhered to and making sure that any complaints that come from the

055district that come through me are filtered through the proper channels. So, you'll be managing the contract basically. Yes, ma'am. overseeing it, making sure everything is completed based off of what we sign with them if that's the route we decide to go. Would you be available to give us maybe a couple examples of how this would benefit you as far as freeing up time? Yeah. So, I can give you one right now. The the main benefit of this uh going contract would free up time for myself and uh my secretary as we have to hunt down multiple people every week to clarify time sheets. There's people that are missing time. There's things of that nature. Personnel issues uh you know those sort of things on the administration side that we have to are using to hold

056our people accountable. uh that would allow me to focus in other areas of possibly saving the district money in other areas. Can you talk about what a typical contract looks like? Is it multi-year price guaranteed fix renewals and then contingencies? So co hits I mean that's a big expense on the transport side. Is that where stuff is passed on to us or picked up by both or how's that work? We're pretty So our typically our contracts are three years. Uh we have some that are longer, some that are less. Uh a lot of the school districts will do a one year where they'll come back and we can talk about budgets. The only typical area we a lot of times you can hold price firm for two to three years. Uh it just comes down

057to wages. As you know, the wages have changed drastically in the last few years and different markets have been hit harder than others. So for the wages, uh we want to be a good partner for you guys. If we're having a lot of attrition with those wages or something, we we're going to provide you with that data and say, "Look, you know, it usually never exceeds 3% as far as an increase goes, but we may need a percent increase here that we're going to apply uh to wages." Uh during COVID, we had customers uh I believe most of our education customers, we downsized on staff. Uh we had a customer like Texas Instruments where we they continued running the entire time and they needed us to add in disinfectant techs. Uh so we added in

058uh positions on top of what their base crew was. So as those challenges come forward, you know, we we want to be a good partner with the district. We're not going to hold you to a specific contract. If things change and we're going to downsize our staff by, you know, 25 30%, then we want to be fair about that. the price is going to reflect that. So, I think our contracts are very, you know, short and sweet. I think they're about nine pages in length. If you look at some of our multi-billion dollar competitors, that might be about 50 pages. So, we and I think if you go back and you you contact any of those references, they'll tell you the same thing. As far as the partnership, you know, Paris, we've been in there

059since, I believe, 2016. So, been through ups and downs with them over the years. a that year uh contract is that at a constant rate or may it fluctuate? Uh I I think I I'd have to go back and look at the numbers since we haven't got into the contracts. I think we can absolutely hold two years firm. I would have to talk with our our CEO and kind of look at the three years, but I think it's uh I think it's it's possible that we could probably do that. Sure. Just uh just wanted that since the question was about the multi-year. Sure. Typically when we do a multi-year there's you know incentives in there and one of them can be the price control. I will say this our equipment you know all the new

060technology and equipment that we put in there. We built it based on three years. So we advertised over three years on that cost and and typically we plan to keep a customer much longer than three years once we get in there. So that that works out well. And then we also plan to most of the equipment after about three years give or take. Some will last less time, some will last longer, but we want to make a plan to kind of have replacements for that. And the equipment, I think I mentioned to you guys in our meeting before, we don't we don't count our custodians to maintain that and keep that up. We have a partnership with Carter that comes in on a quarterly basis and they're doing preventative maintenance, making sure that all machinery

061is in good running and working order so that the the cleaners have all the tools that they need uh to get things done. Okay. And then Yes, ma'am. I see that didn't explain it well. We are missing each other. Okay. Threeear contract. Thank you all. And then to depend on being written up by supervisor what those things are. But you start off with that. So your benefits and pay much more than what we get. And money talks. I mean, you know that money talks. So, if I had to choose, I would go with I'm following the money, right? But if I'm following just the money, maybe not that. Okay, I'mma give you a personal thing. My mom and my dad raised eight kids. My daddy was a I thought he meant, he wasn't. He was

062workshop not making he brought home I think when he passed a $50 a week and in that that money and my mom also was a housemate very prominent people here in Bay City but did they want to give her a dollar raise because they decided that I want my kids to have more than what I have was what what she was sold. No, you got all those girls bring them to work with you and let them housekeep. Guess what? We didn't with their salaries and what my mom was bringing. All the two, the last two went through college. Three of us have met working on Excel. So, I need to know, and I know you're going to tell me you can't, but since I am so basic, I want to know how many of those

063employees that we have right now are you going to keep? Cuz I've heard from them. I've had phone calls that said they don't like it. What about my job? What about my house? How am I going to feed my family? What if we don't? Those are serious questions to me. If they not in that bunch that you choose and some of it at the age of been there for so long, you know, nobody wants me anymore after 48 years teaching this old desire. No, but those people that worked for us day in day out committed to us coming to work whether rain, sleep or snow, they are there. You can whisper in my ear, you can email me, but those things I need to know. And we have, you said bringing in uh what do

064you call project managers, which is the same as our head custodians. Now you just said you will become the project manager. So that oversees them. Am I correct? No. My role would be a contract manager. So the the the project manager for them would turn in turn be a supervisor for them to cover the district but would be employed but would be employed by the custodial service. Okay. So there's no there's no one in our district. The only one that you will be in contract with is Yes. Mr. Fusk that will be then communicating with y'all. Correct. So all the project manage custodials will be all hired. So So we'll be partnering with him. Correct. And and you know everything is custom made. So the employees that you're speaking of are sounds like they're they're

065AHI employees already. If they're dedicated, those are the type employees we want. And if they're as dedicated as you say, and then the job's up to them because we it's going to make our job much much easier to to having people employees that are already dedicated and willing to do the job. And what we're going to do is bring in streamline and we're going to make things more efficient. I have a a director of operations, three area managers. they're going to come down here and help train the new equipment with the new equipment, have daily u QC reports, follow-ups with them, and you know, they're not we dedicate ourselves to housekeeping. So, we have a whole staff of management that will be teaching everybody from our project manager, on-site project manager on down to the

066the porters and the custodians. and we'll make sure that everybody's trained and developed into the way we would like them to be. But if they're dedicated, every single one of them will have a job. I I can guarantee that. May I make a suggestion? The next time you present to somebody that may have somebody like me on board, start off with that tagline. Start off with that tagline that you just and you wouldn't have had to hear my mouth at all, but start off with that tagline to assure me of folks like me is getting the best. And I think, like I said, I'm just one of these. So, I probably get all voted, but I want you to know how I feel right now about it. And you almost you almost got me. But

067if you had started with that, I think I would have failed. And one thing about our company too, you know, we're large enough to absorb a lot of uh um cost to to bring other type of training and management, but we also tailor make each account special. You know, we look to the contract, we work with the project managers, my managers, and we custom make it to basically fit Bay City. We're not going to come in here and what's best for another account come over here and do it from for here. We're going to tailor make it to make sure that we partner with with y'all. We hear, we listen, and we customize it to what's best fits you. So, um we're not just going to come in here and just have a cookie cutter

068type industry and just make it like we do everywhere else. It will be specially made for y'all. Okay. See, now you have two points. So the me now I have to go back to back to you. Is it Brett? Yes. Brent um you train right oversee all of our schools everything. So now you move all of that off of your plate to give over to a company. And why you ride in a Cadillac? No, ma'am. I wish I could ride in a Cadillac if this were to happen. Cadillac. That's what it seemed like to me. You riding in a Cadillac, you know, and handing everything over to them because see, I'm going to tell you. You say you're not a project manager. You're a contractor. Okay. And you you explain why, but my little pen

069brains tell me that one of those don't need to be done. That's what my little peny brain is telling me. But you you make sure you pay these guys. Although they didn't stop with what I said or what I was thinking. I had a whole bunch of stuff and you narrowed it down into the the last uh comments that you made. back again to y'all and I had to clarify because I think Miss West M trusty West asked the clarification our consilians now are mentors that most of them our kids that's on this camp uh campus they don't have a father they don't have a mom they don't have anyone to look up But you know what? On that day of custodian and I was watching throughout the district, those kids was crazy about the

070custodians. I need to know that y'all going to with all of your monies that you're gonna bring to the table, with all the technology that you're gonna bring to the table, all of the training, I still need to know that my child will be loved in the same way and taken care of the same way that they're being taken care of. But you did say and I'm hold you to it that if they're serious about their jobs and they want to stay bring it to the table and why should they have to go through an interview process or would it be up to you to say hey that girl that lady say lady cuz you're a baby up in there and please put a handle on that miss Jordan let me tell I'm not talking

071uh and she is fant fantastic. Mr. Chris over there is fantastic. But then that final thing Chris didn't uh anything he got in there and he started stuttering. He cannot answer the question. So that's mark you know behind that's mark. So I need to know that you are going to talk to them about every cilian that we have. I think that'll be a part of that ongoing process if if we decide to move that way. You know, they'll have their hiring process, but they'll also uh from conversation will be in contact and communication with with the district employees that we have and see if there's any kind of recommendation that they may want or that they need that the people. Yes, ma'am. And we had talked about that. We have not talked about that. Thank

072you for the question because we did talk about in the RFP process of how transition smooth transition uh to the maximum ability reducing anxiety to have those meetings and I'll let y'all elaborate but that was framed out as here's the in plan here's the days if we're so blessed to be approved which is completely up in the air and and and would be on the agenda on the 15th with no no I did want to add a tidbit and uh this my only point because I know they've done a great job and I know y'all had the interview but when we first had a lot of the questions with the um custodial services are the ones that were interested um Mr. Brent and the team did a phenomenal job with reassuring those vendors that our

073ultimate goal here is we want our staff to to be part of a city. We don't want them to go anywhere. we they are us and we know what's important for the district and we know what's needed moving forward. And so we stress to please please make sure and that's why we put it in the RFP that we want to make sure that those staff members have that opportunity to interview and to have a possible opportunity to work with whatever vendor does take it over. So to just kind of add to the point of it truly is and dittoing kind of what he had said is if they're a phenomenal worker which we have a lot of phenomenal workers. I mean it's just like me when I look for somebody if they're going to show

074up and do the job we want them here. And our custodians are like that. And so I don't have I feel that they're going to have be very successful with our Bay City employees knowing that they're going to show up day in and day out and do the job that is necessary to get get stuff done. And Mrs. Robinson, you don't have to take their word for it in that 158 page proposal and there's a bunch of phone numbers of other school districts that you can call and ask them about the onboarding process. You know what? When I got past five some time spreads out there. Yeah, I would have bypassed the whole thing when I saw 198. This would have been much better. Well, one one thing to rest assured, you know, if if

075we are chosen to get the contract, what we could do is once we make it official, we can actually have a town hall meeting, invite all the custodians and we can come with my leadership and we can actually tell them, you know, assure them that they have a job. as long as they want it, they they transition will be that they come over and all they have to do is fill out their paperwork and they have a job and you know they're dedicated. I mean so that way they feel comfortable about it because we're not wanting to turn away anything. Yeah, he makes a good point that was we we transitioned into Baylor about a year year and a half ago and they had a six-month process of that transition and so there was a

076lot of chatter already out there. people were nervous about their jobs and so we did that as well and they had a town hall and everyone even got a they brought you know it's a it's a welcoming meeting they got a lot of different ahi shirts and things like that went ahead and gave them uh employee ID numbers and and went through that process early to put everyone's mind at ease about their jobs how does it work during school So, does like I think right now if a kid gets sick in a class or something, the teacher would just call down and they would send somebody over. Are they going to have to have like an extra app or anything to go through to get somebody to come clean up or is it going to

077present more burden on the teachers or will it function basically the same way as far as a teacher? I I think it'll probably function about the same way. A lot of our campuses use a radio system uh where teacher calls out into the office, office staff radios for a custodian, tell them what the issue is, tell them where where the issue is at and then they go address that issue. So it it would work pretty much in the same aspect. So they don't have to reach out to Paul or something. That's correct. Like Dr. said no decision is there's no action tonight. This is just information and a time for us to ask questions as board members. Um, and that it will be on the agenda for the April board meeting and we can make

078a decision or we do decide to take it but to stay in line with the dates given in our FD and workbook. That's where we're headed. And if you have additional questions, they gave us their cards. And then like James said that in the bottom of the document, there are a bunch of numbers and there letters in here and all kinds of things. If you haven't gotten a chance to look through the actual documents, I know it's lengthy, but there's a lot of great information. Any other questions? Would it make me real happy if y'all go by elementary and clean that yard, Mr. Brandon? It needs to be over there. I don't care if there's not anyone over there. Keep it looking good till I decide I don't want to go. Okay. Just I know

079you're But that is a different department. Okay. I was like, I just I just want to make sure to think, oh no, we're going to just make sure he always thinks that she has to come behind me and I said what I wanted to say to you. Yes. But I wanted to make sure that they weren't. All right. Um, okay. Thank y'all so much for coming. Thank you for answering our questions. Thank you. I know the board knows how to get in touch with you and Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you again and uh we'll see Carly tomorrow as we heard it was [Music] [Laughter] Thanks for just to see the difference. Oh, I remember the Yes. Okay. I just wanted I wrote that down at the top. Wanted to touch back

080on that. Okay. Uh moving to the next item which is uh uh will be a relatively short item. We have been uh as we said when we opened up looking for every opportunity to bolster services to bolster efficiencies etc. Uh, one of the other things that we had been exploring uh, was an interlocal agreement for uh, armed police services with the city of Bay City. Uh, I did receive a very kind uh, email from uh, from their stakeholder saying that now was not the time for them. They were very gracious, very courteous in their response and and I reciprocated that because we are we're very much partners. And so, uh, we did, uh, put in the time, had some meetings, correspondence back and forth, which I, uh, you know, kept y'all, uh, appraised of in

081the as far as the newsletter. Uh, but due to timeline, I strongly recommend that we focus on staffing the current alignment. Uh we did we did give it a good strong honest effort, but at this point I think from a safety standpoint it's fine. Uh we we've got some we've got some open positions and and so they're covered uh at an expense because uh if you're going to have someone come in and sub uh it's going to cost more because they're not a full-time employee with benefits. So my recommendation would be that we pivot immediately in order not to compromise safety. And of course that's not an action item either. You guys can get back to me at any time. Uh, any other questions or followup on that? Okay. Uh, moving right along to the

082one. April meeting. Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we're just Okay. I just wanted to make sure that we would uh in that case we would bring the full proposal and so a good example will be this next one of how it so we just got done talking about RFP this one is going to be similar interlocal agreement type of it's the same so you'll see in here where we are in the process because it's further along and I'm very excited to report on that uh so just a background uh early this year um and we covered this in our our summit community leaders and business partner summit. Uh we launched a prek partner uh program here locally focused on early literacy, early childhood literacy. And so we opened that up. We currently

083have two partners and we have at least one maybe two here in uh Madagory County that want to partner with us as well. However, uh word got out that we had embarked on this innovative approach to prek partnerships. So, word got out to and uh where we are at I won't go into too many names right now. I don't want to we're in the process. We've had all the meetings. Uh there was a negotiation point uh which came out our way. So uh uh they had proposed uh a 10% ADA. I'll get into all that. We asked for 15 and and they took the 15. Uh they were amanable to every request we made. Uh so there's no agreement. There's no commitment tonight. There's zero that. All I can tell you is it's very encouraging.

084They boed at 0% of the things that we wanted out of the agreement. Let's talk about what that new agreement how it would differentiate from the innovation that we implemented in community partnerships with our daycarees. We're much more hands-on in our local community. So, uh kudos to Mrs. Howard uh over at Cherry Elementary and her team is bomb. They're much more hands-on with our local partners. They're visiting campuses. Uh training is open and I've got several people here. This isn't an RFP process. So, I'll name some names as as we go here. Uh, Elizabeth Rollins has been instrumental. Vince has been a part of this. Uh, Mr. Townsen. So, we have a lot of people in the room for followup and I always encourage jump in where you will. Uh, and so this has been

085a lengthy process uh to implement local uh prek partners. So, those are up and running. works out to a group uh and they are working with the governor and the commissioner of education and they're very large. They're incredibly large. I've shared that before. Uh so as far as their partnership, how does it differentiate? Our first question is we can't say Miss Howard all over Texas. What does that look like? So essentially this 15% ADA deal that has no cap and no legal restrictions that we can provide. So no cap all benefit and we'll get into some of the benefits there. We currently do not have and we have kicked the tires on Dr. Bronto couldn't be here tonight with special education to bilingual education. The main thing we wanted because there has been some nasty

086articles about some other of these partnerships have done it that it's it's an only take the money and run type of deal and that's that's the honest truth. I'm not going to name districts. The articles are out there. How does that differentiate this large management company will handle all those pieces. So it is not a it's not anything less than a total commitment. And like I said both the governor and the commissioner of education are involved in these conversations with this large part. Uh and so they are very motivated to start an agreement. Um they wanted to start this year but we're almost to our last six weeks and we wanted to be successful. They're very motivated. Um back to legislation. All indicators are that it will only get more beneficiaries. There's no indication that

087it's going to get minimized in any way. The governor is behind this because of the cost of daycare, the importance of early childhood education, and because and and Mr. Towns, you were there. They heard about us. Uh we didn't seek them out. They said, "We heard you guys are already doing this, so we'd like to offer you every opportunity." When I say every opportunity, and there's no cap. There's no cap. I mean, you could you could go from what next do we have to be careful for? Well, you get a midsize aotment, right, Vince? And according to the legislation, the midsize aotment calculations are set to change, uh, it appears. And so, one of the things you could do is, well, how much revenue am I bringing in here? And does it move me out

088of the uh, midsize school district a lot? So, we're watching those numbers as well. a proposal that we would bring once the legal we're going to bring in a proposal for sure. Uh unless there's a last minute legal snap room, something that we didn't anticipate. Uh something for you to consider is uh I will say very doable uh an increase of a million dollar increase of a million dollars and that was our starting point. That's innovation. That's above and beyond. That's high level. So we don't have the proposal yet. So there's a lot more details that are coming but I can't tell you kick tires on special programs are we exposing to this bilingual education are these children served completely not only serve this very large is already doing it they're working with charter schools

089however charter schools have a cap I think at a minimum we're blessed that they came this I think at a minimum and we'll see what y'all think but Right. A million support. So that said, with a million four, oh, what does it cost us to learn? Current increase by a million current staff on a score from one to 100. Mr. towns and then how important is teams in this for the district. It's 100. It's not a 99. It's a critical position in which only the most highly qualified person can run that. Would you be stressed if you didn't have the person you brought on 100 appreciation? uh it would we feel that person could run it and bring a million when they hit the mill I don't know if there's 800,000 ds or a million

090they did add one person but if you have a million dollars coming in and children are being held families will be able to to pay for daycare I don't see a loser in it and I think it's a wonderful opportunity hopefully everything will clear uh and again they they they don't want to talk. We we told them what if the board wants to kick the charge on this for one year. They said we'll do it but we won't budget and so very motivated has to clear some purpose. Very encouraging news and that's encouraging for everyone in the district every employee. Uh we all want to be able to bring pay raises. We can target that money. We can set that money aside and still launch a def plan on M and get more cleared up

091and we can run it as long as we can. There is a precedent there. They're already doing this. They're doing a million dollars in business with with one staff member. However, they went to two at that point. I was 800,000 or a million. Uh essentially, let me clarify that point. Although we're not responsible for uh IEPs and bilingual testing and that the person the highly qualified person that we hired is in charge of making sure state compliance. You don't want to mess that up. And so we're confident that we can handle the state compliance. We're confident that it is a huge win for the district if everything measures up. And so I'm just so proud to be able to tell you that is good news and uh hopefully it'll all work out. Uh but any

092questions or anything unique for me. Uh it is in the hands of legal just we as far as all the uh particulars we've agreed on all now it's just as we said earlier I think Priscilla had asked a question you know in the contract you have your exit plans and all that uh in your sorry in your interal agreement. However, they're already in there and we like them, but our attorneys are going to look at them and say, "You should like them or not." So, that's the students we serve are part of our enrollment now. Yes, sir. But that doesn't affect our for status because that's based on high school. Correct. That's correct. And and that's that's one of a million mitigating factors that we have to kick the tires on unintended consequences. Probably we

093just don't want to miss anything. Coach will kill us. Yeah. Oh, and and that's a great point because you could easily move out of your midsize a lotment with your eyes closed. However, it's more to do that. And again, we won't know that till we run the numbers on the potential benefit size because they actually and I'm sorry, but even the formula that's changing this house if as Ben said earlier, if you run that number out there and you use the number that the state gets, it's a big number, but go ahead and divide that out by 1400 districts and it's just not as substantial. You said that legal has the the permit. What is the timeline on that? Have they given you? It's a back and forth. And so uh when I first submitted

094it, they had a couple questions and so currently I don't have any questions in my inbox right now. Uh but uh we did we did the same work with our Skyward contract. Uh we did the same work with Centix. And so it wasn't overly limited uh because there's some certain things and the fact that this group this is a legal agreement that they have many entities and so the only thing would change is a higher percentage of yield for us uh and I can't think of any other major change just clarification of responsibilities to the district vote for special education accommodations IEPs testing uh the team's person would be involved in registration because they have to qualify. Uh and uh it's it's it's hopefully if we fund all day at the state level that's all

095day you have to provide it or it's not and so if that passes one terms so once we get it back from legal is it You present it to the board, we take a look at it, we read the stuff, ask the questions, and then it moves forward. So, are you talking this will start in August? Are you talking depending upon is it a school year to school year or is it a middle of the year? Is there a certain start time or can it start at any point? It can start at any point. It's just so large. We don't want to start where we the six weeks ends Friday. Uh but it would it definitely they're going to they're they are going to push in every way to start next year. They want to

096start this year and so again has to clear all the hurdles but but absolutely we would be looking at all this. Okay. Are there any other questions? I know more is to come on this. Any other questions at this time? Okay. Uh, next item is a program review and we provided some information further down in the document. We may not get thoroughly to do it. Uh, but we had this conversation about efficiency within programs, especially efficiency within programs that are not a detriment to students. And so, uh, I I I just have to compliment principal Moer Fors as well to Mr. Townsen for bringing this forward. Mr. Townsen, appreciate it. Principal Moa Flores for uh it's a lot of information here and so at this time I'll turn it over to your thoughts on early

097college high school dual credit reimbursement incentive and how that looks and may benefit the district. Sure. Do they have access to the live agenda? I didn't uh if they have it on their device, I think I should show the 358 page document. No, give me one second. And if they don't, that's okay. Just for my information as I talk to them. Um, so one of the things that we're doing, you know, we've been doing it for several years is making sure that we're efficient in the programs that we're running. Um and so one of the allotments that we get is college career military readiness outcomes bonus allotment and that's earned um by students earning CCMR but it's a certain percentage threshold for economically disadvantaged non-economically disadvantaged and special education students. And then if you get

098above that threshold then for the number of students that that is you receive a certain amount of money based on what their indicator is for the you know economically disadvantaged students above that threshold will get certain amount non-economic in special education that all comes together to give you your outcomes bonus and that's getting to you in a lot. So that uh has been what has been funding our two two big things and what got us down this road to see we are actually spending more than what the aotment is bringing in. Um and so that's coming down a little bit. Um and so there are two big things. Number one was uh $30,000 is being spent each year budgeted on dual credit student incentives. And what that is is if students taking dual credit, they

099make an A. Um at the end of that semester, they can fill out a form, verify that they make the A and they turn it in and they get the specific, you know, maybe $100 because they made it they made a B, then they get so it's to help reimburse the cost of the dual credit based on their Okay. Um that's really not a necessary thing and honestly when you look at it, um it's not an allowable expense. So that's coming out of M Okay. Just wanted to make sure. Yeah. And so one of the things I want to tell you is is that we generated an outcomes bonus last year. Um we received $61,000. Okay. We were spending $30,000 on the reimbursement. But then for the early college high school, um we're spending $105,000.

100So, you combine those two and we've got a shortfall that's coming out of the local budget of $74,000. Um, and so really the CCMR uh outcomes bonus, the intention of that is to increase the number of students that earn a CCMR point, not to focus on students that already have a point, but to get more students to earn a point, whether it's through CTE or college readiness. So, uh, you know, TSI or dual credit, any of those things. And so, what we noticed is is that the way this was framed out initially when the early college high school was started and this um this incentive um was was not necessarily aimed at that um because you're focusing on kids that already earned the point, but that's not what the money's for. Um, if we're continuously

101giving money to kids who are earning a point through dual credit, then the money is not going to help more kids earn a point. Um, same thing with the early college high school. Um, if we're funding the early college high school and those students have already earned a point, we're pouring money into the same thing. It's not going to where it's supposed to go. So, um, the reimbursement fees, that's a no-brainer because number one, it's not it's not even allowable. um that's not even part of it. So that's got to go. Um so once we get to the end of this year, we wanted to honor uh what we told the kids. Um but once we get to the end of this year, that won't take place anymore. But one of the other things when

102I came on board in the early college high school, I had a hard time understanding what the benefit of that title was. Um because basically high school had already started down that road, I know when I left initially of bolstering their dual credit. Um, and so really when you think about it, when Early College High School came into uh to existence here at Bay City, all of the structures that are in place that completed the students being able to earn an associates or a core complete degree, those weren't necessarily in place. And that early college high school, um, the title of it provided a structure and a framework to be able to build that out. in addition to the grants that were received of dual credit expansion grants that that funded our staff who wanted

103to go back and get their masters to be able to become the professors on campus. And so through all of those things now we have those systems in place. So what we're doing essentially now is we're still pouring money into that early college high school when the system is there and it's in place. So, it's almost like I I went and I bought a car and I paid for it and I'm continuing to pay for it over and over and over. The car is still there whether you know it it's still there. And so, if we don't have a designation of early college, high school, you still get to earn your associates. Those classes don't go away. You still get to earn your core complete. All of those supports are there. And so, that took

104us down the road of looking at what would that transition look like. The other piece is and Miss Moer will share this with you. When we we have a a coach that uh each year we have to apply and do a lengthy application process for all Early College High School. And one of its main focuses is is that just because you apply to be a member of the early college high school doesn't mean that you're going to get it. And it's based on a lottery. And the requirements of early college high school is that you really are supposed to have um a large focus and membership of economically disadvantaged in other populations. And so you have to stack those lottery chances because if you don't have those students that certain percentage in there and that

105percentage is not earning that through the early college high school that you can lose your designation. Miss Boer, do you want to talk about that a little bit? Sure. So, um, one of the things to share that you may not may or may not have access to right now is we started tracking the number of students that were in dual credit as well as the number of credits that have been earned by our students over the course of probably the last seven years. When we started, as Mr. Townsen said, um, actually when I started at B City High School as a teacher 11 years ago, I proctored a class because I didn't have my masters in English. it was in administration. So, we had adjunks that would come a few days a week. They were

106not our staff members. Um, a lot of students were reluctant to have somebody that was an instructor in that capacity. And then also, so many of the classes that were available to them were online only. And we had very few of our students who were successful. They probably had to have all the built-in supports at home in order to be successful. So, we had some things that were in place that allowed us to to look in the direction of early college where there might be a framework that we could utilize to rebuild a system at Bay City High School that would help us perpetuate more. We also benefited early on from the CCMR outcomes based bonus. We got a wealth of funding at the time because it was new and we had some systems that

107were in place through AVID as well as through establishing our own TSI testing center where we could get quite a few of those certifications and we returned our money pretty fast. But then the money that we were investing was into the same students that earned us the money to begin with and they weren't weren't earning us more money. So we have significantly reduced the amount of the bonus that we were receiving but we were putting as Mr. towns and said it to the same students that had already earned it instead of to students that we could be targeting. And then with some of those things um like our dual credit expansion program, we also made it more attractive to take a dual credit class while you're in high school and you have a face-to-face teacher

108that's the same teacher you took for maybe nth grade English and now is teaching you senior English. um we really have a lot of buyin from our students and from our faculty of just what that relationship looks like. So as of right now we have 99 seniors who are enrolled in dual credit whereas in 2018 we had 51 of the senior class and of those 99 right now we have 19 early college students. It happens to be the larger of the cohort when we had a little bit more money at the time. The number of credit hours earned by the end of this school year will be 3,436 and only 324 of those will come from early college. So it's not early college that grew our dual credit. It's the other systems that we put

109in place, some of which we borrowed from early college, that helped us learn better about what it meant to offer those systems within our master schedule, the structures of tutoring programs, um the course sequences that were better aligned, and then of course the recruitment of our staff. So, when we talk about what does early college make us meet, we're not attracting the same kind of students that we really initially wanted in a dual credit program. We want students that actually are u you know willing and and supported with the lottery system. You have to give chances to kids that may meet one or two criteria in order to meet then the designation. But where we are right now is we're we're um at risk of losing our designation because of the few number of students

110that meet the at risk criteria. What happens is we get those kids in they never pass their TSI. So they don't start on the college coursework and then they don't complete what is required to show that we are successful as an early college. We've given as many chances as we can to things like the TSI to increase them getting in because they've done what it takes to really be successful in dual credit which is to demonstrate the ability to handle that coursework academically but with supports that are in place. And the more that we've provided the additional supports for TSI, the more success we've had just for all students in general to be successful in dual credit classes. So, one of the things I shared with Mr. Townson at the time was, you know, we

111were looking um for some funds. We were looking at how we add a few more testing units for TSI. Where was the funding for that at the time? How do we think about, you know, we might have some additional instructional materials that we need for our dual credit classes? Where's the funding for that? Well, the funding that was for that was constrained for us because it was no longer as available as it used to be. And it would be, oh, well, we're going to have to take that on a local budget if we purchase that because all these other things are already coming from the aotment and we're overspending from the aotment. um to share a little bit more about the other things that early college requires us to do of course is we have

112to have all of the kids who are in those courses take a study class which means we have to have it in AVID because that's the study class that we already have in place. So we have a great AVID program. It starts at junior high on Rosy's campus and we have some great teachers in that program. But the target population for those students is not the same as students who just might randomly get picked in the lottery. And some of the students who were applying for early college say I don't want to be in that class, but it's required as part of early college. So, by removing the um early college title, per se, we don't have to require that for every kid who wants to take dual credit classes, and we allow any of

113our kids to take dual credit classes anyway, but we also open up a little bit more flexibility in our master schedule. The early college cohorts put a huge hindrance on our master schedule at the high school. We doubled the enrollment because you never know if the kids that are in the lottery are already going to be in a as of this year of the 31 that applied 19 of them were not already in a so had they randomly got selected in the lottery we would be adding an entire extra section of AVID every year along the way. We already have a a cohort now that has a significant number of kids that were not in AVID and we were going to have to add a third section of AVID 2 because it is very hard

114to recruit the tutors and we have to meet a student to teacher or student to tutor ratio. So we were going to have to hire additional tutors as well. Right now it's perfect that you only have eight sections of ADIC and the tutors can go through the entire instructional day. But if you had a ninth section, then they would go on top of another section and you would have to hire a whole another group of tutors just for that one period when we paid our tutors hourly. So the situation that we're in right now when we go back and look at it when we think about what was the purpose of AVID in the first place. Well, the purpose of AVID was to help all of our students that don't have those built-in supports at

115home to have the study skills and the the training and the expertise of some of our teachers for good instructional strategies, note takingaking, maybe a little bit of autonomy for the independence of learning for a few of the classes that are still online. but to have a support system in place where there actually is studying that happens in the classroom instead of leaving it up to whether or not the kid does the assignments. Um, those are the things that we want to continue to focus on with the right intent and instead of dumping early college kids into an AVID program that has been really successful and deteriorating the success of an AVID program. We want to maintain what the intent of what that program was to begin with. our AVID program and I did link

116for you guys a graphic that shows a triangle on there. Um, our AVID program, it just really aligned with what basic already talks about. So, everything that we've done, if you even go back to all the way when we used to be a capturing kids heart school district, everything was rooted in building a rapport with students and a relational capacity. So, the idea is to think about what do kids need and as educators, what do we provide to them? And I feel like that what we have in our dual credit program with some supports through AVID, we have educators who are already our employees that know what our kids need because they live in this community. They build relational capacity with them and they reach out and build a relationship with all of the stakeholders

117as well. So, we're building student agency. They know how to then advocate for themselves. We have um all of our AVID students on and I know Rosie they they take them on field trips to the junior high to kind of start their interest in colleges, but by the time they're seniors, every one of them is accepted to a four-year university. But we want to build that culture for all students. And so we want to keep sustaining work like um the added things that we're doing that are campuswide instructional strategies instead of just limiting it to a few students that are within a cohort. and then um creating you know just the the schedule complex. I know that there are um you know many students that want to apply and get those dual classes but then

118it's like well it's only offered this period and if I take this class then I can't be an aristocrats or I can't be in athletics and it just creates so many of those conflicts because of the constraints of the early college program and the sequence that it has to be offered. It gives us more flexibility if we have more of a campus based program. I think I followed along. We're proposing removing the early childhood labor. So yes, at this time what we're saying is that we're paying for something that is not sustainable. One, when we think about this, the constraints that are on the local budget because we're not getting the original money that we had for it. Okay. So we got a big lump sum at the very beginning of our push for CCMR

119and now we're just kind of sustaining around $60,000 a year. But anybody in it already is going to run through it. Yes. Yes. What about the incoming eighth ninth graders, the eighth graders now? Has that cohort been selected and are they going to It has not. Okay. Are we proposing that we stop it now or run this last cohort? So, what we have done is we communicated with all of the applicants. The 31 applicants received information regarding the educational foundations scholarship. It is the only one that provides a scholarship to eighth graders. So we shared with them that the shift in our focus was for us to promote all students having access to dual credit if they want. Instead of picking a few kids out of 31, we would really, you know, make intentional work

120with their counselor as well as with their parents to help them figure out what would be feasible for them. They might not want to start at their freshman year. They might want to wait till their sophomore year. Um so we are proposing and we have looked at as a campus team really and the other thing Mr. Town didn't talk about that is required to early college we must pay for their tuition and we must pay for their textbooks. The textbooks have been an outrageous cost and we have paid almost more for textbooks than we have for tuition. And when we think about um just the fact that it's constant got here's another co-work and then they're all brand new textbooks and now we got to buy them all over again. It's just so frustrating when

121you think about the instructional resources that we provide to every other general ed student last us almost 10 years and we don't get to replace those but on any given year we're exceeding and Mr. times he can tell me if I misspeak, but we're by semester I mean I know this is going to sound crazy but with even a small cohort upwards of $30,000 this semester for textbook we budgeted $25,000 because we it was got up to 25,000 the year before 25,000 wasn't enough so we had to seek more and they had to use education foundation money to supplement it was a grant that they had received be able to to cover that so the document that Dr. Max sent to our emails has all of this information and answers a lot of these questions.

122Um, one of the questions that I do have that's not covered in here is I know couple years ago James and Trent, Mark and Priscilla, y'all may be able to remember the actual time frame. Um, it was shortly after I got on the board, it was proposed to the board that we get rid of AP classes and go strictly to dual and do the reimbursement because we have a lot of students that cannot afford to do the full tuition. I know we've negotiated that rate with WCJC. I know there are different now that I have high school students and I have learned about this. I know there are different other reasons for AP and duel um as far as GPA goes it gives you a bump that type of thing. So the only way for

123our students to earn that bump in their GPA is by dual classes at this point. So, is there a conversation to talk about AP classes to bring those back if we're talking about taking away the 30,000 to help those students that aren't able to I know there are a lot of scholarships and such. I would love to share that. So, um we have a couple of existing AP courses and the reason for that is that we don't offer them as dual class right now. So, where we are is if we offer it as dual, we don't offer it as AP and there's a reason for that. one the success rate for students is very slim. So I used to teach AP English language comp as well as AP English literature. Um with the work that

124we have for students I will tell you that AP Spanish is phenomenal but they are native speakers. Correct. And they earn their college credit almost 80 to 100% of them every single year. The national average for the other subject areas is significantly lower than 50%. In fact it's more around 20% of students that would earn that college credit. So where we move away from that is more of a guaranteed college credit. We have a relationship with WCJC where they significantly lower their tuition. So it is much more feasible for a student to be able to take a college level course. And as um Miss Westman mentioned, there are a number of service organizations in our community as well as the educational foundation that offer grants. I will tell you that our counseling team is not

125aware of a single student who did not receive a grant if they applied for it. So the only real um hindrance would be actually get the form and fill it out because there are some organizations that come and tell us we don't have enough applicants. We have more money than this but there's not enough students who are applying for can you get a few more to turn in the application. It's why we really promoted it for the eighth graders because our we know we support the educational foundation and all the fundraisers and things that are going on within the district, but they have continued to flip and and support us and they're the best example of us knowing that every student who completed that application was awarded a scholarship. So just to speak a little

126bit on those students with I still believe from all of the students and from knowing which of these students are taking dual classes they're not our most affluent students but they filled out a scholarship and the majority if not 100% of their college coursework has been funded through scholarships. So, it's definitely wise on our part to encourage them and that's where we shared in the um newsletter that we shared with the 31 applicants. Our shift would be if you have any questions on how to get funding rather than thinking about would I have won the lottery to be one of the few kids who was selected. We would rather all of you just come and ask how can I get that scholarship application. Yes, I and I completely agree with that. I do think there

127are lots of opportunities for kids to have the option to use the scholarship. The one question that keeps coming to mind and I have been asked several times by community members is are we pushing students that aren't ready for dual whether they pass the TSI or not into a dual class that maybe aren't there maturity wise but have the have the ability to do the TSI and is there another route for those students to earn the one one point for their GPA which would be through that AP class and we've taken that away. So I was so actually AP classes have significantly more rigor and they are much more difficult for students to be successful in. So that misconception of I could take an AP class instead of a duel. Our duel comes from a

128community college and the community college is a much more accessible level of rigor for all students. Whereas AP when you think about it if you pass an AP test they're supposed to take it at Yale. So the the threshold of whether or not they would be successful in there is set significantly higher. Something to consider real quick. Something to consider there is you don't want to create a culture of chasing you. Rigor only counts if you pass the course. Absolutely. Because let's talk about teacher training. Teachers in a credit uh situation have to have a master's degree uh in the content area. you go to a training for AP so much is teacher and I don't have any experience here in the district I'm talking about my former experience so what we looked at was

129GPA points are awarded true rigor so if if you pass the the test which I've seen very low incredibly low pass rates so the only benefit is GPA points and I caution against that because you got a more qualified highly qualified teacher generally speaking, not always. Uh it's a as you said, uh guaranteed credit versus the risk of passing a test that very rarely is is is passed. Uh but it it is a conversation I've had many many times and you can really damage CCMR by having AP and uh dual credit compete. And I've run a hybrid depending on the college. some colleges, the one I worked with in the past, they would allow you to dual rope enroll. Yeah. Ours does not. And just something to share specifically about that when we ask um

130the reason I'm not considering it and the reason we moved away from it in the past was the significant constraints on the master schedule. So you might have three students who would sign up for the AP course and have to put an entire section of it on the master schedule and then your regular edit classes would end up with 35 kids because you were making an exception for other students to have a smaller number of one section. I do have to train them, send them to um you know training which is which is an additional expense but then also they have to have it ongoing. um some new things that are kind of some of the expectations also between dual versus AP um they just they don't tolerate the coseating part of it because it's

131completely different sylli so they're completely different criteria which also does not align with our star testing so for the lower grade levels and for some of the content exams just for example for US history Mr. driver was so stressed this week. He got picked for jury, not picked, sorry, he got summoned for jury and there were four of our teachers summit and this is two weeks before his star test in US history. He did not start the US history content until mid mid year. So the content that's on the star test he started in January. So I said, "How did you get out of it?" He said, "I went to the judge and I said, "It's two weeks till the star test and I'm only in the 60s." and they let him out. But to

132be honest, his is a good example of how there's at least some of the same material. That is not necessarily true for all of the courses. And so when we think about the vertical alignment across the coursework and the work that we've done in the district for curriculum mapping, those AP courses again, because they are not really rooted in um this the same um type of level rigor, they're way above where some of the other things are. What's unique about the um dual credit existing program that we have right now, we can actually have students sitting in 1301 and 1302 composition courses for dual credit and they are doing the exact same thing and well above and then far exceeding and meeting the meets and masters level because we have Miss Morrison teaching that class,

133but she also is the teacher of the general ed English 2 course and all of the curriculum is aligned. We have the flexibility to be able to do that. So just to share a little bit about how that would also put some constraints on our master schedule. We were able to do some strategic staffing when we eliminated some of those additional courses that truly we didn't have the enrollment to sustain. Thank you. There are just lots of question I've got over the years about I appreciate the question that the intent and some people do they ask those things what happened to AP. Yeah. And I get that often. I'm like, well, that's and so here's an opportunity. Real quick, I just want to um remind everyone that we have a hard stop at seven and

134that's 12 minutes um away. So, Dr. Mac, was there anything else? I know there some things a super important one that and and please see this as hustling. We talked about the RFP, the timeline, getting that from it's all about hustling. It's not trying to rush. This one here uh we talked I cannot stress enough the uncertainty in in funding calculations for predictions but I I I would feel you guys are very well aware of this staffing special education has almost become exclusively and I can show you I I received a text asking me if I wanted to sign up with them. If you have a special ed certification, these organizations, these private companies, these contracting services reach out and they contract with special ed books. And so it's a huge competition as we said

135earlier and you know, Priscilla shared too about the value of people we know and keeping people we know. I would recommend that we on this because it is the contracted services and we'll get you to know the contracted services is costing us so much it's inhibiting other M projects and other expenses and so we feel that this specific area and and and again I apologize Dr. Pronto will be here but the SLPA and Chris Townson is here we met with Dr. Toronto today. Jordan was here as well. It's beyond high knee. We have some qualified people in history uh that are being recruited out. And again, we say, "Well, what about every position?" Well, this is this is a position and of course a full compensation will come later. I mean, that's all still on

136board, but we're on a serious high need when it comes to the amount it's costing us for contracted service, specialized, special education services. You think about SLP, you think about speech services in general, the majority of your kids are going to take if they don't students that don't go to school here, we serve. And so it's a high need area. And all we're saying is not to surprise you, we would like, not that it's obtuse to bring those numbers to you this month and say here's the exact problem by the numbers. Here's the data from neighboring build uh school districts, TASBY study as well. We TASBY TASBY has a sheet and they what I always tell Jordan as long as you're using that uh that sheet and following their formulas that's that's the way to

137do it and so if you want to talk a little bit about the TASBY study I mean just whatever uh you mentioned it today whatever you're comfortable with that we may bring so I had uh brought that to Dr. Max's attention and the team today um I shared with them just some concerns that I have in regards to special education and staffing special education um the other day that uh Mr. Vince and myself met what Dr. Poranto in regards to the budget as a whole. Uh like Dr. Mack had mentioned, uh we do plan to bring y'all a dollar amount. Um just off the top of my head, I do know it's a significant dollar amount. Um when I spoke with Dr. Mack and the team, I shared that when you look at our staffing

138allocations were spoton, but when you look at the contracted services, that's what really adds additional costs to that budget. And after sitting down with Mr. Vince and Dr. Toronto and actually analyzing that budget based off of just personnel, not anything else having to do with uh with special programs. It's a large number. And what I finally kind of realized is there's additional staff that are being pulled out of that funding that are contracted services that are not part of our allocations. And that's what's really hitting that budget and hitting the deficit larger and larger each year. So my proposal to the team was could we sit and analyze a new TASBY study or a TASBY pay plan or compensation plan that could really target us our special programs to compensate them employees to come and

139work for us full-time be full-time employees benefits uh time off leave TRS everything that is part of a compensation plan to really staff them competitively instead of them going to these other areas and instead of Dr. police department having to staff people through contracted services, proctors, things that u are kind of out of our uh hands because of the services that she needs for those IEPs to meet the students needs. Because once she gets into an IEP, and again, it's not my lingo all the time, so if I'm saying it wrong, but um once she gets in there, if she has to have somebody there to provide the services, if we don't provide it, then we also get into a legal battle of not providing those services to those students. So that's what's really eating

140a lot of our personnel budget cost whenever it comes to special education and we're in the recruiting season and we've got some folks that every indication is from the formula based study we're at a disadvantage and we should address it based on the statistics that it's one of our highest needed services in special education and it's costing us a ton of money. Yes. So, two things. The ask is for us to look at the special ed compensation plan just to make sure I'm understanding correctly. And then secondly, when will y'all be presenting the numbers, the plan, all of that to the board? Is this in the budget with the budget season? Is it approved with the budget? What is that? So, uh the thought there is because we can't and again I I just can't

141just caution any thoughts of a compensation plan districtwide. It was said earlier uh 700 yeah 725 divided out is is not enough uh for teacher raises. So we want to we want to look at that number. We want to look at our ADA and we'll look at this new aotment to get the full plan. This is a this is a alteration but essentially and and I want to add compensation plan currently Mr. Towns correct me for SLPA. Yes. So we please believe me yes we would want to bring you diagnostician at that it's all databased we would not try to rush this but it's completely database and it is uh it is something that we need to act on sooner than later and so yes it would be very specialized to that area just to

142get us going and you know I will admit the legislators are moving a little faster than my 30 years that I've ever seen so hopefully they'll get something to us so we have those members and we can uh respect y'all's time as well was uh the team and we got the numbers, we go for a full compensation plan. But the news is good. I mean, it's remember the last session they floated out a lot of those big numbers and did nothing and so all of the energy is looking good, but it would be good. But that's okay. Okay. So, it would be during budget. Yes, we passed the budget. I'm sorry. I meant to say yes that I'll have the numbers for y'all, but whatever is board meeting next. Yes. So we will we actually

143Jordan already has the number so we can we can share the numbers of where we are by formula by comparison and then we'll do the same thing again for everyone. It's just we'll have more data. So yes, that would be okay. I guess I have a question. We have someone that's qualified to be to do the same work that you're contracting out of. Why were they being paid the same as a contractor? So that's that's the that's essentially why we're an analyzing everything is uh the issue is is those contracted services are paying a very large dollar amount. What happens is Dr. P will go out and recruit somebody to come in and do a contract. that contracted services will say, this is just an example, we're going to pay you $50 an hour to

144have that person come and contract for you, but that contracted services may only pay that SLPA SLP $20 to be there because they have to make something off of that fee or that contracting or having that employee there to staff that district. And so that's where it's costing us as a district a lot more money out outsourced than in-house to be able to staff that employee. That's huge, Jordan. That's huge. So you see the big number, but and Dr. Pronto says, I wish I could consult with every educator in Texas and tell them, "Yeah, but look at your cut compared to the cut that business gets because they don't do it for free." So that's a great question, but the numbers are are a little different in that they have to experience it to fully

145understand that it is all beneficial. I think this brings me to my last one. And if these people that are leaving our district to go to another district that is paying them way more money than y'all were not willing to give, but they were good enough to step in when that position didn't have that person say that I was doing it and I became whatever and I left. But then you pull from a pool of people that's qualified to sit there and take over. But when the hiring thing comes in, then they're not being considered. So they're leaving us to go somewhere else to be appreciated. If we have people that's already certified as a what is that licensed whatever a counselor but also do the testing that person shouldn't have to leave Bay City

146ISD where that person was good enough to stay in that place and make it through the year but when they applied for that position they were not all of a sudden I'd like I'd like to offer some one more And then see when you open that door I am going to stand in. Okay. That's not only special ed when you send out your job openings for jobs or position. If we have someone that is qualified to do that job, but yet we go back to that little formula thing that you're talking about, the formulas that match, but you were willing to pay someone else to come aboard and you don't know nothing about, but you do know this person. So, I I'm confused with the contractor. You can already tell me. I don't think it's

147fair for the people that works out in our district and you go out and consult someone else when those people are good enough to work and and special ed has always been an area of need. Ask me how I know it because I taught that for 17 years and I love there's nothing you can tell me about special ed that I don't love about it. But it was still back then the way it is now. The only way that I got any recognition is because of my big mouth and I wasn't going to be looked over when I'm already doing something. I'm already doing that same work that someone else is doing. But on the job application, you offer this amount which I'm coming in to apply and all of a sudden you have to

148take that pay. That's what you were hiring. No, if I'm reapplying for that position, I'm qualified to do it. All of a sudden, I'm not qualified and don't get the monies. So when you're talking about contract versus what we have already in the district, people that are performing jobs as much like what you're asking them to cover until you find someone. I think that's a slap in any employee that we have in the face. And I and I and I agree. I I get you. I know what you're saying. But if that was ever told to me, just like Jessica's over there taking notes, I will light up face it with every news, every social, everything because that is not fair that I am here and I'm willing to do this, but yet it's here,

149but I you can come in with the salary that I've already offered. No. If you're offering this person 64,000 and I'm only making 34,000, but I can't get that 64 because I'm already in the district. That is something that I think that your team and whomever that y'all talk that needs to be a conversation that needs to be and and keep our people here versus contracted work. They're coming from some other district and they making twice as much that I am here covering. You see what I'm saying? Does that make sense? What I would ask for caution is because we're we're in a recruiting session during this meeting. Okay. What I would say what I would say is hypotheticals and HR is so dangerous. We follow hiring guidelines. the best person always gets the job.

150And and if that doesn't happen, we encourage people to seek legal retribution. The reason why is because we do it right. And and for hypotheticals to come that way, I would just I would say please send me the not not here, but if you would please send me the names, I would that might look into it. But I feel like we're going into an area here that I'm not and I will be more than happy to send them to you and send them to Jordan. Okay? Because I've seen it. I know. I've heard it. And it's more than one time. Yes, sir. So, we have to fix it. All right. Um, out of respect to people's time, people's time at 7:03. Are there any other questions? Dr. Mack, any final closing comments? Um, board, any

151questions that you want to go? I know there was a lot covered this evening. There's still a lot to be covered in the budget process. We're quickly coming upon that that deadline, if you will, for us to start a new year. So, are there any questions moving forward of where we want to go a little bit? Two quick things. I'm excited to meet again in six days and continue these conversations forward and make progress. I think we're probably going to need to meet every week or two until the budget's passed. I know I've asked the draft budgets. Um, I think it's going to be a balance between when the legislative session end when we absolutely have to pass the budget by June 30th, I think. So, you know, let's just try to get as much

152information as we can ahead of time. And next board meeting, we are reading uh board member hours. And so, if you haven't completed them, you got six days to get them done. We're going to be ready to sufficient. Yes. Fair. Kelly, correct? any other and if you have trouble with board member hours getting to the links or whatever um feel free to give me a call or feel free to give Kelly a call and we can we can get that taken care of any other questions comments from here what is the next step Dr. Where are we headed from this information in the budgeting process? So we I know we have a regular meeting in six days but what is the next what I opened up with the main part of updating next year number

153one question how do you project that is a 0% possibility to project 0% how entertaining question because that's zero number one is to to do a draft budget you must have an idea of your revenue if we're going to keep everything the same 5 million defic. But then you look at uh you know the needs that we had to meet for special ed and the needs that were required to meet by policy local and legal for you know armed you know security at uh at our campuses then you know that has gone up significantly. So uh we will do what we can to provide those numbers to you as best we can but keep in mind that the deficit will probably be coming in higher than what we adopted uh given that the requirements of

154what we have as we mentioned today contracting services do cost more than um just speaking to that chief is doing an excellent job of keeping our schools safe this year um but as a short you know a staff shortage there leads us to contracted services and at that point they're going to demand more as a contractor than they would if they were on full time. And if you jump right in this and you said we're going to we're going to pay whatever contractor service, what might that do to the debt? It's going to increase, right? Right. Same thing with special ed. You have to you have to provide the services, you know, deeper pay a lawsuit, you have to pay a million dollars for a lawsuit potentially. So you provide the services that are required

155and ultimately you know we're doing what we can to provide the best services to what we have available. So to kind of summarize with you perhaps it just won't be of any value. No I this is something that's going to evolve every week. Exactly. and and some things may come sure sooner. legislation gets passed and you update your president contract service get approved and you update your you know custodial services number just the fall start to see the picture there and and my recommendation would be right now I can tell you uh if we're going to have staff say and respect people's time I don't know how much get done so many question marks not that we don't want to it's just it's not there as much as if we can trust through it. If

156we don't need to make we don't need to keep staff. One last comment on that is um to avoid giving any type of false hope to our campuses to our departments. Um we're very being very cautious and trying to be very conservative on what kind of allocation we give out. We'd rather give something and give something a little bit more on top of it as opposed to giving what we gave last year and then having to scale that back at the last minute because that could come as a shock and it did for our games. just the feedback that I received. Um, so those cuts that we had to make and those moves we had to make to try to address the deficit last year to get it down. Um, you know, those were made

157in in a fashion that were harder for the the campuses to adjust to. Um, so trying to do it the opposite way um where we're being a little bit more conservative of what we can give it an alloc an allocation and then trying to tie it to the required spinning office that we are at least aware of. Right. That's so at least at that point it's budgeted towards a required spend and something that may not necessarily purge the overall bottom line of a budget that the campus is going to receive. So that's the mentality, that's the mindset. Try to give something minimal rather than give something that's what we've always given because you know just my research talking to other CFOs talking to peers um there's really no you know rhyme or reason or scientific

158formula for for getting that allocation working with my mentor seeing that the best approach that he's proposed is give something here and then anything you give on top of that tied to a lot. So that way if we have to scale back we're scal it's not so I guess u I guess shocking when you have to adjust that's like we did last year just one of those correct it's rather give something and then okay as we get those updates we can give a little but as long as it's tied to a requirement or an allotment questions. One thing that I one question that I ask myself is looking ahead knowing our deficit where the state they're throwing all the balls in the air. We don't know anything at this point. Is there another way for

159us to quote unquote compensate staff and everyone without going further? is the thing that keeps coming to me up is time. Is there a way to look at our calendar and whittle down to where we can give some more time? So, that would be a question that I don't know. I don't know what our hours are. I know I've looked at the calendar that was approved and I believe it was January if my mind is serving me right. Um, but are how many extra days do we have? Is that something that we can have a conversation about to say, okay, we may be able to take to to give more time to our teachers and staff to have off as a compensation in that form or fashion. So, just something I don't know where the

160court stands on that or what the numbers are. We I tried to do it back. Well, it's a great question because if you remember when we talked about charter buses, it has to be a decision between paying for charter buses and early releases, which cost us. And so yes, I think we need to have that conversation and and visit all the implications of less time, right? We all want to give the benefit of time. I I think that and and I think we should any way we can add a benefit. Uh and I know and moreover, I would say we even need to have a conversation about armed security as well. You know, out just like you're saying outside of the bottom dollar to begin with, how do we attract arm security when the city's

161having a hard time with? Absolutely. So we we have a meeting next week and then from there I'd like to work with my team after this meeting. Okay. If everybody on our agenda is there's a first and a second. Trent and any other questions? All right, we will adjourn this meeting at 71. Thank you all. in favor.