Brenham ISD Board Meeting 8-12-2025 Regular Board Meeting

001citizen governance and oversight. The management and day-to-day operations of the districts are the responsibility of the superintendent. This is a public meeting of the board of trustees. Schoolboard meetings are open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed. Audience participation is limited to the public comment portion of the meeting. These proceedings are recorded and I respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking. Thank you for taking the time to join us to join us and for your interest in the Brenham Independent School District. At this time, Justin Collie will lead us in the pledge followed by the invocation given by Bonnie Brmmyer. >> I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible,

002with liberty and justice for all. So before we get started, I want to um make sure everybody realizes we have a public hearing first. We will adjourn and then we go directly back into our normal uh board meeting. Uh we did not have anyone sign up uh for public comment for the uh public hearing. Uh Daryl St. Clair will be uh public hearing to discuss and receive public comments on the 2025 2026 proposed school district budget and 2025 proposed tax rate. Daryl Good evening. Okay. The hearing this evening is to discuss proposed budget information and budget information in general that the door the board is required to adopt each year. So we'll start with some of the basic information about the budget in general. Uh we do have a duty or the board has a

003duty to adopt a budget each year to cover the general fund, the debt service fund and the food service fund. Uh the funds identify the sources of funding that we receive and uh the areas in which those funds can be spent. uh the board is supposed to adopt this at the fund and function levels. So the function more details the different areas of the budget that we are required to make expenditures. For example, function 11 is for instruction. Function 12 is for media library media services so on and so forth. We have functions that range anywhere from 11 to 99. We don't use all those functions but they do exist in the uh code book provided by the states. So we do have a range of functions that we that we adopt budget by. So

004again at the minimum requirement the law states that we must have a general fund, a debt service fund and a food service fund that the board adopts budgets for those. Uh we have a public hearing that's required. a tax proposed tax rate and proposed budget information was published in the local newspaper. Uh that that has been uh posted uh on our website as well. That information about the proposed budget has been posted on our website. And once the board has finished discussing and deliberating tonight, uh we are expecting to have a budget passed for the 2526 school year. Okay. Again, the Texas Constitution states that it is the duty of the legislature of the state of Texas to make provisions and support the maintenance and efficient system of public free schools. So, we do have

005local property taxes that are used to fund our school systems. We also have state revenue that is uh mainly comes from sales tax and other revenue sources that the state deems appropriate to pass along to school systems. And in addition to those, we do also usually have federal revenues uh that we can apply for some in the form of grants that we can apply for and then others that are less formal in the application such as the food service fund that is federal federally funded by the majority of of that information. The majority of that money comes from the federal funding. Okay. Within our school funding system, we have three basic tiers. This is at the state level, state and local level. Uh tier one, we have our regular program aotment. This includes what we

006call the basic allotment. This is a a value set by the state can change from bienium to bianium whenever the legislature meets every two years. Uh this year the B the for the next bianium for 2526 and 2627 the basic a lotment has been set at $6,215. That's our regular uh regular basic ADA amount average daily attendance amount that we are paid. That is up slightly from the last four years. I believe it was set at 6,160. So there was a slight increase for these next two years. Uh we do have additional funding uh for special programs such as special education, dyslexia, career technology, GT gift and talented state comped, bilingual ESL and some other special uh revenues that we receive based on the enrollment that we have and the different students that are identified

007in those special programs. We also receive instructional facility aotment funding if we have a new instructional facility, which we don't have plans for that right now. And actually by new, it means like opening a brand new school that did not exist before, not just even building a building if it replaces one you had. It's a brand new campus. They do uh the state does give us small amounts of funding for that. Uh and then we also have transportation aotment for our uh for busing our students back and forth from home to school and school to home. So those are the tier one aotments. We have additional a lotments in what we call tier 2. Uh these are additional funds that we can collect additional revenue we can receive based on what they call golden and

008copper enrichment pennies. uh for a grand total of up to additional 17 cents, eight golden pennies, five copper pennies, and we'll talk a little bit more about this later when we get further into the budget. Uh those are amounts that we can receive above our the pennies that we can tax on above our maximum compressed rate or our MCR, which is determined by the state each year based on property value growth. And we'll get to that a little bit more detail in a second as well. And then we have tier three funding which is for our existing debt aotment and instructional not new but instructional facilities aotment. Those are two additional pools of money that some districts are able to collect directly from the state uh to help pay back bonded indebtedness and for new

009in new facilities. Excuse me, not new facilities but previously built facilities that we still have bonded indebtedness for. Okay, the main assumptions that we're looking at for this year's budget is enrollment of 4782. Uh we have again we're planning on right now planning on average daily attendance of 4,426. Our weighted ADA according to the finance template calculations that I've been working on should be roughly about 6,700 6,682. The weighted ADA can change based on the number of students enrolled in all the special programs above and beyond just the actual physical bodies that show up each day for attendance. Excuse me. >> Yes. >> What was our um what do we budget ADA for last year? >> We budgeted 4500 last year, but these numbers here are the numbers that we actually ended the school year

010with. So, typically what I've been advised to do when you're starting the new year is take your ending ending uh numbers, ending counts from the previous year and start with that. Unless you know if now if you know that there's some uh shift of of uh people moving into the area, there's something big going on that is going to draw more families into the area and you're going to have a an increased um enrollment, right? Something you're expecting in particular, then sometimes you'll budget for that. But absent anything out of the ordinary, it's usually a good idea to start with last year's ending counts. And then of course, we could have more enrollment. We could have more students enroll and we could have them, you know, stay for periods of time. As most schools do,

011we do tend to have students that move in and then they tend to sometimes move out before the end of the year. So, we do have a lot of uh motion back and forth in and out throughout the year. Uh that's not uncommon especially it seems like the last 10-15 years that's become more common in in school districts in general. Uh the property value growth is another main driver of our funding and our budget assumptions. And as probably most people know by now, I would imagine the legislature did pass a bill this last session in the spring to increase the local homestead exemption from the current $100,000 per homestead to $140,000 per homestead. Meaning that currently the first $100,000 of the value of your home you are not taxed on and you're only taxed on

012anything that's over valued at over 100,000. But the proposal is to increase that exemption up to 140,000. So it means the first one 140,000 if that passes. And that does have to be put in front of the voters and the voters have to approve that in the November election. So even though that's not a done deal yet, there has not been a case that I'm aware of in the last 10 years or so. They've raised the the exemption amount from I think it was 25,000 about 10 15 years ago. They raised it to I believe it was 50. the next no 40 went from 25 to 40 went from 40 to 100 a couple years ago and now we're going from 100 to 140 and so far that those that has never failed in an

013election. Uh so we're all expecting that that is going to be the new law once we get to the November election. In fact, TEA is insisting that we not report our property values based on the current law because they also expect it's going to pass. So, we were told to report our property values using the $140,000 exemption already, even though it's not official. So, just for context, if you were to compare our property value uh increase from last year to this year, based on the existing $100,000 exemption, we would have seen about a 13.5% increase in overall property values. But when you factor in the new exemption, it brings our property growth down to just under 4%. So, that's what we're actually planning to be funded on. And as they usually do, the state uh

014the legislature has set up hold what they call hold harmless money that will be flowing to districts to cover the shortfall in the property values that we now have because of the exemption. We actually lose property value, which means we lose the ability to tax on some of that additional property value. But the state is supposed to be sending hold harmless payments to us to make up that difference so that we're not really going to to feel the loss. Okay. Our uh excuse me, our budget assump assumptions for this year. Again, the general fund, debt service fund, child nutrition or food service fund. Uh these are the the grand totals. This is not per function. We'll get to that here in a second. This is just the grand total for each fund. So you can

015see the proposed revenue for example for the general fund is 58,272,914. [Music] The proposed appropriations or expenses is the same amount meaning that we are bringing to you in a a balanced budget. We don't have more revenue or less revenue than we expect to spend for this next year in the general fund. >> Thank you. >> You're welcome. It's not just me. Of course, the the there's been a lot of people get had had it uh say in getting to this point. So, >> well, I don't think that a lot of districts are going to be able to say that they did that two years in a row right now. So, it's amazing your team and and everybody that worked on this is >> I was worried, but thank you so much. That's that's great

016news. >> You're welcome. Okay. In debt service, you notice we actually have a little more revenue that we're predicting that we'll receive than we have expenses. So, the balance there about $171,000. Uh that should be money that can be added to the food service uh fund balance, excuse me, if everything goes as planned. Uh but that does give us a little bit of cushion. And then also, you'll notice we expect to have a little bit overolction on the um I think that might be backwards. Hold on a second. Hold on just a second. I'm I'm looking at those numbers and I'm not sure that the debt service and child nutrition numbers might be backwards, but I'm I'm gonna check real quick. No, that's correct. I'm sorry. No, no, no, they are they are backwards. Okay.

017So, actually what you see up there, the debt service column in the middle, those numbers are actually the child nutrition numbers. So there we go. We can fix that right now apparently. Okay. So, so anyway, we do have a little bit of overcolction that we expect or additional revenue that we expect to receive that we may not have to spend in both child nutrition and debt service funds uh for this coming year for the grand total of 66,161109 in proposed revenue for those three funds together and a grand total appropriations of 65,698457 alto together and then a grand total of just under 500,000 in excess revenue. >> Okay. So, I want to make sure people understand that not only did we are we passing a balanced budget, but we're actually going to have the opportunity

018to possibly put back some in our fund balance hopefully >> in the child nutrition and in the debt service. We could still put some money into the general fund balance, but that would require that we either get a little more revenue than we think we're going to get and or spend a little bit less than we think we're going to spend. I just I just wanted to clarify because it it it got a little confusing, but so I just wanted to make sure everybody heard it. >> Yeah. Right now the the the plan right now is we would probably spend just about all of the general fund uh revenues that we plan to receive for the year. But yes, it's always possible to do a little bit better or a little bit worse because as

019y'all have heard me tell you before, there are a lot of educated guesses in this budget right now. And there is not just for us, but for every district because we're basing a lot of our our tax levy is based on a T2 value, a property value that we will not have finalized from the state until next February, but we estimate it the best we know right now based on our actual property values that have been turned in by the appraisal office. Uh we're estimating obviously student enrollment and ADA because we don't know exactly what that will be by the end of the year. Hopefully it'll be better, not worse. Um and there are several other things that are estimates. I mean those two items right there could cause a noticeable swing one way or

020the other in revenue. So we simply make the best estimates we can and monitor as we go throughout the year and make adjustments if we need to. So okay. So then the proposed tax rate and and when we get this in the in the regular meeting here in in a bit, uh I'll just go and point it out real quick here. Um since we always adopt the budget first and then the tax rate afterwards to support the budget that was just adopted. That's probably why we're putting it in this order here even in this hearing. So I've told you what the budget expectations are. Uh now we have the tax rates. So you can see there the 2425 tax rate for this year we're finishing up uh is 6669 per $100 evaluation. So 66 almost

02167 cents per $100 evaluation for the maintenance and operation side and about well exactly 8 cents for the debt service side for a grand total of just under 75 cents. That's been for this past year. Going forward for 2526, our proposed uh tax rate for M will be 68.84 cents per $100 evaluation. So just below 69 cents. Debt service we intend to keep the same. And so that would be a grand total of just under 77 cents. So not much of a change, just a little more than two cents of a change in the upward direction. And for those of you who who have been listening and for previous discussions we've had at previous board meetings uh talking about the golden pennies and the additional pennies we're planning to uh propose that the board approve.

022And we've talked about three cents. We we can we can add five cents immediately to whatever the uh maximum compressed rate the MCR is that TEA approves for us. So this year, this coming year for 2526, our maximum compressed rate is actually 60.84 cents. So we can add five cents to that just with board approval. And most districts do that. This board has been doing that for years. I think most all districts do that. There are that's the first five golden pennies. We can add three more golden pennies, but those require voter approval, not just board approval. So yes, we are planning to do that. But again, you'll notice that even though we're planning to add those three cents, it's still only going to actually be a little more than two cents more than last

023year's rate. And if that sounds like it doesn't add up, you got have to remember that because we continue to have tax compression every year and it's based on property value growth, our new reset minimum or maximum rate this year was 60.84. Last year it was 61.69. So we were actually losing a penny and a little more just because of tax compression regardless of whether we add those additional three cents or not. So when you look at yeartoyear it kind of looks out of balance when I say that we may be adding an additional three golden pennies but yet we have a rate that's only two cents more. Questions about that or is that as clear as mud? Okay. And then our actual budget by function. And again, you have this information in your board

024packet. And when we get to the actual vote to approve this at the next meeting, uh these are these are the same numbers that you have in your board packet. Uh so basically, we're looking here again at the grand total. This is food service, excuse me, general fund, food service, and debt service all combined together for that same 65,698,457 that the board that we're asking the board to approve tonight for those three different funds. But that's the collective total. And so this is basically the same uh more or less the same kind of arrangement of the data that you see every month when I present, but give you an updated of actual versus budget. Well, we don't have an actual yet because we haven't started spending it yet because this budget doesn't take effect until

025this new budget doesn't take effect till next month. But this is this will be the standard if y'all adopt it. This is what you'll see as the proposed or the adopted budget going forward next month. And then we'll start showing you as how we're spending it per function as we go. But this is just the the by function breakdown of what we talked about earlier. And with that, I believe Oh, nope. One or two more things here real quick. Okay. The other thing that we have talked about several times in the last month to month and a half at special and regular board meetings is some of the new funding that has been uh allocated to districts by House Bill 2. uh in particular we know that there is a TRA a teacher retention aotment

026and the exact amount depends on how many teachers you have and how many of those teachers you have that are coded 087 and have at least four periods a day or more in their teaching schedule with students and based on their years of experience. So there's a lot of things a lot of conditions that that funding is based on. If you have three or four years of experience when this year begins, then you're getting a $4,000 annual raise. If you have five years or more experience, then the law says you get an $8,000 a year raise. So, that is an assignment or an aotment of money that the state has set aside for districts all over the state. And that that money will flow to us starting I believe starting in September. Uh but it

027will depend on the data that we turn in in our fall ps. The actual we do this every year. We turn in our our budget, our staff data, our teaching schedule data. All this data gets turned into tea every fall in our fall PE submission. And so they'll go ahead and start funding us based on last year's data that was turned in last o or last December. Uh from October, we turn in usually in December. Actually, this past year it was in January. Don't ask Ally about that. she'll get all worked up about that because it was we had a lot of extra work to do for PE submission last year, not on any of our faults. We had a lot of state issues, a lot of reporting issues, but anyway, we'll turn all that

028data in again this coming year. And so, they're going to start funding us based on last year's totals. And then once they get this year's updated totals, then they will reconcile with us in the spring. If they've been underpaying us, they'll pay us more. If they've been overpaying us, they'll pay us a little less. And by the time we get to next summer, we will hopefully be right where we need to be based on our current PES data. But that aotment is not actually up here. I just wanted to mention that real quick because that one was not put up here. And that is a very significant source of additional funding this year. But it is a pass through. So basically what we get from the state, we just turn around and pass it right

029on to the teachers. And so it's not really new revenue that we can have discretion as to how we want to spend it or what programs or whether we want to use it to help offset increasing utility cost or whatever else we may have needs. It is strictly pass through money to teacher salaries. These funds here have a little more flexibility. We do have the SSR which is a let's see the support staff retention aotment. Uh these are again these are all estimated amounts that we we look at in our finance template based on our current data that we know and these are the estimated amounts. So I cannot guarantee you that we will get exactly $1,41,843 in these three aotments by the end of the year. We may get a little more, we may

030get a little less, but it should be pretty close to that. Uh so we do have an amount that is supposed to be used strictly for nothing but other staff increases outside of the teachers because teachers already have their TRA aotment other staff not counting administrative staff. So any other staff so whether it be a par profofessional a teacher aid a custodian uh clerical a secretary anybody else that's not administrator can be uh paid out of that fund. Then we have an ABC allotment uh additional basic costs I believe is what that stands for that can be used for additional compensation increases for salary increases. It's not required to be just for that it but it can be. The intent of it is that you'll probably use it some or maybe most of it for

031additional raises because honestly the SSR is not a huge amount of money. So, you're probably going to need more than just that to fund additional increases, and we certainly will here. And then finally, we have the the BA, the basic aotment, and that's what I mentioned earlier on one of the first slides. Uh, for the last several years, the basic aotment has been $6,160 per student in regular ADA. They've now increased it by $55 to 6215. Well, that represents the additional $55 increase per ADA that we expect to see here. So again, that money can be used for compensation increases or it can be used for other expenses that we have like utilities or transportation, whatever else we need. So Darl, have the employees, teachers/ employees been notified on who's getting what? Because this is

032so confusing on this and I think they need to be notified and told what they're getting before the school start. Unfortunately, uh it starts tomorrow, but has anything been sent out to the teachers? And and and what I'm referring to is those individuals in the classroom who are teaching, but they're not labeled as a teacher. So again, has the word teacher been defined been defined in in this this race? >> Well, it's been defined by the state. That's the 087 teaching four periods a day or more. Uh just as of last week, we are still going through master schedules. We are still looking at actual campus schedules and trying to determine exactly who does and who does not qualify for that raise. I should be getting that updated enough to be able to send out

033information this week. >> Okay. As far as the other raises are concerned, the that these these other sources of funding that will fund raises for non-teers, uh that really hasn't been set sent out in messaged form yet because the board hasn't approved the compensation plan yet. So that'll be happening tonight. >> Talking about that 4,000 8,000 that's what I'm talking about. >> Yes. I mean I the majority of the people who consider themselves to be teachers I'm pretty sure are going to get this but there could be some areas where depending on the exact schedule because of what the law says. >> Okay. And the only way that we could do anything other than what the law says and and other than the pass through money we have would be we would have to take

034it out of our local funding which as you know we do not have a lot of extra local funding and some districts I have heard are trying to make up the difference for some of their teachers that may or may not qu that may not qualify but they have the fund balance to do that and that's where that extra funding would have to come from and we really don't have as as Archer and Kylie pointed out recently, we really don't have much in the way of fund balance. So, we really can't afford to do anything other than pay the teachers that qualify based on the state's new rules. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Can I can I follow up on that? Just to ask a question. When we're talking about teachers not having four periods

035a day, is that a like an aggregate or an average based on their past experience or on what they're anticipated to be teaching this year? >> It should be based on this year's SK coming up schedule. So someone someone could foreseeably start off doing say two to three classes but then they could grow up to four. Does that then complicate our situation? Again >> yes that complicates the situation so >> uh that is that would be a scenario we would have to look at uh that HR department and my department would have to look at >> and and that's not something that commonly happens usually as we build master schedule at the start of the year. We don't see a lot of periods added to teachers especially after the start of the year but prior

036to that October snapshot. So the end of the last Friday in October is our snapshot date. So pretty much student schedules are set in place well bey. So >> okay. And so whenever that was that me sorry um okay so whenever uh they're averaging this out uh is it based upon um you know uh what if they did eight hour if they did eight hours but then one week they don't have they have zero hours or is it going to be pretty continuous for that teacher each and every week? >> Yeah, it should be yeah it should be pretty consistent what the stu teacher schedule is weekly. We don't typically see a lot of adjustment but from one week to the next of what the teacher is doing service-wise. >> All right. Thank you. So

037I like to just get a copy of that so I can uh refresh my memory because I'm getting a little older on on that with the teachers with the four periods if I can. >> Yeah. And so um what a classroom teacher is defined by the state is very clear. And so absolutely I can pull that from the TEA website for you and and share that with you. Absolutely. >> And then could one of you talk through uh just the uh meeting me and the two of you and Ally had the other day for coding purposes to I think maybe avoid any of the errors that uh Raven is is referring to. >> Yeah. And so um what Clay's referencing is Ali, um Clay, myself and Darl met to kind of review all of our

038teaching staff in the district. And so there's not a lot of discretion on our part in regards to that. The state clearly defines teachers are coded as 087. They possess a certification or would normally possess a certification for their position and they're teaching four hours per day. And so, you know, there are some teachers that may not teach a full instructional day, may have some different duties. And so we went through and looked at each staff member um and reviewed their schedule, looked at their master schedule, looked at their assignment in our um student information system and kind of checked and double-checked all those questionable ones. And so we're pretty close to having kind of where everybody lands, but don't want, you know, we definitely want to interpret the policy by the state as it's

039written and not put the district in a bind financially. Um but want to definitely ensure that we're accurately analyzing each teacher. >> So is a coach or a a coach or ISS teacher is that considered a teacher? >> Right. And so it depends on what the coach or teacher is doing. Do they have students a record each period? Um are are they assigned students and how many periods that is? So it may be for some, it may not be for other. It just depends on the individual situation. So that's why we can't just take a blanket look at the entire say okay we're going to look at the entire English department and make well we may have a part-time teacher in the English department that doesn't teach four periods a day. So we have to

040look at each of those situations. >> What about the ISS teacher >> right? So if they are um minutes if they're serving students in that classroom then they would be yes. >> Thank you for the clarification. Okay, so the again with that that amount of money that we were just looking at and we've looked at this several times over the last month or so. Um we've I've given you different breakdowns. This one's broken down a little bit more than the last couple breakdowns. Uh, so we've got what we expect to have step raises for teachers. So just moving up your step. So if you were on uh step five last year, you had five years of experience. Then this year you've you finished last year. So that would now give you six years of experience.

041So you'd move up to step six. That would be in addition to the 4,000 or the 8,000. Well, in that case, the 4,000 uh no, the $8,000 raise that the TRA would provide. Uh so that part just by itself, you see there's about $180,000. Now, this is benefits. I've been giving it to y'all broken down as gross pay, benefits, and then the grand total. These are just the grand totals, including the benefits. Now, uh then we have what we are proposing is a $2,000 raise for steps 0, one, and two since those three steps are not funded by the state, are not funded by the teacher retention aotment. So we are as a district trying to do something to mitigate the the discrepancy between what those steps would be and what starting with the step

042four or step three would be uh trying to bridge that gap a little bit and you can see the amount of that. Uh we've got, as you've heard me talk about several times, even though the state has allocated the gross pay for the teacher retention aotment payments, the 4,000 and the 8,000, they have not allocated directly the cost of the benefits that go with that gross pay. And as I've been telling you, it's about 11%. I was budgeting earlier about 13%. I went ahead and backed it down to 11 uh here recently. So that 11% that $255,000 that you see there, that's just the benefits part of the gross pay that we passed through to the teachers from the state. So that funding has to come out of those other three funds we were just

043talking about on the last slide. So that's an expense, an actual expense for the district. The rest the actual gross pay is just a pass through. The benefits are not a pass through. And then we have uh 3% raise for all non-eing staff. And I you'll notice here I did say coded to general fund and grants. The grants I'm talking about are like our title grants or IDB grants. And I debated about taking that farther out and just looking at the general fund by itself. But as we have recently found out this year and just as recently as a couple of months ago, uh we did have a pause earlier and I think it was in January or February on federal funds from the federal level. And then just in June at the end of

044June, we had what they called the impoundment the temporary as it turned out to be temporary impoundment of federal funds moving forward into this new school year. So with that in mind, I just would like to point out that our federal funds are probably not as secure as they could be as they might have been in years past. And if there is any shortfall in our federal funding where we have teacher salaries and pair of professional salaries, then the general fund gets to pick that up because basically we cannot overspend a grant. If we get a grant of a million dollars, we can spend a million dollars. If that grant gets cut down to $900,000 sometime during the year, then now we can only spend $900,000. And so any shortfall we might see, and this

045has always been the case. It's not like this is something new. Anytime you have a grant, you can only spend what the grant is allotted. So if we have any kind of shortfall or change during the year, then we would have to then absorb those changes if they were in a downward direction into the general fund. So I hesitate to pull out federally funded, grant-f funded salaries, and just general fund because it could all be very much intermingled as we go throughout the year. Uh then we've got the other two categories that I have pulled out, which uh is new. Uh did pull out the food service staff because they do have their own fund 240 that we talked about briefly earlier. And so you can see what their raises would be at 3%. And

046then we also have the appraisal district because here at Brennham ISD our tax office and our appraisal district employees are part of our total pool of employees. So when I was giving you all those numbers earlier in the year earlier in the summer I did not want to really exclude anybody because they are all employees of the district and they're all they're all their salaries are paid through my office. Uh so the grand total you see there is about a million66,000 but keep in mind those last two amounts in blue really don't come from the general fund and the money that we're getting from the state will be going into the general fund. So that's kind of the the most I can really separate it comfortably separate it at this point. Okay. And that is

047my last slide. Are there any are there any questions? I am so glad we rounded up from 275 to three. I I was worried about that. I asked you about that last week. >> This is a start. >> Yes. >> I'm I'm I'm thrilled >> that everybody is getting a pay increase. I'm thrilled about that and I appreciate that. >> Yeah, I agree, Raven. Um Justin at the last meeting put a lot of elbow grease and ink to pen to paper. He was he was crunching numbers and uh we had a good conversation about it and then uh thought about the food service because they're not a part of the funding so they're federal and it just clicked. I was like wait a second they need to be taken out and I didn't even think

048about the appraisal district. So I'm glad we got that to work out cuz 3% is way better especially teachers. We originally started with a thousand and now we're at 2,000. So it's a win uh both directions. I do also have to say um if anybody has any questions in the audience, y'all are allowed to ask. This is a public hearing, so I just want to make sure we say that out loud. If you have a question, please raise your hand, get Mr. Sinclair's attention. Um they Yeah, they can come up to the microphone if you have anything. Not that I'm rushing us away. I just want to make sure we set it. [Laughter] There you go. >> Okay, board. Does anybody else have any questions? >> Let me just say thank you to this board

049and this cabinet. A lot of work to get here. Uh the budget workshops this summer were uh as intense as um I've experienced in my years in education. And I I mean that as a compliment um all of us sitting down together and uh and I really appreciate the depth. I want to say that again. The depth at what uh each of you board members looked at this. You didn't just uh rubber stamp what the cabinet passed on. You all you all dug in and questioned this and that and in the end it made for a better product. So thank you. >> Thank you Darl. You did a great job and and you explained it in a way that almost all of us could understand it. most of the time. Thank you. >> I I

050do have to say that we get to vote on this later, but the hard work was your team, your cabinet, everybody in the office that that put the hours in in the late meetings, and so we we just get the honor of voting for it and having a balanced budget, and we get to look good, but it's only because of y'all. So, again, amazing. Thank you. All right. Well, um with uh no further business before the board, it is 6:40. Uh this meeting is adjourned. Okay, it is 6:41. I couldn't have timed that better. This this next meeting is open is uh I called to order. Um we've done the pledge. We do Let me see here. The public comment portion of the meeting is an opportunity for citizens to address the board or make

051comments to the board. In accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, the board will only listen without comment. Special factual information or resuscitation of existing policy may be furnished in response to inquiries, but the board may not deliberate, discuss, or make any decisions on each subject not on the agenda. No presentation shall exceed three minutes. Delegations of more than five people shall appoint one spokesman. Persons must identify themselves and the groups they representing at the beginning of each presentation. Persons who wish to participate in this portion of the meeting should have signed up with the proceeding officer or just designate before the meeting began. Presentations and language should be appropriate for all audiences. The a lot of time will be displayed on the screen. Please stop speaking when the time runs out. Thank you for

052taking the time to address the board this evening and for respecting the district's policies and procedures. First, we have Lloyd Graham who would like to talk about the Vader and the bond. you may introduce yourself to the group and uh I think I just did that but please say it again. >> Do technology okay? I don't snap face. I don't do Twitter. I don't do any of that stuff. So, uh, President Krennic, uh, Miss Brinkmire, gentlemen of the board, uh, thank you'all for the opportunity. I'm Lloyd Graham. I reside at 2403 Ryan here in Brenham, Texas. U, it was my privilege to participate in the strategic planning process. U,, everybody knows where I stand on that. Uh, I applaud y'all giving the support to the superintendent for him to do that. U, I don't think

053we ought to be at 40. I think we ought to be at 160 to 180 million on the bond. I've said that to you. I've said it to each of you. But what I want you to know is that I trust the collective decision-making process and I think the board should trust the people of our community and their goodwill and I believe if they are appropriately communicated with and given factual and timely information that they will support their schools. I believe ferently that schools are the lifeblood of any community. But that having been said, uh, I really just want to tell you thank you and whatever your decision is, whether I agree with it or not, I will support it and y'all have a nice evening. Thank you'all for the opportunity. >> Thank you so

054much. >> Okay, next we have uh Dusty Robinson. Uh, he also would like to speak on the Vader and the bond. >> All right. I'm more of a doer than a speaker. So, apologize for that. But, uh um I just name's Dusty Robinson. I have four kids at Torland Renomistd and two are graduated. But, uh we're we're all over here so I'm sure you've seen us. But, uh um I just want to speak as as a member of the Ambassador Academy going through that this year and then the strategic planning committee. you know, I've learned a lot this year and just really wanted to go in and and give y'all my support as a community member for the Vader and for this bond. Um, to me, the Vader is is something that that's long overdue

055uh at this point because it's a way we can help, you know, support our staff and our teachers and and get, you know, give these kids a better education. And that's what it's all about. Um, you know, I want I want teachers that come through this program, like Miss Caldis has a great program, CT with education right now. I want those teachers to feel like they can come back to Brennham and start at a level that they they're proud to be Brenham Cubs. And I want them to be able to come back here and make a wage starting out that's at least competitive with places around. And that's a passing this Vader will be a good start to that. And with the with the bond, um, I'm with Mr. Graham, you know, it's like I

056mean, we have to we have to stop the bleeding. We have to get some things going, but we can't stop there. Um, you know, we owe these kids way too much to stop there. Um, I want to tell y'all something that a story that I had. We got to go on the Ambassador Academy, went to went to Kray, kindergarten kid was in there. We got to talk to the kids. He was coloring a picture, you know. I talked to him and and uh he said, "Mister, why are you here?" And I said, "They brought us here to show us how smart you are." and he looked at me and he looked up and he said, "Mister, you think I'm smart?" And uh and man, that just about broke me, you know, and I I just

057told him I said said, "Yeah, you know, and everybody here does and loves you." So, we can't stop with just, you know, these little these little gains. We owe more to that young man than than than just like a baseline bottom level. Okay? So, a community is going to pay for the educational system in their community one way or another. Either you can pay now and prepare these kids and help get the teachers compensated or you're going to pay later by a community that's not healthy. So, um I just feel like let's, you know, I want to give y'all as a community member, let's get this done. When I was with um with my kids at youth football, we'd have a saying. We say talk about it or be about it. Okay? And I'm long

058since done talking about it. Thank you, Dusty. Uh, we will now go into an executive session uh for the purpose of authorized by the Texas Open Meetings Act, Texas government code section 551071, consultation with attorney and 55107 for personnel manners. The board of trustees are going in at 646. um personnel, actions or decisions will be taken up at open meetings. >> Yeah, we're this will be a short executive session. >> Don't leave. It's going to be short. Don't leave. 7-Eleven uh and we are reconvening in open meeting. Okay. First, uh we're going to have a discussion of the storm damage and emergency repairs air quality. Superintendent Gillantine, maintenance facility supervisor Scott Larson's. We have representatives from Balffor Property, Parsons Roofing. Uh, y'all have the floor. >> Thank y'all for allowing Belffor to be a part

059of helping you get your properties back together. I am happy to say that we talked about our first meeting that if we could get you back in by the first ofol, you were in for the first of school. The only thing we're still lacking right now is the junior high gym floor. Um that will be done as of last Friday. Talking to my floor guys, it's about 3 to four weeks out. Um they're still working on them. As of this week, they finished behind the bleachers today, stripping everything out, putting the stuff down to put the wood down tomorrow. They will be starting the sand job on that come this week and this weekend. So it may hopefully go a little quicker than that. Um, do you have a photo of the the gym floor?

060Did I Did I give you one of those for those of you haven't seen it? Um, and this is just a photos. We I just wanted everybody to kind of have a idea of kind of what we did before, during, and after. You can see the floors here. Um, so this is all maple. The maple came from Pennsylvania. So when they lay these floors down, when we got the maple, it was 2% moisture. We want it to be at 8 to 9 to 10% before we start laying it. So, it sat in there for a while. They laid it out. It sat till they hit the right percentage they wanted. So, it's nailed down now. Like I said, we pulled the bleachers off last Friday. Got behind those. They've torn all that out. So, now

061it's just a process of letting that sit, getting the sand done. There'll be a couple sand jobs on it. Come in, do the finishing, the um the coats, the colors. Um for those that we were I was is the athletic director here that I >> You're the one I talked to. Got your colors for you. So, we're going to be with Is that Did he give you the one of the um the layout? >> No. Okay. Well, the layout in the center court. Now, y'all didn't have You're going to have your Brenham logo. So, excuse me. I was able to get that for you guys. So, all your lines are going to be Kelly green. So, you're going to have the Kelly green won't be the black and everything like you have to be Kelly

062green. The lines for the volleyball will be white like you had before. But you're going to have your big nice pretty brimom logo right in the middle of the court. So, it's going to be really cool when y'all get it done. So, I'm about to come watch a game up here when y'all get get it all said and done. But, um, no, other than that, like I said, um, it was a chore, but we got it done. Like I said, I can understand. I know there was some people in town thinking you're not going to get this done. And I can understand if you ever walked over, and I saw some of you in there. If you walked over there, it almost looked impossible. I agree with you 100% on that. Um, we had guys

063working seven days a week, days and nights, sometimes anywhere from 30 to 40 people at a time doing their mitigation side of it, getting it dried out, getting it cleaned, getting it ready. Um, I did hear you say a while ago we did, I know it was concerns for some the microbial growth and air. We had a third party come out and do testing in the junior high areas and in all the areas. Everything came back excellent for you guys. It's clear. So, you know, you don't have to worry about any of that. Um Clay has a copy of the report on that. I'm not sure who else has that, but if you need that, we can get it to you. >> So you mentioned tests. What can you explain what type of tests were

064done? >> Yeah, they came in. I >> got the report, but if so the public can know that. >> Yeah, they they did air quality tests for you. They came and did air quality tests. What they do on air quality test? They test areas inside and they take it outside. And we did I think a total I don't remember the total honestly because we did and I know Joe walked with us. Mkeley, he walked with us during the test. So we did all the we did the band hall, the um the office principal's office, the hallways, the English building, science building. I know. So we did all those and all of them came back clear as can be. >> And what's test you referring to the air quality test? >> The air quality. Okay. >>

065Air quality. That's what that test is that y'all have. That is by a licensed contractor hygienist. Belffor just ble does not do any testing. We just do the mitigation for fire, water, remediation for mold, you know, things like that. So we don't that's why we use the third party for that. So but these guys are licensed they on their report has everything showed all their lights and everything but yeah so for us I mean if you want to go you kind of just start showing some of this. This is just a little slideshow I wanted to have you everybody see kind of where we started some before during and after pictures here. Um, you know, this is they're cleaning floors here, but you can see in the middle when they're putting the ceiling, tile, and

066grid back up, you know, final cleaning over here. So, and um yeah, you you can kind of go through them. I don't you you can kind of see for yourself. That's one of that's the English building, right? Well, actually, that's not that's the middle school right there. We had both walls cut. All the walls in here had drywall, double 5/8 drywall and insulation inside of them. So, we had to take out a lot cuz it was getting really wet. that they needed to come out to keep from any anything bad happening. That's the roof at the beginning and that's where Parson started kind of as they were going. We were just kind of flying a drone over so everybody could kind of see and take note of what Parsons was doing as well as us.

067>> Can I pause you for a second on the That's middle school, correct? Yes. Um when are they coming back to do a final quality control check on the roof andor um what is scheduled to be finished or done next? >> The middle school on our part is done. All I have left is a gym floor. I'll let Parsons speak on the roof. >> Yeah, I'm just I'm talking about the roof specifically. >> Yeah. No, that'll be I'll let Parsons I don't that' be part. Okay. >> Um yeah, middle junior high here. >> This right here is the auditorium. You can see all the stains. We had to put over here on the side there's water coming. We You see the scaffolding. I had to have scaffolding installed because um there's no way to get

068to that. So, we got scaffolding installed, had decking on it. We got up there, replaced all the deck insuling tile that was bad. Um there's no insulation above that. So, it's just your ceiling tile. Um since it's helped out a whole lot. Here's your band hall. See over here on the left? Lot of water on the floor. That's the middle when before and this is when we're doing the the daring after here. And then you can see what is finalized here. This is after everything was done. So got new carpet in there, new baseboards, new ceiling tile insulation. I think that place is cleaner than it's been since it was built. >> Yeah, that's what the band director said. Anyway, yeah, and this is just something this I think this is the English building here

069looks like. But yeah, you can see the water. This is a classroom here on the left side. Water coming down the wall or coming in. Luckily over there, everything was cinder block besides a couple walls. Some of the walls there were drywall. So, we had a couple areas in there we had to do a twoft flood cut that we replaced and everything. Ceiling tile in the hallway. All the ceiling tile grid was replaced, which you can see there. And um yeah, that's kind of a finished product right there for you. Same thing here. This is just over in the science building. Um, a lot of ceilings, a lot of insulation. Y'all, there was insulation in the middle school and junior high that had to come out of the deck insulation. All that came out. All

070of your duck insulation had to be taken off, rewrapped. I I think we showed some photos the first time when the first board member we first started talking how we poked a hole in some of the insulation and water just dumped out of here. But, um, yeah, another after photo right there of everything. This is just some of our meters we used. The meter on the left is for gym floors. it. You probe it and it reads the the moisture in the wood and underneath the concrete. Um your wood in there is actually on screres and you can see the middle one where it changes colors dark. There's moisture there and then over here saying you can see the moisture that this is before like we were in there doing everything while we had to

071get it all out. And we've already seen this right here. This is kind of tearing it out. And that's your finished product once we're done. Any questions for me? All right, that that's it. >> I got I got a question. >> Yes, sir. >> Been in the junior high several times. Also, congratulations. You guys did a lot of great work in the middle school as well. >> So, I know there you know our our buildings weren't perfect before and you're within the the junior high. Um especially when you get into the auditorium area and other other places, there's some pre-existing I think things that you uh may have found or run into. Was that something that was addressed as well? I know, especially as I'm looking on that far right side. >> That far right

072side balcony. The balcony comes across and also on that floorboard. >> Yeah, we took some drywall out of that balcony area up there and redid it and we actually did some test samples for the insurance company when they came out to make sure the wall wasn't wet and we patched that and we painted that wall corner to corner is what we did there. >> Okay. What about on the on the floor on just not not on the balcony but on the main level? I know uh there's there's a as of last week or two weeks ago there's still you know a little bit of water and stuff. >> Yep. You're there's still water coming in the building. >> Okay. So we we're still we still have the same structure. >> You've got stuff coming in

073not necessarily from the roof anymore. Maybe a little cuz Parsons did a great job of coming. They I believe they came back and like I said I'll let them speak on that. But there's areas on the back wall that you know there's still some water coming somewhere. >> Sure. >> But your drywall is dry. That's what it's coming in from low. So, you know, that's just an issue. Until the exterior is looked at, you're going to have Okay. All right. Thank you. >> You're welcome. How are y'all doing? Excuse me. Um, mine's not as flashy as his. Y'all get to see the the pretty gems and everything, the finished products. Ours is just simple roofs. But um if we'll go through here, I think everybody knows what buildings were affected in in regards to which

074roofs that we had to do repairs on. Um it's the list right there. Um you know, it consisted of uh seven seven different roofs. Um so with that, um on the next slide, am I controlling this or let's see if I'm doing it the right way. Okay. Yeah, I got you. And so basically it was a you know the the process we kind of went over it last time. Um you know we worked with Tazby with Kim Shel y'all's representative from Tazby on um the situation with y'all's roofs which there's some pictures some before pictures and after pictures here in a minute but um basically you had to put an emergency repair on there which was a coating. Um, TA TAZBY immediately approved because of the situation you were in. As you saw Balffor's pictures

075with the uh the water that was that was in the building. Um, and so we worked on that. Of course, as soon as we started, as y'all know, it was pouring rain and it made the process a little bit longer. Um, but finally, we had some dry weather and um, you know, wrapped everything up. Um, we have been back a couple times to get some certain areas. Um, but I believe that right now we're completely in the dry. Um, you know, the one thing, um, that, you know, you have to note is that this is a repair. It's it's not a it's not a final product. And so, what we've done is we've, uh, we've put a coating on there that TASBY has approved that will, you know, it's it's a band-aid. And so, but,

076you know, we're looking towards the final product. Um, so invoices have been sent. TASBY will be working with with y'all on the um you know the the final part of that. Um some of the pictures as you see up here, this is before uh kind of shows the situation. Any anytime you see the spirals on there, uh that is where the hell damage is. The hail comes and impacts that. Um in turn, it creates basically what we call spirals. Um what that does is that's where the water penetrates in. Um and in turn it soaks through there's insulation underneath there. Um there's a you know better picture of just there's one hell impact right there and that tells you the significance significance of it. You know that's somebody's foot there. Um but anyhow there so

077what has happened is your uh insulation underneath your your top layer of roof has become saturated. Um and so going through the insulation is getting onto the deck and that's where all the the um the water damage came from on the inside the building. Um one thing that we have to note is that whenever this is um insurance comes through and um we start working on scope works with them um the insulation is going to have to be completely taken down. this th with the damage that y'all have on top of the roof, this is going to be one that's going to have to be taken down to the deck on pretty much every roof in y'all's uh that is on this list. And so, you don't want to keep a layer of roof, saturated

078insulation, and then a deck. It does not work out well. And so, you're looking at uh on the scope work, it'll be new new insulation, new membrane. Um here's just more pictures of of what this looked like. Um and once again it was it was uh basically hammered with hell uh throughout the district. Um thousands of of hell hell indentions. Um you know just other pictures. These are these are you know some of the different roofs. Um coating pictures. You know here's the final product. Of course it looks pretty, you know, compared to the other ones. Um but this is what the uh coating looks like on top of the roof for the those of y'all that haven't seen anything. It's basically a thin layer of, um, silicone that goes on top of there. Um,

079the goal is to keep everything in the dry. And so, um, you know, it, like I said, it looks great. It's not a it's not a final product. Um, we will, you know, go through next steps here in just a minute, but, um, you know, basically this will be taken off in and your final product roof be put on. Um, and so just, you know, there's another picture. Uh so basic, you know, here's here's the big deal is the next steps is uh you know, we're working on uh scope of work. We're working with TASBY um on what type of roof, what type of insulation um for each different one. Not every not every roof has the same exact insulation underneath, the same uh top, you know, most of them have duralast. Um and so

080it's we're working through all of that. So what happens there is their adjusters, they come up with their pricing, their scope of work, what they feel. We come up with ours. Basically, we're trying to, I guess you'd say, represent y'all for the best type of roof y'all can get for the money for your insurance. Um, so you know, the the things that are negotiated are right there. The type of roof, the amount of insulation, a code upgrade, which means that any of your old roofs that um they need to be brought up to insulation code. If they don't have enough, then there's a code upgrade that goes with that. Uh we negotiate all the gutters, trim, and any soft metals that were damaged with the installation. And then, you know, of course, the price per

081square with them. Um after everything's, you know, once TASBY approves that, has a green light, um you know, then that's when y'all look at approving everything and, you know, going through tips or whatever procurement y'all are. And then once all of that happens, then, you know, hopefully all the roofs get replaced. And so that's that's kind of where we're at with um our process. And so I know that you had some questions on >> Yes, sir. Um whoa, I'm loud. Okay, so I'm going to go backwards. Um back to this. So, does TASBY give you push back on what you're recommending or is it this is what we need and then they go back and say, "Okay, well, it's insurance and it's approved and then or are they giving you a price that says they're

082not going to approve that amount and you have to negotiate back and forth?" I didn't quite understand what you're saying. >> Yes. So, it'll be the it'll be the type of roof and the amount. And so we have to we have to go back and um basically they're going to give us a price amount per square on the t a certain type of insul a certain thickness of their membrane, a certain amount of their insulation, the labor, uh everything that's involved with that. We negotiate back and um try to come up with and and we work with insurance all the time. So we kind of usually we hit kind of nail on with everything. um we're usually not far off from that, but there's a lot of times when um we're going to find things

083that they did not see when their adjusters came out. And so that's where a lot of the negotiating is, whether it be uh even soft metals or trim or anything like that. When they're coming back with um a price and their scope of work and they've left off certain areas or certain uh parapit walls or anything it might be, that's where we come back and say, "Well, y'all have left this off. we need to go back and we need to adjust this. We need to adjust everything that there is on that. So that's where basically the negotiation is is more of a making sure every single thing is covered and it's covered in the right way >> because ultimately it's an insurance claim from our end. So therefore, we pay our deductible and the roof

084gets replaced. It's just a matter of them paying you and you getting paid what you need to do the work that they're approving and y'all going back and forth. I'm just making sure I understand that part as well. True. Basically, they're paying y'all for I mean, we're okay. Um, basically, we're negotiating for y'all. They pay y'all and y'all pay the roof. And so, what we're trying to do is make sure y'all are getting all of the money that y'all deserve. >> All right. And then now I'm going to go back to the question I asked him. Okay. >> Are you coming back to check the roof? Is there another inspection done? Is there anything else that is Cuz I heard you say it's dried in. I went up on the roof yesterday. Um, I noticed

085a couple of places where I saw it wasn't dried in. There was a few issues and I can show you those later. Uh, if you want me to. I took pictures. I probably have about 20 pictures I took. Um, I'd like to make sure that those get addressed. And so that was my question is, do you have somebody else coming back to do more of a QC check or a punch list or do you have anybody else coming to do an inspection or what's next? >> Yes, we were here um, yes, yesterday. I had somebody here yesterday. >> Yeah, I think I showed up right after you all left. That's what I was totally >> So, yes. So, one of the things he was doing is walking the roofs, measuring the roofs again, inspecting the

086roofs, taking pictures, um, and doing some of that. There are going to be on, like I said, that thing we got to remember is this is a temporary repair. There's going to be things um that are going to have to be addressed throughout that. So, what we, you know, on all of these roofs that we've done, if something does happen and there is a leak or anything like that, Yes. we're we're immediately sending somebody out to to come back and repair that. Yeah. So, it's it's basically we're going to be on call until we can get this insurance finalized. >> I got one more and then I'm going let these guys go. Um, that the junior high because I only got up on the junior high and middle school. Those are the two roofs I

087go on. the main junior high building, the drip edge on the outside of that membrane. Is that going to need complete replacement or I'm not sure because the the membrane comes in early and then the drip edge is on the outside and there's a gap and there's a void in between and that looks dangerous and that's why we have water coming in from the top and it doesn't make any sense that that's done that way. But I don't know, this is temporary again. So the final roof may go over the outside, but that drip edge is obviously 50 something years old. So it's done wrong, but I want to make sure that that's part of >> it is. >> Okay. Yes. All of all of that's No, no, no, no, no, no. All of that

088is everybody else. And so that's part of the whole new system whenever the whole new system comes in. >> Yes. >> What's the What's the timeline on the new system? Is that something you're targeting for next summer? Is this a winter break kind of thing? What is it building by building case or what does the timeline look for that? >> Uh once approved by TASBY, that a lot of times the slow process is the insurance process. Once it's approved, um, then we work with, uh, Scott, we work with with Clay, we work with everybody on what needs to be done first, when we can do it, and, you know, we have to work with the school district on that. Um, you know, we would, if it were approved next week and y'all said, get get

089to work, we would do it. And so it really a lot of it has to come down to us us negotiating with the insurance, get it closed, get it finalized, get it approved, and then working with the district on when you want us to do it. >> Yeah. Just to follow up on that. So say it's approved next week, right? Uh does that affect or impact the students being in the building? Uh does that impact uh regular operations or anything like that? >> No, we we do roofs uh throughout the whole school year at in at multiple districts. Um what we try to do is work with the actually the campus administrators on each building. So let's just say the junior high. Um what we try to do is we work with the uh administrator,

090you know, of course on dates, any dates that there's things that they do not want us on the building for. But then if it's a fully adhered roof, anything like that, yes, you're going to hear a little bit of noise. Um but we try to work around schedules as much as we can. Um, and really on something like this, it's probably if if there's going to be a good timeline on it, you're probably going to need it done a lot of it done while kids are in class. >> And so, >> okay, just just two quick questions. You said before you're talking about having to rip it off and go all the way down to the decking, right? Uh, but you mentioned as far as saturation within the uh the insulation that's currently there. Yes.

091>> Is that insulation still saturated? >> Yes. >> Okay. So if if if not >> I mean the only only thing you can do right now for an emergency repair is put a put a coating on it and that's going on top of the membrane that's on there which has the saturated. So that's another reason to you know the process needs to go pretty quick because really that saturation the insulation that is saturated needs to be taken off brand new insulation put on and yes so it is okay does that provide I mean an additional any any additional risk or anything to the building with that sitting like that currently especially I think within the junior high where I know there's the yeah the wood decking above and then you have insulation but I don't

092think it's fully dried out leakage into those rooms and and causing that to be a So the insulation I believe now everything that has come through that has that has basically tore up your sheetrock and on your floors. >> Yes. >> Um I think the rest of the insulation for now has has soaked that up to where it's not a constant um waterfall anymore. The top has it to where no more water's coming in because it gets to where the insulation gets to where it's so dense it has nowhere else to go. Right now we're in a good holding point. um you know as long you know for as long as it takes um but it I mean it needs to be taken up. Okay, >> last question. Do you you've done this a lot

093a lot of other districts. Do you have any idea or from your experience how long has it taken for TASBY to approve? Because the longer it sits it's just going to start racking up more insurance costs and there's going to be more damage and more problems and more issues. So, >> in your experience, how long does TASBY take to approve? And then, >> um, do we need to do anything on our end to kick him in the butt to hurry up? >> So, Scott Scott and I are actually working working with Kim pretty well. He he's he's stayed on them very well. Uh, done a very good job with that. Um, everything's kind of in motion. They have they're working their side, putting putting their scope of work together. Um, we're doing the same. We're

094basically done with ours. Um, and so I've I've seen the I mean I'm not gonna sugar coat. I've seen processes take a long long time. I think y'all are pretty fast forward right now. I think I think Kim um you're fortunate to have Kim Shel. She's usually very quick and uh she I know she's working on it um daily. And so, um, I'm hoping, you know, by a month from now that everything's everything is, um, finalized. >> Sorry, I think that was the last question, but let me just ask one more. >> No, go ahead. >> Is there anything that you saw? You're on top of our roofs. You see, we we know we have aged buildings and all the rest. Anything that you look at say, you know what, that's going to be be

095armed repair. We're just going we're going to be putting a patch on that uh continuously. Uh, is there anything that you saw along? So, with the ones that we the roofs that we put the coatings on, um there were there were all kinds of things, but it's all getting taken off and replaced. And so, you're getting complete new roofs on those. I >> guess >> um well, it's hard it you know, anything like that? No, not yet. Um you know, you can always run into So, whenever and part of the process of replacing the roofs is you can always run into um some rotten decking or anything like that. And that's that's part of the process of replacing that. And so and and we will I mean your your roofs are very old and uh

096we will run into some of that and that's I mean that's part of our everyday work, you know, replacing some decking and and doing that. >> All right. Anything else? Great job. Thank y'all for being Johnny on the spot with this and getting it running for the kids. Um I know it's been a heck of a summer for the administrators and for y'all and for the teachers as well. So, we really appreciate it. Okay, next uh we have the uh financial advisor update with uh Steve, advisor Steve Perry. >> Down. Okay, got it. Thank you. Uh I have a brief presentation I'd like to give you just an overview of district's finances. I've presented some of this information to you before but thought this would be instructive. So uh the first thing that I'm going

097to talk about is is tax values in the district going back to the year 2004 until now. Obviously there's been significant growth in the district. um your tax values for this upcoming year uh for as of January 1 of 2025 are 4.3 billion. That's taking out the new $140,000 homestead exemption and that's after frozen values are taken out. So, as we're talking about things like uh your capacity to have a bond election without a tax rate increase, that's one of the most important. So, Daryl and I have agreed on that number, 4.3 billion. The next page, I think this is instructive, too, uh, to look at where the district's tax rate has been over time. Again, going back roughly 20 years, you can see that the normal used to be for M$150 up to $150

098for M. Uh, and then your INS tax rate was uh, 10 cents. And your INS tax rate has really not gone up that much over time at at the most roughly 14 cents and now it's at 8 cents. So, u you know, your total tax rate for last year is roughly 75 cents. Another item that I think's interesting is is to look at you to gauge you versus other school districts in terms of what tax rates uh they're adopting, what they've adopted. These are all of last year. Uh information for this fiscal year is not readily available. A lot of districts are still adopting their tax rates. Uh but you can see Brennham is at the lowest. Um even with the proposed tax rate, you'll still be the lowest of of this group of school

099districts. Um and then you can look at the amount of debt outstanding. Obviously, Waller is kind of an outlier, but uh even compared with most districts in this area, you're sort of at the bottom in terms of just a a global view of the district's finances and how those are perceived by third parties, uh you know, investors. You've always been rated by Moody's Investor Service. It's a credit rating agency. Those guys, standard and pores are are the two big rating agencies. Uh it's important to note that whenever you sell bonds, the state of Texas has a guarantee program that the permanent school fund uh sponsors called PSF guarantee program. So when you sell bonds, they receive a AAA credit rating. You pay $1,500 uh best deal in the country. So your bonds sell with a

100AAA credit rating. But uh investors also look through to the district to say, well, what's that district rated on its own? uh because then there are different kinds of interest rates charged to different districts. So the higher your underlying credit rating, the closer you are to that AAA on your own, the better credit or the better interest rate you get. So uh your credit rating right now is an A1. It's a good it's a good credit rating, not bad. Uh before July of 24, you were at double A3, which is a notch higher. So, uh, what happened is they reviewed your credit in 2024, which they do periodically, and they decided to downgrade you, uh, from double A3 to A1. It's not the end of the world, but it's it's not ideal. So, what that

101means is that whenever you go out and sell bonds, uh, investors will look at your AAA rated bonds with a double A3 or I'm sorry, an A1 under A1 underlying rating. They'll compare you to another school district that has a AAA rated bond but then has a double A3 or a double A2 or a double A1 and they're going to charge different interest costs. Yours will be slightly higher. Now there are school districts that have lower credit ratings lower than A1 and those folks pay more in interest cost. Uh but you know it's it's a very small amount of of uh interest rate difference per year but over time it adds up. So the downgrade again occurred mostly because of the decreases in your general fund balance. Rating agency was very happy with you when

102your general fund balance was $15 million and given your tax base arguably your rating should have been higher. Uh if you had been able to stay around $15.5 million of general fund balance well then your rating probably should have been more like a double A2. It should have been going up. But just given what occurred over time, uh, you know, your general fund balance as of fiscal year 24 about $3.7 million. They looked at that and they looked at the erosion over time and said, "We're downgrading you." So, not to spend too much time on that, but um, I think it's an important global concept. We we deal in this world all the time. So, wanted to to try to relay that to you. TEA recommends uh, 75 days of expenditures and general fund balance.

103So for you that would be roughly $10 million and right now you're at 3.7. Any questions so far in terms of of reviewing the district's debt capacity? I I think we've talked about some of this before. First, I wanted to list a couple of your bond elections. In 2012, you had a roughly $25 million bond election for Alton Elementary and some middle school repairs. before that uh 2004 you had a $10 million election and then the last election before that which was before my time I think it was 96 uh you had another small uh election but those are the three you've had since I've or really the two up there that I've I've been working with you on uh your capacity for an election without having a tax rate increase for INS uh is

104$30 million. So again we take your sorry 39. What did I say? 36. >> 30. I'm sorry. 39. >> Don't be short. >> Yeah, I'm backtracking. I'm here backtracking. No, no, really, the number is $39 million. Um, and I've I've taken a look at, like I said, your existing tax base, your existing debt, um, assuming market interest rates and a bond election in November of 2025 and very modest growth for the next three years. I think Daryl said that your your real increase in tax base was about 13%. U the the new homestead exemption lowered that we may have more homestead exemptions down the road. But assuming that you know we track at 5% growth for the next three years and even if we don't um we would be roughly right at 8 cents within

105a a rounding factor. So I'm very comfortable that $39 million is is the amount that you can raise without increasing the INS tax rate. uh some notes about the way we've been managing your debt over time. Uh we've refinanced debt every time we've had an opportunity. So no more of those opportunities exist. You have one set of bonds. We refinanced during COVID with interest rates that were in the one and 2%. So we'll never see those kinds of rates again. I I wouldn't expect. So that's about as low as it can get. Uh but even at that, we've been prepaying debt every year. So, every time we have an opportunity, uh, we pay down that bond issue and that's been roughly $3 million that we've paid off in the last couple of years, which is

106a prudent use of of INS funds. Uh, the last information I had where I could pull all INS tax rates in the state, out of 870 school districts that had debt, you were 814th. So, um, you know, you would still be keeping with, uh, this plan to not increase the INS tax rate. You would still be at at one of the lowest INS tax rates in the state. >> Can I ask you a quick question? Um, >> sure. >> The interest rate you have up there and current interest rates, I know the I don't know how much it is affected by what the Fed does. And if they do lower the rate, will that then in turn basically be beneficial for us if that does happen? So this is basically where we're at now. But

107it's projected that the rate will lower. It's just a matter of when. But >> correct, >> that will help us. Correct. >> That will help you. That'll help you when you authorize. >> I didn't know how much that affected it. >> It it that is absolutely one of the factors. Uh I try to build conservatism into my models because the last thing I want is, you know, we sell 39 $39 million worth of bonds and then it causes your INS tax rate to go up. So I do things to be conservative. U I think that 5% is a good cap. U I do expect that rates will start to come down. I think the Fed will start to lower rates. There are things building that I I think rates should be coming down. Uh your

108INS or I'm sorry your your your tax base should be growing over time too, even more than what we projected. So what that does is build capacity down the road if you've got other projects that are coming up. uh you know, we're we're trying to do things so that you're not just flatlined at one INS tax rate. We'll be managing your your tax rate over time and uh trying to do things to give you capacity in the future, too. So, we don't just sell and then leave it there. It's our job to help you manage the the INS tax rate. I think that may be the the last that is the last slide. So, just a quick overview. Uh any any questions about any of that? Thank you very much. >> Let me just ask

109a question. >> Yes, sir. >> Sorry, but I the disparity between us and other districts and other communities on our tax rate, >> it's massive. >> It's h how do we grow? I mean I mean I I guess there has to be a formula for growth and no one likes taxes. I don't like taxes. I don't know anybody who does except for the government. Right. >> That's right. So, I guess the the question is I mean uh I think you know Dusty said it said it earlier at some point you're going to have to chew as you're paying, right? And so >> my question is is this is this sustainable to keep just holding the line where because we're going to have more people coming in otherwise I mean just I guess in in your

110opinion how do you see that? >> I think that uh it's a prudent thing to have an election where you're not increasing the INS tax rate. It's a sort of a stop gap measure, but I I in my opinion obviously I'm I'm I don't live here. So, uh but I think at some point you you're going to have to do more things. So, you've provided yourselves with a good base. Um you've got this nice low INS tax rate. You have a very large tax base. Uh most school districts that I represent that have four going on $5 billion of of tax base would have a couple hundred million dollars of debt outstanding. And like I said, I'm I'm not advocating for that in any way. But that would not be unusual at all at all.

111Um right if if a couple hundred million dollars more you know that's maybe another 20 cents of and I'm just you know rounding off but um it's well within your capacity to do to do those things and you've got to adjudicate those with the public and figure out if that's what they want to do but in terms of the numbers you've got the capacity. I had one other comment um half question comment. Um since I asked about the interest rate because I'm pretty sure everybody knows it's going to go down. It's just a matter of when. Maybe the next meeting or the meeting after that. But the reason I asked that question is because if it not if when it does go down uh Brennon will continue to do what we've been doing which is

112have a better situation where we'll be paying more than what we are needing to pay. Therefore being fiscally responsible by paying down our debt again due to an interest rate lowering and us assuming we're at 5% if it's at 4 and a half then that extra half percent is going to principal and therefore we're being fiscally responsible again. I just wanted to point that out. So it's a half comment half question but is that not correct? That's what we would be doing. >> That is correct. I I think you know to the extent you're not immediately going out and borrowing again it's always a good idea to start prepaying principal. That's how we build capacity. That's something I've done my whole career is try to make sure that as you know as quickly as we

113can we're paying principal down just good business practice >> everybody good >> again thank you I mean there's some good news with our finances so but we really appreciate it >> sure thank you >> okay next uh we're gonna have a recommendation from the strategic planning committee uh Katie Burch and Destiny Andrews I will need my water bottle just so you know. Howdy and good evening everyone. Um my name is Destiny Andrews. I've met quite a few people over the last year, but still maybe you don't know me. Um, I come to you wearing many hats. First, I'm a parent. I have two kids and I brought my kids with me because stuff like this is important. I think they need to know how decisions get made. So, I have a fifth grader and a

114sixth grader and I know they're probably cringing right now and it's a school night. Yay, we're back in session. Um, I'm married to a coach. So, I'm a coach's wife. My husband teaches world geography ninth grade and coaches the basketball team. We're newer obviously to the community. This is the start to year three. And I'll let it be known, this is home. We have found our spot here. This place is special. And one last thing, I am a PhD student in education administration. Most of my experience stems in higher ed, but I've worked with PK through 12 all throughout. I'm not here just as a speaker. I'm here as a parent, a neighbor, a community member, and someone who truly believes that Brennham's best days are ahead of us. First, I want to thank each

115of you, Jared, Raven, Bonnie, Archer, Kyle, Sean, Justin, along with Superintendent Clay for allowing Katie and I to come up here and present to you all. About a year ago, I had the privilege of joining the Brennham Ambassador Academy, which later led to serving on the strategic planning committee, which I see a lot of familiar faces this evening. Through those experiences, I've seen firsthand both the incredible strengths in our district and the very real challenges we face. Before I speak to those challenges, I need to pause for gratitude. Because even in the face of tights, budgets and tough realities, the district is full of people who show up every single day for our students. I want to recognize our campus leaders, Mr. Michael Watts at Brennham High School and his teaching staff. Jillian Wilkkey at

116the Brennham Junior High and her amazing staff and teachers. Erin Tibido at Brennham Middle School where my kids are. Um, and her teaching staff. Sarah Cook at Krowy Elementary and her teaching staff. Stephen Seamlas at Renham Elementary and his teaching. Did I say it wrong? >> Oh god. I was like, "No, that one I did. I will say I was I was worried y'all. I was worried." Oh, Michael OG. Words are hard. I'm usually one that says words are hard. Believe it or not, PhD, yes, words are still hard. Okay. Michael OG at Alton Elementary and his teaching staff. Melissa Bunker at the Early Childhood Learning Center and her teaching staff along with can't forget athletic director Danny Young's, his team and coaching staff. and beyond our principles, the unsung heroes, people we may forget

117about. Business and finance, communications and enrichment, HR, safety and security, learning and leadership, special education services, DAP, child nutrition, technology, maintenance, transportation, CTE, health and wellness staff, and pair professionals, administrative assistance, substitutes, custodial staff, you name it. Everyone in this district, we've heard from them at some point in the strategic planning committee and the ambassador academy. You are the backbone backbone of Brennham ISD. Our leadership, the board, teachers, and staff are doing Olympic level work with the tightest budgets. We see you. On behalf of the strategic planning committee, we honor the commitment, the long hours, and the way you choose to keep showing up for our students and for many of us, our children. It's from a place of gratitude that I bring you my concern, but also my hope. Because while we have the

118right people, we do not have the right conditions to fully support them. In the last few months, we have made Tremendous strides because my husband challenges me often to look at the glass half full. Right. We have filled positions that were once vacant and didn't seem like they would be filled. Our district will be offering free breakfast and lunch to all students of Brennham ISD through the community eligibility provision program for this next academic year. And thanks to House Bill 3, the state will provide significant payraises for teachers. 4,000 for those with 3 to four years of experience and 8,000 for those with five or more years of experience. These are important wins. Wins that deserve to be celebrated and proof that when we come together and focus our energy together, we have made meaningful

119pro progress. These steps move us forward, but they do not close the gap. My role in presenting tonight was to present on what we know based on the academy based on the strategic planning committee and just from what I've seen as a community member and subbing in the district which I have this last year was really nice. Our teacher turnover rate was in fact high and yes that was something that was felt across the state. Brennham ISD's teacher pay is among the lowest in our surrounding area, making it harder to attract and retain highquality educators students deserve. Even with the raises from House Bill 3, Brennham ISD's teacher pay is still among the lowest in our surrounding area. And House Bill 3 does not include firstear secondyear teachers. Does not include non-eing staff or administrators,

120many of whom are also underpaid compared to neighboring districts. Our facilities are aging. Something that was very evident tonight and I took notes. Our roof roofs are very old. We need new isolation and a membrane. Didn't know what that meant, but uh roofing is a band-aid, not final product. Other things we've learned, we're not ADA compliant on the tours. That's something we learned. the junior high, there is still water in the building. That's what we know. We also know that over 60% of our students here in Brennham come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. Our academic performance is not where we'd like it to be. Stuff we learned all throughout the strategic planning committee and the Ambassador Academy. We also know based on experience, kind of tying back to comments earlier, we know that maybe students don't

121feel that they're smart. If you're asking, you think I'm smart? Are we making them feel smart? Research consistent consistently shows that competitive teacher pay is one of the strongest predictors of teacher retention. When salaries are significantly lower than neighboring districts, schools see high turnover, which is something we've seen in Brenhamd. This disrupts student learning and increases long-term costs for recruitment and training. Teachers are more likely like likely to stay where they feel valued. And fair pay is one of the clearest ways a district can show value. And it's not just pay. Research from the last 20 years shows that schools physical environment, air quality, lighting, and even aesthetics has a positive effect on student achievement. Better facilities lead to better learning outcomes. Again, something our students in this community deserve. In the strategic planning committee,

122I was able to put on my education hat and speak to the committee about the ecology of education. The idea that every element in a school system is interconnected. Like an ecosystem, just like in nature, when one part of the ecosystem suffers, whether it's soil, water, the air, entire systems feel the strain. Schools work the same way. It's if facilities are in disrepair, if teacher pay lags behind, if students walk into classrooms that don't feel safe or welcoming, the whole system is impacted. Achievement, and I'm taking this, this is not my word, achievement doesn't happen in isolation. It grows out of the health of the whole environment. Maslo's hierarchy of needs, I have to throw that in there, y'all, is a simple but powerful truth. Before students can focus on academic excellence, their most basic

123needs have to be met with safety, security, a sense of belonging, a community that supports them. If those needs are not in place, learning takes a backseat to survival. Imagine asking a child to focus on algebra when the classroom is sweltering in August because the HVAC system is outdated. Or when they're worried about whether they'll have a stable teacher next year, or when the walls around them send an unspoken message that their learning space isn't worth investing in. A student can't climb the ladder of success if the first rung safety or belonging is missing. When a school building is modern, clean and thoughtfully maintained maintained. It doesn't just serve as a structure. It becomes a signal to every student and educator. You matter. Your future matters. This community believes in you. If the foundation of

124the school is shaky or the ecosystem that makes up the entire school district is unhealthy, the future of the student is too. We got to think about where we're sending our students to and then what comes next after they graduate. Are we preparing them to be productive members of society? Strong schools don't just teach academics. They teach hope, possibility, and selfworth. Every student who walks into a classroom deserves to feel like they are walking into possibility, not limits. That possibility is built in the details. A teacher who chooses to stay because their pay is fair. A building that inspires pride instead of resignation. A community that sends a clear message. You are worth our very best. Our facilities are not just buildings. They are the stage where the future of Brennham is being written every

125single day. Where a fifth grader discovers they love math because of a teacher who is a product of this community inspire them. Where a junior high student decides, hey, I want to be a doctor because of a a middle school or a junior high project. and they dissect a pig where a high school senior feels ready to take on the world because we've equip equip them with the right skills and resources to go build social mobility and come back home, right? And build on to a better Brennham. We owe it to our teachers, our students, and our community to give them a place that matches their potential. Because when the learning environment rises, so does everything else. Test scores, morale, retention, pride. I say the saying a lot because it's true. A rising tide raises

126all boats. When Brennham chooses to invest in its schools and their teachers, it's choosing to invest in the future. It's choosing to plant seeds that will grow long after we are gone. Because believe it or not, let's knock on wood, we will be gone. And then we're handing it off to the next generation. Let's build something so strong, so intentional that generations from now, our children's children will thank us and they will know this board, this community chose them in this moment. So, that's the big takeaway from the strategic planning committee and everything that we've learned through the academy. And now I'm going to pass it to Katie Burch who will present on what the committee proposes unless you have questions. Okay. [Applause] All right, give me one second. I got to get situated. I

127know this is a long meeting, but I'm I'm not going to rush. Um, this committee has done a ton of work. Um, my name is Katie Burch. I'm local to Brennham, graduated from Brenham High School. Um, and I'm going to speak tonight on behalf of the strategic committee. Um, so thank you'all for the opportunity to be here. Um, I will say if if I take off that hat and say an opinion, I'll try to differentiate that. Um, but I'd also like to kind of have a conversation. So, um, jump in at any point if y'all have questions. I have notes, so I will get back on track. Okay, I will not forget anything. So, um, I want to say that the history in our community of talking about bonds are relevant here. um only because

128of the lessons that we learn. Um we have a chance here to model for our kids how to work very hard at something that you truly believe in. Um have it not go your way, go away and reflect and then course correct and try again. So we have a chance to model for them what that could look like. Um so that's what we're doing. Um, we're going to take our time on this because I want to share as many details about what went in went on in that room as I possibly can. Um, but I know we don't all want to spend the night. So, I will stick to the stick to the high points. Um, I want to start by telling you that we studied comments from past bonds. Okay. Um, so what I

129mean by that is, and all a lot of what I'm saying right now is already on the strategic committee's website. Um, and it's detailed information. So I did I did um have to kind of look around on the district website to find that link, but once you find it, all the meeting notes are there. So a lot of what I'm saying here, you can go back and kind of get more detail if you're interested. Um, so we studied um 710 comments and these comments were posted back in May of 2022. So that's a lot of time has passed. Um those comments were from 125 individuals. Okay? So just so you know, um if the comment was anonymous, we did not look at the comment. Okay? So only comments that had names. And of those comments

130that were made about those bond efforts, the ones that uh were let's say opposing or had um appeared to be opposing. Okay. Um we put those concerns into groups and those categories that we looked at were more details needed um concerns with the cost of lack of transparency tax impact um and disappointment in past uh BISD decisions. Again, these comments came from May of 2022. Okay. So, we did talk about that in the first meeting. I actually think it was a third meeting. Um, but what we also heard is about 14% um of that group thought that no improvements were needed at all. What I would say here today is that was three years ago. I'm going to say this, I I don't think that would be the same number now. That um I think

131they were mostly talking about the junior high and that that building has changed a lot. There's been flooding multiple times in that building. It's a completely different scenario even from then and I actually don't think 14% of our community would feel that way. Um, but I'm I'm just saying that's that's kind of what we saw and what we talked about. Um, but what we learned from those comments is what they were saying is they just need more transparency. So, what is transparency? Okay. I think what it what it boils down to is just simply more details. I don't think that most people were saying someone's lying or whatever. I think it was literally we need more details about what is the process, what's going on. So that's kind of what we know about the history

132of what the community has said about bonds in general. Um so what do we know right now? We know we have one facility that's in very disperate situation, the junior high. Um we also have conditions across the district which are very at at varying degrees of critical condition. I don't even know how to put that. some of them are in immediate need of repair and could prevent us from having kids in the building and then it kind of goes down from there. So, um this was a place that Kyle Hafner and I worked together um during the strategic committee to kind of work on that list and there were three board members who were on that committee, Mr. Hafner, Mr. Collie, Mr. Archer um so they can also answer questions you know in the community

133um about and to you guys um about those meetings. Um, so what we did was we basically the school district met with campus principles and maintenance staff and they did just a really thorough um spreadsheet style list of these types of problems that the school district knew about um on each campus. Okay. Then we took that list and we compared it against uh facility studies that the district had had since 2012. Okay. So the reason for that was a lot of those facility studies and they were completed by all different companies. Um some were paid for, some were pro bono. Tazby threw some things in. So the reason for that was to say like if they had projected that say a roof should be replaced in 2013 and it still hasn't been replaced. We wanted

134to capture that even if the principal didn't notice, right? Or something like that. So uh then Mr. Mr. Havner had the idea of color coding these and putting them by I guess just by you know priority. Basically the the ones in red uh which were the most critical items. Uh we were looking at um I think 9 to 12 months of not being able to have school in those spaces. Would you mind putting that up on the screen just so they can kind of get a feel? It's it's not something we can go through tonight. It's a long list but it Why not? I finally got up there. >> Okay. So, um it is on the website. So, that is on the strategic committee website. So, you can get Okay. Sorry. Go ahead. >> Meeting

135five. Okay. Under meeting five. And so what we did is we colorcoded those and um Scott Larson worked with us uh who's uh was representing maintenance for Brennham ISD and we talked about every single item on here. Um you can see those QRS and those are a link to pictures so you can kind of see um where we were headed there. Um let's see. Well, so >> yeah, Kyle got a little red happy there for a minute, but I it's true. I mean, this this was eyeopening. And honestly, you know how when you have a gut feeling about something and then you kind of start digging to under uncover it turns out to be true. This was one of those times. I think everybody in the community had the feeling that we had a lot

136to work on, but once we started looking at it, it it was a lot more than we anticipated. Um, so what's really important to note here is these are not maintenance items. Okay, we're calling this a recurring capital improvement list. These are not maintenance items. So kind of the difference and just one way to look at it is a lot of these items require a licensed tradesman. Those are not, you know, the filters need to be changed, fresh paint, something needs to be mowed. These are chillers, roofs. jump in at any point if you want to kind of clarify any of this. We worked on this together. >> It was a lot of things. Uh like you said, chillers, roofs, it was uh we actually took some of the roofing out that is now being

137covered by the um insurance, but it was a lot of plumbing. It was a lot a whole lot of air conditioning, HVAC issues. Um, and it was a a broad range of items and it's from plumbing pipes to toilets to um not working water fountains, things like that and security doors. There's a lot of it was a broad range of issues, >> right? Um it was overwhelming at first, but there was a lot of time put into this. Um what we're hoping is that um within the context of the $39 million that the financial adviser mentioned a second ago, which our community, my understanding is we have access to that without a tax rate increase. Um we're hoping that we can work our way through those really critical items. We probably will not get through

138this list. Okay. But here's what we're thinking and I I think this is really good advice. If we can work our way through the very critical items, then we all know that it's so much cheaper to go to a well visit than it is to go to the ER. Okay? So, what's happening right now is every time one of these things, you know, rear its ugly head or, oh, wow, there's this 60-year-old, you know, chiller that we have to deal with, that has to be dealt with immediately. And that sucks all of our possibilities out of, you know, those funds that could go into the classroom. And so if we can work our way down that list and get those big items, you know, taken care of, then it will stop drawing so much um

139on money that could be allocated to the kids. We're not going to get all the way through the list with that money. Um but we will make a serious dent in it. >> So >> um yes, >> what's the process for removing the word draft from this document and making it more kind of >> Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, I see it now. Yes. >> Kind of concrete because I've gotten a few phone calls recently where people have looked at this document and they've said, "Well, this item that's in red really needs being in yellow and this yellow item really needs to be in red." And like from what I understand, this is a draft and it's not finalized as the gospel truth of this is what we're doing with the deferred maintenance bond. I understand

140that it's kind of you two's professional opinion, which I greatly respect and honor, but what's the process for sort of finalizing the list? >> So, I heard two things. One, yeah, that's okay. When we get the when can we get the draft thing off? I think after this meeting, Kyle and I will sit down and we will go through it with campus administrators. Um, we're going to give them a chance to get school started. But these these items go in categories. Um, you could ask a hundred people what is what. I'm going to say this, most people will agree with the red. Um, and what I will also say that is the gospel truth. Okay, that list is the gospel truth. And so, um, we can take draft off whenever the board feels comfortable. Um,

141but I'm certainly comfortable. Um, >> I'm just help with that. I I I think the main reason it's a draft is because the goal was to see what was red, what was orange, what was yellow. And then from there, uh the next plan was how far is this going to go? In other words, how much money is it going to take? Is this a $100 million list? Is this a $20 million list? And we didn't know that until we started asking questions. And through asking around, it was a lot of well, it would be a bit of about this, an estimate of about this. And we, as Katie mentioned, we don't know what they can what we can get done because it's going to be a while before we get the money to pay for

142it and there's prices go up, inflation, etc. But a lot of these things on this list are are definitely a need. Uh some of them are even a requirement. However, um we don't know how far that dollar is going to stretch until we've got true bids. And right now, we we're not at that point because it has to We have to receive the money to put it out for bid. And once it's out for bid, then we'll know how far that dollar is going to go. >> Yeah. And Mr. Archer, it's a it's a budget. Okay. So, it's a budget. Um those every line on there has to be put out to bid. It's a it's a public money, so that has to happen, but it's a very credible budget. Um and I I agree.

143um we would sit down, we would go through those things, but I am very confident in that list and a priority. >> Great. I'm just glad to hear that um our campus administrators are going to get get the input because the last thing I would want is for this group that was a lot of the community members but not everybody obviously to have it be operated in a silo and then we just kind of run into the same problems we ran into before. And so I'm glad that we're giving our campus administrators an opportunity to really view this and go through it. And again, I trust you and I trust Kyle implicitly. I just wanted to ask the question. >> Yeah. And also I think um the maintenance department, I mean, we need to sit

144down, have a very detailed meeting before that happens, but campus administrators, the maintenance department um Yeah. Um, and whenever you guys are ready for that, should you choose to go this route, we'll get you a very final list. Um, so this is our capital improvement list. Um, now, one thing I would say to the board and to the community, um, we can't have it both ways. Okay? So if we ask the community to dig in and be transparent and spend our time in the uh strategic committee meetings and we get this level of transparency and this level of detail, we can no longer call these things unforeseen. Okay? So we can't have it both ways. So that's just needs to be said. These are these are no longer unforeseen items. We have them on a

145spreadsheet. So, um that being said, my understanding that uh we can get um just under $40 million to cover those things. So, we will be recommending that the board take action on that uh tonight. Um now, there were other conversations in that room and I I want to make sure that I uh honor the spirit of the room. I think um yeah I I want to share as much about what went on in that room as I can. Our community has sometimes made groups um which kind of kind of have like a polite discourse but really the people that would really disagree are not in the room. That was not the case here. Um it just wasn't. Um there were meaningful conversations. Um, if you were in that room, I suggest you let people in

146the community know what those conversations were like and what came out of them. Um, there's a roster published of anyone who attended one meeting on the website. So, this is a very transparent uh situation. One issue that we wrestled with in particular near the end um is how to deal with the junior high. Okay. Um, and some of the larger issues and projects like what goes on at the high, you know, at the high school. The high school's 30 years old. It's by no means in the same situation as the junior high, but that conversation was had. So, I'm going to wear two hats here and you can ask me which one I'm wearing. Um, I will tell you what was said in the room and I'll also give you my opinion as an architect.

147Um, so everyone in that room believes that there is action needed on the junior high. Okay, we agree on that. Um, it's no longer actually really an argument. It's different than it was a couple years ago. Um, specifically the main building. So, what we know as the junior high, that main building, um, if you haven't, if people in the community haven't seen it, they probably, uh, you may still be hoping that it's okay. Uh, they need to go over there and check it out. Um, it's in a critical state. So, everyone acknowledges that. Um, I presented some findings to the committee about which buildings on that campus, in my opinion, could be salvaged um, and renovated, and those would be major renovations. So, there are some buildings on that campus which uh we talked about

148I I think could be salvaged. Not to say that they would be worked into a junior high. We have not gotten to that level of solution, but we think uh that they should be renovated and not torn down. Um we did also did some work dissecting uh information about some of the um reports that subconsultants have presented in the past couple years uh and just to kind of get to the meat and potatoes of what those reports really meant. So we talked about that. Um but we had all those conversations but at the end of the day uh in the first meeting Mr. Gillantine asked us to figure out what we agree on not what we like to talk about till an hour after the meeting was supposed to be over. Um so what we

149agree on is uh regarding these larger projects is that we have more work to do. Um, we know that you will support us in doing that, but we need to hear it from you. Um, we need to come back very, very quickly to give you better information on what to do at the junior high and we need you to support the community in that effort. Um, and kind of trust us and we'll keep the district, you know, do the same thing we've been doing on the committee, just continue that effort. Um there were people in that room that believed very passionately that uh we should ask for those funds now and go out for that bond right now. And um they are not wrong. Okay, that building is in critical condition. Um we could 100%

150make projections and try that. Um but that's not what the room said we thought would work in the community right now. So we need to come back very quickly. Um, but what we know right now, do you want to jump in? Oh, okay. Um, what we know right now is we need to continue these conversations accompanied by facts. Um, and that needs to happen very publicly so everyone in the community can be involved, hear what's going on. Um, but we are coming back. Um, just want everybody to know that. So, if you if you need us as a board to say publicly that we would like for the strategic planning community to continue to look into the need for a middle school or a high school and come back to us with a second recommendation

151at another time, then I think we as a board can say absolutely, please. I value y'all's time. I know it's a lot, but it is definitely something that we've heard. We want to continue to dig in and see what y'all come up with long term to help out all the schools, but mainly the junior high, which people are affected by. If anybody disagrees with me, please speak up. But I think definitely we would need the strategic planning committee to keep going and come back with us or something at a later date. >> Thank you. We did need to hear that from y'all. I appreciate it. >> Yeah. No, no, it's it's it was going to be brought up anyway. you just kind of let us down that white road, so it was perfect. >> Yeah.

152Okay. So, I'm not going to go into the conversation surrounding the Vader um anymore. We talked about that at length as a group. Uh Destiny did an amazing job talking about um and thanking the people that that work hard every single day. Um the the strategic committee wants to go for the Vader because we realize every single position in the district is important. And while the state allocated some money, it didn't go to every single position. And some of those positions are in desperate need um of a raise. They that's it's just what it is, okay? It's too low. We want to be competitive. We want our kids to win. We want to be right there, you know, the place that everyone wants to come and teach because that's where they want to grow their

153career and they have to make more money for that to happen. So, that being said, the strategic committee is recommending tonight that the board of trustees uh put the decision for a Vader to increase staff pay um and the decision to tackle these recurring capital improvements out to the voters. We are not asking you to decide. We are asking you to let the community decide. Um and then we're asking you for your permission to keep working. Um to the community, whoever may be listening, if you're listening on YouTube, let's remember who we are. Um, I've heard so many people say that all small towns are the same. Every, you know, every small town is the same. What I would say to that is there's only one birthplace of Texas. There's only one place that founded,

154you know, the first public school districts, black and white, here, right here in Brenham, Texas. >> Thank you. Um, >> that's right. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Springer. Um, not very many, not any other communities can say that except us. So, we are a little different. Um, and so if we start to doubt that we can make it through these conversations together, um, just remember that we are made for this. We are made for hard work. We are smart, innovative, and we are the most hardworking community there is. So, um, thank y'all for letting us work on this and we will be back soon. >> Okay, we will take action on this, lay out another item. Um, but to again to everybody on the strategic planning committee, thank you for your time. Um I know

155probably every board member up here want to be a part of it but because of Texas meetings act three is the limit otherwise we're in a quorum. So um but we would have been right there with y'all late night. So thank y'all so much for this. Um does anybody have any questions or do y'all want to move forward where we can actually start taking action on some of these items? >> Uh no no questions. I just want a couple good quick comments. Um I was a part of the strategic planning committee. Thank you Katie and Destiny for um reporting tonight. Um I I will say I think as a committee we're we're doing our best to learn from the past and then investing in our future. Um so that's the key takeaway here is that

156uh I think everyone our as the committee our focus is on the students um and on the staff of Brennham ISD and and I think everyone just needs to continue promoting that forward is that our focus is on the students first and the staff of Brennham ISD. So, um I I we can't preach that enough. Uh and then just trying to continue um continue our mission of the planning committee because the work's not done obviously. Uh yes, we had a milestone here that to report at this meeting and for the board to take some action, but the work for that committee is not done and I look forward to the future meetings. >> Um being on the committee, I want to echo exactly what you just said. I I don't need to copy and paste,

157but I do want to say um now that we've got these two recommendations uh from the board, and I I appreciate you saying it, Jared, but I think starting right now is when we need to come up with a plan, whether it's going to be for a junior high, for a high school, or whatever building is going to be next, because it's absolutely a need. And anybody that disagrees, feel free to ask and reach out to anybody in the committee and anybody that wants to look over this list. um we spent a lot of time working on it, but uh it's absolutely a need. So, I hope that the committee moves forward with what we can do for step two, so to speak, uh for hopefully in May and not wait till November. And for

158one, I thank you so much both of you. Uh thought your information was fantastic and I think you hear the proverb, you know, proverbial saying of kicking it down the road. Well, you're basically what I hear you saying is there's no more road. Um, and the fact of the matter is we're going to have to take bold uh substantive uh stances and moves moving forward as a community in order to do this. Um, which means it's going to be a bit uncomfortable. All bold things are right. And I think, uh, as a community, we are we are geared for that. And, you know, as far as I think you said at the end, Miss Burch, regards to, you know, does the community have an appetite for, you know, a new school and, you know, or

159to be able to funding that? And I'd be interested to know more about that as far as what what pushes that appetite aside especially when you're at the end of that road and uh you know what does it take for us to get there at that point uh so that everyone can understand and maybe it is because of the past bond issues and otherwise but um I think that we have a great opportunity to do something very powerful here uh and in Washington County and if we do it uh I think it's going to resonate with our kids as you said so well Destiny uh with our teachers and everyone else but if we don't it's going to resonate today, too. >> Well, I don't want to rush anybody at all, but there's a lot

160of stuff on here that we definitely want to get voted on because there's some exciting stuff coming. So, if y'all are good, we can press on and start working our way through this thing. Uh, I'm I'm just excited. There's some good stuff coming up here down here. Okay. Uh, Chief Financial Officer Daryl St. Claire is going to present us information regarding the 2024 2025 defeasence of certain outstanding obligations of the district. And I got it right. >> All right. As you heard earlier from our financial adviser, uh we have been for several years paying down our principal bonded indebtedness early. 200. Okay. uh we've been trying to pay some of that principle down early to save interest on the the long term and to do that to continue to continue doing that in the future.

161We do need to have a resol resolution approved by the board. Uh we've been doing this again for several years now and this is the time uh that we usually have the resolution approved for setting the stage for the next year. And so this is to continue doing what we have been which is whenever we have the additional funds and we can afford to do so we try to pay down principal debt sooner than expected and save the taxpayers interest payments in the future. >> Okay. I would like to make a motion to adopt a resolution approving the defeasence of certain outstanding obligations of the Brennham Independent School District as presented. >> I second it. >> Okay. Archer Marcher has made made a motion seconded by Bonnie Bryer that the board of trustees adopt a

162resolution approving the defeasence of certain outstanding obligations of the Brendom Independent School District. All in favor? >> All opposed? The motion carries. Okay. Next, uh, Chief Financial Officer Daryl Stlair, Chief of Staff Christy Johnson, Chief Communication Engagement Officer Brook Trey, and Chief Academic Officer Sarah Bohart will provide us information regarding the approval of budgets for general operating interest in seeking and food service. Okay, as we saw earlier tonight at our budget hearing, uh there are those are the three funds that the board is required to adopt each year for the budget uh for the for the upcoming fiscal year which starts September 1. Uh you did see earlier that the grand total of all three of those funds we're proposing is $65,698,457. Uh these three funds support our students. They support food service and they

163support the basic day-to-day operations as long as well as continuing to help us raise uh revenue to pay down our bonded indebtedness. uh the three main factors that affect this budget as I believe I alluded to earlier uh the adopted tax rate which we'll be getting to shortly the assessed property values which we did talk about earlier that our property values are still uh increasing and holding very strong and of course our student enrollment because we're uh our funding from the state is always based on ADA which is a factor of or result of our student enrollment uh the information you have there in your board packet where the there's an actual breakdown per function and per fund. Uh again, I'll just kind of briefly give the the individual fund totals there. the general fund

164budget of 58,272,914, the food service fund budget of $3,724,543 and the debt service fund budget of 3,71,000 for the grand total of 65,698457. >> Anybody else? >> Anybody have any questions? I'll go ahead and make a motion to adopt the budget for general fund, debt service fund, and child nutrition fund for the 2526 fiscal year as presented. >> Second. >> Okay. Justin Collie made a motion seconded by Kelvin Raven to adopt the budget for the general fund, debt service fund, and child nutrition fund for the 2025 2026 fiscal year as presented. All in favor? >> All oppose. >> All right. Thank you for all your hard work. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Next, uh, chief financial officer Daryl Stlair was going to present some information regarding a resolution setting the tax rate for M. Darl,

165I just think we just need to get you your own chair just right up here. You're up here so much. >> Well, we do try to group all my stuff together so I can get it all done in one one uh string here. But uh before we get into the actual uh details of the maintenance and operations tax rate, uh I will point out that in the past, well at least last year, that's my only frame of reference was last year. Uh we did have the M tax rate and the INS tax rate together in one motion. But as you'll see here in a minute, we do have a reason to need to separate those out. So there'll be two distinct uh motions tonight and two distinct votes. um as the state requires, we adopt

166the budget first. That was just done. And so now we adopt the tax rate to support the budget that was just approved. So there is a reason for it to be in that order, which sometimes seems backwards, but that's the way the uh uh the flow is supposed to go on this. So, one thing I would also like to point out before we get to the actual tax rate, uh, mentioned this earlier that our maximum compressed rate that's approved by TEA for for the 2526 fiscal year is 60.84 cents per $100 evaluation. We are allowed or the board is allowed to increase that by up to five cents just with board approval. And I mentioned earlier, we've been doing that for years. Most districts, I believe, do that every year. uh that that is the

167those are the first five of the eight golden pennies that can be added back. And they're called golden pennies, by the way, because they not only increase our local tax collection, obviously, but we also get state aid to go along with it. So, it's not just local tax collection, it brings in more state revenue as well. And so, all eight of those pennies do that. The first five are the only ones that you can adopt as a board without asking for voter approval. So, in the past, we've just done the five pennies that can be adopted by the board. However, this year, as you've heard from our strategic planning committee um members, that they have recommended that we do more than that, that we increase the tax rate, the additional three cents, the the last

168three golden pennies. That will also bring in local tax collections and additional state aid. And so that is what we are asking for this year is or recommending this year is that instead of just doing the 6584 that we go to the that would include the additional three golden pennies which would require voter approval. So basically the way this works is the budget you just adopted includes the revenue and the expenses anticipated by the vader the voter approval tax voter approved tax rate election. Uh if heaven forbid but if the measure failed in November then we would simply amend our budget back to not to take out that extra revenue and those extra expenses. But as I mentioned earlier, since we adopt a tax rate that supports the budget, the budget needs to include that

169because now we're asking for a higher tax rate. So, are there any questions about the tax rate being proposed? >> My only question real quick is the is the 8.51% increase. Is that the correct number? I'm not getting is that based off of the point >> the previous year? Yes. Previous year tax rate >> and that takes out all the golden pennies and >> because from 6669 to 6884 is not 8 and a half%. >> And that may just may be a >> well I don't have my calculations sitting right here in front of me that I did earlier. >> I I just like for publicly reasons I don't want to read eight and a half% tax increase. Uh and I don't I don't believe that's the correct percentage. So, I I would just read

170the the tax rate, not the percentage amount. >> Uh, we have to have that in there. That's part that's part of the the the change in the motion. >> Okay. >> Right there on on the motion, it says 8.51% tax increase. Yeah. while he's calculating, I want to make sure I understand what he was um saying. So on the M side and we're only doing the M side on this first motion and the rate is going to be at excuse me the previous compressed rate or the new compressed rate is going to be at 60 plus the additional five makes it 65 and then we're going to be asking to add the extra three so we're at 68. I want to make sure we're all that is correct on the math. Correct. That's correct. Yes.

171>> The state puts us at 60. We're we've already added five and now we're asking to add three more. Okay, I've got the answer. >> That's for him. I was just making sure on the actual 68 cents is where we're going to end up, right? >> If you'll notice on the motion uh and the language in the motion, and I don't have the actual motion language right in front of me, but it's basically the same thing that's going to be on the tax rate resolution that will need to be signed later. Uh it what the tax rate resolution says the tax rate will effectively be raised by 8.512% and will raise taxes for the maintenance and operations on a $100,000 home by approximately $0 because we have a $100,000 homestead exemption. So what this does

172if you if you noticed you may not have seen it but if if you look at the proposed rate and the information that was published in the newspaper and I don't remember the exact number off top of my head but I did check it this morning. Uh I believe it was something. It was less than the 65 cents which you could do right now without voter approval. That is a calculation of the effective tax rate because basically as our property values go up to maintain the same level of revenue, we would actually have to adopt a rate that's less than the 65 that you could approve right now. So what this motion and what this tax resolution language is identifying is that not only are you increasing the rate, but you're increasing it more than

173you need to maintain last year's revenue levels. So it's really not the six we're not really comparing 6884 to 6669. We're comparing 68 6884 to 63 something that was in that newspaper notice. >> Okay, that that's the difference. >> That helps a lot. Um obviously the state makes this so easy for all of us. Yes, it is not it is not simple, but yes, that's what this comparison is. >> Um, I'll go ahead and make a motion to uh to set the property tax rate >> increased by the adoption of a tax rate at 6884, which is effectively an 8.51% increase in the tax rate. >> I'll second. >> Was that Sean? >> Okay, Justin. Justin Collies made a motion seconded by Sean Coun that the property tax rate be increased by the adoption of

174a tax rate of 6884 which is effectively an 8.51% increase in the tax rate. All in favor? >> All oppose. Okay, the motion carries. >> Okay. Uh in this next one, our district financial adviser Steve Perry, superintendent guillotine, chief financial officer Gerald St. Clair will present information regarding calling for a vader. Okay, just uh again quick overview of of what this is. VAT TRE is a voter approved tax rate election and as I explained a few minutes ago that is required anytime the board adopts an M tax rate that is higher than the maximum compressed rate approved by TEA plus five golden pennies. So the rate that you just adopted since it was higher than 6584 and we did 6884 that's three cents higher that's those additional those final three golden pennies. So now that

175requires the approval of the voters in the November election for that to actually take place and be set as our permanent rate going forward. Um again, I will just reiterate what I said a few seconds ago. These are called golden pennies because not only do they net local tax collections, they also net state revenue as well. Just in case anyone's interested, there are nine more pennies beyond the eight golden that are called copper pennies. And the reason why they're called copper is because they net us more local tax collection, but no additional state aid. And in fact, once we get into the copper pennies, we're very likely going to be having recapture, subject to recapture, and some funds would be sent back to the state. But that's only if we go to the copper pennies,

176which is not what we're talking about tonight. We're just talking about the golden pennies. And the golden pennies are uh not subject to recapture. So we have a guarantee from the state that we will not be subject to recapture for increasing the the tax rate up to the eighth golden penny. Okay. Some of the things that can be used with this additional Vader revenue. Uh we can use this revenue for pretty much anything that's in our M budget. includes salaries, that includes uh supplies, that includes safety and security upgrades, basically utilities, anything that we have a need for that we have an identified need for that the board approves to be using uh those funds to help out with the the our original, I guess I call it our baseline uh local and state revenue

177that we have. The approximate value of these three additional golden pennies uh is about $2.5 million. That would be $2.5 million more in revenue uh that we could add to our well not add to the budget you just approved because I've already added it. But that would be additional to what we would have had you not approved that budget and had we stayed at the 6.6584 rate. So that is what the money can be used for. Uh that's the approximate amount. We won't know the exact amount of course like most things until we get at least probably halfway through the year if not three twothirds of the way through the year but that's the best approximation that we have right now. >> How much is a golden penny one golden penny worth? >> I believe

178it was $817,000. So three times that would make the $2.5 million. >> I know that. I want to get that number out there. >> Thank you. And that's 817,000 again both local and and state revenue together put together on that. >> Any questions? >> I make a motion that the board of trustees adopt an order to call for a voter approved tax rate election. >> I second it. >> Kelvin Regen has made a motion seconded by Bonnie Brickmemire that the board of trustees adopt an order calling for a voter approved tax rate election. All in favor? >> All opposed. The motion carries. The voters get to decide. [Applause] Okay. Uh gentlemen, since you're there, uh there could give us uh information result uh resulting setting the tax rate for debt services. >> Okay. Uh again,

179as you heard Mr. Perry discussed earlier during his presentation that our current INS rate has been for a while and and uh 8 cents per $100 evaluation and that even with an increased debt of $39 million, we could still hold that same 8 cent tax rate. Uh therefore, we are recommending to the board that we continue to have that same 8 cent tax rate for this upcoming fiscal year. uh funds obviously to be used to pay down our minimum debt payments that we already have scheduled. Uh possible additional debt that could be issued after a bond election might be called and also to pay down principle on existing debt if we have the funds to do so and then in the defeasence resolution that you approved earlier. I will make a motion to adopt a

180resolution approving the property tax rate at 0.08 cents for debt service as presented. >> Second. >> Justin Collies made a motion seconded by Archer Archer to adopt a resolution approving a property tax rate of 0.0800 for D services as presented. All in favor? >> All opposed. Motion carries. Since you're there, uh this uh they'll be giving us information on calling for bond election. >> Okay. So again, I'm going to refer back to our earlier presentation uh from Mr. Perry and from our strategic planning committee representatives. Uh we can, as I just mentioned, we can increase our debt by roughly $30 million $39 million without raising the tax rate. And if we if the board so chooses to call a bond election, that would be the mechanism that we would use to do so. Keeping in

181mind that we are looking at capital maintenance projects that were discussed earlier, the mainly the red items that were on the list. Uh this funding, this additional funding can be used for roof repairs or replacements, HBAC system upgrades or replacements, electrical and plumbing replacements and upgrades, safety and security to existing buildings, and major renovations to existing buildings. All of the things that I believe have been well identified on our on our to-do list from the strategic strategic planning committee uh review. The other thing to keep in mind that as we've also mentioned that I believe Mr. Gillantine and several others have said more than once uh a healthy amount of debt is a good indication that we are taking care of things before they become emergencies before we have to stop the world to fix

182them and draw funds away from our maintenance and operations to do so. So this preserves the taxpayers's investment in extending the life of current current facilities. It helps to avoid costly emergency repairs. It helps to take advantage of favorable interest rates as we just talked about a little while ago that those are expected to to decrease soon. Uh it helps to keep major repairs out of the maintenance and operation budget because that's really not a maintenance and operation function when it becomes a major renovation or a major replacement. And of course, as we also heard from our committee earlier, that it maintains a functional learning environment for students and staff and facilities that everyone can be proud of and look forward to be being a part of each day. Before I make a motion, I'd

183like to make a comment or make sure everybody understands if we have things that go bad. In other words, if we have an air conditioner that needs repair or replacement, um if we have a boiler or chiller that needs replacement, it has to get paid for. It's just a matter of where. And Clay's made this comment multiple times. Um, we're either going to take it out of our M side, which is where we pay salaries, or we take it out of our INS side, which is meant for paying for things like this. Our tax rate is extremely low. Um, and it's going to stay that way. We're going to keep it. We've been very fiscally responsible and we're actually just asking for some of that money back with this bond. And I think it's a

184no-brainer. And before I make the motion, does anybody else have anything they want to add? >> I do. Okay. >> I I want to make sure that it that we say it. So this bond is is going to be zero impact to the taxpayers. This is money that we've already paid. We're just getting it back. So it's going to read on the ballot. This is a tax increase. No, it's not. This has no impact to anybody's taxes. Nothing will go up. So that's what the message needs to get out for this one is this is going to go directly to the district to help us get some breathing room to where we can start looking at other things within the district that need to be repaired. So again, no impact to the taxpayer. We just

185have to put that on the ballot cuz it's the law. But I'm going to say it again, no impact to the taxpayer. Okay? This is this should be a no-brainer for this community is to help us with some infrastructure. And that's a lot of what this is going to do. HVAC and everything else. So >> So like uh Destiny and and Katie said, we have to be transparent. And you start you started the roll on that. We have to be honest and transparent so we can get this bond going. >> I agree with you. Yeah, the no t it says it's a tax increase, but it should also say of 0ero cents. So, that will help. Um, anybody else or am I good? All right. Well, I'd like to make a motion to adopt an

186order calling a bond election to to be held by the Brennham Independent School District. >> Second. >> Kyle Her's made a motion seconded by Archer Archer to adopt an order calling bond election to be held by the Brennham Independent School District. All in favor? >> All opposed? Better be crickets. All right, the motion passes, guys. [Applause] That one felt good. All right. Uh gentlemen, some nice of you to be up here. Uh present information regarding a reimbursement resolution. >> Sure. I I'll take this one. So, uh we put this resolution into place. This is very common whenever a bond election is going to occur. you've got capital items that you may have already spent money on. Uh you're going to have deductibles associated with roofs. You you will have other things that will occur between

187now and the time that we can issue bonds that result from this election. So to the extent you have to go out and spend operating dollars to pay for those things. Whenever we sell bonds, we'll have a a separate line item. So when we raise that money, we'll be able to put that money back into the general fund. So uh this is an IRS regulation. and your bond attorneys and their tax attorneys will review these things, but this is the first step that allows us to do that. >> So, one of the first questions we asked was all the construction happening right now within the district, we have a million-doll deductible that we're going to have to pull directly out of our fund balance. This resolution would make would be we would be able to

188put that money back. So, that gives us another couple days worth of funding. So again, this is just I try to make sure that they understand the importance of this. But yeah, that this this is huge because that gives us a little bit more cushion and we're all concerned about our fund balance. So we need to make sure that that y'all know the impact of these two these two items right here alone are going to give us an extra million in our fund balance. >> That's correct. >> Uh one more quick question. Is this a resolution that we'll adopt once or is like if we have additional so I mean say say something breaks in in a few weeks and and it's something that's itemized on our red list that would we have plans to

189repair is this would that will we have the opportunity to kind of repay ourselves back or we have to adopt a resolution every single time. >> This covers everything. So once you adopt it one time you can actually look back 60 days if you had things from two months ago you could reimburse for those and then it's good looking forward for 18 months. Okay. So we we'll issue between now and then, but you do not have to adopt this again. >> 60 days invoice date or um >> uh 60 days from the time uh that that you made the payment that uh you paid for the >> payment date. Okay. >> Correct. Correct. Right. >> Uh I will go ahead and to I will go ahead and make a motion to uh for the board

190of trustees to adopt to adopt a reimbursement resolution. >> Second. >> Oh, sorry. Getting paid money back. That's an easy one. >> Okay. Justin Collie made a motion seconded by Kyle Hafner that the board of trustees adopt >> adopted a reimbursement resolution. All in favor? >> All opposed. The motion passes. >> Okay. Next, Christy Johnson is going to conduct the annual review of the district's compensation handbook. >> I'll stand up here with you. >> Yeah, perfect. Good evening. I've um in your board docs in your board book, you have a proposed 2526 compensation plan. I want to go over a couple of highlights of the plan just to um brief you on what is included. So, the plan includes updates to the incorporate the teacher retention aotment provided by the state that Mr. Sinclair went

191over in the budget hearing. Um, this includes a $4,000 increase for year three and four teachers and an $8,000 increase for teachers five and above. Our 01 and two teachers did not have that increase through the teacher retention aotment, but the um teacher compensation plan indicates a $2,000 increase for those 01 and two teachers, which Mr. Sinclair reviewed in the budget hearing. Additionally, um a percentage raise was discussed by Mr. Sinclair of 3% for all non-teer pay scales. And so that is reflected in adjustments are made to the pay scales that are based on compensation practices recommended by professional organizations. Those minimums, those midpoints, and those maximums are adjusted proportionately so that um new new staff are hired, but they don't surpass our existing staff with the same experience. Um, additionally, um, we had discussions

192that talked about some of our lower paid hourly positions throughout our board workshops, and those were our CT1s, um, and our IS-1s. And so, um, when we, um, reviewed the practices and reviewed, um, compensation plans and, um, did some salary studies, we made adjustments and moved those positions to CT2s and IS-2s to, um, kind of get rid of that lowest pay scale that had some significant discrepancies between other surrounding D districts and Brennham ISD. Okay. Right. So um you know additionally we also um reviewed individual positions. We focused and reviewed and adjusted salaries and pay scales based on comparisons with peer districts. And that's part of the language always included in the compensation handbook. We do review and make those adjustments um annually to ensure that we are following the practices of the industry. Any

193questions regarding the compensation handling? >> Are y'all waiting for a motion? >> I'm I'm I'm trying to get to it. >> Oh, okay. >> I'll be happy to do this one if you don't mind. >> Not at all. >> Wait, hold on. Don't We're not make Before we make a motion, does anybody have any questions? >> Yes. Okay. >> I thought you were going to ask a question first. That's why I was waiting. >> I I do I do get a question. >> Uh moving the the uh to CT2. Um what does that look like as far as on the increased side of moving like the pair of professionals and otherwise? What does that look like on that adjust adjusted pay scale? >> Right. Um so each pair professional falls somewhere different in that pay

194scale. So I can't say that all pair professionals will feel that impact this this way. But so if I'm looking at an IS-2, it does increase their daily rate um if the raise was on midpoint, which it is um by $355 a day. And so at the lowest um minimum, it's now $1267 for current IS-2 employees. So it um you know does increase you know quite a bit from where we were. Um I think if recall we were looking like 1133 yes in the past and then looking at our CT scale um which is a little different which is clerical technical um it was 379 a day on that midpoint which um puts us at 1345 for existing employees and that pay grade at the minimum. So that not everybody falls at the minimum which

195many of y'all pointed out but at the minimum it so it does um >> it'll be a felt impact. Yeah. So, it definitely helps to close the gaps. We're not quite there, but um getting closer. >> Yes. >> I want to make sure I understand this is the changes with or without the Vader that we just passed. >> So, this is or asked for. >> So, this is the changes without >> without. Okay. Okay, cuz I see in the the gr whatever color this is, gray above it, a pay increase of whatever percent will be contingent upon successful passage of the Vader. Those numbers are not voted on and agreed on by us. So, I don't know where those numbers came from. There's a bunch of 3%s and 5%s because we haven't talked about those,

196but I don't know where those came from. So, that's why my first question is why are those there? And who decided that? I guess I don't really even care who decided it. But why are they there is the first question because we're voting on just the 1.04 whatever that or 1.6 that he was talking about. Correct. Is that correct? Because this is a nonvader vote or proposal. Correct. I I think I can maybe answer that question. And like I said, and I haven't been part of y'all's discussions or anything else, but the idea behind your compensation plan when you're looking at as proposed by your administration, in order to possibly have a raise that's built on a contingency, has to be part of the compensation plan itself as proposed by the administration. For instance, if

197the administration did not propose it in the way that they did under your DEA policy, then even if the Vader passes, they would not be able to actually administratively go back and actually change salaries after the November Vader. This actually has that contingency built into it as well, which is my understanding is how it's being proposed. Correct. >> Correct. >> So that's why it's actually proposed in that way, Mr. Hafner because you have to propose it that way under the law because you can't give a mid-year raise for a employee without actually going through a lot of permutations which I would not necessarily recommend you do because a lot of times they're not credible. They are actually considered bonuses. There's all kind of other prohibitions. So that's why it's actually proposed in the way that

198it is because if your vader passes then you have the ability as far as a district to look at those possibilities otherwise you would not. Correct. >> Again I'm confused again. Uh so I'm just going to ask ordinary question. >> Anytime I talk Mr. Raven you say you're confused. I'm not really sure what that says. So, are the employees, non-teer employees, getting a 3% raise? >> Okay. >> That's all I need to know. Okay. >> And and that and but it could potentially go up to 8%. Is that what we're saying with the 5% Vader? >> Potentially. >> There's a potential for increases that are built into the contingency if a Vader passes. >> Okay. I'm just seeing with the 5% with the 3% that's already granted. So, we could cap. Okay. Yeah. >> All

199right. Not saying there's, you know, locked in, but that's there. So, 3%. Okay. So, I got it. >> But that this is assuming 3% and 5% for different groups. And I don't think we've had that conversation because this is not what we had discussed at the last meeting. These numbers are different than what we discussed. Uh, specifically teachers. I don't see that um the same way that we discussed it. And I definitely don't see the retention bonus or whatever it was that I I proposed. I know we were going to have a discussion on that and I thought that's what this was for. So that's not on here either. And I I personally am not a big fan of it being um three and five as a generic across the board number. Uh I think

200they need to be broken out a little bit differently. I think some of these percentages need to be different. So I I assume now is when we're having that discussion, but this is not what we discussed last week. So, is the 5% that's on there up to 5% or does that lock us in at that 5% based off of what this says, does that give us the ability to adjust if a Vader goes in in the R in that range or does this tell us this is all we can do or that it has to be that is it proposed specifically that way? >> Yeah, if it's proposed specifically that way in the compensation plan the way that the administration proposed it to the board, if the board votes on it that way, then that

201essentially locks you into those figures. Yeah. The first thing that's not good on here is the teacher pay. We can just start there. Page five. That's the first thing because I unless unless nobody listened uh or everybody disagreed and didn't tell me about it, uh we were very clear about teacher salaries starting uh $2,000 was the separate conversation. We were doing $2,000 for zero, one, and two, right? But then on year three, we're not giving them any bonus at all. And that was very very clearly laid out and discussed at our meeting last week. And here it says we're only going to do the pass through from the state of 4 and 8,000 which all the other districts are doing. But we're not meeting we're not we're not going to compete with any other district.

202>> Well, I I remember the conversation but this is what I remember from the conversation is that the reason we were giving 2000 is because the state wasn't giving money. So, we were giving them something ourselves and then a 3% on top of that to everybody. This doesn't say 3% though is what I'm saying. It doesn't say it. >> I'm looking on page what >> Yeah, page five is what I'm looking at. >> Does anybody else see because There's >> let let me just >> understand. >> So I do want to um point out that there is um on the teacher scale there is um a proposal some of additional funding um in the box above the teacher scale. Yeah, I see that it says $1,000. And I I thought we had talked about doing

203$2,000 so we could get closer to where even other cities like Belleville were. Or let me go back to my notes. Hold on. Excuse me. >> Yeah, I said $2,000 per teacher across the board all the way across. Not just for zero, one, and two. It should be for three all the way through 30. And that was my proposal. And I don't think anybody disagreed with me. Maybe it just got uh deleted or missed. Um, and I even wrote down that I calculated it was going to be around $790,000. But teachers on year three are only getting the state money. They're not getting an increase other than their step increase. And that was my first proposal was that we should go up on every single teacher. I think every single teacher needs a $2,000 raise

204across the board. We should change our steps bare minimum $2,000. And this is doing zero for teachers three plus >> that. So >> am I wrong? >> No. Well, there's a summary sheet. It's it's in um item eight on the board book. >> So pull up I I think the summary is going to help you. >> There's also an additional thousand >> number eight on the board book. >> There's also an additional thousand that they will get on top of what they're already getting from the state. >> So that would be close to 13%. >> Yes. >> Okay. So, that one says $1,000, right? >> Yes. >> Right. >> Yeah. Top of on top of whatever $1,000. Yes. >> Right. And correct me if I'm wrong. thousand moves us very small, very slightly closer, but

205nowhere close to where we are in relation to Somerville, Navasota, Belleville, Brian, College Station, Cely, Himstead. >> It would because that would put the starting salary at 53, which we said was right on par with the rest of the districts in the area. It wouldn't. Obviously, we can't compete with Waller, but we were right in the range. >> Yeah. I don't want to compete with Waller. I'm Maybe I'm missing it cuz I only see the two. So, we're doing the two plus the one, so it's three. >> Yeah. Then there's another There's another one on top of that. So, that brings us to 53. >> One is for every teacher all the way through 30. >> Yes. Every one of >> Yeah. Let me >> Why do we have to go back to item number

206eight when we're on item number? >> Let me look look at this with me real quick. Let's look at a middle number and just stick a sock in my mouth, Eric, if I say something I'm not supposed to say. you've got uh years of experience that we've moved from 25 years to 30. Okay, which is a that's a big deal. Let's take the middle teacher. Uh let's say they taught 14 years. So, we're giving them a step up to 15 years. Okay, with the Vader move, you can see the language up top, right? Plus the extra 8,000. So you're you're looking at about a 13% raise from what they received the previous year. It's pretty significant. Um it's much bigger than the other um employees across the district. >> I think one of the key

207points here um and going back to that summary page um obviously we have additional revenue I'm again stop me if I say something incorrect. We have additional revenue coming in. Uh, one of the key takeaways from a lot of the teacher feedback that I've heard is class sizes. So, we've all want we all want to impact class sizes. How we do that? We hire more staff. So, if we can attract some more staff into Brenhamd, um, use this additional revenue that's that's coming in from from the Vader and be able to attract more staff and bring more staff in. Um, and if you go back to that summary page, I appreciate the conservative estimates. I mean, because yes, uh, we need we do need to hold some of the money back for our general fund.

208We do need to replenish our general fund and be strategic about our next step, but we also need to hire more teachers and have more classroom impact. Not only is it going to help class size, it's going to help um it's going to help your kids read. It's it's, you know, less the the student teacher ratio, which obviously is is is too high now. We need to lower that student teacher ratio. So I think reviewing um the summary page and kind of seeing the amount there that that is all that is proposed uh for salary increases is fantastic and then having an emphasis on class size uh a focus on class size reduction um just to to provide more benefit to the students in the long run. >> And I think I think we have

209to state though this is not this is not our a proposed endgame. I mean, this is a step in the right direction, right? And so, how are we moving that and doing substantial uh substantially, but also, you know, balancing what people need to do in order to put food on the table with also being able to do their job. So, you got you got a lot of these things, these components there. Well, yeah, you know, we wish you could give everything, but also they want to be able to do their job effectively as well. So, I think there's that balance, but I I would just say I don't believe any of us say that this is the endgame. I think this is the starting point of what we want to do for our teachers going

210forward. And I think we're doing a big favor for those teachers who have been with us for a long time because now there are steps beyond 25. And I hope that uh everybody hears that as well. Those teachers who've been with us a long time and will continue to stay with us. That's going to give them, I think, a lot of of uh I I think it'll give them a lot of joy to know they can they can stick around a little longer and still get, you know, a big bigger paycheck. >> Yeah. I want to be sure I'm sorry. I want to be sure everyone gets that takeaway number. Again, going to year 30 with the pass through through the state plus the language at the top. Um, you're talking about an experienced year

21130 teacher who is leaving because they've decided the commute is worth it now making close to 76ish,000 a year. I mean, that's that's um, yeah, that's a big jump from where we were last year. Um followup question. The back to item number eight that Justin was telling me with the um proposed increases the bottom line number and this may be a question for Darl. It's 1.1 million approximately I believe is what that uh number was. So, does that include this extra $1,000 for the teachers as well? Because that doesn't the math doesn't add up. So, we're talking about all the raises total is 1.1. >> Yeah, that's what I needed. Thank you. One thing to keep in mind on that uh summary that I think y'all are looking at now just like when I showed

212it to you earlier uh the raise breakdown between general fund and then food service fund and then the appraisal district budget I've done the same thing here I've separated this out so that would be the grand total of everything but there are those other budgets those other funds that cover some of that. That was your question was Kyle. Did I Okay. >> Sorry. I didn't hear you. Sorry. >> So, I I I did a breakdown just like I did u earlier back I think during the budget hearing. I did a breakdown so that it's not just all employees now on one big lump sum. >> It's general fund employees. Then it's food service. Those very bottom two are the appraisal district and the two right above that are the food service. So the general fund

213stops I guess at the third row of that chart that you're looking at. So that would be the general fund part. But I still wanted to represent all employees on here. So yeah, when you look at all the employees, it adds up to that 1,140,000 I think this you referenced. >> Okay. I apologize for the misunderstanding then. Um I didn't see all of this earlier and I didn't put it together. This was from item 8 is actually on item 13 or whatever we're at. So, um I still didn't see the uh retention bonus. I'm guessing that's something y'all are not in favor of or wasn't added on here. What do y'all have any input on that? Because I really think it's a good idea. I really think it's necessary. I think it separates us Whoa,

214somebody else's mic's on. Um I think it separates us from other districts. I think it makes us special. It makes us unique. It makes us just different. Um, and personally, I've heard feedback after I proposed it from a lot of employees, mostly uh non-teers, but even teachers as well, that said they thought it was a great idea and they they liked it. I didn't hear anybody giving me any negatives, but I wish they would have if there were. But, I mean, I'm open to suggestions. If y'all think it's a bad idea, tell me. But I and I don't know if you were here when I proposed it, Raven, but what I proposed was $100 per staff. I don't care what your job title is, $100 per staff for every year you have served at Brennham.

215So, if you've been here for 10 years, that's $1,000. 15 years is $1,500 for every single staff. I don't care if you're um if you're custodian, I don't care if you're a teacher. I don't care if you're in the cafeteria. Every single employee, $100 per year of employment at BISD. And that's, you know, in perpetuity. And I don't want that to ever go away. I don't know. And Justin, I know you mentioned about the wording and all that stuff and I completely agree with you. I don't think it should be anything that the board can take away or we have the right to remove it with whatever. I should think it should be in the employee handbook and it should be locked in just like all of these raises should be. But that is a

216raise for somebody who's been here as a parah for example and they're making 25,000 $28,000 a year but they've been here for 20 years. That's a $2,000 bonus and that's a huge increase in their in their salary. So, that was my two cents and I don't know it's not on here. Um it's not in here anywhere that I'm unless I missed it, but I think that's something we definitely need to do to separate us from everybody else out there. And Kyle, correct me if I'm wrong, but I've done the math and I believe that your retention bonus after year two or three would be more than the 8% raise that we were discussing in the past. Correct. >> It was more than 1% on >> correct. That's what I mean. Yeah. Right. >> I I

217be honest. I think it's a good idea. I think it needs more work. Um I think we need more time to kind of to kind of finalize that, Kyle. Um the way so this year I the way that the the way that the funds are going to work out this year um assuming that again stop me if I say something incorrect. Assuming that the Vader passes your teacher all your staff's going to see likely some lump sum because they're going to get some back pay for a couple months. Um so I don't this year I don't see a benefit of of doing that at the same time. Um I also would rather see the opportunity to hire more teachers. Um, but I do think it's a great idea. I think it needs a little more

218work and we can kind of decide. One concern that was brought up to me was the fact that that if you do pay this out in a bonus, it doesn't contribute to their um to their retirement to their TRS. So, you know, if you're paying a 25-y year teacher out $2,500 um personally, I'd rather have $2,500 for the rest of my life or rather than a onetime $2,500 paycheck um just based on how it works for TRS. So, I mean, there are there are some limitations there. I was going to interject whenever you were done. I just >> I was going to say there are some limitations there of of my understanding of of how that if if it's paid out in a bonus or a siphoned. Um and then again again my long-term concern

219is that if it's paid out as a bonus or a stipend I I fear the a board in the future stepping in and taking it away because they they need some money or they need to create some funds. And and I don't think there's any verbiage or anything that you could do to lock that in where they couldn't take it away. I just I think a board in the future might take it away and not have the same priorities that we have today >> here. And before you kick in, uh, absolutely. I know any future board can take it away just like we could right now vote to make first year starting pay at $40,000. You know, any board can change. We do it every year. So, I can't imagine an intelligent board that is

220focused on the school on the school is going to take money away from teachers. Um, but I've seen I've seen worse, I guess. Never mind. Um, my point was it's it separates us and it attracts good teachers. And right now, the only teachers we attract are the ones that aren't going to go somewhere else. The ones that live here in Brenham. I would like teachers from other districts to want to come here and want to be here because if our pay is the same as the next city as the next city is the next city or the districts are all the same just like you said now we're we're the exact same as um as Belleville they pay a retention bonus so the Belleville teacher is staying there they're not coming here you see do

221you get my point different than college station alled >> they won't see that money reflected in the compensation ambul because it's a bonus so if They're looking at it, it's going to say starting salary 515 or starting salary there 53,000. We haven't given a percent. I when we were talking about it, I told you I was kind of on six and one half a half dozen than the other. We haven't given a percentage range or step raise in the last couple years. I mean, I think us being able to once it's all said and done to say we were over 10%, it's going to be massive morale boost for the for the teachers and it goes to the TRS. everything about it at this point. I like I kind of like what Justin said is

222like they're going to get some form of um back pay like we said. So they're going to get something this year if it if everything if the probabilities of what we're looking for happens. So they have that this year. I think it's definitely something as a board we should look into. It does set us apart, but I think right now a big a big percentage for them to me says more to them than anything else. >> Yeah. I'm not want to take a percentage away and this isn't something that's a one-year thing. They're going to get backay because this gets adopted and they don't get paid until evader approves and if it's approved then they get back pay on what their raise would be. I'm talking about hey this bonus being there every single year.

223>> I'm not talking about taking it away. Not a excuse me I'm not talking about a one-time thing. I'm talking about being there every single year and it it it grows with you every single year you work here. Not a onetime payment. >> I mean it is a onetime payment but it's every year. >> No, I understand what you're saying. I'm just saying right now in this moment to me I feel like it's a bigger bang if we give them this m this bigger percentage. I think that they're going to in my mind it's going to be it's just me saying it. I just I feel like it's better being on here not being able to do this for the last couple years and then once it's all said and done and the dust settles

224being over 10%. I I just I think right now now I don't say it's not a good idea because I definitely think it is something that we need to continue to look into as a board, >> but we have the ability to do something a big chunk for them on a monthly basis. I think with inflation they'll get more I just think they'll get more out of it with inflation right now. >> I'm not trying to replace any percentage. This is in addition too. >> Well, I don't think they have the money to do both. I think I think teachers who are getting ready to retire and those who will retire someday, they would rather have that money included in their in in their paycheck. And so, uh, if it's something that they just they

225get every year, but they don't see that after they've been working with the district for quite a few years, they start, you know, it makes a difference. And I know this because I'm retired. We want everything that we ever received as make it part of what's going to be our paycheck someday. So that's just the way I feel about that. >> You kind of But I would be interested. You said we do have it because obviously we know we don't have an endless pot of money. What would you not be doing then? because obviously we're we're we're looking to move money forward cuz it's either not hiring more teachers or h how would you how would you accommodate for that as far as to if you're looking to give the uh you know the $100

226per year? >> Well, if the math is correct, I just gave it back to Brooke, but if the math is correct, there's there's over a million dollars left >> because it's a million dollars. This Vader is 2.4. you have that million dollars to be used. >> 13 teachers at 75. >> No, I agree. I'm not saying we don't need teachers. I would love to hire three kindergarten teachers tomorrow. We need another kindergarten teacher per campus. I'm not saying no to teachers and maybe a first grade teacher as well. I don't know the exact numbers of what the first grade enrollment looks like, but I know we definitely need probably three kindergarten teachers. Um, but look, if it if I'm in the minority, I'll just shut up and move on. I just thought it was a

227great idea to separate us and I'm not taking a percentage away. I'm not Yes, it doesn't go to TRS. The 5% that the pairs are going to get, they're still going to get that. It's going to be in addition to that, they're going to get this bonus as a nice thank you for being a BISD. No, it's not going to go to TRS, but it's a heck of a Christmas bonus that you get on your Thanksgiving check uh whatever or your December 1 check. All it was was a extra bonus just like I believe Raven maybe you were on the board when y'all went around and handed out a thousand dollar check to everybody just like that but for everybody and based on how many years you've been here. That was my idea of just

228as a thank you. No, it doesn't go to your TRS. Sure. It makes no sense to say, well, if I can't have it in my TRS, I don't want it at all. Who's going to say I don't want an extra 500 bucks or 800 bucks, whatever that number is. If I can't have it on TRS, I just don't get it at all. Okay, that then don't don't don't accept the check. You happily put it back into our our fund balance. That's fine. But it was just an idea. And again, if I'm in the minority, that's fine. It was just a way to to separate us, to make us unique, make us special, and as a way to say thank you for being at Brennham and not leaving like everybody else has been wanting to do.

229And it's it's helping keep you here. You've been here for 15 years and you're thinking about it. Well, stay one more year and you get this extra bonus. It's just a we appreciate you. that that was my only thought process cuz we have the money to do it and if we're doing a compensation, we can put it in the compensation handbook and we can take care of everybody and get it locked in. But >> I'll shut up. >> It's a good thing. So, let me say this. If the money's there, Kyle, I think we have the opportunity to dig a little deeper into it and to make sure we're doing it the correct way because if it's there, it's not going anywhere. And it could also give us an opportunity to put another little chunk

230back in our fund balance at the end of the year. So, I think the idea is great. I think fundamentally it feels slightly rushed on our We just talked about it last time. We're just talking about it tonight. I don't think it's something we need to not do, but I think we need to just take a little bit more time and maybe think about it next year whenever we do this. see how much that million dollars gets us in teachers, lower some class sizes, things like that that could benefit the district because I think in the strategic planning committee, y'all also had discussions about class sizes and how to do that. So, I think we have a way to check a lot of boxes, but we still have a leniency to do something like that

231down the road. >> Hey, and I just I just want to point out again, you know, we were talking percentages earlier for that mid-year teacher on a 30-year scale. You know, again, if you're at that 14-year mark, and I'm just using that number because it's the mid number, um, and you're rolling to year 15, you've gone from about 56 and a half to potentially, uh, 66 next year. So, you're talking about a $10,000 raise for that that mid point teacher for this next school year, which is significant. Poor President Krennic, can I just actually just add something real quick? So, when you're looking at these overall, your your budget is being proposed. You've already accepted your budget. This compensation plan dovetales into that budget overall. The idea behind actually a retention bonus is actually a

232good thing. I've seen a lot of districts do it over the years. Usually, it's done with a resolution. Usually, it's one year. I think what Mr. after is talking about is something that be added to the compensation plan overall which would change your budgetary numbers and everything else. The DEA policy that I know you all know essentially this is how it's actually proposed. Administration has proposed this particular compensation plan which is a component of the budget. So if there was something else had to be changed you'd have to change both of those other figures as well based on what we actually change something within that. Right now, this is the one that's necessarily before the board to necessarily adopt or not. That goes into the 2526 school year. That doesn't mean that during the year,

233if your Vader were to pass, you could possibly come back and actually take a look at a retention, you could take a look at something else. You have that option or more teachers or whatever may be if it passes. You don't know if it's going to pass yet. You hope it's going to pass. It should pass. As we heard very much tonight, it needs to pass for this particular community, but you don't necessarily know if it's going to yet. This budget necessarily that's already been amended and adopted basically is based on this compensation plan. It's the biggest component in your budget. So, you have options later on, but this one is the one that's before you right now. >> Thank you for that. So, and let me let me just make sure I understand correctly.

234So, and I'm going to be very low level here, so just go with me. You're basically saying, if I understand correctly, because we have previously passed the budget a few minutes ago, this composition handbook dovetales into that. And so, so in essence, these cookies are already baked. >> Well, that is the best way I've heard that said in a long time, Mr. Archer. That you know, to some extent, yes, because there it is the largest component of your budget. Like, I would assume it's the largest component of your budget. Everybody, it is for all other districts that I'm aware of. So, it's it's not necessarily that the cookies are already baked. The amount of cookies are already baked. Now, the way that this is proposed basically assumes that we know how many cookies that you

235actually wanted and the cost of those cookies to actually use your terminology on that. Sure. So, with all that being said, yes, in in some ways the cookies are already baked. However, if the board wanted it to be differently, the board obviously could start part of that process over again with the administration, but the administration would have to propose a different compensation plan than the one they're proposing right now, which is part of the budget you already adopted. >> Right? >> Does that make sense? Correct. So I'm not saying that later on the administration could not propose something else regarding retention regarding something else and the board might adopt that but it's not part of the compensation plan which is before you which is part of the budget you already adopted. >> Sure. >> In

236a future retention that wouldn't have to be part of the compensation plan. Correct. Like if we if we just add a retention bonus into that. >> It would. >> Yeah. It it all kind of depends on which part you're talking about. If you're talking about how Mr. Hfner had proposed it to where it actually becomes part of compensation going forward as I understood his proposal then yes it have to be part of a compensation plan. Most retention stipens like in surrounding districts that you've seen whether they be a thousand whether it be 1500 are based on how long someone has been there number one but also whether or not they stay there for that entire school year in order to receive such retention. Sometimes it's broken into two pieces. Sometimes it's broken into four, but

237those are not credible like Miss Brinkmire talked about because TRS has made the decision that those will not be credable because of the way that they're paid. We've tried all kind of very creative things and they don't care. So, I'll just say it that way. But, I mean, nonetheless, in order to make it creditable, you have to make it part of the salary. But once you make it part of the salary then it stays with that particular employee forever which also means your budget has to reflect that forever. Did that answer your question? Whose question was I don't even remember now. >> So uh thank you for the information. Basically your answer is yes in a lot of words 90% yes basically. But so here's what I would ask is I would ask that we

238go back in in the future and reook at this and examine this more because I truly believe in the retention bonus and I believe in it for the reason that Mr. Afner stated. It makes us different. It makes us unique. I have a disability. I am unique and different. That is a badge that I wear with pride and I want Brennham ISD to be different and unique. And also to your comment, Jared, I would say I understand that it feels rushed, but I'm going to be a little bit smart here and say that we rush items in this boardroom all the time when I don't feel ready to vote on something because the district needs it now. And it drives me crazy. It really does. But that's how it works. But I would ask that

239we go back, as Eric is saying, and look at this in the future so that we can do something unique, different, and special and work it all out so that it works with the TRS and all of that. As Ronald Reagan said, it can be done. All things can be done. We can do it. So, let's do it. But you're asking me to revisit in the future. You're not talking about stopping our process right now. >> Correct. Correct. >> Because Yeah, >> Archer. I agree with you. I definitely don't want to not discuss it. I think this is definitely something that we need to revisit with Mr. Sinclair and his team and and see the I think I think yes, I agree with you. So, I'm I totally agree with you. >> So, moving on,

240knowing that that can't be brought up, there's only one last thing I'd like to say. I do not believe that um we should be at 3% for professional administrative pay. I think that's too high personally. Um I'm sure that's also minority comment. Um but I believe they deserve a raise, but I I originally in my math I had it down at 2% and that's where I was happy to keep it. Um but uh that was that was something that I thought we should allocate that money to other things. But that's uh last comment I'll make is I think that the professional administrative pay so the exempt the salary staff should be at two instead of three. But again maybe the cookies are already baked and we can't do that. >> I mean why I guess

241I don't understand that. I guess when we're looking at going forward uh and also to keep pace with our uh you know with people uh so that on the administrative staff side especially those in the AP or principal roles um that that's something that's a you work up to as well and I think it uh they deserve it and they've worked incredibly hard. So and I understand about rolling things back but uh across the board folks not received you know pay increases so if if there's a reason on it I mean I I would be welcome to hear it. Um, but I mean they're they're the ones who are kind of leading the charge at each one of our districts, uh, each one of our schools as well. So, what would be your reasoning on

242a 1% decrease? >> Um, honestly, I planned on using that money for different reasons and putting it to the paras and I had it set in a way different way on my worksheet and that's how I originally proposed it. um 3% 5% 2% 6% it's all plus or minus and also I was because 2% for administrative is in my mind um it gives them the raise and then back to what Justin said it's allocating money for teachers but we're if we're not allocating money for uh the bonuses I had put in here then it's 61 and half dozen other on where we're spending the money but to me I I think they're principles directors coordinators are are paid pretty decently and a 2% increase is still um that an extra 1% is not going to

243make or break uh their pay and using that 1% to hire an extra teacher or actually I think it came out to two or one and a half uh I thought was going to be better >> use of our a little bit of um the daily rate. So if you look at many of the staff on the professional administrative pay scale, they work um additional days. And so if you take the um daily rate and divide it by um 182, which is what teachers are, so our lowest level of a I believe a P4 I calculated. If you divide it by the daily rate, um you end up with someone on a P4 scale at 32859, which falls um a fifth year teacher daily rate for someone on the professional administrative scale. So um it

244it you know there are additional days in there with an additional salary. Yes. But the daily rate >> so worry about it sending a signal of of devaluing somebody based off their current salary. I mean, they work all just as hard and they're gone. And we don't I don't want to send a signal to somebody that says, "You're less important than this person. I'm not going to give you as much as this." I mean, how many hours do our principles and teachers stay away from their kids? I mean, they're still sitting in the back and first day of school tomorrow. So, >> that just can also point out a question. Archer asked a great question last time. you know, not not only are teachers looking at an average of a 13% raise, um Sarah, we've

245got a teacher incentive aotment that we are actively applying for. So, I just caution you not to get into a situation where you've got an experienced teacher making so much more than assistant principal that we can't recruit supervisors for those teachers. And in addition to that, uh, these principles are going to every school at, every sporting event, football, volleyball, basketball, baseball, and the high school principal is traveling to the games away from their family. So, um, respectfully, I disagree with that. Uh, so, uh, again, we want all kids to have a fair education. want all employees to get a raise, salary, salary increase. >> Yeah, I agree. I would, and I don't want to get into the weeds. We can go back and forth in this, but there's a lot of other positions on here

246outside of the princ the principles. I think they deserve it. I think the assistant principles need a bigger raise than that, too. I think they should be more than 3%. And I'm okay with the principles being there. It's the rest of those on this list that take up that page that I don't think need as much. So, but I don't want to get in the weeds and we're going to be here till 11 o'clock if we keep going at this rate. So, um, as Archer very eloquently put it, the cookies are already baked. So, I think we're at a stopping point. Would you >> Thank you. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Would you also read um the you know if they want to start talking about specific positions like an AP, would you read the the

247statement that gives the superintendent the authority to look at pay grades per position within this plan that they're adopting? >> So it's on on the compensation package reclassification on a periodic basis. Jobs may be reclassified in different pay grade or salaries may be adjusted within pay pay raise and order. So, um, Clay and I talked about this today is is we can we can identify items that we want the central the the chief of staff and Clay to look at and have those conversations and those can be reviewed midyear. It's not something that has to be done tonight. Um, that all can be done midyear and those changes can be made. So, I know our conversations about it. >> That's exactly right. So, if there's a specific position that you say, "Hey, take a look

248at this. Uh, evaluate it with other districts in our area across the state. >> Uh, Mrs. Fallen where it should or should that position be adjusted to another paygrade?" Right. >> Um, you are granting me the authority to to do that >> cuz I brought one up to you last week. That's exactly right. I'm I'm good with that. >> And that's refle Hey. And that's reflected in the current pay grade. >> I know. >> Great conversation. What is the What is the Okay. I'm I'm glad to hear that we can shift this in the future because this is the exact conversation I had with Justin today. I was concerned about the APS as well being broken out from that group amongst the coordinators that they sit in with that group. It kind of in my

249opinion destroys um the teacher staffing pipeline. We want to be we want to be positioning ourselves to put a class people on the campuses not necessarily in in central office which we obviously value our central office team but we want to pipeline people towards the campuses and when we have those APS in that same group it kind of breaks the pipeline and it does it didn't make a lot of sense to me and so I definitely want to look at that in the future and see if we can maybe fix that. >> I'd like to make a motion to approve the district compensation handbook as presented. >> I second it. >> Raven Calvin Raven has made a motion seconded by Justin Coot Sean Couns to approve the district's compensation handbook as presented. All in favor?

250>> All opposed? The motion passes. Okay. Next, uh, Mr. Sinclair will, uh, present information regarding a budget amendment. >> I believe this is my last trip up here tonight. Okay. I did just get information from Miss Davis. uh I think it was last week that they are expecting that they will need a bit more in their budget to finish purchasing the supplies, the food supplies to get through the month of August till our fiscal year is over and starts over in September. And so she requested that we u move an additional $157,000 the estimated cost from their fund balance from the food service fund balance over into their budget, their current budget so that we'll have that money available to pay for those final bills uh leading up to the end of this month. Anything

251Cassandra needs? I'm good with it. I make a motion to approve the budget amendment as presented. >> Second. >> I think Kyle Her made a motion seconded by uh Justin Collie to approve the budget amendment as presented. All in favor? >> All opposed? Motion carries. Okay. Next, Chief of Staff Christy Johnson, Aaron Tibido, the Brenham Middle School principal, and Mr. Michael Watts, the Brenham High School principal, uh, will give us a quick overview of the 2025 2026 student handbook. >> We've actually got Miss Wilkkey coming up to present the handbook. So, in your documents forformational purposes, um, we present to you the student handbook each year. And so, you do have the 2526 student handbook. I'm going to highlight a couple of the revisions to the handbook. Um, but do know it's an ongoing document.

252And as you know, there was a recent legislative session. There will be board updates throughout the fall based on that legislative session and those would be reflected um in the student handbook. So um a couple of the um revisions um that want to kind of bring um big one that has been all over social media, all over um the internet has been personal communication devices. As you know, we adopted um some language in our handbook last year regarding um cell phone policy and cell phones being off during instruction time last year during the instructional day. And so this just further enhances that. So it does define cell phones as tablets, gaming devices, smartwatches, earbuds, personal laptops, um and of course cell phones. So um this means they're off and they're away during the school day.

253And so this is, you know, direct reflection of the legislative session. And so we have communicated that in our district newsletter to students already, but that language is included in our student handbook. Um, another um addition is consent from parents for students to participate in clubs on campus. So we're working on developing a form for our sponsors to use to give parents control over what their students are participating in. And that is part of Senate Bill 12. Um there's some language regarding parents rights um and the storage of safe storage of firearms. And obviously that's not storing firearms at school, but we do um they do want us to help relay that message and we have to give three notifications to parents three times a year about safe storage of um firearms and how to

254safely store them. So that information, one way we're communicating it is in our student handbook. So when parents receive that information, that's one of our ways and it's just advising them how to safely store their firearms in their home. >> On the cell phones, do you have a step discipline process if a student is caught with the phone? Uh yeah, do >> you want to go first? >> Go because I don't think ours are the same >> first couple of days. Good afternoon. I mean, school starts school starts in a couple hours. So, um I mean protocol is zero tolerance. Cell phones, not even in their um in the back in the back pockets, nowhere. They can't even plug them up in the classrooms. So, they're not supposed to be visible at all. So, tomorrow

255if I see a cell phone, put your cell phone up. You guys know the rules. Um after we pick them up, parents must come pick them up. If it continues, they'll be going to ISS. If it continues, it continues. That's called persistent misbehavior. I will put them in DAP. The It's a state law, not Britam ISD. So the rule is the rule. Non-negotiable, be honest. >> So for us, we did it last year. I'm really disappointed we can't collect the $15, but that's just my personal opinion. Um, we were really strict on it at junior high. We saw it, we took it. It's the same thing. We have a discipline procedure first time parent, guardian, or sibling because sometimes parents work. We've had this conversation about parents working and they send a sibling has to

256come get it. They get lunch detention. The second offense, they get after school detention. The third offense, they get ISS. So, we are going to be on it like we were last year, but our junior high kids kind of already know what to expect from us. >> Also, we've already identified our students with the medical situations. Their IDs will have a medical thing on it that need to have access to their cell phones and different things. So, those things already been taken care of. >> That's true. >> Yeah. And and just for clarity, does this extend for school uh engages if they're uh whether it be at practices or anything like that, it's just whe when they're within the halls of the school. >> So for us, it's while they're on campus, but of course,

257if you're a mom and your kids going to play in Navasota, you want your kid to have the phone on the bus. So for us, it's on campus in the morning, lunch, afternoon, and then they have them in their backpacks for extracurriculars. >> Okay, common sense. These kids travel, so when they coming back, they probably need to call their parents and get them home. So, they probably will have access to their stuff. They don't want to be at the fieldhouse until 12:00 or 1:00 in the morning. So, absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, any more questions, guys? Okay. Uh, next we have a consent agenda. We can uh pull anyone or just approve it uh as a whole. I would like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> Hold on.

258I I do get one question about the library policy. I'm going to have to ask this. I do got a I got a question. >> Sorry. Could I No. Is that I'd just like to just ask a question. >> Do we need to pull it? >> Uh I I don't know. I I just just for clarification. >> If it's just for clarification, you're not questioning it. That's That's great. For clarification, when we're talking about the the policy for books, are we talking about books that are age appropriate, meaning reading level appropriate or content appropriate? Um, let's just say you have a fourth grader who's reading at a sixth or seventh grade level. Well, they still have access to books in their library at their elementary school. Uh, that allows them to continue to go forward

259in their reading skills or does it limit it where they can only read at a fourth grade level or is it more of a content? So that's what I just want clarification on. >> Please >> I'm the lead librarian for the district. That was actually under House Bill 900 which was passed two years ago. Um the stuff we're looking at today is Senate Bill 13. >> I know. >> So in answer to your question related to House Bill 900? >> It it's related to House Bill 900. I mean honestly if you look at it I have to look at age relevancy for like my students. So, yes, I do have kids that are reading way above like what is considered appropriate for my campus. I can look at things that are fourth through sixth grade,

260but typically if it has like a middle school main character, there might be content that's not appropriate, say for a 8-year-old, nine-year-old that's in fourth grade. So, it's more just keeping things that are appropriate for them developmentally. >> Good. You're good. Okay. I would like to make a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. >> I g I gave it to him last time. Archer got mad at me. Okay. Archer Archer made a motion seconded by Kelvin Raven to approve the consent denza as presented. All in favor? >> All oppose? Motion carries. Uh next we have monthly reports for information purposes. Uh and with no further business to come before the board at 9:49 this meeting is adjourned.