Brenham ISD Board Meeting 8-4-2025 Noon Board Meeting

001is the BISD board is now in session. Uh we didn't have anybody sign up for public comment. Um and we are going to skip executive session today and go straight into uh action on uh 3A. [Music] Yeah. So uh this time Mrs. Wilky, there you are. I was looking to make uh eye contact with you. If you'd come up please and make an introduction to the board. Yes. Good morning everybody. It is my privilege to recommend Jessica Lewis be an a assistant principal at Brennham Junior High. I know many of the faces in this room know who she is. Um she's a Brennham native, graduated from Brennham High School. She's been in Brenham Himmstead. She's recently been in Waller and um just got her PhD. She finished before me because I don't have my life

002together. Um and I will tell you um we really are excited to have her. And I told Mr. Gillantine after our interview that I had several people reach out to me before I even started interviews like please interview her. And so that that is my recommendation to you guys. They have to vote. Vote first. I'd like to make a motion to accept the uh recommendation of to employ Jessica Lewis as assistant principal at the Brim Lehi and approve contract recommendations as presented. I second pick one. I said it first. No, you didn't. I wait. Let him vote. Okay. Uh Kyle I mean Kelvin Raven made a motion seconded by Kyle Hafner to accept the superintendent's recommendation to employ Jessica Lewis as assistant principal at Brigham Junior High School and approve contract recommend recommendations as presented.

003All in favor? All opposed. Welcome to Britham. Welcome back to Britam. [Applause] Thank you. Um, I'm super excited to be returning to the community and district that I call home. And I look forward to working with each of you to ensure an exceptional education for all of the students here. [Applause] Yeah. So, uh, forward [Music] Okay. Next, uh we're going to consider possible approval of a agreement for the purchase of attendance credits and to delegate contractual authority to the superintendent. Uh Mr. Sinclair, good afternoon. uh just like we have seen for the last several years. Uh we did this last year about this time and I remember going back and checking for several years back I think 102 years something like that. Uh this has been a standard operating procedure now for quite some time.

004Basically, the uh Texas Education Agency suspects but doesn't really know for sure if we will qualify as having excess local revenue that might need to be sent back to the state for the last 12 years or so. We've gone through this initial phase and there has been no actual recapture sent back, no actual funds sent back. But because there are a number of things that they don't know right now, in fact, uh if you notice there in the letter that they sent to us, they kind of listed those out on that last page. They don't know our final enrollment. School hasn't even started yet. So neither do we. Uh they don't know our entitlement or local share of state versus local funding uh yet because we haven't even set a tax rate or adopted a

005budget or any of that yet. They don't know our state certified property values. That won't come out till next spring. uh they don't know our MO tax rate. They have given us the uh m the maximum compressed rate, but they don't know the exact rate we've adopted yet because we haven't done that. And they certainly don't know how much of our tax collections we've collected because we haven't even started. So there's all these things that are complete unknowns, but they still are required to initially get the conversation started, if you will, by having us submit an intent letter for which one of the five options we would choose if we had to do so, if we had to send money back. Uh they do point out that most districts choose option number three, and that's

006traditionally the one we've chosen here, which is the purchase of average daily attendance credits. uh basically purchasing attendance credits from the state, meaning we would buy them from the state and that would of course require we would pay TEA for those credits. So this is all just very preliminary for the 2526 school year and the only thing that really needs your approval at this point is to authorize the superintendent to negotiate a contract with TEA in the event that would actually happen and we would actually need to do that. And I would point out also in the letter that TEA sent to us that we are basically prohibited from adopting a tax rate until we get this done and get this information filed with TEA on their website. We have to get this information submitted

007by September 1 so that we can move forward and adopt a tax rate which we are planning to do next Tuesday, August the 12th. So, as it usually is this time of the year, time is of the essence. So, isn't it great that TEA can tell us they don't know much of anything and then turn around and tell us we have to do something based on information they don't know and then dictate exactly what we have to do, which is also controlled by the state as well. So, I I said it last year and it it it's pointless to say it again, but I' I'd rather just keep the money ourselves and tell them to come fight us for it, but it's whole another fight. So, it's just redundant. It's ridiculous. And I'm glad they're

008telling us what to do when they don't have all the answers. [Music] Yeah, we we do have we do need to take action. [Laughter] Okay. All right. Uh I'll make a motion for the 2526 school year uh to delegate the contractual authority uh to oblate the school district under Texas Education Code 11.1511 to the superintendent solely for the purpose of obligating the district under TEC 48 uh257 and TEC chapter 49 subchapters A and D and the rules adopted by the commissioner of education as authorized under TEC 49.006. This include approval of the agreement of purchase attendance credit or the agreement for the purchase of attendance credits netting chapter 48 funding. I second it. Good for you. Okay, big breath. Okay. Justin Collie made a motion seconded by Bonnie Brinkmire for the 2025 2026 school year.

009We delegate contractual authority to obligate the school district under Texas Education Code TEC11.1511 to the superintendent solely for the purpose of obligating the district under education as authorized under TE hold I missed one sorry the obligating the district under TEC 48.257 and TEC chapter 49 subchapters A and D and the rules adopted by the commissioner of education as authorized under 49.006. This includes approval of the agreement for the purchase of attendance credit for the agreement for the purchase of attendance credit netting chapter 48 funding. All in favor? All opposed? The motion passes. That was a mouthful. Okay. And then next we are going to go into our uh budget workshop. Yeah. So, if I could get the executive leadership team to move up here with us. I mentioned this last time as uh we were

010presenting uh some information that I really wanted to workshop uh the cabinet and the board together in conversation. Um we sit in here um as an executive leadership team with numbers right up there on that screen um for hours upon hours upon hours and um I really want to bring them in as part of the conversation with you. So there's a lot uh to absorb. School funding as you all know is is different than uh most organizations. Yeah. I told you the other day that uh you of course have three main functions. That's to hire the superintendent. That's to approve the policies that we enforce. And that's to approve the budget. Well, if 80 to 85% of your budget is personnel, then approving the budget most definitely includes the compensation package. That's the majority of

011the budget. So, um you know, the last few years in this district, um the compensation package was how can we spend the least amount we can well that was our our take last year, I should say. um as how can we spend the least amount we can spend on personnel since that is our number one expenditure and we are looking to cut costs uh and we did right we did by millions. We absorbed um almost 50 positions uh most of those being professional and we cut budgets anywhere and everywhere uh we thought we we could we could cut. Um, remember in the end, this fiscal year that we're living in, we adopted a balanced budget, but in doing that, we didn't put one penny back in our fund balance, and we didn't give one extra

012penny to our staff. We couldn't uh we could not I mean, we we cut everything we cut and only adopted a a balanced budget. So, um, most years you want to at least give a cost of living raise to your staff, which is on the average about 3%. Um, we haven't given anything to staff in the last three years. Uh, four years ago, Christie, you told me we gave 5% four years ago. Of course, that was not um this team that sits around these tables here. Um, that was 5% four years ago. Um, again, we haven't given anything since then. So, um, now that we've got some extra funds from House Bill Two, not near what we would would like, obviously, um, House Bill Two did not do a lot of things that uh, we

013obviously hoped it would do. Um, House Bill Two did do well by teachers. Absolutely did well by teachers. Um if we can move the scale locally on top of that um this should shake out to be a pretty good year for Brennham ISD teachers. Um we've also got another staff though to keep up with that uh again has not received anything in the last several years. So that's what we're going to look at today is in your considerations for compensation which makes up the majority of the budget. How can we, you know, how can we tweak that to fit the numbers we want and that you're uh giving increased uh compensation to those those personnel that we feel like most need it. Uh we've talked extensively in here about how our paraprofessionals are underpaid. Uh

014and we've shown you that in the districts around us. Um, so how do we really make up for that and get them up in the market where they should be for a like position and a a like district close to us? Uh, again, how do we make up for a lack of not even a cost of living raise over the last couple years? So, um, Darl, you want to jump in with, I guess, the top sheet that, uh, everybody's going to be looking at here and, um, we're going to workshop through this together. um board, if you'll if you'll let again, we we do this behind these doors hours upon hours um at least a couple of days a week. So, if you'll let us kind of work through what you're going to be looking

015at, um and I mean me and the cabinet and kind of jot your questions down. Now, if we're in a spot where listen, this is a workshop, we're all a team here. If we're in a spot like I I really need to ask this question right now, then please do so. Please just say, "Hey, let's let's pause right here for a second." But for the most part, if we can let uh the cabinet sort of work through what you're looking at and uh that way you have the full picture, the full scope of things and then we want to definitely ask all the questions you want to ask. We want to workshop um different type uh ideas. So, um, and of course we can bring you back next time anything that you would like beyond

016this. Uh, remember today there are no decisions to be made. Uh, you formally adopt the compensation packet and the budget on the 12th. Um, we've been looking at these numbers now, you know, for a little bit. Uh this is kind of our last time together uh as a team to work through some different scenarios, give you things to think about before you adopt at the next meeting. Okay. So with that, um Darl, if you'll start us off on page one, and we'll just kind of work through this together. Okay. I just handed out updated information from our regular meeting in July. It looks very similar. In fact, if you'll notice that the information at the very top of page one going across the top, the funding sources and then the possibility of additional revenue that

017may come if a Vader election was approved. Uh that information is exactly the same. That hasn't changed. The information down the left side from there on down on each page is the same that you were given back in July with one exception. Page four is new. Uh last time you had a three-page packet. uh total. So everything on page four is updated. And then on the right side of the first three pages, that's the same basic information that's on the left, but each chart has been updated slightly. And I'll be pointing out what the updates are here as we go through. So again, no no changes in the assumption, the revenue assumption across the very top of page one. That's the same as before. Uh when you look there at that the other information there

018towards the bottom of page one, there are a few changes there. Uh before we were assuming step raises for teachers below step 25. Now we've actually I've actually we've been talking about looking at the possibility of increasing the teacher salary schedule up to step 30. So, right now, I've preliminarily created uh those steps and adding basically $750 per step from the one below uh from 25 up through or 26 up through 30. And so, that information has now been updated with the cost would be for those step raises. Um, we were also talking about a $1,000 increase to steps 0, one, and two. Since those are not funded by the the teacher retention aotment the state uh passed in House Bill 2, we've now upped that to $3,000 instead of just 1,000 for each step.

019So, that's an increase as you can see there between the chart on the left and the chart on the right. Uh, the other information has basically stayed the same. Uh you will notice though that I am using a lower amount for benefits. After going back and doing a more thorough uh analysis of what we're currently spending on benefits, I thought my 13% estimate was a little bit high. So I've reduced that to 11% and I've done that throughout. So that's the biggest change all the way through. All the information you see on the right of the pages ver versus what's on the left of the pages is that the benefit amount has been decreased from 13% to 11%. So you can see there that with the reduction in the benefit estimate even though we've got

020some increases in the gross pay the total bottom figure there of 1,63,835 is not much more than what we had before. And again, it's mainly because the offsetting of the reduction in the benefit cost. Okay, moving on to page two. 30 years on um teachers instead of 25. And so looking at going to 30 years and he um specifically calculated a $750 increase per year. So that takes our um step 30 to $74,688. So, if you're looking from 51 or 53, whatever we're considering, to 74, it gives teachers an opportunity to advance each year to end up 20,000 more than when they started as a teacher. Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. You know, I know several of you have talked about retention for those that have been here for a while. Um, this

021helps us be more competitive in that regard. Uh it's also um I think as we've seen some of the more competitive school districts it's a little more common as as you get into Wooden Wallers was at least 30 and softairs went up to 40 right so I think it incentivizes those that have have been here for obviously 25 plus years to be a destination um for for those most experienced teachers instead of the the thought I'm in my last five years maybe ought to go over to a higher paying district. You know, I think it I think it helps in uh in that conversation. Anything else about this first page that uh Brooke Sarah was feel like we What was that salary number again for step 30? Now, that's with the new pass through of

0228,000 for the for the teachers. Um but uh remember some of those top numbers we we were looking at at school districts um just you know 35 minutes down 290. Um I you know it really helps us again with those top teachers. So anything else about page one before Darl moves us on Brooke or Sarah? I have a question. Yes sir. Um how confident are you in that 11% for benefits? Um I really think it's 10 point something. So, I'm still pretty sure that that's a little bit of an over You are overestimating a little bit. That's what I was want to get caught. Yeah. And that has nothing to do with uh the insurance the health insurance uh contribution that the district provides. I've got that in a separate bucket. So this is just

023basically uh Medicare uh TRS stat that we pay on most professional uh positions, not on every position but on most professional positions, workers comp, uh unemployment compensation, all the basic other benefits that we have to pay for. And let me let me point one thing out too before we turn the page. So just so everybody's so very clear, you know, without additional VA revenue, without additional VA revenue, this is where we would sit at uh going to a step 25, a $1,000 raise for teachers 0, one, and two, remembering that there's a pass through from the the state for those above that. um and a 2.75% raise for everyone else who's not a teacher. So without any extra Vader revenue, that's all we can do to balance the budget. Okay? Without taking on any other

024major expenses um from this past year and remember we cut everything everywhere um to where I think we were all saying, gosh, how much deeper do we have to cut? So without any taking on any major expenses, um we're only looking at 2.75% for all non-eing staff. Again, how I explain the the the teacher um steps there. So beyond with with the extra with with the extra um revenue from a Vader, that's what we're about to get into. So as you look at as you turn the page and you see a percentage equate to a number know this know that that percent is on top of the 2.75. So the 2.75 is almost considered right. So in other words, um if if you're going to say, hey, we're going to give uh we want to

025give 8% to paras next year, 8% to paras, you're actually you're actually you you've got a 2 uh 75 already written into that. So it it's really looking more at an additional fiveish percent, right? and not the 8% as you're as you flip over to page two and see how those percentages equate to different buckets of money. Darl, you want to work us through this now? Yeah. Uh again, don't not much of a change really on this next page. On page two, I did add just went ahead and added 9%. We had talked about 9% raises at one point. Um again, this is on top of so we probably wouldn't go quite that high, but just wanted to go ahead and add that. I guess mainly for context. So that's been adjusted on on every

026single one of these charts going from this point forward. Uh again, reducing the benefits from 13 to 11%. So that's been a change going forward. That's really about the only significant changes as far as all the calculations that you see there on page two. Uh the base numbers for the gross pay have remained the same uh as they were a few weeks ago at a regular meeting. I did also add in the uh information that well the first chart there on the top left and right is for uh increasing the teacher salary schedule above what we currently have at the step levels. So if we were to increase all the steps by 1% on average, we'd be adding another $23,000 in gross pay. Uh and then so on and so forth from there at higher

027percentages. The bottom two charts on page two is where we start to get into the professional uh the professional staff scenarios. I did add this time exactly which pay grades those are. So again, we're talking about paygrades P1A and then P2 through P9 that are listed in the compensation plan. P1 is the teacher salary schedule. So that's why it's not included because that's calculated separately uh with a different different scheme. So the rest of this is basically the same information just adjusted for the decrease in the benefit rates and then as we go on to page three any clarifications there from any of good Christie Sarah broke okay I just and I keep asking that we've we've talked through these pages so many times uh that I want to be sure okay did we say

028everything that we personally have questioned and worked through. So, I just want to add and just making sure that we're all on the same page. So, when you're looking at the professional staff and you're and um Darl references P1A, P2, P9, like those labels are in your gray spot on your compensation handbook. So, that's kind of the section he's referencing. And then all the not staff member names, but staff positions that occupy um those pay grades are listed. So, you know, you can see, oh, that's the occupational therapists are in that pay grade or that's the sped counselor that's in that pay grade. So, so, and I I just, you know, you can uh access that online, but then I sent you one in the Friday email as well. I don't think they have it

029packet in front of them. You can pull it up in that Friday email if you want. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And then going on to page three is where we start looking or at the top is where we have the non-exempt staff, the hourly staff. And again, I went ahead and included this time, which I didn't have this in there before, the exact pay grades that we're talking about. CN1 to CN7, that's child nutrition. CT1 to CT8, those clerical technical positions. IS-1 to IS-6, which are the instructional support positions. I wasn't sure what the S was. uh basically our teacher aids. Correct. Okay. Uh then we have the M1A, M5, all the M's, those are maintenance positions, different grades we have for different uh maintenance positions. So just kind of detailing that out. Other than

030that, there's CN CNS, child nutrition, the child nutrition and maintenance. That first one he went over when you keep talking about, hey, this is where we're lower in the surrounding districts. We really feel like we ought to give a bigger um raise to this group to get them up where they where they should be. Um that's that uh CN and uh I'm sorry the CT where CT and is I'm sorry instructional. Yeah. And those are I've got those more itemized out on page four. We'll get to that here in a second. Thanks. So there is a slight change there of the 1% you can see the 1% gross pay did go down slightly uh just up I've been updating all the people who are leaving all the people who are being replacing the people who

031are leaving so there've been just a very small change there essentially the same and then again reducing from 13% to 11% on the benefit calculations and then the bottom two charts on page three just like before it's just the grand total of all the charts the three charts before just kind of putting it all together. Uh, so if you wanted to know what a 5% or a 6% or a 4 percent increase would be on all three of those previous charts, you can see that there in those totals. Okay. Then we get to page four, which is completely brand new. You didn't have any of this information last time. Um, neither the left nor the right side. Uh this time what I've tried to do is detail out we'll go one more division amongst some

032of the the different paygrades within professional or within non-exempt. So the top two itemize the admin professional staff on the left and then the non-admin professional staff on the right. So together, if you put those two charts together, the gross pay and the estimated benefits and the totals, that would equal the entire professional chart that we had a couple pages back. So this is just splitting it up a little more finely. So you can see there again, it's the same same basic information just more detailed. Uh basically the admin staff are the staff that are coded to pay grades five through nine. There are a couple of positions that I felt like probably should be pulled even from P3 and P4 which I made a note of that uh because they tech the assistant assistant

033principles are on P3 and P4. So technically I think they wouldn't be considered admin. Uh so they're in that chart and they're not on the other chart which is everybody else besides the P5 through P9. So there's a little bit of overlap. you know, when you look at the actual pay grade and you start looking at the exact job codes as they're described and the positions, it's not always 100%. Everything in this pay grade is admin and everything in this one is not. There's a little bit of overlap. So, I'm trying to get that as fine-tuned as I can. Um, then if you look down at the bottom of the page, again, just separating out. Now, this time, if you added these two together, you would not get the entire non-exempt chart that we had

034earlier. you would get most of it, good chunk of it. But this is CT1 only on the left and is I'm sorry, CT on the left and is on the right. So clerical technical on the left, instructional support on the right, all the different levels of those two particular groups. And so you can see there uh again the different amounts and different percentages. Uh if you just wanted to look at those two separately, uh those are the two that we've talked about being lower than average probably for us uh for our district. So thought we'd pull those out separately so you could see that in a little more detail as compared to the overall all non-exempt group. Anything else with that? Not specifically with that, but maybe a little more explanation of kind of the

035compensation handbook. Wanted to point out a few things that as we have discussion kind of how we are considering things and making changes to compensation handbook. So um when we hire a new employee, they are dropped upon initial hire into their pay grade. And so we consider their years of experience in public ed public public education and their years of experience in a like position. And so only upon initial hire are they dropped into that salary formula. And then any advancements after that initial drop for our pay formula staff is based upon a board adopted raise. So it's not like teachers where I got another year of service, I bump up to year two. I got another year of service, I bump up to year three. it is I dropped in. I had this many

036years of experience. I had this many years in a like position. This is where I start. And so my advancement is based upon a pay raise adopted by the board. So just so you know, so a lot of the staff or the staff that's on that professional pay formula has not had any advancement because there's not been an adopted raise since that 22 23 school year. Okay. And then um one thing that the professional organizations always recommend when we're making adjustment to those pay grades um so if we do a 3% raise it's 3% on midpoint. So if I'm in P2 I'm getting a 3% on midpoint. So my midpoint's $323% on that. So wherever I fall in there that percentage is the same. When we adjust the pay grade the recommendation is not to

037adjust the whole scale 3%. It is half of that because if we have new hires coming with the same exact position and we adjust the whole pay scale with 3% it puts them slightly above our current staff and it creates an equity issue. So I calculated I pulled a current employee pulled where they fell in the pay scale and then I calculated a new employee coming with the same with 3% adjustment to our scale and it had them $150 more a day. Um, so it does make it a little off-kilter and we do want to recognize and retain our staff and not have we're hiring somebody and we're going to pay them a little more than you. So, you know, the professional organ organizations say if you're going to do a 3% um raise for

038staff, adjust your pay scale by 1 and a half%. So, wanted y'all to have that information. Yeah. And I know that's been a big point for several of you that we don't want other people coming in new that are making more than the staff that's been here. So, um Chris has done a lot of work, uh with with HR to come up with some numbers that uh that keep that from from happening and again a plan with equity um in mind as we hang on to people and and recruit new people. So, um you know, as we work work through this, I threw uh some numbers out at you uh in an email. Um understand I I guess here, let me kind of walk into a takeaway area. How about that? takeaways um to me

039are that the teachers if there was add additional revenue um with the House bill the average teacher gets about 13% more next year than what they did this year. So that's huge. Again, if uh we get the additional Vader revenue um and the the board uh moves our zero teachers up to competitive range with the districts around us, which is 53. And the board moves that topend 25 year teacher to 30 years along with the Vader I'm sorry along with the House Bill 2 money that would come through again you're looking at an average of about 13% more as a Brennam ISD teacher. So that's that's amazing. uh you know other numbers to consider um those professional staff that are not teachers um as Gerald just explained you have admin and then you have plenty

040of professional staff that are not admin so um they don't follow a scale like a like a teacher they only get a raise when you give them a raise um again typically as long as schools are functioning um in a financial healthy way. Of course, a cost of living raise is um considered right which on an average is 3-ish%. Um again, we have not given even a cost of living raise in three years. Uh one cost of living raise is on an average about 3%. So, um, what we've pitched out is 6% for professional staff that are not teachers. Again, your teachers are looking at about 13% on an average. Um, the other group that um has been uh, you know, fallen behind more than the others, I guess I should say, is is the

041paras. So that's that is and CT pay grade there that uh or spreadsheet piece that Daryl has there for you. Uh we're looking at bumping them up. A suggested number to you is 8% to get them in a competitive market. So those are kind of the buckets we've drawn out. um in doing this in looking at about a 13% raise for teachers um 8% for paras and 6% for other staff and doing that also writing in positions that were lost. Remember our teacher to student ratio has gone way up as well. So having those positions set aside as we can fill them that's going to do two things. that's going to allow us to make a nicer student teacher ratio. Um, as those positions aren't filled, put some money back into the fund balance. Okay?

042So, I say that to say all the the money that's being considered is all for staff, current staff or needed staff. And while it's not with needed staff, it's in a fund balance waiting for the needed staff. So, um that that's our recommendation. Uh that's where we are now anyway is a recommendation for you next week. This is not anything to be voted on today. Let me say this too. Um thank God we're having this conversation. Okay? It's way overdue, isn't it, Raven? Thank God we're having this conversation. And and I truly mean thank God that we are having this conversation. I'm thankful to the state for what they did for our teachers. Um what I've heard is um this the state say, "Hey, you know, you have to make some decisions locally as well."

043We know our our revenue comes from students and it comes from local taxes. Okay? And uh we get charged with uh sitting at this table to have those conversations. So, thank God we're having that conversation and that uh our teachers are going to be better off next year than they were this past year. Um hopefully all staff in some form of way financially are better off a little bit next year than they were this past year. But um at the same time, thank you that we're having a conversation in a strategic planning committee um that will come to you with a recommendation next week. Um this is just executive leadership cabinet kind of working through these numbers. Um working with comparables and and running the data, running the data and running the data some more.

044So not a whole lot of sleep for the CFO this time of year. He gets to take his vacations in uh maybe maybe January. We'll let him out the door, but the summertime um he is he is working all all hours. Um let's workshop this out. any comments, questions that y'all want to, you know, I'm got to say something. You know, I'm so I just want to make sure this is kind of this can be confusing for some individuals who are not looking at the paperwork. So, it's a compound question. So, are the teachers getting a raise when school starts? Yes. And that's going to be what the state gave is giving them. Correct. That's correct. All right. So, are the other employees getting a raise when school starts? That's part of what you have

045to vote on as a compensation package. We've written in 2.75 for the other staff that are not teachers. Um for the teachers, we wrote in the $1,000 stop in for 012 teachers and uh then you've got that pass through from the state for the other teachers. So the other part of the conversation uh Raven is all about you know if we get additional revenue which would have to be voted on by this community this is what could happen. So we you really it's a unique year and I want all of you to hear this. It's been a lot of work on this staff working through a strategic planning committee meeting and then working on scenarios. Right? We're not just adopting a budget this year. We're also adopting a whatif budget. So, um it's been a

046lot of work to get both of those things ready. Again, I I commend all of the staff for basically working through two scenarios. Um and that's what we have to bring to you next week is if if if we do not get additional revenue because of a Vader, here's the budget compensation package that we are adopting. If we do get additional revenue because of evader, here is the compensationbudget that we're adopting. That's what you're going to be asked to do next week. Um, again, the basic numbers we gave you was just the $1,000 for 012. The other retention for the teachers is is just a pass through from the state and uh then a 2.75 for all staff. remember none of them have got even a cost of living raise in the last few years.

047So that's the starting place in our mind. But again, this is this is why I stressed you the other day, too. This is one of y'all's main functions. At the end of the day, I'm going to bring you you hire me to um to bring you comparatives, to be the expert in the room, so to speak, to give you what all the neighboring districts are doing, what the data says, what the research says. But at the end of the day with the budget, with the compensation package, I don't get a vote. The seven of you do. So, we're going to give you all the information that we we can and our best recommendation, which is what you hired us to do to bring to you a recommendation to run this district. Uh, at the, you

048know, again, at the end of the day, what you adopt is what you adopt. So, um, we want to we want to talk through what any of these numbers might look like today so everybody understands what the consideration is next week. So, let's take the V because it gets confusing. You say if we So let's take the va out off out off out off the table right now. Are the teachers and other employees getting a raise when school starts? I need a yes or no on it. That's what you have to vote on that. our our recommendation is the 2.75 for everybody. If you're a teacher, you're getting either 8,000, 5,000, or if you're a brand new teacher or 012 teacher, you're getting 1,000. So if we if we vote yes next Tuesday, everybody will

049get a raise at people. It's confusing because we going if and that. So I want to make the community know that something's coming if we vote that way. Something's coming uh in in the next meeting we have. Is that correct? That's right. Okay. Yes, sir. And so I'm assuming there will absolutely be a decision next next week. There's I'm assum I'm assuming the 2.75 is highest we can go, not three. Okay. The only from the previous meeting originally didn't have Correct. If you remember from the meeting before, we didn't have any steps for 012 because that was left off with House Bill 2 and a lot of other districts utilized that. So, even just to put that $1,000 in there for the 012, you see it added that 339. Um, so we had to shave

050off of a little bit from that 3% to be able to stay within that allocations that's coming through cuz if you see the current total puts us at 1.03 and what we're going to get from that is 1.041. Yeah. So so uh remember if if we took the thousand away from 012 teachers, Darl, I think we felt like we could get closer to that 3% Raven. Uh but that keeps our starting salary next year at 50. When we see the uh districts like Belleville, um Hempstead, College Station, the districts right around us were are all starting pretty close to 53, if not at 53 next year. Yeah. If you'll actually look at that handout I just gave y'all that y'all seen at the previous meeting. Um, since then the main one that I've been able

051to update is Belleville, Brian and Navasota all have adopted. And so if you see Navasota is at 52565 for their zero year, Brian is at 525 for their zeroyear teacher and Belleville's 53. Um, so if you look at almost every surrounding district, they're they're either at 53 or they're pushing pushing at 53. So that's why we're saying, hey, let's let's let's put a thousand there. It only gets all staff 2.75, but let's put a thousand there, get us to 51. Again, the conversation on the other side is uh with the additional Vader revenue, Raven, we want to start that zero teacher at 53 like the neighbors uh that she just uh read to you. So we going to reach the goal is our goal is our goal everybody's going to get a raise and if

052we voted on that that's that's the goal. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. And and we probably I know this is simple but we probably need to make sure everybody understands that that like that $8,000 they don't get it all in one lump sum. Okay. Uh and because a lot of teachers are hearing that they might get this money and everything. I just want to make sure that that they understand that this is part of their salary. Um not not $8,000 bonus of some. No. So sometimes you see um some sort of retention bonus. It can be written into a check, but a a lot of times when you see like a retention bonus, it is that one check. This uh you know Brenamistd boards have done that in the past. Um Kyle's talked about doing something

053uh similar as as some sort of retention practice. So you can do that. Uh but no, we're talking about um money written in monthly. Right. Right. So they understand that. And then I have another question. Um student teacher ratio. Uh are we going to does anybody know principles? Do y'all know are you going to have a smaller class sizes? says it'll be about the same. Any ideas here? About the same. Yeah. If you if you remember at the previous board meeting from the academic year from the previous to this, we cut 20 25 of those positions were educators. Um 10 administrators, five and a half were uh maintenance and custodial. Um and then if we look, which they're drafted right now, but just in our staffing studies, that's just from one fiscal year, the totality

054the last couple years, I think we were 36 teachers. um that we've we've lost in two two fiscal years. And when we looked at that 25 that we lost last year, just to replace hypothetically, that was what $2.4 million or something. So obviously with additional revenue from Evader gives you 2.4. You're you're kind of looking at different buckets, right? So, it's like how can we give an equity raise so that we are um keeping people here, we're also attracting people here, but new people getting dropped in the scale aren't outpacing the staff that we want to keep long-term in retention. And then what does that alleviate now that we can also put aside? So then next year, can we add some of these FTE backs like especially at the elementary grade levels um where we

055have high class sizes? So we'll still have some classes with Yeah. Because hypothetically, I mean, even if the Vader were to pass or we had a big revenue source where we could apply these, they passed in November, those immediately can get put into staff paychecks starting in November and then you um fix it throughout the year. you'd have to earmark it like going forward like Clay said as as you're able to do FTEES or if you don't fill some FTEEs then you would be able to utilize that in fund balance to have that autonomy to do those in the future. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. And so looking at kind of what the proposal was, if there's additional Vader revenue, it still left enough revenue available from Daryl's initial calculations to possibly add back 18 positions

056at 75,000 per position. So it did leave funds to add that back. 18 if we give everybody else raises. But I want to u make sure I go over a couple things. Um, first of all, first question I have is is uh the numbers you gave us, Darl, it says 1.041 is what our revenue increase is going to be. And then the updated chart at the bottom is 1.063. That's spending more than we're making. So, that's not possible. Um, but I'm assuming this is workshopping. So, I would like to halfway propose an edit to this and make it uh 2,000 raise for teachers at step 0, one, and two instead of one on the left side and three on the right side because I think that's a hybrid and that saves us approximately, based on

057my math, about $40,000, which is going to fix that problem. So, that's number one. Uh, number two, um, I know this is just proposed and this is just for us to workshop. And Raven, I think what you were kind of asking is a lot of what I've been getting questions about too. Who gets raises? When do we get raises and why do we get raises? How many raises? So, just to I guess use the analytical mind of making sure everybody knows exactly what the process is and kind of like what Clay was saying is teachers in year four, five, and six all get a $4,000 raise from the state. Teachers in years seven plus get an $8,000 raise from the state. Nobody else does except for we have this million dollars that we're supposed to

058spend on raises. It's how are we going to spend it? And it looks like we're looking at 2.75% is the max we're going to be able to do for non-teer staff, which is our paras and all the others. You know, the the the entire gambit of everybody that was in here. So, it's our job to figure out how much we're going to be able to do. However, I think I I I can't speak for the board, but I think you would all agree with me that I don't think that's enough, and I think everybody probably agrees. uh which is why we need to have that second discussion on the 12th of increasing our tax base of 3% having this Vader and doing that. I think it's a no-brainer. I think it's necessary. I think it

059has to happen and I've been calculating a ton a ton of numbers over here on what it would look like if we got that full 3 cent Vader increase. Uh I think it's almost mandatory for us to get the city behind us and get this passed. So, want to make sure I I mention that, Darl, on the on the one, two, and $3,000 on the 032 01 and two because those teachers do not get any raise whatsoever. And then, um wanted to make sure because we we can't be upside down. So, you understand exactly the what we're planning on doing is only doing the $1,000 raise if we don't have additional funds, and we're only planning on doing the teacher steps up to 25. So it's the the second chart, the one on the right

060would be obvious, you're right, we would have we would not have enough money. So we would need the additional funding from uh later or whatever. I think the step raise going up to teachers going up to step 30 for teachers should be and I think that should be done no matter what. And I don't see the extra $7,000 being that much of a hindrance. And if we if if if my math is correct, we take 180 and we take the benefits mandated at 256 and we take the 2.75 at 502 and then 3,000 raised for teachers. If you do the math backwards, that comes out to a little over 82,000. You do the math, that saves us approximately $40,000. So we would be at 1 uh two 1.02 instead of and we would be basically

06120,000 in the positive. And I think teachers 26, 27, 28, 29, 30 years should get an increase. A teacher here on year 28 should not get the same as a teacher in year 25. Again, I think everybody agrees with that. Um, I think that should be included no matter what. Period. So, I would like to have that in there. And then if we do our teachers instead of one, I think we should be at two. We're right there in the middle. And that puts us right at the same where Brian and College Station are. and puts us right at Navasota ahead of Somerville, slightly behind some of the others like Belleville and Celely. So, to me, it seems like a no-brainer. And then there's other things we can do once we get to Evader with

062more increases and more money and more raises. But with the 1.04 that we are getting, that would be my proposal on how we would take care of raising pay for everybody else. the same and you're changing 012 to 2000 or keeping the 180 for step raises. Correct. Changing 3,000 to 2,000 which would make that 82,000. Yes. Benefits have to stay the same and 2.75 stays the same. That comes to 1.04 approximately. I mean 1.02 approximately. I was going to say instead of that way we're 20,000 in the black from the 1.04. Yeah, I I was going to Does that make sense? Yeah, it it does make sense. So th those bottom two charts, basically we just need the the bottom left chart with the $1,000 012 updated to showing the correct benefits amount and then

063seeing what options there are there because that that chart does me no good with the benefits at 13% because it's it's kind of out out of date. So, just kind of updating updating that and then seeing an option at at $2,000 for the 012 teachers and maybe even a $2,500 option at 012 for the 012 teachers just so we can stay below stay below stay below the amount of money that we're that we're that is coming in from HB2 that we need to spend on the teachers that we need to spend on the teachers and staff uh per the requirements of the SSR ABC and the VA and the basic aotment. So, just trying to understand those numbers better and and um I definitely think we can all come to a an agreement, a conclusion

064and and an accurate vote, especially for what we know is coming in for HP2. And then this, like you said, the second step is is the Vader equation of what the maximum is that we can get, you know, if we can get the entire um you know, the the district uh the voting population for our district on board, which I I feel like as a team we can. Um, and then just kind of moving forward for that. So, yeah, I can definitely get that information updated this afternoon for y'all. [Music] What else? Anything else you need that's not uh again, we we run this and run this and run this and run this. So, um, if if that's the only thing that you need, then I feel like, uh, the team here did a pretty

065good job of, uh, getting what you need to to make a decision. again. Uh we'll bring you after we have this new bit of information, Kyle and uh Justin, um after we have this new bit of information, um we'll use that in our calculations, bring you a recommendation. It's no different than any uh you know, board decision. Somebody, one of you will have to make a motion of some sort. I would assume that's going to um create a little bit of of healthy conversation. Again, let me say this. When I say that, hey, thank God we're having this conversation, right? Um, so, um, I I welcome this conversation. Wish we could have had it last year. Um, anything else that y'all need beyond that, uh, one one piece there? We're not having a potential future

066Vader conversation yet. Correct. We're just talking about what we have and not what we hopefully want and ideas on what to do with that. I'm just making sure. We're not talking about potential Vader because yeah, I I'd like to So, good good question. talk about it if we if we can or should, but if that's a conversation better had later, then let's So, let's let's uh let's have the strategic planning committee make um their formal uh recommendation to you as far as um you know, as far as uh the INS uh for potential bond uh and the M for a potential vader. Um, I think that would probably be the best time to to have that. Uh, they're uh you're you know, you've got the final say. They're going to bring to you a recommendation

067um not to exceed uh the uh golden pennies that are considered here. Um that goes directly to the decision you made last meeting. Remember, not to go beyond these three pennies. So, um they'll bring you a recommendation within these three pennies and um like I say at uh at some point through this healthy conversation um somebody's going to have to make a recommendation of some sort. We'll get you started in the conversation as we're going to bring you our recommendation. Okay? And um and let me say, you know, I I appreciate the passion and the consideration and we all want to do something for the staff and and I I feel very fortunate that that so many of you take a deep deep look um because it matters to you. Uh I'm I'm so so

068thankful for that. Um I've got a dedicated team here that works 60 hours a week minimum and they're going to bring to you their very expert opinion. Okay. So, um I would I would encourage you to take a strong consideration of that and um of course you can vary from that as much as you as a board decides to. Um but um this team right here, it's it's not just a hobby for them. Okay. Um so here hear them out and uh have a conversation and and like I say at some point next week, somebody's gonna have to make a motion. Yes, sir. I don't know that Kyle's question was actually answered. Okay. And I kind of have the same question. Um, so right now we're just talking about the pot of money that we

069are going to receive from the state, which is at $1 million, whatever. We then need to have a separate hypothetical conversation whether it needs to happen now or what I'm trying to find out about what we're going to do with a hypothetical three cent Vader money which you just talked a bunch about the strategic plan. But what I'm trying to find out is do we have to have a plan for the Vader money by the by next Tuesday? And if we do, we need to figure it out now. Yeah. Because that conversation needs to happen separate from the conversation that we're having already about the guaranteed money. Yes. Yeah. We can definitely have some of that conversation. The the strategic planning committee is going to bring you a recommendation. Several of you avoiding a quorum

070are on that committee. You know the way that's trending. Um by design. uh you know we report out that information to you cons just so continuously if you're not on that committee if you are on that committee again by design you're there so you have an ear to just exactly what those conversations are. So yes, we can um we can start the conversation today with an understanding that we don't have a we don't have to make a decision until next week, but if there's any sort of questions or conversations that you just want to have to sort of get us started down the road, then we can we can do that. So it's I mean it's your it's your floor. Any of you want to say something to the other board members? This is what

071I think. This is where I think we should start. then that I I welcome that. Just know we don't have to land that plane today. Right. And I I think it's important too for us to realize that people are going to vote on this Vader. And so it's important that everybody understands what it is and how would it affect them and how would it affect the community? And so I I think that's important too. You know, we we're just we're planning ahead. We we all know that that Vader's going to go through and the public is going to love it and uh life will be good. Uh but yeah, I know. But uh in the meantime, we also have to remember we've got voters out there who need to know more about it and understand

072it so that when this comes to pass and when it is passed, everything's going to be fine. Right. Do can I answer the question too with this that uh part of the reason I wanted this meeting today, this workshop today is is for the the very question you're asking. You have a lot of decisions to make in a week. Okay? You've got to you've got to hear the strategic planning committee out. Um you've got to adopt a tax rate. Um and um you've got to decide on a budget if we only have what we have or if we end up with some more because some additional uh fader revenue. So again, we've got numbers for you now. We'll have a strong recommendation for you next week as we are I've already kind of planted a

073seed where we are. Um but uh we'll have a strong recommendation and then and then y'all you know at at the end of the day you make the decision. So if y'all want to start the conversation now then uh please do. Real quick, Darl, I have a question. If we go from 51 to 5 or $1,000 raise for teachers at step zero, one, and two, then go to 52, like I said, at 2,000, does that impact the um tax implications? I'm assuming that means you're paying a little bit more taxes, a little bit more benefits, a little bit more all that, too. Did I push my button? I did. Okay. um how much of an effect does that have going from one to 2,000 or from two to three? Um and is that calculated in

074this number where you give us the 123 or is that a separate number? Where is that effect at? So yeah, the 123,000 that you see there on the second chart, that does include uh the $3,000 increase and the that's the 111,000 the gross pay and then the 12,210 is the benefits on the 3,000. So if we go down to 2,000 then the 111 goes down and Okay, so that does include all of the above. Okay, got it. Just making sure I wanted to make sure I got that straight. And then Yeah, bless you. Um rough math. The 2000 is it 82,140? Yeah. Yeah. It's at the 1.02 which would give us $20,000. Correct. Slight black wiggle room of whatever new teacher comes on board, new parent comes on board, new subset, whatever. Um, it just

075gives you a little bit more wiggle room because if we go up at all from that, we're going to be crossing from black to red. Yeah, sorry. I was doing a lot of calculations, so no offense, Clay, but I heard about half of what you said, but are we I think you always hear about half of I'm just That's true. That's true. I selective hearing, you know. Um, so yes, we are talking about the future potential Vader options, right? I don't like to lean in. Do you have my mic volume good? Okay, cool. Um, I spent a lot of time on this and normally I don't spend this much time on something, but I feel like this is a big deal. It's a big decision. So, I really wanted to make sure I was a

076creative, b thinking outside of the box because that's just kind of how I want to come up with something, but I want to be kind of analytical about it as well. So what I did and this is mostly for uh the rest of the board here. Um what I did was the step raises are a guaranteed expense, right? So that first column 180 that's you know that's already that's going to be spent no matter what in my opinion. Right? The and I'm skipping the teachers right now. If we go down to the benefits mandated that's guaranteed going to be spent, right? So now it's back up to the teachers. What I just proposed a second ago was $2,000, right? And so if we look forward to if this Vader passes, if we have this three

077cents, right, when I love your optimism, Bonnie, but I'm just if it passes, we need to be transparent about what we want to do with that money. I feel like Okay. And that's that's been what I've been saying for two and a half years is all about transparency on the board. And so, um, and I feel like everybody here agrees we need to be transparent. Otherwise, we're wasting our time and it's not going to pass. So, if we do $2,000 for 01, and two, I believe whatever that percentage increase comes out to, or it's a flat 2,000 for every single teacher, 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 all the way to 30, however many years they've been here, your salary should increase by $2,000 all the way up. And I calculated that math.

078And if we do it that way, that puts us Where was my numbers at? Um Kyle, I know. I understand that. I'm talking about giving instead of because this whole conversation is about how much of a raise are we going to give our teachers? What percentage raise, right? So, I'm equating let's delete the percentage number of 3% or 2% or 5%. Delete that. Whatever that percentage increase is, I think it should be a 2,000. It should end up being $2,000. And based on my math, it's right at about 3 and a half%. Okay, 3.6, 3.4, I don't know the exact numbers, but a 3 and a half whatever percent increase, which would give every teacher on the entire pay raise pay scale a $2,000 raise. So, yeah, go ahead. I've heard you talk about this

079before. So I want to be sure what's the difference in when we take our current pay scale. We move the zero I'm the zero teacher from 50 to 53 as we've discussed. We take the topend teacher of 25 uh Christie which is currently like 63 and we put it at 30 which comes out to without the $8,000. No that's with that's with the $8,000. The math I came up with. So when we when we make that shift, what's the percent difference? Because I think aren't we pretty close to that already with what what Kyle's asking for. Is that not what we're bottom? So while he's calculating, because Darl might need a minute while he's calculating, what I was looking at is we, you know, we have on on our website the teacher pay scale and

080we have it in our whatever you call that thing. Thank you. The compensation handbook. I've tried to say that like five times and I keep forgetting what it's called. Compensation handbook. the teacher scale. Whatever the number is, make it plus $2,000 all the way across the board. All the way up. Um, looks like Brook's about to pull. Yes, there it was. Oh, you just had it. There it goes. So, pick a number, add $2,000 to it. Across the board. My calculations say that it's going to cost the district approximately 791,000 to do that. Okay. You want to round it up to eight? Round it up to eight because I'm probably doing really fast iPhone calculations on my math. But anyway, I'm talking about my proposal across the board. What I was saying next was what

081we've all been focused on is the non-exempt. Okay? We want to make sure we get them a big raise. I think in addition to the 2.75, in the end it should equal 7%. And I'll give you more on that in a second. But that 7% number, if you turn to page three, I think that number comes out to 673,000. Is that right? 6729 or something. So round it up. $673,000. Yeah. So, go to page three, top right corner. Hourly staff non-exempt CN1, CN7, CT1, CT8, IS-1, IS6, MA, whatever. Yeah. 672. So, round it up of $102 and we're at 673, right? I'm just using easy math here. You're not you're not talking versus instructional. That was everybody in that group. That wasn't breaking them down into two separate groups. That was all the hourly staff.

082Every single hourly staff employee. Not breaking it out. All hourly. Correct. All the hourly, aka all the non-exempt. Yes. All of them. 7%. talking I don't think your mic's on. Yeah, we've talked about the the paras uh being that clerical staff and instructional support paras and then we've talked about all the hourly but you mean yes I mean all cuz even though our paras are behind all our hourly are behind as well I think for the most part I mean probably 80% of them I feel like are behind and it doesn't matter they like you said earlier they haven't had a raise this takes care of that this puts them in pace this puts them in line and it gets them where they need to be. Yeah. No, I% I appreciate the thought. I just

083want to remind everybody the focus on that group was because as uh was it just last year we child nutrition got a bump. Uh when we brought transportation in house from Durham, they got a bump and we were brought custodial in house from ABM, they got a bump. So the one group that has not received again are those classroom support paras and the the clerical staff office staff paras. That's the only reason we differentiated if you wanted to take an extra look at that that smaller group. But no, I appreciate the thought of 7% for all of them as well. Well, when I was looking at this, I didn't have them separated out. So, having them separated might make it a little bit different. We can adjust those. Again, this is the 30,000 foot approach

084proposal. And we can change it from there. But that was the other one. And then for which would be page two, right? Our exempt. Is that what it is? Professional staff. all the exempt, right? Okay. Um, and I know it's not exciting, but I I definitely don't think it needs to be the same. It doesn't need to be as high. And so, I calculated in 2% raise, which puts us at 173,000 for that. And I know it's not the three or four or 5% that everybody was hoping, but these are salary. They're making more. And I'm I'm focusing more of our resources on the hourly non-exempt. And then the last thing I did was I calculated how many and this I what I asked y'all for and I so I know the rest of the

085board y'all saw the email asking for um how many years do we have based on all of the employees in the entire district. And I did the math. I added it all up. It took me a while, but I did the math on how many people have been here for one year. How many have been here for two years? somebody been here for every every single year all the way through and then looked at what if we gave everybody a bonus based on their their time of service at the school, not as a school employee overall, but just in Brennham, because those were just Brenham numbers. And what I came up with is if we do a $100 per year of service, so in other words, you've been here for eight years, that's at $800.

086If you've been here for 15 years, that's $1,500. Does that make sense? for every year of service, $100. My calculations came to a little bit under 600. It was closer to like 560, but round it up $600,000. You add all those numbers up, every single number of all the bonuses, all the raises, everything comes out to 2.7 million. We have a total, and I'm including the 1.04 that we have, we have a total of 3.4. So that gives us extra wiggle room, extra fluff to hire an extra kindergarten teacher or two or three, an extra first grade teacher, and very importantly add money to our general fund because it is dangerously scarily low. So this was just my proposal. This is what I spent a couple hours on trying to figure it out. I'm sure

087y'all spent time trying to figure out other numbers and other things, but if we're going to have that discussion, I figured I'll at least shoot first and tell you what I came up with. And those are my numbers. That's my thoughts. There. There it is. If we received extra um VADER revenue. Um so I forgot where I was uh originally at. Britney, I was on a flow there and you just Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you very much, Jared. Uh we wouldn't hire those teachers until spring, right? So that allows you to put that money back that you allotted for those positions until they're hired. I I mean let's say for example we um we put money back for all 25 teaching positions that uh that we absorbed 25 plus um you know you you don't

088want to just hire the first 25 applicants and you know once this once this were to pass through uh by the voters. So as as we uh market you know for those positions and uh and and we have people that we would love to join this family then we fill those. In the meantime again those FTEES the money allotted for those full-time uh employees is in your your fund balance. So did anybody have any questions? I just wanted to push back a little, Kyle. Just want to bring something up for consideration, you know, as we're looking at, you know, you mentioned, um, and I definitely appreciate the passion for our clerical, our instructional support, and our teachers. Um, but I do want to as I, you know, work with new hires and work with staff

089retention, looking at the professional, um, not non-exempt staff, um, no, the professional exempt staff. I want to point out several of the positions, um, educational diagnosticians, school counselors, assistant principles. So many of the people in those positions we've hired within the last three years. So if they came with no experience and they're a brand new assistant principal, they are towards the bottom of that pay scale and they're on that minimum salary. So looking at those and 2% so they've been here three years, they could leave us and go somewhere else and be dropped into their salary scale and make something much greater. So I really, you know, just want to point out that we do want to continue to retain those staff as well. Of course. And that's where the bonus comes in to help

090out to help want them to continue to be here, which is why somebody's been here three years, it's only 300 bucks, but it's 300 bucks. Um, however, if we have a limited amount of funds, so we have to choose where we're going to spend it, and we need to spend it at the people who need it the not somebody who's got a $50 $2,000 salary. Somebody who makes $18,000 a year is who I feel like needs that bonus more. And so, I'm sorry, but that's just where I I want to make sure our teachers are rewarded and kept and retained. And I want to make sure our non-exempt hourly lower income are kept and retained and appreciated. And that's also where a bonus of $500 for your fifth year for somebody who makes $20,000 a

091year. That's a large amount of money. And that's actually changing that 7% closer to probably 10%. If you think about it, but yeah, there's only So I would love to have a $10 million influx so we could give everybody large raises. In fact, maybe the board could get paid. But I'm just kidding. It was a joke. It was a joke. But my point is, if we have to pick and choose, I'm going to I'm going to re I'm going to point my resources and allocate them accordingly to whoever needs the the most whoever has the highest need. And so that's where um I'll push back on that. But uh yeah, if if we had more, sure. I mean, there's also an argument to say we need the three cent Vader to turn around and put

092100% of it into our general fund. uh because we can't even go a month without uh operating with with zero income. I mean, our our our general fund is so low it's dangerous. Um we're at two weeks and we we need to be at 3 months. So, we can go a lot of different ways. The extreme radical version of it, but I I feel like this is a very liberal way of spending money. I feel like we're giving it out and saying, "Here, you get a raise and you get a raise and you get a raise." It's almost like Oprah in here. Um, I you can't give everybody everything, you know. So, that's that's just why I came up with that. But again, this is just an idea. This is the 30,000 foot view. That's

093our job to come in and hone in on specifics. This is just what I thought of. We want to change it. That's obviously up to us to figure out what we're going to do with it and how it's going to play out. Yeah. No, again, I like I said beginning, appreciate the passion and and what how deep all of you are looking into this. It is a big decision as I point out. It's one of the biggest decisions you make as a board. Um, I want to tell you again, when we make a recommendation to you, it's going to be based off of a lot of data and research. Uh, what school districts around us are doing, what school districts across the state are doing, what districts approximately our size in our area are doing.

094Um, so, um, I and Kyle, you've got a lot of professional staff that would agree. you know, most of I said the other day when I was talking to some new teachers how um you they look so forward to those students coming in as we we all do, but as a leader um you know, you feel that same way about your teachers. So to your point, I mean, you just absolutely want to take care of those teachers and and and the hourly employees that work for you because we're all in the service business and we want to take care of them. Also though, I you know, I want to bring to you a a professional expert opinion based off of the other professional staff. they're not teachers that that are administrators know that when you

095consider a compensation package, um you're doing the same thing for your teachers. Of course, you're not just considering a raise for the current staff. You're consider considering a competitive market value uh for bringing other people in. So, you want to look at your your top level teachers. Yes. What are they getting? Um, at the same time, you're going to have assistant principal positions open up and um, you know, you're going to have teachers that go to school, go to graduate school, get their masters or principal certification to become an assistant principal um, andor or or principal. Um, is it worth doing that? Is it worth going back to school, getting that master's degree, stepping up into that position for the number that you have connected to that position? So, those are all all considerations you

096have to have. What does our top level teacher make? What does our first year AP make? Um, we that's that's the numbers we bring to you. um again based off of the districts around us in our market and across the state of Texas. So when we when we bring you a recommendation next week and it's going to be pretty close to what we're talking about now. I liked um that conversation that uh Kyle and Justice Justin took us down earlier um with a new look at at some of that. Um so we'll tweak our recommendation um a little bit, but we're going to make a recommendation based off of those around us. Like I say, at the end of the day, y'all have to have that conversation. We're going to give you our opinion. Um

097I don't I don't get a vote. Seven of you do. And let me say this, and I said it to this group um before we walked in here. Whatever Whatever you approve, we're going to do it better than anybody else. That's our that's our job is to execute it, to put it in motion. So, we're going to give you a very professional uh maybe passionate, just like you bring passion, we bring passion, too. Maybe passionate opinion. Um, at the end of the day, you make the decision and we'll make it happen. Any other questions or comments about any of this? Anything else we can get to you before uh that day next week? Archer, I saw that uh we are still still giving $1,000 to those teachers who get their master's degree or have their

098master's degree. Is that still correct? What about those who get their uh their PhD uh How many do we have to how many do we I think it is just the $1,000 for the masters for the masters and it's for teaching teaching staff. So if you're in you know if you're an assistant principal you that's a requirement of being in that position. So you do do not get that if you're do you know off top of your head uh how many master's degrees we have in the district. There are quite a few, but I don't know off the top of my head, but there are quite a few, which is good. We encourage them to go back to school, but but that stays put. We'll still have that available to them. Okay. Thank you, Sarah.

099Do our professional exempt staff, our APS, and those folks that we're talking about earlier, do they receive the teacher incentive a lotment, are they eligible for that? No. The state is looking into doing like a schoolwide for principal teacher incentive aotment but right now it's only for 087. So our teachers that are studentf facing 50% of the time the state the legislative is in discussion about that but right now no. Hey great uh great question and point. Can you just for the sake of the listeners and the board as we're talking about compensation possibilities, can you kind of update us um just as to when we might first see uh some benefits from TIA? So this year we are we received June 1st that we were eligible, our application was accepted. This year will be

100our data capture year. So we have to pass over 13 validation checks by Texas Tech to make sure that our data that's who TA outsources it to is Texas um Texas Tech to make sure that we are positively correlating. What that means is if we have a student growth measure that's very high and a test score that test is the rubric in which we use to evaluate teacher practice then that not is low then that's negatively correlated. So they're looking for alignment in that. And so we will find out, we'll submit all of our data in 2026, like the fall of 2026. We will find out the summer of 2027. If we passed data capture, if we pass data capture, then teachers that we put forth for a designation to receive that incentive would be

101eligible for payout in the fall of 2027. We're working on our teacher incentive aotment handbook right now to have it up and ready to go by the time teachers come back. We're doing it in phases. So right now we have phase one which is a lot of our core teachers that will be eligible and then we're looking into moving into phase two and phase three to try to include more teachers. Um applications come due April 15th for us to expand what we originally submitted to expand into phase 2 and phase one. But it is a rigorous robust educator evaluation system. But it does increase teachers compensation if they earn it because it's performancebased. So it's not a guarantee. Um if they earn that then it can increase their pay. Legislator did add an additional designation

102so that it should uh hit about 50% of teachers. Now thanks for that info. I was just thinking about how we can get some of those folks a little bit more money because I do agree with CJ, but I also agree with Kyle as well. We've got to get those pair of professionals, non-exempt hourly staff up to where they need to be. That's my top priority. That's my sole priority in this exercise is getting them up to where they need to be. And so I know that 2% is a is a little bit rough, but at the end of the day, we're trying to and everybody here understands this, we're trying to stretch so much money as far as it goes, and we're just trying to find a middle ground where we can all agree

103and I think we're doing a good job of that so far. Um, just some more creative ideas like Kyle mentioned of the retention bonus I think is a great idea, something that very few districts do in my research. Something that would make us special and different and unique and I'm all for that. So, that's just kind of my thoughts. Uh, yeah. When Kyle first asked me for that, we looked around. Uh, we found a Do you want to pass that out? I think we gave him uh the closest neighboring district we found that did something similar was from uh was that Belleville Christy Belleville. So this is what uh Belleville ISD is is doing. Again looked into this after uh Khaled uh expressed an interest not in Belleville but just just the idea. So uh

104this is the closest district we found doing it. This is what they're doing. So, if that's something you want to do and consider, uh, a lot of times when you see this done, um, it is done, Bonnie, you asked about being distributed across the paychecks. Um, a lot of times when you see this piece done, it's done on its own, Darl, like almost at maybe at Christmas or at the end of the school year or whatever they um whatever the board wants to do there. So, that's that's when you see that done. And it's it's really neat if you time it right, you know. um pretty cool to receive in uh November, December um at Christmas time. It's it's a pretty neat extra um bump. Uh something to consider Christie um is if when you

105do it like that or Daryl uh maybe the money is not in considered in your TRS credit that is that right? Yes, that's correct. If it's a a single payment and it's not for services provided like your regular pay is, it uh is not TRS creditable. That's TRS's rules. It has to be actually paid out in normal regular installment payments as you earn the money. Uh so for this basically they look at that as a bonus which they don't count as as credible. They they also payments, right? They do pay tax on Yes, they would have to be tax because instead of getting a $1,000 check, you're going to get probably $750, right? Yeah. Medicare and and income tax, all that would still be that gets taken. It just wouldn't be TRS tax because it

106wouldn't If you remember the year that we got retention bonus, I was still in the classroom here. We got them at Christmas, but the board calculated it that way so that everybody got $1,000. Exactly. So, it covers So, yeah. So, y'all calculated in the cost. Yeah. So the tax ahead of time was I think it was I think we did that. Yes, it was through was done at Christmas. Hey, read if you didn't do so read uh what we just gave you from Belleville ISD. Take just a a second and read that. I mean that's that's an important point. That's why it was c Do Yeah. Would you please? Um, so it says whatever board the trustees adopting a budget that include resources dedicated to the enhancement enhancement and retention stipens. These stipens serve as

107a public purpose to the benefit of blank ISD to seek and retain employees and increase morale. These stipens will be implemented pursuant to the compensation plan and availability of funding to support these stipens. If funding is not available as determined by the board of trustees and superintendent to support these stipens, there shall be no obligation to these stipens. Specifically, the sup specifically the board is budgeting a December enhancement stipen based on the graduated plan by BISD years of service. The board of trustees also reserves the right to admin budget and to provide enhancement or retention stipens at other times during the year if funding becomes available. And the stipen serves as a public purpose and benefits. And then you can kind of see there's some asterisks underneath the chart that they gave. Um that just

108reiterates the amounts listed above will be based on available funds as determined by the superintendent. And then enhancement retention stipens are adopted on a per employee basis. The number of positions does not dictate the number of stipens, one stipen per employee. So, the reason I point that out is um you saw more of these even lately as funding has gotten really tight um because you didn't know if you could predict um if you could project let's say in the next five, six, seven, eight years we'll be able to continue this. you just uh financially ISDs across the state um have been a little unstable and uh instead of moving the pay scale they gave a a retention bonus uh so that they could if they had to to function they could take it away. So

109but at the same time it is a it is a pretty cool gesture. It is a unique thing that's uh neat to do. I think Brooks said hey that'd be awesome to do before Black Friday. you know, I mean, there's there's some there's some uh there's some uh there's some cool uh factors to it. So, something else to uh consider and uh thank you for bringing this one up. Yeah, I just I do want to make a note there, a point. I'm not a huge fan of anything compensation that's got the word stipen attached to it because it's obviously can be taken away. So, I I feel like, you know, taking that question out like, is the board going to take this away in the future? A different board comes in, they're going to take

110this away, and I don't I don't want I don't want to give the future boards that option. So, that's where, you know, make sure that whatever we do vote on, it's not the wording is not in there a stipen. There's no asterisk attached to it. Um, you know, the amounts listed above will be based on available funds. I don't want that. I don't want any of that included in the conversation because it's like we have to take care of our teachers and our staff. um our staff more than our teachers. Our teachers are have been taken care of by the state. I feel like um for this year and next year, uh we do need to to look at our zero one two-year teachers, but I think we needed to really step up and take

111care of our staff. Um and I would like to see uh possibly some a little bit more breakdown of you've pulled out the clerical and technical and then the instructional support. Can we see the other bucket of what's left in that uh non-exempt uh employees? I can do the math, but it's you can probably you can you can do a lot quicker in your Excel sheet than than me over here scribbling and messing something up. Um, but that way we can really, you know, Archer said his his main goal is to take care of those the instructional and clerical support staff. Um, I think we just kind of verify those numbers there because like your your nutrition seen a bump, your transportation seen a bump and I think they're in that same category of non-exempt.

112So, I think if we can kind of separate those out and just, you know, and I hate to it's play with the numbers, work the numbers um to where we can get the maximum benefit uh for for each of the the categories and the groups that are there. But, um I I can't wait to hear the recommendations, further recommendations from the from the staff here based off of our conversations today. Um, I will say again, I don't want anything with the word stipen attached to it because I don't want the question from the teachers or the staff or uh principles, counselors that, hey, is the board going to take this away from us next year or the year after that? Um, I don't I don't want to I don't want to play those games. I

113agree. I don't want to take it away either. I I don't care how we word it. Yeah, I'm delete the whole paragraph as far as I'm concerned. It's just a you know, retention bonus period. Um, $100 per year of service period. every employee, all of them. I don't care where you work. If you're um working in the cafeteria, if you're a librarian, if you're a custodian, if you're maintenance, uh if you work in the administration office, I don't care. Every single staff member, I feel like if you work at BISD, it's a BISD retention bonus. And no, I don't want it to go away. I want it to be there. So, if you do leave or somebody has left and they decide, you know what, I kind of want to go back and they did

114work here for four years and they left, well, those four years count. Now, you're on year five. So, let's get you set up for that. Um, and yeah, I agree. I'd like to see more breakdown, but I'm kind of the mindset I think all hourly employees need a raise. Um, that's that's at that same number. But either way, but yes, back to your point. I completely agree. Uh I don't want any technically every future board adopts the budget uh based on compensation but they could all change it but I I don't want it to be easy. Hey let me make uh one more point to you as we bring you some numbers next week. Uh remember that uh while a lot of districts around us struggled um some districts still gave raises that maybe couldn't

115afford to do so by dipping into their fund balance. Okay. And uh we couldn't afford to do that as you all know we could not dip into fund balance to do that. So no like I looked at no but the point being even though whileion people were struggling you know just like we were a lot of them still dipped into their fund balance to give raises. So again I want to say that our staff has not gotten even a cost of living raise uh in in several adopted budgets now. So, we feel like we've got to make up some ground uh when we make this decision. Okay. So, it's it's uh it's about it's about uh those that are with us and recruiting um a a a healthy staff um in the future, putting that

116best face in front of that uh that campus, that classroom, which Sarah has talked uh a lot about. So, anything else for us? Anything else you need to see? So I just want to ask um my other colleagues how are I agree with you Justin about the language related to these stipens. I think it should be absolutely permanent never go away. How are we how are we feeling about this approach? Do we like it? Do we not like it? Um correct. I I do like the idea of it. I just wonder if teachers wouldn't rather just have that as part of their salary instead of as a stipen for them. Like if we take that money and just give it to them throughout the year instead of once a year. I mean I I have

117to think about it that way too. I mean I would I love to get one. Absolutely. That'd be fantastic to have a little extra money right before school starts. I'm right before Christmas or something. But you know what? What we have to think about what's best for them is does it have this on a monthly basis to where they're getting more and it's helping with their daily bills and everything that they have or once a year? It's a it's a good question to ask. Right. So, I don't necessarily disagree, but if I'm a if I'm a staff that's on the edge of potentially leaving, no matter the money that's already in my pocket because I'm just fed up or whatever, if I'm on the edge of leaving and then I get another little something on

118the side, I mean, that would encourage me to stay. And for me, that's a that's a big deal. We got to retain our people. I don't know. That's just my opinion. I understand that. I I agree. But if you have a 5-year teacher and you're going to give them 500 bucks, that's not going to sway them enough to stay when they're going to another school district and making seven, eight, $10,000 more a year. You know, $500 is not going to move the needle for a lot of those teachers. Sure. I agree. Um, and that's why I think we need to take Waller out of this discussion because we can't compete with them. They're a 6A school. They're growing tremendously and they pay $10,000 more than we do. Uh, but every other district on this list

119we need to be talking about. We can't I mean, if somebody wants to go for $10,000 more, there's nothing we can compete with them. However, the bonus from the state is half. So, they get four instead of eight. So, we're we're helping to draw that gap a little bit. And then an extra bonus on top of that helps. and then our raise helps. But when I sat down and calculated this and I thought about it, I the state took care of the teachers and we're giving them a raise and a bonus as well. I was looking at the the person um that's making $22,000 a year and $29,000 a year. Those people get on their eighth year, 10th year, they get a $1,200 bonus or whatever that number is. That's a large number and it's

120increasing that 7% to 8 n 10%. It wasn't necessarily helping the teacher out as much which it will help close that gap just a tad but we can't compete with Waller. But if this will help attract from Belleville and Burton and Snook and Navasota and get those teachers here as well. Instead of us only recruiting what's left of whoever else left the district to go somewhere else, we're able to recruit people from other districts that are interested in coming here. Because when our principles are interviewing three people for five positions is not helpful. But if they're interviewing 10 people for four, five positions, it's a lot easier. And so if our salary is is in line, because if we go up $2,000, $1,000, $3,000, whatever, we are at the top of everybody else except for

121Waller or really close within a couple hundred bucks, right? If we go up $2,000, then we are literally $1,200 away from the from the highest district around us, and we're over half of the districts. We're beating most of them. So, I'm not competing with Waller because we can't I mean, let's just let's just call the spade a spade. can't compete with a $62,000 starting teacher pay. We just can't. We can compete with Celely Hemstead College Station, Brian Belville, Navasota, Somerville Cwell, getting Snoke, Burton, and Roundtop. We can compete with them and we are competing with them and I think we can compete very well with them. And this just is an extra cherry on top is is my only point. But my focus was doing this bonus. It's something to whether it's a 1% boost,

122but it's something that helps everybody else, not just the teachers. The teacher on five years, $500, I know it's not going to move the needle for that person. the teacher that's on their 20th year getting a $2,000, yeah, that definitely moves the needle. But the PAR that's here or the custodial staff that's been here for 20 years getting a $2,000 bonus, that's a 10% increase in their pay for the most part. And that's a huge deal. You're talking about for Vader or within the Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to clarify for everybody. Absolutely. This is Vader only conversation. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's it's a six in one, a hand, a half dozen in the other. When you talk about what to do with it, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm I'm

123not overly upset about either idea. I say either way, we're trying to give the teachers and the staff more money, and that's a good thing regardless of how we give it to them. You know, I mean, like you said, thank God we're having this conversation cuz these are fun discussions to actually have when we have a little bit of hopefully a little bit of money to play with to pay everybody, you know. I mean, it's I've been my fifth year here and then we've given 4% 5% and then nothing. So 9% a couple years back and I mean people are struggling and any way we can get them more money, we got to figure it out. So Kyle, I'm not like I said, I'm not fighting you on it or or battling. I was just

124we're just playing devil's advocate and talking out loud. It's it's like I said, I'm not I'm not mad about it. I mean, we can go either way. As long as I get money, I don't care. The one thing I want to say is I'm I'm personally very unique. I love being unique. I take pride in being unique. And I think if we do this um loyalty retention bonus, whatever you want to call it, we can put a sign on our door that says we have something special and unique that very few other people have. And I'm and I'm all about that because everybody else is doing the same thing we're doing. They're giving potentially straight raises with the money that they get from the state. And if they're doing a Vader, they're having similar conversations.

125But this is something that very few districts are doing. And I think we need to give it strong consideration with all of the different asterisks that we've discussed, the language, all of that. Um, but I like being unique and I want Brenhamd to be unique. That's a good point, Archer. And and as for the wording, I mean, luckily we have very good lawyers that'll tell us exactly how we need to word. Yeah. And we got uh chat GPT over there, Brooke. So, um does anybody else have any questions? Are we are we uh feel pretty good about this? Thank God y'all are here. And thank you so much for the work you've put into this. And as we think to the future, too. I I there's nobody who's going to know what's going to happen

126in the future, but I just know that the people who are working on this, they realize that this is important and we we can't make mistakes at this point. We want to make it right. And so, and you know, and and Darl, God bless you. And people like you, people like you, I know. I know. and uh because he knows what a lot of things that we don't know about what could happen in the future, how it could look, what it could be like, you know, what what what are some of the issues that we probably don't know about. And I've been in the school business a long time, but I've never done your job. So, and that's good, too. Thank God for that. Uh, but I think we'd be I think we'd be in

127trouble without I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure. Hey, I'm going to recap just real quick for people listening because we were having a lot of budget conversations in one conversation. So, just to recap and correct me if I I make any missteps. So, when we're talking about House Bill 2 outside of the four and the eight pass through where it looked like we landed was adjusting the step raise for teachers to 30 for 30 years. Uh looking at adjustments for 2,000 raise for teachers at 012. then the pass through for the mandated benefits and then 2.75 for everyone else. That pretty much locks in majority of what we were talking about from House Bill 2. The last half of this discussion we just had was about if we had additional revenue in the district in

128our case in terms of evader. Other districts, if you'll look at that sheet I gave you, have been doing that through their fund balance um their 012 and other things which we know is not an option here in Britamist D. So that conversation will be at the the 14 the 12th the August 12th meeting where we will adopt a 2526 budget and hear the recommendation for strategic planning on what a potential additional things we could do [Music] on real quick. Um, Darl, just to throw another wrinkle, if so, if we were if we were to drop that to the 2,00 uh for the 012 teachers, it'll come out real close, but there's an opportunity to bump that to 3% for the uh all non-eing staff. I already made enough to go back and check on

129that. Okay. Yeah, cuz again kind of based on my rough calc my rough calculations here, if you drop those teachers, it would be $82,000 after uh benefits and it's like 46,000 uh to bump 2.75 to 3%. So I again, if we can get to 3%, I know Raven would be happy about that with the HP2 funding um for all non-teing staff and I think everyone else on the board would support that. And then it does make uh the next conversation for additional compensation a little easier uh and and kind of where we go for the next steps after that. So I agree. Uh he I was just going to say I was going to reiterate to three sounds a heck of a lot better than 2.75 which is what I just told you. I'm like

130that does I mean it doesn't only sound better. It is better. But I would almost venture I'd almost venture to say well if we can't get to three then I'd rather go to 1500 for teachers and get to three. I think the three should be a priority above going from one to two. You know what I mean? I I actually agree with you because I think that would be it it's a lot broader for a lot more people. We'll see what we can do. Yeah. Yeah. It does impact more people because you've got uh you've got 37 37 teachers that are in that 012 category. I'm not saying they don't need to be touched impacted by uh some adjustment, but I 37 new teachers versus 800 other employees. it it or not it's not for

131all non-eing staff. So another 500 employees. Yeah. It does it it impacts more people across the board. So if you look you can get creative because a lot of these are 52,250 you know that's their starting salary. So we don't it doesn't have to be a se a solid number. We can tinker with it you know to get there. I want to I want to say one other thing just kind of hedging hedging the community a little bit to be clear. We're ha Brook kind of said it, but we're having two separate conversations. One of them is relatively hypothetical on the passage of a Vader. The other is not with the money from the state that we're already getting. So on next Tuesday on the 12th, we are voting, correct me if I'm wrong, voting

132on what we're going to do with the pot of money that we're already getting from the state. how we're going to divvy that out. And then we don't necessarily have to have a plan for the Vader, but we would like to. There's no voting on that. Just discussion. We're also on the 12th. We're going to vote if we're going to do a Vader or not. Right. We're going to vote on that, but we're not voting on how to use it is what I'm saying. We still have we still have to have a budget. Correct. Correct. Well, I mean, that's that's how part of the budget. So you have to have a budget showing if a Vader passes and the compensation manual if they if they pass which is part of the reason. Okay. Right. Yes.

133Yes. Okay. Right. Correct. I want that that to be clear to the community. Sorry if I confuse anyone. No, just again very thankful that we're having this conversation. I feel like we can get to three. Um thank you for um again looking very deeply at that. We've got some more conversations in here um as a executive leadership team um before we bring you a budget based on function. Remember you adopt at the function level. So um we'll continue to work with expenditures and uh comb through and comb through and comb through and uh try to reach that uh 3%. Okay. [Music] Okay. Is everybody good? All right. It is 1:50. With no further business uh before the board, this meeting is adjourned.