Brenham ISD Board Meeting 7-21-2025 Regular Board Meeting

0011 p.m. The board of trustees for the Brennham Independent School District is now convened. I wish to extend a warm welcome to everyone present. In collaboration with our families and community, Brennham ISD is committed to providing an exceptional education for all students in a safe environment. As a Brenham ISD board of trustees who are here to provide local citizen governance and oversight, the management and day-to-day operations of the districts are the responsibility of the superintendent. This is a public meeting of the board of trustees. Schoolboard meetings are open to all who wish to attend and hear the matters discussed. Audience participation is limited to the public comment portion of the meeting. These proceedings are recorded and I respectfully ask that you please refrain from talking while others are speaking. Thank you for taking the time

002this evening to join us for your interest in the Brennham Independent School District. At this time, I will lead us in the pledge followed by the invitation given by Justin Collie. [Music] Please bow your heads with me. Dear Lord, thank you for bringing us together tonight. As we meet during this final summer month, we are grateful for the season of rest and relaxation. We ask for your protection over our students, staff, families as summer winds down. keep them safe on the roads, in the air, and wherever their plans may take them. As we look ahead in this new school year, we pray for clear minds as we begin making preparations. Give this board guidance and unity as we make decisions that impact our schools and community. Help us to always keep the best interests of

003our students at the heart of what we do. We also lift up our teachers and staff. May the coming year bring new energy and opportunities to make a difference. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen. Okay, we don't have anybody for special recognition tonight and we did not have anybody sign up for public comment. So, we'll go straight into board member reports and comments. Um, Archer, Raven, nothing really to speak of. Okay. Um, no comments. No comments. That's a first. Okay. It's definitely summertime. I will say this. Um, I want to give some praise to all the coaches out there that have been doing the sack. I know my kids have been participating. It's been extremely hot. So, everybody that's been sacrificing their mornings and all days to work with our kids during the summer.

004I just want to make sure I recognize them and tell them thank you cuz uh I know mine's come back wiped out and it's been really easy to get them to go to bed. So, thank you to all the coaches for wearing out my kid this summer. Okay, next is the superintendent's monthly update. Well, good evening. Thank you uh to everybody for being here. Um let me say yes, it's uh it's been a very very busy summer uh in BISD, I think, as most people know. So, um speak to to just a few of those things. Um in fact, I've got um I think I've got a strategic planning update next, so I'll save that conversation for then. Um, a lot of questions lately about uh renovations at the middle school and junior high. I

005had that conversation with a couple of you. Uh, we get reports from them every few days, couple of days. Um, they're they're more I've got a couple of them in my hands now as I as I address you. Um, I met with them just last week. They say we are on schedule to be in those buildings by the time students get back. So obviously um a lot of obstacles with the rain. Uh Balffor could not um um you know replace and and clean and do all the things they need to do to get the the buildings back in in the condition they need to be in until um Parsons could dry us in, which um was was very difficult with all the the rain and moisture. But um they are moving a moving along right

006now over these last few days. Um quickly and again uh just sat down with me a few days ago to say that that they are are on schedule. So um any questions about that at all? Again I think a couple of you given me phone calls because y'all received phone calls about that. So if there's something I missed in that um if you Okay. Yeah. That's awesome. No, thank you for the update as I know a lot of people were concerned about Yeah. the Bruce being done in time for school. So, that's good to hear that they're on target. They they did say they think the junior high is going to be ready for when kids go in. Yes. They truly believe that. I'm I'm just Are they confident with that? I guess. What's that?

007Are they confident with that answer? They truly believe they're going to get it done. Uh that's the one they gave me. So, uh I hope so. Yeah. Yeah, we've uh again, we've we've met with them several times. Again, I I met with them just a few few days ago. They get us status updates every few days and um they tell me at this time they are confident that they'll have us back in. And and to your to your point, Kyle, I went and toured BGHS and then also the middle school, talked to contractors uh multiple times and they're echoing the same thing. Uh I think that a lot of it was the delay on materials and as materials are getting in, they will put it up. I think they even got uh stuff for the

008decking today. So, they feel confident. So, yeah. I appreciate it. That's good. I mean, I hope so. The I I talked to Jillian and she's just like there's not a lot of people there working and there's a whole lot of work to do. So, I was just, you know, I'm concerned. Yeah. Well, there there's a pivot from the middle school over to the junior high school uh once they have the the decking on and they're going to pivot all the people over to the junior high school. So, I think you'll see that double triple over there. Yeah. I appreciate I know several of you uh Sean just mentioned have have walked through the yourselves. Um I love to see y'all um do that and take that special interest and um you know pictures are worth

009a thousand words as they say. So when you you walk through and actually see it yourself um you know yes a lot to to do but a lot that has been done and they feel now that the weather's drying out a bit um they can really sort of throw it and fast forward if you will. And that's that's my update. Okay. Oh, well, it's okay. He's uh strategic planning committee um update. Who's is that you again? Yes, sir. That is me. So, yeah. Um you know, we were talking legislative update monthly. I was reporting out on that. um that has sort of uh turned into my strategic planning committee update is so much of that work um is directly related to uh what was or was not done with with House Bill 2. So, uh

010just just a quick update. Um key priorities identified really at this point are to increase staff compensate compensation um and to stay competitive and retain top top talent. So that and then addressing uh critical facility needs that um can cost us more money than they should. And an example of that is the conversation we just had with the middle school and in junior high. You know, now we're paying for emergency um funds or or emergency uh operations out of sort of emergency funds or our fund balance. Um when if maybe we could have been a little more proactive with that uh we wouldn't be in this situation now. And and that I highlight that to say that's been a lot of the conversation with the strategic planning committee. um is you know what how can

011we how can we pay it forward better? So, um, you know, the last time we met, there was a lot of conversation about Vader and, um, if that would generate more money to our, um, our local revenue. Um, that, uh, it's definitely been a part of strategic planning committee, as you know, is is uh, that's been reported out to you, but you'll hear some more of that conversation as we get into sort of our budget workshop time tonight. Um the strategic planning committee has been all about um the instructional quality uh that we provide our our uh students which includes physical uh facilities. Um so you know I think that kind of wraps up where we've been this next meeting tomorrow night. Uh we'll be talking about um deferred maintenance, capital improvement projects, and um

012trying to decide really what what has to be done uh this this school year, this fiscal year, because if we don't do it, there's a chance we might end up paying for it this school year, this fiscal year anyway. Um we just didn't um plan accordingly for it. So, that's really been the conversation and again that'll continue tomorrow night and we'll bring the results to you immediately in the next board meeting and um hopefully have a recommendation to you that committee to you um in August. There's been some conversations about um the federal uh federal grant funds. I know some of you have been reading that literature. Um, you know, right now, um, it looks like around 500,000 in federal funds is is temporarily impounded. Um, right now, the general operating fund will have to

013cover costs temporarily. Um, we'll see if it's reimbursed. Um, and if and when those funds are released, we will then, uh, you know, reimburse our general operating funds. So um you know that's that's definitely something that we are looking hard at um as we work through these these next couple of months and uh and and bring something to you in um August. Um the last the last statement I wanted to make was about tonight's budget workshop. Um I've talked to a couple of you individually about this and then to all the executive leadership team um even again today that we really want this workshop time tonight for all of you to be just that a workshop. Um so um we will have some and I don't know have you've got a document for them. We'll

014get to this here now. If you hand it to them right now they're going to start looking at it and they're not going to listen to anything. Uh there we go. Look at look at him. Um, it's got a lot of uh scenarios. Um, we're going to kind of talk you through that. Um, what I want to stress here, guys, everybody hear me? Yeah, we're we're not asking you to answer this tonight. Okay? Just just know that we're not asking you to answer this tonight. in each budget workshop. Um over these next few meetings, we're going to continue to sort of polish this conversation and try to land that conversation at that August meeting when the strategic planning committee makes to you a recommendation. Okay. So, strategic planning committee um we'll get to sort of

015wrestle with um some data over their next couple of meetings. you have several meetings to sort of tease out some numbers that we're going to give you tonight. So again, please please do not think you have to solve this tonight. Tonight's just about generating some thought and some conversation, giving you some scenarios. Maybe out of these scenarios, you have some questions that you can bring to us, and we can continue to polish out these scenarios for you as we work through these next few meetings. So that's uh that's that's me kind of teeing it up for our uh budget workshop this this evening. Yeah. So next is the budget workshop by chief CFO Mr. General Sinclair. Good evening. Okay. The uh the handout that uh we just sent around to you uh basically has updated

016information. I'm sorry. Yes. The three-page lots of numbers and charts. Nothing. And I started to say, y'all y'all even, you know, once we get into this, I just want to stress this again. Maybe I'll even pull a chair up when we kind of get in. I'm serious now. Like, I want this to be a workshop time. I don't want to open this up for questions and we get crickets and then um I've got community asking questions or even you asking questions that maybe we could have sort of wrestled with here publicly. So, I really want to, you know, we call this a workshop every year. Every district I've been in calls this a workshop. I really do want to workshop some ideas and sort of hear your thoughts on some things and we're going to

017talk through some scenarios. So again, uh I've I've got not just Daryl, as you can see, but all the executive leadership team up here as we talk through this multiple times each week. Um so once they get into it, I really am serious. Um you know, sit down, pull your chairs up a little bit, but I want to give this board a chance to publicly ask anything that they may need some clarification on. All right, Darl. Okay. Uh just want to go over some of the uh basics here of this information that we just handed out to you. Uh first of all, on that first page, the three-page packet, uh you'll see there the funding sources. These are the new funding sources that we have from House Bill 2, the uh SS funding. That is

018the support staff retention. Oh, you didn't get one. I'm sorry. The SSR is the support staff retention allotment that uh was created in House Bill 2. The next one on the list, ABC, that's the allotment for basic services, basic costs, excuse me, that was also uh newly created in House Bill 2. And then finally, BA is for the basic aotment. Uh that is something we always have. The increased amount was $55 from last year. So I believe it went up from 6160 to 6215. So this amount here that I'm referencing is just the additional $55, not the entire amount. So I'm trying to highlight here, these are the new funds that we have that we can put towards uh salary increases for this next year. I will point out that in that first column labeled

019previous assumptions I believe the last time we met actually maybe two the last two times we met I mentioned that it was about $950,000 is what I was estimating we would receive. So that's where I was getting that number. Now that we've actually been working in the finance template and getting our data input and looking looking at the calculations that are done it's actually a little bit more than that. It's a million41,000. So, that's the current assumption unless something else changes on the template uh or some other new information comes to light, but that's the current amount we're working with right now. Any questions about that first little section of information? I I know you said current. We all know the legislature is going back into session. They have not mentioned anything about school finance

020in this session, but do we do we anticipate anything popping up in in the legislation? It has to be announced as a special session and at this time it's just star scores or star testing has been announced formally. No, I'm I'm not expecting I haven't heard of anything that would change school finance at this point. So, uh no, as far as I know, not not yet. Hopefully not. Any other questions on that first little bit of information there? All right, then if you'll uh I'm going to save the golden penny conversation a little bit later. That'll fit in better towards the end of it. So, if you look down at the next chart at the bottom left of that first page, this is pretty much what I had been working on for the last couple

021of weeks, three weeks, four weeks maybe, since House Bill 2 was finally passed and finished and everything. Um, there has been a slight change, which I'll point out here in a second. So, right now, these are the the things that we've been talking about doing to increase salaries for all employees. Uh so we do have uh step raises for the teachers. That's just basically what Clay calls the birthday step. Uh just you go up each year. We have a 25st step salary schedule for teachers. So basically just going up one step each year as you complete another full year and get another year of credible experience. So just that right there with the current salary schedule we already have in place without making any changes uh with benefits runs about $173,000. So that's for all

022teachers just going up a step. The next row of data there, we have what I'm calling uh raise for teachers at steps 0, one, and two because if you'll recall, House Bill Two in the teacher retention aotment provided $4,000 increases for teachers at steps three, and four, and $8,000 increases for teachers at steps five and up, but they provided nothing for steps 0, one, and two. So again, this is just putting in some numbers to see how it will look, how it fits in with the rest of the the calculations that we're doing. So right now, I have identified 30 teachers that are either actually on steps one and two. So by adding a $1,000 increase to just those top those lowest three steps, that would generate the $30,000 in gross pay increase. Then the

023benefits on that for a grand total of about at 34,000. questions so far? Yes. Okay. Step raise. Step rate for teachers. How much is that step raise? If it varies based on what step? Uh that's not exactly the same dollar amount in between step one and two, two and three, three and four. It varies. And that's based on the system that the state has been strongly suggesting to us that we have. If you go but look at the actual minimum state salary schedule that's been in place for years, decades, they do not have a uniform $500 increase, $1,000 increase. It varies. They generally have big increases for the first five to eight years. Then they slow down for about five years from like 8 to 12, 8 to 13. Then they increase a little bit

024more when you get up around 15 to 16. And then it's pretty much flat from there all the way up to 20. And the state schedule only goes up to 20. Only has 20 total steps. Ours has 25. Okay. Most districts, I think, these days have more than 20. I think 25 to 30 is pretty normal. Ranges from like a couple hundred to $500. $800 is 800. 70 I think is the biggest one that's built into our schedule. They're not defining percentage. They're defining the actual money uh amount of of of a money type, I guess. Okay. Thank you. And just a side note, just in case you're wondering, why would you have higher steps at the first few years and then taper off and then a little bit bigger increase and then kind of

025flat. Uh what I've always been told, the psychology of that is when you've been teaching for four or five years, you start getting kind of tired. Things can be tough. And so you keep giving big raises for the first few years to keep people coming back. And then the general consent, and this is not me, this is not school districts saying this. This is what I've heard the psychology of the whole system is that generally once you get up to about year six, seven or eight, you're pretty much in a routine. You figured things out real well. You you got in a groove and now you're probably in it for the long haul. So the carrot's not quite as big that they dangle in front of you. So not saying that I agree with that

026or disagree with that. I'm just saying that's what I've heard how that's been explained to me over the years of why the schedule is staggered the way it is. Is there a chart available that kind of has that those 25 steps ours? Yes. On the district. Okay. When you go to the HR page, you'll find it under the compensation plan. So when you're on our website under the departments, you can find the human resources department and on the left we call it quick links. There's one for it's called the salary schedule and it has the teacher steps as well. Fantastic. Thanks. Okay, going on to the third row of data in that uh same chart, you'll notice we have the benefits for the mandated TRA teacher retention aotment. This was the big $4,000 $8,000 raise

027for REMD uh that was passed in House Bill 2. The state is funding the gross pay for those raises. They're sending us the 4,000 times however many three and four year teachers we have and the 8,000 times however many five plus year teachers we have. So they're funding that directly. I did not put that on this chart because that does not come out of those three amounts up there at the top. It's funded separately. So but we are on the hook for the benefits that goes with those payraises. So the total benefits for all those mandated raises is about $39,000. So that 309 does need to come out of the money that we the new money we have up there at the top of the page. So just the benefits on that part. Darren, Darl,

028what you're saying then is we still are held accountable for the benefits even though we have nobody yet with who who will be getting this in the near future. Well, no, no, I that we will be getting the the teachers will get the 4,000 and the 8,000. We'll start paying that out in the fall. I just didn't include it on that first uh cell there on that row because I'm trying to only focus on the things that have to come out of that that million dollars at the top of the page. Okay. Funds from house. Yeah, this is just the pass through the pass through money. This the pass through. But I do have a question on this um payroll side. Is there an additional expense for having to do the pass through? Are we

029having to do is there extra line items for payroll that has to do anything? Is there extra anything that anybody in the administration office or anybody that's going to have to do to In other words, is there any are there any other hidden costs that come with paying this extra $4,000 and $8,000? I mean, I'm excited we're paying it. I'm just curious outside of benefits. I mean, once we get the budget set up, it'll get put into the budget. It'll get put into the payroll system and then it just gets calculated and paid out. No. So, not not really. I mean, the extra work is right now up front trying to figure all this out, but no, once we get going, it'll be just standard payroll process. Okay. And then at the last the last

030row there, uh, and before, I'm sure you will remember I've been talking about a 3% raise. That's the calculation I had been doing working off of for the last month or so. Uh, but right now, I've got it at 2.75. And the reason why I dropped it just a quarter of a percent is because until this last week, I didn't have anything in for the step zero, one, and two-year teachers. So basically, to make room in this million-doll source of money that we have coming to accommodate a small increase for step 0, one, and two, we got to take a little bit away from something else. I can't take away from the TRA benefits because that's set in stone. That's going to happen. Uh we could make adjustments to the first row of data there,

031the step increases. That's optional. That's something we don't have to do. We're not required to do that. Uh but just to kind of give you an idea, just doing that minimal $1,000 per step for 01, and two pulls enough money out of this million dollar pot that we have that we need to reduce something somewhere else. And just for tonight's purposes, I just wanted to show you that we could accommodate it by dropping the 3% to 2.75. So we're not changing the mark too far. And as you see, all that together, benefits, gross pay, everything together is a million34,000. We have a million41,000. So we're right there at the edge of what we can afford out of that source of money. That those three new sources that we have about as close as we can

032get without going over. I want to make sure I understand the uh first line of step raises for teachers below step 25. That line at 173 that's increasing the steps we already have in place. Is that the cost we of the steps we already have in place? It was not changing the salary schedule itself. It's just saying when teacher goes from step three to step four, there's a say a $400 year raise. That's the $400 for that teacher and then $800. It's Yeah. It's already this is already the existing step. So this isn't an increase to the steps. Got it. No. And and no, please notice that it does say below step 25. Step 25 is the top step, right? So when you're at step 25, you're at the max. So unless the the whole

033range changes, the whole schedule changes, 25 is 25 and you've maxed out at 25. So there would have to be an additional consideration if we wanted to give other than the 4,000 and the 8,000. If we wanted to give additional raises to people who are already at the top of the scale, that would be something that's not figured in here. That would be an additional raise there. I I can't hear you because the air condition. So, what's the difference between going to 3% and drop it down to 2.75? What's the difference on that? I didn't hear that. The 3% raise of that bottom row would be about 565,000. Okay. Okay. So, it's about 40,000 more and then like I said, it would almost swap out with that step 0, one, and two part. So, difference

034is 40,000. Roughly 40,000 more. Yeah. I I just got an issue with that. We have to value our our employees. 40,000 uh seems like not not a lot to me if you want to value your employees, right? Uh so I know we just talking. I'm just going to be honest with you. And I know you're doing a excellent job. Excellent job. But we need to make a way that we don't pull away from these employees just to benefit other employees. It should be all. And that's why that's why we're going to get to the the Vader dollars here in a minute. Okay. I'm ahead of myself, I guess. But but yes, you're correct in that observation. Okay. Any other questions or comments so far on page one? Darl, I got a question. Um, how how

035are other districts or, you know, the money that's being allotted for the four and the 8,000? Are other districts using port or I can't say if they are, but are they putting into their scenarios that they would use a portion of that to boost the benefits as well and not just give it as a straight raise? That is completely that is very well spelled out in House Bill 2. So when they say a $4,000 or $8,000 raise, the entire 4,000 the entire 8,000 has to be passed along in gross pay. So yes, there's a very specific line item that says no no benefits can be charged to that. Got it. Otherwise, yes, I'm sure districts would be looking at doing that, but not not allowed. The only difference the only difference I've seen is that

036their 012 they've been using it out of fund balance instead of their aotments because they have they can Yeah. All right. Let's go on to page two. And and really pages two and three are very much the same same kind of information. Uh it's just broken down into smaller groups of of employees. So if you'll notice here on the top of page two, this is the teacher salary schedule. Now this is this is actually looking at increasing our steps. Not just teachers going from one step to the next on the schedule we already have, but actually increasing the steps by a percentage. And again, this is an average because as we already discussed the step increases from one step to the next is not exactly the same. It's not uniform. So this is just an

037overall average of all 25 steps. So to increase all 25 steps by 1% of the average would cost about $224,000. Okay? Then 2% just twice as much, 3%, three times as much, so on and so forth. Uh so just wanted to give you some some reference here of what the cost would be for different percentages all the way up to 8%. Any questions about that information? Okay. Now, the next two charts are very closely related, a little bit different than the teacher because the the next two charts refer to our professional staff or our exempt staff and our hourly or non-exempt staff. Those groups, everybody on those in those categories have a pay grade, not a step one, step two, step three, step four like teachers do. We have pay grades. We have a minimum,

038a midpoint, and a maximum for each different uh job classification and quite a few different actual pay grades overall. So in these scenarios, what we're talking about doing is giving the employees, for example, if you look there on 1%. So, the cost of giving every single professional exempt employee a 1% pay pay increase based on their midpoint, whatever their midpoint is, and I believe there's nine nine different professional pay grades. So, it varies by person depending on what their their job is and what their pay grade is. But to give every single current employee a 1% increase on their midpoint would cost about $88,000. And then it's double that for two and so on and so forth, just like the other. what what roles define those different pay grades? So, there's um a lot of

039different roles. There's librarians, coordinators, um instructional coaches, um counselors, um administrators, assistant principles, principles. So, it is probably a list of 25 different positions. On that same spot on the website where Sean wanted the teacher pay scale is the compensation plan. that also shows you all of the different pay grades in the ranges. C can you explain the difference between a midpoint and a regular raise, please? Okay. So, generally the way that the this is the only system I've ever seen when you have payrades, generally instead of giving an employee one or two or 3% of their actual annual salary, it's always based on the midpoint of their pay grade. So, if the low end of your pay grade, say, is uh $200 a day and the high end of your pay grade is $400

040a day, the midpoint would be $300 a day. So, when you get a raise and you're in that pay grade, you don't get it based on 200 or 225 or whatever you make that year. It's based on the middle of your pay grade. So, it would be the same amount of dollars for everybody in that pay grade. Everybody would get a certain percent times $300 times however many days they work. Thank you. What? Sorry, this might be a stupid question. What determines um what determines the the pay grade like the top number and the low the low number? What determines that? Right. So there's a um there's a um experience. No. So when they're So you're asking not what how we set the pay but how people fall in that. So it is it's weighted

041on experience. weighted um experience and so experience in public ed and then experience in the like position. Okay. Thank you. All right. Then the next next table top of the next page. This is for our hourly non-exempt staff. It's the same setup. They're on pay grades as well. They have a minimum midpoint and maximum. Their raises are calculated the same way. A certain percent based on the midpoint. And so again, you can see here that for all of our current hourly non-exempt employees, if we gave every single one of them a 1% increase based on their midpoint for their position, then the grand total would be 100 roughly $100,000 for benefits and actual gross pay. And then again, just double that, triple that as you go from 1% to 8%. One thing when I was

042looking at this earlier with Darl, these are percentages on top of the 2.75%. So if you're looking at 1%, it's 2.75 plus an additional 1%. Um, yeah, also we I did a little math when I was talking to Daryl today because there's been a lot of discussion of our instructional support pair as those IS-1s that are at $11.33 an hour. So what does a 1% mean per hour to that employee? Right? So it's 14 cents per percent. So if I was making 1133 and we did a 1% raise, it on midpoint it would be 11.46. If I was a 2% 1160. So we would not get up to $12 until we did that additional 5% or a total of 2.75%. Yeah. Their raise is based on midpoint as well though, right? Yes. And I asked

043last time, what is the actual number of people that make that hourly wage or rate? I believe it's very very low. And we're we're we're focusing on one really small rare number. Um I'd like to focus on the midpoint, but what what else is grouped in this group? Because like you asked like you asked while ago was librarians and everybody else. Um, who else is in this group besides Paris? Yeah, so just like Brooke explained in the compensation manual, it's um all of those um CT um so our clerical technical um our instructional support, our is our manual trades, um our custodial, our maintenance, all of those positions that pay hourly and don't receive like a contract for employment. That includes bus drivers as well, right? Yes. Yes. Okay. Then the fourth and final chart

044here on these last two pages is basically the sum of all the other items on the other three previous. So, for example, if you wanted to see what it would cost to give every single employee regardless of pay grade or uh whether it's a teacher or a professional, non-exempt, exempt, give everybody a 2% raise at whatever their level is, their pay grade is, it would cost roughly 824,978 for a 2% raise added you basically just adding the 2% number on all the three previous uh charts. So, I just thought just to give a little context of what it would be for everybody involved if they got that percentage for a raise, that same percentage in addition to the two, right? And and well, yeah. And so the again the 2.575% that we started with on

045the first page, that's what we can afford with the money we know we're going to get. anything more than that. So let's say you want to do a 4.75 then that would be you would take the 2% the 824978 that I just quoted and add that to that million34 and that would give you the grand total of about uh 2.1 million no sorry 1.8 8 million. Sorry. So, the reason back to f page one, the reason why the information at the top right for the for the Vader revenue, possible Vader revenue, the reason why that's there is to show you that what's on that first page in the bottom left corner is really all we can afford or some re-shifting of those amounts, but the million dollars roughly is all we can afford without going

046and bringing in new revenue. And so again, we've talked about the the one golden penny, the two golden pennies, three golden pennies that could be approved by the voters. Each golden penny is worth about $817,000. Again, uh this is my estimates as of right now. We still do not have our final tax rate for this coming year and we still do not have our certified values. Should be getting those later this week. So hopefully by next week I'll be able to refine this information a little bit more. But somewhere in that ballpark, about $800,000 per golden penny. So with three golden pennies, that could add another roughly $2.4 million to our entire revenue, our M revenue. We already have the 1,ion41,000. So then that final column would show you what we would have in total

047as new revenue depending on what may or may not pass innovator. So again, if you wanted to spend $1.8 8 million on raises. We'd need the 1 million we already know we're getting from House Bill 2 and about 800,000 from additional revenue that could come from a Vader or whatever other scenario you want to to envision. I'm sorry. With these numbers, you can start again sort of teasing out some different ideas. Well, if I gave, you know, we know, uh, if I gave this group 6%, but I gave this group 4%, um, you know, that's what that might look like. So, it just gives you some room to to think about how to approach that. Um, as you do that, I I don't would would now be a good time for you were sharing some

048information even this afternoon. I know I know a a a big focus amongst and and I think Raven may have even mentioned it tonight, a big focus amongst this group has been the parapay that's where um while while we definitely need to get competitive in um in some areas like our teachers um the paras are the most behind and uh can you can you speak to that a little bit Christie? So um you have a single sheet of paper that is has some color on it. If you look at um the second column, so these are school districts that are within 30 or so miles of Brenamistd. And so the first column talks about teacher salary for a brand new teacher. Um some of the numbers are from the 2425 school year and some are

049from the 25 26 year depending if they've adopted their budget or not. And then the second column is the districts that I could find an entrylevel instructional PARA. So their base par profofessional pay. And if you look through those numbers, um, they're all falling, you know, well above our 1133 per hour. Um, so just wanted you to kind of see where we are in comparison with those. The ones I didn't include, I wasn't able to locate yet. So just kind of a work in progress but wanted you to kind the um the numbers that we have in the first group is talking about increases to um based on percentages. We should probably be having a separate conversation about that and talking about just increasing the base pay because increasing doing a raise doesn't change the

050base pay for starting salary. So, that's a separate conversation where we I don't know who's in charge of setting base pay, but 1133 is just stupid. Um, sorry if that's not politically correct, but it just is. It needs to be this this number. This number needs to obviously drastically increase. Um, instead of talking about giving them a raise and it's a percentage based on midpoint, we need to just change the starting pay. So, let's have that conversation a little bit separately and differently, but that starting pay needs to obviously increase. And I'm not sure if that's a Clay decision or if that's your decision or if it's our decision, but if it's our decision, I think we can bang that out right now. Like, let's go. We've got a timeline for that. So, you're talking

051about the compensation handbook, which is absolutely board adopted. Um, so that's, you know, that's a big part of these workshops. Again, as you all know, 80 to 85% of our budget is our personnel cost. So, of course, your adoption of a compensation package um dra drastically drastically affects our our overall um budget. So, um we're going to workshop that out. Um, she's got some more information for you tonight though on Well, uh, we do I don't know if Chrissy if you want to share this or Daryl. We would when we start to even get in the ballpark of um, the other pair of pays, you know, that that that she's shared out with you because we're obviously the lowest on that list. Everybody sees that, right? Um, to even get into the the ballpark of

052some of the districts above us. Can we talk about what that that's going to take? Because I think once you know that because I know the parah just hey we we we got to fix this right we we're not even how do we get up to to even the next um two three school districts. Let's talk about what that looks like and then that will help you play out some of the other scenarios you might be thinking about. So can y'all can y'all share that please? Yeah. So, as you know, and I I appreciate that 1133 is a small percent, but it's easiest to pick one point on that scale to kind of see how we compare. So, as I'm pulling numbers, different districts categorize different positions on different pay gra bands in that scale.

053So, looking at 1133 to get us to $1244, that would be an 8% raise for that hourly employee. Yeah. Right. So, so when we drop um employees on the compensation handbook when we drop them in their pay scale, so that's an initial when we look at base pay and we look at that multiplier years of experience, but advancement beyond that initial drop into our pay scale is not steps like teachers. It is through board approved raises. They don't automatically get a a birthday raise if you're not on that teacher scale. It is through percentage raises. So by adjusting that scale that doesn't adjust those existing in the um in the compensation handbook in that pay band. So advancement is by percent raises. Yeah. But it does move the whole it moves the the scale the

054entire scale. So it brings up while it raises the the mid number, it also raises the top number and the bottom number which I think is what you're really talking about is is what's the starting pay for that position. Well, it's going to move the whole scale up, including the starting pay for that. We definitely need to change the raise part of it, and I'm I'm pretty sure we're going to all be in agreement. It's just a matter of what percentage we're going to agree on. But we also need to have a separate conversation and probably need to see what the numbers look like of changing that starting number to this or this or this and see what that's going to impact our budget, whether it's 14 or 15 or 13, whatever. We we need

055to see those numbers, too. I think I think that's what they're talking about a little bit, Kyle. were saying that even if we do that now the ones that we have are kind of grandfathered into their original base scale so they won't be affected by but I agree with you I I think nobody here would adjust that so I guess we need to get creative on how if we do change the base how do we also bring those back up to where they are so those are conversations that we can have in tandem because yeah I'm not going to use Kyle's word but I agree with him with what he said but yeah no and and thank you all for listening to us when we did say how low of a number that was and

056the fact that y'all are we're having this conversation is more than we've done in the past. So, let's let's keep rolling on this. So, as we move closer to the school year, is anything going to I know the state's going going to uh give us some money. So, can you give the the employees something tangible when they may get a raise at the school start or anything like that or we still in negotiation stage? We're working on it. Let me have uh Brooke, why don't you talk through I feel like what Raven is is asking is is we can see what the state has done with House Bill 2 and and we see that it's not enough. Everybody seems to agree on that. So, um how does this strategic planning committee with that timeline? And

057I know you shared it, but can you kind of talk through that timeline of the strategic planning committee pitching something to this board? This board working through the in information as well over these next few budget workshops to possibly um possibly uh vote on something in August, agree on something in August, how that becomes an election and and so forth and so on. Can you just kind of big picture it for us? Yeah. Um the timeline uh superintendent Gillantine is talking about is also located on the website. We have strategic planning on the homepage. When you go there you will see meeting four resources and this timeline is um there for anybody listening to also follow along. So um with strategic planning vader considerations and the budget adoption um that timeline actually doesn't even show

058the totality of all the things like posting in the newspaper and all of the different things. But um at the next meeting we have to do the proposed rate. So that's where we we set the cap. But that's not what triggers the Vader. The Vader is triggered in the later I think it's August 12th currently scheduled uh board meeting. So at that meeting strategic planning would um present their recommendation. So because y'all engaged in the audit that's leaving the autonomy on the table for them to kind of work through um what their recommendation based off of the data they've been digging into for y'all. And then ultimately at that meeting when you ex uh adopt a rate so if you adopt it at a one penny two penny three penny that's automatically automatically going to

059trigger the vader. So if that passes in November then what we've seen most districts do is that November paycheck that they get so for us which would land at Thanksgiving would have th that increase and it would retroactively pay them for those first couple of months that they should have received those raises. So they'll basically get kind of a lump sum in that November pay paycheck and then they'll notice going on forward from there they'll have a a new higher normal but I believe some of this pass through money will that come earlier right that comes initially okay I didn't hear okay the pass through money that's those aotments that are on that first page that Daryl was showing you whatever that agreement is on how that gets dispersed that can move out so that

060the the teacher allotments that staff increases all of that stuff on page one that can start. You answer me. Yes. Thank you. And so kind of part of the delay and I think Raven, you're seeing other districts adopt their compensation handbook and communicating with their staff kind of what your percent raise is um is because the board and the strategic planning committee is considering whether or not to move forward with a Vader. So there's important language that must be in our compensation handbook to allow us to back pay if that's the direction we go. So if I bring you a compensation handbook tonight and I don't have that language and I don't have those percents, it doesn't allow us to back pay. So that's a little um explanation of why we're maybe a little later

061than some other districts. It's just because of all the discussion occurring. Yeah. Yeah. And and I appreciate that cuz all employees want transparency and so you got other districts coming out saying they getting this, getting that and we're not giving but I see why now. I see why now. I was a little frustrated, but I see why now. So So uh I'm very thankful for that. Uh again, all employees are are valued at Brennham ISD and and I appreciate that. So thank you. Hey, so let me let me try and connect these dots and um and then anything y'all want to add? Um please please uh cabinet anything you want to add to this again um you've you've got in that that first page what remember remember this this year this current fiscal year uh

062we adopted a balanced budget right um we cut everywhere um we we absorbed 50-ish positions um you you've you've heard that many times to adopt a balanced budget So those numbers on that first page, that's if we didn't change anything, right, with expenditures, um, anything with that balanced budget that we adopted this year, um, and we received the money from House Bill 2. That's what we can do. That's what we can do. That doesn't, as you can see on there, that doesn't include the 4,000 8,000 5,08 4 and 8. way too many num way too many numbers in my head. Uh that doesn't include the four and eight that are going to the teachers, but that that's all that's left that we can do. So we we again we want you to see what the

063one penny will do, the two penny will do, the three penny will do. We've only been talking about golden pennies um that are still out there. The strategic planning committee is talking about these pennies. We want you to see what an extra one penny would do. So, um, Christie or or Daryl, one of them were explaining earlier that extra 1 cent that's on top of the 2.75 that I feel like everybody's saying, "Yeah, absolutely." That's I mean, we're going to give everything we can, right? So, that 1% is on top of that that 275. Okay, that two cents is on top of so that that three-ish becomes fiveish. So, play with those numbers with those different groups. um recognize that. Um Christie, help me again here. Even to get with with the parapay, even to

064get to like the next uh highest district or two around us, we've got to jump up. What' you say? 8% to even get to the the next highest district around us. So, I I know that's been for several of you, Raven, a priority. So, keep that number in your mind as you start to sort of um tease out the others. Okay. Any any anything I left out? Any questions for this group? Um again, we we close doors uh and and and work on these numbers. Darl worked uh tirelessly on these numbers to to give you all the scenarios that you might might want. All right, Mr. Der, you you go ahead, sir. Go ahead. Well, thanks, man. So, from what I hear you saying, this doesn't include recapture of essential personnel or of the 50

065if there's people that we need to recapture. Uh, this scenario currently does not include that is what you're saying. That was a really good question. Did Did y'all catch that? Uh, oh, she was she was about to mention that. Yes. So, um, several of you have asked, hey, when we start talking about this one penny, two penny, three penny, um, several of you have asked, you know, we want to be able to show that this is going to staff, right? We are, we are trying to make up for the fact that, uh, they have not gotten a raise in the last several years. We're trying to make up for the fact that our par pay has been uh so low. Um, how do we show that these golden pennies are going to staff? We do

066need to remember that another priority though of this board of the strategic planning committee has been hey we need to we need to look at the the classroom sizes the student toteer ratio. So given all this money to staff yes but also potential other uh staff that could help reduce some teacher student uh n ratio numbers some class sizes Bonnie. Yes. Yes. Do you want to talk through that Christie? So, it was about 25 teacher positions that we absorbed. I'm good. She can talk. I'll get in eventually. We're not going anywhere. Yeah. So, if you're looking at replacing all 25, Darl did the calculations. And so, it's not just their salary, it's salary and benefits, but then it's also additional instructional materials because we have new teachers with more curriculum needs. So, as we looked

067at that, Darl kind of did some calculations. If we were to replace all 25 teacher positions we absorbed, it was 1.875 million. So that is pretty costly to kind of get all 25. I'm kind of looking at our needs like if we're looking at, you know, we're running 25 students per class in our elementary like if we add a kindergarten teacher, we add a first grade teacher. So I think there's some good middle ground that we could find kind of relief on that. Yeah, but that'd be a great a great question and great and we weren't skipping you. I I wanted her to answer his question. So, um that may be a great number for y'all to write down is is what an extra uh Darl an extra teacher on the at the midpoint with

068fringe is 70ish. now not first year teacher but you're step I when usually when we have a vacancy uh and I don't know who we're going to hire to replace it I usually put in a middle of the salary schedule so like step 13 65,000 so about 65,000 just with the actual salary and about 13% for benefits and then the additional expenses that Christie was just mentioning with training and materials supplies I mean you could pretty easily get to 70 or 75,000 per per teacher per new teacher additional teacher pretty easily So, you know, where where does this as you look at uh classroom sizes, you know, are we talking about um an extra potential kindergarten teacher in this this a district our size? Are we talking about one extra potential first grade, one extra

069potential second grade, third grade? You know, what does that mean for um the secondary campuses? um do we that English team, do they need another teacher to help reduce those sizes? So, that's just something for you to think about is not just uh what this golden penny could do for our current staff, but it is for our current staff in a way that it it lightens their workload. That's that's what I'm hearing from the teachers. Um all of you are is our classes are too big. Um you how do you change that? You hire more teachers, right? So just know those numbers as well as you play around with these scenarios and think about them over the next uh couple of few weeks. So, I just wanted to take a minute to kind of announce

070some of the numbers that are on this chart of our district different districts that are surrounding us because as I'm sitting in a seat in the public and we're having this conversation with all this information, they don't know what we're talking about really. And I remember feeling that way before I was elected. So, I'm going to announce a few of these numbers. So, we're talking about our pair of professionals make 1133 per hour. And then you look at Navasota, which has an enrollment of 3,000 students. Their pair of professionals make $126 an hour. Belleville, which has 2,200 students, makes $14 an hour. Brian, which has 16,000 students, makes 18 18,000 per year and 1271 per hour. College Station 1275. So, these are some of the surrounding districts and numbers that we're competing with and that

071we're behind on. And these are districts that we're losing teachers to. Waller 1375 an hour. So don't the closest one we have Burton 15. That's a huge gap. I think that's it. I think ultimately we just, you know, we want to be responsible. We want to look for the future and long-term retention and find ways to build relief, but we want to have immediate relief for the people who are here, who are doing the work, are in the trenches, took on the bigger class sizes, took on the PAR with the extra coverage, um, and all of those things. So, yeah, we want Sarah wants to add something. Yeah, sure. We want to be very sure um I want to kind of jump on top of that and say we want to be very sure that

072our strategic planning committee becomes a long-term planning committee, right? We're not just talking about this year, uh these next few months, these next couple of years. Um let's, you know, let's let's rightsize some things and get on the right track and continue to meet as a committee to be forward thinking in some of the things we're trying to do for the kiddos in this district. So, I I wanted to just add one thought for y'all to think through when we think about and we're talking about teacher relief, right? And we're talking about class sizes and we're talking about seeing our teachers that had the increased class size and the effect that that had on their ability to reach student outcomes. And so, at the end of the day, why we all show up, right, is

073to really make sure that we educate the children of Brennham. And so through that, by looking at a way not only to increase teacher pay to be competitive, to help us retain staff, it also is really looking at those 25 positions so that we can reduce class size. I know early literacy is a big area that we have created an early literacy coalition. Today I spent um with you know K through 12th grade teachers and principles really looking at what are researchbased instructional strategies that increase our ability to change the trajectory of a child's life because they can read and write on grade level. So through that, it's going to require us to look at that Vader at the three golden pennies to even get close to adding back the 25 positions while strategically looking

074at the compensation. And at the end of the day, the teacher is closest to the students. So if you want to impact your students the fastest, it's by impacting the teachers because they're the ones in the four walls with the kids every day. Um, going back to the to the PAR numbers, how many employees we have that are classified as PARAS? Like how many do we have a number? I don't have it off the top of my head. I I would like to see that just to kind of know what the annual impact is, the breakdown just so we can kind of put the number to it before the next conversation. Um, just so we can kind of put those numbers to it. If we were to jump from 1133 to 1275, what is the

075annual impact of that number? Um, you know, just kind of understanding, you know, you've got educational pair of professionals, PE, uh, preK, ESL, bilingual, computer lab, ISS. Um, just understanding how many employees are are categorized in that par that that could be affected by by these numbers and and an adjustment in that starting salary or salary range. So, Justin, I believe the number is 300 by my previous research for the last meeting. I'm not 100% sure, but that's what I remember is about 300. and they can they can see how confirm that and to see and to see where they fall in that pay scale. Uh because everybody's not at 1133. So where where does that fall and how many are there? Uh but but I would say to to your point uh Archer, what

076you what you said it is it is we do need to note that all those districts that do have higher pay for the repairs also in the last 5 years have all passed bonds uh and they didn't have to dig into their resources to be able to make the repairs like we're having to do. And so I do think that's something that we do need to note where, you know, the money that maybe we could be giving raises to or would be in our bank account, we've had to uh uh do other things with where a bond would help alleviate that. So I think that's something to note as well. Technically, a bond needs to be for facilities. It's for INS, not M. Um but it would relieve that side. So you know, you're pick

077one taking one hand, put taking money from one pocket, putting in the other. So yeah. Um, I have a thought. Um, and I've mentioned it to a couple people. Excuse me. Uh, I've told you Clay. I've even mentioned it to you, Sarah. I think I've mentioned it to you, Brooke. I would like to see, and I've been playing with numbers, and it's really difficult because I don't know the exact breakdown of teachers, um, and support staff as well, uh, with exempt and non-exempt and everything. It's difficult trying to figure it out, but I would like to see uh a more creative version of giving, and I'm using air quotes here, of a raise, but not a full raise uh so to speak, but by doing a retention bonus. I'd like to give the staff of

078not just teachers and I'm not talking about teachers. I'm talking about the the custodial, the paras, the librarians, all of the above. Some type of scale where we have an extra income that is unique to Brennham to help retain them because they're getting paid extra whether it's 250 bucks a year, whether it's $500 a year that we're able to give them that will be in addition to their salary, in addition to the raise we give them, but a separate line item that we're able to budget and we're able to figure out the right way to to make those numbers work because I can't see what that would look like because I don't know how many eight years and 12 years and 27year teachers we have and and custodians we have and line cooks and all

079those things. But we should have something that is unique because I believe Belleville does it but I'm not 100% but I'm pretty sure they do. We need something that is unique to Burnham to help retain teachers because yes, people go to Waller because they pay more and we can't compete with that. They're 6A school with a what is it? I think it's 40 cents more tax increase than we have. Yeah, their taxes are insane. But regardless, the rest of the teachers and the staff here can have that extra loyalty bonus, so to speak. And I believe there's something in that. I could be alone in this, but I really believe that you get a a bonus check on your first of December and then the last of the year. So, it's like a Christmas bonus,

080end of school year bonus, and whether it's, you know, 50 bucks per year you've been here or something like that. You've been here 10 years, that's 500 bucks. You know what I mean? Something along those lines. And I don't know how the numbers would play out. But I believe if we're going to look at doing a Vader and we're going to look at increasing taxes, we need to be creative on how we're going to retain our our employees and take care of them and show them we appreciate them. Kyle, I'm with you. Um, so I want to ask you, how would you propose? What is quote unquote creative to you? What's what's the solution? I'm not there yet, but based on what I've been looking at and the numbers, I I fully believe we need

081to do some type of a some type of a raise across the board, obviously. And I think it should be different percentages for different groups. I think the the um what's it I don't want to get the wording wrong. Uh the non-exempt hourly staff needs to have the highest percentage increase of race. I don't know if we can do a flat dollar amount across the board for everybody, but if we should, it should at least be $2.67 to get everybody at 14. And then from there, we also pass a raise. I think we need to do a small increase raise plus a largeish that equals a large raise, but a largeish um what's the word I'm looking for? Loyalty bonus or some other you does that make sense? You know what I'm saying? I think

082you're trying to say longevity. Yes. Okay. Because if we did, for example, like you said, $1,000 in here, whatever the number was, if we had our our starting teachers, if we raise that starting pay by 1,500 bucks, and then also have our loyalty, longevity, whatever you want to word it as, um, where we're able to give teachers on their fifth year a$1,000 bonus. And we're not losing that teacher going from year four to year five because they're getting an extra thousand dollars by being here again. uh in addition to all the other raises they have. It's just that extra it it builds that Brennham spirit, that loyalty, whatever. So that would be and again we're at the beginning stages of this, but I think that's something we need to consider and we should look at.

083I think I think it's very important whatever we do, we need to make sure everybody understands what we're talking about because we're using a lot of vocabulary here that your average taxpayer may not recognize. So that's something else that we need to do as as a group. We know it's important for our kids to have the best teachers, the best the best principles, and the best people around. We also know we want to get get those class sizes a little bit smaller, but uh if we don't have the the the community involved in this and understand what we're doing, it sounds like, you know, it's creative. That's a great idea and I like it, but at the same time, we need to make sure that the people who are going to help us make these

084decisions understand what we're talking about. And that's something that's that's very important, too. And we don't have a lot of time in this. U you know, the days are are flying by already, but uh I I think we all agree that we love our teachers and we want to keep them. We love our paras. We want to keep them. We want our class sizes smaller. And at the same time, we didn't get the kind of money that we thought we were going to get after the uh you know, after the dust settled, after the legislative session, we've got to deal with what we have now. So, uh I just hope that the public understands that too. We want to do what's best in everybody's situation like now. And uh I am surprised looking at the

085uh difference between what our paras are making versus uh the folks that live close by. And I think we're the best district in the whole state of Texas, maybe in the whole country. And uh we got to we got to do something to get ourselves back up there. I agree with you, Bonnie. I think the communication of all of this is vitally important, especially as we and the strategic planning committee um molds around maybe a deferred maintenance bond. When you see a Vader on the ballot, it's going to say tax increase. That's what it's going to say. and our lovely community is going to vote against that every day of the week and on Sundays if we don't communicate the really important details that that are needed so that we can do well on this

086and I'm reiterating this because we've had two bonds that have failed in the past because we didn't do a good job communicating. So we we got to do better this time go around because this is the endg game for our for our people. I mean if we don't if we don't do something substantial then we're going to be in really bad shape. So I I think um I think it's as much about trust as it is about communication. And uh I think we've come a long way with with trust in this this community uh to a point that uh we're having conversations um in this room in um in the strategic planning committee room and across the community about what a golden penny could do for this district and what a capital uh improvement bond

087could do for this district. So, I I feel like we've got um a lot of concerned uh people across the community and across the district that are starting to mobilize in uh in a certain direction. Um so, um we're going to continue to to bring you this information. I think we've given you a great place to start, some numbers that you can start looking at um as far as percentages for different groups and what you might like to do. Um Sean and and Kyle, we can absolutely get you kind of a breakdown of our staff. again 800ish employees. Um what I'm hearing you ask for is um how many teachers do we have? How many pair professionals do we have? How many um you know secretaries do we have? And and how can we kind

088of uh break that down within our data Christie from an HR standpoint? And then um and then you know what what it would might look like Kyle if we gave this group a thousand and this group uh you know 500 etc. And you see that in districts um especially over these last few years of districts have have had to be creative. They've given some um retention bonuses. I want to stress, you know, the point of the exercise, Kyle, would be because you don't want to see tenure teachers leaving Brennham, right? We want to I just want to understand the motivation so that we bring forth the right data to help sort of um with with what we're trying to accomplish. If if the problem and it's been identified as a problem um is that really

089more so than ever before we're seeing seasoned veteran teachers that we would love to hang on to go go go elsewhere um because of of money. So what what might entice one to stay as far as some sort of retention bonus? Yes. Yeah. Well, yes. Exactly. And if you look at the teacher salaries from here and the other neighboring cities, communities everywhere else, right? Uh we're really close. So, if we were the exact same as the next three or four cities around and they're getting the exact same pay, then the only other reason they would leave is the facilities or the atmosphere or the people around them. and I can't control that. I Well, maybe the facilities we can fix, but um the other thing is if it's the exact same salary, but then it's

090not really because they're also making an additional $1,000 as a retention bonus and it's not the same salary. It's actually more to stay here. And then it does the opposite. It is enticing good teachers to come here, good staff to come here. whether you're a cook or a janitor or um a librarian, you come here and you are going to start being eligible for that retention bonus as well. So, it's I don't want to call it a a a secret salary increase, but that's basically what it is. If your salary is $58,000 because you're on whatever step you're on and you're also qualifying for an additional $750 bonus, then your salary is a little bit higher than it really is. You know what I'm saying? So, it's it's just a a loyalty bonus of some

091type. And maybe it's not a good idea. Maybe y'all don't agree with it, but I think I think it's another way of keeping people here and being creative with the funds. But yes, that was my intention is to keep people and keep them wanting to stay here. Okay, that was great. Great first workshop. There's a lot lot to lot to get into there. Um Final shameless plug, strategic planning button is on the website. So, um, like the strategic planning is still going to come with their recommendation at a later time. There is general questions about what is a golden penny, what is a Vader, and if you don't see a question on there that or you have a question that you don't see on there, anybody in the community can submit those as well. And

092there are projections for the different impacts. and and Brooke, I went through that entire page today and there's a lot of words I had to look up, but you did such a fantastic job of breaking it down below your the team. So, I would encourage the community go there. You'll find probably about 9% of your answers right there. Yep. It's really helpful. Thank you. Okay, if there's no more questions, we can move on. Are we moving to number nine or is there a second part to number eight with the financial update? We kind of group that all together because we can jump straight down to nine which is consider uh what did we just do? We did future budget. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's what that's what I was asking is the second part of that

093the fin. Okay. Uh yes, we do have our regular monthly reports uh that we see each time. We'll go ahead and start working through these. Again, this is all of our updated information as of the end of June, always uh the month previous. So, you'll see here where we have our updated uh revenue, excuse me, revenue uh budgeted in the first column there, then green, and then the actual received revenue. At this point, uh you see we're getting very close to our our maximum that we've or anticipated that we have for the year. We're up to almost $52 million in total collections. Uh just another reminder, we won't get another TEA payment till the end of August for this year. And then we'll immediately get a September payment, but that'll be for 2526. So we

094get nothing much from TEA the during the spring and then we get an August payment and a September payment real quick. Uh so that will that final August payment from TEA will finish up our 2425 state revenue and we still have tax tax collections coming in. Uh but as I've mentioned before it's minimal at this point in the year. Uh in fact if anything really penalties and interest and delinquent payments are about the only significant part that we see this time of the year. Oops, wrong way. Okay. Then you have the report there of of expenses per function uh for each function that's either in the general fund or the food service fund or debt service fund. Uh you'll see some of these numbers change significantly this time. Well, by the time we get to

095the end of August because we will be having our second bond payment coming up in August. We have our maintenance tax note payment, our one and only annual payment coming up in August as well. And our bus lease payment is coming up, I believe, actually this week, end of July. It's due by the end of July. So, that one will show up on the next report. Uh so, we do have a few end of the year larger than normal expenses. And just another reminder about uh payroll. We we're processing July payroll this week. We'll have regular August payroll, but then we have those lovely August payroll acrruels that we have to go back. It's not actual money paid out. It's payments we have to credit or excuse me, debit charged to the 24 25 year

096because we have teachers and other 10-month uh staff that come back, start working in August for the new school year, but they don't get paid till their uh their first check for the new school year until September. So, we do have to credit charge those expenses back. uh it's basically an auditing and accounting uh requirement but it will give the appearance of almost two full payrolls in one month in August. So but it's not actual money paid out. It's just because of the way we have to book it for the auditing. Okay. Our investments still holding pretty steady. I think there's been a very minimal drop in interest rates like half a percent or less. No, not even that. about a tenth or maybe two ten of a percent. So, still holding pretty steady. Uh

097most all the the pools still holding well over 4%. So, we are still continuing to uh gain interest there. Of course, we've been moving the money back over as we've needed since we haven't had any big TEA payments or big uh extra-l large tax collection payments lately. So, we are moving some of it back now to cover the cost of payroll and some of these one time a year expenses. So you will notice that uh let's see Texas class for example is down to 9 9.4 million as of the end of June. I just moved money back over today for payroll this week. So it'll be significantly lower next month. Uh but fortunately once we get to August we get back on the upward trend on on uh revenue payments. Hey, will you go back

098one slide real quick? I got one question. Okay. Um so looking at total expenditures here, the adopted budget was 57.7 million. We've only spent 43.6. Are you anticipating us to spend 14 million in the next two months? Well, like I said, we've got July payroll that's not showing up yet, plus any other July expense. This is all as of June. Uh we got July payroll, we've got August payroll, we've got August payroll. What's the average payroll per month? It runs about three about 3 million. Okay. So, there's 369. 369. It's not showing up yet. So, that gets us up to 52. And we've got our bus payment that's about a million. So, that's 53. So, we're we're going to be closing in on it pretty quick when we get to the end of August. It's

099our debt payment, too, right? Well, the Well, yes. And the debt payment is we paid the bulk of it. We paid principal and interest back in February. The interest payment we have coming up is not nearly as much as the first payment. I think it's only three or 400,000. I haven't looked at it in the last week or so, but it's minimal cons compared to the first payment in February. So, yes, we do have a number of end of the year. when you start putting them all together, it adds up to a lot of money pretty quick. Uh so it will look a lot more than an average month. Is there any way that we can just kind of summarize and forecast that for the board just to make sure that we're coming in under

100budget on or coming in close to under budget on the expenses just for I'm the new guy here. Just for my re reassurance it's it's difficult because you really don't know until you get everything in at the end. So, I mean, he can project all he wants, which he does a great job with it, but we really just I hate to say have to see where the cards fall, but at this point, we just got to wait. Am I wrong? We just kind of have to wait to see how when everything comes through. Why don't you talk them through um just sort of the timeline of of August? Uh, and we we'll get to the Justin the board dates that are being recommended to you here in a little bit, but maybe if you just

101kind of talk through the timeline of August, uh, board dates coming up because we've got a few Well, yeah, we've got a few. Yeah. on an average to goody year, meaning no legislative session, no major changes in payroll, no major changes in in finance in general in revenue calculations where the the new year budget that we're working on is relatively stable, very much like the previous year. So like next summer this time, there won't be all these major changes because we've already been through the changes one year and things will be pretty well set on the same course for 26 27. on an average to good year, I would have already started working on trying to get my best predictions on all the final revenues and final expenses and just kind of get a ballpark

102of where do I think we're going to land, overspent, under spent, right on target. Uh, but I will tell you this has not been an average summer by any stretch of the imagination. So, I am I have not started working on that yet. Uh, hopefully in the next couple weeks I will finally get a chance to. Uh, one thing that as Clay was mentioning, um, you know, normally the budget adoption, tax rate adoption for the new year comes towards the end of August, usually the third week of August. We've moved that back. We've needed to move that back to August 12th, which is the second week of August. So, there's a lot to get done on new budget, new tax rates, new revenues, possible Vader, all these other things that's going to take a significant

103amount of time between now and August the 12th. And therefore, we may need to have an additional special meeting after August the 12th, closer to the end of the month, possibly. Yeah. But all we did was uh move the special one in September um from that first week in September to that last week in August. So, we didn't add anything to the potential schedule. We just moved it a week so that we fell under that deadline. Right? because we do have to have a final amended budget for 2425 board approved by the end of August. So waiting till September is too late. It has to be done before August 31st. So yes, that's something I will immediately turn most of my focus to as soon as we get past August 12th so I can get

104everything wrapped up for the old year, the outgoing year. But yes, uh it it has not it is definitely not slipped my mind. I was just talking to Clay about it today. is like I really got to get started on this because time is running out. But okay, then we had our investments. We already talked about that. And then our tax collections. Uh we are currently knocking on the door of 97%. I believe it was 96.7 or 8% on current uh current year collections. So we are right there near 97%. I believe we planned for 98%. So, we should at least be between 97 and 98% by the time we get to the end of the year. We still have two more, well, month and a half. Um, and like I said, delinquent collections are

105up. They're usually up this time of the year anyway, but they're actually up more than I expected they would be by the end of the year. So, we are gaining a little bit on our delinquent collections over the past year. Any other questions on the monthly financials? Okay. Uh, next we have uh consider a possible approval budget amendment. And Mr. Sinclair, you're up. And that was the one thing I forgot to print out. I believe it's 361,000. Is that correct? Okay. That is the first payment uh that we've received from Parsons. I believe it's Parsons. Uh first invoice we received from them that we need to pay for the emergency uh damage that we've had. So since we did not plan for this obviously we did not plan for this type of expense and all

106these repairs. Uh so what I'm asking is approval to for the time being charge that to budgetary fund balance. Keep in mind that it's not real fund balance unless we actually spend everything in the budget and then it really is coming out of fund balance. What I would call actual fund balance but for right now it we're just asking to add the money into function 81. Is that right? Did it say that on there somewhere? Okay. I didn't look at it today. I usually look at all these things before the meeting, but uh so yes, we're just adding wanting to add the money to function 81 so we can pay that bill. Uh we got that I think about a week or a week and a half ago. And just to be clear, this is

107the deduct the deductible for all the issues we're having at all. Make sure. Okay. So this is this is the first bill going towards our deductible for our insurance to fix all the RS that we had during the hilltorm. Okay. Correct. I think this is first of probably three payments, correct? That are going to be just like this. It's I don't know exactly how many they're going to submit to us. That's the first one I've seen, but yes, there are more coming. Obviously, that this is a third of the amount that we're going to have to pay. Yeah, it is what I'm getting at, right? Yes. Um, so s now seems like a great opportunity to point out also since we've been talking about raises and spending money everywhere. Uh, we don't have a lot

108of money to spend and we need to keep that in mind as well because our fund balance, meaning our savings account, is drastically dwindling and we're not replenishing it. Um, so we're down to probably two weeks left. $2.7 million, I think. 18 days for you, coach. There you go. Um, it makes me really nervous to know that our school district does not have anywhere close to the 90 days we need. Um, and we don't have any revenue coming in, which we can't control that. I understand that, but it just it needs to be said because this is this is a lot of money going out. Um, and I know we can't control hail, but we've got to figure out how to replace that at some point very soon. Yeah, Kyle, let me let me address

109that. Part of the reason why we would want to allow room for additional positions is if the board chose to add those positions or if they chose not to depend on the finite. So again, you can you can quickly get to if you start talking about adding the teachers and the support positions that we cut moving into this fiscal year. you add those back, not the admin positions, the teachers and the support positions, and we're we're at about $2 million. So, um that's why I say yes, a raise to our current staff. also money back for those positions. And as the board sees fit, um you either start adding back some positions where you feel like maybe you want to uh relieve some classroom loads or we say uh let's hold tight in this one

110area and that money is is not spent. But yes, we would highly recommend not only giving uh raises but also putting money aside for the positions that we lost and we would put those back again as the board sees fit, which could be Kyle at the end of this next school calendar year or it could be at the end of uh a couple of few school years. just kind of depending on what that fund balance looked like, what the state of our our ISD was at that time. We uh we will need a motion for this one. Unfortunately, I will uh I'll make a motion to approve this the budget amendments as presented by Daryl. Second. Motion has been made by Justin Collie and second by Raven Kelvin Raven to approve the budget amendment as

111presented. All in favor? All opposed? The eyes have it. The motion passes. Next, we have a possible acceptance of a bank depository bid. Mr. Sinclair, if you please. All right. Uh, we did put information in your packet uh just going over the basic concept of the bank depository bidding and the timeline and and all the other information there that uh reflects this. Uh basically every two years and it usually falls in legislative years. Every two years the district either has to renew its contract with its current depository or put out a bid and receive uh bids and uh review them and decide on possible changing of a other depository to a different bank. Uh you can do as many as three two-year extensions once you've had the initial contract approved. And so that's total of

112a two-year contract and three times two is six more. So, eight total years at the same bank and then regardless of whether you're happy or not, you have to do the bids again because eight years is the limit at one bank without going through the process. So, we are now as of the end of August, we have hit eight years with Brenham National Bank. So, we are we were required to do this bid this year and review and go through the process that TEA has outlined for us. Uh the bid packets are pretty much standardized by TEA. and download them off their website. There's a little bit of customization for your individual district, but for the most part, it's a standard uh bid packet. Uh the law requires that they be mailed to every bank

113in your district. Uh so not not credit unions, but full-fledged banks. Uh so we did that to the best of my knowledge. We did that. We did a search. We checked online. We made sure we got everyone that we could and mailed those out. uh outline the entire process to the banks. We received back three bids and there's a bid data sheet I believe in your packet that shows the the banks that we uh sent this packet to. Uh just real quickly, we sent them to Bank of Brennham, Citizen State Bank, Global One Bank, JP Morgan Chase, PNC, Brennham National Bank, Vera Bank, Wells Fargo, and Wood Forest National Bank. So, they're the ones we sent. And you see we received bids back from Bank of Brennham, Brennham National Bank and Vera Bank. Those are

114the only ones that we received by the deadline. And then also you'll see in your packet there the uh evaluation matrix that we use to score these based on the information that we were given. Uh we also included uh notes from what we reviewed and there was a three of us that did this team of three of us that went through and and reviewed all the information last week. Uh, and so we made some notes. Actually, I'll give credit where credit is due. Jennifer made some very good notes uh on the differences and the similarities between the different bids that we received and that that's been included in your packet as well. Of course, one of the top concerns we have is the interest rate. That's always going to be the top scoring uh criteria.

115And then we have other uh concerns for or consideration for the um the records that the bank can keep on our behalf, the documentation, the records that we need. We also also want to know what kind of services they can perform and what charges there are for those services. And so as you'll notice there in the bid evaluation, uh Brenham National Bank had the best offering of interest rate. They also can accommodate all the uh documentation and the records that we need kept. And they give us I see a typo on there now that I'm looking at this. Okay. Well, there's a slight typo on the third item there. I just noticed where it shows 20 possible points for the ability to provide necessary services. And I see one bank has more than 20 points,

116which is a typo. Uh that is not the way that was supposed to look. Uh regardless, uh Random National Bank has offered all of the services that we need at no charge. No charge for any service. That includes wire transfers, a processing, positive pay, any services that we have free of charge. And then after that, it was fairly similar, pretty close, but the one bank that stood out was Brennham National Bank. And so that is the one that we are asking uh that we're recommending and asking you to approve for another two-year contract from September 1 of 25 through August 31st of 27. Anybody have any questions? I make a motion to accept the bid from Brenham National Bank to serve as the district's bank depository as presented. Second. Okay. Bonnie Brinkmire made a motion

117seconded by Kyle Hafinger to accept the bid for Brim National Bank to serve as the district's bank depository as presented. All in favor? All opposed and the motion carries. Okay, Mr. Sinclair, if you don't mind, now possible approval of the district's property and casualty insurance carrier. Proceed, sir. All right. So, this was the other packet that we sent out uh actually earlier than the bank packet. This was sent out I believe at let me see here. I think the end of May. No, 1st of May. Let me check my date here real quick. I should have put it on here. Yeah, between May 1st and May 7th. Actually, we tried to get them all out on May the 1st. Uh there were a couple of uh businesses that I did not know about that I

118didn't know were interested. They found out about it. They contacted us and asked for a copy. So, we sent it to them as well, of course. And so in a period of about five or six days, all of these bid packets were sent out to the the agencies you see listed here. Dominant Associates, Duke McGinness, Higinbotham, PCAT/insurikica, uh Texans for ex excellence in education, Trusted Capital Group, USI Insurance Services, Van Dyke Rankin Insurance, and Wellman Insurance Agency. So those are the the businesses that we did contact and did send the information to. Uh there was a myriad of information that was put in this packet. Uh everything from current premiums to current coverages, deductibles, uh properties listed with the value per building. Um pretty much anything that anybody would want or need to know to

119be able to respond and and offer um give an offering for for coverage for this is for property insurance, liability insurance. Let's see what else. There's a couple others. Uh, so automobile liability, automobile physical damage, property, uh, school liability, meaning for basically for staff for any kind of lawsuits that might come about from us doing our performing the functions of our job, privacy and and information security and violent acts. So those are the basic categories that we were requesting bids on. Uh the deadline came and went and not one single bid was returned. I was actually fairly surprised. I expected at least two or three maybe. I wasn't sure that all of them would, but we did not receive a single one. Um I did have a couple of the local agencies give me a

120notice a little bit before basically saying that they were politely refusing or not choosing not to to reply. Uh but outside of that, I expected that I kind of really thought we'd have at least a couple or three others. So, uh since that was the case, uh the only bid that we have to consider is our regular renewal, uh annual renewal from Texas Association of School Boards, which we have received. We get that usually right about the end of June, 1 of July. And so, we do have that already. I put a copy of that. I went ahead and put a copy of last year's and a copy of this year's in your packet. Um, I also included a I'm trying to find it here. I included a breakdown showing the changes per category. Uh,

121there was a slight increase. I mean, slight one is to $500,000. 33,000 is not a huge percent, but yes, there was about a 30 almost $34,000 increase. Most of that is on the property side. There's actually a decrease on auto automobile physical damage. a slight increase of $2,700 on the automobile liability and a slight increase of $1,200 on the school liability for professional uh staff. I will make I did and I think I put this in your packet as well. The one good thing about this, even though the property amount premium goes up, the deductible has dropped significantly as we were just talking about our current 2425 deductible is minimum of a of a million dollars and going forward it's minimum of $250,000. So that in addition to the fact that they did send out

122they have a third party uh that they contract with to do it's not annual inspections. is they do this about every 3 or four years and from my understanding it's been at least 3 years since anyone came out and actually put eyes on our property and took measurements and inspected and you know verified the buildings that are here and the ones that might not be. That was done back in January or February of this year and I'm sure as probably won't come in any surprise to you that the property values the value has increased over three years. the value of these buildings has increased whether the condition of them has increased or not, the capacity has increased or not, but the value of it has. So that has a small effect obviously on the the

123cost of replacing the buildings or repairing the buildings. So I would say probably the main two factors on the increase of the property coverage is a lower deductible. Generally, if you have a lower deductible, you're going to have higher premium. That's usually an offset. And then of course the properties themselves being re-evaluated. Question. Um it when I look through the uh TASBY risk fund, whatever this whatever this attachment is, it says that the coverage is um from 91 through 8:31. Is that when our contract was up or is up is 8:31? Yes. It's always a one-year. So for us to give 30 days notice if we were to make a change, we would need to let them know by July 31st. July, correct? So which leads to my main question. Why did we do an

124RFP that was due by the first? Why didn't we have that RFP due this past Friday? So, we gave more time to the insurance companies to submit numbers, submit whatever the right word is, estimates, uh, or pricing, because from the little bit of research I've done, most rates aren't available until mid July. And TASBY obviously is different because they already were our insurers, so they already know our information, but all these other insurance companies have to get VIN numbers on the buses and all the property information. It's a lot of work. So, they need every chance they can get. And I just don't understand why we did the RFP with such a f far far back date. Is that the right phrasing? Anyway, why it was the first instead of making it like the 18th

125for example or the 17th even to give more time because if if we submitted it to 10, one of those being TASBY is only when we got back, that means the other nine didn't have enough time to get information back to you. Um, and having spoken to one of those nine, that's what I was told is we don't even get rates until July. So, there's no way we could have put in pricing if we don't have the rates because new rates come out in July. Okay. the new rates being leased in July or released in July is news to me. I did not I was not aware of that. Uh I did try to give as much time. I gave everyone two months to go through and review all the information and you know reply.

126Um yeah, I'm not blaming you. No, I'm just saying I'm just trying to explain. So my reasoning for making the due date on July 1st was because again assuming we would have gotten two or three or five maybe five different bids, we would have to have time to review them. Sure. and evaluate them and and just going through the bank bids we did last week took like two two and a half days to go through and it's a lot of information to digest when you have so so to Kyle's point they would have had the opportunity to say hey the rates don't come out until July if they decided to reply to you but they just chose not to do that even with the Yeah I I was not aware of that which is why

127they all said they couldn't do it. Um, but I would like for, assuming we do this again next year, we put it out. I would like for us to change that date from July 1st to the 18th, the 17th, whatever that Thursday, Friday is before the Monday meeting. Um, cuz ultimately we don't have to tell TASBY anything until the 31st. So technically we can make our decision on the 30th and then we're okay. But I know the board meeting is going to be a week and a half before that. So, if that's our last possible date, I'd like to allow more time because that's what I was told by um more than one today uh when I asked. So, okay. Well, I was not aware of that. I want to respond to that too because

128some of these I mean we've we've been reaching out to and having conversation with as far as almost a year ago. Um so, I understand if there's a rate consideration, but that that was not communicated to to us at all. And uh we always want to give you plenty of time to work through it. Um most districts when you're talking about a big decision um you know even with a policy change you'll have a reading and then the second uh meeting you look at it you try to make a decision. So um we can definitely back it up but I'd want to give you a reasonable amount of time to have some conversation about it and and uh and be willing to sort of digest it a little bit. So, a lot of times we

129allow um again for it to be brought to you for to a meeting, you know, two three weeks later we're meeting again uh for you to to make a decision on it. So, I just want to say that um I was told the exact same thing that Kyle was told because I went and I made a few phone calls after my conversation with you yesterday, Clay, about this cuz I wanted to follow up cuz I was a little shocked just as you and Daryl were that nobody else submitted a bid. And I spoke to a few of them and they said these rates don't come out until the beginning of August and and that's why we couldn't couldn't give it. And so I would echo Kyle in that if we could shift that deadline for

130next year to allow some more time that would be much appreciated. And I appreciate your work on it. I know you guys have been working hard to get this information. It just looks like quite honestly that we might have missed a step or two and and um we'll do better next time. Quick quick question on that then. How how did how did TASBY get us to those numbers? I mean, is it because they've had us in the past cuz it's still they still have all the same information, but the rates would they would still be constricted by that as well? They they had everything in their system already. They basically just reququed us based on whatever they needed to for this year. So TASBY is also a separate pool and they're not they're not going

131out in the general public. They're not going out and getting other insurance companies to put in rates. They have their own I mean monopoly basically. But they already have everything and everybody always renews and the deadline I'm sure is set like that on purpose to make it really hard for other school districts to make a change. There are a lot more that are changing now, but it's because it's a it's it's almost like a closed loop system, right, Sean? To answer your question, it's more of a co-op sort of deal. And so and so they kind of I don't want to say control, but sort of control the deliverance of their information and what what type of bids they're able to get out. And quite frankly, that's one of my um frustrations with them is

132is their monopoly on the whole entire system. But I know that the insurance base within districts is changing a little bit to allow a little bit more competition, which I'm glad to hear about. And I'm glad that the rates went the the um costs went down this year. that kind of reflects a little bit of the presence of the competition, which I think is good. Um, but so yeah, to answer your question, it's a conglomeration of school districts that kind of set their own policies and rates and stuff. I I'd like to point out too, we've had several claims with TASBY and from the best I can tell, we've had absolutely no issues with them helping us out with the the ED building and then everything with the RS that got us emergency statues. So,

133like I know we want bids, but at the same time, they've treated us extremely good. They've always been very helpful. They've always been quick to react and very prompt with getting our buildings back up. So, as far as I know, I haven't heard any complaints from anybody in the district about using TASBY's insurance. So, I just want to make sure you know that like even though this was the only bid, they have taken very good care of our district cuz we've had a lot of claims over the last couple years with freezing pipes and water and it seems now roofs and it's just they've always been right there with us. It's kind of a a partner helping us get back on track. So, I just want to make sure the public knows that too. We

134are they have taken very good care of us over the years. Yeah. And I I want uh I want everyone to know again I'm I'm not for or against any particular property casualty insurance company. I want a I want a good coverage for a good rate just as I do with my own personal insurance. So um we will continue to actively look for other I was very hopeful as well that we would have um at least a few. Again uh this is um an area where yes we want good coverage but we want the best rate we can get as well. um just as I do with my personal home and car, etc. Um so we we approached it the same way. Um I felt like we were very proactive and started the process um

135pretty early on. Um but we're we're happy to continue those those conversations. I'd like to make I'd like to make a motion to approve Tazby as the district's property and casualty insurance carrier for the 2025 2022 2026 school year as presented. A second. Kelvin Kelvin Ra Raven has made a motion seconded by Sean Coun to approve TASBY as the district's property and casualty insurance carrier for the 2022 2026 school year as presented. All in favor? I. All opposed. The motion carries. Okay, Darl, I think you're done. Good job, buddy. You were up there for a while. I had I had to check. I was like, is he up again? All right, so next we have the consider possible approval of a policy update 125. Uh, it says Clay and the executive staff will discuss this.

136Yeah, we get uh here we go. Uh yes, as you know, we get routine uh updates um especially around this time of year following uh legislative session. So, you can expect a 126 before uh too long. uh 125 is is pretty small in comparison to what you'll see with 126, but uh as it says here, uh myself and the executive staff have have all made ourselves um familiar with these these changes. Do you have any questions for us about these? Uh no real question. It just seems completely unnecessary. Um, after reading through it, it doesn't look like it's um doing much besides removing board power, and I don't think it's necessary at all. But, um, I didn't get a chance to read all of it because obviously it's a lot, but um, and I don't

137have time, but anyway, I I don't I don't see that this is legally necessary at all. Seems like typical TAZAB policy updates, not necessary. Um, but it doesn't it just the one thing I did see that uh and I wrote a note down. Um, it uh it takes the board's power away to assign a district employee to provide clerical assistance uh and reassigns it to the soup, which nothing against you, but what about the next board and the next board, the next superintendent, next superintendent? I think that should be board responsibility. That's the only thing I noticed and I haven't made my way through all of it, but it just takes board power away. Which I'm sorry, which piece was that again? Oh, I don't have it open in front of me, but I wrote

138it down. Um, assigned district employee uh to provide clerical assistance and reassigns the power to the board uh to the superintendent. I'd have to go back and find it. That was so a long time ago. It's on page 101. Meaning that Thank you. Sorry, Chairman Michael. Kyle, were you saying that? Meaning that Sorry, my stupid button. Sean, you're so right. We need to we need to fix this game, bro. It's not working. Anyway, so you're saying that um Miss Gas Camp would not be our board secretary or are you talking about Raven being I'm confused by that. So it it says um in BDAA removes the board's power to assign district employee to provide clerical assistance and reassigns that power to the superintendent. BDA BDA. Yes. B Delta A. But I I think I think

139what's addressing is that because they the district employees answer to this the superintendent for it be an overstep actually on the board's part to assign someone to do work that doesn't technically work for us. Uh we're not their immediate supervisor. So I think it's it looks like it's correcting something just in the in the order of how things should be assigned. I'm not sure that it's pulling back um board uh power or or um but I think it's it's more of just putting it more into alignment where the superintendent would be able to say, "Hey, uh you do this." Let Christie walk through a clarification. So, I'm looking on page one and one of one of the local policy comparison. And so when you see the red striketh through on that very first page, it

140is just taking out. So it says board officers is the title of the section and it says the board shall elect a president, a vice president and a secretary who shall be members of the board and then strike through. What's being removed is the board may assign a district employee to provide clerical assistance to the board. And then what remains in that paragraph is officers shall be elected by majority vote of the members present in voting. So, it doesn't really state that that is transferring to anybody. It just removes the board um being able to assign a district employee. But that's where it is in the policy. Well, there are some notes there are some notes uh if you look later on uh where it it kind of gives a reasoning on that. I think

141it it was pretty straightforward on it. I think it's in a different um uh one of the papers here, but it does lay it out just it's just kind of giving it a proper alignment. And again, just to be clear here, this this is not TASBY changing any policies. This is just them updating the policy based off the end of the legislative session. So, it's not them dictating to us. They're just updating based on what they just got done. And I'm sure there will be more after the special session if there's anything in there, which is what Clay was saying. So, this is not Tazby making stuff up. This is what the people we voted for in Austin decided and then we just have to update it. That's all it is. Well, there's nothing legal

142in here. This is not a legal update. This is just local policy update. So, back to my point of it's not necessary. What are we paying for this if we adopt it or is it already paid for? It's an Yeah, it's an annual um it's an annual membership that they update. So, um, the next one, 126 I said before, will be much more substantial because it's falling a legislative session. Um, this could be anything from um case law to um, you know, as like say following a legislative session, a a law change, um, or just sort of a trending court decision. um for whatever reason uh their their lawyers um have have recommended uh this this change. So it's um you know policy is is the same way uh the policy pool works a lot

143like the insurance pool does. So, um you know, they've got hundreds of districts out there instead of paying um your attorney an hourly rate to um help revise policy. You know, you've got hundreds of districts paying a much much lesser rate. Um so they're, you know, they're doing for all instead of paying one to do for for just just you if that, you know, so the insurance works the same way. That's why, you know, when you have that pool, you've got a a much cheaper rate. It's an annual membership. Um like I say, some some updates are are much more um substantial than others. Whe if there's something specific that you want us to get more information about or look at other options, we can definitely do that. Um or you can, you know, you

144can adopt it as presented. We're uh we're happy to uh to research and see if there's any options with any policies that might be recommended if that's the the will of the board. they also look at the way we talk and uh what that means is sometimes when they are looking at dis different districts they have different tabula vocabulary and they're trying to make it so that we all understand each other. Uh I saw one of them while ago here that talked about uh advisory committee and it originally it was called citizens advisory committee and because they didn't want that or someone made the decision that citizen might need to be out of there. Also, I've seen it used uh in big cities where you have uh times when you've got a board meeting and

145there becomes a big debate about something and if they don't have somebody there to watch and and guard what was being said and and what's being told because it gets so long, they've uh made some changes to that, too. So, um that's what they do. They're like they're like uh people who just take care of all of the all of the districts in making sure that uh we we have a common understanding. Go ahead. So Clay, you just said my number one problem with this their lawyers believe. So what about our lawyer? What does our lawyer think? That's that's been my problem with the these entire things the entire time I've been on the board is their lawyers believe. And I know that's how it works and I know that we're going to vote on

146it and it's going to be 5 to2 and that's and that's fine. But again, their lawyers believe. What if I don't subscribe to the values that TASBY has? How am I supposed to know that I agree with their lawyers? What if I don't? And Kyle said it. This is not a legal update. It's a local update. And you don't need to respond because this is just my opinion. And we're going to have a vote and move on to the next item. But these items every year are very frustrating to me. And I just wanted to express that. No, I I I'm happy to answer. Um, you know, yes, legislative updates, but uh, you know, practices as well. I held the word best um because I don't want to argue whether or not it's to best

147practice or not, but practices of the the hundreds of districts out there, you know, the questions that come in, the trending issues, trending problems. Uh, we feel like if this policy is written this way, then uh, you avoid potential problems issues. Sometimes it's based on law, sometimes it's just um again I'll hold the word best, but sometimes it's just practices for the the hundreds of school districts they work with. So, you know, my my response is much like the insurance is um I'm not I'm not for TASBY. I'm not against them. I'm I'm for policy that works for this school district. So Archer, what you have to realize in that scenario that you painted um you know for every legislative change uh and how it affects policy if we are paying our lawyers just Brenamisd

148paying our lawyers we're paying a lot more than this annual um membership with TASBY again because and I know you know this but I'm just so everybody understands because you've got a pool of districts paying this smaller amount and they're still receiving um you know their their their attorney fees um you know that uh that you would see again similarly to what we would be paying a loan to our our attorneys right and I don't I don't have dollartodoll um matches to to to show you that but I I I think everybody understands that's that's the benefit of a pool So, um, yes, you could seek out with your own individual attorney that you chose for this ISD, but you're going to be paying a lot of money for that if you pick up the

149phone call or pick up the phone and and, uh, request a policy change every time there's a legislative update. I understand that. Again, this is a local update, not a legal update. And that's an important distinction because we as the board have jurisdiction over our local policy. Yeah, you're absolutely right. Again, we pay for an annual membership. So, we're going to get the local and legal recommendations both. But, um, as I said before, if y'all want us to to play with some language, see what some other options are for any particular local policy, um, that's that's one of your main, uh, main duties as a board member is to is to, uh, adopt local policies. So, we can we can take a look at any specific policy that you would like us to and, uh,

150see if there's there's other ways to do it. Um, you just let us know which ones you'd like us to look at. That's why we have this meeting. That's why I said earlier um a lot of times with policy updates um or policy changes, you'll have two meetings. Um a meeting where we do this and then a second meeting where we actually say, "Okay, this is what we've decided to move forward with." So um yes, give us feedback on which ones you'd like us to take a deeper look at and we're happy to do that for you. Um I'll just make it easy. Let's just go ahead and vote. But there is another group. We just didn't uh approve them last year. Uh, and they do this much much cheaper. Anyway, so let's move on.

151Which group you referring to? TE Mhm. Remember, I tried to call them. They still had it's two years later still hadn't got a phone call back. So, how can you go to someone if they not responding back to you? And I can tell you, I've been on this board. I don't know what number you called, but I I talked to her today. Okay. Well, I called the numbers on the website, the plain website, generic website. That's what I called, which that's only uh the information I had. But I've been on this board going on my my my third term going on uh 12 years. Ty's been good to to this to this district. You all are making this personal. This is about business right now. It's not personal. Whatever they doing, he just said that

152he doesn't care for Taz in so many words. Oh, no. I don't like him either. That's my point. That's my point. What's best for the children here? What's best for the district? This is not person's business. It's I do business with all the time I don't like. So, I'm gonna make a motion. Wait, wait, hold on a second. Before you do that, go ahead. Before you do that, no, I mean here, so we don't have five to two votes going, do we need to go debate every single line item on this policy update? Because if you go just the one that you did bring up, it's not we are a team of eight here and we need to focus on that. We are a team of eight. So, the way that that policy is written,

153the the update is written is it takes the board's ability to assign clerical assistance. It's not our job to to have Miss Gas Camp do work for us. She works for Clay. Clay works for us. Like, we are a team of eight. We need to focus on that. We need to focus on what's best for the children. Like Mr. Raven said, um I'm I'm happy to sit here and and we can debate every single line item. You already said you didn't have time to read all this like so I mean we need to focus on I don't think any we can talk about it if you want to. I don't think any of it's necessary and so it's no point in debating it. I think this whole thing not one thing on here is needed.

154Not one. Um we've had plenty of updates. The last one the one we did last year we needed it. Some of it was necessary. Uh this one there's not one thing voted against last year that we needed. We needed it in a different version, but yes, same one. Yeah. Did you vote for it or against it if we needed? I voted against it. Then then like you said, this is personal. No, it's personal. If you voted against something that we need, it is personal. Correct. There's a hidden agenda. You have an agenda against Tazby. You have an agenda that's not healthy for this district. Everybody has their opinion. I'm entitled to mine. You can believe what you want about TASBY. You've been on the board for a couple months. When you do your research, hopefully

155you'll You'll see who they are when you can do it how you want and we can get into a longer debate about it. It's not anything other than this is not necessary. So, let's just vote on it and move on. But do you do you disapprove of that specific one as far as the assignment? Is that is that what you're saying? Are you saying you disapprove of the reassignment where we cannot assign a clerical staff? That's just one example and it was on the it was on the front. That's why I wrote it down and then I breezed through the rest of it and this is just I was like there's nothing in here that's necessary and that was the first example I came up with. This is the first one I wanted to bring

156up. I don't care. It's fine. Let's just move on. Okay. Because when we get down into the later notes and and this is this is actually a question I have in regards to uh expulsion. Uh where it's now updated the term where bullying can be for expulsion as well. And my question was, do we have a do we have a firm um uh definition of that word uh bullying? Because obviously it can be a lot of different a lot of different things. And so uh that was a question and you know we received this last Thursday uh you know we had last week so to to read through it we can do that. Um but that was my question in regards to the 125 where it talks about the bullying being added to uh things

157that you could be uh expelled for. Do we have a firm definition on bullying or is it We do. Yes, sir. It's uh it's it's defined in in policy actually. So, okay. Um yeah. And again, a lot of this is legal. There's there's plenty of legal updates in here, too. But, um as uh you know, as I've said many times, um you know, y'all your your main three functions are hiring your superintendent, approving the budget, and adopting policy. So, if there are any um particularly local policies you want us to take a deeper look at, we're happy to do that. Again, there's there's um several quite a few. In fact, I think most uh updates in here are legal that are going to be um you know, in response to um legislation. And to be

158clear, if we this we don't have to adopt everything. If we if we add a Miller again something, we could look to have the the wording re redone. Is that correct? Oh, absolutely. We can pick apart. Yeah. The the local um you know, for example, um Sean, if if we came across a situation in this district, an academic one, a discipline, whatever, and the board took a hard look at that local policy and thought, you know, I don't I don't know that this exactly works for us anymore. then uh we could change that one one policy uh as the board um sees fit. Um with an update like this, you just get you get them all at once, you know. So um if there are any local policies that any of you would like us

159to to pick out and and you know see what other options there are, we're happy to do that. Or you can um you can adopt this, you know, all all at once, however you choose to do it. Okay. I make a motion to approve the addition revision to deletion of local policy as recommended by policy service and according to the instruction sheet for localizing policy m updated 125 as presented. Second. Okay. Okay. Kelvin Raven has made a motion seconded by Justin Collie to approve the addition, revision, and deletion of local policies accurate as recommended by policy services and according to the instruction sheet for localized policy manual update 125 as presented. Who's for it? I against I. Okay. The motion is passed 5 to two. Okay, moving on. Uh, next we have a discussion for

160the 2025 2026 employee handbook. Uh, Chief of Staff Chrissy Johnson will lead. So, in your board packet, you do have a copy of the proposed 2526 um employee handbook. Um, the employee handbook is not um a um full policy manual. It is just um a snippet of our board policies. Um, it provides our staff with questions and answers to how to have a successful school year. There were very few revisions to the policy, I mean to the employee handbook. Um, last year, if you remember, we adopted a policy on nicotine pouches, and so that information is now added in. Um, there's been some legislative changes about the timeline to make a report to CPS changing that from 48 to 24 hours, and that revision has been um, put into our policy. there's a mental health

161training requirement and so um that information that board policy is summarized in here as well. So not a lot of revisions. I think I flagged four pages of kind of changes that were pretty minimal. If you have any questions I'll be happy to answer those. Very thorough handbook, 117 pages according to what we have. So there's a lot in there. Thank you for the time and effort on it though. Okay, nobody had any questions. Okay. Uh, next we'll have a presentation from Washington County Crimestoppers. Uh, safety and security coordinator Joe Mkeley and, uh, Carrie Council, who's president of the Washington County Crimestoppers, will present. Thank you all so much for your patience. Thank you so much for your time. Uh, Joe's here, uh, as one of our board members. Uh my name is Carrie Councel.

162Uh I'm the active chairman and and president of Washington County Crimestoppers, Brennan Washington County Crimestoppers. Uh we've been an active organization since the early 80s. Uh I've been on the board since the 90s and I've just recently in the last several years taken over as chairman again um as as a evolution has gone around. We have about 14 board members. Uh if you're not familiar with Crimestoppers, Crimestoppers is all about anonymity and reporting crimes and and uh uh the key to it is the anonymity part and making sure that you know somebody can report something and and keep it completely anonymous. Um so Crimestoppers is the is the parent organization. Washington County in Brennham Brennham Washington County has been around forever. We used to have it in BISD. Um gosh, I don't remember how many

163years ago, but it's been years ago. uh we had a uh campus crimes stoppers right here on uh on the campus and due to the evolution of instructors and teachers and like if you don't have somebody that holds the ball on the air that ball ends up going you know the sand goes through your fingers. So that's what happened here. Um we actually had it at Blind College as well and with the retirement of the the person that ran it over at Blind College the funds came back to Brennham Washington County Crimestoppers but so what I'm doing is it's not a consent. We're just letting you know that Brennan Washington County Crimes Stoppers is coming into the school district. It doesn't cost you anything. There's nothing. It's going to be beneficial to you. Um Kelvin

164and I have worked closely with Washington Crime Crimes Stoppers for years. I don't know how many years. We go back way we go way back. But what I'm what I'm just informing the board is I'm going to pass this off to Joe and he can give you a little bit more information. You can ask questions on it. Um, we deal with felonies and above. Washington County Crimestoppers, Crimestoppers organization deals with felonies above, but they have a campus unit which we would be the umbrella underneath uh, uh, Brennham Crime, Brennham U BD, Crimestoppers. Um, so we would fund it. Uh, it wouldn't cost you anything. the training for the uh for the uh um campus would be would be uh the financial responsibility of us uh the parent organization. So that's there's no expense to the

165school district at all. Any of the payouts will go through Washington County Crimestoppers and um Joe was elected to our board. It was just we started having the conversation. We got uh Superintendent Gillantine involved and if there was an interest uh and they they started talking about it and then I got pulled into the mix and we've had a couple conferences and this is the presentation to the board to let you know that now we have to take it back to our board to set up the uh the tier level on how we work it and what gets paid and whatnot. How do we you know how we fund it and how everything is going to be funded all the way down. Uh Joe became a member of Crimestoppers back uh December December and uh

166we sent him off to campus Crimestoppers training and with that he gets his tallell hours which are part of his police officer training hours. Um so he did his training in February, right? February he went to campus crimes stoppers at at the our uh state convention. And so he's he's gathered a lot of information. It's like what did I say? Drinking from a fire hose. But I'm gonna pass this off to him and he can give you a little bit more about it. I just want to let you know what the parent organization is and we've been around forever, been around for a long time. We work really closely with the with the police department and our actual u coordinator is through the sheriff's department. This has all been run through. Uh we actually before

167we brought it even mentioned bringing it into the school district, we talked to the sheriff, the incoming sheriff, and he thought it was a great idea that uh you know, a lot of these these kids know what goes on out there a lot more than what we know goes on. So, it brings a lot more. I think it's going to open our eyes to the community a lot more than what we really realize that goes on, not just here at the school, but you have these kids that are in the school that, hey, this is happening out here in Chapel Hill or it's out happening out there in Burton and it's going to bring more information in in. And it's it's just another level of security and another level of safety. And one of the

168things I'm going to pass this off to you, I'm trying not to I'm going quick because I don't want to drag this meeting out, but uh is the suicides. Um the this is one of the big deals that uh that campus crimes stoppers is focusing on right now is the teen suicides. Um but they've had a couple of them that have slipped through the cracks and one is too many. So this is huge because of the the mental health issues that are aren't addressed. So, this is another outlet and just another safety net for the school district is and I'm going to pass this off to to Joe Mkeley. Thank you, board. Um, Crimestoppers, what it does, it it provides persons with initiative. So, uh, if a student knows of another student with illegal drugs,

169with vape, or violating school rules, some shape, form, or fashion, they can make a phone call or send a text to an anonymous tip and report little Johnny has violated school rules or or has illegal drugs or has a weapon. Um, and then we can turn around and pay them for that violation. Just initiative for them to do the right thing. Um, just so y'all know, it hadn't been approved 100%, but what we're looking at, like for a vape, if a student has a vape and someone tells them and the administration finds that student with the vape, we'll pay the tipster roughly $40. For illegal drugs, we're looking anywhere, depending on the type of drug, anywhere from $100 to $250. Uh, for violation of school rules, maybe $25 to $50. Just an incentive to do

170the right thing. And and one of the difference between Crimestoppers and campus crimes stoppers, it's not illegal to walk down the street with a with a knife on your pocket. It's not illegal to walk down the street with a vape. U not illegal to walk down the street with a with a with a rifle. Uh but you can't come on school grounds. You can't come on school's grounds with a pocketk knife. So there's a little difference between the crimestoppers and the campus crimes stopppers. Crimestoppers. You know, this is why that when we institute this, we have to have different different policies for the campus than we do for the Crimestoppers because Crimestoppers, like I said earlier, only deals with felonies and above. So, if somebody has drugs, obviously, here's your felony. Or if somebody has

171a c a gun on campus, here's your here's your here's your crime. But is it a crime to have a vape? Is it a crime? But you still want to have that that incentive and the students want to be incentivized immediately. So what we're looking at doing is having a fund balance that he will supervise and have immediate payout through the school system and keep the anonymity. So you the stu we don't know really who the student is reported it. All we know is we've got this report and we have this suspected you're on school grounds with with whatever the violation is. You want to continue on? Yes. and the and with the with the team of our administrators um the report when a tipster makes the report it'll go to a call system that

172system will then go to the sheriff's office the sheriff's office liaison will then figure out which agency it needs to go to does it need to go to Brennham PD the sheriff's office blend college or is it a school violation that's where I come in as the the coordinator for the school district the tip would then come to me and does it need to go to an administrator or to one of the SRO's to be further investigated. Once it's investigated and a tip turns out to be true, then working with our administrators, we can make a pay to the to the tipster. And we're looking at working off the QR codes. The kids today or students today uh are more about technology than what what we have in the past. Uh we give them the

173the phone number, the the phonetic phone number 836 tips. Nobody knows what that means anymore. Uh but if you give them a QR code, you know, they can scan a QR code and everybody's got a phone on them. So, um we're going to we're going to transition into the QR code and away from the 836 TIPS, which is the the Crimestoppers number. Well, we're glad that all are going to be back in the schools. It's just another outlet for kids. So, thank you all for the hard work. And we're going to take it all the way down to the elementary level, too. It's not just going to be at the high school. It's always just been at the high school. and and with his instit his his him instituting this this will be something that

174we can carry all the way down to the elementary school. Archer, you had a question. No, turn on your microphone. You I think this is amazing. I think it's great to get fellow students involved in discipline processes, safety processes. I'm just interested. Do you guys have, and if you don't, it's fine, but do you guys have any um data or any other districts that are doing this that have found it really effective or in terms of referrals or you understand what I mean? Kelvin Kelvin can probably answer that for you right now. At the high school, that was tremendous resource. I mean, that's when MySpace started happening when I was there. So, uh that's way back in the day. Way now you just told your age. I did. But I will tell you this is

175huge. This is huge. I used to have kids sliding notes under my desk under my door to uh to make this school a safer place. And with the initiative that they're presenting and also the incentive of being paid, you can't beat that. And they're doing it for the right reason, meaning they're trying to make their school better. And they'll tell you that. So yes, it's very successful. Cool. Great. Love it. And I think it's going to expand out past the school. It's going to it's an extra what it is. It's a safety net for you. It's an extra addition a free safety net. You got an additional safety net. You have the safety net that you pay for right now anyway that you're required to have. Here's another safety net that the the county is

176offering. We're going to and I guess I guess we could publicly announce this now. We're going to go to the county. Uh there are um there's we have some availability where we might have some funds coming through some grant funds from the county to be able to pay for the software to institute this. So, that's just another little bonus that we need to take to the county and say, "Hey, there's some funds out here that the county just needs to reach out and grab." And if we can get the county to reach out and grab these funds, then we don't have to pay for the software as well. So, we've got enough in our fund balance to take care of some serious stuff. And where we get funded is just so you get an idea

177where how we're able to sustain is probationary funds. When he arrests them over here and he and they go through the court system and they get their, you know, they found guilty and this is this is what they have to pay out. They're they're part of the restitution is a crimes stopper fee. So every month we're getting we're getting funds from uh from the payouts of people that have been arrested for years and years and years. So, we have a pretty substantial fund balance and this fund balance and I'm and I thank Joe for for taking the ball on this and that's what he's really done is he's taken the ball and ran with it because originally it's always been in the high school and you know the junior high and the elementary school and

178the middle schools are really sources as well because these kids not only see what happens in the schools, they see what happens at home. they see what happens with aunts and uncles and family members and so forth. And it's an added safety net. When I brought it to the sheriff, that's what he said. He said, "This is an added safety net for the entire community, not just the school district, for the entire county." So, well, thank you'all so much. We really appreciate the hard work and look forward to the partnership, guys. Great. And we'll keep you informed and you'll get we'll keep you with a with a uh Can I just ask one quick question? I I when you really you lit me up on this one which I really like when you're talking about

179the mental health and suicide prevention because especially in our rural communities our students are facing that and so uh this this will allow for uh tips to provide services. Absolutely. Absolutely. As a matter of fact, this is one of the things that there this is the hot button. Now uh Governor Governor Abbott directly under Governor Abbott is where the crimes stopper sits. There's a there's an office of uh Crimestoppers directly appointed by Governor Abbott and he's directly I mean this is one of the hot buttons for them right now is mental health and campus crimes stoppers. I'm sure they mentioned it how many times about that over over and over and over about uh about the mental health with the with the students and there's we like I said there was two in the last

180year in the state of Texas that fell through the cracks and they actually went through the crimes stopper system and they didn't catch it. If we have one, that's too many. And so, but there were two. I think it's tremendous. So, thank you to that. Um, we're required by the state to have an anonymous tip line. Uh, working with it on that. Um, but this is like a secondary anonymous tip line with an initiative, get paid to report things. Any other questions? No. Again, thank you'all so much. Thanks. I appreciate it. Okay. Okay, next we have the consent agenda. We can approve all at once or pull if we need to, but I think uh Mr. Gillant would like to say something first. Yeah, with the with the calendar the board meeting schedule uh the

181original schedule you saw um had that August 25th meeting was actually the first uh week of September as we discussed earlier. um any changes to this fiscal year, we have until the end of August to do that and uh Daryl feels very much under the gun to have that done by the 12th. Um so we would rather move that first week of September meeting back to that last week of August to be sure that um we are comfortable um with the information we're bringing to you. Um other than that, this is the same uh same calendar uh that you've you've had since last week. Um, remember, uh, some of these dates with the special board meetings, some of the red dates are simply placeholders. Um, I've kind of jokingly said to all of you, if

182we're meeting every month for a quote special meeting, it's not that special anymore. It just becomes a second regular meeting, right? So, the idea of a special meeting is for truly special situations when you need to squeeze in a second meeting during that month. Um, so there's some placeholders of a special meeting for all of us to reserve on our calendar. Doesn't mean that we necessarily are going to need it. Any questions about that? If not, I'll hand it to Jared. Okay. Um, like I said, we can approve all approve all of them at once or pull any if we need to. Yeah. I'll go ahead and make a motion to uh approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. Okay. Motion was made by Justin Collie, seconded by Archer Archer to approve the consent agenda

183as presented. All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. All right. Next, we have monthly reports for information purposes. And then um I'll ask the board if y'all want to go into executive since we already have the resume. Uh I think we've all had the opportunity to go over it. So, if y'all are good, we can just go straight into the vote and skip executive session. All right. No, I that's what I was uh whispering to Jared here just a minute ago. If for any of the reasons allowable under an executive session, if you would like to speak with me um in executive session, we can do that now. If not, uh you've got the information um here for uh since last week about the recommendation we're making to you tonight. If you do not want

184to go into executive session, I'd like for um for Sarah to come up and introduce uh the uh recommendation we're making to you if if that's Is that where we're at? I think we're good. Clay, hang on. Is the motion correct on the agenda? I don't No, Bonnie has the correct motion. Yeah, we uh Yes. Good good catch, Archer. It was little typo. Thank you. Yes. Okay. So, we are excited to bring forward Sarah Montes as the recommendation for the district ESL bilingual coordinator. Sarah is a Brennham High School graduate with a strong background in bilingual education. She previously served um as a teacher and then a bilingual dyslexia specialist at Krowy. Currently, she is the bilingual assistant principal um was um at a a different district and she holds a master's in educational administration

185from Texas A&M and is currently pursuing her doctorate in educational psychology with a specialization in bilingual and ESL education. So, her qualifications as well as her deep connections to our community make her an excellent choice to lead this department. um she understands that we're here to strengthen student outcomes in our bilingual program and are absolutely confident that she'll bring the structure and focus required to support both our educators and our students. So, we're excited to welcome Sarah. Yeah, let's take a break. It is my pleasure to make a motion to accept the superintendent's recommendation to employ Sarah Montes as our new ESL bilingual. Uh, and we have to approve the contract recommendation as presented. Second. I like it when y'all are quick like that. Okay. A motion has been made by Bonnie Brick Meer, seconded

186by Justin Collie. uh to accept the superintendent's recommendation to employ Sarah Montes as the ESL bilingual coordinator and approve contract recommendations as presented. All in favor? I. All oppose. Congratulations. [Applause] Picture. Oh man. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Thanks for sticking it out. [Laughter] was my principal at because it's because here you go over here. Can you ask back to standing by me again? I was going to say like like old times. Bye mom. Congratulations. Jesus. Thank you. Okay. With no more with no further business before the board, we will adjourn this meeting at 8:29. Thank you all for coming.