001It's uh 12:00. We have a quorum and I call this meeting to order. Uh nobody signed up for public comment. So, we're going to go straight into item three, which is selection of an auditor to conduct a district efficiency audit and authorize a superintendent or his design to sign an adult engagement letter. An audit engagement letter, not an adult. Again, killing it here, guys. Uh before we go into a vote, does anybody have a comments they'd like to make? Yes. Thank you, Jan. So, I want to share a few thoughts and if you'll give me a minute to get through all of it, I would appreciate it because it will take me a minute. So, sorry that I'm slow. But I want to first start out by saying that I'm frustrated that we're here today.
002This feels like a process that has been completely rushed, completely emergency. We did not plan for this in any form or fashion. And I feel like that has always been our mode of operation since I've been on the board is to be reactionary and not plan for the future. And I think we're doing that in our strategic planning group. But I think some of these conversations need to happen a lot earlier because I'll be honest with you, I've re-examined some of my comments from our meeting last week and a discussion on facilities and academics was on the agenda and there was a strategic planning update on the agenda, but it was meant for facilities and it turned into a Vader conversation. which was valid. But there was no time for me as a person that
003prepares and researches and gathers information to know really what I think. And so my comments were a knee-jerk reaction. Now, I will say I still believe that alternate methods of ravens should and need to be explored. and I still do not want to raise taxes on our community members. With that, I want to share a few facts that I learned about the Vader process. The general fund did not see Vader money initially. We will be a pass through for this money for raises for our staff. Currently, we have $3.7 million in the general fund with a $56 million budget minus the 1 million that we use for the insurance claim that we're having to pay because of the storm. I'm not very good at math, but that leaves $2.7 million in our general savings account
004fund, which if anyone didn't know is 18 days of operation cost. That is horrible. Way lower than it needs to be or should be. A proposed increase. Another thing I've heard continually is that a 12 increase in the homestead exemption would be net zero for taxpayers. That's just not true. Homes that are valued at $140,000 or less will pay into the VAR. Homes above $140,000 will see less of a refund. And there are homes that are less than $140,000 in Washington County. I talked to several realtors about this and there's a quite a big chunk of that last amount. teachers with four more years four more years of experience are receiving raises through the site equals 1.936 million and support staff is getting a raise of $666 annually through the $45 AD that the state
005is giving us. And finally, a Vader is technically not permanent, but because the board can go back and change and shift the manner, lower it or eliminate it all together. But I want to ask a question. We have the autonomy from the state to use five pennies that we all get from the state without even asking but the autonomy to do without. And so let's think about that in the context of a raider. Have we ever discussed not in my time on the board of lowering those five pennies? No. Because it's lost revenue for us and that's the last thing we need or want. And so to think that a Vader is not permanent is just kind of crazy to me because whatever we set the tax rate on with the Vader, that will be
006the tax rate long after long long after all of us are gone because we never want to lower our our revenue, which I absolutely understand. So the argument that is not permanent is technically correct but in the spirit it's wrong. And so in spite of all of these points that I made I cannot with good conscious think I'm giving believe who is a pillar of good honesty. She represents everything that is good, right, and holy about our district. I love her to death. And anybody that's like her, all our secretaries, all our bus drivers, all our janitors, everybody. I cannot think in good conscious that giving the Lord and people like her a $666 raise is sufficient. It's not. I'm embarrassed by that. That's not enough because she works her butt off and deserves more
007and people like her deserve more. Our support staff deserve a living wage. And secondly, this board is made up of seven people. And I believe that it is their job that the community should decide and be given the opportunity to voice their opinions. If an audit does not if the audit does not if a vader does not pass then the excuse me if the audit does not pass then the community is not heard because there's no vote and who am I to decide as one person that the voters do not deserve a voice this way the community can be heard through the election. and they get to decide. Not us. They do. And so if it passes, great. If it fails, fine. Then we have to figure out something else on. With all those thoughts
008in mind, I will be supporting the VA audit however and I appreciate the conversation, but I wanted to express my frustration because I feel like this is very immediate and all of a sudden we were in this meeting last Wednesday and I'm not blaming you Justin cuz it was a good question. But if you had not asked the question about the the step raises and getting the high percentages, we would not be here today. And I was not ready for this conversation. And I left here very frustrated. Kyle left here very frustrated because we felt like this was just spawning on us. And not once has the strategic planning committee ever discussed the process of what a Vader would mean. We've discussed everything from land for new junior high in high school to broadly avoid
009workers to the ecosystem of the school district to all of those things. But never once did we discuss the actual process and needing to pay money to spend money on an audit. That we need to actually do this. And so my frustration is is that this feels like a big switch. It feels like two years ago, the reason I ran for the board was because we did such a bad job with the bond and everything in my opinion was hidden. And that's why it failed twice and there was so much misinformation and it sound like and feels like we're going down the same path again. And I just wanted to express my extreme frustration and know that Mr. Hopkins who's not here today has given me permission to say that he cosigns to that same
010frustration because this feels like a complete bane switch. And the last thing I want to do is not give our people money that they deserve. But the planning and forethought on this was atrocious. horrible and we need to do better. But I am proud to give bullying more more than $666. That's the bottom line. And I want everyone to know that this was a extremely tough decision for me. I've been vacasillating on this for days because I want to take care of the humans, but we've been so irresponsible with our money in the past that has set us up now to make this really crappy decision in my opinion. and Kyle differs than me. But as you can see, I'm sorry I'm so passionate about this because I don't even want to be here voting
011on this. I don't because we should have done better before this. And now we're in this situation where we have to ask people for more money. And I'm just not cool with that. I know some of you might disagree, but I'm not cool with that. But the bottom line is I want to take care of our people. They deserve it. And this is a crappy way to do it. And I'm just frustrated all as all get out. And I am so sorry for coming across maybe unprofessional or whatever it might be. I'm just so frustrated, so frustrated, and so passionate about our people. I just don't want to be in this situation. And somebody said to me, "Archer, grow up because this is the situation we're in and you've got to deal with it and
012you got to make a choice." And I did. I didn't get any sleep last night because I was thinking about this vote because I really don't want to do it. But I walk in the high school and I see Ben Ward and the joy that she brings me. And she tells me that she makes $19,000 a year and we're giving her a $666 raise. That is unacceptable. And so I'll be voting for it. And again, I apologize. I just care so deeply about this and this was the most probably the most difficult decision for me that I've had to make on this board and I chose to put the people first and so now I'll shut up. I'm sorry. Don't apologize. Thank you for your honesty. I mean Archer and this is a difficult decision
013for all of us. I think we all are looking for ways to put our teachers and our support staff first and we're I don't know what else we can do at this point. I know I had a conversation with uh our local senator shortly after I was reelected and the push she gave me was to go after the golden pennies for the district that that was the one way that we would be able to get more money in our district. So, I think this is something that a lot more districts are going to start going for. we're going to start seeing a lot more of people because frankly there's no other way to get it right now. Um I do like that we I mean I agree with you that we need to look for
014alternative ways of fundraising because we got to get creative and we've been like that for a while and Archer keep fighting man. I mean that's why we're here. We we care about everybody and we want what's best especially for our our staff and our teachers. I mean I get your passion man so you don't need to apologize for being passionate. Okay. Thank you. I wasn't here last last uh meeting. I had to leave to go back to work, but just want to confirm that this bait is is, correct me if I'm wrong, is going to help get staff uh a higher salary. Is that correct? All you're voting on today is to conduct an efficiency audit, but the end goal is to get this staff that allows allows you if you chose if you so
015choose to um you'll have a recommendation from the strategic planning committee. It's only a recommendation. It's a school board decision. You'll have the decision in August to decide whether or not you want to put a Vader on the November election. Okay. This audit simply gives you the option to do it. So, to Archer's point, you're not making the decision, but you're giving the voters a chance to. Very good. My next question, when's the last time the employees got a raise? Two. Going on three years. Three years coming up this year. Yeah. Three years. That's unacceptable. This is unacceptable. Um I'm kind of curious on where you got the figure of $600 for Miss Ward because I I divided it by the ADA payment that we're getting. Okay. For the lot cuz there's a $45 aotment.
016Correct me if I'm wrong, Clay or Daryl. There's an aotment that we're getting from the state for support staff. That's $45 per ADA. And then if you divide that by our enrollment or ADA, I came up with that $666 number. Darl, is that an accurate number? [Music] Okay, if you can follow with Arch and I on that please, because I like to know that and I agree with you. That's not enough, right? But if we move forward on this, uh, some of us, and I'll say me been talking about this for three years, maybe four, it needs to happen. Cost of living is going up. People are leaving daily. We need to do this. Sometimes you take a risk. Sometimes you got to take a risk in life to get where you need to go.
017I understand. I'm I'm going to vote for it. I'm not I'm with you. I'm just frustrated. I I get frustrated every day cuz these teachers the employees not getting getting paid. I get frustrated. I get it. So, I think this is a great idea. Uh I think with the staff we have in the school district, they're very creative. I think they can make it happen. and I'm 100% uh to go forward. So, uh that's my two cents on that. I wanted some clarity on that because I I was not here when y'all went over it. [Music] Does anybody else have anything? Yeah, a couple of quick comments. Um Archer, I do agree this has moved very fast. Um you know, Sean and I are both new to the board. Uh just been on here for
018for a few meetings now. um it has moved fast, but I do also believe that based off the strate strategic planning committee that the emphasis from the the room and the last meeting was to put our focus on the people because we're losing so many teachers um because we we have still 20 plus openings uh for this next school year. So I mean the anticipation of starting the school year with substitute teachers is is going to is going to inhibit the product that is comes out of Brennham ISTD. Absolutely. I agree. And so, um, you know, the board or the, uh, the central office staff sent us some information. You know, starting salary for our for a brand new teacher for Brennham IC is $50,000. That's behind the curve. We're behind all all of our
019neighboring communities. And so, we have to be able to have options available to entice teachers to come to Brennham, you know, to to for teachers to desire to come to Brennham ISD instead of going to Hemstead or Wall or Navasota or College Station. You know, we've got to be able to to entice teachers to come. I guarantee they're not coming for our facilities. Um, so we got to have other options for those teachers to come to Brennham ISD to for those teachers to want to teach in Brenam ISD. So, um, we have a great community. I'm extremely proud of our community, the way our community has stepped up to support everyone throughout the last several years. Um, you know, our our community does amazing things behind the scenes, fundraising through the Ed Foundation and other
020things like that. Yes, let's still continue to be creative, but I'm fully in support of of giving the voters this option and going through this process to give the voters the option uh to to make the final call for this. So, I understand $15,000 it's a painful number to to SP it's a painful, you know, spending any money these days is that wasn't budgeted originally is painful, but again, this is in my opinion, this is an investment for the future of Brennham, and we just need to see what options are there. I I just want to say one thing. I I know that it feels fast, but to be completely fair, it's felt fast since me and my team have stepped into this. Um, it hasn't slowed down, not one single day. Uh, when we
021stepped in, we cut expenses just as hard and fast as we could go, which included 50 professional positions in every budget that we could that we could cut, we cut. Um, now we're saying we we've cut unless unless you want even more teach even more students in each classroom, which is not what I've heard. In fact, I've heard the opposite over and over and over again. Again, that's where you make your that's where you make a cut with a school budget. Um, we've cut we feel like it's deepest we can cut. If you want to now look at the other side of the coin and increasing revenue, then these these are your options. You can look at the capital uh improvement bond which we've discussed which will relieve your M budget some. You can also
022look at increasing the M revenue. So again, we're not deciding to do either one of those things today. We're just saying, hey voters, these these are your your options and I appreciate the board being willing to give the the voter a chance to say yes or no to that. Right. And so I want to I want to kind of reiterate three things if I may. Again, and I know everyone knows this, but I'm I'm saying this more for the public, I guess. We have $3.7 million left in the general fund, and then you subtract the $1 million deductible that we're having to pay because of the storm. That happens. That's a surprise. That's an emergency. I get it. I'm good with that. We have $2.7 million left in our savings account. That's 18 days of
023operations. I'm going to say it again. 18 days of operations. What happens when the next emergency happens? Then we're out of We don't have anything. We're done. The game's over. It's done. That That's just frustrating. And the second thing I want to say is what I mean by this field rush is we have had a strategic planning meeting. We have gotten that going but I would have liked to see a discussion in an evening board meeting four or five months ago about Ovader whether Justin or Sean or whoever is here. We need to have that discussion four, five, six months ago and it needed to not be in a freaking noon meeting when five people are here. How is that okay? I'm sorry for cussing. I'm just getting and I'm not frustrated you guys. I'm
024just frustrated. We should have done better on this. And bottom line is I'm not against this audit. I'm not because I want to pay our people more and they deserve it. But I'm just so frustrated with this whole entire process. We should have done better. [Music] I agree with you on some of that, but we are at a point now it is what it is. Exactly. And we need to communicate with the people. And I know that not everybody gets to be on the on the uh the strategic planning committee. I get that. It's very important for us to let everybody know what we're doing is trying our best to get everything that we need for our kids and our teachers. And it's it's a shame we have to do it so quickly. Maybe at
025the same time, like like Raven said, sometimes you have to take a chance. But the other thing is we care about our kids. We care about our teachers. We care about our community and we have to let them know that and then we have have to get them to trust us to make things happen. But one thing we want to do is make sure that we understand what we're talking about and that everybody understands what we're trying to do. And so we we need to do a better job of that, I guess. Um and and you know time m marches on. We aren't getting any better. And and the other day when I looked at that list of all of the things that we need to fix in in you know in Brenham here we
026need to look at that and we need to make the best decisions we can make. Uh and we need everybody else to know that including our people. We want all of our people uh not just the teachers and the and the pair professionals, but all the other people who are part of our community of at Brennham ISD that they know what's going on too and that they understand we care about them as well. So, uh I I this this is one of these things where it's a it's a bad situation, but we can make it better, but we got to work together. I Bonnie, I agree wholeheartedly. I guess my number one point is I would be way more on board with this if we had discussed it 6 months ago. Archer, can I speak
027to that? I just got a I got a question. Absolutely. Did HB2 change the way that we would look at this Vader opportunity? If HB2 had come through a lot differently, which we had all hoped for, that may have changed the whole the whole uh game plan. So even if we had talked about and I agree with you due diligence man I love and the passion we you know how I feel about you man and the passion and and way we're going about this because we want to take care of our community but even if we talked about it four or five months ago when HB2 came down we had no idea what was going to happen with the government funding and so if they had come through and actually done something that was substantial
028we wouldn't even probably have to talk about elevator at this point and so I think that this the fact it shows that we weren't talking about it five six months ago is the fact that Well, hey, we were hoping we wouldn't have to do that because we really had hope in the state on that. And so now that we're here at this point, yeah, I can understand it feeling rushed. I I get that. But the our hand, you know, our hands are tied on it as far as going forward. But I believe the conversation would have changed dramatically even from the conversations four months ago because of what's come out with HB2. And and you're not you're not necessarily wrong, but I will rebut you minorly. And I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm just rebutting
029a little bit by saying Clay said two meetings ago as we're launching the strategic planning committee that hope is not a strategy. So all I'm asking for is the conversation to have occurred because now we look in my opinion to the community that we didn't plan because now we have our pants down. That's all I'm asking for is a proactive planning. And you're right, we were waiting on the legislature because unfortunately we are beholden to them. That's one thing about this job I hate is we really have no control. The it's the illusion of local control. It really is. We have we have some control, but there's very little. And so I don't necessarily disagree. You're correct. We're waiting on the legislature. But again, hope is not a strategy. And proactive planning always wins. And
030that's that's my bottom line point. And I think if Mr. Her was here, that was his bottom line point to me as well is we've just got to do better to plan. And I always we did this. You guys don't know this, but Bonnie remembers, Jared remembers. In my opinion, when we were talking about the Brennham ISD police department, that whole entire conversation, in my opinion, was rushed because Dr. Chaplain, God rest his soul, wanted to do something that I didn't have all the information on. And then we were rushed into voting on things that I didn't feel comfortable voting on. And quite frankly, as a board member, I'm just tired of that. And I know you guys weren't here, so you don't know. But I'm just because I'm a person that plans. I'm not
031like Kyle. I don't think on my feet. I planned all this out today. I did my homework. I did my research. And Clay knows that. Jared knows that. Bonnie knows that. Kelvin knows that. That I work and I plan. And it's just frustrating to come into these board meetings over and over and over again and say, "Oh, no. We have to vote on this thing now." It wasn't discussed in the last board meeting until an hour and 45 minutes in the meeting when Miss Train stands up and says, "Oh, we got to spend $15,000 on XYZ." What? I even looked at Dar's face and he looked surprised because we were all surprised. And that's just my number one problem is that I'm tired of being surprised. That's it. I'm done. Sorry. Again, Archer, I think
032I think the points you're making are valid. I'm agree with everybody else here. So, I mean, I think I do know that this staff and everybody's going to appreciate the support. But those decisions when they're pushed quick, you know, sometimes they catch us off guard, but I think in this situation, I said I think it's something that because of what HB2 did and because we have an election coming up in November and because the time frame is so short, we I I don't think we had a choice because we need to get some relief for other things. So, I think maybe that is kind of why it feels a little rushed because we're trying to do it as fast as we can to make sure we support our staff and and I agree with that
033intention. I guess my disagreement, if that's the word, I don't even know if that's the right word. My And so I'm done. I'm done repeating myself. I'm going to vote for this because I want to support our people. That's very important to me. But I just wanted to express my passion, my frustration, and my love for all our people in our district because I think they deserve it. Thank you, Archer. Um, okay. So, I think uh what is the will of the board on this uh selecting an auditor to conduct a district efficiency audit? I make a motion to select Pato Brown and Hill LLP to to conduct a district efficiency audit and authorize the superintendent or his designate to sign an agreement excuse me audit engagement letter as presented. Second. Okay. Uh Bonnie Brink
034Bonnie Brinkmire made a motion seconded by Kelvin Raven to select Patio Brown Hill and LLP to conduct a district efficiency audit and authorize the superintendent or his designate to sign an audit engagement letter as presented. All in favor? All opposed? The eyes have it. The motion carries. Six to nothing. Thanks, guys. [Music] With uh no more business before the board at 12:31, we will adjourn.