Brenham ISD Board Meeting 6-25-2025 Noon Board Meeting

001this noon sess special session of the school board is going to begin. Uh we didn't have anybody sign up for public comment, so we're going to go straight into our star EOC update. Our chief chief academic officer, Sarah Bohart, will present. Good afternoon. Turn there. Okay. Good afternoon. Okay. So, um I'm excited to present our preliminary STAR test results today to you. I will not be presenting alone. Um this is a team effort. It certainly takes more than one person, one role to impact the lives of children and students. So each campus principal as well today when we get to their campus slides will be reporting out about their campus scores and trends that they've noticed as well as best next steps. I want also to know and it's important to if you notice on

002the slideshow and that you have in your board packet that was sent to you in board book that this is preliminary raw data. So today we are going to just give a cursory overview of this data a highle view and know August 15th when the state releases accountability ratings as well as when we do our annual performance review we will dig much deeper into the data disegregating that data dissecting the data and determining and identifying trends and report that out to you. So I want to begin sharing with us that STAR and EOCC data is one point of time, one day, one test. And when we think about overall broom ISD, we have multiple points of data that we use to triangulate and inform decisions about the students that we have the privilege to serve.

003So you can see there that there is in-class data that we use for K through2 reading DPS our district progress measures our circle for our preK students MAP growth ICB which is for our industrialbased certification tests which helps inform college readiness our TE class for our English and our ELLLs and Spanish speakers. So all of that data comes together to help drive um improvements in how we continuously improve instruction and teaching and learning in the district. I'm just going to focus in on STAR and EOC for today. So what is STAR 2.0 and the we just got finished with the legislative session and there was much debate and much conversation about star 2 about star and just terminating the star and going to a different measure. As of now, there have been no changes in

004the STAR. So, we are moving on. As you know, STAR 2.0 began implemented in spring 2023. And kind of some of the shifts that we saw was that it includes multiple question types. It increased writing in all areas. Formerly, STAR would give a writing sample in certain grades. Fifth grade, seventh grade would have writing. They might write a narrative of our persuasive. And now writing is incorporated in every single test. And then I think another important thing for all of us to be mindful of is that it's completely administered online unless you are able to do a paper test which isn't all too. So all of our third graders through high schoolers are just taking this test online. Some things for us to consider. It was redesigned in 2023. So we cannot compare data 22

00521 19 performance because it does not compare the level of rigor and expectation is different. They included that extended constructed response and extended constructed response is writing a response to text. So, it used to be write a story about a day you went to the park and now they are reading text um passages online and then responding to those passages in um writing an essay. Scale cuts and levels for STAR 2.0 were not set until September 2023. And there's two ways to view the data, as I mentioned, raw data and snapshot data. Today, we're just looking at our raw data. snapshot data or kiddos that came to us after October 25th and that they are removed from our data batch as well as looking at other data forms. And then I think what's important also

006to note for us is that the rigor for each test varies year to year. So how the state does this is if we're planning for a third grade reading test, there are reporting categories where they bundle standards that are similar together. And so each year when we're noticing trends and the state releases it, they may increase the rigor of standards in one reporting category but lessen it in another. So in some ways it could be a moving target because the rigor and application is different. So I'm going to kind of share you um I know some of us that were in the ambassador program, Erin Tibido played are you smarter than a fifth grader with us? So, I'm going to kind of show you some questions that our students experienced on the 2025 release. They

007are not confidential. The state allows us to release them once they went out in central reporting system. I won't spend a lot of time here, but I want you to see the level of complexity and difficulty that our students are encountering. So, the reading language arts includes multiple choice, varied answer options, and then those short and um extended constructed response. varied answer options. You'll see there's multiple ways kids students have to answer the questions based upon the type, whether it's a table grid, a multiple part answer, or text entry. Here's third grade. Here's what the prompt for third grade. The state is reporting out that 52% of the third grade students that had this ECR prompt scored a zero. Brennham had 57% of our students score a zero on this. So what that tells me

008or I can draw conclusions that as the state increases the demand and rigor of the expectation on the students then we're going to need more support in helping our teachers and students learn to answer to this level of so let me explain to you what happened in this third grade writing prompt. Our third graders had to read two stories. They read the farm where nothing grew and a poem. Then based on the details in the story, they were asked to explain why the farmer and Olivia feel differently about working towards their goals. So they had to write a response to literary orformational text and demonstrate an understanding of that. If you you click to your next slide in your board book, you'll see the rationale. This was what a 10 point required. It required a

009third grader to gather multiple points of text evidence from both pieces of text and then come together with reasonings why the farmer and Olivia felt different. Very different from STAR what we would call 1.0 where it was write a story about a day in the park. This requires a whole different level of thinking and understanding and writing. Here's an eighth grade ROA question for you. What's significant about this is that they had to paraphrase and summarize text to maintain meaning and logical order. They were given they had to specifically look at one selection of the text, a necessary invention. Then they had to choose two correct answers to figure out if they were writing a summary, which two sentences belonged in the summary. So that's what our eighth graders um one of the questions. Moving

010on to math. um they have multiple choice and again those very answer options which have to do with an equation a text entry graphing drop down all worth multiple points. So it isn't one question one point there the state is rating different questions different points based upon that. So here you see a fourth grade multiple select question where they really had to represent multiple step problems um using strip diagrams and equations. What it asked them to do was find two correct answers. So they had to be able to solve the problem and then find two ways to represent it. Moving into a seventh grade, which is the same calculating unit rates from rates of mathematical and real world problems. This is a two-point question, but if you notice, they have to be able to drag

011and drop the correct um answers to finish the sentence, knowing not every number needs to be dragged and dropped. Moving into social studies, here's one of the short constructive responses. Remember, something new for Star 2.0 is that writing is now integrated across all curriculum areas. And so, the students in this um that received this in eighth grade had to really understand number one, what the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John Marshall's quote meant, and then figure out how it impacted his conflict or not for a resettlement of Cherokee Indians. Science questions. Same thing, multiple choice. Again, varied answer options and constructive responses. Here you can see our fifth graders are being asked. It's a multi-part question. It's part A and part B. It's worth two points. And they had to determine what happens when light hits

012and where it will go. Here's an eighth grade that has to do with force and motion. And then it is also one where they are having to calculate and figure out the combination to produce the greatest acceleration. So I think it's important that you see the level of complexity that the star questions are because it's a very different level of rigor and expectation. It's important for us as a group to analyze star data so we can review trends to figure out where we are. So the next couple of slides I'm going to show I'm going to compare us our performance to the state of Texas performance so that we can get perspective on similarities and differences and have a baseline for where we are. It's also important for us to analyze star data so that

013we can make adjustments and that's the most important thing. We believe in continuous improvement. every single one of us are improving every day in our practice. And so by using data, the only reason for us to really look at it is to determine what to do next. So from this data, it informs decisions that we're going to make to do next in our professional development and our continued improvement. And then we want to provide support. So when we look at our data and our campus trends and the principles and I have an opportunity to work side by side in principal professional learning, job embedded professional learning to make sure that we're providing support to each other as a team of learners as well as to our teachers to be able to meet the demands and

014needs of the kids. So I'm going to take us through just some demographics. I think what's important to look is overall if we're looking at the state and seeing where Brennham is, you can see that Brennham is servicing 59% of our population is deemed economically disadvantaged. 49% is at risk, 40% Hispanic, 20% African-American, 30% white, and 14% emergent bilingual. So state um the star comparison we're looking at three-year trends to see and these are just percentage points overall. So looking at the trends for our third through 8th grade in reading and math we're comparing 2023 and 2025. So looking at those trends and you can see that um in some areas we we gained some points and other areas we lost. I want to draw your attention to seven grade math. This year in the

015state of Texas really gave districts an option to take 40% of the highest performing math students in sixth grade math and place them in advanced math for seventh grade where we began to compact curriculum which what that means is we're condensing the material and going at a faster rate so that students would be prepared for eighth grade algebra. That being said, those 40% of those highest performers of our students took the eighth grade math test in seventh grade. So that removed a large group of our population from seventh grade. So the students that took the onle seventh grade course received regular seventh grade math. Then a a greater percentage went into eighth grade math. So you're going to look at seventh grade math and see a 38% drop what it would appear just in percentage

016points. But that is a direct cause from this year how we structured compacting that curriculum and accelerating to get them ready for eighth grade algebra one. Here's science and social studies. Something that's important to note about science that we did have new standards. As you all remember last year we adopted new material sas. So, we're one year with those new science standards and using those new materials, but you can see overall our science is is an area to target and to focus. Looking at high school um the EOCC's overall, you can tell that we made gains from 23 to 25. I don't want to steal Watson's thunder. Um algebra 1 surely did come out and see those those percentage point gains. US history. So, you can see those threeear that we receive overall. One thing

017that I do want you to note at the top and I should have mentioned this in the very beginning for my first slide. These percents are meets or exceeds. So the state groups kids students performance into four levels did not meet approaches, meets or masters. These percents are focused on our students that met expectation or exceeded Now, approaches students did pass. So, the state calls them approaches, but they're approaching grade level that will need support to be successful on grade level content. The district has high expectations. We have high expectations. We want all of our students to meet or exceed. So, these charts that you're looking at are going to be those students that are performing based upon the STAR test for EOC meeting or exceeding expectation. Sarah, yes, that eighth grade math I the

018explanation's fantastic. What can we expect going forward? Is the number always going to be like this where you're going to take the 40% of having them take the eighth grade? So, what can we do at that level to increase those numbers? Because it I know I know what you're saying. It's difficult because you're taking the smartest out, but it's just cosmetically I'm not cosmetically but just it's alarming. Yes. And so I'm just wondering about this is going to be something we're going to start seeing every year. And I hate that we have to explain it, but do we have a plan? Do we have anything going forward? Is that Are you going to talk about that, Julian? We're going to talk. Okay. I just I told her I said I want you to make sure

019that you approach that first because when they see that, if they see that for the first time coming to meet, it's going to be a lot. So Okay. Thank you. I just I think I mean looking at the numbers, that's the big elephant in the room. So I wanted to make sure that for sure we talked about that one. Right. So we So the I'm going to go through these slides. I'm going to let each principal come in and share and then I'm going to close us with a couple slides and then at the very end we'll field all of your questions and respond. I do think you know the data when we look at it first glance it does some areas that we see or target areas for improvement and we've designed plans and

020are ready to attack that um managing all the different variables that we're managing. Right. So yes Jared. Yes. Okay. So, but it is important to note these slides are links and about not approaches and dimensions. Okay. So, then I again principles are going to share. We're one team. We're all in this together. It takes way more than one person and our principles are the face of our campus and it is an honor and a privilege for me to work beside them every day as we spur each other onward. So, I'm going to let Michael from Alton share some of his data. Give me a microphone. afternoon. Yes, afternoon. Thanks for the opportunity to share with uh just some little uh information. I think most of you know, but at Alton, we serve around 450 students.

021Of those students, 34 students are Hispanic. Uh 19% are African-American. Uh 41% are about are white. 62% of those students are economically disadvantaged and 6% are English learners with 19% receiving special education services. Uh when looking over the data, I am proud of the hard work that our teachers did to bring us in line with or above the region or the state average and meets and masters. Uh I I attribute this to a commitment to growing all students. Our mission at Alton Elementary is growing lifetime learners. Our teachers have committed to showing up daily to help our children grow. We often say it doesn't matter where the student is, be able to grow. Uh, our PLC clusters allow our teachers to examine the standards, examine the student work, and respond in real time. We don't

022have to wait. We can automatically respond with our admin team, which includes myself, Miss Mala, our instructional coach, Miss Henzy. Teachers can use a new curriculum that we've gotten, which has been extremely helpful, and collaborate on best practices to get the best results. Alton is known for a collaborative culture. And so not me if you come join our team. Uh and behind that all of that is strong foundation of relationships. Our kids are known, seen, and supported. Uh we submitted a parent survey at the end of the year and probably one of the best comments that I've ever read in the survey came from a Alton parent that says Alton Elementary feels more like a family than it does a school. I think that speaks highly to the teachers and the staff and their dedication

023and commitment they now moving forward. Uh I often tell my staff that uh success is never fa uh funny and failures never fail. So while we met the or exceeds the state average in the meats in the mast's area, we still have a lot of work left to do. uh we need to look at getting the majority of our students to the meat or above level. Uh if you look down closer into it, we got to focus some support on our subgroups such as our African-American students, our economically disadvantaged students, and our EL and special education students. We have to perform better for them. So, moving forward, this is what this is kind of what our focus is these past two years. uh my third and fourth grade uh grade levels have been almost the

024new team almost every single year. It's the the new teachers coming in. So we have with the help of the district and with the help of Miss Bohart, we're working on we have a system but we're creating a system where excellence is a standard and we elevate our practice in the classroom. So if you are joining Alton Elementary or if you're joining Renom ISD, this is the way we do things around here and we have high expectations no matter where the students are at. So creating that system regardless of who comes in, we can still achieve at a high standard. Uh we'll continue our PLC clusters focusing on sustaining strong cheer one instruction. uh our new curriculum has helped and but we need to go deeper and we need to elevate our practices that go

025on in the classroom as well. Um a lot of people have said and I'll be honest I'm the old one here. I talked to many superintendent, you know, you put the f, you know, star is the big thing. Miss Bohart just shared a number of different assessment alignments that we look at. We can continue for the elementary levels. I can't answer for the middle school or the junior high or high school. We can continue to put the focus in on third and fourth grade, but we're just spinning our wheels. If you want dramatic change, we need to put our focus on prek, kinder first and second where the foundation is made. That is I I have uncle track that's why we but you know when I have a teacher a new teacher come in oh

026I don't want to teach at a star grading level. No you we need the best at the making the foundation. So, we're going to put a focus. The early literacy committee has started. We're putting a focus on that. Continue tier one instruction uh place. Okay, I'm getting off track here. And I think we need to continue and invest in our staff because strong teachers give us build us strong. So, thank you. Thank you. And today I get to follow Mike. So thank you'all for letting me be up here. I was gonna kind of tell you a little bit about kind of the students we kind of serve. We serve 515 students. Uh we're fairly evenly distributed. We have about 30% white, 25% African-American, uh 38% Hispanic. We are 66% economically disadvantaged and 5% uh emerging

027bilingual. So just kind of looking at our data with my AP, my instructional coach, we kind of looked at all kind of things where we're where we need to go, what we did good. So just kind of talk about some things we did good. One thing that we kind of do at our campus is we we excel and we grow students. Uh so the one thing I ensure and all our teachers know that we always tell our students, make sure that everybody is growing. I have an amazing grade level team in every grade level. Um but if you look at my fourth grade team, they are amazingly strong. uh they do not take no growth. That is not an excuse. They have an excuse. Those students will learn. Uh so that's kind of what we

028do. We talk about growth every year. How we do that. Our commitment is committed to student growth. We always talk about no students go backwards. Uh we're committed to student growth, not just in fourth grade, but all grade levels. And I I have been really lucky the last couple years. I've been pretty consistent with my teachers. I haven't had a whole lot leave. That may change this year. I had five uh fourth grader teachers last year. I lost two. So we're down down to four. So that may change, but we have been very I've been really really lucky that my grade levels have been pretty consistent. So we did show some growth in many areas, but we have some work to do. Uh when we look take a deeper look, what we need to do

029is our economic disadvantaged students, our African-American students, especially our special ed students are the ones that we need to really concentrate on. And how we're going to do that, we're going to identify ways to support teachers uh with increased class size. We're going to elevate our PLC process with all grade levels. Uh last year we kind of did that at the end of the year with our first grade. We showed a lot of growth. Uh so we really like to do that with all grade levels this year. Uh we're going to change kind of the way we placed our special ed students in the classroom. Uh some of our inclusion teachers last year got too spread out. This year we're going to kind of consolidate a little bit better so we can get more bang

030for our buck. Um that way we're going to implement a PLC time for our special ed teachers. Hopefully they have some time to collaborate, work on student uh learning and teacher improvement. And we're going to continue to support all grade levels, especially our new teachers um and build strong relationships with our teachers and students. So that's what we're going to do. Question. I didn't hear your percentage breakdown on I missed it. What's your special ed? Uh I think I didn't get that. I think we're about 100 students. So whatever that is uh whatever percent that is 25 I'm right at 100 students in special same you say increase class size or decrease we're going to support our teachers with the increase of class size from last year so last year our teachers had to increase

031class size we're just going to find ways to help them and support them so is that a contribute fact that that they have so many students in the could be. I think it is. And you don't have to say it. I'll say it. I think that's a major problem that we need to find issues to lower the classroom size so the teachers can can can focus on teaching a little bit better. I know it's tough. I've received multiple phone calls on that. But but I appreciate that. Hey Steve, real quick for you. Um, looking at the numbers basically in my in my opinion and let me know if I'm translating this. You lost a very strong fourth grade class last year. We did. We did. We did lose strong. To me, that's why you see

032a lot of in my if I'm again translating this correctly, that's why you see a lot of negatives up there. Compare 24 third grade to 25th grade. You still had growth and improvement in all those. What do you mean you lost a strong we lost a strong fourth grade teacher? No, strong for like students cohort of kids like cohort of kids because so the way the way I'm translating this in third grade they did great now those kids went to fourth grade so fourth grade those kids are now in fifth grade so that class got so you look at if you start at the on the first column your third grade RLA was at 75% meets and approaches well those students are now taking the fourth grade test and they're at 80% meets or 80%

033produce. So that's to me that's a 5% increase even though the number next to it is showing a negative 9%. It's a cohort. It's the cohort. Yeah. So there's still growth like there's still growth there. There's still improvement there of the scores. It's you your fourth grade class is now in fifth grade. The middle school that was a very good scores last year. So it's to me that's why it's kind of skewing skewing the numbers there on the on the chart. same student. It's not comparing same and we're just giving you like high level today and yes, you're right because cohort you're tracking your third to your fourth and you do see growth there when you're tracking the cohort. Okay. At Crowley Elementary School, we serve um around 750 students um from preK to fourth

034grade. Um what is different about is that we also have the district's bilingual program. So when we look at our breakdown in demographics, it's a little bit different than the other campuses. Um so just overall um for our our sped population is about 14% um of our of our total student population, but our emergent bilingual population is approximately 37% including bilingual and your um ESL students serviced in the GED English classrooms. Um 30% of those emergent bilingual um are actually in a bilingual classroom. So about a third of our students um do not they have very limited English proficiency. Um of our um if you look at our scores um about 52% of those failures in um in the reading test were our emergent bilingual students um and 48% of our math failures are from

035our emergent bilingual students who are all being right now to take a few tests. Um, and I'll talk about kind of how we're going to approach that as well. Of our our special education students, 39%age of our failures are from um our our in the reading test are from our our special education students and 28% of our math failures. Um so what we um we are going to increase our focus not only on the materials which were a big help for us this year our teachers felt very supported in knowing that they had um good researchbased high quality instructional materials. So now that we've gone through that for a year and we've used them, we're now going to take it a step. We're going to elevate it. Um, and we're going to look at how

036to incorporate more best practice instructional delivery of those instructional materials. So we're going to move forward toward that. We're also working with region 4 um, one of their emergent bilingual specialists. We started that conversation with her um in January um and she started with some coaching for our teachers but by that point it's a little late in the year. So we have already spoken with her. I met with her last week and we are going to continue that um relationship with regent um and we are going to continue to provide coaching especially for our new emeringual teachers or our bilingual teachers. um but also how we can better analyze whether the students who are coming to us with very limited education at all whether in English or Spanish um if testing them in Spanish would

037be more beneficial. That's not an all or nothing. Um we're going to start from the very beginning of the year being very intentional and identifying students who are more of our newcomers that have more limited English. Um, and we're going to provide them benchmark testing in both English and Spanish to see where they're most successful. Um, because STAR can be given in Spanish, um, but with limited accommodations. And so we have to weigh whether or not we want to give the test to them in English with accommodations or in Spanish with limited accommodations. And so we want to do what's best for each student. So we're not going to do a blanket decision. We're going to be very intentional on identifying the students who would benefit based on data being given a test in Spanish.

038Um we just have to be mindful that some of our students coming to us, they're not literate in reading Spanish or English. And so we have to determine what's best for each student. So we are going to work very closely with region 4 to help with um a process to determine the best way to not only instruct but also assess our students and not just for the start but all year long so that we can really get an understanding of where we are um and what our students know. So we will be moving forward with that. Um along with what you talked about with Red Elementary, if you do look at our cohorts, you can see that there was significant growth um from fourth grade. So we went from 57% of our third graders last

039year um now reaching 71% approaches in fourth grade. So that cohort saw a lot of improvement um in both reading and in math. So we we are seeing growth um and we will continue on growing our students and getting them to place to be successful in all things not just one star question for star and Spanish. What does that look like? Well, for our emerging bilingual students, if we give them a test in English, the ELP committee can determine that we can provide the test um orally given to them online um along with some content clarifiers which provide um popups on certain things like pictures or simplifying wording or things like that. Um, so we can provide that in English, but that doesn't carry over into the Spanish version of the test because we're providing

040those accommodations based on language need. So the idea is that if we're providing them for a language need and if we provide them the test in their native language, they shouldn't need those is the thought process behind that. Um, and so we determined this year that it was more beneficial to the kids to give it to them English with supports rather than in Spanish. This year, we are going to be intentional about determining if students from the very beginning might be more successful with the Spanish test without the supports. We don't want to make that decision without data. So, we're going to start from the beginning with some pre-esting. So, for students with English as their first language, right? Are they even though they are still the same accommodations? only if they um only if

041they're identified based on 504 accommodations or special education accommodations. So if there was a child who's a Spanish speaker that did have qualifications accommodations because it's for a language if they don't require any other services. Just to follow up on that one, that one's rare though because when they're at that age, it's hard. You have to first rule out that language is not the school before they can qualify for SPE services. So that would be a rare instance that you have student who is an English learner and qualifies for at level. Okay. So um at BMS background information is we are the person campus where all of those groups come together as one. So we have um they're come together all together as a graduating class for the first time all of the elementaryaries highs

042and lows together under one roof and kids are assimilating for the first time in larger um campus size. We have um about 30% of our our students are that you have that same number as Sarah. Um actually because of the numbers of students it's uh the 800 bilingual because they're going to all come together for us for the first time. Um for us also the ones the areas that struggled were our sped population which our sped population is about a quarter of our our students student body. So we have um a lot of inclusion support in our classroom. We also have what we call um u specialized support where students are in that mainstream classroom but also come out and receive some education that's more on their level because like Mr. Al said when the

043gaps are created in those early ages like preschool first and second grade by the time they get to our campus we're not teaching to read anymore that's not anywhere in their curriculum that they need to be able to read to learn by the time they get to us. So some of those kids will get that instruction in their post. They're exposed to it with their peers, but then they have to get pulled out for significant amounts of time to receive instruction down at the level that's not going to be taught at the middle school. Um for us, we've seen an increase in that number. We had um 55 students receiving that last year and we were at 91 this year. Um so we are we've almost tripled since 2023. So the number of students who

044are needing that support is going up. So that just speaks to what Mr. Og mentioned about that early support being so important for us. One of the things that we are planning to tackle this is to increase that teacher support. Our um teachers are participating in instructional learning instructional leadership teams this summer and so they are learning to be teacher leaders um which is going to create some time for them to observe each other and we're trying to raise accountability across the board. We're trying to amplify our instructional leadership. So, as a principal and assistant principal, um our our leadership team can only do so much. We have one instructional coach, we had numerous new teachers. Many of them are new to the profession and coming from all certification programs. So, we had several um

045science is one area that jumps out at me. We had multiple um teachers who are not quite certified. They're in the process of earning their certification and they're teaching this content. It's also an area we had to lose a teacher. We gave up an FTE. So, one team of fifth grade had um a teacher who taught math and science instead of our science social studies. So, she was responsible for two tested areas and she was the only veteran teacher in that team. So, with the changes that we're making, she has moved to be that team's lead. She's just teaching that and we were able to add another FTE back in that area. So, that's some of what we're hoping to do to address that. our math team um formed. We had a lot of new

046and they worked really well together in fifth grade. So, we're trying to amplify that. They're staying together. A couple of the p pieces that we moved there are going to be supplemented with some experienced teachers. The support is an area of concern for us because we don't have a lot of applicants there. That's an area I'm still missing some people. So, we um we want to increase the way we're supporting those classrooms, but we do we need the right people. So, we're trying to our goal is going to be to really put them into the instruction with the content so that they're not just supporting sped students as helping with whatever they're given from another teacher, but they actually know the content well enough to work with those students and close those gaps in the

047content and be experts in the content, not just in special ed questions you have. We'll get more detail again in August when we break it down, but that's it. Okay, I'm gonna give you guys what will corn calls my chaos notes because um the my blog bullied me and made me take my slide out and I'm a numbers person and I don't know why. I'm so sorry. He literally bullied me. Okay, so I am the elephant in the room, right? Nobody stressed out more about my star scores than I did when they came in. Um, I stood in this spot a year ago, this week, and took this job. So, on your top left, I'm gonna go really fast. I'm giving you these numbers for situational awareness. Okay, this is brand junior high only. In

048two years, we've seen a 45% increase in our class size in English classes. So, if you think that's not an effect on students, you're wrong. Absolutely. We've also seen six 6.2% increase in emergent bilingual, 12.3 in economically disadvantaged. And you can read. I don't need to read that to y'all. I'm just giving that to y'all for context, right? Because we said in 2023 that's when STAR was changed. Our advanced classes actually have more students than that in there. They're about 28 29, some are 30. Um, you can also see at the bottom that two years ago we had two instructional coaches. Last year there was a dean that we halfway through and we have no instructional support like the elementaryaries directly on our campus. Now, we have our wonderful coordinators, but we don't have a

049person that's there all the time. So, I'm going to show you if you look in the right top, it says initial obstacles. We have six people on our um leadership team and five of us were new to junior high the position this year. So, Einstein says what you have an hour to solve a problem. You take 55 minutes to diagnose and five to solve. So, this year was my we're diagnosing right in a day. I strongly believe that behavior and instruction are married to each other. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If they're well behaved, do they listen or do they listen if they're well behaved? Right? So, I've included some behavioral data here for you. Yes, seventh grade math. That is enough to just make me want to cry, but I'm not

050going to because what I'm going to tell you is if you look in the bottom left, I've given you some highlight points for this year. We had two teachers in eighth grade that embraced HMH that were first year teachers that I brought on. They had 65 and 67% approaches. One was a first year teacher with no training. So what does that tell us about our high quality instructional materials? They were right. And if you look below, the teacher in 8th grade who embraced Carnegie and was the least resistant on her team, she had the highest scores on her team. So our instructional materials, y'all, they're going to work. And now this year, because I'm not new and learning, we are going full force. Sarah hears me say all the time, hold the line. We're gonna

051hold the line. So that is our plan for that. Um, we have had lots of turnover in BSD. Don't even get me started on him. We have had I had four teachers who who left the district, but listen, four teachers left the district and two because their spouses took a job somewhere else. So people still really want to be here, right? We I do believe I said it last night, we have the best people. So, I think that's a highlight point that if you have a campus that's like ours and you have four people who leave to go somewhere else, that's that's saying something. Uh we grew our attendance rate by44%. $22,000. So, that that's a highlight. And also, we we decreased our discretionary DAP placements, meaning we know that the way to maximize student

052learning is to have them in the classroom and not at OSS and DAP. Right? So, that was one of our focuses this year. That's awesome. So, our plan next year If you kind of look to the right, this is my Sarah gave me 10 minutes since I put an N in the bun. Um, we are doing the PLC clusters and we've spent a lot of time this summer already, all the principles with their instructional leadership teams building what that's going to look like because the best PD often comes from the teacher next door. I rearrange the way the junior high is set up. Y'all know we have the science wing, right? All the science teachers are there. Well, now all the math teachers and reading teachers are in the main building because during a passing

053period, you need to be able to say, "Okay, Kyle, how'd you do that? That didn't work for me." Right? So, we've realigned kind of the way the building is. We've also reallocated our staff. Um, several years ago, there were eight teachers in every core content area. This year, we had five except history. Um, I took that sixth history person and have moved that person to English so that our English class sizes are smaller next year because we know if you can't read, you can't do anything else. Um, like I said, we're going to go hard on ZAS and HMH and move on it, but also our history scores, if you look at them, they're they're also rough. We don't have a full curriculum there. So, what we've done is we've taken the DBQs and we're

054going to implement those. And Will Korn was an amazing history teacher, so that's going to be his baby. There's a whole lot of stuff on there. I I Clay knows I don't do failure well, so it takes a long time to turn a cruise ship. Give me another year, please. and what questions you have for me. It looks like you're starting in the right direction. I would like a place to do it. Yeah. Only question I have is um middle school is uh 30% uh bilingual, but you're 15. Oh, sorry. Middle school is 15 30% bilingual and you're 15%. Why are the big drops? You have any idea? Well, that I don't know. sometimes. So, when you fill out your home language survey when they're born essentially, you can't change it, right? So, if you

055put Spanish speaking and you only speak English, that's too bad. You're going to be receiving those services. I'm assuming it has to do with the numbers of kids, right? Because you're serving what 30 40% of the population and I have less. But also um when kids move in and we have lots of moveins like she's talking about newcomers that don't speak English at all. They will oftent times even put on their home language survey that they're English speaking only because they're afraid of what will happen if they're a Spanish speaker. Does that make sense? I think you got to look at the mobility. Yes. They move in. Uhhuh. They move out. They come to school. They move. All those types of things. We have lots of mobility at that age. You also have kids coming

056up from private school, home school, but um not we don't have lots of kids that are labeled with special labels like special ed or EB that come from private schools. We do I just wonder if they increase the number of So we do because we have all the seventh graders that will come in from first practice. So yes, those numbers increase but it's not enough of an increase in my That's it. Sorry. Hold on. Hold on. Not this has nothing to do with STAR. Yes. But we've heard a lot about discipline in the schools. So that's basic 50% drop in DAP. I just want to say whatever you're doing, keep doing that. So when I put that in there, I was afraid I was going to get roasted. So what I did was, not by

057y'all, but you know, you often hear teachers say, "You didn't do anything." But we looked at our number of referrals and it was within 50 of last year. So we are still processing those. We're just we implemented a new program which for another time. Um that's really helped us with our behaviors because that was one of our goals was increase attendance and then drop that DAP rate because if they go to DAP then they're not with our teachers. I just think it's important that the community gets to hear sometimes because we talk we can't really it's hard to talk about this but if we can have statistics behind it so the community can actually see that there's growth and that we're actually working on it I think it's massive. Thank you for including it. Keep

058up the good work. I mean this we like we want kids in school because we need heard it from you guys are very humanentric right now as opposed to just the process and so the value of the teachers that they have that dialogue the collaboration and otherwise but also of the kids understand okay this kid had a bad day it's not a kid that's a bad kid and so I do appreciate that of the valuing of the individuals and really turning back towards not just trying to get a work these kids thrive. I think that's what I'm hearing. And we talk a lot, Aaron and I, especially because our kids are so, you know, they're so in the same age, but they're not that they're not in high school, right? An 18-year-old's decision versus a

05912-year-old, right? At 12, I'm trying to teach you how to be a human because when Officer Raven pulls you over, he's not going to say, "Hey, where's your where's your special ed paperwork?" Right? So, so we're really trying at this age to say, "Man, if you're my age and you make this decision, this is what happens to you." So, we try to Sorry. Thank you. You're welcome. Good afternoon. Overall, I want to celebrate the success of our students at this effort of our teachers and had students outcomes. Our class sizes have increased by 20 to 30 students. uh my teachers work to adjust and focus on the students learning while dissecting the data further we can see the areas of growth that we need to the district providing hmm as high quality instructional materials for

060this content area for this coming year and has elevated instructional leadership and assigned an instructional specialist four days a week for Brennham High School uh to target and support the teachers uh to close this gap and our motto is every student must grow and we are focused on growth at Brennham High School and I'm not going to won't be long. You can see the numbers. One thing that we're going to do is Miss Bohart is our leader and her team, we're going to support them. We support them and they support us. And this is one and uh she's coming on board and she's doing a lot and I just want to give her her praise right now while she's sitting here. And let's continue. Thank you. break down, you know, we can we can both.

061Thank you. I want to thank you for bringing everybody together and for giving those of us who are, you know, who who are out in the community and everything. It helps us to know what's going on, but also but also it's it's about leadership and the fact that we are finally talking about star again and the fact that we got our star scores a little bit earlier this time. Hopefully that will help all of you too. Uh because it it's it's not fun all the time when you see scores that could be better. But I I agree some of the best things that I have heard right now is the fact that we have good leadership. We have good teachers. We have good instructional materials that are being used and you know and and the

062teachers understand what what the uh the goals are and also the fact that you're you're keeping up with this and helping us all to know what's happening right now. And of course the fact that early childhood learning is so important. big deal. Thank you. I want to say thank you. I mean, we're guess what? I still have a couple more slides. Kum slides, but I I I mean, it's the it's a team effort. We talk about one team, one goal, and that we're all in this together. And I although she might jump up in a minute, I want to say Amanda Dutes and Christy Sternado are instrumental coordinators that I literally could not do what I do if I didn't have them. So, anyway, it's a team effort. Um all of us are in this

063together. All of us need each of us. Each of us need all of us. I'm going to finish with three slides. We'll dig deeper in August into all um August 15th. We'll get the data. So I look for a September board meeting where we can give a full report. We've taken a lot of time already. But one thing I do want to know is that 62% of our students as TEA counts growth. Our theme this year was every student grows. So if a student may did not meet they need to get about 10 more about 10 seven to 10 more questions right to move to approaches and then to move to approaches to meet about about seven to 10 more questions. So overall we had 62% of our students that individually did grow a performance

064level and in um reading. Then when we looked at math we had about 63% of our students that did make small incremental growth six to 10 more questions right than last year. So when we talk about Mr. colleague really watching those cohorts as the data came up you can see that our students are growing eventually we believe that the growth will catch to the achievement right as we we continue to focus on student growth it will get there I want to say quickly about the next steps one thing that um we are working really hard on on an instructional teaching and learning leading and learning side is really building a human capital management system our teachers our principles, myself, everyone that is in BISD is part of this human capital system, right? And so in

065order to have effective student outcomes and our whole goal as a community as Bernam ISD is to create an excellent experience for children and to serve children. That is why we show up every day. And in order to do that, we have to have a highly effective educator in front of our children. that is the number one indicator of success in a student's life. And so, how do we as Bernamist begin to build a highly effective educator and recruit, retain, and reward a highly effective educator? And so, I' I've been here a year and a couple of months. And in that year and a couple of months, I've worked hard alongside this team to really figure out a way to build that. We've enhanced our teacher mentor program. Next year, we have received a mentor

066program aotment grant that will allow us funds in order to enhance and elevate our mentor program so that we can begin to help those experienced teachers, our principles. We're so trying to hang on to them, right? Um, multiply and impart their gifts and talents into new teachers knowing that we're receiving alternative certified or uncertified or brand new teachers back, right? So, how do we build and equip and accelerate them? And we're working very hard. Mr. Og mentioned the early literacy coalition. We began Christine Sternado and I this spring leaning out alongside our principles step by step about diving into what requires from early literacy. Then we were awarded the strong foundations grant that is going to bring um Mo Casey as our partner to come in alongside us and really help us build a literacy

067framework that drives instructional practices. We through the board support and in a year and a couple of months have gotten instructional materials that are high quality. It's going to take us time to get there. This summer we worked already four to five days. Like the principles were like do not add one more training to my like come on we're doing it again like I just you know was that great but we worked very hard on building instructional leadership teams. They had the opportunity for two days to really work on what is an instructional leader and how do we lift the capacity of the teachers that we do have. We're working on teacher career pathways. We've started PLC facilitators where teachers are now paid a stipen to help beat out this work of PLC. Um we

068have a rigorous and robust educator evaluation system. We are a teacher incentive aotment district that is in data capture that uh we received on June 1st. TAC accepted our application. So now we are looking at teacher quality through the lens of student growth and the t test rubric. Um we have our high quality instructional material support and continue data driven. All of this is systemic reform if you will. I mean it is systemic and it is a way in which we're approaching elevating the capacity of the educator. Um for myself as an educator to the teacher the brand new alternative certified or brand new teacher that's entering Bernamist. What are the ways that we're elevating that excellence? It will take time. We're all in it together. We're committed. We have a lot of variables which

069you've heard. Class size. Trusty Raven mentioned he's had teachers reaching out to him. Class size is an issue. Stephen um mentioned from elementary last year he kept his staff. This year he's losing some to different districts that are paying higher. There are variables in which we cannot control um that are h you know that are going to take more support from all of us to to rally around. But we're committed. So, we went a little long um because I know we're waiting for Katie. So, yes, we can all take questions. We're all in this together. So, yeah. So, Sarah, appreciate the information and principles really appreciate the information. you're very proud of all of your growth and I know that this has been a complete transformation for you guys this year with all the new

070curriculum, all the new um data that we're working through and I just want everyone to know I'm basically saying this for the community. We will be a C going into next year, but I want folks to know the amount of work that our principles and Mrs. Bohart and her team have done this year and will continue to do to get us aligned and going in the right direction because before we were not all in the same boat, but now we are and we can start growing in the same direction. And so I really appreciate that and look forward to continued growth in the future. And I have one question Sarah. Can you kind of talk about because I heard from each principal a little bit about this specific population in the needs of special egg

071growth and it seemed like a consistent themes of special egg growth. And so kind of what is your approach for that? And c can you kind of talk about the parameters with which our students that are in special ed have to approach star and take star and what kind of your thoughts around that are I'm sorry. I'm sorry. No, you're good. No, I'm gonna let Christine Johnson is over special programs, so I'm gonna let her answer. So, you know, special education growth is we're looking at students in special education. They qualify for services by not only having a disability, but also having um a need for specially designed instruction. So, they have, you know, some hurdles to overcome. And so, they're not on grade level when they're qualifying. If they were, they wouldn't be special

072ed even if they have a disability. So, I can have a disability but not have that need for specially designed instruction and not qualify. So when we're looking at those students, we're expecting them to make more than a year's growth in a year, which is higher expectations than we have for our general education population. So when you're looking at that master's achievement, that is, you know, you're going to see some some downfalls because if they were um achieving on grade level, they wouldn't have that need for specially defined instruction in all areas. So really, we're focused on student growth and supporting those teachers. And as Mibido mentioned, you know, we are struggling to recruit those teachers in those areas. And so it is very challenging to have and to build capacity in those. So supporting

073them through PLC's missing pull in those teachers and establishing those frameworks and then making sure they're highly qualified in those content areas so that they can make sure students get access to the entire right. [Music] Yes, I know that. I know that. I wanted to get that out there. I know that. So, that's a great prequel to my question, which it seems to me, um, and writing them all down here, it seems to me we let me let me back up. Um, from a bird's eye view, if you just look at the scores, kind of your knee-jerk reaction would be that they don't look good, which is why we would be a C, right? But if you actually dig in, you see that the majority of the issue is special education and bilingual. So I

074I know this is coming in August and you don't this it's kind of a half question, but um in August I would like to see how the general education students are performing that not require special ed and bilingual help. I want to see how the general population of the students, if that's the right word to use, is doing because based on percentages, based on what I'm looking at, based on what everybody said and this some of the information I'm looking at, it looks like our students are doing actually really well, but the scores are being held back based on other populations making it look worse. Does that make sense? So, in other words, I'd like to see how I I don't know if it's possible to break it down, but I'd like to see the

075stores almost separated if that's possible. So, we do like the statement that looking at what's in your slideshow, you'll see the closing the gaps is one of the next slides. So, part of all kids are general education students first, right? And then require specially designed instruction or language acquisition instruction. That being said, those are two um sub populations, right, in which that are going to require those specially designed special certified teachers. So yes, I mean those are areas in which each principal spoke to is identifying as a target area of need and then we as a district will respond to that. I do appreciate Archer you mentioning that some of our students like one of the things Mr. all came and whispered in my ear while Miss Johnson was speaking was some of our students

076that and Miss Johnson will know better but you know that are in a life skills environment are expected sometimes to take an onle grade level test high expectations for all students but there's different criteria the state gives so yes when in August when we get into a more detailed view and we can dig deep into demographics it's something that we're tracking on our end as well to make sure we're servicing all kids to meet all needs um given the constraints and environment in which we're doing that in. So, any other questions or I I don't have a question, but I want to comment on something Archer said. Um this is the first time in my five years on the board that we have not turned over principal going into the next year. There we go.

077I'll say this is it was on the second time. So this is the first time in five years I've been on board that we have not turned over principles. So Archer was talking about the team that stability for the schools and the teachers underneath them and for the principles to continue to grow on everything that Miss Fhart and her team are doing I think is huge. So I mean just that's all that's all I just wanted to point out was man the stability in the schools is fantastic. So, thank you all for stay sticking around and being with and I just wanted to add that this year I've had an opportunity to visit as part of the cohort that I'm in through region six some other campuses and my latest v visit was with Magnolia

078and um and asking all the hard questions I was asking there. Nobody's doing anything better than what we're doing. His answer was repeatedly, well, we just have the stability. We just have the stability. They just had the same leadership, the same on campus, the same at the district level for a long time. So, we're doing and then interviewing people asking questions. There are a lot of teachers coming from districts. I'm excited because you came from this district. I was an a district and they don't know half of the things MTSS. They don't even know what that is. And we're doing all of the things with Fidelity. So, we are ahead of the curve on what we're doing to get better. Kudos to Clay and everyone is working very hard. Um, but we know we're here

079to serve students. So I know it's a long time. Okay. So I thank you for your time and your questions and now if we need a seven inning stretch break or let us speak like once a year. Thank you. Next we're going to have a strategic planning committee update. Uh Katie Burch with plan north is going to update us before she does that kind. I want to introduce want to introduce Katie and kind of where we are to this point. Um, first let me also kind of echo what the board said about this team of principles. They're so solid and the work they're doing and I couldn't be prouder. You know, I'm in the kid business. I said that when you hired me. Um, teachers and the kids are just the heartbeat of what we

080do. Um, but I have such a heart for personals. Always have. Um, I think they know that. I think everyone and this this principles is so important to me. They are so unified and connected in the work that we're doing and I'm confident. I want everybody to hear me out there that's listening. I'm so confident in the direction that we're going to Julian said, it is a cruise ship. This takes some time to turn a cruise ship and we're turning. They're all the same direction. But uh you know we've got some we've got some needs and beyond what they can do. I feel all their accomplishments all our accomplishments to this point have been done really with one arm tied behind our back and um I'm asking for both arms. [Laughter] talk about that. So,

081where we are at this point, um we uh Erin led us to our first strategic planning committee meeting and um she talked about uh our financial tools that are available to us. We back up even before that and say, you know, we put the strategic planning committee together. Um it's a passionate committee, represents our community. I feel like the heart of our community. Um, they don't all agree. It's not a room full of yes people. Um, that's not what I ever wanted. Um, I know we had to get a little muddy and have passionate conversations. There's no way that we're going to agree out in the community. if we can't come to some sort of agreement in that room. And the only way you do that is by putting people with different opinions in there,

082patching people, people that move this community together and decide what they can agree on and uh try to timeline that out and move forward. So, we're coming together. Um we're shaping kind of where we need to go from here. Our focus is long term. I've said it over and over again. It's long term if we're a good strategic planning committee. We're not just talking about things that should have been done yesterday or things done tomorrow. What needs to be done in 10 years, 20 years? Um, how do we keep that uh 30 year old high school uh a group that replaces us in 20 years? How are they not having the same conversation we're having about the junior high today? What kind of work are we doing today to keep those conversations from happening, 30

083years from now? That should be our focus is on this community we're handing to our children and our grandchildren. So we are a long-term team trying to align priorities ensuring transparency. We've heard that over and over again. We're doing our absolute best to ensure transparency, do what's best for our students and staff. So challenges as y'all heard from our principles even today. um aging facilities, rising costs, overcrowded classrooms that Raven pointed out, high teacher turnover. You just pointed to uh the fact that we have consistent principles in place. That is huge. It is just as huge to have teachers in place. We have to have a consistent group of of highly skilled teachers in front of our students. Um and we've got very limited operational funding. So again, uh Erin kind of took us through

084some different financial tools available to us. Um we had um our CFO of course, Daryl was there. Uh we had our financial advisor, our chief appraiser as well as uh the deputy of administrative services for the region center there um to talk about some of those financial tools. One of them being an evader. This is not a bond. It's a way to generate more operational funding for teacher and staff salaries and overall day-to-day operational costs. The other is bond capacity. Um, thanks to smart financial management of this community of this district and early debt repayment can propose a 36 million bond or more without raising the INS tax rate to farm uh to fund large scale capital projects. So both of those are financial tools available to us later in bond capacity. The second meeting

085was led by Destiny Andrews who really looked at community voice. Um she shared what many of you have seen um low morale inadequate facilities um a need for unity and action. And again, I feel like we've been taking a lot of great steps in the right direction, but with one arm tied behind our back, right? We can do better. I think we all agree that we can do better. So, next, what's next? Kate took us through um some needs, everything from consistent teachers in front of kiddos to um groups that need to be replaced and chillers that need to be replaced. and she's going to sort of recap last night's conversation for you. Now, we are trying to be very timely. We've got a lot of work to do. A lot of work. We're trying

086to be very timely in what uh the strategic planning committee brings to you. We just met last night. Here she is this morning, this afternoon to report out to you. Okay, Katie. Okay. Thank you for that intro. Um yeah, so my charge here today is to update you guys with what was said in that room specifically last night. There's a lot of people here today that were in that room. Um a couple of three board members, um Kyle, Archer, and Justin Collie were there as well as a play, a lot of school people and a lot of community members. Um, if you are wondering if we all saw eye to eye and had a pleasant evening, I would say we just I would just use the word constructive instead. Okay. Um, also I would say

087um, thank you guys so much for all your work for you kids. Um, that was really encouraging to hear. Um, those boots on the ground uh are really important. So, um, I want to make sure that I kind of do justice to the people that were in the room last night. Um, and make sure that, you know, I do what I'm asked to do here, which is report what the room said and not kind of any other goals there. So, we talked about, um, last night we talked about three things. Um, I, uh, I'm an architect, so I was focused on facilities. That was the main charge for last night. Each meeting has had a separate topic. So, I think that's that's appropriate for myself to facilitate that meeting. Um, we talked about maintenance. I'm

088gonna go through each one of those and I want y'all to know this is my number one priority for today. So, I will not be rushing through this. I just want you to know I'm not feeling any kind of rush right now. This is so important. Um, so we talked about as uh Clay just mentioned uh it was said in the beginning at the first meeting that we have a chance at a zero tax rate increased bond to fund maintenance projects. And I would expand that to say maintenance and capital improvement projects. Um I I designate the difference as a capital improvement project would be like a roof replacement. It's not appropriate to assume a maintenance person would be in charge of that. So that's both. Okay. It's more like recurring uh things that we

089can predict will need to happen in a timely manner such as a chiller replacement, things like that. And then also deferred maintenance. So that was one topic. Um the other topic that we uh focused on which um is separate and aside from that was two facilities which will be needing in the very near future more significant uh solutions. We were talking about the Brennham Junior High and the Brennham High School. Um, obviously two completely separate cases. There was a lot of discussion. Um, those would not be obviously something that we could tackle within the context of that maintenance bond. Um, and then we talked about uh our teachers. Clay uh brought up in our very first meeting. Actually, I think it was some of the finance people this chance at a vader which would um

090give a permanent solution to the way our teachers are compensated and our possibly even more importantly because it was not as addressed um in the recent legislature as our other staff. So, pair professionals and other staff that are not designated as teachers. I just want to say right off the cuff, I don't speak education terms. So, If I say something, somebody just jump in and say that's not exactly how that said. Let me say with Katie saying that I asked this to be very conversational. So I've got the executive leadership team right here all willing to jump in at any time and speak to anything that you need them to speak to. And I'm going to put the principles on the spot. I think all of them, most of them were there last night, but

091anything that they want to add or share would be welcome. So, as Katie kind of gets down the road with some of this a little bit, we have some more specific data that we can share about certain points. So, again, anytime y'all feel like you need to jump in as she's working through this, then feel free to do so. Go ahead. Okay. So, this is what I coming into that meeting. Um, I prepared to talk about construction and maintenance. Uh, I've studied the junior high and the high school really carefully. I thought that's where that conversation was going and I honestly thought that's what we would be talking about today. So, in preparation for that, we made a actually um the school district made a preliminary list of all of the different maintenance things that

092are going on. They spoke with campus principles. I spoke with some of the principles um especially in more in the more significant cases. Um, we looked at the junior I mean we did a lot of prep work that for that but one of the things that um Clay said in the beginning is I want to know like where is the room going to lead us because the room is the community and everybody was all sides were represented in that room and so we can come prepared um to talk about maintenance and you know facilities but um there's a lot of work to be done on those topics. we probably just didn't have enough data because it's been a short time. We've been working on for two weeks um for me to give you hey this

093is what the broom agrees on when it comes to mandatory facilities. What what I did share with the group and I' I've maintained as very true um when we're talking about new facilities. So let's say a replacement for the junior high that is not something that would be responsible to tackle this year in terms of say a bond for November. I think that's off the table. Okay. So, um I just want to say that in case anyone's wondering, um that would be something that would need a little bit more planning time. Um now, with respect to the maintenance, um Kyle had a great idea to code all of the maintenance needs into different colors and with those colors having um definitions. And that turned out to be pretty cool because we can see that there's

094a lot of red. I think that was and you know, you know how I picked the colors? I picked them from like the weather radar, you know? It's like like a really big red and then you know kind of goes down and so I think there was there was a little shock value in how much was read and there was a good question in the room well how did you choose what is red um we came up with a definition which was it's going to impact's ability to educate students within nine months or sooner so that's an imminent you know that's an imminent concern so the the root did not disagree that those were important and that we should keep sending them and we need to keep making headway. Um, some of them wanted more

095information more quickly. We'll work as hard as we can. Um, so now I'm going to tell you what we did agree on. Um, teachers are this community's primary concern. And I when I say the word teachers because again I don't speak proper educational terms. I just want you to know that's an inclusive term of staff, pair of professionals, you know, people in the cafeteria. Um, so I feel a little out of my lane here. I feel a little in uncharted territory because I was supposed to be talking about facilities in my mind, but here we are. And so I'm just going to represent what the room said. You're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you. Um, and it's interesting because that's what I believe. I believe even in a business, the people are everything.

096Um, somehow these teachers made it through the storm, which has been 2020 until today, right? They've been fighting battles every day. And um, every single day we ask our teachers to find the solution to whatever the issue is and keep going. We ask the same of the kids. Um, and we know that our people here in this community know how to do that. Um, we are sort of a close the gap type community. So, um, my understanding is that there are limited options right now for us in terms of how we can increase teacher and staff pay. I do not know the ins and outs of school finance, but I know that it is a critical concern for our community that we take immediate action to pay our teachers more. So, I I just had

097to ask because I didn't know if it was public information or if I'm just being nosy, but I called these people this morning. I was like, "Hey, how much does an entry- level pair professional make? Like, I just don't know. I'm curious. It's $11.33 an hour." So, um, I would just encourage you to have this conversation and leave nothing off the table because what is on the other end of that is when you hear these people talk about what it takes to get where they've been, if those teachers had support and resources, this team would be unstoppable. And every like story you've heard about a winning team, there's some backstory where they had to climb their winter, you know, and they were so strong and had so much grit, but um you know, you guys

098are that you I mean the board is one of the biggest employers in the community. So, we're looking for you all to lead the way here. Um we think it affects the academic success of the kids and Somebody in the room last night just kept bringing us back to hey but the kids the kid that's what we're trying to move here. That's the needle we're trying to move. So um if you're going to make a bet on our teachers is all I would say. Um and maybe one day we'll talk about some new updates on facilities too. So um that's that's kind of what I heard last night and I'd love to just have a conversation about it. Yeah. I'd like for um any of the different leadership team to go over some of the

099data that we discussed this morning to reference board members more reference as far as data. Um yes, I did ask Katie uh just so um people out there have full understanding. Uh she's doing this proono. I've asked community to uh to lead this. I'm trying to um I'm trying not to to lead these meetings. Um I really want to be community le and um so while this law facilities is K expert Die Andrews um her her expertise her dissertation for her doctorate at&m was all about um the school as part of the community and that's why she led that that we had again the finance finances uh discussed with the group um I had a principal here and a student and long-term members lead that discussion. So, really trying to uh let the community lead

100this, but um team, if y'all could uh step up and add some data, please to uh what Katie just shared. Yeah. So, you know, Katie talked a little bit about what our entry instructional paras are $11.33 an hour. We've not adjusted that over the last two years. So, um you know, we did make adjustments to nutrition. When we onboarded our custodial staff, we felt like we set their salary at a competitive rate and the same for transportation. Um, but we've not been able to make any adjustments to that. Um, I pulled this morning looking at what what's the starting pay for an entry level position at Lowe's or Home Depot in the state of Texas and it runs about 14 to$15 hour at the lowest end. So, we're paying less than that for people that

101are impacting our future here in our community. Um, also, um, looking at how many openings, you know, you've heard teachers talk about cons or principles talk about consistency and staff, and we had about 60 teacher resignations this year. Um, we currently, as I counted this morning, have about 29 openings. You know, we're hiring. Rod told me he was interviewing today, so it's it's always moving, but we have 20. It's it's highly likely we're going to start with some substitutes in classrooms this year. And as a reference, Christie, as a reference, on an average over the last couple of years on resignations when you say we have had 60ish this year been around 40 in the past around 40ish in the past. So um we've seen and I know you've got more to say here but

102um just to that point you and I were just discussing yesterday we've seen how many teachers decide that you know what I'm going to have to commute. didn't want to make the drive to Waller to to take a position because the gap's just gotten too big. That's that's what so I asked the HR team to kind of analyze and so anybody determine where they were going um put it on a spreadsheet for me. So I sat down and counted up to to date where our staff were going and there was you know we had some teachers retired. We had we had five that left education. Um, and we had some that moved out of state, three moved out of state, and those were our big numbers other than Waller. I had 14 staff that left

103for Waller. All the other districts, I had two go to Caldwell. Um, there was a couple, so they both went. Um, that was that's it. Everybody that left in a significant number to any district was our neighboring district. So that's about 8% of teachers if my math is somewhat correct. Did y'all see me hit the button? There you go. You're good now. I'm so good at this job. So, it's about 8%. Um, do we know the districts around us about what their turnover rate is, too? I think Sarah said, we can pull that data for you. If you look at the text, it's the taper report for each district. It'll say, you know, how many they were able to retain and left. So, we as a district can look at the surrounding areas and get

104through the retention rates. It's reported on each district's um academic performance. I want to say the state I have not looked at this, so this is just is usually around 12%. I think I'm going to check that. In the past years, I felt like we were pretty aligned with the state. this year seems like a lot more. So, well, I mean, hopefully that number's right because I mean, not a bad year. We're still 4% less than what the state average would be, which I still don't like losing anybody. Um, and this year, I mean, obviously because we hadn't been able to get teachers raises for two years. I I can't blame them. I mean, they have to take care of the families and their kids. They love teaching kids, but they have their own. So,

105it's a hard hard pill to swallow, but it's it's the truth. I had Ally yesterday pull some data for me, and so you stated we lost about 60 teachers. We have 324 teachers. [Music] I didn't Yeah, teachers would be just teachers. That's 20%. Sorry, my mic went on with that, but that's No, not necessary. Okay, just kind of a follow up to what Miss Johnson was just talking about. Last week, I told you at our regular meeting that we had some preliminary calculations on the aotments that have have been provided by House Bill 2 as far as the uh money that we used to increase staff and teacher pay. Uh just reiterate that real quick. uh basic allotment increase has been is $55 per student received per ADA which for us generates about $243,000. The

106allotment for basic costs which is one of the new aotments that was generated is $106 per enrolled student. So not ADA actual enrollment. So that generates about $500,000 for us. And then we have the new support staff retention aotment which generates $45 per ADA and it's actually adjusted ADA. I don't have enough details yet to know exactly how the difference will be between regular ADA versus adjusted ADA. So hopefully in the next week or so I'll get a clear picture on that. So I'm just going with basic ADA at this point. Should be a little bit higher. But just for basic ADA it's $200,000. So those three increases in our funding generates about $943,000 for us. The basic aotment is not there just for payroll. That's just an increase to our basic student at all

107times. The aotment for basic costs is not just for payroll, but it can be used for payroll. The support staff retention aotment is just for payroll for the non-teers the groups that do not qualify under the teacher retention a lot. So we do have two new allotments that are meant to be only for payroll. One that can be used but doesn't have to be used just for payroll and one that another one that can be doesn't have to be. So just in general just trying to keep this big picture here. We've got nearly a million dollars in new money that can be used towards payroll increases. I've done and I'm going to stress preliminary calculations have not been verified. I need to do a lot more going back and double checking and looking for any

108inconsistencies or gaps whatever. But currently my preliminary calculations if we have a 3% raise for all the non-teers meaning teachers who will not get the four or $8,000 raise and then the four or $8,000 of course is being funded by the state directly grow. So the 3% raise with benefits and a step raise for teachers. So whatever step they're on now is going up to the next step in addition to the 4,000 or the 8,000. the benefits on that is putting us right about a million dollars. So a 3% raise for all the non-teers and a step raise just a step raise and the benefits on all these the increased cost for TRS Medicare the benefits that go along with these these gross pay increases is just about exactly what all three of these a

109lotments together come out to be. So, we're we should be able to do what I just said. Again, this is preliminary data. I'll have a better picture hopefully in the next week or so, but it's going to take every bit of the new money that we're getting just to do that. That's including the retention a lotment. Well, I'm not I'm counting the benefits only retention. The benefits have to come out of these a lotments. Correct. the actual a lotment itself that's it is new money but that's just passed through right so that's just in and out so I'm not really counting that in this $94,000 I believe just the 4,000 8,000 a lotment for teachers is remember is about $2.3 million right now but again I've got to get a lot better clearer picture on

110exactly who's going to qualify who's not right now I think I've captured most everybody who will be on that teacher list but since it's going to be based on that role ID code of 087. And I'm just looking at a job code that says teacher and a pay scale that says P1. That's that's their pay grade. There could be some more edited. It could be something that get taken out. That's still a lot of time still has to be done. But what that doesn't do is it uh it doesn't adjust the pair professional salaries that we discussed that Chris brought up. the 3% raise, but it doesn't it doesn't move scale to a new scale. That's using current teacher scale and current pay just as they have been for the last two years. Errol and

111I were at a meeting yesterday with surrounding superintendent, CFOs, and what um some of them are looking at because the teachers with three or more years of getting that pass through from the state, they're looking at doing something for the year one and two. Um but that has to be done locally. So that doesn't it doesn't touch that and it doesn't leave any room to uh with the 3% for everybody. It would not leave any room to put any more money in the fund balance. Nor would it nor would it allow us to add help in the classroom for the teachers if we're just giving teachers a raise across the board. So I'm excited to be give them something, but at the same time it hurts. It just hurts my mind. Yes, we can do

112something. I want everybody to hear that we are absolutely going to do something. Um there's still some some gaps and it it doesn't it doesn't add FTEEs. It doesn't add to our our payroll which of course is what it takes to decrease the number of students in her class. So can I circle back to Katie? Um it makes zero sense to on spending money on teachers when we have facilities falling apart that we're going to have to spend money on this year. Um that's your opinion on what said, right? No, that's this is me. Um it was it was uh it was very clear there were millions of dollars of red items on your list. Yeah. And as a board member, uh, call me a fiscal hawk or conservative, whatever you want to call it.

113Um, I I I can't in good conscience plan to spend money when I know I'm going to have to spend different money somewhere else later. Um, for example, last year we approved, I believe, two air conditioners. um we didn't have the money for that, so we had to pull it out of a fund we didn't need to. So millions of dollars on that list um needing to be spent in the next year, maybe two, maybe months, maybe weeks. Uh it it's it's not fiscally responsible uh to know you have expenses that are in the multi-millions and then turn around and say, "Well, hey, we've got a million dollars coming in. Let's spend it right away." That's just that's backwards logic in my uh I could be in the minority and that's fine. I'm used to

114that. Um but I do want to circle back to what you started with. That's why I said I want to go back to Kate. Um, we mentioned in the first strategic meeting and then brought it back up in the third meeting, which is one you led, uh, that we do have funds available. Um, and I do not believe it has been explained very well yet for the general public and maybe this is not the time for it. plays, if you want to explain it, you can uh where that money comes from and how we have that available. But I believe that would be our best plan of action because if we can take care of the leaky roof, if we can take care of the 28-y old air conditioner, if we can take care of

115uh a bad chiller, if we can take care of the red items or the majority of the red items, that frees up the board to make intelligent decisions on finances for teachers. interesting because I woke up with the same exact thought. I think this very much I don't know ahead to that. Yes, Kyle makes a a great point. Um what you you don't ever want to take care of of things that should be taken care of with the INS side of things with Money, right? Um, again, trying to keep this very sim uh simple, but your your operational budget, as y'all heard me say over and over again, 85% of that goes to personnel. You cannot should not depend on that money for capital improvements. That's what the INS side of of the budget is

116for. Um, what will happen is exactly what we're dealing with right now. Uh we've got a a very bad uh junior high school roof that we had to take care of in an emergency type situation. Um our deductible, our insurance deductible is a million dollars that's going to come out of our M budget. Um there are things that are red line on that on that scale that we feel like in the next year or so could again be costing us from the operational side of the budget. So could we instead use the INS side of the budget? And I I'll say again, um, we can propose to the voters out there a bond for almost 40 million that did not increase the tax rate that they had to to pay. It increases I want to

117be careful the way I say that. It reads on the ballot that it's a tax increase because obviously you're taking on 40 mill 40 million more in debt, right? But because you have been such good stewards of your money, um, and I use this simple example, it's no different than you paying your mortgage every month and paying well well beyond the principal every month. Um, you have uh you have um paid beyond I think $2 million in the last couple of years beyond the the the principle of that uh that INS. Um, we have um got lower rates along the way over the years that now you could take to the voters a bond for almost 40 million that didn't actually take anything out of their pocket each month. Okay, which yes those red items

118if we'll take care of those red items I firmly believe that middle school and junior high are an example of that that you can relieve the Mos out of the budget by doing that. Absolutely. Yeah, I I agree with that. One of the things we were working on in the room last night, and if I can just kind of go big picture and jump out of the education words that some of us in the community don't understand. Um, we're learning how to trust each other again. Okay? We're learning how to have conversations and say very specifically, what are we saying? What do you agree with about this? And what you know, what is your concern about that? This is a skill that the community is relearning. Okay. So, um, we were talking last night about,

119let's just be really specific about what we're saying. So, Kyle said, "I have a issue." Um, let me see if I can paraphrase this correctly. Um, spending more money on, uh, salaries and more teachers, better teachers, whatever. Um, when we have, uh, imminent catastrophic maintenance failure items that may come up and bite us in the bud. Right. So, I would categorize what you're saying as those red items, right? I mean, the list goes all the way down to where some things are like, wouldn't it be nice to have a sidewalk that ties into whatever? I'm glad we put that down. We're going to try to work it into another project, but it's not an imminent concern, right? So, I think what he's describing is those red items. And I think I agree. I think that

120the path forward is to find a way to tackle those red items. Um, and those were overwhelming to the community. I mean, it was a lot of them and we didn't have we didn't have budgets on them yet. So, it was just overwhelming to see what it was. So, that but then also I think where our community is okay with like a simple, reasonable, healthy place for kids to learn. So, like no frills, but a nice respectable school and we want to be economical about that whole thing. When it comes to our students, like we want to win, okay? We just don't want to be in the game. Okay, there's not a person here that goes to any baseball or football or anything here being grateful to be in the game. Like that's not how

121we roll. So when it comes to our teachers, we have identified some of our competitors. I don't know how else to play. We would like to do better than them. Okay? Like I don't know how else to put that. We want to win. Okay? So that's about the kids. And when it comes to facilities, we should deal with the disasters and the imminent items and um keep working on the other group, you know, we're building trust and we're working through transparency which is new. So, um is that I mean yeah, you explained it very well and uh to use the recent storm damage as a great example. Uh Darl just said we have about a million dollars potential coming in next year with what the the House, Senate, and Governor has, right? We just said

122approximately and it's a guesstimate, right? We just also said we have a $1 million deductible. Well, we have two options. We just right because that we have to do the insurance repair. The guys are there. So that's gone if we do nothing. I mean, that's just black and white. We have a million coming in, we got a million going out. Uh, unless we're going to do another million on top of that for teacher raises and whatever else. And I know these are I'm not I'm not trying to get into the weeds with numbers. I'm just that's black and white. Million coming million coming out. Um, but we also have additional uh we have additional funds available if we do this right to repair what's needed around the school or as much as possible to then

123free up us as a board to make good decisions for the teachers to get races and everything else. Just one thing to keep in mind of some of this new money coming to us is your mark specifically. I know you can't use all of it. Yeah, microphone. Thank you. Um, I was just sitting here thinking about this. You know, we talked about 3% for the non-teers. Have you looked at 2% for the non-teers and how that would work out for us? Okay. 3% for that group of employees is roughly with benefits is roughly 565,000. So that means 1% is about 187,000 I believe 200,000 so 2% would be about 360 that would free up 87,000%. Thank you. But but again quite it doesn't move that doesn't move the uh the pay scale you know of

124the Paris that's just the the cost of living raise. Um, it also does not include the first year teacher year, um, what I could call a stipen that we're seeing from other surrounding districts. It's the state is given the three plus year teachers um, arrays and it does not move the overall pay scale of the teachers. Uh, we we were studying that. Um, we're above Barton, but that's but that's that's about it. Um, I mean whether you're talking about uh College Station or or Belleville or or or Celely or you know obviously as you get into the the Houston area with the Wallers or if you you head towards the Austin area um we're we're above first but that's about it. Okay. So, you know, we if we're looking at moving the overall scale, we're

125not we're not touching that at all this year. Okay, Darl, can you give um talked a little bit about um I I guess my question is what are we looking at on the money that's earmarked? Like how much of that is is truly earmarked that we could not move over to use for something other? Well, the support staff retention a lotment the 200,000 that is absolutely must be used for pay increases for the support staff. Uh the basement as far as I know at this point can be used for pretty much anything. I was just not noticing that we're going to need that to fund the plan that I have working on the scenario. The allotment for basic costs. I think the intent is that we're at least going to use some of that to

126go for payroll. They did mention in the legislative invitation I received, they created that because they know the legislature knows that we can increase those pay the benefits have to follow and they did not give us offsetting benefits increases. So they're expecting that we're going to need to use at least some of that to offset the increased ERS and Medicare expenses to go along with the first pay increases. But it can be used for other things. chance to follow up maybe y'all will have what's the cost of replacing teacher approximately if we lose a teacher what's you're talking about more than salary voluntary well so I think part of and I don't know Christy like to replace a teacher we have insurance benefits it depends where they fall on scale one of the things that

127we heard principles echo was and that we've talked about is we will as you see we're building this human capital management system right so how do we build a high quality educator part of that we'll get them in our system we'll build them for two to three years and principles you echo me yes or no and then they will leave because just like we've seen we're not competitive um Miss Burch mentioned really wanting to win and then we just showed you star scores part of the reaction that we we received from trustee happener was when I look at these at first glance these are not the performance that I would expect in order to perform at a high level we have to compete recruit retain and reward highly effective educators so that our reputation right

128is a place that attracts top talent we're in the business of serving students the number one I said this last night the number one indicator in research that's going to make the greatest impact for students is the quality of the educator. So having a highly the second is the principal. So the fact that we have stability in our principal team is huge. They are working like all of them. The elementary is off contract and they are here. They were here last night. They're still trying to hire. We have 29 vacancies. So I think I don't know what I was supposed to say but I think either like I I see this either or conversation, right? there's this there's this oxygen mask that we talk about with these red items that are glaring at us that

129are in imminent need right and then from a student perspective from a instruction teaching learning perspective I also see and the team of us also see a red glary me because we have to have highly effective educators to change success for students in buildings that are safe and bound. So, it's I know the needs are like it's it's both. It's not either or to me, it's and both, but I don't know how to move forward in that, but I think we still have 29 vacancies. So, we have to get competitive to win. to just to your point. I just want to say this and I understand what you're saying pal in regards to you know we have to take care of this but we put if we don't have teachers to put into both buildings

130you have the right group but just kids aren't getting educated but so the both approach we got to got to get creative on this thing because we can't not continue to raise you can not be competitive we also can't have a building that's falling down as well and I don't think any of us want to do it but at the same time if we don't do our teachers the cost of of bringing new teachers in training for two years, I think we're going to probably be, you know, many times x on top of the cost of the longterm cost as opposed to having to fix a wall otherwise. And so if we're looking at a fiscally responsible side, we got to look at if we have to replace future, man, we're going to be 3x

131what it would have been if we allowed a building to go a little bit longer. Now, we want to fix it red line, absolutely got to get done. But the long-term cost of losing good teachers, I think is going to be major major problem for us if we don't do something now. And so I I hear what you're saying responsible, but in the long flight, it may not be as fiscally responsible to not take care of our teachers at this point. So just got two things I want to talk to you real quick. Um Clay, this question's for you and maybe for Daryl. Um, could you pay that interest deductible out of a bond? It has to come out of your M. Um, so that clarifies one question. Secondly, we've talked about bare minimums here.

1323% no increase for pair of professionals, nonstructional staff. How do we get to five six%. We we've got to make up for lost lost time. So like what what option is here for us to get to five six%. So, I'm looking at competition. College Station passed 5%. Yes, they passed a deficit budget, but they passed a 5% raise across the board. Um, Somerville yesterday or they announced this morning, uh, 5% for non-exempt hourly based employees, 4% for administrators, uh, 2,000 incentive for zero to your teachers of service. So, like, yes, Waller's an issue, but Somerville's an issue. That's closer than Waller. College Station's an issue, you know. So how do we get how do we get to five six let's green here 7%. Let's what are the steps that we can take to get to

133that level and then at the same time let's I let's keep working on our maintenance on our maintenance list and put a value to these red items that need and maybe it's not $40 million. Maybe we scale that back and save some of those funds for the f because we're going to we're going to have to build another school in two years like it's going to have to come before the public again. So, what can we do now to to take some pressure off of our budget on the maintenance side where we can shift some of that money over operations and and soak up some of that through like through a bond package or through like let's let's pump some how do you fix a business that's failing you to invest in let's invest in

134our employees number one let's invest in our facilities number two and let's challenge the community to kind come together and work together like that's what I heard in the room last night number one was employees like we've got to invest in our employees we've got to turn some things around the classroom. Yes, there was no turnover in the principles, but we lost some assistant principles. We've lost some counselors. We've lost some some additional support staff. And we lost 60 teachers. That's unacceptable. And I think everyone in the room agrees with that. So, let's figure out a way we can pay our employees. Not 3%. I want six. I want seven. Like, we need to challenge the community. The community wants wants a scores. like pay our pay our teachers the rate of an A score

135of an A school. Like let's let's let's invest in our teachers in our schools. That way we can support them and pay them what they should be paid and not just keep kicking that skin down the road. I don't want to kick the teacher pay down the road any longer. Like I know Raven's behind this. He's been preaching since he got in the school. So, but we have to we're going to have to do more than one item here. And I know it's going to happen have to happen quickly. Yes. So, like we said earlier, the room represented the community and we are trying to allow them to move the room and then they will eventually come and make a recommendation or multiple recommendations. It's not just short term, it's longterm. So, like you said,

136we reflected what you heard in the room. it was we talked about facilities but the conversation kept coming back to to teachers to the support staff and the parents who have not gotten a raise um you just heard from our HR director their current hourly wage so to have all those options on the table for the strategic planning committee that's making up more than the people's opinions in this room one of those options is a bigger in addition to the capital maintenance those are all options but to keep that on the we would have to move forward with a letter of engagement to even have that as an option. That gives us over the 3% raise. That hits our paris, that hits our librarians, that hits our instructional support staff, um our bus drivers, our

137monitors, our cafeteria workers, our technology, our it all of those people are part of our what um has talked about multiple times, our ecology of a healthy school district and a healthy community. So not saying that that's the direction that we ultimately have to land but to give that strategic that autonomy to even go through that work and get there you as a work will have to decide whether or not that can you give uh broker Daryl some of the numbers um what a three what a three cent um raise the M side of things would mean for the taxpayer. Okay, I've done some calculations. I don't recall exactly what the average cost average home cost was. I think it was in the ballpark $300,000 a little bit below that gives me $300,000 as a

138as a right now there's $100,000 exemption homestead exemption. Uh then the rest is taxed at our set tax rate. Our current M rate for this past year was 66.69 cents per $100 evaluation. So that would generate a tax debt of $1334 around it. Frame it up. Yes, just frame it up. Not talking about the ins. I'm just looking side of it. So just know if you take that same $300,000 home with the same $100,000 homestead exemption at 69.69. So 3 cents, which would require voter approval. That would bring up that same house, the state homestead tax rate to 1394, which is about $60 increase per year for the year. And since we know that the legislature has put out has approved $140,000 exemption ballot, most likely that will pass. not aware that there's ever been

139a home state exemption increase that has not been voter approved. So, we're all expecting that's going to pass November. So, again, the same $300,000 home now with $140,000 exemption uh with the 3cent increase would actually save $219 per year. So even even with the precent increase, the $40,000 exemption increase will be able to offset the precent and the 3cent is the maximum that we can increase. That's the maximum that we can have guaranteed that we will not have recap. There probably is some room to even go. Those are the three golden pennies that are left. There's eight total golden pennies. We already claimed five of those without voter approval. We're allowed to do that and that's what we are doing. So we can go three more golden pennies which generate both local revenue and state

140revenue. If we go beyond the three then we get into what they call the copper pennies which only generate local revenue and there is a threshold that you cross and calculations more detailed calculations have to be done to know if it be one or two golden copper pennies or three more. At some point though, you're gonna tip the balance and then you're gonna put us more likely into recapture because then we're going to be receiving too much local revenue compared to the state average. So, and what we don't want to do, we don't want to raise M to only send that money to other districts to to the state to send other districts. Correct. So, we feel confident that you can go three cents. We feel like that would generate and it's a guesstimate more

141than$2 million2 million for this district a year 2 million. Um so again the takeaways from that three cents generates around 2 million a year for this district. The taxpayer doesn't feel anything le anything more to their their pocket at home. Okay. Just as the INS discussion of a bond up to almost 40 million, the taxpayer doesn't feel any more in their pocket at home with those. So I just I want to be so clear with that three cents M taxpayer doesn't feel anymore up to 40 million on INS taxpayer doesn't fill any more uh to their their pocket at all. But if you want to consider that strategic plan to make that decision and do that work, we you as a board would have to choose to move forward with the letter of engagement, which

142best practice would be our current auditors very soon, like next week. So that um the strategic plan as they continue to work and figure out how they do want to give staff races would have that autonomy to still have on the table by approving an audit. This doesn't actually lock us into doing anything. This is just a step forward in order for us to see if this is something that we want to do. Is that it? It allows um the committee if they if we have a letter of engagement and we go through it's an efficiency audit that is required to do a later that has to be published a month before November election for the community to see. Um but to be able to that to to have that choice. If they chose to

143go through, which would be on November ballot, we would have to engage. Do we we have the final vote on it that ends up on the ballot or is that the strategic planning committee? No, it it is triggered by y'all when you adopt. I mean, not I'm just saying if we do the letter tomorrow and then this is what the strategic planning committee says they recommend. We still have to take a vote to add it to the I'm just trying to say we're not committing ourselves to makes the decision. Yeah, but we're not committing ourselves to anything saying let's go ahead and see what what the strategic planning committee comes up with. We're giving them the tools to to go down this path. We're making sure we don't miss the deadline. Yes. In case we

144decide to go that direction, I'm sorry I just call but I missed the deadline. What is coming up in a week? Why do we have to do this in a week? So So there needs to be an efficiency audit done so that we can then pursue conversations about obedience. Does that make sense? Make sure my mic but that has to be done. We can't wait till the next board meeting for that there are certain dates. What is that question? What does an audit cost? About $15,000. I got the quote from our auditor. Don't we typically can we count this as part of our audit anyway that we don't don't we normally get efficiency audits every year? This is separate. No, we usually have our annual audit, our financial review audit. That is what we normally

145have to do every year. That's required by state law. This is similar. I don't know exactly what all the differences are. I've never dealt with this before, but it is a different type of audit. It's I don't think it's quite as indepth as the annual financial review which he'll go on slightly. This is an additional layer. This is something that I don't know exactly how long the state is required of this. I believe it's been tremendous number of years maybe the last six eight years I think they required this if a district wants to pursue. So it's a relatively new requirement requirement that the state has put on districts to go through this and present this information to the to their community. It's in intended to be a measure of providing the community the asurances

146that what we currently do with our money is efficient, that we're not basically wasting money. So I mean basically what we're saying is we're making $15,000 investment to get two million basically. Yes. So but without that we don't have a shot for no because audit is required. Okay. So I mean there there's a bit of we want to be fiscally responsible but there is such a thing investment side of it get but we cannot pursue the data if we do not have this. So we have to look at more of an investment as opposed to audit this time otherwise because I mean actually there's there's not a lot of options that we have to we have to consider all the options even if it cost us a little bit it does it does hurt that

147there's a cost involved with audit but listening to the feedback from the strategic planning committee and then listening to feedback from the board members we know where officer Raven stands when it comes to looking for ways to give teachers raises and everybody else I I think I think it's worth it for us as a board and as a community to at least go down a path of of calling for an audit so we have a chance of evader and increasing our teacher salaries. Um I'll be the one to disagree. Uh I don't think so. Um I don't at all. I think it's an um bad decision to spend $15,000 to turn around and say we're going to raise taxes. I I can't get behind that at all. Um, but we we talked about more income

148coming in. We talked about uh the potential for raises and then it turned to well then I want more raises. I do too. I agree. I'd love to have the extra money to give raises. Unfortunately, we were given a situation that the can was kicked down the road by previous boards and previous superintendents and previous administrations and they set us up for they set us up to be in this situation where our hands are tied. We're struggling. But in no way, shape, or form could I get behind putting us in a situation where financially we're going to be in a worse situation than we're in now. Um, and we're in a bad situation and trying to claw out of it and doing a good job. Uh, like you said while ago, past I don't remember

149the the school district, but a lot of them are passing uh deficit budgets. I can't support it. I won't. Um, I know I'm in the minority on that maybe, but it just doesn't make sense to spend more than you take in. I just can't do it. And in this case, I also can't support spending $15,000 to then turn around and say, I want to raise taxes. I just I just can't do it. Did you hear the difference? Did you hear the difference? I was outside. Can somebody clarify the difference in the amount cuz like after that you hear that? So I think it was like a $60 increase for the entire year for this for the golden pennies for the community. But then there also on the ballot is going to be raising the homestead

150from $100,000 to $140,000 which if we did that it would actually be $219 decrease to the taxpayers. So, if the homestead passes, if we're able to pass these golden pennies, it's a great opportunity for us to not have any impact on the taxpayers and possibly also be able to give our teachers a raise. Now, I don't see any reason why somebody wouldn't want an increase in their homestead from 100 to 140. I think the 100,000 one pass pretty easily. So, it's it's they'll both be on the ballot at the same time if we move with the timing wise. So, we're actually in a really good spot to be able to do that. Um I mean to speak to I know those are rough numbers too on the $60 roughly and roughly 219 the the homestead

151helped but again it's it's being creative with numbers because we didn't do it then they get more of a discount right but to speak to what Mr. just said about the history, the recent history of what's gone down in this community. Our um community has a little bit of um trepidation toward anything like that because of the monstrosity which was thrown to the community in the past. Right. Okay. So, and I I'm I'm just saying from the heart here. I think we we need to be very careful about exactly what's being said. I don't think our is not generous. I don't think that we're against paying a small amount to help our teachers. And that that's a small amount. I mean, that's a really small amount. I think what they said at that time was

152these these bonds that are being proposed without the proper backup data, which is what our community said, whether we agreed or not, that's what the majority of the community said, um was something that the community said no to. I don't think the community has ever said no to that type of ads. So I mean I think it's a completely different situation that you just have to isolate and look at from a business perspective. If I have a chance at more than a million for 15,000 L every day and twice on Sunday, you know, so for me I I differ a little bit, but um those amounts were a really big deal to me on that. It was it was very small. Say something. from Oh, the exact numbers correctly [Laughter] [Music] microphone fumbles throughout the

153evening. Um I guess um do we need to call a vote to have a meeting or do we just agree that we're going to meet? Yes. So what this would take um and again I I want to be so very clear. I know it's been said over and over again. We're talking about a voter approved tax rate election that uh at the end of the day the taxpayer would not fill uh anymore from their pockets at home. uh in fact with homestead exemption uh chains that we're looking at they actually fill less in fact when we're talking about the INS side of things we're talking about a bond um again we're talking about no effect to the taxpayers pocket uh when it comes to their their monthly payments so um I I applaud this team

154I applaud you as a board um it being very timely the strategic uh planning committ be very timely um in in uh being very conservative and at the same time looking at a way to to generate revenue. Right? We've got a lot of expenses. Um expenses take revenue and this is extremely conservative approach. But yes, to consider these two options um we have to have an audit which means we need to have a board meeting next Tuesday. Um it would you you've got all the explanation we can give you. It would be simply a board meeting to say um yes move forward with it. You have to post it on the agenda and say yes go ahead and move forward with getting this done. I mean it should take two minutes. You do it at

155noon at 8:00 in the morning. Whatever works for you needs to happen next Tuesday. Hang on. Sorry. looking at my calendar. Anyway, I just wanted to say, you know, this this is a very difficult conversation for me personally because I know that we have major human capital issues that we need to take care of. And I absolutely believe in taking care of our people and um making them feel like they're valued and sexual because they are and we have a rockstar team and I would change that for the world. Something that concerns me about the Bader even though we have the homestead um exemption offset is the fact that it's permanent. Personally, I don't like anything that's permanent. It just doesn't make me feel comfortable. I have a very sort of guttural reaction to anything

156that's permanent. And and so where my mind goes is, and I've asked this question several times, what are alternate revenue sources that our district can pursue that we have not pursued yet? And I'm thinking about something specific. I'm just going to bring up this idea and I know it will take time and doesn't solve the issue right now, but about a year ago, we had this train come to a board meeting and present about something called BCR now and has a scoreboard that we can install and have advertisements pay for the scoreboard eventually after four or five years. And then the rest of it is revenue. So that's an example of something that I know that we pursued in the past and I know it's not an immediate solution. I know we can't do that

157tomorrow but scoreboard tomorrow. It cost a million dollars and we have to raise that money. But it's definitely something that I would like to pursue and look into because I think Everybody agrees at this table and in this room that we have to be creative. And this is one of the ideas that comes to my mind, if not the only idea that I would potentially be okay with. And again, this is not easy for me personally to say or share because I care deeply about every single person in the room. But anything that's permanent, I'm just not going to be for kids failing permanent. Kids not getting the education they need is a permanent challenge for them because they have to go forward in life. And I hear what you're saying, man. We got to

158be creative. I believe exactly the same thing. And but I think that's on top of it, right? And if we're talking about a million dollar investment in a a board, but not getting a $15,000 investment in an audit, I think we're kind of looking maybe a little bit challenged on that. But the education of our kids and if they're not getting a proper education because they can't afford the teachers, the high quality education materials and other that is primary. That's our community. And so I I agree with you. It is hard to look at things that the committee to something that's permanent and and a community but communities have to make permanent decisions all the time. They put roads, they put stops, we do these different things in order to be able to be able

159to progress. If we don't do it, that's going to leave a permanent mark as well. So we kind of choose our pain a little bit and I get fiscally it is the feel risky and I guess I look at us as a board what are we going to you got to choose our pain at some point and no do I want to spend money and do I want to you know do it based on but at some point we're going to have to make decisions we haven't made historically in order to get to where we want to be in the future and so I think as we're looking at this looking at kind of the much bigger picture there's going to be a downside no matter what happens is And but if we don't leverage

160ourselves with what we have right now forward, I think that's where we're going to really miss out on. And so yeah, permanence, it is challenging, but at the same time, the human capital side that we're going to fail on if we don't do these things, we don't have the right teachers in the right places, we don't have the right facilities. I think that that's going to be a much bigger cost to them. Okay. So that just for consideration. Um Sean, you hear from those So, it wouldn't be something the school would be paying a million dollars for, but that's a whole another conversation for another day. Sorry, I didn't explain. Uh, and I think we should also the revenue from that should be tied directly to teacher salaries and increases, but that's again whole another

161conversation about the day, but um I think the math is wrong on uh what y'all talked about Darl, what have you. Um because yes, the homestead increase is going to go from 100 to 140, but at the same time, property values increase and at the same time we raise that up another 10%. So $300,000 home goes to $330,000. So really you're getting about a $10,000 difference when you raise it by three three cents. Actually it's a tax increase. Um there no it's not. I I pay property taxes. I see what the price goes up. I mean it's not I mean everybody everybody has that. Yeah except by the state. You're saying your property hasn't gone up in value? No, it has. Absolutely. It's speculation that's going up 10%. I'm saying that's that's the average. And

162And what meeting was it that uh she was at? Was it the last meeting or the meeting before? No, two meetings ago. She was at the first one. She was No. Uh yeah, she she said the average across the board was not Thank you. Nothing. She said the average was about 10%. and the homestead cap at 10. So that's why I picked that 10. You want to go with 5% whatever we're using. But no, under no circumstances stay the same. So I think we need to be fair with the numbers. But I agree with what Archer says. Uh permanent is a non-starter for me as well. Uh we just got given extra money and now we're turning around and saying, "Yeah, but city, we need more." And again, we can we can sit here and

163vote for that. And if it passes at the meeting Tuesday that we're going to set, that's that's fine. Uh it's ultimately still not our decision because it's going to go to a vote. And then what's going to happen if it doesn't pass? We've we've spent $15,000 on a on we spent $15,000 and it turned into zero instead of turning into two million or whatever the number. So all there because we've been here for hours. Just one thing. No, we need to if we're going to do this, we got to send me or whatever. We got one thing nobody said was even with the three extra golden pennies, we're still going to be one of the lowest top 10 tax in the state of Texas. So, the community keeps telling us that they want us to

164pay the teachers more. It's up to us to give the community the opportunity to show it. So, and also what message does that send to the teachers if we don't do this? We just had 80 teachers left gone. if we 60 60 sorry we just had 60 that thank you that's a big correction but what message does that send them if we don't attempt to get them more than what we're already trying I I feel like us doing this as a board send a message that we are doing anything and everything we can and we are willing to invest what we need to to retain teachers and to retain not just teachers but everybody that works for BISD all 800 employees so we need to look at it that way too what message are we

165sending to them I'd like to just quickly address a couple things. Um, yes, it is permanent, but you do have the autonomy at the board if you were to change it. But just we don't actually have to vote on this. We just say we're going to meet correctly. We actually have to have a motion and just setting a meeting for this purpose. Sorry. And we can come back to the revenue and the board because it would take years to have the type of capital that we needed to be able to give out the raises that we talked about and that's for another time. But what I charge you with is when we look at some of the feedback that we've gotten from the community, from the first bond, from the second bond. Yesterday, Katie um

166actually produced some really interesting statistics where her and her team went through and looked at the community feedback from all of the conversations um publicly online that were actual identifiable person. Um a lot of it comes back to trust. So, we're trying to do things right here. And I'll I'll note on the previous bond, the very first bond, I was serving as an educator, as a community member, and we for hours and hours and hours. So now we're reconvening. We're trying to get all these different sectors and we're trying to rebuild trust. Well, we also have to trust those community groups that we're putting together. And so by already inhibiting their ability, we're saying, "Hey, community groups, hey, all of these subpops, we've come together, we're going to take this decision away from you because

167we don't trust you, but you want them to trust us." It it has to be a give and take, right? So, I feel as if we have enough support to schedule a meeting for next Tuesday to vote on whether or not to do an audit. Um, are we So, that's what I was asking. I don't know if we need to set. Yeah. So, typically our special meetings are at noon. If there if you and the board agree that next Tuesday we can meet for the purpose of discussion microphone is everybody. Okay. Yeah. So, I think the board all agrees that we can meet here next Tuesday to vote whether or not to authorize an audit for for the strategic planning committee. Thank you all for the very the time today. We really appreciate all the

168presentations, everything. Um and then with no more no more business before the board at 2:20, this meeting is [Music]