Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD - School Board Work Study - 5/14/2026

00114, 2026. For the record, board members present are Kim Brady, Marjorie Barnes, Carolyn Benavidez, Paul Gilmore, Randy Shackman, and myself, Cassandra Hatfield. We constitute a quorum and may conduct business on behalf of the district. The next agenda item is audience for guest. Anyone who wish to speak during audience for guest must have submitted a form by 1:00 p.m. today. And for this meeting based on board policy BED local, the speakers comments are the it had to be about the posted agenda items, but we did not have anyone wishing to speak. So, we will move on to agenda item 3A momentarily because our technology has decided that it does not want to cooperate even though this is our favorite part of our work studies. So, our item number 3A is our district goal progress monitoring for

002third grade reading language arts. So, just to remind the public, we have four board goals, and today we are doing progress monitoring on our fourth one for the spring. And we've been working through this process of creating a systematic format for working through our board monitoring reports so that we can follow along more efficiently and have a predictable format. And so, in a few minutes, administration is going to present that to us. He keeps doing it. Ms. Holcomb, soon to be Dr. Holcomb and associates. Yes. Thank you so Well, maybe Oh, hello. Hello. Okay, good evening um President Hatfield, Dr. Eldridge, and distinguished members of the board. Uh Ms. Breanna Burrell, um our RLA director of K through 12 reading language arts, is here with me this evening. Dr. Julian is feeling a little under

003the weather this evening, and so we will be doing your board monitoring report for our reading um board goal. So, I want to start off and just remind everyone that our board goals were set, of course, by the board of trustees. As you know that we are monitoring long-range goals out to 2030 for our early reading um early childhood goals, uh which include also our reading and our math, as well as our college career military readiness. And then we also have the goal progress measures that we're bringing throughout the year that are going to be monitoring our short-term progress towards those goals. This evening Okay, this evening we are going to be presenting progress updates on our GPMs that we call them, the goal progress monitors, um for our overarching goal of third grade reading.

004So, to just kind of focus this in, we are looking at our third grade reading uh progress towards increasing our meets performance on the third grade STAR reading assessment as measured by what the state refers to as meets performance. We are looking for an increase by 2030 to hit 64%. And so, we were starting this in 2025 going from the 46% aiming for incremental growth over time to 2030. If you'll remember the last time we presented in April, we did our board goal for our math GPMs. Uh they were adjusted slightly between fall and April to adjust to our goal progress measures that were um adjusted at that time so that we did not have stagnant measures every year, but they were more incremental measures. So, our RLA GPMs were also adjusted. The targets now

005reflect reflect incremental growth over each year versus a constant target of 80% each time. Um, they better align to our district data measure so that we can isolate individual skill sets and then we can also can improve consistency over time on all GPMs. Just to revise and to kind of get us back to where we were, the original version looked like this and if you remember there was a lot of 80% across the row. They were measuring vertical um progress measures from pre-K all the way through K1 and 2 up to third grade and that is something we do believe very much is important for us to see growth in our um early literacy grades to lift our third grade meets performance. So the adjustments that were made are now going to look like this.

006The um copy of this was provided um to the board um so you have a copy of this. They are very similar in what we're measuring although you'll notice there's incremental growth over time. And where we landed with our GPMs so that we could monitor this consistently each year was on our reading fluency and specifically sentence reading fluency in our early literacy grades. So the first one I want to draw attention to since these are kind of a new focus for the board I want to make sure that everyone is kind of understanding what we're what we're monitoring. In the first grade we are monitoring 75% or higher on our sentence reading fluency accuracy. So this program will measure throughout the year in beginning, middle, and end of year the results of our students reading

007at at least 75% or higher in their accuracy for first grade. Then in second grade we are monitoring that but we've actually raised the bar a little bit higher on second grade. We're really looking at a 90% or higher accuracy rate on sentence reading fluency. We know this is an aggressive measure but we do believe it is important to kind of measure this at higher rates so so we can see that third grade meets performance getting higher over time. The third GPM is focusing on how our whole group of second grade students are doing on their projected MAP Growth Reading Assessment, and that is just a collective group of all the students and who is projected to get to meets performance. And then the final one is the reading and writing goal. So with this

008one, it is focusing on our third grade students and how they're scoring on meets performance on what they refer to as the ECR, which is the extended constructed response. That is the essay portion of the reading test, the STAR test. I want to also draw your attention to the goals there because you'll notice some say TBD, and you might be wondering, well, why would that be? On the very last one on 1D, in 2028, you'll know that the testing is going to change. The state is going to be changing out how we are monitoring our STAR test, how we're doing a stand-alone writing test. We're going to also have the testing at the beginning of the year, the middle of the year, and then the stand-alone spring test. So with that, we can't measure those

009targets just yet because the test is going to be different, but we are going to measure from where we were in 2020 five to this year's our baseline measure, and then next year, and then we will have a new target for 2028. The other one that you'll notice on 1C, where you see an asterisk, that is important because with that one, we are measuring that over time, but the testing for the MAP Growth prior to this year, our English and Spanish students were taking the test in the same monitoring window, and students who do test in English and Spanish, like our dual language students, would also test in that same window, which kind of meshes the data together, and it's not pure data of just the students testing in the language of instruction. So this

010year, we have separated those monitoring windows, so they're testing in their language of instruction, and they do not overlap. So this year is our first year baseline measure for our students to test in their English or to test in Spanish and to get an overarching goal of how they're doing on their meets performance. So, with that, so a few things to know about the actual assessment tools, the MAP oral reading fluency data is taken from our K through 2 students. Those are the only students that utilize that program unless they are in RTI and we need an additional measure. We are doing that program in English and Spanish and of course you're very familiar with MAP Growth and that is a measure that we're doing all the way up through high school. It is reading

011focused. It's also taken in English and Spanish. The other thing you'll hear us refer to in this presentation is district common formative assessments, which we like to refer to as our DCFAs. Um they are administered in February or March every spring and they give us sort of a stand-alone benchmark measure of how close we can take the how close we can measure our star-like questions and mastery of standards. So, this is a test that looks very much like STAR and it gives us a good gauge of where we are. So, they're different tests from our our diagnostic testing, which is done through our MAP Growth and MAP Fluency. The district common formative assessments also measure writing and so that's very important as that's going to be a stand-alone writing test in 2028. The MAP Growth

012test does not measure writing in a written form. It's more done in a multiple-choice type format. And the ECRs are also graded by our teachers on a 10-point STAR rubric so that it is closely measured and monitored much like the STAR test will also be graded. So, with that, let's look at our progress. So, the first GPM we're going to look at is our first grade students achieving at 75% or higher accuracy on their sentence reading fluency. Our goal this year was to go from 61% in 2025 to 70% by 2030. That would be English and Spanish combined. With this goal on the left-hand side, you will see our fall, winter, and spring results. We started with 31% of our students reading at 75% or higher. By middle of year, it was 47. In the

013spring, as we wrapped up, we were at 65%. The blue line that you see across the top is measuring how we did in 2024-25. So, you can see our students last year came in at about the same proficiency rates, but at the middle of the year, we were at 46. So, we see a little bit more aggressive, um, and higher performance with our students this year in this cohort. And then, the end of year last year, we were at 61. So, we are already four points, percentage points, higher than where we ended last year. So, with our target that we're shooting for, which is our long-range goal, um, in 2024-25, we were at 61%. We were aiming for two percentage point increases each year, which would put us at 63%, and we've actually attained 65%

014for this year. So, we are on track with this GPM, um, exceeding the target that we were measuring for early learning progress. For our GPM 2, which is our second-grade students, monitoring how they are performing at 90% or higher on accuracy for sentence reading fluency, our goal is to go from 62% to 72% by 2030. This year, for beginning, middle, and end measures, we started at 36% of our second graders reading at 90% or higher, um, for accuracy on their sentence reading fluency. By middle of the year, they were at 49%, and at the end of the year, we were at 62%. You can see with the blue line and a measurement of how we did the year prior, we started out with students a little bit higher in that cohort at 40%. By the

015middle of the year, they were at 51%, and the end of the year, they were at 62. So, the one One we noticed with our cohort this year as well, they came in a little bit under where last year's students started, we had really significant growth this year to catch up to the 62% where the students were last year. So, to increment incrementally have growth over time, we want to stick to the 2%. We think that is definitely aggressive, but we want to set our goals high. And with that, it puts us right on target where we ended last year, which automatically puts us two percentage points under our goal, but we are very confident we will meet that. Um so, we're going to be consistently monitoring this, and you'll hear in a moment Breonna

016has some um strategies to share with you that we've been doing that have been showing some positive growth, and we will see that growing over time. So, with our GPM target, we are calling this one uh status of progressing because we are we're close, but we're almost there. On our GPM 3, which is our our 1C, is our second grade students as a whole cohort um and how they're performing on their NWEA MAP Growth Assessment. We are aiming to go from 50% um to 64% in 2030. This would be a benchmark year for us. Um as I mentioned earlier, we need to make sure that the air testing in separate windows so that our English students are testing and our Spanish students are testing, but we're not doing a double dip in the same window.

017So, our benchmark scores for this year, we are ending at a 50% students of our second graders are projected to perform at meets or higher for third grade. So, we will monitor that growth over time, and we're aiming for 2% increase out to 2030, and hopefully aiming for 58%. So, you can see there in the summary of data, um our 2024-2025 all bilingual students did take the MAP Growth in both Spanish and English during that same window, but this year we have divided that into two windows. So, moving forward, that is how we will test each year. And then our one uh excuse me, GPM 1D is our writing goal, which is the um ECR. Um that one we are aiming for an increase from 34% to 38%. And if you'll remember, that is one

018of the targets we set that was important because we knew that the writing scores across all of our star scores were going to be very important to see that increase over time. Um, because each of our subject areas, we know that is a significant part of the test, whether it's in an essay format or in a short constructed response. And so, our benchmark here for this year for writing is 34% and we are aiming to get to 38% uh, for next year. And then we will reset the targets 27-28 when we have the new measures and framework from the state with the new test. Okay, so I'm going to start off with some of the superintendent insights here and Briana and I are going to kind of co- tag team on this because she's got

019a real a lot of really great data to share as well. Um, but with this particular goal, we're going to start with three bright spots that we nailed down. Um, the first one we are very, very proud of our closing the gaps with our special populations. Uh, there were several areas that we saw some increases. Um, one of those was in our first grade emergent bilingual group, 10 percentage points from 60 to 70%. Special education was an increase by 11 points from 38 to 49. Um, and second grade emergent bilingual increased by one from 56 to 57. And then our special education in that second grade group increased by three from 37 to 40. So, we're very proud, want to celebrate and highlight the hard work going on with our special populations groups. Um, and

020we have a lot of the fans in the crowd here tonight. Um, Okay, and I think Briana has something on this one. Yes, so we shared the picture of the TEA foundational skills and what we're really focused on with our special populations and all of our students is really bridging the gap of those, if you look at that little tree, the roots and that tree trunk. So, all of the the that you'll see today that we'll share is really focusing on those foundational skills so that all of our students have an opportunity to read with fluency. Um so the next one that we have is the African-American growth for first grade. So we noticed that our first grade performance for African-American students went from 51% to 55% and we really contribute that to the implementation

021of the new structured literacy as well as professional development for our first grade teachers. So we saw a lot of great growth with those students. So for structured literacy, it is a TEA aligned framework with the science of reading that we implemented this year for all of our kindergarten through second grade teachers. And so with the structured literacy, there is a routine that they are following every single day to teach the foundational skills from phonological awareness all the way to sentence fluency. So it's a routine that teachers can follow every single day and they understand and it and it helps the kids also with the routines of foundational skills. And it's a part of our HMH. >> [laughter] >> Okay, and on this one I wanted to draw attention to on our differentiated campus support

022in our DIP, our district improvement plan. We have a targeted goal where we want to differentiate staff development not only for target groups of teachers but also for our campuses. They don't [clears throat] all need the same things and we want to make sure that we target those areas directly to the needs of what we're seeing from the data. And so this is an area that Breanna and her team took really to a whole another level that I'm very proud of. So I wanted her to share a little bit about this one. So what we did when I first started in this position, we took our lowest performing campuses in that 2023 year and we are targeting those campuses to really make sure that they are having growth over time. So with the help of

023you all and with Kim, we really made sure that those campuses had enough coaches in a monolingual and bilingual support to really support those campuses in implementation of new curriculum and growing and analyzing the data. And so we're really making sure that our our campuses that need that support have that support. And so what we've done with them is we've created um walk-through systems and coaching routines where we are really pulling the campus leadership together to really work with them on how to and what the look fors are for the foundational skills. And it's the great thing is 100% of those campuses had growth with first grade. So we're really excited to see our performing uh our campuses performing at the level um as everyone else. So that's really exciting. Okay, so our next area

024are our areas for growth. Um I'm going to kind of lead off on this and we both had things we wanted to share. So we were like, we're going to do this together cuz we had so much to talk about. Um and you get us in a room talking about reading and that could go on for a long, long time. Um staffing. Um we noticed as the data was pulled that staffing in each of these grade levels, so kindergarten, first grade, and second grade, at least 1/3 of the teachers were either new to the profession or they were new to the grade level and transitioned into a primary grade. With that, as you know, comes very much a lot of support for learning standards, learning how to teach, learning how to manage classrooms, learning how

025to lesson plan. All of those pieces are extremely important. And so targeted professional development in specifically the science of teaching reading, along with our House Bill Reading Academy, which is required by the state, uh which Briana and her team lead, every year we have several teachers in that, anywhere from 60 to 80 teachers. And so this is something that continues to build capacity in our teaching staff. Yes, so this year with the um science of reading and reading academies, we had 80 new teachers a part of our reading academy in the primary grades. Um so that's 80 brand new teachers in any grades from kindergarten all the way to second grade. Next year when we're rolling out for the 2026-2027 year, we already enrolled just this week 60 teachers that will be a part of

026that that were new to this current school year. So every year we're just enrolling any new teachers that we have to teaching in um the early literacy grade. So even if they're a fifth grade teacher and they come down into the primary grades, we train them on the science of reading and the foundational skills. Another area for growth is aggressive progress monitoring. And so we have this also tied back into our district improvement plan, um training our campus principals as well as our teachers and how to monitor mastery of standards, mastery of skill sets. Um this is something we've been doing ongoing, but in addition to doing that, Briana and her team have also taken this to another level with getting it all the way down to a foundational skill level of how our students

027are doing in these particular areas that we're noticing in our data with MAP Fluency. So what we're going to do, we're going to create a dashboard that will help teachers really understand their data when they're looking at the MAP Fluency. So it will say like if students are low in um phonological awareness, here are all the resources that we have provided for you in HMH that you can use to really monitor your students. So we're going to create a a monitoring tool especially for our second grade teachers um because although we had high growth um for our first grade students, second grade still has some ways to go. Um in second grade, you have to keep the level of fluency going as well as comprehension. So um where most of our data tracking tools are

028for that comprehension piece cuz we're trying to get them ready for STAR, we also need to keep up with the foundational skills. So we're going to create a system for the second grade teachers to do that. Okay. Okay. Oh, and uh for the extended constructed response, um from year to year, we the the standards and the prompts change. And so, what we saw, although we saw a drop from 27% from DCFA 1 to our STAR release DCFA 3, when we were analyzing the data, we noticed the complexity of the text changed. So, for DCFA number one, the first common formative assessment that the students did for the ECR, uh the prompt was explain how um soil is important to the earth. So, they were using their text to talk about soil and how it's important

029to the earth. So, they had some background knowledge from science to do that. Um but, when they did the DCFA, so the the practice STAR this current year, they had to take two paired passages, read both passages, and talk about how the characters are different in their motivations. So, the complexity is greater um from year to year with the ECRs that TEA is providing for us. And one thing that we notice is third grade and fourth grade are the only grade levels from English from third grade to English two that had to read two texts and write an essay about it so far. So, it's just something new that we're all learning and learning how to navigate with TEA. So, as that level of rigor goes up, so does our staff development and the targeted

030staff development we're providing for our teachers to not only grade those essays, but also how to teach appropriately in their core instructional blocks. So, there's several um strategies that we're going to do here. We're going to tag team some of these as well. Okay. So, I'm going to start it off uh and Briana's talked a little bit about the structured literacy framework. I also want to say another big thank you to the board for the support of the continuous support of high-quality instructional materials. It is the root of everything that we need to start with planning good core instruction. The structured literacy is a framework built into what we were already using, but it is highly focused on explicit phonics, as well as fluency, comprehension, and it's all aligned to the standards of TEA. I'mma

031let Briana talk about the results of how that strategy worked, cuz that was something new that we implemented. Yes. So, we saw alignment in and across all of our campuses with using structured literacy. One thing that we really notice is that the increase of rigor in our tier one instruction across all of our foundational skills in primary campuses. And again, like I mentioned earlier, we just want to help with the tier two part of that by creating systems where they can look at their data and know how is this going to impact the instruction that they're doing so that they can make decisions based on how to support their students in tier two and tier three. So, with that there are some strategic adjustments at the district level for you to be aware of. One

032of those is around our RTI and MTSS protocols. It's been a continued kind of refresh the last few years. Next year's focus is really what's happening at the teacher table. How are we progress monitoring it and how are we using that data to then interpret it and do good meetings with our with our RTI teams and then make decisions for students moving on. So, we want to see those numbers dismissing and our at-risk numbers going down, but with that comes strategic adjustments and making sure that our teaching is directly aligned to the skill area deficit. And so, that's going to be a strategic adjustment with this particular strategy just to get our our our proficiency proficiency rates up a little higher. The second area is the piloting of foundational skill lab schools. This is something

033that was done at five campuses. It was inspired by work with our commit partners, which I want to give a shout out to them as well. Our team goes on a regular basis. I would say maybe monthly-ish. Um but we have a group of people that go in reading and math and they do continued focused work with them on building capacity, learning new tools, coming and doing classroom walks. There's a variety of things that we do and there was an area of time that we had neighboring districts coming into our schools and seeing how we were implementing our reading curriculum and went away with great ideas and takeaways. We also went with them to their districts and learned different things and brought back ideas for our own school districts. So, Briana can talk about these

034foundational school lab schools strategy and how that worked. Yeah. So, we picked five campuses what five campuses had to apply. It was very prestigious. Um five campuses applied to be a part of our lab schools. And so, what we do with the lab schools, we walk with all of the campus principals at that campus and all of the instructional coaches are a part of it and we have a rubric that aligns to the science of reading and the foundational skills that are connected and we give feedback and just find trends across the campus to help the principal understand what are the next steps for them to lead their campus in those foundational skills. Um so, with our lab schools, those five campuses that participated, 100% of those campuses saw increase in their math fluency this

035year. So, we're really excited to branch that on to other campuses. So, now principals are like, "Can I be a part of a lab school?" So, they're like, "Can I Where's the application?" So, we're excited that they want to apply to be a part of the lab school and next year what we'll do is do more follow-up meetings so that principals who have never taught foundational skills really know how to lead that work on their campus and how to look at their data to align it to their CIP as well as our DIP goals. Okay, and then this one here is regarding our Amira learning which you will remember as formerly called Istation. The companies merged together. So, when you hear the word Amira, you can think of the Istation program. Um but we are

036continually using that but it's a little bit different and Amira has an AI tool built in and Briana um can talk about that a little bit more. It is also one of TEA's approved programs for all of our House Bill 1416 students and I heard a I actually was at a conference and I heard them talking about the success rate of Amira in several of the school districts and the AI kind of bot comes on there and listens to the student read and gives them feedback. And I remember uh one of the the uh principals talking about um she was a mother and she said when she went home, her daughter said something about or she asked her about how Amira was going and she goes, "You know her?" >> [clears throat] >> And she

037was like, "Yeah." And she goes, "Please don't take away my best friend." And so they literally have built like this connection with Amira um and it's really kind of a neat thing to see evolve. And so I'll let Briana talk about that. What we love about Amira and thank you all for approving Amira for our team. So I I really do appreciate that. Um that it aligns to the science of reading. Uh students have an opportunity, especially for our dual language students, have an opportunity to practice in English and in Spanish. It's one of the only programs that allows the students to practice in that listening and speaking piece that is so important for for foundational skills. Um and as well as it's great for our dyslexia screeners and it has all of the tools

038for a dyslexia screeners as well that we use and we partner with our special ed department. Um so we really use Amira to help with that intervention piece that we need. And it's already aligned to our HMH. So whatever lessons the students are on at HMH, it gives them interventions based off of the tier one instruction that they're doing. So it's it's very closely aligned. What we notice is that for all of our grades from kindergarten through fifth grade, we saw growth from beginning and end of the year on all foundational skills and structured literacy and comprehension. So even the foundational skills and the comprehension all grew in grades K through five. So we're excited about that. Um this year [clears throat] we had some issues with um iPads and usage. So what we want

039to work on next year is really helping teachers understand how to navigate a an online platform for intervention and provide POCs. Our coaches are out doing work with POCs with um the teachers on how to look at the data and how to implement um the the Amira program into that in their side their classrooms with fidelity. So. And the one thing I would say on this one is it also requires our headphones to be up-to-date and check, you know, all the time. And so we're constantly looking at making sure we have enough resources. That's one thing we hear on our campuses a lot is we need more headphones or we need to maybe up our budget for headphones. So I don't prepare to bring that to the board, but if that comes just want you

040to know that that would be an area of support. So Moving on, our last slide we have three more we wanted to share with you very quickly. You've heard us talk a lot tonight about the professional development focusing on foundational skills. Again I want to remind that this is part of our district improvement plan that we're monitoring in many different ways, but specifically with our reading it is critically important especially with our new teaching staff. And so um Brenda do you want to share on that one? So as we walk with um Kim and Matt Pope and all of the district leadership we keep a tracker of how are our teachers improving in their tier one instruction especially for our foundational skills. And we saw that 90% of those teachers had improvement in their growth

041overall. So that was great to notice. Um another thing that we really want to focus on next year is really helping principals really calibrate and understand what to look for when they're doing those walkthroughs. So um just giving them more feedback in how to implement um next steps for their teachers with foundational skills cuz a lot of our principals um are new to that. So we have to help them with that. Okay. And then the second one here, lesson internalization. Oh, this gets us excited. Um so lesson internalization is something we did a PLC reboot last summer and we really focused on this in our um training with our principals in May. We trained our Are y'all laughing at me? >> [laughter] >> Sorry. It's the little things. Um So we do love this. >>

042[laughter] >> Telling you. Um and so we trained all of our coaches on this. We did get some inspiration from our commit partners again on some other ways they do it. And then Matt. Matt Pope brings us another great idea of how they do lesson internalization in other districts. So, we love great ideas, but we have to do it our way. And so, we have a CFB way and Breonna and her magic and her team, they start mashing up how they want to do it. Math did their own version, science took a hold of it, then social studies and it was like, "Wow, this was off and running." And so, what we're really trying to do in our PLC time, which is our professional learning communities, is we want our teachers to really understand the

043standard, understand how to teach it, and what level of rigor to teach this at. And that comes from studying. And so, one thing I'm really excited about with our new math curriculum, I know this is about reading tonight, but our new math curriculum has so much provided that our teachers will not have to do so much on the lesson planning side. They'll be able to internalize cuz things are done for them. The lesson is laid out at the right level of rigor if it's implemented in the way that the authors wrote it. It's going to be really fabulous. And so, with reading, we've already had that because the HMH did that for us as well. And so, this lesson internalization protocol went next level with Breonna and her team. And so, I'll let her share

044in that. So, what the one thing we did with the principals, we had them teach foundational skill lessons to each other. And they were like, "Oh, I have to teach it right now." I'm like, "Yes, like right now." And so, they talked to their partner and their partner gave them feedback and then they had to correct the feedback immediately and try again and teach again. And so, that's a routine that we do during PLCs because we don't want the first time that a teacher is teaching foundational skills is with students. So, our goal is to really have that PLC process where we're internalizing, we're practicing in a safe space, giving each other feedback before we actually deliver this information to students. So, it's really just helped their confidence and understanding of the instruction. So. Okay.

045Yeah, last one. And the last one is for um ECRs and really strengthening the ECR writing. So, we had a district level training with all of our third through fifth grade teachers on how to understand the TEA rubric and how to grade those rubrics. Um another thing that we really noticed is that it doesn't [clears throat] start with just writing. So, we really wanted to focus on this year um annotations as well as structured discourse. Um so, last year when we were doing consolidation, we noticed that a lot of our My Books were um the books that come with the consumables at H&H were empty. So, we uh started this year with doing the implementation of helping teachers understand how to annotate and teaching students how to annotate all the way from second grade all

046the way up. And so, um another thing that we worked on is making sure that we were calibrated across the district with writing. So, we did something called the ECR road show where our coaches and myself, we went to every single campus and we work with the teachers. We took out all their essays and we calibrated together to make sure that we're all aligned as a district on grading um the ECRs. And so, what we'll do next year is we'll continue those road shows and that implementation from third grade all the way to English two. We'll have one district-wide way that we structure our writing and have structured discourse and talk so that we're as consistent and aligned literally from the first time that they take the STAR test all the way to their last

047STAR test. So, we're excited. Yeah. Okay. So, with that, we want to thank you again for your continued support and we hope this has been an informative update on where we are with our reading goal. Uh we are very excited about the growth that we have and do expect some good results this year and we are hopeful for that come June. So, at this time, we will open the floor up for questions. Thank you very much for the presentation. Board members, questions? Miss Bards? First of all, I want to thank you. It makes me excited to hear the science of reading and all of that um and uh so, I'm very excited with everything that y'all are doing. I think you touched on this, but could you explain a little bit further the your goal

048progress measures mostly show the spring map as or the spring test as being kind of the the what we're looking at. What are but we're looking at the goals throughout the year. So, what are some of the things that you're uh going to be looking at to kind of help guide us to whether we're meeting our goals throughout the year. Okay. Are you referring to the graph on the left like when we do our beginning middle and end of year? Yes. So, is that is it going to be actual maps from fall winter and spring? Yes. So, it's it's a reading fluency test that they take at the very beginning of the year and then again in the middle and then at the end. Um it measures their phonics, phonemic awareness, it measures their word

049recognition, it measures their ability to read sentences with fluency. And what happens when they take the test is they're given a series of of sentences and how accurate they are in reading those, they may get more than another student depending on how strong they are in that reading. Um with that, it then scores them at whether or not they're at a approaches, meets, masters type level. And so, that test can be given at any time of the year, even though we do it for all students at the beginning, middle, and end. We also have an ability to do progress monitoring measures all throughout the benchmarks between the beginning, middle, and the middle and the end. And so, we have some great success stories of progress monitoring measures that have been set up. Um do you

050want to talk about that? >> Yeah. So, um actually on one of our campuses, we had a teacher who had some newcomers coming in that spoke French. And she was like, "I got their map fluency data and we need some work." So, we created a system where she would target them and do their progress monitoring after every MTSS cycle. So, every every week and every 2 weeks she would do that. And so, we would just focus on um the phonological awareness, just how they're hearing the sounds for those students and within a 3-week cycle she saw them grow from like the 10th percentile to the 40th percentile. So we're seeing like quick growth very quickly cuz they're taking their data and it's giving them short lessons and short cycles to get help them increase that

051progress so. So the data that we're going to see throughout the year though is that just based off of those spring map scores? >> be the beginning middle end of the year. >> Okay, so that will change from spring to fall and winter? >> one on the right? Yes. So the one on the right is end of year measure and that one is going to be every year we're going to report out like here's how we ended here was our target and here's how we met that goal but if y'all decide you know what we kind of want to know where we are in November we kind of want a little early report and you want it two reports on reading we can come in November and we can show you where we are on

052the left side of the graph where we started and where we maybe are at middle of year. If we have that data ideally it would be great to do this report in like February cuz we're doing this winter screening is in December so we actually could do it in January. If we did a January report we could give you the beginning in the middle and then if you want an end of year report we could come back with all three bars and then show you how we ended the year towards that long range goal to 2030. Does that make sense? Okay. Yes, thank you. >> Okay. I think to Miss Barnes point the so in this example if we had heard this in the winter you would have been able to use the slope to

053predict what the spring would be so we would kind of know if we were on track based on the fall and winter. That is correct. Okay. Thank you, that's very helpful. As a math person. >> [laughter] >> Miss Brady. First I'd like to comment on the great success especially for our special populations. That's very [clears throat] exciting. That's great numbers. Thank you so much. My second question really is about that last slide not this slide, but the slide you showed us second to last. With the superintendent uh Back one. Yes. So, I noticed in the middle column, second and second section, talk about 40% of the campuses not using Oh, yes. >> this consistently. And I'm So, I'm going to ask you why. And then I'm my second follow-up question to that is this training

054that you offer in the summer, I guess beginning of the year, is that optional or is it required by all new teachers? It's required by all new teachers, of course. And for the 40%, what we notice is that when I do PLC walks with the coaches and just like checks on how things are going, some campuses have just made this a practice of what they do with the internalization protocol. And then some campuses we're still working on making this just a consistent routine a part of what they're doing. It's just not consistent yet. So, it's because it's new and we are still rolling it out, um it's something that we're I'm going to really work on those campuses that still need to have that push of making it a just a consistent part of their

055routine during their PLCs. So, you think part of that 40% is just because they're not as comfortable >> Yes. Yes. with it. Okay. >> try out the routine maybe like once every month at the beginning of every unit, but there's some campuses that are doing it every single time they meet. So, my goal is just to make sure that just becomes a part of what they do when they're meeting together in PLCs. >> And so, the end goal would be that everybody's using it consistently on everyday We're doing this all the time. Excellent. Thank you so much. Ms. Benavides? Thank you. Um I wanted to ask about the um the fundamentals for the emerging bilinguals and the 1% increase. How are they doing on those fundamentals? Is that a challenge for them to be able

056to increase the reading skill? I think it's the this one right here. Yes, uh-huh. >> [clears throat] >> So, for our the fundamentals for the the 1% increase is that what you mentioning? Yes, so for our emergent bilingual students, what we're noticing is because they are now transitioning into from those foundational skills of just the decoding and multi-syllabic words, what we're struggling with inside of second grade is building the fluency. So they know how to because syllables is just a part of what they do. What we're seeing the struggle is now is putting it all together in context and really reading with the fluency. So that's what we really want to work on with our second grade teachers next year is how do you now that [clears throat] you understand the foundational skills of decoding,

057how do you put that in context inside of a book and read fluently to help you build your comprehension. >> the 90% accuracy. Yes, and it's also for 90% accuracy, whereas in first grade it was 75%. So the level increases. That's great. Thank you. You're going. Go ahead Mr. [clears throat] Gilmore. Hi Kim. >> [laughter] >> Um third grade reading is pretty ambitious 46 to 64. >> [snorts] >> Um have we um do we understand what GPMs are the strongest early indicators that we're going in to the right direction? Say that one more time, I'm sorry. Do we understand what GPMs are driving or uh showing the best success to get us to That's a great question. Um wow, and it's we probably [clears throat] don't have enough time to get into all of it,

058but [laughter] what I will tell you um writing is going to play a really big part in our students in third grade meets performance to meet those goals. If we don't master writing, we're probably going to struggle for meeting that goal every year. Um but the other part of that is if our students aren't coming out of second grade with reading fluency and mastery of of the foundational skills, the comprehension piece is not going to be able to go to the depth that we need. MEETS performance on star is all related to your ability to lift the words off the page, understand the text at very deep levels, and then to Briana's point, write about it in complex ways when you're comparing texts and comparing characters. So, we have to get students out of second

059grade with strong reading skills and not still working on mastering phonics in third grade. And we do struggle with that in some areas, especially when our emergent bilingual students are coming into grade levels learning another language. And so, we're teaching both English and Spanish. And so, sometimes that just takes time. So, the growth that we're seeing is very positive that we're doing things that are going to get us where we need to go. But with that, we have to continually monitor and adjust our game plan because every year can show us something a little bit different. So, when we start a new year, we look at our percentage of new teachers, we look at the experience level of our teachers, what grade levels are they in, where are our hot spots, and how frequently are

060we going out and continually observing and giving feedback. Um we're implementing a new walk-through feedback tool next year that we are beyond excited about, uh which I can talk about another time. Um but that is going to give us a unified system for monitoring walk-throughs from every single level from district to campus administration to our coaches, and it will be able to um pull data for us district-wide to see where are we strong, where do we need to do more of a focus, where do resources need to be put uh to increase areas that we're maybe struggling a little bit. And so, we are very excited about that because that will continually grow and build capacity. Um so, to answer your question, I will come back to I'm going to say the writing, the 1D

061is going to be one we better really keep our eye on, but we can't lose sight of where our second graders are coming out of that grade level and how strong that level of mastery is. So, that 90% sentence fluency, that's aggressive, but that's going to get us where we need to go. Okay. And then I think you answered my next uh thought is um with the change in some of these tests and things um we have a plan to inform the parents of where their benchmarking and all that throughout the year so that cuz of that change and that and I think I heard you just explain that. >> Yes. So, for our DCFAs is what we call them to help parents really understand. We actually share those that information with the parents. Um

062the teachers have that a part of their grading process. So, the parents are aware. They can see it on Parent Square and our the self-serve to see how the students are doing with those assessments. Um another thing that we also try to help teachers do and share with their parents is how to really look at the data and really understand how to support their teachers and parents and students on how to um really help them with that ECR um work. So, another thing that we kind of implement is just giving students just quick short-cycle practice all throughout the year because we never know what TEA may ask them for that constructive response. So, we just give short-cycle practice that they can do all throughout the year and they can take that home and share with

063their parents as well. Cool. We I look forward to seeing the results. We do. Thank you. We are, too. Um I just have one question. I noticed as we look through like the plan and the strategic adjustments, looking into next year, there are several that say like increase implementation, increase support, adjust support, and expand lab school. So, um how will the resources that you had this year need to change for next year in order to implement this ambitious plan? Mhm. Great question. >> That is a good question. Um so, as far as resources go, I would say outside of maybe headphones, um, we have the resources that we need to be able to increase these student outcomes that we're after. It's the training, how to use the tools, how to use them appropriately, and I'm

064a big fan of not changing things frequently because what teachers will tell you is, "I just got used to using this and then you changed it on us and I got to learn a whole new program." Well, every time we change a program, that means every teacher in the district has to be trained and every new teacher coming on the next year has to be trained. So, we're on like year uh, what, two or three of them here? This is just year one. This is our first >> year. So, this will be our next year because we've had iStation, which is embedded in it, but it's still a little different. >> Yes. So, we've had that and then the HMH is now year three-ish going on four. Um, so, we've got consistency in that area,

065so the resources, I think we're okay. Um, the staff development resources, I will be really honest, the RLA team is outstanding and I would put any of those coaches and coordinators, and directors, our executive director in front of any of the multilingual um, campuses that need support. We can handle it in-house. I don't think we have to outsource much outside. I would say in some areas, we do need that support like in multilingual and we'll continue to partner with our outside cohort with Ms. Carlene Thomas and those coaching cycles. Uh, we will continue with Matt Pope and his work that he's been doing. So, there's a still some things that we'll do that are outside resources that that might be an area of support that the board could ensure that we can, um, provide funding

066for, but outside of that, um, I think maybe the headphones is the one area for us to consider. >> They have to have good microphones. For for the public for the public that is listening, we will be asking for headphones [laughter] for the 26-27 school year. With the microphones and no earbuds. >> with the microphone and no earbuds. >> So, in case our community was wondering, we'll have an Amazon wish list for headphones to be delivered to central office to be dispersed to our schools. >> We know which ones. Very specific type of headphones. >> Yes. Yes. Yes. >> [laughter] >> Um I feel like Karen's not here tonight, but I feel social media campaign coming on. Did you know the importance of headphones? Yes. [laughter] Yes. >> [snorts] >> Um okay, board members, any

067additional questions or comments? Well, I want to thank you guys for the report. Um it's incredibly um heartwarming to see the intentionality behind the work that's going into meeting these goals. Um obviously you guys love it. I think you should have some pom poms um or something with yourselves. Um [laughter] and so this is very I the structure is continuing to really bring things to light and um even more than the words on the page is the words that you guys say because I had notes all over mine and then I was like, well, they answered that one and they answered that one. Good. So, some of the um I guess it would be technical questions and the tactical questions you guys answer through the verbage that you use. So, I think it's very helpful.

068Um my one personal request is sometimes I get lost in what grade levels you're supporting. And so it feels very broad like we're doing professional development. But the goal's third grade and so I'm just trying to understand like how targeted the professional development is. Is it kinder through third? Is it all the way to fifth grade? Like kind of that. We don't need to answer that now, but just thinking forward that was the one thing that I I I just was like, what grade is actually getting this support? >> Got it. So, and that might help if we weren't doing all the GPMs together because if we were just doing the first grade GPM, then these insights would just be for first grade, so it would probably really connect to that. So, maybe that will

069help us for next year. >> Sure. Okay. Absolutely. All right, any additional comments? All right, thank you very much. Excellent work. All right, we're moving on to item 3B, which is our facilities condition update. The plumbing, roofing, and critical infrastructure strategic use of remaining 2018 bond funds. Uh Mr. Moore. Thank you, President Hatfield, Trustees, Dr. Eldridge. I'm I'm sorry to say I don't have anything as stimulating as lesson internalization to discuss. But, lots of numbers in here. And I internalized these through my math lessons growing up. So, now that I've had a little fun at Ms. Holcomb's expense, thank you, ma'am. It's just intuitive or right there. She's going to pass those out for me. Um So, tonight, as you shared, we're going to talk through uh 2018 bond residuals. Uh and um I I

070wanted to make a point here. People may be going, "Why are you talking about 2018 bond? It's 2026. We see bi-monthly reports on the 2023 bond." Um and so, we had some money uh left over from the 2018 bond um dating back. This the the bond passed in November of 2018. It was a $350 million bond. Um we did the work. Uh we completed the projects. Uh it was promises made, promises delivered. September 22nd is when the Bond Oversight Committee declared that we as a district fulfilled um the expectations, the intentions that the voters uh approved with that vote. Um about a year and a half ago, November of 2024, is when we in a work session reviewed with you all a project list to help us work through the remaining residuals from that 2018

071spend. And so, here we are tonight again looking through the project list to uh assist with a final spend of these bond residuals. Now, that slide on the screen is a little small, but those are the jumbo-size tabloid sheets that you've got there at your at your table. Um what you're looking at, that's what we have looking to prepare for this deemed as the the phase one. That is the list um that we looked at in November of 2024. And if you see the blue line, first of all, look at column G, that's the board ranking in November November 14th of 24. That is the ranking we brought you this entire list. That is where the rankings landed at the end of the of the work session. Um we drew a a line at line

07223 just there at the Creekview High School elevator replacement. Um that is where we went with um Corey and Bobby and construction and facilities and determined we wanted to stop there to ensure that we had the funding in place to complete the projects. So that blue line there designates where we stopped. As you can see, most of those projects are complete. Uh there's a couple that are still in progress. Um and you'll also see below that blue line, you're like, "Man, you just told us that everything that's green you completed and you stopped at the blue line." Well, we redistributed funds uh on those green that are there below that blue line. We were able to move some of the funding around, whether it was construction, facilities, security. So, um not only were we able

073to complete the the items above that blue line, we were also able to get creative in some of our spending and and move funds around to complete uh more things on that list than just that. So, I'm about to go Pablo Picasso on you here. Bear with me for a second cuz there's going to be a color splash. Um that is the same sheet, but what we have done, everything that is in yellow, those are the things that we are proposing uh tonight. That's that's what we brought forward to continue uh with as phase two. Um those in the red, those are things that we simply don't have the remaining funds to complete. Um and so, starting there um at at line 24, I will work my way down. This is again is is the

074rating order in which we received them and where we stopped in November. Um the LED replacements, you can see there that it's at Creekview, um working down, it's at Smith, Turner, um Blaylock, Polk, Ranchview, uh and Bush. All of those LED replacements, uh we we obtained new estimates on those. Um and so you can see there the new estimates and they're considerably lower, about $1.3 million lower. Uh that is one of the areas, the uh sports lighting LEDs, that's one of the areas uh actually um where prices kind of do trend downward. Everything else escalates, but that's so competitive and the the the uh market chain has has um stabilized so much, but that has decreased. And so um the estimates on those LED replacements are less. Considerably less than they were. The Standridge Stadium

075scoreboard, line 25. Uh this was a year and a half ago, we had uh an estimate of $750,000. That estimate has doubled in that time. Um and as a reminder, that is um we just had a game at Standridge in November. We were hosting a playoff game between Coppell and Richardson High School. Uh lightning came in, scoreboard at the bottom of the board uh went on the fritz, we couldn't get it lit up. The referees were keeping time on the stopwatches, coaches didn't know down and distance, uh players didn't know the play clock. It was it was something. And so um that scoreboard that that that would include the scoreboard, the video board, and the audio. There's three separate components that we have at Standridge. All of them are pushing 20 years old and so

076this would bring all three into one. Um line 26, initially there was $290,000 worth of HVAC equipment and controls that we had uh brought to you in 2014 for the um for this building here. Uh but in the process since then, we've had some leaks and some different issues come up and uh the roof, you see that scope change from 290 to 1.88, that is a scope change for the roof. This It also includes the the original with regard to the HVAC, but this roof is 20 years old, about 22 years old. It's exceeded its warranty. There are multiple areas of failure. There's bubbling, cracking, blistering. There's erosion around the curbs where the rooftop units are. And so, to replace the rooftop units, which we need to do, it just wouldn't make sense to replace

077those and not touch the roof. Also, as we saw earlier with the AV on the displays here and the approval for the um the audio-visual system here, if we did that and did not do the roof and the rooftop, calibration could be thrown off. So, all of those things need to take place at the same time. Um LED, moving down to there, Sports Field again, Wesley Building, there's no funding in there. There's There's not enough with that estimate. The irrigation, um that's a phase two, and I'm going to recommend something here in a second on the next slide. And then at the very bottom, that's the new item. We did not have that on here in 2024 when we talked with you about these, and that is Good and Lost Cleaners. That's repurposing the existing

078rooftop units from McCoy Elementary for No Elementary and Farmers Branch Elementary. That is a $3.2 million request there. And that came up, obviously, those campuses were functioning in 2024. Um Farmers Branch is about to undergo construction, but that would allow us to the the cost of those, there's 14 to 16 years is is the age of the the rooftop units at Good and at Lost Cleaners. And repurposing those would be about $3.2 million. That's a cost that immediately would save us anywhere from just south of $100,000 a year to just north of $200,000 a year, whether it's repair, um efficiency, controls, etc., energy usage, utility consumption on those units. Uh that's also something that if we were to wait and just cycle off of this and replace these uh the the true cost for market

079right now would be a little more than $3 million at Good Elementary uh and a little under $4 million at Los Coyotes Elementary. So, repurposing those units uh would save at least half of that cost there if we were to do that new. Obviously, the the residuals that we have remaining, there's $6.7 million in the residuals that we have remaining. That list that I just showed you, 7.9. I'm not a math guy, but I do know that that's the wrong side of $1.2 million. And so, um these are the recommendations that we are bringing to you with regard to the to the final spend, if you will, of the 2018 funds. Um the rooftop unit repurpose for Good and Los Coyotes, HVAC, roof replacement, and plumbing here uh in in in this building, and the

080video board, scoreboard, and audio at Standridge. Those three combined for $6.58 million. Uh and again, that keeps us under the uh seven 6.7 million dollars that's there. If those come in under, if any of these projects that are currently in progress come in a little under and we have some uh remaining funds, we would then recommend um getting into the LED replacements at those campuses as as they become um available if there are funds remaining when we close everything out. And so, that is uh an overview of how we got here, where we are, um and and the pricing and our and our recommendations. So, uh if you have any questions at all, we can jump into them. Board members' questions? Mr. Just for clarification on how the poll bonds work, you use it and

081you got to use it on projects. You can't pay down the debt, can you? Correct. Other questions? Um I think that personally, I think this is like it's great to see reusing the resources we already have and that will save the taxpayers in another bond package at some point if we replace those units with what we already have. Um and of course, I'm sure HVAC's not going to go down between now and whenever the next bond decides to be called. Um one request I do have is I think the athletics this is just in general. I'm not 100% sure where we are on like what's been replaced and what hasn't in general. So, we have like LEDs at some place some sports fields. We've had tracks replaced. We've had turf put in. And so, it's

082kind of all muddled. So, I guess I just wonder if I don't know, maybe it isn't appropriate board you can help me understand like what is the list of everything remaining on athletics that is in a plan. Um just because it feels like we talk a lot about replacing things and for the benefit of the public understanding, the 2018 bond had athletics in it and Mr. Moore, you correct me if I'm wrong, after that there was legislation that passed that athletics had to be pulled out as a separate What's that called? Yes, ma'am. Proposition. >> Proposition. Our 2018 bond passed and then in 2019, you were all right. It did have a allocations for athletics and then in 2019 legislation was put into place where in order to have a bond spun bond fund spent

083on athletics there had to be a a standalone proposition for stadiums and certain amenities if the capacity was a thousand or more and so that is where this is the last funding that we have available to spend without going for a standalone proposition in order to do this type of work at Standridge. All right, thank you. So for the public when you look at this list the board in 2024 chose to prioritize HVACs and elevators and then started going after the athletic pieces because as we chip away at the extra money if we can get athletic things in under that package that benefits us and the taxpayers and keeps our facilities in working order for our kids but the HVACs was like critically important like we got to have AC in the buildings otherwise we're

084going to have very upset teachers and staff and students. So I think this reallocation to HVAC makes sense to me. What do you guys think? Yeah, go ahead. No, I just want to say yes, absolutely makes sense to do the reallocation and to reuse those HVACs from the other schools. I think it's actually kind of phenomenal how far you've been able to make this money go. I feel like wow, we we still have money to go in the 2018 bond. So that's it does impressive. [clears throat] So I appreciate that. I appreciate your thoughtfulness in going into all these projects and I appreciate the board being so supportive in getting it done. So thank you. You bet, absolutely and hats off to Corey and Bobby Shaw. They they are masterful in all of this as

085well. Any other questions? Miss Benavides? Mr. Moore, I was going to ask about repurposing the HVAC is 3. um um 3.204. Yes, ma'am. >> 3.204. Now, uh the age of those units, you said they have the long another 14 to 16 years? The ones that are currently at uh Los Colinas and good, they are 14 to 16 years. The ones that we would replace them with are about 3 years old. So, there's still 7 years remaining on the existing warranty on those that we are that we would replace. And aren't the Farmers Branch units newer than the others? They were all the McCoy, Forno, and Farmers Branch were all done within a year or two of each other with the 18 funds. Okay. Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. Ms. Barnes? Did you She answered it?

086Okay. Any other questions? All right. So, um with this information, is this a uh action item you're considering for the June meeting? >> Yes, ma'am. Nothing for tonight, just consideration for you all to to look at and and bring back to you in June. So, board members, as you kind of mull through this in your mind, if you have any additional questions come up, feel free to email them to Dr. Eldridge, and um they will um answer questions, but I would anticipate that you would see this as an agenda item in June. And so, it'll be important that if you have any questions to be thinking of those between now and when that uh meeting is posted so that we can make sure we get your questions answered. And then, of course, we can answer

087them during the meeting. Um if there are specific questions, we can also pull it off of consent or do it in the pre-meeting or have it as an action item for you to get more information. All right. Thank you, Mr. Moore, very much, and thank you to the construction team for thinking so thoughtfully um about these residual funds. All right. Board members, do we need a short break? Everybody good? Everybody's good. Okay, here we go. Um for those of you that would like to go home at this point, totally, we understand. Um although, you are always all welcome to stay for as long as you would wish. Um our next item is item 3C, which is our staffing study presentation. Dr. Eldridge, will you introduce this item? Hello Karen, how are you? Um so, our

088district um needed the guidance from TASB and we reached out to Karen Dooley. Is Did I say your last name correct? Okay. And so, um Dr. Smalls guest set this up. Um we wanted to see where we are as far as since we are declining in enrollment, what is our staffing ratio in every department, our campuses. And I know you spent a lot of time interviewing the departments and then you'll talk about that. And so, these are the results from um and you can give the timeline of how long it took you to do this, but this is a very important review for us as a school district because we want to make sure that we are being fiscal responsible to our community taxpayers that where do we need to watch what we're doing in

089hiring and and um you know, who who do we need more and what do we need to um really look at. So, with that, I just can't wait to hear your presentation. So, take it away. >> [snorts] >> Thank you all. Good evening, everybody and it's a pleasure to be here in y'all's district to provide the results of the staffing review that I've uh conducted back over um April, May uh basically into March, I guess was when we kicked it off uh and collected the information. It came in a little bit late, so we were trying to get it all done so y'all can use it uh for your purposes as you're moving forward into the next school year, knowing that you can't accomplish all the recommendations by no means, but at least you've got

090some good data hopefully to help you move forward. So, the review itself, it entailed a collection of data and so there was staff data, uh there were questionnaires that were sent to the participants once the participants were uh determined for the district and then virtual interviews uh were conducted after that uh where we talked about just the information that they submitted, if there were any clarifying questions. I always like to let the staff know how I use the data that they provided not as well as how do I look at their particular area to review it and I'll give y'all some information on that just shortly. Then uh there was an analysis of the information. Uh part of that is peer comparisons, the other part is benchmark comparisons that I do. And then uh from

091there I build a report where I go through with uh analyzing all the different departments and campuses and then uh aligning information with the benchmarking uh based on uh the information whether it's uh our common practice in Texas benchmarking that we have, uh whether it's the peer comparisons using the HR services salary survey data, which I'll talk about further in just a few minutes. Uh we use organizational standards as well. Uh but using all of that information to do the comparisons and then addressing uh the needs and identifying any savings that could come about because of the alignment of the benchmarking and identifying the variances that were uh revealed through the study. So, benchmarking itself, why do you benchmark? Uh you know, it gives you a good look at yourself. Um especially as uh Dr.

092Elrod says, with a declining in enrollment, it's good to take a step back and do an analysis of the different areas uh positions across your district and doing it as a whole uh is extremely important because you don't want to uh cherry-pick certain areas or think that you know what's happening in one area or so forth. So, it was good that it was a full review where we got to look at the district as a whole with all the positions across the district. Um what benchmarks were used in this analysis? Uh as I said, I did some peer comparisons using the HR Services Salary Survey. Uh we have the organizational standards um as an example, the APPA, which is Association of Physical Plant Administrators to do analysis of custodial staffing, maintenance staffing, and ground staffing.

093We also uh have the common practice in Texas, which is what we use for like assistant principals, like one assistant principal for 450 students or one counselor for 350 students and so forth, where we've got those benchmarks that we go through the different uh campuses to do the analysis. And uh then there are some uh state averages that we use. For instance, when I'm looking at teaching staff at the secondary level, I'm looking at 22 to 24 students per class at the middle school, um not including your ESL uh or your uh dyslexia or your special education student uh staffing. I don't count those staff. I count the students, but not the staff. And then at the high school level, it's 22 to 25. But, I'll talk about that specifically when I get to those

094areas. So, district details first and foremost. This was a snapshot. This shows from uh through 2024-2025 what was happening. At that time, there was a 2.8 decline over the five-year period. Now, we know that the school year it had dropped to 22,666, uh with the reported number that I had uh whenever I collected all the data from all of the campuses. That's what I came up with. There uh is a number, the PEIMS Standard Report is where the data over the five-year period came from. Well, it's now available and so in this next slide that I'm going to show you of the peer districts, I actually pulled the 25-26 data. So, you're going to see what was reported back in the snapshot back in the fall. My data was collected for the spring. So, it's

095a little bit less than what it was in the fall. What we did use was a 2% decline in student enrollment for next year and that was by aging up students from kinder to first, first to second, on up all the way from 11 to 12 and then calculated a 2% decline in student enrollment in order to get the projection. So, we were using as the projected enrollment. Now, it's you know, it's divided up into the different campuses as I go through the different positions on those campuses, but that was the total number of projected students for next school year. Yes. >> When you get into some of the ratios, are you using the students for next year? Yes, for the Well, I analyze for this year and then when I'm projecting staff for next

096year, I'm using the new number, the projected number. Okay? So, in the report you'll see both There's columns for both. You'll see existing and what the district looks like as far as the ratio for this year for 25-26 and then what it would look like for 26-27. That's a great question. So, moving forward, these were the peer districts and like I said, this particular chart is hot off the press. We have, you know, spreadsheets with macros in them that collect data that we get this data from TEA and it organizes us it so nicely for us. This particular one I had to hand do it because we don't have our new stuff ready and like I said, it is brand new data. The PM Standard report has just put in the 25 26 data. So

097you can see at that time in this in the snapshot of the fall y'all were at 22 899. So y'all had fallen a little bit less than that here in the spring. And I also want you to take note of the peer districts. We try to get 10 to 14 peer districts for the comparison. Now you can see that some are closer in the student enrollment and the other categories than others. That the main category that I use I first focus on enrollment and then my second category is to go to the economically disadvantaged because a lot of times it encompasses your at risk population. And so I'm trying to match the student needs with the district to develop a mirror if that makes sense. To look at a mirror and say, "Okay, who mirrors

098Carrollton-Farmers Branch the the closest?" And so I'm going to show you in just a few minutes something that can be done to narrow down the comparison a little bit from what I did here. Like I said, I like to do 10 to 14 districts, but the district may want to go a little bit narrower and they can do that and I could show how that can be done. So the strategies moving forward after this we would expect that decisions made by district leaders and the board collaboratively on what these are. There's some recommendations, but that's all they are. It's just a menu of items. If you're needing savings for the district or if you want to right size some of the things based on what the student enrollment is or based on a benchmarking or

099based on an organizational standard, there's a list of things that y'all are going to be able to look at that has I think you got the very last page with the cost analysis from the report. And so you can look at what it will generate for you if you were to choose to do certain pieces of it. Of course, what I want to make sure that I tell you is that you have to think about your strategic plan, right? And your district goals. And those are going to set your priorities. And so, there may be something that may not necessarily align with what your priority is, but you would do what you would think would be justified based on your priority. So, keep that in mind. I mean, I'm just going through and working with

100the data and giving it to you and then y'all work collaboratively as to how to move forward with the information. And so, we always recommend reductions through attrition. Uh, we would say avoid a riff process at all, you know, at all cost if you can. I know that sometimes districts have to move forward with riffs. Uh, you know, there's the two different kind. There's the financial exigency and the, uh, program change. The program change riff is an easier one than the financial exigency, but uh, just something to think about moving forward. Hopefully, you can deal with things through attrition. Uh, evaluate your secondary master schedules. Um, I'm going to show y'all in a little bit when I get to the recommendation for, uh, middle school and high school teachers. I'm going to kind of explain

101the master schedule piece of that and how that master schedule can impact, uh, the work that you're doing. But, you also have to consider some curriculum and instruction things or some teaching and learning things or leadership and learning things that we're talked about a little bit earlier, uh, whenever you're looking at master schedules cuz they're working with those PLCs and they have some very focused work that they're doing. And so, uh, that can impact the master schedule as well. Uh, gradual implementation if possible. I know sometimes you have to do more, uh, than than you want to just because of what you're trying to accomplish. The good thing is, uh, with gradual implementation, uh, you've got about 50% of your staff that are not going to be contracted staff. So, they're going to be on

102letters of reasonable assurance or just on employment agreements, things like that. And you can make changes in those areas easier than you can with the individuals that you have on contract. And y'all have already issued contracts for next school year. So, uh, you know, it'd have to be through resignations with your contracted staff if you do any adjustments at this time. Uh, then utilize district and campus staffing plans. You know, uh, what you can align with the enrollment at each of the individual, uh, campuses and how you can use that also for, um, other areas, uh, auxiliary areas and so forth is important and it can allow you to do an evaluation moving forward each and every year, uh, if you establish what those benchmark or, you know, what those, uh, ratios look like for

103you for your district. And you may match mine and you may not and that's okay if you don't cuz like I said, it's your priorities for your strategic plan that's going to drive what they look like. Okay? So, summary of findings and options and this is a very high, high, high level of, uh, summaries of findings and options. So, I'm going to start with the central administration group, but I wanted to show you what the peer comparison looks like for the area, uh, for the, using the HR services salary survey. That is actually a salary survey, but in the process of conducting it, we collect FTE counts. And so, that's why I'm able to use it to do analysis within the central administration staff. Uh, so, it's limited to the 165 job categories that we

104have. I mean, not every position in every district is going to be found on that salary survey. So, keep that in mind as we go through it, but what we are matching is your district information to your peer district information. So, and I'm not I don't mean to pick on child nutrition here or you know the the nutrition services or anything, but it was just a a good one to show you how kind of what it looks like with just looking at that one position. And so, for district child nutrition supervisor there, Carrollton-Farmers Branch reported four where the average of the peer districts was 2.1. And that number is determined by adding up all of the peer districts and then dividing that number by the number, which I think is 11 peer districts up there.

105And so, it came out to be 2.1. So, good information because it shows you that there's a variance. You can also see who is also staffed like you, and then how many districts are staffed below where you are for that particular area. The chart underneath there is me showing how you can narrow down the information. If you were going to look at the the three peer districts that probably align closest in enrollment and the student population that looks most similar to y'all, it's going to be Birdville, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, and McAllen ISD. And so, if you were going to look at narrowing it down and saying, "Okay, well, those three districts, if we want to do something for this particular position, what may that look like?" And so, I just took, you know, the the took out

106the other peer districts and just did it for Birdville, Hurst-Euless-Bedford, and McAllen. So, it still came out to be 2.1, but compared to the four. And so, it's still a still opportunity there compared to those districts that look most like you, where there is a variance in staffing, where some opportunity is available to make adjustments. Does that make sense for y'all? Okay. So, that's going to be the way that I evaluated all of these central administration areas. And let me say that I've got buckets and we do that because we we're dealing with spreadsheets with macros, we're pulling from this huge database that has everybody's salary survey in it across our state, which we have a a pretty good percentage of districts that participate in it. So with that in mind, our categories are curriculum

107and instruction, business and finance, human resources. This operations right here are operation leaders and they are reflective of auxiliary departments. And then there's technology and there's safety and security. Now, there's also some other ones that that I'll mention in just a few minutes, but for doing the central administration comparisons, then these the positions from the report are put into these categories. And so in curriculum and instruction, the categories we've developed has the leadership and learning, it's also got student services, but I know student services is a standalone here. Just like special education is a separate department, but the curriculum and instruction has all of those in there. If I went back to the slide before that, you'll see that each one of those positions have their own line. And so while they're all cumulative altogether

108and the number is nine that could be absorbed in that particular area, it's just a big umbrella. And so you've got to look at what the the variances are. I can tell you there was a variance in student services. And so while that's not part of the leadership and learning department, it had an opportunity that is affecting that overall C&I umbrella, if that makes sense. The business and finance, that was including payroll, purchasing, benefits, also the accounts payable and so forth. Benefits is one that we see alternate between business and finance and HR. So, it's included in both and I can simply delete it out of the HR one because that's not where it sat here in this district. Unfortunately, I don't have that opportunity in other positions like I do for for the business

109and finance and HR for benefits. But for that area, there was a recommendation of the absorption of five positions. Human resources was evaluated. It did not have an absorption of staff, but what the recommendation was on human resources was looking at some of the titles because it stood out as far as the direct the use of the title director. Similar to I'll say the special ed too. Special ed stood out in the special education director title compared to the peer districts. And it's just that the titles are elevated in this district compared to the peer districts. And so, that could be some some savings in the future through attrition that you not label those or use that naming configuration of director for those positions. Maybe use coordinator or maybe in HR it may be a

110coordinator or a manager. So, just recommendation. They're not specific positions, but just to downgrade some positions to different titles that can have some savings with them. In operations, it was transportation, child nutrition, maintenance, and custodial. And these were the the high-level positions for this particular piece. I will say fine arts is part of operations here in this district, but it's located up in the C&I part. But there the fine arts director looked the same across Carrollton-Farmers Branch and your peer districts. There was no variance there or anything that would cause any problems. Technology, it's got the position of instructional uh uh the instructional technology specialist position, which does include the stream specialist. I think uh that are some of the campus positions. That was one of the biggest differences in technology, and it showed that

111there was the opportunity for the uh absorption of up to 12 positions. And then safety and security, no recommendations there. Just let y'all know that I did provide the information. Uh you'll be able to see who in your peer list has a police department, who does not. Uh the director of safety and security is a brand new position that just got put in this year, so you can see what districts are employing a director of safety and security, and how many of those. Okay, then we move into campus administration and support. And so uh that's the professional support piece. And so for assistant principal across the secondary and elementary campuses, there was the opportunity to absorb up to six positions. Uh for counselor, it was up to two positions. I did look at the instructional

112support piece. I hope that that can be used uh just to see I mean, kudos to the district for the amount of of money that they're putting into instructional support. You heard the work that they're doing while ago. It was presented prior to me. So in the curriculum and instruction report or the teach uh leadership and learning report, they they've got a lot of work going on uh as the instructional coaches on those campuses, and and y'all are doing a great job with that. There was a little bit of a discrepancy in the what I do is do a comparison of the number of instructional support compared to the number of teachers on each one of the campuses, and the middle school looked to be a little bit lower staff than what the elementary and

113the high schools are. So hopefully that's good information to see, um especially if you've got some campuses that are needing some attention. That maybe there uh uh needs to be additional support. So, just something to think about. Uh Uh library, there was an alternate model provided and it was based on a peer comparison similar to the one that I showed prior with the uh central administration staff where I'm looking at number of uh librarians and number of library aides for those districts and they were using a um stronger model of the combination of librarians and library aides. So, I did a model an alternate model where a campus had less than 400 students, then I was recommending a library aide to be uh say paired up with a librarian at another campus and they work

114together on those two campuses if that makes sense. Just to have some uh cost savings there because I knew that y'all were looking for savings. So, it was just an alternate model. The clinic was the same thing where it was the use of uh RNs, LVNs, and clinic aides and looking at the number of students, what the enrollment was, and assigning staff accordingly. Uh say for instance, an 1,800 student high school, uh my recommendation was like an RN and a clinic aide. Uh if it was less than 400 students, similar to the librarian uh library aide combina- combination, it was to staff with an LVN instead of an RN. Okay. For a paraprofessional staff, uh there was the recommendation for eight library aides and that was to offset the alternate model that was given. Uh

115the clinic was uh to absorb 5.5 clinic aides but add six LVNs. And so, once again, that was to fulfill the recommendation of the clinic staffing. And then, general education aides, there was the opportunity to absorb 16. These are are just general education. Um it does not include the library aides, clinic aides that I talked about here. It does include some recommendations with PE, bilingual, ISS, and so forth. And those are labeled on the graphs within the report where you can see the specific positions that I'm I'm aligning the benchmarking of 14.8 per 1,000 students per campus with that benchmarking. And knowing that high schools are staffed much lower level than the 14.8 and elementary are staffed at a higher level than that, if that makes sense. Um campus clerical staff, there's two different ratios.

116The elementary are 4.5 per 1,000 students. Secondary campuses are 5.5 per 1,000 students. And there was the opportunity to absorb 13.1 positions to bring that in line with the benchmark staffing. And then non-campus clerical, there was an opportunity for like 1.5 position, but that's really going to be encompassed that could come from the business and finance recommendation because payroll specialist were a little bit high, which fall into that non-campus clerical position. It was just a different way to look at non-campus clerical. It pulls all of the staff that are not on campuses but have clerical roles at a benchmark of three per 1,000 students. You know, we're very close to the benchmark there, but it would it would be taken care of if you did what was recommended on the business and finance recommendation. And

117then special education, opportunity to add 24.1 special education teachers. There was an analysis of all the instructional settings. It was resource inclusion as one one area, life skills, autism, self-contained as another area, behavior as an area, and then ECSE or early childhood special education. And so looking at each one of those instructional areas and applying the benchmark, It was an overall uh increase of 24.1 teachers and 17.2 aides for those areas based on our benchmarking. Dyslexia teachers, you know, that's been a big change here recently with the dyslexia students now being going through the special education testing and the shifting of many of those into like resource and inclusion where we're seeing many of them being served. I also have a benchmark 30 to 35 students for a caseload for dyslexia teachers. So, I took

118the total of students that were being served by these teachers and divided it out and it showed ability to absorb up to 18 of them. But those may be able to shift over to the special education teacher positions. If they're certified. Assessment staff, that's going to be your school psychologist and diagnosticians. There's an opportunity to add two to get to that benchmark caseload staffing. Speech staff was one position. Y'all don't do a lot of speech language assistants. So, I would say that that's a shift where you could have some savings if you'll have a few more of those. They cannot do the assessment that the speech language pathologist can do, but they can provide the services. And so, it is a an option that, you know, many districts choose to do to do a balancing

119of SLPs with SLPAs. And then behavior specialist, that was an area their work had already been moving forward on. They were already implementing some adjustment to staffing of those behavior specialist. And so, it was an area that stood out on the comparison for special education. So, when I checked on that, it was something that was already moving forward, but it was looked at. And then teachers, there was an opportunity there was an analysis of general education and special education. And when all the dust settled between the two different groups of student populations, it showed the ability to absorb 55 elementary positions to put pre-K through grade four at 22:1 and put grade five at a 25:1 ratio. So, that's where it landed with aging up the students, moving them and having the 2% decline in

120student enrollment at each one of those campuses. Elementary electives, I did a review of the elective schedule or for each one of the elementaries and what stood out to me was that there's some specialty things going on where there's some campuses that have some additional elective staff that other campuses don't have. So, it's making the average of elective teachers to students range across the district elementary campuses from 72 students to one elective teacher all the way up to 202. And it's okay to have like a specialty, let's say the the STEAM elective teacher or let's say a theater teacher or something like that, but a lot of times what you'll do is offset that with one of the standard electives that you have as opposed to having it in addition to cuz then you don't

121have the disparity between the number of students per elective teacher and what that also does is it brings about disparity in student opportunities as well. And so, certain students at certain campuses are getting opportunities that other students are not getting. So, definitely think that looking at an enrollment basis as being how elective teachers are assigned can be a more uh equal and not equal, but equitable model for the district to use in order to serve those elementary students and can provide some savings. Middle school teachers, there's three numbers there just like there are for high school teachers. 19.1, 37.6, 39.1. High school 91.4, 92.4, and 112.9. What those different models are, so the standard master schedule over at the middle school is a 7 5.5. What that means is students attend seven periods each day,

122and teachers either teach five periods or six periods. The ones that are teaching five periods or the ones that are getting the PLC that was referenced earlier. The ones that are teaching six periods are not having that additional planning period or additional PLC. At the high school, it's an 8 6.5. So, they students attend eight, and then teachers either teach six or seven. And so, the first number is just taking the high end of the benchmark for middle school, which is 24, and the high end of high school, which is 25, and using the 7 5.5 master schedule, and at the high school the 8 6.5 master schedule. And that shows you what the savings could be in teacher FTEs. And if you heard me a while ago, it does not include the special education

123teachers, ESL teachers, or dyslexia teachers in those numbers. The next number, the middle number on both of those is also is a different configuration. It's taking at the middle school and doing the 7 6 master schedule with the 24 to 1. It's doing the 8 7 master schedule at the high school at the ratio of 25 to 1. And then the final one is doing the 7 and a half 7 uh 5.5 and the 8 6.5, but it's pushing the middle school to 26 students per class and the high school 26 students per class. And that shows the difference. So, hopefully that gives you a good idea of what you can do with class sizes and with master schedules to make adjustments to have savings. Okay? And then athletics was reviewed and on there it's

124not there's never a recommendation get rid of coaches. That's not the purpose of our analysis of athletics. What I am doing is looking at all the athletic periods at the middle school and the high school and I'm aligning them with what the current class average is at the different campuses. And so I'm saying if you're going to average closer to what the class sizes are for the middle schools and for the high schools, you could absorb I'm not absorb the people, but change some academic change some athletic periods to academic periods and not have so many people in the period. You're not taking away any coaches. They're coaching the sport or after-school. It's just maybe there's not so many in the period. So, that's included in the report. The auxiliary staffing, so maintenance and grounds,

125that was reviewed as I said it's APPA standards is 67,500 per square footage of all your facilities. Grounds was done on a 1 to 35 acres maintained basis. There was no recommendation there. Custodian, there was as far as addition of 17. Right now there's 11 positions that are rovers. And so taking those 11 and adding it to the 17, there was an opportunity to add across the campuses 28 positions to get to a 1 to 23,000 one custodian per 23,000 cleanable square feet. Right now y'all are about 25,000. And y'all may say, you know what? We're good with that. We think that our campuses our facilities are in good shape. We like our number. We're going to stick with it. And that's okay if that's the case. So, just showing you what it is for

126what we use, which is 1 to 23,000. Child nutrition, it was 11 positions across the whole district, across every campus total, and it was about 70 7, I think, labor hours is what it was. And that was based on efficiency. So, I was looking for 70% efficiency at all the campuses. If a campus did not meet that 70% efficiency, then I adjusted labor hours because of that. And it totaled 11 positions. And then transportation was looked at. There was no recommendation there, but you can see the amount of square miles that your district covers versus your peer districts and so forth. So, some just some good information to review. Any questions? Well, first of all, thank you for your thorough report and how giving us an outsider's view in because when you're looking at yourself

127and only yourself, you see different things. So, I really appreciate that. I also really appreciate your thoughtfulness at the beginning of reminding us that we have to take a look at our district and our goals and our priorities that this was not intended to be a you should do all of these things tomorrow or next week or next month or next year, but that it gives us an opportunity to really pause and look and be strategic, but aligned to our goals and guardrails. So, board members, with that, comments, questions? Ms. Brady? I just want to say thanks for your report. Thank you to the district for asking for it cuz I think we needed it after COVID, after all the things, like, you know, we accumulated people and maybe not necessarily let them go. So,

128there's been a lot, you know, a lot of things. Plus, enrollment going down, like, there's a lot of factors into the numbers we saw tonight. One of my questions, though, on the high school level, and probably a little bit in the middle school, is that did you take a CTE courses into consideration at all, the specialty teachers? Yes. Yes, and that's a question that comes up you know, it's a very common question that we get. We know that it balances itself out. We have them all in all the teachers outside of the ones that I listed special ed, dyslexia, ESL are all in there together. Now, we know that a welding class that you're not going to put more than 15 students in there, right? But you may have a choir class with 35 kids.

129So, it all balances itself out to that average cuz remember when I say 25 to one or 26 to one, I'm talking about average class sizes. Okay? Thank you. That's a good good question and a common question. Ms. Benavides? Thank you. Um I was thinking about um on sped, does that include behavioral specialist um with your figures? The uh no, the what the work that they they had already begun that work and so I did not include that on that line out of it the very end of the report because that was something that was already in >> [cough] >> Um one thing that I did is looking at the peer districts, I went and looked at the student achievement of those peer districts right and I noticed that only four of the 11 had

130um state accountability ratings higher than ours. Uh and then of the four, only two were significant. Uh it was interesting that the two that you like pulled in um HIB and McAllen were two of them um but they have significantly lower staffing on some things and so I just thought it was interesting because when we think about right sizing this for CFB, Right. like we have we have some pretty strategic goals and priorities and so um I guess I'm interested Dr. Eldridge in how you see um using this information moving forward. Our team has already started um looking. Thank you so much for the information. Um so we've had some people retire. And so when that happens, we look at like we evaluate every position because we just in the last 2 years have implemented

131our position control system so that every position is evaluated. Um one of the questions I have though is um when you think about um um you know, as I get feedback from some of our administrators, when we have a smaller campus, but we have more special ed numbers, one of the things that the administration tells me is there's so much involved in arts. And so, you know, where your recommendation is to absorb six assistant principals, um do you take into account the special ed numbers of those campuses even though they have a lower enrollment, they still have a higher population of need. And so that's what we as a team are trying to balance out. And so back to um President Hatfield's question, I think that to make it in our district, we are evaluating

132all those positions, but I at your level, you know, do you take into account those specialized programs um such as special ed? Right. I I and I think that that's a a great point. What I like to also look at not only I mean, of course, yes. And when they're at a point five or whatever, you know, you got to determine do we add additional one or do we not at that point? And that may be based on the student population that that particular campus serves as to whether you do it or not. The other thing is making sure that that and I'm I'm sure that this is done in special ed is that you're not overloading a campus with a group of special education populations if that makes sense. That you're trying your best.

133I mean, that's the way when I was in a district was we really tried to I mean, we couldn't offer every program at every campus. So, we tried to pay attention to the number of students that were in the different programs that needed that support. If they had that behavior unit on it, then we didn't load them with a bunch of other stuff because those are usually your most taxing ones. Uh but, just the number in itself, like you said, ARDs and those types of things. Now, y'all have the ARD facilitators, which is a helpful thing that some districts don't have. Um and so, just looking at how you're using those additional staff, too, is is extremely helpful. And I think, too, um you know, special ed is a high need and it's and we've

134discussed it and I know Art's going to discuss it in our finances, but I really appreciate the report. I think this is the analysis that we need to continue to follow as a district and, you know, as I looked today or last week when you sent this, the analysis of just absorbing certain positions [clears throat] at the cost savings um is such a benefit. So, um I just put it back on this slide because while you were while you're declining in enrollment, what is your special education doing? >> Right. Um and so, you've got to keep that in mind whenever you're making the decisions. That's probably what's hitting the teachers and the special ed aids in that special ed section is the fact that you've grown 26.7%. Mhm. Mhm. That's huge. And we know that

135a big part of that is the dyslexia thing that occurred, you know, because now so many more students are qualified as special education that you should only be 504 dyslexia. So, that's increased it, but I I tell districts pay attention to that because that's going to that's going to impact your number of special ed teachers and it's going to impact your special ed aides. Well, and I just want to note that from snapshot date this year till today, we've already lost 307 students. So, you know, I'm wondering if the 2% is It may not be enough, so you may have to go a little bit a little bit lower, but >> our CFO and I have been discussing [clears throat] like we don't know because we don't know the impact also of the vouchers. So,

136it's um um it's an evaluation every day and that's what we talk about. So, thank you again for your report. >> You bet. It's a pleasure working with y'all. I have a quick question. Yes, ma'am. Um for the general education uh educational aides, you had talked about uh absorption absorption of the 16. Um but you said that that adjustment includes bilingual and ESL aides. Um I know when you're comparing the numbers to our peers, our numbers are quite a bit higher. Right. Um in terms of bilingual, ESL, um was that taken into consideration at all? Yeah, well, with that I'm using that 14.8%, which at the elementary level it's bumped up to about 17 about 17 uh aides per per 1,000 students. And so, it's just looking at those uh and and I didn't touch

137the the the the special ed because that [clears throat] is what it is, the pre-K is what it is, but it was looking at everything else outside of that and seeing if there was any opportunity. You may say, you know, no, we want to have a a bilingual aide at that particular campus for whatever [clears throat] reason. And so, you just got to keep that in mind. I just highlighted them so you could see where I came up with that number. Thank you so much. Any additional questions or comments? Ms. Benavides. When you were talking about class size to 26, what is our current um that you spoke of? Was it 21? Uh it depended on the campus. At the off the top of my head, I don't I've got my >> wrote it down.

138>> I can tell you on average it's 1 to 13.5, right? Wasn't that right? Our 1 to 13.5 is very low. Okay. Right, currently. Okay. >> Now, I did current class average of just doing the student the student population and just those teachers that I talked about after doing a master schedule analysis where I went through and captured all the sections, divided it out and came up with that. There's a summary chart in the middle school section and a summary chart in the high school section that'll give you that. Thank you. Okay. I'm just going to say the Is this thing on? >> [laughter] >> Is I'm just going to say the 13.5 was a number that that we picked up off of the taper report. >> Yeah. Uh which is just all teachers divided

139by All students. >> All students. So that was 13.5 and the state average is is a little under 15. It's about 14.8. So we are under the state average. Keep in mind that that the state average includes all districts in the state and 80% of the districts in the state have fewer than 1,000 kids. We're much larger than average. And so if if you compare us to say Birdville, and Birdville is one of our If you look at the taper report, uh Birdville came in at 15.3 and we're we're at at 13.5. And so we're significantly below on average if you just look at the student to teacher ratio, we're significantly under Birdville. And uh Birdville is a very comparable district to us. But that's including, excuse me, [clears throat] all CTE, all special ed,

140all everybody. I'm just making that clear. >> Yeah, that that's that's a Does that Does that sound about right to you? Yes, absolutely. Yeah, the paper includes all of that, every teaching position that's reported. Like I said, mine my current class average that I established in the theoretical average was done by going through each one of Yell's master schedules at the secondary level, adding up counting literally counting sections for every campus, dividing by what the opportunity would be, for instance, whether it was the 6.5 or the 7. I mean the 6.5 or the 5.5, and then getting what the current class average is based on those FTEs. So. Well, thank you very much for the thorough presentation and um really appreciate the summary and the other summary and then the full report because it just

141kind of helps you process it in different ways. Um Dr. Aldridge, I would like to request kind of your plan for how to keep the board informed about this process um as we go through next school year um because I know you guys are thoughtfully considering um what uh we're going to do with this information um but I think the board would like to receive updates as we progress through um utilizing this report. I will tell you um Dr. Smalscug and I met and I've already said we need to create a chart. Um I know you all well enough that um we're going to chart out what we absorbed and and um she learned how to how to use Canva last night, so I think it'll be pretty, but it will also be a chart.

142I think that um what we need to take away from this is one, we had an outsider Tasvi wonderful presentation that took all the emotion out and it was because we all know great teachers and great administrators and and you know, librarians and whatever's dear to us. And so for the outside view for us to be able to make a plan, um, I think it's going to benefit our um our, you know, not only our student outcomes, but also our our goal of financial stability. And so I want to thank you for that. So yes, you will be informed. And thank [snorts] you for I know you guys are taking this very seriously, um, because we have we want to get to a balanced budget and we want to right-size this district and decisions are

143going to have to be made, but, um, keeping that as far away from the classroom as possible, I know is also a priority, um, because we have goals, but at the same time we do have to right-size things. So I really appreciate, um, the work that administration did to support this and the continuing ongoing work, um, that you guys are going to do to really right-size this. Um, and with that I think I've been asked if we could have a break, so it is 7:53 and we are going to take a 10-minute break. >> Mhm. >> Stop acting. The time is now 8:02 and we are back in open session. Our next presentation is 3D, our budget workshop for the 26-27 school year. And Mr. Martin, I will apologize. I did rearrange the agenda so

144that most people could go home and you drew the short end of the stick on that one. So, you I am sorry you have to stay late, but I did go through and analyze who could go home the earliest and I'm sorry that you were That's okay. the lonely finance person that and Carla you too. You all drew the stick of having to stay. So, thank you for all the work you've been doing as we prepare for the 26-27 year and I think the presentations from tonight have already kind of informed us on how important our instructional support is and then the staffing on how important it is to look at our resources wisely and make strategic decisions. And so, I'm looking forward to our next presentation. Take it away. Well, thank you uh Madam

145President, members of the board, Dr. Eldridge uh I think in presentations like like this one, I think sometimes it's it's useful to kind of give you a summary, little bit of a summary up front, and then talk about the detail and then kind of summarize again at the end. But, the summary up front really is much like what the the presentation just heard. Uh we're losing students. We're over the last 5 years we've lost over 2,000 students, really about 2,200. And and and we are overstaffed. Uh and so in order to if we had those 2,200 students, we would not be in the in facing the issues that we're facing now because we would have those revenues. And uh so that's that's kind of my summary up front is that we've we're going to we've

146lost a lot of students over the last few years, especially this year. We anticipate that we're going to lose more uh next year and uh and we've got to reduce our staff uh because we're spending too much money on staff. Uh 80 over 80% of our budget is staff and staff-related cost. And that's where we have the most uh ability to control cost is within our staff. Uh there's only so much you can do with a utility bill, there's only so much you can do with supplies and materials and all of the non-payroll cost. But, our greatest ability to control cost is is uh through the number of people that we hire and pay. So, uh having said that, uh we're in we are estimating right now and we and we're hoping to get that

147number lower. Is we're estimating right now that we're going to end the end of year with a deficit of about 12,500,000. And between now and the end of August, we're going to work to reduce that number wherever we can. Going forward though, uh if we anticipate an additional declining enrollment of 1,000 students, uh we do some adjustments in special ed. If we were to do a 1% adjustment for Paris and auxiliary people and nothing else, uh reduce staffing through attrition. And right now we're we're looking at 95 positions that we can reduce. And when I say that, that's we will write 95 fewer checks every month next year than we're writing this year. Uh and we we do anticipate if if our trend holds, we do anticipate an increase in our property values and uh

148we hope to to pick up of what we've picked up in the past on average about 1.2 million of additional revenues through what's called the golden pennies. Those eight golden pennies that we have uh within our tax structure that are just not subject to recapture. Uh we we have actually reduced expenditures this year compared to last year by 3.1 million. Uh part of that is due to the uh the one-time uh use of TIF funds, but we've also overall reduced spending even even without that. Um we um uh trying to right-size the district uh uh total employees, we we uh um we're anticipating that we're we're we're going to get down to about 3,368 um through through attrition. Uh not a riff, so we're not talking about a riff, talking about attrition. But that's still

149going to leave us with a deficit. And when I talk about a deficit, I know that we're changing the fiscal year and because we're going to just be budgeting next year for 10 months, we're going to be able to show a balanced budget. But on a cash flow basis, we're still going to be spending more cash than we're bringing in. Yeah, even even though we're reducing students. Um in 24-25, if you look at the number of days in cash, and that's the that's the what you will see if you look at the first report, the financial integrity rating system of Texas. Uh TEA uh has a has a uh an item on the on the first. It's item number seven. And uh if you look at that, uh in 24-25, we read 157 days in

150in cash, which is adequate. Uh TEA if you if you don't drop below 90, as long as you're above 90, you're going to get the maximum points. Uh once you start once you drop below 90, then uh you're going to start losing points on the on the first report, which is our financial report card. So, if we uh anticipate a 12 and 1/2 million-dollar deficit uh or declining cash, uh that's going to put us at about 142 days. Next year, if we uh end up having a 21-million-dollar deficit, then that would put us at about 117 days. So, after next year, we're you know, we're getting closer to that that 90-day mark. Uh the uh House Bill 3, the teacher incentive allotment, uh we're we just want to point out here that we're one of

151those districts that that uh we have went all out on the teacher incentive allotment for our teachers so that we can get as many teachers as possible uh to receiving money through the teacher incentive allotment. And so, uh right now, we've we've got 528 student uh teachers that are on that allotment, and we're and we're spending about 5.6 million but all of that $5.6 million that we're spending is is coming from the state. So, that's that's money that doesn't come out of our our tax collections. That's money that's coming directly from the state, that $5.6 million. And you'll you probably know that there's a lot of districts that for whatever reason they have chosen to opt out of the TIAI. And we're one of those districts that didn't. We we went like I said, kind

152of all out, and we've got 528 of our of our teachers that are receiving a significant allotment. For the TIAI incentive teacher incentive allotment, we've got uh those that are on the recognized level, they're getting an average an average of $4,913. So, in the in the exemplary and something has happened to my little spreadsheet here. >> you. On ours, it says 9,773. Thank you. You're welcome. And then on the master's level, it's 18,315. The the the district has chosen for those people that uh that are between 0 and 2, we gave them additional $1,250, and that's funded locally through district funds. And then for those that are on 3 and 4, they get the state-funded 2,500. For those that are 5 years or more, then they get the 5,000. And they and they started receiving

153those those allotments this year. This is the first year that those allotments were paid. 26 25 26. We've we've looked at some possible salary adjustments for the paraprofessionals and auxiliary and especially ed stipends. If we wanted to do a 1% of midpoint, uh it would it would run about a million dollars. If we wanted to do the 2%, it would run about 1.4 million. And uh that would not include anything for any other category of employee. And uh we're recommending the special ed that we do some adjustments for special ed and as you see from the previous presentations, we're short on special ed teachers. So, we we feel like we need to do something uh for special ed hopefully to attract more special ed teachers and or uh not lose uh the the staff that

154we have. Uh and we wanted to do uh an increase recommended increase for clerical paraprofessionals and auxiliary staff. We have a incentive that we talked [clears throat] about and it's included on this this this uh slide here. Uh that uh as has been in place apparently for a while. And to be honest with you, uh this I I've not worked in another district where this I've worked in other districts where they had an incentive, but this is a very nice incentive. Uh where we're paying out, you know, uh potentially several thousand dollars a year. And so, if we wanted to uh look at saving money uh by not doing something that you don't find in other districts, this is one of those areas we could look at. Uh where we're paying uh employees incentives uh

155when we're already overstaffed. Incentives and you might say, "Is it a retention incentive or what kind of incentive is it? What are we trying to accomplish uh with this incentive? And if it's to retain people, we're overstaffed as it is. Uh we need to reduce staff. Our key takeaways is we want to reduce staffing levels through right-sizing our staff. Uh we want to get our student teacher ratios up. Uh as we discussed a little bit earlier and in a previous presentation, if you look at us and Birdville, uh to in order to for our our district to be comparable to Birdville in our student teacher ratios, we would need to we would need to reduce our teaching staff by over 200, about 240. Uh we want to get to a place where we can be

156financially sustainable and uh and have a balanced budget. We we're not in we're not in uh in in what I've called dire straits or we're not in trouble financially, but if we don't right-size our our staff and our payroll cost, uh we're we're headed that way. Uh we've we've uh we can't afford uh uh not for very long. We can't afford you know, deficits of 15 20 million dollars because you you will drop below that 90-day threshold. And uh TEA will start downgrading us on our report card. If you drop below 30 days, kind of think about that. If and I and I know we're a ways from that, uh but if you ever drop below 30 days, if if you got a monthly payroll coming up, 1 month is 30 days. If you don't

157have 30 days cash in the bank, uh you you you're not going to have enough money to meet payroll. So, you have to keep it up above 30 days or you're going to the bank to borrow money. And uh so, that's that's kind of I think the I think it's where we're at. And so, I I want to kind of pause a minute and give you an opportunity to ask us any questions. Board members questions? Mr. Gelmar. Uh back to the uh 1% or 2% of midpoint. What the fun new guy, what kind of difference does that make to an individual? Do you know that answer? Is it Uh a 2% I'm trying to think just think of a a beginning salary. I'm guessing our beginning salaries for a clerical person is is a midpoint

158is probably 25,000. 1% would be $250. Is that what you Is that Am I addressing your question? Okay. Ms. Brady. On the special ed incentive, what does that break down to? Is that a $6,000 incentive bonus? What is or is is that Uh I think Shera's working on that. I think we want to try to limit that to $600,000 for for special ed and then and then she's going to be if she hadn't already got it worked out, we're going to she's going to be working that up. I'm working to try to figure out Can you come to the mic? I'm sorry. Of course. So, we're looking to um increase Let me our self-contained classes from a $2,000 stipend to a $4,000 stipend except for our past classes, we're looking to bump it to a

159$5,000 stipend. And then our fundamentals um in class support inclusion teachers from 2,000 to 3,000. Thank you. Um am am I reading this correctly that we are not considering a uh, base pay increase for teachers? No, we're not considering it. I I say not considering it. We're not It's not part of our recommendation. Uh, and and it's if it's okay to say it, whatever we do more than this, it just it just makes our deficit larger. So, when you look at the financial projection of the 21 million, is that 21 million cash or is that 21 million on the 10-year or the 10-month? No, this this is on a cuz as we as we talked about earlier, the 10-month, we're going to be able to show a balanced budget because we're not going to we're

160not going to budget for the the months of July and August. And so, that's going to allow you us on a one-time basis, but that's not going to affect our cash flow. Our cash flow is not going to change. So, over a 12-month period, we're still going to be spending more cash than we're bringing in. Okay. So, how does this compare with our peer districts that are adding to teacher salaries? Uh, I think Tammy has some information about that. We are We are below our peers. Uh, and that's because we have too many staff. So, just think about the formulas. We're subject to the same formulas. Uh, all of our peer districts are uh, they're subject to the same formulas we are. And they generate about the same amount of revenue per student that we

161do. When we hire more people, we're not going to be able to pay as much per person as the other districts. If they hire fewer people, they can pay more per more per person. and that's there's just no other way around it. Uh so, if we have 240 teachers more than we should, we're we're not going to be able to pay our teachers as much money as the other districts. So, what I heard you say right now is that we're already 95 positions down. So, we've eliminated 95 positions at this point. >> we're at least that now. And so, between now and August, we're open that that will we we think that will increase. By a significant amount, like 150? Not that many. Okay. But something bigger than 95. >> Bigger than 95. Thank you,

162sir. Any other comments or questions? So, what are the next steps um to look at the 26-27 pay scale? Is that in the June >> pardon? Say that again. So, are you all going to bring this forward in the June for consideration? Yes. Yeah. Um you know, we um we we need to get our certified values. We'll get those on July 25th. Uh we'll reevaluate how much money we have to work with and and then come back and, you know, as we get resignations, retirements, and that kind of thing, we're going to be looking at every position to try to reduce our staff more than than 95. And then we'll we'll come back with an update. Could you also go back to the significant CFP employee incentives? And what does the cumulative leave upon retirement

163on the right mean? Yes, and which slide was that? Um a A bit further. I can explain it, Art. So, in December of when it when an employee reaches 5 years in December, we in in what every December we give the teachers that meet those marks that amount of money. When they retire, we also have another incentive. If they have 38.5 days of local leave left, we give them a check for $5,000. Is the one on the right in policy? Yes. Mhm. Yep. >> What is it? DEC local DEC? And I think these have been over 20 years. So, employees that in in like Art alluded to, our teachers that meet these marks, this is a a separate amount that they receive. And it goes all the way up, and Carlos Addison can talk about

164this. There's no limit, so it goes to 40, 45, 50. It keeps going. And if I remember right, the uh the longevity pay is paid in December, on the December check. And then the uh retirement money is paid when they after they submit their retirement papers in the summer. Okay, thank you. Board members, any additional comments or questions? All right. Thank you very much for [clears throat] your presentation. You bet. Um our next item is item number four, which is report from our subcommittees. And um I'll start off with the leadership subcommittee, which um is responsible for the legislative agenda and superintendent evaluation tool. We have uh not met, but um I'm in the process I'm going to be working with Kim Caston to set up a meeting um because we are about ready to

165kick off the legislative priorities and get those drafted in the next few months. Um, I think we have some interest from staff that have expressed they want to help and they're interested. Um, and so we want to work with Dr. Eldridge to see the best right-size of um, potentially in the past it's been the board president in consultation with the superintendent and now there's kind of some interest to get other people involved so that when we come up with that agenda, we also have some accompanying materials that would include um, how the legislative priorities would impact the district directly with some data. Um, so that we can better communicate our legislative priorities and so um, we'll be working with Kim in the next week or so to get that meeting on the books. Um, and

166then any additional updates from the governance subcommittee? Correct. The governance subcommittee uh, met on May the 2nd um, to go over what um, what had been presented from uh, commit about um, updating and uh, looking through our board operating procedures or otherwise known as the BOP. And um, and then we have already presented that in our last board meeting. Um, we will also be setting up a time to meet with Tammy regarding our uh, district of innovation and our grievance. More specifically our grievance the grievance schedule just so that we can better understand um, and go over that. And I think that was per request from uh, Mr. Gilmore. So we will be doing that here within the next hopefully couple weeks. All right, and then any updates from the infrastructure subcommittee? Finance and infrastructure

167committee met on um, the end of April on 4/27. Um, since we've had a couple board meetings you've heard those presentations really but we were looking for a compensation package from Mr. Martin. So, you all have seen that and now hear it. All right. With that, any questions, board members of um other board members about the subcommittee work? All right. Um well, I I believe uh we have reached the end of our agenda um and the time is now 8:25 p.m. and we are adjourned. I'm going to call the meeting