001Mhm. >> Mhm. >> Good after Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for being here this afternoon as we begin our Eagle Pass Independent School District regular meeting here at 58 587 Madison Street. At this time, we call this meeting to order. Mr. Mijares, will you please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? Yes. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. Thank you, Mr. Mijares. Now, we will go to roll call. We have Ms. Hilda Martinez, present. We have Mr. Christopher Hill, present. We don't have Mr. Perry is not here today. Mr. Morris Lipsen, present.
002Mr. Tom Gonzalez, present. We have our superintendent of schools present, Mr. Mijares. We have Ms. Valerie Carrillo, present as well, and myself, Jorge Barrera, present. We will now move move to citizens communications and recognitions. And at this time, so we don't have anybody signed in for citizens communication, so we will move into recognitions. The first one is recognition of Nellie Mae Glass Elementary Emeralds dance team for winning first place at the Dance Team America competition in San Antonio, Texas on March 28, 2026. Ms. Burton. Good evening, Mr. President, distinguished members of the board, and of course, Superintendent Mijares. Thank you for allowing me to spend some time with you this evening. Our first recognition for tonight is to celebrate the Glass Elementary Emeralds dance Team on Saturday, March 28th. The Emeralds Dance Team competed in
003the Dance Team America competition in San Antonio, Texas. The Emeralds danced flawlessly and danced their way into a first place. Way to go, ladies, and way to show in a Falcon's nest, nothing but the best. At this time, parents, you may get your photo if you wish before we get our official one, you can come up and get your photo. Also, just a reminder to everyone in attendance, all photos from tonight will be free for download tomorrow morning on our district website. And next, Radar's Maverick cheer team cheered and jumped their way into a national championship. The girls were ecstatic with representing their school at the Fun Cheer National Championship in San Antonio, Texas. Way to go, Maverick cheer, and keep snatching them trophies. Once again, while while the girls are setting up, parents, this
004is your opportunity to get your photo. You may do so as you wish cuz when we take our official one, no parents will be allowed in the main aisle. So, if you want to get your photo, you may do so now. >> Saturday March 14th, Henry B Gonzalez's Dazzling Bobcats Dance Team participated at the MCDA Cheer and Dance Championships at Six Flags in San Antonio, Texas. The girls rocked the mats and brought home some serious hardware. The Dazzling Bobcats nabbed their division title. Way to dance it out, Bobcats. Okay, parents, this is your opportunity to get your photo at this time cuz once again, when we go for our official one, no parents will be allowed in the main aisle. >> Saturday, December 13th, Benavides Bulldog Cheer Team participated at Fun Cheer's Winter Wonderland competition
005in New Braunfels, Texas. The girls showed up and showed out and brought home a first place and the trophies didn't stop there because when they went to the Texas Cheerleader competition on January 18th, they brought home another first place. This team is stacking trophies and taking names. Way to go, Bulldog Cheer. Okay, once again, parents, you can get your photo at this time. Just a reminder to everyone, all photos from tonight will be free for download tomorrow on our district's website. Saturday, March 14th, Benavides Bulldog Bells Dance Team participated at the MCDA Cheer and Dance Championship in San Antonio, Texas at Six Flags. The girls brought their high energy and swag to the hip hop division and brought home the first place title. Way to dance it out, ladies. Perfect the Manchas Winter League Division
0063 baseball team took home the championship title on March 20th. This was a great season for the Mustangs. Way to finish strong and fight to the end. Go Mustangs. >> March 21st through 22nd, Perfecto Montchess Mustang cheer team participated at Fun Cheers National Championship in San Antonio, Texas. The girls rocked the mats and brought home a great title to Mustang country. They represented their school well, brought home a national title, and looked good doing it. Way to go, Mustang cheer. >> Congratulations goes out to the Serna Stallionettes dance team that definitely made their presence known at the Cheer and Dance Drill Team America competition. The Stallionettes pranced their way into first place in the high kick division, third place in the palm division, and brought home the most precision award from the entire competition. When
007in doubt, dance it out, Stallionettes. >> Congratulations are in order for Armando Serna's Division 1 boys baseball team for coming in a tremendous first place in the winter baseball league. Way to stamp over the competition, Stallions. And not to be outdone by the Division 1 boys, up next is Serna Stallions Division 2 winter baseball champions. The boys did an amazing job this season and brought home another championship to Stallion country. Way to hit it out of the park, boys. >> Rounding out our Cerritos recognition for tonight is the Division 3 Cerritos Stallion flag football team because they proved just what it means to be a champion. The boys blitzed their way into the city title and dominated. Congrats, boys and girls. >> Eagle Pass High School is proud to recognize their history-making varsity soccer team
008under the direction of coach Reinaldo Reese. This is the second year the boys have made it to playoffs and the first year in program history where they earned the title of by district champs and punched their ticket to area. Congrats Eagles and keep making history. >> Eagle Pass ISD and Eagle Pass High School are very proud to announce that senior Santiago Villarreal from the Eagle Pass High School Mighty Eagle Band was selected for his bass clarinet playing to the prestigious High School Honors Performance Series. Santiago traveled to New York City on February 8th to perform at the world-famous Carnegie Hall. He was selected from over 10,000 nominations across the world and this is a direct result of his talent and 5 years of dedication to his craft. Please join us in congratulating Santiago for this
009once-in-a-lifetime achievement. At this At this time we do invite Santiago's family to join us for the photo. I do want to point out that I looked up the statistic and only like 1.5% of all musicians get to play at Carnegie Hall and this young man got to play there. So, I think we deserve a big round of applause for that. CC Winn High School is pleased to inform you that the CC Winn High School Student Council has been recognized as an outstanding student council at the TSC State Reporting Judging. They dominated the five judging categories and claimed this honor that only a few can boast. Congratulations, Mavericks, and keep leading the way. CC Winn High School competed at the UIL 28-5A District Meet on Saturday, March 28th at MacArthur High School. And guess what, ladies
010and gentlemen? They brought home another title of overall district champs. Winn would like to congratulate all their participants for a job well done and wish a hearty good luck to all the regional qualifiers. Way to go, Mavs. Closing out our recognitions for this evening is a big round of applause for the CC Winn Guard. On Saturday, March 28th, CC Winn's Winter Guard traveled to San Antonio, Texas to participate in the Scholastic Regional AA Blue Blue Division competition. Winn Guard is proud to announce that they secured their seventh consecutive first place in a row with their show Kiss Kiss. In addition, they received awards for best equipment, best general effect, and best design. Congratulations Wingard and see you next year for number eight. Yay! >> Okay. We will now move to item number five, first budget
011workshop, and we will take one through nine. Mr. Mijares? Good evening, members of the board. I will be presenting next year's budget tonight. Also, you have two books in front of you. The book that I'll be going over the slides, which includes only the slides that I'll be going over are the one that says presentation. Those are the slides that I'll be going over. The other big book is it includes all the pages of the budget. So, I'm not going to be able to cover every single page, but the presentation one is I picked a a good amount of pages to to present to the board tonight. Here we're looking at the district funds for 2026-2027 budget. And as we all know, the budget is presented in four groups. That's the way every school district
012has to present the budget. The first group is a general fund. When we talked about the general fund, that group consists of 20 budgets. They're individual budgets. They're from 101 through 199. 199 being the M&O fund. 101 being food service, and then you have all those in between that which we'll be going over throughout the presentation. Special revenue funds, those are grants. That's our group number two. We have two grants there in the budget for next year. We have the one for the food service, and then we have the one for the textbooks, the state textbooks. That's what Mr. Camarillo is in charge of. Uh and that's what the money that we receive for textbooks. Number three, that's a debt service. That's where we make our debt payments. And number four, those are capital projects.
013Whenever we have major projects, we go ahead and and put the money there. Like right now, we have money there on the proceeds that we've gotten from uh settlements. We've gotten several several several million dollars. It's in right now, it's in the construction fund. So that we can do utilize those that budget. That's the general fund, the the first category or the first group. It starts with 101 as you see there all the way all the way to 199. Those are 20 budgets. When I present this every month, you see each budget in the financial statements that I present to the board every month. And we have a budget for every single fund there. And then the special revenue funds, those are the ones we discussed right now. Those are your uh federal federal food
014service. That's summer school. We do have summer school, and they give us money for the summer school to feed the to do the feeding program. And then we have the IMA. Debt service, which is 518. Category number three. And then the special the special projects. There you see a breakdown for next year's budget. Uh you see that most of our money is in the first group, the general fund. 97 It's almost 98% of the money. It's in your general fund, those 20 budgets. So there we This is That's where you have most of the money. And then you have your special revenue funds, those two grants that we talked about there 800,000. That's the IMA and then the the 200,000 is the summer program. And then you have your debt and your capital projects. We
015have a total of revenue system made it for next year of 180 million dollars. Revenues again, so you can see who's which funds. Of all the funds, which are the funds that have the most revenue? As you see there, it's the M&O. The M&O has most of the most of the revenues. And then you have all the other revenues from all the different budgets. Total of 180 million dollars. But it's a different breakdown, so you can see where the money's coming in. And then appropriations, how the money's going out. Again, M&O, that's the biggest budget. And then you have all the different funds where the money's being spent. Those amounts are pretty much the same. They don't change by a lot. Uh those are operating budgets. So, there's they're pretty much the same from year
016to year. There's not a big difference. Uh other than if the state gives us more money. Uh this is a good thing to look at, uh especially when we're community we're com- communicating with our community. You see again that 180 million dollars estimated revenues for next year. A lot of times people think that taxes uh pay most of our of our budget. And you see there taxes is only 16 or 17% of the total revenue. Most of your money, as you see there, 71% comes from the state. And then uh another 9% from federal. And then the others is about 4%. So, taxes is important, but it's not the most the major revenue that we get. It's it's it's it's the state. This is a different way to look at the appropriations here. We go
017this everybody's familiar with payroll, contracted services, supplies, other operating costs, debt service, and capital outlay. This is pretty much the benchmark that's used in in the financial area. Our our our major major cost is payroll. We're at about 82%, which means most of the budget is already set at 82%. The 6200 are utilities. You see there 6200s, which is about 4%. Those are also already costs that are fixed. And then you have your supplies, which mostly go to the schools, and you have your capital outlay, and and your other operating costs, and your debt. That small debt that you see there is what we owe right now in our bonds, and also the e-rate that we not the e-rate that the money that we got last time for for the we did the retrofitting for
018the schools. We we got a loan for that. Here page 11 gives you a breakdown of all the budgets. And every single budget in this district is assigned to a project manager or somebody that's in charge of that budget. You see the names. For example, there food service you see Mario Garcia, food service director. And when you go to any These are all of our funds. This is This isn't all the different funding sources that we have. And the the program directors are responsible to making sure that when something's being spent, they have to approve every single expenditure, and they have to make sure that it's in compliance, and that we're allowed to spend that money in that specific program. So, that's what we have had in for many years. It has worked really good.
019It's uh when they come and look at our district, they like that we have a standardized process of how we handle our budget. We have 47 different entities. Every budget's Every budget's like an entity that's got its own revenues, expenditures, assets, everything. So, we have uh in the at the district level as you see there, we have 47 of them. This is the budget when you're going to compare it from this year to next year. You have them side by side. You have the revenues from this year. And then on the on the column to the right that's highlighted, that's the revenues for next year. The The revenues stay the same. Uh the state has not provided any additional funding. Uh they will look at it again every 2 years, and next next year is
020when they're going to look at it. And then you have the appropriations are pretty much the same. So, the budget is pretty much bare-bones, and it's basically what we already are have right now, and we're just go going in forward and putting all the different account numbers that we need to and getting it ready for next year. This is what uh when you approve the budget uh in August when we come back, this is the only document you're going to see as a backup. This is the document that we're required to prepare. We're required to submit it to TEA through PEIMS, and this is the document that gets approved. It's got all the categories. It's got the general fund, and then we have to put the food service aside. We have to pull it out.
021And then it has special revenue, second category that group that we talked, debt service, and construction. It has all the different groups there, and it has summarized uh the budget as how TEA requires us to do to do it. Here, if you want to look at all the budgets, 23 budgets, and you want to know what their payroll is, what their contracted services is, what their supplies is, what their other contracted other contracted services are, debt service, and and capital outlay, you have there the breakdown, and you have it for every single budget. If you want to look, for example, number five, gifted and talented, we do get money for gifted and talented, and that is the budget for gifted and talented, 410,083. If you want to look at the one that I highlighted there,
022number 20, which is the M&O, you have there 61, 62, and there we have almost $98 million. The budget that we're presenting for approval is for in August is going to be almost $190 million. As you see, the percentages at the bottom also show what they are by categories. Payroll, again, is 82%, and then you see across there which ones which uh budgets have payroll, and which budgets don't do not have payroll. There are some budgets that do not have payroll uh as an expense, but they have all the other categories. Uh let's look at IMA that we discussed that it was a hundred thousand. You see IMA has no payroll, no contracted services. They have it all in supplies as for next year, and it's $800,000. Okay, these are the revenues side by side.
023Uh the revenues are pretty much staying the same. And you have most of the money, as you see there highlighted for this year and next year, is the is uh is uh state funding. And uh we're pretty much staying with the same amount. The peak enrollment has is at 13,474. That's the highest enrollment that the district has had this year, and I'll go over that breakdown later throughout the presentation so you can see the schools and where we uh lost students, where we gained students, and you'll be able to see comparisons too, but there we use that to get a cost per revenue per per student, which is pretty much the same for next year. Appropriation is the same. We're not adding anything to the budget. We're not padding the budget. We're not Basically, we're
024just carrying the the budget with what we have, which is what we're we're carrying that budget to to next year. This is a the the slide that I like to kind of take a little bit more time on it. This is our our uh um in layman's term, our savings account. This is the money that we have available to work with. Uh for 25-26, we started the year with 62 million. We do have a a deficit. That number is still the same. I know last year we gave increases and I I I we didn't go into more of a deficit because of the increases, so it's the same amount that we had last year. We're carrying the the salary increases of 5.5% from 22-23 and we're carrying the salary increases of 3.1 from 24-25. When
025you add those two, it gives you the 8.9 million-dollar deficit. As I explained to the budget committee this morning and as I have been asked before, um is a deficit that high and I'm telling you we the like I told you last year, we do everything in our part to increase revenues and minimize expenditures. So, that that deficit I'm looking at cutting it in half. So, instead of 8.9, it'll be about 4.5 million-dollar deficit or even more. Uh we do a lot of things with our revenues and we appeal values and we try to do we have interest bearing accounts. We're getting a good interest on the interest bearing account. All that helps. And I think at the end of the year, it'll it it will be half of that. And then at for 25-26,
026we're looking at 53 million. And then you see the the corresponding years that the deficit just carries forward. On this page, you see our historical information, our tax rate. We've been able to reduce our tax rate uh since 2021. And for next year, we're we are not going to increase taxes. Taxes will either stay the same or might go down a little bit. But I'm not foreseeing having a tax increase for next year. So, what you see there historically that our tax rate has been going down or been uh stagnant, I think I That's what we're proposing also for next year. For 2026-2027, you see there that we're proposing pretty much the same tax rate. And if we're able to get it a little less, we will do so. Uh fund balances, you see the
027the the his- the history there of the fund balances. Uh before the year before that, before 2021, our fund balance was 17 million. We went to 51. Then we went to 66 67 and then 71. Then down to 63 and then then this year to 62 million. So, uh we we've been able to do really good with the fund balance, and that's why we've been getting a very good financial rating. With all the financial ratings, when we go out there and ask for a loan or we sell a bond, we are going to be able to get a very good extremely good interest rate because of our our financial status that we have. Um to the right, you see another graph. That's 2 months of reserve. And 2 months of reserve is 31 million, as
028you see there. And we almost have a double of that. Which uh Yeah, when they look at that, uh that's something that works in the favor for the school district. This is just the same numbers that I showed you for the M&O. This is the general fund. This is something I put there. The rating agencies want to make sure that we provide this information to the school board and that we are aware of what our finances are all the way to 27-28 and even in 27-28, if things continue it says they're 35.36 million is still over the two months reserve and we'll probably be in a better in a better much better situation than that. I was not able to update the all the information in here. Uh so the fund balances and the 1
0292 3 and the third column are on the 3 4 5 and the third column where it says audited ending fund balance 24-25, those are actually last 23's 23-24. Uh TA was not able to update that information. They went to the new system. But just so just so you can get an idea of what our fund balance is compared to other districts and as you see, we're pretty much where Harlandale is. And then there's some districts that have an I I I highlighted Crystal City and you see there they have a they have brackets because they have a deficit but fund balance. You cannot have a deficit fund balance. If you have a deficit fund balance, you're going to have to close schools and you're going to have to start letting people go because that
030means that you you you you don't have any money in the bank and you owe you you you owe money instead of having any money. So um that just gives you an indication as to where other districts are and the Laredo is at 114-264 but when you look at it per per ADA, we're pretty much up there. And that's something that a lot of times people lose sight of what they can really afford and they spend more than what they can really afford to spend. Expenditures per month, I gave you here a breakdown. That way you all can see how much we spend per month. And the average is 16.4 million. That's how much money's going out once you add vendors and the payroll. It's a big operation of of a money. I think we
031are the largest employer in Eagle Pass, Maverick County. Uh in August, as I highlighted there, we had a heavy month. We went ahead and paid 20.4 million dollars in actual disbursements to vendors and to employees for the payroll that we have to meet. Uh these are the subs- the subsidies. I want to make sure that the board completely comprehends what a subsidy is from the M&O. M&O is having to uh put out money to all these programs because these programs do not have enough money to meet their budget. So, they're short. And it's not uncommon. Athletics in the state of Texas does not generate the money that it needs to do to to provide that those services. In every school district, that's the way it is. For example, as athletics, we spend 7.4 million dollars.
032M&O has to uh from there from from from the M&O budget, we have to subsidize uh the athletics department. You have there the special ed department. I know we just got an audit on the special ed department. Uh we having to subsidize the special ed. This the money that the state gives us to operate the special ed program is not enough. They're not giving us enough money to do it. So, we're having to from the M&O, we're having to dish out 5.6 million dollars so that the special ed can be functional and and be able to uh meet their their budget budgetary needs for the program. And then you have transportation. Same thing with transportation. It's a unfunded mandate. We call it unfunded, but it is a mandate. We're required to have transportation, but the
033state does not give us the money necessary to do that. Seat belts, you'll see later in the presentation, they don't give you money for anything. They just They just require things, but they don't give you the adequate funding for it. And there we're subsidizing it by $5.5 million. So, everything that you see here is a complete subsidy from the M&O to those programs. And it That's the way it is throughout the state. The state has promised that they're going to give us more funding in special ed because they know they're not funding the program at 100%. They've told us they're going to give us more money for transportation because the money that they're giving us is not enough, but they haven't. So, those those things have just been talks at the legislation at the with
034the legislators, but we're waiting to Every district in the state of Texas is waiting to see if they're going to go ahead and fully fund it and not partially fund it. Right now, basically anything that you see here is means that the state is partially funding it and we're having to fund it so that it can be at the at the level that we that we need to have those budgets. And the total subsidy is $33.6 million. It's a big amount. Okay? It's $33.6 million that are otherwise that otherwise the M&O would be able to keep and we would be able to do something else if the state would give us what we need to do those. And those numbers pretty much don't change On the next page, you see what the the subsidies are
035this year, '24-'25 and '25-'26, and they're exactly the same. So, we're not going from one point to another to another extreme. We're just We're just funding what we normally fund, what special ed is normally accustomed to getting from the M&O and so forth. So, those numbers really don't change by much, but it's historically that's what we've been having to do to bail out those budgets and provide the service. So, next year's budget is the same amount. We didn't increase any of them. Uh these are the projects that we've done this year. You see them there on page 28. Uh that way you can have them on one slide. And uh current projects, we've done $1.5 million and there you see the breakdown of what we've been doing. And then the other projects that we continued
036doing as the year went along, 1 through 11, it's 891,000. And then the pending projects, which which we did bring to the board. One of them is is a is the building that we have at here at across Eagle Pass High School, which is the um dressing room, storage room. That's about 1.5. We did it at high school, so now we're having to do it at CC Winn. So, we're having to do that. We're going to have lights at Eagle Pass High School, all track, uh all weather track, uh football field, we're going to have lights. We don't have the lights at CC Winn, so we're having to do the lights at CC Winn. And it's all it's all based on comparability for UIL uh and requirements and so forth. So, we're just trying to
037make the district comparable those two high schools, but it costs money to do that. So, uh this year those all those projects were you're looking at about 19 21 projects. And it's a total of $4.3 million that uh we're we're investing. I don't want to say uh spending, because when we're looking at projects, it's an investment. It's something that we will have there for many many many years to come. Uh payroll, uh last year it does the first if we look back at at the 10 years, if you look at back at 10 years and the 10th year being last year, that's when we gave the $8 million um salary increase. Last year, I remember we went to the to the executive board room and explained some information on the funding. Uh once we add
038that and and for the first 10 years, we spent $37 million in salary increases alone, only salary increases. Uh alone, we spend that much and uh we're looking at for sure having the step for next year, minimum. And then once you add that, it's it goes up by a little bit. So, that's what we spent and I made a note there on the salaries. Some school districts get in trouble for not analyzing this. Look at the footnote there at the bottom. The salary increases are fixed cost and reoccurring expenditures to the annual budget. Once you see give a salary increase, it's there forever. It's like you you you you you can't take it away. It's a fixed cost, so you have to sustain it the following years from from that point on. Uh I know
039a question was done on the $8 million that we spent last year. How how is that in the budget? Yes, it's in the budget because the state is giving us that money every year because it's a salary, so they know. So, every year we have to give a listing of all the employees we have through PIMS. We work with HR, Mr. Costilla, and and us. It's an annual report that we have to do. And we have to give them a list of the employees that that we have so that they can send us the money. But they're they're going to be continuously sending us the money every year because it is a fixed cost. And that's the way it was approved by the state legislation. Uh once you put everything together, I know when when
040they were presenting some of the projects and something some of the projects that we were looking at and so forth, uh this kind of gives you a rundown. Uh the 9-year projects, we spent $93 million as you see they're highlighted. We have spent $93 million in 9 years in special projects without passing a bond. This money has come from the MNO fund balance and we still have a fund balance of over $60 million. If we didn't, all that money would be in fund balances fund balance, but like I said, special projects are investments. They're not expenditures. They're investments that can give the district a lot of a lot of benefit throughout the through many years. And then you have the 11-year cost for the payroll. So we spent $130 million just on salary increases and
041projects from our bank account in the last 11 years. That's a quite of accomplishment, I think. Because we have not increased the taxes. We've been able to do all this without increasing taxes, without any burden to anybody, but just by being productive and and and and doing what we need to do. Our fund balance will be at $53 million and then therefore if we had not spent invested this money, we would be we would have a fund balance of $183 million. This is so you can see how our enrollment is working. This is enrollment. This is not attendance. These are kids that are enrolled at the campuses. We lost 439 students. That's an elementary this year. When you compare 25-26 to 24-25 to last year, we have lost 439 kids. It's a big number of
042students that we've lost. However, that's happening throughout the whole state. Throughout the whole state, everybody has been losing students. There's been changes in legislature and things here and there that have compromised students deciding to be homeschooled or deciding to take other avenues. So I have highlighted where the campuses where we we have lost the most students, one of them is Eagle Pass High School. High Sch- Eagle Pass High School lost 127 kids, more than what Kirshner has. They had less students this year. Uh C.C. Winn 72 students. You have another big number of 41, 38, and 41. And And you see you see the campuses. 47, Memorial High School lost 47 students. And then you go to LDC, 39 students. So, you you see the breakdown there. And at the end of the day, it's
043uh over 400 students that we lost. Where did the kids leave? What happened? That's kind of difficult to determine. Uh but this is our enrollment. This is what PEIMS has. This is what Mr. Camarillo works with. And th- those are the numbers that we have. Here's where you can look at the trend on the next page. Let's look at the peak enrollment, which is uh what we look at. Peak enrollment has been going down. ADA, which is where we get funded. A lot of people think we get funded on uh on enrollment on peak enrollment or enrollment. We only get funded if the students attend school, then we get funded. If they don't attend school, we don't we lose money. That's So, average daily attendance is ADA. And as you see, there's a big gap
044between enrollment and ADA. And the gap between those two is money that we're not receiving. And uh the bottom line numbers are at the bottom. For the last 10 years, if you see it the third column at the bottom, we've lost 1,810 kids. I've never seen that so much. That's basically C.C. Winn. C.C. Winn has about 1,800 kids. So, in the in in this time period, it's a cycle. It's not something that's that's happened from 1 year to the other. It's it's a cycle. As you see the trend, it's a trend for many years that we've been losing students. I mean, that's just the the way it's been working out. Here you see the peak enrollment as Mr. Montalvo Jesse from PEIMS gives me gives gives me so that I can check the figures. And
045when you do the difference between 25 26 26 27, those those are the numbers that we're losing students. Next page, you get to see the grade level. It's the same numbers, but now you have a breakdown of the grade level. Where are we losing the kids? First grade, pre-K, second grade, seventh grade. You have the same numbers they add up across, but you get to see it by grade level. And then at the bottom you see the the total per grade level for the whole district. So, it's going to be interesting many many maybe 2 or 3 years not that many years 2 or 3 years, we were getting a lot of reduction in enrollment at the at the early childhood centers. We were getting a lot we were getting a reduction. And then the
046high school the two high schools were growing. And then this year it's the other way around at the high we're having the the loss at the high schools. The LDCs most of them were okay only for all the LDC that they they lost quite a bit of students, but now that we offer the whole day for the pre-K plus parents feel more comfortable sending them for the whole day instead half day like it it was before. So, that has helped. And we do we are getting for the full day from the state. Uh reduction in in in in enrollment and reduction in ADA is going to reduce your funding. I have it there highlighted. We're going to be losing about 3% which is the numbers that I gave you 400 and something close to 3%
047a little bit over 3%. So, we will be losing about $2.9 million in funding. And uh we will make up the money because we've been very careful with the staffing. We have been staffing the campuses based on the reduced enrollment, not based on the enrollment that they had last year. So, we we we already we already know what to do. So, we'll get a reduction there, but we'll save it because we didn't hire the teachers that we didn't need to because we got less students. So, we we were able to do that. This is just what you all can see what we get from TA. The first line item is the ADA that we're talking about. This is last year. See, last year we only had a reduction of 91, which was nothing. Now, we're
048going to have a reduction of almost 400. So, uh this is a breakdown of all the weights and everything. When we have to do the the the state revenue calculations, we have to include all those weights and ADA and numbers so that we can determine how much TA is going to give us in funding. Let us remember, state is the is where we get the most money from. It's at 78%. Taxes, uh just real quickly there at the very bottom just so you can get an idea how we've been doing with our taxes. Uh we reduced our M&O substantially. We used to be at 127 uh in '04-'05, now it's at .7553. So, we reduced our M&O tax rate by 40 cent by 40%. J- just that alone, if we were able if we were
049if we were to pass any bond election or anything, just that in itself i- is a big plus because we've reduced our taxes tremendously tremendously for for for the in the last uh uh 21 years. So, we reduced it by 41%. Then, you looked at the INS. We've also reduced the INS. That's where the bond would go. And then, we have also reduced the total the total the total amount has also been reduced by a substantial amount. So, that the information is there where we've been able to to give give a break to the taxpayers with our with our taxes. And then on top of that, we have a huge tax exemption for homestead that the state passed last year, which is $140,000 per homestead, and that's not even calculated with this reduction. Then you
050look at the city of Eagle Pass, how have they been doing? They've been going the other way around. They've increased their taxes by 53% in the last 21 years. The county has increased their taxes by 20%. They've done a little bit better. And then you have the hospital that they've reduced their taxes by about 9%. Those are actual figures, by the way. The next slide, you want to compare to your peer districts with our taxes. We have one of the lowest tax rates, as you see there. There's only two other districts that are right right below us, but everybody from 1 through 11 has a higher a higher tax rate than us. Their I&S is either higher or their M&O is higher, and then the total tax rate is much higher. So, that's just to
051give you an idea as a report card to see how do we compare to our peer districts, and we compare really well with our taxes. Our taxes are very low. This is a next slide. I already have the projection for a 26-27 tax rate, and like I had told you, I am not anticipating a tax increase at all for next year. And then we have there the I have to estimate the the the property values. We are going to be getting an increase in property values. That's something we don't control, the appraisal district does. Those of you board members that are with the appraisal district, you know we have we have we have no control over that, and we're estimating that it's going to be almost a 7% increase in the property values for next
052year. Either new construction, either new evaluation of certain sectors in the in the in the in the in the in the tax roll, or changes that are happening, but that's what we're looking at about a as a 7% increase. Next page, that's the worksheet that I developed many years ago. That's what I used to calculate the tax the taxes for next year. And the M&O is 27.4 million, the one that's highlighted, and the tax rate, and then and the INS, the 25 2.5 2.6 million that we have to do to pay our to pay our our bonds that we've passed in the in in the past. Another thing, just in a nutshell, just so you know, when we're talking about collection rate and with our on our taxes, if you if you levy a tax
053rate and you don't collect, then it's like if you're not getting it's it's not benefiting you that much because you're not getting the money. You're leaving a lot of money on the table. So, the more you collect, the more TA will give you more state funding. Some people don't know that, and that's why I keep a very good tabs that we have the highest tax collection rate that we can because if you go from just from 96.5, which is what's in the budget, and if you would go to 98% as it's highlighted there, just that would give you almost $600,000 more. I mean, that's that's that's that increase in state funding. So, the correlation is there, so we try to keep it as high as we can so that we can maximize the state funding
054from the from the state without having to increase taxes just by increasing the tax collection. And that's just the calculation that I told you the 6.57% that we calculated on the property values, that's just the spreadsheet that I used to make that calculation. This is um on page 58, these are all the budget summaries. These are uh 3 years, and this is all the budget assumptions that I use for next year. And uh I put them side by side just to make sure we don't make a mistake, and if there's a mistake there, we can see it. Uh the percentages have to jive from 1 year to the other, and all that information that you see there, we actually have to put it into a formula, and we have to come up with a state
055funding for the school district. This is a calculation that you'll see in the newspaper. It's a the fund balance is a little different than the fund balance that I just showed you. This fund balance is unencumbered fund balance. We have to calculate what we would pay uh before we get our first installment from TA from state funding. And uh you'll see in the newspaper the M&O is 39.8 million, and the INS is 2.1 million, and it's a lot less because we having to calculate the dates the days that we have to wait until we get the first uh payment from TA T TH just wants to make sure that we have money enough in our fund balance to make those payments. I uh so when we're waiting for the for the first payments, we have
056enough money to to pay uh any any debt or any expenses that we have. And then this is going to be what's in the going to be in the newspaper, too. We're not increasing the budget. It's actually a very fractional of a percentage below because we're not carry we're not including the carried forward funds. It's about 155,000 that we're not including, and that's why it has a very minor It's It's almost insignificant compared to the to the overall budget. Uh debt, a lot of times they might ask you, "Well, how much bonds does the district owe?" Do they How How much debt does the school district have? This is the debt that we have. Okay, as of 8:31:25, we owe we owe and we're making bond bond payments, we're paying our debt the people the
057the the banks that we owe money for the bond issuance. We had several bond issuances that we passed that we've passed in the past. Uh one of them there is a SAC. Uh one of them is Serna and Perfecto Mancha and a bunch of projects that we did back in 2008 and 2009. So, we do have debt. We and then at the end of 8:31:26, which is this year, the debt will go down because every every year we pay part of the debt. So, at the end of this year, of August 31st, 2026, we owe $32,052. That's our debt. And then you see number one and number two, we're going to be finishing paying number one, which is largest debt. We're going to finish paying it on May 15, 2038. That's a long time from
058now. Uh but we will be paying it. By the time you know it, it'll be 2020 2038. And then the other one is 2034. The other the other bonds that we have. We do get state money from the state to pay this this bond payments. That's just the the calculation EDA. And I know we were talking about existing debt allotment. The state does give us money to any bond issuance that we pass. If we pass a bond issuance tomorrow or next year in 3 years from now, the state will give you money for it. A lot of people don't emphasize that the burden is not all going to be on the taxpayers. The state will come in and they're going to give us additional state funding to to pay that debt for the duration of
059the debt. If the debt is 30 years, they're going to give us the money for 30 years, not for 1 year, not for 5, for the duration of the debt. So, it's called EDA as you see it there, existing debt allotment. And the district is getting some and right now for those for the debt that I just showed you and for any new debt if we ever get any new debt approved. And then we also get IFA. That's called instructional facilities allotment. That's also a different kind of funding for if you pass bond for instruct for for for instructional funding. However, there's no money for that, new money. So, that's why they paid it to us in EDA, which is the previous slide. So, here if we pass a new bond, we're not going to
060get it here, but we're going to get it on the previous one. We're going to get it on that one, on the EDA. And then this is what comes in the newspaper when we do our tax rate. You're going to be seeing this or if you don't see it, just be aware that all these compliance disclosures advertisements are going to be in the newspaper that we're required to have so that we can get our budget approved. It'll be happening in the background. This is our calendar. We have uh completed the budget. It's complete. The only thing we're waiting is for the proper for the for to get the the tax the tax certified certification, the certified roll from from the appraisal district. But the budget's already ready. Once we get that, it'll be sometime in
061July. By law, they have to give it to us in June, July. Sometimes they give it to us earlier. And then we're just going to do the put in the numbers so we can do the notices that we have to do in the newspaper. But the budget has been completed already. I finished the budget in February, March of this year. It was already done. Now we're going to get to the salaries. It's always something that, just so you can know what the salaries are. Uh and a breakdown of what 1% would cost. And 1% would cost $1.2 million. Most of the money will go to professionals. Professionals are teachers and all instructional staff. And then manual trades are other employees that work uh as custodians, as uh carpenters, and so forth. And then paraprofessionals are
062your office personnel, non-degree. And then you have your administrators. 1% is $1.2 million. Just for for presentation purposes. And then this is what we're going to have to to for sure give to teachers. Uh minimum. The step. Not to be confused with anything else. Uh so, minimum we will have to give that and to all the teachers. That's a requirement. Uh it's part of the raise that we gave last year and it's always been that they that the step has to be uh included every year. This is the one we did last year. You see Mr. Mihalis' signature there? Uh when we went went ahead and and did the salary increase last year, that's exactly what the salary increase cost us last year, $7 $8 million. Round it up. And the state gave us every
063single dollar for this salary increase. That did not increase the deficit, like I told the board members, that did not do anything to anything. It's like a pass-through. Uh whatever the whatever it was, they're going to give us the money and they're going to continue to give us that money every year, just like if it's a bond uh payment uh indefinitely because it's a it was a salary increase. Uh when you're looking at the structure that compensation plan for the school district, uh be aware that these are the professionals as you saw the cost. I said most of the cost for the salary increases were for professionals. This is a professional schedule and teachers are there. They're at the Let me show you where they are for next year. They're there they're highlighted on the
064following page and teachers are part of the professional hiring schedule and so are all these positions which are mostly all these positions are mostly at the campus or at departments and and that's where they fall under the professional uh hiring schedule. They're not with us. They're not with manual trades. They're not with No, they're here. These positions that are here require board approval. So, if somebody's going to get hired in this page, if you see it here, and if you see that there's a position here and we didn't bring it to the board, you need to tell us because it needs it requires it requires a contract. It requires a contract and it requires board approval. So, every single position that we have here, okay? And then the next the next one, it's always good
065to show what we pay our teachers compared to other districts. We pay our teachers more than any other district. You see they're the rich districts. You see Alamo Heights, Northside, you see Austin, you see Laredo, you see nurses. We pay the average salary for our teachers is higher than any of them. So, what does that tell us? That tells us that we take care of our teachers. We pay 60,000. Their starting salary might be higher from this other districts, but once they start working with us, the other component to look at is the average teacher salary and our average teacher salary which is important because if the teachers that have stayed with us, they're making more than than they would have started to work right out of college in these other districts. That's just a
066fact. Those Those are just and that that were the numbers. And then the state average is 64,941. We're at 71,473. So, we're paying 6,532 above the state. And our above the state is higher than any other district. This is a compensation plan. Uh the categories are uh our administrators. That's a category in itself. We saw the profession the professionals right now. The The teachers were included. Now, this is our next category. This one's also have to go to the school board. If we're hiring anybody from this category, any position here, it requires board approval. And they require to have a contract. And it requires uh for us to go ahead and go through the whole process that we need to go through for the hiring of of this of this positions. These are our administrators.
067Who are the administrators? Pretty much the principals as you see there. All your principals are there. Your deputy superintendents, your executive directors, your IOs, your that they're it's it's all the those different positions that are called administrators. That's because they are under this category. The pay for these positions, the lowest is pay grade 14, the highest is pay grade 20. You have the the starting salary, which is a minimum, the midpoint, and the max. So, if you want to do the math, you look at the previous slide, and it has a days to the right. It has how many days each position works. You just multiply times a daily rate, and that's going to tell you what those positions earned for the whole year. It's as simple as that. The next category are paraprofessionals. These
068are not contract employees. These are hourly employees. You have the breakdown of all the employee the employees that fall under this category. Pay grade three, you have to remember the pay grade cuz in the district we go by pay grades. And you need to remember it too for the administrators. The The only ones that that have the same pay grade are the professionals. All these people have pay grade seven or eight if they have a master's. And then when when you go we're now at paraprofessionals uh also pay grades. And then depending the the higher the pay grade the more pay it is. And then you have the different positions that you have uh depending on which pay grade they are in. And then you have the salary. One thing for for the board members
069to to see here, uh they've been for a long time they've been saying they're going to increase the minimum wage from $7.50 or $7.20 to they're going to increase it. They haven't done it yet. But if they were to do it, you have nothing to worry about. Even the lowest pay grade for paraprofessional in the district gets paid 1720. So even if they were to increase it to $12, to $13, or to the highest $15, we would not be affected. That would not affect our budget. That would not affect the pay or anything because we're already paying at the lowest pay grade 1720, which is higher than the $15. These are paraprofessionals. Uh 1720 for pay grade three starting pay. And then pay grade six 2580. We do an exemption for the uh police officers.
070We pay them a little bit more as you see there the footnote. And that has been the the the norm since Mr. Villalobos was here, which was about 30 years ago. And we've left it like that. So we pay our officers just a little bit more to be more competitive. The next pay grade is uh para uh manual trades. And you it's got a different numbering system pay grade 52 through 56. Those are pretty much your the the custodians, the food service workers, the transportation workers, uh people that work uh outside and inside. Uh So, this this are also um the super- the does not require board approval for these ones. They don't have a contract. And those are the different positions with the days that they work. It's very important for you to know
071the days that employees work because that tells you for that position whether that those employees only work 7 months, 9 months, 12 months, or the whole year. So, that's where we put it next to next to the so that you'll know what type of employee is. If you see they're a cafeteria manager, they only work 187 days. What does that tell you? They only work the days our instructional days are 180. They work 7 days more than the instructional days when kids go to school. Uh but they're they're 9-months employees. But when you look at a custodian, they work 238. They work all year round. Uh 226 and above is all year round. So, that's why you have that. And then we go the same thing here. Uh we made it a point uh a
072lot of effort here that if the minimum wage goes up to $15, we're covered. We're paying We're at 1505. So, we would not be affected. We would not be affected, but they've been saying that for already uh several years and they haven't increased it. Get an idea in the next slide. There you have the breakdown uh of the years of service and the number of employees that we have that fit that that bracket that are in that bracket number of years. As you see at the very bottom, I think we have somebody that has 48 years of service with the district right now. And um And then you have all the other categories so that you can see mostly where our teachers or professional count is based on the years of service that they have.
073And it's interesting because you're able to see whether we have teachers that are very experienced or whether they are brand new or they they have a series of experience, or five, or whatever, you can just reference that, and that gives you a very good indication as to the number of years that they have, and how many we have in that category. The next one, this is also important. Uh this is the count. How many employees do we have in every different category? And I highlighted some of them there, like elementary teachers that are If you see an eight there, like I told you can be an eight, that means they have a master's. If you have a seven, that means that they have a bachelor's. But it gives you an idea of all the employees
074that we have. We have almost 2,600 employees, and in this page and the next page, you're going to see where they fall, and you're going to see uh how many of them we have in that specific position, which is always important to look at. You go to the next page, you have administrators, and you have the numbers that we have in that specific pay grade. We have 93 administrators. Uh and then you go to paraprofessionals, we have 487 uh uh paraprofessionals, and so forth, and so forth. And as you see, grand total, we have over 2,500 employees. It We're the largest employer by far in the whole county. Next slide is a health insurance. We're keeping the same rates for the health insurance. We're not increasing the the premiums to employees. Uh we've been doing
075that for many, many years, and uh a lot of districts, what they do, they increase the premiums to employees, and there it's like getting a a a a pay cut. When you increase When you increase health insurance premiums, and you don't give a raise, you're doing a pay cut to the employees. You're reducing their pay. I don't know I don't care what people say, but they they're going to be getting paid less. So, we're not doing that. We're We're not increasing any other premiums. As you see there, I have zeros everywhere. We've been doing this for many, many, many years that we've been able that we've been able to help out the employees and not increase their premiums. Those are the rates for next year. We're already They're already established. They're the same. They're going
076up up by a little bit because we're having to increase the premium the the cost of the insurance by a very minimum percent of 5%, but we're paying it from the school district. We're not paying it from the employee. And that was So, when that was last year. We need to look at this slide. And let's let's really look at it. On the health insurance, I put this slide together so that you guys could see this. Uh employee only high option, that means that uh we have high option for district employees and we have low option. Employees that have the low option for the health insurance, they don't pay anything. They get it for free. And there's a lot of employees that choose that option to get their health insurance for free and not pay
077any money. Here, we're showing the ones for the high option that the employees have to pay a little bit more to get a little bit more benefits because they're paying a little bit more. And look at Igo Pass. Igo Pass is highlighted. Employee only per year, the employees only pay $840 for the whole year to have the high option. That's all they pay, 6% of the cost. The district on the next on the next column or a row that you see there, the district pays 12,504. The district is paying that portion. The district is paying 94% of the cost of the health insurance and the employees also only paying 6%. So, it's a big difference when the employee only pays 840 for the whole year and the district pays a 12,504 for the whole year
078for the employee. That means the employee the district is pretty much paying most of 94% of the cost. And when you add those two up, the total cost for our health plan is 13 13,344 dollars. We are the district by far that has the highest and the best rates and the best benefits that for for health insurance for employees and our employees appreciate it. Uh employees that have been working with us for a long time and or they just started, they appreciate having that health insurance and having those benefits. And the other thing about a health insurance plan, the way we have it, we have it that they don't get taxed on it. The those 12,500 dollars that they're getting from the school district, that the district's paying on behalf of the employee, they're not
079being taxed on it. So, if you look at a new employee coming to the school district, they're getting paid 60,000 dollars plus this 12,504, it's like they're paying seven they're getting paid 72,000 dollars. And prac and probably more because they're not being taxed on those 12,504 dollars. And we've been able to do this, like I said, uh uh every every year for the employees. And we made another minor change that I'll be going over in the when I get to the slide to explain the minor change that we also did to our health insurance. These are all the French benefits. These are all the different French benefits that we have to pay for the district, social security, we have all the other workers comp, we have TRS, we have we have a bunch of French
080benefits. And we're not increasing any of the of the French benefits. We're leaving them all the same because if we increase some of the benefits, we don't want the employee to be burdened and having to pay it from their paycheck. So, we're leaving all the benefits the same. So, if you get asked out there, health insurance for employees are going to be the same benefits, no increasing premiums, and no increasing premiums for that for that French benefits, either. It's just like any private company. French benefits are costs that have to be that paid. Uh direct deposit, this is pretty much the note that we put in every check stub. Every check stub, when the employee gets her check stub, there's a note there telling them when their next pay period is. That way they don't
081have to be asking, "Well, when do I get paid again?" or "How many days?" or what have you. Uh, they get that in their pay stub in addition to this. Uh, we also send a memo to everybody that they're no longer have to wait 3 weeks before they get paid again. Uh, the way we did on the next page, the way we did it, and you see the highlights, where we used to have 3 weeks, we minimize everything between 2 weeks. There's a lot of 2 weeks there. And then there's some that are 2 weeks and 4 days is a max uh, for for for the pay period between one pay period and the other. And we don't have any more 3 weeks anymore. That's a time of the past, and like I explained to
082the board, the only difference that we had to do is that not not not we're not going to have uh, if you see on the one on the left, everybody used to get paid on a Wednesday. If you look at the one on the right, we have different dates that they get paid, not just on Wednesdays, by making that change, we were able to reduce the most that they need to wait is 2 weeks and and 4 days. So, that's already in place. Uh, we also put this on the jumbotron and our district website when that the district website that Mr. Camarillo has where the windows change, this is appearing right now. Uh, and we're putting it on on our outside sign that we have here to our marquee. And we're keeping it rolling all
083the time, 24/7, so in case they didn't see it on their paycheck, whenever they see the the district webpage, it'll be there and telling them to to remind them of the pay dates uh, that that we have. Just so that everybody can be informed. And then we have this one also, the the new one after July, we're going to set the new one, and it'll be it'll be the same thing. I'm having it also on the tax uh, sign that I have here over here in the front and on the district website. So, if there's any more ideas where else we need to put it, just let me know, and we already have the file, we can just upload it, and and and and do that. These are the changes that we were talking. We
084talked to the budget committee. The budget committee, during lunch, really liked these changes. The These are the health insurance changes that we had that we have for next already. They're not for next year, we did them immediately. We made some changes to the eye vision. We made some changes to the uh dental. We made some changes that uh is going to allow the employees to uh take more and get get a little bit more of a benefit and get a little bit more of a percentage paid from from the insurance uh versus them. For example, there on major services for for the for dentists, we used to pay 50%. We went to 80%. Uh and then we used to pay yearly 1,500, we went to 2,500. Just little changes here and there, not much, but
085little changes. Uh superintendent made it a point to tell everybody at the committee that if you if you're going to have contacts, that you now can go and get contacts. Uh the exam the exam will be paid by the health insurance. Before you had to pay $400 because they would only pay the exam for the regular uh glasses, and now it's going to be included. So, those are little things that they really are are happy with and that they use on an on a year-to-year year basis. Everybody goes to the dentist, and everybody goes uh to the eye doctor frequently. So, those are the changes that we were able to do for them, and they are very happy, and they're they're they're glad that uh that the the school uh district was able to do
086that for them. They're gracious uh for the changes. Uh these are the additional request. Uh that's a back the big fat book that we sent to all the uh board members. Uh we got all the additional requests from the campuses. There's a letter that I when I send the information out, uh $3.1 million in in additional requests. Uh those are it. We go through this list. If there's anything as it has been understood from the previous board members and the current board members that if there's anything here that's safety issue that we take care of it. So, that's what we do this and we go through it and then we see anything that's a safety issue, then we address it. And and if it's a one instead if it's a one instead of a need
087uh there that you see a lot of the facilities that you have there uh if we're able to do what we want to do with the what we're working on and we're successful, then all that will be taken care of through a bond election on the facilities. Uh most of it should and if it's not, then we will free up some money so that we can look at it and evaluate even more. But um that's what they submitted and believe me the amount has gone down. I know when the new when the current board members have been here a long time, it was like uh like more than double or even more than double easily. But we've been taking care of some things as you see we've been doing a lot of special projects. So,
088the cost the request amount has substantially uh got gone down. We have that ADP J a gym and I know that some of like I said some of that's some of that stuff can we we will be able to do if we are able to go ahead and and and and uh and pass what we need to pass and and and and provide those um facilities. Uh this concludes uh the presentation. This is just what I give you every month. You know the reports. Everything that I explain I have it there. I don't get up every board meeting to go over it like I would did right now, but you have it in front of you. I I we make sure we do the work and we make sure we provide the report and we
089make sure that you're getting everything that I went through, that you're getting it every month just to make sure that everybody's in the up and up and everybody knows what's going on with the finances of the school district. That's all I have. Are Are any questions? So, on the last one for the 3 million, is that approved or not approved? >> No, that's our request. >> That's a request. That's a request. No. >> Any other questions? No? Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to note that Trustee Jaime Barrera came in during the the recognitions. Okay, we'll move to number six, district reports and presentations. We will take one through four together. Any questions from the board? No questions? We will move to number five. E3 presentation regarding the completion of Memorial Junior High HVAC construction
090project. Which one is it? This one? Um that one. This one. Here we are. We're good. Well, thank you all very much. Um President Barrera and members of the board, uh Superintendent Mata, thank you very much for giving us the opportunity again. It's great to be back. I was looking at the the uh at old notes, and it was 12 years ago when I first met you all, so I've been working with you all ever since. So, thank you all again for giving us the opportunity. This particular presentation is um the work we did at Memorial Junior High. I know it was a much-needed one. It's been been needed for a long time, but this is the post report. So, this gives you some information on how this project went, and um and we're we're
091there at we're at the finish line. It was a success. So, um I'll be relatively quick. Want to go through our uh our personnel introduction. Special thanks to the board. We'll give some special thanks there. Uh project summary. We put together a little video before and after video to give you all an idea of of of what we were talking about and then we'll answer we'll end up with any uh questions and answers. First of all, I'm Bill Savarino. Uh I've been business development manager with E3 for for a long long time now. Y'all uh y'all know me. This is Ben Todd. He was our senior project manager on this particular project. So, if any questions come up regarding this project, he'd be the one to answer that. As it pertains uh uh to Memorial.
092So, um first of all, thank you to the administration. Um both Mejia as the assistant superintendent Mejia and and CFO the money man. I know that's that's a big deal. We can't get it done without money, right? Um and then Mr. Salinas, thank you so much Orlando for his help. Um uh the communication uh and everything associated with that. This was a really tough project, so we hit it out of the uh hit it out of the park. We couldn't have done it without the great uh communication between Mr. Salinas, uh Mr. Fallon, and Mr. Glorio on the HVAC stuff. There's a lot of coordination. Um and then of course purchasing, Mr. Velez was a big help. And at Memorial itself, uh our prin- our uh principal Mr. Escobedo, and then uh Mr. Rodriguez with
093to the uh the high school custodian, and the office staff was was fantastic as well. So, enjoyed working uh working with them, and uh it was a success because of everyone involved. So, the project summary just to kind of bring you back up to speed. Y'all approved this project last February. And um and we were in a bit of a panic at that point in time. Um but it was a $5 million or $5 million project, uh and we were able to complete it uh in January. But we had to have approval ASAP cuz the only time we could do this work was in in summer time. Um and so that was a that that was a big deal. So, we got approval. Um, the project consists of all of the um it says serving
094area A and C. That was in our contract, but that was rewarded to B. So, it was serving area A and B at Memorial. Having to rip up um we had to get up and replace duct work, all the specially um made air handling units included three big 130-ton chillers uh was part of that uh part of that work. Uh then after we put everything in, we had to put in new ceiling tile and grid and everything associated with that. And then we went in and completely uh redid your um the central plant. Uh and we have some pictures of that too and the equipment associated uh with that plant work as well as some electrical upgrades. As I mentioned, the challenge was we get approval mid-February. We don't even have submittals approved or anything
095yet. These were specially made air handling units to fit uh in a real tight area at Memorial. And uh so we knew that the lead times were long and we had to have it the first day of summer to make that timeline uh to make it work. Um and we got it done. Y'all approved it. Like I said, 3 and 1/2 months to get everything uh completed and delivered. And we got the equipment that we needed on um so that we could start on the first day of summer. So, that worked out. We got real lucky to be there. So, we put together a little video just to show you um some before and after on this project. >> So that was a snapshot of that project and it was a huge success and thank
096you all for giving us the opportunity to work with you guys again and we look forward to many many more in the future hopefully. So with that I'll answer any questions that y'all may have. Any questions from the board? What's that? We don't have any questions. Thank you. Oh yes sir. Thank you all very much. >> Flippen good. Y'all have a good day. Thank you. We will move to presentation of the SB 546 reporting on school bus safety belt costs. This is room two. Good afternoon or good evening members of the board, Mr. McAdeson cabinet. Back in the Texas legislature they went in past and implemented on September 1st of 2025 Senate Bill 546 which is basically going to amend our transportation code 547.701. So what we're ask what TA is asking us to do
097is to go ahead and complete a a study that's going to actually eventually require us all school buses that are transporting children to be equipped with three-point safety belts. That means every single passenger right now all of our buses have a safety belt just for the drivers, but we're going to go ahead and share with you the information as where we are and what we need to do to get into compliance. And right And we'll also share with you our current bus fleet as well as a cost to retrofit the buses if we're wanting wanting to go ahead and modify the buses and add safety belts instead of purchasing new buses in in that aspect. Currently for Senate Bill 546 like I said, it's going to replace transportation code 547.701. Just so for it to
098make things clear, when we're referring to a bus it includes a school bus, a school activity bus, a multi-function school activity bus, or a school chartered bus. So, it means anytime that we're transporting a student or school children, it needs to be equipped with a three-point safety belt safety belt for each passenger including the operator or driver. And that's basically the ones that come across at a at an angle and also across your lap. Before when we just had section 547.701, the seat belt requirement only included buses that were model year 2018 or newer. So, anything that would have been manufactured out of September 1st of 2018 or newer, it was already required. But now with this new the passage of Senate Bill 546, it's basically closing that loophole that existed. We had some exceptions
099and flexibility. I'm going to sort of go a little bit between the two the the current transportation code of what's already being replaced this is you have an idea of what's actually going on. Uh under the we had exceptions and flexibility before that allowed us that if a district felt that the budget did not meet permit the district to purchase new buses, we could uh um ask for a waiver. In doing so, it would be like if the bus warranty would become void or you would lose your warranty uh if you were going to make modifications to that. Basically, you all buses will be out of warranty after 3 years. So, a lot of our fleet wouldn't even really it wouldn't affect us at this current time on the ones that are not in compliance.
100And then the other option would be like I said if it was a bus that has 2017 model or older. Like I said, it was really 2018, but I'm going to say 2017 so you can get a a better picture of where where we're working to. Those were exempt before, but now require compliance at the end of this school year. So, essentially, coming in I mean, we were already supposed to be making those modifications and changes. So, we might think that the changes with Senate Bill 546 is all doom and gloom, but actually it's a little bit it gives us a little bit of an opportunity to give more a bigger window to come into compliance. So, under the exceptions under Senate Bill 546, the warranty exemption is no longer it's actually removed. So, it
101doesn't matter if we retrofit or not. I mean, that's just that's no longer part of the equation. We have it's going to be it we have to. And the other thing, the 2017 model year and older exemption is also removed. So, basically what we're saying is the board of trustees of the school district will have to make a determination under subsection E section 1 shall submit and we shall submit to TEA and present it in a public board meeting along with the minutes. And this is part of the presentation of what we're doing to document of what we have to report. Like I said, we're it's a little bit of an extension. Now, our compliance date is September 1st of 2029. So, it gives a little bit more wiggle room. So, like I said, it's
102not all doom and gloom, but I mean, we have a little bit more time to try to get everything under compliance in regards to transportation. If anyone has any questions along the way, just feel free to interrupt. Now, we're looking at if we look at Senate Bill 546 reporting requirements as stated, uh the board is going to have to create a uh a feasibility study to make sure that if it's within our financial means to purchase new buses to come into compliance or we're going to go ahead and spend the money to retrofit what is needed on our fleet to make to meet the the mandate. If it's not feasible by the end of this year, we need to present and this is part of what what I'm presenting today to meet compliance. Go ahead.
103Um we do understand that this is one of those unfunded mandates. I'll get to one of the slides a little bit. There's a that'll be my one of my last slides. It'll be a little bit of a a silver lining hopefully. Um but as of right now, it is an unfunded mandate. It's just sort of like a requirement. They're just basically collecting the data and then what they're going to do is once this the TEA gets all the information together, they're going to try to see what's going to be the best way to tackle it I guess statewide. But either way, it's still they're mandating us seat belts in every single bus that is transporting a child at any point in time. And the reason I said any point in time cuz it doesn't mean
104only local transportation. It means if we're going out of town in a charter, we need to make sure that our charter buses are also equipped if we're hiring them out. Okay, and then also we need to also make sure that I'm going to share with you today as well as which buses are fully equipped with three-point safety belts, which ones are included with two-point safety belts, and which ones do not have safety belts. And I'm I'm referring to our bus fleet. We're going to go ahead and share with you also an estimate on what it would cost for us to retrofit the buses that require installation of a three-point safety belt to obviously comply with the modified transportation safety code. Um and then like I said, all of this will be submitted to TEA via
105Sentinel. So when when the Senate bill was rolled out, TEA offered some guidance and in doing so, they asked us to first we had a um create an an acknowledgement, excuse me, through Sentinel and I know they they notified us in October. It opened the portal in November, which is what we did on day two. We were able to secure our acknowledgement, so we're on target. We have had until December to get it done, but we did it in November. We need to make sure that the district submits a report by the end of May 29th with documentation, which I already have in we have ready, as well as me board agenda and minutes of this public meeting as well. Now, we get to the numbers, and I hope Mr. Mejia or the parliament doesn't
106get upset with me. No, I'm just teasing. If we're looking at retrofitting three 3-point lap or shoulder belts, just so you can get a better picture, we went ahead and classified our bus fleet into three different tiers. We obviously have we have 87 buses in our fleet and four school safety activity buses, but what we're looking at right now is our is our our yellow bus fleet. Tier one are the buses that are manufactured dates of 2000 to 2009, which is 27 buses that are either IC or international buses that are 71 passenger buses. To retrofit those buses, it would cost $70,000 a bus. And by saying $70,000 a bus, 35,000 of that is to retrofit the new seats. If you look at the picture to your right, you see the seat back, it would
107be to change out the actual seat backs on every single seat, as well as to change the floor. A lot of the floor, since they get warped out after a lot of the usage, those are obviously our older part of our fleet, which is 27 buses. We would have to be changing out the floors on all of those buses, and so that's the additional fee. That's where you're getting about 70 $70,000 a bus. Just so you can get a comparable right now, the buses are 100 about $150,000 a bus. So, just so you can get an idea where I'm going on the next slide. Our tier two is our bus fleet of 2011 to 2018. They're also IC and international buses. Also, most of them are 77 passengers. Some of them are also modified to
10853 passengers for some of our special ed routes, special needs routes, excuse me. And those are only just the seat backs. Those are Those are okay and we've already met with the manufacturers. All of our quotes that we're going to present to you today, that the numbers that you're seeing are all only with OEM specs. We could have gone for aftermarket products because they are out there available that you might save maybe between 5 to 10,000 dollars a bus, but you they're not going to be guaranteed to meet OEM specs. And I don't think it would be prudent to to risk any kind of a liability like that to make sure that whatever we're putting on the road is going to be safe for the students at all times. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm I'm I
109sort of skipped the the big number in the on the tier one that if we do do the 27 buses, it's 70,000, you're looking at 1.8 million dollars. The tier two bus the tier two, which is 35 buses that are 35,000 and six buses that are 27,000. The reason those are 27,000, those are the like I said, the smaller buses that are modified that are the 53 passengers for our special needs routes. And that would cost roughly 1.3 million dollars or closer to 1.4. Our tier three is a 2019 through 2026. Obviously, I put 2026 as you'll purchase four new buses this year and we thank you. Uh on behalf of our students, I mean, they come with the latest stuff, all the LED lights, all the bells and whistles with cameras and stuff to
110make sure that the the students are safe at all times. Those are 71 and 53 passenger buses. In those we have 19 buses and all of those are completely compliant. Just every single passenger, whether it be two or three people per seat. And the reason I say three is because if you have the little ones that are like in early ed, like in kinder pre-K, you can get three kids to a to a seat. There's a seatbelt for every single student. And if not, then it'll be just the two passengers if it's maybe a middle school age or something. So, um those are all in compliant as well as our 2019 um student activity buses. All of those also have um seat belts in every seat. Okay. If we're looking at what it would cost
111to retrofit all the buses to meet compliance, you're looking at a bill of $3.2 million, and that's like I said, every bus that was purchased after 2018 are obviously compliant and they do meet the transportation code. How many buses is that total for the $3.2 million to retrofit? Uh that was the 68 buses. >> 68 buses. Mhm. Mr. Ismael is telling me that that cost is already included in the proposed budget. But I sure would have liked for the state, if they mandate something, for them to fund it. Mr. Davis. Yes. Quick question. And I I I commend the state for wanting to do this as far as safety issue. However, is there a new state bill that mandates our students to actually wear the seatbelts? It's sort of coming out of the national transportation
112board, actually. And our our liability as a department is to remind every student any any bus that actually has a a seatbelt, our drivers are and our bus aides are instructed to as they're boarding and as they're boarding the bus to instruct them that they must wear the seatbelts. You're the liability is somewhat of a gray area. I would guess I would defer to legal. >> we have to pass a board policy or local policy for this? Mhm. I don't know if there's a local policy on this, but what we do, every every bus that is does have a seatbelt, they are the all they are always being used. I mean, right now the ones that are primarily being used with seatbelts are our kinder routes as well as our special needs routes. So, I
113mean, we do have a bus aide on every single bus that is that's servicing the kindergarten age students. So, we want to make sure that they are actually secured. Thank you. Mr. Davis, are those all those buses used like every day or how's many spares? >> There when we got our four new buses this year though really we replaced some of the ones that were technically breaking down quite a bit. We do have a few extras, but it's really not we really don't have them much. >> often they're I would say about six to seven you could be as an extra cuz we have like one special needs bus that we can use if there's a student that's not that's being transferred to that does not need the wheelchair lift, but other than that like
114if there there's a wheelchair lift that's broken and we can't find the parts to replace it, we use it as a as needed basis, but it's not something that we do use on the daily, but it will be an emergency if we do need a if we do need a if there's service or breakdown, we can use it, but So I'm guessing the tier one buses are probably the shorter routes and all that, right? Mhm. Well, some of the ones in our tier ones we try to keep them as the extras because we try to put our better buses on the fleet on the road daily. >> Mhm. Give me that number. And they don't let and I honestly they don't when even as serving as an extra as a backup, they still don't do
115very well. So those are the ones that we really we need to look at probably replacing. I'm sorry. No, that's fine. 68 buses plus 19 that are already in compliant. Mhm. That's 87 buses. >> Correct. >> do you use daily? 81. 81 daily? Mhm. On different routes. There's 81 different routes. 81. And then that well it sometimes it fluctuates because sometimes you have like some field trips that are between routes and stuff. So we try to modify and sometimes we're transporting kids that are like athletic programs, also the CT programs that go between campuses. Those are outside of the normal routes. >> Okay. Um Plus some of them sometimes go out of town, sorry. Going back to what I did that was asking, are we to understand that if a student refuses to not buck
116to buckle up, he will be the student will be taken off the bus? There's a process. It's just like a the school bus is an extension of the classroom. So we do have the same policies in place to where there is a communication and the then know know this all too well on the best conduct reports. If we see something or they see something, it's a we're working in tandem together to try to make sure that we create a positive climate. But I mean it is it is a challenge. I'm not going to say any one thing that it I do not look forward to is and I'll be very honest with you is trying to police uh high school kids to make sure they wear their seat belts. I mean, I If you know
117how it is, I can I'll speak for my own kids in my own vehicle. It's a constant like even though you're in the back seat of my truck, you're like, "We're driving to San Antonio. You need to leave your seat belt on." And it's it'll probably be a similar situation in the buses. But like I told my I'm telling my staff in training, we need to remind them. Every time we have a training, we say the same thing about that. If there's a seat belt, you need to remind them especially on the older kids that are in elementary age because they'll they're Since most of the all the buses run two routes, they might run an elementary route which is our first route in the morning and then those the second route will be maybe
118like some of your early ed campuses like Kennedy or ECC and then or high school and junior high. So, all buses do two routes. Are cameras uh part of the compliance? It's It's actually just for safety, actually. It's It's more district. Mhm. And we do I mean, some of our buses are needing upgrade of some of our cameras. Some of our newer systems that are on there are have really much better better resolution. I guess if you want to compare to a cell phone. I mean, you know, some of your better better resolutions from your cameras. So, Mhm. Those are some of the things we're looking at. I'm going to go ahead and go to the next slide and like I said, feel free to chime in. But uh this is like if we're only
119retrofitting, the second the next slide would be if we're actually looking at retrofitting what would be most prudent for the the district to invest. And I know there's a hefty price tag if we're looking at a lot of replacement. I mean, cuz if you look at a lot of the tier one buses which is our older fleet, those are probably the one that it wouldn't be the best, you know, financial things if you're going to put $70,000 in a bus that's pretty much ending the end of their their life their shelf life. >> this point some of those buses aren't even probably worth $70,000. I agree with you. You're absolutely right. And just before we move on, like I said, we have six seat buses that have no seat belt. We have none that have
120two-point safety belts. And then we officially have the 19 that do have the three-point safety belts. Okay. Uh if we're looking at the next slide, our tier two are some of the ones that we would suggest that we would have retrofitted unless you want to buy all of them, I wouldn't be I would not be unhappy and neither would my our principals cuz we would have less breakdowns. Uh but um if we're looking at our tier two, we have 25 IC buses to retrofit. Those are the ones that are between 2016 and 2018. I would think that spending $35,000 on a bus is really not the worst-case scenario versus, you know, the 150,000 a bus. You can still get another 5 to 10 years out of out of those buses. You know, or maybe a
121little bit more on those. And then you have six buses that are to retrofit that are 2016 and 2017. Like I said, those are the smaller buses and those are 27,000. That's at a price tag of a thousand uh excuse me, 1 million 37. And that's that's not a bad price, I guess, if you want to look at it. It's like I said, it's not my money, right? But it's that's servicing 31 buses. So, I think it's sort of spreading across and making a very sizable impact compared to what it would cost to replace the bus. Now, if we're looking at replacement, it's I mean, this is sort of like retrofitting and replacement. We're not trying to just do all replacement or all retrofitting. Uh we're trying to look at it in the way it
122would be the most prudent and probably the most cost-effective. So, if we're looking at 37 buses, which is basically all of our tier one buses, which were 27. And when it says I put tier two 10 2011 to 2018 just to mirror what was on the pri- the previous the prior site, excuse me, but those are all 2011 buses to be quite honest with you. They're not really the the 2018s. I would I would keep a 2018. But like I just said, I'm just trying to keep everything parallel so that you don't get lost on what I'm trying to the get lost in the numbers. So, if we were to try to budget at 9 to 10 buses a year, you're looking at about 1.5 million dollars over the next three to four years. And
123the reason I asterisk this is right now at the federal level there's a bill floating around that's going to change EPA guidelines and would probably ask increase the cost of buses from about 150 to about 175 to 190. It just depends when they get it off the ground. It was supposed to already happen this year. It's been postponed. So, as things get postponed, I'm sure the prices are going to get um are going to increase, but that was the last number of what we got when we meeting uh we met with some of the bus manufacturers about 2 months ago as well as um some of our some of the people I mean when we network basically in our transportation department and those are some of the information that we were getting from the state
124um our state board. Mr. Davis. Yes. >> So, right now we're just gathering information to see what they're going to >> Right. do. Correct. We're going to submit all this information to TEA. And then they're going to gather everything statewide and see basically what we're looking at and that would sort of lead us to But this I think Mr. Lipson will like the our next slide. >> But this is what we're kind of going to where they're going to re- require Right. They're going to require the safety belts regardless of that's that's where they're going. How each district handles it is where that's where there's a little bit of a gray area. And then where you will eventually have to make the the determination and how we want to handle it as a district. And
125like Mr. Lipson was stating about how every mandate would be funded, the last thing that they did give us was that there's a little bit of a silver lining that there once they get every all the information back, there should be a possible grant opportunity avail- available made available based on whatever the needs of the state are. That's as clear as they made it. It's as ambiguous as you can read it as well. But hopefully, like I said, we're turning in our information. We're going to try to make sure that whatever is available, we will try to move as quickly as directed by y'all and to make sure that we get the best thing. So, I mean like I said, we're just trying show you what it would cost if we had to retrofit or
126replace without any kind of assistance, but hopefully, like I said, there is a grant opportunity available, then we can just bring that back for consideration, and then y'all would decide how you want to handle things. I have a question. Um and you and I we discussed this before about the Tier 1 buses, the older buses. Uh has there been any possibility Have we looked into the e-buses, the green buses? We have the The first time that we did look at it, um the way it was running is they were wanting us to try if they if you were using the grant funding, it was going to be to where you would replace It was two buses for one, okay? There's some talk about them changing that a little bit of the if I'm not if
127I'm understanding, but I I want to see it in writing before I actually make that statement. >> back to the subsidies and the grants and all that, I I know there's more funding available for e- uh green buses >> Mhm. uh through EPA, through the state, through all these organizations that are pushing for the green incentives. So, that might be a route to look at and see if we can, you know, just do better on the numbers in that aspect. >> There's a There's another grant that's coming out that's also through TCEQ, but uh I think it would probably best to wait to see what the state does with this one first cuz I think there would be probably bigger coffers to work off of, and it might be the best way to go. Now,
128the one that's with TCEQ is sort of it would be similar where it would be a percentage, and it was about on It was It would only hit like our 2004 and 2006 buses, which would give us about 12 of them. Which but it's still not a bad deal because it was the grant funding that was available was about $75,000, more or less. I I want to say between 60 and 75. I don't want to give you the wrong information. >> buses for one, like That was if we're doing That was on the electric buses. Those are the e-buses. We have We would have to sacrifice two buses for one on the on the electric buses, yeah. Yep. Yep. And then the only other the other thing about the e-buses is I mean, it would
129be increased investment in our infrastructure cuz we don't obviously have the infrastructure in place right now. We're all diesel driven. So, it would be that we would have to have the infrastructure in place to have all the charging >> would have like half Which is also very expensive. yellow and half green. That'd be kind of hard. I mean it's doable. The only thing is I know there's not a lot of studies on how it would impact especially what I've heard by some of my colleagues that do have it that they're in areas that are not as hot, but they said that sometimes it does affect that they don't want to use the AC as much because they've noticing that sometimes they don't have as much cooling capability and they it tends to dwindle off their
130their power. So, we would probably have to use them on our shorter routes if anything. Okay. Mhm. You know, and the main thing with those, Mr. Davis, I think if if we're running on a timeline from like a 2 to 3 year whatever timeline is, I don't know if y'all practice a lot with the fleet management to eventually find out, you know, you got these older buses which are year 2000 to find out, you know, some of the major costs that you've had on these buses repetitive which in equipment it turns out to be a lot. But at the end of the day is coming down to a very good guestimate of what, you know, you can give up versus keep on putting money into something that's already on its last wheel, you know? Right.
131I mean that's why I would shoot for the 10 to 15 year window to be quite honest with you that way because what we would be doing is basically preventive maintenance instead of some of the larger stuff that you would be doing on some of the other buses that are a little bit larger. I mean, and sometimes we do have a wait time and we have buses that are down for extended periods of time for that because we don't sometimes there's no ETA on man when manufacturers can actually deliver the parts on an older bus bus part. And that's just the way they see it and that's just sort of the way they even do it with like some of our white fleet stuff. I mean, I know dealers um they don't carry the year
132range that they used to carry and I remember this from a from a prior career to where it used to be that a lot of the dealers would have almost 8 years of parts available and now they don't. They They limit a lot of that. And then post COVID and a lot of the the downturn, I mean, they've really shortened that window. Then whatever they have, they send them out to what they call vintage parts. I mean, vintage parts can be 6 years old. That doesn't sound vintage to me, but that's just how they've limited their their scope of what they retain on their dealerships. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you, sir. We will now move to seven action items. Number one, consider and take appropriate action on the request to approve the final 2026
133K through 12 mathematics instructional material recommendations considered and selected by district mathematics teachers. Mr. Curtis? Yes, this is a recommendation to approve materials. Uh teachers already voted on it, and any questions, we have Mr. Camario. Any questions? Any changes, Mr. Camario? Um actually, no. Uh we're currently using as our curriculums, and that's what we are recommending for those particular grade levels. The only change would be in the high school, which is the envision math by Savvas Learning. And we had a total of uh three ballots, K-5, 6 through 8, high school. We had over 300 We had 332 teachers that teach math actually vote. And those are the uh companies that won. And that's what we are recommending based on the new IMAP process, which is the instructional materials review and approval process by the
134state. Traditionally, we always recommended 100% TEKS coverage, which we'll see on the next action item that you have there on your agenda. The reason we do that is that we won't have to provide supplements to the current tier one instructional materials, which are the ones we're recommending. So, this is the main recommendation, and then we have sometimes supplemental to for remediation, for accelerated instruction, tutoring, whatever you want to call it. For those kids that need extra help, but these are what we call tier one instructional materials that the state um And and you'll have a list there as well of everything that's been approved. In this particular case, we're looking for approval of these materials that are been vetted by teachers, voted by teachers, and committees to be 100% TEKS covered for the next school
135year. Thank you. Any other questions? Now, do we have a motion? So moved. There's a motion by Trustee Hiller. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Trustee Martinez. No other questions. All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes unanimous. Number two, consider taking appropriate action on the certification of provision of instructional materials survey 2026-2027 TEKS certification. Yes, that's to certify that the materials approved by the board are 100% covered by the TEKS. Any questions? Mr. Covarrubias is here to answer. I I commented previously, this is uh it's not something new, it's something that we do every year. Two years ago, the name changed basically, and the process changed a little bit. Um it's now all web-based. We submit it to the state after your approval. Again, the process that we choose uh to adopt instructional
136materials always comes to the board. We always recommend 100% TEKS coverage companies in order to avoid buying supplements. Okay? There is only one that I know of, which is the health curriculum, and they're the only one that are not 100% coverage at the state level, either. Okay? So, we are recommending that one as well. And there is a huge list of in this particular backup. And that is actually the form that will be submitted to TEA um as soon as you're approved. If we don't have this approval, then we are not able to order materials for next year once the um the EMAT service opens up in May. Go. Any questions? If not, do we have a motion? So moved. Motion by Coach Trustee Gonzales. Do we have a second? Second by Trustee Jaime Barrera.
137Do we have any questions? All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes unanimous. Number three, consider and take appropriate action on the request to approve the summer work schedule for the district service center staff and the campus administrative staff for the months of May, June, July, and August. How does Yes, this is to approve the summer schedule. Uh this is something we bring up every year. Uh any questions, Mr. Kostelny? Two hands. Any questions? >> Any significant changes that there anything to know about? We're We're keeping the same schedule as last year. This one. Can you um explain the schedule? The summer schedule? It's actually from Monday through Thursday. Mhm. Uh and it's from 8:00 to 3:00. And it begins and ends? It begins right after the year school year ends after the graduations. So, we
138get a week in May and then it goes all the way through August. Thank you. Any other questions? If not, all in favor? Do we need a motion? We need a motion. No, this one. Oh. Do we have a motion? No, we don't have one yet. Mr. Lipson made a motion. Okay, he makes motion. Uh Second. Trustee Lipson makes a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Trustee Gonzales. No other questions, all in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. Number four, consider taking over production on the request to approve resolution 2025-2026-11 of the Board of Trustees regarding designating non-business days under the Public Information Act for the 2026 calendar year. Mr. Cortez? Yeah, this is to make sure that we comply with the with the state law that we have to designate designate non-business
139days. Anytime there's a public request and any questions, Mr. Cortez is here to ask. Uh yes, Mr. Herrera. Basically, what we're doing is we're designating some days during the holidays, November and December, which will not count against us if there's an open records. Those are considered non-business days. And we're approved uh we're allowed to approve 10 business days. Yes. Okay. Any other questions? If not, do we have a motion to approve the request to approve resolution 2025-2026-11? So moved. Well, motion by trustee Martinez. Do we have a second? I'll second. Second by trustee Jaime Barrera. No other questions. All in favor? All opposed. Motion passes unanimously. Number five, consider taking up for action the request to approve change order number one for A. Hiller and Sons Incorporated on sealed proposal 25210103 on EPHS track parking
140lot and sidewalk addition as per board policy CV and state guidelines and to amend the budget accordingly to include matters related to this project and to make the final payment for services. Yes, Mr. President. This just to provide additional 27 parking spaces and sidewalk and a 1,200 square feet storage building to the to the track at El Paso High School. And and we have Mr. Powell here just in case you have any questions. Do you have any questions? Well, I I Mr. President, I'm going to recommend that we take this into executive session for discussion. Okay. There's a motion to take this into >> Yes. >> I'll second. There's a motion to take this into executive session by trustee Jaime Barrera. There's a second by trustee Lipson. Do we have a motion I mean, all
141in favor? I'll abstain, Mr. President. All opposed. We have one, two or five yeses and one abstention by trustee Hiller. We will take this to executive session once we go to executive session. We will now move to a number eight items. We will take one, two, and three together. Any questions with any of the items? If none, do we have a motion to Just one correction there, just on the item number two. Uh it's a $20 value each, not $200 value each. The type of error. It's $200 what? The value of each basket was $20, not $200 each. >> It would have been a lot more money. Yes. And it's it's an approximate value of some. There it is, for $20, not $200. >> Yes. Yes, it's for $220, and this is retroactive. You see,
142the foundation reached out to us uh just before Easter, and we wanted our kids to get their baskets. Usually, we bring the the items first to the board, but it's just to to uh make sure that we we just uh Can I use a word right now? Uh re- re- ratify, yes. Ratify, thank you. Okay. And Mr. Mejia, please thank the Mandalel Foundation for us for that >> gracious donation. Do we have a motion? I so move. Motion by Trustee Martinez. Do we have a second? Second. Seconded by Trustee Gonzalez. No other questions? All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. We have the consent items. We will now move to number nine. The Board of Trustees of the Eagle Pass Independent School District will convene in closed session as authorized by the Texas Government Code,
143Chapter 551, to deliberate upon the following matters. Number one, the board will hear the request of hired personnel to fill vacancies pursuant to TGC 551.074. Number two, the board will hear the request to approve term contracts as presented pursuant to TGC 551.074. And number three, the board will will consider the level three grievance appeal of David Hernandez pursuant to TGC 551.071, 551.0821, and TGC 551.074. I'm going to go ahead and add quickly just because y'all did a motion a while ago for the other item to be discussed in close, and that is just action item seven, subsection number five, um regarding the change order matter that will be discussed in close. Uh I'm going to say pursuant to TGC 551071 for legal advice. Thank you. >> Thank you. Do I have a motion to convene
144in close session? We have a motion by Trustee Jaime Barrera. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Trustee Martinez. All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. The time is 8:19 p.m. and the date is Monday, April 13, 2026. And the Board of Trustees is now in close session, and no action will be taken in close session. >> Mhm. >> Okay, the time is 9:39 p.m. The date is Monday, April 13, 2026 and the Board of Trustees of the El Paso Independent School District is now in open session and we will move to item number 10, number one. The board will consider and take appropriate as discussed in closed session. Is that me? Mr. President, I move to approve the request to approve term contracts as discussed in closed session. >> No, that's Oh, that's
145the next one. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yes, Mr. President, I don't I'm not on item 10. I move to approve the request to hire personnel to fill vacancies as discussed in closed session. We have a motion by Trustee Jaime Barerra. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Trustee Gonzalez. No other questions. Do we have all in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. Number two. The board will consider and take appropriate action in the request to approve term contracts as discussed in closed session. Mr. President, I move to approve the request to approve term contracts as discussed in closed session. We have a motion by Trustee Gonzalez. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Trustee Martinez. Questions? If there are no questions, all in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. Number three, the board will consider and
146take appropriate action on the level three grievance appeal of David Hernandez. Mr. President, I move to affirm the relief granted to the grievant at level two and to grant additional relief by directing the superintendent to take appropriate administrative actions to address the concerns raised by the grievant as and as directed by the board in executive session. We have a motion by Trustee Lipson. Do we have a second? Second. Second by Trustee Martinez. No questions, all in favor? Before we vote, I I have a prepared comment that I wanted to to prepared statement I want to read in reference to the matter. Um for the record, it is my opinion that the >> Mr. Arredondo. Yes. Can we consult with legal if we can comment? We were told we could. >> legal. Can I just look
147at it real quick? Yeah. >> Okay, Mr. President, for the record in this case and in in my sole opinion it is that that the initial incident reported on October 10th was not handled in accordance with board policy FFI local, which requires that reports of bullying or related misconduct be promptly investigated, documented, and addressed, including timely notifications of parents or guardians. Based on the information available, these procedures do not appear to have been fully followed at the time of the October 10th report. I believe this prac- this lack of proper action may have contributed to a sub- subsequent incident involving the same student, which occurred approximately 2 weeks later. As a As a member of the Board of Trustees of Eagle Pass ISD, I consider it essential that the board ensure district policies are consistently
148implemented and that proper procedures are followed in all matters affecting student safety. It is my opinion, and only my opinion, that this matter has warranted careful review and consideration by the board to ensure appropriate administrative actions are taken and that lapses do not occur in the future. This statement, again, represents my sole opinion and is not of that of the entire board, but is entered into the record to underscore the importance of policy, compliance, accountability, and the protection of all students under the care of for this district. Do we get a second? We got a second from trustee Martinez. No other questions. All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. We will now go back to action item number five. Consider take appropriate action on the request to approve change order number one for A. Healer
149and Son Inc. on proposal 2521003 on EPHS track parking lot and sidewalk addition as per board policy CV and state guidelines and to amend the budget accordingly to include matters related to this project and to make the final payment for services. Do we have a motion? If there is no motion, the item dies. And we will now move to correspondence and information. Mr. Maharis? Yes. Yes, on Wednesday, April 15th, 2026, Peter Piper Pizza special luncheon. It's at 12:00. Uh you're invited to attend. I think they want uh the board to attend because they're going to some pictures. Uh on Wednesday, April 29th, 2026, uh scholarship contributors dinner. 6:00 p.m. is at the SAC. Number three, uh TA requires school safety training due by May 29th, 2026. Email with link has been sent to you. And
150required annual cyber security training due May 29th, 2026. Email has been sent to you. And that's all I have. Thank you. Now we will move to adjournment. Do I have a motion to adjourn? So moved. We have a motion by trustee Hiller. Do we have a second? Second by trustee Jaime Barrera. All in favor? All opposed? Motion passes. Meeting is adjourned. It is 9:47 p.m. Thank you.