November Board Meeting

001pardon me. Uh Midway ISD board. Um if you don't know why I said Waco, then you should look it up. Uh to order. Uh we have a uh full quorum here tonight. All board members present. I on behalf of the board like to welcome everybody that's here uh in person and those of joining us online. Appreciate your interest in the district. Um y'all know what to do with your cell phones if you hadn't already done that. And brief reminder as always, it's the board's role to adopt policies, hear reports, and conduct public hearings on things like the first report, uh, adopt tax rates, budgets, etc. The superintendent and his staff engage in managing the day-to-day activities the board or the district. That's not the board's job. Um, fortunately, uh, welcome and mission statement. One of

002the things we do starting our meetings, Miss Watts was the one that suggested this back and I think it's always it's been a great thing is we rotate which board member does it. Colin Wood's going to take our uh turn tonight and it's uh the mission statement, some words of wisdom and uh Mr. Wit, the floor is yours. >> Okay. Well, I will uh read through our mission statement real quick. Uh, Midway ISD will maximize individual potential within a learner centered and supportive environment to prepare students to excel in a global society. And you know, I appreciate that it's uh it's my month to do this, but I I actually think it would be most appropriate uh if our board president had some thoughts to share in his last meeting of words of wisdom as

003a parting gesture. So, I would be happy to yield the floor if you would like to do that. Um, I wasn't prepared, but I will be very brief. Um, the board plays an important role in the district, but what it's really all about is those folks out there day in day out that are doing the real work. Um, we just up here operate at a I've heard at 30,000 ft. At Midway, we're higher. We're at 50 cuz we're better. Um we are. Um and and I all I can say is I wouldn't have been on this board as long as I've been on this board but for serving people like those folks out there, the teachers, the other campus level folks, the central office people too. and um having board members like these six um

004they're great examples of the folks that I've served with over the years. They're here for the right reasons um because it's all about the kids. >> So what I would say, Mr. Whit, >> thank you. >> Well done. >> Thank you. >> Moment of silence. Um, if we could, I'd like for y'all to engage in a brief moment of silence for prayer, reflection, contemplation, meditation, as you choose. Thank you. Not to throw shade on anybody, but probably the best part of the evening, the pledge. >> We have students tonight from both Spring Valley Elementary and Park Hill Elementary, and I'm going to let those folks take it from there. >> Hi. Thank you so much, board, and Dr. Allen, for the opportunity to lead the pledges tonight. I'm Chelsea Lippy, the proud principal of Park

005Hill. And who I have with me is a group of fourth grade students that um were picked with the help of their teacher, Mrs. Weezy. And these students were picked because they showed such incredible leadership with their studentled conferences. So they had parent conferences at the end of October, but instead of the teacher taking the lead, the students took the lead. And these students stood out so much with their leadership in that conference that they're here tonight and they're going to share with you their name. and they're going to introduce themselves and show that leadership as well as their favorite seven habit. >> Oo, >> I know. Exciting. All right. >> Love that. >> Uh, hi, my name is Reed Rodriguez and my favorite habit is uh sharpen the shaw. >> Hi, my name Hi,

006my name is Gideon SA and I and I like uh sharpen the saw. My name is Hunter Chavez and my favorite habit is sharpen the saw. >> Okay. >> My name My name is Weston Chavez and my favorite habit is seek first to understand then to be understood. >> My name is Maranella Rivera Ross and my favorite habit is think win-win. >> My name is Annie Orin and my favorite seven habit is sharpen the saw. My name is Iris Biggins and my favorite habit is think with the end in mind. >> My name is Nathan Esmond and my favorite habit is think win-win. >> My name is Evan Carter and my favorite habit is think win-win. >> Good. >> Okay. Good evening everybody. My name is Lauren Dunlop and I'm the assistant principal at Spring

007Valley Elementary School. Tonight I have members, five members of our junior lighthouse team. Um, and with them they're going to introduce themselves and their little panther that's with them that ranges from prek3 to kindergarten. >> Hi, my name is Ava Derek. >> Hello, my name is Thomas Fsburg and this is Lorenzo. Oh, >> Hi, my name is Adakus Smith. >> Hi, my name is Jefferson Mauricio and here standing next to me is Arlo Dunlop. >> Hi, I'm Josiah Maicio and this is Pen Dunlop. >> All right. All right. 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. [applause] So cute. So cute. >> Thank you >> to all the parents that brought those kids here tonight.

008Thank you all for doing that. We appreciate it very much. >> I think we [clears throat] don't have any public comments, right? No sir. >> Okay. Um, we're going to do recognitions. >> Yes, sir. >> Next before we do audit. We'll do it out of order. >> We'll do recognition and >> uh we we would rather do false presentation than audit because it flows into a whole long discussion on finance. >> Okay. Very good. Very good. Uh recognitions then, Dr. Allen. Um >> November, sir. November recognition days. uh all month is generation Texas month as well as national American Indian and Alaskan Native Heritage Month. And then November 3rd is Father of Texas Day. That would be Stephen F. Austin. And then the week of 3 through 7 is National School Psychology Week. The 8th

009is National Steam STEM Day. The 11th is Veterans Day. And I'd like to express appreciation to our campus leaders for doing such a good job of uh leading our young people through Veterans Day recognitions. 13 is World Kindness Day. The 20th is National Par involvement day. Super appreciative of our parents for their level of involvement, support, and the education of their young people. And then the 21st is National Substitute Educators Day. We'll take all those we can get. So, uh, that's the recognition months. Would you like me to move on to Friend of Midway? >> It's got your name by it. Yes, sir. >> All right. We have a friend of midway we need to recognize. Um, but and I'm not going to tell you who it is, but I'm going to read you a

010story about him that he wrote in his own words. So, when you hear the word I, you'll figure out who this is pretty quickly, but I'm going to read this to you just as I read it earlier um this month. It says, "I have been a bike rider for many years, but have never had the chance to go on a really long ride until the summer of 2011 when my daughters, Rachel and Rebecca, and I bicycled from Waco to California. It all started when Rachel, an outdoor education teacher and cycling fanatic, told my wife, Robbie, and I about her plans to ride her bike to California by herself." Robbie's immediate reaction was, "Oh, no, you're not. [laughter] your dad is riding with you. To make a long story short, we ended up making the ride

011with Rebecca and I riding on our tandem bike, Rachel on her single bike, and Robbie driving the van in support. Although there were some difficult days on the bikes, the time together and the teamwork we experienced that hot summer was one of the coolest experiences I've ever had. That was written by Pete Russ. Um, the reason I wanted to start off the recognition of Mr. Russ as our friend of midway this evening with that story is because in my mind it tells you a whole lot about who Mr. Russ is. Um he loves people. Um and when it's your own kid I guess it's a little bit easier but in some it can be a challenge. And when we come up with these ideas about how we want to pursue excellence, he supports them and

012he encourages them. He does he's not one to kill a good idea. He's also extraordinarily thoughtful and logical and reasonable and will start doing the riskreward analysis. And in this moment, he had two things he had to calculate. One, whether or not he's going to let one of his daughters ride to California by herself. And two, whether or not he wanted to disagree with Robbie. [laughter] So, he did what he does, and that was instead of looking at somebody and saying, "You can do this. Go get it." Or instead of looking at somebody and discouraging them, he hopped on the bike with them >> and they made the whole trip. And um I I I think that's Mr. Russ. He thoughtful, caring, compassionate, supportive, and when the time comes to do the hard thing, he

013just hops in there with you. And he's been doing it for almost 30 years. He just jumps in with you. It's not obvious because he does he is so attentive about the role of the board, but the conversations he has with us behind the scenes. Many of our principles in the room have have had conversations with Mr. Russ over the years about different things. a very quiet, strong, deliberate, intentional helper who's also extraordinarily optimistic. It's one of the hottest summers I've ever experienced, but still one of the coolest things y'all riding California on a bike. So, um, I would open our comments about Mr. Russ with that little story. I know we have members of the board who also would like to make some comments before we formally present you with your friend of midway

014bowl. >> One thing I got to say before we get there though, I got a bone to pick with somebody cuz I asked who the friend of Midway was and I was lied to. [laughter] She was directed by the superintendent to lie. [laughter] Um, >> all right. >> Can't trust her. What can I say? >> I'll uh I'll I'll yield the floor as Mr. Wit said. >> Colin, we start with you. They want to do the >> Sure, I can do that. First, >> I can do that. So, I um I haven't been on the board with you as long as some. Uh I was elected to this board in 21. And about a month or so after my first meeting, uh Pete and I went to lunch, which was for me more about trying

015to figure out how I really do this thing. Uh from the guy that obviously knows and for Pete probably trying to figure out who is this guy that just ran for this seat, probably a little bit of that. Um and I think I still owe him a lunch from that too. So we'll [laughter] we'll figure that out at some point, your honor. Um but uh I will tell you this, the the thing that thing that stood out to me that I took away from that conversation is um he said the he the gist of what he said was that the easiest way to do this job is to always think about students first. Always put students first. >> And um I've seen him do that in conversations. He's done it publicly. He's done it in

016our close session meetings that we can't tell you about, but he has. And um to that end, uh one of the things that we all get to do every May that I think is kind of fun. It's long, but it's kind of fun is we get to sit on a little stage next to the main stage at graduation and watch every kid walk by and talk about how great their shoes are or [laughter] congratulate the ones we know and congratulate the ones going to the military and things like that, which is great. >> Um so I think it I think that uh what I wanted to point out and what I wanted to say and I had Dr. Allen pull some data for me um on this. 1996 to 2025 there have been 14,560 students

017graduate from Midway High School >> during Pete's term on the board. >> Wow. >> And if you add to that the 8,700ish that we have now and however many early graduation requests there are I don't even know on today's, but there's always some. um it's over 23,000 students that we know have either made it there where we try to get them or are well on their way uh in your time here. And that would that would fill up Panther Stadium twice over. >> So when you think about next time you're at graduation at Panther Stadium, think about two full Panther Stadiums full of students who graduated, finished this district, moved on to success in their life largely due to the leadership of Mr. Russ uh as a board member but also as board president uh

018more importantly. So thank you for that. >> Thank you all. >> Uh few of my thoughts with uh Pete and his uh serving on the board is um first off is just your desire to serve the community. Um, you know, obviously with the number of years that you've served on the board, that's very obvious um what kind of servant you are to your community and how much you care. Uh, another one is integrity. Um, never heard a bad word about Pete Russ. The way you run meetings, the way um you just conduct yourself, the integrity is what stands out to me. Also, uh obviously your knowledge, um the way you spit out all these uh terms with the legislature or the meeting acts and those kind of things. Just your knowledge and how many years

019you've served this board. Um it's, you know, I don't think anybody else is going to ever, you know, get close to what you've done here. And then, you know, the the last basically is just your passion for the serving the kids of this district. And I think that's pretty obvious the way Collins talked and everything that um you know, that's number one with you and how you've wanted to serve this district. So, it's been a pleasure in the seven years that I've been on this board to deal with you and uh we appreciate it. >> Thank you, Brad. Thank you. Well, I I would say we're more than just friends. >> Yes. >> You're more than just a friend of Midway. I I if if we were going to really I think give it the

020right um nomenclature, at least over the years that I've been on the board, you're the father of Midway. >> Um you you you've you've had that role uh with us as the board and I I think with the with the district in a in a greater sense. And um you know I just want to thank you personally for your your mentorship, your friendship, your wisdom, um your your crazy knowledge and wit. Um you're actually funny every now and then. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. Um and uh you know when you look at uh the the really the the the long period of time that we've had really good outcomes here at Midway you you have led us through that. You've led this district I mean almost 30 years. I mean you're the you're

021the constant. We've you've like you said it's been a lot of different board members. It's been different superintendents. It's been a lot of different executives and and we've had have some staff that have been here that long. not many, but you're the constant. So, I I think that's commendable. Um, yep. And lastly, I I would just say I am uh knowing where what you're doing next, uh where what what the next role that God has for you, I'm I'm super proud of you. I think you're going to serve our community really well >> at in the ben on the bench. So, thank you for taking on that job, which is not an easy one. Thank you. >> Oh, you're going to throw it to me. [laughter] >> The first conversation I ever had with this

022man was over the phone on the subject of school finance. And I think most of you all in this room have have some working knowledge of it, but for those who don't, it's it's not something that's easy to parse. And Mr. Russ spoke to basically, you know, a PTA mom who didn't know anything about the subject and made it make sense. And that was back uh in 2013 when we were getting ready to pass the bond that built uh the fine arts edition and the MAC and and and a number of other things. And I served in a leadership role at that time. And that uh experience was what became the forerunner of our facility study committee and some of other great community engagement projects. and the conversation that I had with him and the

023support and uh information and wisdom that you provided for me at that time had a lot to do with my decision to join this board because I knew you represented the the character and the spirit and the kind of relationship uh that you were someone that I wanted to serve alongside of and we could all I think spend a lot of time talking about what we've accomplished here on this DAS, what we've accomplished [clears throat] in conversations upstairs, what we've done on behalf of the district. Uh, and I would love to take an hour and just honor you in in that role there. But what's what's I'm going to remember the most are sitting on the back porch at the Pagel's house eating shrimp boil. Uh sitting at your home watching election returns. Uh having

024cake at my house for my birthday. Some evenings at uh state schoolboard convention that that those stories stay there. Um, we talk a lot here about being this team of eight, but we are so much more than a team. We are a family. I've my family and my entire family have come to love you and Robbie dearly. You are two of my my best friends. Um, I'm going to miss you terribly in this role, but I'm so grateful for the relationship that we've had over the last 12 years. We're going to miss you. We wish you well and just love you so much. [snorts] [clears throat] >> Well, I was one of those 14,000 some odd students that graced the stage at Midway High School back when it was Midway Middle School. Um, and uh,

025the only reason Pete wasn't the one that handed me my diploma was because my dad was on the school board. [laughter] Uh, and so he handed it to me. But um so I've I've known Pete through school board being a student and through my dad who was on the school board for many years alongside Pete. Um and so when I got on the board in 2022, uh Pete was obviously one of the first people I spoke to. Uh he's he's been a a great mentor. He he's cut the learning curve for me as like my dad was great, Pete was great. Um, so I'm here today in large part because of of Pete knowing that if I was on the school board, I would have Pete Russ as the president while I was on the

026school board. And that made it an incredibly easy transition and uh something that I am am honored to be a part of and will be forever grateful. And I just also want to say that it cannot cannot be understated the impact that that Pete Rusk has had on Midway ISD and the school board and that he his shoes will be impossible to fill. >> So I don't envy the next person that takes his place on the school board for the first time in 30 years without Pete Russ on it. >> Uh it won't be the same. But, uh, Midway ISD is, um, I love Pete, but Midway ISD is more than Pete Russ, and I think he'd be the first to say that. >> But I I still think that we owe ourselves and owe

027the district and owe Pete uh the opportunity to to express our sincere thanks and gratitude for what he's done for all of us and for Midway ISD. So, thank you, Pete. Um, if we have any of our principles or directors, coordinators who would like to come to the mic, you're going to have to come all the way up to the mic so we can hear you. Um, exec team, if you want to filter in there somewhere, feel free to. I read it. Um, but I too, Mr. Russ, um, am one of those 14,000 um, students. And so I came to Midway uh in the fall of 96, which I believe also as a third grade student and which coincided with your first year as a board member. Um and so and so when I look

028and so when I I just when I look back on my time at Midway um and this time in this district, you've always been a set steady presence at some of the most important milestones in my life. um from walking the stage and graduating from Midway in 2007 um to then you approving my contract to become an educator in this district. So, thank you. Um and then again um approving a contract um as I stepped into school leadership um just your support and um your constant uh leadership has just um always been there and you've literally watched me grow from a student to an educator and I just I don't know Midway ICD without you. Um, and so I've had the privilege um of experience your experiencing your leadership as a student and as a

029staff member. And in that time I've watched this district continue to thrive and progress and strive um for excellence under your guidance. And just anyone who knows me knows that I love this district. Um I'm an Aggie. Um and so like Aggies have like this natural like people like know that they bleed maroon but really um if I bleed maroon it's because it's blue and red mixed together really and truly because I'm a Midway Panther um through and through. Um and so um and so um and so you just know what it it mean it's meant to the world to me as a student um it means the world to me now as a parent and it means the world to me as a principal to have you um as our president um for all

030this time and to serve under your leadership. Um to have somebody with your steadfast your humility um and your just unwavering dedication for over 30 years is just nothing short of extraordinary. And so um you're just the epitome of a servant leader. Um, as I reflected on your service and the legacy you leave, I couldn't help but think about how much better our world would be if there were more more people like you. Um, people who, um, lead quietly but powerfully, who show up year after year, and who choose service over spotlight, um, and who make decisions with both wisdom and heart. And so I just wanted to say as a proud member of the class of 2007 um but more importantly as a proud parent of the future graduates of the classes of 2038,

0312040 and 2043 um [laughter] that um I just want to thank you for giving nearly three decades of your life to this district for your steady humble leadership um has shaped generations but mine um including mine and um you just leave a legacy that's um uh unforgettable and you've left Midway better than you found it. So, just thank you from the bottom of my heart. You mean a lot to me. So, thank you, [clears throat] >> Mr. Russ. I was not here that early. Um, but I do have four children, 25, 27, 29, and 31. So, we're going to say that. And red and blue are separate always because Midway Panthers do bleed red and blue. And I would say you hit the epitome of that since day one, since I stepped foot in the

032district, since the day that you gave me your cell phone number and said, "If you need me, call me." Um, down to the year of COVID that we all lived through together, figuring out all the things that year and trusting us in having a graduation on June the 5th, um, in the heat of the summer. Um, and to even the beautiful evenings where we've had to shift because of weather, um, and then having some of the most beautiful nights on Panther Stadium's field ever. Um, it's been my pleasure to serve as the principal most recently, but starting as a teacher, I've seen your support as a teacher, as a coach, as an assistant principal, as a principal, and your support and leadership will be greatly missed here at Midway ISD. So, thank you for everything.

033Appreciate you. Mr. Russ, I've talked to you on the night that you shared your impending departure and told you I don't know a midway without you. Uh I've been here 27 years. Started as a classroom teacher and very early on my dad who was also in service uh on a a MCC board of trustees as a board president spoke to me about you and said that you really need to engage. I mean this is early as a teacher. We don't always engage um with our school board and and understand the workings of the district. and he told me early on, I need to engage with the school board and make sure that I meet you because you um are an incredible example of what it means to be in service to students and to a

034school district in that I would always be able to find support in you. And I've always found you approachable. Um, no matter what role I've been in in my years here, you you are very personable and and easy to talk to, easy to approach in an in an environment that can sometimes be intimidating. And I have found that in all of my roles when I've been up here presenting, sometimes nerves can take over and I can look at you and your your expression and your smile is very um comforting and um you are encouraging even in your non-verbals and have always just been such an incredible um motivation to me to continue to do the work that I'm doing because I know I have the backing of a school board that we're on the same

035team and we're working for the same purpose. And um I just think it's going to be uh such a different midway, but you've left such a legacy that the good work that you've helped to be a part of over these years is going to continue. And I know you're not too far down the road and are still going to be doing that great work. And just want to thank you so much for all the ways you've supported me personally and all of the work that we are doing for students. Um Pete, uh thank you so much for your many years of service and uh specifically in my area of school finance just scenarios very complicated and the rules change every couple years and even in your tenure you've had you know several just overhauls of

036the entire system but I've just always been impressed at the way you stay informed or diligent and being knowledgeable just the way the school finance system works um in order to make decisions um to be responsible with our taxpayers funds and be good stewards of those and invest those in ways um to best support uh the students, staff of the district. So, uh thank you. We're going to miss you. >> We'll let you go. >> Okay. >> Anyone else like to say anything? Okay, I'm starting to cry and I haven't said a word yet. But anyway, I'm gonna be I'm gonna end us and everyone's said so many of the same things I was going to say to you, Pete. One of the first things that hits out is how you are a servant. You're

037selfless. You put the kids first. So, we know this is not something you like doing what we're doing to honor you tonight because [laughter] it's it's not it's not about you. It never was. And so this is I know not your favorite thing but I am thankful that you were on this board. I knew you when I came on the board not really well but I knew you and it's an honor and privilege now to call you a very close friend. You are a mentor to me like you mentored everybody else. You were always very welcoming, very patient, >> um very kind, very thoughtful, considerate and always objective. you never had an agenda and you always put the kids first and the staff in our community and it's always been about that and everybody has

038has said that as well and you always talk about us as a team of eight. You always it was never about you and that bodess well for our future because you set us up that way and we are going to miss you greatly. But we will continue to put the students and the staff first and work as a team. And it won't be about any of us. We'll all try to be the humble, selfless servant that you have been all these 30 years. You definitely have shaped Midway in many ways, known and unknown. With your quiet, quiet leadership, your confidence, your ability to put people at ease and explain things in layman terms that people can understand. And it's just been seamless. You just you make it look easy. And I do I do pity

039the person that's going to follow you. Yes. Because that's you do have big shoes to fill. I [snorts] know you won't like this word, but besides being a father to Midway, you're a legend. Not many people serve on boards for 30 years and as president for 20. [snorts] >> Um Pam's been here almost as long as me. I've been here half the number of years, 15. Um, and you will be greatly missed as a person, as a friend, as a leader. Um, it just won't be the same without you. But you have put Midway in such a great spot. You've already thought ahead for the future students and families of Midway with things you've set up and the the way you've taught everybody on this board to plan ahead and look at the future and

040try to think one step ahead. So, I just want to personally thank you for your amazing service to Midway and for your friendship and wish you the best of luck in your new role as a judge because you will be awesome as a judge and we're thankful to have you on the bench. So, let's [snorts] all give him one clap before he talks. [applause] >> Yes, sir. You can talk now. Okay, [laughter] [snorts] I'm going to just say if I were sitting where all you people are sitting, I'd be thinking, "God, damn, I wish they'd get this over with. Get on with the meeting." Um, and my wife told me, cuz I said, "I I I don't want any of this." She said, "You need to sit down, shut up, and smile, and be gracious

041about it because this is this is not me." So, thank y'all. Um, thank you. That's it. >> Yes, sir. >> Well, we love you and we have something for you. Yep. And with all the board members, we'll go down to the floor, please. And you, too, Pete. You have to go to the get your friend to Midway. >> Oh, one other thing. I do have to say this. Y'all appreciate this. Mr. Tullus's comment to my wit. I walked out of the bedroom this morning down the hallway and my wife said, "I thought you had a Midway board meeting." I said, 'I do. She said, 'You wearing that?' And I said, "Yep." Cuz I knew somebody was lying to me. [laughter] >> I think it's very appropriate. Put those students first of those 14,000. I understand

042that's a championship shirt for one of your children. Is that right? This is the real Midway soccer state championship. One, two, three. Make sure that's the right. One, two, three. You hold it over your head like it is. >> It's a It's a World Cup right there. Let's get >> You're safe. Just for the record in almost 30 years, third [applause] two. >> Shout out to this lady who has been the wind beneath this man's wings and his president is no small job. So, can we give Robbie a round of applause? >> [applause] >> And you made the important one. You made a swearing in. Oh yes. >> And one where I know he was going to lie to you. >> Homework. >> [clears throat] >> Good job. >> Awesome. >> Put a bomb. >>

043I was waiting for [laughter] >> I always think I'm shorted if I'm not in any picture, but That's why we all have this up here. >> I do have to say one last thing though relative to the first board meeting. I think y'all will appreciate this one. Our oldest son was eight and he went to that meeting and back in those days the new board member was me got sworn in at the very end of the meeting the last thing. Not making that up. And so when the board meeting was over, we're driving home and from the back seat, Christopher, 2002 state champion [snorts] said, "And dad wants to do this. Why?" [laughter] >> I didn't have an answer. Um, >> all the kids come to that with us. >> No, no, it was just

044just our oldest cuz we, you know, we knew. We knew. you. [laughter] >> Oh god. >> Information items. We ready for that? I am. >> We got to get back to work, boss. [laughter] Yes, we do. We We still have a meeting. >> Yes, sir. >> Um, unless and and policy update 126. Um, for those who are curious, it's only 1500 pages long. So, you know, if you think Yeah. 1500 pages. Um, if any board member has a question about any information items, we'll take that up now. And if not, we will uh move on to the presentation discussion items. And I understand we're going to do our discipline report with Paul first. >> Yes, sir. >> Plan on the calendar next month. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay, that's good. >> And and this is

045first reading on those board policies. And in fairness, 1500 pages I counted, there's only 90 pages of local policy updates that the board votes on. So only 90. >> Only 90. Remind me, I want to talk to you about >> at the end of the pack from the local. >> Yes. Yes. >> Um Paul 2526 uh discipline report. >> Yes, sir. Well, Mr. Russ, I'm sorry cuz I knew I was coming up here to talk anyway, so I didn't want to come twice. Right. >> But thank you for being such a an example of servant leadership. >> Thank you, Paul. >> Have a lot of respect for you because your words and your actions always aligned. >> They were never different. Appreciate that. Uh I am here to go over the um discipline report and

046some DAP statistics for last school year. Uh the first slide we're going to look at is code of conduct violations. And let me explain what a code of conduct violation is. Um all of our behavior co uh incidents have a separate code in PES. Code of conduct is a code 21 and that is several different things that fall into that 21. Example of that is tardies, class misconduct, cell phone, um cheating, dress code. It is kind of your run-of-the-mill student misbehaves code of conduct violation. We'll talk about some different violations here in just a second, but you can see um from two years ago to last year, we went up 92 total code of conduct violations across the district. You can see the high school went down, the middle school went significantly down. And you

047may be wondering why the elementary campuses went up by so much. We found that um across the board, our elementary campuses were not always coding our behavior in our e school system. So when we were running reports and we were pulling data, there were things that weren't always in there. They were keeping track of it just in a different form. And so we really got that more aligned last year. And so that's a big part of why you see so many more code of conduct violations from two years ago to last year. I've already been looking at it for this year and for the through August, September, October. Uh we're tracking right at or below where we were last year. So, I think that can just explain the difference in why we went up so

048much in elementary was just basically a documentation of our elementary campuses on that. Um, some of the other specific incidents that we keep track of that have different PES codes that don't just always fall into the code of conduct are listed here. And and you've you've seen all this information. I'm not going to go line by line. I'll hit some high points. If anytime you have a question about something, please let me know. Um the thing that probably going to jump at you first is you see terroristic threat from two years ago was at four and it jumped up to 20. Um that is a trend we've seen across the state and students making threats. Uh that trend continued at the beginning of this year and I'll and I'll talk a little bit about that

049uh at a later slide. Uh but again like our our uh code of conduct violations, we became much more standardized across our campuses in identifying terroristic threats and identifying what they were and if it meets the penal code for terroristic threat, we coded it as such. And so that that is part of why you see that such a jump there. Um you'll also see um from two years ago 10 instances of bullying down to two. Uh and I think a lot of that goes to what we do on the front side of discipline. uh from our character education, our leader in me, and things that we were able to do on the front side to intervene with students so things don't turn into bully situations. We've already talked about this year uh the the effectiveness

050of our vape sensors, and you can really see that. And the marijuana, THC, and the ecigarette or vape uh notice in 2223 uh they were low. They jumped up in 2324. Uh 2324 is when we initiated the vape sensor. So we we caught a lot more of them whereas a year before we just weren't catching them. And then now you can see last year just how effective they were in cutting those um THC vapes and those ecigarettes instances down by so much. Uh this slide just shows a few more of the very serious offenses that you'll see out of students. Again, very very few of those that we see across our district in Midway ISD uh for things felonies, false alarm, false report, sexual assault. We just don't see uh many of those at all.

051Uh your next slide is looking at the disciplinary actions that our administrators uh issued or for all of these code of conduct violations and these other incidents. Uh we did expel three students last year. All that that was for assault on employee or assault on a student. Uh that it was a mandatory expulsion for those offenses. Um we had a decrease in DAP placements uh from 233 two years ago to 176 last year. Um and and something else I want to point out is continuation of previous year MISDAP. Two years ago that was 23. Last year that was six. Uh our administrators do a very good job at the end of the year looking at students that are in DAP to see if that placement needs to hold over to the next year. Um, sometimes

052that that placement does need to hold over to the next year. That that that's what needs to happen. But it's also sometimes hard for a student to start the year at DAP and miss some of those critical things at the beginning of the school year. So, I want to commend our administrators for looking at case by case and understanding that while it may be just for that student to start at DAP, uh, if we can let that student start at this at on their main campus, it is better for them. And that's why there was such a big decrease in that uh, over the last two years. Um you also see at the very bottom we had mandatory discipline not taken. We had four of those and four of those for ARS. That's for when

053we when we look at any discipline we have to look at intent. We have to look at the circumstances. And sometimes there are things there where the state says you have to do something but we know there's more to the story and we have to code that as mandatory discipline not taken. Uh for an art committee it's when the R determines that it's a manifestation of the student's disability and we don't have to take the mandatory discipline there. uh looking at just the number of unique students that we're talking about here. Um this is at the secondary level. Again, we had a decrease in code of conduct violations, ecigarettes, marijuana, and fighting or mutual combat. We've highlighted those kind as our target behaviors. And um from two years ago to last year, we had a

054decrease in all those incidents. And you can see the decrease in the number of students that that actually was for those uh infractions at the secondary level. And when you think about that in terms of percentages, uh, last year only 10% of our students violated the code of conduct, uh,8% at ecigarette or vape, 1% marijuana, and 1.7 fighting or mutual combat. So, um, there's a lot of great things about me at Midway ISD, but when you consider at the secondary level, only 10% of the students violate the code of conduct, that is just yet another one of those things that's great about being here. Um, looking at our elementary students, um, I've already talked about how the code of conduct violations did go up. Um, but again, it was only 46 more students. So, you

055spread that out over eight campuses. We're talking about eight more students uh, last year violating the code of conduct than the year before. And I think we can attribute some of that as well as to just the coding and the documentation of it. But you can see again the only thing we really went up in our elementary, we had a couple more kids get into a fight, but again we're only up to 19 total students last year that were involved in in a fight or mutual combat at the elementary level. Uh looking at that in terms of percentages, again 5% of our elementary students violate the code of conduct, half of our sec half the percentage of the secondary and just so so very few uh have ecigarette or vape. We had zero marijuana and

056we had just that very very small percentage of students that that had fight or mutual combat. Going to shift and talk about DAP more specifically here. Um the number of students that serve time in DAP um went down by 27 from two years ago. So we had fewer students assigned to DAP. And then we looked at these different categories of why our students were going to DAP. And of these five categories, this this accounted for 85% of our DAP placements. Uh our truency efforts are working. Uh you can see that's decreasing um every year. So we're doing a good job of getting ahead of our truency. Of course, you know, our ecigarette vape marijuana is going to decrease because of what we saw with the behavior incidents. We did see increase in physical conflict and

057verbal conflict getting students at DAP. That physical conflict, yes, it is fight, but it's also aggressive act, verbal assault, excuse me, aggressive act, physical assault. Uh, and that verbal conflict is where you'll see those terroristic threats. And we had such a big increase in those. And those are a mandatory DAP placement. And that pretty much tells the story of why you saw such an increase uh from just 4% of our placements two years ago to 16% last year was that increase in those terroristic threats. Um some of the things that we're doing at DAP, um I really want to highlight the tiered behavior system. When students go to DAP, they are there for for it's a punitive re placement. They are there because they violated the code of conduct. But one of the things we're

058trying to do is have them see that meeting expectations is worthwhile when they go back to their main campus. So we have a tiered behavior system where students have to meet certain expectations for a certain number of days and when they do they earn some things at DAP. They earn the chance to wear blue jeans instead of the khaki pants. Uh they earn the chance to wear not just the navy shirt, but a different colored shirt. They earn the chance to have a few minutes of socialization um with their peers at lunch. And I asked Mr. Fischer how many students have made it to the better tier this year. Uh 35 students and only two have reverted back to tier one. So it's it is effective in in getting students to see there's a benefit

059to meeting the expectations because when they go back to their home campus, that's what we want. We want them to they they see that they they've made a mistake, they serve a consequence, but there is a benefit to meeting expectations to going back to campus. Student discipline as a whole, a couple of things I'd like to highlight here. Um, our catapult we tip anonymous reporting system um that has been so beneficial and we we've had this before in different ways. We've called it stop it before and now it's called catapult we tip. But I think that system um gets should get a lot of credit for helping us intervene especially in bullying in fights. You'd be surprised how many times students will drop the tip that hey I heard these kids talking about getting into

060it and before they ever have a chance to do it our administrators have a chance to go get the students intervene talk to them get to the bottom what's going on. Uh this this we tip is available on every student's iPad. It's available on our district's website. Uh essentially anyone in the world could could give us a tip on [clears throat] something that's going on. And so it's really been a good tool. We also have human monitoring on our uh on our email and our Google Docs. And so if if uh if a student emails something, Bark picks it up and those alerts go to certain staff across the district and we're able to get uh get in touch with students before things happen. Um I mentioned that we had seen an increase in the

061terroristic threats last year across the state. We also saw that at the beginning of this year. And that last bullet point there, the Texas School Safety Center, uh they created a campaign that all districts in the state could use called threats are no joke. And there was a period of about two weeks there that every time my phone rang, it was a principal call and saying we had another kid make a threat. We had another kid make a threat. And about that time is when the safety center put this out and we used it. It was really more of an educational campaign uh for us to get try to get ahead of some of this. So there was a classroom component. Uh this was for grades 4 through 12. uh teachers had a very scripted

062lesson that they went through with their students. It came with a video that the safety center made for us. Um that also had a parent component and we sent that out so that parents could have very guided conversations with their students about not only the dangers and the consequences that come with making threats but then also the proper way to report those. Uh since that time, uh we have seen a a vast decrease in those and it's something we plan to do every school year moving forward now at the beginning of the school year is to use this as more of an educational piece for our students on on threats and how dangerous they can be when when they make those threats. Um also in student discipline, a couple things I'll highlight is we have

063uh the coordinator of our MTSS program, Dr. Robin Wilson. uh our our multi-ter systems of support handles our academic RTI and our behavioral RTI and and we deal with behavior RTI just like academics. Some students need a little more help uh academically because they're struggling. Same way with some of our behavior students and through the work of Dr. Wilson and her staff, we have seen a decrease in the percentages of those students across our campuses receiving those tier 2 and tier three supports. We're down to one to two% of our students uh needing those very very targeted, very very specific behavior supports. Uh a lot of credit goes to our teachers for implementing our champs and our stoic, to our behavior coaches, and to our administrators. Uh but you'll see that we have lots of

064partnerships with many organizations uh that help our students. Uh we have Baylor interns that uh spend time uh with many of our students, but specifically at DAP for students that are there for THC violations. uh they get some counseling through these Baylor interns on substance abuse, life choices, conflict resolution. Uh so we really try to marry the the punitive with the restorative uh when we're dealing with student discipline. Um any questions from anyone? Paul, I wonder if you could uh unpack the this bullying coding just a little bit more. And you you you addressed some of it about how you're able to kind of chase that down and get ahead of it. We got roughly 8,800 kids and last year reported two instances and that doesn't seem to align with public perception that bullying is

065rampant on public school campuses. So, [snorts] can you remind us a little bit about what it what it takes to code to that level? I mean, what what how what level does the behavior get to before you enter it into the system? >> Um, a a lot of what people say, I'm being bullied, uh, doesn't quite meet the definition of bullying with an imbalance of power, a single significant act or a a pattern of acts that really executes or shows that imbalance of power. What what you find most often when people say, "I'm being bullied," is somebody's being mean, and they're mistreating it. But for when we do a full-on bully investigation and we do interviews and we talk to these students, most often we find that it doesn't quite meet that definition >> of

066of bullying. >> Doesn't mean they're not being me and there's not intervention and there's not things that we do, but it just doesn't meet that that full definition. >> Well, Paul, another thing we'll sometimes find in these investigations is that what's being couched as bullying is actually two kids getting after each other. >> True. and and and that not necessarily being realized by the parent alleging will say, "Well, hang on. Let's explain to you what your student has done." And it turns out to be much more mutual. >> True. >> Good point. [snorts] Paul, with the increase in the physical violence and the verbal violence from last year, do our behavioral professionals and even the teachers you does anyone have any insight into why that has increased so much when everything else doesn't seem to

067have gone up as much as those two things have. Is is there anything >> I really can't point to one thing as to why those would increase. um the the verbal is is the terroristic threats and I think a lot of it's just students not realizing what can happen when they make those. Um it's too easy to to say I'm going to right >> or and they don't they don't see the consequence of that. So that's why we're trying to get ahead of it more and do some more education with it. >> Okay. >> Yes, ma'am. To what to what degree do we feel like we have good um sort of a good handle on behavior management sort of across the board from elementary, middle school, high school and are there and are there resources

068and training that happens and onboarding [snorts] for teachers and sort of an ongoing process for that or talk a little bit about what we do for teachers to know hey how to respond to these incidents. >> So I mentioned with Champs, we're our fourth year champs. So teachers that are new to the district receive a a Champs training. Uh also uh there's a stoic uh piece of that and that's just how to set up your classroom. Uh teachers receive that training. Uh we have behavior supports at all the campuses um except for South Bossy and Midway High School, but we also have um through Dr. Wilson, yes, teachers get a lot of support and principles are in the room. Can y'all feel about that? We also have very specific walkthrough protocols that look for nothing

069but the implementation of stoic enchants in classrooms. >> Can you remind us what stoic stands for? >> I'm afraid you're going to ask me that. [laughter] >> You got it. >> It's the class. >> Structure teaching intentional. While while she's looking at that, I will also tell you that we have our principles >> construct 90-day plans >> and the first 90 days, they overemphasize the implementation of classroom structures at the beginning of the year >> so that we get the students accustomed to where expectations are as we go throughout. So there a number not only do we never do a number of things with teachers, but we actually measure whether or not they're being implemented with fidelity. >> Great. All right. So stoit is an acronym that's used by state and civil schools which is

070our classroom management curriculum that we use. So S is for the structure of the classroom. So the teacher has guidelines that they create their structure for the classroom. T is for teach expectations. We don't hold those accountable things that we don't teach them first. >> Um the O is for observe systematically. I is for interact positively and C is for correct calmly. So, it's a procedural thing that teachers are taught to do for a behavior management system. >> That's a lot of information. >> It is, but that's something that's a training component for teachers. In addition to that, we also use a CHAMPS acronym. So, that's an an acronym for students so that they know um the conversation level. So, that's a conversation, how to get help, what activity they're supposed to be doing at

071any time. um uh what what it means when they're finished and then what it means when they're successful. So in every scenario in the classroom, whether it's small group work, whether it's whole class work, whether it's how we line up at the door, whether it's like silent time, they know what the expectations are in every situation. And so the teachers explicitly teach those protocol and so everybody knows what to expect so that students are successful because they know what to do. >> Thank you. Any questions for Paul? >> Paul, I do have one on the terroristic threat. I know that we're hopeful that the training from the state folks will help and continue to help. I'm just curious though, are most of those in person or did we get a lot of them through online?

072>> Most are in person. We've had we had one this year that was an online, but most are in person. >> Interesting. Okay. Anybody else? >> All right. [clears throat] Thank you, sir. >> Thank you, Paul. >> Annual financial audit report draft. Correct. >> Draft. Uh we missed you last year, Chris. Glad you're back with us. >> It's good to be here tonight. >> Chris, I appreciate your patience. Uh, I think you could tell by the beginning of the meeting that we want to take some time recognizing Mr. Russ and then we we're getting ready to have a whole big chunk of discussion on finance and so normally move you to the top, get you down and get you out of here. I appreciate your patience letting us do the work the way we need

073to at this. >> Yeah, my roots to this school go back 47 years >> and uh as a parent and a uh graduate actually it was my pleasure to be here. So, uh, with that being said, my name is Chris Gr with, uh, Brown Hill, an audit partner there. Uh, as you can see, this is a draft of the financial statements. Um, let me do a little explaining on that. The school district receives more than $750,000 of federal funding. So, you're required to have a single audit, which I will discuss here in a minute. Um, as part of that single audit process, we have to uh follow the OM, which is the federal government, issues a compliance supplement that guides us out on what we need to test and how we need to test it.

074That supplement usually comes out in March or April every year like clockwork. It's still not out yet. It's November. Not only is it not out yet, I don't know when it is going to be out. uh there have been a lot of factors um involved in uh the delay at the federal level. Um but until it actually is issued, I can't finalize your report. I can't opine on it. Um so what we've chosen to do is is give you the report uh go over the single audit. I don't anticipate any changes. Um they act the OM did put out a draft of what they foresee passing uh in August and we use that as our guide to do your audit. So, barring any changes, as soon as we get it, we should be able to

075finalize uh you know within a week and you will have to it will have to come back uh to the board for for your approval to sign off on it and actually approve the final u but you can do that you know quickly. You don't necessarily need a presentation although I don't mind coming back. Um with that being said, let's go over the financial report real quick. Um on page two you will find our opinion. Um the opinion states that the financial statements are the responsibility of the management of the district and that my responsibility as your auditors to express an opinion. You receive what we call an unmodified opinion. It's also referred to as a clean opinion. And so what we're really saying is that the financial statements in our professional opinion are free

076of material misstatement and that they can be relied upon by a third party. It's the highest opinion I can give. Um, and it's what you would want to see in your uh, financial statements. Um, as far as the numbers go, I'm only going to go over a couple. Uh, the first question I always get [snorts] is, you know, how we doing? Um, and I think a great indicator of that would be your unassigned fund balance in your general fund. You can find that on page 13. Um, your unassigned fund balance in that general fund is $26.1 million. So, in relation to your yearly expenditures, it's about 28%. So, it's considered healthy. The district does have a policy, I believe, of 25% is what you have to have. You're at 28, so you're over that. Uh,

077you it can't be too big. Um, so it's right in that wheelhouse where you would want to see it. So, I would consider that healthy. Uh, the second thing that people really care about is the budget. Budget drives everything at a government. It's on page 45 uh for your general fund. I would like to point out that your revenues, you took in $3.3 million more than you anticipated. Uh that's driven mainly by state program revenue. On the expenditure side, you spent $1.7 million less than you anticipated, which is good. Uh so overall, you're 5 million little over $5 million better off than what you anticipated when you drafted your budget at the beginning of the year. These are healthy financial statements. that shows conservative budgeting which is good. That single audit that I had mentioned

078earlier begins on page 66. There are two reports that I have to issue. The first one it is called a yellowbook report or a gas letter, government auditing standards letter. And what it is is that it says that we're taking a look at your internal control over financial reporting and compliance with various laws, grants, and regulations as it relates to the audit the entity as a whole. So what does that mean? Um, these are the things that you think of when you normally think of an audit. We're looking at uh what controls do you have over cash? How are you protecting your buses? How how are you comp protecting your computers? You know, what processes do you have in place to make sure you know that your internal controls are where they need to be?

079And I'm and also that you're in compliance with, like I said, various laws, grants, and regulations. Happy to say nothing came up during the audit that would lead us to believe that your financial statements would be material misstated. So that's a clean bill of health. Second letter is on page 68, very similar to page 66 in that we're talking about internal controls and compliance, but this time it's with the grants that we did the additional test work on. Uh we don't look at every single grant. Um we identify your high-risisk grant programs or your large grant programs and then we do additional test work on those. Uh, in case you're curious, we looked at your child nutrition cluster grants and your title one program. Again, clean bill of health. Nothing came up uh that we

080feel would cause you to be out of compliance with those either one of those grants. So, that's great. The second document that you have um is a letter to those charged with governance, which would be yourselves. There are certain things that I have to convey to you. As your auditor, I've just chosen to put them into a written format rather than verbally going over all of this stuff. I will say that the letter talks about our responsibility in relation to the financial audit. Uh planning and scope of the audit, compliance with ethics, um things that we look at prior to the audit, um whether or not we had disagreements with management, which I'm happy to say we did not. Um whether or not you use other auditors, which I'm to my knowledge you did not.

081Um so again, it's a standard letter. I just have to communicate with you and I'm doing it written. Uh, this time I'd like to field questions over either document or the audit process in general. What do we do? What do we don't do? >> I take it, Chris, since this is a draft, once the feds issue what they issue, >> this will need to come back to the board, >> correct? >> For the board to then act on. >> Yes. There's a actually page one. The reason why the opinion letter is on page two is because on page one there's a certificate that needs to be signed by the board and uh that has to be signed and you can't sign it until it's finalized. We can't finalize it until we get this stuff from

082the federal government. And again, you can do it at a as a consent part of the consent agenda. You can we can come back, you know, Wesley can take there's several ways we can do it, but we wanted to get this out there. A lot of our client, as you can imagine, all of our audits are piling up because we can't get anything out the door right now. So, um I believe I have 10 meetings on December 15th. >> Um so, that should be fun. [laughter] >> Questions for Chris? >> I know. Go ahead. I know the answer to this, but can you explain what it means to be independent and why this report from an independent CPA firm should have uh plenty of credibility for anybody that might question the financial standard? >> Sure.

083I there are certain um part of our ethical standards are that we are independent from the board. Um I don't have a family member on the board, no one that was assigned to your Now I'm a graduate, but that doesn't that doesn't mean that I'm I'm conflicted. Um yeah, we can't basically have ties to the board. Even teachers or or a um our firm would not send someone who's, you know, wife is a teacher or husband is a co, you know, we just wouldn't do it. Um so we want to be independent. That's important because you want to, you know, have somebody that's outside of what you do every day to look at what you're doing to make sure that what you're doing is okay. And uh in particular, our firm audits probably 60 to

08470 school districts at this point. So we look at quite a few. Um, >> talk about sort of dragging their feet on this a little bit. What in terms of the work that you do in this 70-ish page document for us? What I mean what what percent of that are sort of governed by these OM changes and what is I mean because a lot of this it seems like is numbers and things you're going to look at anyway, right? So, how much is that really affected? >> Does that does that question make sense? >> Yeah, totally. Uh, it only affects the single audit which is the very back part of the report. those two letters that I talked about at the back. It only deals with that portion and it deals with what we have

085to look at when we're looking at a specific grant. So, you have two grants that we have to look at. They issue rules. There's like 14 subjects that we have to look at and they'll be listing, okay, you need to test this, this, this, this, and this. Most of them aren't going to change. We've already done the work on what we anticipate is going to be needed. Um, so as far as a I don't know the compliance work could be actually larger than what you might think 10 15% maybe. >> The large majority of the work that's here the numbers and and the rest of it is really not dependent on the you just can't sort of finalize. >> Again I didn't want to get into it but if it's not out by next February

086what we'll do is issue your financial statements separately and you can have a separately issued single audit and that's the route that I would recommend that you go. That's fair. So, the financial statements themselves have just has no bearing on that. So, >> Pam, did you have a question? >> Oh, I was just going to say thank you for your patience. >> Oh, again, like I said, I was I was kind of glad I was here. So, >> you got to be here on a historic night. >> Exactly. >> Sorry you had to sit through it. No, >> no, it's fine. >> That's just my personal perspective. is man. Um, no other questions. Thank you, Chris. We uh we'll we'll await uh y'all being able to tell us these are final and have the board

087act on it then. >> Sounds good. >> All right. >> Thank you. >> Monthly finance report. Mr. Brooks Wesley. >> Okay. Good evening, members of the board. Uh so our financial report for uh the month ending October 31st. Uh first page there statement of general fund revenues expenditures and changes in fund balance. Um just kind of a um you know bird's eye view. The percent of our budget we've spent uh so far is 33% uh versus last year at this time we're at 34%. So uh seem to be trending well there as far as uh our expenditures spent as a percentage of our budget. Um, also uh this month I um included enrollment reports um by grades span for each month um at the 1 of no November. We're down about 90 students from last

088year, 88 from the elementary. U 15 increase at the middle school and 17 decrease at the high school. Um as we kind of discussed last month, um our enrollment is down, but our water still is strong, maybe even a little above what we budgeted. Um so we're we're looking um okay there on our revenue. Um also budget amendment 26-7 in the consent agenda is our last um payment on our arbitrage for our 2020 uh bond issuance uh which basically just restricts the amount of investment earnings that we can earn um on our bond funds because it's a taxexempt financing and so we'll remit that payment to the IRS um in the spring. Any questions on the monthly financial report? I know the superintendent's going to talk to us in just a minute about M budget

089alignment and I know there's a pigraph in there and it's got 85% of it is payroll cost just from your perspective Wesley I know that's a capture of a particular year but just over time that 85% number of in our M budget is that about what we typically see is 85% of That's payroll cost year in year out. >> Um it's creeped up um the last few years. Um you know it was closer to 80. Um but it's it has creeped up to to 85 the last couple years and especially this year as we you know anticipation of the bond moved a lot of the you know whatever maintenance type related expenses that we could um into that that bond package. We moved out of the M budget. So um it is it is higher

090um probably this year than it has been. >> Okay. Thank you. Other questions for Wesley? All right. Thank you, sir. Dr. Allen, I think you have the next three agenda items, sir. >> Yes, sir. And I'm going to ask Wesley to hang tight for just a second because what we're going to do is talk about imino budget alignment, but to sort of set the table for that. He's going to go through the state, our current like the current state of our budget and then when he's through walking you through these slides, I'll actually just kind of pick up where he leaves off and talk about what it is we're going to try and do to solve the problem more or less. So Wesley, if you'll run him through these and I'm going to start making

091my way that direction. >> Okay. Um so first off, I wanted to start uh since we had Mr. Puit here talking about the fiscal year 25 uh budget. Um and uh we finished the year in fiscal year 25 with um a surplus of $224,000 to the general fund. Uh we actually budgeted our adopted budget for fiscal year 25 was a $2.4 million deficit. So I just kind of want to give you an idea of of um why uh what that variance was made of and how we're able to kind of make up that that deficit. Um and largely it's due to increase in revenue. Our state and local revenue we budgeted 72,937,000. You can see there on that left-handed column under budget total revenue and we finished the year at 75.6 million. Uh so that's

092a positive variance of 2.7. Uh some of that is due to Wada. So we budgeted uh 10,962 finished the year 11,113. So that increased our tier one entitlement and also our tier 2 state a because that tier 2 portion remember it's a guaranteed uh yield per watt. So if our WADA increases that tier 2 portion increases as well. Um and then uh also one and a half million um it's kind of a mouthful there. I could barely fit it in that in that uh that line, but it's additional state aid for adjustment of limitation on tax increase on homestead of elderly or disabled. So we adopted the budget before we knew the state was going to provide a hold harmless uh for the portion of our tax levy that um for those that were over

09365, their tax levy was frozen, but with the tax rate compression, it actually went lower than what it had been frozen at. So we missed out on that tax revenue uh not thinking that the state would make that up. But then after as the year progressed they did come up with that hold harmless and that's that 1,477,000. So that's kind of um and you know bird's eye view there of how we kind of made up uh the deficit for last year. Um again and Mr. Puit uh mentioned this as well our fund balance target in August 2019 we established a policy of maintaining a minimum unassigned fund balance of 25%. Um he did mention um I think he mentioned that we finished the year at 28%. Um and that's different from I'm showing here at

09432%. Um that's because in the actual um audit report if we adopt um a deficit for the next year. So we had the 3 and a half million uh deficit for fiscal year 26 um they assign that in the report. So they set that aside basically saying okay this is assigned to make up you know that deficit. Um I didn't use that in the calculation because I don't think we'll finish with a $3.5 million deficit. So, I removed that um uh and or actually I added that back to the unassigned amount. So, that's what I'm showing as 32% um for the fiscal year 2025. And if we do finish the year with a three and a half million deficit, um then our general fund unassigned fund balance at the end of fiscal year 26 would

095be 26.68%. Kind of a worst case scenario there. Uh this next graph um shows that that green trend line shows our fund balance as a percentage of the general fund. Um and so you can see there the 2026 that last column um is the 26.68% if we did finish this year with a $3.5 million deficit. Um that orange uh u that [clears throat] orange bar there is our general fund expenditures. Uh so we budgeted 97.9 million this year and the unassigned fund balance is in blue there at the 26.1 million. Okay. So that brings us to um kind of a look at our general fund kind of uh going into next year. Um just kind of an early look at um kind of making some decisions and adopting the budget for fiscal year 27. Uh

096you can see there's four columns here. Uh the first column is just our adopted budget for the fiscal year 26. You can see at the bottom the three uh.491 million deficit. Uh the second column are um savings that have already been implemented. So um actions that we took subsequent to adopting the budget um that we are projecting to save in the current fiscal year. Um that first number 170,000 that's what we're projecting to um uh increase in revenue over what we budgeted uh because of the slight increase in Wada. Uh the personnel savings of $500,000. Those are positions that we um were able to eliminate just through attrition um after the budget was adopted. And then the $100,000 increase there for other expenditures is a combination of two things. Um our insurance premium increased $200,000

097uh after we adopted the budget, but then we eliminated $100,000 in travel cost after we adopted the budget. So that's $100,000 increase there. So, $570,000 um that we've already hoped to realize in the current fiscal year um due to those um steps that have already been taken. Um the third column there is potential adjustments for fiscal year 27. Um and there's a a sheet behind here that I kind of um uh detailed some of the items that we've talked about uh before, but ways that we could potentially save um some funds for next year. um the 7-day period for middle school. Um and that kind of depends on, you know, how many positions um are eliminated from that. U just um just the way things uh and that that may take a couple years to

098actually realize the full 600,000 there. So I put 300,000 of savings for next year. Uh the change in the middle school CTE courses. Um you can see there um seventh grade speech and health for high school credit change seventh grade local credit ad class middle school robotics to high school one and change pals to CTE community service and so those are increases um in revenue. You see on that the 305,000 on the previous slide um of the increase to state revenue because we would have more um uh uh weighted funding for those classes than the way they're currently coded. Um and then uh reducing e four ESL facilitators 288,000 um and then eliminating AVID is a combination there of saving a couple FTEEs as well as their travel and supplies expenses. So that total there

099of the 1.1 million um you can see is a total um in the previous slide there of the fiscal year 27 adjustments. So, uh, starting again with our adopted budget for this year, uh, the savings that we already hope to realize for this year of the 570,000 and the potential 1.1, um, for those adjustments for next year, uh, then we'd be looking at, um, you know, very preliminary, but a fiscal year 27 general fund budget of $1.8 million deficit, um, you know, before any increase in personnel costs. >> Obviously, what you laid out there 627 assumes water flat personnel cost flat. >> Yes. >> For both of those. Okay. Wesley, I guess one question that comes to my mind and maybe other folks have the same question is the additional two plus million that we

100saw sort of after the fact that put us 224 into the good. We don't see anything like that happening for this fiscal year, I take it. >> No, sir. I I'll keep you, you know, apprised of our Wada. You know, we've had two six weeks under our belt and, you know, it's looking a little higher than what we budgeted. Um, so that could that could change, you know, if our WADA increases or looks better. We could get more state revenue. Uh, but no, so we don't anticipate there's no hold list or anything like that hanging out there that we're unaware of. So, [clears throat] how are you are you incorporating any of the new voucher system into our 2627 budget and how that could affect us the changes? No, >> no, >> just going based

101off our current enrollment and growth. Okay. >> Uh the only the only thing I'd say to that is we're keeping our enrollment flat. >> Okay. >> We don't expect it to grow. >> Okay. >> Um in fact, the demographer says it may dip a little. The last several years though, we've dipped in ADA, but we've increased in WA. So, we've been kind of >> our enrollment's been going down a little bit, but the funding's been kind of flat. >> And so, we're assuming we're going to be on that same trend line. >> Okay. >> Anybody else? You ready for Dr. Allen? >> Yeah. And so, I'm just going to Thanks. I'll take the click, man. So, I'm just going to I'm going to speak from here because it's easier for me to look at y'all.

102And I'm going to kind of transition. What I want to emphasize before I start into my part of this discussion is that projection next year of $1.8 $8 million of um negative to fund balance assumes a bunch of changes on the M budget expenses and revenue that I'm going to talk you through here in just a minute and several slides, but also no increase in compensation. And we've been doing around 2 million a year in compensation increases. And that's um made more complicated in the 2627 budget by the fact that the state gave a subset of our teachers a between a 5 and 10% increase. And so we have to weigh through what we think the impact of that is over two years. And also understand that that makes a 2% GPI more expensive because

103it just it just artificially increased personnel cost. And so Mr. Russ, you asked earlier, have we always floated around 85%. Part of that bump that you have seen is additions to uh like programs like special ed to meet the needs in those areas, but it is also because there was an infusion of cash on the personnel side that the state added $2 million to our personnel cost with that money that they infused. And so it just changes that ratio a little bit. Uh Miss Wing, can you pull that presentation up? What I'm going to do now is explain kind of what it is that we want to try and do to align our budget to bring us to a place where we are looking at um trying to get that budget down to a $1.8

104million deficit. That's the next presentation. Um, so what this does is it explains how we're going to try and accomplish that $1.1 million of savings. And so before I get into too much detail on this, I want to talk about the challenge. So for the 2526 budget, we have a projected deficit of 3.5 million when we started the year. We're already whittling away at that, which Wesley's already explained to you. The 2627 carries that deficit forward without an increase to compensation. We expect our enrollment to be flat. HB2 from the 89th regular session did almost nothing to address operational costs and we have little reason to believe that we'll see additional funding from the state uh in the second year of the bienium. They have indicated early on that we might get additional funds in

105special education. In my conversations with Lisa Cochran and others, the state has advised us to budget flat and not expect a significant infusion of new cash related special education funding. Okay. This year we added about $300,000 to the revenue because we get $1,000 per new evaluation for students, but outside of that, they've told us to just ex to maintain flat and if we get any extra money to be thankful for it. So again to your question earlier, do we expect another big infusion of cash like we got because of the hold harmless? We do not. And that's based on what we're being told by the people who tell us what's going on with budgets, especially on the sped side. Um but there is the potential for us to pick up some revenue there. Um and

106so we're monitoring that as we go. Um, the other thing uh I would mention is that we have considered and discussed numerous options, some that might be very disruptive to our programming and undermine what makes Midway Midway. That's a terminology we throw away throw around from time to time. Midway is a very, very special place. But y'all, there's a thousand school districts in the state of Texas. What makes us unique? We think it's a number of things and we want to try and hang on to those despite the fact that we're being underfunded from the state of Texas with regard to what it takes to operate programs for students. And so what follows are what I would describe as initial initial steps that begin to partially address our M budget concerns. Those concerns are driven

107by more than just the situation that is in front of us right now. But it is also driven by a realistic understanding that our enrollment projections are flat for next year and then tick up slowly after that and by the fact that we have a governor who says he's uh running for reelection on a platform that would assume the elimination of all property taxes without having communicated a plan for how to replace the school revenue. And so in a time of such uncertainty, uh we feel like the prudent thing to do to make sure we continue to position oursel for success is to be prepared to go with uh the assumption we're not going to get any new revenue. In addition to that, we have significant challenges facing us around teacher certification. Starting in 27,

108our ability to use the district of innovation tag on certain subjects and in certain classrooms will be removed from us. What that means is one of the primary strategies that some school districts have been able to use to keep their classrooms staffed is being removed from us at the very time when we have uh less budget than what we've typically had in Pubed. And so the competition for fewer people is going to increase. Okay? And they're phasing that in over years. But um the the requirement that we have fully certified teachers in certain places is going to be one for which there's no exception. We've already seen what that looks like in special education. They've never been able to DOI and we've had uh conversations over the years about what we've had to do to

109manage compensation on special education positions because the districts in the state are fighting for what's a relatively small pool of qualified people. Um the other thing I would add at this point is that what I'm sharing with you tonight has um the results of lots of thoughtful work that's involved everyone at the executive level uh has also involved some of our uh campus level leaders. It has received feedback and uh input and discussion with our directors such as Daryl and fine arts, Brad Shelton in athletics. This has been kind of kicked around and discussed and has gone through lots of eyes and ears. This isn't just the world according to a small group of people. And and although some of these things we're going to talk about tonight may be somewhat discomforting, we do feel

110like it's the most bang for your buck in terms of accomplishing about $1.1 million worth of savings overall while at the same time um maintaining what it is to be midway and not overreacting, right? Um with that additional money coming in the 2425 year, we know we're sitting at 32% fund balance. You heard Wesley say earlier if we hit that for all 3.5 million, it would only take us down to 26% fund balance. So, we have a little room to to to work with. Um, I'm just not particularly optimistic that we're going to see our situation improve dramatically in the near future. All right. So, that's that's a lot of setup to get you here. So, what are some things that we need to do to reduce expenses? We want to reconfigure middle school schedules.

111And what we're talking about is taking the middle school from uh basically what's a nine period day when you include lunch down to uh a a it's an eight period day instructionally. we would take it down to a seven period day. What you see in front of you is what a sample, and I use the word sample here very intentionally, bell schedule for what that might look like. Um, each class would be extended by 5 minutes. We think that's good for instruction. The advisory would be extended by 11 minutes, which I'll explain more why in just a moment. And then a two-minute change in the overall school day. Um, but that's what it might look like if we did this at our middle schools. And what would the impact be? You would go from three

112electives to two electives for sixth graders. They get reading, writing, math, science, social studies, two electives, and in this scenario, it would be pre-athletics or PE or some other choice that fulfills that requirement. Could be fine arts or some other choice. And then advisory is built into the bail schedule. It's not a schedule per se, but it's built in so we know we have time for it. This eliminates one elective option for sixth graders. [clears throat] This replaces an elective option at seventh grade with professional communications/ lifetime wellness. it would count as a high school credit. And that's very important to note because what it means is on the back end when the students get to high school, they actually pick up an elective. So they would lose one in seventh grade, but they get

113it somewhere else in high school. So it's almost a swap. That class would receive CTE weighted funding and contributes to the revenue generation conversation we're going to have in a moment. So when you're trying to balance a budget, you try and reduce expenses and you try to increase revenue. this m this one change could do both for a typical seventh grade student and in eighth grade there'd be almost no change. Um so a little bit of change to advisory time and class times but they would maintain three electives. We would use advisory to uh cover some of the content that we normally cover in leader and me. We would use it for mediation and t and tutoring. We have requirements. It's called we call it 1416. It has to do with the House bill, but

114that's our nomenclature for it around here where we're legally required to provide certain tutoring to students, but it would give our principles some flexibility to do some intervention for kids who don't require tutoring, but who we know need additional help if they're going to be successful in um being uh on level in their learning. We would cover our digital learning requirements as well as Panther Pathways. And so what we'd be doing is removing some locally required content to give kids back some choice in that schedule so that as we go down to a seven period day we minimize the impact on student electives. This is also where we would build in some of those additional supports VSSL dyslexia 1416 etc. That's why we would be adding that 11 minutes to that advisory time. Um, it

115would make sure that every child is getting what they need individually and give our principles some more flexibility to use their staff to help make sure that our students are getting what they need to be successful. So, what are some of the pros or gains from this? More instructional time and more time in leader me remediation and addresses student needs in a much more specific and prescriptive way. It improves mental uh health. So, our students come out of elementary school, they walk into middle school and they immediately have to juggle eight classes. This would take us down to seven. It allows for uh improved focus, reduce stress for students and staff, we think, and reduce the overwhelming aspect of transitioning from fifth to sixth grade. All students would pick up at least one high school

116credit in middle school. We think that serves them well. It counts in all endorsements and programs of studies. So, the course they would be picking up for high school credit would uh be good for any endorsement or any program of study. So, it's universal. Every kid needs it and can benefit from that. They can reach the advanced level in some of our CTE courses by 11th grade instead of 12th. There's two benefits to that. And one is it would generate additional CTE funding, but two, it would allow so many more of our students to get those externships. We talk about this all the time at the chamber, Mr. Tullson. talk about how do we get more kids to a point where they can engage in those realworld hand-on experiences where they're actually partnering with business

117leaders in our community. One of the challenges we have is getting our young people to that advanced level by 11th grade. This would open the door to that uh nice and wide. Um it gives an additional elective at the high school. Speech and wellness will be eliminated from the GPA calculation because they're taking it in middle school. So it takes that GPA calculation and smooths that out a little bit. I actually expect the commissioner by law he's supposed to give us a uniform GPA GPA calculation anyway we have no idea what that's going to look like but it rem it would remove that piece of variance from the discussion. It may help us with kids who need uh eligibility for release uh time or work at the high school and it allows for growth in

118high school electives without adding FTEES because the kids pick up an additional elective because of some of that trade-off they're making in seventh grade. Um there may be uh some others to look like. Equity, number of courses taught between middle school and high school teachers helps with teacher fatigue, y'all. Nine periods in a day at the middle schools a lot. More students will complete 14 16 hours in the summer. Um when they know that part of what they'll do is potentially lose an additional elective if they don't get that done in the summer. We think it'll incentivize getting that work done in the summer, which is better for them because it brings them into the school year um at the appropriate level of learning. So they're more prepared for the grade level they're walking into.

119students will be taking so many filler classes. One of the things we hear occasionally from middle school parents is that kids are taking classes just to fill schedules and sometimes they express a little frustration with that. This is actually more efficient use of electives and FCEES and um it would increase our funding for speech and wellness and you know there's financial savings with it. Like at at the end of there, I want to be very very clear. One of the the biggest pro, the biggest gain in this is that we're looking at some cost savings, which I'll line out for you here in just a minute. Some perceived issues, loss of elective option in uh one in grade six and seven, they would lose an elective. And there is some uh concern about the effective

120on our elective courses. Are we going to lose some electives over this? Very likely, yes. You you can't reduce a period without losing some electives. That's what brings about the personnel savings. What I would say is that in many places what happens is the schools decide what electives are being cut with an exception that I'll explain here in just a few minutes. What reduce in a period actually does is by student and parent choice they tell us which courses they value and then whichever ones don't make are the ones that gets reduced. So they are actually kind of choosing by the courses they sign up for those things that they value instead of us making those decisions by fiat uh at the district level. We need to make sure that we're in a good shape

121on how we align the content advisory to make sure we're providing for ESL dyslexia and the 146 hours. We're going to have to work through some certifications with our staff so they can teach the speech and wellness. Um and then just looking at our staff alignment. Are we going to be aligned in making sure that we have all the staff with the certifications they need to do this work? That's part of the reason we're wanting to have this conversation tonight. We need to start having this conversations with our staff as quickly as possible to start preparing them for these shifts. The financial impact is conservatively $600,000. Now, in the budget that Wesley showed you, he's estimating 300,000 in year one. What that does is give us some grace to work with our staff on getting

122these certifications. that gives us some grace in working with our staff on accomplishing this 10 pos 10 position reduction. Um, but y'all that is uh we have hundreds of teachers, classroom teachers between the two middle schools. And so 10 positions uh feels like a lot, but the impact on the campuses is less than 10% or right around 10% and can pick up $600,000 in an ongoing way to the M budget at the district level and in a way that doesn't necessarily um eliminate those things that we think are most valuable to our parents and students. It will cause some uh change in courses. There will be some electives that don't make or don't make at the same level, but those will be determined by the selections of our kiddos and it gives us some time

123to manage what the implementation of that would look like. So, it's very sensitive to our staff as we go throughout this process. ESL model, uh, this is a redundant service. Teachers are required by the state to be ESL certified if they teach a self-contained or uh, reading language arts class. Best practice is to serve students in contentbased learning instructional setting, not a pullout program. Currently, we have certified teachers in the classroom and ESL facilitators that work with students in addition to classroom time. We believe we can reduce the number of facilitators due to the redundancy of this program. I will also tell you that when you look at specific population reductions across the state of Texas, the greatest reduction of a pro of of student demographic types across the state of Texas right now is

124in the ESL bilingual population. Um so this is an area where we think that we may even begin to see a reduced level of need over time. Um the role of the facilitators that we maintain would be to assist with ELPAC meetings and paperwork processing. Make sure our Telp pass state testing is thoroughly supported and organized and we can facilitate this type of program with the two FTEEs. This breaks down what this looks like financially. We have six ESL facilitators and there's what their salaries look like plus benefits and travel. Number of students enrolled. We could reduce that expense from $433,000 or $1,000 per pupil down to about 144 $144,000 or $337 per pupil. Um this is a service that we we basically overstaff. We can bring this in line and we think we can

125do this without undermining the ability to provide our students what they need to be successful. uh the elimination of AVID. So, I said, you know, with one exception, we're not choosing the program to cut. Y'all, this is the one. And this is a full circle moment and kind of a hard one for me personally. When I was high school principal here, Jennifer Allison and I worked to bring AVID to this school district. And now I'm standing before you telling you I think we need to eliminate it. And there's several reasons why. Um you can see here, it is one of the more expensive programs that we currently run in the district. Um the FTE reduction is not shown at the middle school level here because that's already baked into what we reflected as part of

126the reduction of a period at the middle school level. But there's $219,000 that can be saved here. It's one of the most expensive programs we run when you consider personnel program cost and then some of the embedded tutoring cost and other experiences that the students have. Um it's about $1,000 per pupil to run this program. And that's one of our more expensive per pupil expenditures. Uh you can look at that and look at the ESL and it is one of the more expensive programs that we want run per pupil. Um the other thing I'll note is that this is a program that's had shrinking enrollment anyway. I've talked to Miss Smith about this. I've talked to Dr. Mezer and Kayla about this a little bit uh and Miss Brown. Um you know this one this

127one stings a little because we feel like there's some things that this does for kids. Um but it's such an expensive program. It's already declining in enrollment and we can do some of the things that AVID does for our young people without having to buy the full program. And this is one we just think we need to trim back a little bit. Um so if you look at all the expenses, just the expense reduction, you're looking at up to $1.1 million of expense reduction with those changes. And that's that's assuming the full 600,000 on the personnel. Okay? But you're looking at potentially up to $1.1 million in expense reduction in those changes. Realign our ESL model, uh eliminate AVID, and reduce the period in our middle schools. Um I'm not through. I want to talk

128to you about what we'd be doing to generate um revenue. But I do want to talk I do want to stop at this moment and just make this point clear and I know y'all know this because you've been studying and paying attention to this. But I've been saying for years back to my days in Marble Falls that if there was not a change at the state level and the way they think about per people funding, we were going to start to see it hit school districts. Um and and what I would share with you is that we are blessed that we're in a position to have this conversation and not be talking about reductions that are significantly more difficult. um the decisions that other school districts in the state in some cases have already had

129to make. There are a number of things that we discussed that we're not bringing before the board right now because we don't want to lose what makes Midway Midway. We don't want to lose the important and critical services that we provide to young people that we think is part of the reason we're an A-rated district. It's part of the reason I still have confidence saying I think we can get to a master's level of achievement of 60% of our students. And so this is not an easy conversation to have, but of all the things that we could be talking about when you look at the types of uh adjustments we're talking about for picking up a potential $1.1 million savings or to put that another way, a 1% general pay increase for our staff. I

130I'm glad that we're not having to talk about other things at this point that the day may come when we have to. And and so if this conversation is making anyone uncomfortable either online or over my left shoulder or in front of me, what what I would say is um th this is not this shouldn't be news to anyone. I I I've been saying for years now that this day was coming and and you can put $4.1 million of revenue into the district, but if you don't do it in ways that actually solve the problems we're having, it's it's not money well spent. And so, um, I I would encourage anyone who's frustrated with this conversation to take that frustration and channel it into primary elections and channel it into general elections and channel it

131into the way that you think about um what's going on on the state level and the way that we need to be advocating for public schools. >> As a question on the reduction >> Yeah. Yes, sir. >> You mentioned several positions sort of elimination and moving around. My assumption is, you know, we feel like the the really good teachers in Panther Pathways and AVID and other things might be able to transition to speech wellness and some of these other positions, right? So, we're through it through positions that open up. It's not likely we'll actually lose a lot of people. It's just we'll be >> re rep. >> What I can tell you is I'm very confident that if someone wants to work in Midway SD, we'll have a position for them. Some of that would

132be through attainment of different certifications and some of it's just through attrition in other areas. m much of our staff is dually certified or is able to do other things or as we have conversations with them individually can pick up certifications. We have hired at least 130 teachers in this district the last two years each of the last two years. Okay. We need teachers. We just need them in different roles than some of the ones that they're currently filling. >> That's a great way. >> Yes, sir. It would be done through attrition. Absolutely. Yes, sir. >> So, question on this, Dr. Allen. This is 1.108. And in our board packet, we've got one that's 1.114. >> Yes, sir. >> But it only has out of the 600 for eliminating the 10 positions at the middle

133school going to the lesser periods, it only allocates 300 of that and gets to 1.14. >> It's because it's included the uh revenue generation, which I'm going to get to next. >> Okay, that's what I thought. I just wanted to be sure that I >> we're kind of halfway through my presentation. This is >> I'm sorry. I I was ahead of you. >> So, uh, so this is so that says reduced expenses. So, in other words, we'd be reducing the expenses by about 1.1 mil. So, how do we get to that that bigger number? Well, we got to generate some revenue, >> right? >> And here's how we think we can do that. All right. So, we're going to increase revenue. Middle school CTE courses is one of the the big drivers on this. So,

134we offer professional communications, which is a term for speech and lifetime wellness, to all seventh grade students for high school credit. That would generate about $174,000 each year for three years. Okay? So, that's a pretty big revenue generator right there. We can change some of our seventh grade local credit and a science and orientation to high school credit. Uh, that's a principles in a food and natural resources. That'll generate another 21,000 in CTE funding. We can offer middle school robotics. That'll generate another 34,000 in uh CTE funding. And then change middle school and high school pals both to a CTE weighted class called community services. And you can see it adds about 30,000 at the middle school and about 46,000 at the high school. And when I say change, this is almost literally as simple

135as changing some PES numbers and then looking at some certification alignment. we would have to tinker with the uh delivery of some content on the PAL's courses, but the impact on students on this front is is relatively minimal. Um if you have questions about that, uh where did Jessica go? Yeah, Jess can give you some specific details on that. But this is just a way that we can take some opportunities that we have with the way that CTE has been realigned and do some different things with the way we code some courses and offer some programs and generate some additional revenue. So if you take the speech and health, the a science, the robotics, and the PALS, that gets you to the 305,000 and Mr. Russ, that gets you to your number. >> Gotcha. >>

136The other thing that we're looking at is some virtual school options. Um, I have not included these numbers in the calculations at all because we won't know till we know, but it's just to tell you about some work we're doing. So part of what happened in House Bill 569 is that we are now allowed to offer a virtual hybrid school and offer virtual program. Um we have identified a platform and are actually currently using it right now that we think would give our kids some opportunities to take some virtual courses. We can offer those courses in an online platform and actually be able to charge people to be able to take those courses who are not currently at our schools. All right. So, for example, we're looking at a program that would theoretically allow us

137to offer uh courses to students virtually. Think core courses, but then come take our elective courses in person. Well, that would generate additional funding for the school district because it's an it's an enrollment bump. Think about a student who's currently at home paying for a certain type of online course like a homeschool offering. Okay? Something like that. Well, they might find it uh attractive to come take our virtual hybrid school if they knew they could take their core courses at home and then come to Midway High and participate in choir or band or participate in our CTE programming or participate in athletics. They might find that attractive. That would allow us to pick up revenue for those students. Okay. And so we have an opportunity to offer a virtual hybrid program that that would allow

138us to maybe pull some kids in who have chosen options other than Midway ISD in the past because they can kind of blend their offerings for the young person. Some of it at home through a virtual platform and then some of it using our some of it with our in-person electives and extracurricular offerings. This also includes AP courses, foreign language courses. It's all NC2A approved. We can also use this for credit recovery as well. Dr. Dejima did a deep dive in researching this and and came up with this offering. Um, a hybrid program would allow for some face-toface as well as some virtual courses. And uh, we think that we want to roll this out this spring for students in grades 6 through 12 and start off at the secondary and see if there's some

139young people out there who might want to come uh, be involved in what we're doing in Midway ISD through a blended learning program. I know of parents right now who are frustrated with us, homeschool parents who are frustrated with us um for not allowing their students to come be a part of our athletic program specifically. This would give them a way they could do that. They could still do uh schooling from home on our virtual platform and they would be able to also participate in some of our curricular offerings. It would also mean that they would graduate with a midway diploma and they would get the prestige that comes with that. So this might be a really good offering for some folks who are currently not choosing Midwayd but would be willing to come take

140advantage of one of these programs. >> Would we get the same for a virtual student or hybrid student as we do a in-person student? >> Yes sir. And in fact and I want to I'm facteing with you on this but it's based on enrollment not attendance. So if they're just enrolled we get we get that money. >> Get 100%. Yes sir. Then u and it's no cost to the to the to the student or their family, right? >> Well, so there's there's two two scenarios. >> And one is if they enroll in our virtual hybrid program, no sir, that's no cost to them. >> Okay. They would we would get state funding and that's what pays for their experience in Midway ISTD. I should say no more cost than any other student. I want to

141be careful how I say that. We do have some program fees associated. If you take some of our CTE courses, there are certain program fees that go along with that, but they wouldn't be charged anything that a student attending our regular everyday classes fully in person wouldn't be charged. We are also looking at ways that we can offer what I'm calling allocart offerings to parents and that could be anybody. Students currently enrolled face toface or it could be people who just want to pick up a course or two. So imagine you're a homeschooled student but you want to take AP calculus. We would make that available to you in an allocart way. You wouldn't have to enroll in Midway. We would just let you log on to our virtual platform that you would pay for.

142>> Okay? >> Because we wouldn't be getting state funding for that. Is that So, if we get state funding for it, we're not going to ask the parent to pay for it. If we're not getting state funding for it, the the parents going to need to pay for that >> for potentially for a homeschool family, they're uh I mean, they could do whatever they're paying for whatever homeschool curriculum goes away because if they're a full-time virtual student with us, then >> Yes, sir. It's a huge savings for them. >> If you're a homeschool parent and your school is and your students, you're paying for a curriculum and you're willing to enroll in our virtual hybrid school, you can do that at no cost to yourself. >> And last question, is this limited to to kids

143in our boundary? >> No sir, not exclusively. I will tell you on the athletics piece, you still have to go through all the debt committee processes. Okay? So like all the rules on extracurriculars and whether we're talking about athletics or marching band or anything else. Uh you you can't just like if you live in Laga, you can't just get in our virtual hybrid and just start running track for us. Like you still have to go through all the debt committee piece. Got you. >> Um but outside of that, outside of those exceptions, we anybody even outside our district could take some of these courses. Yes, sir. >> Testing. I have to assess you here. >> Okay. Did y'all hear what Becky said? You have to come in person for your state assessment. If you can

144get here for state assessment, you can do it. >> So when we minister to the start, so you kind of want to be within reasonable driving distance. >> So when you say they have to be here, they've got to show up and take it on a computer >> face to face with us. >> Dr. All assuming there's some out of pocket cost to parents in the scenario. Could they use their voucher aotment for to pay for that? So, um, in a scenario where you, let's say you've got the homeschool student and they just want to take like an AP class, yes, they can. And so, Miss Vic, when you're asking earlier about have we included the impact of vouchers on not in an enrollment perspective, but we have tried to come up with some creative

145ways that there are people who may be receiving some voucher funds that we can pull back into the district with with the virtual hybrid program, which is one way of doing it. and then kind of this allocart virtual platform and and I will tell you y'all know because y'all sit here and you hear this every month we have student we have teachers who abandon contract from time to time >> and our ability to find teachers to fill those spots is becoming increasingly difficult that will do nothing but continue as the state rules on uh the uh inability to use DOI increases some of these virtual platforms allow us to satisfy that need. I I have grave concern about our ability to continue to find certain teachers in very specific subject areas because we can't find

146them. Now, >> Chris, you mentioned on the on the higher the ability for, you know, those those families to do some core classes at home and then come take some of our fine arts athletics or CTE and that's an enrollmentbased funding. I'm assuming there's also a lot of increase for the CTE that those kids take, right? So that hybrid kid that comes and takes the robotics class is going to get that multiplier as well. >> Yes, sir. Yes, sir. If they if they come on and so to Mr. Tulsa's point, do they get the full funding? That full funding includes any weights they would get for courses that they take with us here in person. They don't get weighted on the virtual platform, but they would if they came in person, right? So, if it's

147like a weighted CTE, we would get that. Yeah. I >> see Jesse nodding your head back there. Anything to add? Uh this is just to give you some sense for other places who are actually kind of ahead of us and already talking about doing this. These are places that Becky researched and others on her team have been looking at and kind of their roll out um uh primarily to give you some comfort in the fact that we're not way out on the limb what we're talking about doing. We're not the only ones. Frisco's also now spinning up a program similar to this. We we feel like we need to do this so we're not behind the game in it from a competition point of view. Like I feel like if we don't do this pretty

148quickly someone else will be and we're going to lose out on those opportunities for those students. >> And and y'all I you know I hate to sound like I'm beating a dead horse, but I bleed red, white, and blue like everyone else here. I think Midway has something great to offer. And I think that the more chances we can get young people to come be a part of what we're doing around here, the better off it's going to be for those young people. So, I believe this is a a significant benefit to young folks to start experiencing what it is to be part of Midway ISD. >> How do we advertise it? How do we go get the students? >> We start with telling our board and an open meeting. So, and then we go

149we go we have a pretty aggressive campaign that we'd run this spring and some surveying. Uh there's a timeline that we've actually developed on getting some feedback from our community and trying to learn a little more about this, but we're we want to go aggressively with this and we want to roll this out this spring to start in the fall. >> Yeah. When we talked, we had this at a training meeting a month or two ago. So the basics of this, we talked about I assume one of these areas that's been hard for you to attract teachers is is foreign language. >> Yes. >> And so we had talked about maybe even as early as this spring being able to push some of foreign language classes to current students on the [snorts] spot. Is that

150still one of the directions? >> In fact, not because we wanted to, but because we we had a teacher abandoned contract, Spanish teacher. We're currently using it at River Valley right now. And we're learning some stuff in that process like um inevitably we do something new, you learn a little bit from it. And it it is it was not if I could have picked a course to roll out, it wouldn't have necessarily been Spanish because it has some inherent challenges. But we're in the process of rolling that out right now. Um we we didn't have choice. So again, none of this is included in next year's budget because it's unknown and we we are conservative, right? But like if you if you imagine we got, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of eight students in

151a full-time like eight full-time students, right? And eight courses, we'd get 6215 per student. We have to pay for the uh course, the online course. we're going to make $3,000 on it for about every eight kiddos. Uh and then you can see how that breaks down if we looked at some sort of alleart options as well. And so it could it could generate meaningful revenue. Um but again, we haven't put that in any of our budget projections because we're we're just not we think people will be attracted to this, but we have to advertise it and and see who signs up for it. I I think part of the reason I wanted to mention this as part of this tonight's discussion is if if we're going to talk about having to make some kind of

152hard decisions, I think we owe it to the board and the community to also demonstrate how creative we're trying to be and tackling these issues. Um, you [clears throat] know, when all you have is a hammer, all the world appears to be a nail. And and we're trying to bring more than just a hammer to the problem. Okay. >> Some of our pledge kids said tonight, we need to we're sharpening the saw. Yes, we're trying. Yes, ma'am. And there are some opportunities here. Part of what the 89th session did was give us some opportunities that we didn't have before. >> It shows that we're trying to think outside the box and think ahead of to to new trends or new ways of revenue like you said, solutions, not just problems. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Do

153you have a does this program have a champion? I mean, do you have a an internally identified champion to help put this together and run this? And is the answer Becky Odima >> is mostly with with >> I just know that we asked Becky to wear a whole lot of hats. So >> yeah. Well, and we're we're aware of that and so that's probably when we talk about this. Becky can't do it all by herself, but she's done the the heavy work on the number crunching and the researching and whatnot. Here's a here's how the numbers would play out depending on enrollment size. We would need someone who can oversee this program um as it grows. But we're we are being kind of methodical on how we come at that cuz again we got to

154see how many people get interested. >> But um you know Becky will get it off the ground. So >> what did she say? She'll get it off the ground. >> Thank you. >> I mentioned earlier we have a timeline for implementation. Here it is. We would launch interest survey community this like quickly like we're already behind that a little bit based on feedback make some decisions on cost and setting roll out an interest form find out how many people really want to do this and might be interested have someformational meetings and if all goes the way we think it could open that program in the fall of uh 26 >> and so excluding ing the virtual. So, ignore the virtual for a minute. Uh, we could increase our revenue by $35,000. And that's mostly in

155the realignment of some CTE courses. Um, I call this discussion a budget alignment discussion because that's what we're talking about is it's a it's about alignment. It would be easy for someone to go, "Oh, this is just about cuts." It's really not. It's about much more than that. It's about a reconfiguration of our structure. Um, a a great business leader once said that your your structures perfectly aligned to get you the outcome you're currently getting. And we're getting a lot of really good academic outcomes and a lot of good uh extracurricular outcomes and other types of outcomes for young people right now. But we're also another one of the outcomes we're getting is debt. So, we got to tinker with the structure to try and maintain as many of those positive outcomes as we can

156while reducing the growing debt that we're dealing with. Uh we're also doing it somewhat conservatively though uh because we know we're not going to hit it to 3.5 million. We always get some positive variance. So, we're trying to be thoughtful about not overreacting as well. So, if you look at all that potential total change to fund balance due to expense and revenue generation, you're at 1.4 mil. So, I want to talk about one additional operational change, and this isn't so much about funding as it is about other pressures we're feeling as a school district. It's preK3. Okay. Um, there are a couple challenges with preK3. Um, it's not required by the state. We currently have four classrooms of it. It requires four teachers and eight pair professionals. It is only funded half day for qualifiers.

157and we provide um and you can pay tuition for the afternoon. One of the things embedded in HB2 is that we are no longer going to be allowed to charge tuition for certain pre um preschool services if we have other preschool providers in the community. We're basically not allowed to go headto-head. Okay. So, so that's one challenge. The other challenge is that it is staff rich. The way we currently do it, we're about budget neutral on it, but all that staff that we're using here might help us fill holes where we're going to have to have certified teachers in the future. Okay. It is a disproportionate amount of um administrative burden at the campuses. It's a disproportionate amount of administrative burden at the campuses. And so for a lot of reasons, the sustainability of prek

158over time is is something I have significant question about. The final thought I would add is this. Our enrollment is projected to go flat and then start to bump back up. If we eliminate prek3, it creates space. space that we can utilize for preK4, which we expect to expand in other classrooms as we deliberate what the best way to deal with the potential enrollment growth that we may be seeing in the future. So, there's a there's a lot of reasons to think about preK3. And so, it allows for early intervention. The behavioral load on the campus needs a lot of support. So, when I talked about disproportionate administrative burden, that's what I'm talking about. It's not currently at every campus. Each classroom requires three staff. Students do not typically have the academic or development requirements

159and they are in many cases not potty trained. Um, Becky and I were talking about this the other day and in some of those classrooms who have 22 kids, preK3, and because they're not all potty trained, they're going to be changed or they're having to be pa bathroom break. And you do it. By the time you do that in small groups, you you you may spend an hour just rotating through bathroom, y'all. And I I know that sounds like I'm exaggerating, but by the time you start with kid one and get to kid 22, they're not all sitting around for an hour doing nothing but that. Like clearly we're smarter than that. But that's how much time staff may be working just on that. Um and then like I said, it's becoming significantly more complicated

160because of rules in HB2. So right now it's about break even. We actually make a little money on it, but we actually think we should cut preK3 as well. We have every intention of eliminating preK3 because it's just not sustainable on the current model for a number of the issues that I've outlined for you and and could benefit the district from a space utilization perspective. All right. We [clears throat] also think we should eliminate our transfer fee. Um, we would still have all of our same transfer criteria. All right. But we think we should drop the transfer fee. We think if we drop the transfer fee because we are such an attractive district, it might get more people interested and want to transfer out of other districts and come here. We also think it might

161slow down some of the um creative paperwork we get that people use when they try and come in under statement of residency or power of attorney or other ways. And we think it might just clean the whole system up and increase our enrollment and and and frankly all increase the level of transparency we get with parents when they're coming in. Right now we have 144 out of district transfers. We get $1,000 in tuition per kiddo. That's about $144,000 per person. This does not include the students who are coming here a as out of district transfers because they are uh an employees child. That would stay the same. If you work here, your kiddo can come here with a few exceptions. Um, so we we actually think that we should drop the transfer fee um and

162allow these and see if we can get more kids who are interested in coming to school here from neighboring campuses. >> We get full transfers. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Thank you. >> We get full WD. >> Yes, sir. And we have the space form. Yeah. >> Transfers. transfers from out of district go where we have space. Like we tell them where >> Yes. Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. So when I say we have space for them, we have space from them everywhere. But we have seats that we have 24 seats. I'll tell you that. >> So we get 24 kiddos. We've already broken even. We think we'll pick we think we have the chance to pick up more. And we would advertise this as well. There's no longer a financial barrier to attending Midwayd if

163you meet some other criteria that we evaluate before we approve a transfer. It's also worth noting that as part of our DOI plan, uh, if a student violates the conditions of transfer, we can send them back to the district, they're supposed to be zoned to at any point during the school year and and have done so. We don't, you know, we don't like to do it. It's kind of hard on kids and families, but you come here under a certain set of conditions and you stay here under a certain set of conditions, >> right? >> Yeah. Good. >> All right. What questions do you have for me? That's a lot. Um, but we we need to be able to start talking about this and talking about it quickly, mostly for the point that Mr. Wit

164was making about making sure our staff don't hear this and and frankly get scared and panic. They're going to have a place here if they want to be in Midway. And we're confident we can work them through that. That's part of the reason we only show $300,000 worth of savings in the first year. If we have to maneuver some things over the course of 24 months to get there, we really want to respect those who have um really put a lot of time into Midway. Um, and so we want to try and do the best we can to make this transition as manageable as possible for our staff while also accomplishing the uh, Mino budget reduction we have to accomplish. I told anyone and everyone who listened to any of my bond presentations that we

165had to put some money in that INS bucket and because of the goodness of our voters, we've been able to do that. I also told them we were 3.5 million in the hole on the INS side and we were still going to have to take that challenge on. Circling back to the conversation about uh having to make budget cuts and you mentioned that uh the state has told us to expect special education funding to remain flat. >> Yes, ma'am. I would just love us to uh go back a few more months and be reminded of what the state passed in May as far as school funding and what the special education amount was that we were promised >> 800 million. >> Yes, ma'am. >> And we're going to see exactly what >> we've been told

166to expect flat >> which is nothing. >> I want to be Look, you know I'm no friend of the state. Okay. But I do want to be fair additional. >> I want to be fair in this communication. They've told us to expect to to budget for flat um and then see how it plays out. They have to put in a tiered system that's based on intensity of services. They've never done it before. I think the state's trying to make sure they cover themselves. I think we may see some additional revenue. I don't I I would be shocked if it's $500,000. >> I would be shocked if it's $500,000 because we're looking at an eight tier system going from highly intensive services. So when you think about Midway ISD, we have about 300 kids who are

167highly intensive need children. And then when you think about our speech only kiddos that are just receiving speech therapy and we have about 300 of those kids, well, we get a higher weighted tier for our speechon children right now than we do for our highintensity kids, but they're going to flip it. So right now, Midway ISD, we don't know what that's going to look like until we break it down by the actual tiers, actual specialized staff, and actual numbers, hard numbers. And so that's going to impact what we're doing. So conservatively, we want to budget flat because they're going to take numbers and data from this school year to budget for next school year. And we're holding right now. and they're going to take those numbers from every district in the state. Okay? And so

168when you think about intensity of services and challenges that students present, you can imagine that there are other districts who may have a a much higher percentage of kiddos who need more intense services. >> Yeah. >> Um and and I say that with some reservation. Um one of the things we're kind of known for is great programs for kids who receive special education services. So, I don't really know how that's going to shake out, but the uncertainty is why the state has told us to start flat and then if you get additional money, you know, you get additional money. To your point, Miss Watts, though, when they were selling that bill, they told us the money was going to come rolling in. >> Yeah. That's and that's the point I want to challenge the perception

169that all of a sudden we're receiving all this extra money and it's a lot more complicated and a lot more certain uncertain than it's >> voted to be. >> Yes, ma'am. Sort of like when they said that all the teachers were going to get a big raise and all turned out not to be nearly all. >> Right. Yes, ma'am. Other questions. >> May I continue? Mr. addressing. >> Sir, >> I had mentioned earlier that with if anybody sat still for five minutes, I talked to them about the bond program. Um, and that because of the goodness of our voters, we were able to put some money in that INS bucket. And so, all I'm going to do is briefly go over 2025 bond election results. Um, the uh the election was uh legally canvased yesterday,

170but I just want to go over some high level numbers to put this stuff in perspective. So, approximately [clears throat] 8,249 ballots were cast in 2019. um that was 6,812. That's about 22% of registered voters in both elections. Okay, so it's about the same percentage of people who were registered to vote in both those elections based on some numbers that we've been crunching. Um here's how they turned out. So for Prop A, which was the general construction, we had a 5 about a 59% pass rate. The the lighting was about 57% and the instructional tech was about 58%. All three passed. Like I said a second ago, the election results were canvased uh yesterday at noon. Thank you to the board members who were able to help us do that. We actually have a signature

171page for you here in a few minutes. We need the rest of you to sign. Um we had about 22% turnout of all eligible voters. Uh about 29% of our parent group. That's an increase from the 2019 election. Okay. So we had more parents turn out. And then 71% of our staff turned out. That is also an increase from the 2019 election. So, um I I I will tell you those numbers actually disappoint me greatly. That 22% ought to be closer to 100. All those numbers ought to be close to 100. I I do I do not understand in a world where there's so much rhetoric about people who say they want to have a voice in their child's education that the voter turnout on this isn't better. Um but on on the positive side,

172those are improvements from what we'd seen in years past. And so, you know, we felt like our part participation uh wasn't bad, especially given it was an off-year election. Like we weren't voting for the governor this go around. How' the state do? There were about 65 districts that had 110 propositions. 50% passed almost exactly. Two of the three MSD propositions had a percentage pass rate in the top half of the state. The highest pass rate in the state was 78.4%. The lowest was 50.1%. The average was 58.99%. And so, how do we do? How did we do in terms of like community support for public schools as expressed through a bond election? We did well, y'all. We did pretty good. Um, you know, I'm I should be up here saying we did a great job

173and I'm excited and yay. Yes. I will tell you when you're talking about an $83.5 million bond program that had zero penny increase to INS tax rate, um, I I would have hoped it been better, frankly. But we had some headwinds. This is the first uh ballot that said this is a tax rate increase whether or this is a tax increase whether it legitimately turns out to be or not. That's very confusing language. Um we had some other challenges just with some opinions about the bond especially in some specific precincts around town. Um and it's just it's becoming harder and harder and harder to have conversations about bond passage in general. So uh when you look at us compared to the state, we did very very very well. When you look at us compared to

174Logic, I um that that's a little different. So this should have been a no-brainer. We could have done 170 million at zero pennies. Um but that gives this board and future board some flexibility as we do anticipate what might be potential growth in the future. >> The one caution is the next legislature is talking about moving it to a twothirds >> supermajority. Yes, sir. >> To pass a bond issue. >> And I just want to say something about that very briefly. I wasn't going to go there, but it's interesting to me. Their theory is that that's going to bring down passage rates and keep property taxes low. And that may be what happens. There are other states that have already done this and they do find it very very difficult to pass bonds. Um what

175I would tell you though is that what that's going to do is shift the strategy dramatically at school district levels about what it's going to take to get bonds passed. And my fear is that in some communities, especially very large communities, um that what you're going to start seeing is discussions about what do we have to add to the bond to get people to vote yes. And if you're not careful, you're going to have the same thing happen at the municipal level that happens at the national level with that we call pork barrel. And people are just going to stuff things into bomb programs to get yes votes because you got to get to 66%. And I'm fear my fear is that it may have the exact opposite result of what the state thinks it

176might. Now, uh I might be dead wrong on that. I say all that to say this. Um, I would be interested in seeing if that same level of um, excitement about supermajority for bond elections would apply to other elections that they contemplate in the state of Texas on a fairly regular basis. I would like to see whether or not vouchers could get a super majority of approval from the state of Texas right now. >> So, it we we kind of pick and choose our battles pretty interestingly, Austin. questions about this. >> You brought this up and the percentage of voter turnout. I hope it's become clear out of the conversation that you've had with us tonight that the future of Midway and public education in general. It's going to take a significant turn based on

177our elections next spring. So, if our parents and our staff want to make sure that Midway stays midway, we all need to be very thinking very carefully about how we're going to vote for state leadership and then get to the polls and vote that way. >> And and the issues we make a priority, the issues we just choose to make a priority. Yes, ma'am. You know, I know that we last year at this time we were talking about new um new candidates for House District 56 and inviting some folks to campuses to walk through and to meet with us, answer questions. I know we have new people running for Senate District here as well. So, we may want to consider is it worth that conversation to get to know some of them to get to

178know us? >> I've already engaged those conversations um kind of casually. I've not invited them in to walk the campus yet to try to get past the first of the year, frankly. But yeah, but there they've already been I've already I've already had multiple conversations um with certain candidates about about some key issues, some we agree on, which is awesome. So, that's really good. Yes. Before we get too far off the bond, I do want to say um you know, when you're superintendent, you kind of become the face of something like that. Um and when it passes, it's like you wipe your bra y'all. The amount of work that staff did on this, my executive team, Wesley, Paul, Ashley, Becky, the amount of work that they did on this, I was getting there. Emily, non-stop

179all the time. Emily on answering questions, trying to be responsive. No one No one can say that we weren't transparent. I mean, everything's out there for anyone to take a look at. And then that was a pretty heavy lift on Emily's part, making sure we got it all up there and on the website and all publicized and this that and the other. Um it was it was a very very heavy lift. Um these things always are. I chuckle when people talk to me like I think these things are a good idea. We do them because the kids need them, not because they're fun. So um but the kids need them. Um and so I'm I'm proud of the fact that we have a community that still believes in our children and still wants them to

180have a great educational experience and they still believe in Midway ISD. So >> yes. And I want to say thank you to our community to voting yes for all three bond propositions. I really appreciate that and the support means the world to us and all that is due to what you just said. You did a ton of work, Dr. Allen. So, thank you for all the hours you put into it, which you were able to do thanks to all the great support you had from your team. And so, we really appreciate all the extra hours y'all did to make sure this passed and and our community was well informed. Well, a special shout out to you >> to vote for Midway and that campaign and the signage that get that got out and the Facebook

181page and all all that you did, Jordan, and your team. Uh >> yeah, >> a lot of community support and and we couldn't have done it without without all of you and all of that. >> You know, I'm really glad you said that. I have actually done a lot of talking today. I mean, a lot like even before tonight and I'm getting tired of hearing my own voice and I'm anxious kind of to get back to my seat. Um, and so my brain was going kind of fast. To not have mentioned Jordan Barry in the pack earlier was a significant oversight on my part. I'm sorry, Jordan. Um, thank you, Miss Watts, for taking a moment to highlight that. I I really am tired of my own voice. Do y'all have any other questions? >>

182I have a question. I want to follow up on what Pam just said. I think but for the work by the executive team and by Emily, by Jordan and those folks and and the transparency is the right word for it. what's to me so frustrating and recognizing I'm not out there on social media. I uh y'all saw my lovely bride here. I I let her do all that and I work through her on it and all all I can say is is but for all of the work that all the folks did and to be as as informative and transparent, it's tough to fight that social media negativity when they're not worried about factual accuracy or the truth. And it's it's very disappointing that we get that many people that get sucked down that rabbit

183hole when we're constrained to be nothing but just truthful and and for most most of us, right? Not advocating for it, just being truthful about it. So, thank all of y'all again. Jordan, you particularly, sir. [clears throat] >> Yarn signs delivered. I know. >> Yeah. [laughter] Um, you already did election results. Um, so we're pending board vacancy update. Mic. >> Yes. Um, I just wanted to let everyone know that of course the application window closed a little bit ago or a week or so ago and we have a good healthy number of applicants for our future open seat. And we will be doing interviews on December 2nd to make that decision. Very good. Thank you, ma'am. >> Uh we actually have a um required item here. >> Yes, sir. >> Our first report. Uh Wesley,

184is there anything you want to say about it? Uh before I mean the board knows about it. It's in the board packet. This is nothing new. I think 23rd year. Um or I can go ahead and open the public hearing. >> Yes, sir. >> All right. So at this time we will open the public hearing on the first report. Uh that stands for the financial integrity rating system of Texas. For those that want to have some idea, we would invite any member of the public that wishes to speak to the board on this matter. Please come forward. Well, that's double the number we had last year. [laughter] So, uh, not hearing from any member of the public. We will close the public hearing on the first report. If y'all have not looked at it, it's

185in the board packet. It's is as always been the case with us. An outstanding report. Uh, Wesley and his team do a great job on that. And to Jonathan's question, it ties into in part the independent audit. And if you really have any question about how well is the district functioning in a financial s sense, there's 23 years worth of those reports you can go look at. So, uh, consideration items. We've got the consent agenda. We have minutes from our October meeting, a number of early graduation requests, two new courses for the high school, and our budget amendment that Wesley referenced. Does any board member wish to remove any item from the consent agenda? And if not, I'll entertain a motion to approve. >> Motion by Mr. Alford, second by Mr. Tullis. >> All in

186favor say I. >> I. I. >> Any opposed? >> That motion carries unanimously. >> Adopt a resolution to cast official votes. This is um this is a change from what we've done in years past, folks. >> Um Jonathan, you want to explain it? my room. [laughter] >> Uh the the easiest explanation is uh now the uh the state requires the appraisal district uh board of directors to be on an alternating cycle. So there are two three spots up I don't remember which. Uh and then um everyone else is on um a two-year uh cycle after this. And so it's it's not all five at once. It's staggered now. >> Three that are elected popular. >> Y that's right. >> So we have the uh the names in the board packet there. And one of the

187significant changes from this means that before we've always had enough votes to elect a member and and now because all 5,000 votes get cast, but they're not spread among the five different folks, it changes the dynamic a bit is is is the bottom line. So, um, any recommendations, Jonathan, on who we cast our votes for? I do not have any recommendation. I think all three I I recognize all three names. Um I think all three are very qualified. One of the things that I would say about this folks is is is and recognizing that um I'm not going to be here in the future to do this, but my view of it is is we ought to support the other entities that are trying to elect somebody that serves whether it's on the Waco City

188Council, the Waco ISD board, the Mlennon County Commissioners Court. support those folks. And and the reason I say that because when it's all said and done, the big four, five, if you include MCC, because of the way the funding flows to the Mlennon Central Appraisal District, it's based on your tax base and your tax collections and everything. And I guess if Governor Abbott does away with that, it'll be interesting to see what happens with all this, right? But that said, um we for the number of years because we contribute probably now roughly 20% of their budget have thought it was important to have somebody on that board that's on our board that's paying attention to where our taxpayer money goes. So, uh, to that end, when it comes time to be able to nominate Jonathan

189and vote for him, we're going to need other entities voting for him, just like Waco ISD and Mlennon County do for Mr. Patton and Mr. Smith. >> So, is that a is that a motion to split our votes evenly between Mr. Patton and Mr. Smith? >> We have a motion by Mr. Wit. >> I'm asking if that was a motion. Yes, that is a motion that we split our votes between Mr. Patton and Mr. Smith. >> Then I second. >> All right, I have a motion and a second. Any further discussions, questions? >> If not, all in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? >> That motion carries unanimously. >> I guess I should have asked first. We have an even number of votes cuz if it's odd, we couldn't split them evenly. >> 86.

190>> Okay, good. Yes, that's right. I see it. Okay. >> I wouldn't let [snorts] you go down that path, Colin, if otherwise. >> I do know how math works. >> I do know. >> Would not have let you. Um, we're going into close session for something, Dr. Allen. >> Yes, sir. On personnel. >> Okay. Superintendent's communication then. >> Uh, well, it's actually kind of tied to personnelish. So, two things I want to mention fairly briefly. One, we spent a lot of time telling you how much we appreciate you and we know you hate it. and we're mad at you for leaving. So, we're going to do it again on December 9th here from 5:30 to 7:00. It'll be a communitywide event. We've already put this on Facebook. There are some individual mailings going out. Um,

191but we are having an event here where we're going to spend a lot of time doing what we did tonight, only more and worse. Um, so we're looking forward to that. We sure hope you come. >> I'll tell my wife to give me some Xanax. >> Yes, sir. Whatever it takes. You're the judge. She won't be on the board at that point. [laughter] No, you won't. Um, but the day after we will be recognizing Deian Kypus, who you might have noticed is retiring at semester. Deian's been with us quite a bit of time. There are others in here. Martha Manard's also stepping aside and and Marie's retiring, but we're bringing her back halftime, so she's not really going anywhere. Um, but you know, we we've Dian's been with us for quite a while, and I

192just want to mention that we'll be doing a reception for her the day after. Paul, did you want to say anything about that? like uh what what's the time on that? >> 3:45. >> Okay. 3:45 to 5:15. It'll be right back in here the day after your Here's the thing. We're not sure anyone's going to come to yours, so we want to have something do leftover food. [laughter] >> You said the >> No, just joking. But anyway, uh no, but we'll be doing that the day after right here. And so we, you know, we look forward to honoring people uh for their service to the district. um all sort of joking aside. And so we look forward to those two big events. We're excited about it. And um the the one from Mr. Russ, it

193is communitywide like 30 years on the board, 20 years board president, plus all the other things. We we hope that everybody comes and gets a chance to say something to him and getting his good graces because before long he may be overseeing a court in which you are a plaintiff. So anyway, [laughter] we do we do hope that people make time to come by at least say hi. So anyway, that's it. Super communication. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. >> Okay. >> At 9:27, then we're going to go into close session under 551.074 of the Texas Government Code. And we won't be doing anything when we come back here, but you're welcome to stay. >> Y'all have a good night. >> Yes. [laughter] >> [clears throat and cough]