001Thank you all for being here tonight. If you could please stand as Trustee Hassell leads us with the invocation and pledges of allegiance. Almighty and merciful God, we ask your guidance and blessing upon this board, students, parents, patriots, teachers, and administrators as we assemble here this evening in the common pursuit of this great nation's wealth, our children. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible. The time is now 6:01 and the meeting will now officially be called to order. Good evening and welcome to this regular board meeting of Northside Board of Trustees. Before we
002call our first agenda item, the board would like to take just a moment to briefly review some of the rules for conducting our meeting. The order of business for this meeting is set out in the agenda. One item that you may notice on the agenda is the consent agenda. It includes things that are considered routine and are recurring in nature. All of the items listed under the consent agenda will be acted upon in one motion. And if there's a consent agenda item that anyone here would like to address, please sign up to speak to that item and we'll pull it from the consent motion and discuss it separately. The purpose of this meeting is to conduct board business and for that reason it is held in public. It is not a public forum, however, we
003do provide the opportunity for the audience to participate. If there's anyone wishing to address the board regarding citizens to be heard agenda items, you must complete a sign-up sheet prior to start of the meeting. If there's anyone that would like to address the board during an agenda item, we ask that you please complete the sign-up sheet and indicate the agenda item you would like to address. These are located at the entrance to this room. This is so that we do not overlook anyone who would like to speak to the board. We will review the rules for addressing the board later in the meeting. Is there anyone here who would like to sign up for an agenda item or the citizens to be heard item and has not already done so? All right, thank you. We're
004going to move to our first agenda item now, recognitions A through K. Yes, ma'am. Madam President, good evening to all. This is a very exciting evening. We have numerous students, groups, and faculty members that we would like to recognize. And so, at this time, I'm going to turn the presentation formally over to Barry Perez, our assistant superintendent for communications, and I'm going to ask the board to join us in front of the dais. We'll be taking photos. So, parents, if you'd like to to take photos as well, we'll be in front of the dais. And we are so excited to be able to celebrate our amazing students and staff this evening. Thank you, Dr. Craft. We are very excited to host these awards this evening, this recognition by the board. As the trustees take their
005place in front of the dais, just a few bits of instruction for the honorees. Honorees, on your chairs, you should have found a certificate that you're going to bring up so you can hold that for your photo moment. And on the back of your seat, you should have seen a name card that I'm going to ask you to bring up with you as well. In just a few moments, we're going to line you up. We're going to ask you to bring me your name card. I'm going to call your name, and as I do, you're going to cross in front of the dais. You're going to greet each of the trustees, but before you leave, you're going to come back to the center. We're going to get a photo of you with the board. And
006then you're going to cross and exit on that side uh of the room and then can circle back. We're going to stop some of you in groups because we want to take an individual picture, but we also want to take a group photo if we can. Now, I know some of the groups are large and so we're going to try to put you in smaller groups so that we can get a group picture with the trustees in front of the dais. If you are a parent or family member here, we have some seats on the front row on that side of the podium that are reserved. As your child or honoree comes up, feel free to come up to that front seat as Dr. Craft said to get a photo. And then again, they're going
007to be exiting on that side. Okay. We have a lot of groups and so before we recognize each group, I'll read a introduction recognizing this group's accomplishment and then we will start with the honorees. And so the first group is recognition of the UIL theatrical design contest winners. If I can have y'all So let me read let me You're okay. The UIL theatrical design contest is a statewide competition that allows students to showcase their artistic vision through technical aspects of theater. Unlike one-act play, which focuses on performance, this contest highlights design and conceptualization. Of the eight state qualifiers from the San Antonio area, six are from Northside ISD, an incredible accomplishment. We are extremely proud of these students and their teachers and at this time we're going to recognize those individuals and we'll begin with
008from O'Connor High School, Allison Chernow. From Soto Mayor High School, SOPHIA FIGUEROA. FROM BRANDEIS HIGH SCHOOL, CLARA REY BANDA. FROM BRANDEIS HIGH SCHOOL, Fernanda Nuñez. From Brandeis High School, ANTHONY TORRES. FROM BRANDEIS HIGH SCHOOL, REAGAN WINSLOW. >> And now staff, the tech theater director state qualifier Guillermo De Leon. And tech theater director Tyler Askins. Now we're going to bring the group back so we can get a group photo. Next we recognize a group of exceptionally talented and creative students. We are incredibly proud to celebrate our Northside ISD student artists who advanced to the state competition of the visual arts scholastic event or vase. This year Northside had 50 student artworks earn a spot at state, competing this past Saturday in San Marcos. Their talent and dedication were on full display with an outstanding 40 pieces
009receiving the highest rating and earning the title of state medalists. From there, these top works advance to a second round of adjudication for the prestigious gold seal distinction, the highest honor awarded by the Texas Art Education Association. Out of nearly 32,000 entries submitted statewide, only 151 artworks are selected for this elite recognition. We are thrilled to share that Northside ISD earned three gold seal awards this year. We now recognize these VASE state winners and will begin from Brennan High School, Kennedy Beazer. FROM SOTOMAYOR HIGH SCHOOL, KIMBERLY BECKER. FROM SOTOMAYOR HIGH SCHOOL, SYDNEY BLOCKINGER. FROM SOTOMAYOR HIGH SCHOOL, ZARA CANTU. FROM HARLAND HIGH SCHOOL, Leilani Alec Davidson Gonzalez. From Sotomayor High School, EILEEN DELGADO. WE'LL TAKE THAT GROUP. OKAY, BEFORE WE GO ON, WE'RE GOING to take that group picture. So, we're going to have those
010students come back over for their group vase picture in the front of the dais. Continuing with our vase award winners, now from Marshall High School, SHAYMUS FAGAN. >> FROM BRANDEIS HIGH SCHOOL, BIANCA FLORES. FROM SOTOMAYOR HIGH SCHOOL, Sienna Gonzalez. From Sotomayor High School, ADALIA GONZALEZ. FROM SOTOMAYOR HIGH SCHOOL, JEFFREY EDERRA. AND THE TEACHER FROM SOTOMAYOR HIGH SCHOOL, MELISSA MCKENZIE. NEXT IS KYLEN HILL, also from Sotomayor High School. And from Sotomayor High School, Lydia Ireland. We're going to We're going to call the group back. Oh, no, I'm sorry. We'll wait one more. I apologize. And the teacher from Sotomayor High School, RANDALL VILLARREAL. AND WE'RE GOING TO BRING that group up to get a group photo of this section. >> We have more vase winners. We'll now begin from Harland High School, Jose Ochoa Sanchez. Aliana
011Peru, Sotomayor High School. Next we honor Emma Pittman, Sotomayor High School. From Sotomayor High School, ALEJANDRO RUIZ. ART TEACHER FROM HIGH SCHOOL from Harland, me, art teacher from Harlen High School, Mandy Carson. And art teacher from Sotomayor High School, MRS. GODSON. ANOTHER VASE winner from Sotomayor High School, SOPHIA FIGUEROA. FROM SOTOMAYOR HIGH SCHOOL, Lucia Susick. And the art teacher at Sotomayor High School, MR. GODENA. >> OKAY. MR. GODINO, GODINO, IF YOU STAY RIGHT THERE, we're going to bring the group back and get a quick group picture with this group. We'll turn our attention now to Stevens High School, ISABELLA TREVINO. AND THE ART TEACHER AT STEVENS HIGH SCHOOL, MRS. HERNANDEZ. From Marshall High School, SARAH SMITH. >> FROM MARSHALL HIGH SCHOOL, CARINA CARMONA. The Marshall High School art teacher, Andrew Ramirez. Also from Marshall High
012School, art teacher Mrs. Holland. And art teacher Mrs. Gomez, Marshall High School. >> From Brennan High School art teacher, Mrs. Root. Another vase winner from O'Connor High School, Jenna Brockway. And Mrs. Hennessy, art teacher at O'Connor High School. Let's bring this final group of vase winners up to the front of the dais. >> Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes all of our vase winners. If we can give them a round of applause. We now have our next group. Students from O'Connor and Brandeis and Warren high schools have qualified for the National Speech and Debate Association National Tournament to be held in Richmond, Virginia this June. They earned this this distinction through their performance at the Central Texas Qualifier. Additionally, students from O'Connor High School competed at the UIL State Championships in both Student Congress and Policy
013Debate. At this time, we are now recognizing those students and we'll we'll start with Amron Abdel-Kader, Warren High School. From O'Connor High School, ANITA HEFEI. >> FROM WARREN HIGH SCHOOL, MARCOS LEVA. FROM O'CONNOR HIGH SCHOOL, Xavier Phillips. FROM BRANDEIS HIGH SCHOOL, SIDDHARTH RAO. FROM WARREN High School, CLARA ULINSKI. AND NOW WE RECOGNIZE from Brandeis coach Leslie Credi. >> From O'Connor High School COACH ALI MATANI. AND FROM WARREN HIGH SCHOOL COACH DARIELA RODRIGUEZ. AND IF WE CAN START BRINGING that group back. This is our group photo. These are our speech and debate state qualifiers. Let's give them a round of applause. >> Next. Next, we have world champions to celebrate. Winter Guard International WGI is the premier organization for indoor percussion and color guard competitions, culminating each year in the world championships in Dayton, Ohio. This
014year, among six, excuse me, 52 groups competing in the Scholastic Open division, Sotomayor High School Indoor Percussion rose to the top, earning the title of WGI Percussion Scholastic OPEN WORLD CHAMPION. WE CONGRATULATE AND WE recognize these performers, and we're going to start with ARTHUR ACOSTA. MALACHI BACON. JOSHUA COOPERWOOD. >> ISAAC DANGERFIELD SAMUEL DUVALL PRESTON ESPINOSA ELIJAH Espinosa June Garcia >> Way to go. Henningson, Gessman. So, we can fit the whole rather than try to fit the whole group. We're going to do this in in two halves. So, this group we're going to get a quick picture. We have to hold it. Yeah. Can't see it cuz of the No. It's okay. >> That's not even quite half the group. We're going to continue. We have more. More world champions in JAMIE AND HALL. JOY HALL.
015JARED HANSON. JADEN JAIME. JASHAWN KEY. >> LUKE KNUTSON Nathan Laird Elijah Lopez Jay Sluna Joaquin Madrigal RICARDO MALDONADO >> JACOB MENDIOLA ANNA MORALES WE'RE GOING TO DO OUR SECOND GROUP PICTURE. >> And now the final group of our WGI world champions. Aiden Moreno Jordan Music Isabella Neri Derek Ramirez Elliot Reyes >> Cassidy Reseck ASHTON RODARTE MATTHEW RODRIGUEZ DESI ROMAN Isaac Sendejo Lilliana Shaw. NOEL SOLANO. JAYDEN VERIEL. Mckenzie Walker. And the director of this amazing group, APRIL ALOTTA. AND WE'RE GOING TO BRING FINAL GROUP BACK FOR a last picture. And that is your Sotomayor High SCHOOL INDOOR PERCUSSION. BUT WAIT, WE HAVE MORE. The Destination Imagination team from Harlan High School has earned a spot at Global Finals, where they will represent both their school and Northside ISD on the world stage. As the only team
016from both NISD and the Central Texas region to qualify, their achievement is truly exceptional. Global Finals will take place May 21st through the 24th in Kansas City, Missouri, bringing together top teams from around the world to compete in steam-based challenges that showcase creativity, collaboration, and problem-solving. We recognize them, and we begin with Anvi Amith. Aaron Cedillo Lucy Cedillo Robin Ramirez Jolissa Scott And the Destination Imagination team manager from Harland High School, MARY CEDILLO. >> HARLAND TEAM MANAGER PAULINE CORNFORTH. AND THE HARLAND HIGH SCHOOL ASSISTANT PRINCIPAL SHAY HUNTINGTON. WE'LL BRING I'M SORRY. WE'LL bring our DI team back for a group photo. Our next honorees are on a roll, both literally and figuratively. These student athletes competed in the Northside Bowling League and advanced to the Texas High School Bowling State Championships. For the first time
017since 2019, a Northside ISD team has claimed a state title. The Taft Raiders are your varsity team state champions. We recognize first, Bree Dorty. HUDSON SMITH. Aiden Snyder. ALEJANDRO VASQUEZ. Josiah Redding. >> ADRIAN GONZALEZ AND THE TAFT HIGH SCHOOL ASSISTANT COACH, ALEXIS BUECKERT LET'S BRING OUR STATE BOWLERS BACK. Let's give them a round of applause. Northside's I Excuse me, Northside ISD's Library Services Department has been selected as the 2026 Branding Iron Award winner by the Texas Library Association for digital marketing. This honor recognizes their shout-out social media campaign and celebrates excellence in library marketing and public relations. Congratulations to our Library Services team and we recognize this evening Jennifer Eckert AND XENIA BAYARDO. OUR NEXT GROUP OF SCHOLARS, these six Northside ISD students have been named Aguilar Scholars by the C Clef Foundation. These students
018are recognized for overcoming challenges, staying focused on their goals, and striving toward a bright future. We congratulate them and we honor them tonight beginning with Jermaine on the Onyanwu from Sotomayor High School. >> From Brennan High School, Isabella Mercado Smith. From Clark High School, Zachary Miller. From Sotomayor High School, FLOR SOJO. FROM HOLMES HIGH SCHOOL, Mitali Salazar. All right, we're going to bring our scholarship winners back for a group photo. >> Let's congratulate them with a round of applause. This next group are also scholarship recipients. They are recipients of the Northside ISD Board of Trustees Scholarship for future teacher preparation. The Northside Board established the future teacher scholarship last year to support students pursuing careers in education. And I believe we have a board member that was going to say a few words. We are
019as a as a board, as you all know, teachers are so critical. And what we decided as a board is in order to recognize how important they were, we established a partnership with the Northside Education Foundation where we took funding that we were fortunate to receive and we thought what better way to donate and to support not only this year, but continue that for a very long time for those that come to our district and want to go into that career field of teaching. It is a selection process chosen that the board goes through and we have some This is the most we've ever had before, so congratulations to our winners. Thank you our board for continuing this tradition and thank you all also. Thank you very Our first recipient this evening is from Harlan
020High School, Camden Avants. >> From CAST Tech High School, Darian De La Garza. From CAST Tech High School, Angie Diaz Jamaica. From the Agriculture Science and Technology Academy, ASTA, Sophia Gonzalez. From Clark High School, Sophie Pomeroy. From Brennan High School, TINA QUACH. WE'LL BRING ALL OF OUR BOARD SCHOLARSHIP recipients back for a group photo. But wait, there's more. We have four groups waiting in the hall, so I'm kidding. This marks the second year of the Northside ISD Student Ambassadors Program. It is a select group of students chosen through a rigorous application process to serve as the face and voice of the district. These ambassadors represent Northside ISD at school and community events working alongside board members and district leadership while developing valuable leadership and communication skills. This year we received a record 120 applications for
021just 34 positions, a statement and a testament to the strength of this program. Tonight, we say goodbye to our graduating seniors and recognize the juniors, many of whom will return to lead the next cohort. You probably recognize them if you've been to district events, you'll see them in their classic navy blazers. You were probably greeted by some of our ambassadors as you came in the door, and ambassadors we thank you for your service, and we'll begin by recognizing them from Jay Science and Engineering Academy, Abel Franco. From Holmes High School, Cynthia Garza. From ASTA, Libby Hibbits. From Brandeis High School, Zora Nazir. From Harlan High School, Dinora Auster Hernandez. From Sotomayor High School, Reem Estatia. THOSE WERE OUR junior student ambassadors. Uh so, we're going to take a group photo of them before we move
022to our senior student ambassadors. Next, we invite our graduating seniors to come forward. They will receive a leadership cord in recognition of their service. And the first senior we're honoring tonight we are honoring tonight from Sotomayor High School, Reha Multaher. >> From Sotomayor High School, Jermaine Anyanwu. From From CAST Tech High School, Jocelyn Camacho Hernandez. From CAST Tech High School, Lily Seny Settles. From the Marshall Law and Medical Services, Isadora de LA CERDA PEREZ. >> FROM WARREN HIGH SCHOOL, Sophia Garcia-Nunez. From O'Connor High School, Chloe Gitron. From Clark High School, Jillian Jones. From Marshall High School, Cole Kerber. From Warren High School, AVA LOPEZ. FROM CLARK HIGH SCHOOL, Zack Miller. From Harlan High School, Emma Mills. From Health Careers High School, AVANI NAGARAGERI. FROM CLARK HIGH SCHOOL, ISABELLA PERRY. >> FROM FROM HEALTH CAREERS HIGH
023SCHOOL, Brian Nudam. From Brennan High School, Tina Quach. >> We can get our graduating student ambassadors back for a photo. A final applause for our student ambassadors. Trustees, this concludes our student recognitions for this evening. If you are a family member or parent, we want to acknowledge you. We appreciate you coming out tonight. Thank you very much. You're welcome. I will miss y'all. We'll miss you too. I'm tired. >> I'm tired. They're They're sweet. Okay. Yes. I'm tired. That's a long night. Okay. I know it's harder for me to stand. Is it not for you? Standing wears me out. I don't know. Moving doesn't. >> Fresh rain, fresh rain coffee. I'm going to thank you so much. After that, thank Thank you. Nice. What did you get? You what? It does. It's got a happy
024face on it. Okay, stretch. Joanne, you know they make those in sugar-free. You know what? I'm no no no shaming here, but I'm just saying. It's only a Four or five bucks. It's only a Mickey Mouse. Excuse me. It is. Were they all stuck together cuz they were in your car? All right. So, we're done with recognitions, and our second item on our agenda is our superintendent's report. But, it looks like we might need like a few minutes of a break. So, let's Can we reconvene in about 3 minutes? 7:27? Okay. Thank you. Hey. Tell me again. This one looks different. David, where are they Probably they went to the bathroom. Where Where's I did. The watch. Maybe I'm just not being patient. Okay, well, maybe Thank you. Does it come up twice for you?
025It doesn't for me. Yeah, that's the way I should have gone. Copy. Okay. Why is everybody sitting on the side? Okay. >> What? No, I was just All right, just in time 7:27 and our superintendent's going to give us our his report. Thank you, sir. Yes, ma'am. Again, good evening. I know it was a longer celebration, but um what a just a tremendous group of students and staff. We're really really really proud of our state, our national, and even world champions and soon to be world champions. So, again, thank you to our parents and family members and of course all of our phenomenal teachers for their support. I'll just mention a few more things. I don't know that we had the opportunity to highlight at the board level our educators of the year. We had
026a really really nice celebration again with all of our educators um on the 25th of March with our elementary educators and the 26th with our secondary. So, again, congratulations to Angie Reyes Gonzales, a special education teacher at Franklin Elementary School. She was our first year educator of the year for the elementary level. Gabriella Gabriella Stewart was a language arts is a language arts teacher at Folks Middle School. She was our first middle school educator of the year and Kristen Alanis, a science teacher at Harland High School. Um, also our uh veteran educators of the year, Melissa Tobias, uh bilingual dual language teacher at Burke. Um, we uh it's uh Saul Sepeda, uh science teacher at Hobby Health Science Magnet. Uh and excuse me, Patricia Zende, a bilingual dual language teacher at Clark High School. Um,
027really nice ceremony. I think that the all the educators were really um uh well received. They had, of course, their cheering sections uh cheering them on and like I say, it was just a great celebration. Also, on the 15th of April, uh we were able to celebrate uh over 100 partnerships. Uh the venue was a little bit different. Uh it was obviously a little bit longer ceremony, but I think again, uh those who volunteer and give countless uh hours, but also uh donations and and time uh were well received and and well recognized. And again, we so appreciate uh our partners and those who recommended uh the the partners. I want to thank our Northside Communication Network um uh staff. We met uh for the last time last week. Uh this is our group that
028we really try to work to engage in open communication. We've uh transitioned to a a Zoom format just due to logistical travel and uh that time of day, it's somewhat difficult to try to uh all uh ascend upon a a central location, but uh they were also a pretty phenomenal group. Uh they would give us honest feedback and ask tough questions, which I greatly appreciated. Um, so again, thanks to our NCN. And then this Friday will be uh wrapping up uh our last student voice uh group as well. This will be the combined two. If you recall, we have met at the uh sports gym, but then also at NAC. And so this will be the final uh student voice. Uh if you can make it at 11:30, it's always great to hear kind of
029uh the seniors' last uh hurrah, what their plans are, and just how much they've grown and developed over the course of a year. Um so, uh this will also be the first time that they've really all had the opportunity to meet one another. Um so, again, that'll be this Friday at the Northside Activity Center. I think that completes my report. There's so many other celebrations, but I think we've uh celebrated quite a bit tonight. Um and rightfully so. I'd like to ask we can be brief with our reports tonight just because we have so much to to go with. So, who would like to go first? Mrs. Freeman? Sure. Okay. Um a couple things that I I know that you've asked us to be brief. If we had any have anything to add, we can
030always submit it to Barry. Or we can put it in Friday letter as well. >> Okay, good. Um just a couple things um that I hadn't been aware of before that that we as a school district partner with is Assistance League um in San Antonio. And they have a a thrift shop um that they have on West Avenue near um near the I-10. And they raise money throughout the year with auctions and then money they make from the thrift shop, and they give it back to kids. And what I found out when I visited that particular group and talked to some of the volunteers, who by the way, some of our some of the volunteers are um retired educators and some of them from from Northside ISD, that we have kids that receive benefit from
031um from the money that they raise. They have um a learning opportunities in the form of field trips for some of our students, as well as they take bus loads of kids, and they um they have a clothes closet. It's It's a large clothes clothes closet, all brand new clothes, and they give them to our students. They fit them and they all go back on the bus and go back to their um campuses. But, what I also learned is that we are one of the um one of their the largest group that they serve. And it's not just because we are large school school district. I want to give a shout out to Sharon Sanchez and her department for reaching out and partnering with this particular group. And it's because of that communication that our
032kids have benefited so much. So, congratulations um to our students that benefit from that. And thank you to Assistance League. And then, one other thing um Koontz had an uh Koontz Elementary had an open house this year. They've had it um They've had it previous times. Last year, it was for they it was for pre-K. They had it on a Saturday, invited kids in, had a They put them on a bus. They went around the bus circle and various things within the school that their parents and the kids can um see. This year, they invited K through 5. And um I think very successful. I don't know what their numbers, but they enrolled kids on that day. And anytime they enrolled um a student, you could hear the the shouts across the campus that okay,
033one more. Um So, very excited. I know some of our other schools do that, but um congratulations to Koontz. They did a very good job on that. Thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Freeman. Mr. Blunt. Yeah, thank you. And just a couple a couple quick items. The first one is a our Texas Caucus of Black School uh members uh uh summit was held annual summit was held. Want to say congratulations. Uh we had the administrator of the year that was selected uh for the state there. And that was Mr. Bishop out of Brisco. So, it was great to see him and his family in attendance. And then, I want to bring out the Medisa Pena uh at Burke. She just gave an outstanding presentation about reading in the community and the impact etc. I really blew
034everybody away. So, it's really great to see the Northside participation there. Uh, the solar cars again. We started in 1996. You know, here we are in 2000 and what year is it now? Oh, 2026. And uh, thanks to Elam Elementary Middle School Science uh, continuing to keep that one going and it was a I think it was another great day. It wasn't a sunny day, but it was another great day nevertheless. Really good racing. I think everybody definitely enjoyed that. And the last one I'll bring up. Last one I'll bring up because we finally had the finals. Thank thanks to really to Xenia. You know, again we started our Great San Antonio Reading Challenge with a budget of zero. And through her very creative abilities, through some partners and some corporations and everybody really coming
035together. You know, we had started out with 10,000 students over 105 schools. We awarded the final four and we had a great celebration there. Um, if you haven't heard, Burke came in third place. Chumley Elementary in second place. And then Freedom Elementary on the Southside. I was actually there today. Actually ended up in first which was really great for that community. I mean, they they really put in some hard work. So, looking forward to continuing that our inaugural year. And last one I will bring up is and one of y'all might bring this up too. We had a very special celebration at Nolan with their Fiesta parade, but I'll let some of the other trustees talk about that one. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Dr. Hassell. Yes. Um, some amazing Fiesta events that we were
036able to attend. I know Myers Elementary had a great parade and Nolan Elementary. I had never had so much confetti. Um, but it was an amazing event. Just wanted to mention I was able to attend the TASB Legislative Advisory Council in Austin. I had the privilege of really being able to learn and really hear what is going on in the state of Texas. So excited about that. And I also did want to mention that today is National School Bus Driver Day and I just wanted to take a moment to thank all our bus drivers, bus driver assistants that are on the bus and all the amazing work that they do every day for our students and just wanted to take a moment to really thank them. Thank you, Mr. Salcido. Excuse me. Just real quick,
037I was uh invited this week to uh with the John Jay PTA. They invited me to a cap, gown, and ballot. When I first started, I didn't know what I was going to be going to, but it was uh a collaboration with the the Civic Center and the You Do Vote uh and registering our high school seniors. Uh vote, they get a registration cards and they fill it out. And I think the last count when I left, they had like 80 people already signed up, 80 high school seniors. And uh the good thing is they get to vote in in November, so they're already going to get to start voting already as of uh you know, the day that they register. So that I thought that was something real neat. They usually go to all
038the high schools or when they're invited. So it'd be nice to get 100% uh participation from all our high school. That'd be 1,000 kids. I thought that was cool. Yeah. Thank you, sir. Dr. Hall. Thank you. Um I just was going to add something real quick to what Sonia said. There was so much confetti, we started picking it up and throwing it back at the kids. So it was lots of fun. It was lots of fun, but there was a massive amount of confetti. Um I'm going to start just backwards. Um just with some announcements. We had the great book giveaway um on Thursday. Um I'm going to be at Brennan, but carloads and carloads of families coming and getting free books. It is phenomenal. I think it's Brennan Homes and maybe O'Connor, but um,
039you can look it up on our webpage, but free books for everybody, no questions asked. Um, and then also the NEF 5K is this Saturday. Probably one of the best family school events. Um, we're going to start it off. Um, I will personally pat everybody on the back as they pass me by. So, um, you know, if anyone wants to to get a pat on the back, I'll be at the end. So, um, anyway, and then today I received um, a a text message from uh, Ken Kevin uh, Pumphrey. He's the Model United Nations coordinator at Clark High School. He also teaches um, in the social studies department, but they just got back from New York City this weekend and I know they weren't here to be honored cuz it just happened, but they came
040in as the best delegation again. And this is with thousands of kids competing. Um, Barry, I'll give you all the kids names, but I'll just forward you the email. It was it was phenomenal. Um, I do Bobby then want to thank you for um, the solar cars again. It was I I had the best time. My granddaughter was not a good loser, so we used that as a day of learning about losing is moving forward and getting better and and Cane's Chicken helped out a whole lot. So, anyway, um, and Sonia, also thank you for being our LAC rep. That we appreciate a lot. That's a lot of your weekend time was given up on that. Um, I wanted to thank very much the fine arts department. We have Los Leones um, earlier um, last
041month and that only fits half our school district showing off their incredible art and music and dance, um, and song, and then the rest of the half get to go to, um, the fine arts fest at the sports gym couple weekends ago. Again, it's just incredible. What I think is most amazing is being able to talk to the proud teachers that are there, and they talk so much about the process that kids go through and their growth and how, um, joyful the kids are, how much, uh, healing goes on through the process, um, but the art is just phenomenal. The dance was incredible. The singing just, you know, put you in a good mood for, for months and months and months to come. So, great job from our fine arts department. Um, this was kind
042of my month to catch up on things that I'd been invited to different ALE programs, but I wanted to highlight the Holmes ALE. Um, they used NEF funds, um, to build a beautiful, incredible sensory room for the kids. Um, it's not done yet, but it will be and they'll invite the board to come to the inaugural, but it's so needed, so incredible. Um, and hopefully other ALE programs will write NEF grants excuse me, to get the similar equipment, um, but they put a lot of thought and research into it and, um, the teachers are real excited. Um, so to my or ALE, Gina, one of my, oh my gosh, the video medals that they made, priceless. Um, I think of all the medals, um, there were two. That one would be my favorite. The other
043one, uh, Zachary Carrasco, um, I saw him at one of the Fiesta events and he had his own float. I've, the board members remember the Taft bike club that he started. He was a kiddo that was highlighted in one of our videos, uh, with a heart condition and really wanted to play sports and couldn't do it, but then, um, formed this bike club and it's had phenomenal participation by kids and they really do great things in the community but to actually see them Saturday night with float in the parade um was phenomenal um and then um fun run oh um Carnahan had a great ceremony with King Antonio recognizing the student art um I think what was exceptional was that Peggy Carnahan herself is there and celebrating with the kids and families and um that
044was terrific Nolan parade we talked about Burke had a great fiesta too um they didn't have any confetti but um had lots of variations of floats that was lots of fun um and I think so I don't want to forget anybody um hang on hang on oh um board members they still need NEF volunteers to give out the NEF prizes um and if you don't I mean this is our last time this year phenomenal so thanks Thank you Dr. Hall. Mrs. Uh yes I just want to I know there's so much going on but I I want to you know it's it's a I want to say um just great job on our students they just finished their EOCs or they're finishing up this week so I know that's you know huge part of our
045accountability and you know just the hard work uh everything that goes behind it um in you know years in advance and you know uh hats off to our teachers uh you know everybody that is a part of that from the cafeteria staff custodians bus drivers it is it takes a village um to be where we're at and so just want to thank everybody you know when we think about you know what school is about and and you know all these great things that that students are doing so I just want to you know uh shout out to the kids. I I know they did well. It's Fiesta time, so everybody's just kind of ready to celebrate and it's you know, it's it's May and there's a lot of events out there, especially for our seniors
046and so um I'm just so happy for them. It's it's a really really special time, not only for the students, but for the family, so So, thank I just want to thank the students and just the community of Northside. Thank you. Um I had a great time at the elementary educator of the year. I love to see my students now um getting those awards, which is aging me, but it's amazing. I was also able to attend our partners um event that honored everyone that helps Northside through the Northside Educational Foundation. That was a lot of fun. Thank you all for everything that you do and every donation matters. Um we got to enjoy Fiesta at Knollton Elementary. Thank you so much. That's those are all fun events always. And then also shout out to all
047of our students that participated in the day parade at the Battle of the Flowers and all the chaperones. I know that's a long day for you. It's a lot of work, but you guys really uh showcase everything we do here at Northside. And also shout out to the Taft Bike Club that was also at the night parade at the Fiesta Flambeau. They had their own float and uh it was really nice to see them on their bikes on the on the float. Um Dr. Kracht and I were able to join the Northside Educational Foundation on a tour of health careers and I was just really impressed that all of the things that they're able to do and all the hands-on training that they get in the medical field. It was just really impressive and and
048the excellence of academic rigor that's provided at Health Careers is really outstanding. Uh I want to thank everyone that helped uh organize and host the community town hall event that we had at Sol Ross Elementary uh middle school. And I want to shout out to all of the administrative assistants. I know that your week was last week, but thank you for all that you do for everyone on campus and we just have about 1 month left to go. Let's go go big and then go home, right? The last push of the year. Thank you for 17 days and nobody's counting. Okay. Uh and then I do want to uh honor and give a ask for a moment of silence in honor of Donna uh Wisniewski Balinsaad. I hope I pronounce that uh correctly. Thank you
049for your impact on the lives that you've touched. And let's give her a moment of silence, please. Thank you all and um so that concludes our board members reports and now we have our citizens to be heard. I'd like to go over the rules, please. Uh citizens um we believe that citizens to be heard is important and meaningful and we will listen to what you have to say. We value your opinions. Although we are restrained by law from taking any action, please address your remarks to the board, confine your remarks to a Northside policy or practice, limit your remarks to 3 minutes. At 3 minutes, you're going to be asked to wrap up your remarks, and do not make any personal attacks on individuals. Thank you. Madam President, members of the board, uh this evening
050we have uh four individuals, or excuse me, two individuals uh signed up for 4A, so the the general citizens to be heard. Uh we have four signed up uh to speak to 11D. And we also have four, three, excuse me, uh signed up uh to speak to 14C. Um just uh logistic uh kind of clarity. Uh I'm assuming that those have signed up for 11D and 14C want to wait until that agenda item is called. Is there anyone that would like to speak to uh just a general citizens to be heard, which would be for a Okay. Then, first signed up for citizens to be heard is Tammy Mendoza. Oh, I'm sorry. Mendez. Mendez. I apologize, Ms. Mendez. Good evening, members of the board. Um I am Tammy Mendez. I am here today to address
051concerns regarding policies, procedures, and the consistent application of the student code of conduct with within the district, particularly as governed by chapter 37 of the Texas Education Code, commonly referred to as the Safe Schools Act. Specifically, I am requesting clarity and accountability in the following areas. First, the fairness and consistency of disciplinary actions. What standards are being used to determine punishment, and how is equity ensured across cases involving student altercations? Second, the involvement of law enforcement. Under what circumstances are juveniles referred for arrest following school incidents? What safeguards are in place to prevent unnecessary criminal criminal excuse me criminalization of student behavior? Third, the use of force. What policies govern the use of physical restraint or force by the school personnel or or the school resource officers? And how is excessive force defined, documented, and
052reviewed? Fourth, I am seeking clarification on how the district defines and applies the term assault in student incidents. What criteria must be met before a student is accused of committing assault? Are all students involved in a physical altercation treated equally under this definition? Are all students identified as initiators in a fight subject to mandatory criminal charges under Texas Penal Code 22.01? Fifth, regarding removal and alternative placement under Texas Education Code 37.006 and 37.007, are all students identified as initiators in a fight subject to mandatory placement in alternative education programs or is there discretion based on circumstances or just administrator decisions? Sixth, communication. There appears There appears to be a lack of timely and transparent communication from school administrators to parents and guardians. What are the required notification procedures when serious incidents occur? Additionally, I am
053seeking clarification on administrative accountability when policies are not followed, what mechanisms exist to review decisions and hold administrators accountable? And finally, addressing bullying and defamation under Texas Education Code 37.0832, which requires districts to adopt and enforce formal bullying prevention policies, including procedures for reporting, investigation, and parent notification. What are the formal procedures for reporting, investigating, and resolving claims of bullying or damage to a student's reputation? How are the findings documented and how are families informed? These are not abstract concerns, they directly impact students' rights, safety, due process, and futures. I respectfully request that the district provide clear and concise written policies and ensure that they are applied consistently, transparently, and fairly without prejudice regard regardless of race, gender, nationality, sexual orientation, or personal preference in compliance with Texas state law. Thank you for your time
054and consideration. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Mendez. Uh Katie Curtis. Good evening. My name is Katie Curtis and I am the treasurer of Northside AFT, representing workers in Northside ISD. I am also speaking on behalf of Northside AFT and our president, Melina Espinoza Alcorta. We are here tonight because we have serious concerns about the consulting firm, Civic Solutions Group, and the report you are or will be asked to consider. This is not about questioning expertise in general. It's about examining patterns. Killeen ISD district hired the same firm in 2025. After their audit, the recommendations were clear. Close schools and pursue 1,882 um partnerships. Those decisions don't just balance budgets, they permanently reshape communities, displace students, and open the door to privatization. So, when we see the same firm here tonight, we have to ask, what
055are we looking at? Fresh analysis of Northside or familiar playbooks being applied to a new district? Because when you look at the firm's leadership and consultants, the pattern becomes clear. There are direct ties to charter expansion, state intervention boards, and systems where public schools were replaced or converted. Even their own language emphasizes student choice, a term that in practice is consistently used to advance charter growth and privatization strategies. That matters because it tells us this is not a neutral starting point. It's a perspective. And perspective shape outcomes. We are also deeply concerned about the data used to justify those outcomes. This report lies in part on survey responding a responses for roughly 2% of Northside families. In a district serving 98,000, this is not represent representative. So, we have to ask, who is surveyed? What
056communities are reflected? And who, especially, is the most impacted schools? Is this missing from the data? Incomplete input leads to incomplete conclusions. And incomplete conclusions should not drive irreversible decisions like school closures or consolidations. Let's be clear. Northside AFT understands the financial challenges. We know the state is underfunding public education. We see enrollment shifts. But we have not seen What we have not seen is full effort to invest, to stabilize campuses, and to fight for this district. Uh turning to closures and consolidations, and that is why we are asking for a different approach. We are calling for a community dialogue audit, one that looks beyond spreadsheets and examines the real impact on neighborhoods, families, and students. An approach grounded in research that shows school closures don't just move students, they destabilize entire communities. Before any
057decision is made, um this board should fully understand who is harmed, how they harm, and what is lost. We are asking you to slow the process down. Seek additional perspectives and ensure that any path forward reflect reflects the fully reality of Northside, not just one firm's recommendations. Our community deserves transparency, it deserves balance, and it deserves decisions rooted in people, not just productions. We ask that you stand with the community and proceed with caution as you review and hear the report. Thank you. Thank you. Excuse me. Um yes. Dr. Duran, was that the end of those that are These are the That those were the two signed up for 14. >> So, we've got two or uh two groups that are speaking on um agenda items. And I'd like to clarify cuz we've already been
058here for 2 hours and um those agenda items are at the bottom of that list. This board has the opportunity to um move those agenda items up um if we want to and I'd like to consider um doing that. Now, 11d, I I understand that, but you said um Dr. Craft, you said it was 14d? 14c. >> 14c. 11b and 14c. So, the challenge that And 14c will require us to go into executive session before we can take up 14. So, perhaps we uh maybe Dr. Duran, you can explain to the people that are speaking to 14c how long that may be because we are going to take executive session at the end and we obviously got >> We're looking at around 11:00 p.m. for those that want to speak on 14c at the earliest.
059But they can still speak. They can still speak now. if they'd like to. So, before we even move to uh executive session and then Yeah, before we close this agenda item, which is just it says 14. You can speak to citizens to be heard is a little bit more general. If you would rather wait until that specific agenda item's taken up. Again, logistically speaking, we're we'll have to go into an executive session before we could come out and and actually open the floor to 14C. I think 11D uh in accordance with the agenda Is district policy naming of facilities? >> Pertains to uh yeah, exactly. >> the item you'd like to speak on? Uh 11D is yeah, naming of facility CD local. 11D Is that the item that you want to speak on? I'm just
060asking, is that the item that you want to speak on? I guess the first question for the board is are we good with bringing up 11D >> don't have to wait. >> point and then coming back after executive session with 14C. Sure. 11D Yes. >> Right. Okay, so 11D, if you want to call it the agenda. Um we're going to go ahead and move uh item 11D on district policy naming of facilities up so that our citizens that are here to speak on that agenda item can go ahead and speak now. Okay. I believe like I say, we have uh three uh signed up for 11D. Uh and I apologize, I had to reorder uh just to uh put them all together. Uh the first individual have signed up uh to speak uh to 11D
061is Steve Goodson. Is that Me. Okay, I'm sorry. Dr. Craft, fellow board members, want to thank you for letting me voice my concerns about the change of name for the elementary school. You guys, As sat around and listened. Everybody talked about family. Our schools are great. Everybody's got a community. That community, where that elementary school is, you might want to consider that an anchor community for this school district. It's been here longer than you guys have been around as board members. Way longer. Longer than me. I've been in Northside since 1965. My kids went to school Northside. My grandkids, all my siblings, everybody. I'm speaking here for a bunch of my friends that went to that elementary school. They don't like the name being changed. That's hurting a long-standing family member. I understand that the
062person that you're asking to this school be changed to is from Passmore Elementary School. A counselor. Had nothing to do with Colonies North with Colonies. Nothing. Okay? Why can you not name the library at Passmore Elementary School after what I understand is a fantastic counselor. I had a fantastic counselor. That to me would seem more logical than changing the name of a well-known, well-established elementary school in a very prosperous and still growing, even though old, area of San Antonio. It does not make any sense. I also understand that when you first did the survey, almost 65% of the people surveyed said, "Do not change the name." If it was 65% that said, "Yeah, change the name." No-brainer. So, why is if 65% of people say, "Don't change the name." Why is that a no-brainer? It
063doesn't make any sense. Logically, it does not. Let's talk about the rebranding cost. Ask Robert E. Lee High School what it cost them to rebrand when they changed their name. Doesn't matter the reason you want to change it, but ask about the cost. Are you as a board being physically responsible for doing that after you spent probably the last 3 years spending a lot of money refurbishing the existing elementary school. Rebranding is going to cost what? 35, 40,000 dollars? Who knows? All I know is about construction, it's never the dollar amount you start with. I have yet to see a project cost what it says it's going to cost. And I've heard a lot about the last two speakers asking for transparency. I'm asking the same thing. Why are you trying to change this school's
064name? I don't understand it. It doesn't make any logical sense. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Goodson. Carolyn Hoffman. Good evening. My name's Carolyn Hoffman, and I'm a 40-year member of the Colonies North Elementary School community. As the parent of two Colonies North graduates, former room mother, and PTA member, I'd like to provide feedback regarding the potential renaming of the campus. I became aware of the renaming proposal presented by someone not directly related to our community through word of mouth in our tightly knit neighborhood. I completed the NISD survey soliciting input from the impacted community, as I know many of my neighbors did, resulting in an overwhelming majority in favor of keeping the existing school name. However, I understand that the potentially renaming of the school has not yet been taken
065off the table. So, I'd like to voice my feedback in opposition for a number of reasons. Colonies North Elementary has a long and meaningful history serving the members serving the families of Colonies North neighborhood and the immediately surrounding areas. As it stands, the name Colonies North is a neutral, non-controversial reflection of the area it serves, and remains an important part of the school's identity. There is no clear benefit to the students, former students, or neighborhood families to justify name change. Additionally, the campus recently underwent a major renovation during which updated signage and related branding were installed. I understand that an additional $37,000 in costs is anticipated if a name change were approved, an expense that would come directly from district resources and taxpayers. I observed the school renovation progress on a daily basis, and the
066cost of creating new signage seems like a ridiculous waste of taxpayer dollars. Given the many competing needs within our schools, I cannot support allocating limited education dollars toward a name change without a compelling, clearly communicated justification. Finally, Colonies North Elementary is deeply rooted in the surrounding community, sits adjacent to the Colonies House Swim and Tennis Club, and all area street names, including the school's address on Northampton, are aligned with the early American colonial theme, further reinforcing its strong geographic and historical connection to the neighborhood. Changing the name without a clear purpose risks severing a meaningful link between the school and the community it serves. I appreciate the district's commitment to community-centered decision-making and the opportunity to contribute to this important conversation. Thank you, Ms. Zapata. Thank you. Nancy Bowers Good evening. Again, it's good to
067see you all. Uh hopefully next time it'll be under different circumstances. Um So, I just wanted to start off by reading the last portion of what y'all posted in the link of the agenda stating a request to rename an existing school shall come through the standard nomination process. If the board is to consider renaming an existing school, it shall first seek feedback from the impacted school community. That's all great, but the problem is that's exactly where it ends. Um so, what I want to know is what now? Because the community survey was 441 no's and 46 yes's with 17 undecided. The community petition is 651 no's. So, I do understand that NISD, that y'all represent NISD as a whole, but Ms. Zapata, I'm your constituency. Those thousand signatures, they're your constituency and we're directly impacted
068by this process. So, I don't understand why there's not a clear decision as to what happens once you reach out to the community. You guys just left it there. And I I want to know what's going to happen next. Um also, uh in March you guys let the community know that you were halting um construction on elementary schools uh that were for um new gyms, libraries, cafeterias, classrooms, um admin spaces, all that were that were funded by a bond that we voted for your uh three years ago. So, there's no money to even finish updating the classrooms and cafeterias and gyms that need to be um updated. You paused all of that. And we're fixing to go in and have to vote on whether or not we want to give you guys an additional $400
069million come November. So, what I'm asking is why would we want to do that if you're even considering spending $37,000 on renaming a school when the community has overwhelmingly shown up through social media, through petitions, through surveys to let you know how strongly we feel about this. And I'm going to keep coming. Hopefully, we can come to some kind of revolution resolution, but that's where I stand and that is where the people that I speak to stand. We do not understand why it even got this far. Um and again, as someone who went to Colonies North Elementary School, both of my sons went to Colonies Elementary School, I'm on the board at the pool across the street. We're fixing to have the fifth grade pool party for free that we do for Colonies North Elementary
070School every year and have since I can remember. We are not just a neighborhood, we're a community. And I think it's time that we um get the same consideration that you wanted to give to the the who were putting in their submissions um and give us an answer uh based on the impact that the community has let you know that this will have and the fact that we are not okay with it. Thank you very much. Thank you. And also y'all said there were three people signed up, but There's four. Okay. Margaret Boros? Hello. I'm Margaret Boros. Um I moved to the Colonies North community in 2013 by accident. I did not mean to live there. I saw cute houses and I thought this is wonderful. I wanted to be equidistant from my husband's work,
071the school, and a grocery store because I had a bunch of children and we landed at Colonies North. And it has changed our lives. It is like a family. It is unlike anything I've ever seen before and we're a big family on community. My children um I have nine of them. They range in age from five, newly minted, to 20 in the United States Navy. They all have gone or are currently going to Colonies North Elementary School. One of them is 13. She goes to Hobby. And we adopted her when she was Well, we got her when she was seven. She came to us um because she is biologically related to some of our other kiddos and when I asked her tonight, which I'm probably going to send you the video because it's precious, I
072asked her before I came, "What do you think about them renaming the school? They want to rename it. What do you think?" I did not feed her any information, just that. And she goes, "I'm not okay with that. That's where I met my first friends. That's where I met my first teachers that cared about me. And that's where I have the best memories." And I was like, "Well, there you go." Because it's a family. We have been there since 2013 and I will be there since my baby is five until 2032. I am invested. I have been PTA president. I am going to be on the board again next year. And we are working so hard to create a community there. We face some really special challenges. We're an overflow campus. We are a newcomer
073campus, which some people don't think that those exist anymore, but it does because Catholic Charities bring families in and that's where they go. They go to our school. So, my kids know how to tell you to sit down in Pashto. And my kids know how to say stop running in the hallway in Arabic. And they speak English. We are represented by over 400 students when we do our parade of nations, which is incredible. It used to be 32 countries. Now it's 25. This year it's 25. It is so great to hear all of the kids come together and to know like my kids will say like, well, I play with the kids from Afghanistan cuz they play the best they we're a family. And we have the pool across the street. We have the the
074elementary school right there and we spend all school year with our friends at school and then we spend all summer at the pool with our friends. This is a community unlike anything I've ever seen. We've lived in Burney where you live in beautiful houses and everyone really cares about your education and what backpack you have. We moved out of that because my kids didn't look like any of the kids that were going to school with them. Now they go to Colonies North and I am so excited that my littlest is going to end up at Hobby from Colonies North. Please don't change the name of our school. Leave us alone. We have such a proud heritage. We matter. Our family matters. So, please consider that. Thank you. Thank you. Believe that completes all who signed
075up to speak to 11D. Um in your board packet, you'll see you have the renaming of the facilities CW local policy which has been revised over the past 2 years. So, this is a discussion potential action item. Okay. Anybody like to Mrs. Freeman? I was going to push the button and then there's >> There's no button to push. I guess I was confused at the agenda item to begin with because it is um it is policy. I don't know if the intent was to discuss a change in the policy or not. Um I know we've had conversation about this particular issue regarding um naming the school. This might be the fourth board meeting we've had. I don't I don't know. I I know at the very beginning there was a there was a conversation about
076wanting to change the name. And this um it was voted majority of the board wanted to go ahead and do this and and our policy says that we needed to survey the community. Um from my perspective, um we've surveyed the community. We have clearly heard how the community feels. Um we are all about community on this board. We have said to our community we we will listen to you. But you know, it's one thing to listen and it's also another thing to um then in turn respond um to them and engage with them. Um I I am concerned about going forward with any type of change currently in the name of of Colonies North. These people certainly the people that live there have a sense of of pride in their school. And I we all
077have children and we all know what that pride is like. And um and that particular school is named after the community and and which they live. So, um that's that's where I am. I guess I I I'm still confused about the intent of the agenda item. >> Okay, let me clarify. The intent of the agenda item is being put on the agenda for this session is because as you mentioned, the policy indicates the board's final selection shall be determined at a regular called meeting. So, we have to take action on the nominations and the names that have been submitted. And that's been the whole purpose of this entire process is to answer to the request that have been made to make a name change. And that was the decision that was asked to be put
078on the agenda to begin with. So, here we are. We have to make a final decision and that's the intent for this particular meeting for us to make a final decision on all nominations that have been made to date because we haven't addressed those uh individually, right? So, that's that's my understanding. So, first I have Dr. Hassold then Dr. Hall. Um I just wanted to go over like kind of I guess the thought process. So, as a new board member coming on and I had heard that these requests had been in queue for a very long time. I personally felt that it was important for us to be transparent and to have a process and follow through cuz people had been waiting for a long time for a response. So, that's at least my thought
079process on it. I wanted us to be transparent with the process and give individuals a response that they had been waiting for for a while. Um I know you want to add in after that if we want to do a motion to Dr. Hall had a discussion. Yeah, a couple things and um I just wanted to um reinstate something I said two board meetings ago. Um And just build on some of the comments about community and family and voice and advocacy. And I'm going to stay away from the word transparency because I do think these have been honest conversations and so I want to just highlight the word honest. Um Our family goes back to Colonies North. Our family swam across the street. My church is down the street. It has Colonies in the name,
080A Fan Jackson. Um Our memories are formed not just around a word Colonies North, but around a neighborhood, around a community that has been over 50 years that I've been part of that community. Um active, engaged, um and so proud of a school that is named Colonies North. We have talked about so I guess part of my my story is we also want to honor honor a process we've been doing um on the board level that may not or may need to be in policy where and it was brought up again two board meetings ago that well we changed Shenandoah Elementary which is Shenandoah when I was in Colonies um to Shirley Hausman. Well Shirley Hausman had been principal of that school, beloved principal. The community again wanted Shirley Hausman and so hence that name
081came as a change. Uh we've named new schools at the board level and lots of names have been in the queue and we've looked at them. And so that's when we've either looked in the queue and it's been for a people waiting for a long time, but it's been when there's been an opening for a name. Um we renamed Jerry Allen Elementary. I'm going blank what it was. What was Jerry Allen? Lackland City. Yeah. Lackland City, thank you. And it was back when um I was part of that community as an educator um at Rayburn and the community again wanted to honor Jerry Allen. Um I didn't see any nominations and I could have missed them but I didn't see any nominations from the community saying they wanted um a name change at all in
082colonies and that's that's something that I think has been community driven. Um I saw it come from outside the community. I would have loved and again this is just if it becomes policy some sort of additional clarification honest clarification around um people that we'd like to consider either from that community or from that school so the honor is really aligned to their work to their purpose to their contributions. I I didn't see this although again what an honorable educator. I wish we could name every thing libraries gardens sensory rooms and maybe that's the another policy consideration. Um but um right now I I think it's very loud and clear that the community um my family um wants to keep the name the same um until some of these other things are fleshed out and that
083can be done and I it's not kicking the can maybe it'll be a time that we need to have that in a workshop or our our board where we talk about being more specific and clear especially for new board members about how our schools are named so Thank you Mrs. Zapata. Um I I agree uh with Carolyn uh Dr. Hasso. I know when we came on the board this was something that was already uh or was considered so I felt like it was something that was taking a really long time So, when I look at our process and how we do things, I really do think this is um one of the areas that we need to go back whether it's during a workshop and look at this and really um clean the process up.
084It I think it took too long. Um and I understand the uniqueness uh of the community, you know, um I met many people when I did my block walking. So, I truly understand um you know, uh how special that community is and and how um rooted it is in our district. Um so, I would like for us to see moving forward um working on this and cleaning it up so there's a clear process and the transparency that we should have uh for our community um to show that we are listening and and and every email that I received, every you know, all of those did not go on deaf ears. So, so we take that into consideration. So, I I think thank you for the community feedback. Um I again, I I just feel like
085I want to apologize because we I felt like we could have done better with this and we will do better. We will do better and I and and I promise you that. So, um Thank you, Mr. Bond. Yeah, I'll just say I've probably been part of a naming of at least 70, probably more than that, schools, etc. Uh just couple quick comment. What it really comes down to, to be honest, is whether how the board operation works together uh to address it. I mean, it's clear we've done um when we get nominations in the past for whether it be buildings, libraries, etc., brought before the board, discussed it, made a decision or not, moved on, and we've done a naming in that particular regard. New schools, you point out the process was, and they submit,
086we take the names, we look at it. I don't know Colonies North to me couldn't be on the table tonight uh from the discussion um because you can't just rename an existing school by our policy. You know, first you go out to the community and state it. And then, if you want to go forward even further, then it goes through like it states in our policy, it goes through like a new school naming process. I mean, in the way we've done it, but you couldn't just rename it per se. So, I don't be honest, I don't know where we are tonight if it's just, "Hey, let's go up up down in terms of the ones that are listed there." But I don't see where Colonies North to even be on the table tonight uh for
087uh any type of decision. Okay. Well, we have any emotions? It's an action item. Any motion from the board? I have a question. Sure. Will we go for I'm sorry. Are we going to go for a motion? Mhm. There's been a discussion or uh Mr. Blunt, you talked about um people I don't Is there I I don't see any It's just the policy that's on the agenda. There's no um I mean, we've looked at There are people that that we know that have been named um or have There's been some suggestions to name uh parts of facilities, whether it be gyms or or courtyards or whatever after somebody, but it is not in the agenda tonight. I mean, I I keep I I've heard I've heard that. So, to to take to put that in
088to the any kind of motion, I think would it's disingenuous. Okay. Which by the way, and I don't think we can do legally, I don't think we can do that. Dr. Hall? Well, I don't know what the legality is. I was just going to make a motion that we um not rename Colonies North Elementary School and take a vote on it. Okay. Madam President. I move we close debate and move to vote. Not to close. Colonies North. Not to rename. Oh, I'm sorry. Not to rename. I was like I'm sorry. It's been a long night. >> motion and then a second. Okay, so >> Not to rename. I apologize. It's been a long night. >> me rephrase that. There's a motion on the floor by Dr. Hall that we move to not rename Colonies North
089this evening and there's a second motion by Mrs. Zapanta with the same language. Uh we'd like to vote. All in favor say I. I. >> I. Any opposed? Any further discussion? And I'd like to just finalize that we have looked at all submissions and we want to thank the community for their voice. And thank you for sticking through this process as we respond to all of the requests that were made. So, thank you. Motion is passed. We are not renaming the school. All right. So, we're going to go back up to our next item. Um and actually we'd like to ask if the folks that have signed up to speak to agenda item 14c, rather than wait till after executive session, if those three folks would like to speak now or wait until 11-ish. So,
090what we'll do is we'll just change, rather than speaking to 14c, we'll go back to 4a. Madam President, if you'll recall 4a. Uh this will be just a general citizens to be heard. Uh this will allow you to speak. Uh Like I say, logistically we'll have to go into executive session before we can take up 14c. If you'd like to stay until 14c, you're more than welcome to do so. It's maybe a little bit later in the meeting. Uh we call Okay. agenda item four. So, we'd like to recall agenda item four, A, citizens to be heard. I would those Chad Gray, would you like to speak this evening? Thank you. Superintendent, members of the board, trustees, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak on coach Nick Hayden's behalf. My name is Chad
091Gray and only just a few seconds about my background to qualify the rest of my remarks. I'm a graduate of the United States Naval Academy. Navy beat Air Force. I'm a retired information warfare officer in the United States Navy, former vice president of an aerospace and defense company and I led the largest technical analysis contract at NSA for 10 years. So, I know a little bit about leadership. I've had a a great opportunity to to witness leadership and what I've seen from coach Hayden is is a tremendous leader and the impact that he's had. I've heard a lot of your comments or remarks this evening about community and family. And what our mission here is about the children. And I've seen directly his impact with not only my sons but a lot of our friends
092and family as well. 19 years that's not just a tenure number, that's a generation of kids. That's thousands of early mornings, late nights, weekends, bus rides, practices, meets, moments where a young person needs someone to believe in them and he did. You look at his record, it's remarkable. District championships across multiple sports at middle school level, football, basketball, track, golf. And at the high school level, eight Alamo water polo titles, two regional titles, multiple coach of the year awards. And as I understand that, that comes from peer recognition as well. In swimming, 21 district championships, four regional titles, and even a state championship performance. But, I want to be very clear, that's not why I'm here. What he's built is something far more important. He built confidence in kids who didn't think that they had
093it. He built discipline in kids who needed structure. He built resilience in kids who were going through things that most adults wouldn't handle well. He's built teams that feel like family. And some of my best friends in my my life are now here as a result of his leadership in bringing this team together in a community. And long after the medals are put away, that's what lasts. But, I want to speak of something harder. At 19 years in this community, he's facing a tough challenge right now with with the uh the things that are before you. And I just want to ask you to consider those things and the impact that he's had on these kids' lives and what opportunity that he will continue to have if you make the right choice and right make
094the right decisions. And and I know with great confidence, given this long track record record of history and the other members that I've gotten to know very well and their backgrounds, we all trust and have faith in Coach Hayden, and I know he will continue to do a great job. Please consider that. Thank you very much. Trey Labella? Would you like to speak now, or would you like to wait? Members of the board and administration, thank you for taking time to hear us out. My name is Trey LaBella. I'm recently retired Air Force surgeon. I've spent the past 30 years of my life serving the country. A little bit about my future. Last 14 years of my career, I was a professor teaching young surgeons the values and the principles that matter in life. More
095importantly, I'm the parent of a current and one past swimmer. But as someone who has witnessed the extraordinary impact Coach Hayden has had on our swim program, our students, and this community. I cannot speak for all the families, but as a military family, when we heard the pleasure that we were coming back to San Antonio, we sought out O'Connor. We sought out Coach Hayden to plan our roots and to stay here so Coach Hayden's impact could have further implications on our family and our future. Coach Hayden has built a legacy not just with championship titles or coach of the year awards. Although those are impressive and well deserved, but more importantly, they build a culture of discipline, resilience, teamwork, and integrity. His student athletes train hard and support each other and achieve remarkable results both
096in and out of the pool largely because of his leadership. As board members, if you all are trusted to protect our educators and the best interests of the most important people, our student athletes, it is without doubt Coach Hayden is the man for the job. When we speak of educators shaping lives, Coach Hayden is the very definition. Ask any of the swimmers, past or present. Ask any of the parents that serve him on boards. You'll never hear stories of how this inspired them, pushed them to believe in themselves and create a second home on the pool deck and for the lives ahead. Ask the parents and we'll tell you how grateful we are that our children have had a role model who genuinely cares about the growth and development of our children. Coach Hayden has
097faced lots of accusations and has been through a lot over the past couple years. Some of this, in my opinion, are baseless accusations. 26 years, 19 years at O'Connor, almost two decades without a spotless reputation, and now he's facing potential loss of his job. His family, his daughters, he had to step away from coaching and miss his daughter's senior year. He has another child that's about to start her senior year, and he's 1 year away from retirement, and y'all want to dismiss a man of quality and integrity. Due process matters, and so does a person's long-standing character and the positive impact they've had on hundreds of lives. We're not asking for blind loyalty, we're asking for fairness and in context for the board to consider overwhelming support that Coach Hayden has for his swimmers and
098for his parents. Don't let fear or speculation undo years of dedication and success. I stand here before you today and ask all the parents and coaches and children to stand with me. Coach Hayden has stood with us, I would ask you to stand with him. Thank you. Joey Riley. Good evening, board and trustees. Um my name is Joey Riley and uh I'm here to speak on behalf of Coach Hayden as well. I want to tell a story. We moved to San Antonio about 10 years ago, um and we had our children in a local swim community, and I remember the first time I interacted with Coach Hayden. Um he he's loud, um and it was a competition, So, you better bet he was, uh, there to win. And it was impressionable for me because it
099was what I grew up with as an athlete playing sports. Someone who's hard, but compassionate and supportive. And we were at Briscoe, so my daughter was districted for Taft, but she decided that she wanted to attend, um, asked the school for agriculture. The one thing we knew was Coach Hayden was there, and when we, uh, first started, she was slightly apprehensive about what this interaction was going to be like. And what I can tell you 2 years later, um, it has been quite the opposite experience. Um, he has brought my daughter in as a brand new student. Think of that, changing schools. You went to middle school with these children. But he has supported her in a way that as a father, um, I respect very much. And it has been so impactful to my
100daughter in a way that he has guided her and pushed her and challenged her to where she's now very much invested in pursuing a college career to play water polo, which is really inspiring for a father and is something that I could have never have done for her. When I look back and I just look at the man and the experience and the tenure that he's had with the ISD, I want to echo some of the sentiments of the gentleman who spoke before me. One year before retirement. You know, like these guys, I spent 4 years in human resources at Target Corporation, and I learned a lot about culture and environment. I've also learned over some of these experiences we've, uh, had to go through with, um, Coach Hayden's investigations and some of the things
101that happened. It's affected my daughter. And I'll give you one specific example. There was a claim around harassment, and I believe it was sexual harassment. And the administration pulled my daughter into the office. Didn't contact us. Didn't have any discussions with us about why that conversation was being had. She's 16. She's a minor. As a parent, I find it completely unacceptable for anyone to take action in a space where there's allegations that to that ex- extent. My wife and I tried to contact the administrative staff multiple times over several weeks and we were not contacted or no calls returned back from anyone in that administration and I find that unacceptable. When we did connect with someone, there was lack of documentation. There was lack of context. There was really a lack of any proof or
102anything in regards to what it is that they were seeking to understand. As a parent, I find that completely unacceptable. I don't know the full facts of why we're sitting in this position with Hayden, but I what I will say is I would say it's a grave mistake if you guys are even remotely entertaining the opportunity to release him from this district. As a teacher and as a Thank you. That's the last citizen to be heard that we have signed up. Okay, thank you all for coming tonight and we are now in our next agenda item which is five reports and district the 5A. Ma'am, so this evening is really your first opportunity to see the work, the combination of work that's been done with CSG resource planning. You of course know Debbie McNary. I
103don't know if you've had the opportunity to meet Olin or actually I think you have actually with your individual interviews. It is about the future planning, strategic planning that we've been discussing for months now and really looking at the way forward. The optimization piece of the conversation is really important because as we're looking forward and I know that I don't mean to take Megan's presentation too far uh detail, but we're going to be uh hovering around 95,000 students uh next year. It's going to be about 14,000 students less than uh where we peaked uh not too long ago, 6 7 years ago. And so we've got some tough decisions uh before us. The optimization piece of this is is what programs should we really look at trying to grow? Um what are our priorities? Uh
104again, more along the lines of strategic planning. Um and how do we best utilize most efficiently the limited resources that are made available to the district? Because they are limited. And I want to be really clear. This will be the last deficit budget that will be able to be proposed depending on the amount without going into fund balance the following school year. And I just that's as clear as I can make it without making some really really difficult decisions. With that being said, Dr. Fay, Debbie, turn it over to you guys. So thank you for the opportunity and um I know that Olin Parker will go through kind of like our process tonight and um we're hoping to land on some priorities that will help us guide the work moving forward because we're nowhere near
105making any recommendations uh to our Board of Trustees on where we're going to go and what we're going to do. And so uh to kick us off, I thought it would be really important um for Debbie McNairney who's been involved kind of behind the scenes uh a lot uh in Northside for many many many years in resource planning uh and that is all about the boundaries and our staffing models and things like that. And so I have found Debbie to be absolutely instrumental in our most recent rounds of looking at staffing and understanding where we've been and then helping us kind of look forward. And so, um I think Debbie I think all of us have a a problem or a challenge with understanding what the big picture really is for us moving forward. Uh
106but I think Debbie and I have and others that are working on this task force have come to realize that, you know, like Miss Dr. Craft said, the limited resources are upon us. And we're going to have to be really resourceful in how we use our resources moving forward. And nobody explains that better than Debbie. And so, thank you, Debbie, for doing that for us. And I think we've got a slide. Or not, right? >> Or not. There you go. Um thank you for that introduction, Dr. Duran, Dr. Craft, and the members of the board. And I'm I'm not bringing a boundary meet proposal with maps and numbers, so I'll be brief and you don't have to concentrate on the details right tonight. Um I think I was challenged a little bit of walking a
107little very quickly down some historical information and kind of talk about where we've been, where we're going, and kind of some op- some opportunities that we have. So, first of all, just talk very quickly about some challenges. And those of you who have known the district for a very long time, um for many, many years in this district, our work was very focused on high growth. High growth, where we going to serve students, and making sure that we were providing equitable uh opportunities for kids all across our diverse district, whether you in a we're in a fast growth area or not. And really focusing on making sure we were providing a high-quality educational opportunities for everyone across the district, regardless. And while that was a a focus for a very long time, in more recent
108time, the district as we know it with those kinds of challenges is very different. And um the rapid change that we've experienced, when you talk about just these last few years, our peak was in 1920 school year or the 20 the 2019-2020 school year. Um and so, the rapid changes that we've experienced in a very short time is not unique to Northside. We're seeing those kinds of challenges across the state. It's unfamiliar territory for us as a district, and so we're really having to strategically think about what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how we should be moving forward differently. Um the unprecedented expansion of charter schools, homeschooling, micro schools, some of these things didn't even exist in our community just a very very few recent years past. Um and we've had, as you
109know, I'm not going to go into those details, right? Frequent changes in state funding, and those are challenges as we navigate what how things impact us. And so, as we talk about challenges, yes, we do need to talk about enrollment change pattern changes, capacity changes. Those are real challenges, but I also see where we going next. We have lots of opportunity, and that's how I choose to look at the process we're going through right now. Um the work that we've done in this district historically is looks different than the work we're doing right now. And those of you have been on the board a long time, you know that, right? The kinds of conversations and the work our department has been involved with looks very different. But the at the heart of the work, it's
110still about evaluating and planning. That work is not going to change. It just looks different given the situations that we're in right now. And so, where why are we going through this process as a district? The optimization the optimization process? I look at that as an opportunity. We're having a unique opportunity to to team with the CSG partners. Um and I want to make it really clear we've all been involved. This is not just a high-level involved with these um consultants and this group. Their T&I and our department, along with many other folks across the district, have been been involved and engaged with this process and meeting with them from the very beginning. Um I see that they bring a wealth of experience as they've looked at projects all across the district in kind of
111a different lens to look at um as we begin to evaluate where we are and what opportunities we have as we make decisions going forward. I think they uh I can share that that they're very data-driven and you're going to hear that in the presentation and you probably have heard that previously, but I also want to make it really clear that that data starts with our data. This is not somebody coming in with new data, it's our data, district data that the is you know, TEA, PEIMS data, etc. But it's also looking at that data from a different lens sometimes. And I look I I think it's important as we talked about input from our community, our leaders, you as the board, our district leaders, as we're looking at all of those pieces of information,
112I see it as a team effort working with the CSG group and trying to figure out how do we look at all of our challenges from different angles and what are some possible solutions to that? And ultimately as you as Dr. Fay mentioned, we have a goal to establish a framework and I see that framework with this project as giving us as district leaders a roadmap for both the short-term and the long-term as we navigate a different district with a different look. How do we make the best decisions to use the limited resources as Dr. Craft and Dr. Fay have both mentioned. And I think that it is super important to look at um from our lens and our department's work, we're going to continue to look at evaluating and planning. We have to look
113differently at how do we use our resources, our very limited resources in the most strategic, effective ways to serve our communities. And what the way we decide to serve community and community B may need to be different than what we've done in the past and they may not look exactly the same, but I think that's the challenge as we go forward and the opportunity we have to rethink all the ways that we're providing education to make sure that we're being impactful and providing the best opportunity for all of our kids, no matter what that situation is. Efficient use of facilities, programs, the way opportunities, the way we bring community in. So I look at this as a partnership as we move forward and and looking at opportunities and those long-term solutions with your leadership. So
114with that I'll hand it over to Olin. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you, Debbie. Thank you so much, Debbie. I just want to thank you on the microphone for all that you've given to this process so far. You've truly been instrumental in our work. Um Madam President, Superintendent Kraft, members of the board, thank you so much for having me here tonight. Uh I want to start by saying it was very inspirational to be here at the beginning of the evening to see so many students receive so many accolades and and to have accomplished so much in their time at Northside ISD. Uh some of you may remember from our earlier conversations, I'm a trustee in my own community and I always love this time of year because we get to celebrate the
115successes of our students and I just want to say the students that were in this room tonight were extremely impressive and you have so much to be proud of here in the district. Um Thank you. As you're very welcome. As as Debbie mentioned, uh we're here tonight to to give an update on the district optimization process that first came to this board in January. And that process, as the superintendent mentioned, is about responding to the realities of the district, the financial realities of the district, the demographic realities of the of this district, the uh realities of making sure that we are maximizing our use maximizing the use of our resources to benefit our students, our teachers, our families, and our community. Uh do I have a clicker? Or should I Perfect. Thank you. So, um
116if you look at this slide, when people hear the words district optimization, and it's a term that has different meanings in different places, they often immediately go to school closure or school consolidation. And I want to be very upfront that is often part of the district optimization process, but that is not what we mean when we are talking about this process. District optimization could include any of the items that you see on the presentation here or many items that are not on this presentation. So, uh, it could look like implementing new programming to be responsive to communities, to make sure that we're retaining the students that we do have, and attracting new students to the district. It could mean re-zoning to make sure that we are capitalizing on our highest quality facilities and making sure
117that we have that our highest performing campuses are serving the correct number of students. Uh, we've worked in districts where we listen to the community and we expand popular programming. In this part of the district, there may be high demand to expand the existing fine arts program. In another part of the district, uh, it may be expanding the, uh, STEM magnet program that exists. This work involves many things. It is about maximizing the re- the limited resources, the finite resources that we have to benefit all students. I'm just going to ask you to take us to the next slide cuz I might not be smart enough to work the clicker. Uh, so, the update for tonight is about the priority development process. Over the last 3 months, we've been engaging with members of the Northside
118ISD community, stakeholders, staff, parents, students, et cetera, to develop a set of priorities to guide this work, as Debbie mentioned. Uh, now, why have we spent so much time investing in priority development? Well, first and foremost, these priorities serve as a decision-making foundation for this work. We want to make sure that any decision that ultimately comes to the board is grounded in evidence, is grounded in is grounded in the feedback that we received from the community at the beginning of the process. Additionally, setting priorities will allow us to do a holistic and objective review of every single campus. Everybody comes to every decision they make in their lives with a with preconceived notions, with their own context, with their own history. Setting priorities at the beginning of this process allows us to make sure that
119we are objective in our analysis of every single campus, that we have an equitable and holistic review of every single Northside ISD school. And what it needs and how it can thrive moving forward. Additionally, we want to make sure that this work is reflective of this community. There are and not only the Northside ISD community, but the smaller communities within Northside that make up the broader district. These are not priorities that are created from scratch. They are building on the values and the context and the experience of the community members themselves because that is what makes this process effective is when it is reflective of the needs and wants and desires of the community. Next slide, please. Hey, look at that. Um thank you very much. So, this very simple equation that you see on
120the screen sort of summarizes the entirety of the process. You could look at a district, you could look at the budget, you could look at the schools, you could look at the score the scores on STAR tests. You could look at all that data and make a bunch of district optimization decisions and you could be done by the end of the week. And if you made decisions in that way as a board, you would unintentionally do a lot of harm to the Northside ISD community. Similarly, boards could make decisions using only their context, their values, or their experiences. They could make decisions based on their gut. If they if if the board made decisions that way, it could also unintentionally do a lot of harm to the community. So, what we're doing with this process
121is we're trying to marry those two things. All of the data that we have available to us provided by uh the wonderful members of the Northside ISD team that are seated around the room here. All of the data that exists in TE uh in the TE various TEA data repositories. All of the data that is available from demographers, wherever you want to find it. There is a plethora of data out there, but we are not making decisions based solely on that data. We're making decisions based on that data, as well as everything that we have heard from the thousands of people who have already weighed in on this process. And so, we are putting those two things together and uh coming up with draft priorities for you for the board's consideration that you'll hear about
122this evening. So, I wanted to give you an update on the community engagement that's happened since the last time we spoke. What you see here is over 300 Northside ISD staff members engaging in a discussion about what makes a thriving school. It happened in this this very room. Uh and this this included uh central office staff, principals, members of the operations team. We heard from uh people that work in food service. We heard from transportation employees. We brought as many people as possible to give us their definition of what a thriving school is. You can see uh you probably recognize some familiar faces in these photos. Uh but we we received really valuable feedback from this group of individuals. And we boiled that down into 10 categories that were most relevant in those conversations. And
123you see them on the screen here. Uh safety and security, positive school culture, a thriving school has extracurricular opportunities for students, a thriving school has strong school leadership. Now, these mean different things to different people, but these were the broader themes that were developed from that engagement with over 300 Northside ISD staff members. From there, we took those 10 um those 10 themes and released a survey to the broader community. We use the same method for this survey that the district uses uh when it seeks feedback on other things like a bond or a veto or, you know, all of the same mechanisms, the communication mechanisms to parents, social media posts. You can see a a screenshot of a social media post, uh direct communications via email or text to families. Uh and through that
124engagement, we were able to receive over 5,000 responses on those 10 themes. I'm pleased to report that over 55% of those responses were from parents, were from guardians, were from people whose children attend Northside ISD schools every day. Um typically, we don't see a response rate that high from parents and guardians when we do surveys in districts. So, we were thrilled to see that uh that number, that percentage of parents and guardians weigh in this early in the process. So, how did the parents, community members, and staff members weigh in on those 10 themes that we talked about? You see right here Of course, all of these things are important. So, all of these things have are very highly rated. There was we were we asked community members to weigh in and rate from one
125to being least not very important, five being very important. And obviously, all of these things are important, but you saw some clear sort of priorities for the community emerge, safety and security being chief among them. I do want to point out safety and security, like I said, means different things to many people. For some people, if you look at the open-ended feedback, safety and security meant the built environment. For other people, it meant uh their student feels safe and like they have a trusted adult that's cool. For others, it it meant there's no bullying at the campus. So, what we did is we sort of weeded through not only the uh the quantitative data, but also the qualitative data to determine what the themes are as we're narrowing this funnel. Remember, we started with um
126just an open-ended question to staff members, then we narrowed it uh to rating these 10 items uh with members of the community, and we use this to come up with four priorities that we hope will guide this work. Those priorities you see on the screen here. The first is academic achievement. It's no surprise, I think, to anybody in this room that academic achievement is a quality of a thriving school. Additionally, leadership and staff, high-quality leadership uh at both the administrative and at the teacher level. The student experience. Again, student experience means different things to different people. We heard a lot about safety and security. We heard a lot about school culture. These are things that align very closely and fit into the student experience priority. And lastly, resources and facilities. Are our buildings uh high-quality?
127Are our schools operating in a way that is financially sustainable, etc.? So, these were the four themes that emerged after the survey. And we took these four themes and worked with the individuals that you see on this screen. When we talk about academic achievement, we were working with Susan Cleveland identify the correct data to measure academic achievement for Northside ISD. For leadership and staff, we worked with Ben, we worked with Adrian. With student experience, we brought in Debbie and T. Resources and facility, obviously Megan and Jacob were involved in those conversations as well. Again, we wanted to lean on the people who know this community best to identify what data is going to measure these four things that the community has identified are important to them. And so we ultimately came to the conclusion that
128these would be the best stand-ins to measure these four priorities. You can see them on the screen here. I'm not going to go into uh intense detail at the board meeting, but they're up here. Obviously, academic achievement, we're looking at both an absolute bar and growth. Uh for leadership and staff, we're looking at is this a place where teachers want to stay? Is this a teach a place where teachers want to work every day? Is this a place where teachers uh remain in the school for a long time and develop strong relationships with each other and with families. Student experience, is this a safe school? Is this a school where students want to come every day? Is this a place where uh families want to continue coming to the school year after year? And lastly,
129resources and facilities, is this a is this a campus that is financially sustainable? Is this a campus that is worthy uh from the built environment standpoint that is worthy of the students inside of it? We are going to take all of this data once the board approves these priorities and create a school profile for every single campus in the district. We want to be be transparent in this process. These school profiles are not report cards. They are simply a reflection of the current reality based on your community says this is important. We're measuring uh we're measuring how each school performs when compared to the standard that's been set by the community. And once uh once the board approves these priorities, these school profiles will be created, shared on the district optimization website, and used throughout
130the entirety of this process. I do want to call your attention to the two um screenshots on the left. That is the uh glossary and data index for the school profiles. Every single data point that you see in a school profile will have a citation. It will be backed up so that any member of the community can know if we're talking about teacher retention, this is the data point that we got it that we used uh to to include in the school profile. If we are talking about student growth, this is the data point. And so we will again, we want to be objective. We want to be transparent, and we want to make sure that every community member has access to these profiles. And so as soon as they are completed, they'll be posted
131publicly and shared widely. I just want to conclude this evening. That that's There's some There's an issue with the slide. I'm not sure what it is, but I just want to conclude by sharing with you where we are in the process right now and where we're going. In January, uh the the concept of district optimization was introduced at a board meeting. We have since had conversations uh with members of the community, with members of the board, uh and developed these priorities that we hope to that we will apply to every single district school. Moving forward from that process, after the school profiles are created, we will look at every piece of data we have. We will look at all of the community context that we've already received. And we'll develop some draft scenarios. What do
132we need to do in this part of the district? How can we attract students in this part of the district? What programming are our families clamoring for? What do we need to expand? What do we need to start fresh? After that point, we'll bring some draft scenarios to the board for your consideration and we'll immediately begin another round of community engagement. The community engagement is a cornerstone of this process and you will continually receive updates on the results of that community engagement. And at the end of this process, the staff that you see in this room will implement whatever recommendations are ultimately approved by the board and incorporated into the long-term planning of the district. Along the bottom of this slide, you'll see board and stakeholder feedback are included throughout. We will have conversations throughout
133this process. We will continue seeking um seeking guidance from community members, from uh existing advisory groups, from any new advisory group that is created. Um basically, we are firm believers that this process works best when you involve as many people as possible. And so, we are going to constantly be seeking board and stakeholder feedback so that you as a board, whenever the decisions are ultimately what whenever the decisions ultimately come before you, you feel like you have all the information that you need in order to make an informed decision. The challenges facing school districts in Texas are real. There is uncertain funding. There is declining enrollment basically everywhere. There is um you know, there are demographic challenges. There are housing challenges. Every district is facing them in different ways. The Northside ISD board needs to
134respond to those challenges. And we are firm believers because we've done this work that you can respond to these challenges in a way that benefits students, benefits families, increases student achievement, and increases the number of students who are in your highest quality facilities. I really appreciate your attention this evening. Really appreciate the invitation to be here and um as I mentioned, we'll be in touch throughout this process. Thank you. I have a follow-up question. Lots of questions. >> As you um make your recommendations, could you also consider like what marketing strategies would be beneficial or like how can we recover lost students? Like that's one of the big questions that we've been asked from the community. And then if there are recommendations of resources that may be uh recommended um to be lost, how would
135that community be impacted? Those are like the the questions I've been getting like what the those are the big, you know, million-dollar questions. If something were to be removed, how is that community going to be impacted, right? And those are the questions I know several of us have had along the way, but I think there's other questions here. Thank you. Uh who did you have a question? Mrs. Freeman? I'd like to go back to the draft priorities. So, um you have examples here of are these examples of academic achievement or are we defining how well we do academically by our results on the STAR exam including CCMR? So, again, I'm trying to get back. I'm I'm once again having clicker issues. Um but the data that you see on the screen was a result of
136conversations with all of the individuals around uh Slide 12. Slide 12, yes. Um with all of the individuals from Northside ISD, we sat down and said, "This is what's important to members of the community. What are the best ways to measure this?" It's certainly not the only way way to measure whether a school is academically successful, but we also are constantly trying to balance how can we Thank you very much. How can we ensure that we are looking at what is important, but also not overwhelm members of the community by talking about you know, Dibble scores and um MAP scores. >> MAP scores or you know, all of these academic data can be very complicated. And so the group ultimately decided that these were the best uh representations of the four items that the community
137identified as most important. I guess I would say if we ask our parents how they define academic achievement, nobody I I you're going to find very few people that are going to say, "I want my child to do well on the STAR exam." And that's going to predict how well he or she will do in the future. I'm concerned about using just the STAR data. We know of our communities and we dabbled years ago talking about some community accountability system. We never got there. But I I'm concerned. I I understand the importance because that's what that's how our state rates us. That's how our state looks at us, but I guess I don't know that I want to define student achievement and I I'm just one person here, but I don't want to find student
138achievement in the school district by how well we do on STAR tests. We do talk about MAP data. And and I will tell you we've sat in accountability sessions and how well the map data predict how well we do on on STAR exams. We've Well, we've always talked about Lexile profiles and various other things with um Anyway, that's a concern. Um and I just lost my page, but um teacher retention and our teacher attendance or teachers' years of experience, I would also add certifications. And um there's just so many other things besides and student experience student attendance is one of one of them, but I just wonder about other things. This just My thought is that this oversimplifies. Um the the examples here oversimplifies these priorities. Are we looking like income? Like when you talk
139about I think that that's what you're looking at, right? So, uh if I may If we could go to the slide that shows the school Oh, I it's working again. Um the school profiles that you see here include significantly more data than what is represented in this slide. Uh typically the way the school profiles work is on the front page we have uh information about the school's demographics, about its history, um to what you just mentioned uh President Duran it talks about their socioeconomic status, their or their economically disadvantaged status. It gives you sort of a snapshot of the back page it is about how a school uh performs according to those metrics set by the priorities. So, there is additional academic information that will be presented uh in the school profile documents, but again,
140we're trying to strike a balance between making sure that these are accessible for members of the community, making sure that they are accurate representations of the communities' wish wishes through the surveys and through the community engagement that we've done. It's always going to be a difficult process to identify exactly what is right, but just to give you a little window into the discussions, we talked a lot about absolute performance versus growth, you know, that continual debate that you have in you know, rewarding schools for academic performance versus rewarding schools that are able to grow students. And we wanted to make sure that both of those were represented, which is why we ultimately landed on the metrics that are just got that we had under academic achievement. Um so again, it's never going to be perfect,
141but that is what, you know, working with uh Dr. Cleveland and other members of the team, that's ultimately what we decided on in this iteration of the priorities. Dr. Harrell and then Mrs. Zapata. Yeah, um so I'm curious. I'm not critical. Um this first time I've been through this. So, I wanted to ask a few questions um just for clarity. Um I I don't think we had the slides that had um our staff members who represented unless I'm looking at a different report. Um so, I'm just curious about the four themes, uh academic achievement, leadership, and staff, etc. Um How what was the decision-making process where those names were given in order to deepen the work or to look at next steps? So, the process is always a little bit messy anytime you're looking at
1425,000 responses. You know, you have to do some synthesis. And so, if you look at these sort of 10 um 10 responses here, you have to balance what is the community saying with what data is available to you. So, as I mentioned, safety and security means different things to different people. And so, when we looked at the open-ended feedback in the survey, we found that the lion's share of the safe and secure environment feedback was about feeling welcomed on campus, feeling they had a trusted adult on campus. And that feedback was very closely aligned to positive culture, meaningful relationships, other themes that came up. And so we went So what we did as a group was sort of determine these fit in this these sort of are in the same center of the Venn diagram.
143These qualities sort of fit in the center of this Venn diagram. And then we went through a a process to identify what data do we actually have. So school culture, Northside ISD used to have a district-wide um student and staff culture survey. We do not have current data for that. That survey was discontinued several years ago. Uh so we don't have current data, so we could not use that as a data source. And so the group then sort of identified, well, this also is a is an accurate representative of school culture. And this might be a representative of a representation of school culture. And so what we did is we identified commonalities, identified data sources, and then came up with a list that was presented this evening. Well, so if that was the highest percentage,
144safe and secure, um where I I I guess I'm I I need clarity around is it the student experience? Is it academic? I mean, it seems like school culture is led by the the principal. I mean, it seems like that's all the way through, and I'm not seeing that. Um and so that's that's my big question. Where is that represented here? And then what kind of metrics would be around I I know you said we don't have, but it maybe um that's something that we need to work towards as an action item um if that came out so high. Um so that that was one question and then going if you could go to the slide that had the names on it, where would representation be of our own staff that highlights that kind of
145next steps or that work about school culture. Um I'm I'm again I'm looking at Dave Caesar phenomenal people. Um I just know there's other leaders that would represent that as well and why it was limited to just these few. Um so I don't know if you want to answer that or um but then you had mentioned that then um there was um staff would funnel um some of that information and then it would go in an open-ended way to the community. So these staff are really important and so I'm I'm trying to get clarity around the funneling process and who is involved involved and how in order that the community get what they originally asked for or responded to on the survey. So Yes ma'am. So let me uh I'll try to address both and
146if I if I don't get it all the way. >> Well, I don't know I'm still working on the clarity piece so >> So the first piece on uh student safety, we talked a lot about the safe and secure environment rating and making sure that that was present. Again, safety and security could be present in student experience. It could also be present in facilities. We made the conscious choice not to include safety and security in facilities because we don't want to create a document that says these are our campuses with the safest built environment and these are the campuses where we have weaknesses or where we haven't invested as much money. Obviously, we want to make sure that that information is not publicized. Um so we made the conscious decision as a group to include
147that only in the student experience section. And if you look, we uh worked very closely with Adrian to look at uh discipline codes uh that are submitted to the state. And, you know, there are I want to say roughly 90 discipline codes, and we went through each code to identify does this rise to the level of a family reasonably feeling that this would be an unsafe occurrence at a school. There's a difference between somebody getting a dress code violation and somebody who, you know, makes a bad choice and and the police end up getting involved while they're at school. And so, we went through as a group working with Adrian to make sure that we identified those violent or safety-related incidents and then compare them uniformly across all campus types. Obviously, you're going to have
148more incidences uh related to violence or safety the the older a child is. Um so, that's where safety shows up and where it doesn't show up. And again, both of those choices were intentional from the group. I also want to point out this group is representative of those who provided the data specific to these priorities. This does not comprise the entirety of the staff that um that have been involved in these conversations throughout. So, my apologies for not being clear about that in the in the original presentation. Um Dr. Faye, Superintendent Kraft can certainly uh say more about who's been involved throughout this process. If we go back to the original, I think it was on the first slide on the student engagement piece, and then the that slide. So, we had this huge stakeholder
149engagement meeting with all the principals and all the directors and coordinators and specialists and things like that in the district, uh which is about 3 hours long, uh really well-crafted session for us, uh which is where we landed on these kind of general themes, right? And then we took those themes and generated the survey questions that would then go out to try to grab what are those of the themes, right? What is it that our community aligns with them, which is I I think so I have this big thing and it's it's funneling down, uh, which then led us to believe based on the open-ended responses and and uh, that we got was like what what is it that our our our our community is saying is really important within these themes, which is where
150we landed on those metrics, right? And so I think academic achievement probably is the hardest one for us because we too would agree probably as a educator that STAR isn't the ultimate end game. Um, but neither is MAP data, right? And so what is it that is going to help us understand what is or is not going on at our schools, which is why we didn't go with like this like achievement piece uh, as a holistic variable, but it was like you could do both, right? Because on STAR you can measure growth over time with kids, which is what the state does. And that is actually a really good practice. So we felt like we wanted the opportunity to weigh both of those, but we also know that we have some really high performing achieving
151campuses, which we didn't want them to not be able to gain access to that credit as well. And so I I hope that explains kind of the funnel and how we got there. Let's get Yeah. I see. Yeah, and the only other comment I wanted to say, I mean I do echo what Karen was saying. I do think that MAP data with that growth and achievement is something that is right now and is used and is you know, according to curriculum, it's been very predictive. And so I would I would echo that there's more than one way of looking at high quality instruction. Um and so I don't know that was the end of my I promise the end of my questions is is are we limited are we limiting ourselves by just saying it's
152this? Is it's is there still time to add or to think like even CCMR and certifications and things like that? Um you know, I'm just just wondering. I'm always thinking that feedback is something that we're always willing to receive. Um and I will definitely bring it back to the task force that's working on this and and rethink and and potentially come back around another time um to solidify where we are um because I do I do believe like we actually just so y'all know y'all actually didn't meet Olin before other than in the one-on-ones because I did the original presentation cuz we had changed some things around and I think that opportunity missed has kind of created some uh friction or challenge for us in getting this right the first go round. So definitely we're
153part of bringing this to you guys is to get your feedback on what we're thinking, right? >> And I think it and I'm sorry ultimately you are the the elected officials of the district. So I think when I mentioned income I meant that data that is being looked at is what we're held accountable to to star and attendance which is how we generate our income for our district. So it makes sense to align the data that we're being held accountable to with what we're looking at but it doesn't tell the whole story. I agree with everyone Dr. Harland, Mrs. Freeman about the whole child because when we look at growth we look at map growth we look at all the things and then to us even though this child is perceptually being seen as not
154is failing maybe we see growth but that's that's the whole story, right? So it's hard to when you look at data that tells a story to tell the entire story because there's different facets of data. So thank you but I understand why we're looking at the specific data sets that we're held accountable to. Thank you very much. Well, we'll never be able to tell the story of a school on the front and back of a piece of paper, but it's been the effort of the again the tremendous staff who are in this room to help identify the best possible picture so we can provide that objective holistic review of every campus in the in the district so that you all can make appropriate decisions in response to the challenges being faced by districts across the
155state and across the country. Ms. Zapata? So, I'm hearing that um there's so there's still time. We're still it's still being molded. We're still getting information. And one of the things that I'm not hearing is and and um it worries me is that I I want student data. I think tonight was a perfect example of how important it is when we have programs that kids are involved in. I think that has to be a part of uh student achievement because again sometimes kids just come to school because they're so involved in athletics. They're so involved in their clubs. They're they're they're again they're they're just so involved. So, that's a big huge motivator. So, I feel like that has to be a huge piece in it. And what I heard you say was in the
156past we used to do surveys and we don't do anymore. And I feel like that's something that we we need to visit. Right? And and and I know it's hard. I work on a campus. So, I know it's hard to get you know student feedback, but I want that feedback from all the kids. Um and and I think that's important. I think they need to have uh a say in this because they're the ones that are in the classrooms. Um so, they're the ones that are going to tell us um we know what the parents want. You know, we understand that. Um the next thing is that I saw the out of the 5,020 it looked like 28 05 were parents, 1897 were the members. What was the other 318? >> the >> other were
157typically people who identified as multiple multiple categories. So, they work in Northside, but they're also a parent in Northside. Mhm. Okay. And And I know we have you know, we have what close to 12,000 employees. We have 97,000 students. I just, you know, maybe it was the time, but I think 5,020 and I think we can get more responses to get more feedback. Um I will say we've we've done this work in numerous communities and we've never had this many responses, both absolute and the percentage response at this point in the process is quite high and is a testament to the work of the communications team. >> 100% Thank you. >> I think it's also important to note we were just on this uh conversation in regards to sample size and validity and reliability and
158coefficients that are necessary and for the bond survey to kind of give you a a good idea uh we anticipate that it will be a a statistically significant study uh with somewhere between 400 and 450 responses. So, >> didn't see the survey. That's a much higher that's Again, wonderful work by the communications team and the and the school leaders and everybody to get this actually. Um statistics >> have this We didn't include it in the slide, but we have it broken down by zip code where those came from. So, that will be accessible to you guys that we can share that with you guys as well. So, y'all know specifically by zip code. We're just trying for efficiency to keep our presentation Dr. >> I wasn't I wasn't done. She wasn't done. Um go ahead.
159So, I it sounds like we still have time to get that feedback. Uh so, those are the things that I had. And then um the next thing I want to bring up to you is that I I see this and I I know we're going to this and I know um, this is something that is coming down the road, but I also feel like this is us on the offense. Where's our defense? I feel like what are we doing with the students that we're losing? When when when they withdraw, are there are there exit surveys? Is there information or data that's telling us why? Because I want to be able to try to win those kids back. I hear you say we want to reach out to new students. I want those old ones back.
160There was something that we did or something that happened that there was maybe an experience. So, I I I really want us as a board to look at that and to focus on that because yes, I I do know this is where we're going, but I also do feel we need a we need to see where we're at. What is it that we need to fix? How can How can we reach out to those families and tell them to trust us. Come back. Give us another opportunity. Um, because I we are a destination district and and I feel like we haven't done enough um, for those students that that we're losing to those charter schools because in my opinion we we we they can't compete with us. But so it just that bothers me and
161I want to know again like what is what is our defense to that? What are we doing as a district to win those kids back? So. And if if I may Trustees Zapata, just to sort of tie multiple comments that I heard from y'all together. Um, first and foremost, the student programming, the those those items that bring many kids to school every single day, those are represented in the draft versions of the school profiles that we have that we have gathered that data for every campus. Um, and as far as what, you know, there is districts have to play both offense and defense at the same time. They have to bring students back, they have to retain the students that are in their their buildings right now. And uh, President Duran, you mentioned this earlier,
162we've actually done a lot of research, um, we've done the research with the districts that we work with, and also we've looked at national research. The the biggest impact you have is retaining the students that are in your building and making sure they never leave in the first place. And that's part of this process to make sure that we're being responsive to the needs of those families, and then we're building the type of environment where if somebody leaves the district for whatever reason they chose, they see what's happening and they come back. Um, so we're this process is about doing both of those things at once, retaining those students you have, and also building the type of environment to bring students back to the district as well. And Dr. Craft wanted to say something. There's
163also data, right, that students have left and they've come back. We have that data set, too. I'm I'm certain every piece of data that we've asked about Debbie has it somewhere in her computer. So, yes, uh, I'm I'm just going to go ahead and assume yes, we have that data. Thank you. Any other questions? Dr. Mr. Blunt. Bobby, you haven't spoken. >> sir. Mr. Blunt. Yeah, I'll make I'll I'll I'll make mine quick. Um, uh, uh, two comments. One, the the the first one is, when we had the Go Public campaign going pretty heavily, we did a lot of these type of analysis, data, and other type things. And it's interesting, I'll be honest, the categories are very similar. It's cures, extracurricular, I can show you the history on that particular part. But, but I
164bring that up because one thing I'm I'm I'm just struggling and trying to differentiate, and almost relates to what Laura's comment just now was, was how do we see Northside in this? In other words, if I take this now and apply it to any school district, those categories, to be honest, I know in the same to No, I anywhere, to be honest. But, what are those things and other things that really made Northside sort of different, whether it be aspirations, whether it be expectations, other type things that people like to talk about, but there are things like that. And that's the thing I think that's sort of sort of missing is what would make I know your comment on this that we are different, per se, and you may hear that other places, but we
165really are. I historically, I can show you that, per se. But, what are those things that we pulled out that says, "No, this is Northside, and this is why you know, this is a better way we're going to fight this," different than just the general categories. Certainly. That's a general comment. And, uh, Trustee Blunt, and and all members of the district, we're happy to share the raw data from the survey with you, as well, so that you can see every single comment from every community member that took part. I I just have a few things, if if you don't mind, Dr. Craft. And so, um, I recall Barry, um, Mr. Pettus speaking, I don't know if it was one of our sessions, uh, and I don't know when the last year was we we did
166our surveys, but I know it wasn't because we didn't our community wouldn't take them. Um, we didn't we're not doing surveys because there was a cost related to that. And so, I think that was cut within the budget over the last couple years. Um, but, um, within those surveys, um, we there it was identified that our number one competitor as a district, right? So, we know that information, as well. Um, and it isn't charters. It it is, uh, bordering district to us. And so, in part of that is because they're they're creating innovative programming for their kids. Um, it's not 1882 partnerships, it's just innovative, different things. Uh, they have P-Tech programs, they have they have different things. And I know since Dr. Craft has been here, we are adding some of those things with
167Early College High School. Um, we're adding new magnets to the system, and I think that that for me, uh, and I think for the community, what's going to make I do agree Mr. Blunt because I I too have watched the go public campaign and what makes Northside ISD different and I don't think we can glean that right now. Like I I'm not sure that we're very different. Um and so and not in a bad way. Just I'm trying to kind of go where is that? Where what are we missing? And so maybe we can talk offline about where that information may lie. But I do believe it's about thinking creatively to provide an experience to students that we're currently not providing, which is why people are choosing different options. So we do have birth rate
168issues. We know that. We have immigration issues. We have migration issues across state lines. So all of that is impacting what we're doing. But we also have the issues of what unique experiences and what we're finding out through the state data is that parents are choosing flexible options for kids. They're searching for those that that flexibility that they want for their kids, which could be in I mean two-hour schools and AI are popping up at this point. You know, and I don't know necessarily how we compete with that, but I do think that there's an opportunity here to gain to I think Ms. Zapatha's remarks about to gain some of those kids back that left us for those unique programs and we I think there's an opportunity here to to move the district forward and
169get some of those kids back. And so I too was part of go public campaigns in in San Antonio and I'm very fond of it. Loved every minute of that and I think it's about how do we highlight the very unique things that are happening here that can attract kids back. Because that has not happened. And so I'm I'm encouraged by the conversation. I think it's been really really rich. I would I know it's not part of the presentation, but I think timeline is important. And early on in the presentation early on I know Ms. Freeman you brought up the concerns about where we planned on timing out this, you know, bringing recommendations forward and I think for us internally that's a really important part right now. Um not that I don't want to rush
170things but I also want to be mindful that we are moving forward with a bond uh expectation beta expectation. Um so I'd like to hear some thoughts around timelines from you guys and when y'all feel like we should be ready some recommendations forward. So. Dr. Duran. Dr. Hall. Um yeah, real quick. Um and I again I'm I'm kind of stuck on the data piece. Um it seems like a lot of the data is quanti- uh quantifiable or quantitative and I'm wondering going back to the uniqueness of Northside. Is that the one of the major ways that we're going to measure some of these things or get feedback on it or is there opportunities for qualitative because I think those stories um you know, we can say we have one out of five students in a
171fine arts program and um and that's nice and that can be used as a metric but really those stories about how it impacts their lives and um is is more powerful and then the uniqueness of Northside come out like these were all individual stories. Um and and talking and how it's changing their life. So I'm wondering about that um because it seemed real heavy quanti- quantitative and then um I I know who was surveyed but I I would like to see the survey cuz some of and maybe other trustees too uh would like to see it too because I did get a couple emails not a lot but asking questions about the survey and making some points about the questions and I had no context for them and um I would just like to see
172it. I don't I obviously we don't have to approve it. Um but um I'll leave it at that. Thanks. >> Certainly. Well, as I mentioned we're happy to share not only the questions but every single response from the survey with y'all. Um I do want to point out the priorities are very data heavy. I brought up I brought this slide back up on purpose. The priorities are very data heavy because the school profiles are data. But the context and values and experience of the community we will continue to gain throughout this process. We have only started the community engagement process. Just some other like we heard examples of a school communities context values and experience this this evening talking about the importance of the pool across the street and the fifth grade swimming event that
173happens every single year. That is context that matters to this just to this board when making decisions about the district. I spent three to four hours today just doing a second drive around the district to get a better understanding of not only the school facilities but the communities in which those facilities reside. Um so we are continually gathering context values and experience. Much of that will not show up on the school profile but it will be relevant and it will be included throughout the process. Just as we used the context values and experience that were provided in the survey to help us identify which of those um which of those themes aligned with each other and what people were actually trying to say when they rated this a five and they rated this a three.
174Okay. I had a clarification. Um Dr. Craig, you said when when do we want recommendations? Like do you mean like is that like a hypothetical? Like I mean cuz I want them like today, but like are you talking about like speeding the process along or >> original presentation, we had um a time frame of about I think January of next year to bring final recommendations forward for board action. There's there's a process. There would be here's what we're thinking, right? Board gives us feedback and then we go do town halls and get feedback from the community and then we bring recommendations forward based on that. So let me let me interject just a minute Joanne. For anything to be actionable January would be the absolute last opportunity for you to approve for implementation for the
175following school year. Okay, that's what I I thought but I was like wait a Whether that be rezoning, whether that be repurposing, whether that be a new program, growing a existing program, consolidation, I mean January will have to have those those spring months. So so from January through June to be able to implement. Okay, so the goal would then just be we would get recommendations sometime around January. We would then have Let me I'm sorry I'm sorry. Probably preferably first round end of November, December so that in January here are the recommendations that are going to be the plan. And that is a It sounds really simple as I just described it. But there's a lot going on in between. >> on at that time of year. No no no, I understand. I just I
176wanted to make sure cuz I was like wait, I I to make sure I'm not missing like an opportunity to say like something. So, I just wanted to make sure I was like missing opportunity say that we want it faster, but no, got it. >> and say you're probably going to have to have the second half of November, all of December, and probably almost the entire month of January to get to a point of having consensus on here's not only what we're planning, but we feel good about through implementation. Okay. And I think my my concern, Dr. Kraft, is uh Miss Freeman had brought up in our last board meeting around this work about the timing after Vader versus before Vader and things like that. So, that ultimately is like I want to make sure
177that we're ready to go with whatever timeline it is that our board wants us to have, right? So. Okay. So, we're on the same timeline. It's my I'm hearing, correct? We're still looking at January for Any other inputs? >> January needs to be actionable. The action and Yes, Mr. Bond. A question related to that cuz you said it would be uh going out to the community, etc. I mean, is that going to overlap it with us doing >> We're going to We're going to start having really a lot of these conversations with the CBC committee. Okay. So, it is the bond. We're going to try to like I say use the CBC Okay. to extend even beyond Vader and and the bond. I mean, the the bond, depending on the prioritization of facilities and facilities
178needs, again, I I just I'll say this, and and we're going to meet with SEBAC tomorrow, but the bonding capacity with the three golden pennies on the Vader is going to be right at about $400 million. We've got life cycle, health, safety, particularly health safety needs that I just those need to be prioritized. Not to say there's not some really nice-to-haves on that list of $2.1 billion of needs, but I I just I just don't see the Vader in the $400 million bond package without raising the total tax rate um being very complicated. I'm trying to oversimplify, but it just it's not going to be real complicated. And and we want to make sure that the timeline is uh adapted to the context of Northside ISD. So, we don't have a set timeline by when
179things need to be completed, but to Dr. Kraft's point, in order to implement a decision in a way that benefits students and families, in a way that benefits teachers, in a way that benefits people who are designing new programs, et cetera, January is essentially the the deadline to make that decision so that the people that work in this district every single day can begin operationalizing whatever decisions the board ultimately makes. And I will also add you know, I keep talking about community engagement this evening. We do have an extensive community engagement process uh where generally you know, it's not a we don't run a community engagement process where you put a microphone in the middle of the room and people come and speak. We have small group discussions with anybody that wants to come out
180that takes time out of their days their evenings to come and speak about the future of the district. We will have hundreds or thousands of people at these meetings, and they and every single one of them will leave feeling heard and feeling like they were able to engage with a member of the Northside ISD uh district staff. So, we will need time to do that engagement, but if we operate with January as the sort of deadline, we can backwards plan from that to make sure that we are able to hear from as many voices as possible. So, just to reiterate, we're still on that same timeline. Would everybody agree with that? On the board? Correct. So, you asked me to comment about uh you know, community it How about our business sector? Because I think
181that's one of the things too that we also want to look into connecting with. Um we have so many businesses around us. Like how could we also involve them? How could we involve them in the survey? I think it's important because they're a big part of our community and these they support us and I think now more than ever because of the uh you know, the lack of funding that we're getting is that we need to really lean on We need to lean our lean on our community. And so, I feel like making them a part of this process too is important to let them know that um their input is just as important. Certainly. Um we will speak with anybody who will speak with us. Uh our phone lines are open. Uh we in
182this in this work in other districts, we have spoken with and gathered feedback from the industry leadership councils, from the chambers of commerce, from faith leaders, from you know, any a wide array array of groups. And you know, we'll lean on the Northside ISD staff and members of this board to identify who those stakeholders are. And again, the more people, the more organizations we bring into the process, the stronger it will be. Well, thank you for answering all of our one more question, Mrs. Freeman. I I know that we've received something from Ms. Guerra on um setting up another meeting It's me. with y'all. Um can you briefly tell us what that might be about and then can go over it. I I know we don't have another plan to to talk like this. I
183don't Well, I don't know. They're not anytime in the near future. Is it would it best be served if we had a special meeting of some sort so that we could all have this conversation? >> had that conversation today. Um, I just haven't had a chance to talk to Dr. Craft about it, but in our meeting today with our task force, we talked about how I thought it would be really important for us to do this again but more in a workshop format. Um, around the work because I think that there's some other pieces that involve the holistic piece of what's happening in the next few years. One of them of which is in our next presentation. We have the technology committee that you heard just a few weeks ago or last week around the
184$30 million. So, there are big things happening. Tonight you'll hear the bus um, you know, resolution that we have to bring on the on seatbelt requirements. And so, there's a lot going on. So, we actually talked about that today. I just haven't had a chance to talk to Dr. Craft about getting it kind of squared away. So, we are thinking about doing that. I guess I cuz we individually we don't operate in silos and and we learn from each other in discussion cuz we come here with different perspectives. And so, I guess I just wonder if our dialogue with you would be more rich if the seven of us had the conversation together rather than individually. I just don't know what you're seeking from us. So, I can't I can't speak to that. I'm just
185questioning whether we should consider something like that. Sure. So, we are certainly happy to you know, we'll follow the lead of Dr. Craft, Dr. Faye in this process, but again open to having conversations with trustees in whatever format works best. Um, the There are benefits to both sitting down in a workshop format and sitting down in an individual format. And we will likely realize both of those throughout this process. The intent of the next round of one-on-one conversations is essentially once the priorities have been set, again, we want to take an objective holistic review of the district. So, we want to sit down and share with board members this is where schools fall according to the priorities. This is additional data about these campuses for your consideration and just to help orient you as to
186uh orient you to the school profile documents so that you can share them broadly with members of your networks because the again, the more people we bring in, the stronger off the process will be. Thank you so much for your time tonight. Appreciate you. >> Thank too. We're going to move on now to um 5B, our TASB salary um presentation. I believe we have Amy with us from TASB. HR Amy, thanks for your patience. Uh this is a follow-up. Again, part of our discussions uh with well, finance meetings and just looking forward. I know we've been talking for the last couple years about uh a pay system review or salary study, salary analysis. Really and analyzing where are we in regards to market competitiveness. And so, um this is the first part to uh really
187a two-part which we'll talk Amy will probably talk more in detail about here momentarily, but a lot of work uh has been put in place or or it's taking place. Uh there's still some that will be forthcoming, but again, this is to try to uh get to a most um equitable, but also competitive uh pay system uh as possible. Um in in building next year's budget and moving forward. So Megan, I don't know if you want to add anything or Amy, if you want to take it away. So, our team has been working with Amy for many months now and she's been analyzing our data and we have gone through several of our different pieces of data. We do have things we need to explain to Amy as she's looking at our different pay studies
188and our pay structures, our job descriptions, our job titles, why we have them in different pay grades and she'll be making some recommendations. The actual recommendations will come to the May 26th meeting. So, tonight is more about the process and some things that she's seen so far, but the actual recommendations, I don't want you to be disappointed when she finishes and you're going, "Where's the cost?" We don't know that yet. That will come on May 26th. This is actually dated April 14th because I was initially going to present then and so, yeah. Uh it is a work in progress. I want to start out by saying hello, good evening. I'm Amy Campbell, director of HR Services at TASB. Uh we as Dr. Graf mentioned, we work with about 200 districts per year to do compensation
189planning and I am it's a blessing and a curse to work with all of the largest districts in the state and so, 12 of the 15 largest districts I've done compensation studies for including four of the 10 this year alone and so, I say blessing and a curse because it's a lot of employee information, a lot of data and large districts have lots of challenges. I worked in a 90,000 student district myself and so, I've been on both sides. Yeah, our the previous speaker mentioned to just the challenges that are going on in the state. You're not alone and so, some of what I'll share with you are things that as Megan mentioned, you want to we we're going going to recommend that you work on things that need to um uh I guess that
190you would want to improve, but there are always going to be limitations um financially and otherwise. So, first I'll just talk you through the methodology. Uh we get a lot of And by the way, I'll go quickly cuz I know you have a lot of things after me on the agenda, too. Uh we collect all of your employee data and job descriptions and all of those things. That is still a work in progress. Um there's you have lots of employees with lots of different job titles and uh just gathering all that information is um proving to take uh a lot longer uh than even the other largest districts I've worked with. Um market pay review, we do a salary survey every year and I think we're on about year 40 of that um of all
191of the districts in the state. And so, we have data for uh close to 200 jobs. Um but we also, you'll see in a minute, purchase non-school market data cuz you're not only competing uh with school districts. And then we build models for for improvement. That all has to tie back to what is affordable and and what you're able to implement in the district. If we came back and gave you recommendations that were not budget-friendly, they wouldn't be useful to you. Um I will not spend too much time on this uh but and you have the slides to review later, but generally the things that you as a district focus on and these are true for any employer, uh you want to be able to position yourself to recruit the people you want, the best
192and the brightest. You want to steal them from other districts and woo them to your district. So, uh to do that you have to offer competitive entry rates and uh pay competitively for people new to the district, but you also have to keep the great employees that you have here. And to do that, uh as Dr. Kraft mentioned, you have to pay competitively um with all of your market peers. And that requires um increases and adjustments and things that I know financially have not been easy for most districts over the past few years. You also have limits, um, on paying for job value. You can't overpay. Um, and then the biggest limit, of course, would be budget and that I know every board member in the state wishes they could do more for, uh, pay
193adjustments. The funding is just not always there. Uh, and you're familiar, uh, with it, your pay structures already have these, uh, strategies in place, but the the goal will be to offer competitive minimum pay rates and get as many people as possible in the district paid within a market competitive range. Um, we're going to talk about both pay structures and having competitive pay structures. Think of that as your recruitment piece. When you post a vacancy, you want a competitive structure so that you're, um, offering pay rates that people want and are willing to come for. But then the second is the the people in your district already. That's the retention piece. Are you giving competitive pay increases and are you paying actual, um, competitive pay rates to your continuing staff? Those two have to balance.
194They need to connect and that's what we're working through right now. Um, I'm going to mention minimum rate. I know board priority was to increase your minimum starting rate to $15 an hour. So, we are working with that assumption right now. Uh, and, you know, it's proving to be costly so far and so I I think we will we are certainly going to be flexible with that and we are going to work on some phase-in plans and and work towards getting you something that both meets your goals, um, and meets the budget limitations. Whether that happens in 1 year or multiple years, you'll have plans that will accommodate both. Um, the PDF, uh, of the slides does not look quite as pretty as the PowerPoint, but uh, the market target is going to be what
195we talk about when we talk about market rate. That's the median or middle value of all of your responses. And so it's not the best, it's not the worst, it's the middle and that's where we get to the bullseye visual here. And the goal again would be to have people distributed around that bullseye based on their skills, experience, credentials, things like that. But you want as many people clustered around that market target as possible. So the findings again your market peer group is you know we've done pay pay studies for you over the past several years and your market peer group is largely the same. Eleven of the local districts that you compete with. You'll note that and I'm also working with your largest neighbor this year as well northeast and so but you'll note
196that most of your peers are significantly smaller than you. And so we're not only looking at local peers. For your central administration positions we want to look at districts just with 50,000 students and and up to get districts that look much more like you in terms of size. And then I mentioned non-school market for skilled trades, custodians, clerical staff. You're not only competing with school districts and so we factor in non-school data for any jobs and that also allows us to pull in data that we don't survey for specifically and so you'll have a lot of market data. Again this PowerPoint did not translate. One of the things we looked at is teacher demographics and I want to I guess give kudos to the district. Typically the larger the district the less experienced the teaching
197staff and that is not you. Despite your size you have a very experienced teaching staff overall. At most larger districts, especially larger urban districts, have a majority of teaching staff with 10 or fewer years of experience. Yours is a minority. 48% have 10 or fewer years of experience. So, again, that's that's impressive. That means that your teachers like to be here and and are you're doing something to make them want to stay. New teacher hires, again, I'm sorry, this does not look like it quite like the PowerPoint. New teacher hires, I think every district in the state is struggling to hire experienced teachers. And you're not alone. The majority of your new new teacher hires came to you with no experience. But you did have large percentage of new hires that came to you with
198a good bit of experience, 15% had 11 or more years. Again, this is not any different than any other district we're seeing at this point. Oh my goodness. Market data for teachers The real numbers will be on the next slide. It did not translate. The orange line is your teacher data and I'll just skip to this one that is um that did translate. The I would draw your attention to the bottom few rows. The percent of market, 100% would be even with market median and each of your teacher benchmark years is above market median. Meaning you pay better than the middle of your peer values. And it's better by roughly 1,300 to 2,000 dollars. So, by a significant amount. That rank order on the bottom is your ranking among your 12 total peers, including you.
199So, at starting pay, you're the second best in the area and at lowest, you're still in fifth position. So, again, just very competitive teacher pay um compared to your peers. When we look at assignment stipends, so teaching assignment stipends, again, um competitive for master's degree, but below market at each of your other assignments. Um secondary math and science are the lowest, but only two of your peers offer that, so that's less of an issue. Uh but bilingual and special ed are critical high-needs areas that are just difficult to find certified teachers for. Um and so, being below market, even if your base pay is a little bit above market, still is a challenging spot to be in. Um one of our next steps is to continue with extra duty stipend review, and so we'll come
200back to you with recommendations for uh stipend adjustments as well. So, first, uh your pay structures right now are um they've been the same for quite some time, it appears. And so, reorganizing them to uh group by uh like work and different job groups will help solidify your career pathways and offer um a visual for staff to see what positions they can move into. It also helps you better match market. And so, improving the starting pay rates and improving midpoint alignment, um the proposed structures are would be grouped like this, um where all of your administrators would be in the same pay structure. Right now, they're differentiated between business uh or non-certified and certified or instructional administrators. Um people jump jump between those two, depending on which jobs they're in. And so, this would align
201those. Um and you can see what the remainder are there. Um we're just over halfway done getting through recommendations for all of these, and so, um we expect to finish those up in um a very short time. Uh we're going to bring forward three general pay increase models, but again, all of that is um contingent on funding availability and phase-in. One thing we do work with districts, especially large districts, a lot on is building multiple phase ins that can be contingent on passage of a Vader or things like that, too. And so, there's lots of options that we're going to lean on Megan to help guide. Um and then adjustments, that's always an important point. Um this year in particular, districts are waiting longer than usual to consider compensation plan adoption, and they're looking at
202smaller, if any, pay increases and focusing their limited funding on adjustments. And so, that very likely will be a model we bring forward where we're making very strong adjustments to pay in your biggest pain points without an across-the-board increase, um just to show you how you can spend the limited funding strategically to address the the biggest problems that you have. Um there's you know, as Megan mentioned, digging through a lot of this uh information and having worked with so many of our large districts, there are lots of things that are probably making things more difficult for the district in terms of administering pay. Um you have a ton of duty calendars, and you've got some jobs that have six, five, six, seven duty calendars for one single job title. That is difficult to administer, it's
203confusing for employees, and so condensing those duty calendars and aligning with the business needs of those positions um will be something we uh recommend. Also, you have lots of stipends that are being paid for the actual job that someone is assigned to. Uh while that does potentially give you some flexibility to change or um increase or reduce those uh outside of base salary, it also means that as as an employee, I would have to add up my base salary plus three separate stipends to figure out what my earnings are. And so, it also makes it harder to recruit because you're not posting that you're offering base salary plus these three different stipends for the assignment. So, condensing some of that to simplify will be important and it just helps avoid mistakes. And then job titles
204and levels, um unique to Northside, you have a lot of um job hierarchy, uh more so than we see in many districts. For example, in some of your smaller campuses, you have um a head, an assistant, and a custodian for just three positions. And so, there's a lot of hierarchy that um seemed to be standard, but may not be serving the district and uh may be um limiting your ability to pay competitively for uh starting pay rates and and for all jobs. So, our next steps are going to complete our market analyses, um reorganize and redevelop all of the pay plans, complete the job slotting, and that's the part that's really going to take the most time working with um with district administration because job titles are not clear in your payroll uh HR system,
205and so we're trying to translate um piecemeal uh partial words into what what does this person do and where should they fit in the pay structure. Um title change recommendations to help address some of those issues and then pay adjustments. Extra duty review is the last bit. And then as I mentioned, phase-in of recommendations. Okay, that was uh fast, but happy to help answer any questions. I think that's for me that's been one of the biggest asks from like the coaching staff to look at their demand versus if I teach a coach one sport versus all sports and etc., right? And the level of stipends and the days and thank you for addressing that and I know this is a big week cuz if we look at our market where there's really no other comparison
206and as far as size for us in this area and then if we start comparing ourselves to other markets, it's just not an equitable comparison because we're not in the same market. So, thank you for this. Mrs. Freeman has a question. Um I know this this is difficult and we've talked about this in the past, but do you give any consideration when we start looking at this and and recommendations about benefits? We do we compare Is there Is there a way to compare our benefits with neighboring districts? One of the surveys we do is a health insurance broader benefits survey of offerings, but a piece of that is health insurance contributions where we look at employer and employee contributions and so a lot of districts do take that information and blend it with some of
207the salary data. I think we can certainly work to bring you that back at the next um uh presentation. Which is a great segue because I believe Amy, I don't know if you've received the official invitation, but I think we're looking at May 26th coming back. >> on my calendar. >> That will be more numbers in the sense of this is what different scenarios and equity adjustments um GPI or general pay increases are going to cost. Well, one more question, Mrs. Zapata. So, that was my question on I guess a timeline. So, May 26th we can come with recommendations and then is that going forward into the new school year with it possible changes? No. Um I don't think you're going to be able to afford in in fiscal year '27, our next budget, um
208to do much with compensation. What will happen, and this is that subsequent item, but what will happen is there'll be a recommendation contingent upon the passage of the VA letter. At that point, uh the pay raises would be implemented, and then that we would retroactively pay back to the start of individuals' contracts, um which in most cases is going to be um a uh September 1. Uh or no, August 1. Uh August 1. So, it depends on your contracts. >> Depends on the contract, yeah. >> for us around here, most of us is a July 1. >> Yeah, so so again, that would that's going to be highly contingent upon the passage of a VA letter. Um like I say, Megan will present the budget, but what we're talking about, I mean, you you'll be
209well over a hundred million dollar deficit budget again going into next fiscal year. So, I do have a budget presentation here um later in the agenda, and I did ask Amy to make sure she uses the word contingent, because that is the piece that we will probably want to look at her recommendations, and look at the different pieces of them depending on the cost, and say, is there anything that we want to try to put into our base budget that would start August 31st, and how much would go into a contingent based on the VA letter piece. And so, try to measure those and figure out if there's any we can afford, we'll go through that here in a little in a little bit, but that really is that contingent piece, and we plan to
210bring the compensation plan tentatively to the board on June 9th uh for consideration, where we would ask that the board decide on what compensation plan you want to adopt, and how much of it would be contingent, and how much of it would be built into the budget, because we need that information to really build the budget moving forward. I would say of the four of the 10 largest districts, one of which is y'all, um I work with most of them every year, every couple of years, some of them every single year for 10, 15, 15-plus years now. Um they as a large district, you can't make a wholesale change all at once, and so typically what happens is I'll give you a structure, a system to say this is where you want to be, and
211then how can we get there over time. And so it is a a multi-step process, a multi-year process typically. Thank you, Amy, so much for that. >> Well, and I I I bet you won't mind, Madam President, Amy Amy, you made a really good point, and I think it's important to to discuss in in real um terms. Um So, for example, I Amy's going to run a scenario looking at $15 per hour. Um we know that it will cost approximately a million dollars uh to make that a a minimum set wage. The challenge is going to be how to address uh compression. Mhm. And that is a much larger challenge and a much more expensive venture uh to the tune of at least quadruple. 15 to 20 million dollars. And and so those those are
212the decision points that are forthcoming is raising to 15 is okay, that's that's a a great start, but can you afford the 18 million dollars to avoid compression, i.e. supervisors uh and direct reports making the exact same wage or even inverted in some cases. I have a Mrs. Um So, the last legislative session, we know that teachers got raises except for um counselors, librarians, and nurses. Um I know we haven't had the the discussion yet about whether we are going to attempt to add more to to what the what the legislature didn't give us last time to make some of those salaries equitable. I am curious as to other school districts and what those plans might be for um for our nurses, counselors, and and librarians. So, we've worked really hard with districts over the
213years to build robust educator career pathways where there is a financial benefit to move up that pathway. Uh some of the recent legislative changes have undercut those efforts in districts. Our recommendations will be what amount to a menu of options. And so, you as a district can decide where you want to spend your limited funds. That will be a menu item that you can choose to um adopt. And it is there's a lot of levers you can pull. So, is the lever to get everyone even with the teacher pay rate? Is it to get them slightly above the teacher pay rate if they're assistant principals and so on? There's a lot of choices that the district will have to make. I'm sorry. Yeah, in in you're right. That didn't include our administrators either. Right. Well,
214not to not to complicate matters even more, but keep in mind beginning in June we're likely going to have through the teacher incentive allotment uh teachers uh that in some cases are going to be making more than counselors and and assistant principals on their respective campuses. In fact, we've got the number uh I think it's 1,250. Is that pretty close? And it's how much I'm trying to remember, 9 million? 10.1 million. So, that That's been the case always with those. That's good for teachers. Just it's something to take into consideration as part of part of this conversation as well as well. Well, thank you. Any other final comments? Okay. Appreciate you so much. Have a safe drive home. It's like saying it. And now we move to our consent agenda item number six. It includes
215items that are considered routine and are recurring nature. So, all items listed under the consent agenda will be placed upon in one motion. Do we have any motions to move? Dr. Hassell. I have a question about um one of the well, the only purchase over $100,000 um because that wasn't like in any committee or anything and that's a lot of money. So, there's a purchase of um a video center hung at the Northside Sports Arena for 850 857,713 like close to a million dollars. Yeah, so the What's what's going on there? Yeah, so it's through a co-op a purchasing co-op. Um is what's going on is they're end of life can't replace the modules the software system can't be updated upgraded. So, it's just a matter of really do we want to keep the video
216boards the panels themselves. It's not the structure or the the structural support. Do we want to keep them operational or I guess take them down. I consider it similar to the turf on a football field that you have a life cycle of that turf. We are at the end of our life cycle for that. The big square at the middle of the gym at the north side. I'm just Where is the money coming from? Is that just >> It is in a separate fund. So, we do have a It's a capital projects fund, a non-bond capital projects fund. That money was set aside several years ago. It's been there and it is actually set aside for athletic capital assets, capital expenditures. And that is where the money is coming from. It is not general fund.
217That is an important piece to make sure that we Okay. Yeah, cuz I just wanted to make sure where was this all coming from. And the main structure would remain. So, it They're calling it a refurbishment because the the structure itself would remain. It's the boards on the inside and then the computer that controls >> And that's the one we use for convocation, for everything, all the major events. Currently. >> And would this normally go to finance? Like would this have been something to go to finance and then put on consent agenda? Cuz it it just showed up on consent agenda. So, trying to kind of figure out where would Where do these 100,000 dollar purchases go first? So, like we can review them and then they're on consent agenda. So, where would anywhere. Yeah,
218I was like just Where are they going to go? So, that way like when I'm at building, I'm like, "Okay, like I can review it." And then when I come to the meeting, I'm like, "Hey, we've already reviewed it." Cuz but this one just >> Well, I mean, you know, if it it requires professional services, so engineering, architectural, uh contractor services, uh it's obviously over the threshold, so it requires board approval, uh which is $100,000 uh now. But there's no professional services other than just It's like It's a life cycle replacement. So, probably if we're going to treat it like an HVAC repair, um I don't know if I'm you know, there's some flooring projects, there's things that just we we cover in building committee. That That would be where we'll bring it in the
219future. I actually this is not a trying to pull a fast one. I mean >> This is a lot of money. Like I mean in reality like it's just it's a lot of money to say like hey it's just here. Like so I just want to make sure like where are they going to go cuz that's as close to a million dollars and so I think it's important for the community to know like cuz if someone just looks at this and they're like y'all are going to spend a million dollars on something for the sports arena when we have other things that need to be purchased. Like it's important to know that this is specific capital project funds. Like this is not general funds that are going to be used. >> and not bond funds.
220Yeah cuz I just wanted to make sure it was out there because that's a lot of money. I I honestly don't think it matters um what committee as long as it's on the agenda and we could see that it's on some one of the agendas. I agree. I think that would be a good thing to follow up on. Shade it. Okay. Do we have with that do we really agree or do we all have a motion for a consent agenda? I have just one question on it. So is this is the board not working or It is It is working currently but the repair the the parts of the board are getting harder and harder to get because it is out of life cycle and so it's out of warranty or will be this summer.
221It's about to come out of warranty and so it's one of those things just like any of the other products like this with has a 10-year I I equate it again to the football fields the turf. Once it's made it's 8 to 10 years of what they will warranty it for it's time to start looking to replace it because it could go out at any point and not be able to get the replacement parts. Or it is it becomes very very expensive. Cuz we're having to purchase off-brand aftermarket replacement parts and we'll look up and in two or 3 years we'll have spent 3 or 400,000 dollars in just replacement after market parts that it's kind of just the nature of scoreboards. I I don't I don't know. I mean I I say we cannot
222do it. My recommendation as it starts to fail will be just to take them down. That was our discussion. It's what if you don't do this >> Don't do this. >> We don't have that. You'll have the side scoreboards and that's what you'll have in the gym. >> I'm assuming that with all the things that need to get done on the sports side, like this is the top priority coming from Conrad. >> um Conrad to sit and answer that question since I I mean I mean I just I think I think it's something that's come to me. I will say that in this year that I've been here. It came to me immediately after I got here of that it was going to be a concern and so we started looking into the funding that
223we do have available. We do have that capital projects funding. Yes, he's here. He's I think think about it. It's Conrad's coming up Think about it like a a a large screen flat television. And I in the middle there's pixelation or a square that's out and up in the corner there's a square that's out. I mean it's it's some point when those can no longer be repaired or replaced and those modules are like they obsolete. And we can't find them or order them anymore. That that will trigger those boards needing to come down because it to me that would look worse having dysfunctional board than having anything at all. Um it's it's just it's life cycle replacement with this technology and I personally think it's by design and it's a racket but it's my personal
224opinion. >> So the question Conrad on the floor is is this on priority you would see for athletics for you? So what I what I can what I can speak on is and the reality is we are on we're we're we're really working on the primary computers alone. So, normally when we get a new system a new video board, we have primary and we have auxiliary. All of our auxiliary backups have have essentially died. Uh so, we're at the mercy of this one primary computer um truly working. So, we're really talking about behind the you know, the behind the scenes of of this video board. And um the reality is like I said, we we've replaced and replaced, but um we're we're like I said, we're we're now at the life cycle and the recommendation
225from um Daktronics was we we need to really start looking hard at replacing this the the the guts of it which will include now the the the panels as well. Thank you. Okay. Any questions any other motions to approve the consent agenda? Mrs. Freeman? I uh move we approve the consent agenda. Any seconds? I'll second. With the Mrs. Zabala seconds. Okay, all in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay, the motion passes. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Connor. Thank you. Well, we needed to make sure we've got a record. It's 6-0 with one >> is not present. Oh. Not present, not voting. Thank you. Can we move on to um 6B? Uh yes, uh Madam President, this is a follow-up um item with um academic committee presentation. 6B. I'm sorry, 6C. 6C.
226What is 6C? 6 what? What? That's our consent agenda. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Seven. Let's move on to seven. C and I. Seven. 7A. Yeah, sorry. I was just like >> 7A. Thank you. Okay. 7A. So, uh we presented the first iteration of a academic dashboard I believe at the last academic committee uh meeting. And so, there was there were some recommendations. I think uh we had uh only the opportunity to present it to board members, two trustees. So, uh this is really an opportunity for you all to see uh I can say I know what has been requested several occasions um Mhm. an academic dashboard. So, James Yes, sir. So, this will provide an opportunity for you to see both campus and district data uh for some components that you guys have been
227interested in. And it's important to know we're using an existing product, which is Decision Ed. Um so, we've been able to create a dashboard that has some elements that we think would be of interest to you um to monitor and check. So, I'd like to invite um our very own Lisa Armstrong. She's director of continuous improvement. She oversees the implementation of not only Decision Ed, but Schoology and the list goes on it on and on. Thank you, Dr. Jordan. Um so, I'm going to give you guys just kind of a quick tour of this gift you'll be given uh as of tomorrow. Um you'll I will send you all the details via email to make sure you know exactly how to access it. But, I what I want to do with you all tonight is
228introduce you to the system, give you an opportunity to understand what sorts of data and what capabilities the system has, and then hopefully you um prepare you enough so you're up and running when you're ready to dig in. So, first of all, um the system is accessed within the district network. You got to have to be on the Northside network and you'll have availability through an icon in your Northside portal. That information I'll email to you to make sure it's clear how to find it. When we first enter here, we kind of just have a landing page with some support information. Should you need any, feel free to reach out to me directly and I'm happy to schedule some time with you. But what you see is our navigation bar there at the top in
229gray and it basically tells you all of the different sort of buckets of data that we have available for you to to dig to dig into. Once again, as Dr. Jordan said, it would be data at the district level or data at the campus level. So, I'm going to take a quick tour within each of these just to show you what data is available to you and then also make sure you're familiar with some of the navigation capabilities. So, I'm going to start by clicking on the enrollment tab. And as soon as I do that, I'm kicked out of the system. So, let me try that again. There we go. So, what you're looking at here um is basically enrollment data. I see grade level data, a bar chart indicating the number of students within
230each grade level. I see enrollment race ethnicity data. I also have some data on the left-hand side on all of my special programs and I see the option to to kind of filter if I want to dig into this data for a particular campus. So, anytime you're working within the dashboard, pretty much every data point you're looking at serves as a filter. For example, if I want this entire dashboard to refresh and only show me data for third-grade students, I can go to this third-grade bar here and click on that. And you'll notice all of the numbers throughout the dashboard changed. This is now representing only those 6,887 third graders and I can see all of the specifics around special populations, our gender breakdown just for those kiddos in third grade. Once again, I did
231that by clicking on that data point. To undo that, I'm going to click on that same data point and it's going to take me back to the original data set. So, any sort of bar you might see or any sort of chart, all of the different components of it serve as filters. Additionally, we have these filters located here to the right for particular student programs. As I select EB, you'll notice once again the numbers on the screen change and I'm now only looking at data for EB students. You can layer these filters as well. If I'm interested in looking at EB students that are also enrolled in, let's say, GT. Well, we've got 500 students that kind of meet both of those categories. So, once again, I'm going to unclick each of those to take
232me back to my original data set. So, this is our enrollment tab. We're going to go ahead and move on down to our assessment tab. And in this case, what we have are a couple of menu options that are our blue buttons that will take us to additional data. So, for assessments, we're providing you access to STAR or EOC data as well as our MAP data. So, I'm going to dig into the STAR 3-3-8 dashboard to demonstrate what's available for you here. Similar data would also be available on the EOC option or on the MAP option as well. You'll come to the page and you'll begin by seeing a bunch of additional filtering options up here. I can focus in on a particular subject, a particular grade level, a particular language that the assessment was
233administered in. And for STAR 3-3-8, what I'm looking at down here is summary information about performance level. I can toggle between looking at it by percentage or by clicking on this tab looking at it by number. And once again, as I indicated before, all of these data points we look at would service filters if I click on them. For star data in particular, what we display for you is the most um three most recent years worth of data. And the data is updated for assessment as they are administered. So, in the case of MAP, we'll be updating the data three times throughout the year. For star EOC, it would likely happen just once throughout the year. So, this was our assessment data. Once again, you have access to all of those student filters at the
234right side of the page. And then we do have some reporting category summary data listed here as well. I'm going to use what we call the switcher up here at the top to go back to my top level dashboard. And we're going to go ahead and take a peek now at our attendance tab. So, here, we're going to see a summary of attendance data. This graph in particular, I kind of think is sort of cool. Uh you can use your mouse to kind of drill in and out if you really want to filter down to a particular period of time that you want to take a look at what's going on attendance-wise. We've also got some additional data down below taking a look at by grade level absences over 10. So, this gives us some
235summary data to understand whether or not there's a particular issue for certain grade levels. We also usually have current data absences as of yesterday indicated here just to help us sort of monitor those trends in absences throughout the school year. And once again, you do have access to all those student filters over to the right. I'm going to keep on moving down the menu bar and pick a discipline. Here we're going to give some summary data on incidents and also responses. We begin by looking at our top 10 incidents in this graph here. Um they're listed over here to the right in the legend or excuse me to the left in the legend. And we also have some data here on top 10 responses if you're interested in kind of digging into how we're responding
236to any of those discipline incidents that are happening. I'll mention to um on each of these screens we did see a school filter as well. As you scroll down this you have the ability to in filter the data on each of these dashboards for particular campus if you'd like. And the final tab we have here is also a tab that we use to monitor our CCMR data. So when I come here you'll notice once again I see a blue button similar to what I saw for my assessment data. If you see a blue button click on it and that's going to take you to the data. So we're going to dig into CCMR data and we call this our potential dashboard because a lot of the data points you're looking at here show us students
237that are on the path to achieving CCMR for that particular indicator. We do also have an actual running percentage indicated here for where we're at, how many students have actually met CCMR at this point in the year. That of course we expect to continue to increase throughout the year as students meet more of those CCMR indicators. And so we've got all of the different indicators broken down down here, ELAR, um our on-ramps course, CTE information, and then once again we do have some student demographics indicated here if you're interested in trying to filter for some of those student demographics. Once again I'm going to take this back to that top level and at this point we've kind of taken a tour of all of the different tabs here and then should hopefully have a good
238understanding of the data available to you. Um my plan after today is I've put together a one-pager that kind of walks you through some of the points that I taught you this evening as a reference for you after today. So, I'll be sending that to you via email as long as some information on how to access the system through your portal. Are there any questions about what you've seen here? >> So, she did um offered a one-on-one with each of you. So, for those of you that have a lot a lot of questions, I recommend you do that. That way you can help she can show you how to navigate everything to what you want. Uh I was just going to add thank you so much. Um from academics to now, um incredible um and
239comprehensive um warehousing of the data. Um just so thank you very very much. >> Thank you. >> even on one-on-ones if we just have questions. >> Yes, good. Uh maybe I need a learning partner, so maybe if I need more but Thank you so much. >> Yeah, that sounds good. Feel free to reach out. I'm happy to help. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Good night. Thank you, Lisa. And now we move on to item eight for facilities and operations. Dr. Jerome. While they're setting up, Who's winning? >> at 79 to 59. Spurs. Third quarter with 3 minutes to go. Woo! Go Spurs, go. It's been 20 points since halftime. Third quarter. With 3 minutes to go, 79 59 Spurs. So, 20 points up ahead. It's good. Good good head start. Keep it going.
240All right. Thank you, Madam President, members of the board. I'm here to present item 8A, which is our amendment one GMP for the cafeteria kitchen athletic replacement at Oliver Wendell Holmes. As you may recall, Bartlett was awarded as a construction manager at risk back in April of this year, or I'm sorry, of 2025. We do have a architect that is present today, Miss Casey Annunzio, who's here in the back to answer any questions you may have. That she is with Huckabee Architects, and then with Bartlett I do have Tim Martin and James Caraway, who will be serving on this project. And so this first amendment that we're bringing to you is one of two. This is a two-phase project. The first one is to prep for the demolition of the actual buildings. As you recall,
241there was a slight delay on this particular project because we were tinkering with whether or not we renovate the space and essentially take it down to the bones is the way I would explain it, and then make it look new, or go through a full actual demolition and new new construction reconstruction. And so after looking at the numbers and coordinating with our contractor, it was in the best interest to move forward with the actual reconstruction of the building rather than trying to renovate a a 60-year-old structure. So this first phase that we bring again, I mentioned, is going to be the temporary utilities that we would have to reroute to make sure all of the other structures around this structure that is to come down will remain functional for the campus and not interrupt instruction.
242It'll be the demolition of the actual buildings themselves, as well as some of the foundation prep as we dig down to prepare for the new foundation. The budget, or I'm sorry, the amount that is in this amendment is just shy of $5.9 million. So it's at $5,898 to 998 and 202 dollars. And it is a not to exceed figure. It does have some allowances built into it to take care of some contingencies that we may encounter as we're demolishing the building at one of our oldest campuses. And then we anticipate that phase two will come shortly after as we're preparing to bid amendment number two here in the near future. And so with that I will open the floor. Obviously this item is for approval and again is funded by the 22 bond program. And
243so with that I'll open the floor for any questions that you guys may have as it relates to this amendment. Any questions? Dr. Hassell. I just wanted to say I was at building committee and we had some really great in-depth conversations about this. I mean, just so everyone's aware like this is going to be a two-year project. Like Holmes is going to be looking a little different for the next two years and just so the board is aware. Um but it's exciting. I mean, it's definitely going to change Holmes for, you know, same change some of the areas and so, but just wanted to make sure the whole board was aware that this is fully two-year project. And um I know I'll be communicating to the neighborhoods around there so they generally know um cuz
244they asked early on like, "Hey, I see portables. What does that mean?" And so um I'll be sure to let the neighboring HOAs know like, "Hey, it's a two-year project. Um there's certain processes that are going to happen so they're kind of aware of that they're not surprised when they see things out there." So, just wanted to mention that. Thank you. I don't know. Anybody else? Do we have any motions? I'll I'll motion. Okay. Um a motion to approve the NISD Holmes High School CKA replacement package one. Okay, any seconds? I second. This is about the seconds. All present, all in favor. Say I. I. Any opposed? Okay, any further discussion? Motion passes. Thank you, sir. Right. Thank you. >> Thank you. Item number nine under business and finance. Yes, ma'am. So, we're going to
245go through a short presentation on budget planning. Again, we're still in the early phases of our budget planning. You know that your compensation is a big piece of our budget planning and we are still working through our deficit that we've had and our last slide will really bring that to you visually. So, I'll go fairly quickly through these items. As Dr. Craft alluded earlier, our student projection for next school year is 95,461. So, we will convert that into an ADA and what that's the budget department's work. We'll work that on converting that into an average daily attendance, which we will put into the formulas to project our revenue and we plan to have that for your order our next meeting so we can compare that along with our staffing formulas and bring it back to
246what to you to see what that difference looks like. It's I'm sorry. Go ahead. I I I have a question. Excuse me. Mrs. Freeman. I'm sorry, you mentioned staffing formulas. So, it seems to me we're kind of behind with our staffing allocations. Am I Am I just imagining that and um and then how does that work into HR because we've always wanted to be ahead of other school districts when we talk about hiring practices? Are we behind? I would say yes, ma'am. I would say we're behind, but we did release them to campuses this week. So, they are out. Actually, some last week and some early Their FTEs are Okay. So, we are working through that right now. Again, I I don't necessarily know that I would say making that we're behind. I think we're
247trying to be calculated. And what I mean by that is is that again as we discussed in cabinet this morning we're going to work really hard to protect programs and the integrity of programs and jobs. Yes, we've got vacancies. But a lot of it is going to be contingent upon how much of a deficit budget the board wants to assume going into next school year. Because there's a lot of positions that we can fill internally and I do mean a lot. Just simply from displacement and attrition and fixing ourselves. And I should have said we are behind compared to previous years of when we were doing this. That given where we are with our budget Again, I can't remember. I think we hired a little over 400 new teachers. That number is usually 800. I
248anticipate that that that number of hires will be even less. Again, depending on how serious and how aggressive the board wants to get with trying to balance the current deficit budget knowing that we still haven't seen what the 1,132 students who were just awarded vouchers that are within Northside ISD uh currently I mean that that is not even calculated into this 95,463. So it it just Are we late? Probably historically speaking. Are we um trying to make really uh it uh deliberate and very intentional decisions so that programs and people don't get hurt, especially unnecessarily, absolutely. And what's happening with projections this year? I've never experienced or seen anything like it. So to to that point though, I guess what I was saying is I was assuming that we would be approving the staff allocations.
249Is that Well, you you've you've approved the the student teacher ratios. Staffing allocations are less. Okay. So you're you're I I mean, if you wanted to approve less than what has already been approved, yes, we can bring allocations. We're not asking the board to approve any additional allocations, i.e. budget implications. >> We're working on what's been where we have been and then just continuing. Okay, that's But less. >> the budget in the future, right, Megan? I mean, in essence, you're approving allocations through the budgeting process. So in the past, prior to me coming here, uh there were growth and improvement packages, G&I packages, that the board would improve those. Since we are not adding, we're only reducing, there's not something to bring to the board to approve. >> Okay, thank you. Does that make sense?
250Maybe that I've asked I've asked that question of my team several times of okay So just for the audience to understand, Megan, like last year, um when did principals know their FTEs? I'm not sure about that. Do you know? April? Earlier. Early April. >> there. We're just a little bit there. They understand, right, why? And we've been talking to them. You know, as we have our our level meetings, I presented every one of them and tell them what we're working on, where where we're looking. And you'll see more of that as we go through this presentation of the things we've been working on. Um but the student projection, it drives a lot. It drives those staffing guidelines based on the same teacher um ratio student teacher ratios that we had for last year. We're not
251planning to change those. So that's the third line here. Um we're not offering uh bringing forward any school closures. I want to get that out there because that's been a big question. So, we just talked about we can't have any consolidation or um changes in the structure of the way a school would look or any of those options that we have available there. Um that's not happening for next school year. So, I want to make sure to just dispel those rumors uh right there. Uh so, that's out there. And so, these are our big overarching assumptions that we're using right now as we're starting to develop the the budget that will come back to you. Want you to know what we've been doing on the budget side. So, we surveyed all of our principals and
252we've asked all of our principals what should we protect in our budget? What should we not consider as we know that we have budget challenges. It's it's clear. Uh we have a third we adopted a $38 million deficit that we need to get under control, especially as our student counts continue to go down, that deficit will grow if we're not doing anything with it. So, we want to talk to principals about what do they really want us to protect? What do they hold dear that they really need? And then what they would consider for budget reductions. So, we've got all of that survey data back and we've looked at all of that. All of that information was given to the cabinet members. And so, and they were given it in raw data and a executive
253summary that brought that together. And then we asked our cabinet members to identify possible reductions at the cabinet level using a district-wide lens, not just their department. But what do you see? I could turn in something for athletics. Um Janice could to start turn in something related to facilities, you know. So, it's we asked just give us a laundry list of things you see from your lens that we should be considering as we're looking at budget reductions. The last thing we want to do is cut something and then 4 months later somebody say, "Well, if I would have known that was going to happen, I would have offered up something else." So, trying to be thoughtful and smart of looking at our budget considerations. And then of course, you know, we're going doing this GASB
254study that Amy um brought forward earlier for the PERS piece of it, and we know that will go the opposite direction. So, that will make us need to reduce more if we're going to add compensation. So, those are the things we've been working on over the last 3 or 4 months. I want to talk a little bit about the voter approved um tax rate election, the Voted that we've talked a little bit about. A piece that I don't know that um everyone realizes that when we assume we're going to go out for a Voted, that revenue will go in our general fund budget. So, our roughly $1 million revenue that we had last year, you will add the $45 million into that, and the the budget that we will ask the board to approve would
255roughly be a million a billion $45 million with that revenue. So, we'll have offsetting expenditures that make up that $45 million. You know, why do we need this $45 million? It could be a portion of the $38 million that we don't want to have to reduce to get to a balanced budget could come out of that $45 million. The GASB study could be part of that $45 million. There's a lot of things that could be part of that Voted revenue for operations, the need for operations. And so, we're going to have to have that conversation, and I'll show it graphically to you here in a moment of how is the board going to designate the items as we were talking about with Amy a few minutes ago, the items that are actually tied to that
256Voted revenue that are contingent on it. Because if we have items in the last line item here, the items that we tie to that Voted revenue, we can't start spending until after the Voted election. So, they're contingent on that November election. So, as we talked about a general pay increase, I want to make sure that the board understands that if we wanted to give a general pay increase for employees, or if we wanted to do the um the adjustments to pay and tie it to that Voted because I believe the cost is going to be too much for us to be able to handle outside of that. That would not go into effect until after November 3rd election. And we would when you adopt it, it would be contingent on the VADER passing. So, that's
257an important piece to know that. Uh the board could choose that if we do a general pay increase and tie it to the VADER, once the VADER passes, it could be retroactive. So, we could make up that time of what they missed or what they would have normally gotten uh in November once it passes. But, that's the piece that we'll bring up several times of will this be contingent on the VADER or will it be part of the regular budget process? That's something we've never had to think about before. So, I want y'all to start thinking as we're talking about items in the budget, what is the time piece? Because if we do go out for a VADER and it doesn't pass, we have to come immediately back into a budget amendment to remove $45
258million in revenue and remove $45 million in expenditures. So, that's a a big piece we have to be able to ready to go to. Do you have any questions on that? Again, that's brand new information that y'all have not It's great heard before. Okay. So, this is the the big piece I wanted to get over tonight before we really start talking numbers. There are numbers, of course, on here, but they're round numbers. So, if you look on the left-hand side, that's our current year budget that we're in. We had it roughly a million dollar a billion, sorry, a billion dollars in revenue and roughly a billion 38 million in expenditures. So, that's our $38 million dollar deficit, the difference between the blue and the and the orange. The next area, and I want to say
259thank you to Jake, wherever there's Jake. We've been talking about how do we show this graphically for months, and he came up with this and it he's done a great job of trying to make it where we could step through it. It's a hard concept to put in pictures. Uh so, the second graph is showing the 38 million and that we need to reduce at least a portion of that. We do have instructional continuity out there that can help us with this. We don't have to go to the whole 38 million this year, but we've got to get it control of it because as our enrollment continues to decline, Yeah. it's going to get bigger. And so we've got to be we've got to be taking pieces of off it off every year. And if
260we need to add any revenue I'm sorry, any additional expenditures in, that's going to make that even be larger that we would have to go to. It may not just may not be salaries. It could be gasoline cost, it could be utilities. I mean, insurance, there's a lot of things that could add to this that would make it more that we have to reduce. So that graphically is showing it could be zero, it could be 38 million, it could be more than that. The next piece is the Vader that we just talked about, the 45 million in revenue offsetting 45 million in expenditures that we'll have. And all of that added together will get to our proposed budget. Again, we're showing out here the billion 45 million. Down at the bottom it says this graph
261right here does not show any change of enrollment, doesn't show any change in property value, um and talking about the expenditure reduction goal will be net any increases. This is a very high-level view, but I'm hoping that we can adjust it and understand it this way before we get into the real numbers that we'll start bringing to you next meeting. Do you have any questions about this? Will you be giving us a data um scenario two based on let's say we lose all those students that to the vouchers, right? Based on that ADA. That's what that 45,000 um 461, that's where we're going to start, yes, ma'am. We'll be running the scenarios of what that revenue looks like. We have to apply that to all of our special populations of students, too. Have weighted formulas,
262so we've got to go through that piece. That's that's Jake's work that he's working on. And then we'll apply that to the staffing ratios. There's other expenditures, too, but that's of course the big ticket to see what that um difference is. I do not expect I do not expect the decrease in in staff to cover the decrease of revenue, if that makes sense. I expect the decrease in revenue to be larger than the decrease in staff. So, I think that's going to make that a bigger hole, if you will. Mhm. So, but that work that we've been doing of identifying possible ways to reduce further, we will start bringing that to you either May 12th or May 26th so we can start giving you options to look at of um where would we go. None
263I want to tell you nothing on the list that we've looked at from the principals or cabinet are good options. There's There's not any. We do great things for students, and no matter what the decision is, it's going to be hard, and it's going to hurt. Yes. And we we had this conversation again this morning in cabinet, even though it was a $65 million that was a much easier lift. This This is going to be a little bit more painful because we've pulled the easy levers. And I say easy, they weren't easy, but relatively speaking, now we're getting into well, deeper tissue. Yeah, we we said that last year that this is going to get harder and harder, and I guess We did. For the community, if you want to serve on our citizens bond
264committee, we're still taking names, and we need we need your advocacy um to help us pass this so that we can continue to offer all the great things we do at Northside. So, get with your constituent, your respective trustee, if you want to serve on the bond committee to help us. Appreciate that. That is the presentation is about to get That's it's very high-level tonight. Thank you. digging down into. And now we have our efficiency auditor selection type. Thank you. Yes, so our next item is you remember that we've been bringing forward to you the timeline of the Vader and in bond election. And along with that is the piece that we need to select an auditor to do the efficient the required efficiency audit that must be done before you can call a Vader.
265And we would call the Vader on August 17th along with the bond. Those are is our date. It's a Monday, which is different. So, make sure that's on your calendar. So, we will not have a Tuesday night board meeting. It will be a Monday night board meeting for August 17th. And this auditor must be selected 4 months before that. And then it has to be delivered to the board within 90 days. So, there's very strict rules with this auditor in the process. Uh we have identified the comparison districts that will be used for our efficiency audit. And it was recommended to us from our external financial audit that we would use Dallas ISD, Northeast ISD, Austin ISD, Fort Bend ISD, and Fort Worth ISD as our comparison districts. So, when they're looking at our efficiencies,
266they compare our ratios and our financial information to those districts. They use our 2025 audited financial data for this. And based on that, we're recommending that we use Whitley Penn. They are current external financial auditor. Uh you know, we go out for bid every we have a 3-year process and then you can add Sorry, 2 years and we can add three 1-year contracts to that. So, we go out every 5 years at least. But currently, Whitley Penn is our auditor and we're recommending that the board select them as our auditor for doing this efficiency audit because they have all of our data easily accessible. So, this is an action item this evening. Do we have any motions? This is Freeman. I would move approval of the selection. Are Are we looking at the um the
267engagement letter or are we approving >> efficiency audit? >> approving the just the selection of the auditor and I'll sign the engagement letter. Okay. They we won't sign the letter until May because they would that We've got to get meet these deadlines exactly so we don't want to sign the actual engagement until after that but we need you to approve who the auditor will be. So I motion we approve the auditor as discussed. Do I have any seconds? Dr. Hasso seconds that. All right. All in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay, we've approved the efficiency auditor. Thank you. And our next item under the finance area is actually a benefits area and Ben is in the back but I told him I'll try to cover this for him this evening.
268We have an agreement that the board entered into back in 2012 for 457 investment plan for our employees. At the time that it was entered into again back in 2012 it allowed for pre-tax investments into this 457 plan and we have pre and post tax selections into a 403b plan so those are two different types of plans but we never have had a post tax option so after tax you would be able to invest money into a plan under the 457 plan. It's just a check box on there and you can see it in the adjustment to say that yes we want to allow employees to to don- donate invest I should say not donate invest in a into these plans as with after tax money. The the reason why you would want to do
269that is depending on what you think your tax situation is going to be at the time you start pulling out that money. If you're going to be in a higher tax bracket when you invest it compared to a higher tax bracket when you take the money out is what you decide if you want to do it pre-tax or post tax. And so that's the decision that employees have to make and of course they're somewhat guessing on that but we do have employees that have wanted to invest after tax and we don't have that ability currently. We only have the pre-tax. So we're asking tonight to amend that contract to check the box to say that employees could use their own money. It's not costing the district anything, putting their own money into an after-tax So,
270that was the question I had to What is that going to cost us? There's no cost to the district. >> No cost to the district. The employee pays the fees. >> to put their after-tax dollars in the plan. That's great. Oh, can I Yes, ma'am. Does that also give them the option if they do after-tax if they can pull it before they leave the district if they need it for some reason? I'm going to let Dr. Fay mention that because I know she's very interested in that. I can discuss it. So, 457 plan, there are several advantages. One is there's not a penalty for withdrawal before 59 and 1/2. So, if you think about a 403b or even a 401k plan, there's going to be a you get to pay taxes on early withdrawal, but
271you also pay a 10% uh penalty for from an early withdrawal. With a 457 plan, you don't pay um a 10% penalty, in essence. Estimate or you try to estimate taxes, obviously. Um but that's a that's a real advantage. You can borrow against it, similar to a 403 uh b uh vehicle. Like I say, it it's an option uh that especially most school districts of our size provide employees. We We would like to just make one change to the attachment say Region 10. They could just be updated to say Region 20. And it's actually through Region 10. So, Region 10 has a retirement arm, and it's um the whole state uses them. Oh, okay. We would just go through them like we do We call it RAMS. Oh, okay. We call it that. It's a
272good catch though to try to That was Mr. Zuniga. Okay. All right. With that said, do we have any um motions? Dr. Hassell? I move to add the option of the 457 after tax option. Second. Okay. And Dr. Haws seconds that. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay, motion passes. Thank you. And now we're uh on to item 10 for under administration. So, another fun one. Um so, um we have to bring before y'all uh some information regarding this new seatbelt laws on our buses. And so, Tessie has done a great job of compiling data. And so, tonight we will be requesting uh y'all to take action on a resolution, but it'll be based on the presentation by Tessie. So, thank you. Good evening. It's rare that I have FaceTime
273with you, so I wanted to take this opportunity on behalf of the transportation department and myself to thank you for all you do for student success and for the work that you do um to support the operation side of our district and all that we do to support students. Thank you, Dr. Haws, for recognizing our drivers and assistants today on their national recognition recognition day. So, now for the fun stuff. You've heard about student recognition, district optimization, now seatbelts on buses. Oh my. I'm here to present to you the agenda item for 10.8, the resolution for reporting seatbelts on school buses and the cost to retrofit. Fun stuff, Dr. Craft. Texas Senate Bill 546 has passed last April and went into effect in September 1 of 2025. To give you a brief historic overview, the
274topic of uh seatbelts on buses has been a hot contention for many years, but it was thrust into the spotlight in May of 2024 because of the tragic bus accident in Hays ISD where a pre-K student who was on a field trip uh lost his life because he was riding a a school bus that did not have seat belts. So, as an outcome of uh Senate Bill 546, I'm presenting to you the required information about the seat belts on our buses in our fleet. So, we'll move on to the next one. Um so, basically, we need to be in compliance by September 1 of 2029 that all of our school buses that transport our students have to have three-point seat belts. September 1 of 2029. That's a lot. Move on to the next one. So,
275currently, Northside ISD has the second largest fleet of buses in um Texas. We operate 967 buses. Our current compliance, we have 313 buses that are equipped with three-point seat belts, 427 buses that are equipped with two-point seat belts, 227 buses not equipped with seat belts. So, currently out of compliance, we have 654 buses that either require retrofit of three-point seat belts or replacement. So, currently, in phase one of the retrofitting, um of the 654 non-compliant buses, 290 meet the technical criteria for retrofitting, meaning that they still have some life in them, and uh it's cost-effective for us to retrofit. Each bus is approx- To retrofit a bus right now, it's costing about $36,000 to put them through three-point seat belts all throughout. So, the estimated cost of retrofitting 290 buses currently is going to be
276$8.8 million. The remaining gap of 364 buses that are not eligible for retrofitting, either that they're too old or we're not even able to find parts to repair them, um that's 364 buses, and based on that 364, we looked at the mileage that these buses had per year. So, if they were driven less than 3,000 miles last school year, we felt that they weren't an operational integral operational part of our our daily operations. So, we're recommending at this time to purchase 230 new buses so that we can be compliant by September 1 of 2029. And the estimated cost to replace those buses is going to be about 43.7 million dollars. Um Oh. So, at this time, we need a resolution to basically say that we do not have the 8.8 million dollars to retrofit 290
277buses, and that's the information I have to present to TEA. Yeah, we don't have There's no state funding for this. We can barely make our ends meet right now. Right. What we'll do with this information tonight is we'll by getting a resolution is we'll be allowed to put our data into Sentinel, and then my hope is just like the safety allotment dollars that came out after the the requirements for safety came is that the there'll be grants available for us to apply for to get money to actually do that work. I'm certain it will not be all of it, but certainly it'll help support it. Any questions? I have a question. >> Yes. Go ahead. Um of the 300 and uh 13 Oh. Of the 313 buses that are are equipped, are those right now
278um at the elementary school level? Like, we use those for the elementary school or who So, those buses are currently on route, and all of our buses serve a three-tier. So, they drive elementary kids, middle school kids, and high school kids. Okay. So, they're spread out. spread >> throughout our five stations. And so those Are they using the seat belts? I guess is my question. So that's the next step. Dr. Fe. Yeah, so once buses are outfitted with seat seat belts, the law says that we will use them. And so my team is working through administrative regulations around that because it is difficult in some cases to get certain age groups of students to actually wear them. So there's going to have to be some consequences. First of all, high expectations. Number two is what
279happens when you don't. And so we're working through that right now with my team. And so we'll be rolling that out soon. Mr. Blunt. >> Yeah, um Is there a possibility of bond funding for this? Okay. Yes. We've got an option to be considered to include additional buses of new I just you know how many off the top of your head? I I don't have the priority this So since history of Northside that since I've known about it, every bond election that has passed North transportation department department has been allocated 15 million dollars per bond cycle. And so this last year we were only able to purchase about 90 buses just because the cost of the buses are going up. We used to pay like 90,000 a bus. This last year we paid 160,000 dollars
280a bus. So I did request for the 22 bond to get 35 million, but cuz we knew this was coming. I only got 15 million. So now we're in a pickle where we need to buy 290 buses, you know, for So we we yes, it's it's one of the items that need to be considered on the like I say 2.1 billion dollar list that Jacob has. Which he left. Yeah, he's like you know >> conveniently No, I know. So, this isn't This is an action item? What do we have? Yes, we we need to submit We need to submit this information to TEA, and you don't have to approve a resolution, but we do have to review this information and take action so that we can submit to TEA. We felt like the in the
281form of a resolution would be really the most simplistic and straightforward. So, do we have a motion on that? Do we need the resolution that just kind of buys us time? What we're looking for. >> Well, I don't know how much time. I mean, it it I don't know. Here's what I do anticipate this is going to be another item or an item that's going to be discussed again in the legislative session. I mean, this is a classic classic unfunded mandate. If there is such a thing, this is almost textbook definition. Districts across the state right now, unless you're running a fleet of about eight buses, are are passing some form of a resolution or reporting uh that it just fund it, and we'll be glad to you know, make sure that we come into
282compliance, but there's not there's not the funding there. So, we'll have to continue to work. Obviously, new buses that we purchase will be equipped with seat belts. Um I still would argue that by 2029, that's not very far away that >> It's impossible. It's Retrofit because I mean, if you think of all the school districts across the state are needing to retrofit, there's not very many companies that are actually doing the work. And so, if we need 290 buses to be retrofitted, you know, compound that. This is this is a probably a really well-intentioned law, but not well thought out and strategically timed. Do we have a motion to draft a resolution in response to Senate Bill 546? >> the resolution. >> We have it here. Okay. I'll move approval of the resolution. Okay. Second.
283Mr. Blount approves it. Dr. Harl seconds it. All in favor say I. I. I. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay, motion passes. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Tessie. And now we move on to item number 11. Yeah, I and I'll I'll just interject and and um uh Laura and David asked that that this and the next item be placed on the agenda. And so um there was a news article uh that was published more in and around March 23rd. Uh and we agreed, I agreed um to sit down with an investigative reporter by the name of Daniel uh Daniella Ibarra. We knew, as we usually always know, kind of what the angle of this particular story was going to be. And it was not going to be kind to particularly our special
284educators um nor uh administration and administrative support staff. Um needless to say, uh it wasn't. Um at the same time, I've sat down with more investigative reporters for 40 plus minutes as was this, believe it or not, interview. Um even though about 20 seconds of what I offered uh for them to consume and consider was actually printed or published. Um And so lo and behold, uh a snippet and if you go to the snippet that is exactly marked um at 28 minutes and 15 seconds, um there was a comment made um that uh related to our communications department put up a a roadblock um uh for the past 2 years. Well, uh just as the director of news and his name is Jace Larson uh admitted to uh our in our conversation um on uh
285the 10th of April. Yeah, it was completely taken out of context. And you can see very clearly in that video where what I said was not in its entirety, nor was there a contextual question associated. It was a simple sound bite that was plugged in. So, I can understand um needing um to try to win a Pulitzer Prize. But when my integrity is attacked, and which in this case it was, and like I say, uh Jace Larson um admitted which I have recorded uh that yes, it was absolutely taken out of context. Furthermore, when pushed back, the entire interview was supposed to have been posted along with this story. Has not happened. Danielle was supposed to have given me a call. Has not happened. Yes, I'm going to push back. And so, I apologize to
286our communications department that this context was was taken out of context. Um I said it. Uh it was not ill willed. Um and I apologize. And really, I'm apologizing because I agreed to sit down with this investigative reporter. That's what I'm apologizing for. And I won't again. Okay, thank you, sir. Any Any comments? I do. I have a comment. Um Wha- With that being said, and I know uh I think this incident happened about 2 years ago. Um I guess my question is it's uh There was a question that uh the wife, I guess at the time, didn't have closure. So, I guess my question is with that going out with what was being said said w- What uh Are there any plans to offer closure to Missy Mendez? I think it's uh >> I
287I would not be able to answer that question without legal counsel present. Because then that question was thrown out there. So, now we know. We know that she wanted that closure and I and and I feel like I think it's important that you know, we look into that. You would not want me to answer that question without legal counsel present. I agree with that, and that's fine. But I I feel like it's out there and I think the question needs to be be You You did and I didn't hear what you're saying. You won't do it again, but you did it. So, I tried to defend our educators. That's what I won't do again. Okay. Okay. With an investigative reporter. All right, thank you. So, one more question. I So, I guess what I'm trying
288to say is Has anybody from Northside contacted her after the interview? No, because we haven't because you haven't uh consulted with counsel. So, no one >> with counsel. since the interview? No. Is that my direction to consult with counsel since this interview? I was told by our legal counsel that I've done a fantastic job with the interview at a luncheon. Okay, thank you, sir. Dr. Hall. Um so I'm going back to the what you just told us and I'm I'm just a little confused because um I watched it several times. I read it. What is the part that you said was taken out of context cuz it was >> that was asked. Well, I'm talking about in reference to the communications department. That So, I'd like to take this conversation and maybe add it to
289our executive session in the future. Which I'm more than happy to do that. I think this would be appropriate on May 26th. Okay, let's move this to executive session, please. On the future agenda item, we can add this. I'm going to That's also something that if we need to have counsel there we need to probably consider that too as well. >> Yes. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, we're moving on to our discussion on the internal audit. So, this is a presentation that has been presented a finance committee meeting I think probably about a year ago. Monica, you're going to have to drive the slides for me. Uh I presented this at TASB SLI several several different occasions. Uh it pertains to again David and Laura requested this agenda item uh regarding internal
290audit services pertaining to hiring uh processes, student safety, and employee compensation. Um She's going to pull up the PowerPoint on internal audit overview for Northside. Item 11b. 11b. You have a PDF file. Mrs. Freeman. It's 11:13. >> Sorry. I I wonder if we could have this discussion. This internal auditor discussion has occurred at this I don't know how many times we've had it several in committee on the board perhaps before you've gotten on the board. We actually went out for a a bit or I'm sorry. We opened up opportunities for people to apply for an for a position for an internal audit and we I Dr. Kraft connect correct me if I'm misrepresenting this. But the the people that applied we were um we just wanted to open it back up again. We just didn't
291>> Yeah, it it is there there are pros and cons. Internal audit just a few highlights. Don't worry about the presentation. Um we'll cover it in the committee meeting. But you can go internally. You can use external but it's an internal auditor that provides the services, hires the experts within that given field or department. Um the challenge with hiring an internal auditor is finding an individual or even two that have the area of expertise across all domains. That that is the true challenge. So the benefit to using like a Weaver or a Gibson Consulting or what they do is they hire or subcontract with the expert individuals that can perform the audit and really know how to work with departmental staff and asking the right questions. Um the audit itself has to be independent objective.
292It by law must report directly to the board of trustees. What we had discussed in the last finance committee was a little bit different than what I've presented at TASB as well, but it can be done uh in the sense of programmatic audits uh as a result of a risk analysis, which is really important to conduct before we just start cherry-picking departments uh because we don't like what they're doing. Um and and so you can have uh an auditor look at like activity accounts. You can have an auditor look at things that need to be spot-checked uh even though our external auditor can do a lot of this as well. But a pure a pure or a program audit uh for example, a school safety uh audit. I mean, it really needs to be uh
293probably subcontracted by somebody that has that level of expertise because an individual that uh is familiar say with financial or conducting a financial audit or say an HR audit is likely not going to have that same level of expertise looking at student safety. It's just my general experience in this entire audit world and ecosystem. So just to kind of remind us before we had gone ahead and asked that we hire someone to continuously offer these and put someone in that position and then we Yeah, so we posted the job. I think we had three applications. Three. Um A- And again, we can discuss this on the 26th as well, but we've kept the job open. Okay. >> Because the board, you will have to interview and hire your internal auditor. Okay. This is not a
294function of HR or even the superintendent. Okay. The internal audit reports only to the seven Right. of you. Okay. Thank you. >> real quick, if if I recall correctly, he's only I I think we ended up with sort of a hybrid idea. That's where we were. I track that. Oh, yes. Where we could do the internal and maybe have a couple, two, and then um where they could do it internally, they could, and then if they needed an external, they would make that decision, and they would manage that external part. Okay, and that's where we ended up. >> we started discussing the cost associated with, that was So, you're you're going to be at a cost with the individual staff member that reports again directly to you as the board, but then you're probably going
295to spend if you wanted to say audit these three departments, you're you're going to probably spend, depending on again the audit plan, somewhere between probably $160 to $200,000, maybe $250,000. I I don't know. It Per audit? >> So, it just depends on scope of work, etc. So, So, that's another factor that we just kind of put on hold. Okay. Thank you, sir. Mrs. Raymond? I was just going to say as we go forward with this, first we have to identify the auditor, and then it becomes a decision of the board whether we do the risk management, and then decision of the board as to what departments we audit. And I know that there is here listed three departments of a concern. My suggestion is if you have specific concerns about if anyone has specific concerns
296about a department at least right now because it's this is not going to happen very quickly even if we select an audit then then ask the questions to the to the superintendent, but Yeah, and we'll and we'll be glad if you want to like say pursue outsourcing uh having, you know, interviews set up with different firms. There's several. Um but the risk analysis is going to be a function of individual interviews with you all. It's going to be an inventory. Um and then in essence uh it will be scored and you'll have a matrix that will then determine your areas based on your uh perceived responses that are probably of greatest risk. Okay. Not to say you have to follow that um that risk analysis or plan, but there'll be suggestions, recommendations that these might
297want to be the departments that you want to take a look at first. Carla. Dr. Hasso, um is the job posted? Yeah, is it currently still posted? What is it called cuz I'm searching >> What's the name of the um position? I tried audit, auditor. Send it. Okay. Okay, thank you. He's going to get that to us. Thank you, sir. Okay. And the next item we have are future agenda items. Um Excuse me. We're looking at May 12th um needing to have a a called board meeting. Um we initially had thought we would bring back uh fiscal year 26 budget amendment number two. Probably a fiscal year 27 budget planning again. We We need to start getting deeper into the planning of that that budget. Uh child nutrition update. Um we're going to have a
298few appointments. Um I believe our PTA is going to provide a end of year report. Don't tell Candy I said that, but Okay. All right. Um so and then we may actually may have a grievance. So that going to probably warrant, like I say, a meeting for the 12th. Okay. And then now we have district policy. I haven't >> You already did that. Yes. Okay. So now we're moving on to executives I'm sorry, Mrs. Freeman. >> that's okay. Um somewhere along the line we need to start looking at our board operating procedures. There's specifically there's like even Excuse me. Um even how agenda items the the title of the agenda items and the specific specificity of agenda items as we put them on the agenda so that at least trustees know specifically um what we're
299looking at as well as our community. But there's I I think all of that can go into board operating procedures. And so I'm requesting a discussion at some point as to when we're going to look at board operating procedures and perhaps we do that at a time when we do team building in the summer and and look at a facilitator to help us with board operating procedures. Just because we have to have that done. Let's do that. That sounds like a great idea. Well I we My thought is we have a discussion about the a facilitator if we go ahead with a facilitator or not. Mhm. This is not a decision point here, but I think we put it on the agenda for next time. It did jog my memory. We also need bring uh
300CEC credits uh to be reviewed. >> Next. That's one meeting. And we do have the new updated um cyber security that needs to be retaken, and then the child one is needs is needs to be renewed. Child abuse needs to be renewed by all of us cuz they expired together. Okay. Do you have a couple weeks to get that? All right. So, now we're going to be able to um convene into closed session in accordance with the Texas Government Code sections 551.071 through 551.084. No action will be taken in closed session, and any decisions will be made when the board reconvened into open session. The time is now 11:23, and we're going to be moving into the back room for our executive closed session. All right. It is now 12:12, and the board has reconvened
301into open session. No action was taken in closed session regarding agenda items discussed in closed session. Is there a motion to come before the board in regards to action item one? Yes, Madam President. Okay. Dr. Hall? Um you're in regards to 14c, right? Yes, ma'am. >> Okay. Um I move to terminate the probationary contract of Nicholas Hayden at the end of the contract contract term to serve the best interest of the district, and further move to authorize the superintendent to provide written notice to Nicholas Hayden of this board action as required by law. Any seconds? Mr. Blunt? Mr. Blunt seconded that. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay, the motion is passed. Thank you. And do we have any other motions? I move approval of the administrative appointments as discussed in
302closed session. Any second? Mrs. Freeman seconds that. All in favor say I. Any opposed? Any further discussion? Okay, the motion carries. And it is now 12:14. Unless there are any objections, we are adjourned. And have a great night. Thank you for watching.