001um I talked with Walsh gagos asked them you know the practice of having anou in place with the Education Foundation they said absolutely it just truly lays out those expectations those educational opportunities it strengthens community and ensures transparency between the two groups and then she said I love this where did you get it and can we borrow it um and I said sure um anyways so she didn't see any issue with it and thought it was best practice to have that in place but requested those two changes any questions for Dr Austin if not I'll look for a motion I'll move that the Rockport Fulton ISD Board of Trustees approv the memorandum of understanding with the Rockport Fulton Education Foundation fostering a collaborative partnership that enhances educational opportunities and resources for rfisd students and staff
002I'll second any further questions concerns all right we'll take a vote all in favor I any opposed motion carries 70 just try to move it along we'll move to 8G consider take possible action to approve the two 2025 29 strategic plan rfic balance scorecard Dr Austin again so I went through balance scorecard this is specifically the four priorities 12 objectives and just the way in which we lay out the balance scorecard that I reviewed with the executive leadership team I'll look for a motion I make a motion to approve the rfisd board adopted plan 2025 to 2029 strategic plan balance scorecard as presented specifically the district's four priorities and 12 strategic objectives I have a motion made by m Randall seconded by Mrs Yarnell any further discussion Mr I'm not even sure it's not going
003to necessarily impact my vote what whatsoever but I do have a question on these Board of trustee item sheets that we get just the ones that summarize they're about to be updated I was going to say these goals at the bottom of these things drive me crazy so we're actually going to beum they will be updated based on the Strategic plan yes Miss Hill and Molly Adams and myself said soon as we adopt then we will update this whole sheet that will be fantastic uh and it will reflect our uh priorities and objec it will okay so this vote is even more important Mr Burton so we'll take a vote I I any opposed motion carries 70 thank you all right move to 8i consider take possible action to approve the 2026 superintendent evaluation tool
004uh AG House Bill three goals sorry oh let me go back to 88 consider take possible action to approve House Bill three goals so went through those as well that is in the Tec code 11185 that's a requirement um nothing has been changed so every five years it will be something we do we update and I also just want y'all to know as Dina made me WR the Motions they're very wordy so if you'd like to streamline them down you can but if you have any questions on the house buil Regals please let me know you ready I move that the board or that I move that the Rockport Fon ISD Board of Trustees approve the hb3 board goals as presented all right we have a motion made by Mrs Austin seconded by Mrs yarell
005any discussion all in favor I any opposed motion carries 70 all right now we'll go to a I consider take possible action to approve the 2026 superintendent evaluation tool this was the aligned superintendent evaluation tool with the balance scorecard uh as I presented earlier I move that the Rockport Fulton ISD Board of Trustees approve the 2026 superintendent evaluation tool as presented we have a motion made by m Randle seconded by Miss Austin well I heard two any further discussion all in favor I any opposed motion carries 70 all right 8 J consider take possible action to approve resolution of Appraisal District appointees Dr auson all right after Miss yarell um attended the appraisal district committee meeting or well board she came and showed us Texas tax code 603 that says any entity um that has
006interest in the appraisal should be should put in place a resolution appointing their uh Board of oh I'll read it there their Appraisal District Board of Directors those appointed members uh so we have not done that we would like to do that now with this resolution the well we're doing it now I moved at the Rockport Fon I Board of Trustees approved the resolution appointing members to the Oris County Appraisal District Board of Directors as presented I have a motion made by m Austin seconded by Mr Randall any further discussion all in favor I any opposed all right motion carries 60 with M Yarnell abstaining all right move to 8K consider take possible action to approve resolution regarding wage payments during emergency School closur Miss Austin or Dr Austin I'm still used to being called
007Miss Austin I had it talking to her like oh um school was cancelled on January 21st well for ice I I thought I moved down to South Texas and then we have to cancel school for ice and so on that day we had unsafe road conditions caused by weather and as stated in EB local the board delegates to the superintendent the authority to close schools for reasons for public health and safety during that closure most of our District employees are instructed not to report to work and other employees are called upon to provide emergency services so as stated in our DEA local during this emergency uh we want our employees to be paid for their regular Duty schedule uh so that is what we're asking for our board to do any other questions I'll look
008for a motion I move that the board approve the resolution addressing wage payments during the emergency emergency School closure of Janu January 21st 2025 we have a motion made by Mrs Randall and seconded by Mr Ros he's awake any further discussion all in favor all any opposed motion carries 70 all right that completes action item eight so we'll go to nine superintendent report Dr Austin all right so I am excited to have our featured campus report start off the central office reports I've asked for our Rockport Fon High School to join us tonight we have Amber lad she is our dean of CTE career all things high school stuff like that ptech uh candy Morris is our director of ccmr federal programs and Dr Carter our high school principal going to talk about secondary program
009guide and within that we'll be talking about proposals for our master schedule all right well thank you for allowing us this time to kind of share a little bit about our program guide and the course selection process for this year it has been quite the journey we'll that's what that symbolizes uh quite the journey um so we have worked in Partnership I mean this has definitely been a team effort to put together a plan that does have quality options and is academically focused I think that is what has driven us throughout the development of this and so um I appreciate y'all giving us this this opportunity here to tell you about where we've been so if if if you've had a chance to look through the guide you'll see that um it is fairly comprehensive
010I would like to add that we've put this together but even today in talking with uh Miss Robbins we found something that we had left to like a little just a little clarifying sentence because some questions had come up and so I it is a document that we presented and shared with you but as we discover things that cause confusion or unclear um I think it's important for us to continue to go back and reflect and revise the plan to make sure that we have a guide that is a One-Stop shop so to speak so when I arrived at the high school um at the end of last spring I realized that we did not have something in place where we could look and go to to find clear guidelines on the programs that we
011offer some of our policies and codes in one place that could be easily accessible and understood by our all of our um uh students parents and staff and so I think those challenges led to a lot of misinformation sometimes being shared um confusion um and so our solution was to create a centralized resource um we do believe that this program guide has done that um and another challenge that we uh discovered by not having something like this was there was just a lack of this resource was our ccmr success rate and when I got here and looking at the beginning of this year at where we were we were less than 30% CCM are ready um so that our students had not earned that indicator um I am proud to say that as of today
012we're up to 62% um this is not something that you should be doing in a quick year it happens with a lot of hard work um Miss lad has really worked with the success advisers um and Miss Morris to to support our efforts to get there but we don't want to do this like this again we want to plan can I also remind them that we had a drop in ccmr on our taper and you guys saw that but remember ccmr lags two years behind so why she's saying when she came in that 30% you're going to continue to see unfortunately because of not having this in place the last year two years unfortunately that's going to impact our taper for too long so while we are getting that to incase just know that it's
013not going to show up immediately on accountability three so we are not responsible for the information that's going to come on an extra ster they don't let that reflect us I just want to make sure yes we appreciate that too because we've thought about that I'm like we're they're GNA think we did this like we didn't do this we're doing good stuff so we we we assure you that when it comes out in a couple of years it's a number that we should be proud of and I think we're confident even though as we said here today at 62% from from our uh calculations we we do feel confident that we can get to at least 85 um and so that is still work that we're putting in and trying to look at each student
014individually that hasn't H earned that indicator to see what can we do to get them there um so that's just some work that we're doing so the program guide highlights just some things I wanted to make sure y'all were aware of is it does have a clickable table of contents for of use and navigation um we have taken some policies uh and education codes were relevant and kind of tag those in there I think sometimes people think that like either I just make a decision because I want something that way or someone else does and really we are making the decisions majority of them through what our education codes and our policy sets and so that transparency I think will help um there's some general academic information attendance has been a thing we're trying to
015Ed edate uh families on credits Credit Recovery scheduling procedures the things that kind of are Hot Topics I would say so to speak um also assessment that is part of what we do uh and so that also is clarified and then the college career military Readiness there is a lottery system that I think there was some um just a lack of of knowledge of that and so I think making sure people understand that we may have 200 kids that want to take Maritime but maybe we can't sustain that so we have to to have a lottery system and there's guidelines that say how do we select the students that go in there um so that's just for transparency uh on page 13 of the uh program guide we tried to outline some of our graduation
016plans and um as noted in this table that you'll see that students can graduate with 22 credits that is something they can do it limits some of their postsecondary options but if they were to get the four English and math three science and social studies two foreign language a fine art a PE and four elected they could get a diploma um in 22 credits uh this distinguished level of achievement graduation plan and the foundation graduation plan uh with an endorsement or 26 credits um and those offer a little bit more flexibility um postsecondary opportunities and then also they're easily achievable within a four-year time frame um I would like to highlight a few additional challenges that we kind of face this year with our current schedule so there was some Miss alignment and course offerings
017that we found which led to students taking multiple CTE courses without completing necessarily a full pathway uh many of our students were enrolled in enough courses to to graduate but they lacked interest in taking the additional courses so we placed those students in study halls um Aid periods instead of structured meaningful uh learning experiences so the operational and the financial impact I think was quite concerning to me so we currently just for numbers um we have 360 students that are sitting in a study hall a an aid position of some type um and that is neither an effective use of our resources nor beneficial to the student they do not they earn a local credit but they don't ear earn a State Credit so there's no impact on GPA there's it it doesn't it's not
018it can't be one of their 25th there's still other things they have to do and I think sometimes that difference between a state and local credit which I know Miss Morris will kind of get into a little bit more but if you think of that mathematically 360 students that could equate to two5 teachers depending on the class side well not only that think of it as a graduating class like you have seniors have 220 you have you have two almost two full class years that are combined in that yes so think this concern in looking at that I talked to Dr Austin about in the fall and we both do have experience I've worked at campuses that have been on seven periods eight periods block schedules I I've had experience those same things that she
019has and I think we were just encouraged to kind of explore a seven period day so I do believe that we think that that could maximize um I guess give us the most strategic mix of flexibility time on Cor instruction and efficient use of staff so I'm not really going to elaborate on the financial concerns but I I will say that I've said in these board meetings and even tonight um I've heard Dr Austin speak on many occasions to educate the community and us about the financial status of our district and and I just simply would not be a good Steward of the funds that I've been asked to kind of oversee if I did not propose something that I felt was an option for us and at the end of the day though I
020still think can meet the needs of our students students and provide a quality experience for them um and stay academically focused I know you still have a lot to present so I'm going to be very quick with this like she said we have been looking at this since the fall at all things and the first thing I asked her to do was secondary program guide before we even started talking about schedule we wanted to make sure we were still providing those programs for our students there might have to be choices now but the one thing we didn't want to do was eliminate programs where yes this would be saving money if there was a program eliminated it was because there was not student interest not because we didn't want to do programs and we still
021have kept seven and you're probably gonna say this she's gonna say this she'll tell you how many programs of study we have go for it go for it um when looking at the endorsement the State Education Code requires that all students entering the ninth grade choose an endorsement while completing their personal graduation plan so parents didn't have to sign off on that plan and so we were working with on the guide book we were working with students and we discovered that all students were being placed on the multi-disciplinary endorsement so we started aligning our programs of study looking at course offerings and we realized that we could allow our students to select an endorsement based on their interest rather than just putting them on multidisiplinary um they also have the opportunity to earn more than
022one endorsement so the purpose of the endorsement is to show that a student um stayed within a specific field of interest and then learned at a greater depth of knowledge on that topic so the students choice of endorsement is then placed on their transcript noted as pursued and changed to show completion upon graduation all right so here is our door P up lineup for next year and we are partnering with Texas A&M University and Corpus Christie and we're offering in 36 college hours to students while also earning high school credits many of those are in their core classes uh I also do want to note that on Monday after school at 5:30 there's going to be a parent night with representatives from A&M Corpus Christie for you to attend so for the students that have
023chosen to be in the pirate PCH Academy we have partnered with delmare college to offer those welding and health science students the chance to earn college credits as well as level one and level two certification ation in their uh area of Interest so um I'm excited to talk about the Career and Technical education at rfisd because it's CTE month so we want to highlight our programs during the fall semester we gave interest surveys to our students and analyzed labor market data to uh determine which programs of study would be most beneficial to our students and result and this resulted in identifying these seven programs of study the diagnostic and therapeutic and Welding are a part of our pirate PCH Academy and then we'll have um plant sciet maraton culinary teaching and learning and graphic design
024going into next year so there was a lot of thought we put into the course sequence because it affects their ability to be completers we talked about and they also earn their ccmr points it also helps them to build confidence as they have the Knowledge and Skills as they move into the workforce and the higher level courses generate more funding from the state that go back into our programs uh the more advanced the classes the more M uh more in-depth the coursework is for the students and It prepares them for jobs and careers when they graduate and with most jobs requiring specialized training or post-secondary education CTE programs are key in providing students with the skills certifications and practical experiences they need to succeed as we discussed the um the course selection with the students
025and did presentations these are some of the presentations that we went over we discussed Fine Arts Athletics and other non CTE choices in addition to these CTE programs of study so the next seven slides I'm not going to talk about them because they're all the same but um they were shown what the program of study was what endorsement it matched with the courses they that were a part of that program study the industry based certification that they could receive and the types of jobs they would get um in those classes and learning those skills okay thank you so I'm just going to wrap it up with just our overall process of course selection on and how um that's been going on um so I went a little too fast oh I'm going the wrong way
026sorry guys right to any questions so the course selection process just in a nutshell um as part of the commitment to aligning course offerings with student interest and data we've carefully structured the course selection process this year to support students in graduating with endorsement as she mentioned earlier that's our goal so this process included multiple comp components including uh developing and presenting the G course guide as Dr uh Carter mentioned and then U students being currently or they're almost about done being engaged with their counselors in one-on-one meetings um their counselors over the last three weeks that's been going on so during these sessions with the counselors uh students were provided guidance and assisted um them in entering their course selections online and Skyward as well so while some students may require additional uh time
027to continue to finalize their selections and seek further clarification our ultimate goal as we talked about is Remains the Same and that's to ensure % of our students are prepared for life after graduation and equipped with the best opportunities as Dr Austin has mentioned many times as well and it's in our plan uh the slide on this first page is what the students receive during the course selection process so it includes their fouryear plan and um I'll show you the the other side of it as well um so in this first page it has their core classes and um on the back of this page was their pgp form which we also call the personal graduation plan which is something uh amber mentioned as well when they have to go into to nth grade it's
028required by Education Code that they select an endorsement and they uh complete these personal graduation forms um so that's on the backs of this uh course selection that the counselors have been working with the students on and um I want to clarify the for students and parents and everyone out there that this can be changed and Revisited it's not set in stone the first time they get um enter ninth grade they might pick an endorsement and select something um now we do say provided their space and courses and and things if they choose to change we we prefer that they do that in you know nth 10th grade because then you run out of time there's not space in courses or you know they may not have time to complete so but we do want
029to clarify if a student does change an endorsement or their pass completely parent permission does have to be received or at least attempted so that's important as well um we do want to make note that it's very common practice for Spanish one and art to be offered in eth grade as High School courses that's something we um added this year um Middle School had course election last year and we saw a lot of excitement about eighth grade coming on to the eighth uh eth gr Spanish coming to eth grade as well as art um we also realized that a seven period schedule does mean um opt choices as Dr Austin also mentioned choices for our students or they'll might have to make some hard choices um especially for our current n9th and 10th graders but
030um as you will see if more of these students in the future 8th grade take Spanish and art you'll see over the time that they'll it'll create some extra availability for their options as they enter nth grade and then it also allows them more time to explore those CTE options versus having to decide in seventh and eth um so early so we offer something like Spanish and and or r which is already required um it doesn't force them to maybe taking a CTE if they're not ready to choose that early um so on the next Slide the pgp was on the back of that page uh that's what the students received the next or the last page is all of the electives um and so as Amber showed earlier with the programs of study and
031we have the courses lined out that they can choose for their elective that fits under the endorsement but we also of course included the uh the Fine Arts options the journalism stem um and I know she mentioned earlier we're only required to offer one uh endorsement we're offering all of them even with these um even you know with these selections and even through a seventh period day they would be um able to achieve this opportunity these are in multiple endorsements as well they can get more than one um so I'm just going to recap and then I promised I'm done um so in a nutshell of course we talked about the have to select an endorsement they have to um they can change or add their pathway with parent permission with our transcript reviews and
032findings we've all been looking at transcripts and data and just trying to figure out what the best um options are for our students we've discovered that some Juniors and seniors have explored three four five pathways and and so there's not any way they could become even a concentrator at this point for a ccmr point if they which is what's required um if they're if they're going the ccmr route through CTE so um it has prevented them from even maybe achieving an endorsement in some areas um as far as credit and course concerns many of the seniors have already have 30 Plus Credit in December so they're going to graduate with you know 34 even in some cases uh often spending time as Dr Carter mentioned in stud halls or as office a and again these
033are local courses that do not um give them any credit towards graduation does not account towards their GPA or graduation requirement since it's a local course um the also it might cost money but it doesn't generate like a CTE course uh might generate funding or even just become of value even in an art or a fine arts course or Athletics other types of things um so we want it to be valuable for them uh finally with that placing seniors in unnecessary classes we've seen has led to attendance discipline issues and even disengagement um for many of them so our goal again is for all students to graduate with an endorsement and be eligible for that distinguished plan which is what we're encouraging all of the eth graders to start out on we want to really
034um raise our expectations there change the trajectory as Dr Austin's also mentioned um this includes even students in our special programs we feel um with the proper guidance and course alignment that we will we will be able to increase the number of students in those um endorsements and grad graduation distinguished graduation plans so while we have strong completion rates in uh culinary Maritime Health Science Pathways it will take some time as we talked about to see some significant impact on overall end endorsement data due to these past selection processes but we are confident that this moving forward we're going to do what's right and best for kids sorry that was a lot now I know you probably have questions but before they question before we start questions I just want to say thank you to
035the team this what you see was started from scratch this has been a ton of work these things were not in place when we came on board and so that team over there has been developing making sure that students were number one that has always been our goal even though some things have to be made with choices the students what was best for them you heard her say trajectory changing I've been speaking to all of the staff um actually our executive team had a Road Show on Monday where we went and spoke to every teacher staff member at every school and we challenged them that we want to become a trajectory changing school this was a huge step in making sure that when our kids cross the stage they have that depth and knowledge and
036plan in place to be successful college career military life and so thank you guys I know it's been a ton of work especially recently so yes please give him a round of applause so now questions um and then I have one more comment before they leave I'm just going to do my comment why you can tell by the work that they've done that our students have been number one but I also want to be very clear with our community that this is something that had to happen um you heard Dr Carter say over 300 kids were in classes that they didn't need that was at least 2.5 staff members why I highly value all of our staff we are in a budget deficit it's 6 million maybe plus dollars I was very clear with everybody
037at the beginning of the year I'm very clear that that could be the case if we do not see something happen at the state level and there is not a lot of things coming out that things are going to be happening for the positive so with that unfortunately like Mr Burton said there are five things we had to look at and master schedule inefficient as it was had to be one of them and there wasn't any options and if anybody'd like to come talk with me or be part of our finance committee I'll go through all of those and why we did that um so I just want you guys to know that students were always kept number one when we were making master schedule changes now questions in this may have should have should
038have gone in our salt committee report but we discussed this as a major Topic in our salt committee the other day and again salt is all with our student leadership um positions and when this was presented there were lots of rumors that were out there and Dr Austin and Dr Carter were able to set the rumors straight but at the end of it all it was interesting to see how quick when they got the accurate information and they took ownership of you know it's only been two years that we've had eight periods prior to that it was always seven but what they each walked away with saying I shouldn't say they each some of them walked away stating was the fact that it allows them to be dedicated in their choices that they make and
039it's not a filler in whatnot it's allowing them to take ownership of what their pathway is and yes they have to make choices we all have to make choices in life hard choices but they were they took ownership of it and they were proud of their decision by saying we agree and we like the seven period idea so something to think about yeah I just want to say uh after that salt meeting I I went and checked on some other uh districts around us um I won't name them but some of them are rather larger and they have a lot more Pathways a lot more uh options for students and they still have seven periods so I imagine their decisions are even harder of what they got to choose this affects my son as well
040um and so as going into a sophomore year I think that's a one of those years that it does matter because of Spanish and some of the other classes uh my question is this is a presentation to us is this something that the board votes on at any time or because we're not we're not changing minutes I wouldn't imagine this is a board decision no it is not a board decision but we definitely wanted to come show you the work that we have done in the secondary program but you're right master schedule and this secondary program is not a a board voting item any other questions thank you all so much oh go ahead I just want to comment first off thank you very much for the work that you clearly have spent a lot
041of time on um can't be easy to make decisions that you know that there's going to be there's going to be negative feedback there's it doesn't matter what decision you make it doesn't matter what you do there's going to be negative feedback but to know that you've got this kids their interests and their their best interest at heart is is huge and I also want to thank Dr Austin for going to the Salt with this and asking them because they may not all totally agree they may not all have that buy in but it does give us give y'all a voice from the student perspective after having be been able to sit and talk with you which most of our students don't get to do but that's a good Core group of people who can
042and then they can go out and explain it and give those facts and I just wanted to make one last comment like I have such respect and appreciation for AI for the Miss vpl for people and I love to see students like advocating for what they believe in and I think it's sometimes it's scary to come stand on a stage with a bunch of people stared at them and and to have conversations but I I think it's great for students to to use their voice and to share how they feel because that's how we we work together we have conversations and I just I just I I appreciated that they were he was willing to come up here and just kind of participate and we can also say that if there are still more questions
043not only are our counselors meeting one-on-one with students but even at the salt there was some misconception some misunderstandings and I we told the students go speak to your counsel are still again that's what I was going to add if I may because um it's a puzzle and each endorsement has different requirements so sometimes especially in the early stages we had some parent phone calls and we just got it out mapped it out some of them I was online virtually you know mapping it out um showing them it can work in many cases and so at first there it's stressful to look at it and how am I going to fit everything in um but I encourage them to go back to their counselor if they still have some questions or concerns and I'm even
044um I love doing it I'm more than willing to take um emails and phone calls too if I can help so whatever it um it takes to help the kids so thank you all thank you guys so I'm going to move to our teaching and learning Report with Jessica Robbins we do have um partial data for you this evening regarding star interim and I Tred to denote dates so that you know when those next tests are coming up this was a brand new assessment that we added this year and I want to be very honest that we made the decision to add the interim assessment um about mid year because we did recognize the Gap in that secondary data the original plan was just to add this interim data at the high school level where
045we have um I would say the the lowest number of progress monitoring tools and then Folton wanted to come on board Middle School wanted to come on board so we decided to use this assessment across all three testing campuses so what you have here this evening what you'll see is I did give you the meets and above for spring star the actual STAR test last year interim is designed by tea it's designed to be a predictor of how students might do now keep in mind the reason you give these assessments is because if this is sort of like map if if we keep doing the exact same thing with this student This Is How They we expect or we predict they will perform in the spring on Star so the goal then is for teachers
046um to be able to use this as another temperature check to be able to make some moves instructional moves potentially to change that trajectory so what you'll notice at reading when uh starting at sixth grade we don't have any fullon scores yet but starting at sixth grade you'll see last year our star meets was 52% and right now the prediction is 44 if nothing were to change right if we didn't make any of those moves in the spring um seventh grade last year at this time we were at 41% this year right now we're at 52% so that seventh grade is up eighth grade is down one percentage point from 50 to 49 and then you'll see English one and two um English one is up quite a bit from 45 to 50 9 and
047then English to is down just a little bit from uh 62 to 57 now I do have some numbers hot off the press uh for math at today hot off the press like I was writing these in at the end of the work day so I don't even know just yet how many I mean of our own staff have gotten to see these so these are so this doesn't include like they'll still do some makeup tests they'll still do some you know they'll do a few few more tests but I looked at the numbers and it was a good percentage of our kiddos so at sixth grade math they were at 30 last year it was 1% down so 29% seventh grade last year 10% right now we're at 7% 8th grade um 27% and
048that's actually up right now at 45% and then Algebra 1 remember that's an EOC test so part of our students are taking Algebra 1 so last year eighth grade Algebra 1 students were at 50% right now that group is at 74% um and then high school last year at this time I'm sorry last year on Star we were at 39 and this right now we're at 24 so we're running a little low under right now um and then I also have your eighth grade social studies data that's pretty flat last year we were end of the year at 39% and right now we're up one percentage point at 40 so again much like map data you've got some real strengths some areas of real Focus um that need some work this is that prediction of
049if nothing changed what would we do so of course the work is happening the analysis is happening we have a full day plan with principles um next week where we're going to be delving deeply into the um interim assessment data so that they've got those plans that they're building out at the campus level for their teams we're making action plans based off the data like she said this is if we did nothing we still have Miss weedi what do we have six weeks we have six weeks of instruction left and so we're going to capitalize on that six weeks and be a trajectory changing school you're going to get tired looking at the reading scores though it's not linear we really should be looking at a year ahead if we're looking at student achievement right
050cohort group yes ma'am cuz then you're not you're notri all we're doing is is if we're talking yeah when you're looking across the line all you're getting to see is last year's group of kids compared to this year's group of kids so if you wanted to see that growth from a cohort um you would want to kind of step down to that next grade level yes but I only want you to think about math specifically if you followed that cohort just just remember that your sixth grade group Mo moving to seventh if they go to pre-algebra they'll be taking the eighth grade test so you're going to see a drop from 30 to 7 but that's students moving out and not taking that test they move to eighth grade eighth grade takes algebra your highest
051performing students are taking the test in another grade level now so it's a little where we still don't want the 7% it just accounts for some of your students move out of that any other questions no questions we're going to move to Kathy Henderson with our business office report okay first of all I need to make a correction and I want to State this I look back at the number between um last year's premium and this year's premium and the sav savings is of January which is when all taxes are due the property taxes were at a 1.93 increase percentage over last year so that's that's a great um on our on our tax collection of current year yeah no that this is this is just looking at property tax collection percentage wise against our
052values our tax levy for the year so if there's not any questions on this I'm going to go into the the 2425 if there's any questions on this if we have answer them okay so I want to give y'all an update on uh 2425 budget so you have in here where we are we're the budget that was adopted and again just reminding the board that we adopted a $ 5,755 th000 budget deficit just we want to keep that everybody that's what we did and what we're trying to reduce for this year and for next year as well um I ran new numbers with our at the end of the first semester of our Ada our weights with students and plugged all that in also now the com controller has their property values their actual were
053actually a little bit less than my predictions so just changing what that affects is we're look now to get an additional $457,500 in state revenue um so that's an an increase in Revenue there but the offset is recapture is going to go up 1, 115,000 so um and again we had um all other expenses um except recapture at 37 million 277 I know we're not going to spend all that now I am not ready at all to say it's going to be X I just just am not I will say yeah probably safely 277 278,000 we won't spend again I'm just guessing there to put that there but now with the reduction in what we budgeted for um Insurance what were now the difference between the actual premium there's 967 th000 there of savings of
054what a budgeted versus what the premium is so there's a you know so now you're already looking at close to a million just with the savings and insurance so that's that's a big plus which will help take down that 5.7 um but not using match um would make our ending fund balance deficit increase 494 again we'll work on that I'll do the same thing in a couple of months for yall all just to kind of keep you updated on um where we are the Ada plays a big part in that we had a lot of sickness like everybody else in in January so we now we're kind of where we were kind of holding at 94% we're you're now at about 93% so that's dropped we'll see hopefully everybody stop cold weather goes away and
055we start everybody getting better um any questions on that first page okay on the the next page on the 2425 I just want to again give y'all an update on our enrollment as of January 31st I've given you across the um the board of what are actual enrollment was again against the difference um from from our my projected enrollment so we're down 86 students from the projected enrollment of 2,971 um so that is there where we're losing students um Jennifer Lin pulled for me um Dr Austin asked we just kind of had this information so we had a total withdrawal and I just said start it from from Labor Day because the first three weeks it's hit and miss and we always gain a lot of students after Labor Day so since Labor Day we
056have had uh lost 281 students we've had 229 entries so a net of loss of 52 students since Labor Day and that's through February the 12th um any questions there so next I want to do just a kind of a quick where we've been working on our 2526 budget um as you know the legislature currently in session any new laws that are passed will be affected in the 2526 budget they made them first September one so again it's long as the legislation is going on then we're having a little bit harder time predicting um next year because we don't know what laws we going to be under but we're working thing um one bill that is being considered um and looks like it probably will end up passing is they're going to increase the homestead
057exemption from 100,000 to 140,000 um two years ago the leg at the last legislature they increased it from 40,000 to 100,000 now they're looking at going to 140,000 um and as I've told you all for they say they're going to do the hold harmless they'll make it up it never equates and so you know we're looking at probably we're going to have a million dollars Less in revenue and it's just a and that's what frustrates me the most is that the story is not being told because it looks great on a ballot it looks great when they control the narrative but they're not telling the full story and so this is why it's so important to get it out to the public yes it looks great on your paper yes you save money but what
058it does to the public public education system and what it's continuing to do there is no paper trail for your lotto system that was supposed to also pay public education there is no paper trail for Robin Hood there is no paper trail for this homestead exemption act nothing infuriates me more than not telling the full story and sorry it just makes me mad I agree 100% the other thing is one there was one bill and I think it was in the Senate they may have changed it but they're already saying okay from the uh when we increase your homestead ex exemption from 40 100,000 well they're going to repeal AP part that hold harmless so again you're already starting to they start backing out some savings that they did something happened two years ago so
059it's again I'm having all the years they made changes the hold harmless does not stay and it does not equate to to an actual what we're losing um we are revie doing expenses as you know we've talked about tonight um with our property insurance with our um Contract Services and all that we're looking at any way that we can cut 25 to 26 because we know we cannot continue having whether it's a 5.7 or five million or six million we can't continue that so we are looking at any way possible to cut Revenue I mean to cut expenses to help us overall um one thing we are looking at um is it's is stopping our chars funding we are not getting the funding that was projected to us um when we started this back two
060years ago and it's costing us um our staff is having to do extra work they're having to track their time like I don't I don't know exactly but it's more like in minutes almost that they have to track what they're doing so it's costing our staff extra time to to work this it's not making this year I projected we're going to make 46,000 I think we'll hit the 46,000 but on top of that we pay the company 5% to actually do the filing of it so I mean they're not even making much off us anyway um but they had projected for us 221,000 this year and there I mean at the where we're at now we're at 27758 at the end of January um like I said I think we'll hit the 46 now one
061thing that will that's when you look at the books that's going to take our charge down is we had to send back $ 9,282 th000 from 2011 for something that the feds told the state was not allowable so I just took it off the revenue from there because I didn't want to do an expense it's not an expense it's just off our Rue that we earned back in 2011 so that's you'll see a difference there we're on books it may not show we actually earned 46,000 because we're taking that 9200 off and then I've got for y'all the my fingers are very dry there it is um our student projections for next year per grade level um we're projecting 2,861 um I'm still you'll see the highlighted orange I still um I need to get
062the life skills students but since they're not in the regular classroom we don't want to use those in our ratio of going to 22 to1 for the elementaries yes ma'am we are at and we I used this year I mean I I've always used kind of my own looking at where percentages increase decrease from Gray to gray you know going AC going up um I did that this year but then we also looked at um tasbo numbers and they only look at in a snapshot date but we decided Dr Austin and I met and we actually met with the superintendent from PTO ranis kind of talked about and like okay with the vouchers very likely passing with other things going on that we just because it was a little bit lower than mine than what
063I was doing um we just decided we needed to go the lower number and be be more realistic any questions all right hearing no questions I'm going to move to Human Resources report um do you want to do miss Adams is not feeling well so I was trying to do our best to tell her to go to go she finally gave up and said she has the chills and I was like go home so Jessica Robinson's going to do the HR report she just wanted um me to highlight that we are continuing to hold meetings with each campus principal and departments to review Staffing um just to make sure that we're having ongoing conversations um directors are present in some of those discussions and we're doing we're the next few months will be pretty critical
064in determining those staffing needs as we look at projections with enrollment um and we bring all of the conversations in around you know what we need to be able to support that um all with budget in mind so though she did say I know she noted in the report that she does have we're we are hearing about some retirements and resignations already so those are the kinds of things that we think about when we're considering those Staffing um shifts Dr Austin will answer any questions you sure will thanks Miss Robins all right if you don't have any questions we'll move to our athletic department coach Sosa not yet mik no not yet not yet um so as you can see at the beginning uh all of the numbers almost all of them uh we have
065almost every single sport accounted for so far except for Middle School softball and baseball uh the numbers are looking really really good um the winter sports are almost pretty much uh completed we still have soccer going on apparently this is soccer weather right now that never gets cancelled everything else wants to get canceled uh as as we saw this week um but our basketball teams they did uh they both got third in the in District they both uh face Brazosport in the first round of the playoffs in tight Haven unfortunately both teams uh uh were defeated by them in the first round um both teams played really really well I know uh talking to Dr Carter we were sitting next to each other at the game uh Tuesday night with the boys and U with
066Miss Cox and and it was a really really exciting game they played really really well uh and and unfortunately we just didn't come up on top uh wrestling uh completed we did have one uh regional qualifier Ava Brandon uh really successful year for her um a lot of growing in that program obviously in the year two so uh really proud of the numbers that we were able to find this year with that uh soccer's obviously going on they uh we were we had to cancel the uh the JV games uh tomorrow um we will be playing varsity games at six o'clock to kind of get them out as soon as possible when the weather's kind of getting not as cold I think the wind chills right now going to be right around 35 degrees right
067at the end of of um the uh the game at about 8:00 so yeah come on out come on out but uh talking to coach raspberry he he's I mean he's excited about the cold weather I guess so um golf is is in full swing we hosted our golf tournament uh last week and uh uh we we had really good competition Hannah did really really well Talon did really really well uh this past week on Tuesday uh Talon actually got second Hannah got first uh in the um what was it uh I've drawn in blank it might have been no I think s's next week there you go there you go thank you um but yes they're they're again coach Donaldson's doing a really good job with that that team uh really young team and
068so we're excited for them uh tennis uh had to cancel this week uh but we'll be back in Action next week powerlifting we have six girls going and qualifying to the regional uh meet in Edinburg next week on Tuesday so keep them in your mind in your prayers um we have our boys last regional qualifier this Saturday um ex or it just happened uh excited for them to compete in the next couple of weeks we hosted the battle of the bay uh the softball tournament this past week uh weekend uh the frigid air um our girls ended up winning our varsity girls went undefeated our JV girls actually played in it as well all varsity teams with our JB girls and they competed really well they came out with one Victory so uh it was
069it was good to see them succeed uh baseball is a week behind softball so we're getting them ready uh we're excited um next week we uh will be hosting our uh our baseball tournament so that's uh that's on our radar excited for that a little update on the stands hopefully we get them done by the end of uh Monday so we can have our first uh softball uh game in our new stadium in our new house uh and appreciate uh Mike and his staff and and every the teal and everybody working with that to to getting that that finally done and then once it's done with softball then it'll go to baseball and all hands on deck for baseball uh and then as the year goes on uh a lot of other Awards start to
070come out we start getting a lot of different awards for for uh football for volleyball all South Texas teams uh All State teams and uh we have gotten a lot of lot of recognition from our our young men uh one man in particular for football has been uh Trevor Garcia he's been named on uh multiple teams uh at the state level and and the regional level so uh super proud of that and uh in really encouraging our teams and our coaches to go out and do community service type of work and Coach Rasberry talking about Coach raspberry a little bit ago with his craziness in the cold weather he's uh he did a really good job in in going over uh to Fon and having a good little time with uh showing his his kids
071and and Inter intermingling with with those kids down there uh talking with uh Mrs Cox we're going to start doing a little bit more to help uh Mentor uh the fourth and fifth graders down there uh and I think the athletes and the extracurricular activities are the best ones to be able to do that so um with them starting at 7:30 starting at 8:25 we have a little bit of time that we can go over there maybe read some books or have be the be the listener or uh maybe just have lunch with them if we can if we can uh find a way with all those kids and all of those off periods or those Aid periods hopefully we can we can use that to our advantage while we have those times you bringing
072me lunch or Uber Eats if anybody is wondering why we are all just randomly laughing it's because one of our board members just got a water Burger delivery next time just ask us for our ERS french fries if there will be no question he's going to say Mom I will never do that for you again ever next time just tell them to give it to Dina so we are going to finish uh our central office reports with Mike noaty okay so you should have my usual report any questions on that i' be happy to answer um so before I get into what's on the screen here I wanted to talk about the Fulton cafeteria so to get that done we had Fulton crew Fon staff uh custodial Food Services Valley and her team maintenance and
073grounds tech technology we all all came together Tuesday after lunch so the kids were eating Tuesday afternoon lunch in the existing cafeteria well now the old cafeteria and as soon as they were done codian started wiping on tables all that was moved we moved all the kitchen equipment and everything that afternoon and we're able to make everything work for breakfast the following day so it's a big shout out to everybody that came together to do that all right and then Ash coat sza mentioned earlier yes baseball and softball bleachers so they are finishing they're at the end they're near finished today they were doing the back rest on the benches so softball should be completed by tomorrow then T will come in and kind of help pick some of the dirt work that was damaged
074because they had to you know get that equipment in there so we should be ready for uh next week to be able to use that there is going to be some flat work that has to be done some uh concrete around but we'll be good uh so that should be ready for not this next home game it one after that but we're ready to use those bleachers come the next home game and then like he said soon as they're finish up that go straight to baseball and we should be uh for next week we would have to probably sit around not use a bleachers for next week but next home game after that we will be able to use the baseball bleachers and then general maintenance and upkeep so that hopefully is our last time
075we have to worry about uh mulching up the leaves that happen around our Central admin office those are the cottonwood trees we've already done this I think three times this season so what is there it's like a kind of a vacuum and they suck up the leaves and it grinds them up anyways so hopefully is the last last time this season we have to do that next slide please okay so started with 725,000 and we have 3298 163 remaining okay so just some upcoming we have a lot of fencing uh there's a lot of gates and fences kind of around the stadium that we've noticed need to be replaced just fixed some a little bit of Fulton and actually some at live o that will be coming up and then onto the bleachers um bleachers
076again at softball and baseball we got to do once they're done we then have to run power to the Press Box and then install our av equipment and scoreboard equipment into the new press BLX so but that won't take too long uh so really it's everything's looking good bleachers are looking good and there's any question be happy to answer all right if there's no questions that's the end of our central office reports all right we'll move to agenda item 10 which is consent agenda the superintendent May consolidate items in the on the agenda summary for possible group action or any trustee may suggest group action on E on items to expedite the meeting are there any questions or items you'd like to pull from the consent agenda and if not I'll look for a motion
077I make a motion we approve the consent agenda as written second all right motion made by Mrs Randall second by Mrs motion made by Mrs yarell second by Mrs Randall any further discussion all in favor I any opposed motion carries 70 that brings us to item 11 so the time is 8:41 at this time the board will recess an executive session pursuant of the Texas government code section 551 071 551 072 551 074 and 551 076 e