001p.m. This meeting of the Sigin Independent School District has been duly called and notice of this meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, section 551.043 of the Texas Government Code. We'll start with audience with the board. The Sigin ISD board of trustees designates a time for audience participation at the beginning of each meeting to hear persons who desire to make comments in accordance with board policy beed local. Those wishing to speak sign up before the meeting begins stating a concern or noting the agenda item they wish to address. Audience participation is limited to five minutes. The board shall not deliberate any subject that is not on the posted agenda. We have two speakers tonight. Um and our first one is Tiffany Cunningham. Good evening board. Between five and $6,000, that's
002the average cost of an alternative teaching certification in Texas. Between 300 and 500 hours is the average time required module required watching modules online that make you want to shove a screwdriver in your ear. Let me put that into perspective for you. The certification would cost me 10% of my annual salary. And if I spent two hours every night, Monday through Friday, watching these videos that teach me how to be a teacher, it would make take me almost nine months to finish. Here's the thing. I took that money and bought stupid stuff for my stupid boxes that were used for incentives. I used it to buy candy to brighten the student, brighten my students day. I used it to bribe prom tickets and caps and gowns for students who couldn't afford them. I took those
003hours and put them into planning unforgettable lessons and going to football and volleyball and basketball and softball and baseball games and many other events that showed my students that I cared about them. That even if their parents didn't showed up, Miss Cunningham would. that even though it was a Friday night and there were a million other things I could be doing, I was still there with a bedazzled bald head begging the student section to get up and cheer for their team. That's not something Texas Teachers of Tomorrow or any altert scam is going to teach your new teachers. And if I could do it all again knowing I'd still be standing here as a terminated teacher, I would because I became part of something greater than myself, a community. When I was a freshman in
004high school, my parents abandoned me. And I was lucky enough to live in a community just like Sigin. Where my softball coach always had an eye on my grades. Where my junior ROTC instructor found me a safe place to stay. Where my best friend's mom, the lunch lady, always made sure I had some good food. When I came to Sigin, I wanted to pay it forward to help heal the 15-year-old me and make a difference in the lives of students that needed it most. And I didn't need a certification to do that. I'm grateful for the extra year you gifted me. It was my favorite year of teaching, but I refused to be a part of the altert scam. It would have cost the district exactly 0 to give me a school district teaching permit
005after spending the last four years earning some of the highest scores on campus for my observations and sumitive evaluations. It would have cost me $78 for the teaching permit. They could have given uh they could have also given AJB's dance and theater coach the same permit, saving us thousands of dollars after already proving in so many ways that we are good teachers. And it would have satisfied the state certification requirements. Basically, this was a really bad vote that embarrassed me as one of your constituents, and I felt the rest of your constituents deserve to know exactly what you were voting really voting on. Anyway, good luck with the ingrown hairs you'll get on your taints. Except for you, too. Uh, y'all should be fine. Uh, but the rest of you, I hear that they are
006painful. So, good luck. Thank you. All right. Next, uh, Mr. Ransdale. James Ransom. Thank you the board for acknowledging the emails I sent out and the petition and Mr. email that he's going to move forward with this and I really appreciate your cooperation and uh feedback from emails and I apologize I don't give them right to the right person at the right time I saw them and pass them along so I really appreciate that. So I'm cutting this short I know you're going to go in with those I just want to make sure and come here personally and thank you for being so cooperative. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Thank you. We move on to close session. The board will adjourn into close session pursuant to the following sections of the Texas
007Open Meetings Act. Pursuant to Texas Government Code section 551.071,551.074 074551.129 consultation with legal counsel including possible telephone consultation with legal counsel as necessary to address legal concerns, implications, and answer any legal questions regarding posted agenda items. B. Pursuant to Texas Government Code section 551.074, discuss personnel matters including appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline, or dismissal of an employee. C. Pursuant to Texas Government Code section 551.072 072 discuss the sale, purchase, exchange, lease, or value of real property and D pursuant to Texas government code section 551.0821 deliberation regarding a public school student. It is 6:07 Okay, it's 7:07. We reconvene into open meeting. Um, there is no action. Moving on to number five, pledges to the United States flag and Texas flag, followed by a moment of silence. Um, our student is 10th grader Ruben Bologanos.
008I 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 and indivisible. Thank you. Moving on to 6A, our superintendent reports. Uh good evening board. Good evening community members. Thank you for being here. Uh couple of quick things. I know the majority of you are here for uh recognitions uh that are about to happen. Uh the only thing that stands between you and the recognitions are me and these board members and how lengthy our reports are before we jump into it. So we'll do our best to keep it as fast as possible for our parents and community. A couple of quick
009things just attendance matters. Uh and right now we are celebrating our schools for their attendance this year. I want to say congratulations to Kicki Elementary for having the best overall attendance in Sigin ISD since February. Uh we're also celebrating MBLC, Mercer Bloomberg Learning Center, uh for having the most improved attendance since February. Uh congratulations to our seniors at MBLC, uh who participated in graduation exercises earlier today. It was an outstanding ceremony. Uh quite a few kids. Uh very very exciting to to see that happen. We've also had the opportunity to recognize our seniors on decision day and industry signing day with fine arts signing day to come later this week. Congratulations to everyone on your next chapter. A quick reminder to our families, uh, this Friday is the last day of school. Uh, and schools
010do have an early release. They can't stay here after we have an early release. Um, they're all yours, uh, for the summer. Happy summer, parents. But we do have early release this Friday. The school year has flown by. Uh, we're watching the weather. Uh, so one of the things that people are asking a lot of questions about has to do with graduation ceremonies that are scheduled for Friday. We are currently watching the weather right now. Sigin High School graduation is still on task on track for Friday at 7:30 p.m. at Matador Stadium. Uh we do ask that you arrive early for security screening and that we will get more information about graduation on the district's website as we get closer to Friday. Uh it is very hard to predict the weather. Um much like the
011state legislature, it's almost impossible to figure out what they're going to do and what's going to happen. Uh and so we're doing the same exact thing here with the weather and we're going to do our best to make sure that we have a graduation ceremony that allows as many people in to graduation as possible. and that means outdoors. So, just bear with us as we start working through what that looks like as we get closer to Friday. Athletically, students at AJB and Barnes joined forces as the Sigin Gold team and won a district softball title. The girls golf team at Barnes earned a top prize at their district tournament earlier this month with four students placing in the top 10. Sigin High School's baseball and softball teams did had an outstanding season made it to
012the playoffs and two of our high school track and field athletes competed at state competition. Um, and you'll hear more about them here in just a few moments. Uh career and technical education wise, the number of industry-based certifications earned by Sigin ISD students continues to rise and we are up to 388 in counting this year. Our cosmetology students were recognized last night for their accomplishments in dual credit and you'll hear more about them in just a few minutes. Our FFA students celebrated a successful year and installed new officers at their banquet. Uh several Sigin ISD teachers and counselors will participate in summer externship programs at several of our local businesses including Caterpillar, CMC Still, GM, GRMC, and HB. We're grateful to all our participating businesses for supporting our staff through these opportunities. Fine arts wise,
013our middle school bands participated in the TLU bandfest and did extremely well. Matador Theater put on a wonderful weekend of performance recently for MMA Mia. And then our band, cheer, choir, color guard, dance, ballet, folklorico, and mariachi programs have all held or will hold their end of the year performances. And we have a high school jazz and percussion programs that will have a concert tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the performing arts center. Uh want to say congratulations to the newest members of the National Junior Honor Society at AJB and Barnes. Uh and then to everyone else, just congratulations. What a month. Uh thank you to our families and community for supporting our students at their various events. Uh we're extremely grateful for all of the support at Matador Nation. Um, since our last board meeting,
014Sigin ISD has also celebrated our teachers of the year and recognized our teachers, principals, bus drivers, and school nurses. Thanks to all of them for their contributions to our district. And then I just speak for our leadership team and our trustees when I say how incredibly proud we are of our students and for the staff and the work that they have put in this school year. And so I just want to say congratulations. Way to go. Just a few more days. Let's go, Matadors. Thank you, Dr. Lee. All right. Um, next are our board member reports. We'll start with Mr. Brett. Um, busy months. May May and April are always busy months. Uh, fantastically busy months though because lots of good stuff gets to get done. Uh, went to many of the things that Dr.
015Lee talked about, but I'm going to highlight two things that I thought were awesome. uh sig industry signing day. One of two events, probably one of my in my top five that I love every single year. Seeing these um young students who worked for four years, got their certifications, and got hired right out of high school. That's that's awesome work by them, and that's true commitment to what they're trying to do along with all the rest of our seniors who are getting ready to graduate, which very excited about this year. Um and then the other thing I thought was really awesome was the chamber teacher of the year banquet. Uh it wasn't just for Sigin ISD. for all of the teachers of the year for all the ISDs and charter schools in the area. And
016I thought that was really cool that our chamber um of commerce recognizes those teachers and and takes the time that night and celebrates them. So that's and that's pretty fantastic. So those are the two my two highlights for this month. Uh for me uh several events, it's been a very busy month, but highlight for me has just been seniors senior seniors. Um, and just thinking back um, decision day, industry signing day, the ECHS banquet, and an MBLC graduation. Um, I've loved hearing about what our seniors are doing with their SIGSD education um, and how they're moving it forward to become successful. I'll also run through mine pretty quick. It's the attended the early college high school ceremony and the cosmetology ceremony. Both of them were awesome. The other events that I attended also was the
017mariach performance. That's it. There's several other activities that I attended but due to time move forward. Thank you, Mr. Dwire. Uh same stuff as everybody else. All the events have been great. Um, I want to say this is the first complete school year that I've been on the school board and I want to reiterate how impressed I am with in the entire organization of Sigin ISD, the staff, the students, the families. Uh, it's very impressive and humbling to be a member of this community and I'm very proud of you all. Uh, thank you for showing up doing what you do for our kids and for the kids. Thank you for showing up and doing what you do to become great adults. Good luck in your futures to the seniors. Uh and the other highlight of
018course is we're about to open our new a facility and our new McQueeny Elementary and that's all very exciting for our community as well. Uh that's all I have. As for me, I've been to many events all that have been mentioned here. Um and it's hard for me to pick one to highlight, but I just want to in general um some of the things that I've been to CTE fine arts. I see many of you in the audience that I've seen on stage or behind an instrument or um actually getting yourself ready for your future and you had all of those possibilities and you had all those opportunities here at Sigin High School. And what I've noticed through your participation and um through your your teachers and those who have helped you along the way
019is that you found a place to not not only belong, not only just to go to, but you've found a place to thrive. And that's what we ask of our teachers and our administration is that we reach our students. I don't want you to get through your time with us at Sigin High School, you know, or until graduation and not have found your place in what you're really special at. Because each of you students, you are special. your loved by us and by this district and we are so proud of you. So, thank you to everyone and everyone who has a part in what you do every day. Thank you. Okay. Um it's been a really fun month. I love May because of all the activities. However, it's kind of the opposite question from my
020husband. It's not like when do you have to go to things at school? It's more like um when you going to be home. So it's going to do next month it'll be being at home. But um he he understands how much I love to go to all these activities. I am so blessed. My heart is full with all the the wonderful um events that I've been to where students have shown uh what where their heart is, what they do well, what they like to do, what they enjoy. and where you're going in the future. And I am so excited for all of you and our teachers as well. Um we are blessed in this district to have teachers that um help make that possible. So uh just go mador have an exciting uh Friday at
021graduation for you seniors and enjoy your life. All right. We uh all went to a lot of the same things. Lots of fine arts things. Lots of um celebrating our teachers, our retirees, the people who have worked for us for a long time. Um was very happy to see choir bands, Wizard of Oz, MMA Mia, um Celebration of Excellence. But the one I want to talk about is the senior awards. It was impressive to me not only how much so many of those seniors has had accomplished, but how much the community was pouring into you. The total number of scholarships and different opportunities given was really impressive for a town our size and I think we're really blessed to have the community holding up our students and having our students do the hard work to
022uh deserve all those scholarships. Um, so, um, that was one of my favorites. All right. Um, moving on to student, staff, board, and community recognition with Miss Emily Allen and Dr. Lee. President Cretenden, trustees, Dr. Lee. We have several presentations tonight. So, see who all we have to call up. stay here. Okay. Um I believe we are starting with the superintendent student advisory team. I don't have the list in front of me, so I want to make sure I got it right. Or do you want me to just go? Okay, great. I'll go for it. Okay, so tonight I have the honor of recognizing and introducing the secondary members of the superintendent stu student advisory team. These students from our middle and high school campuses provided feedback to Dr. ly throughout the year and help
023plan and run our matador movie bash. Students, when I call your name, please come up and receive your certificate. Seniors will also receive graduation courts. Once everyone has passed through behind me to meet our trustees, we'll take a group picture here at the front. Let's begin with students from AJB. We have Penelopey, Emma, and Cameron. Okay, we'll switch it. Okay, from Barnes. From Barnes, we have Brinley, Ariana, and Emily. From MBLC, we also had Malachi. And from Sigin High School, we had Ivonne, Jules, Kenley, Aiden, Hayden, Trisha, Isaiah, Austin, Avery, Michelle, Eleanor, Jaden, Marcus, and Senobia. One more quick thank you to our superintendent student advisory team members. Now, I'd like to recognize our early college high school seniors, all of whom will receive an associates degree from St. Phillips College on Thursday morning in
024the Alamo Dome. You can see the full list of Oh, maybe, maybe not. Are we gonna have our slides? Sorry, Jeff. Please. Thank you. Um, we will have our full list of our ECHS graduates on our slide. They were also honored during a special banquet last week. Tonight, we are honoring their commitment to academic excellence and their future. Students, please come forward. We'll take a quick picture and then you'll come through and meet our trustees. I'd also like to take a moment to recognize the director of Early College High School, Bianca Dubal, and our high school staff, especially the teachers who helped make all of this possible. Oh yes, I apologize. That was very remiss of me. You'll notice that our graduates are wearing blue. Uh that is for their college for St. Phillips College,
025not New Bronals clearly. Sorry. Thank you. We also have a group of cosmetology students who have earned an extensive amount of dual credit, 33 hours worth through Sigin High School's partnership with Lamar State Orange. 18 students have completed the requirements and earned these credits. At this time, I would like to invite any of the cosmetology dual credit students who are here to come up and we'll take a photo. Then we'll uh you'll meet our trustees. We also have their teachers here tonight. So, thank you to Israel Deleó and Linda Geta for their hard work in providing this amazing opportunity for our students. Congratulations. It's an exchange. President President Cretend, and Dr. Lee and trustees. We also have two students who qualify for the UIL state and track field meet that was held this past week.
026I'm proud to introduce Sigin High School freshman Paige Lane Decker. And if I said that wrong, I'm so sorry. Lind Decker. I knew I was going to get it wrong. I knew I was. Who qualified for state in the long jump and junior Adrien Ringel who qualified in the 1600. Both finished in the top 10 at state. And while they're taking a picture, I also want to mention that our high school track and field coach, head coach, excuse me, Clifford Cruz, is here. We'd like to get a quick photo with them. congratulations to our state qualifiers as well as the entire Matador track and field team. This year's Matador Theater production for UIL went at play was one for the books. I personally had the pleasure of seeing it multiple times and understand why it
027received the recognition that it did. The death and life of Larry Benson advanced through district and by district to area competition with several casting crew earning individual awards along the way. Tonight, we would like to recognize their accomplishments. THEIR theater director, Lydia Robas, could not be here this evening, but we're proud to have Timothy Luna here as well. I was gonna I will not remember. I'm so sorry. Hello. Thank you. Sorry. While we move to the right slide, stand by. Okay, we good. Okay. Um, President Cretend, Dr. Lee, and trustees, we are going to show you our student of the month video and then I will introduce both of these young ladies. I'm Olivia Brock and I am the elementary student of the month. Can you guys help me congratulate with your biggest cheer? Our
028elementary student of the month, Olivia Brock. Were you surprised, Olivia? I've had the pleasure of working with Olivia for two years now and every day she shows up with a positive attitude and she's very careful and diligent in her work. She's also wonderfully creative and so in reading and language arts that really shines through with her responses to the text, how she's able to relate to the stories that we read in class and participate to the discussion. I would love to be an electrician, a lawyer, artist or poet. You know, I love working with electricity. I love working with science. I love writing stories. And I especially love my art. My name is Brook Nubals and I am the secondary student of the month. Our secondary student of the month, Brooke Nubals. Come on up,
029Brook. You had no clue it was you, right? Well, congratulations. Proud of you. Proud of what you accomplished. Brooke is an amazing student. She's very involved with the art club. She does a lot in our community uh paints and murals for the American Legion and for local businesses. She is a top students and so she's involved with academics as well and she's just a great great kid. I want to work in the mortuary field or in the art field like somewhere in there where I can express myself but also be doing something poetic. Okay, I'm not sure that both of them are here, but we'll find out. Um, please help me welcome our elementary student of the month, Olivia Brock from Vogel Elementary and whole family can come up for photos please. and I will
030give out a shout out, but I'm not sure. Uh, is Brook News here? No. All right, we'll make sure she gets everything, but yes, let's go ahead and give her a ROUND OF APPLAUSE. AND NOW I'M GOING TO HAND THIS OVER TO DR. LEE. All right. Good afternoon or good evening, I guess, um is where we're really at. Um board, uh you don't get to see it when we do the students of the month presentation, but I start every presentation by saying the same thing. I have the best job on the planet because I get to do some pretty cool things which is recognize people for the great things that they do across our district. And so each board meeting, a lot of our community knows this, we recognize someone for the outstanding work that
031they do across the district. And so I want to start by saying one of the best parts of this job is the opportunity to recognize people who make amazing things happen for our students, but who don't always get the recognition that they deserve. As superintendent, I'm grateful for those who work tirelessly to provide our schools with resources to help our students succeed. This month's recipient is certainly one of those people. We received nominations for the Superintendent Apple Award, and this one in particular said, "I cannot think of another person in our department who has worked as hard to improve student outcomes this year. She is so kind, helpful, and hardworking. She truly embodies our values of students first always, and growth mindset, lifelong learning." During what is now her seventh year with Sigin ISD, this
032person has achieved several accomplishments that have or will improve outcomes for our matadors. On top of coaching teachers, visiting classrooms and leading trainings, this month's recipient also wrote and received a Sagin Education Foundation grant for dual language decodable readers, translated tests and documents in elementary math, reading, science, and social studies. Created K through2 Spanish phonics assessments from scratch. received their certification to lead reading academy for our dual language teachers. She also spends her mornings teaching in a dual language classroom to help a substitute. I think this part of the nomination sums up sums up this person perfectly noting she helps in the classroom not because she was asked because but because it is best for our kids. She's also described as having a servant's heart and I wholeheartedly agree. Sigin ISD is better for having
033her among our staff. I'm proud to introduce our May recipient of the superintendent's Apple award, dual language instructional coach, Mire Gonzalez. In case you're wondering, she did not know Something here. It made the job easier. That was awesome. Awesome. Those things are why I don't wear eye makeup to schoolboard meetings. All right. All right, Dr. Lee and trustees, I'm honored to introduce tonight's campus highlight as presented by Sigin High School. Nearly 1,800 students attend the high school in grades 9 through 12. This year's graduating class alone consists of almost 500 students who will cross the stage this Friday night at Matador Stadium. SHs principal Betto Munoz uh will make tonight's presentation which highlights student and staff accomplishments for the 2025 2026 school year and looks ahead to the administration's vision and priorities for next year.
034Mr. Munoz, the floor is yours. Thank you guys very much. Um, I I'll start by saying I stood here a little less than a year ago with a promise and the promise was that our vision, my vision was that we would work in a way to deserve success. Uh, I feel that our team has done that this year. We have a lot of room to grow and a lot of things that we still have ahead of us. Uh but we're going to if you'll indulge us here for a second, we're going to highlight some of our successes. We're going to talk about some of the challenges and then we're also going to talk about the road that lies ahead for us. And it starts with Oh, go ahead. Uh we started this year with our
035our mission which was riding for the brand. And we felt when we talk about riding for the brand, we explained what that meant to our team, the commitment that it's going to take to deliver the excellence that this community deserves. We also, as the year went on, you know, were able to see how it really aligns well with the strategic plan of the district. And we'll talk about how those things kind of tie together as as we talk about the road ahead. But essentially, in summary, for us, writing for the brand means that anybody that wears the essence crossords, they're committed to promoting the brand, to protecting the brand, and to elevating it in everything that we do. And again, we'll highlight some of those things as we go through tonight. And I brought with
036me tonight a couple of the two main trail bosses uh that ride alongside with me and that's our academic dean Diana Ferris and our associate principal uh Mr. Jose Falone. I'm going to turn it over to Miss Ferris here for a second. All right. Well, good afternoon. Um when Dr. Lee was presenting his highlights, I felt like he already looked at our slides and just kind of summarized everything. I was like, do I just come stand next to him and just share do it again? Um all right so just a few academic highlights um just with our EOCC's um this year in December we had a a big number of students really our retesters that um ended up meeting um approaches meets and masters we had a lot of growth a lot of gains with
037that um just some of the things that we did was really the main thing that we did was we had a boot camp where we pulled all of the retesters we uh shut downs the day for them and they came in and they did uh some intervention with our strongest teachers and they really just helped to push them through with all of the EOCC courses and I feel like that um really just kind of helped them mentally prepare to take the test. Uh with we're expecting our star scores here this Friday. So we're, you know, really hoping for the best for this one. Um, with our testing and our TSI, we have 511 tests that were taken and 224 seniors. Um, with MD Miss with Miss Dval's help, we really pushed the TSI testing. We
038had our English two students, all of our English two students take the TSI test. We also had our English three students test, our English four students test, and then we also had our um, a lot of our upcoming early college high school students, they tested as well. And so we really really just did a big push with our TSI testing. With our AP tests, we do have less students that are taking AP tests, but that's because more students are taking the dual credit. Um, but we do have more students that took the test this year. We really did a big push. And so I feel like our AP testers are really, really seeing the importance of not just taking the class for the GPA boost, but also taking the test to get that credit. Uh,
039we have we tripled our TIA distinctions. We went from one to three. Um but we have Alexander Bian Rodriguez and Gonzalez that were TIA distinctions. Um with our dual credit we have a lot of our students who are taking our dual credit courses. Again more students are taking dual credit courses and so we have these are the numbers for the students that are taking and the number of hours that they have earned. Our IBCs it's still growing. We are at 389 right now. Um but we do have a lot of students that are currently still taking their certification test this week and also some that are taking them next week. So, it's still we're still counting. Our CCMR is a was a really really big push. Again, MS Deval has done a lot of work
040to help push our CCMR um not only through the TSI testing, but we also have our Texas College Bridge. And we ordered cords this year for our seniors. And I think because now seniors are seeing those chords, it's they're really really really pushing to take the Texas College Bridge to get that CCMR credit. Um and so they're really really excited. So, we have really grown a lot with our CCMR um especially especially through that Texas College break. So, they're super excited about it. All right. When it comes to our fine arts, we do believe at Sigin High School that the fine arts provides that well-rounded experience that our kids need. And as you can see from the list of accomplishments over the course of the year, our fine arts students represented Sigin High School at
041the district, at the regional, and at the state level with excellence. We had many accomplishments throughout the program. I won't go through them all, but they are there for you to look at. And again, just showing again that fine arts is important and that we support our fine arts programs to the full ex extent that we can. Uh moving on to our athletic highlights. So again, we believe the the athletic programs do provide a a vital role in creating that school culture, that school spirit that often carries over into the classroom, into the hallways, and into everything that we do. And again, as you look through the list of accomplishments, um you can see that our athletic programs again are competing at at the at the district, regional, and state level. We did have nine
042district champions uh throughout this season. We had 12 different postconference I mean postseason or playoff uh appearances and almost 100 all academic honors. So again uh talking about that we are student athletes first not just athletes but that the student in front of the athletes takes priority. Uh now we go into writing for the brand. Some visuals here for you all. Starting with the first part where we talk about visibility, being in the hallways, being in the classrooms, being outside of our offices, and starting and greeting students with our new safety and security measures with our metal detectors, but also continuing that throughout every passing period and during classroom visits. Uh that was one of our number one priorities to just make sure we're more visible in on campus and then supporting our our staff
043and our students and of course the hardest working people, our uh support staff and our teachers. We had to ensure that um we're celebrating them and letting them know how important they are to us at Sigin High School. So throughout the year, and that's just one picture, but we did many different things to highlight them and support them throughout the year. And one of my favorite things, uh, the teacher voice, we started a guided coalition where we understood that we had to have our staff members and our teachers present at the table and ensure that they have a buy in and a voice with regards to where we see our campus moving forward. So, that's uh that's a picture right there where we did a lot of collaborating and speaking about where we're at presently,
044but where we're headed to to improve uh student achievement and uh campus climate. And lastly, uh that picture starts where it all began at the beginning of the year with professional development. Uh Mr. Munos, we had our admin retreat and uh laid it out for us. You know, the vision for the campus moving forward and uh one of the things I remembered from that professional development is it's going to take a lot of work. We're ready for it. We've been doing that every single day. And that was for us admin. But moving forward with PD, we also continued that with district PD and campus PD throughout the year uh in order for our staff and our teachers to grow uh 1% at a time. And then next, of course, we can't do anything without our
045community and our parent engagement as well. We've had uh cafeesito meetings in order for our parent and our community invited to uh share updates, ask questions, uh grab some snow cones at at one event. So they they were very very appreciative of that. And with these partnerships community uh it's all for the students. It was uh for scholarships and ensure that they are also part of our student success. And lastly, the communication piece. Uh the transition to parent square was a game changer because we're trying to overcommunicate. We understand that uh the communication uh with our parents and our students are is very viable to ensure that they understand what's happening at Sigin High School. And shout out to Mr. Munos with that newsletter. Every single week he sent it out. So that that's that's
046a big plus for that. So that's how we've been uh ensuring that our community and parents are involved. All right. So, with our senior class, we were at 95% with our graduation rate. Right now, we have 476 students that are graduating. Um, we had close to $6 million in scholarships earned. That was super exciting to be there that night and see all of the students receiving those scholarships for college. Um we have eight students that are um enlisting in the military. Several students, we have just a few of our colleges um that our students are going to here. We had 113 students participate in decision day, but that does not mean that there's only 113 of our students that are doing something outside of college. There's many students that did not sign up or didn't
047participate. Um but just super excited about the number of students that are u moving on past the our high school. Thank you, Miss Ferris. And as proud as we are of the accomplishments and where we're at and where we've been, we fully recognize that there were challenges coming into this year. And me coming on, like I said, just less than a year ago, there were a lot of things already in place that we just had to kind of tackle as we went through. Um, starting one of those things was the cell phone ban. But one of the things that we talked about in the summer when I when we started meeting as an admin team was these challenges became opportunities for us. Uh so along with the cell phone ban and some other things that
048were already in place, it gave us an opportunity to put some systems in place to address these challenges and these needs and these state requirements that really didn't exist until we uh started this year. Um the challenge of the master schedule again walking into July a lot of that schedule was already done but uh gave us an opportunity as we went through the year to really identify some of the staffing issues uh that currently existed in our master schedule which in turn put us in a position to look at our allocations and be good stewards of the community's money and really identify what are the positions that are going to be essential for us to move forward and what are the positions that we're able to um through attrition not necessarily replace. So that again
049looking in the effort of uh using the taxpayers money in the most efficient way at the high school and staffing is one of the biggest uh areas where we can do that. Um the other thing looking at the master schedule is really identifying in specifically to some of our fine arts electives and CTE programs. How do we better align those so that students are able to start and finish a pathway from their nth grade year to their 12th grade year? And again, we feel we've been able to address that challenge again as an opportunity for us over the course of of this year and into this spring. Um, I'll let Miss Ferris talk a little bit about attendance and what you're looking at is the attendance rate from last year. So, we have grown in
050our attendance this year. We got second place if you noticed that on Facebook um with our attendance growth by the way y'all. And so, um, next year we're going to get first. We're going to get that belt. Um and so we have just put a lot of system in systems in place to get our students here. We really we really pushed our attendance committee. We met the start of the year the plan was just to meet weekly and then we were going to slowly try to taper off and that just didn't happen. We continued to meet weekly. We met every Friday. The team turned um from a team of six to now about 15 of us meeting, talking about kids, sending letters, calling parents, meeting with counselors. are doing everything we can to try to
051get kids here and find out what's happening with these kids and why they are not at school. We also had a lot of incentives that we did. Um we started off with just some small ones but then uh student support services help um provide us with the grant. Um so we were able to give um some amazing incentive incentives. We did laptops, we did um Polaroid cameras, we had tablets. Um, and on Thursday we are going to do a drawing for a 43 inch TV for students that were here 100% of the time. And so I did announce that yesterday. I told the kids they have to be at school. I'm really worried about Thursday. So they have to be at school on Thursday, especially our seniors, if there's any back here, be at school.
052And so um, so that way we can do give away that TV. And so people seem to be super excited about it. We've done popcorn at lunches, pickles at lunches, and just just offering a lot of things for to try to get students here and just more excited about it. And then the last challenge we we talked about was our bell schedule. Again, coming into this, there was a start and end time that was already in place and we tried as best as we could to really manage the minutes throughout the day and came up with what we felt was the best thing for this year. Uh moving forward, we have created a new bell schedule and the new bell schedule does allow us to better prepare our our teachers to allow for more teacher
053collaboration. I think it's going to help us uh again with student accountability. And the other thing it's allowed us to do is create courses in a way that again we can structure them to fit the master schedule and again to better align our teachers and make the most of the human capital that we do have on campus. Uh looking ahead, you know, we want Okay, sorry. Oh, sorry. That wasn't supposed to happen. All right. Looking ahead, uh the three things as we went through the year or the first semester, we came back and did our state of the campus in January and we identified three shared commitments as a as a campus that we were going to address and that we were going to look at. The first being able to deliver high quality instruction.
054And as we went through the year, uh, through the spring, I'm sorry, we saw more involvement. Um, and we and again, the work has begun. Thank you to Miss Lions and the CNI team for providing that support for our teachers to be able to help deliver more highquality instruction in the classroom. That is another path that we're going to continue. We'll revisit as our guiding coalition meets uh next week. the student engagement piece. Uh again, giving teachers more opportunity to collaborate, restructuring the roles of our instructional coaches and how they can help teachers provide more engaging lessons in the classroom. Uh again, using our instructional coaches instead of just in reading and math, but more as content agnostic so that they can help support teachers across all content. Uh and the last thing is the
055culture of urgency. These are our three shared commitments ending with the time is now. This community needs it, our kids need it, and our staff needs to feel that urgency. and we feel like we're providing um in a sense that pressure because the pressure is good and the pressure will help us with the delivery of what we need to put forth next year. Uh the last thing I'll close with is just a little something that we put together uh that we're going to share again with our staff as we get ready to hit the next year running because again I've said this and it's been kind of a a reoccurring phrase I've been using this spring over the course of the last three weeks that we've been talking to different groups and meeting is that
056the best is yet to come. We feel we've got the right people in place. We feel we've got the right teachers. We've got us, you know, we went through some of turnover, but we see it again as an opportunity, as an opportunity to build our team and to bring people on board that are going to ride for the brand like the people that are already here. And with that being said, let me run this Guys, again, I thank you for allowing me to serve as a principal at Tikin High School. And the promise is not done. The work continues on a promise made. So, thank you. Oh, any questions? Sorry, I forgot that part. I think that they need to be present to win that TV. Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. I just I had two comments
057I wanted to make. Is that one um I just want to acknowledge I am so excited to see the strategic plan being incorporated into next year and excited for what that strategic plan is going to do with all of our schools incorporating that. So, huge kudos for that. Um, I also want to acknowledge I noticed that underneath your challenges, you did not acknowledge that three of the parents of your students are also on the school board plus the superintendent's child. Um, I think that's that is a lot of pressure that's there. And I just want to speak as a parent, I appreciate being a when I'm on campus as a parent, um, really being able to function as a parent. And so I appreciate the respect of students and and staff and teachers for us
058to be able to do that. Kudos for overcoming that challenge as well. Thank you. We're going to take a five minute break uh before we start our presentations. All right, thank you. We're moving on to reports and information items 7A under curriculum instruction. Um the May 2026 professional development plan and assessment overview, Adrien Flores and Jessica Lee. Good evening, board president Dr. Lee and board. Um we're excited to present to you tonight um our professional development plan and some information um about what look assessment looked like this year and changes to come. I'm sorry. My name is Jessica Lee. I'm the district testing coordinator and presenting with me this evening, Adrienne Fletz, one of the elementary curriculum coordinators. So we're going to start off first with um lifting up the two priority priorities from our
059strategic plan. Um, and that is priority priority one, challenging and meaningful learning experiences, and priority four, growthminded personnel. And this is what we're going to ground this work on today. Um, as we're moving forward with building futures together. So, when Dr. asked us to give this presentation, we wanted to make sure that everything that we talk about tonight is grounded in the why of what we do in our department. Um, so we wanted to give you a little graphic here to kind of illustrate what we're hoping to accomplish um within the department every year um but especially moving forward as uh changes have been made with the strategic plan. And so this kind of showcases how curriculum instruction and assessment um is the pillars of what we do, but we want to make sure that
060that's grounded in what sigin needs. Um so that bar at the bottom that shows the strategic plan um with of course our goal being student success. Um part of that is and this is your research lesson for the day. Um everything that we do in curriculum instruction and assessment should be grounded in this model. Um Dr. Fenwick English is the one that created this model. Uh about 40, 50 years ago. Um, and if you look in the center of this triangle, you see that it says quality control. And for folks that work in curriculum and instruction, our goal is, it sounds very clinical, quality control, but really what that means is equity. We want to make sure that everything that we're doing as a department provides equity for students. So whether I go to Kini
061or McQueeny or any campus in the district, my child um regardless of who their teacher is and what campus they have is receiving the same education, especially with the fact that we have a high mobility rate and students is are move students are moving between campuses. And so we just wanted to include this because this shows really the work of what we do making sure that the written, taught, and assessed curriculum um all works together in tandem. And our job in our department is to make sure that that's written down and clarified um trained uh for teachers so they know what to do um with that goal of equity making sure that all students receive that great education. So I want to start off with kind of giving you a quick glance of the pillar
062one curriculum design and instruction uh design and alignment sorry um one of the things a sneak peek is we are going to be creating a comprehensive uh curriculum management plan and a curriculum management plan or CMP is a formal strategic framework that kind of governs our instructional goals. Um, this will provide kind of as Miss Lee said, equity and continuity for every student in Sigin ISD. Um, and part of that work is we're going to go into and really define what the the three pillars are, what it looks like from in every classroom, uh, kind of our operating manual, you could kind of say. So, that first part, pillar uh, one is, uh, really getting to know the what what we're teaching. Um, and that step one is really understanding our our standards and that's
063our Texas essential knowledge and skills from the state of Texas. Um, and then with that um, we have the blueprint, our scope, our sequence and our year at a glance of when we are when how we are progressing through the learning throughout the year. Um, and then step three are the tools, modeling lessons, high quality instructional resources. And again, all of this is going to get really, um, scripted out or manual, the curricular management plan will have all this kind of laid out. Uh, we're in the beginning stages of creating that right now. And this is going to again be outlined and really planned out in our curriculum management plan. And the framework is basically our daily classroom practices, our instructional frameworks like our math models, our literacy models, um 5e model, whichever uh one
064that we have adopted for every single subject. And then of course the foundation of our high quality instructional materials uh for in some of our cases going to be blue bonnet for math and art. Um and one of the things that we really want to highlight is that um it's it's kind of lifting up the science of the work that we do and also honoring the teachers art and giving them um creativity and autonomy um when needed throughout the the curriculum. So, this is kind of just a quick overview um a one-pager of just looking at the May and June professional development and I'll kind of get into the the daily um after this. And so, um we do have on Tuesday we have a teacher work day and during that time the leadership uh
065will be attending a training here with Blue Gene Consulting. Then on the next two days, we have district PD days. Um, and I'll go into to in depth with those in the next couple of slides. Then we have our campus day. And then on the first, uh, Dr. Lee really wanted to balance out the PD requirements and also ensuring that um, ensuring our teachers voice and and making sure they're not fatigued right now. I know they're really tired. So he is allowing them to do some have a teacher exchange day where at home they will be able to go through and complete some specific task and um some required courses at their own pace. So what you're going to see in the two district days that I want to kind of outline is that we're
066going to really elevate and design around teacher voice. Um we want to make sure that their their expertise in their subject matter is heard and so we're going to of them help us in specifically realigning, rewriting some of the pacing um our year at a glances. Uh we're really making sure especially we know that we just have the new adoption with blue bonnet math and now that we have one year under the belt, we can go back and um have the teachers tell us what worked, what didn't work, like maybe we spent too long in one specific uh area, maybe we need to, you know, adjust. And so this is where we're really going to hone in um and on those two days really make sure that we're um hearing and honoring their expertise in
067the classroom. Um so Adrian mentioned our frameworks and as part of theft grant part of the work that we have to do as we adopt Blue Bonnet reading is the literacy framework. Um and so that started with creating a district-wide committee. Um so we uh spoke to our campus leaders and they nominated folks from all their campuses. Um so every campus is represented on the framework. We have multiple teachers, multiple grade levels, um from prek all the way through 12th grade. It's been amazing having this team together. Um seeing prek teachers and AP English teachers having a conversation at the same table today. Um which was incredible. Uh and we have from uh teachers that are dual language, teachers that are special ed. So we really tried to cast a wide net of folks to
068come together. Uh we also have um our leadership team uh the curriculum team um as members as well as some principles, some APs, some instructional coaches. So really trying to get that varied voice. Um and part of that work started uh with a kickoff committee and explaining what our goal was which is to write a literacy framework for the district. Uh the next part was to train um our team in the reading arbs which are reading researchbased instructional strategies for reading and those are foundational skills um complex grade level text knowledge coherence and textbased responses. Um and uh Carnegie could have done that training but I had actually been through the training in my previous role as a curriculum director and so I offered to train our team. Um, so I took a two-day TEA
069training and condensed it into two hours and we had a little driveby training of the Arby's. Um, so I was able to do that for our um, literacy framework team, but then also for our leadership team um, during silt um, just so people could um, get their feet wet. They're going to get lots more training by the way. Um but this was really to get their feet wet their feet wet to do the work of writing the literacy framework so they could understand that um everything that we do we want to be grounded in the most recent research of what are the best practices in teaching reading. Um so after we gave them that training um then um our Carnegie folks have been guiding us through the process of writing a framework. Uh that started
070with a vision statement for literacy for the district. Um it then went to belief statements about the Arby's. So talking about foundational skills, which is how we teach kids how to read, writing, what we believe about that as a district. Um we then moved into the stakeholder pieces. So it's talking about what are the stakeholder actions, the board, what is the board's actions as part of that. What is um our principles, our district leaders, our teachers, our students, our families. Um what are their um action items as part of this framework? Um and then today we had a meeting uh before this meeting and we were going through and grading ourselves using the TEA rubric. still going through that refinement process. Um, and we have another meeting or two and then at some point we're
071going to come to you this summer um with a literacy framework that was worked on by all these folks in the district to take to you to approve. Um, and so uh that process was done with math a few years ago, although I think because of COVID maybe it wasn't quite there was some issues with deployment there and so we're going to go back and do the same thing for math as well um in the fall. So you should expect in January to see the same kind of things for math. um math their reading based instructional or their research based instructional strategies have changed so recently so we all have to get retrained um and we'll uh bring that to you probably in January. So um this kind of outlines this outlines the two district
072days uh that we do have for elementary. Um this kind of goes through each what each uh content will u be engaging in during those two days. One thing that I want to note what you'll see is some common reoccurrence in ARA um and math. We have the research the researchbased instructional strategies. What we decided um as a district to do is to ensure that all of our K through five uh elementary teachers receive this training because we know that reading is the foundation. Um, and so we want this new the new new research that everybody's using across the district. And so if a teacher moves from fifth grade math and then a year later they go through to third grade and they have to do or sec second grade and do all self-contained, they
073have this um this tool and this research about the instructional strategies. And so um we're we decided to go ahead and have all of our teachers K through five engage in that work. And then as you see um for science and then fine arts and and specials again we're going to kind of have them with their expertise the teachers help us review and um rewrite any of the curriculum the I'm sorry the the year at a glances um for for this coming school year for secondary you'll see that same kind of trend again we're going to have our teachers engage give us feedback and help us with the scope and sequence and pacing. ing. You'll also see some other required trainings for our specific um specialist groups. Librarians will have their Texas library standards training.
074Uh K through AP teachers will have first aid, CPR um along with again rewriting and giving feedback on their uh scope at sequence and your amulance looking into August. Um this is still not a final thing. It's not we don't have it finalized yet because what we're going to be looking at is when our star star scores come in that we're using data to drive the decisions that we make. So, um we're going to look through at the end of the year all of our walkthrough data and see any common trends and then of course our star results to kind of outline then what do we need um what do our teachers need so that we can um ensure that they have the the tools necessary for the following year. All right. Now, we're going
075to move into assessment overview. Um, so I'm going to talk a little bit about this year so you can get an overview of the kinds of assessments that we give um and what we gave this year. Um, just a highle overview um by elementary, middle, and high school. And then I'm going to talk about what's coming um because this next year is a transition year. And so just want to prepare you because a lot is about to change in 2728. Um and I want to be able to frontload as much information as we have in front of all of you. Um so Adrian had started with pillar one of curriculum, pillar two of instruction. So we're at pillar three of assessment. Um there's all kinds of different assessments that we give. This little triangle gives
076um a nice little view of it that we have state assessments, starve, telp pass, those are required. We have to give those. Um our the vendor developed assessments are things like the Renstar or I Stationation data that you were used to getting um beginning, middle, and end of year testing. And then they're the assessments that teachers use um every day, formative assessments that happen in the classroom. So all those assessments happen all the time and we want them to. That's part of assessment. Um so we have a little graphic here that kind of lays this out nicely. So you can see in the middle is state testing and what that looks like. um the diagnostic assessments or screening assessments. Many of those are required by law and I'm going to talk about how that law
077is changing in 2728. And then we have the instructionally sensitive assessments or the ones that our campus created or our district created assessments. So if you were to think about this as a rhythm of what happens throughout the school year, this is a great graphic that kind of show showcases that because typically we do stuff beginning of year, middle of year, end of year. And I wanted to showcase it this way because that is what the state is moving to for all grade levels, K8 mandatory um and then optional for high school. So, I wanted to kind of showcase that sort of rhythm of assessment because it's things that we're already doing with the goal um that hopefully it's not too much of a transition uh when we move to this in 2728. Um so,
078for elementary, if you are a prek student, um we give the circle assessment. It's um the free assessment given by the state that uh the district has given for years. um in grades kinder through two um they have it was formerly text KIA now it's circle K um that happens um in the middle of year currently or beginning of middle of year excuse me um and then RENSTAR which is our universal screener um we're required to give a universal screener for our MTSS process that's what captures kids to show us that um are struggling or possibly in need of going through that support system to potentially eventually uh lead to a 504 or special education evaluation. So that universal screener happens in math and reading from kindergarten all the way through 12th grade um to
079help us uh give us data about how students are doing um but also to make sure that we are providing interventions as appropriate for students. And then in grades three through five um they take STAR. Um this year we had to give um the NAPE test which is required. Um that's a national assessment. You're chosen for it. It's in grades four and eight. The data for that assessment will come out nationally in June. Um you you get chosen, they tell you what campus we have to do it. Um and then throughout there, of course, we're taking that universal screener as well. Um at middle school, um that universal screener happens. Um AJB was chosen for NAPE testing. Um and then you can see kind of the cadence of district assessments. Um, if you are a
080star tested grade level, you took a district assessment at the end of September, October, you took one in December, there was a benchmark, which is our release star test. Um, and then you take STAR. Um, if you are a non uh star tested area, you took a district assessment one, district assessment two, there was a district assessment three and four. And that's going to be significant. So, I'm going to tell you how we're reducing that. And all all those grades took STAR. And in eighth grade there's in in eighth grade there's social studies, science is fifth and eth. And then high school is its own beast. Um because you're taking all kinds of assessments for different reasons depending on possibly what grade you're in, what course you're in. Um so a student could have a
081lot of assessments or not very many. It just kind of depends. Um so this kind of gives you an overview by content area. Um in math they took Renstar beginning, middle and end of year assessments. Students took district assessments. Um they also took um TIA beginning and end of year test. Um so that depended again is course specific on our TIA plan. Um and then in the middle there you might have some students TSI's testing, you might have students SAT testing, you might have AP testing. So just know that it really depends on the pathway um that the student is walking or what grade they're in will depend on the assessments that they're taking. And that's similar or mimicked in ELA. Um, science and social studies, they have that beginning and end of year tests
082for TIA, uh, district assessments. If they're taking biology or US history, they're taking a STAR test. And then in CTE, we had beginning and end of year testing for TIA. Um, right now we had six courses for that. And we are adding, sorry, I made some notes for myself here. quite a few um courses, which is great because we want our teachers uh to hopefully gain TIA and be eligible, but I think there's at least 10 courses uh that we're adding there for CTE. And then finally, in the spring, there's the AP testing, and those dates are dictated by College Board. Um it's given to us the first two weeks in May. They tell us um what time of day. I mean, all those things that's laid out to us by College Board for AP.
083So to kind of sum up um especially TIA because that can be confusing, I wanted to create something that very simply laid out what we do for TIA. Um so for preK um it's circle K. Um for kinder it is moving to um Circle K, sorry, preK is circle. Kinder is circle K. Um Renstar math and reading will be for kinder through 2 grade as well as third for next year. And then in grades three through eight, it's either STAR uh growth measure or there's a district pre and post test if they're non-STAR tested. Um and then high school, it is either their STAR um growth measure or it's a pre and post test in edge of um and so um uh Miss Miranda has really helped to try to streamline that process for next
084year. Um we're are we've been working to reduce our assessments and so that's why I'm kind of saying like this year it was Renstar for kinder but now we're going to be able to cut an assessment for them uh to move to just one. So the changes that are coming currently for 2627 we are required to give a kindergarten reading readiness assessment um and we use circle kindergarten as I've mentioned um you have to do a universal screener for dyslexia for us that will be TPRI um or teas and then what's coming is the foundational literacy and numeracy numeracy instruments so nothing has been adopted yet it is optional to do something for that for next year. Um, but we don't have information on what those assessments will be yet. So, right now in kindergarten,
085uh, students take a readiness assessment at the beginning of the year and then we have to screen for dyslexia. What it's moving to, um, is kindergarten, first, second, and third grade will take beginning, middle, and end of year tests, and it has to be reported to the state. That is a massive shift. um for our lower grades. Uh we've only they've only been getting bits and pieces of this um early literacy data and it's just been literacy and notice it says numeracy here as well. Um so this is a huge shift for our our lower grades. That little graph there at the bottom, that little table kind of lays out there that beginning, middle, and end of year testing. For third grade, it's star at end of year. Um but the K through2 instruments currently
086for next year there was an extension granted that's been for two years by the way. Um so we haven't been able to have a list of more assessments to be able to choose from for these things. Um but for beginning in 2728 all K3 students must be assessed. You can only use the commissioner approved in instruments which means as a board um we'll be coming to you at some point to be able to adopt one of those. Um, currently the way that statute reads in first and second grade, the board and the district committee can choose to do something else or the board can opt to do something else that won't be allowed anymore. Um, you will have to choose from the instruments that the state provides from and we don't know how many will
087be on that list. So that kind of lays out the assessments. The good thing is we're already doing those things. So our universal screener is beginning, middle of end of year. Um, teachers are already used to doing those things. The difference is is we're going to have to report everything to the state and we don't really know what that means yet. Um, so that will be the shift, the accountability feeling of it. But as far as those assessments taking place, that's no different than what's already happening for teachers. So that's K2. Now let's talk about STAR. So next year is the last year for STAR as we know it. Beginning in 2728, there's going to be what's called the SST or student success tool. Um, if you've seen anything on the news, they've said, "Oh,
088we've gotten rid of the STAR test." That's not true. Um, what we've done is add more testing. Um, so students will take three tests a year and three through eight that are required. A beginning a beginning of year assessment, a middle of your assessment. The end of year assessment is still STAR, still a STAR test, still going to be the same length, still going to be the same thing on the computer. Okay. Um, the poor eighth grade students will have to take a beginning, middle, and end of year test in math, reading, science, and social studies. They get the most. So, just bear that in mind. Um, so this graphic from region 20 is really great because it kind of lays out what's coming um to tell us what we can expect. The one thing
089that I do want to point out, if you notice um under summer 2026, um it says announcement of allowable third-party assessment list. So, for the beginning and middle of your testing, we do get to choose what assessment that is. Um, it has to be either a nationally norm referenced test has to be an option. There's some stuff in the law that's required. Um, so we can choose something there. Um, we don't know what's going to be on the list yet. Um, but I'm excited that it's going to be released in the summer because that gives us time to plan. And I say that because we have the opportunity to potentially consolidate and not do TIA testing and other things and we can lean into one assessment to um use for multiple purposes. Um in my
090previous district we used NWA MAP testing and so we used that for TIA and our universal screener. Um when the seventh grade diagnostic reading test, which state law got rid of this year, um when that was out there, NWA MAP made the list. So I'm crossing my fingers that potentially it makes the list. Many of our teachers have asked if we're going to move to that assessment. Um, but that's an example of an assessment that could serve the state's purpose, our TIA purpose, and our universal screener purpose, and that's what we want to lean towards. What can we do to use one assessment for multiple purposes to reduce testing on teachers and kids. Um, so at some point, I'm sure we'll be coming to you um with that list and giving a recommendation for you.
091Um throughout next year um I anticipate spending a lot of time training teachers about what's coming. Um and that's it's a little nerve-wracking because we go live 2728 and that um time period for beginning of year testing is September 1st to September 30th. So I have about like two and a half weeks to train folks uh to get them ready to do that test. Um so we will make sure that we're proactive as a district doing everything we can to make sure our teachers are ready uh to be able to do that work. And so this is this kind of just lays out the time frame. So you can anticipate that um students will take a beginning of year in September. It's an adaptive test which means whatever test that makes that list that norm
092reference test. It's going to respond to students. A student get students get things right. It's going to get harder. When they get things wrong it'll get easier. Um Renstar that we already give as a test like that and WA MAP is a test like that. Those are nationally norm referenced tests. um beginning of the year will be the same thing in January or Febru February. I think that window runs um middle of January to middle of February. In April, there will be a writing test standalone which the state had many years ago when I was teaching. We had a standalone writing test. Um so they're moving back to that mostly because it has to be scored. Um and then in May they will take STAR as we know it right now. Um, and uh, the
093timeline is to turn that data around for STAR in 48 hours. Um, so I'm excited about that piece of it. Um, that we will get timely information and not waiting for weeks on end. And this slide, I actually had to have uh, Miss Nancy do another upload for me because I got this in a training recently and wanted you to have the most recent information in front of you. Um and so this kind of gives you a little bit more information about um whether that test will be machine scored um person scored um what happens within the windows. So that's really this previous slide um that I just showed you with just a little bit more information. The other thing to point out is that in our current accountability system we have growth that goes
094from one year to the next. So they look from how you do in third grade star to fourth grade star. Um with this new system you will still keep that but we will also have through the year growth. So how does a student do from the beginning to the middle to the end of year? So both growth measures will be incorporated into the data. So that's star. One of the other changes that's coming is to uh CCMR. Um and this is a benefit for us. So not every school has junior ROC. We're lucky enough to have an amazing program here. Um and so for military readiness reporting, um if students um have and receive credit for at least three junior ROC courses and then have a qualifying score on the ASBAB, that will be a
095CCMR indicator. That's amazing because right now the only way we can get it is if students actually enlist. Um so this will be a huge uh benefit to um our school district. The other thing that's changing that's coming is these tiered um different tiers for CCMR. So right now what we do is we track every little human body that comes through the high school and whether or not they get a point for college career military ready. This system will depend on what kind of point that they get. So everything will be tiered. So if you notice in this bottom tier um if students meet their TSI requirements through college prep course or they're a completer with a a tier three IBC because now those IBC tests are going to be tiered as well. um or
096if they have junior ROTC um with the qualifying score in the ASVAB, that's foundational. The next tier notice, they have to meet TSI um the actual scores on the TSI, not the college prep or SAT ACT or a completer with a tier 2 IBC or a sped advanced diploma and then the advanced tier, which will be the most difficult to obtain. Student has an associates degree or a MET TSI with college credit or notice enlisted in the military. So essentially now, not only will we have to track whether or not students get a point, but what do those points mean and where do students fall within that college career military ready? So what does everything mean? Here's your summary slides. Okay. Um, every student in pre-K through eight will take a beginning, middle, end of
097year assessment that will be reported to TEA. First time we've ever had that ever. Okay. That's huge. All of our data is going to the state. Um, high school beginning and middle of year is optional. Um, high school actually has the least changes. One of the big changes that English 2 is going away. So, my son, who will take English two next year, will be the last, he'll be the last class that will take English two, but after next year, that test went away by law. Um, so students will only have to take algebra 1, English one, US history and biology to graduate um, beginning in 2728. Um, and then we accountability system will be completely different in 2728. And then STAR will be the SST. Um, as far as assessments, um, as we've been
098planning and getting feedback and talking to folks about what we can do again to reduce that testing fatigue, um, we're looking to reduce the district the number of district assessments from four to two. Um, so we're trying to follow that cadence of beginning, middle, and end of year testing. Um, and so really what we're looking at for a district assessment is just one fall, one spring. um consider cons we're going to consider utilizing the high school exam schedule for our district assessments and end of year TIA post tests. Right now students are kind of taking tests all over the place at the high school and we want to try to use the system that's already there within the exam schedule to do some of these tests um so that we're not pulling students out of
099instructional time or the high school trying to manage where all these students go. So we want to be able to work through that and see what's possible. Um, continuing RENSTARS are beginning middle and end of year test in universal screener. Um, with the caveat of knowing that we may potentially be able to adopt something in 2728 um that could meet multiple requirements. Um, and then working towards district alignment and using the module unit assessments that are already provided with the HQIM in all of our campuses. Um, and I wanted to put that in front of you because beginning in 2728, we will not be allowed to give a benchmark, which means we have no measure of knowing or being able to predict how we will do on STAR. So, because of that, we want to
100be able to lean into the assessments that are already created within the curriculum that we've adopted um, and making sure that our teachers are giving that across campuses so we have the best measure, one of how students are ma mastering standards, but two, trying to be able to predict where we're going to end up. Um, and so that's going to be a challenge. Um, and that's why we want to start working through that this year with teachers. Um, looking at the assessments that are within the curriculum, having teachers coming together to look at the length to see if we need to reduce a little bit. Um, but coming to consensus so that we have all elementary fifth graders taking one assessment that's from their curriculum. That's a module assessment that teachers say, "Yes, we feel
101good about this. It's a good length." um to be able to have information to give the best instructional information to teachers, but then also the best instructional information for us as a district to know how we're doing and mastering those TESS. So, just coming back together and that curriculum and instruction alignment, um you can see we're trying to really prioritize teacher involvement in these decisions and in the feedback. Um we're trying to work through um all of these pieces to have one aligned documented system for teachers and staff to be able to follow. Um and then working to do everything we can to have an assessment work for multiple purposes and and reduce that testing fatigue, but also as you've noticed, many of these things I'm talking about are required. And so some of these
102mo many and most of these assessments are things that we have to do. Um but trying to make sure if there's a place where we can count something for more than one thing, by God, we're going to do it. Um so I did provide some additional links for your reading pleasure. Um there is the assessment calendar for this past year. Um our one for uh 2627 is still in draft. Um but I'm almost done with it. Um the accountability system overview for 28. So again, you can see what's coming and also the House Bill 8 changes. Everything I've kind of laid out for you in this presentation. If you wanted to read more, it's there. Um but our goal um again is alignment. it's equity um and doing everything we can for our department to
103be um a customer service focused department to help teachers be able to be successful. We appreciate your time tonight and here for questions. I don't have a question. I have a comment being a sep casualty of the time. Um I appreciate all the involvement that you have given the teachers and the ability to be creative and innovative in their classrooms and that means so much to the quality of education that we have. So, I'm glad that you're putting that into I think it's important when um there are things that we have to hold tight to and then there's things that we can give teacher autonomy and voice to and that's the great thing as Adrian mentioned about the curriculum management plan because we're going to be able to lay that out to teachers. These are
104the things we want to hold tight to because that's what's best for kids. These are the things that are the art and science and the beauty of teaching um to be able to adapt to your classroom and these are the things that you can do so teachers know really clearly, oh my gosh, I can adapt this. I can make this curriculum something for the kids that I'm teaching, which is what we want them to do. I have a question going back to the very beginning of the presentation. I'm talking about professional development days that it looks like they're really structured towards preparing for next year. What does that mean for new teachers coming on board for the 26 27 year and also new to the district teachers? How that'll be in the August PD and
105then there we have the new teacher academy um and Miss Van kind of outlines that for that. I think it's a whole week um before we come back and they'll have that um they'll make sure that they have all the Oh yes yes yes. Yeah, the the goal is we want the people who taught the curriculum this year to be able to have voice for how it's paced for next year. And so that's why we kind of put all of our eggs in that basket of let's get everybody's feedback. Let's have teachers be able to tell us like, hey, we really needed eight days and not 10. Um or we need to we're trying to really account for how many instructional days do we really have in a school year. So for example, um I
106was reaching out to technology and I said tell me when Chromebooks are deployed. Okay, so I get four days. AJB has four the first four five days of the school year. They don't have any Chromebooks where our curriculum is digital. So when I'm working with secondary RLA teachers next week, we're going to build in a writing boot camp first five days because we don't have Chromebooks. So really trying to maximize our instructional time and we want teachers to weigh in on all of that. Um but then that's work that people new to the district are going to walk in and we're going to orient them to those documents that we make. That's amazing. Thank you for that. And then when it comes to reporting back to us, I'm sure you have you have that built
107into how you're going to let us think know how things are progressing. That was one of my one of my questions about assessments is that what can the board expect for the 26 27 year as far as assessment? What data would you like? I have lots. I am I am a spreadsheet queen. um there are lots of things available and so the question really becomes what kind of data is helpful to you um and I think um in your conversations with Dr. Um, I would be thinking about like what information do you want to know? Like that's really what because schools are data rich. I could give you mountains of data about all kinds of things. And so my thought would be what kind of information is the most helpful to you or the burning
108questions that you have as a board member so that we can make sure that we're tailoring a presentation to the questions that you have and not data dumping you where you're like, I don't even know what I'm looking at. I would want to make something that is relevant to the questions that you have or the conversations that you're having. Yeah. One of the things that we'll also work through over the summer is like a data presentation. Um so specifically data presentation calendar specifically what gets presented to you when it when it's supposed to get presented to you. Will you see data on all of these things that were just in that presentation? Probably not. Um you can if you ever ask for it like we'll give it to you. Um but it's not that would
109become part of a standard presentation every board meeting. Um what would be are some of those those bigger rocks, those bigger items that beginning of the year, middle of the year, end of year type data um that shows progress as it happens. Uh some of the other things that are in there uh I'm trying to remember um MTSS one like TSI for example, we TSI three times a month, you know what I mean? I could give you at the end of the year we could give you TSI statistics over how many students tested what it looked like you but if I gave you every month it's not it's just we're trying to get kids to test so they can meet the scores and so that's why I mean like we really would want to know
110what information is the most helpful to you. Now when this law changes we have to provide beginning and middle and end ofear data to you after every assessment. So, beginning in 2728, you will hear from us at least three times a year about those assessments that we're reporting to the state. Um, with those assessments that are given this next year, will any of those count as the students grades or they all oneoff assessments? So, we are working through the revisions for this year's handbook for assessment. So, I don't want to answer something and then come to you with something different. I think it'd probably be better to make the revisions and then come forward to you to say this is the plan because we'll work with principles and folks this summer to be able to
111make those revisions. So I don't want to say something wrong. A quick question on the beginning of beginning of the year test for example. It says that they're going to shorten the time. So then will the teachers get the results within a week or two weeks? 48 hours. They'll receive it within 48 hours. Yeah. It's amazing. Um, with our RESSTAR assessments, for example, we get it back within 24. Um, and so when we give those um, assessments, teachers get the data pretty quickly at their fingertips. And so the the one that will take a little bit is that writing test in April, that will be static because it has to be scored. But these two, the beginning of the year and the middle of the year are going to be buildup to the end of
112the year test. Yes. And and that's the thing like we don't um, let me go back to this slide here. So if you notice um school year 2627 on this slide it says implementation roadmap for test coordinators test design blueprints and rubrics. That's what we're waiting for. So I don't know for example science science and social studies this is where it gets interesting like they're going to have to take these beginning and middle of year tests but then that would require a specific scope and sequence. And so I'm curious, are they going to tell us this is the order in which we need to teach things? Um because biology, for example, can be taught in two different ways. Um there's two different scope and sequences and you have to choose as a district which one
113you're going to do. Um so I think um there's a lot we don't know yet that we'll get in the fall um to be able to give us that information about what those tests would look like. They're supposed to be completed within two hours. Um and we get the information back within 48 hours. So they are going to be shorter than that end ofear test that looks like star as we know it right now. But the star test is the very last one. Is it going to be shorter also or is it going to be the same? It will be the like they typically run anywhere between 45 and 70 questions depending on the test. The most is US history. Um that test is pretty meaty. Um but like our rla tests run anywhere from
11450 to 65 questions. Thank you. Good presentation. Thank you. with the ranking of the CCMR points. What's the significance of that? It's the different tiers going. Oh, the state just likes to play games with different for us or it's just more diff. Um, so what it really means is you're one, if you look at most districts across the state and you were to look at their taper report that comes out every year, okay? If you were to look at that report and see how are school districts meeting their current CCMR, nine out of 10 districts are doing it through college prep, math, and English. So essentially, it's the fastest and easiest way for us to earn those points. Um, I have to give props to Miss Duvall, Miss Miranda work we've been doing at the
115high school. Like we've gone from about 40 to 80% um this semester in our CCMR because of college prep, math, and English. And so you can actually, it will pull it out. You can actually see that statistic in the report of where school districts are are getting their points from. And so overall, their CCMR is really high, but most of it's coming from there. So if you look at this model, that will be the foundational tier. And so you're going to get the least amount of points for getting students CCMR ready that way. So what the state is doing is they're constantly pushing you to get CCMR these other ways because they want them to be college ready. And you can see like if you look at that advance, they want kids to be college
116ready or already in college. Um or to be taking an IBC. Um the tiering is going to happen based on where the your location is in the state and what the high needs are. Um so depending on our area, what are the industrybased certifications that are needed in our area? Um that will play into those those lists as well. Um it's an everchanging landscape with this. And then we also have to watch um when these changes happen because even though it says this isn't supposed to happen for several years, it will start affecting students within the next two. So we have to plan accordingly um so that we know that we are getting students ready in the way that they need to be ready. So for this year for example for um CTE students have
117to be completer plus IBC which means that they take more than one co course in a coherent sequence. They have to finish that sequence and they have to pass an IBC for us to get a point. districts typically get about 26% um of their students to hit that because it's difficult. Students have to basically like pick a major, right? You have to pick a major and stick with it and then take an an end ofear exam. Think about it that way. Um and so it's very hard um and will be increasingly challenging uh to get that. And our CTE department definitely has to work to keep their kids in their programs. Since we're on this slide, I have a couple questions. One, um so let's say you have a that comes in really kind of
118ahead of the game their freshman year they test their MA they meet their TSI that the foundational tier for like math um then so they get that point then the next year they take the SAT TSI so then they get that point the same student we're counting like multiple points right well so it depend it I don't really know in this new system I think they're just going to fall in one of the tiers by the end of their senior year so it will depend on where they end up at the end essentially. But like right now, if students are college and career ready or college and military ready, we get what's out what's called outcomes bonus and we get money. Um in this system, similar to now, we you're tracking the students freshman, sophomore,
119junior, senior year. We have like our our students that graduated tonight hit CCMR multiple ways. And so you may have a student that hits you multiple ways, but you only get one point essentially for it. What I don't know, and it may be in all of the laying out of the new accountability system, and I just don't know off the top of my head, is what these points, what the points will be between the three tiers. Um, but it's determined at the end of their senior year. So, there could be multiple ways that they get it, but you may only earn one point essentially, if that makes sense. I mean, I you only get one. You might hit multiple ways, but they only give you credit for one. That's what I'm saying. I I know
120what you said makes sense, but it doesn't make sense as a whole. you know, if you get all three, you should get three points. I'm just saying. And then um advanced diploma, what is that? Um so that is uh students who finish um on they are a special education student and they finish within uh advanced degree plan. So they graduate with foundation. So some students may be an IEP completer, which means they graduate and they have completed their um IEP. I actually don't see that up there. So now I'm curious to know where that's going. Um, but that's a current way that we can get it. But the advanced diploma means they graduate as distinguished graduate or they're graduation with their on a foundation plan uh with endorsement. They're not graduating with the minimum number
121of credits. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you so much. That was that was a lot and very well done. So, we appreciate you. All right. Um, next our dual language programming. Um, Mr. and Miranda. Good evening, President Granton, Dr. Lee, and board of trustees. My name is Robert Areola, and I have the pleasure of being your multilingual coordinator, director. Sorry, sorry, the microphone. They're short, so now I have to do this kind of thing. And with me uh this afternoon is evening is also Christy Miranda, director of accountability and TIA. All righty. Well, I want to get us started guys with our presentation. Um and I want to root our work in what is it that we are trying to give some information to you guys and I say that those are joining us
122also online that this is anformational item only. There is no action that we'll be taking on specifically on this item but that is to give Dr. Lee and the board some direction according to what we are doing in our department and we are rooted on here on priority number five strategic and operational stewardship. Sometimes programs have to look at the uh whole picture and see how how they play a role in the district's operational plans and that sometimes involves or includes uh dual language programming uh um across our district. So um as you saw on the agenda item, this is a proposal to possibly move uh Rodriguez dual language programming to McQueeny Elementary. There's a couple of things in before we go into the data. Um, back in February, you guys received a demographic study
123where you guys got a lot of information regarding um, how the district is growing. There a couple of things that we noticed to on the previous demographic study is that the growth at McQueeny Elementary just did not come and it is coming at a slow pace. And so we have a beautiful campus that is about to open next school year. Um and if we look at the capacity of the current McQueeny going into the new McQueen Elementary, we would not even be able to have capacity of that campus, right? And so we have to um be good stewards of taxpayer money. And so sometimes that involves or includes programming changes happening. In the time of being here in Sigin ISD, um there's been several program changes that includes special ed programs that sometimes have to
124move. Um when I was here, dual language was moving from McQueen to Rodriguez um a long time ago. Um but uh dual language also moved from Vogle to uh to Rodriguez to consolidate dual language teachers and and teachers. So um over time you will experience some programming and proposed changes to um our community. So what you have here in front of you on this slide is currently just a overall program numbers of where we are in dual language at Rodriguez, Pontlon and Kenny. So if you want to just focus a little bit on the Rodriguez numbers, you see there that in total we have um 171 emerging bilingual plus 40 English speakers participating in that program. If we add up all our students in knowledge of language program, we have that total number of 540
125students in our dual language program which essentially what I'm trying to say is we have enough to and I know Dr. Lee talked about this at some points. We have enough students to potentially open a dual language academy. uh we have the the numbers to really staff a complete campus. Not saying that's what we're going to do, but I'm just saying looking now down the future, um districts are really focusing and highlighting uh dual languagemies. It's easier to fund the the campus, it's easier to get the certifications for the teacher and all the resources to that one campus instead of trying to uh you know spread that out through across the district. But just want to point that out to you guys so you guys have that information there. So this is currently um how
126our campuses are are at. Want to provide to you guys our bilingual and general education attendance zone. And so to your left you see the general uh attendance uh zones that we have for at campus. And then we have our separate bilingual attendance zone. And so these are our sister schools. I was I want to say try to say sister schools but there are some campuses like Jefferson that get split in the bilingual attendance zone. uh vogal there is a little bit of that happens a little bit on that as well and then potl as well there are some um students who have to or closer to pot but go to Rodriguez based on the bilingual attendance zone so um as you can tell um the growth um back when this was done was all
127in the kini side and the dual language uh bilingual zone and mcquini was is massive you could tell here on the slide well um kini is pretty packed if you know our numbers and so um just want to give you some perspective in terms of our bilingual zones here and how those are laid out. All right, moving over to projected and these are obviously just um projected numbers as of if we were to take the current dual language students at Rodriguez to McUni, what would that look like? And so on this slide here you have um breaking down the current Rodriguez students and what home campus they belong to. So I also wanted to take the data and break that for you guys BART. So if I take all the dual language students um English
128and speaking students um who are in the program what campus they would be belong to. So you can see the percentages here um the majority uh are McQueeni with 77 of the students uh pass McQueeni Elementary to go to Rodriguez for a dual language program. Um and so just wanted to highlight that for you guys. You see the 64 that are currently uh zone for Rodriguez and then you have the rest of the campuses. Jefferson at 41, Vogle at 16, Winer at one, Potlon, and then we do have some out of district students that join us for our dual language programming. So, I just want to give you some perspective here. There is a little star at the bottom because we are working on including our new kinder uh English speaking students to our dual
129language program. So, it's not a quite straight number because we have to project them to come into us. We are almost there in the 18, but you would add an additional 18 students on top of that because those are 18 English speakers coming into the dual language program. I don't know from what campus yet. I I do know, but we're not finished with the application process yet, but I don't want to skew the the information with those numbers yet. So, um again, just highlighting um the a lot of the students in our dual language program um are from McQueen. And so I remember when I was a principal at Rodriguez, I was like, why do we have the VU language program at Rodriguez when kids, you know, passed McQueeni, we had it at McQueen, right?
130Uh back then and was doing some research, the decision was made because Rodriguez was the newest campus. And so now we're thinking backwards, right? Well, McQueeni has a new campus. And so um it's a good problem to have, right? Uh but definitely I just want to show you some information and some data regarding um our our students here are currently at Rodriguez. All right. So now this is a slide where we're adding the current McQueeni with Rodriguez. And so here you can see the breakdown by grade level uh who we have currently on McQueeni who we currently have at Rodriguez. And then you have grade level totals. So McQueeni will go if we take the current dual language students um to uh McQueen we would go from 311 students at McQueeni. we would be adding
131221 plus that's possible that 18 that we have in the bottom at 532 kids at McQueeny ele elementary and so that puts McQueeny at a good number um of students obviously we we have the capacity for it and there's actually more room to grow at McQueeny if that would be um the plan to to uh propose to make that change. We also want to look this in different lenses. And so we also want to look this in terms of like uh special programs. And so you see here sped we have a total of 88 uh sped students at McQueeni would be adding 31 from Rodriguez making a total of 119 students and that would be about 22% of that whole campus. 504 we currently attend at McQueeny. We add five 15 students at 3%. And
132then obviously the obvious one emerging bilingual. McQueeni currently only has six emerging bilingual because I currently go to Rodriguez. Um and then we'll be adding 141 emerging bilingual students to um McQueen. Now those are the merging bilingual students. Don't forget that we have the English speaker students in the dual language program but they're not classified as emerging question on that of course. So if we're adding all these from Rodriguez then they will not have that population at all. Well the Rodriguez population will look different right? we will be taking away that those um students from Rodriguez over to McQueen. Hopefully I answered your question. So so Rodriguez will not have a bilingual program. That would be the proposal. Yes. Based on this in this information and also with all the and 504 will they not
133have those programs? No, they do have them but these are good question. These are emerging bilingual that are dually coded. So they're emerging bilingual and special ed or emerging bilingual and 504 or the English speaker that has a special ed IEP or English speaker with a 504. Good question. Thanks for clarifying that that information. A clarifying question. So are we saying that we would just have one campus then? That is No, we would keep we would keep Kenny with dual language and potl um and then we would to essentially proposal move the dual language program back to McQueen. Okay. Again, we're looking at the capacity of the building, right? How do we how can we fill the seats at McQueeny? um we see the growth is it's coming but slow right but if we do
134a program change then we could better serve the community of McQueeni those students that belong to that zone and that we could also um essentially fill seats at McQueeni are we looking at that for next year or in the future? Um it's it's in the future it could be for next year. Um I know also part of this process we have to possibly look at new attendance zones to reshuffle some numbers like I said to help some numbers at Kenny. Um, and so this is sort of a a snowball of of things that would happen because if you also think about this, we take kids from Rodriguez, but then what is that Rodriguez at? That leaves Rodriguez at half capacity. So then you have to think of potentially um, and I'm not Dr. Lee, you
135would have to call for um, restructuring lines so that you start moving some folks from Kicki and start helping with the the overcrowding towards that side of the district. Yeah, chime in just real quick. Uh one of the things that I think is important for us to acknowledge is at the very beginning uh two things that Mr. Ariola mentioned. Uh one there has been no decisions made on dual language movement at all. Um despite maybe some rumors that are out there. Uh what we are looking at is we're trying to figure out what the best options are. Uh we are likely the second thing that he mentioned is that there's a lot of talk um among other districts across the state uh where you start finding campuses that specialize in specific things. So you might
136have a fine arts academy campus that that embeds that in the work that they do. For us, a dual language academy campus would make the most sense. Um we're probably two or three years away from even being able to structure that in a way that is extremely successful. But I think long-term plan likely what what you would see coming for you or towards you um to look at is eventually us making one of our campuses a dual language academy campus. Um that would be consolidating all of our dual language programs into one campus that functions as a full campus that is a dual language academy rather than having a dual language program within individual campuses that are al also functioning in non-dual language classrooms. Correct. Um and so I think that that's like a long-term
137plan. Um but that's not anything that would happen immediately or in even the next couple of years. It's it's going to take quite a bit. Mr. Ariel and I have had some conversations on that. Um we're just not at that place yet. We're not we're not ready to even say that we're ready to go with that. Um ultimately what it comes down to is we're going to have to talk about attendance zones. We've brought that up as a board uh ever since the uh demographic study was brought in as we look at Kenneck and we look at Vogle specifically having much higher numbers uh in in those campuses. Uh we're going to have to talk about attendance zones probably over the next year. Um that's just that's the only way that we're going to be
138able to restructure uh and get into a spot where our campuses have a little bit more similar population numbers uh rather than one campus extremely large and one campus extremely small on correct just to add historically when every time we open a new elementary school we do that we do we just zoning around so we should kind of expect that with the new mood school right right that's at I mentioned earlier when I was principal, I was like, "Hey, you know, I was an assistant principal then than then principal." But I was like, "Well, these kids pass their campus to go to another campus." You know, the bus routes are longer for those kiddos um that going from a Queeny. Um so definitely it would I know for there's always a two sides of the
139co coin. For some of those parents, hey, I go back to my home campus or my neighborhood school. Of course, the students that are participating in the program, obviously, they have to travel further, but I will talk to you a little bit more about that here in the a couple slides. And then next I'm going to pass it over to Miss Miranda because we also want to ensure that this is not just a physical move of students. We want to know what happens with accountability, right? If we merge campuses together, what does that create? Where does that leave Rodriguez? What does that put McQueen at? And so I'll pass it over to Miss Miranda so she could go over our accountability data. Yeah. Yep. So following kind of after what the state does, but they
140gave us some like whatif data. This is some what if data. So we looked at uh the 25 accountability and we looked at the students that were um in the dual language program last year in 2425 and we um look to see where would their home campus have been and then we moved that data back and then we recalculated some scores. So u domain one student achievement um that's just approaches meets and masters. How did student per how did students perform? Take the average of those three and you get a scaled You can see before the change, Rodriguez um was a D and McQueen was a C and then after the change and you can see the changes that it made between the approaches meets and masters and um the overall scaling of that domain.
141Not a huge huge difference. um about a six point or about 11 point difference in um from before versus the similar scores after. So then we looked at domain part two. This is where we looked at academic growth. This is how students had performed the year before versus how they did this year. And it looked at fourth and fifth graders for reading and math. So a smaller subset of students um and it didn't include science scores. And so, oh, sorry about that with my hand. Um, so then you can look at before before change for Rodriguez, uh, 63 with a D and then McWeeny, they had an 82 with a B, um, in 25 and then after the change, what you'll notice is that, um, Rodriguez had the 62 with a D and then McQueen
142had 75 with a C. You'll notice the denominator of the total assessments included changed significantly. Accountability always looks at domain one, domain 2 a academic growth and then it looks at 2B which is relative of performance and 70% of accountability is whatever is the best of those three. That's the reason we looked at those three because it would have been 70% of the accountability rating. So the next one we looked at was domain 2 is relative performance. What this does is it takes your domain one average of a bridge meets and masters and then it looks at the percentage of economically disadvantaged students that are served on that campus and it compares you to other like schools with similar economically disadvantaged percent. And so you can see that with that scaling um the before change
143uh 65 for Rodriguez and a 74 which is C for McQueen. And then after that change oh sorry and then after that change the 69 with the D and then the 70 with the C for and you can also see the changes um the what if change had this had change last year with our economically disadvantaged percent at each one of those campuses. So, so to me looking at all these domains for accountability, this is a bad decision because it looks like the accountability goes down for all three categories. Like it it it does it does kind of spread things back out. Like if you were to think about like a grade, right? made a C and someone made a D and we kind of averaged them together and spread them back out. Yes, it
144does kind of level them. Um, we did not look I did look a little bit into domain three. Domain 3 has a whole lot more. Um, one big change for domain 3 is that neither school would not have an EL proficiency rating because there were still enough students to still have an EL proficiency rating with our students that were served that would have stayed at um, Rodriguez in the life skills and this is projecting that all the students that are at Rodriguez actually moved to MC. This was like a what if like had we made what I'm saying in your what if model All of your students that are currently at Rodriguez in the EB program actually move to McQueen. Yes. But for those families that choose not to have to drive their children all
145the way up to the northern part of the school district and remain their students at their home campuses at that point. Then we lose those EB students. They fall back into a normal classroom. And that brings everything back down for Bogle, for Potline, and for those other campuses. Because if the parents choose not drive their students to McQueeny, then those students fall back to their home campuses. So then those h home campuses go down because they have students that were EB but are no longer in the EB program are in the regular program. Was that part of the projection too? Parents could opt out obviously bilingual services for their their child. Um this is one of the hardest reasons why having bilingual programs at separate campuses creates this kind of tension for parents because yes
146driving to a campus that's closer to uh my child's school um depends on that. Um and so when we put programs at different schools uh the parent makes a choice of okay I don't want my child anymore. Uh going a little bit more detail on your question. Yes I'm a fourth grader next year I have to move to McQueen for example right? Um I don't want to go to McQueen because it's too far away. Well, you got all your programming on following the language allocation plan. Now I'm popped into English classroom. Fifth grade is probably not a good example, but like first grade or kinder, right? I received all my primary instruction in Spanish. Now I'm going to an all English classroom. Well, that's a whole year that I'm, you know, I'm swimming and trying
147to figure this out because I'm in the English classroom. Now, this is where I have conversation with parents about you want to keep the kid in the program. Um, first of all, this is the services that you, you know, you're entitled to have. Might not be be at the place that you have, but we're looking at what could be best for the kid. I understand that might be some differences for parents in terms of bus and transportation. Those are things that we currently do already. We provide transportation for all of bilingual students who are going to not their home campus. Looking at the opposite side, the McQueen kids that pass McQueen to go to Rodriguez, they, you know, they they they have a choice of staying at McQueen. They don't they come to Rodriguez, right?
148only six of them decide to stay back and all those six for example that are in the number are not all Spanish speaking students we do have some Chinese speaking students Ukrainian that cannot take they could participate into a language but obviously they're going to go the ESO route but there is potential for that um but you know so it's looking at also both ways is that those EB students also make that travel to their campus that is not their home campus yet opt in to be part of the program because um they want the child to be biterate right so they opt so yes you could have done both routes you could have parents I said you know, I want to be part of the program. Um, and I'm going to work really hard
149to say don't do that because you that's a disruption to the kid. Work together. The program location might be changing, right? Um, but we want to do the best thing for your kiddo and plopping them out of the program um has some some drawbacks to to that child. But yes, that is a good point to make. I I understand we're talking like Rodriguez and McQueeny, but when you also throw in the 57 students coming from Jefferson and Bogle, right? And especially like who are at the southern part of the district and now you're taking to the school that's at the very northern. So you're basically going from Stockdale to New Bronals. Yeah. Like that's big news. So then those students are left back in Bogle or left back in Jefferson and they don't move to
150McQueen. So then they'll bring those campuses like you said. swimming for a year trying to figure it out. So then those students bring those campuses down as well. Well, and they potentially can, right? And so what we talk about also with our dual language parents, our English speaking parent too is um these are parents that are opting out to the program already. So they know that um it's not their home campus, right? And there's parents that really committed to wherever the program is. I had some parents email me already of like, hey, if it moves to McQueen, count me in. Like my kids still going over because that campus is beautiful. Um it's, you know, I want my continue the program. That is going to be my child's priority to be continue to be by
151literate and working towards that that program. So there are obviously some circumstances where that could happen and our team is ready to hey if that's a situation to talk to parents and say hey I know that you're thinking of you know logistics but we're here to support your child you know and ask you to stay in the program um because dropping out of that obviously sets you back could set you back a as you have received emails about that I have received the same emails saying that they're not going to go to McQueen. Yeah. Yeah. I think the challenging part is that there's going to be some type of change over the next year or two with our dual language programs. And so the question is what's the right change for us because we're going
152to have to make that just based off of staffing numbers alone. The board as a whole has asked me to make sure that we reduce uh campus numbers at Kenny and Bogle specifically. Um if you'd like us to bring what happens if we move Kenneck to a different campus, we can bring you those numbers if you would like. Um, that's a possibility, too, but we're going to have to make some type of shift somewhere based off of our numbers right now. Now, redrawing lines is probably one of those options that could do that ends up redrawing dual language lines also. Correct. Um, which is going to put challenges in there. Um, and so one way or another, we're just giving you the information ahead of time. Like I said, no decisions have been made. Um,
153and no decisions, again, there's never been a decision made on this. We are purely looking at what is the possible best options for us because we know we're going to have to make some kind of changes. I have a couple questions. Yes. Um the first one is you showed a map of the bilingual attendance zone. Correct. Um if that were to get changed, what is the process for that change? Is there a formal board approval or is that something that happens? Go. I I believe that that would be a formal board approval. I don't know what the district has done in the past, but that would be something that as a superintendent, I would bring to you to vote for what those lines look like. There's a whole process. I served in that committee several
154years ago where you have to hire a demographic company. They bring some fancy software. They'll upload all our students. Um, and then they're centrally just playing with lines. They're drawing lines and saying, "Okay, this is how much this campus would be. This kid has his programming and they draw they just they just play with it until you you the district feels comfortable with it." Um, drawing lines always makes parents uncomfortable with it. you know, it's which is different than the lines for voting for districts. It's important to note that these are not like district lines for representative lines. Uh these are student attendance zones is what they are. Yeah. Yep. So in order to switch the campus from Rodriguez to McQueen, you're not recommending the attendance zones change. Just the what's being looked at right
155now is that the school is not the map. Correct. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. But that still still may be a lot of students at Kicki and Bog, right? Correct. Yes. Well, but when you mentioned earlier, you move those to Rodriguez. No Rodriguez stays at a lower number, you know? So, you have to now fill seats at Rodriguez. So, this is how you start looking at then the domino effect of redrawing lines to start bring some of those kids over to Rodriguez. So, it's the they're trying to shift students towards this side of the district for attending these elements. Yeah, that's that's part of the challenge is that right now what we're looking at is two physical buildings. The reality is we're going to end up looking at all seven buildings at the elementary level
156over the next year. Um like there's there I don't think that there's any way around it like it's going to end up affecting the entire district when we start looking at how to redraw those zones. My uh my other question is budget implications. I know it's early in the process. Um would you project those budget implications to be with moving these students transportation cost. Is this an increase in cost? Is this a decrease in cost? Or is it fairly it would seem fairly neutral? Those kids that at McQueeny obviously are now at their home campus area, right? So that reduces the bus transportation for those students obviously and I'll go to my considerations like this is part of the thing that we're talking about. We will have to uh work on transportation for our students
157who are at the Jefferson area, Rodriguez area. Obviously not moving to that route. It's pretty much a a wash um of what it would be in terms of the cost for that. In terms of the bilingual budget aotment, that does not change anything. It does not change staffing. We don't kick kids out of the program. We don't, you know, get rid of teachers. Um we just this program just simply moves to to a different campus. There's a lot also, you know, you can look at as cost or logistics. We do have to move curriculum, libraries, you know, Spanish texts that have to move from that campus to the new campus um because we do have to continue to offer those kind of supports for the students. Um I remember at McQueeny helping all moving all
158the bilingual stuff from McQueen over to Rodriguez. Um but definitely um that that's you know obviously manpower to move those. I have one one last question. If this um change were to happen for the 26 27th school year, change is always hard, correct? Um what would kind of be the proc the timeline of notification for parents to know that the change is so I know we worked on um I am prepared as you know as a director to say hey this Dr. says we want to make a change for next school year. Um obviously we'll have to notify parents of with the letter of a the program change will happen. Um I will probably incorporate some kind of information nights present this to parents about why the decision has been made. I don't want to
159just parents making the switch of what happens. Um you know talking to some parents that already have reached out to me when I essentially know this presentation that okay I see why we're possibly going that route. might not be happy with it, but I understand that there's no sometimes, you know, we have to make some changes that go with this, but we notify parents, obviously, notify teachers. Um, I've had communications with both Miss Eckles, Miss Santiago, and Miss Riley because we have precares going on to Rodriguez. um about just early conversations about this, how to approach this with parents um because we want to make sure we give them the correct information, not panic and but say, "Hey, this is where the district is looking at so we could um inform parents and then we
160know make the changes as appropriate." Dr. Lee obviously will give guidance as to when if if this happens, we don't have to do that route. There's also all the options to look at, you know, do we move to language academy into, for example, say Jefferson, make a more centralized location. Um and so I mean it could just be I just pick Jefferson but you know you can pick any other campus potlon or Rodriguez right to be the dual language yeah campus but definitely there's other options to consider um but change change is coming at some point for the entire district we we've also looked at we talked about initially um you know what if we do a phase in approach with some type of change and so starting with next year's kindergarteners is when we'd
161make a move was quick to point out though like we then potentially split families um and so we could have one sibling attending one campus and a separate sibling attending a completely different campus. And so we're trying to be very cognizant of this. Um, and that's why I go back to like we're presenting this just as anformational item. Like we've we've intentionally not made any decisions because we're trying to find out what the best possible decision is. Uh, taking into consideration how everyone feels about that knowing we're not going to find 100% agreement in any decision that we have to make. Um, I think that's the hard part for us is that we want to and I just don't know if it's going to be possible for us to. Something else to consider I know
162Miranda brought this as last year's accountability data with star scores coming up you know here we could work on projections with actual current data of what would it be if this would have happened this year right and we did that we could we could turn around that um that information if you guys would like to see that what would be when do we get the new ones new accountability starts trickling in Friday so when once we get full reports then we could start looking at current students what would that be this year because that would be just to clarify we get some raw data on Friday we don't get accountability on Friday. I can see a glimmer in a few eyes up here and so I was like, whoa, we get some raw data. We
163don't get accountability yet. It's not full. Yeah, it's not full scores, anything. Yes, but I just wanted that once again, uh, McQueen is going to hold 850 students. That's what it's built for. Yep. We currently have, I believe, 324 McQueen total enrollment right now. Not just do language, the total. know that you you always build it just in case there's growth around that area. But eventually, I guess what I was trying to point out is every time we open up a new middle school, we always have we look at the attendance zone. And I think along with that is going to be the bilingual attendance zone at one point in time. We don't know when, but we're going to have to eventually do that. I think one more thing I would like to address on
164this, you said staffing considerations. I think being in the Rodriguez campus, um, there you have your bilingual teachers, right? But that school is probably the most bilingual school as a whole from when you walk in the front door to every aspect of that school is bilingual. And I don't see that being the same way at McQueeny. You can move just the teachers and just the pair professionals, but there's still the people who are working in the cafeteria. There's the there's the people working in the front office. They're all they're they might not be getting paid for dual language, but they are dual language. I've seen it. I've been there and and I think that's one of the bigger considerations too, especially with dealing with our families who um are also not dual language. Correct. And
165having being able to communicate to them, I think that's a real consideration before moving to No, definitely. Um I don't think that that's No, definitely. Um our counselor at MCUI is fully bilingual. Um and so that's that's a plus to take. I know there's some administrative um changes that are happening with um So definitely you know there has to be some strategic planning. Um I had registars text me like hey am I moving and like we it's just anformational item but definitely yes because the Spanish speaking components of that also help the campus operate and communicate with our parents. I I think that also um goes back to what we talked about at the very beginning. Long-term goal is a dual language academy where everybody in the campus is dual language and like we're running
166a a fully immersive dual language program rather than a program within another campus. Yeah. Like currently example at Rodriguez they hired for a new counselor because they have a new counselor to try to find a counselor who's bilingual were asking for a diamond and Mr. Sant was like I tried Robert I tried. I know you did, but you know, it's just hard to find um also specific people, music teachers, um registars, counselors that also speak Spanish um to be able to do that. But our principles are trying really hard with staffing also to be able to have people um who could be representative of our students and their parents to feel more welcome at their campuses. Yeah, I agree with the comments that Josh made as far as you can see it. You walk in
167there and you see it. So, one of the key components would be to once again, I like the idea of the language academy eventually. Yep. to somehow transfer that culture to wherever it goes. Yep. And it's brand new too. I know when we thought about this at McQueeny when Alto Rodriguez um all the signage you see in blue, red and white, that was all me when I started as a principal there. Um and that we have this a culture for that campus that needs to that happens. So I know we're talking long term here for the uh dual language academy two to three years. So if we make this move to McQueeny 26 27 and then two to three years We move it back to Rodriguez, we move it back to Jefferson. It seems like
168if we have a kindergarter or first grader who starts at Rodriguez, goes to McQueen, back to Rodriguez or goes to Jefferson before they're even fifth grade. It seems kind of silly to me to be making all these moves around if we're looking longterm. Long term being two to three years, establishing a dual language uh academy. I feel like moving to McQueen is a lot of waste of resources. Let me uh just let me show you another perspective of this. We have a lot of uh students from Navaro coming to a dual language program because Navaro does not have dual language program. You also have students who parents who are in the New Bronul zone, the Grove Lane area who have reached out, hey, could we be part of your dual language program? So, McQueeni might
169be the option of being marketable a dual language academy there possibly. Not saying that that would be the dual language academy, but you can look at it's closer to New Bron Falls. I have more more people trying to um I've had folks saying I don't like the new Buffalo's you know programming I would like to come to Susin it's like hey come on over right so definitely look it could be just marketing too depending on on if McQueen is could be that campus I'm saying it's going to be but I do see your point I did had this conversation with Dr. we don't want to move kids to move them again because then you know it's of course parents get upset like hey I just moved a couple years ago and you're moving me again.
170Um so those are actually uh points of consideration to know hey we want to be really really thoughtful about how this program how this is going to work. Um and then what does that look like for the long run right how if we're looking at the language academy where would that be I definitely appreciate trying to pull students from New Bronals and Navaro more than anybody else but I will tell you that my primary focus are the people here in Oh no definitely no definitely. There is there's a large group though at Rodriguez that is McQueen kids and they would just be going back home. Well, that's true. And the thing is, you know, you say that the school's going to be 800 and it'll take a while and it's probably not because if you
171look at all the developments right around the school up the hill, everything, it'll take a year or so for all those to actually get going and we'll have a bunch of kids. So, my question kind of fits in with that. Um because I think um you know when we started this dual language program one of the carrots was that you got to go to Keny which was um a soughtafter campus at that time like people were really trying to get in there and it didn't have the growth that it that it does now and so there were a lot of people who um put their children in the dual language program in order to attend Kini and so I would anticipate with a brand new beautiful school that is McQueeny that it will be that
172way as well. There'll be some people who want their children to attend McQueeny and so they'll put their children starting in kindergarten in dual language. So my question is um if we were to make a change this year or even the following year um how would we reopen the transfer window um for this coming year and would we take additional kindergarten ations for this year if we were to move everything this year. Right. So transfer asking teachers or Transfer for students because now there may be some people who um the McQueeny line comes right into into town um right to the potl line. Correct. And so there are neighborhoods that I could imagine where those students may say, "Look, I can I'm going down the street to Rodriguez right now, but Potlon is just as
173far away as closer." Right? So they may want to transfer to Potlon. Or there may be some people who say, "Oh, hey, I want to sign my kindergartener up for for dual language." Or or um maybe they want to sign the kindergartener up for dual language. Now, the third grader needs to go to McQueeny as well and they're coming from from wherever. Would we reopen either of those things, the applications for kindergarten or the transfer window for students? So, let me first start saying that in a dual language program setting, we have to have that our two-way model, right? That's it has to be have Spanish speaker, have English speakers in their classrooms. Um and so we would try to first move all the students from what would be that campus to that campus to
174maintain the program integrity of our two-way and not go to a one-way right um I would suggest that we have a suggested possible transfer list and saying probably parents would it be interesting with going to potlan because we can't just easily then overcrowd potlan in that situ situation um and we could possibly consider hey this is a possible transfer to to go to potlan to see how many parents would like that option with understanding that in this This is a hypothetical talk, right, that we would talk about. This is not a granted yet. We would have to see how many students that is. Um because we also have dual language students whose um sibling is not a dual language program. They have like a one kindergarten or first grader in dual language and a fourth
175grader. They're not going to just want to move that dual language kiddo. They're going to move the whole family. And so definitely um we would have to consider and to see how how would that be. And I would put it with a big question mark. We feel this potential transfer is not a guarantee yet. We have to discuss this to see if this is doable. pot for example, open that up and then we make the move if if it's feasible, but we'll have to look at that data. I hope that answered your question. And then what about um uh it can people still sign their kindergarteners up at this point for the dual language program? Yes, they can still sign up a student for the dual language program. I did um when I had the
176interest meetings told parents that programming is subject to change. I obviously want to open the window for like, hey, this might be possibly a move, but just letting parents know that this is where your child will be going and that the district, you know, could possibly move the district to a different program to a different campus. Um, so just letting me know ahead of time that that they could that be a possibility. Yes, students can still sign up for the dual language program. We've had a good turnout on the first information session. We had an additional information session a couple weeks ago and we are about like maybe five spots available left on each campus. Um and so we hold off on those because as summer registration starts happening um we have our teachers um
177and our registars offer that option to the parent as they register incoming kindergarters and then they say yeah I would like to go to the to the campus and then those spots fill up pretty pretty fast and so we're looking we're on track to meeting our goal for this year and having those students you know those 18 that we talk about um and that was Rodriguez but um we're doing pretty good with the number of students we've had a higher number of of u parents that already have asked asked if dual language moves to McQueeny. Um like a fourth or fifth grade because they go to do go to dual language. I'm like no you have to start the program from kinder. Um and so fortunately you know that wasn't no answer to them but
178there is some attractiveness happening because it is a new a new campus out there. It is it is and the state does provide more funding for the EVs but not for the I missed your question. Sorry. Oh that the state does provide extra funding for the emerging bilingual. They do they do provide uh we get extra a bilingual a lotment plus we get an extra funding for the all the students who participate English speaking student that participates in the bilingual program. Yes. So also for the non emer and actually the aotment uh amounts increased with this last legislative session. Not too not so much but they did increase a little bit to bring some extra revenue. Um but it is um keeping our dual language students is also uh revenue generating for our district. Again,
179information item. I know there's a lot to chew on, guys, and get your your your brain going on where the district is going. Um, as we This is a good thing, guys. We're growing. We have to look at where programs sit. Um, how do lines get redrawn to make that better? We know accountability gets impacted one way or the other, moving kids left or right. Um, but we just want to be able to give you guys, you know, as much information as possible. Miss Miranda and I were here welcome to create as many scenarios and uh models as possible to try to see what the best move might be for our district. Um and so again this is just information item to to help you guys I do I have one last question after kind
180of going through the entire presentation kind of back to the beginning. What what is the rationale for like the elevator speech of why why move? Well, and going to the point it's just looking at the seats of McQueen, right? You have a campus built for a certain number of kids is will not be as a taxpayer. You see have a campus that is not feeling, you know, being occupied with students. Um, some people might be okay with that. The growth, you know, there is some growth that might be happening out there and filling those seats with time. Um, I don't have a, you know, crystal ball to see how much that would be, you know, how fast that would fill up. Um but then you would also to look at hey how do we operate
181a campus running a full campus AC for only 300 you know students might be something to consider you know cost effectiveness as well and then you look at kini and you look at vogal and you see the numbers of overflowing y this attendant zones has it's always a good point has two sides to everything it affects opens one door closes another it affects you know everybody but definitely it's the fun part of programing and enuring that we are definitely um being steward of our taxpayer money and resources and buildings to ensure that we're operational also performing at the best capacity we can just have one more question and one more comment of course first of all thanks for the presentation it was great I know it required a lot of work to put all this
182data together and since I've been on the board I don't think I've seen well we haven't had that this many discussions of the dual language program as you mentioned earlier there was there's some history there over the past six years but in your opinion long- term We do have an dual language academy. Do you think we'll have a better retention for certified teachers? Oh yeah, definitely. Yes. Right now, the amount of waiverss that we have to put in for our teachers uh because they're not bilingual certified um will reduce because that is um you talk about culture, right? You build a culture of that campus. It's now the entire campus that is involved in that. Um and I've seen for example really good friends with the principal at Mark Twain who is the two language
183academy in San Antonio. He's like I don't lose teachers on my campus. they stay with me. They're certified. We grow them. Um they stay with us. Um and the dual languagemies um in certain districts outperform some of the other campuses. Um and so definitely um that's something you know that good look to look at is that retention will stay. It'll be easier also to fund you know um our teachers in terms of certifications and make sure they're all in one place and not apply for those waivers. It adds a lot. I know you guys know about the waivers. when we apply for a ESL waiver or bilingual waiver 10% of the bilingual a lotment is is not is reduced but it's taken away to uh use on professional development to get those teachers certified so
184I can't use them on instructional material anything I have to use it towards getting teacher certified that's about $80,000 this year that any further questions again I'm here to take any requests and continue to look at the crystal ball of what this might look like for the district I know that the programming is part of this. Thank you guys for your time and any questions. Okay, thank you. Yeah, Miss Miranda gets to stay with us now for um notice of intent to apply for federal grants. So, this is just an compliance uh piece and I just needed to let you know that we are um intending to apply for federal grants um so that we can continue to support our programs. Uh the grants that we are going to apply for and I forgetting to
185do this, I apologize. Uh title one part A for approving basic programs. Title one part B this supports our students that are um in JDC. Title Part A title which um is teacher and principal quality title three language acquisition that's our emerging bilingual um that Mr. Ariel was speaking about title four part A well-rounded educational activities and then idea which is for our special education and our idea B preschool and then our Perkins which is for our CTE programs those are the um that we intend to apply for. Um, I look forward to learning all the new fun things about federal programs. I'm trying. Cindy's shoes were big to fill. So, any other questions? Thank you. Um, next, the future school library council appointment. Dr. uh board. As you know, uh we are on uh
186target to appoint a school library advisory council. Um I just wanted to give you a little bit of information on what that has to consist of. Uh it has to consist of at least five members with each member of the board getting to appoint someone. Uh which is kind of humorous that it says at least five members when there's seven members of the board. So there's at least seven members because all of you get to make an appointment and all of you have to make the same number of appointments. So, if one of you does, we're in multiples of seven essentially. Um, and a majority of those voting members must be persons who are parents of students enrolled in the district and who are not employed by the district. Um, so the majority, if we're
187going to have a a slack of seven, four of them must be parents that are nonmp employees of the district. The other three could be parents that are employees of the district or other positions. Um, but essentially now is your time to start thinking through uh individuals that you might want to consider uh for that appointment. Um, and just be prepared at one of our upcoming next regular meeting in June to possibly share those names for some discussion with like an a board vote affirmation of affirmation of whatever those individuals are going to be probably in July for a start next school year. So is there that information a process by which if someone really wants to serve on this and they live in a particular area just so if there's someone who really wants
188to serve and I may not know them how they can go about like I would like to do this that so that's a decision for you guys as a board to make if you want that to be an application process that you then go through the applications um we can certainly get some information out there um but that That's entirely an option. We also could send some information out to parents specifically through Parent Square uh and see what parents are are interested. I'll have to get with our communications team just see what that looks like, but that's entirely a possibility. Also, I would like that. I mean, it doesn't have to be a formal application or anything, but it might just be, hey, fill out this Google form so that we've collected your information. Sure.
189I wouldn't want to discount someone who would really like to serve and I just don't know them. Yeah, certainly. Yeah, that's it's entirely up to you guys on how y'all want to go about that process. Uh I have two questions. um for those board those members that are appointed um if that person decides not to serve on the committee anymore is there a reappoint? Are we each responsible for making sure that there is a committee member constantly appointed do that? I do not believe so. I think once they're appointed they're just appointed uh and they they serve for the year. uh the committee has to be put together and and has to stay in effect for no shorter than three years. Um so for at least after you appoint there's a three-year period. It doesn't
190mean that it's the same people for all three years. You could reappoint each year if you want to do so. Um but you you are required to have that school library advisory council um for that three-year period. Uh, I would assume it's very similar to the shack, the school health advisory council, um, where you appoint individuals and if if they attend their meetings, then they attend their meetings, but you have to have a quorum of people to be able to do it. I would assume that it's a similar process. This is one of the things that came out of I can't remember if it was Senate Bill 12 or Senate Bill 13. Um, it's not very clearly defined. Um, there's also no statutory timeline on how long you have to establish this. So, that was
191one of the questions, too. you you you've got time and so that's why uh you've got kind of the summer to look at it, figure out what you want to do because there's no requirements in how long for movement to happen. Are there established action items about what this committee does or Yes. So all of that is detailed in board policy EFB local and EFB legal, I'm sorry. Um and it says specifically so the slack uh would have uh six specific duties. Um polic they are required for recommending policies and procedures for the acquisition of library materials consistent with local community values. Uh they would recommend to the board whether library materials proposed for acquisition under education code 33026 are appropriate for each grade level of the school and campus for which library materials are
192proposed to be acquired. Uh they would recommend if feasible joint use agreements or strategies for collaboration between district and local public libraries and community organizations. Uh the removal of any library materials that the Slack determines to be harmful material material containing indecent content or profane content that is not that is inconsistent with local community values or age appropriateness. Recommending policies and procedures for processing challenges received under that uh and uh the action to be taken under the district's response to a challenge. Essentially, once a slack is appointed, any library challenges go through the slack. There are no more multiple committees. That committee hears every library challenge. So, if we have a hundred library challenges, they've got to hear them all. And they have 90 days to do it. Yes, ma'am. That's correct. That's what I
193mean when the law's not very clearly fleshed out on this particular piece. That was just an information item for you guys to to have an idea to start thinking through. Um, but we can work on uh getting some information out uh to parents to see if anyone would be interested in serving. Thank you. All right. Um 7B, Student Support Services. Dr. Bogle. Um SB546 school bus seat belt study. And we get fire. All right, President Kittinden, honorable trustees, Dr. Lee. We are here indeed to talk about Senate Bill 546. I'm here with Ricky, our transportation coordinator. Uh, this bill is also known as a threepoint seat belt law. So, what exactly is SB546? Well, it is a Texas law that was passed as a direct result of a tragic accident in Bastrop, Texas. Um, a
194Haze Consolidated ISD school bus crashed and a child perished, adult perished, and several people were injured. But unlike a similar law passed in 2017 which said that all new school buses must have threepoint seat belts, this law mandates all buses in our fleet must have threepoint seat belts. Good news is we have until September 1st, 2029. Bad news is we have till September 1st, 2029. We don't have a lot of time to do this when you think about how complex it is, how expensive it is. Okay. So, what does the ISD school board need to know? Well, as you may have heard this lady right here, uh we are in a budget deficit and our budget does not support us going back and retrofitting all of our buses or buying new buses with three point
195seat belts. Um but all the districts in Texas are really in the same boat for the most part. So TEA is doing what's called a seat belt study and they're asking every school district to go before their board and in this public forum uh talk about these things here that they have listed uh the number of buses operated or contracted by that are not equipped with seat belts that are equipped with two point seat belts that are equipped with threepoint seat belts and the estimated cost of the district to equip all buses with three point seat belts. Um, so we're going to give this information to TEA upon completing this board meeting tomorrow. Hopefully TEA is going to come up with a plan to help us with this um or possibly some funds, but we
196shall see. B is now going to take us through the currently Sigin ISD has 87 total buses in our fleet. 66 are 71 or 77 passenger buses and 21 of those serve students with special or specific needs. 36 buses both types are already equipped with threepoint seat belts. 13 buses are currently equipped with twopoint seat belts and they are the special needs for the specific needs buses. 51 total buses need three point seat belts. 38 regular the 71 or 77 passengers and 13 of the students with specific or special needs need those three point belts we're not alone in an article in the San Antonio report that I found superintendents in the area are calling this a classic unfunded mandate if you take a look at this chart you'll see some area school districts that
197start have total bus fle 399 well 351 of those buses would need to be just retrofitted this and that's a cost to them 13.5 million north side ISD the biggest school district in the area has a fleet size 967 and they would need 654 buses 53 seat belts cost million you want to see a district a little bit closer to our size take a look at Harlandale in the middle of that chart um 56 buses in their fleet we have a little more than they 29 will need to be retrofitted at $1.2 million. And this is not replacing buses like getting brand new buses. This is just retrofitting. You can imagine cost buying. Okay, let's talk about we have two types of buses that Bluebirds and the International makes. Um speaking with international, international will
198retrofit buses 201 1 and newer. Um, contingent on a subject to a floor inspection to hold the seats and the seat belts. Eight of our 71 passenger buses qualify and two of the buses for the students with specific or special needs qualify. So, the larger buses are around 33,000 dollars to um retrofit. We have about 262,000 for the 71 passenger and 27,000 for the students with special or specific needs, bringing it to $317,000. Bluebird will not retrofit any seats and they have stated that we will only certify the original OEM seating configuration. We do not approve aftermarket seating modifications. Anyone making modification is responsible for ensuring compliance with all applicable federal motor vehicle safety standards. So therefore, we would still have 51 total buses with no point. that we want to keep our buses ready
199to go. We want to keep that fleet size. It's going to cost us roughly 6 million We add the retrofit cost in 10 buses that are eligible. The only 10 buses that are eligible looking at a price tag um you know we can think about gradual replacement. Yes, over time we do replace buses that are older and new seat belts. But when we're in a budget deficit and I talked about this um you know hopefully reduce that deficit then start thinking about buying new buses but the state of course next there we have applied uh for a grant through a TURP grant through uh TCQ Um, this grant opened on April 29th and it allows the trade in of older model diesel buses for newer, cleaner burning diesel fuel with assistance through Holt Longhorn. Uh,
200they helped us with the grant and we officially applied May 4th. Um, if awarded the grant, five buses would bring 108,000 a piece and one bus would bring 64,000 for a total of $67,000. We could purchase six buses for the cost of two electric buses. Uh, we have discussed that and we are working with the company Highland uh possible addition of six buses. We're still working through the infrastructure additions, direct cost, and excuse me, charging capabilities. She said good news is working on however will not be enough. So truly at this point we are state will do hoping all districts we don't Thanks for a thorough presentation and uh going forward I would suggest never buying buses from Bluebird ever again. I I have a quick question. Yes sir. So we have 36 buses both
201types that are already equipped with threepoint seat belts. Are those buses utilized on the longest trips? Thank you. All right. Next, um item 7 C uh one, human resources, personnel information. Mr. New board. You'll find that there's only resignations on this particular one. We will list the uh new hires as we get closer to the next school year. I just had a quick question. The share drive that has the weekly numbers, are these included in there already? Uh yes, they are. You mean the vacancy report? Is that what you're referring to? Yes, there these are in there. Okay. Correct. Thanks. Yep. Could we get that vacancy report link shared again? I was digging through my email the other day and I could not find anywhere. Keep in mind that a lot of those resignations are
202from certifications u reasons. Um the past couple years we've gotten a um some of the exit interview information will get just let let me visit with Mr. Newman and see like what we've collected and how we can figure out what we can do. Give you some overarching data. Yeah, I'm working on refining that. I know that um a lot of our category that says personal reasons, it's kind of a catchall and I'd like to expand upon that uh a little bit, but I am working on refining it uh to give us some more data. Thank you for the work that you're doing. You're you've got a lot of stuff in front of you. Good luck and thanks. Thank you. All right. Um, next is um item D, business services. The first and Miss Banks. So,
203the first one is um Sig Purching Cooperative Management Ease Report. This is just anformational report that y'all receive every year that details the uh purchasing cooperatives we are a part of and if there is a fee associated with those cooperatives, uh you get that fee. We do try to join as many cooperatives as we can because this means our purchases are competitively bid if we use a vendor that's in one of these cooperatives. You have any questions on those? So then um D2 bond interest revenue instruction instructional break improvements. Yeah. So, I had brought these back to you a couple months ago. I just wanted to update you on a couple of the items because of price changes and in one project that we've added, uh, the ball playground, uh, came in a little bit
204higher, like 50,000 higher than what we had planned. We are still working on that quote, so we'll see what we can do. Uh, the AJBM Barns football bleachers, the price was almost half of what we had originally thought, so that's great news. And then at the bottom you can see Vogle and Potline restrooms renovation. So I have a document that I've shared with principles and they have been adding things that are important most important to them at their campuses and then I sit down with Troy and Bo every week and we go through that. Some of them are work orders and some of them are bigger projects. Uh this is one that we walked and looked at and they're in need of renovations and if we ever were to do a remodel of those campus
205in the future with a bond it'd be something that uh we would have already done. So um it's something that we're we're getting official quotes on at this point and we we estimate about the 350 to 400,000. Y'all have any other questions on that? Yes, sir. Yep. I'm gonna get started. And it's always exciting to get some new middle school bleachers because those Yes. Uh games are longer than you think. Yes. All right. Okay. This is our budget presentation for this month. Um again I want to point out priority five strategic operational stewardship. We are really making an effort as we make decisions and plans in the budget planning process uh to decrease that budget deficit from the 8 million that we had at the beginning of this year uh to zero by 2030. What
206we're going to look at tonight is we're going to look at our aotments funding and spending. That was something that Mr. Bright requested at our last board meeting. Uh our tax rate and revenue. We looked at some funding last month, but we're going to look at how our tax rate affects that funding. And then we're also going to talk about using tier 2 funding to address our budget deficit. This was one, this is what Mr. Bright requested at our last board meeting. Really on this one, I just want you to look at special education. Uh these are our allotments that where we have required spending and we also have a spending amount we're coming from the state. So I've got the actual spending in the darkest color. Uh the required spending in gray specifically for
207special education I have MOE required spending that's maintenance of effort. That is an additional requirement that we have just for special special education that we don't have for the other aotments. Um and then our state funding. So if you just look at special education on this graph, um you can see that our expenditures are are higher than our funding and also higher than our required spending. Oure required spending is typically always going to be higher than the actual aotment spending. Um so here's a closer look at the other allotments. You will see for the most part we spend more than our state funding. Uh the CTE looks like technology got cut off, but the career and technology um our required spending is below our state funding. One thing you have to remember is when they
208make a required spend for CTE in particular, it's only 55% of our aotment. They do that because you can't necessarily say this everything that's CTE in CTE the way that we track them. So, for instance, you have a principal at a high school campus. Uh, obviously they're spending some of their time and some of their salary on CTE, but we can't necessarily say, "Hey, 10% is CTE." So, they let you um code things um in what's called Pick 999 unallocated or in otherment categories. And they don't require you to spend 100% of the allotment. Does that make sense? Obviously, we're spending more in CTE than what our spending says because we can't say that Mr. Munoz is spending 15% of his time on CTE, but he probably is spending more than that. So, there's going
209to be costs associated that don't show up in our spending. Um, also, our costs are not necessarily going to be same when you look at other school districts for transportation, for instance. That's going to be dependent on fuel, driver, routes, kids, number of riders. So you can see our state funding is the orange for transportation, required spending is the gray and our spending is a lot more than that. Um that's because every school district district is different and there's no one set formula. So this is just for y'all's information. Okay. So to get started on tax rate and revenue, I just wanted to go through some definitions. We have our M which is when I say M I mean our maintenance and operations tax rate. This is the part of our tax rate and funding
210that is meant for day-to-day running of the school salaries, utilities, instructional programs, transportation. We also have our INS rate, our interest and syncing tax rate. And this is for buildings and long-term debt. This is specifically to pay off bonds where we have passed a bond with the community and we're now paying off that debt. We can only use that money for capital improvements. One thing that people you hear often when schools pass bonds is they just passed an $80 million bond. Why didn't anyone get raises? It's because you cannot use the interest and syncing rate tax money. You can't cannot use that for salaries. You can only use it for buildings and what you said you were spending the money on when you put it on the ballot. MCR is the maximum compressed tax rate.
211That is the highest M tax rate that the state allows us to adopt before we ask voters for approval. Every year the state's going to collect our values when we get our final values in July and they're going to say, "Y'all grow you all sure grew a lot compared to the other school districts, so you're going to have to decrease your tax rate more." Um, right now we're using our preliminary values to guess what uh our tax rate compression will look like this year. And as you know, that could very well change. There's a reason why they wait until July and August to set that tax rate. Our total tax rate is our M tax rate plus our INS tax rate added together for our total tax rate. Here I put a um history of
212our tax rate so that you could see how tax rate compression has affected Sigin ISD in particular. Obviously in 2021 we had a tax rate uh this 1.3614 for our total tax rate. We did have a little bit lower INS tax rate at that time. Um but now we're all the way down to 1.0828 for 2526. So what does this really mean for taxpayers? This means that they were there are paying about $275 per year less in property taxes for every $100,000 worth of value compared to what they were paying in 2021. So if you have a house that's valued at $250,000 uh in 2021 you would have been paying about $700 more in taxes for that home than what you are paying now. That's a significant decrease. And that's just the tax rate. That's
213also you have to also think about all of the exemptions that have been added that have lowered the values of our homes in Sigin and across the state. Y'all saw this graph in last month's presentation where it shows the the local share and then the state share for our foundation school program. Uh this is a more common graphic that they've shared over the years. Um the gray represents our our local share which is our local tax collections. So this is in 2021 and this is in 2526. So obviously as they decrease the tax rate our local tax collections go down and the idea is that as that happens our the state share increases. And again this is where you hear the state say that they're contributing more towards education. But what you have to remember
214is that the amount of liquid in the glass stays the same. So our funding doesn't increase, but this is very simply how it's supposed to work. You also saw this slide last month. This is our tier one revenue and how um that works and what's included on it. I just wanted to remind you of this because we're going to talk about our tier one tax rate. And I have my houses that y'all have seen before. Um, I've just changed it up a little bit to put it in a different light and and add some additional numbers to it. So, I just want to explain how tier one tax rate and revenue works. So, if you have three different districts, dis district A, district B, and district C, and they all have one house in them,
215and the only difference is the value of the homes. Uh, so district A has a house at 100,000 and district B obviously at 200 and district C at a million dollars. And we're just going to say that all three of those districts have one kid and she's the same kid. She's dyslexic dyslexic so she's weighted a little bit higher. She rides the bus. She travels to and from school the same number of miles. So she's generating the exact same revenue in all of these districts. Now our tier one tax rate is our maximum comp compressed tax rate. That is the rate that goes down if our values increase. If you remember last year, two years ago, you remember that we had a higher property value growth. So, our tax rate compressed more and that was
216when we that was um yeah, two years ago. So, then last year our tax our values didn't grow as much compared to the state and so our tax rate did not compress. That is why we decided not to go ahead and do a Vader at that time because it was going to be an actual tax rate increase. So, for To be simple, we're going to say that this all three of these districts have a maximum compressed tax rate of a dollar and that's their compressed rate. So, district A um they collect $1,000 in tax collections on their $100,000 home. District B collects $2,000 in tax collections on their $200,000 home. And district C collects $10,000 in tax collections on their million dollar home. Now, just to be simple again, the state says, "Hey, this kid
217is worth $2,000 in your district." Um, district A, you only collected $1,000, so we're going to give you some more money. And that is what sigin looks like. And a lot of school districts look like that. Uh, let's say you have a district that collects exactly $2,000. They're not going to get any more money for that kiddo. And then district C, well, she was only worth $2,000. y'all collected 10. So, we're going to take 8,000 and we're going to use that money to fund these other districts that aren't collecting enough money. So, this is our tier one tax rate, the maximum compressed tax rate that the state will set for us. And typically, it has been compressing because our values have been higher compared to the state average. So that $8,000 that you saw go
218away, that's what you hear called recapture and Robin Hood and Sigin ISD has not been a recapture district. So we are not that at this point. Uh this is our foundation school program tier 2. Y'all saw this at our last uh board meeting. This is the enrichment funding. So this is also our enrichment pennies. These are the gold and the copper pennies. When you start talking about our tax rate, this is calculated with our Wada. So we're the state says, "Hey, for every Wada, which is our allotments over the basic allotment, you're guaranteed to bring in so much funding funding per penny per watt." And that is a simple way to say or I don't know if it's simple, but it's it's how they calculate our golden copper. So, let's say that um we have
219the same three houses and we're talking about just golden pennies. So, you're allowed to have up to eight golden pennies. Sigin has six of those golden pennies. The only way that you can add only way that we can add more golden pennies at this point would be through a tax ratification election. So we have six and again we got the same kid at the same three districts and they all three districts have six golden pennies. Um so district A is going to collect $60 in tax collections. Um district B is going to collect 120 and district C is going to collect 600. So let's say that this district this kiddo is worth $120. To keep it simple, it's the same idea. The state says, "Hey, District A, you did not collect all of that, so
220we're going to you you didn't collect your guaranteed yield, so we're going to give you a little bit more money to get you up to that guaranteed yield." Uh, District B, you collected the guaranteed yield, so we're not going to send you any more money. And District C, you collected more than your guaranteed yield, but you can keep that money because these are golden pennies. There's no recapture on golden pennies. There is recapture on our maximum compressed tax rate that portion and there is recapture on another portion of enrichment funding that we barely talked about in the past uh because it was going to be a tax rate increase. So I want to kind of show you what that means um what that means. But first uh what does this mean specifically for Sigin ISD
221as far as golden pennies? So our total tax rate would be our maximum compressed tax rate and our golden pennies and our copper pennies to get our total M and O tax rate. This is not our total tax rate just the M side. We're leaving INS aside from this. Uh our current rate our current maximum compressed tax rate is 6178 and then we have six golden pennies. So our current M tax rate is that 6778. At this point with preliminary values and making estimates um we do foresee a little bit of compression down to this 0.5990. If we were to pass an additional two pennies with a Vader, our new tax rate would be 6790. Now I want you to keep in mind that all we have are preliminary values statewide. So that can change.
222There's, as you all know, um, over the last several years, there's lots of crazy things with property values. Um, so, but at this point, that would be the change. If we did two golden pennies, our tax rate would go from 6778 on the M side to 6790. That's a very small difference. And it would generate about $2.4 million additional revenue beginning in the 2627 school year, which is next year. And that money would be generated every year thereafter. It would change. It's dependent on kids. It's dependent on property values, but it would be basically the same. So also on our tier 2 tax rate, we have the copper pennies. So we have eight golden pennies that were allowed. We have six of them. We could adopt up to nine copper pennies for a total of
22317 enrichment pennies. So same three districts, same kiddo. And let's say that they all have their nine pennies. So, district A is going to collect their tax collections. District B is going to collect theirs and district C is going to collect theirs. Now, the difference in copper pennies is there is a lower guaranteed yield. So, they're not worth as much. Um, and these are the pennies that are often subject to recapture. So, um, district A, they said the same idea. She's worth, um, $340 and you didn't get your guaranteed yield, so we're going to send you a little bit more money. District B, you collected all of yours. Um, so we're not going to send you any more more money. And district C, you collected what she was worth, but she's we only guaranteed you
224would get that much. So, we're going to take that money back and recapture So for Sigin ISD, what does this mean? Again, we have our maximum compressed tax rate plus all of our golden copper and golden and copper pennies to get our total M tax rate. Here's our current rate that you saw on the last slide. And then this is what it would look like if we were to do all nine copper pennies. And I am not um advocating for you to do all nine copper pennies. I just want to give you the information. You can do one copper penny, you can do four, you can do all nine of them. Those are your options. And I'm going to show you what each of those look like so that you know what it looks like.
225Um, just for all of the nine copper pennies, just the copper penny portion, that would be about 3.9 million additional net revenue in the 2627 school year. Now, I say net because that 3.9 million in revenue would be after we paid about $750,000 in recapture. That's for all nine pennies. So, we would be collecting a little bit more than what the state says they guarantee we would collect for those copper pennies per watt. So all 17 if we had all of our enrichment pennies, which a lot of school districts have done this, um the thought process is they want to make the most of their tax revenue and get the most that they can from the state and there are legislative changes every two years. Everything is changing. This is probably something that they're going
226to look at because this does cost the state state money to guarantee a a certain amount of revenue per penny per watt. So if you were to do all 17 of them, um that's what our tax rate would be. It would go from 6778 to 7690. That is a tax rate increase. Um but it would be $6.3 million annually for the school district beginning in the 2627 school year. So, it's a lot of money. What would this mean specifically for Sigin ISD taxpayers? All golden pennies, eight. That is what we tried to get before. Um, and keep in mind it was 49% to 51%. It was so close to passing. Um, just those two pennies for every $100,000 of value for a home, it would be a $120 increase compared to the prior year. So,
227$120 per $100,000 of value for a taxpayer in um in the next year compared to what they paid in the 2526 year. All golden and copper pennies, all 17 of them, you would see an increase to 7690 and taxpayers would see a $9120 increase per $100,000 of that value every year. Y'all have any questions? I'm gonna keep going, but if you feel free to interrupt me. Um, so each copper penny is worth about $434,000 uh in revenue. And that's the net because each of those copper pennies would also generate recapture about 86,000. Very subject to property values. uh we're it would be crazy if that happened and it was exactly that amount because property values are going to change and collections are going to change and kids are going to change. But looking at what
228we have right now if everything stayed the same um with our preliminary values that's what each one would be worth. Here is a chart that kind of it goes through our current M tax rate, our current INS tax rate, our property taxes that taxpayers pay for every $100,000 worth of value, the approximate increase and decrease they would see from 2526 and the additional revenue generated. So across the top we have current tax rate and property taxes. 2627 if we did not pass a Vader our tax rate at this point with preliminary values would decrease to 659. That would mean that taxpayers would see a decrease for every $100,000 worth of value of $19. two golden pennies, they would see an increase of $1 for every $100,000 and we would generate an additional 2.4 million and
229so on and so forth. So one copper they would say see an increase of $11 and we would go up to $2.8 million in revenue. Does that make sense? And again, it's not this simple, but um generally this is how it works. How does this impact our budget deficit? Um, as of now, our current budget for the 2526, we are sitting at about a $5.2 million deficit. Um, things that we're looking at for 2627 student enrollment and attendance. Um, we talked about that before, how much of an impact that makes on our budget. According to historical data and our demographic study, we are expecting a decrease next year. Um but we are really working on attendance and um that will be something you know maybe it'll cancel each other out I don't know we still
230have to look at staff compensation uh we have done a salary analysis with TASBY and so we are working on a model to present to y'all uh in June as far as what that will cost that has to be taken into account for our 26 27 budget also staffing needs um you know We're we're still probably going to be adding staff for different reasons. Uh that happens for lots of reasons. So there are staff that are being added to the budget for next year. We are also looking very hard at attrition and uh that has to happen. So it's it's h we're looking at ways we can do that now and we will continue doing that through June, July, and August. Um, since we're a July 1 fiscal year, we don't have the luxury of
231having what a September one school district knows at the time that we adopt our budget. So, we do what we can and then we amend it. Um, we do know about increased costs. A couple of those are going to be the appraisal district and also our property insurance, y'all. Um, we do have property insurance on the consent agenda this evening. We are looking at about a $100,000 increase in our property insurance. That is not that bad considering we are adding property. So you have to remember we're adding McQueeny, new McQueeny and the A facility. It's a substantial addition. Um and then also for next year career and technology that is something that we have been working on the last year. We've seen some increases in revenue and we um did a CTE audit and we
232have moved forward with a lot of those changes. As many as we can for the 2627 school year we'll do or yeah 2627 we'll have more for 2728. So some of these are going to be hits to our budget and some of these things are going to um help with our budget deficit and CTE definitely will. One thing that I don't have listed on here is special education. That is a increase in our funding that we will see in the 2627 school year. So we'll estimate that the best that we can. That was something that the legislature did pass that didn't take effect in the 2526 school year, but we will see it in 2627. So obviously golden pennies alone would decrease the budgeted deficit by about 2.4 million in the 2627 school year. And
233one thing, I know we've talked about it, but maybe not in a while, is keep in mind when y'all are adopting a budget, um, and you're adopting a deficit of 5.2 million or 8 million or whatever, uh, we have laws that we have to follow, accounting, uh, to pass our audits and there's always going to be a substantial amount of cushion in there. So, we're adopting if we adopt we adopted an $8 million deficit at the beginning of the school year or something like that. But, you know, when we end the school year, our actuals are going to be less than that. Uh when we when we do moves uh amongst our functions, you know, y'all approve the budget amendments between functions. Um at the end of the year, if we said in function 11
234for instruction we were going to spend a million dollars and we spent $1 million and $1, then it's a finding on our audit. So, we we leave cushion in there. So, just keep in mind that the budgeted is not going to be exactly the actual, but when we bring you the budget amendment in June uh for the end of this school year, we'll kind of let you know what we think our cushion is so that you have an idea what actual is compared to budget. So, fader voter approval tax rate election that is what I'm referring to when we talk about golden pennies and an election. This is what the timeline would look like. Um, in August, that is when TEA gives us our preliminary maximum compressed tax rate. And that's really when we can
235really make a decision for sure because then we know is this going to be a tax rate increase compared to the prior year or not. Um, and then obviously we would have to order that Vader by August 17th. So, I wanted to give y'all the information on the copper pennies because um school boards can do a lot to pass faders and y'all know your people in your districts. Um if it's something that y'all need to decide if you want to just look at golden pennies or if you want to consider copper pennies. You would hate to ask for a Vader for 17 to get all enrichment pennies and then it not pass and then not even get the golden pennies. So, it's something to think about between now and August 17th. So, just to summarize
236what we've talked about, both golden and copper pennies are available to the school district only with an election. Uh, golden alone would generate that 2.4 million. Copper pennies would add to that amount about $434,000 every year per penny. And it would also put us into recapture most likely at about $86,000 per penny. It's it's it just depends on your values. So if it just depends on what your values are. It's entirely possible that one year we could have no recapture. Yeah. in the following year we could have recapture and then vice versa we could have recapture in year one and no recapture in year two depending on whether our taxable values increase or decrease compared to the state average. Yeah. So you so our tax rate compression is based on the average value of the
237state which is um and then that dictates how much we collect per penny. So it it's it it can change but copper pennies would throw us into the possibility of recapture. Is there a number that guarantees us recapture or does it fully depend on? So, if we passed one copper penny with the numbers we have now and what we know now, we would have recapture of about $86,000 for one penny. One penny. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Yes. And just keep in mind, it's recapture of about $86,000, but the total penny itself is about half a million dollars, right? So, you're Yeah. So you end up with 400 about $430,000 for that one penny in revenue after you send back about 86,000. So historically uh the legislators do they have they added more pennies? Like for example,
238what was it 10 years ago? They well they've changed the combination of pennies. I can't remember honestly off the top of my head the last time they changed it. It used to be different number of golden but it's been a while. But they've been but they've been adding, but I'm pretty sure they're going to do the reverse moving forward. You know, I mean, if I was them, I would probably look at doing away with some of these. They they've never um they've never decreased or added pennies total. Um since back in 2000, what 25 years ago now, um the tax rate, every school district's tax rate was established as the same tax rate. It was basically a dollar tax rate per $100 valuation. That's what every district in the state was. Um, if you had
239adopted your additional 17 up to 17 pennies, um, that you could do, uh, then you had a$17 tax rate. That's just what every school district's tax rate was across the state of Texas. And then back in 2012, probably. I could be wrong. somewhere around there, 2012ish, um they did where school districts had totally different tax rates like we do now with max with compression and stuff like that. Then they started really hitting compression in 2017 is when compression really became a thing. But the 17 pennies has been the 17 pennies for as long you could access four of them, five of them without even having to call any type of election. The board just had to vote with threequarters majority of the board agreeing to access those five pennies. So most people had a$15 dollar
240six tax rate because that's what you could access without having to do any type of collection. Yeah. School districts I mean the school district I was at was very wealthy. We had a$17 and we sent a lot of we sent more money back to the state than we got in revenue the way that it worked. So yeah it's just yeah feeling the way things are going with the state they're going to make some changes but not it's not going to benefit the district. Yeah. And I mean, so Mo Casey is Mo Casey is who we used if y'all remember last year, last year, two years ago, u for our efficiency audit. Um, and they did help us with some calculations be to kind of verify what we were putting on the b ballot and they
241are looking at this with me. Their recommendation would be to do all all of them. Um, but but we we know our voters. Y'all know your voters. and and um all of them would be maximizing the amount of state revenue that we get. Obviously, it's a lot of money. I mean, a lot. What is it? 6 point I don't know. Go back because I'm tired. Uh $6.3 million in total revenue. That's a lot of money to hit our budget every year. I mean, there goes the budget deficit. Um, I mean, we still need to be responsible with taxpayer dollars and look at places where we may be overstaffed or we are buying things that we don't need to. That still needs to happen. But when you're talking about raises, staff compensation, um, what we could
242do for kids with an additional $6.3 million a year, it's a lot of money. And we projected the increase in utilities for the Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And um, we we've got an estimate. I can't tell you on what we're planning, but um the new McQueeny will be substantial. Yeah. Can we use that money to buy new buses? Yeah. Yeah. And one thing I do want to point out about the buses, it's very similar like when they did the perimeter fencing and uh the requirements for safety, they do a survey and they say, "Hey, how much is this going to cost you?" Which Dr. Vogle's working on right now and ideally you tell them what it's going to cost you by the time it you actually have to do it in 2029. Um so and then
243they do they have historically given school districts money uh to use just for that. So I would expect the same thing to happen with the school bus. So I wouldn't stress too much. I I'm not but just like just don't just to kind of clarify things. So for a bond, we can use bond money to buy buses if it's in the bond. Right. If it transports students, right? And we can you and we can use golden penny money to buy buses. Yes, sir. But we can't use golden penny money to buy facilities to build buildings. We can you absolutely. So we can use it for whatever we want. So for people watching, we can use this golden penny stuff for a lot of different things, including staff. Yes, sir. But we can't use bond money
244for staff. Yes, sir. We only use bond money for facilities. Yes, sir. Capital capital projects. Yes, sir. These things are way more versatile for This is honestly how I feel about it is I feel like this is taking our school back. like we want to spend our money on what we want to spend our money on. We want to give our staff raises the way that we want to. And this is us saying we want to spend our money how we want to spend our money. What's best for the community? It's best for the community. It's best for the kids. It's best for the staff. Yes, sir. So really doing the golden penny copper penny thing is way better than doing a bond in our current situation. Yes. bond bond funds uh onetime funds. We
245get the money and that's it and then we pay it back over the next 30 years. Uh co gold and pennies and copper pennies are continual funding year to year. We pay interest on bonds. We gain interest on pennies if we leave it in the bank. So what was our do you remember what our last bond package was? Our 2022 bond package. Oh man. So there's a whole bunch of things in there. Uh, McQueeny was on 2019. Uh, and then 2022 was safety and security. You mean the total price? Oh, yeah. Total. Oh, I'm gonna have to look. I wasn't here. So, 30. No, it was more than that. Google bond 2022. It'll be there. I was just saying like to get to that level, how many years? You know what I'm saying? I'm just
246trying to do the comparison. We did the bond was like 30 million for example. Yeah. Right. And then We're generating 6.3 million every year with the golden pennies. So in that Yeah. five years, we generate the same amount of money, right? And we wouldn't be having to pay it back. We wouldn't be having to pay interest. We would getting paid interest on it. Just want to clarify. Yeah. and then 2022 was before that. Yeah. Would it be possible to get information um residential versus commercial property values? Yeah. Um because I think something to kind of look at here is that we have a lot of large corporations that have come in who are all paying property taxes for us to be able to look at like they would be sharing the burden of this. It's
247not all residential. It's not individual taxpayers. they would be paying property taxes unless they have some sort of a deal where they're not paying property taxes. We we should get that we should get that in July, July 25th. That's when we get our certified values because I think also kind of knowing what percent is getting paid by residents versus commercial buildings would be helpful as well. Yeah. Yeah, we can provide that and we'll get some figures on any of any of those properties that actually aren't paying property taxes yet. Anything else y'all? Any other questions? Okay, move on to four, five, and six. Uh, these are our financial statements as of April 2026. There's there's not really anything to point out on here. Um, we will bring you amendments at our next meeting and see
248where we think we're going to end for the year. You can see that there's a deficit for our year-to- date actual um the deficit is showing up. Just keep in mind we still have revenue to collect and we also have still have expenses to incur. So, um, child nutrition and debt service. I don't really have anything to point out unless y'all have any questions. Um, next we have new vendors. These are just people who or companies that have responded to requests for proposals. So we can use them or we do or we may not. Uh next we have purchases made over $50,000. Uh this is alsoformational. Um you will see there are some bond funds on here. Um, we since we have a new McQueeny and we have our new egg facility, uh, there's substantial
249grounds work to do at both of those. There is acorage beyond what the building is immediately on. So, we did buy a tractor for each of those facilities that can only be used at those facilities. And then, uh, we did purchase two egg vehicles um, on this here on this report as well. I think last month you saw maintenance vehicles. We purchased a maintenance vehicle for each facility as well. Have any questions? Thank you. All right. Moving on to the consent agenda. Policy be local states that the consent agenda shall include items of a routine and/or recurring nature grouped together under one action item. All such items shall be acted upon by one vote without separate discussion unless a board member requests that an item be withdrawn for individual consideration. The remaining items shall be
250adopted under a single motion and vote as applicable. A approval of board minutes for regular meeting April 28th, 2026. B. Approval of tax collection reports April 2026. C. Approval of proposed budget amendments for May 2026. D. Consider approval of agreement with Texas Association of School Boards for Workers Compensation Coverage and Property Liability and Auto Insurance for the period of July 1st, 2026 through June 30th, 2027. E. Consider approval of board policy be local, DEC local, and deed local and F acknowledge public information act requests for April and May 2026. Are there any board members who want to pull an item from the consent agenda? I move to approve the consent agenda as read. Second. All right. I have a motion for Mr. Right. And a second for Mr. Geta. Any further discussion? All in favor,
251raise your right hand. Opposed. Same sign. Motion passes. 70. Moving on to the action items. 9A. Discuss and take action on recommended on recommendations of library material challenge committee. Mrs. Sylvius. who's been checking in Chromebooks all day. Am I Am I right? And we'll continue to do so tomorrow. And I did it Monday uh breezy with a bunch of uh middle schoolers. But I'm here and we survived. But it's good. It's all good. Um okay. So, good evening, President Kittinden, Dr. Lee, and school board trustees. Tonight, I would like to present the reports and determinations on the books listed for you in the schoolboard agenda for your consideration and approval. As you'll see, the committees made up of 122 volunteers who read over 987 hours recommend that all books reviewed remain in the high school
252library with the exception of Allegedly by Tiffany Jackson. Do any board members have any questions? I don't have a question. Um, I just want to make the statement. I read the book Flamer um and found it extremely bolder um throughout the book. It's a graphic novel um that has um several uh several of suggestive language. Um there is they talked about in the report about the tent scene um which I found extremely bolder. Um if any board members are interested in more description I'm happy to give more description but I have a little bit different perspective on that book because I was a middle school teacher for for years and a lot of it for eighth grade. I actually found this book to be very authentic. Um, I think the main story has to do
253with bullying and coming of age of a young man who doesn't quite fit in with the group and has um he's short, overweight, Asian Filipino, uh not like the other guys, and they tend to bully him and his things that he goes through. mature imagery and language. However, there's really nothing explicit. It's words and even in the graphics that you don't really see anything. Um, but it does it does show that that's a realistic kind of thing for that age group. Um, I think being around a lot of my boy classes, uh, they're like that. That's just how they are. And so this book is very authentic in that case where it just gives those realistic things, but it is not the main point of the book. Main point is is basically a very poant
254thing. Um it's how hard adolescent life can be, especially if you're not in the group and you're trying to find yourself to the point where you almost want to kill yourself and then find that life is worth living and so it illustrates making a lot of good choices empathy being resilient. So I think the larger part of the book makes the book Can I ask a general question about the the committees? Some of them have smaller numbers and some of them have larger numbers. Is that just logistics or is there sometimes a a reason why? Like this one has se uh the book we were just discussing, Blamer has seven. Um some of them have four or five. Some of them have 10. Um it really depends on um which book it is and if
255there are a lot of people who feel really strongly about it. Um next board meeting I'll have Knight on the the agenda and that one was packed. Um so it depends on the book. Um it depends on availability of people. Um I tried to have a variety of times available. So we could meet at 7:30 in the morning, um at 3 pm, at 4:15 or at 5:15. And I tried to change that time for every day of the week. So it wasn't the same time every day. Um it was it really was just availability. And then of course people would sign up and they would get sick, their flights would get cancelled. Um you know, something else would come up. But yeah, I would think the length of the book would also play to that.
256Yes. For some people it did. Um, for others I was just amazed at how quickly they got through books. Um, I mean we had somebody that had been on like 10 committees um because they were avid readers and they could tell you that book forward and backwards. So just a lot of different variables for how the committees were were formed. But it was all by um you signed up via a a form and that was available um we sent it to all parents at Sigin High School and it was available uh with flyers at every elementary campus, every school district uh every middle school. It was up here at uh central office and I believe somebody had put it on uh social media as well. Um so it was available across to every parent. um
257we just didn't have that many that were interested um unfortunately. So it was district residents, parents, um district staff, and I was appreciative of every single person that that signed up. Um and I was very excited. So, and I I think by the end of it, they enjoyed it. Um and we were able to read a book and have good conversations about it. So So that's a silver lining in all of it. that um we read some some really good books and had some really good conversations and got to know uh more people in our community and u it was really nice if there was a nice part. I see educators, I see clergy, I see people who work for the city of Sigin, I I see lots of different people on the committee. So,
258I think it's nice that you know we did have the wide variety of people serving. Yeah, I agree. just said a comment. Once again, thank you for all the hard work that you and the committee do. This is really putting a lot of pressure and time on you. Uh and thanks for adding I guess the challenge overview form. They're not it's not turned in for every book, right? It's only on some of the books that they submit that form. Um it was submitted for every form. Um just this agenda I added that with for you guys, but um if you went back to the minutes for all the previous uh books, um it was part of the minutes that's that's on the sigd website. So thanks for writing that on on there because just to
259review it real quick according to the challenger they it's all pretty standard copypaste information pretty much. You're correct as far as the reasoning to me that speaks volumes just to read some of the for the public that's listening that are awake right now. Have you read this book? Unanswered. What brought this material to your attention? Unanswered. What concerns you about the material resource? Unanswered. For what age group would you recommend this unanswered? I mean I can go there's three other mors all unanswered to me it's like they're not even reading the book in my opinion. I believe you're correct. It takes a lot of time to read all of these books. Um I mean 10 hours for some books. Um yeah. Madam President, I move to approve the recommendation of the library material material challenge
260committee. All right. I have a motion from Mr. Dwire and a second from Mrs. Miller. Is there any further discussion? All in favor, raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes. 52. Thank you. Thank you. have a safe evening. We appreciate your work and we appreciate the all the the other things that you're doing as well. Have fun with the Chromebooks. Yes, you're very welcome. You're very welcome. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Oh, okay. Um, next we have 9B, approval of credit by exam dates for 2627. Dr. Coreo. Uh, Madame President, uh, Dr. Lean, trustees, uh, before you is an agenda item uh, up for consideration, approval of uh, CBE credit by exam dates for the 2026 uh, 2027 school year. Uh as you can see up there on your agenda item uh these
261are dates uh that are provided uh by the state and specifically by college board. They give us windows of time in which Sigin ISD can uh um can select uh specific dates within those windows. So as you can see Sigin ISD uh will be conducting four different windows of exams. July 27th through August 14th, 2026, October 5th through October 30th, 2026, January 11th through February 11th, 2027, and May 3rd through the 21st uh through the 21st, 2027 for our four CBE testing windows uh for 2627. Madam President, move for approval. All right. I have a motion from Miss Duncan and a second from Mrs. Miller. Is there any further discussion? All in favor, raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes 70. Thank you. Much appreciation. All right. Uh 9 C. Consider discuss possible
262action to approve a board resolution changing the length of terms of trustees. Dr. Lee. uh board uh current board policy BBB legal uh gives boards options up through December 31st, 2030 to uh potentially approve a resolution changing the lengths of terms of its trustees up through the date of the November election being canvased. Um it has to a resolution has to provide for staggered terms of either three or four years and specify the manner in which the transition from the length of the former term to the modified term is made and the transition must begin with the first regular meeting for trustees that occurs after the board adopts the resolution. Trustee who serves on the date of the resolution is adopted shall serve the remainder of that term. Uh so what you have in front
263of you is a resolution that would potentially adjust board terms from four years to three years. Uh that resolution, if approved, establishes all of the criteria that's in there and was drafted up by our legal council. Additionally, and probably one of the the bigger pieces is it does allow for annual opportunities for the community to provide input uh in the district through electing board members. Um what you have in front of you is a resolution that does all of those things. Uh a couple things that I want to point out to you. Um, right now you are currently established on four-year terms and the legal policy requires that in those four-year terms. Uh, there's an election every other year. For us, it's an even numbered years. In one year, uh, you elect half the board
264and the next year you elect half the board or as close there too as you can, which is why it's four and three. Um, there is no other way to do that. If you were to stay on four-year terms, it has to be those every other year and four up and then three up. Um, if you were to move to three-year terms, it establishes uh that you would elect two board members out of the seven in one year and two more board members in year two and then three year board members in year three and a cycle every three years. Uh, what's in the resolution establishing the districts are just currently placeholders that would be determined by by you as a board on what you want to change. Uh, when legal council drafted that, they
265just did it numerically. Uh, is all that they did. And so right now what it shows in there for November of 26 or November of 27 is simply put in there that way. Um I was asked to bring this for you guys and so it's there for you to consider. Um your options are essentially approve the resolution, not approve the res resolution or table it for future meeting. Um and you know discussion is yours and I'm happy to try to answer questions if I know the answers. Anybody have a question or discussion? How would we go about like determining which districts are for 2026 and which district are 2027? Well, that's what those are just placeholders. We can actually we can adjust that modify that. So, do we have to make a motion to modify
266the So, um you know, we can do something that's chance like We put paper paper in a bowl. Two of them say 2026 and two of them say 2027. And you draw. Um and then that becomes the the resolution. Do we have straws? He really wants the straw thing. Um there it really is up to you guys on how you want to do it because the way that if you're going to make a change at all. If you're not going to make a change then then there's there's no reason to do anything. Um, I I as a superintendent, I don't have a preference in in what you do or do not do. Um, if you want us to find straws or things to draw, I'm certain that we could probably make that happen pretty easily.
267Um, but I think I will say I think the fairest way to determine because four of you are on the cycle where you would be up for election this time. If you were considering changing it where only two would be up for election this year and two would be up for election next year, I think you have to do some type of drawing whether that's draws just to make it a very fair um option for everyone. Well, I I think we have to make the determination first going to run. If you're not going to run, then you're not going to stay. It's not that that's the other thing. If there's some If there's a district where you know you're not going to run, you could Right. So that your term will end. I will tell
268you that I'm going to stay. You're going to run. My plan is to run. Yes. Sorry. It's It's 11. Yes. My plan is to run. I'm planning to sing. I'm planning to run. Hot seat. Um, I'd be willing to draw the scores at one point. Be a straw. Be it a piece of paper. I just feel like the piece of paper so much easier to Do you have any golden pennies? Golden penny break straws. Do we need to vote on the resolution? Uh, so I don't think you vote on the resolution until you have determined what you want filled in for districts two. Right now it says districts two and four would conclude as currently scheduled in November 26. Districts five and seven would be extended by one year to November 27. Um, and so
269essentially you're trying to figure out two, four, five, and seven which ones are up in 26 versus which ones are up in 27. I'm doing this now. If you would like to if you want to my in my opinion I would like to draw last. I would like fate to decide. No, I still have the I still have the injuries from my rock paper scissor jamberee. Do we want to go in like numerical order of district? Who gets the pull first? I'm gonna go last. We could go for a height line. Do you know Josh Bright? Oh no. All right. What? Okay. Just to be clear, the year on here would be the year you would be up for election, correct? Yes. Okay. I got 27. I got 26. 26. I have 27. I'm I
270am five. Seven. Magnificent. Seven. District 4, home of the elementary school teacher of the year for the past Madam President, I move to approve the resolution changes made as stated by administration. for the district assignments. I have a motion for Mr. Bright and a second for Mr. Gheta. Any discussion? All in favor, raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes 61. Fair enough. Um, all right. Do we have any board comments or requests? I would like an update of when the strategic planning committee will meet again, their recommendations. I just like to see that. It's been a while since we've talked about that. The strategic planning committee. No, I'm sorry. The It's late. The facility long-term facilities committee. Is that the name of it? Long range planning and it doesn't have to be next
271month. I would say in the Yeah, it would it would probably be a challenge to bring it to you since next month uh next month since that committee has not met. Yes. Well, but the last time they met, I thought they developed a plan. I just want an update on where we are with that. Thank you kindly. Thank you very much. All right. Uh my only thing is uh if you are the parent of a senior, I hope you will sign them up for project graduation. The deadline is tomorrow. keep them safe on graduation night and happy graduation every madam president move to adjourn. All right, I have a motion for Mr. Bright and a second from Miss Duncan. All in favor, raise your right hand. Oppose. Same sign. Motion passes 70. We are adjourned
272at 11:05 p.m.