001Call this brown bag meeting to order at 11:30 on this what is it second day third day of June. Thank you sir. Welcome everyone and let us begin with our invocation and pledges. Lord, we thank you for the opportunity to gather today in service of our students, staff, and community. As we engage in thoughtful discussion around budget considerations, grant us wisdom and clarity. Help us to steward our resources with integrity and vision, always keeping the needs of our children at the center of our work. As the school year comes to a close, we lift up our students and educators. May this summer bring them rest and renewal and joy. And let it be a time of well-deserved peace and restoration so they return refreshed and ready for the year ahead. May our time together be
002productive and grounded in unity. We ask all these things in your name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God and indivisible. You signed up? No, sir. Thank you, Brandon. Budget update. Let's dive into it. Scott's been waiting. He's been waiting, sir. So, I'll just want to start off this conversation first to talk about this is our best interpretation of the new bill. Uh we currently were working on budget for next year on current law. So, we spent a lot of time on current law like okay, here's our revenues based on current law. We went through a
003lot of expenditure exercises to work on our deficit. Uh just like House Bill 3 back in 2019. Uh a lot of the language that came out of that bill was given to us a lot later. So sometimes we you know you make mistakes when you just under assumptions. So today is assumptions. We have a Mo Casey who works with us really uh directly and we every week been in these meetings. A lot of what we're going to be telling you is what they're saying, but there also is a lot of interpretation of these bills. uh a lot of language that needs to come out. Some of it will be board policy. Some of it will be actual uh to the commissioner and TA to come up with some of the rules of of this. So,
004there's still a lot to unpack, but this is basically our best educated guess as we got the information today. Uh and every week we will continue to work with Mo Casey and TA to get oursel in alignment. So what Scott's sharing is basically what he's been working on and looking at through the eyes of Mo Casey and the different laws and to kind of to put us where we are in current time in our budget. So Scott, all right, let's go. First of all, I'm going to apologize for the 28 slides I have, but there's a lot of new material, so it does warrant it. So apparently I'm the only thing on the agenda today, so I got two hours, right? All right, let's move on. Here we go. So, like Brandon said, we're going
005to talk about the uh legislative updates, look at our current budget, look at maybe talk about potential compensation plan, not approved one today. Just kind of talk get the conversation going and move on from there. All right. All right. Legislative updates. At your desk, you have 34 pages of the side by side between current law and the House Bill Two as interpreted by Mo Casey. Now, this House Bill Two is very exciting. Um it's a largest uh increase of public funding in in years. Uh a lot of good things are going on with it. There's additional raise for teachers. A new a lotment has been created. So teachers with three or three plus years will get a a raise that the state will be providing us funds for. There's also a support service staff raise.
006So that those funds are there as well. Um and then there's a new basic aotment aotment for basic costs which is similar to the basic aotment but different and we'll talk more about that in a second. So those are good things. Those are all good things that are happening. At the same time um we still have our bills that we need to pay. So the funds that we're receiving are more flow through and so we'll we'll still be a little bit in the hole at the end of our budget cycle. So just want to kind of keep that in mind. So all right. So, um, House Bill 2 did provide approximately $55 increase to basic allotment. So, we'll just leave it at that. We'll go to the next slide. All right. So, the new allotments,
007the aotment for basic costs is a $106 times your enrollment. Um, and it provides you with additional funds. So, for us, it's about 1.6 million. That's what we're looking at for next year. And it can be used for several things. for us. 1.6 is already spoken for, so we don't even need to worry about adding any additional costs because we already have plenty to go with. Um, the next new aotment is the teacher retention aotment. This is one that made a lot of headway in the news for our district with 5,000 or more students. So, we'll be providing a uh increasing our compensation plan for teachers with three to four years experience, 25,00 additional, and then five plus years will receive 5,000 additional. Real quick on the basic aotment, they increased it to $55. Uh
008but that took away from our golden pennies. Uh so it's really they've moved that money out of the golden pennies in tier 2, which is I don't want to get too technical, but it's really in essence not an increase for us in that specific. So basically not helping us. Uh now the teacher retention aotment is, you know, helping us pay teachers more money. The support staff a lotment, yes. And then this new cost that he's talking about, this alum aotment for basic costs which we could use on multiple things is really where we're getting the additional funding that we could use for everything else like operationally wise. Can we use this money to get people that are not included in the retention a lot? We can, but we also need to keep in mind that
009you're going to see that we're we'll continue to have a deficit. the what they didn't do in this retention aotment is they didn't take into account they say hey you're going to give all your teachers $5,000 across the board we got to give them 5,000 but when we add to salaries that there's extra cost for the district so we have a TRS cost we have a Medicaid cost we have uh you know obviously we have insurance cost which we have so that's not part of so that's going to be additional that's going to come out probably out of the pot of the aotment for the basic cost to cover those additional fees fees that we we we get charged by TRS and the different uh allocations for payroll. So we will have to cover that
010and so that will help us do that little bit of help. real quick. The teachers that just have one to two years nothing nothing and we're trying to get teachers to pay they their their their value the value that uh the state legislators feel like that you should put your money more towards the tenure uh teacher. And so even in House Bill three back in 2019 they did the same thing. We had to give raises to the more experienced teachers than the actual first to second year teachers even though no more. So uh I know you're going to talk about it. Yeah. Next slide. This one. Yeah. Right there. Yeah. Uh definition teacher in the yellow. Yeah. So they so we have to really get uh they the TA says that a teacher is a
011teacher teaching kids for more four than four hours a day. So any employee whether if they're teaching one day or two days a week or they're doing small group pullins stuff like that we're going to have to get clarification because according to TA those are the people that are not part of this a lotment. If they're not teaching kids for four hours every day at least four hours then they're not considered in this compensation. So what would that like who would that look like? So we've got a slide for that. Oh so um so the hard part about this you know it just came out. So this is we're going to proceed as if we have zero clarification and just try to go with exactly what the the words say which I don't know doesn't
012give us a lot of leeway. So we'll probably have more discussions um as we those are things that we need to get clarified. They also said that teachers that are not certified and so in the past if you're a DOI teacher uh a new teacher that's going through the certification program you're first year we paid you as a first year teacher they are saying that there has to be a $3,000 difference. So that's a problem for us because we have a lot of DOI teachers right now that think they're coming back next year and they're making 60,000. we may have to drop down to to 57,000 or increase our scale, but then that increases everybody else. So, we have that's a little bit of dilemma for us to study and get more clarification. Hopefully, it's
013a grandfather thing. And moving forward, any new teacher coming in the system, we will have to have a skill that starts them off $3,000 less than a starting certified teacher. And that's on page 22 in your side by side. It kind of gives you a definition of what a a non-certified, how many years experience versus the differential on pay. So, it's very it's going to be a little touch and go, so we'll really have to figure that one out. Very good stuff right there. Um the fun thing about the uh teacher retention a lotment, the new one, is that as we move towards the uh um performance-based pay that uh those funds will be allowed to be intermingled with those. So, that'll that'll help us in that regard. So, that's a good thing. All right.
014So, moving on to the next one, the support staff retention aotment. This is the one that covers I think those people on the right. Pretty much everybody except for district administrators um central office. So for us it's everyone whoever's on the professional pay scale and the principal pay scale will not be receiving this a lot. So and the amount of money we received maybe one to 1.5% increase. So, it's very it's very we'll talk more about that as we as we kind of dive into the compensation portion. All right. Some other items of information are there are spread out of course over this whole docu document. We have page seven has the additional $1,000 for special education evaluations. So, um I'm not real sure the impact of that. Then the compensation the compensatory education aotment
015page seven. This one repeals the 55% direct spending requirement that we have. However, we don't really know what that means. So for us it's business as usual until we get further clarification. Um same thing with the bilingual a lotment. It it kind of changes a little bit how you can use those funds but for us we have a good system in place. We're going to continue to use that until we hear something different. And those three right there. So special ed they say on a thousand but there is a big increase in year two. So in the 27 26 27 school year special ed funding is going to increase pretty significantly. They did take care of special ed but they're having to write a lot of rules and with the formulas and so that won't
016really start till 2627. So it won't impact us next year but we will get $1,000 for the evaluations that are being performed for each kid that goes through the process. We did not receive any additional aid uh for comped which is this comped and then bilingual as well. So bilingual didn't get any more uh any more funding for the bilingual program. All right. So those are the updates and all right so now we're heading to the budget to see how all this impacts us. Um, before we start, here's our current year-to-day budget as of yesterday afternoon when I printed out a front line. And you can see that we are spending a lot of money and we are still waiting on some money from the state. So, there you go. All right. These are the
017budget assumptions. They're going to be the same budget assumptions that we had last last presentation, the same um enrollment. We're expecting the same attendance. We will change our tax rate at some point. Um and in Mo case it will will guide us through the uh the tax rate changes and also use their expertise as we navigate the new uh the new laws that are in place. So all right. So just for fun I put a a current law budget up there just for reference only so you can kind of see where we would be at had the law not changed. And you can see that with the current law with the with the draft budget, we're looking at adding, you know, everybody up a pay scale within those uh teacher, nurse, librarian, counselors, and bus
018driver scale. So that would leave us with about $6.8 million in the deficit. This is the current without SP2. Yes, correct. This is what this is what it without any without any raises except for the we were just going to move people up the scale. This is the base base. So, and this is strictly for reference only because this is about to change when the governor signs the law. So, all right. So, this is what our budget would look like based on our current interpretation of the of the new house bill law based on also Mo Casey's uh revenue um runs. The state has not released a template for us to go in and put our own information in. So, we have to kind of rely on Mo Casey for a little while until we
019can kind of get our own templates going. Um, as you can see, the uh the new money for the for Southwest ISD would be about 7.1 million, which is cool. That would have covered this, but some of those funds are flow through. So, as you can see, um, the teacher a lotment is about 3.9 million going through that'll go to those guys directly. And then the support staff a lotment almost 550,000. So those are funds that are already spoken for. And so for us, we get about 2.1 million in in additional revenue to use to cover our existing cost. So that's kind of where we're at right now. Um with the way we're looking at the budget and also say this, so this says 3.9, but it's probably going to go up because what we
020didn't calculate in there is these raises with the additional cost the district has to take on after the raise because we haven't done the raise. So in the system we're not able to calculate this yet. What they're giving is correct flow through those for this year and for next year for next year. So if nothing is done, it's hard. You don't have to pay if technically correct could be back to the current pay they're at. Correct. So our goal and correct you're correct because you know anytime you go to two years is because by any mean they come back in and there's a huge depression and there's deficit state level. It's happened to us where you go in there and all of a sudden they can't fund you for those that anymore. Our goal as
021a district though, what we didn't bring up is in if you go look at the legislation, if you have a strategic compensation plan uh based on performance pay, you don't have to do this. You can take that money and fix your plan. So, our goal is in by the time we meet again with legislators, we're in that strategic compensation because I believe the state of Texas, this is the commissioner's uh like grand plan is to go to a performance-based system. So, I believe that because right now they're already showing you if you if you're doing that strategic compensation, then you can use this new funding to help spread that out and and increase your performance pay system and you don't have to just give every person across the board the race. Uh, so I think
022as we move into this new plan, we're gonna we can be strategic with our m future funds to to do that plan and not have to worry about that because right now what they're saying is you're giving every teacher $5,000 whether they're performing or not. Correct. And then but for us is as we move through this new plan, our our compensation is going to change anyways. But yes, and it's hard to take that much money back from a teacher when you pay them for two years and then in two years cost of living is going to go up. So what money are you saying that we're going to get that we can do on sales? We're we're we're we are the money the only money we're getting that is that 1.6 6 go to the
023see there's this one aotment for basic cost ABC the other the the new teacher aotment that's just for teachers nobody else and then they have the support staff no I know my question is you said based on performance so this money right there that the money that we have to give 5,000 across the board other districts that already have a strategic compensation plan like Dallas ID gets to use it to to to increase their plan but they don't have to give every teacher that's not performing $5,000. Everybody else does. Yeah, everybody else is required. If you are if you don't have a strategic compensation uh plan already in place, then you have to follow what is being done by the state. So, if we get a strategic plan in place next year, we still have
024to give that money. Correct. Because we don't have it in place right now because we're we're still three years away from that. Oh, three years. Correct. Because next year will be principles. Next year we'll be a capture then principles next year we'll start planning for teachers then there'll be a capture year so we're still three years away from that but the plan is to get to that is TIA separate from correct but then once you have the strategic compensation model approved by TEA you tell TA this is what we're doing and then you're you able to utilize your TIA money for that so all the money you're bringing in with TIA all the money that you're getting from the state and then all the money you're not paying teachers that are not performing helps you
025pay those that are the TIA Right. Right now every penny we got for those teachers that correctly. Well, only only 10% didn't that covers the cost that the district had for them. Right. So you're saying that in the future my my concern is that the teachers who earn that much money wouldn't get that much money and every year because we can say no we're going to split it amongst other teachers which I don't know if I'm not interpreting that right but that would concern me not because when the district first started this is the way the district submitted the application that that's how much the teachers would get and this is how much the district would hold back. Okay. And remember every year the the money the teacher gets could fluctuate depending on the campus
026and the campus demographics and when they the choice they move if they change campuses. So what are you saying about being able to strategically use the money if we change our pay system to a performance pay system and Southwest is actually one of the ones that is ahead in their county because we're already starting it for the principles and most of them are not doing that. Okay. So my my question is the teachers that earn the TIA this year, all of the money that the state is going to send for that minus 10% for um operation. Correct. Uh is going to go to those specific teachers that earned the money. Correct. So my question is in the future is it going to be that way or are we going to get a lump sum of
027money and then we say you're only going to get are we going to be shorting the teachers that earned the money? No, because we're going to create a scale that's based on performance. So it'll be in line with TIA. So like the same thing that the TI teacher is a master versus exemplary, we're going to create that scale. So, if you're exemporary, you're probably going to get it or maybe even more than the TIA. Yeah. Okay. It's the whatever's left is what we're going to use to pay the the rest so we can add more people to it. The difference between TIA and strategic compensation, the really the biggest thing I saw is that uh you're not giving raises to people that are not performing. When you have this, because every year we're giving raises,
028the state's given $5,000 and we're giving to teachers that are not performing. then that money we could have used that money to pay our teachers that are performing more. And so that's that's the shift. Okay, that's the big shift of it. Okay, more questions. So teachers that are not performing, let's say, are not going to get anything only whatever's left over that we distribute in the future. This is right now. They they don't at this point unless we just give a raise like we've always been doing, okay? which we have to do right now. Right now, the the state of Texas says unless you have a strategic compensation plan that's in place, you're giving every teacher $5,000 starting this coming starting in the default. Well, I say 5,000. If you're years two through four or
029three, you get 2500. If you're year five, you get anybody over 5,000. Over five years 5,000 additional for the year the next level year they have. So, we got a we got a pay scale. I'll show that that'll help clarify. And what you're saying is the 5,000 this year, the 5,000 next year for the fiveyear teacher plus correct. It's so the third year if stuff doesn't changes, we're still going to keep them at that rate. I thought it was five years. No. Well, right now that's TIA, but in the future it'll be we'll do it. Ours is going to be three years. grandfather at the same rate. No, he's talking about the five and the 2.5. That was only our new P scale. It sounds complicated. It it we need a lot more time to
030show youall and walk you through it because we're going through the process of cleaning all that, but we will bring it to you. But in essence, yes, right now. So, here's what they're doing. So what you're saying is in the third year if they don't do it if they don't re-up it and we're stay there we'd be broken two years correct but I don't think the state of Texas is hopefully they're not doing this to not they said they said that they would continue this until the law changed is what I heard them talk about in the correct show the payll moving right along here let me So, here we go. There's the new pay scale. This would be the new pay scale. It should be in your presentation on page. What did our teachers
031make the last It's there on the thing 25. Yeah, let me look over here. We have the 24 scale right here all the way down years of experience. And if you go across, you can see that zero years and one year experience will be no no additional raise. So you have zero years one the same where they're at now starting year three for a teacher. Our new pay will be plus the former 64 and then the 5,000 starts at year five. So this is our new is there a difference between those two? This is the the later years. So like when you start getting in because we we go to like 34 years. Oh, I see. I see. Sorry. Right. I think it starts at 15 and we're going to cap it at 34 years.
032I think that's pretty nice salary right there. So that's how it work for the counselor, the nurse. What? Well, we'll get to that one. the flat raise that we would do if we did like a one and a half% funds that we have which is 547,000 which we still need to calculate if to make sure that's even enough to do all those other they're not central office admin directors and professional staff that's about 400 bucks huh about 400 bucks a month with the one point is that you no for the extra 5,000 for the teachers about it's a pretty significant raise Yeah, that's pretty nice. About a five six%. Probably more than that, sir. We did five or six% last time like 33,000 closer to 10. Yeah, it's a pretty nice increase right there. Sorry.
033So, all right. So, we want to keep our definitions right now. This is what we're using as our definitions for the different a lotments. So for the support staff a lotment for professionals. We have teachers who are not eligible for teacher retention aotment who are currently on our teacher scale. We're going to move to a new scale along with our nurses and librarians. Our counselors are on a different scale because they already had their own scale. Um and then our pair of professionals as well. So that's the definition. Some of our assumptions for the for the compensation portion that we're talking about. um the new retention aotments for the teacher retention aotment and the new support staff aotment. And then of course our we're looking at $1,100 flat raise for the uh the professionals that
034are non-eing and then a 1.5% increase more or less for the auxiliary. All right. So this is kind of what it looks like um dollar amount wise. Um right now there's no raise for the professional and principal scale. That's kind of what it would bottom right without too many taxes or anything. So, that's a fun slide. All right. And this is the listing of the the staff that we're looking at moving over from off of the teacher pay scale. Moving them off. Yes. Yes. Because they're not create a separate teacher pay scale that's got the raises on it and then having everybody else because they're not eligible for the raise. Right. But these are all the people that are in the past used to getting what teachers get. That's right. That's correct. So, but are
035not eligible for the Right. I I get that. I just want to And that's if they say we have to have a separate skill. So, this is part we we're trying to figure out because if they're going to flow this into a specific alignment where we have it's like a stipen based, which I don't think it is. If it's a statement base, it makes a I mean, it's kind of easier. It's not really easy, but it's just like here you get this $5,000 stipen because you're you're a teacher that's and then we keep our current skill and then everybody that's on it doing it. But then again, if you want to give a raise to the rest, we still would have to separate them because you probably don't want to give a raise to the
036teachers of one and a half percent and then the 5,000 top because that's going to be outside even more on our budget. So, we have a lot to work out that we need to get TA to give us like how do y'all want us to code this? How is this supposed to go in? Is it in salary and then it's on their scale or is this a because they call it a retention aotment is that separated out. So there's still a lot to unpack on that. It's probably the biggest piece to it. It's the biggest I mean it's $4 million $5 million of all the money. Where's the librarian and the counselor top right digital innovations liarian? Oh, and then the counselor's there somewhere going to have their own scale. They already had their own
037scale. Okay. But they're they're so they don't we're not having to remove them. So we already had a counselor scale. and social worker. The social worker is on the counselor skills. Okay. So, this list right here is uh one about 10 minutes Brandon and I went through and pulled off. So, it's not very exclusive. So, we probably need to scrub it probably a little bit better. Can you remind me what coot ta stands for? Kota teacher is the special obvious position, right? But if it's a teacher, why wouldn't it be on the teacher? Because if that person's not teaching four hours. Yeah. So these are the ones that there's some still that we were like, "Okay, I don't know for sure." But we have on the list because we need to find out. Yeah. But
038we don't want to not put them on there and then then all of a sudden we have to pull them off. right now and we haven't we haven't done anything within our system yet. So we haven't moved anybody. So example special program the building test facilitator really you know when I do staffing I give the high schools an extra teacher but if they're not using that teacher to teach then they're not going to get this study right and so they have to make a decision and tell that teacher hey you're over here helping us with testing all year but you're not going to be eligible for the raise or TIA. So, uh, there's some tougher decisions that need to be and I can understand the librarians if so many of them do see kids. I
039mean, some of them are going to feel like I should be getting them. Correct. Yeah. But they don't have any accountability for growth or scores or right is that that's the tough thing because we they haven't really given us a lot of clarification. All we have is that little case we have like two months to So that's our list right there. Subject to change. All right. Um so our starting pay that we're kind of thinking about um presenting to you all will be right here. So starting pay for an uncertified teacher. So as Brandon mentioned earlier, an uncertified teacher with zero years experience needs to make 3,000 less than a certified teacher with zero years experience. And so for us, an uncertified teacher with zero years experience is a $60,000 starting salary. So uncertified 57,000.
040And we'll need to look at that definition a little more in in depth. Um, and I'm not sure if we've hired anybody at those job fairs that are coming in expected to make 60 that may now be making 57. And we do have some DOA teachers that are uh especially at CTE that because of the our DOA plan we're able to hire because you know there's not a lot of teachers out there that are just welders. I mean the welders you have to some of these industry based we're hoping for clarification that those are exempt because many of those aren't certified. Uh but it's more of the ones that are in the core that are not certified. That's I think that's the target of this and it's also in the plan. Uh there's another bill
041that by 2029 that we don't have any non-certified teachers teaching any of the core classes. We saw that too. So is that something where you would look at like you said earlier some kind of a stipen that said or some kind of maybe an incentive that said if you get all of your certification and blah blah blah then you would get oh that's in there. There is that, but it's also like, well, right now you're making 57 and if I'm a teacher, I'm making the same as a certified and if I finish, I'm going to get a $3,000 raise because right now No, no, no. The new ones, the ones that we There's a Oh, I see what you're saying. See what I'm saying? So, like right now it's to keep your job, but right
042now it would also increase your pay if you actually get certified as well. Right now, it's like you're getting paid as a certified teacher even though you're not certified. So, it's like it's kind of both. uh to entice them to get their certification and continue their program. You're going to get certified and continue to keep your job. At the same time, you will see an increase because right now they they just get whatever increase we're giving them. Uh there's no delineation between the two. So, if we have an uncertified teacher that is really successful in their class and they have the growth, they're not eligible for TIA. I don't believe so because they're not certified. I don't believe so. I don't think so. I would have to double check, but I think that's also maybe
043in the TIA rules. I'm not sure. So, we'll have to double check. There's a lot of uncertainty. Things and on the on the 57 what the DOI teacher makes right now this year? No, right now they're making 60. So, if you start with us, you're get paid out the teacher skill at 60,000. So, is this plan A to grandfather them or does this reduce the We're hoping that if we could grandfather the ones that already work for us because I don't know what the rules are saying completely. Doesn't say well if you already have them they can stay. I think the issue that we're going to have is most of the time if you have a DOI teacher the first year they're in we put them on a permit which is like an emergency permit
044and people are on those and so they are ESPC certified through an emergency permit for their first year through our DOI we have allowed them to extend for two additional years even if they haven't completed as long as they've uh made progress to getting their certification in their core subject area of that choice. The issue would be that the permit then will expire and then they're no longer SSP certified. So we will have to put a rule in place for somebody who is not fully certified prior to because they will say well I have an emergency permit so then I should qualify for the full amount but that's if this is what they're going to put in legislation it's going to say no this supersedes that. So we'll have to look at how they're going
045to apply that law. So page 22 on your document. The awarding for the uncertified teacher is the bill would require school district to pay certified classroom teacher with zero years of experience more than a non-certified classroom teacher with zero years of experience. Okay. Such that the difference is 3,000. So I think if we go with 57,000 for I think we're good. I think anyone who's already there is probably okay to stay with their current salary. That's kind of how I read this, but yeah, this is like we've only been at two webinars. It's going to be tough. So, um, but the good news is we have a plan for the future. Um, you know, right now we're not looking to provide any any raises for professional staff or the principles, but the principles will be
046eligible for performance-based pay. Um, this coming up year we're going to be doing a establishing the baseline and then roll it out following year after that. And the same with the uh that's what Dallas calls there is the teacher excellence initiative. So I guess that's what we'll call it too for now. Um it's also performance based pay for teachers and assistant principles. So we'll be able to to roll those out in the upcoming years using the funds and the new teacher incentive lobby and the TIA funding. So future looks good. It's not all bad news. So all right looked at that pay scale already. This scale right here would be the uh $1,100 is about a one one.5% um increase on midpoint um from our current teacher. This would be the support salaries for all
047those non-teers nurse librarian but that aotment doesn't that include transport oh expenses like that. So yeah, so even we'd just be using it all for one thing. Um it's if we do all the non-sup support at a one and a half% that what they gave us wasn't enough, right? So, so if we just do one and a half, it's going to probably be 600 700,000. Yeah, probably 800,000 to cover the rest of the folks that are the support staff. If we just want to use the 500 they gave us then it' probably be like a 1% increase but which and on the other side that we have the increase to the insurance which probably won't be much more but we're going to bring different scenarios. This is a starting point to kind of get and
048as we get more information to give y'all. The biggest piece to this whole thing is bless you. God bless you is as we continue to work through our deficit with the mindset that in 2026 2027 we're opening a whole new school which will be the tune of about 7 to8 million added to the budget because that we have to prepare for. Not only are we working on getting to a balanced budget, we need to prepare for uh because the decisions we make today and moving forward will impact us in the next year in two years with a new school. So, we're going to be running scenarios. We're going to be giving you some calculations. We'll be looking at, okay, what is it going to cost to open Colorado? What how do we prepare? What things
049should we do differently to continue to mitigate uh our budget? I don't want to call it crisis because I think we're in a lot better shape than we were. Uh but you can kind of see the idea here is the funding that we are receiving is very limited on to help us get through uh the deficit that we continue to work on together to to minimize it. So is this pretty much what it looks like across the city? Oh, absolutely. I mean it looks worse. Oh, yeah. I mean I said well district it looks worse. Yeah. I think it's the what I meant by that is it's the same uh yeah the same issues same issue same mindset it's like we wanted the money so yes we want to give it to our employees we
050want to give and we also have lots of other employees to give money to that we think are very valuable we know the teacher is the most important person in the classroom in front of the students we we get that we want to support them but then we have a lot of other folks that play a role there too but we also have to deal with their own operational fiscal responsibility that it doesn't really allow us to do So what we've done in the past, all the other things we've done so far has been really good to help us get to narrow the gap of the the because the deficit this gives no this plan right now. I mean I know it's not really a plan. It's just information gives no raises for the transportation,
051the cafeteria, the custodians, the maintenance crews, all those people that make very little already. There's the counselor's possible scale. Yeah, the bus driver possible skill. Any more questions for us? And like I said, we'll I mean, we'll be back here in the June board meeting presenting even more updates as we work these out. We we were hoping to get and it's basically going to be clarification because we would like to get a compensation plan to you as soon as possible. It's just getting the information and how how they unpack this is I don't even know if it's been signed into law yet. Uh so we're still waiting for that because they can't do anything at a TEA without it actually being a law and then hopefully they'll start pushing out a lot of the because
052what they did last time in house school 3 is they started sending videos. They started having conference calls. Even the commissioner was getting on on calls with superintendent and so they started to lay out a lot of these different things that are important. And this packet we only cover like four or five things. There's a whole other bunch of other things that are in this that are deal with finances and different things that we have to put into place. Then there's the overhead cost of receiving and paying out that correct a lotment. Correct. That they're not covering. Correct. And that's just House Bill two. Yes. There's al Yeah, there's a there's some other things are going to impact us. We probably bring to y'all in the June board meeting about some of the other laws
053they're putting in place because there it's going to impact our tax rate. They're they're raising the homestead more than likely. So, as we saw an increase on our on our our uh foundation program, we're actually seeing that we're going to be collecting less taxes and we're we're trying to see how how did that they work that because it doesn't look like the calculation helps because normally when they reduce taxes, we get a bigger increase, but doesn't seem like that's the mechanism that's happening in with the news the bill. So, there's even more to it. But there is an increase. We got money. We're going to be able to pay some folks uh and some programs are going to get some relief. But it is what Can I ask a question about the summer school? Okay.
054Our fine arts thing. Okay. Are we doing I know we had talked about it. I don't know that we had ever finalized it, but on the transportation are we doing hubs? I would have to get that information for you. I'm I'm assuming we were. Okay. Or actually, we might have routed most of the kids. I'm just curious because uh uh my niece is attending Macau for achie camp and it says uh pick up and drop off at Southwest High School, but then the link that you press to see what time pickup is, there's nothing there. Okay. So, I don't I don't know if other parents are having the same Okay. issue. That's it. I think that's all we have. Okay. No, we're good. All right. Do we have close session? Oh, we do have close
055session. Okay. Okay. As permitted by sections 551.001 through 55146 with Texas Government Code. Uh we will now go into close session at to Call this meeting back into order at 12:28. Go straight to item six, superintendent's recommendations on personnel, administrative employment, resignations, reassignments, leaves of absences, contract renewals. I move that we approve the superintendent's recommendation on personnel. Second. There's a motion and second. All in favor, please say I. I. All oppose. Motion passes. Anything else? Yes. Um, I don't think she's listening, but I would like to congratulate Melanie Henson. Um, Sunday night she was awarded AD of the year. So, congratulations to Melanie. [Applause] Okay, meeting is now closed at 12:28. Let's go for a walk.