Waxahachie ISD Board Meeting 6-10-25

001It is now 4:00. I will call the meeting of the Wachi Independent School District Board of Trustees to order. Let the record show that all seven trustees are in tenants and meeting duly called and notice that this meeting has been duly posted for time and manner required by law. First item on our agenda this evening will be our budget workshop for the 2025 2026 fiscal year. Mr. Cog. Thanks sir. Good afternoon board and Miss McCutchen. Uh this is our second in series of three budget workshops and uh as Mr. Autry said it is for the 2526 school year. I did notice that I have at least one typo later because you'll see 2627 in there that should say 256, but uh I'll dwell on that when we get to it. uh start a little bit

002just about the budget itself. Uh our fiscal year starts September 1 and goes through August 31st. Uh that uh is not changed. That's the same from previous years. Uh we generally start our budget uh preparation process late January, early February. So we'll bring to you guys the budget calendar in January. Kind of lays out our our big rocks and our big timelines that we hope to meet. Then we start meeting with all of our departments and campus leaders. Uh usually in February uh we try to get most of those done right before uh spring break uh because when we get back we know it's focus is now turned to testing and end of year activities. So uh budget's not top priority for them at that point and that's fine. Uh then we kind of cool

003off for a little bit. We uh we talk to you in March a little bit uh get your priorities but then we really kind of go in that holding pattern. We wait on those preliminary uh certified values from the appraisal district that we get at the end of April. And that really helps form a significant amount of our revenue uh from the local level. So in the general fund that uh those local property values make up about 50 to 55% of our revenue. So that's a really significant number for us to uh to know or have a really good idea as we go into adopting those budgets. We work through um at the end of the school year we work through calculating our average daily attendance which drives state funding. And so generally you're looking

004at the end of May, early part of June before we know daily attendance so that we can calculate that for next year. That's another roughly 45 to 50% of our budget as well. So that between those two rocks, you see that there's not a whole lot of momentum that goes into the budget process until we hit late April and the first part of June. Every odd year always gives us a challenge because we know that our friends down in Austin meet and they throw us curveballs and this year is no different. Uh so next year we will have much more certainty going into the budget workshops. Uh we'll have a lot better idea of what we're going to be doing. This year it's still a little bit uh early. We're still trying to digest House

005Bill 2 and one thing uh to go ahead and spoil uh some of the info in the back. Uh one thing that we're really waiting on is information from TEA on exactly how they're interpreting House Bill 2 and the many provisions of it. Uh so that we can make sure that we're going to be in compliance and we're meeting their expectations. So, uh, spoiler alert, I do not have any real good information on, uh, staff raises at this point. That's one of the really big components. So, we are waiting on TEA to give us some guidance on exactly what, uh, they're looking for and what those expectations are. So, we'll continue working on that. We may, if we get some good guidance from TEA, um, I was just at region 10 today. They said that,

006uh, they're expecting compensation uh, guidelines from TEA by the end of this week. If not, uh, maybe the middle of next week. So hopefully we'll get some good news. We'll get some better understanding of exactly what's going on and we might come back with a special budget workshop for you in July. Uh if we have that information because it' be good for us to get that information out timely. Uh in either way, we will have another budget work budget workshop for you, excuse me, in August and then we will have another special called meeting uh that last Monday in August so that we can adopt the budget before the start of the fiscal year. Um, I went ahead and talked way out of order. So, local revenues, they make up about 50 to 55% of

007our revenues. Again, 98% of that is primarily property tax revenue. Uh, we kind of talked a little bit about this with getting those estimate of certified values in April. Uh, we get the final certified values in July, uh, about the 25th of July. Um there was not a bill there was a bill filed in the legislative session this year, but it was not passed to accelerate tax rate compression any further than it's already in state law. So uh we will not have to go through calculations of further compressing uh the M uh tax rate this year. Uh which is a benefit because we are not waiting on again additional information from TEA on exactly how to do that. Uh so we are at the maximum compressed rate right now uh with TEA and we anticipate

008that as the average values in the state grow that our rate will compress a little bit every year. It's roughly 2 and a half to 4% somewhere in that range. Uh so we anticipate that that will happen again next year but no uh otherwise accelerated uh compression of that tax rate. State revenues again make up 45 to 50%. Um there have not been a ton of changes uh on the state revenue side. There are a lotments that are now going to be coming through. Some of those are based on enrollment. Some of those are based on average daily attendance. Uh so two different components, two different functions that again we're still kind of working through and seeing how that's going to impact us. Uh but not a huge adjustment to the basic aotment, which is

009the main funding source uh that we have in a school district setting. So basic right now is $6,160 per average daily attendance. Uh House Bill 2 increased that $55 per ADA. So that's now $6,215. Uh not nearly as easy to remember as 6160, but uh we'll get used to it and we're there for a little while. Federal revenues in the general fund itself, those revenues are decreasing mightily every day. Um back um about three or four years ago with SHAR's revenue, SHARS is the only federal source or federal type of revenue that we have in the general fund. Uh those revenues were about 2 and a.5 million. Uh this year they're about 100,000 101,000 if I'm rounding up. Um and uh all of that generally is due to changes at the programmatic level from the

010Health and Human Services Department. Uh they blame it on an audit from the federal government, but quite frankly, some of these uh adjustments they're making, some of the service limitations they're making far exceed any of the comments that were made in any of the audits that they've had. So, uh, we have seen a a, uh, harder time to participate in the program. Uh, things that used to be qualified for personal care services do not qualify anymore. So, with that, we've seen our our reimbursement for SHARS or school health and related services uh, expenditures. We've seen that uh, reimbursement decrease significantly uh, since then. So, we budgeted about a million dollars in charge revenue uh, per year. uh as we go into next year that may we may go ahead and reduce that uh to zero

011or we might reduce that to about 100,000 to be more commiserate with what we received this year. Uh to be fair that's only the interim payments. So there's still an opportunity for us to collect all of our additional cost uh submit that as part of the cost report that'll be due in April of 2026 and then we could receive some more revenue. But right now interim payments uh we're at about 101,000. Um, just for comparative sake, in the past we would have been at this point in the year probably about $800,000 to a million dollars in interim payments. Uh, it just goes to show the level of of cuts to the allowable cost that have been made in the program. As far as expenditures go, board, we generally lump them into five different categories. So,

012payroll and benefits are are by far the most uh large amount of our expenditures that happen in the district. make up roughly 80 85% of our uh expenditures. Uh we know that education is a personheavy business. Um our kids don't do so well on computers and don't do so well in uh with robots in front of them. So uh we have people and and our people are fantastic and we like to uh compensate them accordingly. But that takes up a vast majority of our budget roughly 80 to 85%. Uh our next biggest category is professional and contracted services makes up about 5 to 8%. Uh that's anything from utilities to uh other services that we don't directly provide. We contract with another uh provider to to provide those on our behalf. Supplies and and equipment

013make up about 5% of our budget. Other operating expenditures, which uh you and I would call miscellaneous, the things that don't otherwise fit in a category kind of fit in other operating, they make up about 5% as well. And then capital outlays make up about 1 to 2% of our budget in any given year. board. You may remember back in March, we had a conversation about our priorities for the 2526 school year and we talked about tier one being uh our fund balance and our focus on fund balance uh a staff salary increase and then some sort of uh improvement over at the Lumpkins practice field uh as we had funds available. We talked a little bit about tier two and three. And we talked a little bit about these are some of the items

014that we've had listed in tier 2 and three, but this was before House Bill Two. So, we had a real honest conversation with each other about we didn't know that we'd be able to get to any of these. Uh, but as funds made themselves available, we would try to hit uh tier 2 items and then tier three. Uh, we talked about these have been mentioned before, but I really don't see a way for us to find some funds to hit those at this point. uh but they're still on the list so that we continue to look into them uh and make them a priority as uh funds are available. At that point board, we've uh we've had a good three months since we last met and talked about budget priorities. Is there any movement in

015any of the tier one, two, or three or any other priorities you would like to add that were not previously added so that we can make sure that those are addressed as we go through the rest of the budget process? I've got a question. Yes, ma'am. From what I've read, the salaries of the teachers will get a raise and like pair professionals and people like that, which hallelujah, not much, but but not administrators and not 01, two. Yes, ma'am. So, this says staff. So what will we do to make sure that the people that are left out are going to get a raise? So the the one component that the state gave us flexibility on is the basic aotment and we talked about it going from 6160 to 625. $55. The whole $55. That would

016be the pot of money that we would have for 012 years of experience along with administrators, which uh the way that I'm interpreting now, this is part of what I'm waiting on TEA's information on, would start at that assistant uh principal level, assistant principal, principal, directors, assistant directors, obviously cabinet uh and going up. So that $55 in the basic aotment would go to cover increased operating cost, increased um curricular offerings and any salary increases for those personnel on those steps or on those positions. Well, this just my opinion, but I think we need to do whatever we can do not to leave anybody out. Understand? So to your point, that's one of the real real challenges that we're kind of working through right now is the way the bill House Bill Two was written. It's

017only classroom teachers, but state law for the minimum salary schedule is teachers, librarians, counselors, and nurses. And so, uh, without some more clarification from TEA on exactly who they're looking at to receive these increases and subsequently who they're going to count for the teacher retention aotment, it's technically a teacher retention aotment. Um, who they're going to provide fundings through or for through that teacher retention aotment. That's where we're curious as to how exactly to set up these pay increases for the following year. Also, that zero experience, that's what gets teachers to come to our district. And um we're behind a lot of districts around here. So, we need to do whatever we can do to make sure teachers are looking at us. Yes, ma'am. Mr. C. Yes, ma'am. I understand that uh we have to

018pay 8% I believe on TRS and so calculating a $5,000 raise that'll make about $400 difference. And does that and that last aotment I forget what it is. It's 102 or 112 106. Yes ma'am. What? 106. Okay, let's split the middle. 106 uh per ADA. And so uh that I mean that and that's our money to make up for all of the inflation and everything. Am I correct? Yes, ma'am. Okay. So So paying the retirement and not even even looking at the health insurance, uh that's really going to eat into our little amount they're giving us by the time we Am I correct about that? You're absolutely correct. So the uh the allotment you're you're talking about is the allocation or allotment for basic costs ABC's. Uh they came up with a really really cute

019little education related acronym for it. Um but Miss Creel, to your point, it's $106 per student uh enrolled student and it's to address the inflationary cost of insurance going up, retirement, uh other employee benefits along with um utility cost, transportation cost. Realistically, the way it was explained to me today in our training was we know personnel is our our most expensive category. These are like the next five most expensive categories within any budget. So, pretty much you go around the around the state, your contribution for benefits, your contribution for retirement, your matching of retirement funds, transportation costs, utility costs, those generally are going to make up about the next four to five or five to six of any district's budget. you just that's just kind of how it works out. Uh in a personnel heavy

020business, your benefits and your your contribution matches for retirement are going to be a significant portion of your budget. We all know what insurance costs have been doing recently. Uh they've been jumping leaps and bounds 20 and 30% per year both on the health insurance side and on the property casualty side. So, uh we're not immune from those just like uh as a homeowner, we're not immune from from those increases in those homeowner rates either. Um, so to your point, Miss Cregel, yes, that is what that allotment is for, and that would be eaten up very quickly with the district's requirement to contribute for the retirement with these increases. Uh, so that is again some more of the information we're waiting to hear from TEA. Is that the intent? Is that just tough luck, Charlie,

021that's what you're going to do? That's what we're trying to hear from TEA to get some more clarity on these. Okay. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. All right. Um, let's talk a little bit about fund balance. Uh, this continues to be one of our tier one priorities. Uh, board, we've talked a couple times in the past. One of our concerns going forward is looking at the opening of uh, Wachi Creek and the staff cost it's going to take for that. The slide you're seeing right now is a is a verbatim copy from last year. And I wanted to come up here with this slide and tell you that I was completely wrong. If you look at bullet number two, it says that we're going to drop below three months of fund balance. That part is actually

022correct. The next part likely four to four and a half million. Absolutely not. Last year we came in about even. We came in 150,000 to the good. So why would I give you intentionally bad information on this slide? The entire point was to say this was done in June of last year and a lot changed from June to the end of the fiscal year. I anticipate a lot's going to change again from now till the end of the fiscal year. Um we budget we are planning for increased uh insurance. We are planning on uh staffing at certain levels. We are planning we're even uh looking to draw in expected staff increases. Sometimes our best guess are just not going to cut it. Sometimes we end up with things that we have uh POS issued for.

023We end up not incurring the expenditure. Um other times uh we have direction from our board who says fund balance is important and we really want you to to prioritize fund balance and we will go in and we actually uh avoid some expenditures to the best of our uh abilities. And so the whole point in telling you this is we are not in the same shape that I thought we were going to be in in June of last year when we were having this conversation. So, our fund balance, yes, did drop a little bit below uh that 25% uh but we are right at 24%. So, we're still in a really good spot. I know that uh Mr. Cooper and Miss Timberman have asked me in the past, where do you feel comfortable uh as

024a percent of fund balance? I believe we were talking about that last August if I remember correctly and I told you I really don't want to get below 20. Uh, I'm feeling okay with where we are right now, but I do know on the horizon, I'm looking at Wachi Creek and I'm looking at opening Wachi Creek. And as we continue going around having our town halls, um, we are looking at for um, getting feedback from our community as to whether it's going to be 9th only, 910. Uh, we've even had some suggest all four grade levels. U, so right now that staffing formula, that staffing look for Walks ate Creek still very fluid. Uh, so I would tell you I like where we're sitting right now with fund balance. Uh, I would not want to

025uh dramatically reduce that given where we're going with Wetache Creek. But Mr. Timberman, I hear you and and I want to do the best we can for our staff with staff increases. Uh, we've been going through budget reduction cycles for the last two years uh to try to uh collect those funds so that we can do things. Uh we have not been overly successful with focusing on the discretionary budgets last year only. Uh this year we started focusing on staffing and uh reassigning positions that we didn't feel that we fully needed. Uh and I do anticipate that through that attrition process uh that will yield some more funds that we can actually uh give back to our staff in the form of increases. So it is still a priority. It's still something that we are

026working on. Uh but the point in telling you this was I was completely wrong, way wrong in where we were going to end last year. Uh I just feel like it's important that we are uh honest with each other and transparent. And so I felt that that was transparent uh to to point out my massive uh miss on that. Uh here's my big glorious slide of an incorrect fiscal year. 202526 would be the school year that we are going into, not 2627. There are some things uh that will impact 2627, notably the uh special education funding as we move from uh student-based funding to more of a settings-based funding. So, the services that we're providing them, that transition will start for 2627. Uh and so I worked on that slide right before I made this

027one, which is why you have a really really bad typo on there. So, House Bill Two. Uh, I'll be really honest with you. I made these slides last week before going to region 10 today. So, I might be able to have a little bit of commentary for where we're going with some of these based on what I heard today. Uh, we talked a little bit already. The main uh, component of House Bill 2. House Bill 2 is an 8 billion uh, infusion of state spending into public education. Uh, it is not all new money. Some of it is a reassignment of current monies. Um, but the largest component of this is a teacher retention aotment. The way it was explained to us today, the state is really trying hard through this aotment to retain teachers

028in the profession. They're not as concerned about retaining them in your district, but we are currently losing about 25,000 teachers per year out of the profession. So, we lose about 45,000 teachers per year uh from the profession of teaching. We are back filling them with about 20,000 whether they are uncertified, they are traditionally certified, moving from a another state with a certification. So we're losing 45, we're gaining 20. So we're losing about 25,000 teachers a year. Uh so the state's answer to that was the teacher retention aotment. Um our best understanding is that through our PES data, we will submit information to the state. the state will uh calculate how much of the incentive or how much of the yes incentive is due to the district for those teaching staff. They'll have years of experience.

029They'll know our our district size. And so they will send us $2,500 for each teacher with three or four years of experience and 5,000 for teachers with five or more years of experience. One thing that we're really waiting on the state is who exactly is a teacher in their mind. The most restrictive uh would be what we submit for PES which would be record service ID087. Uh so that would tell us hey this is truly a person who's providing four hours of instruction every day uh in a uh subject etc etc. But we know that we have more uh people that we know are teachers within our district that may or may not meet that definition. Uh we might have some special education teachers that may not fully meet uh the 4-hour requirement. So that's

030where we're waiting on some info from the state to know who exactly they're considering a teacher for purposes of this retention allotment again so that we can make sure that all that they're expecting uh to receive that aotment receive that aotment going forward uh from our staff standpoint. There's another component of this aotment but it really doesn't apply to us. We have more than 5,000 students. Uh so in districts with less than 5,000 students, the numbers are 4,500 uh for three and four years and 8,000 for teachers with five or more years of experience. Uh one interesting caveat that we learned today, the measurement is as of right now, if you have 4,800 kids right now and you grow to 6,000 kids, those districts will continue to receive the 4,500 and the 8,000 even when

031their districts are beyond 5,000 students. So, we're really going to create an inequity here between I was small and I've now grown into larger and I've always been larger. So, that's it's going to be an interesting component going forward um as we kind of watch some of this. So, uh we were told that the commissioner does have some latitude to correct some unintended consequences in the bill. Uh so, we'll see if that's an unintended consequence or if that's uh truly the way that that's going to stay going forward. Miss Timberman. Another one. Um, we talked earlier about the basic aotment. Here's another one directed towards uh staff retention. The support staff retention aotment. It directs $45 per ADA to provide staff increases for non-administrative staff. So, we talked about the 55 and the basic aotment.

032This can also be used uh for our non-eing non-administrative staff. So, uh, educational aids, uh, custodians, bus drivers, uh, essentially anyone who's not administrative staff and did not qualify for the teacher retention allotment, uh, can qualify for the support staff retention aotment. Unlike the teacher retention allotment where it is a set amount, this one is a funded uh, component. So, we would get 45 per ADA and then of that we would have a mandatory spend. So right now my best guess based off of our WADA for 25 2425 estimated at 14680 uh we'd get about 660,000 uh and that would go for all of our 01 to uh all of our support staff essentially everybody who's not administrator and did not receive that teacher retention aotment. So not a lot of funds to go a

033really long way. Uh the next uh we talked a little bit already about the basic a lotment of $55 uh per average daily attendance increase. So that would go from 6160 to 6215. Uh estimated additional revenue from this adjustment would be about 800,000 uh for the district school safety aotment uh board. You may remember with the last legislative session, we received the uh campus arm security requirement and it came with about uh $10,000 per campus or 15,000 per campus and 10 per 88. Uh and when you look down at the end of the day, it was additional funding of of maybe 15,000 or so, but we knew an armed security guard would cost considerably more than that 15. Uh so the state has put some more money about 450 million uh to school safety uh

034in the current legislative year. So they doubled the per campus uh or they more than doubled the per campus aotment. Uh they've added 18,540 per campus and then they've doubled the uh per student ADA all aotment from 10 to 20 uh to try to help make up for some of that. Just to give you an idea, that would mean increased revenue for us from the uh school safety aotment, excuse me, about 147,000. Uh our total school safety uh uh safety aotment with those new enhanced fundings would be about 830,000. Uh and we spend uh to date have spent 1.4 million on security salaries. So uh it's not a provision that's going to make us whole on student security. that's still a priority in Wakatchi ISD and it will remain one. Uh but just wanted to

035give you a frame of reference. It's getting us closer, but it's not going to fully cover um all of our security uh personnel that we have in district. Miss Creel, we talked a little bit about this one, the allocation for basic cost. It's $16 per average daily attendance. Uh you could almost look at it as it gets added to the basic a lotment except that it has specific spend components that it's on. Um, so we're looking at about 1.5 million from the allocation of basic costs uh or this aotment for basic cost uh to be used on transportation, utilities, property casualty insurance, employee benefits, TRS contribution, payroll taxes, and rehiring of retired employees. Um, as a frame of reference, we spend a little more than that on utilities in any given year. So, it's not

036going to stretch very far uh in terms of well, we should have no problem and fully spending this allotment with the allowable categories. Let me put it that way. Um so other changes in House Bill Two, these I'm not fully uh fully baked on. These are some things that I'm waiting on. Uh there's a new uh category or acknowledgement or category of award of acknowledged or nationally board certified within the teacher incentive aotment. This will be rolled out I believe they said next year uh 267. It has a range of $3,000 to $9,000 in funding. Uh we talked a little bit earlier about a transition from special education to intensity of services model. Uh and that again will begin in 2627. Um one thing that does begin I believe immediately is $1,000 for every full

037and individual evaluation from the special education world. Uh so at one point there was a bill that would would allocate us a thousand if they're our student and 4,000 if they were not our student and those got married into 1,000 uh for whether they're our student or not our student. So we still have to provide those evaluations even if they're not our student. Uh 135 million was put aside for teacher preparation certification courses. Uh if you can't sleep tonight, if you want to go look up House Bill 2, about half of the total uh 230 something pages are de are devoted to teacher preparation and certification courses. So it is a really really thorough read. Uh the the legislature spent a lot of time on trying to make sure that we are being innovative with

038our pathways to find future educators. uh because we know that they're not all coming through the traditional uh secondary uh bachelorette uh or bachelor's degree programs. Uh they're not going to formal school training. A lot of them are getting alternatively certified. Uh there's 13 153 million uh for uh additional funding for CTE. Um there is a provision for free pre kindergarten for students of teachers. Uh again, we're kind of waiting on that definition of teachers. We believe it's going to be the same classroom teachers that are receiving the classroom or the teacher retention aotment. Uh but we're waiting on a little bit more information from TEA on that. So right now there's a list of about seven or eight components that qualifies. One for uh free prek and then being a a classroom teacher would

039be that eighth or ninth uh on that list. So, one thing that I did learn today that that as a district we're going to have to work through on a staff level, uh there are going to be a lot more requirements for seeking approval from TEA uh with our current preKS. And so, as we look to expand, renovate, or even uh add preK sections, we're going to have to seek approval from the state um before we can do those things. We're also going to have to seek approval from the state before we charge for ineligible students to attend preK. Those components will start in 267 uh when the state has those up and running, but that's going to be a change from from the way that we're currently operating. So, uh, again, from a staff

040level, we'll have to work through that and we'll bring you more information when we know exactly how those are going to work. But the state is setting up some preK intermediaries that we're going to have to work through that sound a lot like the uh ESC's, but they're only going to be about four or five of these in the state. So, we'll have to work through them. I believe the the component or the uh the reason that we're working through them is to try not to put our private prek operators out of business uh but to form more of a partnership so that we are not having too many open seats uh that uh they're still able to operate and and uh provide quality instruction uh for prek students and then we can do as

041well uh from our programs. Yes, ma'am. Uh Mr. Colin, I had a question about the um pull in individual evaluations. I understand we're going to have to um welcome students from private schools and charter schools and do the evaluations for them. Has this been an issue in the past or is this a new thing? Are we going to have to hire an additional uh so whoever does the valuation? I'm going to I'm going to tell Miss Heimbuk to keep her mic hot and get ready. But my understanding after sitting in the training today is this really isn't a new requirement. We already have to do it, right? So this I don't anticipate that this is going to drastically increase um our services that we're having to offer. don't imagine that we're going to have to

042add a ton of staff for new um I do not imagine that we will have to add a ton of staff for new requests for evaluations coming in because this is already in existence. The only thing different is we will now start getting some funding, some reimbursement funding uh for providing these evaluations. Yeah. Yes. I was aware, you know, I've been reading a lot up on this and um the one thing though is there some kind going to be some kind of requirement that the um charter schools and the new private schools that they test because that was an issue that's kind of been on the chat boards. So that would that would make it grow greatly. That's not something I've heard either that some of the charter schools and private schools do their own

043testing. Okay. Um but some ask us to do that testing and that's been in play for a number of years. Um just another side note is an average test uh full individual evaluation for a child is anywhere between 1600 to $2,000 depending on the amount of testing that is required. So um while $1,000 is nice it it doesn't fully cover how much will be out of pocket for testing students that are not part of our district. I guess that's another to be determined. And that's that's actually better news than they shared today because today they were saying that during testimony many districts went up there to to tell the legislature that their average cost are between four and $7,000 uh for these exams. And so uh again, those are costs we're already incurring. those are

044costs we're already or testing we're already providing. So to receive a little bit of funding on the back side uh really is helpful um as we kind of go through that. Yeah. And see and I think honestly Mr. Creel, I think that's a part of what going today was really helpful for me is that all the questions that I have and all the questions that you have are ones that all of the other providers in the state are having as well. All of the Mo Casey's and the Thompson Hortons and the Tasbes and the Tasbos. Everybody has the same questions because it was very there's not as grand a detail in House Bill 2 as there had been in some other legislation. There's a lot of the commissioner will, you know, come up with rules

045and share them. The commissioner will do this, the commissioner will do that. So, uh, we're still waiting on the commissioner to draw up a lot of this to kind of let us know where we should be panicking and where we should be going, okay, that wasn't as bad as we envisioned it could have been. Uh, so that's that's really where we're waiting on a lot of direction from the commissioner uh, and TEA right now to kind of help us through a lot of these changes. And then Yes, ma'am. Uh and then one other change that really doesn't impact us, uh there's additional state aid, uh for regional insurance cost differences. This is more in coastal communities. Um strangely enough, nobody in region 10 today wanted to volunteer that they qualified uh for this sort of

046funding, but uh I I don't think this is really going to impact us at all. I think you're going to see this more along the Gulf Coast uh with their insurance premium skyrocketing after all the hurricanes. Overall, what does it look like right now? Uh, let me back up for just one second. I'm only focusing on House Bill Two in here. There are other things that are going to change legislatively. Uh, but we really don't have a lot of impact up and down from a funding perspective with some of the other changes. Yes, Senate Bill 4, I believe is the number, uh, is proposing to increase the homestead exemption from 100,000 to 140. We anticipate that will be approved in November by the voters. And but on the back side of that which okay if

047it's approved that means that we will have less revenue from property taxes but there's a hold harmless provision from the state. So uh at the end of the day the impact will generally be negligible. Uh we should lose money from local property taxes and gain more money from the state. So we're not going to spend a ton of time talking about this because mechanically on my end it's a difference in one account code or another. it doesn't overall it doesn't increase the overall or decrease uh the overall revenue available for appropriation or for expenditure for the next year. So, I do know that there's others out there. There's a Senate bill. I don't remember the other number that increases the homestead exemption for disabled and over 65 uh um homesteads. That would increase their homestead

048exemption to roughly 200,000. Um, we fully anticipate that will take some properties completely off of school property tax role. Um, $200,000 is getting close to our average home value in Walks Hatchee, at least according to what I get from the appraisal district. So, some homes will fully fall off. Uh, but again, that comes with a hold harmless provision on the back end. So, uh, I'm not trying to uh to minimize the impact of those other bills. I just know that realistically from a financial perspective, it's not a significant impact because there's a for the decrease in in local revenue, there's an increase in state revenue uh that should offset it. So, we're really just kind of focusing on new changes and different here. Uh so overall with House Bill 2, no new funding to the

049district, looking at about 3.1 million uh overall. Now, that does not include the teacher retention aotment because um quite honestly, I didn't have the numbers of how many teachers that was at the moment uh to go in and do the math, but that's going to be a flow through. We get money from the state and we pass that money along to our staff. Uh so, new funds that can be used for staff pay. I anticipated that uh uh specifically, Miss Timberman may be interested in this number. Uh but the 31 is supposed to be used on non-payroll. So, that will leave about 1.6 six of new money for uh staff pay increases. Any questions there? I feel like I'm running through this at like a uh sprinter speed and I look at the clock and

050it tells me I am not. Operations current year operations uh board we presented to you a balanced budget for the current year. Uh revenues right now from property taxes are tracking a little bit behind our budget. Payroll expenditures right now are tracking a little bit under budget. Those are pretty much offsetting each other. Um, again, as I told you earlier with fund balance, I didn't get that one right. I'm not getting these right either in terms of overall plan for the year. But when we present you a budget, we present you a conservative budget for that reason. So that when property tax revenue is a little bit behind, we've not spent all the money and we're going to necessarily operate in a in a significant deficit. The payroll expenditures being a little bit behind really

051does not surprise me. We had um some uh contingency positions that were recaptured last year through our use of uh Cardonics to make sure that we were efficiently staffing staff. Uh we did not go back and have to fill uh all of those positions. So, it makes sense that we would have some payroll expenditures that we're not incurring right now. We have some open positions uh that have not been filled. Uh Mr. Cooper, I anticipated you might be interested in this number, so I put it in there, but I've already spoiled all of the fun when I said it earlier. Uh, so if you're not interested, oh well, I apologize. Um, charge reimbursements right now 101,000. Uh, down from two and a half million a couple years ago. Ah, it strikes again another typo. Considerations

052for 2526 budget. Uh, ADA projections. So, we are anticipating about a 300 student increase from our current year. Uh, you may remember that some of our projections uh had some really healthy student increases like four and 5%. This is not a 4% increase. Uh we are looking at about uh a 2.8 to 3.1% student enrollment increase. We believe that's in line uh with not only demog demographic projections but also what we're seeing uh in the housing market and the new houses that are being built. Uh ADA of 10769. I know that we generally uh as a district and I don't fault us for it. We are really concerned with what enrollment is, but as the finance guy, I don't really care what enrollment is, and I don't mean that rudely. Texas is one of the

053one of the remaining states that pays on average daily attendance. So enrollment is a great number to have because I got to have them enrolled for them to attend, but I really only get funded off ADA. So the enrollment estimate of 11617 is is quite frankly irrelevant um in the grand scheme of things for my purposes. Um, so for my purposes, I'm looking at the 10679. Uh, this is about 92% of the the demographers in uh enrollment estimate of 11,617. I feel pretty comfortable at 92%. Uh, again, demographers projecting off a percent 3.8% in student uh growth for next year. We are not budgeting their entire student increase. We are budgeting about uh 75 to 80% of their student increase. Uh and then our attendance uh rate roughly for this year was about 94 and

054a half. Again, that's that other component. I if if I'm going to be worried about enrollment, I have to be worried about student attendance. Uh generally, we we try to track and and budget at 95%. So this year, we were a little bit under it. Um I have a a graph that I'll show you here in just a second on that. Uh for this year we budgeted uh for ADA which is approximately 92% of the average enrollment of 11176. Uh we budgeted ADA of 10436. So you can see that we were a little bit behind our budgeted uh ADA count. Now when I run the numbers for the state revenue template, we're actually sitting pretty good because we had some increase in um other areas that draw additional weighted funding. Uh, but it just tells

055me I'm kind of in the ballpark. I might be a little bit high on our ADA. So, I might even reduce that 300 a little bit more to maybe 250 uh just to be conservative and safe. Looking at this year, um, the green lines on there are where we budgeted. So, we budgeted 10,000 uh 368. I got to change those fonts to be black type instead of blue because that's not very easy to read from over here. uh we only met our ADA projection one six weeks uh for the whole year. We met it in the first six weeks and then uh illness took hold and it really took hold in the fourth six weeks and we never really recovered. So the average is a little bit less than what we anticipated. Uh if you

056want to look at that on a pretendant on a attendance percentage basis uh we average or we budget 95. We hit that in the first six weeks. uh we were under it under it uh every other 6 weeks for the rest of the year and the average again was about 94 and a half uh for the whole year. Things we're still working on for next year. Uh we're still working on reconciling um our current year. So we've had to reallocate about one and a half million more this year for technology, TLI, athletics, ROC, and CTE uh throughout the course of the year. That's not a bad thing. Uh that's that is good. That means we had some funds there. We're still looking at balance. That means we had some funds uh that we could move

057from one uh priority or challenge to another. Uh so, but we need to look at are those going to be long-term uh things that we need to continue doing. Um when I say TLI, I'm assigning it to TLI because I didn't want to take credit for it, but it was like our financial literacy program. Uh we put about 19,500 into financial literacy. So, I charge that to TLI. Whoopsie. I may have I should have told you earlier. Um we're also still working to understand all the changes from House Bill 2 and what exactly we're going to have to do. We think we have a pretty good handle on um the amount of the teacher retention aotment. Now we just need to really know who who are the people that are qualifying for it and then

058all the other components that are in there so that we can really go about executing the third bullet staff payraises. Um, so again, we have a general idea of for teachers with three or more years, but what about 01 and two? Um, we need to really talk about, Mr. Tman, you've given us good feedback already about that starting salary, that year zero salary, um, making it more attractive and more competitive. Um, again, we I've already gotten the cart way in front of the horse, but, uh, librarians, counselors, and nurses, they're on the state minimum salary schedule, but best we can tell, they're not included in the teacher, uh, retention aotment. So, uh, what do we do there? I know that we probably are not going to be able to meet all expectations, uh, from our

059staff. There's going to be a delta between classroom teacher and librarian, counselor, nurse, even though they've been on the the same pay scale for a while. Uh, pair professional, support, and auxiliary staff, and then lastly, administrative staff. Uh, but we said our our original tier one goal was a pay increase for all staff. So, uh, we are still working on that. We just need to make sure that we understand all of the components before we get down to uh the everybody else line. Uh so that's kind of where we are, what we're working on. Uh next budget workshop tentatively scheduled for August 11th. Again, if we get some clarity, we may uh put another one in there in July just so that we can can kind of keep you up to date on hey, here's

060what we know now and how it's impacting our budget. So with that, any questions or comments from the board that I can address? Anyone? I just have one question. Um, so if we were to u get the TIA in the future, do they cover the 8% or will we be expected to cover the 8% of the for retirement on that for TIA for teacher incentive aotment? Right. That's on us. The the retirement contribution match is on us. Okay. Miss Creel, do uh to to increase your your laugh and your your smile a little bit on that. Uh the reading academy stipens that we pay, the math academy stipens that are flow through from DEA, we we get to pay the match on those as well. So, there's a good number of things that come from

061TEA that that we get to pick up the 8% andor other benefits that go along with it. the workers comp, the uh unemployment insurance, all those other benefits that go with it. So, usually the 11% or so is on us. Uh and it's just the amount that's been advertised. We might get that as a flow through from TEA, but there's 11% more that go with it. That is all on us. Well, I just wonder does that I think that would be called an unfunded mandate. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Yep. Our next workshop will be in July. If we can get some more information from TEA that makes it relevant and worth your time. Yes, sir. We'll have another workshop in July. Otherwise, we're currently planning for August. Can you provide us some numbers then on

062um what we saved by reallocating positions and eliminating certain positions if that works out as well? We will we'll try to get some info for you. Yes, sir. Anyone else have any questions? staff one in the crowd. One no one else doc. I'm sorry. Yes, sir. RC was program included in our CT program right now, but never actually CT program. My understanding is what that has being included that is the case addition. Yes, sir. Yeah. Uh really good point. Um that is one of the really big changes for the 153 million that were allocated for CTE. JOTC now will qualify for CTE funding. uh and conversely the expenditures for ROC uh will now be a CTE related expenditure. So uh that is one really big change that came with uh the CTE funding, additional funding.

063So thank you for pointing that out because I know this past year we we we started our NJOTC but then we we had to really find the funding for it um through the the high school um budget I believe because you have to buy uniforms and the startup costs are kind of expensive. Now, it seems a benefit that that we're going to be able to route that into our CT program for real. So, I'm glad about that. Anyone else? Go, ma'am. Did you have something you wanted to include? I I did, but if you want me to wait till later, I can do that, too. You're more than welcome to do it now if you want to. Okay. It's pretending this is a workshop, so that's that's what what what a workshop's for. Yeah. Okay.

064I practice this to be five minutes. Okay. So, hello. My name is Britney Webb and I am a teacher in this district. But most importantly, I'm a parent of three little ones in our schools. A little over 10 years ago, I moved to Texas from North Carolina. There was there I was a life skills teacher in a small mountain school district and worked in a wonderful close-knit community. Although our district struggled financially, most teachers felt respected and worked hard for our kids with the little resources we had. Later, when my husband got out of the army, we moved to Wongah Hatchi near his family. Immediately, I was so excited to be here because I got to see that same small town feel with a heart for service and community fellowship like I had back in

065North Carolina. So, when I was hired to be a special education aid, I was ecstatic to be a part of this school district. I worked hard and got my Texas teaching cert certificate and now I teach seventh grade Texas history. Absolutely loving what I do. Now, my main reason for coming in tonight was not just to tell you my life story or shout out my amazing principal, Mr. Rusty East. He told me to say that. Um, but I wanted to speak about our budget changes. Now, I'm not a specialist on school district budgeting, nor am I as talented as Mr. Calden, but I do feel like some of the changes that we're making won't serve our district well. The central issue is that we seem to be cutting from the bottom and not from the

066top. Meaning we are cutting our boots on the ground people who deal directly with students on a daily basis. We are cutting assistant principles, our librarians, our office staff, and our pair of professionals. Yet, some of our top positions are getting raises and seemingly aren't affected at all. From a person who's been in the area of special education, a pair professional, a classroom teacher, a bus driver, and a coach, the ones who deal directly with students make the most impact. They are the ones who make teachers want to stay in a district because they feel supported. They are the ones who enrich the lives of our students by connecting with them and holding them accountable when things get tough. They are the ones who help ease a teacher's overburdened workload. They are the ones who

067go to recitals and sporting events. They make the copies or even just watch the teachers classroom so she can go to the bathroom. They we cannot lose them. And there are many teachers who are leaving our district due to feelings of not being supported, being undercompensated, or because our district seems to say one thing but can act in other ways. One of the most concerning things for me to hear is that we are not refilling librarian positions around our districts once Lowe's librarians leave their job. Our district just put out a long social media post in April detailing all of the wonderful things that our librarians do for us. Additionally, all librarians have to have their Texas school librarian certifications or they couldn't keep their positions. But now we're okay with just a pair of

068professional running the library. This leads to another issue. Our pair of professionals don't get paid well. On average, they make between $15 to $19 an hour. Yet, they could go to BIES just down the road and work in the deli for $21 an hour with full benefits and three weeks paid vacation. Our parents are already overworked and now we expect them to do our jobs and help with the library. Will they be authorized to help pick out and order our books? Will they be trained in dealing with our Chromebook issues? Will they be able to help teachers and facilitate research methods and help with enrichment to help struggling students close their reading and comprehension gaps to help bring our STAR scores up? And again, all for less than a BIES worker. There was a reason

069behind making sure our librarians had this special certification because they do a ton of work. And to say that a parah who's already overworked can just step in and do their job is not honoring our librarians at all. I find this especially alarming because my daughter's school will be one of those schools affected by this. My daughter is a student at Dunaway Elementary and she's developed a love of reading through the assistance of her phenomenal teachers and through her school librarian who is retiring after many years of service. So to hear that my daughter won't have the same opportunity to enhance her reading skills and have the assistance for reading as other students across our districts is concerning. Now I know I addressed a lot of problems, but I truly believe that we have the

070time to turn this around to keep the heart of Hatche in our schools. I suggest we create a budget board filled with people from all positions in our district to help bring different viewpoints to budgetary issues. If we aren't going to give teacher raises, and I understand, let's expand current things that make us so unique to bring in qualified people. One in particular being our amazing Little Chiefs Academy. Not only is it state level standards of success, but the daycare teachers truly help our schools run by watching our kids so we can teach. That is an area we could expand to pull in teachers without being able to give raises. My two smallest ones are there now. And with only around 75 spots for the entire district, if they could expand and give teachers amazing

071and affordable daycare, that would bring bring enough people here. Another option is when schools are extremely short staffed, let's have our amazing curriculum departments step in and help. They are the experts. They know the learning plans and they would be the most qualified to help cover a class when we need them to. Now, I know they worked hard to get where they are today. And so maybe not all the time, but maybe once every few weeks just step in and help. Again, I admit I'm no expert when it comes to these things, but I have been a part of a district who had little funding was able to keep retention and spirits up all by using their strengths. Before our budget is passed in August, let's use these next couple months to relook at our

072budget strategies strategies and make sure that it's truly what's best for Wakahhatche. Thank you. Anybody else have any questions or comments? Mr. Colin, do you have anything else? No, sir. I'm good. Anyone? Okay. At this time, the board is going to go into close session according section 551. ETSC of the Texas Government Code. It is now 455. is now 6:23. The board's going to reconvene into open session. At this time, I'm going to ask Mr. Cooper to lead us in our invocation, followed by JC Hines with our pledge of allegiance to the American and Texas flag. Yes. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, most gracious God, Father, we thank you for this day. you have blessed us to be a part. Father, we thank you for our school community. Father, we thank you for the things

073that you've already done, the things that you're getting ready to do. And Father, we just pray, Father, on tonight that you would help us to keep the main thing, the main thing. Help us to keep our kids, our school community, our focus. And Father, help us to make the right decisions. And in the areas that we've er name we pray. Amen. Amen. I pledge algiance 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 to the Texas flag. I pledge algiance to thee, Texas. One state under God, one and indivisible. Next item on our agenda would be our open forum. This time we do not have anyone signed up to speak. So we are going to

074go out of order and move to our action item A which will be consideration with possible approval of hiring the Felty Elementary principal. Good evening board. It's my pleasure this evening to recommend the hiring of Miss Asia Mason for the position of Felty Elementary Principal. With 10 years experience in education and current experience as a junior high assistant principal, she demonstrates a clear commitment to student success and campus leadership. Her skills and experience have positioned her well to guide this campus forward. I reckon Miss Mason for your approval. Any questions for Mrs. Balter? Okay. At this time, I entertaining a motion to approve action item A as presented. So move. Motion by Mr. Cooper. Second. Second by Mrs. Creel. Any discussion? All in favor say I. I. Post say nay. Motion carries 70. [Applause] Oh,

075please. Okay. Action item B will be consideration with possible approval for the hiring of the Marvin Biomedical Academy principal. Okay. All right. Board, it's my pleasure to recommend the hiring of Ashley Gabbard as the principal of Marvin Biomedical Academy. She brings 11 years of experience to the role, having served as teacher and assistant principal. Her strong instructional leadership and deep understanding of elementary student needs make her an excellent choice to lead Marvin. I recommend her for your approval. Questions or comments for Mrs. Balter. Okay. I entertain a motion to approve action item B as presented. So move. Second by Mr. McCuten, second by Mr. Pittz. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. I. Post say nay. Motion carries 70. [Applause] Okay. And action item C will be consideration with possible approval of the hiring

076of the director of accounting. Okay. I'm happy to recommend Miss Cindy Weedman as the director of accounting. She brings 26 years of valuable experience having served as a high school business teacher, PES coordinator, and most recently as a chief financial officer. Her extensive background and financial expertise will be a tremendous asset to our district's leadership team. I recommend her for your approval. And I'm happy to make the motion to hire Cindy William as director of accounting. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second by Mr. Scoffield. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. I. Post say nay. Motion carry 70. [Applause] Congratulations. [Music] Okay, here we go. Here [Music] we go. One, two, three. Congratulations. [Music] All right. Well, [Music] That's right. [Music] Wow. Yes, sir. What you [Music] She's been there.

077come a long way. [Music] There's a few more [Music] I feel alive. [Music] Oh yeah. She goes, "Yeah, you just got" She goes, "I just got you beat about two months." I said, "You still hold? Turn it on. Okay, board. We're going to move back to item five, our reports, which is our first report will be our superintendent report. Before uh you start your report, I want to welcome you, Miss McCutchen, to our first meeting at WISD. So, thank you. Been on the job a whopping nine 10 days. It's been great from minute one. So, um it's my honor tonight to present to y'all my first superintendent report. It is a little shorter as uh as you can expect, but just really want to talk about some final numbers from the 24-25 school year. So,

078the class of 2025 graduates, we had 180 seniors that graduated at high school of choice. We had 82 at Global High and then at Walkahhatche High School, we had 725 graduates. I know y'all all attended those events. Um also want to look at final 2425 um enrollment. So on the last day of school, our enrollment stood at 11,171. Um if we just compare back to last year, last day of school in May, that enrollment was um 10,988. So you can see where that growth came in. Attendance rate. Um you saw that in our um in Mr. Calden's budget workshop where we ended the year with a attendance percentage of 94.4%. And then just kind of talking a little bit about my first week at uh Wakahhatche ISD. So I was able to sit in on

079the second round of principal interviews and the business office interviews and we just hired those three amazing individuals. So was uh honored to be able to do that as well. We did hold two town hall meetings last week and those were the first of six. Um really u Mr. Calden and Dr. Dr. Aver did a lot most of that communication and um but I was able to to attend those and listen to some of the input and um questions that we had coming in from our community members. And then on Thursday we held our um held a realtor's breakfast. We did that out at Jimmy Ray Elementary and that was really um it was really nice to be able to meet with some of those folks and just to talk about some of the great

080things at the district, introduce myself as well. And then again, Mr. Calin and Dr. favorite presented the um same information from the town hall meeting as well. And then just some upcoming events. Y'all are probably aware this Thursday there is a meet and greet here at 4 uh from 4 p.m. to 6 pm. Um and so looking forward to be able to meet lots of individuals here in the community. I'm doing pretty good on faces. Not so well on all the names, but I'm working on that. U maybe we should have um name cards or something. I don't know, Becca. We'll see. And then we do have four more town hall meetings coming up. Uh these dates were previously set. So July 8th at 6 PM is at uh the high school, Wakachi High School

081in their CTE room. July 10th, we're changing that up to 10:00 a.m. Same location. And then we do have two uh two of our final meetings in August, one at 10 a.m. and one at 6 p.m. And those will actually be in Coleman in the Fine Arts Center. Um and so that'll that'll conclude our town hall meetings and then we'll move into some some action in that at that August board meeting. So, do y'all have any questions for me, board members? Nope. Questions? Welcome. And it sounds like a great start. It's been busy for minute one. Thank you. Thank you. So, report B will be ourformational bond 2023 construction update. Mr. Mott. Good evening, board. M. McCuten, we're going to go over the May 2023 bond construction update. So, our mission for this summer is

082a busy one. We're going to working to complete the Hancock building uh which will be the new home of Coleman Junior High, complete the Finley remodel there and additions there. Howard Junior High remodel additions and then all the elementary schools that we're touching there throughout the summer and this extensively on quite a few of those elementary schools. So, our goal is by August one to have all those things complete um before teachers start to come back and all that. That's the goal. So, we're going to start with the Hancock building. We're about 98% complete. Mainly doing punch list items. Fix to start doing the landscaping, which mainly for the landscaping we're doing there is just putting back grass. We're going to put sod instead of hydro mulch because we're going into the season that hydro

083mulch going to be hard to keep alive. So, we're going to do sod there um on the areas that we've damaged and everything else through all the construction uh machines and those kind of things. And then we've got uh we put in a couple extra field drains that weren't accounted for at the beginning right there in the front of the school to help drainage there. But then um we the lockers for the boys athletic area, they're not going to be installed until October 25. We had a change order late in that job to increase the number of lockers we needed there. And so by doing that is we went from about 68 to about 150 locker lockers. So it'll it'll now accumulate or hold everyone there. So it's going to be a little bit longer

084for us to get them in and then get them installed. And then right now we're under budget on that job running about 900,000 there. And then the f the furniture for that job for that school will be delivered on June 23rd of that is when they'll deliver it and started putting it together and installing it. So we're planning to move over teachers roughly the first week of July, move their stuff from Coleman into that building. So it'll be that mid July when we'll probably finish with all the installation, but we can still move some of their stuff over. So we're on date for to meet all that. in the furniture is everything's scheduled well on that. I've been getting updates on all that. All the trucks we're seeing are all going to be scheduled. So,

085Finley Junior is about 60% complete. That last 40% is a push. We're going to be pushing that one. Um we're about 95% demo complete of the demo. We're starting buildback of the library in the cafeteria. We're continuing in the admin and the kitchen area. And then we're right now that is a combined withhau that GMP when y'all approved that. Those were combined together. So between those two buildings, we're running about a 1.1 million combined uh under budget there. That furniture is scheduled to be delivered on the 28th of July as well, and we'll need every day to the 28th for that one. Um you'll see some pictures here, but there's there's a lot that's still to be done, but there's been a lot that's happened in the last two weeks since we've gone out of

086school. So the pictures you're seeing here, if any of y'all I'm sure all of y'all are familiar with it, but anyone that isn't, you can kind of see that is your cafeteria and library. The picture on your left is your cafeteria. You can see the far stage if you're familiar with it. Before this day, before school let out, it was three levels with multi-level ceiling. Now we're down to one level and no ceiling right now. We will put a ceiling back in there, but it'll be a single level uh ceiling there. Picture on your right is looking from one of the halls looking right towards the library. If you can look, if you see in the back, you see those uh air conditioning ducks there? That is actually where the teachers lounge was. just to

087give you familiar in that building and it was multilevel with windows and all that kind of around it. You can see it's all just down. You can notice also in all those pictures you see no red brick pavers. We're down to a hall and a half basically from the gym around to the if you went from the gym going along the back over towards where the uh area concession stand was. That's what's left of red brick as of yesterday morning. I haven't been over there today, but they've had two machines going every day, six days a week since the Saturday we let out of school. That's when they started on that. And that's how far they've gotten in in two weeks. But they've had two machines running all day long, eight hours a day, six

088days a week. That tells you how that that tile is. It's been there since 1985. Howard Junior High, we're about 65% complete. Demo's 98% complete. We've got a few little just very little left to do there. Mainly cutting of this uh squaring up some areas and when we demoed it just wasn't it we knew it wasn't going to be clean. They just got to finish cutting those to so we can build it back. Starting the build back of the cafeteria transition but from the old cafeteria the new cafeteria. We tore that whole wall out. You'll see in a picture here. We tore that whole exterior wall out. We just have to build back the bulkhead because we're bringing uh air conditioning from the new RT units on the new area into the cafeteria. We're taking

089that cafeteria off the geothermal system so it will be on just a rooftop units like most of the rest of our buildings are. And then um we're continuing to build back of the band hall area. Again, I told you about that being under budget being combined with Finley on that one. That furniture only furniture we're really buying for that building is the cafeteria furniture. It's just coming with the fel the Finley delivery. So, it I say deliver the 28th. It's probably going to be closer to the 30th, but I mean, it's in that same furniture whenever that truck shows up right in there. But, it's just basically li uh I'm sorry, cafeteria tables for that one. So, your picture here on the left, if that is the old area, that is a that is the

090awning right across from the cafeteria where there was that under awning. That's it. There is no more awning. That is now your drama room and three pull out areas. There you can see the bricks all finished. Everything externally is finished in that area. Um picture on your right is your cafeteria. That is looking from inside the cafeteria through the cafeteria. Actually we're standing at the edge of the hall that was next to the cafeteria looking all the way through from the new into the old into the new. You can see there's no ceiling there. There's no exterior wall. That was right there where those couple of columns you see there. That was your exterior wall and glass windows. It's no longer there either. So, you can see the rain's giving us a little problem with

091some water coming in, but we'll slowly get that we'll get that fixed here next week. We'll start to put the roof on that area out there. Walked at Creek High School, I'm going to tell you, we're 10% complete. It's hard to judge right now on that big a site exactly the full completion, but we're not much. That's going to be a percentage up or down either way on that one. Dirt works about 70% complete. All main building is complete. We do have the parking or the loop around the very front is complete. Mainly right now they're all working on dirt work of the athletic field area in the back. Um and then the sanitary sewer is 90% complete. We're just started uh installing the storm and I say just started like Thursday last week. So

092it's very new. Pier drilling is about 30% complete. 30% of for that out there is about 115 to 120 peers have been drilled out there on that job. We poured our first grade beams last week in some I say of a bunch um in one in two areas of that building A1 and A2 that's where we're starting which is pretty much educational wings. We're starting in that area pouring grade beams and then they'll have a concrete batch plant set up there by the end of the month. Um, so waiting on the second round of comments. We have gotten those back. We got them back late late last week. We have already there were two comments on the second round that came back. One of them we've actually we just fulfilled this morning is uh they

093were wanting to the peer review for the storm shelter. We heard from peer review this morning and it all passed. So that one had that comment has now been solved. We've got a few questions. They're asking about the MEP um that we're talking to our MEP engineer. So it we're down to one question. and we'll have all that to get a full 100% building permit for that job. The next uh text dot supposed to be sending this month 95% drawings for spur 394. That does affect how their drawings affect our drive side on that and how we um our dirt work there. So, we've pulled off about 100 ft from the spur. We're not touching that dirt until we get final 100% completion from them. We have given them what our drives are and what

094our kind of expectations were there and they're incorporating them. So when we get the 95% it'll tell us a lot on where we need to be on grades in that last little bit to get everything matched up there. And then this afternoon we did have a discussion with the city on the a barn that we've been doing out there um on how they want to present this program if they're okay with everything going on there. Meeting went real real well there. Um, we've met with uh people from the school district's a department. We've had two, three meetings on that. Uh, Mr. Schoolfield's on that committee as well doing it and those those comments have gone very well. We're just kind of seeing where they're looking at laying out and if they're okay with everything we're

095seeing there, any changes we may have to do that they want us to do with um drainage or storm or uh sh uh water and those kind of things that we may see going over there. Prop C. So Prop C was the big one. That's a $60 million to renovate the current buildings. We're doing a lot of that this summer. If you go around to any of our buildings, you'll see we're in almost every one of them. So originally when we did this, we priority one and priority two was what the bond was built off of. And that was 419 line items. As of right now, we're sitting today, we've completed 163 of those. We've got 150 more in progress. by the end of the summer, that group will plan to have 75% of the

096original bond completed by the end of summer. So then we started looking at this spring, we started looking at priority three and priority four. With that, we added another 539 line items. With those, we've completed already 110 of those, which is 21% of those. We've got 55 more in progress. By the end of summer, we'll have completed 31% of that area as well. Then now you see the additions due to savings. Those are savings that we've had that we've started things that are outside of those priorities. Could be a playground, could be some flooring, could be things like that painting of classrooms at one of the buildings that never was counted for that we've seen savings and we're saying, "Hey, these are things that we can do to help that building with doing all this

097other in the building. Let's do that one piece and it makes it all look new." Global the Hancock building is a prime example there. Putting flooring in those classrooms and painting those classrooms. were not part of the bond at all. But with everything else being new and we would had old flooring and old painted walls and they move in, it just doesn't fit. Now we've gone in and put all new flooring in all the classrooms and painted all the classrooms. It makes the whole building look really fresh and new when everybody moves in there. So those are some of those things you see in there and those will continue to go up as we add on to that. So it's right now at 39. Those are all things that we've added on. By the end

098of the summer, those will be 100% complete, but we'll have probably have added a few more through the bond through things that get approved in the next couple of months. So, by the end of the Right now, we're looking at 997 line items. By the end of the summer, we're going to be roughly 52% complete. There's a So, that doesn't seem like a lot. Doesn't seem like we've accomplished a lot, but if you really go back and look, we're only supposed to be accomplishing that first error. So, in this few years, we'd have been 75% complete. So yes, we're at 52% complete, but we've widened our scope and not one project has been over budget in that scope. With all those being under, we can widen our scope. And that's what we're doing. Spending the

099money better while we can to do the make the buildings better for what we're going to for the long run. I've had people come in from other districts and they're amazed that we've got a three-story building in here that's 100 years old and they said, "We can't even see a building that's 50 years old in our district like that or even have a building 50 years old." And I said, "Well, we've got some that are 50 as well." and they look just like this and they're just amazed. And I said that and I said that's because we take care of our buildings very well and spend our money well when we can and it shows. So a little bit going on just so you understand ceiling tiles in the buildings. We're doing eight schools. Every

100single ceiling tile, closets, offices, bathrooms, every one is being changed in eight different schools. We've got classroom being painted classrooms painted in two two schools. We're flooring two and a half schools this summer. that is Clif that is Wedgeworth and all the classrooms at at Global. So they're not just like like our smaller schools. There's some big size schools. Wedgeworth is a pretty big school. So is Cliff. So we've got our work cut out for us. Student and staff bathrooms, eight different schools. Cafeteria sound system, six schools. Fire alarms, six schools. So we will have touched by the end of summer. We will have touched every campus in this district besides WHS Simpson which were not included in the bond. And then Coleman Junior High, we have not touched much of that building at at

101this time yet, but WHS and Simpson weren't in there. So, we are touching every single school. We're not going one school and then waiting till it's finished to go to the other. We're actually spreading out. So, everybody's getting touched with what we're doing through here. Here's a couple of pictures. There's the front of Wedgeworth that's been painted. The poles that you see there are dark gray. They were a faded green. So, we painted them a dark gray. Painted the light gray is that um is a stucco you see there. Picture on your right is actually a classroom in Marvin. All the walls have been painted. All the ceiling tiles are brand new. You walk in those those rooms are bright and vibrant. And you know, we floored them two years ago, I believe it was.

102We floored that building. Um so, it's everything's coming around there. There's a big there's a picture there on there. Both of these are our first school of the three that all three have been approved. This is Fely adding the chiller towers and everything there to bring geothermal off. That job is scheduled to be completed before kids get back in the building in middle of August. We have this one job completed. It is a big process. It's the smallest of the schools, but we're learning a lot through that. So, we to get the other ones going. Um, and we've already started ordering machinery and those kind of things. what we're doing. We're going to be doing some things this summer to help at Howard with open ceilings and stuff to some piping and all that. So,

103everything works together. All of our projects, we seem to work together and and it's been going very well. Any questions? I've got a question. Yes, ma'am. I was driving by North Side today. I don't know the name of the street. It's on the side where the door goes into the gym, not the back side. Yeah. Um all along there those windows is there any in this proposition C is there anything like a facelift I mean if you would look at look at that side of north side it looks doesn't look good it like the painting the paint's all coming off underneath those windows it just doesn't look good on the bond itself no we don't have any of that and we haven't I'll be honest with you we haven't had anyone ask for that to

104my knowledge or anybody hadn't brought that Not saying can't be done, but we haven't had anyone that's not have been somebody. Well, will you drive by there and look and see what you think? Cuz I thought, man, I didn't think we had any schools in Walk Hatchee that look that bad. I mean, go by there tomorrow and look at that. Okay. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. No problem. Any delays at the new high school due to all the precipitation? No, not at right. They're not saying anything right now. I mean, they're is it is probably not as far as they would like, but I think they also figure they'll catch up. Nothing that can't be recovered. I mean, they're they always build in some some they're not they're not worried yet. I mean, if we do

105another two months of this, I think they'd probably be worried because that's their dry month and they know they'll catch up. So, anything else, Mr. M? Thank you very much, sir. Thank you. All right, our next report is report C, the S summer campus move update. You calling up by yourself? Uh Dr. Everett may chime in from the cheap seats over there or he may join me. I don't know. Uh I wasn't here today to go through this, you know, pre-board walkthrough. So, we'll see. Um wanted to kind of give you an update on campus moves. So, Mr. Mottz talked a lot about projects going on at the various campuses. Uh so we just want to take a minute and kind of hit timelines on all of our campus moves that are happening this summer.

106So over at the Hancock building, you also know it as Global, you also know it as the old 9th grade academy. So the building that's on on Indian Drive. Um at the end of school, we started moving uh all of the the global materials, all the teachers materials out. Uh so we took over uh bins, we took over tubs in the spring. Uh we had classes I believe a couple of times on how to pack them. Um and so that the teachers and staff could get all their materials uh packed up and right at the very end of school right at the very beginning of June, we moved all that stuff over to uh the Wman building to hang out in the gym uh for the summer so that we could go through and do

107the work that Mr. Vermont's talking about go in and and refresh the existing classrooms with flooring and paint. Uh by the end of this month, mid July, we expect that the classroom flooring and the painting uh will be done uh or at least mostly done in that existing part of the building. Uh so they've gotten started on it now. They'll continue going through the rest of the summer. Uh and then by the end of June, we expect uh as Mr. M told us that that uh new classroom furniture is going to be there on campus and then they're going to start installing it. We expect them to be done installing it about mid July, maybe towards the end of July uh in all for August 1st uh to be when the building is is expected

108to be turned back over to campus staff. Teachers can start moving in campus will start having that operations on campus. All right. So, as we talked about that now, we're moving Global High School back to its original home, which was um the TC Woman building, which is right down the street. Um, obviously, there's there was some work to do in that building to um make it look like a high school. Again, there was a urban myth out there that there we had changed all the toilets to small toilets when they was that's not true. All the same fixtures were there when Wyman was using the building and so that we did not have to go in and change any fixtures in the restrooms. They're all the same. And so that was that's good because that

109would have been expensive. Um but they're they we've moved furniture back over there. I think initially it was kind of a mess actually when you move in a house. I know Miss Pussian with that. She moved into a brand new house. You got boxes everywhere. It takes a while to put things where they belong. But that's that's happening right now. Um we're doing pretty extensive work. One of the biggest work uh projects that we're doing is is returning what were science labs that were converted to kindergarten classrooms back to science labs. And so part of that is installing uh vent hoods in there so we can actually do real science, real chemistry in there and also making sure that we have the proper um gas line so that we can use in science where you

110can use buns and burns etc. And so that work is happening. Um and also returning it back to where science lab looks. Um also, uh the the one the one space that's outside the building that was, you know, the renovation of the former tax office, for those of us who have been around a long time, several of us probably had Edith Finley teach us American history in that in that room. I know I did. Um and so that class that that space um was in was fairly it was in a state of disrepair and was subject we were going to we were going to tear it down but actually looked at it and said no we can renovate this space with a new roof and and we can fix it and that'll be we'll use

111that for for a classroom space that will be the shop for Mr. Warren's class. We're going to move back over there too along the campus. That's where we'll have that shop. We're going to install an overhead door as soon as we can get the the space, you know, tightened up and we can get it conditioned um with air conditioning. We can go ahead and get the flooring done that. And so, we're going to continue to do that work over the summer. We expect that work to be done on August 1st so we can have all that all that done so then teachers can come in and move in and be ready to occupy their classrooms pretty soon after that. Mr. Ma kind of gave us a uh quick overview of the Finley project and all

112the work that's going on there. But uh just kind of as a summary, we gently uh asked the campus to vacate, asked uh Mr. Blanco and his staff to to get off campus if they wouldn't mind right there at the end of May. Uh and you've seen uh through the pictures the great progress that's being made over there and renovating that library and that that cafeteria uh space over there. We expect that really to keep going all summer long. Uh that's going to be a tight deadline. Uh we hope to get uh we're expecting to receive furniture towards the end of July, that last week of July, and then working on really quick installs in that library area and uh the office area and also the cafeteria space. And then uh that'll be right there

113towards the end of summer, right in time for our staff and our students start returning over at Finley. Um, one one part of that was that was on that page was uh installation of a a new sewer line in the existing building. Um, you know, that building was opened in 1985 and the cast iron plumbing underneath it, you know, had seen better days. And so that that uh when we when we pulled the plumbing out from under the kitchen area, we could see that we there was some significant issues there. And so that's been that's been replaced and fixed on that side. Well, then that made us look at the at the sewer line and such. That's why that's been replaced there as well. So, um that that's a pretty big deal. Um and requiring

114folks to get up underneath that building. That's a lot of work, but that's happening on that campus, too. Um Howard, uh you know, we've started they you got you saw the picture where they had the the wet floor there. That's where they had demoed the original exterior wall of the cafeteria space. Now, it's just one big open open cafeteria, which is great. Um I' I've been in that cafeteria several times during lunch. It was very crowded. So that's going to be awesome that that room is so much bigger now. Um the renovation of the band hall um area um is moving right along. Um and so they're also going to start renovation of the stage to make it ADA accessible again in around mid July. Remove and install new furniture for the office spaces and

115the cafeteria. Um those smaller rooms. Uh you saw the exterior um picture of what what it looks like from what used to be just an awning, a covered area where there's picnic tables out there. That's now multiple small smaller type classrooms for for specialized programs and a brand new space for theater arts, a brand new room for them. Um coming along very very well. And again um all of these projects expected to be done right at the 1 of August so that we when we get when teachers come back, we're ready we're ready to roll. Um, back to the Finley RO job. We we and Stephen told us earlier, they're working six days a week over there on on that job to get to make sure we make that tight deadline because it's a lot

116of work has to happen in a short amount of time. So, with that, just board wanted to give you a quick update of of all the summer moves that are happening. It's it's a uh giant jigsaw puzzle, but we believe that we are on task and on track to get all those accomplished this summer. and we believe that those will be uh really really well received by the campus uh staff and by students when they're fully completed. So uh we are on target for August 1st for all these moves. Any questions? Thank you sir. Any questions? Anyone? Thank you guys very much. Thank you. Moving on to our report D. He walks out ISD's intent to apply for federal grant funds for the 2025 2026 school year. Call them board. This is not a a

117brand new item this year. This is but we are trying something a little bit different. We're trying to to make it a little bit more widely known of our involvement in title one programs and to solicit that feedback that's required as part of title one. So right now uh on our website under the federal grants program tab of our website on our homepage uh we have our survey posted the same survey that we post pretty much every year uh soliciting community feedback on title one and how the programs are going and uh what our community would like to see as a part of that title one program. That survey is going to be open for the next two weeks and then we're going to incorporate those responses as part of our grant application for the

118title one program that we will uh be submitting at the end of the month and the 1st of July. So uh a different way of approaching it. We generally tell our parents that we participate in title one uh and then get feedback right at the very end of the academic school year. But uh honestly the feedback is is not numerous in volume. So, uh, we thought we'd try a different approach this year and and try it at a board meeting and try to solicit feedback that way. So, this is that, uh, that notice that the survey is posted and and asking for community feedback on it. And thank you, Mr. Colin. Thank you very much, sir. Our last report this evening is ourformational report on Wakanchi ISD's random drug testing procedures. Miss M, we don't

119get to hear from you very often. Good evening, board. Miss McCuten, um I'm really happy to be here and happy to share some of the changes that we've made um in the last few weeks to our drug testing program. Um, how this started was we had some coaches and sponsors just with some questions about our not really our policy but our procedure and some of our consequences for positive drug test. Um, the questions about were we in line with other districts in the state and um, you know, was it a a pretty uh common practice that that we had with our practices. So as a result of that um we formed a subcommittee out of our shack. Um the committee was made up of staff members and also community members, stakeholders and parents as well.

120We wanted their input um from a different perspective than what's maybe our staff members had. So, um, we formed this committee and we actually gleaned information from almost 30, um, different districts in the state about their drug testing procedures and practices and how they did things and got lots of good information and as a result of that found out that we were pretty much in line with uh, most of the other districts in the state. Of course, you always have your districts that are way more lenient in their policies and then um those districts that are at the other end as well. We feel like we fell in the middle and and that our procedures were pretty good. But as a result of that, we did come up with a couple of areas where we

121felt like we could tweak our policy and make it just a little bit better, uh, more positive for our students and, um, just more beneficial for them. So, um, at the May meeting, we voted unanimously to pass these changes, um, on our drug testing process. Um all of the re revisions are in the uh consequences for the very first positive uh that a student might have. Uh we have our we have consequences for our first positive, our second positive and our third positive. So um these these changes are are purely for the first positive. Um those changes involved um in our previous uh procedures, the student was suspended from all competition, games and performances for 10 school days and they must have a negative test result to be able to return to participation. Um the

122revision that we made, we we kept of course the 10 school day exclusion from those uh activities, but we took out the provision that they had to have a negative test re to return to participation. And that was because logistically it was a little bit difficult. If a student uh served their 10 days pretty early in the month, then it might be 10 days or two weeks before we had another session of drug testing and then they had to wait just that much longer before they could return to to participation. Um we know these kids if they have a positive result, they're going to be tested every single session for the rest of that school year. So we felt like we were going to be following them, watching them closely. So, we didn't need to

123really have that provision that they had to test negative first before they returned to participation. And then the second change that we made um in our previous p uh procedure, student must attend one 45minute drug education session with the campus counselor when they had a positive test result. Um, in our survey with other districts and our own observations in our district, we felt like that 45 minute drug education session was really not doing a lot for those students. Um, it was just, you know, sitting in front of a computer and and watching a video and just not really the the results from that were not um particularly helpful to the kiddo. So, um, we found out another district in the state had a policy instead of a drug education session, um, they did community service

124hours for those students. So, we decided that we would have a student on their first positive test result complete six hours of community service with an organization from um, our approved list. And by that approved list, that's going to be Miss Robinson and myself and and we'll happily accept any input um from others, but we'll make up a list of organizations with which these kiddos can earn those six hours of community service. Um I just think it's always a good idea to extend yourself and do something for someone else. That's always going to be something that makes you feel better. um when we help others, we help ourselves, right? So, we feel like that would be a much better um thing to do with the first positive. Now, of course, with the second and third

125positive, the drug counseling is going to be in there and we're going to get those kiddos the help that they need, but this first positive, we felt like community service would be a better fit. Um, do they have a specific amount of time to complete the six hours of community service? they don't, but they cannot return to their activity until that's been completed. So, the idea is hopefully that within that 10day exclusion, that's when they'll be doing that community service. Okay. Um, and then the next uh change that we made in that previously students would not be able to participate in practice um or rehearsal during the school day if they had tested positive. they were not only excluded from performing or playing but they were also excluded from practice. Um we found that that's

126not really beneficial to the student. Um so the change that we made is that they'll be able to continue to participate in practice that falls within the school day. Now they won't be able to do practice after school or extra things. They can observe it but they can't participate still. But any practice, rehearsal or or whatever the activity is that happens during the school day, they can continue to participate in that. Um, and then the last one is not really a change. The student will still be tested monthly until the end of the school year if they have a positive result. and um you know almost I cannot remember when we have had a positive uh drug test that wasn't marijuana in the last two or three years. That's just what it always is and

127that's the battle that we're fighting right now. So, um we really feel like hopefully we can nip it in the butt a little bit more uh with these policies and that we'll we're doing things that's going to really make a difference for the kiddo. Do you guys have questions for me or anything I can explain better or elaborate on? It's okay. I had a question when you just said that. So, the marijuana is it marijuana vapes or is it um oldfashioned marijuana? Both. Um I think most commonly it's probably vapes. U Mr. Perry and I tend to make a point in our conferences after a positive drug test to ask them the method that they use just forformational purposes. And you'd be surprised. The kiddos are very honest about it and open about it. But

128most of the time it's vapes. It could be gummies though. It could be, you know, good oldfashioned joints. Um, you know, all of it's out there. But but vapes are very common right now. Thank you. You're welcome. Anything else for Miss Muske? All right. Thank you very much. That concludes our report section. So we will move into the consent agenda which is rather lengthy. We have items A through T up for consideration. Mr. President, I move that we approve the consent agenda items A through T. Motion by Mr. McCuten. Do I have a second? Second. Second by Mrs. Timberman. Any discussion? All in favor say I. Post say nay. Motion carries. 70. We will move to action item D, which would be consideration with possible approval to review the plan of finance and adopt an

129order authorizing the issuance of school building bonds establishing the parameters for the sale of bonds and delegating authority to the administration to approve the sale and execute the final documents. Mr. Calden, thank you, sir. Uh, I'm actually going to turn this over to Doug Wit, our financial adviser, who's here with us tonight, and he's going to lead you through the presentation. Uh, and then I'll be back for questions if you have any. Set this here. Good evening. It's good to be back with you. That's your slide preview. Okay. Just click on it. That's the slide show. Okay. Good. Good evening. It's good to be back. Appreciate the opportunity. have a report for you uh centered in large part on the timing of this due to legislation that just came uh through the session and kind

130of changed a little bit of our timing slightly. But u to start the report uh we'll start with the interest rate market. Y'all seen this graph from me before. It's called the bond buyers index of municipal bonds. Uh when you look at the uh it it dates bottom left corner back to January 2001. So, it's a modern history of the interest rate index that comes out weekly. The average runs across the middle in blue at 4%. The record high occurred at 6% in October 2008, record low in 2020 at 2%. Um, and then today we're around 5 and a4%. So, our interest rate levels uh are a little higher than averages. Uh, but we do have a very functioning market. This summer there will be billions of dollars of Texas school bonds brought to market.

131We've already seen some of that uh through the end of May and the 1 of June. So we do have good functioning markets with investor community. It's just at levels that are a little higher than what we've seen in the past. Your bond ratings uh the recent bond ratings of course AAA based upon the permanent school fund guarantee. Your underlying credit ratings are uh where we need them to be in the double A category. double A3 and double A minus by Moody's and Fitch. The analyst site your strong uh enrollment growth uh significant residential development, your stable financial position. I know when you go through budget you have challenges and so forth, but the credit rating agents view you as a very stable business enterprise. You have elevated leverage but moderate overall and manageable. That's

132the bond programs that we're implementing now. And then of course you have to issue the bonds as uh growth occurs. So good bond ratings uh okay market. Back to our May 2003 bond election parameters. Of course we presented four propositions A through D A B and C all passed. Uh the INS tax rate was estimated to be a three cent increase to the voters. We're keeping that promise. The assumed interest rate is 5%. Your first two installments were down around 4%. So, we have significant interest cost savings on those. I sold a 30-year school bond earlier this month. It was right at a 5% average interest rate. But, it had deferred principal that we don't have here. So, keep our fingers crossed by the time we enter the market hopefully we can be at or

133around 5% average interest rate. Um the other thing that we had to assume is this was a multi-year multi-phase building program as you well know. Um but it was uh our tax base needs to grow in order to absorb the size of bond issue at that 3 cents of increase. We are on track with that. All of those promises are being kept. Uh and then the bonds issued and completed as growth requires and allows. So, back to the taxable value in when you look at your net taxable value in column two, the number in red is a preliminary number. We will not have certified values until the end of July. That $9 billion is an estimate based on the preliminary value that was given to you. But then we back off an estimate of the

134increase to the homestead exemption from 100,000 to 140,000. Basically, we apply 40,000 to the approximate number of homesteads that you have in the district and we back that out of the value. When you look at column three, that's the dollar value of change in this particular chart. That is after the freeze has been taken into account. Here are three of the last four years where you see the asterisk 2022 23 23 24 and 2526 upcoming. Those are all homestead increase years and yet we still grew in our value. So when you look back to the pre-election bond model where we're talking about 12% growth per year, uh it's now being replaced that growth is being offset with with the homestead exemption increase, but we now have a column in our bond model for hold harmless.

135So the hold harmless has taken place of some of that value growth. But for example, in 2324, if we did not have that homestead exemption uh increase, you would have grown at more than 12 and a half percent in that particular year. It netted out at 9% uh with the homestead exemption. So, we're on track in our bond model uh as we speak. We were kind of hoping to let the summer play out, maybe get into the fall. Your construction fund dollars are ample to get you through all of the projects that you just saw on the screen. Uh but because we just got Senate Bill 4, which raised the homestead exemption from 100,000 to 140,000, uh they put in there a hold harmless provision date of September 1st, 2025. Some of you may recall

136back in 2023 in August when they adopted the homestead exemption increase from 40,000 to a 100,000 they grandfathered in based on the bond election date not the issuance date of the bonds. This one is based on the issuance date of the bonds if not the first payment but for us that's about a week apart. Uh so because of that deadline that they gave us, we re-evaluated our timing on this next installment to move a little bit quicker than we were going to otherwise. But that otherwise was just out of our hey, we don't quite need the money yet. Let's kind of get into the fall and see where we are. So in addition to your taxable value growth being on target, your interest rate being on target, uh there's a lot of numbers here. This

137is your interest in syncing fund cash flow analysis. To summarize this on the far right column right above the line you see 13 million9. That is your 831 uh 2024 net INS fund balance. That's obviously more than we need. We've had a plan draw down in this budget year with the issuance of those prior bonds and that's going down to 10.3 million. If you ask me what should our target be in this fund, I'm going to put that number right around 7.3 million, which means that you still have three million of excess in that fund that can be deployed as you implement this bond program over time. So purposeful drawd downs to get it down to a balance that's would be considered normal for the size of your interest in syncing fund budget. The next

138slide I I bring up just as a preview. We do not have a refunding bond within this order. This is only for the issuance of new school building bonds to continue your construction projects. Uh but you can see here the 2016 bond, the uh optional redemption call date on that is February of 26. What that means to us is the first time that you can refinance that bond on a tax exempt basis under federal tax law is October of 2025. So, we'll see where the market goes. We may have to come back to you and say, "Hey, we might want to do something with your existing bonds." That's not on the table today, but that's just a preview so that if you see me in six months, you had fair warning that I needed to

139come back. That timing is dictated by federal law. Okay. So, where are we uh from the May 23 uh issuance? Um, we sold bonds in 2023, 200 million of the 575 million. One year later in 2024, we sold an additional $200 million of bonds from the 575 million approved by the voters. You can see that with the 2024 bond, we exhausted that bond authorization for the Proposition C projects. If I read that correctly, you're about halfway through the expenditure of that 60 million uh by the end of this summer and you will continue those projects and spend that accordingly. Uh Proposition A has 42 million. I think that's uh for a remaining elementary school of which we do not have a site or any start plans for that. And then Proposition B includes the high

140school project and there's 132 million of authorized but unissued bonds there. So what we were going to do is kind of get into maybe October, November, kind of see where the construction draws are, kind of take an evaluation of our timing, but now I'm asking the district to accelerate that to capture the hold harmless on our next installment of bonds. Okay? And so right now the game plan is is out of Proposition B to pull 100 million from that, sell a third installment of 100 million, close that issue before August 31st of 2025 in order for the debt service payments on that 100 million to be counted into the hold harmless for this particular round of going from 100,000 to 140. this 100 million whether we issue it tomorrow or six from six six months

141from now will still pick up hold harmless based on the grandfather in of the election date in 2023. So it's this incremental step up in hold harmless that we're looking to capture uh and I think it's an effort worth taking. So what are the factors that that uh talk about the timing of issuing from authorized ben issued bonds? of course your tax base and bond model capacity. One of the functions of this particular bond model is it is based on growth and we have hit the benchmarks of growth andor substituted that growth with hold harmless state aid payments. So we're on track but we still have a couple more years to continue in that growth pattern. Okay. Uh but we do have the capacity to issue the hundred million and that's been examined uh with

142the business office. your construction fund needs. If we don't need the money, we don't need to issue it unless we have a state law provision that indicates let's move forward. And that's why we're here today. Why not sell it all? Well, a couple of reasons. We have to meet federal tax law. Federal tax law gives us a mandate that we have to have reasonable expectation to spend the proceeds within three years. Uh, and if you have new schools that need to be built but haven't identified when or where those are going to take place, that probably fouls outside of that category. And then the second reason that we don't issue all the bonds at once is again, we don't want to get out in front of our skis and assume that our tax base is

143going to continue on the trend that you've had and then all of a sudden we get a national recession or something and it slows us down. So I tell people all the time, we get smarter every year that goes by because we get another piece of data out of that crystal ball. In this case, our data is state aid and taxable value. All right. So, uh, the plan is 100 million out of Proposition B. The schedule of events, uh, again through May, we've been in touch with the administration. We're here tonight asking you to delegate authority to the administration to complete the sale and issuance of the third installment of a hundred million. We'll be getting all of our ratings renewed and in place, all of our disclosure. Uh we'll get a certified value July

14425th and then we're looking at pricing the week of July 28th. Uh locking in that interest rate, then closing in late August. we may or may not have that last payment of on August 26. Where that comes from is if you go back to 2021, the TEA's interpretation of that deadline is we had to have a bond payment by that deadline. And again, the deadline for us today is 912025. We are getting a rumor and memos that are coming out indicating that they're going to change that because they know the time pressure that it puts on those districts who had a May 25 election to be able to squeeze in a bond sale and a bond payment in a couple of months is very very challenging. So they're going to they're the interpretation now is

145the closing date of the bond. So that buys us seven to 10 days a little bit of relief but it's not the hold harmless that we wanted. The hold harvest that we wanted was the same language from May of 23 that just grandfathered it in based on the date of the election. That would have been left the playing field open to issue bonds all through the fall. It will be a very busy summer uh for Texas school bond issuance from those who have authorized but unissued bonds, but also those who voted and approved their bonds in May. So, more information to follow. It's not just a snap your fingers, get it done because it is going to be a crowded market. But generally speaking, our national market is sizable enough to take on a very

146large portion of Texas school bonds that come to market. We have the AAA rating, which is the highest credit quality in the United States, superior to the federal government's credit rating. And so, generally speaking, there's a lot of investors who want that type of credit quality and bond paper, if you will. So with that, uh, we do have a suggested motion on the last slide. Uh, I'll be happy to answer any questions regarding our third installment of bonds from that approved by the voters. But for those who may be hearing this or seeing, uh, we are on target with everything that was discussed with them from a financial perspective with respect to the implementation of the bond program and there are no sizes and all those promises are being kept. Any questions for Mr. Whit?

147Okay. At this time, I'll entertain a motion. I move to adopt an order authorizing the issuance of school bonds, establishing the parameter parameters of the sale of bonds, and delegating authority to the administration to approve the sale and execute the final documents. Motion by Mr. Pittz. Second. Second by Mrs. Timberman. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. Post say nay. Motion carry 70. Thank you very much, sir. Okay. Action item E will be consideration with possible action to approve great minds as our approved provider for the strong foundation implementation part B. All right. Good evening board, Miss McCutchen. So, tonight I'm requesting to sign an agreement with Great Minds to be our approved provider for the Strong Foundation's implementation grant part B1. So this grant was awarded by TEA for the implementation of Blue

148Bonnet Math. And while we did not receive the large grant like we received last year, we did receive partial funding um amount based on two of our campuses that were federally targeted a few years back. So the grant requirements are 50% of the funding goes towards an approved provider and the other 50% can be used for things like salaries and/or supplies. salaries at a maximum of 20% and supplies around 30%. So, as I stated, the Strong Foundation's implementation grant part B1 is based on campuses that were federally targeted in the past. For us, those campuses were Clif Elementary and Northside Elementary. So while the grant funds specifically for those two campuses, TEA has given our approved providers permission for all campuses within the district to attend and benefit from the professional learning opportunities that will

149be offered through this grant. So, while our partnership with Ed Elements this year has been very beneficial in helping our teachers become um e experts at the internalization process, we felt the need to choose an approved provider. This time that could really help us with focusing on content rather than the internalization process. Great Minds actually being the creator of Blue Bonnet Math and Eureka seems to be the best choice for the content support with this switch. So Great Minds believes in supporting through researchbased instructional strategies which our staff, our elementary staff are very familiar with. Great mind staff are experts in content and pedagogy and math and understand necessary shifts in the adoption process as well as supporting all of our stakeholders in a successful implementation. Great minds has partnered with some of our neighboring

150districts such as Cedar Hill, Irving, Richardson, Crowley, Dallas, Garland, Decatur, Fort Worth just to name a few. And with Great Minds as our approved provider, we feel secure in this transition to Blue Bonnet Math from Eureka, which are both two products that Great Minds created and are experts in the content. What questions may I answer for you? Any questions? Anyone? Okay. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to accept action item E as presented. So moved. Motion by Mrs. Timberman. Second. Second by Mrs. Creel. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. I. Post said nay. Motion carry 70. Thank you very much. Thank you. On our last action item is consideration of possible action to approve an amendment to Wakatchi ISD's district of innovation plan. Dr. Aver. Yes, sir. Uh, Mr. President, uh, just

151a quick a quick amendment to our DOI plan. Um, so, teacher certification requirements. I'm not going to bore you with reading all that, but the district fully intends, even though we would like to to um have a a a small amendment to our DOI plan, um specifically to allow us um flexibility and allowing WIT to make local decisions about teacher certification that would provide a better opportunity to offer innovation in courses such as um CTE courses as well as hard to fill and high demand dual credit courses. um this this uh that's that's the language that we're adding in there uh basically to give us a little more freedom when we're looking to hire some of those really hard hard to fill positions particularly in CTE. Um this this exemption would not apply to special

152education teachers, bilingual teachers or pre or prek teachers. Um this this um amendment was was brought to our our DOI committee and our DOI committee did vote in the required twothirds uh vote to approve it. Dr. A, will this uh fulfill the needs of the state legislature when they're saying we have to have highly qualified personnel and everything? So, we do anticipate a a change to that um from that from that law in the future, right? We anticipate this to be for one year. Thank you. Yes. Anyone else? Okay. Motion to approve action item F as presented. One motion by Mr. McCutchen. Second. Second by Mr. Schoolfield. Any other discussion? All in favor say I. I. Say nay. Motion carries 70. Thank you guys. And our last item will be a motion to adjurnn. So

153move. Motion by Mrs. Creel. Second. Second by Mrs. Timberman. All in favor say I. Motion carries 70. Thank you.