001The White House ISD Board of Trustees. I call this meeting of the White House Independent School District Board of Trustees to order. Let the record show that a quorum of board members is present, that the meeting has been duly called, and notice the meeting has been posted in accordance with Texas Open Meetings Act, Government Code Chapter 551. Uh the board will now journ into executive session pursuant to Texas Government Code section 551.074. 074 through 551.084 84. of introduce Destin Hunter. She's a member of the Wildcat Elevation obviously and a band member and came out the other day to talk to me about the lack of efficiency in the way we were throwing the trash away at cafeteria. So, I figured with those leadership skills, it' be good for her to come and lead us in
002the pledge tonight. >> Please join me in the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, one indivisible, and justice for all. Thank you. >> And then uh Mr. Spates is going to present our recognition for National Merit finalists and sir students. >> Y'all want to line up over here? I'll introduce you. All right, Dr. President, Dr. Whittle, and the board of trustees. Tonight, we have the pleasure of introducing some exceptional students who represent the bright future of White House ISD. First, I would like to introduce Mr. Zachary Mitchell, who has been named our lone National Merit semi- finalist and will be among the top 16,000 students to have the opportunity to continue the competition to
003compete for the National Merit Scholarship. Zachary is represented tonight by his parents. He is a member of choir, theater, cross country, track, NHS, Roappa, and UIL. After graduating, Zachary plans to attend college for mechanical engineering. Good job. All right. Second, I would like to introduce three students who have been named commended students in the 2526 National Merit Scholarship. These students placed among the top 50,000 students who entered the competition by taking the PSAT during their junior year. First, we have Caroline Weissman. She is represented tonight by her parents. Caroline is a member of cheer, NHS, Rocappa, and HOSA. After graduating, Caroline plans to attend Auburn University and major in biomed science with the goal to pursue a career in medicine. [Applause] Next up, we have Angela Evans. Angela is a vice president of BPA. She's
004a member of NHS, RO Kappa, and Key Club. Angela plans on attending UT Austin and possibly majoring in engineering. Not present tonight is Emily U, um, who is a member of UIL, BPA in computer science, and Emily plans to attend college and major in computer science when she's finished. I want to extend my thanks to all our teachers and counselors at White House High School who believe in the mission of White House ISD to inspire and equip students through innovative and challenging opportunities. Your dedication and hard work make these prestigious awards possible for our students. Good job. I see you now, Nick. Good. [Applause] Well, congratulations to you all and uh congratulations to your parents. I know it's a huge deal, so you got to be proud of them. So, it's fantastic. Uh we did
005not have anyone sign up for open forum this evening. Uh so we'll move to actions on closed sessions and uh first of those is to uh to approve our guardian plan participant. Do I have a motion that regard Mr. Fling and second by Mr. Moss to approve the guardian plan participant comments? All in favor? And that takes us to our information items. And the first is is our teacher highlight and Dr. Taylor make that introduction. >> All right. Good evening, Dr. Robbie, Dr. Whittle, and trustees. Tonight, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Cole Sorder, who is going to introduce us to two of his teachers who Den lessons. So, they're going to tell you all about what Den is at Holloway. And so, I'll invite them up to the podium at this time.
006>> So, tonight we wanted to celebrate um our lead math and reading teachers. Um they were with us when we first started Den and have put in lots of hours to make sure that we're teaching kid by kid and skill by skill every day. So, um come up and introduce yourself and tell How long you been in White House? >> My name is Natalie Rogers. I am one of the reading teachers at Holloway and I have been in White House for seven years. >> I'm Tiffany McFaden. I have been in the same hallway at Holloway for 22 years. >> Okay. So, we want to talk about the things that y'all do to make Den possible. So, first off, one of those you just share with the board what Den actually is. >> Um, so Den
007is called Daily Education Network. So, this is built-in time in our schedule um for us to um have intervention plans or enrichment activities for students based off of the skills that they either need work on or that they are um currently mastering to kind of push them to the next level so they don't get bored or stalled out on what we're doing. >> And how are these students placed in their dean groups? >> We look at their their um star scores. Right now we've done the star scores and then as the year progresses we'll look at unit test and I ready and we group them in the same group together per what they made. >> And once they're in those den groups, how do you decide which teachers to pair them with? Um so each
008year we kind of look at the targeted group of students that we need to focus on whether it is keeping our high kids high and pushing them or reaching our bubble kids. Um so we we really analyze their data and determine where we want to pinpoint um a lot of our kids and and where they are at. So, um, based off of that, the content area teachers will take those students that we're really targeting, um, the most, and then, um, this is a campuswide initiative, so all teachers are in all the time. So, we pretty much provide them with the lessons and things that they need. We write the lessons for them and then they push it out for us for the other students. um just to make sure that everybody is, you know, getting
009what they need. >> And like since we do have a PE teacher teaching reading and a social studies teacher teaching math, how do y'all go about making sure that they understand what that lesson plan's about? So we pretty much write a scripted lesson for them and provide them with the resources that they need in order to um make sure that they are teaching it at the level that the students need to receive it at. >> And how do you feel that this program impacts students overall? >> I think it helps them and it helps them possibly see it from a different teacher who might can explain it a different way and it's very fluid and we can adjust and monitor as the year goes on. I think it's also important for students to see that
010all of the teachers are invested in them even if they're not on our roster and that you know they have an adult in their corner and just kind of building relationships with them as well not just who um we have assigned to us just on our regular rosters but you know trying to reach all kids. >> So those are all the questions that I had. Do y'all have any questions to follow up? Is everybody involved in Den or are they just selecting kids? >> Everybody is involved. So students um that need extra if we look at our unit data, unit test data or star data um if they're needing help with the skill um we make sure that those kids are grouped together to get that. But then the students that have mastered it, we
011try to push them to the next level, whether it's seventh grade or eighth grade or just critical thinking skills. Um, everybody has a place and everybody has the same expectation of um, what they work on during the den time. >> Are they changing teachers from time to time or are they always with the same teacher in their den session? >> Um, they change teachers from time to time. Um, it's kind of based on uh, it backs up with their lunch. So, whatever teachers have the same lunch as them, that group of teachers will be working with them. So sometimes they may be with me um for two sessions, you know, when we recycle the kids and put them back into different groups. Um sometimes they can go see a different teacher. So it really just
012kind of depends on what skill we're working on and how well that they did. >> And they do two math read two days of math and then two days of reading each week. So they go back and forth. >> And how long a period of time is it? >> It's a 30 minute time period. Thank you very much. Awesome. >> Okay. And then our 2025 ESL report. Mr. >> Good evening. Thank you very much for the opportunity to come before you, Dr. Robbie, Dr. Riddle, and the rest of the board. Um, I look forward to the fall every year because it's my opportunity to have just a few moments to give you an update and let you know about all of the things that we've been doing in order to serve our emerging bilingual students
013across our district and to give a report, an honest report on the health of our program for the last 12 months. So, um, this directly aligns what I'm going to present to you today with the goal that the board has set of providing relevant learning experiences to ensure our students will be college and career ready. And so, the way that we serve our emerging bilingual students or students who are learning English as a second language directly align to that. Um so in a nutshell the students that we served uh during the 202425 school year we had a total of 249 students across our district who were identified as emergent bilingual students receiving services through our ESL program in one way or another. Um, of those, uh, 52 students were newly identified entering the program and
014receiving services for the first time in a Texas school district, public school district. And worth noting of the data that I've presented to you uh is the number of students who reclassified, meaning who met the standard that the state of Texas sets in order for students to be able to exit the English as a second language program. Uh across the district, we had 22 students who met that exit criteria to reclassify. Uh so um at both the elementary and the secondary level obviously we have students across all of our campuses. Uh we served 152 students at the elementary level and 122 students at the secondary level all the way junior high and high school. And worth noting uh which I'm I'm sure that at this point based on the reports that I've provided from year
015to year, it's no surprise that Brown Elementary at the elementary level is the campus where we serve the highest number of students overall in our ESL program. And in the secondary level, the uh the high school is where we have the largest concentration of emerging bilingual students with 65 kids at the high school level. Uh, one of the responsibilities that we have is to track the progress that students make in acquiring the academic vocabulary necessary to function in the classroom setting. And that's done through the administration of the annual language assessment known as TELPASS. And uh that's administered in the spring every year. uh for the last two or three years, it's been a window of time instead of being assigned to a specific date on the calendar. And so during the spring, we administer
016this assessment to our kids. We had a total of 242 students who took that assessment. Uh keeping in mind that that's only administered to students who are in kindergarten through 12th grade. So there's a small um discrepancy between the number of students we serve versus the number of students we um we assess. Um, and of the students that we assessed, we had a total of 12% of our kids at an advanced high uh level of overall rating for academic language. Uh, we had 46 kids, I'm sorry, 46% of our students at an advanced level, 33 at intermediate, and 9% of our kids rated at a beginning level. So the other important assessment that we need to be sure that we're tracking not only the way that our kids are acquiring the English language but how
017they're doing academically and specifically uh focusing on ling uh English language arts. Okay. So their ELA star test is the second major measure that we have to track for this population of students. And so for STAR reading at the elementary level from third through 8th grade, we had a total of 127 emerging bilingual students who took that assessment. And of that uh portion of our student body, 51% of those kids met the state standard and 20% of the kids mastered the state standard for STAR reading. And at the secondary level, uh we had uh students taking English one EOCC and English EOC and so our ninth grade students who were emerging bilingual uh there were a total of 16 of those students 69 of those uh rated at approaches or higher and in English 2
018being the 10th grade EOC typically taken in 10th grade I should say we had a total of 11 students emergent bilingual who took that assessment and 52% of the kids were at approaches or higher And so, uh, what we are working on based on the needs that we see that our students as well as the teachers and the staff that work with them, what we're working on moving forward, uh, one thing for sure is that we want to make sure that the campuses are well equipped, not only in the classroom setting to provide the services that the students required to receive, but that the campus administrators are able to uh take on the task of monitoring closely how the program is functioning at the campus level. And one of the ways that we're doing that
019is to transition the responsibility of identifying new students who may require receiving those services at the campus level. transitioning that responsibility to the campus as well as monitoring the way that the state assessments are administered at the campus level. So historically for the last five years or so since I've been brought on board as the ESL coordinator for the district, I took those responsibilities and I did that intentionally to set a standard and a system that was consistent across all of our campuses. And now it's time that the campuses begin to get familiar more in-depth and hands-on with the system that we have well established. across the district so that they become more and more familiar with their students individually with the progress that those kids are making, what their uh their beginning levels are
020whenever we first identify them as emergent bilingual and how they progress as the uh as their time in the program moves on. And so that's why one of the major things that we have set as an objective is to get those campus administrators more directly involved with those two important components. Identifying the kids and assessing the kids on an annual basis. And then a second major target that we have is to continue to work to target the improvement of our emerging bilingual students expressive skills. Okay, expressive being the way that they produce language. whether it's verbally or in writing. And so last year we started on that path by first targeting their speaking ability. And we've done a good job of that. We continue to make progress in that area. But now we want to
021target the second form in which they express themselves, which is through writing. So we continue to focus on their ability to speak, but now also the way that they produce thoughts and ideas through their writing skills. Okay. So ladies and gentlemen, that in a very brief nutshell is what's been going on. I trust that y'all received the detailed report in print prior to the presentation tonight. Do you all have any questions or concerns for me? >> Yes, sir. have it very >> sure definitely that's a great question. Um, it is a very complex thing for us to do because these are not students who have all been receiving services and at the same pace and in the same way as a cohort. In other words, we could have a current ninth grade student who's going
022to be taking that uh English one EOC for the first time who may have only been receiving services for a few months because they're a recent immigrant. So it's complex in the sense that for us to set a target and not be able to have complete control over the way that we provide services for an extended period of time for an entire group or co or cohort that will be taking that particular EOC to then set ourselves up um inadvertently for not being able to meet that goal. So instead of setting a goal for say EOC instead of setting a goal for that particular measure. What we try to do is to set a goal for the individual student so that once a particular student has been receiving services through our program for a particular
023period of time, we want to see a particular measure of growth over a very specific amount of time that we provide service. Okay. And so what we try to hit as our target is that within five years of the student receiving consistent services through the program that we have established that we get the student to go from the lowest level which would be at a beginning to ready to reclassify and ready to stop receiving those services. So sometimes and the majority of times that comes to us as a student who's entering the program at about four or five years old. And what we want to see is that before that student goes on to the secondary level, they no longer require the assistance for language acquisition. That's really what we're after. But unfortunately, we can't
024control how late in their educational career a student comes to us for the first time. And we don't want to put that kind of specific pinpointed pressure on a teacher who may have never had the opportunity to work with a student an extended enough period of time in order to get them to the level where they can reclassify. >> Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Um, and I'll be happy to provide you with further details on that specific request. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. What I can say is that uh given the current standard for reclassification that we have prior to the 232 24 school year, there was a very complex set of guidelines that a particular student had to meet in order to be able to reclassify. And so TEA worked along with teachers and districts across
025the state to set a more um uh a standard that would be much more clear and objective. And so based on that new standard, uh, we were able to sort of clear the backlog of students who had been on the verge of reclassifying, but from year to year, the measure sort of left them just dangling and right on the doorstep of reclassifying. And that had happened in our district and across the state in uh for quite some time where we had just a backlog of students who had been acquiring language but weren't able to meet that complex reclassification criteria. And then in 23-24 that criteria was uh realigned and we were able to reclassify a lot of students who had been backed up. And but then in 2425 we were really wanting to see okay
026what is the true measure of the health of our program now that we cleared the the log jam in 23 24 how well are our students performing and what will we see in 2425 as students who reclassify who weren't able to meet the standard the previous year but now have grown enough to be able to reclassify. And what we're able to see is that we're able to reclassify 27 of the backlog students in 23 24 and then 22 new kids who didn't meet the criteria the previous year, 22 new kids who did meet that criteria the following year. And so uh that to me tells me, hey, we're on to something. We're doing something good. we didn't clear the the log jam of 27 kids and then reclassify one or two the the following year.
027Um so I will definitely provide you with specific data on the growth of students who have been in the program three, four and five years. Would that be helpful? Great question. >> You're saying that 22 of them reclassified. Is it is it more challenging if they come in later than it is if you get them when they're four? >> Yeah, for sure. >> Definitely. That's another really really good question because research shows that the older a student is um that has an effect. But then also um whether or not there is an interruption in formal education before the student comes to us. In this particular um area, in this particular profile of student, we have kids who sometimes come to us from other countries where they may or may not have had direct and readily
028available education. um or where it may have been a long period of transition from when they left their home country until they have come to our community and are now in a stable educational environment. So there's a lot of factors that go into that. Uh but for sure, for the most part, we do see that it is much more of a successful program whenever we're able to catch them early and as youngsters coming into pre-K or kinder, first grade than it is for us to start working with a student for the first time in seventh, 8th or nth grade. But even then uh our program is at a healthy state in which we have students who have come to us at the secondary level in ninth and tth grade and have been able to make
029academic progress coming to us as non-English speakers at the secondary level and then within a a relatively quick turnaround time start to show improvement not only in their academic ability but then in earning credits at the high school level for for graduation requirements. and things of that sort based on the services that they're receiving. And that's not just to credit the ESL program because as you know uh it it involves teachers across all core content areas in order for students to make academic progress. Definitely. Thank you guys. I appreciate the time >> back to give us a dual credit update. All right. Well, good evening again, trustees. This evening, we're going to receive an update on over our dual credit and advanced placement offerings here in the district. And like Mr. Tamez's presentation, this also
030relates to our board goal of ensuring that we provide relevant learning experiences for our students to ensure that they are college and career ready. Um, I'm proud to share with you that we have about 30 combined AP and dual credit offerings in our district, which very well situates our students in comparison to some of our peer and surrounding districts in the area. We have actually 891 students out of our 1,428 high school students that are enrolled in one or more dual credit or advanced placement course. And so that is 62% of our student body. So, if you think about the fact that usually dual credit courses are taken by juniors and seniors, um what this figure shows you is that we've been able to push some of those uh AP particularly programs down into the
031freshman and sophomore level. And we're actually seeing that some of our students are completing their freshman year already being CCMR complete um as a result of their participation in effective dual credit programs at White House High School. Um, both AP and dual credit courses provide our students with a college preparatory experience. Um, and so they're very rigorously academically prepared for that next step after high school. For our dual credit partnerships for students, um, we have a long-standing partnership with TJC. They primarily support our CTE, align dual credit courses. Now, you may remember that there's been a change over the last few years as a result of the FAST program, which is a fantastic program that provides a reduced cost um and consistent tuition level to all of our students while also providing no cost dual
032credit to our students who qualify for free and reduced lunch. Um so, as a result, we've seen our TJC enrollment decline a little bit. Um but we still have a very strong offering um in terms of 290 of our high school students are enrolled in a high school CTE class that has a corresponding dual credit class that's offered at CTE. Since those classes are no longer free to all of our students um and since we have a significant number of our students who do not plan to pursue that technical certification and um education beyond high school uh that is why we've seen a reduction in those numbers there. Um but currently we have um 61 students enrolled right now in the fall semester with TJC for those courses. um and we anticipate that as many
033as 160 students will be enrolled in the spring. The reason for that um increase in the spring is that often those are year-long high schools courses that have a dual credit component only in the spring. So we have a lower enrollment in the fall and we'll see that increase in the springtime. Uh with East Texas A&M University, they are a primary partner for our academic dual credit courses. Um, and we currently have 294 students that collectively are responsible for 651 enrollments across those dual credit courses. Um, we offer 16 courses with 49 credit hours available. all of our classes through both of our dual credit partners. Uh with the exception of automotive, which is a um course sequence that takes place fully at TJC, all of our courses are offered um at White House High
034School by White House ISTD employees that are credentialed through those higher ed partners. So, that is something that we're very proud of. In the past, we've noticed challenges for our students when they have to take what we would call a proctored class, meaning that um you know, they're in kind of an online environment with a IHA uh university professor, but taking that class at the high school, there's just a breakdown in communication, sometimes a lack of understanding about the complexities of the high school schedule and extracurriculars. Um so that's definitely a tremendous benefit for our students. When we look at our AP course offerings, AP is a strict college level course um offerings that are governed by the college board. Um all of these stu these courses are taught by high school teachers um that
035have received special training and um access to this advanced placement curriculum. Um, we have 536 individual students that make up 852 enrollments in our AP courses. Um, something that we're proud of is in 2024, White House High School was named an AP honoral school. This was a program that only started in 2023. Um, and the program is designed to recognize campuses that meet three benchmarks. The first being college culture, meaning that 40% or more of a graduating cohort of students took at least one AP exam during their high school year. The second benchmark being college credit, meaning that at least 25% of that cohort of students scored a three or higher on the AP exam. And the way students earn credit through AP is a little different than dual credit. It's based on that AP
036exam. And so there's a scale from one to five that dictates how well qualified the student is in that content area. And typically a score of three is what earns a student college credit. Um and the third benchmark, excuse me, the third benchmark being college optimization, meaning that 2% or more of students um took one or more AP classes during their high school experience. Um so some that recognized our participation for 24. Um, and on the screen you'll see some of the highlights from the 25 school year. We actually had a 26% increase in AP participation in courses. We had a 21% increase of students earning a three or better on one or more of the AP exams they they um participated in. and 30, excuse me, 43 out of 45 students earned a qualifying
037score on the pre-cal exam. So, those are just some of the highlights um of the great things that are coming out of our AP programming. And so, at this time, I'll take any questions that you guys have about either dual credit or AP offerings in the district. >> Those are big. >> Yeah. Uh, one of the additions that we made um for our current sophomores is they um had the ability to take AP human geography as freshmen and um that was a successful course. We offered it at White House High School a number of years ago um and had some interest in bringing that course back. And so we did we were able to tap an experienced teacher that's taught it before uh to lead that. And our students I don't I don't the specific
038percentage of students that passed their AP exam as freshmen. Um but the the primary target audience of that class was our freshman because that's a substitution course for what they would normally take as freshmen for social studies. But we did have some of our junior and senior students as well who took that as an elective course. So that is one way that contributes to that increased participation. >> Yeah. So great question. Yeah. So the TJC promise program is based on the TJC taxing district which white house is not a part of. Tyler is a part of that. So that's something that we've seen in the past where we might have students who live in Tyler um be they zoned to White House IC or be they uh employees students um that qualified and at the
039time a couple years ago that impacted the tuition rate. If you were part of the TJC Promise, you had a lower tuition rate than non-TJC Promise school districts or taxing entities. However, that's actually changed now because of the adoption of FAST. And so, FAST dictates what the tuition rate is. And so, there is no longer that difference in tuition rate for our students. Um, there is some differences though um as it relates to scholarships. So, some scholarships that are available through TJC for students who choose to go there after high school. >> Okay. Well, thank you very much. >> While you're there, do you want us to tell us about a couple grants? >> Absolutely. I would love to. >> All right. We have two uh grants that we would ask that trustees approve our
040intent to apply for. Um this directly relates to our board goal of practicing fiscal efficiency and transparency. Uh looking for unique opportunities to partner with different entities in order to bring programming into our campuses. Uh the first is our intent to apply for the prep program allotment and prep stands for preparing and retaining educators through partnerships program aotment. This was actually established by HB2 as part of the 89th legislative session. And what it does is it takes a three-pronged approach to trying to improve both teacher preparation, recruitment, and retention across the state. So, the first part is a pre-ervice residency program. This is an opportunity for districts to create a year-long uh kind of like student teaching uh on steroids sort of program where our our um pres-ervice teachers are fully indoctrinated into the classroom
041working with a master teacher over the course of an entire school year so that they are that much better prepared to step into the classroom as firstear teachers. Uh the second is a grow your own program that looks at employees within school districts who are not yet certified. Uh that might be some of our DOI teachers that might be teachers or um teacher assistants who maybe maybe or maybe do not have a bachelor's degree. Um, and it allows us to tap into some funds to um, help cost share with a university partner in order for them to continue their education and become certified um, and come back into the district and service teachers. And the third is the mentorship program. And so this is an aotment based on the average number of one and two-year
042teachers that you're hiring into your district. Um, and what this program seeks to do is create a comprehensive statewide curriculum for mentoring our new teachers that also honors and um calls out the unique needs of a district. And so in the development of that curriculum, it involves both our mentor teachers and district leaders who will be part of carrying out that mentorship program. So that's the prep aotment. Um, and then the second is empowering ECSE educators to improve student outcomes. This is actually our second year applying for this grant. We applied last spring and we received funds that we were able to use over the summer to bring in some targeted professional development for our early childhood special education teachers and the aids who work in that those classrooms. And that was extremely wellreceived by
043our teachers because it was training that was specifically unique to their circumstances which in that classroom is looks different than even some of our other early childhood classrooms. So we're going to go for round two on this grant for cycle two. Uh we're still going to ask for those funds for professional development and for inclassroom coaching um to occur, but we're going to expand our ask this year um to include special education certification. So these funds could also be used if we have any of our early childhood teachers, pre-K, kindergarten that are already certified in early childhood. Um we would be able to support them in also obtaining their special education certification. So that would increase opportunities for inclusion in our classrooms um and also help us in terms of flexibility of scheduling teachers. >>
044Questions about either opportunity. >> Okay. >> Very much. >> Yes. Thank you. >> There's Clint. Will you have a school funding update for us? >> Okay. Thank you uh for the opportunity. Um we just want to give a a short update and we want this to be pertinent. So what we're we're trying to do is uh we just want to share another layer of the information uh about the VAT that's upcoming. So we're uh we want to tell that story um through the frequently asked questions because uh so that will be pertinent and we really want to accomplish uh out of this um how does this impact the taxpayers in the district. Um, so the first question and these these are questions taken directly from the FAQ document that's on the WISD uh funding website.
045And the first question there is what is the uh school funding election? And what I would say, um, this gives the opportunity, the the funding election gives our, uh, community the opportunity to have a say so in um the expectations of our of our district and to match the funding level with those expectations. And so in short, uh that's just another way of saying what the purpose of that uh the funding election is. Um this is another common question that we've received. Is this a common election for Texas school districts? It is indeed. Um there's hundreds of districts in the state have already um taken these steps. We have uh done this twice uh in the past. We have passed two uh VATREs in the past and many of our neighbors, you know, we've talked
046about the uh tax rates of many of our neighbors being higher than than ours in Smith County. Um many of them that rate is higher because they have accessed some of these pennies that we have not uh yet accessed. So, uh, how do the recent actions of the Texas legislature, um, impact school funding? Well, we've we've talked about this pretty exhaustively. Um, we can say that the basic aotment did increase by $55 uh this year. Of course, we've talked about what the what the need was there uh to keep up with inflation, but uh I pointed out down here at the bottom that from 2019 to 2024, uh inflation was up 22% while if you look at that bottom line, the basic aotment did not change. So, uh we weren't uh there was not an
047attempt made there to help us keep up with inflation over these uh these years. the $55 was uh that was given to start the 202526 year was really a repurposing of some funding um that we were already receiving. So uh thank you thank you for that um to the to the legislature. Um okay let's talk a little bit about the cup analogy. Now uh we've all talked we've talked about this uh everyone uses this analogy but What I want to point out is kind of where we started, what we've done, and where we're headed um and what we're asking for here on the on the right hand side. Uh if you take the cup analogy, uh the cup represents um funding that is guaranteed funding and it's based on the number of students. So the
048size of the cup um is determined by the number of students. Okay. Um there's two inputs into that cup, taxes and state revenue. And taxes are poured in first. So if you take the the bright uh green there and envision that as the taxes uh in the in the furthest one there on the on the left, um taxes poured in first and then state revenue tops off the cup. What we did is um as well as the number of students increases our state revenue increases because remember taxes have already been poured in. Taxes are what taxes are. What we did is we um we increased enrollment by opening up for uh transfers and that increases the number of students. It makes the cup taller. Okay. As I said, taxes were poured in first. The taxes
049were already taken care of. So that additional funding came from the state uh for all all of those marginal students, the the marginally added students there. Um and so where that takes us to is what we're what are we asking? What we're asking now is that the uh we're asking the taxpayers if they want to um give us the ability to tax a few more pennies and slide in the the dark green uh area there is uh another layer of funding. And so we're asking, would you like to give us the opportunity to for a little bit more tax to increase the cup and make it a little bit bigger? And so it it uh increases our tax base. If you uh look at the the figure on the far right, the light green and
050dark green would represent taxes. The yellow and tan would represent state uh state revenue. And we went from the basis to the um increased students to potentially uh the increased taxes to make the the cup even bigger. And that is not to scale. So uh don't panic. Don't panic there. So what would this mean for our annual property tax bill of a of an average uh homeowner if the school funding election passes. Um, we would have uh the average homeowner because of the increased homestead exemption would see a decrease in their in their taxes. Okay? Um, a decrease of just under $247. But if it does not pass, the average homeowner would see an estimated $415 in uh savings. Okay? So that's $169 more. We don't want there to be any question about this. If
051this does not pass, the tax payer, the average homeowner would pay less uh or or would actually receive more savings than they would if it did pass. But there is savings there for the average homeowner year-over-year if it does pass. The average homeowner um okay, the average home White House ISD is a um it's calculated by our appraisal district and they give us that number, but it's $365,000. It's a $365,000 home and uh the taxable portion of that is about um I believe about 186 $187,000, right? And so and that's with the assumption of the uh increased homestead exemption which we were we were told to calculate everything based on the assumption that that will pass through about 365. Okay. Next question. How is the 4 cent increase calculated? Um we've talked about a 4centent
052increase in in our tax rate. we've talked about uh it's a 9 cent VATRE. There's some confusion there. Uh I just want to clarify. You'll recall that last year we um had a 5 cent uh disaster declaration. We we adopted uh the board adopted five disaster pennies and that was a one-year item and so those fall off unless they're approved by the taxpayers in a uh VAT. So what we're asking with this VATRE is for the approval of those five pennies to stay and then an additional four pennies and that's where we get that marginal increase of four pennies. Um even though the the u uh the number of the total number of pennies in the election is uh more than that but we would truly be going from 92.49 cents up to 96.49 that
053disaster. >> It does. It was It was It's a one-year provision. >> Yes, it's a one-year provision. And so that was for the 2425 year. And um to keep those >> passes this time, if it No, if it passes this time, it's not they're no longer disaster pennies. The disaster pennies are are uh are expiring. And then uh those are just some of the pennies that would be available to us on a permanent basis. And then um this is this one is a fan favorite um about how how this impacts how the election impacts the uh uh average or the um senior citizens I guess homeowners 65 and older. they will have u if they filed their senior homestead exemption uh they will see no increase in their taxes and um I I don't want
054to go into the minutia of it but there are actually some provisions there that it could decrease um but those uh those calculations are done I mean the it's the frozen levy says it will not go above this okay it could go below that in some certain circumstances but there Those are some individual calculations there. So, as far as additional information, uh we have a a couple of community town hall meetings scheduled for next Tuesday and Wednesday. That's uh the morning of of the 14th, Tuesday, and the uh evening of Wednesday the 15th. Um and so those are going to be last an hour um an hour a piece and it would give the community the opportunity to come and and uh partake in that. And then we have the information that's on our website.
055The um uh White House or the I'm sorry, the WISDschoolfunding.com website has a complete list of the FAQs and and other information there also. So, u again we just wanted to give a little snippet. These are are some of the financial FAQs uh that that have been cropping up and we just wanted to share that information. Um are there any questions related to that? >> Thank you. >> While you're there, you want to take our school's first report? Let's go. Let's do it. Okay, I I believe everyone is wellversed in this one. Um, what we're looking at here, this is the state financial accountability rating public hearing and um, this is the uh, financial integrity rating system of Texas. what what is called schools first. Um the uh 2025 financial management report is based on
056our 20 23 24 financial data audited. Uh some PES data flows into that also. Um the purpose is to ensure uh just quality in our financial management practices and it includes both um accuracy and financial health indicators in that schools first is uh in its 23rd year and this is the 23rd year that white house ISD has received the uh highest rating whatever the highest rating was for the particular year. This year it happens to be called superior achievement. Um there's a combination of uh fact of of different types of indicators. Pass fail indicators which are self-explanatory. Uh ceiling indicators which would limit um the scoring. It might limit uh even though you have the the points, it might would limit you to a B. Um even though you had the points to make an
057A. That that type of indicator. It limits the ceiling. And um and then there's scored indicators where you can accumulate points to get the superior achievement rating. Um, you have to navigate through all of that, of course, pass all the pass fail, navigate the ceiling indicators, and accumulate 90 of those 100 points. Uh, we did that with 92 points. Um again we'll say that most of the points that we lost are based on our uh long-term debt to net assets ratio and that is uh bonded debt basically. And so there's very little that we can do to uh to get those points other than paying down our debt uh which we're doing on an annual basis. But I will point out that we have done uh I looked at these indicators um for some of
058our neighboring districts that get all of the points and there are some exemptions there for um uh districts based on the growth rate over a five-year period student growth rate there. Many of those districts have a higher ratio here than we do. And so they would not they would lose even, you know, as many or maybe more points than us if they had the same u growth rate, student growth rate that we did over that five-year period. And so uh many of them are are getting those points based on that exemption. And many of the districts in the state are doing that very thing. Um there's a few exhibits in here uh in the in the document in the report. Um there's a status report that gives all the scoring of our indicators. Um there's
059how the ratings are assessed, year-to-year comparison that shows uh the state standard, our prior year uh performance, our current year performance, and then there's some other um uh disclosures there that are required that are just also within those exhibits. That is really um all of it. Now, this is a a public hearing, so uh this is the time that it could be opened up for public comment. And then if there's no public comment, if there's any questions and discussion, we can entertain that at this time. Any questions or comments? Now's the time. You want to take a shot at Clint? >> Everybody can get in on it. >> Thanks again, Clint. You know, it's it's a boring report because you give the same one every year and we are really grateful for that. So, thank
060you. >> Thank you so much. Appreciate y'all. >> Thank you. >> That takes us to our action items. And the action item is the consent agenda. You all have the consent agenda. Any questions or comments about it? Motion to accept Dr. Mr. agenda. All in favor? Carries. That will take us to our reports of the city. >> Well, uh it's it's October and so that's great. It uh it means that it's uh it's principal recognition month. And so uh they're not here tonight. Well, we have two that are here. So, thanks for staying, guys. Uh but but they're not here tonight. But I did definitely want to make sure that said a couple words about them. uh I share with them on top of managing the parking lot and the and the grass and the
061air condition and uh the heat and all the other things, the tile on the floor, the all the things. They're they're really the gatekeeper for great instruction every single day and and so I'm just uh honored to to work alongside them and what they do for their campuses and our community and that the leadership they provide um and and really the direction they're they're moving their campuses towards. I'm I'm appreciative of that and their leadership and just wanted to make sure that I said that uh hopefully they're all home watching it online or I'll go back tomorrow morning and watch it. But just we're super thankful for them and their leadership. And then uh second I just uh Clint kind of reminded everybody about we do have some town hall meetings coming up on October
06214th at 8:15 and on the 15th at 6 pm and we did them one in the morning in case you can't make it at night and then wanted to do one in the evening in case you couldn't make it in the morning. Uh but just wanted to invite the community out to come hear our presentation and then interact with us and answer any questions they may have. Um but it's so far I've been on we've been going on the road uh tour and about two or three nights a week we've been presenting to different people and so it's been a good response and look forward to more conversations in the future. And let me just add our app our principles too because it sure does not run without you guys. That concludes our agenda for
063this evening. Unless anybody else has something motion to favor.