001Good evening. Welcome to the meeting of the White House ISD Board of Trustees. Uh call this meeting to order. I let the record show that a quorum of board members is present, that the meeting has been duly called, and that notice the meeting has been posted in accordance with the Texas Open Meetings Act, Government Code Section 551. We will now journ into executive session pursuant to Texas Government Code sections 551.074 through 551.084. 084. We are ajour uh Mr. Holder and we got a big group. I'm not even sure where you are. So, there you are. Okay. Uh could you introduce your student for us? All right. Good evening. Uh, tonight's pledge will be led by our White House Junior High School student council president, Miss Jenna Broyals. [Applause] Please rise for the pledge of allegiance.
002I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much for leading us. Um, all right. Tonight's brief introductory remarks will be given by Mr. Moss. Please bow your head for a prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Thank you for the opportunity tonight to be here to serve our community. I pray that you be with the board tonight. That the decisions we make are in the best interest of the community. Watch over and protect us and guide us. Lead us when we go home. In your name I pray. Amen. Amen. Thanks. There's a few tonight. All right. Good evening. It's my pleasure to stand before you this evening to
003introduce some outstanding group of students who have achieved some great things. We have quite a few groups tonight. We're going to recognize band, choir, Texas Public Safety Association, and the Business Professionals of America. So, we're going to start off with our choir or our band group real quick. So, parents, as I call out names, if you want to get behind me and take a picture, uh your student will collect their certificate, come up here with the board. We'll take a picture and and then they will go back and be seated with you. All right. So, our first student for band 5A allstate band is Victoria Mi. [Applause] Congratulations to Victoria, your family, Mr. Mitch, and all of our great band directors. Good job. All right, moving on to choir. We're going to do them. We're
004going to do them together. We were going to do them together. The choir and the band. All right. Now for choir, we have 5A all state choir Zachary Mitchell. Okay, next up, 5A All State Choir, Josephine [Applause] Roa. And now we have Julia Mitchell, who is Texas Choir Directors, All State, fourth year in a row. Congratulations, Zachary, Josephine, Julia, your families, and our choir director, Miss Mcichael. You ready? Hey, come on up. Come on up. Get that microphone out of your picture. Great job. Okay, next up we have our Texas Public Safety Association state members. Now, this is a large group. We're going to divide this group into two different two different groups, 15 students each. So, parents, as these kids come through, I'm going to call their name. They're we're going to get a
005picture at the end. If you would please sit tight till we go through everybody so we don't distract from everybody's award. The kids stand over there and then we'll bring them back. Perfect. They can still come up and take a picture. Okay. Here we go. Are we ready? We got a lot of them. It's a great thing. So, first off, we have Logan Simmons, inmate processing. Logan is a state champion. [Applause] Okay, next up, Haven Stiger for Traffic Stop. Haven is also a state champion. All right, Jacob CR for fire facility design. And Jacob is a state [Applause] champion. Next we have Tony Starns for parliamentary procedure. Tony is a state champion as well. Next up, Ashir Erl for parliamentary procedure. Ashir is a state champion. I'm not sure if anybody else got state champion,
006but White House is what it's looking like. Okay. Jonah Conklin, state champion for parliamentary procedure. Good job. [Applause] Okay, next up, Veronica Allen, state champion in parliamentary [Applause] procedure. All right, Vanessa Allen, also state champion for parliamentary procedure. All right. Now we have Sophie Nakos, state champion, parliamentary [Applause] procedure. All right. Abigail Smith, state champion as well in parliamentary procedure. Rena Watson for closing arguments and opening statement. Dominic Perez Hill for search and rescue drones and building [Applause] search. Summer Turney for fire facility and design. Next up is Caitlyn Cook, fingerprint collection analysis and 911 call tracking. All right. Parker Rust for DWI Investigation. [Applause] Next up is Elizabeth Norman for fire agility and felony stop. [Applause] All right, we have Taran Schutz for anthropology and crime scene investigation and crime scene model. Okay, we
007have Aan Simpson for crime scene investigation. [Applause] Also a part of this but but not here tonight is Hannah Curtis as well. All right. Wait a bit. All right. Good. Great. Are y'all ready? Perfect. Yeah, if y'all want to just meet back in the PLC. We're not done yet. We got about 15 more. I don't know if I said this, but but this group tonight is represented by Officer uh Lemons and then Officer James McGraw of Tyler PD and Dustin Rust of Central Point Group. And I'll a testament to Officer Lemons here. I think we had more state qualifiers than you actually had kids in your sections just three years ago. So that that's a testament to how big this program has grown. So all right, round two. Here we go. We have Reagan Malone
008Black for law press conference and correctional facility design. [Applause] Next up is Addison Gray for law agility. [Applause] Okay. Martin Rocher for fire agility and search and rescue. All right, we have Isaac Russell for search and [Applause] rescue. Next up is Zoe Craig for fire agility. [Applause] We have Alise Perez Hill for inmate [Applause] processing. All right, we have Royce Mount for Law Agility. [Applause] [Music] We have Payton Winfield for building [Applause] search. Next up is Isabella Hurley. Felony traffic stop. [Applause] All right. Dylan Odell, felony traffic stop. [Applause] Caleb Allen is a state champion in felony traffic stop. We have Chance Tar for felony traffic stop. Julia Haggard for felony [Applause] stop. Diane McFaden, felony stop. [Applause] All right, congratulations. That is our our our end of that group. You want a picture? Yeah.
009Y'all want to come back on by? ready. All right, great job. Good job. I love that. All right. Our next group of students is represented the the Business Professionals of America National Members. This is under the guidance of Miss Davenport, Mr. Jones, and Miss Ferguson. These students all qualified for nationals in Orlando this year. We're going to start off. We have Sophia Nakos, fundamental spreadsheet applications. [Applause] We have Braden Hendrickx, Java [Applause] Programming, Parliamentary Procedure Team. We have Tony Starns, Vanessa Allen, Veronica Allen, [Applause] Jonah [Applause] Conlin, Sophia Nakos, Ashir, Ariel [Applause] Abigail [Applause] Smith. We have Celica Careshi for health administration [Applause] procedures. All right. Congratulations students, your families, Miss Davenport, Mr. Jones, and Miss Ferguson. Let's get up there. Jones, you ready? Awesome. And then everybody Thank you. There's a closure. I know.
010She's been driving. Well, thank you. We miss our Smith days. There you go. [Music] I know y'all want to just have other things. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for Thank you for everybody that came. Uh I think you more than doubled our high attendance at the board meeting. So, thank you. Uh freedom, but definitely feel free to to leave if you're not as intrigued by the rest of it. Appreciate y'all. Thank you. All right. No one signed up for open forum this evening. So that takes us to our information items. And the first one is uh Mr. Dean jumped to lead up our spotlight on our prek teachers. Okay. I can't believe everybody cleared out because this is the best part. We are so glad they did. Well, it is my pleasure to introduce Miss Ashley
011Pushelle and Miss Taylor Barton. They are prek teachers and they are a dynamic duo. They do an incredible job down in prek. And I've thought about some words and how to describe what goes on in prek. And to be honest with you, there are no words to describe what goes on at preK. So, we want to start off having a little fun by showing a video of some of the shenanigans that take place. And actually, this is a video from last Christmas. And this kind of explains what happens in preK. And then we'll kind of go from there soon as Clint gets soon as Clint gets back in position. [Music] Who is that? Listen. Vivian said we should find him. and sing to him. But what what what do we why do we want to
012sing to him? What's that going to do? Because because the movie when the people sing, he became sad and his heart grew. Okay. So if we sing to him, do you think his heart will grow? Yeah. Okay. Okay. What do we want to see? Okay. I just love that video because it kind of paints a picture of what happens in Miss Pochelle's room. I mean, the kids kids love learning. The only thing that Well, there is a lot of there is a lot of learning that takes place down there. Don't get me wrong, but they instill a love of learning in their kids. And um Dr. Whittle stresses to the principles to hire teachers and assistants that love kids. and it is very evident that they love kids and they love their job and that's
013why there are great things that happen down there. So with that in mind, I want to just take a few minutes and ask them some questions to kind of further illustrate what happens in their classroom. So the first question, philosophical one, tell us a little about your philosophy and how that shapes what happens in your classroom. So obviously I think learning should be fun um no matter what grade level you're teaching. Um, I strongly feel that learning should be play-based and hands-on. So, we give them lots of play, lots of hands-on experiences, whether whether we're planting seeds to learn about the life cycle of a plant or they're playing in a dramatic area or they're exploring with sensory stations. Um everything that we do is intentional and um it serves it serves not only an
014educational purpose but but a well-rounded it sparks their imagination and their creativity and um makes them love learning. So all right we saw this a little bit in the video but tell us a little bit how you foster kind of a nurturing classroom environment. So obviously we all feel like kids need to come to school and feel loved and feel safe and feel um valued. Um Taylor and I start from day one building relationships with our students and not only our students but our families as well. And um that's really it's really important to us. So we try to create an environment where the kids feel safe to not only to be at school but to try new things and to make mistakes because that's that's how we all learn. So yes, we know that
015every kiddo is different. They come from different backgrounds, different levels of ability and we really try to celebrate that and embrace that. Um and I just really appreciate Ashley has such an innate ability to meet the kids where they are and um these kiddos may not be ready to master this skill and so instead I'm going to pull them for small group and do this with them and these kiddos can go ahead and do this and so she really um does a great job of meeting them where they are um with individual goals which is really hard with 22 four and 5 year olds um so it's really amazing to get to be a part of that so okay can you share something innovative that you've done in your classroom this year. Oh. Oh, that's
016me. So I feel like that goes it goes back to really back to my philosophy where um learning is playbased but everything that we do is it everything that we do whether they're asking questions um learning to just explore learning is so I want them to feel that learning is fun but it is also deeply intentional. Yes, we on top of the academics and all all of that is so important, but we're also learning how to be a good friend, how to take turns, how to walk in a straight line, things that um are are very new to them and that are going to set them up for success, not only in school, but also just to be a good little a person, you know, to learn how to be a person and interact with
017those around them. um we do a lot of hugging and and apologizing and let's talk about this and this is why this happened and and what could we do instead and and so it's we're constantly yes doing a a little bit of everything innovation in our classroom might look a little different than okay you have been in White House for 19 years you've taught several different grade levels but it is very evident that prek is where your heart is tell us why why prek What's so special about? Well, I love prek for a lot of reasons, but I think the the biggest reason is the the sparks, the connections that they make and when you see them. I and I've told many people this before. I I loved fourth grade. I love teaching fourth grade.
018I taught reading and writing, but what I missed was seeing that everyday growth. In fourth grade, you see growth, but it's at the beginning of year, the middle of the year, and the end of the year. And in kindergarten and prek, you see it every day. Whether that's academic, social, emotional, I see growth every single day. And I love I love that. And also, you know, they bring joy to everything that we do. So, every day is Christmas. Every day. Every day is Christmas. But that's what I love. Did you want to add anything to that? I I just love um just how, like she said, just how joyful they are. They come to school and some of our are experiencing things that we as adults have never had to experience. And even even so,
019they come ready to learn and are so eager. And it's so neat to get to be part of that process to to just bring them in and and foster that love because they I mean, just their little faces, they're so they're so precious. Does the board have any questions for these two? I was curious what your favorite part of your job was, but you pretty much just said what you love about it. What's one of the hardest parts of your job? She said before, she hoped that you didn't ask that question. Really? I don't know. That's so hard. Oh, well, it's hard right now because I'm by myself. I'm a soul. I fly solo. Um I ha but luckily I have the best I don't She's not even an assistant. that she's a teaching partner
020because she is she makes everything I do literally I'll come to school and be like we're doing this today and she's like okay so I don't really know that's such a hard question yeah letting them go that's that probably is literally the hardest part of my job which so we only have one oh yes sorry it's just me so but yeah that probably is the hardest letting them go yes we become such a little family I mean we're with for so long and we see so much um happen together. Yes. And they just they love each other and we love like it's just it's a little family. Yeah. And so it's just incredible um to get to see that be part of Where do you get your your the 22 prek kids you have? What
021do I Where do I Where do you where do they where do they come from? Why do you have those kids? Um, I guess they live in our zone. Most of them live in our attendance zone. We have a few. I have a handful of teacher kids. Um, but most of them are zoned for us. Sorry. Do you need more classrooms? Yeah, always. That's a Dr. Whittle question. My kids have you and they absolutely loved you. So, yes, I did. I did have his children. I was just say I think uh we've got a plan to expand some some prek offerings. So uh you'll have a you'll have a partner in crime. So a partner in crime. That's right. So Taylor, do you feel like keeping the Flanigan kids several summers prepared you for 21?
022Is that comparable? Okay. It's a good training ground, right? They've trained a lot of kids. They have. Hey, we can handle it. Yes. Thank you all very much. Good job, ladies. Thank you. You had to ask what the hardest part of their job was. They have 22,4 [Laughter] years. Pastor teaching my son. So, all right. Well, that's hard to top, but uh Mr. Mr. Man, you want to give it a try? Okay. Our fine arts update. Great. Well, thank you for allowing me to address you folks this evening to talk about our fine arts programs here in the district. As you can see, WIST currently employs 25 full-time teachers across all of fine arts. And of that, there are four 459 students enrolled across the fine arts disciplines in WISD. is 95% of the total
023enrollment of the district is touched by f by 25 full-time uh fine arts students uh teachers, excuse me. While there is some overlap of students exploring multiple disciplines in grades 7 through 12, the vast majority of this number are only enrolled in one discipline. So uh take for example Brown Elementary uh serves prek through fifth grade for both visual art and uh and music. And you'll notice that these two uh teachers here were just recently recognized by Young Artists of Young Audiences of East Texas as outstanding teachers. Uh Miss Fzen uh twice in in three years times as and Miss Hogan was just recently re uh recognized last week as a matter of fact and um all of their successes you can see through there and we'll be going through a lot of these slides.
024Um each one of these uh members of our faculty are esteemed and they do a phenomenal job. Um, Miss Hurst over at Kain, you can see uh the total enrollment, 507 uh students, and each one of these ladies are serving and and addressing each one of these kids. Um, the visual art completes many hands-on project uh projects and each grade level performed a musical uh program for a total of seven programs planned and executed throughout the year. Uh, at um Higgins, we have Miss Co Pepper and Miss Schmidt. And you can see uh their duties as assigned. Miss Schmidt has some extra duties that are assigned as you can see there. Um s and uh serves as ECSC and life skill students as well as students in the behavior class and utilizes creative cross-cultural curricular
025projects. Um you can see Miss Co Pepper each grade level completes and performs a musical presentation for the school and the community. And she likes to utilize ukuleles, recorders, and various rhythm instruments. I'm going to backtrack real quick because uh one of the things that Bobby Joe Fzen does is uh she's she has a rare certification in our field and she uses percussion instruments and uh that's what she used to use in the in Iowa and that's what uh one of the things that young audiences of East Texas realize that she's very diverse in her teaching of music uh at at this level. She was also a former choir director at Moore Middle School before she came to uh u the elementary school. Now in Stanton Smith, uh Michelle Richardson will be retiring at this
026year, but uh she each grade level completes one performance per year. Um and then in visual art, Miss Dean over there, they love to instill love and appreciation for art and creative expression at the elementary. So that's music and art at our four elementary schools. Um and now moving on uh to choir with uh the three campuses. We have also Miss Borne and Mrs. Mcichael here tonight. Um, WSISD employs three choir directors, one assigned to each secondary campus. Currently, the junior high choir director also assists at the high school and the hallway director assists at the junior high. Total enrollment for three campuses is 214. It's expected to grow uh to nearly 270 280, close to 300 next year is their projected enrollment for next year. At Holloway, they're currently meeting in three class periods,
027two girls classes and one boys class. Uh Reggie Fowler is the director and he's assisted by Miss Emily Borne. Uh Mr. Fowler was awarded the distinguished service to the profession by young audiences in 2020. Their recent achievements, Holloway Choir won best in festival as well as a superior rating at the Lonear Festival in 2024. Their total enrollment this year in the Holloway Choir program is 38 and they're projected to their numbers are going to be about the same next year. Moving on to the junior high. Uh Miss Emily Borne is here and she's the director and she's assisted by Reggie Fowler. The junior high recent achievements as you can see varsity men UIL superior rating, varsity women UIL superior rating and the non-varsity uh uh women UIL superior rating. Um multiple superior ratings and all
028uh had 40 students make and participate with the all region choir. Um their numbers as you can see there meets and currently in four classes and potentially a fi five classes next year at the junior high is what they're looking to add potentially the junior high choir 23 years of sweep stakes awards consecutively. And then at the high school uh Miss Miss Amy Mcichel is here this evening and they currently meet in three class periods. uh two soloists and one magical group received a superior rating at the UL state solo ensemble contest in 2024 and uh due to their enrollment there are going to be uh nearly 100 students at the high school choir uh high school choir program next year adding a couple extra classes I believe to five I think is that what
029we're we're trying to add okay and our current enrollment this year show choir has 10 varsity mix choir has 25 prearcity mix choir has 25 with a total enrollment this year of 50. So they will be doubling their enrollment next year. And as you can see their 2025 awards. Both choirs received superior ratings at the UIL concert and site reading evaluation. 21 students made the all region choir and 10 advanced to the area round. Two students made the TME allstate choir and 26 soloists and two ensembles made a first division at sol ensemble contest. And that is our choir program. Uh, our theater program, total enrollment in theater is 270. We currently employ two theater directors, one at the junior high and one at the high school. Daniel Boone is our junior high theater teacher.
030His classes meet throughout the day with some events taking place after school. Their current enrollment, you can see, intro to theater has 166 students with advanced theater has 24 with the one act play 15 through 20 varies from year to year with their total enrollment at the junior high of 190 students. They will be performing a full-length spring show with 22 actors and two technicians and student written and directed end of the year variety show as well. Um, and at the high school we have Miss Amy Clemens and she was also awarded an excellence in teaching award by Young Audiences of East Texas in 2019. Her classes meet throughout the day with some events taking place after school as well. And unfortunately that prevents Miss Clemens from assisting at the junior high, but they really
031are able to make uh make it work within their within the high school. She is assisted by John Nichols for one class period I believe. Um current class offerings, they have one act play, production, pre-production, technical theater, theater theater with a total enrollment at the high school of 80 students. their UIL uh 2025 district 10 zone place uh zone B place first place advancement to district contest and the awards from zone best performer is Case Wilson all cast all-star cast Tony Starns Asher Rogers Regan Malone Black and then honorable mention Riley Young with best technician Amethyst Barker uh district awards all say all-star cast was Case Wilson honorable mention Nick Noble and best technician Maddie Raina In 2024, UIL 1Act play awards all-star cast Riley Rung, Riley Young, excuse me, honorable mention Jacob Traml and
032best technician Brady Kates. And in 2023, honorable mention Eva Hamlet with best technician Jada. And that is our theater program. Uh, moving on to White House Art Holloway Junior High School with a total enrollment for all three programs of 824 students. It isn't available as an elective choice. And at Holloway, Miss Aaron Payne is the teacher for that. Her classes meet throughout the day. The art teacher is also the dance teacher. Current enrollment, total enrollment in art is 99. And they host a fine arts, one of their goals is to host a fine arts festival for fifth grade students to preview the elective options as an as a recruitment idea. Uh, and the art class is introductory and is aligned with the junior high program. Then at the junior high, we have three teachers, Lacy
033Arbor, Satie Rose, Astred Marano. Uh, junior high classes meet throughout the day with a total enrollment of 400 and their recent achievements. Students do amazing things every day. We learn to respect each other, respect supplies, evaluate our work, persevere through difficulties, and celebrate success. Each year, a select amount of artwork from the WH I'm sorry, from the junior high art students is displayed at the museum uh Tyler Museum of Art. And this year the the arts students created and embellished 200 masquerade masks for the WISD ED Foundation celebration of innovation. And at the high school, uh Chelsea Baransky and Sean Butler are two students there. They have a total of 325 students at the high school. Um there's a vast amount of information here. Um and right now we have two AP art students were
034recognized with the by at the congressional art competition in the fall. Uh we had two AP art students participate in the visual arts scholastic event for the first time in years. And then we had five AP art students are participating in the Tyler Museum of Arts 21st annual high school art exhibition which is open from March 23rd through May 18th. And then a small group of AP art students attended UT Tyler's high school art day in September and able to attend arts workshops and art history lectures. and the art club is touring the museum of art and Tyler Junior Carish art department and students will be receiving guided tours from museum museum creators and TJC art professors. So, a lot of recognition from different students uh of different students within the art community there and
035a lot of students being affected and uh moving on to the high uh high school legacy achievements. A small group of AP art students attended UT Tyler's high school art day last year and were able to attend art workshops and art history. Um, and you can see this list of uh other achievements as well. And we're going to move on to dance. So, we have between Holloway Junior High and High School, we have a total enrollment of 186 students. And all WIC employees employs three dance teachers and one part-time assistant. And at Holloway, we have Aaron Payne as the director, and she's assisted part-time by Paulie Chanel and Nikki Whitley. And classes meet throughout the afternoon. The dance teacher is also the art teacher as we mentioned earlier with a total enrollment of 87. Um
036they've grown from 56 to 87 from the past 3 years and the generous grant allowed us to p purchase 90 sets of palms for our beginning dancers so that all students have the opportunity to experience performing for the community. Then we have Lendia Robertson at the junior high and she's assisted part-time by Nikki Whitley. We have the Maroon Illusion classes meet during the day with a total enrollment of 45 students. And you can see their Maroon Illusion 2025 contest awards, academic champions, sweep stakes, division one rating, Gussy Nell Davis award, best overall platinum judges award, um team prop and team jazz and winner bestin-class all this year. And this year, u Miss Whitley went to their competition season and the list is long here. You can uh see that for yourself. Tremendous amounts of uh
037victories in that in that program. The first ladies have 26 in in the in the group. Palm squad takes 22. Dance one through four has 10 students. And the fir as you know the first ladies perform at all pep rallies, football games, community events and competition and their annual spring spectacular which will be coming up here in the end of April. This year at nationals they brought home five national titles and placed top three in all other dances. The officers won their division at nationals, making them undefeated this contest season in their division. Um, awards for their uh, as you can see for the competition season this year, their officer awards uh, over eight awards there with team awards uh, close to 13 and so just a monumental achievement with our drill team and our
038dance at the high school with Miss Whitley. So, and uh the band program uh total enrollment is 683. Right now, we employ seven band directors. Band is offered at all three campuses, Holloway, Junior High, and High School. Karina Mcreer is our director who coordinates the the beginning band program with uh Nick Hardy, Chris Huy, Randy Kaiser, Daniel Sutherland, Christina Thomas, all teaching beginner level classes. There are 13 homogeneous classes that are divided in the seventh and eighth and ninth periods with a total enrollment this year of 196 students with a projected enrollment of over 253 for next year. And beginning band is the entry level to the band program and is only offered in the sixth grade. Uh hallway band program performs a winter concert and participates in the spring band concert and we have
039earned superior ratings at competition for the past 40 years. They have also earned the highest honor of best in-class during those years. And it's full of every single morning the band hall is full of students that are excited to come to school to make music. And we try to provide a positive culture uh ex celebrating peers and teachers by performing the happy birthday stu uh song for folks. And then beginning band provides a foundation fundamental foundation for the success of the whole white house band program. Moving on to the junior high, Mr. Huy and Daniel Sutherland are the two directors there and they are assisted by all of us. Um we have eighth grade symphonic band, concert band, eighth grade concert band, seventh grade symphonic band, seventh grade concert band, marching band, jazz band and
040majoretses with a total enrollment this year of 250. This year they marched at the Rose Parade performed at football games and concerts as well. This year we had 44 students at the at the all region band and then uh at an ensemble contest 242 participants and all ensembles and most soloists earning superior ratings our largest success in years. This year um all of our concert bands earned first divisions in site readings. Six of them earned first divisions at concert while two earned uh a second division u I'm sorry one earned a second division on concert stage. So, three of our bands uh of our junior high bands earned uh ones at concert and site reading this year just last week on Friday. And then our high school band um myself, director of bands and then
041assisted by the list there that you see. Uh the long list of folks right there, total enrollment this year is 230. Next year we're looking to have 254. Um we have been consistently earning sweep stakes for the last 25 years in the marching domain and eight years in concert and site reading. Um this year we had uh we were recognized our allstator this year and we had 13 students participate at area and 27 students participate at region band and then win ensemble earning sweep stakes this year as well as symphonic winds and our concert band and then our symphonic band earning a first division in in sight reading. And that is the update of all of our fine arts accomplishments for the entire district. And so I hope I didn't bore you too long. Do
042you have any questions for me? because that's a lot of data uh to try to get through and I apologize I was it's trying not to read but you know so you feel like most of the programs are trending up in attend in it's been uh when COVID hit that has vastly affected a lot of our programs uh I'll give you an example in band in 2019 we had two uh 280 in band uh in 2019 and due to the COVID slide uh we're starting to come out of we're our numbers are coming back up uh this year we are at 230 so we lost about 56 six kids uh through that slump there. Um I think that speaks as well for the choir as well where we lost a large percentage and and in
043theater as well. Uh theater had enough numbers three years ago to uh have two full-time directors at the high school and and this year because of the number slide, they've only been able to have one to justify one instructor there. So I would say that the numbers are trending out of the co slump of what we've been seeing so far, especially uh especially in our domains. So our recent community survey there was um some push to maybe start a symphony orchestra. Yes sir. Do you think that would be able to be incorporated or that will that take away from band or other So the trend typically is yes that does take away from other fine arts programs. Um and then you also have to look at facilities right now uh between the band program because
044that's where you would house everything. are are we're we're we're struggling with storage as it is even after the remodel and everything else because of the different kinds of things that we're trying to do in within our program. Then you also have to look at scheduling to not butt up against any other art classes or any other electives that you're dealing with at the high school or the junior high. So, um if we're going to pursue that, it's going to take a careful look at at structure as how we're going to minimize the impact on the existing programs right there, but also meet community needs as well. One of the great things that East Texas does offer is there's tons of afterschool string programs that are available to students right now. Maybe not here in
045White House per se, but in in uh in Tyler specifically and including the East Texas Youth Orchestra that meets on Sundays. So, what we have seen is students that have been interested in orchestra have been taking private lessons and then uh meeting on Sundays with the East Texas Youth Orchestra. There's a young lady that's in the White House band program right now. She's a percussionist. She's an eighth grader. She won the concerto competition at the East Texas Youth Orchestra as an eighth grader on violin and she sits in the East Texas Youth Orchestra on violin. Um, but she's a percussionist for us as well. So, there's avenues and opportunities for those. It's just we're going to have to take a careful look as to how we need to go through our procedures, scheduling as well
046as facilities to see how that would work. So, awesome. Okay. Well, thank you for your time. Appreciate y'all. Thank you very much. [Applause] Well, I believe you have the financial and legislative [Applause] update. I knew y'all been waiting for this. Oh, good news. Okay. Um, tonight I am going to give uh the finance legislative update. We're going to talk a little bit at the end um about the uh out of district transfers and and I'll have uh Mr. Scott McFaden come up and and do that. But uh the items that we want toh cover tonight first is uh the the current funding formula. And in fairness to y'all, I want you to know that some of the slides that you're going to see are going to be uh just recaps. Uh kind of a we're
047going to we're going to put those out there, though I presented some of this to you in October. Um but we're going to put a different slant on some of these slides. Um we're going to talk a little bit about uh the formula recap. We're going to talk about um some funding inputs, the enrollment, um attendance rate, the um potential changes. That's the legislative update portion. Uh we're going to talk about what else is happening outside of fun uh formula funding. And then uh what are we doing to address some of the challenges that that we're facing uh that we're all aware of. And then what are some of our peers, our our neighbor districts doing? And then uh we'll talk about the transfer policy as mentioned earlier and some statistics on that. As far
048as the funding formula recap, um this is definitely a slide that I that I've shown in the past. Um the two key things I I want to take from this are are the highlighted items. First of all, um you've heard me say this before, but ADA average daily attendance is the main revenue driver of the funding formula. And there's such a close association between enrollment and average daily attendance uh because normally our attendance rate is is steady. And so uh we'll see a a graph in a second that'll that will show that. Um but and there's a direct relationship there between enrollment and average daily attendance and the revenue. And so when when enrollment is up, ADA is up, revenue is up. And that's what I want you to get out of this uh this
049slide. This slide you've seen before also. This uh comes from our demographic study. I I presented this at that October meeting. Also, what I want to uh to point out here is that this was the district enrollment projections as of last September. And at that time, the number there that's highlighted in yellow was a projection of what our enrollment was going to be at the end of October. Um and then you had three scenarios, the high, moderate, and low growth scenarios there. it was determined that the most likely scenario for White House ISD was that one in blue, the moderate growth. And so, um, looking at that and kind of isolating that and looking at that, uh, enrollment projection that 47 4717 students, um, the decline in our enrollment was actually steeper than that. uh
050we ended up the end of October with 4,676 students. And so we were 41 students under that projection. And you'll notice that on that blue line, it continues to dip even after that. So we're projected to dip. That was due to u live birth data for Smith County. And so we would still expect to see that in the current I mean in the coming year. And so that that takes us to the next um slide here. And you've seen a version of this um graph before where uh back in October whenever I illustrated how the the relationship between those two lines and how closely correlated they were. Um the anomaly of course was the COVID year. But what I did add here was uh the the two years on the end as projections and you'll
051see that because we were so low this year uh on our enrollment at that uh October date and we do project to dip again um and that's that's due to uh some of the rollups. We have a larger senior class. We're not refreshing at the same rate. Uh so our it's our lower levels, our kindergarten classes that are um that are lagging behind. So you graduate a larger class than you bring in to replace it. And so because of those dips, uh because enrollment goes down, attendance uh ADA goes down because ADA goes down, it impacts our funding. Um so moving away from that for a second, this is the legislative portion. Uh what we're looking at right now is a there's a committee substitute currently for House Bill Two and these are some of
052the uh the elements of House Bill Two, committee substitute, and then some other items that are proposed right now. What we're uh looking at the the main driver there is the basic aotment, that $395 uh per ADA increase that would generate by my estimates about $2.2 $2 million uh based on our current student body. And so for reference, um the cost of last year's 3% raise and benefits adjustments was $1.4 million. And so that gives you some kind of idea what that 2.2 um can cover. The midsize adjustment increase u by about 20%, that's another 150. the uh safety aotment increase that uh we've talked about in a previous meeting. Um about 180,000 there. U special ed the evaluations that's uh an item that's been on the rise. There's some uh it's proposed a $1,000
053per evaluation uh aotment for that assessment. There's uh the addition of a fine arts aotment. That's uh it's as it's projected. It's very small but um uh we don't know exactly how that would be uh worked out but it's it's a small aotment as it is the adjustments to the uh special education comped and bilingual aotments though we we our perception of of what's out there is that the special education aotment um has the potential to be pretty significant and So, but some of that is also to be determined. So, I I want to point this out because it's going to come into play in a second. The $2.2 million is the big item. There's some of these other items, but then we're going to look at some things that are outside of the formula
054that uh kind of start to work in other directions for us. So, what else is happening? Well, you'll recall last year we uh adopted the five disaster pennies that will go away this year. Um and so that will cause a loss of $1.4 million that would net against those those changes on on the other page. Um the charge program, school health and related services, um there's a potential that that will decrease by about $600,000 without legislative intervention. Um we're we're looking at uh interest rates being probably compressed on our um deposit balances. So that's another 200,000. Uh coincidentally, if you add those three together, uh it's $2.2 million. And so you get this netting conveniently. But um but there's a you get this netting effect there. But going back to this one, you see there's
055other there's other items there um besides the 2.2. So we're we're hopeful. So that's what's happening. the the question is what are we doing to to combat this? Um a balanced budget of course you've got to approach it from two ways uh from two directions. One is the expenditure side and of course the revenue side. Uh to balance a budget it's best to attack both sides. Um try to reduce expenditures where you can try to increase revenues where you can. And so uh this top section here this is what we're doing. We're assessing staff on the expenditure side. Uh we have a TASBY salary survey, I mean a TASBY staffing survey underway right now and Miss Matthews is handling that. Um we're assessing other expenditures where possible and I've just listed some of the bigger
056ones that we've talked about in the past. We have technology needs, maintenance projects that maybe we can defer. We have the insurance coverage. Uh we've talked about how much property casualty insurance cost and and how those have increased over the years. We have fleet needs. Uh, and when we're talking about fleet, we're talking about our our buses. Um, we transport a lot of kids. Those buses put on a lot of miles and and we have to replace those. But, uh, we look at that and and try to figure out uh the timing of some of that. And that is by no means a comprehensive list of all the things that we're um that we're assessing, but those are just some of the big things that that we have to look at and determine a good
057workable plan going forward. Um the the buildings will not maintain themselves. It costs money to do that, but we've uh we've got to figure out how to make that work within the budget that we have. the uh as far as the revenue side, CTE offerings. We've talked about this in the past, but uh especially at the junior high, expanding our CTE offerings to uh get some of that weighted funding there. Um and then we've talked about the transfer policy and what we've talked about to this point as far as the enrollment. Uh we've talked about it kind of in a vacuum. um because the the numbers that I showed you earlier were not um those were projections based on uh kind of an extension of where we were last year before we did our um
058out of district transfers. So, but the transfer policy by my calculations um currently we get approximately $8,800 every for every for the average student I guess I should say whenever they uh enroll as a transfer with White House ISD. So, opening up to transfers was another way um that we're looking to uh increase that revenue stream. What are some of our peers doing? Uh, I was talking to Miss Saul the other day and she asked me about um our CCMR outcomes bonus, our uh college career and military readiness outcomes bonus. And we've talked about this in the past. This is an item that that we've talked about. Um, the more of those points you get, the more of that bonus you get. And so Miss Saul had mentioned that um that some of the districts
059in some meetings that she had been in, some of the districts were talking about how they were focusing on that. Um some of them are are focusing on and uh you see this in the news, some the TIMA bonus, that's the technology and instructional materials aotment bonus. By adopting some of the state prescribed curriculums, you can access some additional funding through some uh some different funds there. these next two um sometimes you see these separately and sometimes you see them in concert with one another but uh the riff the reduction in force and the closing campuses I shared an article with you earlier a couple weeks ago about and this is both uh recent and local uh Lufkin ISD closing two campuses and then uh they met in a special meeting and discussed moving forward
060with a reduction in force uh that's the result of u a number of years of declining enrollment at Lufkin ISD and then whenever you compound it with the environment that we're in right now with the uh lack of additional funding that has that has not flowed in uh then that's that's what they've come to that they uh that they have to go down that path but they've been decreasing enrollment for uh I believe the article said over 10 years and have lost about 12 uh 1,200 students in that time. So, it's uh significantly more uh than than what we're talking about at White House ISD. Um tax uh ratification elections, we've we've had some of those in the past. Uh some people are are looking at those where they don't have the maximum number of
061pennies and accessing additional um uh pennies for additional revenue there. uh bond elections. I I believe I sent you an article from uh Central ISD where they were pushing some of their longerterm projects and their larger projects into their um into bond programs so it can be out of their in their debt service side instead of out of their general fund. And uh that's very common for uh for a lot of districts who have uh regular bond elections. It's very common for that those types of things to happen for people to uh for districts to spend their um to do like say uh HBAC work and um roofing out of out of their debt service fund. That has not been common here because we don't have uh those elections regularly um because of the rate
062of growth. So this is the same u graph that I showed earlier, but I've uh taken the data labels out so it's a little bit easier to look at. And what I want to show you is relatively um what has happened since the transfer policy was implemented. If you look at the solid lines, those are the lines as they were projected without the transfer policy. the dashed lines um is the uh change in the curve, the flattening of that curve because those uh declines have kind of softened out. Um they flattened out a little bit because of u the applications that we've received uh first in for the 2425 year and um Mr. Mr. McFaden is going to talk about that in a second and then uh the 25 26 year some of the applications
063that have come in and going forward with that planning. So again looking at this that would be an increase in enrollment which equates to an increase in ADA which in equates to an increase in uh revenues. So these are a few of the questions and just kind of bigger picture questions that we have received. Not not the procedural uh how do I get my my child enrolled. Um these are some of the concerns that have come up as a result of the uh the uh transfer the out of district transfer policy. How does the transfer policy affect the district's finances? We just talked about um increased enrollment, increased ADA, increased revenue. Um how's a taxpayers's tax levy impacted by the transfer policy? Well, in short, it's it's not um it's it does not impact the
064assessed value. So, it does not impact uh a levy. If you think of uh the guaranteed money that we get in tier one and taxes are a portion of that and then the rest is filled out by state revenue. Whenever you get more kids, the pot gets bigger but the taxes stay the same size. And so uh you could say that marginally those additional students are funded by not taxes but state revenue uh on a marginal basis at 100%. um what is the reason for enacting an out of district transfer policy at this time and I I think we're trying to avoid that lend uh that Lufkin type slide. Um you know it took Lufkin a long time to get to that point a number of years of that decline. We're trying to fight that
065decline in enrollment on the front end. push that enrollment up so we can push that ADA up so we can push the uh revenue up and stay effectively staffed and being uh efficient there. With that said, um I know that was riveting for you. Uh but now we have uh Mr. Scott McFaden is going to come up and talk to us about some u our out of district transfer the policy itself and some of our statistics and then of course we're available for any questions that um that you might have for us. So okay do we get the same amount of state funding from our existing students versus transferring students? Yes. Yes, we do. We we have the it's the same guaranteed level of funding. Yes. So, all right. Good evening. I'm Scott McFaden. I'm
066the coordinator of student auxiliary services for the district. And what I have for you is a little bit about our transfer policy. As you know, in November, we y'all passed the I guess the the proposal to accept out of district transfers. And since we started accepting them in 2024, for this current school year, we increased by 46 students. Now, that's not exactly an increase because you can see up there, some of our uh transfer students are current White House ISD students. These are students that lived here, moved away, but elected to stay. And um we're getting more and more of those because some people they move away. They really like White House. They just didn't tell anyone they moved. And so now we're being able to keep everyone in line and doing it the proper
067way. But out of those 46 transfer students, you can see 10 of them were already students here. We received eight more students that transferred in from Chapel Hill, seven from Tyler ISD, five from Cumberland, uh five from Bullard, four from the UT Tyler Academy, four from ARP, and one each from True Henderson and the Tyler Founders School. out of all the applications that were turned in. And these applications are gone over based on their attendance at their current school as well as their discipline history. Out of all the transfer applications that were turned in for this current school year, we only denied one and that student was currently on a truency violation from their previous school district. So if you're not going to come to school, we don't want you to come to White House.
068Um the way the process works is they fill out an application and they have to provide me with all the required documents. Uh official letter from their school with their discipline, their attendance. We also get grades just so we can check and see what courses they're in to make sure we have comparable courses for them, especially in high school. Um, once I get all those documents, I look at everything and if it looks good to me, I approve it and then during the school year, I take it to the campus principal, let the campus principal look at it and they make the decision whether to approve or deny there. And that's the way we did it for the current school year. Now, since we opened up at the beginning of April, we have now um
069a grand total. I believe that's 42 students that have already applied to be a Wildcat next year. and two of them are already current students. And I'm finding a lot of parents out there that uh were renting in White House, couldn't find a house they wanted to buy in White House. And now that we're accepting transfers, they're going ahead and making those purchases. You know, I think in Bullard in the Chapel Hill area, but they want to keep their kids here. Um for the statistics this year, uh 10 have come from Cumberland. So we're seeing a a big increase of kids coming from Cumberland that want to come to White House. uh nine from Tyler ISD, seven from Chapel Hill, and then we have Grace Bullard, Carlile Troop, IFA, which is the Islamic Faith Academy,
070Kings Academy, Tyler Founders, and one from New Somerfield. And so far this year, we've only denied one, and that was due to discipline concerns from their previous school. Um, every day when I get to school, check my email, I have two or three applications that are turned in. So, this is an ongoing thing and it's increasing steadily the further or closer we get to summer. Yeah, Scott, I don't want to interrupt you, but I wanted to clarify a couple things. Um, when you when you think about the stu the numbers that are represented here, those are not people that contact you that said, "I'm interested." Those are folks that have gone ahead and submitted an application that we've we've asked them to go in and uh declare because we've accepted them as a committee and
071they're go a new student uh online uh form and they've verified that. Is that correct? Yes, that's my understanding. When I go through and I do that and we approve them, I call them and let them know just for our sake. So, when we're planning for the future, I have them do the new student online enrollment and I tell them it's got to be done within 24 hours. And I believe um uh Tamara's checking that out to make sure that everyone that's on my list has gone and filled out the NSSE and if they haven't, then she's contacting that contacting them to get them to fill that out. So that is that's 42 that have gone that extra step to to go ahead and and be maybe apply and be accepted and then go through
072the the official paperwork. And then uh number two, if you could uh anecdotally maybe discuss uh the grades of the students that that we've accepted or just kind of your look at when you when you look at those students and you're comparing them. Um are we looking at uh AB students? Uh what's your assessment of that? when we went through and had the committee and we looked at all those and I believe in every single case the lowest grade that I saw was 170 and it was a 78 I believe the rest were A's and B's so we're getting the cream of the crop that are that are coming here and applying to come to White House. Thank you. Any further questions that I could answer about the transfer policy? What what um is it
073is it the age spread fairly equal kindergarten through high school or is it clustered in one area or another? Right now it's probably more heavily geared towards elementary school. Okay. I have a lot of applications that have come in that have been approved for kindergarteners. There's a lot of people that want to start in White House and continue on in White House. So I'm getting a bunch of kindergarteners. Um probably K through four is probably the the greatest that we have. Um, I think the high school right now currently is sitting at about seven of the transfer students are going to be in high school. And then we're talking about a lot about the new applications that we're getting. Is there any way that we can track our net gain? Like what we're are we
074losing kids to transfers compared to what we're bringing in or have we seen a an outflow at all? I think I could uh up until um middle of January, I think our enrollment numbers fluctuated quite a bit. Uh but but I would say and staff if if you disagree with that over the last 8 weeks to 10 maybe 10 12 weeks we have been really consistent at about uh 4742 4741 and I don't think that we are losing when we did see a few uh kids uh drop off in January. I believe we were doing some some home checks and and and trying to encourage kids to come to school. they had been maybe an attendance issue and trying to verify where they are. Uh but I would say we are we are holding very
075steadily right now and we're not seeing an influx of transfers right now. We we've basically kind of kind of halted that so to speak and push those to to start next year but I think we have been pretty consistent over the last 8 to 10 weeks with our with our enrollment. Thank you. One other question just for Clint, no Clint basically. Um, you know, we realize that that a lot of the the funding hasn't changed since 2019 and so obviously the cost for us have changed quite a bit and we've seen a lot of numbers floating around about what the legislature might or might not do and it's looked different ways in House Bill two provides for another $395. I mean, in your opinion, what do you need? what an increase in the average daily
076tenant would be reasonable to do what we we need to do increase in the basic aotment about $1,300. Okay. To and that's just to fight inflation. That's just to get us back to $ 2019. So I have a quick question too. Um and I I don't obviously understand everything about it, but when you're looking at um the debt service um when we have we have the bond, we're paying on that. Correct. So you're paying principal and interest. Not that we'd ever want to get to that point, but could you at some point just pay on the interest and not have to pay the principal as well so that we're not in such a significant budget deficit every year to I hate to kick kick it down a little bit so that that principal is still
077there. It's not increasing and you're just paying that that debt service interest payment. Really, what we're talking about here is the general fund um deficit because we we can tax at at whatever level it takes to service debt whenever we have the debt. we can we can tax at whatever level we we have to uh we try to u project and and have a good estimate and we've always been able to beat those estimates because of property value growth but um I I guess you could do that but uh we have a prescribed uh payment schedule that we have to meet or we default on that on that schedule and so you can't just kind of pause it like you can your your mortgage in some cases We're losing copper pennies this year, but is
078there any kind of possibility projection of that coming back around? Um, another VAT re not that we've really got for another election. We would it would be another uh to to get those on a permanent basis. It would have to be through a VAT. Yes. Yeah. Tax rate election. else. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, that takes us to our action items. And uh the first one is our consent agenda. Okay, you all have seen the consent agenda. Um, any questions or comments about that? Motion to approve? Second. Motion made by Mr. Moss, second by Dr. Conflitty to approve the consent agenda, consent items as presented. All in favor? Motion carries. And it takes us to actions on close session. And the only thing we need to vote on on
079that is uh to renew the contracts for our professional employees. So any comments or questions about that? Do I have a motion? Motion made by Mr. Flanigan, second by M. Schneider to renew the contracts for our professional employees for this coming year. All in favor? Motion passes. We're sure glad to have all of y'all. Um, okay. And then that takes us to our reports of our superintendent. The first is our community survey results. Uh, yes, sir. I I just uh wanted to kind of share and a couple weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago, we we sent out to our families and just uh just asked them to look at five years in in the in the future and and uh how do you assess where we currently are and what would you like
080to see where we're going? And so I wanted to kind of give you just some some brief numbers. Um not not a great response as sometimes uh community surveys uh tend to go. Um we sent it to to every community u every family uh that that we serve. Uh 259 responded. So uh consider the small sample size but wanted to kind of break that down for you uh just a little bit. Um so 95% are satisfied with our extracurricular activities. Um however the the wonder the request that they that they had would be junior high baseball and junior high softball and as uh Dr. Conflitty mentioned earlier orchestra uh also topped as uh one of the requests that people would like to see in the future in White House uh 96% are satisfied with our
081co-curricular programs uh and what they'd like to see in the future would be uh cosmetology which uh Mr. Mr. Holton and I have had initial conversations um with folks in town on that. Uh architectural design and construction also topped the list of of those requested courses for uh future. Um 95% are satisfied with the current state of facilities. Uh however, they did mention school safety and classroom conditions were the most important to them as we as we look to the to the future. Um, and then safety and security. Again, 95% of the 259 respondents uh were satisfied with the current state of our safety and security. So, thanks to our principles and uh and Rex for the work they do. Uh, they did say in the next uh upcoming years, I'd like to see additional
082upgraded security cameras and again increased security presence or what they what they asked for uh for future consideration. And lastly, uh 95% are satisfied with uh the community engagement at White House. Uh and one request would be future opportunities to engage with uh campus and district administrators and maybe an informal setting to ask questions uh as we move as we move forward. So, love to take any questions. We were uh we would like to get more responses and we'll try to work to do that and get more people to give us their input. But it's a good start. Yes sir. Overall fairly encouraging even though it's a small sample size. So uh and then the uh last report of superintendent here report on board training is required by house bill 2563. Yes sir. Uh, let
083me look for Do I have vote? [Laughter] I thought I had it here. My apologies, sir. closely. Well, in the I'm in the notebook here. That's teaming training needs to be completed. My apologies. Ah, here we go. I was right. Always. Okay. Um. All right. I'll go through all these. Um, uh, you'll have to go through them individually. Just Excellent. Uh, how do you want me to do this? And since there's uh uh all billboard members have met their required training, we've got one one member that uh that needs to to uh train to be completed at a future date. Perfect. My apologies for that fumble. Right here. I thought I had that mark. My apologies. Good. You got it. Yes. Exactly. Yes. The information is in the public agenda if you need it. So
084uh all right that leaves us with one more motion. I have a motion to adjurnn. Motion made Mr. Flan segment by Mr. Moss to adjurnn. All in favor? We are adjourned. Thank you.