001[Music] Everyone, I hereby call this meeting. It's 6:01 p.m. This meeting now is in order. First item on the agenda is roll call. If I could have you identify yourself starting from my right. Jessica Trolla present. Donald Margo present. Anita Chavez present. Alisa present. Rosalandez present. Selto Gomez Jr. present. Great. We have everyone here. Um we have a quorum. Next item on the agenda uh is the pledge of allegiance. If you're able to do so, please stand up and face the flag. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. You may be seated. Ladies and gentlemen, next item on the agenda is our staff uh recognition. I'm going to ask
002uh Lisa Pena and Dr. Carlos Marggo if they could stand in front of the dis. Um just will be attend. Okay. So again, we have our board secretary, Alyssa Pena, and our board member um Jessica Choa will be representing us uh for the award recognition. Um this will be uh staff recognition will be u bus driver. If I could have Mr. Joe Alenise from our transportation director, if he could make his way up to the front. How you doing, Mr. Good afternoon, good evening, President Alvarez, esteemed board members and Dr. Sorenson, superintendent of schools administration and uh val committee members also viewing our board meeting. Yes. So on uh April the 22nd of 2025, we had the privilege of celebrating school bus driver appreciation day and bus assistance. That day was dedicated to honoring the
003individuals who ensure that thousands of our students arrive at school and return home safely each day. Tonight, I would like to take a moment to recognize our outstanding uh school bus drivers and bus assistants. From navigating busy roads on all weather conditions to creating a warm, welcoming environment aboard their buses, these professionals embody dedication, patience, and care. They are more than just drivers. They are the first ones and the last ones to see these students smile each day. Their presence provides reassurance to parents and sets a positive tone for a school day. Their commitment to safety, reliability, and kindness plays a critical role in our district's mission of putting students first. To all our bus drivers and assistants, thank you. Your hard work does not go unnoticed. We are deeply deeply grateful for your service
004and for the positive impact you make in each student's lives every single day. And uh we we have a couple of pictures here that we I like to show the some of our schools uh also show their token of appreciation to our our bus drivers and bus assistants. And with us here uh today we have a couple of our employees. Obviously not all of them could be here because of work commitment. They are still working out there providing the best service to our students. So uh I wish I could have them all here but I want to invite the one that were able to make it so we can uh take a picture here. Great. Please invite them over. Mr. [Applause] Hello. Hello. Congratulations. Thank you, Mr. Mr. Lenise. Thank you for recognizing our bus
005drivers, and I would I totally agree with you. They do set the tone for the day. When our children step onto the bus, they're always greeted with a friendly smile. So, I appreciate that. So, thank you for all you do and your team. Next item on the agenda is recognition of school lunch uh hero day. If I could ask Rolando Ernnandez to make his way. He's our our exec well he's our child nutrition service director. Mr. Hernandez, all yours. Thank you, Mr. Alvarez. Uh good evening, President Alvarez, um members of the board, Dr. Sorenson, administrative staff, and community members. Um, I want to on Friday the 2nd, Friday May the 2nd, USDA designated the day as a school lunch hero day. A time to recognize and celebrate the vital role of our child nutrition professionals.
006It is my honor to stand before you this evening to present and represent this remarkable team. Every day, our child nutrition staff makes a lasting difference in the lives of the child of La Hoya ISD students. From preparing nutritious meals and meeting strict nutritional and food safety standards to managing food allergies, planning diverse menus, ordering and delivering food, ensuring compliance, processing invoices, managing payroll, and maintaining kitchen equipment. They do it all. uh they do it with a professionalism, care and a warm smile. Their del their dedication fuels students learning, support students wellness and help creates a safe, welcoming environment in every cafeteria across the district. On behalf of all of us, we we want to thank we want to extend our grateful thanks to everyday heroes for their time tire tireless work, their commitment to
007excellence and the vital impact they make on every single day. Thank you. Thank you. Today we have two of our managers, Miss Gloria Gariel and Miss uh Mercedes Gara from uh Pñena Elementary and Sein Elementary. Thank you for recognizing them. Please join them for a picture. [Applause] Thank you everyone. Thank you so much. Thank you sir. [Applause] Nice to meet you. Thank you again for that that recognition. Next item on the agenda is recognizing of or the recognition of nurse appreciation week of our nurse assistant appreciation week with that that took place this week. Um doing the introductions and the presentation is Mr. I mean Miss Morales. There you are. Good evening board members, superintendent and honored guests. As we celebrate Nurses Week, it is important to pause and recognize the incredible impact school nurses
008have on our students. Not just in terms of health, but academic success as well. By managing health needs, reducing absenteeism, and supporting mental and physical well-being, our nurses help ensure that students are healthy, present, and ready to learn. Their work directly supports academic achievement and helps create a safe, supportive environment for everyone. Tonight we proudly recognize and thank our school nurses and nurse assistants for their essential role they play in helping every student reach their full potential in the classroom and beyond. Present today is uh first of all Miss Myra Carales from Clinton Elementary from Aren Garcia Middle School Mariana Mena from Memorial Middle School. Missita Esel from [Music] Charesco, Miss Alexandra Torres from Leo Jio Elementary, Miss Adriana Castro from Tabasco Elementary. Thank you, Miss Penong from EB Rain Elementary. Miss Olga Bramer from
009Juan [Applause] Elementary Sandra from um Mandola Elementary Rosemary from Miss Fondon Elementary. Miss Isabel Salina from John Kennedy Elementary and representing our high schools is Miss Maria Barera. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Good to see you again. Thank you. Congratulations. Yes, leave me there. Hold on. Let me just let me know. Again, congratulations to all of those that were recognized. I think that's we're done with the recognition. So, again, congratulations to all of you that were recognized today. Ladies and gentlemen, the next item on the agenda is our public comment section. If you've signed up to provide public comment, uh just a friendly reminder, you do have three minutes. We ask that you identify yourself at the podium. At the end of 3 minutes, you will be informed that your time is up.
010And so those are the instructions. If you have signed up for public comment, uh, Secretary Pñena, has anyone signed up for public comment? No, we do not have any public comments tonight. All right. Seeing that we have no one that has signed up for public comment, we are going to move on to agenda item number six. Uh, agenda item number six is the superintendence update, financial audit update. Dr. Sorenson and Met Chris. Thank you, President Alvarez. Um, so this is a long um time coming and we are very excited to not only present to the board but present to the community the findings of our financial audit. we had taken on this endeavor when I first arrived and um really paused. Thought it was really important for me as a superintendent to have a chief
011financial officer in that spot who really would help lead the audit with quality auditors that we could trust and that we really felt like represented what I was looking for as a partner um as a superintendent. And so we originally put out an RFP and didn't really get back um responses that I felt really represented the type of work that we were looking for. Nor at that point did I have the chief financial officer that um really embodied the type of change management that we really needed here in La Hoya. um enter Miss Cresbow in July and re relaunch um the RFP for a financial audit and ins partner um after the RFP process that really embodies our the work that we were looking to do the values that we carry around fiscal responsibility, transparency
012and accountability because what we're talking about here are public funds. These are dollars that our community requires and expects us to be responsible with and ensure that every dollar is used to its maximum capacity to support student learning. And so board um what we present for you here tonight are the findings of our financial audit. Um but in addition to Miss Cresbow um sharing the information with us, the auditors are also here. Um, so we have representatives from Alvarez and Marcal here this evening to share the audit findings with us. So if you would like to join Miss Cresbow up at the podium, we would be grateful. Thank you, Miss Crespo. Good evening. Thank you, Dr. Sorenson. Good evening, President Alvarez, uh, members of the board, Dr. Sorenson, members of the community. Tonight we're very
013proud um to focus on the district recent financial audit. This is a critical step for us to meet our exit criteria for the state of intervention. This audit has been significant and necessary for us as a team bringing light to several pro several and important control issues that we already have be to address and identify beyond compliance. This audit is allowing us to assess all those performance gaps that we need to address, evaluate internal controls and identify opportunities to improve efficiencies processes and mitigate the risk of waste waste fraud and abuse. We will review uh major areas covered as well recommended priorities that we need to intervene uh in order to strengthen strengthen our financial systems and support the district financial stability. At this time I just want to introduce you to our audit team
014from Alvarez and Marcel who walk will walk us through the findings. We really appreciate their work and collaboration through this process. Ms. Brook Hopkins and Michael Potter. Hello. Thank you, Dr. Sorenson and Merch. I'm Brooke Hopkins, managing director at Alvarez Marsol for our disputes and investigations practice. I have over 30 years experience in forensic accounting, internal controls, and compliance. Hi, I'm Mike Potter. I'm a senior director with Alvarez Northell Public Sector Services. Um, we're a group within our firm that focuses specifically on providing supports and services to K12 education organizations. I travel around the nation to work with school districts um and other education entities on projects like this. Um, and uh together we kind of combine our our capabilities to look at both the technical forensic side of the work as well as the
015pieces of the work that inform the way that the district invests in education. So, we're excited to be here to present to you So, I want to start just by giving a quick overview of what we're going to cover today. Um, first we'd like to start by just setting the table and giving you a little bit of background based on what our original scope of work was. And and basically the scope of the work is the document that has guided the way that we've planned and executed this assessment. We'll go into an executive summary of both financial processes and controls as well as budget and financial outlook aspects of the financial management of the district. And then what we want to do is lay out our recommended path forward which will cover near-term priorities and
016a phase implementation plan that we've recommended to the finance team for implementing um for implementing uh improvements over the course of time in order to do this. First, I'd like to start off by um just giving you a quick overview of the scope of work. It's important to note that unlike the annual financial audit that you receive at the end of the year that attests to the accuracy of the statements that you receive, our review is really focused on looking at the way that the the district does business and goes about conducting um its financial business, particularly as it relates to two two focus areas. where we look at the financial processes and controls and the budget and financial outlook. So effectively these are the two different sides of the project that focus on how
017we make sure that indivi is that not loud enough? Sorry. So this basically the work breaks into these two two pieces of scope. Financial and proc processing controls assessment seeks to understand the state of financial controls that help the district function prevent waste, fraud and abuse. Um and then also looking at the state of the bud budget and financial outlook. The budget and financial outlook looks at the way that the district plans, uses and controls spending in alignment with its priorities. And so these two pieces of the assessment will come together to give you a perspective on the overall financial management. Um just just one thing to you know to note here the project the scope of work that's laid out here was the result of a competitive procurement that was conducted by the district
018I think in November and our timeline was work primarily performed in January through April. So we're here now in May presenting after a four-month assessment. I'm going to turn it to Brooke to talk over the financial processes controls assessment. Okay. What you see here are the focus areas. We had a very specific scope of work that focused kind of deeply within each of these areas. So procurement specifically looked at the bid controls controls around RFPs as well as looking at selection of vendors and contract management. Accounts payable and procurement often go hand in hand, but with accounts payable, we specifically look to add accounting and finance controls. Employee expenses fed into that. With employee expenses, they're often processed by the accounts payable team. Human resources and payroll. Again, we looked mostly at the processes and
019the controls with human resources, but for payroll, we also dug into the finance controls and processes. And then with treasury, which basically means how is money approved to go out the door, we looked at the controls around cash going out and payments. This is pretty small for most to see, but I'm going to hit on some highlights here. So, with the first focus area procurement, you're going to see the observations that we have where there were payments exceeding purchase order amounts. So, the purchase order that was set out, we ran against payments that went out the door and found that payments were over that amount. Before I dig into that, we have an exhibit that's going to show you more information. So, I'll just touch on it right now and dig into it in a
020bit. The transactions are not sufficiently documented. What that means is there was not underlying support to be able to tell the beneficiaries of the transaction, the nature of the transaction, and overall who approved it and for what purpose and whether that was in coordination with the purchase order for accounts payable. Again, you're going to see some similar observations because it goes pretty handinhand with procurement, but here we focused on three-way match, which is a really important component of accounting where we look at a match between invoice, purchase order, and receipt. So what that does is offer controls to say that if all three of those match in terms of amounts that there's controls in place such that they don't go over those mounts. So, as I mentioned, there were some that went over those amounts.
021And one thing that we found was good receipts or service receipts, which oftent times you'll see hours that are turned in by vendors. That's not often tracked. So what's typically done is the purchase order is taken signed off instead of getting an independent receipt to show it against purchase order and invoice. Very important point from a control standpoint. Employee expenses. The key thing we found is that approvals are not always obtained prior to travel occurring or meals occurring. human resources and payroll. One thing we found with human resources is that position requests were not consistently documented, which again from a control perspective and approval perspective should always be documented for advertisement as well as when somebody is hired to make sure that the duties align with that payroll. We've noticed that reconciliation procedures with payroll
022are manual. Manual controls are great. We're not downplaying them. However, human error often comes into play with manual procedures as opposed to automated. And then treasury policies didn't don't outline what the protocol is for discrepancies. So, if something happens, what is the escalation process? Who's the go-to for that discrepancy? And how does the transaction shut down? Meaning, the payment's not made until that approval is made. So, one thing we wanted to do with those observations is show you what the controls maturity is within each focus area. So this is a stoplight chart pretty much shows green being all systems go. Yellow kind of some things that need to be changed. Red immediate priority and what we base that on is typically risk. Risk the dis district has and within accounts payable we think that those
023are where the biggest risks lie. A couple things on this to pay attention to employee expenses. We were pleased to see that the district uses Concur, which is one of the best software programs you can have in managing expenses. However, we noticed that several of the controls were not turned on. So, could be a seemingly simple fix, but what the automated controls do is stops the transaction before it ever moves forward. So, that's one thing we wanted to highlight. The other thing on accounts payable is to really put in place policies that have procedures to use for training. That's important so that we can be clear, you can be clear about what the goods receipt must be, what you should collect from the vendors to independently verify that the work was done, the goods were
024received, it was in line with the purchase order as well as the invoice. Overall, the district has policies, which is great. We just think that some of them need procedures for execution and the controls to be called out. Overall, what this will create is more accountability. We've noticed that pretty much through the review of processes and controls without those escalation processes, without those extra approval processes, there's not accountability, especially when things go ary. So, this is circling back on what I mentioned before, which is we have purchase orders. We noticed that there were payments going out above the purchase order amount. Now, we didn't look at this at the transaction level, meaning what was the nature of the increase that caused the payment to be more than the purchase order. What we did look at
025were the processes for it and the controls. One thing we notice is the payment request form which should be used only in special circumstances or if there's not a purchase order that was being used even if there was a purchase order to circumvent the accounts payable process in order to allow a payment to go out. So a key control there is that you always have to have that threeway match. Purchase order, invoice, received. Instead, what was happening was invoice, purchase order, payment request. So it was likely overlooked by the finance department because the invoice matched the payment request. However, it didn't match the original purchase order. So, this is a key area where we think the district can improve. It's one of the highest risks and where accountability can be ratcheted up quite a bit.
026Mike, thanks, Brooke. So, I'd like to quickly talk us through the uh budget and financial outlook side of the assessment. Within the budget and financial outlook side of the assessment, our team over the course of four months basically conducted a review of uh of the uh overall financial health of the district. So, can we pause there for one second? I just wanted to give the board an opportunity before we flip subjects um to ask any questions about the first part of the report. Um board members, do you have any questions pertaining to the controls aspect of the report of the auditors? I do have a question. So you mentioned we do have an electronic system to monitor accounts payable. However, the system was not implemented properly. Is that correct? Specifically for employee expenses. Yes. There's
027a software program application called Concur. It's bestin-class really to have for employee expenses. What we noticed is some of the modules that create the controls are not active. So, it seemingly could be an easy fix. Often that ties back to what sort of licensing agreement you have. We didn't look into that. However, it's expected that you should be able to turn on thresholds and things to stop payments that go above required thresholds. For example, is there an opportunity to at least flag that and then make note and then then move forward with the transaction? Yes, absolutely. So, typically what happens again, Concur is great. when it flags something, it'll automatically send an email to whoever is the next step up that needs to approve that. So, let's say if a manager uh sees that an
028employee has submitted a request for something that wasn't approved or it's above what the approval was, that manager receives an email directly from Concur saying, "This transaction was stopped. will you approve it or will you pause it? Will you reject it? So, it gives the manager time to go back to the employee and ask about the transaction itself. Now, regarding the three-way um system where the PO should match the invoice and the invoice should match the the receipt. Do we not have it in this application where we can upload these electronically? Is everything still on paper? So the for the accounts payable process which um think of that mostly for paying vendors whereas employee expenses mostly reimbursement of expenses directly to employees. Concur the application I mentioned is not used for accounts payable. So it's
029separate. So oftentimes those three-way matches depending on how it comes into the district might have to be manually looked at and joined together. Okay, members of the board, do we have any further questions? Um, yeah, I just want to make a comment. I think some of the stuff in terms of the observations that were pointed out, um, kind of coming from a business business background seem common sense, right? Um I guess my question is in terms of um there being a lack of process is is one of the issues. Is there anything else that could have given you indication of why things were being done the way they were? I think mostly what I mention at the end which is a accountability where that's typically created is when you have strong policies tied to procedures
030which incorporate controls which you can then have training for. That training has to be implemented. Meaning you should have training for people who are actually doing the specific procedures and they should be tested on it or certified on that, signed off to say, "Yes, I understand. This is part of my job. Yes, I understand. I'll be held accountable for it if something goes wrong." So, and that's difficult sometimes for people to understand because it sounds like the soft side of things, a culture of accountability, but it's nine times out of 10 where we see fraud and waste occurring if that culture of accountability is not there. Thank you. I had a question as well. Um I think you mentioned that this was a four month assessment that you you were doing. What date of transactions
031were you looking at? Um what exact range of dates? Two years. Yeah, it was a two-year look back from I think we it was January. Was it 23 24? Yes. So we signed off December. So it was full year 24 and full year 23. Okay, perfect. Great. Thank you. Mhm. So it was like 16 months. Two years. Two years. Two years. Two years. Okay. I have a question. Um, so that was one of them. I'm glad she asked that. Um, the other one was, "When was the last time we had an audit such as this done?" We found no record of previous audits. Um, we we looked um and we looked and we looked and we found no record of previous forensic audits. Um, and I'm sorry, what what Miss Creswell, you're you're No. Yeah,
032you're explaining incorrect. We were saying that if the state were to audit, they don't typically look specifically at these things. It's a different set of processes, but we found no evidence of where this particular type of audit had been done. Yeah. So we get very surface level audits like we said at the beginning where you know you're notified every year of like just the surface level like did we comply right and we get you know a report on that did we do the things right that we're supposed to do but this is a much deeper level look in terms of our systems our processes our controls our finances our treasury and the things that we're talking about tonight um and I really appreciate you lifting the piece that you know I kept hitting on like
033accountability. I must have said it a hundred times as we met with them because we can have all the systems and processes and procedures and training all of that in order but without accountability at the end of all of that they're just systems and processes and training. Um, and so again, when we get to the last slide, you'll see some really clear recommendations from our auditors around those not only systems, processes, and trainings, but also about clear lines of accountability. Um, because people have to know that again, like I said, we're talking about public funds and that we are accountable to our community for the proper expenditure of public funds. And when I say that, I also want to be really clear that I'm not just talking about the business and finance department. I'm talking
034about everybody who is responsible for initiating a PO, who's responsible for approving a PO, who actually puts together an RFP. Um, it's not just the business and finance department, it is everybody who is actually a part of a transaction. Thank you. Seeing that there's no further questions, you may proceed. Thank you. And and thanks, Dr. Sorenson, for that great point. I think uh when we get to our recommendations later, you'll see three sets or three areas of recommendations. One will relate to each the financial controls assessment and the financial outlook. And we felt it was necessary to add an additional sort of area of findings and recommendations that relate specifically to instilling that culture of accountability because controls and processes that are written don't matter if there's no one feeling that they have to do
035them and that they can say I can't violate that process. And so that's that's really critical uh to point out. So thank you. So excuse me. So real quick um from looking at the financial outlook and the overall health of the district um we the scope of this project was to assess that by evaluating these four focus areas. The first is reserves, debts and investments. And that's just to have an understanding of the overall assets of the district, the liabilities associated with those, and the approach by which the district invests, the cash assets it has and uses debt. The second was to look at budgeting and long-term forecasting. These are capabilities and tools related to forecasting for and planning the financial future of the district. So going beyond just what's in the budget process, how
036do we decide that what we're doing in the budget process makes sense and is anchored in a plan that makes sense with things that are happening outside of the district like changes in the state funding model, that sort of thing. The next is um conducting district-wide benchmarking. So we looked at comparisons between the district's current organization staffing and spending relative to benchmark districts and some select industry standards. And the last is to look at the um strategy, processes and compliance related to federal funds, the management of federal funds, including ESSER, title, and idea funds. So, we're going to talk through our recommendations um m much like Brooke just did. I will give a quick overview of the executive summary and then we'll look at some key exhibits which we think help make the points a
037little bit clearer. So, first I'd like to start with reserves, debts, and investments. Uh we had four overall observations. Um and I'll just sort of summarize the big picture observations we think are necessary or you know bring it to the attention of the board. The first is that um reserves in the district are significant. The district has been building reserves over the course of the last several years. So although you've probably seen budgets that look more pessimistic in budget execution the district ends up not spending every dollar that they have and then that builds a fund balance reserve. So it's important to note that that um the current fund balance significantly exceeds the standards the relevant standards including um the you know financial integrity rating system of Texas government finance officers association most standards that
038are applied to school districts apply a three-month standard and I believe this board passed a policy related to maintaining a three-month standard. The district has reserves in excess of that and those reserves have been growing. The debt load is modest and debt service costs are relatively low. So the big picture here is that you borrowed money. At times it was reasonable to borrow money. You're not paying very high interest rates on that on those funds. And it in most cases it doesn't really make sense to use cash to pay off that debt because there's not much of a spread between the the interest rate that you can earn and the interest rate that you're paying. So the low debt, those are both good fiscal health indicators. They both contribute to your overall flexibility in running
039the district and they also contribute to your uh bonded and debted uh debtworthiness or your your credit rating. Right? So those are both really good findings. A lot of districts that have a a new management team come in and have you know a question about internal controls would have unfavorable findings in this area. This is some good news here. Um the investment approach while it's not you know the most modernized automated thing possible it's very in line with best practices to maximize return on investment and minimize risk. So the district looks at options um uses safe public ass you know publicly managed assets um changes its investment strategy based on the returns and the risk profile in a way that's con is conservative but also maximizes income and honestly we we're impressed by that capability.
040Um a lot of public entities have a have a hard time doing that well and even though there's no big complicated model doing it there's a lot of good decision-m that's guiding those investment practices. They're transparent um and and again they're earning interest that nearly matches the bonded indebtedness which is um not always not always the case. So despite the strengths um you know I say those strengths overall are are impressive on the reserves debts and investments. I want to highlight a couple things you know about those reserves debts and investments. We'll go into more detail in a moment, but it's important to know that that reserve that is in excess of your um fund balance requirements, the requirements you all have set, that's a flexible funding source that can provide some flexibility as you
041navigate changes in the district with when matched with a plan for long-term sustainability. the revenue or the sorry the fund balance that's in excess of that standard does provide you the ability to continue to invest in district priorities that help this the strategy of the district and is not necessarily um you know it's not necessarily good to continue adding fund balance because you're effectively holding money out from the system even though we look at it the way we look at like our household checkbook and say this is a good thing to have in the long run you want to invest that in accordance with your strategy provided that that's done with the lens of a multi-year year financial model. So if you can say I know that we can use this, we can use it
042for this year, we can use it for next year, but we have a plan using a multi-year financial model, it can be reasonable to make investments using that. Um the the the next thing uh we want to cover here is budgeting and long-term forecasting. And I first I would like to say that the finance team's been great in helping us understand all of this. The capabilities that we're evaluating today are capabilities that take years to build. And the financial forecasting capabilities in the district are extremely limited. So the forecasting capabilities are, you know, are limited. You guys have been through the process of passing a budget, seeing that budget not get executed fully and then having questions about, well, what did that budget mean? Why did we spend so much less than we planned on?
043That's a reflection of the budget not being accurate. So there are opportunities to increase the accuracy of the budgeting process to account for things like vacancy rates so that the budget is accurate and you can plan to invest things in priorities that matter. And in a lot of cases, districts can improve on their precision and then have the opportunity to invest in things that they need to rather than kind of having that year end, you know, rolling over 20 million or 10 million or $15 million in the fund balance each year. Um, the second is that in the long run, the district does need to take action to think about the way that the size of the district's expenditures match its revenue. Like any district in Texas, you have relatively limited revenue growth associated with
044the per student unit, the per student payment that comes from the state. You have significant uh pressures on that revenue growth that come from uh declining enrollment that is mostly associated with just changes in population that also come from changes in the way that school choice works. There are a lot of pressures on your revenue that over time will mean that your expense profile needs to change significantly. That's not to say that there's a crisis right now, but it's important to have a sense of the way the revenue line and the expenditure line cross each other in the near future. And at the moment, the district doesn't have a financial model that helps you do that. Um, the budget processes are definitely improving, but the budget process that was run this year doesn't match all
045of the best practices associated with school district budgeting. This is something that you have to learn and implement over years. This isn't something you fix, you know, you can't rip a band-aid off and fix this, but it's something the district needs to focus on. So, from a recommendations perspective, we we think three things here. The district really needs to improve its financial forecasting capabilities to build a multi-year financial model so that when you're making decisions, you're making those decisions anchored in their multi-year effect. So if you make a decision about an investment or or cost um cost reduction, you know not just what it does this year, but you know what it does 3 years from now or even 5 years from now. It's a really important capability and it really helps you make strategic
046decisions better. The next is to begin planning immediately for broader structural and workforce changes necessary to make sure that the revenue growth and the expense growth line line up with each other in the long run. So, if the revenue is stable and the expenses are growing, at some point you get to a situation where you're you're financially distressed, the time to make decisions about planning for that is now. It's not to wait until you're an emergency when you can't make thoughtful decisions. So, we would recommend that the district makes thoughtful decisions that would consider things that are are challenging to consider, including changing the way that classrooms are staffed, change the way the central office works, changing the the building footprint, looking at ways to more efficiently run the district, and then the the last
047is um just exploring opportunities to to maximize your revenue. So Texas has a relatively unique to Texas um a complex funding model. There are aspects of the funding model that are automatic and there are aspects of the funding model that come from u pursuing specific strategies. You're probably familiar with a teacher incentive aotment. There are many other aspects of the House Bill 3 funding formula that the district does not maximize that you could explore maximizing that align with outcomes that you want for your kids like um college and career and military readiness that would also contribute to your financial stability over time and could could make it so that you could invest in things that you want to while reaching sustain well while moving towards reaching sustainability. Next, I want to talk about districtwide benchmarking.
048Um the big the big picture of the story it it's kind of complicated because you hear first a greater share of resources are focused on instruction than most of your peer districts. So if we look at all of the functions that you spend on and your peer districts spend on instruction is spending at a higher level than other districts. That is overall a good thing. But if you kind of dig a layer deeper and you understand kind of where that spending is, a lot of that spending is tied up in the fact that you're benchmarking to have many fewer students per teacher than many peer districts. So those investments that relate to the num, you know, the amount of money that you're spending on on students, they're not necessarily things like student supports. They're a
049number of teachers that's higher than you probably need for the number of students you have if you compare yourself to the bench, you know, to neighboring districts and other benchmarks. So that that's really important to kind of look at carefully um with an objective lens to say yes, it's a good thing to spend money on kids, but you want to make sure you're doing it in a way that makes sense and actually serves kids. And that that requires kind of going a little bit deeper there. Um one thing that we want to highlight is there's a couple categories of spend that we think you can look at further in more detail based on benchmarking. The things that stood out were student transportation and guidance and counseling. We saw trends that showed growth in those areas,
050showed you a little bit more generously spending in those areas than some peer districts. We think it's worth understanding better. Could be reasonable workload drivers behind it, but it's worth digging a little bit deeper to understand. And then the last thing is that um we see in like an oper on an operating basis, investment in building maintenance looks a lot lower than a lot of peer districts. And investing in building maintenance is really important to maintaining the fiscal health of the district. So you can balance a budget one year and then do that by not spending money on your buildings and what you're doing is you're borrowing from the future, right? So if if you have any thought that your your buildings are falling apart or not being properly maintained, you need to really make
051sure that you're aligning your investment strategy. Your your district budget needs to align to maintaining those buildings properly so that you have the set of buildings that you need to serve kids in the future and that you don't have surprises. You don't have roof collapses. You don't have elevator failures. you don't have air conditioning, cooling tower failures that come out of nowhere, don't align with your budget priorities, and are big surprises that interrupt operations. So, just on a preliminary benchmarking perspective, we know that we know that you're in the process of considering what your facility's master plan needs to be. You need to make sure you're getting all the information you can out of your facility condition assessment to plan for the future because funding your buildings well is an efficient way to serve your
052kids. even though in the short run it's an easy way to balance the budget not to do that you really want to move towards doing that on a sustainable in a sustainable manner. So just just summarizing real quick and and one last thing just in the finance team um there's some places well overall the finance team is staffed around the same as benchmark districts there's some functions that look like they were staffed relatively high and so there's some opportunity to use some flexibility of folks move them around within the functions that need to be strengthened um specifically moving folks from purchasing around or looking at moving purchasing personnel into other roles and then so from a recommendations perspective you know Looking at teacher staffing really carefully is really important. You need to understand what's driving
053those ratios and whether the things that drive those ratios are things that really serve students well or are aspects of an older operating model that doesn't serve the kids as well as it could. You want to make sure that you know you have teachers in healthy sized classrooms. And so we'd recommend going a little bit deeper and studying your staffing, evaluating the condition of the buildings and reinvest revisiting your investment strategy for those buildings and seeking to better understand the costs that are out of a little out of whack. So transportation for example, you need to really understand um consider conducting a study, understand why your costs are growing in that area, why they exceed benchmarks, how that relates to more finite measures. Last is federal funds management. Um similar to some of the control
054processes we talked about earlier, this is a very manual process. We understand that it's manual um partially in response to the the finance team saying we want to make sure we're doing this really well. increasing controls. Overall, the the controls that have been changed, the improvements in the way that federal funds eligibility works, they're effective, but they're very inefficient. So, it means the team is spending a lot of time on making sure you're compliant. Um, federal funds planning u happens from the bottom up in a really kind of detailed way, which is good in a lot of ways, but it doesn't always align with your overall district strategy. You're not saying we have all of these sources of funds and we're going to plan them to meet these strategies across all of these schools, you
055know, for title kids, for idea kids, etc. You're having school-based plans that build up into the overall spend. And while that's a good way to maintain compliance, it doesn't always support the overall district strategy like saying what are all the sources and uses that we want to consider. And then the the last thing is historical analysis indicates that in the past um prior administrations last couple years there's been things that have been funded by title that probably shouldn't be funded by title at least at least conceptually and possibly from a compliance perspective. You know for example you really shouldn't be using title one to fund maintenance and so you know title one funds are supposed to be used for a specific set of types of supports for lowincome students and you want to make sure
056that your financial processes support that. We think the processes that are in place now do support that compliance, but it's important to note that there have been instances of lapses in the past prior to the current finance team addressing those. So recommendation is just to expand the knowledge of federal funds compliance across the district. Can't it's not just the finance team. It's the people that are asking to spend the funds need to know what what's eligible and they need to understand that they need to listen to the federal funds experts when they say no. Uh the next is to distribute responsibilities amongst personnel to make sure you have that same kind of dual control environment. One person asks, one person approves. Incorporate additional steps into the draw down and post draw down process to make
057sure that you're compliant. So the the worst thing to do is to like ask and then you know uh submit and then hope you know see what sticks you know throw it against the wall and see what sticks. You want to have a process by which you know what you're submitting for reimbursement is affirmatively eligible for funding. um it mitigates audit law uh audit risk. It contributes significantly your ability to use the funds strategically. And then the last thing is to um consider leveraging additional federal funds expertise to think about more highlevel upstream strategic management. So it's great to be compliant. It's more important to support kids, right? So you want to do both those things. You've gone in the direction of making sure you're compliant. We would applaud that. But it's really important that
058it integrates into your overall academic strategy. um in the same way that your general fund does. So when you're all thinking about what you want to spend on this year, it's not outside of that process. It should be part of that strategic process. So I want to highlight just a couple visuals that will be really easy to digest. Um this is just a quick overview of your change in fund balance. You guys can see that in FY20 you had a what what I would say is an unhealthy level of fund balance and then over the course of the last four years you've built up a pretty significant fund balance going from 37 million to 109 million in unassigned fund balance. That yellow bar is this the board standard for reserve. So effectively the difference between
059the yellow bar is and 109 is your flexibility for for funding use. You can use that within compliance with your your policy. So, it's just important to note that that's happened over time and that you have some flexibility that comes from that and um you've met your reserve requirement the last couple years and so it's not unreasonable to think about using those funds if you need to for strategic planning provided it's anchored in that financial model we talked about earlier. The next is just quick benchmarking. Um actually this is a little bit more details of your general fund reserve. I just point out the top the top box there is your available fund balance in excess of that reserve is around $35 million. So that's kind of your, you know, think of it as your
060checking account of like you could invest that money um in in spending on things that help kids. The next I want to move to quickly um just benchmarking. Couple quick takeaways here. Instructional spend by pupil as I mentioned slightly higher than some of your benchmark districts in the upper half of the sort of range of benchmark districts. You can see Macallen on the far left side and and you can see um PSJA on the on the far right side and you guys are to the right of that. That instructional spend by people is slightly higher but then other spend by people is much much lower right so you're spending less on things that are not like direct pupil supports but it's important to put that you know that insight in the context of staffing. So
061most of that difference in per pupil spend is driven by this. you have the second to the lowest number of pupils per teacher of all of these benchmark districts which are similar. So you have around 13 pupils per teacher which is much lower than benchmarks, much lower than Texas averages and lower than nationwide averages. And so there's trade-offs that come with that as I mentioned earlier. So that that summarizes our our findings for the financial assessment. I'd be happy to take any questions. Members of the board, do you have any questions for our presenters? No. Seeing that we don't have any, I just do want to say thank you for the um the findings. This has certainly been very informative and uh presentation that you just handed over. So, we appreciate that and all the
062work that you put into this. Thank you, Mr. President. We want to um quickly talk about next steps. Okay. I'll pass. Thank you. Okay. So, going back to financial processes and controls, what you're going to see here are some of the recommendations for a path forward to consider. The first thing that you're going to see is to perform follow-up analyses on the purchase order and payment amount variances. What that looks like is actually digging into those transactions that were related to the overages from the PO. What you hope to identify is why did those overages occur? Did someone approve payment of the overages? Was this a rogue employee who just put this through or was there some sort of malfeasance involved with the payment overages? So that'll be at an even deeper level than what
063we did. You'd actually be looking at people, people's practices and nature and beneficiaries. You also want to look at the existing policies and procedures. You want to take the existing policies to make sure that they're accurate with the practices and controls that are needed for the district. You want to revise those policies. If not, you also want to flag the policies to ensure that you have controls built into the policies. In order to execute on the policies, you want to have procedures. It's very difficult to provide training on a policy because it's a governance document. Procedures actually lay out things step by step. They show accountability and they specifically highlight where controls are and escalation procedures if a control fails. Then you also want to have the awareness campaign which is not only training but
064communication and I'm going to jump down to the bottom but communication to ensure that you have tone at the top to ensure that you're highlighting a culture of accountability that compliance is something the district puts as a priority and it's an expectation in performance of job duties. Down at the bottom, you can see where you would create the culture of accountability, incorporating clear roles that ties back with some of the HR job descriptions and proposing some possible key measures. So, if you've heard of KPIs before, having metrics that actually tie to accountability. Where are their failures? Where do controls fail? Where is someone not approving where they should be? Where are things being circumvented? And making this possibly monthly to start, quarterly as you go on, and then hopefully something you can report on by
065annually. Then completing that awareness campaign. Oftentimes, we'll recommend having a communications plan in place. What does that look like? When does training occur? What type of memos are going out? What are you updating people's performance obligations to be if at all? And what type of metrics are tied to the execution of their duties? And then strengthening accountability for accurate budget execution that Mike talked about as well as reporting to the departments in central office. Do you want to touch on this? I Yeah, I will. I will just quickly um I know I just covered these in more detail, but it's just important to highlight these are the things that need to go next, right? So these are the priorities. We're going to show you all more detail like a a detailed overview of what the
066plan is that we've shared with the finance team. But for your awareness, we just want to clarify these are the key takeaways of what you need to do the very next thing. And on the budgeting and financial management capacity side, it's really simple. Enhance your forecasting accuracy and build a long-term model. You have to be making decisions with good information. You're going to look to identify administrative and school-based deficiencies so that you're sure that the district's moving in a direction that you can afford on a sustaining basis. You're going to conduct a facilities uh condition assessment, which I think is already underway, and use that information to inform the way you plan spending on your facilities and then realign and strengthen the finance staff. um both both supporting the findings that Brooke shared, but also
067making sure that you have people in place who can build that long build, maintain, and support that long-term financial model and can strengthen the budget process alongside the CFO. It's great to have a really strong CFO, but they need to have a full team that can support them with very different skills. Accounting and budgeting are different. You need to get to a place where you have people that specialize in those capabilities. And as much as it's great to have people that pitch in and do a really great job, you want to make sure those roles are distinct from one another so people can focus on the things that they're good at and there's no conflict between planning and execution. So, um, with that, I just want to show this real quick. Um, this is kind
068of an overview of the detailed plan that we've laid out for the finance team. This gives you a a multi-year approach to fixing all of the findings that we found. There's a recommendation that maps to every finding. It is, you know, incredibly detailed and there's details to support each of these initiatives that have been provided to the finance team and the leadership team. Um, but we just wanted to provide you that kind of quick overview. There's one for financial processes and controls and financial management capabilities. And we really just kind of want to end on just, you know, in summation kind of at a board level what we want to have as the key takeaways, the the key priority risks and considerations for what you need to do next. So for the financial processing controls,
069paying vendors more than purchase orders is is the key risk. That is a that's a big risk to manage. And the procurement policies that are outdated, they lack precision. They're not well enforced. Those are the the risks you want to close as quickly as possible. So that means the follow-up work that Brooke talked about, reviewing, revising policies and then um conducting training to make sure that everyone is aligned on using those policies. From a budgeting and financial management perspective, the key risk is not having a forecast, right? You need to have a forecast that tells you what's going to happen. You need to know when revenues are going to keep up with expenses when they aren't. You need to make adjustments based on that. And um that's just that's the most important financial planning capability
070you can have. We worked with Marget and her team to provide some templates that will help with this. Using those templates to plan into the future is critical. So developing that multi-year model, conducting rapid assessments of the areas you might have for efficiency and pursuing those efficiency. And then really importantly, none of what we just laid out works if you don't have a culture of accountability that goes all the way back to the sort of people processes. So all of the things that are backed up in finance processes and policies need to be backed up in HR job descriptions in expectations for employees and and at times if necessary in disciplinary action so that people can't violate the policies and they know that they need to question if there's a problem about whether something's violating
071their policies. So supporting the district like what we would recommend is proposing policy modifications quickly that make those expectations clear and carrying those into the rest of the organization not just in the finance team but also leaders. So department heads can't say to finance no you know approve this PO finance needs to be able to stand by those recommendations. So with that I hope I hope that summarized it well. We're happy to take more questions on next steps. Any questions from the board? I do have a question. I don't know that it's necessarily for you guys, but more for Mer and Dr. Sorenson. Um, is it safe to assume that now that this has been completed and we have a plan in place that um, metrics from here and priorities will be used um, for
072the exit criteria for the board of managers? Yes. Um, so I'll go first and then you go. Um, so exactly. So what we're going to do is we're going to take each of these focus areas and we're going to create goal progress measures for each of these um and we're going to align it also to the timeline um recommended here and say so what are the extra criteria that we what are the goal progress measures that we can accomplish in year 1, year two, year three um and we will continue to report out to the board um and obviously to the public um so that we meet the exit criteria by the time required if not before because there are some things here that are urgent as as you can hear. Um I I also
073do want to say that there are some things that we've already started working on. Mirjette this year has really um really begun to dig into procurement and procurement processes um as that was an area that we recognized quite quickly um even upon my arrival that needed work and needed work immediately. So um we've already strengthened some of these processes um just even the using of concur this year um that was not happening last year at the way that we're using it this year. So there are things that are already taking place um that are strengthening our processes. Um but long answer yes. Um so Mette if you'd like to build on that. Um I just want to say that I am excited about this work in different levels. One personal because I I love to
074fix things. So that's something that excite me. But the second part is because we already started reviewing. So in pro in the next couple of board meetings you're going to have the policy for procurement in to be approved because we are already working and reiterating in that we are working on the job descriptions for all the staff because it's not fair to ask for performance when they are not having job descriptions for them to have them but the accountability that comes behind that job description is also going to be in place. So with support and the amazing work that Arver and Mars did, I'm going to have to I'm going to have a better channel to prioritize and establish what are those expectations and where we are going to go. So those are two examples
075of things that are already starting. There are also some accomplishments that we had done with other departments and my my colleagues had been amazing to starting to say yes ma'am when we say no. So that has been that's appreciated and that has something that had been happening already. Thank you board member. So um does is&M recommending a specific framework for further internal audits what a framework for for financial management. So in terms of risk you've identified several areas of risk. Is there a framework for us to follow to have our own internal audits moving forward? So from a financial processes and controls standpoint, if you build the controls within the procedures, those controls are then implemented through training. Typically what you want to do from there is to test those. So, one thing we would
076recommend is an annual audit review on the highest risks processes and controls to test and make sure that those things are working correctly. Other than that, there's not really a framework that we would put in place because I think it's best to tailor it for the district, especially as things continue to change. you can keep it flexible but also monitor the controls. The only other thing I'll say is flip the switch on on Concur. If there are automated controls that can easily change, flip those switches on, embed that into the policies and procedures so you start getting automatic flags on those things. I just just add one thing to that kind of across the board here. Each of these recommendations is paired with you know what the end state ought to look like right so
077um using that information especially in line with your plan to evaluate the exit criteria Dr. Sorenson that you can use those sort of explanations of what it should look like to do a after our improvement efforts have we gotten what we wanted and so you should conduct sort of a exit from this process and say looking back we had this finding we closed it out we know because we have this indicator that it's working well right yeah the reason I ask is because I work in healthcare and there are specific frameworks established for audits and such and I don't know if there is one for financial management. Yeah, with health care it's it's much higher regulated both from a private and public standpoint. So there are several different types of frameworks. Now if you're talking
078about compliance, we typically refer to SECCE, which is the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics. It's corporate focused, but it's general corporate compliance that can be applied to the public sector. Now, what we take with that are any state or federal regulations that must be incorporated, especially from a processing control standpoint. So the maturity that we laid out kind of that stoplight chart that's best practices from the SEC what you would expect to find for compliance within each area. Right. Thank you members of the board. Do we have any other questions for our presenters? Miss Chris, would you like to end by saying anything? I just want to say thank you to Alvarez and Marcel and and Mike and Brook because they have been amazing to support us and collaborating with us and identifying every
079step that we had to take. Um this is um reinforcing our commitment to strong controls to transparency and to respond to the district needs. We are going to keep working hard and for that um because it's necessary and because it's for the children. We appreciate the board support in this in this endeavors in everything that we are going to do from now on to get straight and have things uh the way they need to be and we will keep working. Thank you. Dr. Sorenson, would you like to add anything? Um yes. I mean the only thing I think I would add is that um you know this is our commitment to district priority 5. Um, we were very clear in district priority 5 that we were committed to integrity in our financial processes and we
080promised the community that we would conduct this financial audit and be transparent with the findings. And so here we are um following through on that commitment um very transparently um sharing the work that we have ahead of us. And so we are I I I make jokes sometimes and I I don't mean it flippantly. I think I'm I might be one of the only superintendents who gets really excited about an audit. Um because I think it gives us an opportunity to know very specifically where we need to do our work in order to get better um and to be holistically accountable to the public. And so we will keep working. we will keep being transparent and we will keep reporting to the board and to the public on our progress um as we go throughout
081this process. And so, thank you so much to Alvarez and Marcel. We look forward to continuing the partnership and Mirette and and the team. And I know that there are members of the team sitting in the back. Um thank you very much for your partnership. I know that you guys worked very hard also in the middle of budget season um to make this work and and be transparent and you know open books and so thank you guys for all your work. I I am really really grateful. Thank you. Thank you Dr. Sorenson and thank you both for the presentation. Uh next item on the agenda is our LSG update report on goal progress measures K through 9 Z and Matia growth aligned to GPS GPMs 2.1 2.2 2 2.3 and K through9 Alexia growth align
082to GPMs 1.1 1.2 1.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 Dr. Little and Miss Garcia. Good evening board and superintendent. We are here uh first with Miss Garcia and next with Miss Annette Lozano to give you updates on how we're using and how we're seeing progress in our supplemental tools. Uh we'll start here with math and then we'll get to literacy. Uh so just a couple of reminders here. You know that we had a new math curriculum K8 in the district this year. We brought in Eureka and K5, uh Carnegie and 68. All of that's transitioning to Blue Bonnet next year. At the same time, we also started with new supplemental resources. So, additional things that teachers and students are working with uh to support both on grade level learning and to help students catch up with any
083gaps that they have. So, as we go through this presentation tonight, these are in support of our Lonear governance goals and GPMs, but they're really like a a step back looking at leading indicators to how we're getting uh to those ultimate measures for our students. We'll begin on the elementary side with a look at Zern. Um this is a digital tool that students and teachers are using to really improve mathematical proficiency. Uh it does start with kindergarteners. So we have kindergarteners all the way through fifth graders using this uh on a regular basis. It's building both regular fluency in math which we'll talk about more in just a second as well as really measuring their mastery of the concepts that they're learning uh in the core curriculum. This is done during the school day. That's
084our focus as a district is this is built in time during the school day for students to use this resource and for teachers to support them through it. Those students do have access to everything we're going to talk about this evening, math and literacy at home. So, they can use it for additional time and practice if they want to. The other really important thing to keep in mind in tonight's conversation is while we are talking about digital resources, they are not exclusively to be used in a digital environment. like teachers are actually having opportunities to pull students in small groups aside separate from the device and computer to really dig in and improve their skill development uh and their work. So you may hear us tonight, excuse me, refer to those as offline lessons. Those
085are things that teachers are doing out of Zern, Matio or Lexio when we talk about literacy uh beyond just the digital environment. So tonight with this focus on math that does directly support goal two and our third grade math uh targets as well as the GPMS underlying that. And one of the things we wanted to share at the outset which was really important you know nearly nine months ago when we were starting the school year with our teachers and leaders to help make the case uh for why Zern matters and why all of these supplemental resources really have an impact. Uh there is Texas research specific to Zern that shows that students who are doing at least three on-grade level lessons a week see remarkable gains in star achievement here more than 50 points in
086like raw star score growth uh just from having this access to this additional resource uh in the classroom. So, while we're not sharing star data with you tonight yet, that is coming soon. Uh we certainly expect that what you're going to see in these two uh presentations absolutely starts to show up in our student growth and progress measures down the line. The other thing just to note before we start to look at some data is a bit on how Zern works. Uh so part of what it's doing is it's helping students build fluency. Uh, you've heard Annette talk a lot about fluency in the literacy context. So, really being able to recognize letters, words, and sounds really quickly, moving faster to comprehension. Brenda and I, who also am a math guy at heart, haven't had
087the chance to talk about fluency in the math context. But that is simple. Like, at its basic level, if I were to ask you what 11 times 9 is, you either know that or you don't. or if I know what 111 plus two is, I either know how to do that quickly or I don't. This is not old school like we're copying our timets 12 times a day and the teacher like fusses at us if we're getting it wrong. We're really digging into the concepts that underly that but we still want that automaticity for students. So in Eureka they actually have part of that curriculum called sprints where students are doing this on a regular basis and then Zern is reinforcing that in the digital environment as well. So that's one part. The other part
088is just broadly the math concept. So how am I starting to apply those fluency concepts if I'm working on how to add fractions or if I'm trying to decompose numbers and understand more things. Getting to the place where the student ultimately can do all of that work independently. Uh this is a gamified system. Students actually really enjoy this. If you're in the classroom and you're watching them on Zern, it's fun. They they look forward to this. Part of it is due to that gamified space, but part of it is like there's a challenge like I need to show that I can get these things right and move forward in this level or these lessons and they can earn bonuses through that as well. Now, as we think about implementation, and you're going to hear us
089say this consistently throughout the evening, uh we first want to ensure that our teachers and students and schools are using these resources appropriately. So that starts with a view on usage. So we have targets that we have set in partnership with Zern, Matia or Lexia based on their research that shows what we minimally want to see in terms of overall usage for students. So this first one is looking at um the average minutes that students are getting per week. Our target is at least 90 minutes. That's that black dotted line across the chart. You see here that we have exceeded that at every campus in the district. That's really exciting. Like people have built the systems in place classroom by classroom, school by school, uh not distracting from core instruction in the classroom to get
090access to to more student time uh in this resource and in this learning. What we want to see paired with this though and as a preview this is our area of growth moving into next year is that this time with the resource and digging into this extra learning opportunity shows up in the results and in the learning. If we look at how Zern sort of captures that they're really looking at how many lessons a student has completed. So I could spend 90 minutes this week in Zern, but I may not have completed a single lesson because I'm really struggling with that concept. Like I'm not actually gaining the knowledge I need to gain to move forward. So here you see that we don't have every campus actually hitting that target of percent of students with
091lessons completed. So this is a real signal to us. It's a signal to the teachers on where we need to push in and provide additional support. they can actually see these reports and data at a student level. So I can see that Derek is still really struggling uh with complex numbers like he doesn't know how to handle them. He doesn't know how to add them or turn them into fractions. And so that's a place that I can really focus or pull a small group with Derek and other students who are in that in that same uh learning challenge. So, as we think about where we're going in terms of what students are learning and how they're progressing, this is giving nearrealtime information to the teacher on how to provide additional support to the student. So,
092students are in this again multiple days a week. We're looking at this at a district level, at least on a weekly basis. And so, that helps us take action at the classroom level much more quickly. when we get to map data or star data, which we'll share with you uh in a few weeks on the map side, like that's happening less frequently in the school year. So, this really helps make those early course corrections along the way so we get to that growth and achievement that our students need uh ultimately at the end of the year and over their whole journey. So, that's a quick snapshot of where we are at the elementary side with Zern. Miss Garcia is going to come up now and talk about what that looks like in the middle school
093space. uh with our resource called Matia. Good evening. Good evening. Uh at the middle school level, the math curriculum that we use is Carnegie Learning. Along with Carnegie learning, the digital platform that we utilize is uh Mafia. Uh just a quick background on what Carnegie learning is or the foundation. The three critical components are engage in which we activate student learning through real world experiences, develop in which students um really deepen their conceptual understanding of math through various activities and then demonstrate where students actually reflect and evaluate the math that they have learned. So that's a basic overview of what Carnegie is. If we continue um just like Dr. Little mentioned um like Zern, Matia is a digital platform that works handinhand with Carnegie learning. So the lessons that students are doing in in the
094Carnegie lessons they're doing in classroom during tier one instruction, they get that extra practice in the Mathia platform. So there's really five pillars that we look at when it comes to this. First, it's AIdriven instruction, meaning that uh students are are able to work at their own pace because it gives them real-time feedback and it kind of guides them in the direction they need to go to reach that success. They also uh has personalized pathways in which um students are able to they're guided through the curriculum or through their their uh syllabus depending on their areas of strength or their areas of growth. So it kind of adapts to the students learning. So it's an individualized platform per student. Um of course it's a real big shift to go from teacherled to student centered learning.
095And in this case that that's what this whole uh Carnegie learning is about. Making sure that we engage students in learning and deepen their understanding and their critical understanding of mathematics. In addition, we all know that real world problem solving or real world experiences always makes math relevant for our students. And then of course all of this is anchored in the cognitive science foundation which supports how students actually learn and retain math. So that's a general overview of what Carnegie and Mafia is. If we do continue, just like in uh Zern, we do monitor the usage of Mafia. We have set a goal as a district from the beginning of the school year uh for our students to be uh using Matia at least 90 minutes a week. And as you can see here, we
096had two campuses that met that. Um we're very close across the board, but we're not quite there yet. Um, Matia time is built into their core math time. So, they do have their tier one instruction for their 45 minutes and the extra time during their math class is what they're able to use to work on on Matia. So, therefore, it is built into their schedule and the focus is for them to be working on it during the day. They can work on at home if they choose to, but this is something that's worked on during math core um for the purpose that if teachers if students need help, teachers are there to assist them. So, um, if we continue, um, Carnegie Learning has a syllabus or a curriculum that students need to complete. So, for
097example, if I'm a sixth grade student, um, am I able to go through and complete the entire sixth grade curriculum by the time the school year ends? So, when this data was pulled back in April, at that point, we had set a target that we wanted all students to be at least 80% syllabus completion. So as you can see here, all but two campuses did reach that goal. So we are, you know, using our time. We are working through the curriculum. But the next slide that I want for us to focus on is the applause score. So yes, we have the time more or less 90 minutes. Yes, we are working through the syllabus. We are going through the curriculum. But how are we performing? And applause stands for adaptive personalized learning scorecard for education.
098So what does that mean? That just means our students mastering the work as they're going through the lessons or their work spaces. So going back to what Dr. Little mentioned in Zern, this is a perfect time if a student is not being successful in Matia for teachers to pull students aside and work with them in that small group setting to make sure they're understanding the lessons as they're going through the workspaces. So this is a great opportunity for that tailored instruction for our students. This um picture right here is just u goes over the sides that we just went over. Campus A, campus B. As you can see, both campus A and B, they are at an 85% syllabus completion. The goal was 80 when we pull the data. So check kids are working through
099the curriculum as they should in Matia. However, campus A did meet the applause score of 70 or above where campus B did not. So this is a real you know eye openener for us to make sure that we need to make sure that teachers understand when this is happening that we need to make sure that we stop kids as they're going through the program pull them aside and work with them so they can feel confident and in the lessons and be able to go through the lesson successfully. So this is one of our big pushes for next school year to make sure that we as a department and our teachers know that this is when we need to stop and make sure that students are being successful. Board President, can I ask a question? Yes,
100please. So, u Miss Garcia, is it possible or let me rephrase that. Do principles have access to this data? Yes, ma'am. They do. So, I want to clarify for the public. What is the expectation of our principles to be in this data so that principles can provide real time feedback to teachers as they support our educators on the campus to close this gap. So I'm just wondering because I I know that you know the access to the data both our our educators have it our principles also have it. So what is our expectation as you know we talk about excellence in leadership what is the expectation of our campus leaders to provide that support to our educators so that we are closing the gap for our students. Sorry we're debating who wants to answer that
101question. Uh there are a couple points to that uh Dr. Sorenson. So first we the team really has created and and this is true on the literacy side as well like conversation mechanisms between a principal and a teacher. So we've created templates and tools for a principal to be able to sit down with a teacher or a teacher team look at the data understand what it's telling the teacher in terms of what students need and reinforce that in classroom practice. The other thing that can happen even more organically as principles are in classroom sort of doing walks, doing classroom visits, uh we've seen this a number of times. You go into a middle school math classroom, often the teacher has multiple screens going and one of those screens is a dashboard of how students are
102doing in their math lessons. And that's heat map. So you can see, hey, this student is on green, they're doing great right now. This one's yellow. This one's red. Like that's telling the teacher, where do I need to go right now and provide intervention and support? So principles can reinforce those practices and expectations for teachers. And part of what we've got to think about and help our educators do even more is like these are conversations with each other. So what the teacher is doing in ter teacherdirected instruction with Carnegie in this case, what the student is doing in Matia are directly related and connected. So it's not like isolated time. The teacher is super or has to be super involved in all of that. And that's a leadership opportunity to improve that teacher engagement even
103more when students are in their matia time or zer time so to speak. Thank you Dr. Sorenson. That was a great question. If we can go to the previous slide before the one we're at now. So I don't know. I mean like you're all educating us on this, right? And it says here our target is 70%. And not one of the our schools obviously hit it. I mean, is that alarming and is that something that we can um address? Now, it is certainly it is certainly a call to action, especially when we think about like we're getting really close to there in terms of student time in in the resource. Most of our students are actually getting through the number of lessons that they need to get to, but that's not yet showing up in
104their mastery of those concepts. the the thing that I would say to the benefit of doubt for teachers in this space using a new math curriculum like Carnegie that really forced a lot of new learning at the adult level as well again fundamentally changed the approach that they have to take to teaching that that mathematics. Um so that's been a learning curve for everybody. I think that explains this a little bit. It does not excuse it, however, because we've still got to ensure that our students are earning those grade level st uh skills, that they're meeting those grade level standards, and we're ultimately getting them uh to mastery. So, this example with math, I think different than what we see in Zern, certainly different than what we'll see in a minute with Lexia, is where
105we have the most work to do to make sure that we're accelerating that progress. Yeah. And so the reason that I highlight that is because I think that in the past we've talked about creating a culture of coaching, right? And so I think that this lends a a really great opportunity as teachers are learning a new curriculum. How are we expecting our leaders on campus to lean into coaching our teachers in order to close this gap between students just using a tool, right? going through the syllabus, going through their minutes, but actually moving to mastery of content, moving to mastery of skills. And so, how do we coach our teachers and support our teachers to get there on a more regular and consistent basis so that we don't get to May and we're at at
106the levels that we're at. And so, creating that culture of coaching and support, I think, is what I was, you know, really honing in on. But thank you. But I appreciate your answers and your thoughtfulness. Yeah. And I think that starts like literally with us, the the two of us, and like what we set as the focus and priority for principles for campus and then how that feeds through the entire system. That's a little bit what we can see here. Um this is meant to be small. You don't have to like read the data points on here just to visually notice a few things. Uh we monitor every week and I transparently share with all of the internal world. So, every principal in AP gets a an email from me every Tuesday uh that includes
107this data and includes Lexia data and other things where we're saying here's how you did last week and it's heat map. So, we need every school to ultimately be in the green. I think the insight for us and what we've learned is this is cliche for educators but like what we pay attention to gets done. We've paid attention to people spending time in the resource. we have not paid as much attention to are you actually mastering the concepts you need to improve this data point. So that's really an improvement for us as a system as we move into the next year. Zern here is the two big ones at the top. You see that's really pretty positive. It's green overall. Uh at the bottom that's all math data and you see that's got a lot
108more yellow in there. I will call out the red that you see at the bottom is high school level data. We did not have firm expectations for usage on that even though it was available for students this year. So to to use your word uh President Alvarez about alarming, that's not alarming to me as I stand here today. However, next year we will have new curriculum in algebra 1, algebra 2, and geometry. We will have firm expectations for how teachers are incorporating mathia into those classrooms. And so that high school data can't look like that next year for sure. But the other thing is what we're really having conversations on week by week and how we're focusing the attention of our leaders will be much more on outcomes rather than just the inputs of the
109resources as we move forward. The other two quick things I would say here as we think about next steps um always making sure that our our educators and our team are up to date on professional learning as new folks come in next year helping them catch up but also revisiting this with everybody. So they're really saying, "Okay, here's what we learned and here's what we saw in year one. How do we also get better in our practice?" And then as we mentioned, and I I want everybody in La Hoya who's listening right now to hear this, our move to Blue Bonnet next year does not at all take away the relevance of Zern and Matia. They are still directly aligned to those curricula. They still directly cover the Texas standards. And so like the the
110curricular improvement as we move to blue bonnet um does not change the focus or the impact that these resources will have. And with that we can pause before we get to the literacy side and see if there are other questions. I have a question definitely um for blue bonnet when it gets implemented next year is that that's going to be then during the core class time right and then Zern and Matthew are doing those supplemental periods. Correct. Well, they're the supplemental resource, but they're used within the core block of that lesson. Um, so Miss Garcia was laying out a little bit. Hey, you have 45 minutes of your core math instruction in most middle school spaces and then you may have additional 15, 20, 25 minutes depending upon the day of the schedule that you're
111using Mathia, but that's during the school day attached to that core block. It's not like you're going to a different class to do Matio or to do Zern. Okay. And then um one other question if you don't mind um when you mentioned the data from MAI by campus for high school um and you said that you weren't expecting um I guess good implementation of it. What was the reason why? Is it because they didn't have the right lessons available to them or like for the right? No, we had so we've had old curriculum in the high school space for quite a while. Next year will be the first time that gets updated in those three classes algebra one and two and geometry. And so we really put this out as a soft resource for campuses
112to use as teachers saw fit and then we walked away and said, "Okay, use it however you want to use it because it wasn't as connected to to those resources or what we're seeing in the curriculum." Next year that'll be treated as a suite just like we have right now in the KAP space, sorry. And so those expectations will be really clear and they'll be followed up on. Okay. Thank you, board member. Um Dr. little thank you for identifying on each slide what goal measure each data is associated to but my question is related to the adjustments. So you you mentioned that the teacher has to adjust the instructional material um to make sure we improve gaps. How often is the teacher having to do that? Do we have that track somewhere? Yeah, I mean
113in the like highest functioning classroom that's happening every day. like teachers know exactly where their students are as they're focused on different skills, different standards, whatever that may be. They're making those adjustments within the lesson and teachers are reflecting after the lessons on what they need to come in the next day or the next couple of days and work on. The other thing to note here, um, like some of the lessons are multi-day lessons. So, if I'm working on a skill, I may have that plan Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, uh, for students. And so, they can think about it in those chunks as well. uh but teacher adjustment to where students are should be happening organically all the time. What this data helps with on a regular basis is how to guide that and how
114to inform what the teacher is doing in followup. And then when we get our map data, that's an even like bigger measure of here's really where our students made progress and here's where they didn't and therefore here's what I need to do as the instructor. Yeah. I was just wondering if at the higher level that we're getting that feedback so you know we ensure that we have the resources for the teachers. Yeah, I do not think this is a resource gap issue. I think this is knowing how to use the resources well has been our challenge this year and as we improve that moving into next school year. I think we'll see improvements in these areas. Thank you. Great questions. Any other question? Um go ahead Dr. Margar u Miss Gracia. one of your slides
115you mentioned that one of the major components or core components of Carnegie learning is the AIdriven instruction. I'm just curious to maybe learn a little bit more about how it's used. I know Dr. Little Dr. Little was just referring to uh real time monitoring. I'm assuming that's one of the one of the areas in which it is used. Anything beyond that that AI in general is being used to drive this instruction? Um it's just the lessons itself. If a student's given a lesson and let's say I'm struggling with how to simplify a fraction, um it'll take me down that path to make sure I understand that I understand it well before I move on to the next component. But it's all within the same lesson that's been been assigned to the student. So that's how
116the AI component works. It depends on the student and the how how they're progressing and how they're answering the questions. So if I'm able to master that quickly, it's going to move me on to something else. So that's what makes it personalized and that's what the AI is used for. Thank you. Any other questions? Yes. Um what resources regarding uh Matia and um um this program are available to parents and where can they find um that supplemental information? Well, Mafia is an online resource they can use at home uh at any point. We do have a parent communicator that we send out on a six weeks basis and it does go over what we're going to in all contents what we're going to be teaching throughout the week and where they throughout the six weeks
117and where they can get lessons from or where they can get the you know help from. So I know for Zern um there's this packet that can go home that goes handinhand with with the the the great minds which will be blue and it also goes handinhand with the with uh Zern. So that's a product they can take home to their parents as well. But we do have the parent communicator that's available to everybody on our website. Uh campuses are also expected to send that home with their parents um resources of where they can go u to get u so they can help their their students. These online these resources high quality instructional material one component is that itself it needs to be available to our parents to our community in case they want to
118assist their students at home. So that's one thing that's you know for us and for literacy next year as well. That's one thing that is part of that comp of a high quality instruction material. Thank you. That was a really good question. Any other questions? So, tagging along uh the last two questions. Um she mentioned the parents what's available to the parents and you mentioned how we can reach out to them give them the information but can the parent um pretty much reach back to the teacher rather than you know principal or anything like that the teacher and specify how the student is having issues maybe with the AIdriven instruction they're giving repeated um questions of the same thing that the kid's not understanding so it's pretty much redundant if the kid is having to
119do all these questions the parent doesn't understand or doesn't know how to help the kid. Um, and the kid doesn't know how to get out of those AI and that's when the teacher steps in. That's when you know teachers have that that dashboard to be seen where students are struggling and that's when the teacher steps in to make sure that students are understanding so they can move on. Um, I will say that if students don't master the lessons at the level that they should, sometimes the teacher will reassign the lesson to the students. So sometimes they see it as redundant because it wasn't mastered initially, but before it's reassigned, that's when teachers need to step in and work with their students to make sure they're understanding so they can have mastery the second time around.
120Thank you. Just one thing to add to that, like the the teacher parent connection is super important. We've got more work to do to strengthen that dialogue and that information sharing back and forth between the classroom and home. But you're starting to see with MAP, with these resources, with our our core curriculum, there's a lot of ways to foster that communication. We just have to help campuses build those structures more tightly uh to do that. Yeah. Mainly because um you know, the student might not want to speak up to the teacher, but the parent can help along. Absolutely. The helpful thing about these resources is the student doesn't actually have to use their voice to say, "Hey, I have a problem." because the teacher can see, oh, you're still struggling with the same thing. I
121need to go do something about it. And they can see with what you mentioned, the red, yellow, green, and that's how the teachers know as well. Thank you. Well, great questions from the board. Uh Dr. Little, thank you. Miss Garcia, I know you're going to proceed to this. You're going to ask Miss Lozano to join you. Yes, we are going to move to the literacy side uh of this work. In this case, we use a resource called Lexia uh to help with our our supplemental literacy uh attainment. Lexia is actually broken down into three components. So, we have Lexia English, which is focused on our kinder and first grade students. We really use this in partnership with Miss Unia and our dual language program uh because this is helping build more English proficiency for our
122youngest learners. Then our main elementary program is Lexia Core 5. That's supporting students K5. Uh it can also go down into like into preK space. And then when we get into the secondary uh grades, Lexia Power up is what we're looking at. So you can imagine this is getting a bit more sophisticated as we move through this continuum uh where Lexia English and the early part of Lexia core 5 is very foundational and then we're getting into more sophisticated literacy skills uh with power up just like we really emphasize with Zern and with Mafia. This is a digital environment but it's not exclusively a digital environment. teachers have offline blended lessons uh that they can pull based on the data that they're seeing from their students to know, hey, I need to work with these
123four students on these skills and Lexia actually gives them lesson materials to do that with. Uh that also supports work that our reading specialist, for example, can use with students. Uh in addition, so this resource really supports our reading goals and GPM. So it directly relates to goal one and goal three. uh for third grade reading and eighth grade reading and obviously all of the grades that lead into and support that. I told you we would sing part of the same song over and over here. And again, the first thing we're looking at is our people using the resource as they should. Uh Lexia measures that in something officially called usage. Like they have a way to know what each student should be doing in terms of time each week. uh we certainly want to
124see 95% of our students meeting that usage and here we certainly met that mark um across all of our elementary campuses for this Lexia English program which again is focused on uh kinder and first grade students. As we look at the impact of this um a slight benefit of Lexia over the conversation we just had with Zern and Matthew is we can see a bit more progress data in a clearer way uh out of some of these data sets. So for our kinder and first grade students with Lexia English, we want to see that their proficiency is improving. Students are gaining more access to to English and building those skills along the way. The first two bar charts to the left are kindergarten. You see BOI, we get that really tall blue bar. That tells
125us at the beginning of the year, our kindergarten students came in at the foundational level. So they did not know a lot about how to connect words to sounds, words to letters or letters to words uh rather like they were still building uh those concepts and skills. As we get to the next one in middle of year, you see the blue went down pretty significantly and the red started to rise. That tells us that students have moved from that like newcomer space into the beginning level. So we expect to see across the year certainly when we get endofear data uh that that approves even more and in the first grade those two middle ones you see that growth even better. We have students moving into intermediate and advanced. Um so this is really hopeful for
126where we're going in terms of student progress and growth. uh it gives us um like excitement to see our end of year MAP data and look at that student growth and proficiency because we can start to see throughout the year that students are making progress uh in the literacy space. And so what Miss Lozano is going to do next is actually walk you through our main elementary program core 5 as well as give you updates on what we're seeing in the middle school space with Power Up. Good evening board. So here we have core 5. This is our core program supplemental resource for elementary reading. It is based on the science of reading. And as you can see we have our word recognition in language comprehension. So we're all our programs are instruction supplemental and
127tier one are based on the science of reading. I want you to look at the wheel on the right hand side. This is our adaptive blended learning model that we strive for our teachers to use when they are utilizing this program with their students. Why? Because at the core of all instruction, whether it's supplemental or tier one, the teacher is driving this instruction for the student. So although students are on the computer, teachers are driving this instruction because they know where their students are performing and where they need to be addressing those gaps to accelerate that instruction. So here we have our graph of our campuses meeting our usage report. As you can see we have a very high target of 95% for meeting usage on a weekly basis for our students. This target looks
128quite easy but it's not because this target is varies by each students level of need. So if a student has greater gaps they're going to require more time. if they have lesser gaps, less time. So, it varies, but overall, campuses are meeting their goals and we're seeing success with it. Here's where we can see that our students are either meeting or exceeding grade level expectations. We have students at the beginning of year and middle of year. Let's look at our kindergraph. At the kindergraph, students that were on grade level for kinder was at 26%. Now at middle of the year, we're at 96% of our kinder students being on grade level. This is amazing data and you can see it in first grade, second grade, third grade, fourth grade. Fifth grade is an area that
129we definitely need to work on, but because we also know that the older they get, the more gaps that they have. So we definitely need to be working more with our fifth grade population. And now this is another staggering data. These are students who were two grade levels or greater below grade level. This is the population that absolutely needs additional instruction based on the science of reading to close those reading gaps. We see first grade at the sorry yes first grade at the beginning of year there are 42% of our population was reading below grade level. Now we've decreased that to 25%. That is the goal we want. We want to be decreasing that below grade level to be coming down. We can see that in third grade, fourth grade, fifth grade. Second grade is
130another area that we're targeting to be working on in order to decrease those below grade level students. So now we have our Lexia power up. This is the program that we are utilizing in middle school. Much like Lexia Core 5 is based on the science of reading, so is PowerUp. However, PowerUp is divided up into three strands. We focus on our word study, grammar, and comprehension. And each student is placed individually based on our performance and needs either at the foundational, intermediate, or advanced levels. Here is our usage report for middle school. Our target is slightly different because when we use power up in middle school, it's not for all students because this is our supplemental resource for intervention for our students. Having that said, our target is 35%. However, all middle schools are meeting
131and some are exceedingly going over that target. Now, here we see the result of how our students are growing in the different strands that we have. We have word study at the foundational level. At the beginning of year, our sixth through 8th grade students, we had 64% that were at foundational level, meaning that their skills were K second. Now at the middle of year, only 19% of our students are at that foundational level. That is great improvement for middle schoolers. And we can see that now they're in to the intermediate space. And we're actually having moving movement into advanced. And we have students who actually have completed the word study strand. The next strand that we're working on is also grammar. Also divided into foundational, intermediate, and advanced. Very much like our um word study
132numbers. We had a lot of students at the foundational level. And as we've been working and progressing through, they have shown tremendous growth. And comprehension. comprehension doesn't look slightly different, but we also see that we were struggling at the beginning, but now that we've gone through the system, teachers have been leading the lessons, students go onto the computer, they work through them, we're seeing that progression and growth, and we are happy with the growth that our students are having in middle school. And so board just like we talked about on the math side in terms of how we really create system focus around this we monitor and share this every week as well uh with Lexia again for English core five and for power up here we're looking for consistent sort of green implementation across
133the board and for the most part schools have actually done this really well where you see yellows those aren't too far away uh from those green targets but this is uh another place just like on the mass side where we have to shift our focus and our messaging next year. We've done great in year one actually getting people to use it and to use it pretty well. So next year our focus has to be much more on the outcomes that we're seeing. So how are we moving students from foundational to advanced ultimately to completing these will be much more of what we're paying attention to. These are actually the exact same next steps with Lexia as they were for Zern and Matia because it really is the same sort of challenge moving forward. Making sure
134our educators know exactly what to do and how to use these resources that we're getting more teacher-led uh instruction in small groupoup work based on the data that they're seeing. And as we do have new curriculum on the literacy side with Blue Bonnet and Amplify again that teachers are really building that bridge seeing the connection in using both the core curriculum and Lexia to reinforce each other uh with student learning and same story here on the high school space particularly for those classrooms supporting newcomer students. So, I'm new to the US or I'm uh a recent immigrant and I have very little to no English proficiency or background. This is a tremendous tool and resources to use with students in those circumstances. So, again, we will have firm expectations for how that happens in the
135high school space uh for next year. And with that, again, happy to take questions. Members of the board, do we have any questions for our presenters? I have a question. Go ahead, Vice President. Um I think I'm uh confusing myself. On slide 59 um uh the it mentions in the title middle school students and I'm just in the graph it gives you the first grade, second grade, third grade. Um and I'm just a bit uh am I reading that wrong? I didn't totally hear what you're saying. on the title. Well, oh, I guess in our version it says middle school on our title and and now that I see yours, um I see that it's it's on slide 59. Ours says middle school. I don't think the slide numbers are aligned. Oh, that one. There
136you go. Middle school students make gains. Yeah, it should not say that. This is an elementary uh data slide. Okay. Um I thought we actually fixed that two days ago. So, I'm sorry that that still showed up. Okay. I I thought Okay. Thank you. I was just Good pick of Yeah, Dr. Yes, I do have a question. Um, are we seeing any type of student based incentive programs um around these curriculums? One, I see you guys nodding. So, can you give me an example of that? And then two, do we think for schools that aren't doing this that we might want to implement something like that? So, our campuses have been very creative now that they know that we're monitoring on a weekly basis and providing this feedback on a weekly basis. They were concerned
137about meeting usage. How can we get our students to meet usage? Quickly, our campus leaders learned that it just wasn't about meeting minutes. It was about students earning those units at mastery level to move the student student forward throughout the levels. So now students at their desks have a weekly chart where they're charting how many units they need to get in order to meet those targets. And at the end of the six weeks, we have celebrations. Campus leaders have celebrations for our students. And so they're excited about it because they can see their progress. They they have charts in their classrooms with numerical values that represent each child and the levels that they're moving through because they want to be able to see that progression for themselves. So students are also taking ownership of that
138growth. Thank you. Members of the board, do we have any further questions? I have a comment. I just want to say thank you. I I have seen that with my own children where they're telling me I have to complete my ZER, I have to complete my Lexia, I want to get to the top of the chart and I have seen the growth. So, you know, it's a spectacular program. Thank you for sharing that. Great. Thank you. That is great news. All right. Thank you both. Our next presenter and Joseph, um probably my favorite part of the meeting. [Laughter] You want to hear some good news, Joseph? Lonear governance time use tracker report for our April 23rd, 2025 meeting. Thank you, sir. Good news is on the way. Good. Uh, Mr. Board President, uh, members of
139the board, Dr. Sorenson, uh, members of the community watching us, um, I am pleased to share our Lonear governance time use tracker report, our regular scheduled item. Um of course with loans Lonear governance um we are focused on improving student outcomes right so we are guided by the idea that student outcomes don't change unless adult behaviors change and so as such our time use tracker is aligned um and um we want to thank you thank you um we want to optimize our meeting times around discussion around presentation of items that qualify for student outcomes as student outcomes and adult outcomes um but primarily with student outcomes. So how did we do at last meeting on April 23rd? Um we scored five minutes um in the adult outcomes category out of a meeting that was 177
140minutes long. Um we had discussion at last meeting um about um things that we could do. Um I mentioned that there were some structural things that we can do to our agenda as well as our presentations which go into effect which went into effect this evening. You may notice that on our agenda to the right um on the right hand margin um in parentheses um next to each agenda headline item um it annotates what um what reporting category for which that item qualifies time. Um and so the other thing we did um is like the the the the presentations we just received around Zern Lexia Matia um we align those very specifically and very explicitly um to show how they impact our board goals and our goal progress measures. So you can see on our
141agenda this evening that presentation is listed under the Lonear governance category. Um so we anticipate the map of that presentation u will show up differently on our time use tracker um next next meeting. Great great news Joseph you were right for next meeting. We still have work sir. Um so I I think we asked this question before. So, prior to our our meetings that we have, our board meetings, I mean, obviously these are discussions you're having with staff talking about how much time we're spending on certain things, right? When we prepare for our board meetings, right? I mean, you you speak to them and tell them, hey, we we need to keep on time or uh I'm talking about so that we hit our goals here, right? Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. Yeah, I know
142you do that. So like that was a part of a conversation going into this week's Lexi Azern Matthew presentation like how do we get it more explicitly tied to our goal progress measures and our GPMs. Yes. Thank you Joseph. Members of the board, do you have any questions for Joseph? Okay. Thank you, Joseph. Seeing we have none. Thank you very much. Good news for next next next meeting. All right. Next presenter is our conservator and that is Dr. Diana Baretta, our board self assessment. Welcome to South Texas. Well, I have much better news. I'm not going to be the Debbie Downer this time. Um, President Alz, Dr. Sorenson, members of the board and community, this evening, it's time for our board self assessment using the integrity instrument. You should have the instrument in front of
143you, correct? Yes. So, we know student outcomes don't change until adult behaviors change. And the adult behaviors that need to change before anybody else's or whose whose behaviors need to change? Ours. Ours. Yours as the board, theirs as a staff, and then administrators and teachers and so on and so forth. So, the reason that we evaluate the board is we want to track your progress as well because we're holding you accountable. Just like you're holding the superintendent and the superintendent holds her staff accountable, the community holds you accountable because you are here to represent the vision and values um of the district. And so in order to do that we we engage in evaluation of ourselves, you yourselves using this instrument that is that was developed um to improve student outcomes with effective board behaviors.
144In this instrument um there are five pillars that we review. vision and goals, progress and accountability, systems and processes, synergy and teamwork, and then advocacy and engagement. So, there's a rating scale. The rating uh numbers that correspond, they're not the same for each one. They're weighted differently, but basically we start at does not meet focus, preparing to focus, approaching focus, meets focus, and master's focus. And I know this is a high achieving board and I know we all want to be at master's focus. We will get there. I promise. Let's start with vision and goals one. The board has adopted student outcome goals. So the first time we did this, you scored yourselves a zero. The last time we did this, you scored yourselves a 12. So, we're currently at meets focus, right? Can we
145be at masters? That's the question that we're asking. We were already at 12. Can we go to meets masters? So, Diana, can I pause for just a minute? Board members don't have copies. Oh, they don't have this? No. So, Marty just ran upstairs to make them copies. We I can talk you through them because Yeah, that would be great if you could talk. No, I can definitely talk. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. Pardon me, board. But I do want to answer your question. Yes, we can get there. What's that? I said we can get there. That's the next level. Yes, we can get there. Um, so the reason we can't go to master's focus on this one is because the broad community ownership, again, the way that is they developed this broad community ownership. It's that
146when the community already knows what all of these goals are for and why you're here and how you're holding the board accountable and how the the community is going to hold you accountable. We're not there yet. We will be there, but we have a strong 12. So, we're at master's focus for that one. So, we're going to put that mark that one down as a 12 for vision and goals one. Under vision of goals two, this is on the board has adopted goal progress measures uh GPMs align to each student outcome goal. So the last time you guys scored a one and the time before that you were at a zero. So from the one preparing to focus, we're going to ask can we go up to the next one which is approaches focus. Um,
147so under there it says the board has adopted no more than three GPMs for each student outcome goal. Is that correct? Yes. Yes. Yes. All GPMs are student outputs, not adult inputs or outputs that include a population, a five-year deadline, baseline targets, and annual student group targets. Is that correct? Yes. Then we are now at approaches. Yay. Yay. So, let's see if we can go Yay. What's that? So, let's see if we can go to um to a 12. So, we want to make sure that all the GPMs will challenge the organization, require adult behavior change, are influencable by the superintendent, and are all predictive of their respective student outcome goals. Yes. This office says yes. Do you agree? Yes. Yes. Yes. So, we are at master's focus. Um, again, I mean focus, pardon me.
148Master's focus again would be the board would have to have that broad community ownership, which we don't have. We're not there yet, but we got a 12 for this one. We're doing great. For the third one, vision and goals three, the board has adopted constraints. I went up one. Uh, two quarters ago, we were at a zero. Last quarter, we were still at zero. And today, we are not going to be at a zero. So, for preparing to focus, board has adopted one to five superintendent constraints and own the process. Have we adopted the superintendent constraints? Yes, we have. We adopted the constraints. Not the CPMs, but the constraints. The next one for approaches focus. Each superintendent constraint describes a single operational action or class of actions that the superintendent may not use or allow.
149Thank you. We already we checked to make sure that was it because that was one of the the ways that when we were developing it that we had to make sure that it addressed that. So we're at approaches now. We're going to meet focus. If you'll look we're on page 24 of that um instrument team. We're on page 24. So let's look at meats focus. The board has adopted five board self constraints. Have you guys adopted five board self- constraints? No. Yes. One to five. The board relied on root cause analysis. Yes. That's what you looked at when you were uh when the superintendent was developing her constraints and all board members and superintendent agreed that constraints will challenge the organization to focus on the vision and uphold the values. Are we there? Yes. Yes,
150we are. So that means that we're at a meets focus now. Um and again the board in master's focus. Why would we not be in master's focus? Community ownership. And also we have not adopted a theory of action. That's something we're not there yet. But I think I'm happy with the meets focus. Are you guys happy with the nine there? Yeah, sure. Yes. Perfect. So, we're already ahead. I'm not a Debbie Downer today. Vision and goals four. Two quarters ago, zero. Last quarter, zero. And let's look to see if we're at a one. If we're at preparing to focus. I don't think we're there. Why are we not at preparing to focus yet? The status of each adopted CPM is is able to be what does it say updated multiple times during each school year.
151I don't have my CPA because we have not yet adopted CPMs for the superintendent. uh constraints. Okay. And remember what we were waiting for has arrived. So next time we do this, we will have them. We were waiting for the special edit to come back so that we can use those results to develop CPMs. So that has arrived. So for now, we're still at a zero for this one. I apologize. So, progress and accountability one, the board invests at least half its time to improving student outcomes. Where do you think we are? We've been at a zero the first and second time we did this. I still think we're at a zero. We're still at a zero. We're still at a zero. Mhm. Still at a zero. We're still at a zero. Why are we
152not at one? What have we not done yet? The CPMs. CPMs. You haven't done the CPMs. There's something that that we have not evaluated or monitored yet. Board authorized public meetings because we're waiting for the CPMs. Yes. The monitoring tracking the constraints. Is that what you said, Alisa? No, I we're missing the constraints. Yes. Once we start doing that, then we can go into the preparing focus. Does anyone have a question on that one? So, we're good with the zero. We're not good, but we are at a zero still. Okay. Progress and accountability too. The board evaluates but does not interfere with progress toward improving student outcomes. So I believe we're still at a zero this month. Tell me why we cannot go to preparing to focus. There's something on that preparing to focus list
153that we have not done yet. We haven't approved our self-evaluation. No, we we've done that. We approve them every time. Okay. probably the superintendent, right? Yeah, we haven't done anything. Have you did an annual evaluation? The annual evaluation, right? We're still working on that process, but by the next time we do this, we will have completed the superintendent annual evaluation. So, because of that, we have not done that yet. So, we're still at a denot focus for progress and accountability. systems and processes. We were a zero the first time we did this. Then we were a four. So we are at approaches right now. Why can we not be at meets the three hours per meeting? The three hours, right? The meeting times. And again, I' I've mentioned this before and I'll I'll say it
154again. I'm not concerned about that. we are setting the um setting the stage for everything that we're doing. All of these reports that you're getting that's how that's how each of you is building your uh your knowledge about the district about uh operations about what's happening and about the work that the superintendent is engaged in. It's also addresses the transparency that we've talked about that the community really really wanted to see. So, we're very transparent with all the data that you're seeing. Um, she provides data in everything about staff, about students, about programs. And so, I'm not concerned about that. We will get there. So, that in that one we are a four advocacy and engagement. We've been at zero. Can we move to the one? Would the community design day kind of count as
155that where we have that val community members and all? Yes, I I think it can because they spoke to you and you spoke to them as well. Is that correct? Yes. It's got to be two-way communication. So, I think that that one would count. Dr. Sorenson, what what do you think? Oh, yeah. Definitely. There was over 300 uh how many people were there, Dr. Sorenson? Um approximately 317. Was that the number? 317 community staff. Wow. So yes. So we move up to a one on that one. And the last one uh first quarter we were a one then we were a three. add approaches. Can we move to a meets today? Do we have the board operating procedures in order? No, not yet. Yeah. No. So, no. Scrunch that up. So we'll stay at a
156three. We're still at three. Yes. Yes, we are still out of three. So 12 and 12 24 What's the reason? What are we missing? What was the reason? Is it the lonear governance? Um I thought we were at Why are we still at a four? Because not everybody, not all board members have met their uh required training hours. If you'll see that it's the very third the third bullet under meets agrees that every member has completed all statutoily required trainings. Not everybody has met their their trainings yet. We have three months to work on it to get this point. The next time we we'll get there. you guys have been doing a whole lot in the year. Um, and a few months that you've been here, you've been learning a lot. I am not worried
157about that that one. So, I think we're at So, again, the first time we were at a two, Mr. Alvarez, the last time we did this, we were at a 20 and I believe we're at a 44. Oh, good. Is that Does that sound correct? I believe we're at a 44. I'll do that. I'll I'll check with my phone when I sit down. But um so what do you think about this? We're making progress. Double it last time. Definitely making progress and this is what we want to see. But we still have work to do. You're right. And that's that's pretty much whenever you hear from any of the staff, any of them. Of course, Dr. Thornson models it for everybody all the time. But any data that we look at that's that is um
158that is an improvement. Yes, we're going to celebrate the improvement, but we know exactly where we want to be. And it's important to say we're not there yet. Um so for tonight, we will uh I'll ask you to approve at the consent agenda this um this evaluation with a score of a 41. So congratulations guys. Thank you. Any questions anybody? Dr. Little um Dr. Carlos Marggo said he was going to go through the Carnegie training for pick up the score. Janna, this is very helpful. So, thank you for that and thank you for I'm glad that um that the board had an opportunity to participate, you know, and and and we're being honest and then we saw areas that we needed improvement. When you mentioned the training, I'm right away I started thinking I'm not
159sure if I've completed all my tasks. I I'll check with Muddy. I see Muddy looking at us. She's very good about keeping us on in line. But thank you very much for the report. You're welcome. In all these areas um on your agenda that are other progress and accountability, vision and goals. We added that for you to know that every time we're we're on an agenda item how we're spending our time. And so for tonight, we were just under an hour for uh for minutes for progress and accountability with the reports for um uh for the goals. So that's going to put us in a real nice spot for tonight. But thank you all. Diana, just for clarity, um so we do this every three months, right? So we will be doing this again in
160August. Yeah. Let's see. June, July, August. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Yes. And again this is we're we are showing the community that we are giving data uh and showing progress of how we're doing just like we asked the students to do just like we asked administrators in evaluations. So thank you guys. Thank you Diana. Thank you Dr. Vo. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, our next item on the agenda is agenda item number eight. It's our consent agenda item. Uh, do I have a motion? I move to approve the consent agenda. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. All oppose. Motion carries. Okay. So, next agenda item is going to be we will be going into close session. Right now it is 8:22 p.m. We be going going into
161close session under section Texas Government Code section 551.001 551.07 uh 551.001 551.071 551.072 551.074 551.076 551.082 082 551.129 and 551.821 concerning any and all purposes permitted by the act including but not limited to sections and purposes that we have listed below on the agenda. Uh it is again I had referenced it's 8:22 p.m. We are now in close session. We are back from close session and it is 10:08 p.m. Our first item is action and discussion items 11.11 approval of quotation 2025-828 computer technology districtwide through DIIR contracts DIIR TSO-3763 and TIPS contract number 230105. Do I have a motion? I move to approve item 11.1. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is 11.2, approval of RFQ number 2025-24,
162Engineering and Architectural Services. Do I have a motion? I move to approve item 11.2. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is 11.3. Approval of Lonear governance board self assessment using the LSG integrity instrument. Do I have a motion? I move to approve item 11.3. Do I have a second? I second. All in favor signify by saying I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is 11.4. Approval of nomination of La Hoya ISD school board member for the Tazby board position region one. Position B. Do I have any nominations from the floor? I nominate Anita Chavez. Um I uh nominate Selo. Okay. So, let me go ahead and we have a one for Anita Chavez and one
163for Mr. Soo Gomez. Do I have any other nominees? Seeing that we don't have any, this is a requirement that we have to do it in open meeting. So I am going to ask uh that you raise your hand for the record and I'm going to go ahead and state that we have two candidates that have been nominated. Anita Chavez and Soso Gomez. So I'm going to first start off with the first one that was asked or nominated and that is Anita Chavez. So a raise of hands for all those in favor of electing Anita Chavez is our representative. Raise your hand. Two. Okay. Now the the other one would be all those in favor of not of uh selecting Mr. Soso Gomez raise your hand. One three. Okay. Mr. Gomez, you are been selected
164to represent uh our board uh as the board member uh that would be representing the La Hoya School Board. Uh let me see. Now that Mr. SO Gomez has been selected. I have to have a motion. Is there a motion to move forward with SO Gomez being our nominee? I move to approve Salis. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All opposed. Okay. Motion carries. Congratulations, Mr. Gomez. Thank you. The following item is 11.5 approval of the Texas teacher evaluation and support system. Do I have a motion? I move to approve item 11.5. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next we have a agenda item 11.67. Consider and take possible
165action to non-renewal chapter 21 term contracts of teachers and administrators impacted by the elementary school restart program change impacting Sapata Elementary School, Sigin Elementary School, and Garza Elementary School. Do I have a motion? I move to non-renew chapter 21 term contracts of teachers and administrators including the campus principles at Sapata Elementary School, Sagin Elementary School and Garza Elementary School in accordance with the elementary school restart program change reduction in force. I further move to authorize the superintendent or her design to provide notice to this action to the of this action to the affected employees. Do I have a second? I second the motion. Do I? All those in favor signify by saying I. I all oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda, ladies and gentlemen, is 11.7. Consider and take possible action proposed non-renewal
166of chapter 21 term contracts of teachers, instructional support, faculty, and campus and district level administrators, including deputy chiefs and directors in employment areas affected by the staff overage reduction in force. Uh uh do I have a motion? I move to propose a non-renewal of chapter 21 term contracts of teachers, instructional support facility, and campus and district level administrators, including deputy chiefs and directors in employment areas affected by the staff average reduction and force as presented in close session and to authorize the superintendent and her designate to provide notice of the action of the affected employees. Do I have a second? I second motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is 11.8. consider and take possible action to propose the renown renewal of chapter 21 term contracts of
167teachers and administrators for performance and or conduct. Do I have a motion? I move to propose the non-renewal of chapter 21 term contracts of teachers and administrators for performance and or conduct concerns as presented in close session and to authorize the superintendent or her designate to provide notice of this action to the affected employees. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item is 11.9 considering take possible action to terminate probationary and non-chapter 21 contracts. Do I have a motion? I move to terminate the probationary contracts at the end of the term in the best interest of the district. I further move to terminate the non-chapter 21 contracts as presented in close session at the end of their terms. I further
168move to authorize the superintendent or her designate to provide notice of this action to the affected employees. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. The last item is 11.10. Consider and take possible action to authorize the retention of a licensed attorney to serve as the board's designate on renewal hearings requested pursuant to board policy DGBB local. Do I have a motion? I move to authorize the superintendent or her designate to retain the service of a licensed attorney to serve as the as the board's excuse me to serve as the super the board's designate for conducting any evidentiary hearing requested on any non-renewal proposals by the board on May 7th 2025. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in
169favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. Next item on the agenda is our calendar. May 2025, Mental Health Awareness Month. May 5th through the 9th, 2025, National Teacher Appreciation Week. May 7th of this year is school nurse day. May 8th, 2025, La Hoya ISD 2025 Honors Banquet. May 9, 2025, school uh communicators day. May 10, 2025, Centennial Speaker Conference at Loa High School. May 16, 2025, Armed Forces Armed Forces Day. May 20 May 19 through the 23rd, 2025, National Educational Bosses Week. May 21st, 2025, regular called board meeting. May 25th, 2025, uh, La Hoya ISD class of 2025 commencement exercise at Ber Ogden Arena and this will be held in Browns I mean in Edinburgh. May 28, 2025 special call board meeting student recognition. Uh before we adjourn, are there any remarks
170uh by any of the board members or superintendent? Um I do want to make a comment. I just wanted to I had the opportunity to be a part of community community day this past weekend. Um and um just really grateful for the community members, the staff, um parents that came out to to that um event um to help kind of shape the future of um our district, but also to all of the organizers that put in um all of the the work. There was uh it it was it was a a great event. Um I think that resonated across the board. So, thank you guys for all the work. Well said, Secretary Pñena. Anyone else? Well, um can I say one word in the um this week and um across our district, there's lots of
171employee groups to recognize. Um we just saw a couple um stand before us this evening. our school nurses, our bus drivers, our school lunch heroes, um our um on and on. But um and this week we also are celebrating our teachers and staff across the district um because it's teacher appreciation week this week. And so, um, it just proves once again that it takes a team and it takes a village to really do the work that we do. And so whether you're a school lunch hero, um whether you're a bus driver, um you know, whether you're a support personnel, whether you're a teacher in the classroom, um we're just so grateful that every single one of you show up every day and give everything to our students, to our campuses, to our community, and do
172everything um that is required to make sure that our students are learning, that our kids are thriving. Um, and that educational excellence really does become everything that we need it to be so that our kids thrive, right? Thrive every single day and that they are college and career ready when they walk across the stage. I did just see like the 25 the top 25 from Palm View right in front of me. And so it takes a village to make sure that that happens. our nurses, our lunch heroes, our bus drivers, our teachers, our staff that support our teachers. So, just really want to recognize everyone um because in this month we take time to recognize them. So, thank everyone um for your teamwork to support our children. Thank you, Dr. Sorenson. Anyone else have any
173comments, closing remarks? Seeing that we have none, do I have a motion to adjurnn? I move to adjourn this meeting at 10:19 p.m. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor signify by saying I. I. All oppose. Motion carries. We all are adjourned. [Music]