The board will now convene an open meeting. Today is June 16th, 2014 and the time is 735 p.m. The board met earlier this evening in closed meeting. Any action arising from discussions in a closed meeting must be taken in a subsequent open meeting. Mr. Fraley, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Law in regard to the notice for this meeting? Mr. President, we are in compliance.
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The first item is the purchase of property to support district needs.
Mr. President.
Mr. DeBrell.
I move that the Board of Trustees enter into an agreement to purchase the Weiss Land and Development LCC, 2020400 Frowns Road, Katy, Texas, 77449, an approximate 5.8-acre parcel of property adjacent to the Central Maintenance and Operations Center and the Martin Ranch High School campus for the total acquisition cost estimated not to exceed $1.254 million.
Second.
I have a motion by Mr. Dubrell, seconded by Mr. Griffin, that the Board of Trustees enter into an agreement to purchase from Weiss Land and Development, LLC, LC, 20400 Franz Road, Katy, Texas 77449. An approximate 5.8 acre parcel of property adjacent to the Central Maintenance and Operations Center and the Morton Ranch High School campus for a total acquisition cost estimated not to exceed $1,254,000. dollars. Any discussion? If not, we'll proceed to vote. All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye. Aye. Motion carries six to zero. Note Mrs Doyle is out of town this evening.
Mr President, please to announce the reassignment of Yvette Sylvan to be principal of Franz Elementary. She's currently AP at Stevens Elementary. We're pleased with that.
Very nice. Congratulations, Ms. Sylvan. She was a little excited when I called her today. Very nice.
The next item is a separation agreement with an employee regarding a pending non-renewal, a reference in case DFBB-2014-001-teacher.
Mr. President.
Mr. Adams.
I move that the Board of Trustees approve a separation agreement with an employee regarding a pending non-renewal reference in case number DFBB-2014-001-teacher.
Second.
Second. I have a motion by Mr. Adams, seconded by Mr. Dubrow, that the Board of Trustees approve the superintendent's recommendation for a separation agreement with an employee regarding a pending non-renewal referenced in case number DFBB-2014-001-teacher and authorize the superintendent to sign the agreement. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll proceed to vote. All those in favor, raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye.
Motion carries 6-0. Next is the personnel report.
Mr. President.
Mr. Griffin.
I move that the board approve the personnel report as recommended by the superintendent.
Second.
I have a motion by Mr. Griffin, seconded by Mrs. Fox, that the board approve the personnel report as recommended by the superintendent. Any discussion? Hearing none.
Mr. Maholski.
Oh, Mrs. Fox.
The only discussion I have is that on this personnel report recommended, there are a few of the teachers our new teachers that we're hiring our friends of mice my kiddos at home and students that graduated from KTISD and that always gives me such joy to hire our very qualified very well educated students right back into our classrooms and I'm excited to vote on this one
thank you it was nice to have them come home okay we will vote them all those in favor raise your right hand and say aye motion passes 6 to 0 do we have any scouts in the audience this evening can you see any seeing none okay moved to recognitions oh I'm sorry every scout oh I'm sorry please stand up tell Tell us your name, troop number, and any badge you may be working on. She says, I'm not working tonight. Not working tonight.
I'm just here.
And that's quite all right, too. Welcome. We're happy to have you here.
Okay. All right, for recognitions, we have Ms. Tigert.
Good evening, Mr. President, board members, and Superintendent Fraley. The KDISD Police Department is a full-service law enforcement agency established in 1988. The mission of the department is to effectively and efficiently provide for the protection of lives and property, preserve the public peace, and provide the central and campus administration with specialized services. The department is comprised of 50 officers serving all 181 square miles of KDISD. At this time I would like to introduce KDISD Chief of Police Mr. Mark
Hopkins. President Mikulski, board members, Superintendent Fraley. Recognizing the need to enhance the safety and security of the school district, the board authorized the increase in staffing allocations and reorganization of the police department. As a result of the increased staffing allocations, I bring two of our newly commissioned police officers tonight, Shamira Pitts and and Robert Cater Jr., please come forward and publicly swear and affirm the oath of office as required by law and be recognized as sworn members of the Katy ISD Police Department.
Thank you.
and laws of the United States and the United States, and laws of the United States,
and I furthermore follow the swear that I am not directly nor indirectly paid, offered, or promised to pay
Thank you.
While they're signing their certificates, I'd like to tell you a little bit about each one of them. Officer Samira Pitts was born in Los Angeles, California, raised in Las Vegas, Nevada. She relocated to Houston, Texas in 2007 and now lives in Katy ISD with Michael Quinn and their 11-month-old son, Khalil, to whom she devotes all her spare time. In December 2009, Officer Pitts completed the University of Houston Downtown Police Academy and began working for Kline ISD Police Department. She was a Kline ISD police officer for approximately five years before becoming a valued member of Katy ISD Police Department. Officer Robert Bobby Cater Jr. is a native Houstonian and currently lives in Katy ISD with his wife, Christina, their nine-year-old daughter, Savannah, and two-year-old son, Case. Officer Cater spends his spare time with his family, friends, and motorcycle. I don't know how that all fits together, but okay. Officer Cater's first career included 15 years of installing and repairing elevators in high-rise buildings. However, his lifelong dream was to become a police officer. To fulfill that dream, Officer Cater attended the Lone Star College Police Academy at night. And upon graduating in 2009, Officer Cater became a Fort Bend County Deputy Sheriff. After four years with Fort Bend County, he transferred to Katy ISD and has become a valued member of the Katy ISD Police Department. Please help me welcome Officers Pitts and Cater, and it's really not a comedy act, Pitts and Cater, to our Katy ISD family. Both Officer Pitts and Cater brought family members. They're in the audience tonight. Officer Pitts' family members are up front here, and Officer Cater's wife is in the back there. and his uh yeah so thank you very much
alright congratulations officers Pitts and Cater and welcome we will be moving to the consent agenda portion of our agenda believe mrs. McDonald will be talking to us about some generators this evening and Mr. Robinson welcome
good evening President Mohoski board members and superintendent Fraley we have one one item on the consent agenda for your consideration this evening. First of all, you may notice that I'm not Mrs. Stevenson. She's on a well-earned vacation, so tonight you get the backup. But I have brought reinforcements with me, Kathy McDonald and Patty Fortin from the purchasing department, in case you have any questions of a technical nature about this item. You may recall that last year power was lost at a game at Rhodes Stadium. without a backup system. The only light available for evacuating the stadium came from the LAMS system, and there was no sound system to issue evacuation instructions to the patrons. In an effort to correct that situation and provide emergency backup power, maintenance is recommending moving a 40-kilowatt generator from OAC to Rhodes and also installing a 100-amp automatic transfer switch. which this project will include the installation of new emergency panels, auxiliary lighting for the stadium and the parking lots, and a sound system. Due to the short time frame for completion and the fact that there are qualified vendors available through the Harris County Department of Education Choice Partners Cooperative, we are requesting permission to utilize the job order contracting or JOC method to complete this project. We are recommending the company, LECS Limited, to complete the project for a not-to-exceed price of $439,639. This price includes all required permits and bonds and an owner's contingency amount of $25,000. LECS Limited is required to complete the project by August 21, 2014. We recommend that the Board approves LECS Limited for completion of this project using the job order costing method as presented. And we're happy to answer any questions you may have.
Mr. President. Mr. Griffin. I was at that game and the amount of work that was done by the staff and the administration, the policemen and the community was impressive. Is this going to give us the ability that if this would happen again, the press box or wherever we have the emergency management system, the ability to talk, or is this just going to be the siren that we hear on our TV all the time when they test the?
No, they will have the capability of speaking from either the press box or down in the field house where the command center is.
Okay, thank you.
The completion date was August 21st? Yes, August 21st. it's what's the date of the first football game August 22nd August 22nd I
just said I think that's the screaming just checking oh we have to be finished before that that'd be great any other questions thank you very much thank you
Moving to our discussion action portion 6.1, I believe Dr. Creech is coming to speak with us. Welcome, Dr. Creech. Always a pleasure to have you.
Good evening, President Mikalski, Board members, Superintendent Fraley. Can you hear me? Move it over. Got it now? Got it. In 2009, the state legislation passed House Bill 3, and in there was a portion of a piece for data analysis, for data, the access to data. The state built its own or had Pearson build a portal for data to be accessible to all parents, students, community members in the state of Texas had to be ready by 2011. Katy ISD has been doing this for a long, long time, but the state required, because there were smaller districts that didn't have the technology to produce all of this, Katy has and does. does. The waiver is to ask the permission and the state gives us that in the education code 32.258 requires that we have to have something. The state has TAMS, Texas Assessment Management System that a lot of districts that don't have a technology department like we do or don't have the access or the ability to produce the data, they have to use the system you have to have something we've been asking for this waiver since 2009 the portal actually became available for members of the state in 2011 so we've been requesting this data since 2009 hasn't changed it's the same thing we're just requesting that we use our own system because it is honestly more reliable we can get the data in it within hours where if we send it to the state we're waiting on them to post it so then we can then pull it back out
this waiver just allows us to do our business okay thank you any questions there any objections to moving this item to consent okay thank you doctor Thank you, Dr. Creech. Next we have, I believe, Mrs. Ward. Talk about a new math course.
Looking forward for your consideration, a new course proposal that is actually an elective credit designed to help struggling math students who have yet to pass an EOC. So it might be designed mostly for ninth and tenth graders who need to pass the Algebra I EOC, and they haven't been able to, or maybe their eighth grade scores were particularly low, and we think they might need extra help in the ninth grade while they are co-enrolled in Algebra I. So it's an elective credit, and the high schools are excited about the potential of now we're able to offer a course that our students can be enrolled in to earn credit under the direction of a math teacher we would start teaching this course in 2014-15 which is this coming August we'd have the curriculum prepared at the beginning of the fall semester there any questions that you have mr. president thank you mrs. Ward
for the explanation it's an elective credit they're not really very much room in our in our day for electives anyway but do you see that as a concern that's the only concern is good question could it be an after school something if children are or or an online or something else so that so do they have enough room so they don't have to drop out of fine arts or in athletics to to fit this in if they need it house bill 5 and the recommended plan also has room in
in the student's day for some electives. The way we've been approaching students who need to pass the EOC is to put them in an algebra block course, which is two periods out of their day, but they only got one credit. So this, the high schools are overjoyed now that they can actually put a kid in a course where they can earn credit. The other way that some high schools were handling students who needed to pass the EOC was to put them in an ISP, which is an instructional support period, under the direction of a math teacher, but still they earn no credit. So we found a way now through an innovative course at TEA to be able to offer credit. I'm pretty excited about this. I love that. Excellent. Mr. Griffin. Will this be available at all the
high schools and how many students do you think will take advantage of the new
course? The high schools, six of our high schools, offer the algebra block or the ISP and the students are already used, they're already in those course requests, they're already placed in sections. Now we just change the course code. We don't call it algebra block, we change the number on it. And the same thing with the ISP. For example, at Seven Lakes High School we had about four sections of 15 kids in each section. A high school with a larger number of EOC failures might have seven or eight sections. So the students still have an option of what course they want to be enrolled in for the to be able to pass the EOC we think that they're going to to choose the elective credit option instead of coming after school or on Saturdays to get extra help
Ms. Van I have an incoming ninth grader so he he does not follow the criteria of needing math help but how are you going to reach out and explain this to so many parents a lot of parents have I've never even had a child in high school. They have now a ninth grader who will benefit greatly. I love the whole perspective of being on elective credit. I think it's gonna serve the kids great. I'm just wondering what's the plan of action to communicate not only to the students, but to their parents to understand the benefit and how this is gonna help their student.
Eighth graders now, those who just passed the EOC, I mean the STAR math test, or those who might have failed it and finally passed it on the third try third administration those we've had those conversations a long time the counselors know the test scores they find the parents and the kids and they have that conversation and that happens in about may after we get the scores back so they change a course request to put the student in isp or algebra block so we've already been identifying those kids in the past now it's all good news in that we have an elective course credit to put them them in. So it's up to counselors and teachers and assistant principals mainly to have the relationships with the students and parents to be able to direct them into that course and that should be happening now.
Is there any objections to moving this item to consent? Thank you Mrs. Ward. Sounds like a great and innovative solution so thank you. Next we have Mrs. Holland. Welcome. Talking discipline tonight. All right.
Mr. President, members of the board, Mr. Fraley, we have for you tonight a proposed discipline management plan and student code of conduct. The Texas Education Code requires that we develop a discipline management plan and student code of conduct in concert with our KD Improvement Council and it must be approved by the Board of Trustees on an annual basis. Fortunately for us in this last legislative session there were other issues that were of greater interest than the discipline plan so there were really no legislative changes that we had to contend with. The one change that we want to make sure that our parents are aware of, we have a special section of the discipline plan where we have notifications. Falsification of student records is now a felony as opposed to a misdemeanor. So when we have people who tamper with student records, whether that be falsifying where they reside or some other falsification on a student record, it is now a felony. So the stakes are higher and we want to make sure that we put this in a prominent location so that parents will be aware of that. In terms of other changes, the state defined for us in a previous legislative session a definition of serious misbehavior when we have students who are already at our D-AEP and when we are considering possible placement in a JJAEP on a discretionary basis those offenses are very severe such as public lewdness and a variety of other things but just ongoing persistent misconduct is not enough to remove a student from the DAP any longer we felt we also needed to provide a definition of what we meant by serious behavior when we have a student who is a a persistent behavior problem at the home campus and we need to consider removing them to a DAP. So we have included now a definition of what we consider to be serious misconduct that might result in the removal. By law in our discipline management plan we have to specify under what conditions and for what types of behaviors the student might be removed from class, from the campus or from a DAP to a JJAP. So we want to make sure that we are clearly communicating what those are in our discipline plan. One of the suggestions that came from our advisory groups from administrative representatives, and we do meet with the committee from elementary, junior high, and high school each year, the teachers are telling us that having the cell phones on vibrate is sometimes just as annoying as if they were ringing, particularly if multiple phones are vibrating. So they asked us to change the language to have them on silent during the instructional day and during instructional time. So that was a relatively minor change but we'll take some communication I'm sure at campuses. We've also made some minor revisions not in the policy regarding dress code but just in some of the the interpretations and ultimately the principals at our campus have the ability to determine what is distracting or what is inappropriate on their individual campuses. But some of the language that we had previously such as not wearing pants or items with spandex, they laugh now and say you can't buy anything without spandex. So some of those things were simply outdated and we tried to revise the language. language. Several years ago they asked that we relax a little bit the provisions about facial hair because we had students because of religious reasons or other reasons were not able to shave until a certain point. We also have greater diversity and some younger students have more obvious facial hair than others. So they've been most appreciative of that because the real goal of this is to allow the principals and assistant principals not to spend so much of their time monitoring dress code but rather spending their energies on the main thing, which is academic performance. And they found that a lot of the things that might be distracting to some adults don't impact the other students or the school environment at all. So they're just asking us to please allow them some flexibility there, not that they're going to throw away the baby with the bath water, but just to give them a little flexibility to really focus their energies where it needs to be. Any questions?
Mr. President? Mr. Griffin?
Ma'am, on a, I don't know what page it's on, serious misbehavior, page 1415, you highlighted in red serious misbehavior in this situation is defined as. Why is in this situation highlighted and turned in red as opposed to just defining serious misbehavior in general?
Okay, because the state has defined serious misbehavior in terms of removal from a DAEP to a JJAEP, but it did not define what was meant by serious behavior when removing a student from a home campus to a DAEP. So what's in red is just for your purposes to see that that's where the change is, that we're adding that language.
Thank you.
Mr. Adams. Ms. Holland, we get reports all the time from Dr. Caskey and others that we are able to identify the progress that we make on our education aspects. and you've been doing student discipline management handbook for a long time. One of the things that I'd like to see, and maybe I need to address this to the superintendent, is that what I would like to maybe see is maybe some type of annual report which would indicate the effectiveness of our student discipline management handbook and how it's working. In terms of that, I know that may be hard, but I'm looking at things like maybe the number of arrests that we make or we have to place a child in the AEP or something like that and and what are the crimes if you want to call it that that are committed because what I'm looking for our trends here about things and in our neighborhoods hood and see and I think that it's it's important for us to stay stay abreast of that and it may be be that this may be something that's presented to the board in an executive session as opposed to you know something out in public but because that for us to get to know because our safety issues and all but I think it would be beneficial to us to to maybe just do a snapshot on a yearly basis to to see where we are on some of these things and I know the student this one management handbook covers a multitude of things everything from cell phones like you saying I'm not looking for that I'm looking for things that are you know a number of children that maybe are DUI minors in possession or things like that or if we if we're seeing anything it
might be a drug problem or of that nature okay Mr Adams I think that's an excellent suggestion in fact as we were talking about having our planning session with the senior staff the identification of different reports and things will be as part of that conversation we'll be have it so the appropriate thing to include in the conversation. Thank you.
We'll say that we served 333 students over the course of the year in our disciplinary alternative education program and based on statistics that have been published in area newspapers we are among the lowest and we really think other than those mandatory removals for which we have no discretion we do have committees who meet to consider those that are going in on permissive basis and if we don't feel the campuses have exhausted their efforts we send them back and say bring your application at a later date. I also think it's important to remind the board that the discipline plan is just one portion of our effort toward student safety and the curriculum instruction department in particular the special education department has been implementing what we call PBIS and we've had really great results with that we're seeing a reduction in the number of suspensions. On the opposite side of that with the passage of Senate bills 393 and 1114 that now prohibits us giving citations to students who commit classy misdemeanors. While the intent behind that I think is very positive there are instances where we have seen increases in the number of fights and assaults and other types of regressive aggressive behavior, disruption of class, disruption of transportation, those things we can no longer cite for. Some of our principals have really expressed concerns about that because students are realizing there's nothing that can be done. Until a student actually injures someone, a simple assault or fight is not going to rise to a level for us to do anything other than trying to just remove the child from the situation for a while. Given the feeling across the nation and concerns about violence and student safety, there's some real challenges I think ahead. But I really do think for the most part, Mr. Adams, that our principals are doing a great job of trying to handle the situations at the campus as best they can.
Mr. President, one of our biggest promises we have to make to our parents is that kids will be safe at school. It's one of our biggest promises we have to make, and that is something that I know our principals are very concerned about as well. Looking at the disruptive behavior in the classrooms and hallways and whatnot is always on our minds. And we even look at school layout and design to address those kinds of things and lots of staff training. The Senate bills that Mrs. Holland referenced, I actually attended a Senate jurisprudence committee meeting last week to discuss this. They were very pleased that the number of citations have decreased because they have prohibited us from doing it. The reasons to cause the citations have not necessarily decreased. And one principal pointed out that the children now know that where they used to go fight behind the restaurant across the street, Now they do it at school because at school they can't be arrested and given the citation. Whereas across the street they can be. And so this law has some unintended consequences that we'll be forming, Senator West will be forming a gold standard type committee and I've asked to be a part of that along with TASB officials to just look at those types of things. you know the days of chewing gum and wearing your hair too long I wish I saw we had to deal with but you cannot read the newspaper headlines you cannot watch the nightly news and somehow be so naive to think that those things don't play out in our classrooms as well across this country they do so we're putting our heads in the sand and fooling ourselves to think that we are immune from society's impact when actually we are the recipient we are the display case of society's dysfunctions and and we cannot have our schools safe we don't
improve our society I'll get my soapbox on that is there any objections to
moving this item to consent thank you very much miss home next we have miss Ms. Decker, welcome. We're going to talk about resurfacing a track this evening. All right.
Good evening, President Mohalski, Board of Trustees, and Superintendent Fraley. Last month we discussed the possible repair options, but we asked that we wait until we receive the results of the soil samples. The soil samples revealed the need to stabilize the subgrade soils. soils therefore we are recommending that the Board of Trustees approve funding for soil stabilization and track replacement at Morton Ranch High School at a cost not to exceed $315,000. Now I'm going to turn it over to Chris.
Okay. The $315,000 is not going to be in the budget amendments that are presented before you. We didn't know that number until this morning. So what we'll do is between now and next week we'll include that if that be your wishes and my our recommendation will be to pay that through the construction fund with project savings mr president mr griffin miss decker how
long if we go with option three typically does that track last they can't really tell us bottom
lines we don't know how long the substructure will last the problem is we're putting a 10-year warranty product on top of it so my concern is if the track fails in three years we wasted a 10-year warranty product by putting on top of the substructure okay so if you go with option
three that track basically has got a 10-year warranty regardless no no we're putting the
surface on it on a non-repaired if we go with option three right and the substructure fails the warranty for the surface on top of it does not come with that it's a separate situation so So we have to guarantee the substructure is good for the warranty on the resurface to be good. Does that make sense of what I'm saying?
And I think you're asking how long the substructure warranty would be.
Well, if we went with option three, does that basically tell us we have warranties for that track to be 10 years? Yes, we should have a 10-year warranty on the track.
Okay. Yeah. Okay, I got you. Okay.
Any other discussion? So again, Mr. President, so the plan is to go ahead and move forward with this project and then bring the budget amendment back for your approval. I believe that's understood. Correct? Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you.
Okay. Any objections moving this item to consent?
None?
Okay. Next on our agenda, we will discuss additional staffing needed to address growth for the 2014-15 school year. Mr. Snyder, welcome. Welcome.
Good evening, Mr. President, members of the board, Mr. Fraley. This evening you received the proposal for department staffing that we have worked on for the last two months. And I want to mention a word of thanks to all my colleagues that have worked hard to, because we start out with basically what is a Christmas wish list. And it's like telling your children they're not going to get what they wanted. And so it's been a lot of work that's gone into this and reducing it to the document that you see before you. And we just bring them this proposal for these positions to be added for the 2014-15 school year.
Mr. President. Mr. President. One of our biggest focuses have been then to look at how these positions directly support the campus and in some instances that we had a lot of massive cuts back in 2010-11 to management operations and we're seeing the results of that is that we don't believe our schools are, they're not dirty, they're not functioning but we want to do better. So we're looking primarily at replacing that support and also enhancing campus and instructional support and supports teachers as well on the structural side and technology side and as Mr. Schneider said this has been a true team effort we looked at for the past couple of months but I know folks who looked at this stuff for years with their long-range staffing plans and we still haven't said yes to all of them yet and I hear about that how many times it's been on get cut but we do want to focus on providing as much direct support as possible in our district staffing to the campuses, either on the structural side of things or the technology side of things, which should be supporting instruction also. And we feel we looked at this very hard, and we can do this and sustain it. I had concerns regarding the upcoming legislative session and how this could impact us financially, and I've spoken with a lot of folks, and we feel at this point very comfortable that this revenue that is needed to support this and sustain it is there and will be there. And it does allow us to also look at the any salary raises for teachers as well.
I would like to acknowledge Yolanda Edmond, Executive Director HR. She as she put it she's the worker behind the curtain that I made come out and sit sit here tonight. But a lot of this is done through her hard work and her department's work to present all this and get it right for us. We also worked real close with Chris as well to make sure that, and Sherry, to make sure that this fits in the long range budget plan. That was kind of our guiding point that we've been cutting back to.
Your work is much appreciated. Thank you. Any objections moving this item to consent? None heard? Okay. Mr. Frehley, I know that nothing is ever guaranteed when the legislature meets, but hopefully the booming Texas economy will hold off for a while and tax revenues will be where they
need to be for us. All right. Thank you, sir. And at the risk of violating my rule number one, when you made the sales pitch, if you would do though no transportation we have put in some positions there all right
okay looks like we've come to the accounting and finance portion of tonight's agenda good evening mrs butterfield
first we'll discuss grant ratifications tonight we have 11 grants MOST OF THESE ARE MOSTLY OUR LARGER GRANTS AND PARTICIPATE WE'VE BEEN PARTICIPATING IN THESE FOR MANY YEARS APPROXIMATELY 16 MILLION 193 THOUSAND 353 DOLLARS OF GRANTS WHICH ARE BEING APPLIED FOR YOU CAN SEE THAT THE FIRST SIX OF THEM PLANED PERTAINED TO SPECIAL EDUCATION THE NEXT TWO TO COMP ED AND And last three or two other programs, primarily ELL and CATE. Do you have any questions about the grant ratification?
Any discussion? Any objection moving these items to consent? Okay. Thank you.
Budget amendments?
All right.
We have 44 amendments tonight. Don't be concerned. IT'S HIGH VOLUME. THIS IS NORMAL. THERE'S A LOT OF HOUSEKEEPING THAT GOES ON. FINANCIAL CLERKS GO OFF DUTY. AND SO MOST OF THE ALL BUT TWO ARE OFFSETS BETWEEN FUNCTIONS. SO THERE ARE TWO TO BRING TO YOUR CALL TO YOUR ATTENTION. ONE GOF AMENDMENT IN THE AMOUNT OF $115,800. THIS IS FOR EXPENDITURES RELATED TO THE 2014 BOND COMMITTEE MEETINGS. and then the $3,500,000 debt service budget amendment that will provide the expenditure funding for the proposed defeasance later this year.
And again, that defeasance is, Mr. President, is to accelerate some payoff of principal and save a ton of money and interest.
Right, which we prefer. Any questions or discussion on these? And just to be clear, the $315,000 for the track will be added into these budget minutes next week, right? That we will. Okay. Any objections to moving this item to consent? Yes, I believe we can, and it will be added during the week, yes. We are now at the discussion portion of our agenda. I believe Mr. Allowney.
Mr. President, as he takes his seat, you may have noticed that we have had some issues in this room at these meetings with the audio. Frequently our monitors you are looking at are yellow or not working at all. There is reason for that. These guys, they have the fix. They have the fix.
Good evening, President Mikulski, Board members, and Superintendent Fraley. Thank you for the opportunity to present the audio-video upgrade for the Board Room, the Conference Center, and the Executive Conference Room. Assisting me with this presentation is Mr. Joe Christopherson, our Director of Technology Operations Department. The scope of this project involves replacing the existing audio and video equipment for the following three locations, the boardroom, the executive conference room, and the conference center. These three areas are heavily used by the district and the public for a variety of events year-round. The audio and video systems in these areas are old and outdated. Most of the equipment was originally installed during the administration building renovation project 11 years ago. This equipment has reached its recommended end of life. In fact, in most cases, replacement parts parts are discontinued and repairs are very difficult to perform. These systems are on borrowed time and in need of replacement as soon as possible. Consequently, the KDISD design team has developed full specifications for the immediate replacement of these systems with the help of PBK as the engineering architect for this project. We We also invited three qualified vendors who are on state contracts to participate in a pre-bid walkthrough to assist the scope and cost of the project. We believe that this project will bring these conference areas up to date with current technology and take it to a higher level in terms of flexibility, reliability, ease of use, and performance. performance. Although these systems by design appear simple, they are inherently complex and require hundreds of components to work together seamlessly. They are typically designed to last a long time, anywhere from 5 to 10 years, depending on the component. For example, audio and video controllers may last for 10 years with no major issues. Other parts, such such as projectors, microphones, may be replaced in shorter time. Generally, the core of the system is designed to last a long time, approximately 8 to 10 years with no major issues. Now, in our plan, we took extra care to ensure flexibility, redundancy, ability to grow, ease of use, longevity of the technology, performance, and operational cost. For example, as part of this design, lecterns have their own media presentation controller and expanded video and audio input capabilities for future expansion. Ceiling speakers suited for high ceiling for a fuller and richer sound that's highly intelligible. Wireless microphones with extremely slim RF footprint to prevent interferences in a highly wireless environment. High definition video wall panels for high quality textual and graphic displays suited for such large spaces. Reduced operational cost by using technology that does not require expensive consumables and audio video matrix control with automatic light sensors for each room in the conference center area. Although these areas are extremely busy all year round and especially during the summertime, we want to ensure a quick completion of this project. The estimated time of completion for this project is about three months from the date of purchase. Now I would like to turn it over to Mr. Joe Christopherson to go over the upgrades and estimated cost for these areas. Good evening President Mikulski,
Board Members, and Superintendent Fraley. The proposed upgrade will include the following items for the boardroom and executive conference area. Install and provision a new Ethernet compliant audio server digital signal processor system. Install and provision a new digital video distribution and routing switcher. Replace speakers, microphones, and projectors. Replace the Deus displays with computers, eliminating the tether to laptops. Replace the boardroom projector with a high-definition projector. Replace the projection screen with a high-definition compatible screen. Adding a 84 inch HD LED TV confidence display display panel on the wall facing the board members. Replace the timing clock that will allow for hour, minutes, and seconds. Replace master control system, lectern displays, and lighting switches. Additional audio recording outputs for news media in the back of the room. Additional input capability at the lectern. Additional cabling, however, we will reuse existing cabling where possible. In the executive conference room we will be with the 84 inch HD LED TV panel and add audio system.
Can we pause there and put this in plain English a little bit? Alright. Basically the panels that you are looking at now trustees are hooked up to a laptop that is not always working well. These microphones as well, you know how they have been behaving for us right now. So all that will be changed. All the guts to make all this work will be replaced. The projectors that we have up there now, if you're in the audience, you can sometimes, sometimes you can't see it. We have lots of training in here. We want to have a monitor up on that wall there as well, so that if you're presenting, you know what you're presenting, and also we can have a better visual, you can from this desk as well. So that's what we have in here and in the conference room again have the same type of AV presentation capacity in there. They'll be digitized and a lot better, easier to read. We do a lot of graphic stuff, a lot of tech stuff, and these just do not make this clear. That's what we're trying to do here. Is that kind of?
Yes. All right. That sums it up.
Mr. President. There's a lot of hardware in here. Is there no software included in this?
So there are software in the control system that they have to configure to manage all the mics and audio and all the feedback. All that stuff is built into that system, that control system.
Mr. President, I noticed that we've had some awards recently over in, is that 1,200 over there? That some of those projectors are not working very well.
And that's the next section of this.
Okay, sorry, sorry.
Right up. Let me ask one clarifying question real quick because we're talking about the screens in here and the resolution. I thought you had said would there still be a projector here?
There would still be a projector. It would be a high-definition projector, so the screen has to be adjusted to meet the next aspect.
Okay, so it would improve the resolution considerably. Yes. Okay. Ms. Weiss.
Mr. Michalski. So we have in front of us the list you're about to read us. Yes. Can we jump right to the plain language part?
Absolutely. Can we jump right to the Mr. Frehley summary? We want it to be as accurate as possible with this language. We actually debated how much. This is a watered-down technical version of it.
We need it, but we can see it.
She's worried about us not getting it.
Yeah, I got it already. I got it already. Can you just give it to them in plain language? Is that for the next part for the?
For the 1200 Conference Center.
We spend a lot of time in there too, so just explain it to us, we'll get it.
New shot? Yeah, the plain language is really we're replacing all the projectors in that area with TV panels. These are high definition 3x3 TV panels. We're also replacing the whole audio system, the video system. them also on the side walls where we're adding displays, 85 inch high definition televisions. Because that area you can divide it into so many different conference rooms. Right now you can't even get a projector or any kind of projection in these rooms. You have to bring in a portable projector. So basically in a nutshell, that's what we're doing in that area.
Along with sound reinforcement, right now if you break the room out and it's no longer the big 1200 room we have to wheel in speakers and a portable mic system and those kind of things to get sound in there this will allow us to divide the room into sections and still provide mics
for those sections as well mr maholsky follow-up miss fox oh i forgot i'll come back to it when it comes back to me
Mr. Adams. One of the things that happens sometimes in city council meetings, especially in Houston and other places, is that at the podium that they have a light configuration that when speakers are speaking that they can know how long they have or something. Is there any opportunity to include something like that in this? I don't know if that floor panel in front of you has got the capability of having something that would hook up, as opposed to having an alarm go off on a computer or having a sergeant at arms try to get their attention and say, you've got 30 seconds left or something.
Right, and that can be included. We discussed that as an option as well, and it isn't a real difficult solution.
Trapped door.
Trapped door.
Mr. Mahalsky, I remembered my question.
Try again.
Sorry, as you were describing, I had all these ideas of all the kinds of meetings that we have in there. And sometimes we record in that room, certainly the State of the District address, things like that. Will this have a little bit better quality of that maybe? Is there an opportunity to not just bring in like a little handy cam and record?
It does address video recording of the meetings. No, it wouldn't. It couldn't, but it wasn't part of this.
I just saw it on YouTube this week. just i must i kind of saw mr fraley's state of the district address on youtube which was very interesting kdsd has a whole youtube channel it's incredible i thought some of the graduation stuff it was really great and so i just wondered it's pretty good audio and video even what what we have
from that but sure i saw several speeches of yours this weekend we have talked about because that's audio video production that type of stuff is is pretty big and we have uh begun to look at some some contract type of thing for those high-profile type things, like say other district. We did one of the bond presentations as well. And so we're looking at that. And so that's not this because those are kind of special events type things. So we can probably contract out cheaper than we can try to install and train and keep folks. Is that right, Dr. Reynolds? Is he kind of nodding over there? And if I could add, Mr. President, as Mr. Adams and Ms. Fox have said, we use those 1,200 rooms that we call here at the conference center. Constantly. Constantly. We have folks who actually rent those rooms from us and sometimes things work, sometimes they don't. We had a banquet in there and we had two folks working all night long just to get their video stuff to show. And we didn't give a discount, a rebate I don't believe. But this is our main training center, presentation center. And it's just costly to do this stuff. But we've had it for the past 10, 11, 12 years, what we're doing now, what we use now. So this will last us for a while, but definitely give us a lot more flexibility, I think ease of use, and really an upgrade of what we're doing because the training in there is getting more and more robust as well.
Mr. President. Mr. Adams.
Mr. President, you know, I know you've been to Region 4. There's a facility there. They have got really nice, state-of-the-art things over there. So I don't know if you've been over there to see what they've got, but they've got some really nice things. It may be something to just take a look at to be able to see that. Did we also say that you're going to have a modified thing in the back where people can, the press can plug in their deal back here? Yes. Okay, thank you.
Mr. DeBrogne.
My question is along the lines of the people that may use a 1200 room or rent it out. Because the price tag on this is, my initial response was like, whoa, when I first saw it here. What about cost recovery from the people utilizing $1,200? If we have the opportunity to subdivide it, can that increase our cost recovery potential?
I don't know about having kind of a fee increase with this because so many of those groups that rent it really are tied to our programs. We do some external renting, of course. and not having the full-fledged offerings that some of the other conferences would have our pricing may not have a expedited full cost recovery but we do get some the main thing we look at is our personnel that are in there we want to pay for our custodians and our staff that's working the system I think we even factor in an AV person when they if they need that but I don't see this nothing like the lamb system where we can see a three-year complete payback because
our rental rates aren't that high mr griffin all right this kind of throws i think towards the next discussion item but i understand the first two the boardroom and uh but the conference center if we do it now suppose the bond committee would come back with us and say hey all right the The 1200 room is a great multipurpose room, but when you did the State of the Union, man, we're bringing in chairs. That room is not designed for big training. So we're taking this audio system and we're making a multipurpose room, but it's really never going to be for where you want it to go. Would it be maybe more prudent to hold off just a little while? this is a discussion anyway to see if maybe in the bond committee came back with us and said hey we can give you a room maybe similar to a pac center so that we would have all the things that you need to carry on all the work that you need to get done because room 1200 is all right but when we put that little stand up there it's hard to get up the stairs it's hard to move it's very narrow the lighting's not good the audio's not that great and we need to spend a lot of money maybe if we had a an area set up for what the district needs might be. a $600,000 that we can put into a better area?
Well, first of all, thank you. I appreciate that offer. I really don't see anything happening that would require us to not need that space with what we're proposing. I think if we do anything else space-wise, you've approved the project center. That will have some AV equipment in it as well, capacity in there. If we do anything with the shell space and maybe any other type of meeting space or whatnot, we will have a scaled-down version. I don't see anything coming on board in what's being proposed that really would accomplish that. Nothing I've looked at thus far. But I love the idea.
A couple other questions. Help me understand, you were talking about in room 1200, I think, replacing the projectors and screens with, did you say 3x3 panels? So those are LED panels or like a zero edge that are butted up next to each other and you can merge data or video or whatever. So they're each 3x3, 3 feet by 3 feet?
No, they're 3x3 55 inch displays. 55 inch displays, 3x3? So it's approximately 14 feet wide and 8 feet high.
Oh, 3 by 3, 55 inches.
Yes, nine screens mashed together.
Okay, that makes more sense. How many, just one setup of that or multiple in that room?
All three of the projections.
Yeah, there's three projectors. Okay. Okay, that's interesting. Interesting. And then, okay, so this is on the agenda tonight for discussion only. Conceivably, it will come back as an action item at some point. Will you be presenting us with the bid information at that time? Because we did not have that in this package tonight.
We think we probably have the bid information ready for our consent agenda item for next next board meeting for the next board meeting. Yes.
Mr. President, if I could, as is our practice, since this was something that we kind of got forced into, we still wanted to have a chance to have a comfort dialogue with the board against your comfort level. And if you're ready, then we can move forward. If you're not, then you weren't under any kind of obligation. Well, you never are. But there was no expectation until you all had a comfort level that, okay, that you can accept this.
Mr. President.
Mrs. Fox.
So every time something comes to us, I choke at how much things cost. And every time I go to the grocery store, I choke at how much everything costs or need to do anything in my house because it does cost too much. Everything does. But we're KDISD, and we cannot say excellence, and we cannot expect excellence. from our classrooms and from our schools and then expect our community to come in here and see what they've seen the last few months which is everything go black and we have to stop and scramble and look for hard cup and just and you know we're allowing our community to see our meetings transparent and open and allow all that to happen and without quality quality communication devices so that they can understand what we're saying. I mean, we're cutting off all of that. And so I think we have to continue to provide excellence, and that means giving people who come and use our 1,200 rooms, you know, quality AV and devices. And I remember when this boardroom was built and we moved out of that small room upstairs, stairs and I just was so I wasn't on the board but I was just so proud that our boardroom finally looked like what what we felt like our children were getting and so I believe that this is probably a necessary expense to to continue the expectations we create we we as a community expect mr. president mrs.
Mrs. Fox, I think I'd come at them Fox. Mrs. Fox, I think this really is an investment or so than an expense. We have, I have looked at this need for many, many years, but I know there is a very bitter appetite, if at all, to spend money on an administration headquarters. I know that but the reality is this is where we work this is where we bring staff in for training this is where we do our our our thing to help support the main thing and and not having the best tools uh for the staff who supports the staff with the teaching i think it's putting them at a great disadvantage and and and certainly does not speak well for the district's image but most Most importantly, it really has made our work very ineffective and suspect oftentimes in terms of the quality of what we can do. And so thank you for your consideration of this. And we'd really like to try to expedite this as much as possible. It's about three months from the time of date of purchase. And we know our downtime, such as it is, is coming up now. So we need to get this bid, we'll get this out there and begin working on it. and we want to try to get in less than three months if we can. But we just need you to let us kind of give us the green light to go with it, and we can bring it back for action Monday.
Mr. Burrell. One final question, because, again, like Ms. Fox said, when I first saw the price tag, I was like, whoa, I don't need this. You know, what I would like to see, and I know I don't see it all. I've tried to come for Leadership Cady and other events here as much as possible. I know the EDC and other groups use room 1200. I would like to see some type of usage to make me really feel good about this number. You know, because I'm hearing 10 years, which isn't necessarily a very long time. But how many people actually use this room? How many people actually use 1200? How many, not just groups that rent it, but other groups, you know, some of the training that you're saying. What does that usage look like? So we can really see what we're talking about here.
Other than constant, I don't know what else I can give you. You know, when you come up here, oftentimes I try to take a shortcut to go to HR somewhere, and I can't get in because someone's meeting in here. 1,200 rooms, if it's not the whole room, they're subdivided in there, huddled around a little bitty laptop or maybe a miniature projector, but they really can't see everything. thing. And so these are in terms of, uh, I know, I know we run numbers because we do a gate count at road stadium. We do it at at murals and I don't know. And we sign in. So we would have to go back and create a report to tell you that the answer is, I think Tom's term is a lot. We're saying you're using
these rooms constantly, four to five times a week, three or four times. Oh,
it's great. That part of everything. A lot of hours before seven o'clock in the morning and after five o'clock we are reserved them for the next three months now because if we don't block them we're not gonna have time to work
on this project if you talk to dr. Caskey trying to our dr. Lawson trying to find space for in in service or some type of fresh development thankfully we we have tompkins high school which uses quite a bit but guess what not much longer so so and and the thing about it is i know the cost of some things are going down but but this is this is less than it would have been had we done it earlier years but i don't know i don't know if we can really keep delaying it so i mean so mr bell i can assure you there's a constant utilization of this space either by internal staff or through banquet season it is just filled with folks in the springtime and and there's something up here most nice in the week as well really are I don't have the quantifiable numbers in terms of the gates receipt tickets because we don't always keep a head count of who comes to the banquets and you have to include that as well Press development, all of them don't require signing in. But there are, in terms of bodies through those doors, tens of thousands. If you have 200,000 through roads, you're going to have easily, you know, 50, 60, 70, 800,000 bodies throughout the year here.
Mr. Mahalsky, I mean, the system's broken. I mean, it's just broke. We need to get it fixed. and we've got a government by board however you do it through through them you've got the approval I think we've got that and I'm all in favor of moving forward with this in some ways I wish that it was discussion action so we could take action but it's just this discussion so we'll catch it next
Monday night okay okay thank you I kind of envision a couple of those smaller all our LEDs mounted on the wall in the hallway out there just with a scrolling calendar of all the times the rooms are booked and I think it is yeah so okay thank you gentlemen it moves us to our standing agenda item 7.2 planning for growth 2014 bond mr. Fred Lee you have anything for us this evening on that
Just I think last time we met the committee began some deliberate work and they'll continue tomorrow night Mr. Brokaw. Mr. you don't want to. Yes sir
some some good news we started deliberations we had 15 tables so we had the bond committee broken into 15 different groups over two weeks those those tables deliberated and each one of those tables came up with a an initial package and only a couple of them had to work overtime so we have 15 individual packages right now tomorrow night that will be merged into five groups so you have three tables going into one and the goal is tomorrow night that hopefully will be down to five five proposals that are kind of pretty close so we can move forward over the next 30 days and and lead it to a recommendation we're going going to spread out a little bit tomorrow they the groups are getting bigger and they need a little more room so we're going to have them still at Taylor but in a couple different spots if you come to to Taylor tomorrow you see that we're taking places like the LG I the Commons library and other places too so that's the news I got and hopefully next Monday be able to give
you some positive news okay thank you very much mr. Goodell our next board meeting will be the regular board meeting come one week from tonight Monday June 23rd 2014 there being no other business the time is 847 and we are adjourned
Official documents
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Motions and votes
Recorded actions
MOTION 001 · AGENDA 3.1
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees enter into an agreement to purchase from Weiss Land & Development, LLC, 20400 Franz Road, Katy, TX 77449, an approximate 5.8 acre parcel of property adjacent to the central Maintenance and Operations center and the Morton Ranch High School campus for a total acquisition cost estimated not to exceed $1,254,000.
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bryan-michalsky | Yes |
| charles-griffin | Yes |
| henry-dibrell | Yes |
| joe-adams | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 002 · AGENDA 3.3
PassedIt is recommended that the Board of Trustees approve the Superintendent’s recommendation for a separation agreement with an employee regarding a pending nonrenewal, referenced in case #DFBB -2014-001-teacher, and authorize the Superintendent to sign the agreement.
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bryan-michalsky | Yes |
| charles-griffin | Yes |
| henry-dibrell | Yes |
| joe-adams | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |
MOTION 003 · AGENDA 3.4
PassedIt is recommended that the Board approve the personnel report, as recommended by the Superintendent.
6 Yes · 0 No
| Trustee | Vote |
|---|---|
| ashley-vann | Yes |
| bryan-michalsky | Yes |
| charles-griffin | Yes |
| henry-dibrell | Yes |
| joe-adams | Yes |
| rebecca-fox | Yes |