The board will now reconvene in open meeting. Today is Monday, June 18th. The time is 634 p.m.
Katy ISD · Work Study Meeting
Katy ISD Work Study Meeting, June 18, 2018
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Dr. Hint, will you verify that we are in compliance with the provisions of the Texas Open Meetings Act regarding the notice for this meeting?
Madam President, we are in compliance with regard to the notice for the meeting tonight.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's work-study meeting.
To prepare for this meeting, each board member received the agenda and documentation for this meeting on Thursday, June 14th,
and have had four days to study its content and to seek clarification from Dr. Hint.
This evening, the items posted on the agenda will be presented to the board by staff, administration, and the superintendent.
The board will have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss agenda items during tonight's meeting.
The board has just reconvened from closed meeting.
First off, do we have any scouts in the audience?
Having none, we will proceed to our recognition.
First, we have our presenter, Chief Jenks will introduce Officer Paula Centoyo.
Welcome.
President Dole, board members, superintendent Hill.
Newly commissioned peace officers are required to publicly swear or affirm an oath of office.
Tonight, we have a newly commissioned officer.
I would like to ask officer Paola Santoya to come forward to take the oath and be recognized as a member of
KDISD Police Department
Please raise your right hand and repeat after me I
Paula Santoya
Do solemnly swear
do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the duties of the
office of peace officer of Katy Independent School District of the
state of Texas and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and
defend preserve protect and defend the constitution the constitution and laws
and laws of the United States of the United States and of this state and of
this state so help me God so help me God congratulations
Paola Centoio is the daughter of Anna and Julio Centoio she grew up in
old Katie and has been a Katie Tiger all her life. She attended Katie Elementary,
Katie Junior High, and Katie High School. Upon graduating from Katie High School
in 2013, Paola moved to San Antonio, Texas where she attended Our Lady of the Lake
University for four years, obtaining her bachelor's degree in criminal justice
with a minor in psychology. While attending Our Lady of the Lake, she was
involved in many different organizations such as Criminal Justice Society, the
Criminal Justice Honor Society. In addition, while a senior she was
selected as one of four undergraduates to present at the Criminal Justice
Conference in Kansas City, Kansas. During her educational career at Our Lady of
the Lake University, Paola completed an internship with the San Antonio Police
Police Department where she completed over 150 hours interning in various divisions to
include patrol, criminal investigations division, homicide, crime scene investigations, and
dispatch.
Upon graduation in 2017, Paola enrolled in the University of Houston Downtown Police
Academy.
She graduated from there in January of 2018 before beginning her law enforcement career
with the Katy Independent School District Police Department in March of 2018.
Help me welcome Paola Santoya.
Welcome. Thank you so much.
Madam President.
Ms. Fox.
Is that her family? Can they stand to be recognized? I'd like to see it.
If you could please have your family stand and be recognized, that would be great.
Thank you so much.
Welcome. I'm sure they're proud of you.
Next we have agenda item 5.1, planning for growth, attendance boundary modification for
for the 2019-2020 school year.
Mr. Lee Cruz, welcome.
Good evening, President DeWolf, board members, Dr. Hint.
Tonight, we once again set the stage
for our annual attendance boundary enrollment review
process.
Keep in mind that the recommendations from this review
would be implemented at the start of the 19-20 school year.
Here you see our ABM process, which was established in 2012 and modified slightly in 2017 to provide
additional time for input and discussion from stakeholders before final approval is sought.
As has traditionally been the case, the process begins with district staff, including representatives
representatives from central office, campus principals, and campus principals working
with our contract demographer, population and survey analysts to develop the ABM options.
Tonight, Chris Poole with PASSA will be presenting those options.
And following tonight's board meeting, we will seek stakeholder input with a final recommendation
brought to the board in December.
This year's process included our standard review of campus capacities and boundaries
with special attention given to the opening of our two new buildings in 2019, Elementary
42 and Junior High 16.
As mentioned on this slide, this ABM coupled with the opening of these new campuses is
intended to provide enrollment relief for Bethke Elementary, Ties Junior High, Wood
Creek and Seven Lakes Junior High Schools.
Here you see the timeline for the process.
Note that there will be a September update of progress in the survey results to the board
and again, final approval will be sought in December.
Our communications slide shows the three phases and our education phase actually kicks off
tonight and notification, the notification phase, I'm sorry, the participation phase
will begin on June 20th.
Please note that all the notification for any ABM decisions made by the board would
begin in January and we would contact any students or families that are affected by
the ABM change.
It is now my pleasure to introduce Chris Poole with PASA to discuss the proposed options
and provide insight into considerations in the process.
Good evening.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
As we often do, I'd like to start the presentation tonight with the current attendance zones
showing the projected students that we have based on the 2017 demographic update.
These figures shown here are the geocoded students, just as a reminder,
and that means that these are the counts of students that we would expect to reside in each attendance zone,
regardless of whether they're actually attending any of those schools.
Ms. Poole, yes, could you please make sure you're speaking closer to the mic?
Okay.
Is that a little better?
Okay.
Okay. So just again, these are the geocoded students that we're projecting based on the demographic update from the fall of 2017.
We do know that students transfer around a lot, largely in this area due to their bilingual programs.
And so what we have included here is for each one of the facilities, we've included the capacity of the school there in parentheses,
the geocoded projections, but then also the transfers as they were occurring in the fall there at the top.
So we can see that Hutzel King and Morton Ranch are picking up students.
Nottingham Country, West Memorial, and Winborn are losing students from their geocoded student population.
So this is option one.
This is our recommended option.
This would relieve Bethke Elementary by sending everything that's between Morton and Clay to either Hutzel or to Elementary 42.
This does pull 23C, Laney Zone 23C, that's where the school actually sits.
That's Morton Creek Ranch South.
It does pull that Laney Zone also up into Elementary 42.
And in this particular option, none of the other attendance zones are touched,
just Hutzel, Winborn, the new 42, and Bethke.
Also, if you are interested in further studying these,
the black outlines here in each case the heavy black outlines are the current
attendance zones so you can see a little bit the outline of Bethke that pulls 10
B that would bet 10 B comes from Bethke and most of elementary 42 comes from
Bethke also we also wanted to know what was the minimum amount of zoning that
could be done to open the school this is that option in this case hudson is left alone and
elementary 42 has an attendance zone only large enough to barely exceed its capacity at the end
of the projection period while we like the idea of moving the fewest students this left bethke with
almost 1300 students in the fall of 19 and hudson would still be operating at around 70 percent of
capacity. Then we also did look at an option three. This final option is very
similar to the recommended option one with the only change being that it moves
Laney Zone 22B which is primarily Lake Creek Forest from King to Winborn. King
currently gains students due to transfers and Winborn currently loses
students due to transfers. This would keep both schools operating slightly
closer to their capacities once transfers are accounted for. Landing Zone
22B, depending on the year, contains 140 to 160 elementary school students.
And then to go on to the junior highs, once again I'd like to start with the
current attendance zones. These figures are the geocoded students. We're showing
the enrollment, we're showing the capacity in parentheses just as we did
for the elementary schools. There's one thing that's very important to note here, though.
If you look at Wood Creek's long-term projection, it's 2,286 students. Ties is 1,855, and Seven
Lakes is 2,105. The capacities for all three of those schools are around 1,400 students.
So if you do the math real quickly, that means that to get all three of those schools
down to their capacity, we need to find a new spot for around 2,000 students.
And we're opening only one junior high of 1,400 students.
And so that is what drove some of these decisions
and how do we best handle the students in this entire sector
for these options that we're going to be looking at.
The black lines here again show the existing junior high zones.
So you can see that here, Junior High 16 pulls from Seven Lakes Junior High
and Wood Creek Junior High.
This is our recommended option here that we're starting with.
Tice Junior High gains two land use zones from Wood Creek Junior High and loses to Seven Lakes and to Cinco.
Cinco Ranch Junior High gains from Tice and from Wood Creek, and then the section of Cinco Ranch Junior High that is east of the parkway moves to Beck.
It's perhaps TICE that sees the biggest amount of change, but the core land use zones that
make up the central portion of the zone remain the same with the changes occurring on the
edges.
We've left Beckendorf alone here, and it's left alone in all of the options because its
enrollment is projected to decline slightly as smaller, younger grades work their way
through the system.
This option places all of the schools at Beckendorf between 86 and 105 percent of capacity for
2019 and between 84 and 113 percent of capacity for 2027.
Even with quite a bit of rezoning, option one still leaves Wood Creek over capacity by the end
of the projection period. So option two here looks at pulling more students from Wood Creek,
but due to ties being so full they can't be sent to ties. So instead in this option they're sent
to Cinco Ranch Junior. This works well in the long run, but as some portions of the district
age out, like Cinco, but it puts too many students in Cinco Ranch Junior High in the short term.
That would be 1,525 students in Cinco that has a capacity near 1,400. We also looked, the other
difference here, we also looked at smoothing out the line between Seven Lakes Junior and Ties along
along Cinco Ranch Boulevard.
And while this makes a much nicer boundary line,
Seven Lakes Junior High is small over time
and ties remains over capacity by 100 to 200 students
throughout the projection period.
And then again, because these two options
do require quite a bit of zoning,
we did stand back and take a look
at what is the minimum amount that we could do
to open the new school.
option 3 shows this minimum amount and it leaves Cinco Ranch junior and and
that junior high alone along with Bekendorf so in this case junior has 16
pulls from Wood Creek and seven lakes only and while junior has 16 and seven
lengths looks to be in good shape in this under this scenario Wood Creek is
expected to shortly exceed its capacity and ties would not get below 1,700
students at the same time in this scenario if we leave Cinco and Beck
alone, then they have excess capacity. And so as a result, we felt that this minimum sort of option was not viable.
Just as a reminder that we do obviously need an ABM. We have two new schools opening up, so that requires attendance zones for those campuses.
These recommendations have been collaboratively drafted. We sought a lot of input, and we're going to continue to seek input
because the communities about to get the that are affected are about to get
surveyed so that's going to be a good thing and then just a reminder that
we're taking additional time with this we start in June we don't finish until
December so we allow plenty of time for feedback and we will give you an update
on the survey results so at this time we are happy to take any questions
Adam president mr. Lacy I don't know which one of y'all did this to direct
this at but if i'm looking at option three just to kind of look at where wood creek is the western
end of wood creek if you're able to look at it very closely that 50a 50b 51a 51b that entire
western section there's not a whole lot of streets cut in there there's a lot of new building going
in i'm assuming the answer is yes that we are taking into account the number of homes that
they are anticipating yes because we do go in and survey we actually drive all of the streets that
that are being developed.
We actually just sent somebody,
since this is based on the fall 2017 numbers,
we did send somebody back to several sections
in the north and the south to sort of reassess
and be sure there weren't any surprises.
And so yes, we're attempting to always take into account
everything that's going on in all of the land use zones.
As a follow up, do you feel like once we get this adjusted,
once we bring in junior high number 16,
that this will enable us to lock south of I-10, so to speak,
and we won't have to make these big adjustments in the future?
Well, I've done this long enough to know to never say never.
But by and large, this sector of the district should be built out in the short term.
And so that's what we're hoping.
But like I said, we're looking at needing, you know,
say 2,000 additional spot for 2,000 additional students by 2027.
And so we might need to make some adjustments and things along the way.
We don't have any plans for any future facilities in the south after this.
We're hoping that this will do it.
But, again, never say never, right?
Amen there.
Thank you very much.
Sure.
Mr. Scott.
Two things.
Am I correct?
Option one is your preferred recommendation at this point?
Yes, in both cases.
Okay.
I know at one point we had used functional capacity and design capacity.
I would kind of like to see how the portable buildings work out at each of these campuses under the proposed scenario or under the scenarios.
Because we know 1,400 is design capacity, but we have a lot of portables.
So if you're at 1,400, you're going to have limited portables at those buildings.
And I know that because we opened ties at about 1,350 or so, and I think we had one portable there, and that was because we had a program.
So you're going to have limited portables.
We could certainly try to create a graph to show you how many portables at each campus, but it's going to be limited per junior high campus.
I know it's Seven Lakes.
I mean those numbers still look substantial and there are there are
several there are a lot of portable buildings at Seven Lakes and this still
looks like a pretty heavy over not only over design capacity but over with which
option are you referring to well I'm looking at option one you got right
closer okay you're saying that you're moving on I was actually I was looking
at another one if you're if you're looking at 1400 to 1300 you're looking
at taking a lot of portable buildings awful seven likes yes sir I would say
you'd have very limited in option one on the junior high options you'd have very
limited portables and I would say less than three to four maybe bill you're
right if things don't go crazy you might be you might be zeroing in if you look
I didn't mean to interrupt, but if you look at option one, long term in the Wood Creek, Cinco Ranch, Beckendorf, Seven Lakes, Tizen, and Junior High 16, you get some nice balance down there long term.
Okay, I got it.
Any other questions?
Madam President.
Ms. Fox, can we go back to Elementary 42?
I just heard a lot of things.
Is that a bilingual campus, Mr. Cruz?
It is not currently scheduled to be a bilingual campus.
But it brings in some of the children from some bilingual campuses around it.
But if you're in a bilingual program, you would be zoned to a different school.
If you're in a bilingual program, you kind of have a bilingual zone in addition to the regular zone, if that makes sense.
So students in maybe two or three attendance zones might be clumped together in one school for a bilingual program.
And how does that affect the geocoding?
It really doesn't.
The geocoding is just the base to start with, and so then we hand the numbers off to the district,
and they look at where those bilingual students are and where they're going to be clustered
and if they need to make any changes to it.
So the geocoded is where we have to start when we're moving pieces of kids around to make new zones,
but then there's that additional layer of assessment on top of that.
If you look at West Memorial down at the bottom of your screen there in option one,
Yes, sir.
You can see that they're well over their capacity, but if you look at the top of the screen,
they're losing 166 kids to a bilingual program, so that knocks them down closer to their design capacity.
Because it's difficult to look at the West Memorial numbers and the Nottingham numbers,
and their design capacity of those seems like the numbers are a little flipped,
but you're saying that some of those people.
West Memorial is losing students, as is Nottingham Country, to bilingual programs.
Okay, thank you.
Anyone else?
Okay, thank you, Ms. Poole.
Thank you, Mr. Cruz.
Next, we have our consent agenda, 6.1, consider future board approval of the contract for
educational diagnostician licensed specialist in school psychology services, RFCSP number
1712.
Mr. Smith.
MR.
Good evening, President Doyle, Dr. Hindt, Trustee
I brought my good friend Brian Malachuk up here, Dr. Malachuk, in case I have any need to be bailed out.
My goal is for me to be able to handle this, but he is the expert in subject matter that I'm going to be speaking to you on these next several items.
And I'll start off by saying that there are seven items that I'm going to present,
and the first little bit of this section is going to appeal to all seven of these in order to y'all not get too tired of me up here,
and also respect your time.
But state law dictates that any expenditure over $50,000 in the aggregate
must be put for a competitive bid.
Contracts on the agenda items 6.1 through 6.7 all exceed that threshold.
In prior years, many of these services were covered by the independent contractor system.
This year we're using competitive sealed bids to determine our selection.
On receipt of response to these RFPs,
They were all reviewed by Dr. Malachuk and his staff and the purchasing department.
And again, all contracts in items 6.1 through 6.7 are being recommended for one year with the option of three additional one-year renewals.
Trustees, if I may, this is part of a greater process that we have worked with our purchasing department as well as our special ed department
department in order to maximize the resources that we're using to get better contracts and to get more favorable contract terms.
So again, when we talk about resources, this allows us to use the people that are the best in the field and
the people that we have relationships with, but it allows us to do so on terms that are more favorable for us with, again,
the allocation of our resources being sort of the main goal so kudos to the
purchasing department and special ed all right so I don't think you mr. mr. Graham
so item 6.1 education diagnostician licensed specialist of psychological
school psychology services or LSS piece is easier to say it's right it's
recommended that the Board of Trustees awards the contract for educational
educational diagnostician, licensed specialist in school psychology services to two firms,
specialized assessment and consulting, and firm number two, Sunbelt Staffing.
For item 6.2, it's for educational evaluation materials, and the proposals were again evaluated by Dr. Malachuk and his staff.
It's recommended that the Board of Trustees awards the contract for
educational evaluation materials to six vendors listed in your materials that
you have before you. Again there are six recommendations presented in the
materials before you. They are also recommended a one-year term with one
year term with option of three one-year renewals.
item 6.3 is translation services for students evaluation and individualized education plan
or IEP meetings last year almost 3,000 requests for interpreters last school year for students
in IEP meetings to accommodate almost 80 languages spoken by district families it's recommended that
the board awards the contracts for educational interpreting services to the vendors and
and individuals listed in your materials.
I believe there are 20 vendors.
Again, for 80 languages and over 3,000, we need more than one.
Again, one-year recommendation, recommended for one-year option
for three additional one-year renewals.
And I'm sorry, item 6.2, I just noticed,
did not have the recommended one-year option for three-year
additional renewals, nor did this one.
In your materials, it should have it.
all items are with one an option for three additional one-year renewals and
I'm sorry those two did not have it I apologize it's my fault I just noticed
sign language interpreting services these are contractors you can provide
sign language services to serve our deaf and hard-of-hearing students there's a
short of a shortage of qualified sign language interpreters Crabtree and
interpreting and WebCo enterprises DBA visual communication services is our
recommendation to you to award that that's item 6.4
okay
Okay.
Sorry, I'm being clumsy.
All right, item, oh, it's 6.4 again.
Okay, item 6.5 is speech language pathologist.
to provide a pool of agencies from which special ed department can pull from.
Due to the high demand in this field, the district's often unable to fill all these positions.
There were 20 proposals received, and after consideration and all the evaluations that are presented in your materials,
it's recommended that the board awards the contract for speech-language pathologists to the vendors listed in your materials.
I believe they are med term placement, DBA therapy consultants, salient health, clinical
communications, pinwheel therapy, and education-based services.
Item 6.6.
I'm sorry?
Mr. Smith.
Yes.
We have some speech-language pathologists as employees in KDISD.
Are these located at the district level and then sent to where they're needed, or are
they assigned to campuses?
Mr. Malachy.
So they're assigned to campuses, but at the district level we hire them,
and we then assign them to campuses.
So they're usually more than one campus.
And so this contract is for when we have a higher need and we go out and have to?
Or we have vacancies we can't fill, and then we will hire a contracted person.
Or if someone goes on maternity leave, which happens, or they go out ill
and we have to cover that building, then we bring those people in for contract.
I understand they're in high demand and hard to find.
They are.
Okay.
Thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Thank you.
Item 6.6 is speech language pathologist for the deaf and hard of hearing.
This is another highly specialized qualification and is recommended that the board awards the
contract to the four speech language pathologists for the deaf and hard of hearing to Dr. Anita
Zachariah with the Speech Language and Listening Center of Houston.
And my final item on this is item 6.7. It's autism and behavioral programs support services.
This provides assistance within educational settings, including specialized autism programs,
life skills programs, preschool programs for children with disabilities. It's recommended
the Board awards the contract for autism and behavioral program support services to Dr.
Dr. Beverly Braman. Dr. Braman has provided these services to the district for over 20 years.
Thank you, Mr. Smith. Board, do you have any questions?
questions on any of these items, items 6.1 through 6.7 for Mr. Smith and Mr. Malachuk.
Yes, I have a question, Madam President. I have a few questions. First of all, as you know,
I'm new to the board, so I'm learning. I would like to know which line item on the budget is
being reduced or where is the money coming from for these special new things that we're doing,
which I really appreciate all the work that has gone into this,
that on the 6.1, 6.3, 6.5, 6.6, it appears that these are new things that we're doing?
These are not new.
These are annual things that we've always done.
They come out of two funding sources.
The general fund budget, which you will approve in August,
is the primary source for these as well as IDEA-B.
That's a federal funding program.
IDEA-B stands for Individuals Education Act.
Okay.
The Federal Lease Education Act.
Education Act.
I knew that, but I just couldn't spit it out.
I'm tongue-tied up here tonight for some reason.
But I did know that, Dr. Mallich.
But those two funding sources, again, primarily general fund, but a large percentage also
will come from special revenue funds or federal funds in this case.
Then I have another question, if you don't mind, Madam President.
On the 6.4, when we have the sign language approval, is that something that we re-approve every year, that contract?
What we're asking for is a one-year contract with our option for the district to be able to renew that annually for three more times, yes.
That's not new.
Okay.
And then the last one, I'm just curious about this.
I see that Sun Belt was chosen on 6.1, but on the evaluation on 6.3 for translation services,
their evaluation was X'd out.
I'm just curious as to why.
Okay.
You're talking about item 6.1 on the evaluation?
Well, 6.3 on the evaluation.
The Sun Belt on the evaluation was X'd out.
yes Sunbelt staffing it just had a big X on it I'm just curious did they not participate in that
I'm not finding the exit you're speaking of.
Very last minute.
My board docs works a little better than this.
Flipping through the pages, I'm sorry.
I'm just curious.
Yeah, they did not submit a bid.
That's what that is.
They were potentially going to and did not.
That's why there's an X through it.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Sorry about that.
I just couldn't find it.
Thank you, Ms. Champagne.
Thank you so much, Madam President.
I'm new too, so I have just a few questions.
Are any of these a retainer, or we just pay as burn rate as we use the money,
and it's just based on previous year's expenditures?
It's based, the amounts that you see are estimates based on previous expenditures,
and they're not retainers.
They're based on billed hours.
Okay, and then the second part of that question is, if we do renew for future years,
do we have to renegotiate the contract, or are we renewing at the same price?
We would be able to negotiate the contract if we saw necessary, but we would
or renew at the same price. It just depends on the services that were
provided and that supply and demand. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Any other
questions? Thank you so much. Moving on to item 6.8, consider future
Board approval of the June 2018 budget amendments. Mrs. Butterfield. And I guess
for keeping you Mr. Smith? Yes ma'am. Okay. Thank you President Doyle, Trustees, Dr.
Hint. We have two budget amendments in the general operating fund that are
increasing expenditure budgets. $216,292
related to our Harvey amendments, 10th amendment for Harvey and $389,017
$17.00, related to building management control systems for two buildings, the ESC Annex and
the Student Support Annex.
Both of these amendments will result in a decrease to the General Operating Fund fund
balance of $605,309.00.
All other amendments are offsets between existing functions.
Are there any questions?
Thank you, Mrs. Butterfield. Thank you, Chris.
Thank you.
Item 6.9, consider future board approval of a contract for the collection of delinquent taxes.
Okay. The Texas Property Code permits school districts to contract with attorneys to collect
their delinquent taxes. This is done primarily because it can't be done in-house effectively
effectively or efficiently. Code permits the attorneys to collect penalties and interest,
including a collection fee, which is paid by the delinquent taxpayers.
There are no funds spent for by the Katy Independent School District. Again, these services
are done between the taxpayer and the representative that we have, that we choose.
RFPs, requests for proposals, were released earlier this spring and responses were received,
two responses were received.
Each response was evaluated based on criteria laid out in the tables that you've been provided.
Both firms demonstrated their ability to provide the delinquent tax collection services.
However, the firm Limbarger, Goggin, Blair and Sampson was chosen by administrative staff
based on the experience with the district as well as the inclusion of the property tax
tax value study appeals services at no cost to the district.
The agreement is for a term of three years commencing on October 1, 2018, and provides
an option but no obligation of the district to renew and extend the original agreement
up to three one-year renewals.
You might recall that we did last summer, we did the last of the three one-year renewals.
So we sat here and presented this same information, I guess now, six years ago.
go. So again, this is a contract for one three-year period of time and option for
three one-year renewal options. It's recommended that the Board of Trustees
approves the contract for the collection of delinquent taxes with Lambarger,
Goggin, Blair and Sampson. Are there any questions? Mr. Scott. First of all, let me
express my appreciation to Dr. Hint for what I'm about to say. I'm going to ask
that the contract be pulled off the consent agenda and allow me an
opportunity to submit some questions to Dr. Hint. As a brief matter of background,
for the last two years at this time of the year, I have expressed serious
reservations about the process of delinquent taxes. I want to make
something really clear by asking for this action and the questions I will
submit and get answers to. I want to point out that last August when we were
at Cinco Ranch and even though I had problems with that contract I voted for
the line Barker contract last year because I believe that any contract
approved by this board should do it with four votes and not a technical majority
but a real majority. I want to say this also. I don't know what I could do more
to express my appreciation, respect for Dr. Hint and his administration and I
know there's nothing more I could say about Chris Smith that would more
indicate my high devotion. From 1983 till today, KDISD has been fortunate to
to have an unbroken chain of financial people from Earl Walden to Bill Moore to now Chris
Smith noted for integrity and competence.
And so I want to look at Mr. Smith and say this.
I have an appreciation for the role of privatization of delinquent taxes.
You come to work every day battling, you and your team come to work every day battling
a million alligators vastly more teeth than this one. I understand that. My problem with the delinquent tax industry goes back to 1986, and what I want to do, since this is a new three-year contract, for two years we've been extending, this is a three-year contract.
We've had board members sitting here in the past that have turned this into a bitter,
divisive, mean-spirited issue, and I'm not going to do that.
There are points that I feel like I want to address on the delinquent tax issue.
I just want to take a little bit of extra time, and I'm confident that taking a little extra time
is not in any way going to adversely affect the collection of delinquent taxes.
We did it August 31st last year. Here we are in June.
So I appreciate the fact that Dr. Hinn is receptive to this,
and I assure everyone that this is not going to be a repeat of several years ago
where we pitted each other against each other and the board against the administration.
We have an administration that's doing a fantastic job.
I have problems with delinquent tax collection,
and I want to use my opportunity as a board member to highlight what some of those problems are that go way, way, way, way beyond KDISD and other local governments.
So I hope that we will move this off the consent agenda and give us an opportunity to do that.
We can remove it and what I would recommend is that we remove it and we just make it an
action item next week. You're going to submit questions relative to the contract. If we can't
answer the contracts within the week prior to the action item, which again we can have an open
discussion on because it's an action item, then we can certainly postpone it till July, but I
I wouldn't postpone it any further than that.
Is that correct, Mr. Smith?
That would be my preference.
Although we did do it in the middle of the hurricane last year.
I have two reactions to that.
One, I don't think the questions can be answered in four calendar days,
and there is no way in the world that I personally would recommend that this go beyond even the July workshop.
And actually it's less than four because we don't work on Fridays.
We're on the five-day weeks now.
So why don't you submit the questions like I said, we'll move it to action if we can't answer the questions or get a sufficient response
Then we'll pull it and put it in July and I'll have that discussion with our board president
And thank you
Okay, moving on to item 6.10 consider future board approval to award the purchase for network and wireless infrastructure
Mr. Chris offers
Good evening, President Doyle, members of the board,
Superintendent Dr. Hint.
As part of the 2017 bond technology network access
switches and wireless upgrades, KDISD
is contracted with education partners
to solicit quotes in accordance with E-rate requirements
for network hardware that is needed.
Based on the responses, it is recommended
the Board of Trustees award purchases of this hardware
to NETSYNC Network Solutions using
in DIR contracts DIR-TSO-2542 and 2538 for the amount of $6 million, $97,426.01.
The funding source will be the 2017 bond and E-rate funds, and board approval of this recommendation
is in accordance with board policy, CH Legal, CH Local, CV Legal, and CV Local.
Are there any questions?
Ms. Gesoff.
Thank you, Madam President.
Just a quick question on the evaluation forms.
Can you just, probably just for my own education, probably everybody else knows,
but what's the difference on that evaluation between long-term costs to the district
and the price of eligible service?
So the price is what it costs, but then what's the long-term cost evaluation?
It's a combination of upkeep and maintenance costs,
ongoing maintenance costs for those solutions.
So not necessarily maintenance costs that we would pay them, but what it's going to
cost us to maintain it?
Correct.
Okay.
Thank you for the clarification.
Are there any other questions?
Thank you so much.
Next we have Consider Future Board Approval of the Memorandum of Understanding for Operation
of a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program, JJAEP, with Fort Bend County.
Ms. Holland.
Good evening, Madam President, members of the board, and Dr. Croninger.
As we do at this time every year, we are bringing for the Board's consideration and approval
a memorandum of understanding with Fort Bend County for our Juvenile Justice Alternative
Education Program.
There is no difference in the contract this year than the one that was presented last
year.
As a part of the contract, we are asking for two seats for permissive placements at a cost
of $14,000, which is the same as our contract last year.
Are there any questions? Madam President, I have a question. Ms. Champagne. Yes, thank you, Ms. Holland, for your work on this. I'm just curious, do we, so we always use or pay the $14,000 for the two permissive seats, but do we use those seats?
This is a recurring agreement that we have each year. Counties that have 125,000 population or more must operate a juvenile justice alternative education program.
And then districts develop a memorandum of understanding with them to provide those services.
If a student is placed there for mandatory reasons, there's no cost to the district.
But if we ask for permissive placements, then we do pay a fee for those placements.
We are very judicial in how we use those permissive placements.
So do we ever go over that?
We have not had to go over in Fort Bend.
Our principals do a great job of containing those kids.
We try to keep the kids in our district to the greatest extent possible. Thank you so much
Madam president miss Fox mrs. Holland
With our JJ aep. This is in Fort Bend County
Do we also have one in Harris County or is there only one and why is it important?
We do have a will have one for Harris County
There's was not ready at this time
But Fort Bend was most anxious to have theirs approved so they could move forward with their planning
And how do we decide which children go to which facility?
It depends on where the students reside.
So those students that reside in Harris County will go to the Harris County JJAEP,
and those in Fort Bend will go to Fort Bend.
Are there any other questions?
You have the next agenda item as well.
Yes, I do.
Okay, go ahead.
Thank goodness this was not a legislative year where a lot of discipline issues were being considered.
So we took advantage this year to really work on streamlining our discipline management
plan, student code of conduct.
We are recommending that some of the things that have previously been in the book are
moved to the student handbooks and our discipline management plan will be more directed just
at discipline.
We've also done a lot of reorganizing and trying to make this document more user friendly
both for administrators and for parents and we think that we have achieved that.
and in some other areas we've simply expanded some things for clarification purposes and to better place parents and students on notice
Are there any questions I
Do have a couple of questions madam president yes champagne. Thank you, okay
First of all I wanted to make a comment that on your distance for the students who may need special education
that's the new timeline.
I really appreciate that.
I just wanted to say I like having that, you know,
a specific timeline added to that.
But that leads me to the identification badge.
I have, there's not a timeline on that.
It just says something about it needs to be promptly taken care of.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
On the identification badge.
Yes.
Yes.
That if they don't have the identification badge, that they need to be promptly, you know, taken care of to replace it.
But that one didn't have a timeline, so I was just, you know, a time constraint on it.
I was just curious about that.
Which ID?
Are you talking about student ID badges?
Are you talking about student badges, ID badges?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
The student ID badges, they've had ID badges for a while, but with this coming year, if they, for secondary students,
If they are not wearing their badges or do not adhere to the guidelines there could be disciplinary consequences for that
And what we'll do with that just like a visitor to the school because we need ID for safety purposes
They will use the Raptor system to identify them with a paper badge that takes on to them
Usually the discipline consequences are not detailed in here. It's put into procedures that then all schools
follow once those procedures are developed they'll be disseminated first
we get the discipline management plan approved okay and then I have one last
question please this is Holland I wanted to ask you about the audio recordings on
page four and I I've not been a part of this board before so I don't know what
What has prompted that, or if you know about what prompted that decision to add that in?
We offer in our discipline charts, we offer quite a range of disciplinary options that principals have to choose from.
We always encourage them to start at the low end of the scale initially.
But depending on the nature of the offense, they do have the option to move to a more serious infraction at that particular level.
Okay. And may I ask also, this is all the same subject, do other districts do this also?
Yes. We actually modeled this exact topic from SCIPR ISDs.
Yes.
All right. Are there any other questions?
Madam President.
Mrs. Fox.
Mrs. Holland, on the one about the identification badges, I see that the language says all secondary students.
I wonder if we could just say all students?
We had that conversation. We're looking at doing something at elementary school, but because they're at a younger age, we're looking at possibly implementing it at fourth and fifth grade, not all level grades.
The ID badge tends to be something at that level that we will be constantly dealing with.
But at this time we said secondary level and then we're going to have a conversation with
our principals about implementing it maybe at two grade levels.
Because my concern is, and I think it's naturally what yours is, if we can train them as babies,
it'll make it easier when they get to the secondary level.
My concern is just safety of all students.
that certainly an elementary school you don't have as many visitors coming and
going and and anybody in a school but I know my husband at his work every person
wears an identification badge and you check in and out of the building with it
and I think a lot of people in industry private sector certainly going to that
mine is just safety everybody who's supposed to be in the building and this
is a student discipline management plan so it wouldn't be appropriate for me to
say but I think every staff and every student in our buildings if they were
identified then if there were someone in the building that's not part of us we
know who it is and then you can stop them and say excuse me may I help you
and help you get where you're going my understanding is is that we are gonna
ask the elementary to do it but we're not gonna tie a discipline to it that's
why it's not in the discipline management plan it is something that we
are gonna start training them at that level and also you know safety is the
number one issue here that's the reason why we took the trench coats you can't wear those
in buildings and some other items in this discipline management plan also access a building
once we get our elementary babies in there they're typically supervising they're not leaving for
other areas like some of our high school kids are i thought you were going to answer me and say they
already do that well and so let me just say consistency wise some do some don't so we're
We're going to make it universal.
Okay.
I have another.
Do you want to talk about ID badges?
I have one more question, Madam President.
Okay.
On page, like Mrs. Holland, on like page 24, 25, 26, there are some things that have been, you know, marked through.
And I just wonder, did that go somewhere or is that not necessary there anymore?
I didn't see it move to another place.
Are you talking about some of the items that we have deleted?
Mm-hmm.
We have some things that we have moved around and maybe deleted one area, moved to another, or reorganized that information.
We've also deleted things that will eventually go to the student handbooks if that is an appropriate location.
Is this like level four, level five?
You'll see if you look further over in the plan, a lot of that information has been moved.
I thought I saw a redundant.
Yes, it is.
It's moved within the plan.
Okay, that's all my questions.
Thank you.
Mr. Scott.
Mr. Scott.
Thank you, Ms. Holland.
Agenda item 6.13, consider future board approval of the interlocal agreement with Harris County Department of Education for specialized services at the Academic Behavior School West.
Dr. Malchut.
Good evening, President Doyle, board members, and Dr. Hint.
The next two items, 6.13 and 6.14, actually connected their annual reoccurring interlocal agreement contracts we have with the Harris County Department of Education.
The first one being for five slots of ABS West facility for students with intellectual and emotional disabilities.
These are the same number of slots we had last year for the last school year.
And then the second one, 6.14, is also Harris County or local agreement.
And that's for occupational therapy services, physical therapy services, and music therapy services
we provide to all our students that have those needs in our district. And that's the same contract we had last year with them.
Are there any questions on either of these items?
Okay, thank you.
Next, item 6.15, consider future board approval of a contract with Harris County Department of Education and Katy Independent School District for the promotion of adult education in Harris County.
Dr. Grims, welcome back.
Thank you.
It's good to be back.
Good evening, President Doyle, trustees, and Dr. Hent.
Before you is a reoccurring contract with the Harris County Department of Education to provide adults opportunities to enroll in community education courses on a district campus to no cost to HCDE.
This contract is from July 2018 to June 2019 and is recommended that the board approve this agreement with HCDE.
Are there any questions?
Ms. Gesoff?
Dr. Grooms, is there any cost to the district to provide this?
No, there is not.
Thank you.
I'm sorry.
right there is a minimal cost to the district for the staffing that goes
along with sustaining the program but the fees that individuals pay to enroll
in the course pay for the instructors okay so it's net zero well actually it's
a positive isn't it I'm sorry what do you mean is it so does that net to zero
or are we making there's a cost to the district for the administration fees
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Dr. Grims.
Item 6.16, consider future board approval of a water meter easement to Harris County Municipal Utility District number 71 associated with Galbo Elementary.
Ms. Kassman.
Good evening, President Doyle, board members, and Dr. Hint.
Tonight I have three items for your future approval.
The first one is the water easement for Galbo Elementary.
This is for a new fire water line that is required as part of the renovation project
and it is required for a separate water meter and easement even though it's an existing
campus.
You can go on.
Second one is a blanket electrical easement for high school 9 and junior high
16 in Cross Creek.
This will allow for the installation of electrical services to the site with final information
to be recorded for the deed for this easement.
The final item is a change order to Steward Builders for the Ag Science Project.
Back in December of 2017, Amendment 3 was issued to the contract, which approved the
main phase of the project.
This change order in the amount of $2.6 million to Steward Builders will include the project
center, adjacent structure components, code requirements, additional site, roadway, and
drainage improvements.
And this will complete the scope of work as presented in the original design presentation
Do we have any questions on these three items for Miss Caspian?
And may I ask the question real quick and I think it's important to note
This is the last project in the 2014 bond. Is that correct? That is correct
It'll be the last one to finish May Creek High School. Gobble and Pattison will finish this summer
This will finish next February Gobble Pattison and those though. We've allocated to fund
So this being the last of the 2014 bond package were within the scope of the overall
2014 bond package if my understanding is correct
We've got about a remaining balance of three point five or two point five
That's correct remaining doubts about two point two somewhere in that range
Okay, dr. Hinn
The remaining balance in the 2014 authorization is just over six million at this time
But with the approval of this item here...
With the approval of this item, yes, you're correct.
It then takes us to about 2.5, 2.2.
Yes, sir. I'm sorry. I misunderstood.
Gotcha.
I'm sorry. You're right.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ms. Kastner.
Thank you.
Item 6.19, consider future board approval to award the contract for the resurfacing of eight campus tennis courts.
Mr. Teed.
Good evening, President Doyle, board members, Dr. Hint.
I'm bringing before you a recommendation to approve the award of the contract for the resurfacing of eight tennis court,
eight campuses tennis courts to three colors tennis court resurfacing in the amount of $179,941.
This is part of the 2017 bond component replacements.
The M&O department worked with PBK Sports and Athletics Department to develop the project scope and the permit documents.
There were four respondents to the request for bid, a copy of the recommendation letter from PBK Sports, the bid proposal sheet, and the contractor attached for your review.
Again, the total proposed contract cost is $179,941.
The total project cost includes architectural cost and a contingency for unforeseen issues.
We have included $118,800 to cover these costs for a total project not to exceed cost of
$298,741.
This contract has been reviewed by District Legal Counsel and is approved as to form.
Are there any questions?
questions. Just for transparency purposes, the differing costs per high school is due to the severity of the work or the anticipated work for each school. Yes, sir. Okay.
Ms. Gesoff? Just one quick question. What are, what would architectural costs associated with resurfacing tennis courts, what would that be? Design drawings for permitting.
So you're going to change the structure?
You're potentially going to change the structure?
No, ma'am.
We actually take them and update them and develop a set of permit drawings so that the
contractor can go and pull a building permit.
Oh.
That makes sense.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Item 6.20, consider future board approval of the Katy Independent School District compensation
plan for the 2018-
2019 school year. Ms. Yolanda Edmond. Good evening, President Dahl, trustees, and Superintendent Hint. I have Ms. Connie Davis here with me because, one, I want her to be acknowledged for all the work she put into this item we're about to present. I am just a presenter, and she is literally the brains behind all of this.
So we're here tonight to present for your consideration of approval the 2018-19 KDISD
compensation plan. It is a plan that we review annually. It is a comprehensive plan that includes
the teacher salary schedule, non-teacher pay ranges, stipends, substitute pay, as well as
benefits and retirement information. For the 18-19 compensation plan, we have changes to the teacher
salary schedule which will reflect the $1,230 increase that the board approved
last month in addition to the non teacher pay ranges which have increased
by 1% and our standard is to always increase those ranges by half of the
annual increase that was approved which is 2% and then we have very few changes
if I'm not mistaken maybe four under fine arts or I think whatever six five
or six I'm sorry under fine arts and those are the only changes that's in
in this plan that are different from last year's plan.
And in addition to that, we are excited that we have entered
into an agreement with TASB.
They're going to conduct, well, they're in the midst
of conducting a comprehensive salary study for the district.
Our goal is to remain competitive
and to ensure that we are competitive with market values.
So they're going to look at most of the districts
in the Region IV area and compare them to KDISD.
We do not expect major changes, because I
I do believe we are a pretty competitive district as we stand now.
We are looking to expect a final report from TASB by early fall.
And just so I can, if you recall, we look at stipends every year.
This past year, the stipends that we looked at were for the fine arts,
and that's where those changes were, and they were in the plus, not in the negative.
That is correct.
Do we have any questions?
questions.
Yes, Mr. Scott.
Since we got you here, how does staffing look for opening schools?
For the new schools?
Yeah, for the new school year.
I think we're fully staffed for the new schools.
We still have some postings, but they are a result of vacancies where people are resigning
or retiring at the end of the year.
But as far as the new schools that are opening, we're fully staffed.
Thank you, Ms. Edmond.
And I'm sorry, Ms. Gasol.
I know we're still waiting for the TASB results about benchmarking and being competitive.
Do you feel like we're competitive in the space of how we pay people with advanced degrees?
That's something that always has stood out to me and stands out even more so when I look at the pay schedule,
that, you know, really we're paying people about $1,000 more if they have a master's degree
and about another $1,000 more if they have a doctorate.
And, of course, the disparity, it gets a little bit better as they get further into their careers,
but maybe that's just more so a Texas thing.
But I know in other states you're compensated much more appropriately, I think,
when you have an advanced degree than we do here.
Just wanted your opinion on that.
Well, I used to work for Houston ISD and the studies that they did found that the
masters and the doctorate degrees did not add a great deal of value to the students.
So, HISD is no longer paying for masters and doctorate degrees.
But to answer your question, having worked in Fort Bend, Stafford, Allen,
and now Katie that is a general range of where those stockings are for those
advanced degrees but once we get the TASA or TASB survey back on on the
compensation plan we'll see our plus and minuses for every category in our
compensation plan okay I think we would dr. Kent most of the surrounding
districts they range anywhere from 1200 I think the max I've ever seen is 2000
Okay.
For a master's and a doctorate.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you both.
At this time, the Board of Trustees will give members of the public an opportunity to speak.
A meeting that is open to the public under the Texas Open Meeting Act is one that the public is permitted to attend.
The act does not entitle the public to choose the items to be discussed or to speak about items on the agenda.
agenda. A governmental body may, however, give members of the public an opportunity
to speak at a public meeting, which KDISD Board Policy, BED Local, does allow. As defined
by this Board Policy, the first 20 speakers who signed up at least 15 minutes before this
meeting began and have provided their first and last name will be allowed to speak. A
maximum of 30 minutes has been allocated and the time divided equally among those who have
signed up. However, the maximum amount of time for any one speaker is three minutes.
If you are not finished speaking at the end of your three minutes, your
microphone will turn off. If speakers wish to share written material with the
board, ten copies must be provided to the Secretary for Board Services, our board
members, the Superintendent, the Chief Communications Officer, and Permanent
Record. Due to posting requirements of the Open Meetings Act, the board is able
to respond only to a statement related to a posted agenda item with a statement
of specific factual information given or a recitation of existing policy in
response to the inquiry if a speaker has not attempted to solve a matter
administratively through proper channels as stated in board policy the presiding
officer shall advise the speaker to seek resolution through the appropriate
policy board policy BED local I'm sorry BED legal states that it is a criminal
offense for a person with intent to prevent or disrupt a lawful meeting to
substantially obstruct or interfere with the ordinary conduct of a meeting by
physical action or verbal utterance and thereby curtail the exercise of others
First Amendment's rights. Board policy BED local provides for removal of any
member of the audience after at least one warning who disrupts the meeting by
by his or her words or actions.
Finally, pursuant to Texas Government Code Sections 551.074 and 551.0821, the Board will
not permit the presentation of personally identifiable information regarding a student
and will not discuss the appointment, employment, evaluation, reassignment, duties, discipline,
or dismissal of a public officer or employee, or to hear a complaint or charge against any
officer or employee. Should a speaker wish to address one of these issues, they must
do so through the appropriate local grievance policies, F&G local, DGBA local, or GF local.
As I announce your name, please come forward and state your first and last name for the
record. Our first speaker this evening is Susan Wallace. Ms. Wallace.
us if you have any desire to learn why so many are unhappy or angry with our
district you need to go no further than reading articles in a better legacy I
highly recommend it it's the only site dealing with all this mess that one can
have a dissenting opinion and not get censored and booted out don't just read
the parts that you agree with that will not help you understand why so many
many people are unhappy with the jobs you are doing with our community's children and our taxes.
35 years ago, a bully was protected and it almost resulted in a KISD student eating a bullet.
Even less funny, seven years ago, bullies that anally raped a fellow student were protected.
This past school year, my now former neighbor's child was bullied on multiple occasions.
Each incident involved different students, teachers, and a bus driver.
Even in the worst of these incidences, the bullies were protected, the victim blamed and shamed.
Mind you, there is video evidence, so it's not a case of he said, she said.
Our district's bullying problem is made worse by the district administrators practicing the three Ds, delay, deny, and discredit.
Delay contacting a parent, delay investigations, or maybe don't even perform one, delay follow-up.
Deny access to video, deny information, deny the victim future protection, deny the incident even happened.
Unfounded seems to be a favorite word.
Discredit the victims and parents.
Telling speakers here that we are picking and choosing our facts when we, the taxpaying community, are allowed a mere three minutes to speak if we are lucky.
This after waiting hours sitting through your dog and pony show and in the past
few months having to sit through your eulogies concerning the person that made
this about him. Your Messiah. Trying to discredit a parent using his dead child
as bait? I bet you wish you could take that back. Bullying problems may always
be with us but protecting the bullies at the victims expense must stop. If you are
interested in showing a good faith attempt to resolve some of the problems
and show us taxpaying community members you are serious about finding a starting
place to heal our community then release videos to parents without requiring the
parents to hire an attorney stop sending FOIA requests to the Attorney General
maybe start returning emails and phone calls even if it means having a
difficult conversation my dad liked to say the day you stop making mistakes is
the day you die. We didn't expect you all to be perfect, but treating victims and their parents
like you do is evil and unforgivable. So I wonder how often do people, do administrators get
promoted after writing unfounded on every assault that goes on on your campus because it seems to
be a habit that you get promoted for that. Our next speaker is Dr. Babin.
Good evening. I'd like to offer my condolences to the district on the death of Ms. Garza.
For all of us that were privileged enough to know her, there was never, ever an administrative professional who treated every child as if it were her own.
So I'd like to say that perhaps the district can do something in her honor more so than just planting a
Bush on the campus that would be lovely for the campus to do but I think maybe we need to think about
how some of these
Administrative assistants APs etc have a bigger impact and they weren't about you know
necessarily on the fanfare and the
the accolades. They were truly here as educators. So perhaps a building, I don't know, you know,
a library, something in her honor. I would like to welcome Ms. Jessup and Ms. Champagne formally
to the board. I really am impressed right now with the level of questioning. And I'd like to
tell you that I start everybody off with an A. So you guys please keep your A because that's
important to me. I'd like to be able to give everybody an A. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
Ms. Jessup, we had a discussion online, and I wish you had respected my request for a private message regarding that, so please note that for the future.
Single-member districts or adding other board members, I'm sorry, folks, you can't handle this district.
It's too big.
It's growing too big.
The anticipated growth is more.
more we definitely need more board members because we have three areas in
the district that are underrepresented and those are minority areas so on
Maid Creek community has no representation on this board I think I
speak more for main Creek community than any other individual and I'm happy to do
so but we need to think seriously about adding more board members or going to
single member districts mr. oil I want to congratulate you on your ascendancy
to the president I did send you a message you were the people's choice a
award winner for the comments but again people have forgotten that so um you know you can go
to tape and review it but i don't think we're keeping it to heart you guys get seven to eight
minutes a piece to speak and we get 1.5 to three minutes we might want to think about restoring
another opportunity for the public to speak um perhaps return emails because i didn't get a
return email from you or you her i got one from mr lacy and that was before you ladies came to the
board and y'all do need to respond to your public you people do work for us and it's not just who
you pick and choose responds we're not emailing y'all for grins and giggles um i want to thank
miss holland um for addressing the problem of the last board meeting i appreciate that the last work
study thank you to miss nowak for serving we really appreciate you we're going to miss you a
lot welcome to miss Ross and our next speaker is Jennifer McKnight I've been a
taxpayer and a voting resident in this district for about 34 years I have a
history with this district this board got my attention by recent events in the
news where the superintendent laughed when someone made allegations against
him and it was ill-advised and inappropriate in my opinion
Ms. McKnight, I'm going to ask that if you have specific comments related to a specific employee of the district.
I have a lot to say, and I would like to be able to say it.
Mrs. McKnight, I'm going to ask that you refrain from referring to employees by name or position.
This is not an occasion for resolution of personal disagreement with employees.
Would you please restart my time?
That needs to be directed to the appropriate administrative channels.
I'm happy to show you how to do that after the meeting.
understand that please restart my time.
The I made mistakes comments was inappropriate and in my opinion hiding behind Christianity.
You first, you should have responded as a good role model for the students of this community.
The second response should have been Matthew 5, 23, 24.
And that's all I'm going to say about that.
I was dumbfounded to learn that you all intended to pay tax dollars that we fork out for the
education and elevation of our children to hire legal counsel to pursue detractors for
for this person. That's not okay with me and I doubt very seriously if it's okay with many
of our taxpayers. And to pay out his contract is even worse. Over the years this district
has poured money into their athletics programs with great success, but it's been at the expense
of academics. My child took Latin four years. All four years there was one book
for the entire class to utilize, one book, but there was money for a new tennis
court and for new football uniforms and that's not what our tax dollars are
intended for. You need to start using them for what they need to be for.
Elevating and educating and not cutting programs for students and salaries
for teachers not every child is into athletics you need to think about the
ones who want to go into medicine and law the education field or the arts
every child needs to be taken into consideration it's not about lining our
coffers so that we can pay administrators big bucks it's about
Thank you, Ms. McKnight.
Our next speaker is Ms. Janice Vollmer.
I'm sorry if I didn't say your last name correctly.
Vollmer is correct.
I'm Janice Vollmer.
I've been a resident of KDSD since 2002.
I've had two kids graduate from Cinco Ranch High School,
and I currently have two grandchildren.
children. I live in Nottingham country. My granddaughter is about to start junior
high and I have one in elementary at Nottingham. I'm also here on behalf of
Moms Demand Action. Thank you for your time tonight. I'm here because there's
been a lot of talk about arming Texas teachers and staff and I want to make it
clear that much of the community does not want that to happen here. In response
In response to the horrific school shooting in Santa Fe, Governor Abbott released his
school and firearms safety action plan at the end of May.
There are a lot of very good solutions in that plan and a lot that I agree with.
The only one I do not agree with is the expansion of the school marshal plan, which allows teachers
or other staff to carry guns inside schools.
schools. For the safety of our students and educators, we urge KDISD not to adopt the Marshall Plan.
Guns do not belong in schools, which are meant to be places of sanctuary, safety, and learning for
children. The presence of guns at school as an unpredictable element that puts educators and
students at increased risk and layers even more safety concerns on top of the heavy responsibilities
already placed on these teachers. There is no evidence that army teachers will make schools safer.
I have several, my daughter-in-law and several other family members that are teachers and administrators,
and I've talked to them extensively about this, and personally they do not agree with it.
They don't feel like it will make the school safer. I've also questioned them about their colleagues,
and I say the majority of teachers and administrators do not want this to happen.
One more point I'd like to make is that if the lawmakers want to prevent school shootings,
they must adopt proactive common sense solutions, many that are in this plan,
to prevent people with dangerous histories from obtaining guns in the first place.
one way is to save lives is to support the red flag laws. Thank you for your
time I appreciate it. Thank you Ms. Vollmer. Our next speaker is Michael
Scheman. Okay I've yet to see a KISD student with autism speak at any of
these board meetings or in anything posted by the community including by a
better legacy or otherwise I've reached out to allow anyone with autism to
contact me directly for support and so far received absolutely nothing back. It
is time to stop treating these individuals as prisoners for uncommitted
crimes and yes this includes by their own parents who claim to be the heroes.
We have spent tremendous effort on correcting those with autism, speaking
for them to save feelings even if they have never mentioned such feelings and
And research shows they love and show productivity
by actions of words, speaking for them
when they do not respond quickly enough for a liking,
despite research saying they write and read far more quickly
and deeply than they speak.
And that's because their neurons are hyperconnected.
If you actually let them finish, you'd
probably find that they'd have a lot more analysis left for you
than an average person.
Involve planning and deciding what
the career and social path should be instead of taking
a few minutes to ask them.
and scaring them to prevent the violence they are supposedly about to commit, using yelling and threats, despite the neurons being hyper-connected, to hear such louder and more deeply, thus physically hurting them in a way something like a brain scan can actually prove.
Also saying how much they need help in a patronizing fashion as if they are weaker and then declare ourselves heroes when we do said help.
Often defining their happiness and goals by how much they live like us rather than ask them if they want to live perhaps more simply.
When they often need less resources to do so.
By doing so as a community, we are blatantly violating their right to consent.
And yes, I believe that falls in the same category as physical consent.
Yes, including even things like embarrassing things like sexual consent.
We're essentially enslaving them that way.
And then we're acting surprised when they use passive resistance, such as Javon did
by pushing the guard back.
The guy apparently had such an ego break because of that, oh, this autistic guy was actually strong enough to push him back and he wasn't winning.
He's so embarrassed that he takes out a taser and says, I'm not stronger than you, but I'm going to make myself stronger than you.
you.
Imbecilic and pathetic.
A lot of times it has come to the point where many caretakers, professionals, and parents
alike often carry more ego issues in their supposed heroism than the kids they are claiming
to be treating.
People with autism deserve fair time and room to speak for themselves.
They are not weaker people, only slower, and they do not falsely promise quickness.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Our next speaker is Nicholas Funditas.
Thank you.
Academic integrity is a pinnacle value of any academic institution.
If even a little academic dishonesty is acceptable from the leader of a school district with zero accountability, how can that institution then establish a limit on how much academic dishonesty is acceptable from the children?
children. Academic integrity extends beyond plagiarism to also include honesty and rigor in research.
Is this going beyond policy? This clearly is referencing public accusations that have been made. And I'm just asking, does this violate our policy?
I think he's within the policy right now.
Very good.
So please add my time back.
As parents and taxpayers, we have an obligation to demand more of the leadership of our school district.
We must demand that the leadership of our school district be the exemplary model of academic integrity
and be beyond reproach regarding this fundamental value.
We have a right to demand transparency regarding how the school district leadership conduct themselves
and we have an absolute right to judge the performance of the Board of Trustees
and those whose salaries we pay with our tax dollars.
In the real world, actions have consequences.
and that is a fundamental life lesson that must be instilled in our children.
We cannot demonstrate to our children that consequences and accountability can be avoided
and misconduct rewarded as long as we are willing to compromise on ethics.
If the leader of any corporation were publicly accused of violating the fundamental values of their organization,
you can be assured that the Board of Directors would read any documentation in question
to support or refute the allegation.
I would like to ask from the six board members here today, with a show of hands, who has read the complete dissertation in question?
So I hope any transcript can reflect that zero out of the six present have read it.
Your willful and blatant disregard...
Point of order, Madam President.
The question was, how many will acknowledge reading it?
If we choose not to answer that question, he cannot imply an answer.
The Board operating procedures allow you to answer that.
It's a specific statement of factual information.
It's not asking for conclusions or debate or any conjecture.
It's a simple statement of fact.
The rules allow that for a non-agenda item as per your own Board operating procedure
BED Local.
Point of order, Madam President.
The policy may allow us.
It does not mandate.
And I will go back to the point, if we choose not to answer a question, you can't presume
that there was an answer.
That's fair.
I have 10 seconds left.
So does anybody choose to answer or all six choose not to answer?
So all six choose not to answer.
Your willful and blatant disregard for ethics and your neglect of...
Thank you, Mr. Funditas.
Our next speaker is Deborah Petito.
Good evening, members of the Board, Madam President, Dr. Hindt.
I had the pleasure last month of being present and witnessing all of those high school students receive their salutatory and valedictorian recognition.
And it was inspiring and just amazing what they were able to accomplish.
One thing I couldn't help but notice is that many of these kids mentioned language as something that was part of their journey in high school, something that perhaps got them where they ended up being.
And there were some kids who talked about being presidents of the Spanish Honor Society, things like that.
And so you can assume that maybe those kids approached that from a non-native angle and were able to accomplish a lot and go far.
But I noticed a lot of kids mentioned their heritage language.
And so surely they must have grown up in a multilanguage household.
And that's what I want to talk about here tonight.
tonight. If those kids were able to just get such an advantage from that rich background,
what could all of our students at KDIC accomplish if they were offered some sort of similar
possibilities? That's actually what the two-way immersion dual language program was meant
to achieve. Unfortunately, that was recently voted on to be discontinued. And I wanted
to mention that there are a couple of things we haven't considered before we voted to
discontinue that. You've heard a lot from people like me, you've seen me before, and
I'm just one person, I have two kids in KDISD, I'm trying to raise them
multilingual because I know just from my own experience and also from research
that I've read about what kind of advantage it gives kids to know more
than one language. The areas of speech formation in the brain are huge.
And I hope that one day we recognize that as a language acquisition is a
really important part of forming a student much like math and sciences
areas we've chosen to focus on these days and so you've heard from people
like me you've also heard from people who are against programs like TWI but
what you haven't heard from is experts so I want to recommend two things for
the board I'd like you to consider inviting an expert a linguistic PhD to
talk about heritage languages bilingualism ESL ESOL and single
the language environments and how those things compare. So somebody like me is
just going to take you so far. The people who are against it are only going to take
you so far, but an expert is going to really I think help inform your opinion.
And so that's what's missing is that I don't believe the board's been fully
sort of informed of the different capabilities and possibilities of this
program as well as the public. And the second thing is I'd like to hear from
the majority not the minority not the for and against but the majority of kdisd so i recommend
that you create a survey and especially pinpoint parents of elementary students and ask them
where are you where are you zoned to what languages would you like your child to learn
and are you interested in the second one thank you so much
Thank you.
This concludes our meeting.
Eight point one regular board meeting is Monday, June 25th.
There being no further business before the board, this meeting is adjourned at 8.04 p.m.
Official documents
Motions and votes
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