The board will now reconvene in open meeting. Today is Monday, April 15, 2019, and the time is 639 p.m.
Katy ISD · Work Study Meeting
Katy ISD Work Study Meeting, April 15, 2019
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Mr. Grigorski, 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, I confirm we are in compliance of the provisions of the Texas Open Meeting Act in regard to this meeting tonight.
On behalf of my colleagues, I welcome everyone to this evening's board work-study meeting.
to prepare for this meeting each board member received the agenda and
documentation for this meeting on Friday April 12 2019 and have had three days to
study its contents and to seek clarification from mr. Gorgor ski 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 met
earlier this evening in closed meeting any action arising from the discussion
in a closed meeting must be taken in a subsequent open meeting. We will now move to agenda item 3.1.
Madam President. Mr. Lacey. I move that the Board of Trustees approves the personnel report as
recommended by Superintendent Grigorski in the closed meeting. Second. I have a motion by Mr.
Lacey, a second by Ms. Vann that the Board of Trustees approves the personnel report as
recommended by the Superintendent, Mr. Grigorski, in closed meeting. Is there any discussion?
Hearing none, we'll proceed to vote. All those in favor, please raise your right hand and say aye.
Aye. All those opposed? Motion passes. Next we have agenda item 4.1 2018-2019
health plan update. Mr. Nalman, how are you? Fine. Good evening everyone.
Superintendent Gorgorski, President Doyle, Board of Trustees. I'm here this evening
to give you our annual update in April about the health plan for 2018 and what
we're looking forward in 2019. We will look at the interest of the 2018
health care plan. I will give you a high level 2018 operating results. We will
look at Gallagher who is our consultant projection for 2019. We'll look at the
plan savings that we achieved for plan year 2018. I will give you an update for
for TRS and what they're doing.
We will review the 2019 health plan changes and enhancements.
And then lastly, we'll look at what's
going on with the Affordable Care Act.
In this slide, you'll see that the district for 2018,
the total funding to the health plan was 57.2 million,
with employees contributing 36.2%, with the district contributing 63.8% of total funding.
For 2018, the cost per covered employee was $7,511 for the year per person,
and for covered members was $4,695.
To give you a little bit of perspective on our spend,
we spent $38.8 million in claims, medical claims, on a daily basis of $106,199.
The corresponding pharmacy claims for the same period was $12.2 million, or $33,516 per day.
This exhibit is basically to show you what our current, for 2018, the premiums were,
which are very competitive and very lower than I will speak to in our TRS comparison.
This is for all four plans.
This is a very important slide. As we discuss in each one of our board meetings here,
we talk about the growth that Katy experiences.
If you look at the top blue line and the, I'll call it the orange line,
that follows forward with our growth.
The important thing to note in this slide is the gray line. How in the gray line we want to stay in between the blue and the gold or orange.
But starting from 2013-2014 you will begin to see that cost per employee per year is beginning to go down.
That is because we are taking steps to bring healthcare expenses down and implement some cost enhancements to the program.
In 2018 I came to you and we gave you a projection we would have a 3.4 million
dollar operating loss to the plan. At the end of the year in 2018 we achieved a
3.5 million dollar operating gain to the plan. What caused this? There were many
factors. We had a plan member growth of 3.5 percent. Our medical trend was a
negative 9.88 percent and medical trend is another word for health care
inflation. Another impactor to the plan was our large losses of a hundred
thousand or greater dropped by 31 percent. Claims greater than 50,000 in
2018 we had 120 of those totaling 12.3 million. 2017 108 claims at 16.5
million and in 2016 91 claims at 9.1 million. Historical perspective again in
2017 we had an operating loss of 3.0 million. In 2018 as I stated earlier we
had a 3.5 million dollar gain and as I mentioned to you last July we were
projecting a 3.4 million dollar loss in 2019 and I would I would make a side
comment on that that was with no changes to the plan as is where is let's look at
what we did in 2018 from administrative savings perspective Katie is a part of
the TEC pharmacy collaborative which consists of several large self-insured
school districts across the state through that collaborative we were able
to negotiate some additional ingredient savings over the prior year of seven
seven hundred twenty seven thousand dollars and we'll see more of those
savings in the total year of 2019 because we'll have traction for the full
year we also participated in a program called save on our X which achieved
another additional savings of six hundred seventy four thousand and thirty
two dollars and if you'll recall in April of 2018 our interlocal involving
involving Houston ISD and Aldine ISD fell into sunset.
Those administrative savings represented
at $1.258 million savings in administrative costs.
Now, that was only a portion of the year.
In 2019, we'll begin to see full traction
of a full year of those savings.
As I just said, we will see a full 12 month
through that interlocal going away.
Changes, we did eliminate the HRA to be able to carry forward balances.
Employees are still able to use that, and they still are to this date.
We managed that number and make sure that employees still have those dollars available to them.
What did we do in form of enhancements?
It was very creative this last year.
We created the premium support program.
We utilize former HRA funds to provide a premium relief to employees to promote consumerism and healthcare stewardship of their dollars.
Secondly, we have just rolled out ReadyMD to provide telephonic and video medical care through enhanced smart technologies for free.
So an employee now can call up, he's got a sore throat, upset tummy, whatever it may be, can live chat with a doctor on the phone.
And we're not charging for that service.
So it saves the employee a significant amount of money, time.
If it's a teacher, it keeps them in the classroom.
The only thing is the employee is still responsible for the pharmacy charge to that.
We're seeing great results with that so far.
We've only had it out barely a month and we're receiving some very positive feedback
Give you a perspective the average
Urgent care visits about two hundred thirty seven dollars
So we're investing those those funds of the HRA back into the plan to give some relief to employees
What's going on in Austin with TRS as of the moment
It's still early to tell what the Board of Trustees with TRS will be doing
that really won't come down to around July, June or July, whatever changes they want for 2019.
But we do know that House Bill 3987 has recently been filed to evaluate the long-term feasibility,
financial soundness, and benefits delivered to those under the TRS active care program.
and basically this is whether or not the TRS program will look at allowing
districts to exit from TRS. Last year they did increase the maximum out-of-pocket
maximum from $71.50 to $73.50 which is significant and across the board across
all plans at TRS the average premium increase to plan participants was 9.5%
The Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act is still with us. What is really interesting is,
is we are still mandated by the IRS to report our expenses, even with Congress eliminating
the individual mandate. So we still incur expenses to report to the government what employees had
coverage and what period. It's still mandated in terms of affordability, so we have to keep
our plan affordable and to the to the rules we still incur PCORI fees it says
fees but it's really a tax that the government passes on to us in the form
of having technology and with again the elimination of the individual mandated
coverage was noted in the tax reform bill last fall every year we talk about
what's going on with TRS and other districts and kind of measure ourselves
against other districts and this is a very important slide I want to share
with you I've put on this slide districts in this area that are
self-insured particularly in our area you will see across the board very as
close as we can get similar size and being self-insured there were no
districts that had HRAs and you will look at the medical and Rx spend that we
we mentioned earlier district number one per employee worth spend was 8340
district number two was 8880 district three was 7920 and district four was 7512
Katie we're at seven thousand one hundred and sixteen dollars so let's
look what TRS if we would be in TRS the following districts their expense would
would be 73.5 million for District 1.
District 2 would be 32.3 million.
District 3, 62 million.
District 4, 60.8 million.
And for Katy, if we were in TRS, our ticket
would be $75.6 million.
Again, compared to last year, in 2018, we spent $53.6 million.
That's a significant delta, very significant.
So I give that to you as a hard comparison.
Next steps for 2019, we'll continue to consult with district administration about current hiring trends
and what do we have coming down the pike.
We'll look at plan options for 2020, what options are available for employees in that regard.
We'll present to our benefit advisory liaisons, which are staff members,
And then again in July, I'll update you with what our recommendations are.
And then lastly, I'll bring to you the final number, so to speak, in August.
Thank you, and would welcome any questions that you may have at this time.
Thank you so much.
Board, do you have any questions?
Madam President.
I'm going to start with Ms. Fox.
Thank you so much for your presentation.
So I have a question about, I didn't see it on there, but I'll just ask you.
Have there been changes to our maternity leave for our teachers?
Are they anecdotally, I'm hearing they have to leave their,
are they required to use their personal days before they use whatever designation you have for maternity leave?
Help me understand that.
Well, we're currently, we're discussing health care plan, and the maternity leave is separate and apart.
That would be an HR function.
option. So to answer your I'm so sorry I thought it was under the health care and the insurance that they have to use none of that.
Okay.
Man any other questions I have a question it's champagne and then we'll go to miss castle.
I just have one question for you. Thank you doctor Norman for your presentation. But on at slide twelve where it says the self insured district comparison.
comparison. I really appreciate you doing that because I think that gives us, you know, valuable information how we're comparing to other people. But, and if you've said this, I apologize, but why are we more expensive than the others?
It's a function of how many employees we have.
You're talking about the 75?
It's a function of PEPY per employee per year.
So you'll see that we're, if you look in the middle line where it says covered employees, we're at 7140.
And then if you extrapolate that on to covered lives, it's close to 13,000, 14,000 are on the plan.
So that's mathematically just larger.
Mr. Nauman, sorry, I have no voice, but I'll do my best.
Be quiet.
One easy question, one harder question.
The easy question, the Teladoc or the Televideo doc, which I think that is genius.
We have that as a benefit company that I work for.
What do we pay for that?
Versus you gave the figure for if someone were to go to urgent care.
Do you have any idea?
The plan cost will be $50 per visit compared to the district paying anywhere from $220, whichever clinic they would go to.
It could range.
The average price is $237, I believe, sort of in that window.
It could be more.
And that's also, you know, it saves those expensive ER visits for a sore throat that some people may go to.
And as we continue to preach that message of consumerism, you know, that helps keep the plan cost.
And as I alluded to in that curve, this helps keep that curve going down.
The cost is the cost.
But whatever we can do administratively to help move that number down, we try to do that.
Right.
Right, I think that's a huge benefit too as a working mom and
used to be a working teacher.
The difference between having to come up with lesson plans for your substitute and
pull your kid out of school versus the kid stays in school and
you stay in the classroom, I think that's huge.
My second question, on the comparison of the districts.
So we have a saying in my business, what is it?
Investigate the red and challenge the green.
It's great that our number's a lot lower.
That's fabulous.
But I guess my push is what's in that $75 million?
Are there any benefits that because we're doing it our own way,
our teachers are missing out on something?
No.
When you look at our deductibles and our out-of-pocket maximums,
I believe we have not in the last three years, four years,
we have not changed that amount to our employees.
We've not transferred that cost to those employees. TRS over the last three years,
if you look historically, increased premiums, increased deductibles, and
increased out-of-pocket maximums. So what they're in essence doing is that, as I
call it, the total cost of risk. They're transferring that cost onto the
shoulders of those employees. And one of the things that we're, I guess you
call it fortunate is we're in a defined area and we have a defined market with
Memorial Hermann with our network the TRS has various different markets and
you have inflation factors the cost of that delivery of that care across the
state from El Paso Dallas San Antonio Beaumont wherever it may be they're all
fluctuating so they're trying to throw a cast a large net to try to get as much
as they can and so they have to do that incremental deductible here there and
sometimes very hard hard and high increases for staff okay so partially is
that added benefit of our defined geographic area we can make different
choices one more follow-up question so do the teachers choose a hospital
network Memorial Hermann or Methodist or is it chosen for them we have the
Memorial Harmon Network we have a custom network with that now that we've had for
several years and I will tell you each year we look at that whether as we go
through our contracts with that nine and the different providers we look at that
as we grow as a district and I will tell you this the the marketplace in the
healthcare business is it's fluctuating it is very rapid it is very it's very
very hard to predict. So you have one group changing prices every year it seems like.
So, but what we try to do is try to stay the course. And if you take the conservative approach
over time, try to take care of your employees while doing so, that tends to produce very
positive results while making health care as affordable as it can be. We can't impact
the cost of the delivery of care at the point of sale but we can certainly
through our our masses that we have we can negotiate and work on being
administratively lean and mean. Okay and if they want to use a doctorate that's
outside of that network they still have that option they just pay more for it.
Exactly. That's where the consumerism comes in. You have to educate yourself
and that's that's all the world in which we all live that's what that's that's
That's the environment in which we play in right now.
Thank you very much.
Yes, ma'am.
Mr. Scott.
We've talked about this over a couple of years, and so there are two tables here that
I would like to get behind, knowing that George is left behind and I won't be a part of this
anymore.
Page four, slide four.
I think it would be helpful to the Board going forward to understand, you've got 16 options here,
I think it would be helpful to understand, as I've indicated in the past, how many of our
participants fit into the matrix of consumer ABCD, consumer basic choice ABCD,
consumer plus limited ABCD, consumer plus choice ABCD. I would like to know where
our employees are being served and what choices they are making and I think
that's a fair assessment. In these, if it's nothing more than two or three
bullet points, I think it would be consumer basic choice gets breast cancer,
gets colon cancer, gets cancer cancer, and has paid employee only. What does consumer
basic choice send this person? Where do they go? What are their deductibles? I
think that we need to understand what each of these 16 slices of the pie mean
to employees and I don't really view that as being complicated. I think that's
pretty perfunctory. Perfunctory. Perfunctory. Okay. Then six. I am assuming
I'm assuming, and I may be wrong, that large claims impact, claims over $50,000, that when we look at 16, 17, 18, 9 to 16 to 12 million dollars, that these may be claims that are above and beyond the deductible payments.
These are costs of the plan.
Correct.
Self-insurance.
They've paid their deductibles.
They've paid their co-pay.
they paid everything and now it's up to the plan you see those numbers now go
back to four I would like to see where those total numbers fit in to this
matrix for instance I first of all I've looked at your insurance plan for three
years now and I think we're right on but there are still some questions I have in
in my mind, we kind of got sidetracked over the last year.
If there's $12 million of consumer,
of the district payment, where does that $12 million
distribute itself within these 16 matrixes,
within this matrix of 16?
Because that would go to premiums, period.
Period.
Very simple, right?
Mr. It's the premiums, yes, to answer your question.
The total cost of the plan is aggregated and then broken out by tier exactly to where you're
going.
Mr. Right.
So should we see, and this is not an answer to a question, it is a question question.
Should we see some correlation between the distribution of the district payments and
and some correlation on this 16-piece crossword puzzle,
should there be some correlation,
is the consumer plus choice
responsible for the vast majority of that overage?
Or is the consumer basic limited
responsible for the basic matter of that?
And I'm not asking for an answer
because that's a mathematical question,
and I'm presuming that your computer brain doesn't just spit that out.
I will tell you this, we look at this monthly and the expenses for each plan
and we monitor that as it relates to the total plan performance.
And to kind of answer your question, we've seen historically it's fairly stagnant
in the plan participant numbers in each one of the tiers.
It may move a couple of percentage points one year,
and and that's really a function of and I think the reason is probably static if
you're asking that is we had as I alluded to earlier we haven't changed
deductibles we haven't changed out-of-pocket maximums so people are
staying so when you move that one direction or another you'll see a
migration to one plant whatever it may be so so here's my gut feeling my gut
feeling based on some data in prior years that this is pretty damn solid
Okay, that's my that's my gut feeling and I think you'd be better off showing
That there is a correlation within these numbers than not showing it and this is the last time I get to ask you that
Thank You mr. Scott any other questions
Okay, thank you. Mr. Nelman
Next agenda item 4.2 2019 2020 budget update. Mr. Smith
Good evening, President Doyle, Superintendent Gorky and trustees.
I think it would be real fair to say I don't know what's going on.
And be done.
But you all aren't that lucky.
And be done.
So we're in April and as it's been on our schedule, we're going to talk about the legislative
update and what's happening in Austin.
And in order to do so, I really feel like I need to step back and talk about what happened
in 2015.
Again, you've heard this and you heard this not too long ago, but I think this part of
the story is so important because it sets the stage for where we are today.
But in 2015, we were in the middle of a lawsuit, the ISDs versus the state of Texas, and it
had been sent to the Supreme Court.
in the 2015 legislative session met and they did increase the basic allotment,
the primary source of funding to ISDs by $100. That funded about a 3%
pay raise that we passed on to our employees that year. But they also funded
a 1.5% TRS care, new, I call it a tax if you will, and it didn't, it didn't, it
created about a six million dollar expense to Katy ISD but it didn't go to
our children or staff, it went to our retirees. And I'm a firm huge support of
our retirees, but that did come as a mandated spend from KDISD to fund the
teachers retirement care system of Texas. So we didn't get quite the full benefit
of the increase to the basic allotment because we had a six million dollar
expense detached during that session. In May of 2016, the Supreme Court made its
decision and they sided with the state of Texas. I guess that's the
defendant in this case that decided in the state of Texas, but they did say as
part of their that your system is out of date, it's archaic, it's a band-aid on top
a band-aid and they use a lot of big terms that I can't even remember right
now. But in other words, you have your work to do and you need to get it
fixed. So in 2017, two years ago, the legislative session happened and
really what dominated the session was conversations about bathrooms and
and the V word, but vouchers, but not not not not funding the not fixing the
problem that the that the Supreme Court pointed out just a year earlier.
So we did get a benefit of the Austin yield just as you know just as a
reminder because this is important too, you'll see it later. The Austin yield is
is if you take, it's put in the statute in 2006, some 11 years ago, or 11 years prior to this session,
and essentially it is Austin's value, taxable value, divided by their number of students.
And as that rises, the Austin yield rises, and I know, Mr. Lacey, you know that the Austin yield is also called the golden penny.
So that did get more golden that session and that funded the pay increase that
this board was able to pass on during the summer of 2017. So again I
want to focus two things on this screen. The $100 increase to the basic
allotment and the Austin yield only as we move forward in this 2019 legislative
session. This is where we are at the star in the middle. I'm not sure it's a star
it should have been, but I lifted this from another presentation that I saw from some of our consultants.
And I'm not talented enough to change it.
But because I wouldn't have put a star there, I'd just put a dot.
But we're right there in the middle of the session.
The session started on January the 8th and it ends on May the 27th, and we're pretty much smack dab in the middle.
House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1 have both been passed by the House and Senate chambers.
Those are the funding mechanisms for the state's budget. House Bill 1 has several riders attached to them and
the only one I'll mention is, or two I'll mention is Rider 77 which funds House Bill 3 which I'm going to speak at length
about here in a second.
then Senate Bill 500 which funds some TRS and post Harvey disaster recovery.
I'm not sure it will benefit from that but it will benefit many Texans
especially further down the coast. I don't know what's going to happen of it.
There's some other amendments that I won't talk about in essence of time but
I'm going to shift gears from the budgets to the first school finance bill that was filed right out of the gate there back, I guess it was in March.
Not right out of the gate, but pretty early in March.
Senate Bill 3 by Nelson.
It was the teacher's pay increase bill.
My wife is a classroom teacher, and she came home and said, hey, $5,000 pay raise.
No, that's just from the Senate.
that has to go, the Senate did pass that and it has to get talked about with the
House and they have to confer and then when they have an agreement between the
House and the Senate something will become law but it's not law yet. But it
only funded a $5,000 increase for classroom teachers and librarians. We've
always funded, or at least in Texas as long as I can remember, we've considered
counselors and nurses as part of that group and in fact in Katy we have them
them as one pay structure on our pay scale. But it is only fund, would only
fund full-time teachers and librarians. There's no funding mechanism, how are we
going to pay for it? That was not included in the bill to my knowledge. One
would assume it would be through those funding formulas, but that was not
mentioned. Again to my knowledge it'd be more like a grant. The bill would not
increase stat minimum. We spend a big chunk of money on stat minimum. That's
because we pay over the minimum teacher salary here in Katy, but it
wouldn't it wouldn't affect that, but it would affect that 1.5% that I
mentioned on that earlier, that TRS care, because our payroll would increase
substantially, that 1.5% would increase as well. It would follow right
along with it. That's really all I know about that bill and and and all I'm
going to say about it. The House Bill 3 is what I understand to be the
vehicle that is progressing through Austin. It passed the House just
two, I guess Wednesday of this week, two weeks ago at 148 to 1. It has a 9.5
billion dollar fiscal note, meaning it's got a three, a nine billion dollar price
tag. As I understand it, that breaks down by this, three billion for tax relief,
three billion of reduced recapture and three billion of increases to the
funding formulas they're getting your nine billion dollars that's that's how I
understand it it eliminates the cost of Education Index I tried to pull the
tech that the leg out from under the table last last month that didn't work
as dramatically as I'd intended but it is pulling the leg out from under the
table of districts in the Houston area especially or fast growth school
districts. I'm going to show you that. That's just not my opinion. I think those
slides will show you here in a second that the CEI does mean something. It may
not mean something to some of our legislators but it has meant something
over the last 20 plus years in suburban areas throughout the state. The
The basic allotment increases on this from $5,140 to $6,030.
That's a headline.
The basic allotment increases $930.
I'm sorry, $830.
Wait, that sounds good.
Remember what we talked about in 2015?
It was a $100 increase.
Well, remember, the CEI is getting knocked out,
and I'm going to have a table on the next slide, two slides from now,
that's going to show you that we're not getting that big increase, we're not
benefiting from that big increase in the basic allotment. That does sound great
and it sounds like an important deal but it's but we're starting in a hole.
Reduces tier run rates about by four cents. It also reduces any rate above the
golden pennies. I've done a calculation and it looks like it's
about a seven cent tax reduction on the M&O taxes or about a hundred and seventy
dollars. That's changed from last month's with some of the details on how it works
on some of the compressed pennies that we have, but it does reduce. Now
Senate Bill 2 I understand passed the Senate today. How that works with 2.5%
tax caps in this, I don't know and that's what I kind of said. I don't have a clue.
because there's multiple variables happening in the two chambers right now.
It does have new comp ed calculations. Essentially we used to get our comp ed,
we currently get our compensatory education calculations based on our
number of free and reduced lunch children. This would take that process
away and essentially go back to the 2010 census and take information from that
census on some residential tract and based on that information they apply it
to our all the addresses in our and of the students in our district and they
it's a new it's a new mechanism for determining the the the calculation for
our free reduce loans are social economically disadvantaged students I
don't know how it's going to work in a fast growth school district in 2010 a
A lot of what we had was rice fields and pastures.
So how was that captured in the census at that time?
I don't know.
Those are questions that are currently administratively
being worked through by the Texas Education Agency.
As full day mandatory pre-K funding
for eligible four year olds,
it increases the reading allotment,
it increases the mainstream weights,
reduces or eliminates a couple of weights.
There's not a lot of simplifications being done in this because what calculations they take away, this bill takes away, they're adding calculations.
So I'm not sure it's getting any simpler, or at least it's not for me.
Maybe I'm just not changing like I should with the times, but I don't see it as getting any easier.
Golden pennies, talked about that earlier, about the Austin yield.
This decouples that since it's been in statute since 19, sorry, 2006 that the
Austin yield was the golden penny. It now reduces to 160 percent of the basic
allotment, those golden pennies. So no longer as Austin gets wealthier will the
golden penny rise. I hear lately it said they're not golden pennies anymore.
more. They're more like gold-plated pennies. They're still very valuable. If
you look at it at $96, essentially that's the, again, the property value divided by
number of students. If you did that same calculation here in Katy, it would be
around $338. So you can compare that, and so if we could raise the
$38, then the state matches us, in this case, twice that to get us up to $96.
But they were matching it, what, four times, five times to get us up to what old law was.
And old law was going to be $126.88.
In the budget year that we're preparing, we were using $126.88.
So it's currently in this fiscal year at 106 pennies or $1.06.
And it was due to increase.
Again, Austin's getting wealthier.
but House Bill 3 decouples that and just puts it at 160% of the basic allotment.
It does allow for eight golden pennies.
Y'all have known that we've taken advantage of four and six as the limit.
It does go up to eight golden pennies or gold-plated pennies.
And then copper pennies, it moves that up.
If y'all will recall, I've always said if we were able to have a high enough tax rate,
and I'm not wasn't I just say that as an example that if our tax rate was a
certain level then we would be subject to recapture on these on those copper
pennies because our wealth was higher than 300 and then in this case where you
see the 48 it was higher than 35 I'm sorry 334 and so they would have been
subject to recapture but it's not higher than 48 so we would and technically get
state funding, a little bit of state funding on copper pennies if we were in
the copper penny market. Teacher pay, there was an amendment at the last
minute on the floor of the house that was was submitted that says increase the
increase of the basic allotment must go or 25% of it must go to teacher pay or
commission or to the compensation. There's some questions about that on
on there's a lot of questions about that and I'll show you here in a second but
and then the Commissioner has the ability to remedy any unintended
circumstances as a result of this bill and at the last minute they did put a
three percent gain floor so every district if they weren't going to gain
three percent will get lifted to the three percent floor and that could be
very important to Katie because we're right down there by the bottom and in
In the legislative budget board's runs, we're lifted to the 3%.
And in some of our other runs that I've seen, we are a little above 3%.
But in either case, with all the uncertainty, the 3% is nice to know that it's out there.
So changes to the basic allotment.
Again, remember the $890 increase I talked about.
That sounds great and it makes a great headline.
We're going to increase $890 to the basic allotment.
Remember to make up for our CEI when you take the CEI and you set it to nothing, we go from an annual loss or a loss of revenue of over $60 million.
There's the hole.
It pulls the leg out from under the table and puts us in a hole.
So anything now in addition to a $630 increase to the basic allotment just breaks districts like KDISD, breaks us even.
So the difference there of the $175 and $85, whatever that adds up to, I can't, ADHD right now, whatever that adds up to is really our only increase.
And remember, $175 of that goes towards to make up for the decrease in the 7 cent tax reduction.
So the state, through the basic allotment, is going to make up for that.
and that really essentially leaves $85 in other formulary changes or changes in the basic allotment.
So I go back to that first slide of 2015 when they increased it by $100.
This year after tax compression and the elimination of the CEI, it's essentially increased
$85.
So when we see just 890, it's a great headline, but it's not
it's not for Katie districts like Katie it's it's not before $890 it doesn't
address any raises for administrative staff or principals assistant principals
anybody who's considered an administrator it's not considered it
doesn't have any cost for PK pre-k expansion so in those formulas there is
but would wouldn't be some revenue but there's not any expenses associated with
that in the form recognized in the formulas that would be an expense to
Katie ISD or any other funding priorities that the district would have.
So I want to show you this and I hope it's clear to the audience it's clear
for me up here and at your monitors I hope but you can see Katie there in the
lower right and if you can't find that then then you're might as well just tune
out in the next five minutes because that's where Katie is and but that blue
districts and you can see Katie's surrounded by blue districts mostly
those are the ones that are on the bottom rung of House Bill five so House
Bill three so on the top two tiers we have about three hundred and about
four hundred forty nine thousand students on the top in the red so you
can see the shift from blue to red those are those are the districts that are
benefiting very much from the from House Bill 3. And then you've got the two
bottom tiers which is about 3.3 million students. We're in that bottom tier of
districts that that gain but we don't gain that much. We don't gain what we
what we hoped we could do so we could take care of our staff over a couple of
years when it comes to just things like cost of living adjustments and health
care benefits, cost of fuel increasing, etc. So just looking at it a little
different way, there's Katie on the lower left. This is revenue per student or
revenue per ADA. So Katie ISD currently is just about just under $8,000
per ADA when it comes to revenue. So these districts here are worse off than
KDISD and these districts here are better off than KDISD under current law.
Does that make sense? Okay and I'm going to go to some Apple slides and kind of
put some salt on that but those districts are doing more when it
comes to revenue per student and we can look at districts up here and it's a
district of 16 kids, children, I'm not more than 16 but it's something very
small like that that makes over $50,000 per student that's a very small most of
these are very small districts okay so in looking over at another angle to look
at this on the effects of House Bill 3 again here's Katie it's at the same
level at just under $9,000 per student but everything to the right oops to the
right of that is gains of House Bill 3. So for example this district would gain
four thousand dollars, I'm sorry four hundred dollars when it
came to more revenue per student. All the districts to the left which is where
Katie is don't gain that much. We're at the three percent floor and then you
have districts that are that have major gains out here but again those are very
small but I focus on that there's about 300 or 449 thousand students that gain
upwards of 1,400 $1444 $1444 would go a long way in Katy ISD but our gains are
more in this area which is somewhere between a $230 range per ad a and $500
dollar range per ADA. So just zooming in a little bit on region four and by the
way I want to I'm gonna do some kudos to Dr. Alaune and Jamie Hines and the
technology department. I was able to receive this information two
weeks ago tonight. This is from the legislative budget board. We converted it
to Excel and combined it with other data from the Texas education agencies
and put it in this tableau viewing cycle and it makes it very easy to look at statewide through GIS.
But again, here's KDISD.
They're in the highlighted yellow.
And the Region 4, and you can see in Region 4, up to the left of us, Hempstead comes out very well
and there's Aldine and et cetera.
And then there's the other districts.
If it's a lighter blue, they're in the fourth rung from the bottom. Dark blue is
in the bottom rung. Middle is the kind of the, I would say it's the beige. It's kind
of hard to see, but it's more of a grayish beige. And then you've got the
pink, which is the second tier, and then red, which is the first tier. But you can
see most of the districts in the Houston area, because of the CEI, are at the same
level as us which is very low when it comes to gains when it from per ADA from
House Bill 3. So again looking at it a little differently there's Katy we are
better off than these districts and I'll just I won't name them in order but
those districts are Cypress Fairbanks, Clear Creek, Tomball, other large
districts that don't make as much revenue as we do remember we have a
dollar eight compressed tax rate. We've not had a TRE but we do have that
funky compressed tax rate which is higher than most others or we probably
be down there too, further down. And then the districts this way do have
access to more funds throughout region four. Again region four being the Houston
area. Looking at it from a different standpoint under House Bill 3,
there's Katie again hugging that somewhere between two and three hundred
dollars or that left-hand column and anybody this side tends to do a little
bit better not as near as many most of us are right in here or a million
students are right in there at making less than you know seven hundred dollars
more per a average daily attendance
fast growth school districts this this we talk about a lot when it comes to
bond authorizations and bond committees.
Fast growth, Texas is adding about 80,000 students biennium or about 40,000 students
per year.
Well, we know 2,000 to 3,000 of those come to Katy.
Well, they also come to these districts in here.
If you think of the fast growth triangle, that makes sense.
We've seen that before.
It's suburban Dallas, suburban Austin, Georgetown, suburban San Antonio, and suburban Houston.
those seem to be the ones that are adding the most students. You can see
there's very little pink. There's one school district out here that's about
2,600 in ADA. It's almost the size of Region 4, geographically, but it's only
got 2,600 students. Most of these students that are fast-growth
school districts are coming out not very good with House Bill 3. It's the
redistribution of the CEI, in my opinion, that you're seeing. So the districts that
that have the red carpet out and the kid that families want to move to are not doing well,
or as well as some of the other districts across the state.
And there's KDISD.
I should have showed you that earlier down there in the lower right.
Just looking at it a little differently, when you look at ourselves compared to fast growth schools,
we're better off than some of those folks.
Again, we have a $1.08 compressed rate.
Most folks have a dollar, so that should give us a little advantage. And then from
a looking at it from the gains, again we're on the lower on the left side wall
if you will at the at the 3% minimum and these folks are making gains from House
Bill 3. I think it's important one of the things that that's not being talked
about a lot and I think in my opinion, in my opinion, it should be is districts
Districts with high socioeconomically disadvantaged students also get Title I funds.
And KDISD gets Title I funds.
We get about $6 million in Title I funds.
And I know of districts that are half our size that gets $20 million in Title I funds.
They have a lot more socioeconomically disadvantaged children.
House Bill 3 redistributes a lot of funds to socioeconomically disadvantaged students,
and it should.
You heard me last month say it does cost more money to educate those children.
and I'm a firm believer that it takes more more funds but I think that when
you look at access to title funds or federal funds that should be considered
and to my knowledge it's not not being discussed and we receive we're at the
bottom rung of this and I think we're about $80 per student when it comes to
title one funds and you can see there are 28 school districts that receive
receive over $400 in title funds. Again, there is where we are. Late on the draw again. So
I'm going to show it there. This is the Title I funds. It's the same story throughout. I
want to move on. My Apple slide and Mr. Scott can attest to this slide a lot. This is where
we were just 13, 14 just that's just six years ago. KDISD was was funding 53% of
the cost of educating children in Texas and state was funding 47%. In the year
we're in we anticipated to be 13% swing or about 34% state, 66% local.
That's those of us in here funding more than we were just five years earlier.
earlier. Under current law in the next year, I would anticipate that trend to continue at 31%,
69%. Folks, in just that amount of time, that's over $500 million more that the local taxpayers
are paying. And if we forecast that out, it's $700 million real quick. It's growing exponentially.
exponentially. Now if House Bill 3 were to pass as I've seen it and as I've been able to interpret it thus far, and again,
I'm far from from an expert on it, and I think the experts are far from being experts on it at this point,
but it would change that percentage because again,
we would drop, it would compress our tax rate by seven cents, and it would make up for it with that increase in the basic
allotment. It would make it go from about a 36 percent, it would bring the state up about five percent from 31 percent to 36 percent.
But folks, in my opinion, the way that things have gone these last several years, that would
just be a one-year deal.
And the 2021 school year would be right back to tipping to the 30, 70 percent, et cetera,
and it would just continue at that.
But again, I want to ‑‑ Mr. Scott gave me the idea of putting a dollar amount to
it, not just a percentage.
And it's over a half a billion dollars in just Katy.
And I think the the same thing can be said for neighboring districts too that that's property values growing and and these apples are happening
in those districts too. Senate bill 4 is
Senator Taylor's out of the Clear Creek areas Senate finance
There the Senate finance bill as I understand it he's declared House bill 3 to be the vehicle
There's a lot of holes in this meaning literally it mentions the basic allotment leaves a blank
blank and things like that. It was just filed for the deadline, but he has declared House Bill 3 to be the vehicle. The CEI in his bill is also repealed. The cost of education goes away. It pulls the leg out on this bill as well. This also would be another change for us as it moves from current year, it would move to current year values because if you'll recall when we adopt a budget and our values grow,
I always say, yeah, we're going to get a temporary growth, but the state's going to take it away the next year.
This law would say the year that you get that money, the year the state is going to take it away.
It kind of comes out in the wash over time, but if managed correctly, it can be a good management tool.
And I think this board has done a good job over the years of managing that, knowing it was going to go away the next year.
We've been able to do things to reduce expenses that were one time.
And that tool would go away from the toolbox.
box. So I'm going to move on through this. I also would say that Senator Taylor's Senate Bill 4
decouples the the golden pennies to the Austin yield as well. It doesn't, I don't think it says
to what level, but it does take them and separate those golden pennies from Austin's wealth. So
that is that is something to be mentioned there. Senate Bill 2 by Betancourt, I understand as I
went in this meeting, was passed out of the Senate today anyway. Still has to go to the House
Conference Committee and how all that stuff works is a little above my head
but it's not law but how does that work this is about the two and a half percent
appraisal caps how does that work with compression I don't know again I don't
know something would have to to trump one or the other I guess I don't think
that they can the fiscal note can afford both House bill 2 by Burroughs is also a
a bill that would reduce property tax cap bill as Senate Bill 1309 and I'm I left my cheat sheet.
In essence of time I won't go through all these these are just these are just other bills that
are out there that do property tax bills or some ballot bills what does that mean it means that
that there's been some bills that were filed that says when I go to a voting booth,
I want to be able to educate the voter on what they're voting on
when it comes to all the details about a bond election.
It'd be kind of like going into a voting booth and having President Trump's resume,
if you will, in the voting booth.
It puts the decision time in the voting booth versus before you go into the voting booth.
That's working through and a couple of these.
There's one that says that any unspent bond funds would need to have another election to spend them
or any project savings to have another election to spend them.
I think it's been changed and massaged a little bit to say a formal hearing.
And we do ours at board meetings, a formal public hearing to discuss spending any used bond funds.
Those are some of the other type of things.
There's some school safety bills.
And this district is doing everything we can from a school safety standpoint.
point and I think there's going to be an item later on the agenda that's another
aggressive move by KDISD and this potentially to do the do the right
things for the children in this district. Other bills of interest there's a Senate
Bill 5 which I believe is Betancourt's homestead exemption bill I mentioned
this last month it's still out there again how does that work with what was
passed tonight versus House Bill 3 I don't know. There's mandatory sales
sales disclosures and modify equal and uniform provisions. Those don't have any traction. Those could generate significant dollars, tax dollars, not residential tax dollars, but could generate some tax dollars to fund the state coffers or revenue. And then there's the Senate Bill 393, which increases the TRS contribution rates for ISDs, which would mean we would pay more towards funding teachers
retirement system. So the things that Mr. Gorky and the administration is
looking at and is now is that you know we talked about the growth in special
education and the expense that is that we are incurring as well as all
districts across the state. So again safety and security enhancements this
has been a constant conversation throughout this building and I think
you're going to hear something tonight on that compensation for teachers.
That's always what can we do for these classroom teachers. We want to stay
competitive, etc. Compensates for non teachers. They may not teach but they're
they're doing the best that they can and have been trained to do to educate
children. And then pre-k expansion. Where do you put put them and the expense
associated with that expansion if that were to work. So we're working on
prioritizing these initiatives. The campus budgets are done. The
department budgets are being worked on now. They're baseline budgets. We're
progressing nicely. Again, we won't hear our budget hearing until August. There
are many, many districts who have a district July 1 start date on their
budget and so they are compressed two months. So we're in a little bit better
position than them when it comes to figuring all this stuff out the the soup
that's happening in Austin but we are working in the meantime to be there so
we can make the best decisions along the way as possible so there's plenty of
uncertainty I could have ended 20 minutes ago 30 minutes ago by just
sitting down and y'all probably would have gotten as much out of it as as
hearing that but I thought it was important that you hear that as a dad as
as a taxpayer, as a wife of others, a spouse of a teacher,
House Bill 3 is wonderful for the state of Texas.
It's wonderful for a lot of children.
I showed you several hundred thousand children.
It's a good thing for districts that were reliant or this.
CEI or the CEI meant something, the district that I pay taxes in, it's pulling the leg
out from under the table.
I went back with some history back to 2015 to show you that we were kind of wanting to
be able to get to a point where it wasn't always what can we scrape together in order
to deliver a cost of pay increase to our teachers who deserve it so much.
What could we strategically abandon without hurting educational
opportunities for children? We've been in that mode for many years and what's and
what as the dad and us and again going back to the spouse that's that's that's
a tough position to be in and I don't see House Bill 3 is getting us out of
that and it would be kind of the same way we've been living each time we're
going to be relying on the state to be able to increase that basic allotment
and not no longer the austin yield it would be the basic allotment we would be at the mercy of
what's going to happen with property value caps and then of course the raises that i already
mentioned so we're we're done with april and in may i'm going to be a lot shorter unless
something really moves in austin and and i hear it may happen fast but i'll give you an update
and hopefully a little more focus in may and then we'll finish out the budget process
Thank you so much. You did a great job. Are there any questions?
Madam President.
Ms. Fox.
Mr. Smith, thank you for the presentation. I have a bunch of questions, but I'm not going to ask them all.
I do just have a question about, I guess it's slide 18 or so, the one with the whole picture of Texas in the pink and blue.
Yes, ma'am.
Yes, ma'am.
So as we're looking at that slide, there are roughly 5 million children, school-age children in Texas, is my understanding, figures I've known from before.
And this proposal most benefits about 500,000 of them.
and the bottom fourth and fifth are over three and a half million.
Three and a half million, is that correct, of the five million children really don't benefit from House Bill 3.
Is that?
That is correct.
3.4 million are in this section, and a million three are kind of in the middle of the road,
and this 449,000 students that is includes school districts and charter
schools are in the top so you know most of the students are in the fourth and
bottom rung so I have a hard time understanding from from breaking this
down here three and a half million of five million children like if they talk
talk about socio-economic, economically disabled children, right? So the poor children. They're
talking about poor children and how they need that. It's just these kinds of statistics have
me a little baffled at where the money's really going. I know there are, we talked in the slide
with the Title I, you don't have to go there, but so I saw some of that in the Title I schools,
schools. But those title one schools in our area down there with our yellow star and the all the blue it just seems like their intent.
To help our poor children which are completely support because of all the reasons why that's a good idea doesn't seem to translate through their amendments and how it's going to roll out. Am I missing something.
No, Ms. Fox. If the CEI were not being eliminated, we would see a bigger impact and a more positive impact to the bottom line.
Now, it wouldn't be $690 increase to the basic allotment, but it would be something smaller, but we would not be putting ourselves into a hole.
And I can speak for Katie. Again, I can't speak for other ISDs.
But when it comes to Katy, we get put in the hole with the loss of the CEI, and we do not have enough socioeconomically disadvantaged students to pull us out as far out of that hole as other districts do.
Now, those districts that get pulled out further because of their socioeconomically disadvantaged students have their challenges, right?
And I'm not denying that.
And, again, I support that.
But that's what's happening in Katy.
we are at a double loss of losing the CEI and not being socioeconomically disadvantaged enough to rebound out of it,
as some other districts are.
But there's a lot of blue around there in that picture.
Thank you.
That's just what I was thinking.
I know in our area in Region 4, we have about 1 million of the state's 5 million children.
We have 20 percent of the school-age children in our area,
And I just don't see how we have much advantage with HB3, although I appreciate the state's legislators taking a hard look at this.
I watch it every day.
I see that there are changes and amendments, but I hope that their plan to help poor children by eliminating the CEI, I hope it doesn't undo what they're really trying to do.
And again, Mr. Superintendent and Mr. Smith, if you'll just give us talking points, we'll all call.
And I know it changes all the time, but let us know how we can help you call.
And Ms. Fox, I'm going to reiterate on that point that Chairman Huberty and the House Committee and the Public Commission,
they really have worked hard from my angle in the room.
They've worked hard on this.
It's not an easy fix.
It's not easy.
But and I think they really think they've got a good attempt.
But just from Katie's perspective, that loss of the CEI really puts us in a tough spot.
Thank you.
Are there any other questions?
Yes.
Okay.
I'm going to Ms. Champagne and then Mr. Scott, please.
Okay.
I have a question for you.
Now that it's passed to the Senate and the House, what, I'm sorry.
This is just past the House. It has to go to the Senate and they have to agree between the House and the Senate on what ends up being law.
So we still got, you know, this may not be anything what it looks like today. This is just what it looks like today. It could change.
So my question is, you know, when you show the slides with all the large districts that are being affected and a lot of them are, like you said, around here.
Do y'all do any kind of collaboration with the other large districts when you try to negotiate things?
I mean, do you, I don't know, go to Clearquick ISD people and say, you know, what do you think, what can we do together?
You know what I mean?
There have been some phone calls and e-mails from myself to other CFOs in the district,
and there have been going back to when they talked about the potential of
eliminating the CEI it was like hey guys do y'all realize what this could do you
know etc etc with the loss of the CEI our salary structures have morphed
around that you know it's it's simply more expensive to compete with an
accountant or a CPA here in the energy corridor than it would be in far out
West Texas and not just I just use this as an example that goes with any
professional it's more expensive when my wife and I moved to Katy we're like
it's expensive here you know or half the house cost us you know what we cost us
more money to buy a house the insurance was a little more because of the port of
part of Texas we were from the CEI meant something to our household individually
and and I think it does to the district but I'm just wondering if working in
numbers you know because we're all in the same boat together it seems like
Like, it's just a thought.
Are you finished, Mr. Empay?
Okay.
Mr. Scott.
Thank you, Mr. Smith.
I actually understand these plot graphs.
God forgive me.
Let me ask you a couple of questions, several questions,
because I think it's important that we explain what has happened not just the
underlying statistical analysis that you've provided which is astounding the
state of Texas has captured money property tax money and they've called it
Robin Hood money we're familiar with that right yes sir and it's been
anywhere from two to three billion dollars a year correct yes sir and so
So they go into the property tax and they take $3 billion and they redistribute that
money into their needs to these at-risk districts.
That's been the way it's worked, correct?
They distribute it to less wealthy districts.
Less wealthy districts where you have a disproportionate number of these kids.
So when you look at the pie, the current pie of 2018-19, they're not expanding the pie to help certain districts.
They're taking property tax money that is in the pie, and they are allowing less of it to be redistributed.
True or false?
I think that's a true statement when it comes to KDISD.
So when we talk about some districts getting higher and higher income per student, whether it's basic allotment or weights, some of that money is not new state money.
It is a redistribution of Robin Hood money.
True.
Yes, sir.
It is a redistribution and also of the CEI.
Right.
Now, the next part of this is when districts like Katy and Fort Bend and Cyfair and others,
as our values go up and our tax rate goes up, there's like a boomerang.
You throw it here, we get the rate, and then it comes back and the state takes it.
Is that a fair statement?
Yes, sir.
Under current law, yes, sir.
So a lot of the money that the state is going to send to these other districts,
your ones at the top of the tier are going to be money that the state does
not add it's a redistribution of the current pie true or false as I
understand it that is a true statement okay so we have several billions of
dollars that are in the existing pie that the state of Texas says you've won
won in the past, but now you're going to lose. We're going to take money that has come to you.
We're not adding one penny within this category of money from the state treasury, and we're going
to send it over here to other campuses. That's basically true. The elimination of the CEI,
as I understand it, redistributes $2.9 billion from the CEI calculation to other areas
of state funding for formulas.
But take away the asterisks, the little,
we've got to make, to be 100% true, we have to do this,
but 95% true, we can say, they're taking the existing pie,
they're creating losers within that existing pie,
and they're sending money,
and the money is primarily going to districts
that have a disproportionate percent
percent of economically disadvantaged kids, correct?
That's how I understand it, yes sir.
Alright, that's the way I understand it too.
Now in that cohort of students are students that the state of Texas has a Supreme Court
decision, a Senate Bill 3 decision, 93-95, and a federal court decision in 2000 to take
care of the cost of closing the academic equity gap for this group of kids, correct?
Yes.
And so the state is not adding one single penny in the cohort that we've been talking
about to take property tax money.
One hundred percent of the money that we're talking about now, so far, is property tax
money, correct?
Yes, sir.
Robin Hood and our dollars.
Yes, sir.
Okay.
Okay, so now let me ask you this.
Within this formula, we'll talk about the bigger pie in a minute,
but of these dollars, can you give me some estimation in what you have reviewed?
Austin is a Robin Hood district.
Spring Branch was a Robin Hood district.
Are they going to end up getting $3,000 more per student, $4,000 more per student,
$5,000 more per student, or $1,000 more per student?
What is the parameters of what you see with those big winter districts?
As I understand, there's two things that are creating the winters,
socioeconomically disadvantaged, and we've talked about that a lot.
And, Mr. Scott, you bring up the fact that some of these Chapter 41 districts
that do pay recapture.
Again, we get wealthier, we receive less state funds.
We showed you that in the apples.
There are some districts that have so much property value wealth
that they have to give a check to the state,
and they're 100% funded by local taxes. So their check that they're given to the
state is going to get smaller as a result of this. It goes back to the
Austin yield and as you can as an example that $89 new yield is I
understand it there's chapter 41 districts that are paying recapture
don't have to pay recapture on those so if their wealth is above that $89 yield
they get to keep it all. So Austin ISD would be one at a perfect example one
one that I can just use as because I know the math they can send they can
Katie would be lifted up to $89 Austin would be able to keep 126 but
extrapolate that to a bottom line Austin is a wealthy district but they also have
a very high percentage of economically disadvantaged at-risk kids well they're
going to get two thousand three thousand four thousand dollars more per infusion
as a result of this?
I don't remember the exact number, but it's over $1,500 per student.
Okay.
Now let's talk about the new money.
We're talking about new money that might be sales tax.
It might be some state treasury money based on wherever they get it.
But the bottom line for Katie and districts, like Ms. Fox said,
that are in these middle to fourth and bottom tiers,
the reality is that these districts have anywhere,
many of these districts, a significant percentage of these districts,
have at-risk economically disadvantaged populations of 25 to 35 or 40 percent.
All right?
So Katy is probably in the range of 30 plus percent economically disadvantaged.
Right at 30, yes, sir.
So our 30% economically disadvantaged students and the ones in Fort Bend and the ones in Cy Fair and the ones in all of these districts that are not the net winners per the redistribution, their at-risk kids are not going to have an infusion of state dollars, a new infusion of state dollars.
Net.
You can't see it.
No, sir.
All right.
so let's go and then I'll close out on this the bottom line when you go through all of the the
manipulations of the dollars the weights the etc in 2013-14 KDISD and tons and tons of districts
like us had about 43 to 47 percent state funding. Yes sir. By 2018-19 it was 34 percent. By 2019-20
it's 31 percent. It may take a blip in the second year of the biennium but there's nothing that says
it's going to stay there. True or false? As I understand the interpretation of the laws that
that would be a true statement.
So from the bottom line, if you look at districts like Katy,
and we're not the only one,
we're not the only wealthy district that is not recaptured,
that has 30%, 35%, and 40% of our test takers on STAR being at risk.
We're not the only district.
Correct.
So what the state of Texas has done is they've taken a significant piece of the existing pie of money that is coming into it,
they're redistributing it, and as Caesar said, et tu, Brutus.
Okay?
They don't care, and that's what people need to understand.
Okay?
Okay? This is a shell game and I'm going to give you one unintended consequence that's going to come forward over the next two years.
If somebody wanted to offer me a consultancy, pay me $50,000, give me a quarter of a million dollars to do research, here's what I would do.
I would take all of these Title I winners that are going to get millions and millions of dollars infused into them.
and I will guarantee you unless the state of Texas treats cheats
psychometrically on the STAAR Test they will not close the academic equity cap
this is the biggest Trojan horse for vouchers that the legislature has ever
done this is to create economic chaos this is to create turmoil in as much of
the state as is possible and the end result of this is they're going to say
there are some people in the legislature that are going to say Leininger could
not figure this out we are smarter than Leininger my number one concern out of
this is that the state of Texas has played a shell game with property tax
tax dollars, redistributed property tax dollars to make it appear that they're aiding at-risk
minority districts. They are abandoning significant percentages of at-risk minority kids in every
district around the state of Texas that is not a minority, that is not a majority non-at-risk
population this is a bad deal okay and it may take a year or it may take two
years tonight you did a great job I don't know I don't know but I think we
do know when it gets right down to it Thank You mr. Scott any other questions
okay Thank You mr. Smith next consent agenda item 5.1 consider future board
Board approval of April 2019 budget amendments.
Ms. Butterfield.
Good evening, President Doyle, Trustees, and Superintendent Gorgorski.
Tonight we have three budget amendments in the General Operating Fund
that are recognizing revenues and creating expenditure budgets.
These are $38,400 for the CTE STEM camp, $37,826 for a CenterPoint rebate check,
and $2,496 Harris County police asset forfeiture.
One amendment for $2,500 for portable radios, ESC safety managers, resulting in a $2,500 decrease to the general fund balance.
Construction amendments include $68,000 for Wood Creek Elementary, funded by 2017 project savings, and $237,572 for Alexander Elementary from the 2014 project savings.
savings. One final amendment recognizes additional expenditures related to renovations at the
Merrill Center to be funded by the tourist waterfall at $712,250.
$250.
Next, we have agenda item 5.2, consider future board approval of projects to upgrade campus
safety and security.
Ms. Cassman.
Good evening, President Doyle, Trustees, and Superintendent Gagorski.
My item this evening is the follow-up from last month's closed session item regarding safety and security.
As discussed, I am bringing forward a recommendation for the approval of $7 million for multiple projects
involving upgrades to alarm systems, access control, and security entries throughout the district.
this project will be bid in numerous packages using the competitive seal proposal method
for over all completion date of next fall 2020.
are there any questions
thank you so much thank you
next we have agenda item 5.3 consider future board approval of a proclamation for school
nutrition employee week school nutrition employee week whereas nutritious meals
at school are an essential part of the school day and whereas the staff of the
district's nutrition and food service department is committed to providing
healthy nutritious meals to the district's children and whereas the men
and women who prepare and serve school meal meals help nurture our children
through their daily interaction and support and whereas Katie ISD expresses
deep appreciation to those valuable employees and commends their good work
on behalf of children. Therefore, the Katy ISD Board of Trustees hereby proclaims the week of
April 29th through May 3rd, 2019 as School Nutrition Employee Week in Katy Independent School District.
Agenda item 5.4, consider future board approval of a proclamation for Police Officer Appreciation Day.
Whereas students, staff, and parents have a right to a safe and secure learning environment free of
crime and fear of crime, whereas KDISD police officers are a creative, forward-thinking,
effective and efficient workforce dedicated to raising their level of excellence to meet
the challenges of tomorrow, and whereas the KDISD police officers are recognized as leaders
in campus public safety practices, committed to integrity, service and excellence while
supporting the diverse and dynamic campus community's pursuit of academic goals, and
And whereas KDISD police officers effectively and efficiently provide for the protection
of lives and property, persevere in public peace, and with the highest level of professionalism
and ethical standards, provide the central and campus administration specialized services,
strengthening their ability to prepare students for the change and challenges of the future.
And whereas police officers pledge to protect and serve even at the cost of their very own
lives.
Therefore, the Katy ISD Board of Trustees hereby proclaims Monday, May 13, 2019, as
Police Officer Appreciation Day in Katy Independent School District.
Agenda Item 5.5, consider future Board approval of a proclamation for School Nurse Day.
Whereas children are the future and by investing in them today, we are ensuring our world for
tomorrow.
Whereas families deserve to feel confident that their children will be cared for when
they are at school.
whereas all students have a right to have their health needs safely met while
in a school setting whereas children today face more complex and
life-threatening health problems requiring care in school whereas school
nurses have served a critical role in improving public health and in ensuring
student academic success for more than 100 years whereas school nurses address
the home and community factors for example social determinants that
impact students health whereas school nurses are professional nurses that
advance the well-being, academic success, and lifelong achievements of all
students by serving on the front lines and providing a critical safety net for
our nation's most fragile children. Whereas school nurses act as a liaison
to the school community, families, and health care providers on behalf of
children's health by promoting wellness and improving health outcomes for our
nation's children. Whereas school nurses support the health and educational
success of children and youth by providing access to care when children's
cognitive development is at its peak. Whereas school nurses are members of
school-based teams, school health services, 504, IEP, disaster emergency
planning to address the school population. Whereas school nurses
understand the link between health and learning and are in a position to make a
positive difference for children every day. Therefore be it resolved that the
Katy ISD Board of Trustees do hereby proclaim May 8th, 2019 as School Nurse
day in observance of National School Nurse Day. Agenda item 5.6 consider
future board approval of a proclamation for Teacher Appreciation Week. Whereas
teachers are the heart of Katy ISD making our district great. Whereas
teachers work to open students minds to ideas, knowledge, and dreams. Whereas
teachers fill many roles as educators, listeners, explorers, role models,
motivators, and mentors. Whereas teachers continue to influence us long after our
school days are only memories whereas our country's future depends on providing quality education to
all students whereas teachers spend countless hours preparing lessons evaluating progress
counseling and coaching students and providing community service whereas our community recognizes
and supports its teachers in educating the children of this community therefore be it
resolved that the kdisd board of trustees does hereby proclaim the week of may 6th through the
10th, 2019 as Teacher Appreciation Week and strongly encourages all members of our community
to personally express appreciation to our teachers for their dedication and devotion
to their work.
Next we'll move to agenda item 6, open forum.
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 Meetings 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.
A governmental body may, however, give members of the public an opportunity to speak at a
public meeting, which KDIC 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, with 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 for 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 B.E.D.
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 rights.
Board policy BED local provides for removal of any member of the audience after at least
one warning who disrupts the meeting 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 an officer or employee.
Should a speaker wish to address one of these issues, they must do so through the appropriate local grievance policies, FNG local,
DGB a local our 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 Eric
San Miguel hello ladies and gentlemen of the board thank you for allowing me to
speak once again I want to first thank you for your service in the boardroom
the public photos are nice but in the boardroom is what matters most so many
many thanks for that commitment. Next, I was going to give a little bit of energy
to the so-called leader of the group that fills its Facebook page with
personal and baseless attacks. Or I was going to give a little bit of energy to
the two-time volunteer of the year that chooses to read Fifty Shades of Grey
during the meetings and then comes up here and to be right you guys. Or the
woman who switched positions at the last minute putting all of our kids at risk
by splitting up votes, but tonight I'm not going to do that. Tonight for me it's
about George Scott. Mr. Scott, thank you so much for your unwavering and brutal
honesty here in the boardroom and beyond. Thank you for your drive in helping less
fortunate kids that are being set up for failure but through standardized test
manipulation here in the state of Texas. This is a fight you've taken on and
without apology. I respect you so very much for that because you didn't have to
do it you do it because you care most of all thank you for your friendship you've taught me so much
in a short amount of time and i look forward to learning more the board is losing one of its
greatest assets and i wish you so very much the best of your future i look forward again to
learning more from you thank you thank you very much thank you mr samigel our next speaker is
Brenda Martin give it to the board secretary please
I keep doing this.
I am not good at this, but my name is Brenda Martin.
I'm a longtime resident of Katy.
My daughter was a 96 graduate of Katy High School.
My grandkids are at Katy Junior High and Katy High now.
I am here to talk to you about a program that's near and dear to my heart, Milk for Many.
I don't know if anyone has heard of it, but it's a it's a partnership between
Katie ISD and Katie Christian ministries. I was the
Chairman of it at Katie elementary for several years
Back and only five schools in our district participate right now some five of four elementary schools in one junior high
Holland is one of these schools that participates
And it's a program that takes
unopened milk and food products and gathers them at your school and takes
them via a cooler to Katy Christian ministry food pantry I think it's a
shame that just this few many schools participate in that but I've given you
information about the program with my business card attached I'd love to talk
to anybody about it at length but that's a copy of the letter that goes home to
the parents at the beginning of school it's all volunteer driven we have
volunteers that come up and get the cooler. We have all kind of safety
measures for the milk. But just to give you an example, back in 2014-15 just at
Katy Elementary alone we donated over 5,000 cartons of milk. It's a shame
our kids aren't drinking the milk but according to law on a lunch tray the
milk has to go on there. But now in the first quarter now KCM is keeping track
track of it by weight. And just with these five schools in the first quarter this year, they've gathered 13,000 pounds of milk, juice and food products. For all of you beyond fourth grade math, that's six and a half tons of food that would have gone into the trash. We're not taking it off the kids trays. We are lunchroom ladies at Katie Elementary are so great. They stand right there by the trash and there's a cooler and a basket for you know, all the
muffins and little bags of carrots and all that the kids trunk in the trash so
I would love to see this program you know talked about to our other schools
probably schools don't even know about I'm thinking about Beth Key things that
are close to KCM food pantry to where they could easily you know it's 30
minutes is all it takes I used to deliver it all the time and it's a great
learning experience for our kids to show that we can help our people right here
in our community it's not you know people in need somewhere else it's right here in Katy Texas
I've pulled that um cooler in with milk and it's gone straight from my cooler into clients hands
they the KCM they used to have a problem with storage now they have a huge walk-in freezer
so they can take all the milk that we can deliver so please let's do I'm happy to go talk anywhere
at volunteer breakfast at different schools but if you guys would get the words out
Thank you, Ms. Martin.
Madam President, I have a clarifying question for Mrs. Martin.
I have a clarifying question, please.
What other items besides milk and juice are allowed to be donated?
Anything that's unopened.
At some of the other schools, they told me at KCM, they're just getting the milk and juice.
But I can say for Katy Elementary, we take anything.
Because they get breakfast there.
So there's little Pop-Tarts and muffins.
But anything that's unopened, there's bags of grapes and carrots and little craisins, granola bars, all those.
May I ask another clarifying question?
How does someone sign up for that if the school is listening?
It's set up already.
If a school is interested in doing it, I would love to come talk to them about the logistics of signing volunteers up.
up to KCM only is open Monday through Thursday.
And it's just a matter of you have to have a cooler
with proper ice sheets at KE.
We have them in the nurses' freezer.
And we have a whole little system.
It's simple, very short.
Thank you.
I'm happy to explain it to anybody.
And they set it up with Holly at KCM.
Thank you very much.
I'm going to go ahead and jump in there and just let you know.
We'll do some exploration into this and see what we can do.
There are several rules tied along because these are federally reimbursable meals,
and there are some guidance in there, and I'll have to get with our Child Nutrition Department
and find that out and see what we can do in regards to that.
If it's something we can expand, we can certainly look into it
and just see where the rules lie in terms of those types of meals.
Thank you, Ms. Martin. Next speaker is Sean Dolan.
Good evening. On August 18, 2018, a parent reached out to me because she had asked the district to provide busing for her Maid Creek High School children, but the district told her no.
Her older children had busing when they attended years ago.
Mr. Scott.
I wanna know if Mr. Dolan has to provide some evidentiary
certification that he is here actually speaking for an actual human being.
It is very easy to come to the podium and say, I'm talking for Timbuktu.
I'm talking for this person. Okay, Daniel, go ahead and stop the time.
Who's got the time?
Thank you.
So the rules which govern open forum do not require him to provide factual evidence.
And at this point in time, he hasn't given any specifically personally identifiable information related to a student that would give us information to know who that student is.
and so I do not believe that the rules of open forum I do believe that the
rules of open forum allow this line of discussion so I want to make sure I
understand your ruling a person can come up and tell the truth or lie that he may
or may not be representing an individual in a particular case I think that's a
very good rule could you please add 15 seconds it was 2 30 when mr. Dolan was
stopped. All right Mr. Dolan you may proceed. Thank you. But years ago the
district removed the route and many others across the district due to
funding. I sat down with her at her home and she showed me the map of the path
her children took to get to school. I recorded a video of the almost two mile
walk her children took to school every morning. There were no sidewalks for most
of this journey there were multiple major intersections and the last stretch
was a poorly lit area also with no sidewalks I imagine this last portion
would be incredibly unsafe in the dark early mornings especially with student
drivers on the road last week on April 5th a Maid Creek High School student was
struck by a car on his way home from school and was life flighted to the
nearest emergency room the intersection where he was struck was the very
intersection that the district and I were warned about back in August by this
concerned parent. She contacted the district and that didn't work. I posted
the issue online to the community and that didn't work. It was specifically
raised in a work-study meeting that instead of a blind as the crow flies
exclusion radius, a risk-based approach should be utilized to provide service
where the children are at an elevated risk. Now we have a child that has been
struck by a vehicle. So my question is would somebody please explain to me the
most effective way to get a problem like this resolved.
Additionally, Justin Graham, you are not only the general counsel for KDISD but
also the election administrator for this year's school board election.
Would you be willing to state for the record that it is absolutely
impossible for you or anyone in this district to know who district staff
staff members vote for. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolan. Madam President, I believe that that warrants a factual response.
Okay, Mr. Graham, go ahead, please.
I am, in fact, the elections administrator for this district, and I have been for other school
districts. I've served in this capacity as general counsel and elections administrator in dozens of
of school board elections and bond elections and have never had this issue come up have never been
questioned on this issue but i do understand that just generally sometimes in the public
that questions do arise can you know if the school board is required to run its election
which we are because harris county refuses to run our may elections for us because we own the
the voting equipment, does that mean that any district official or that even one district
official can figure out who it is that an individual goes and votes for, irrespective
of whether or not they're a school employee or not?
We have safeguards in place to absolutely assure that that does not happen and cannot
happen.
We had our equipment testing recently at the beginning of the month, which was publicly
posted as required by law and held publicly. The equipment works just fine
as it hasn't passed. This has not been an issue as far as I know for KDISD
elections but again it will be something that we monitor closely because we do
respect everybody's right to vote and we we do safeguard your right to vote for
who you choose to vote for and we cannot tell you who you've we don't have the we
We do not have the physical capability.
We can simply tell whether or not you have voted.
Thank you, Mr. Graham.
Our next speaker is Lori Harrison.
I'm going to do this first.
Good evening, board members, President Dorrell and Superintendent Grigorski.
to say the least this last year has been very trying it's almost seemed like three years
instead of one um you guys in our district and just about every department has been attacked
over and over again accusations lies false claims allegations fake news it's been nothing but plain
and utter nonsense and many others greatly appreciate i and many others greatly appreciate
your steadfast loyalty to this district throughout all of throughout all of this thank you for
bringing the leadership of mr gregorski who's continued the fantastic direction this district
was headed with dr hint it keeps us whole and functioning mr scott thank you so much for your
service to the district you will be missed we hope you won't go too far in case we need your expert
advice again. President Doyle, we thank you for your grace, courage, and
perseverance in the wake of ugly and sheer lunacy this past year. All of us
want you to know that those of us who truly care about our students, our staff
in this district, aren't going anywhere. We'll continue giving our support in any
way we can, no matter what. The goal is to continue to heal our district and unite
us all once again we will be the ones we will be the ones keeping cave great
Thank You miss Harrison our next speaker is Nick funditas
thank you I'm Nick funditas I would like to discuss the topic of fiscal
responsibility and highlight just a fraction of the taxpayer money that has
has been utilized by this district for a purpose other than to further the education of our
children.
As you will recall, this district spent a minimum of $38,000 for a lawyer to investigate
wrongdoing in the Katy ISD Police Department.
As a reminder, that lawyer had no legal investigative authority, no subpoena authority, and no arrest
authority.
In fact, all that lawyer could do was have conversations with willing participants and
review documents that were willingly provided.
It is also worth reminding the Board that the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office could
have conducted an investigation with proper authority at no incremental cost to the District.
The lawyer hired by KDISD provided written confirmation that he would interview, quote,
all of the active KDISD officers.
In the end, he interviewed less than 50%.
Also according to the investigation report, quote, almost 40 officers have left the department
since 2016 through now, end quote.
In addition, according to the report, quote, we spoke to over 10 departed officers, end quote.
The lack of adherence and specificity are very clear indications that the investigator is either inexperienced or the investigation was superficial.
Based on the lawyer's own nonspecific numbers, at worst, only 28% of the personnel that left the Katy ISD Police Department since 2016 were interviewed.
The report also does not mention how the officers that left the department were selected for interview, if all of them were contacted, or how many were contacted but did not respond back.
The lack of a specific documented process, traceable methodology, or control variables mean that it is entirely possible that up to 72% of the employees that left the Katy ISD Police Department were contacted but declined to participate in a conversation with the lawyer hired by the district.
It would stand to reason that if former officers had stories of wrongdoing, those officers would likely fall into that potential 72%.
It would also stand to reason that if you were a member of the public targeted by a defamation lawsuit by the Katy Independent School District,
that you would probably not want to participate in any discussions with a lawyer hired by the same district that hired a lawyer to pursue legal action against you.
It appeared that the Board were quite perplexed as to why a member of the public would resist cooperation with a lawyer hired by the district.
Madam President, can you please confirm that you will provide your full cooperation for an investigation into wrongdoing by this school board conducted by an attorney hired by the members of this community?
As a reminder, Section 551.042 of the Texas Government Code allows you to respond with a statement of specific factual information in response to an inquiry about a subject for which notice has not been given.
You may also deliberate, provided the deliberation is limited to a proposal, to place the subject on the agenda of a subsequent meeting.
Would you like to place the subject on a future agenda or deliberate it?
Thank you, Mr. Funditis.
Our next speaker is Patty Lacey.
Hello.
My name is Patty Lacey.
and first of all I want to say thank you to George Scott. We weren't real sure
when you got on the board and I know everyone pretty much agrees with me
except for a few people that don't agree with me now anyways it doesn't matter.
Anyway you're brilliant and you make us better. You make the district better, you
make us smarter even if we have to go home and look up the words that you're
saying sometimes you're making us better and I appreciate that and I love you
dearly and your sweet wife and thank you for being buddies with my husband
because I know he feels the same way about you. What I want to do is very
different but I've had a lot of people from my church and friends that have
reached out to me about some of the stuff that goes on in the district and
what has been happening to us personally and some other people that are on the
board and I am going to take my two minutes and ten seconds and I'm going to
to pray for us and if anyone has a problem with that I'm sorry. Dear Heavenly
Father I just thank you so much for the volunteers of our district. I thank you
for this Board of Trustees and all the hard work that they do and all the other
volunteers. I thank you for our Police Department, our nurses, our students, our
teachers, our admin, for Mr. Gorgorski and I just pray a special blessing over
them and over our students and our district because we need healing and I
know that you can provide that healing for our district and I thank you so much
for that. I thank you for Mr. Scott and his brilliant mind that has come to our
district and I just pray that he enjoys his retirement but doesn't go too far. I
pray for Miss Gassoff because I am so thrilled that she is here and I know
that she probably is not. I know she doesn't feel well but I thank her for
for being here and I ask for healing for her.
And over our school board candidates,
I wanna pray for Mr. Redmond, Mr. Dolan,
Ms. Fox and Mr. Keller,
and just ask that you,
a special blessing over them and just protect them.
This is not a fun time, but it's important
and it's important for our students
and it's important for our district.
And I just ask that people get involved and stay involved
and join together with me in praying for our district in your son's most precious
name I pray amen thank you miss Lacey our next speaker is Laura Evans hello
I'm Laura Evans and I would like to address mr. Scott first who would have
thought right a love fest for you mr. Scott but I've known you since my days
with Senator Whitmire and honestly when I worked for Senator Whitmire you scared
me he kind of scared me too but but I knew if he listened to you and he took
your calls I was to put your calls through that you knew what you were
talking about so fast forward 20 years and I'm living in Katy and I find out
you're running for school board and I think oh no but what I know at 50 that I
didn't know in my late 20s if people want warm fuzzy they're not going to
like you but if people want the truth those of us who want to hear truth
regardless of whose feelings get hurt or who may or may not like it we can depend
on you to speak it and I appreciate that your knowledge and school finance is so
so thorough and so deep.
Patty's right, you're so smart and it's so clear though that
you're using that and you're committed to what's best for our
kids and you want them to have the best education possible and
you want to hold everyone involved in that accountable and
we appreciate that every meeting you're prepared. You've been
through numbers and charts and.
And you don't hold back, but in a time where people twist or
revise the truth to serve their own agendas. I appreciate so much that you speak truth loudly
and boldly and I thank you for your service. And since I still have a little bit more time,
I want to also address Ms. Dorrell and Mr. Lacey and just kind of reiterate what's been said.
I appreciate how you handle the personal vitriol with class, with grace, and I hate that you're
having to suffer through these attacks, you and your family, but I want you to know we do all
appreciate you very much we pray for you we support you and we appreciate the
time that you and your families both sacrifice for the betterment of our
kiddos thank you so much miss Evans our next speaker is Robert Willoughby hi I'm
Robert Willoughby it's kind of hard to go after like the prayers and everything
because I wasn't planning on being that nice. But I'm going to start with some of you guys that are being attacked on the internet, the cyberbullying.
You're my friends. Whatever you need, we're going to stand behind you. We're going to support you. We're going to lead and look for the truth and find it.
You know, they hired this investigator.
You know what he found?
He found the truth.
There were lies that were being played.
There were accusations being made.
And a father of two police officers.
It hurts my heart for them to have to be held up and scrutinized over something that they didn't do.
And that's wrong.
My boys go out every day, and they may not come home.
Same thing with the KDISD police officers.
Shame on the people that throw shadows on them for the things that they do.
It's just disgusting.
Now, Mr. Scott, I didn't mean that from disgusting to you.
I just want to say it just worked out that way.
You know, we've had interesting conversations at times.
Sometimes we agreed and sometimes we didn't.
But the truth is your heart is pure and good.
and you truly have the best intentions for these kids and while some people may
miss you many will not I don't think you're going very far I appreciate a lot
of things you do but what I haven't figured out exactly is what empirical
means and I know that you're worried but I promise but I promise I'll go look it
up but but but thank you so much for your service and I appreciate you as
well okay thank you thank you mr. Willoughby our next meeting regular
meeting is Monday April 22nd there being no further business before the board
this meeting is adjourned the time is 834 p.m. thank you all
Official documents
Motions and votes
Recorded actions
The motions and votes for this meeting have not been recorded here yet. Whether any were taken is not stated either way. The agenda and the recording above are the primary sources.